it's a game you cannot win but i thank you all the same links andrew charmaine crystal cuifen dalena dalglish david debbie elizabeth han xian herch ivan jane janice jie yang lennard rachelle shane shawn shaun sheila suxin wey ren wei zhen xiao hui xin hui yan yi archives glacial exhalations halcyon hells dirty secrets live jay photos more photos my deviantart icq: 20648870 msn: yucks somewhat undented orisinal read print here.inmyhead dictionary.com  
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Monday, April 20, 2009 The Rules We're off to the start of a new round of Biff Boff Bappy Boo; you know the rules. We sat, at fifteen years of age, in a room full of classmates and curious boys, sat facing each other with a concealed smile in our hands. We waved our elbows and twirled our fingers, shook our legs and turned our heads, all the while yelling Biff Boff Bappy Boo. At Boo we looked towards each other and would exclaim You win or You lose or How could I not have seen that? And the curious boys would ask How is this played? What are the rules? We explained that this gesture countered that finger and this wriggle defeated that extension. The rules were complicated. We would proceed to demonstrate. Weaving that intricate dance of ludicrous full-bodied gestures into Biff Boff Bappy Boo before exclaiming loudly at our victory or loss. The truth was that there were no rules. The only rule that counted was not to laugh, not to give it away. The other rules were invented spontaneously. A few understood this and raised an eyebrow in amusement. They went away shaking their heads and forgetting about the game. Some tried for hours to get it: Didn't you say half an hour ago that a clock-wise rotation of the left pinkie was subservient to the tumble of a lock of hair? Yes, we replied, but did you not see me purse my lips? That won it for me instead of him. Ahh. We think we get it now. But they always climbed the infinite wheel of our invention, running in place as our game formed new logic to baffle them, more roads to travel to nowhere. But Ivan knew that he had the rules, that he had the game. But when he yelled I got it! the game changed completely. We would ask him to guess which of us had won after each round and why and, without our even agreeing on it, we would always say he was right, that he had Got it. We planned a mistake, here and there, to make up for his human error. We took our wheel and unravelled it like a ribbon, letting him walk to the end and kept him there, pleased at his accomplishments. We start a new round now. You are no longer here but we start one anyway. Our hands weave that ribbon of rules. My mother walked away smiling. My father was ensnared. Ivan still slept on his island, growing fainter but not older. Playing the game every day. Wednesday, April 18, 2007 a million ancient bees It is torturous not being able to fulfill the tingle in my limbs. And there's that husky voice one employs when one does not need to perform a role in front of an audience of friends. And there's that husky voice back from one free of an audience too. And we sit and rasp at each other like we are going to lose our voices soon when in fact my voice is on the verge of amplifying and shouting out happy words. But the words cannot come, and the tingle remains unfulfilled. And I sit there with the sting of a million ancient bees throbbing against the inside of my gut. Saturday, April 14, 2007 Infinite Gift Same recurring story year after year after decade and I shadowstand and say I like the shade. Bruise There is a masochist in me with a tongue of gold. And that tongue is long and smooth and kisses like honey. There are some secrets and some fears and some love and some entropy. Allow me just once to get out. Monday, April 09, 2007 Between compromise I'm thinking of a number between one and two. I'm thinking of a place between now here and nowhere. I'm thinking of a word between speak and spoke. I'm thinking of a life between sunset and nova. I'm thinking of a love between mean and median. I'm thinking of a smell between me and you. and I'm thinking of a plan btwn chaos& space. Tuesday, March 27, 2007 SGAL In case anyone was wondering what the fuck I am doing nowadays. Thanks to Charmaine for the poem. Lunar There is an ad for Gap on television right now. It's pretty simple: the concept is of a musical and onstage is a couple. The woman sings, "Anything you can do I can do better; I can do anything better than you" and "Anything you can wear I can wear better" etc. The guy sings the refrain, "No, you can't" throughout and, at the end, the woman pulls the pants off the guy and puts them on. The idea is pretty simple too. The entire ad is staged around the concept of someone "wearing the pants" in the relationship. The pants in question are called the "Boyfriend trouser" and, ostensibly, by taking his pants, the woman is taking control in the relationship. That is, she is now in a position of power. This is designed, obviously, to appeal to women by empowering them symbolically. This ad made me think of women in power – the idea of a successful woman – and how they are portrayed in ads, on television, in the media, or anywhere, actually. What strikes me as interesting is that women in power always have their power defined as their overcoming of men. Even in something as innocuous as an Archie comic, whenever masculinity and femininity clash, Betty and Veronica are always the ones with the last laugh while Archie and Reggie are shown in some humiliating position. As a male, I used to be mildly offended that any ad on television that pitted the wits of a man against a woman always had the woman win in the end, but I realised that that was a myopic view of the situation because there are ads that portray powerful and successful men as well, but the reason I did not think of them is because they do not parallel the ads of successful, powerful women; unlike those ads, powerful men in the media are never portrayed as having overcome women. A credit card ad will have a good-looking middle-aged man lean back contentedly in his leather chair as the camera pans out to an overview of his expansive office, symbolically signifying his success and power. There is not a woman in sight. My point is that modern societies define women as having power if they can overcome men, thus inherently acknowledging the fact that their power comes to them with respect to men and, more importantly, with respect to overcoming what is perceived as the dominant, or superior, group – men – and, because overcoming an inferior group does not display any overtly special power, men do not have to be defined as having overcome women to be portrayed as successful. Thus, based on the perception of modern society – which includes women, as women themselves buy readily into the idea that they are empowered by overcoming male obstacles – men are superior to, or dominant over, women. Let us look at some essays exploring the idea of male and female. Deborah Tannen's "Asymmetries: Men and Women talking at Cross-Purposes" poses what is commonly called the Difference model in the study of gender and sex in language. She advocates that females interact in "a world of connections" in which "intimacy is key" and where "individuals negotiate complex networks of friendship [trying to] minimise differences, to reach consensus, and to avoid the appearance of superiority" whereas males operate in "a world of status" where "independence is key because a primary means of establishing status is telling others what to do and taking orders is a marker of low status" (214). Therefore, any asymmetrical relationship between men and women is not the result of an asymmetry in dominance but is the result of an asymmetry in ways of thinking. The allure of this model is twofold. First of all, it propagates the idea that men and women are equal, merely different. Second, it readily explains any miscommunication between the two sexes. Tannen gives multiple anecdotes about how seemingly confounding responses in mixed-sex interactions are reducible to the basic concepts of independence and intimacy. Thus by dissecting any mixed-sex interaction with those two concepts, we are able to understand what exactly provokes a response in each sex. But is such a model tenable? Up until now, language has been created and maintained by men. Dictionaries, the final authority on the meaning of words themselves, are perhaps the strongest definers of language. In "From discourse to dictionary: how sexist meanings are authorised", Paula Treichler says, "Dictionaries have generally excluded any sense of women as speakers, as linguistics innovators, or as definers of words... they have perpetuated the stereotypes and prejudices of writers, editors and language commentators, who are almost exclusively male (60)." The evidence of this is undeniable. In Muriel R Schulz's "The Semantic Derogation of Woman", she identifies hundreds of words which refer to women that have undergone pejoration – the act of picking up negative connotations through time – some examples being words like "hussy" which used to mean the head of a house, and "harlot", which originally meant a fellow of either sex; both words have pejorated to mean a sexually loose woman. In contrast, she could find extremely few examples of terms in reference to males that have pejorated as much, thus giving a compelling example that men have power over the shape of language. This approach to language with the understanding that men created and control it is called the Dominance model, in which the dominant form of language and speech – "male" language – is the centre of that language and that all other permutations of that particular language – called vernaculars, which include "female" language – are deviations from the "norm". "Male" language is the impersonal, scientific and factual language of scholarship whereas "female" language is the language one would use in familiar and intimate settings. This model is the traditional model with which linguists approach this area of study. This curiously reflects the point I made earlier on women having to define their power in relation to men because "female" language, in the Dominance model, is also defined in relation to "male" language. Watching that Gap ad was revelatory because it made me realise that it could be so that the Dominance and Difference models, rather than opposing forces, could in fact inform each other very well. Women tend to define their status in the world and their power with regards to their relationships with men whereas men eschew comparisons with women to define themselves in any way. Utilising the Dominance model, it seems pretty obvious that this indicates the perceived superiority of men as the group able to autonomously choose precisely what it wants to be without an external force and women as the inferior group that is dependent on defining itself by comparing it to something it is not. However, the Difference model suggests that women's definitions of themselves in relations to men are actually by-products of their desire to engender intimacy – they actively wish to define themselves in a relationship with someone else – and it is not that men do not need women to define themselves, but that they wish to define themselves independently. The study of gendered linguistics would have us believe that one has to choose between the Dominance and the Difference model. We have to decide if we wish to approach this area with the idea of a dominant language in mind, and treat the other as a by-product of the first, or with the idea that men and women are merely different and all breakdowns in communication can be attributed to what Tannen calls "cross-cultural miscommunication". But as I watched that ad, it made me think about how those models – and models in general – are merely frameworks through which to look at things. They are easily understandable concepts with which we can, with comfortable authority, poke and prod into any subject matter at all. But why do we construct models? Perhaps we fear the great complexity of an irreducible chaos. We build tributaries and mills to guide and harness the raging stream and point to the results of our borrowed power and say, "We understand it now." David Lehman's poem "When a Woman Loves a Man" ends with the lines: When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A woman wants to stay awake because, desiring intimacy, the waking hours are more time to be spent together with the man she loves; but a man, loving her back, wants her to sleep so he can watch her in her sleep. Lehman's usage of the simile "as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved" suggests that a man believes his beloved is most beautiful when she sleeps as the moon is most beautiful in the darkest of night, piercing the darkness with its lunar glow. But what is a glow? Especially the moon's glow? It is a reflective light. The moon draws its beauty from the light it reflects from the unseen sun, but is it lesser because of this reflection? The sun does not dominate the moon – they both have their own times to govern the earth, and yet without the sun, the moon cannot be beautiful; it cannot even be seen. The truth is that models are merely constructed perspectives which we may utilise to view phenomena. They may be elaborate and complex, but they are still just points of view and one point of view necessarily limits you to seeing only one side of something – you can never see the entirety of a sphere without changing your view by walking around it; there will always be half a sphere hidden from your eyes. But a qualitative analysis of these perspectives is needed, too. A fork can be seen as an implement with which to eat, or it could be seen as an instrument for poking out eyeballs. Regardless of what view one takes of a fork, all these perspectives share an overarching trait: that a fork is to be used to spear things. We understand that a fork is a relatively simple concept when we see that all potential views of it share very similar characteristics. However, the perspectives on men and women are complicated, the Dominance and Difference models seem to oppose each other and yet both have widespread arguments for and against them. That there can exist valid and yet contradictory perspectives on the same concept suggests to us that the concept in question is multi-faceted enough to encompass many perspectives. So we may never understand the other sex, and we may read gender and linguistics essays till we're blue in the face, but men will probably continue to misunderstand women, and women will probably continue to misunderstand men too because, beyond the crutches of models and perspectives, gender relations might just be complex enough to eternally confound. Works Cited Tannen, Deborah "Asymmetries: Men and Women talking at Cross-Purposes" in DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy (eds) Occasions for Writing. Boston: Thompson Wadsworth, 2008. Lehman, David "When a Man loves a Woman" in When a Man loves a Woman: Poems. New York: Scriber, 2005. Schultz, Muriel R. "The Semantic Derogation of Woman" in Burke, Lucy et al (eds) The Routledge Language and Culture Theory Reader. London: Routledge, 2000. Treichler, Paula A. "From Discourse to Dictionary: How Sexist Meanings are Authorised" in Frank, Francine Wattman and Paula A. Treichler (eds) Language, Gender, and Professional Writing: Theoretical Approaches and Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage. New York: Modern Language Association, 1989. Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Lastly I'm taking a break from blogging. Among other things, the formatting problems irritate me too much. I read this online. It's by a young singaporean gay guy and I thought it was the most honest and most optimistic bit of gay writing I've read and it made me sad: i was told not be gay by a friend, who knows that i'm gay, and i was awkward. In fact, i've never given it (the question is it wrong being gay) a thought. Probably because i enjoy being gay, n nothing embarrassing nor saddening has happened to me since i've known i'm gay. I just still feel like I'm a part of the society, and I'm waiting for the Mr. Right to appear in my life, and i have done nothing illegal or offensive to achieve my dream. I'm just daydreaming bout my future having a steady relationship and wonderful life with my lover. I know the moment will come, some day. And I never think of going back to normal (straight) again (In fact, I dont think i can). There ain't nothing wrong with being gay, except for sometimes you like watching the guys changing or sweating. Well, that's is called 'gay' anyhow. "Dont be gay, it's not good." This statement may be true and acceptable to the straight guys or anyone normal in the world, but it just sounds useless if it were meant to turn me into straight guy. I'm accepted by anyone i know, should they know i'm gay or not. Just... Go on with wat u r happy with. I'm glad i've said all these. wow fucking shit this fucking blogger shit just deleted a whole post I wrote. fucking hell, retarded new google shit fucking go to fucking hell nah fucking bei Friday, February 16, 2007 FUCK I HATE THIS FUCKING NEW BLOGGERSHIT THAT CAN'T EVEN PROPERLY MAKE LINE BREAKS FUCK THIS SHIT I HATE MY LIFE Thursday, February 15, 2007 Shelter I was sheltered from a cosmic storm that swept the coast of me and took the sand and beach to sea. The stars were dark and furious they took a thunder out to play. I turned inwards and smelt the scent of freshly-washed hair that tickled my face and wondered if out in the dark a star had just died without a trace. Wednesday, February 07, 2007 makros they will us waving from such great heights "come down now," they'll say but everything looks perfect from far away "come down now" but we'll stay Broadway sparkles with the reflection of stars, slashing diagonally down Manhattan. But when I fell down and the sparkles were at my nose they were just crystals embedded in cement. Tuesday, February 06, 2007 harh lampah One of the most hilarious conversations I've had with my roommate. This was over MSN, yeah, he's an American who uses MSN, isn't that weird? Michael Tanzer... says: Wen EN! ?3dantic says: wat u wan? Michael Tanzer... says: ha ha ha lam-pas? ?3dantic says: wat tokking u? lampah, issit? nah bei, damn vulgar sia Michael Tanzer... says: FUck you CHi-BAI! ?3dantic says: eh get ur expressions right, can? it's cheebye Michael Tanzer... says: what you ah bang lah>? ?3dantic says: haha you can never use 'lah' in a question ?3dantic says: good try though Michael Tanzer... says: fucking singlish ?3dantic says: oh yeah, and it's ah beng ?3dantic says: fucking angmoh, simple singlish also cannot make it The Corner We try not to be superstitious because we are of that generation that eschews the mystical for more prosaic disciplines, but when Tracy told me of a ghost who gets in beside you if your shoes are pointed towards your bed I laughed and most of me did not believe her but I knew that from that point on my shoes would never point towards my bed just in case and that is the heart of superstition: that one vestigial doubt that can be diminished to a whisper but cannot be erased. Friday, February 02, 2007 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i because it was time to tell someone something ii because it was time to tell anyone anything time to open my mouth iii not because i never wanted to but because i never had anything to tell but kept that to myself iiii to listen to the sound of a buzzing lightbulb on saturday night iiiii and to dismiss first so as not to be dismissed first iiiiii because one day iiiiiii because indefinitearticle day epicenepronoun conditionaltense intransitiveverb Thursday, February 01, 2007 Roar = Meow During my first lecture for "Gender, Sex and Language", a linguistics course, the professor started the lecture by passing me a packet of articles and said, "You might want to look at this." As I had registered late, I assumed that it was supplementary reading that the class had already received the week before. She began her lecture and it turns out there is a very feminist slant to the whole thing. There are 7 guys and about 43 girls in the class, some girls conform to the stereotype of feminists - short-haired, androgynous-to-male dressing styles, loudly opiniated - and the teacher herself embodied some of these traits. After the lecture, I went to talk to her about the course, what I missed and stuff like that and she asked, "So do you want to take those?", referring to the notes she had handed me. Confused, I asked her what she meant. She said that those articles were of gender and sex in non-western languages, specifically, Japanese and she thought that I might have been interested in them. I said I was Chinese. It's interesting to me that a woman who during her lecture discussed the nuances and problems of sexual bias and prejudice in language could display that level of racial presumption. Tuesday, January 30, 2007 +/- Why can't emotions be simple? I hate, I love; I'm happy, I'm sad. But they can never be separated and too often what we define as opposing emotions are experienced at once. Happy and sad amalgamated into a contrary creature when we recall certain memories. Pride and jealousy all mixed up when we see our friends succeed at something we can't. Sometimes, such mixtures render it impossible to distill what is felt into a singular emotional experience and it gets so utterly confusing. If only there was a physical characteristic to emotions that when something is felt, a chart could be produced that would indicate exactly what that mixture is. How much simpler life would be. I'm feeling 39% happy, 17% annoyed, 24% exasperated and 20% terrified. Then we wouldn't have to search for that perfect analogy anymore. Like that feeling you get when you take off your shoes after a long day in the office. Like that feeling you get when you run into a hot tropical rainfall after working at your desk for three hours. Like that feeling you get when you look at the calendar and realise that your grandfather died exactly two years ago. And like that feeling you get when you wake up some mornings and realise that there's nothing in the world to prevent you from diving back into the covers and sleeping for another hour or so because nothing you have to do that day is so important that it cannot all be postponed for another dream. Saturday, January 27, 2007 ? Is it the air we breathe Is it the sun that shines Is it that indescribable feeling That tells me what isn't mine. ? Sunday, January 21, 2007 For one Chocolate Lucky Charms + Amarula + Milk = a very chocolatey, milky, crunchy, alcoholic and marshmellowy snack Friday, January 19, 2007 Some I can't deny that when I was walking back home today, when I had my hood up against the rain wishing I had bought that Pucci umbrella, when I was getting wet and the fur on my coat was beginning to droop, and even if I keep saying I can't stand it and the very idea of it makes me want to puke, when the rain turned to snow halfway through the deluge and stopped falling and started floating and swirling in flurries of white crystals, even though they were not particularly fluffy snowflakes, even though it was much more like slush, I can't deny that I did not feel a slight and childish wonder. Monday, January 08, 2007 The wind is in the street and the shadow boys are breaking all the laws I woke up yesterday thinking it was tomorrow. And today I will fall asleep and wake up into today. The smallest things resist change while the huge phenomena move inexorably forward. and it's time. time. time. Saturday, January 06, 2007 Stock photos Sometimes I can't believe I'm already 21. It seems so odd to think about. It's just another number, I try to tell myself, but it's really not. It's a symbol that has so much power that I cannot escape it no matter how I try to twist my way around. Most people start working at 21. Many people graduate from university at 21. Some people even start families at 21. I've done nothing; I'm in my first year at university doing shit; I can't seem to grow up. It seemed to exciting at first, becoming 21. Such a milestone shooting straight into the heart of all life. Now it's just this awful, never-ending compelling impetus to grow up quickly into something useful, if to no one else, to myself. Thursday, January 04, 2007 P.S. HAPPY NEW YEAR! New Year Resolutions: 1) Stop spending money like a spoilt brat. 2) Get a part-time job so I can get a nicer apartment than my parents are willing to spring for. 3) Study more and procrastinate less. 4) Become less fat. 5) Be nicer to people. 6) Stop my alcohol consumption when I finish my last bottle of Amarula. These are so fucking unrealistic but I figure if I aim for the stars I might actually make it onto my roof. Tuesday, January 02, 2007 The small irony of a paperclip Right now I'm on my bed in Bali thinking about how stupid it was for the designers of this place to think that the charm of a thatched roof made up for the tiny surprises of lizard shit that miraculously find their way onto surfaces that show them off best in their black, white-tipped beauty. That book that welcomes you to the hotel and tells you of the facilities (which I love reading but I think I'm probably the only one who ever does that) included the line "Snakes, insects, frogs, lizards and mosquitoes are part of nature." I should have realised that this wasn't going to be all spiffy since that is basically a paraphrase for "Expect snakes, insects, frogs, lizards and mosquitoes to share your living space." Conversation snippet: Me: This place is actually damn nice. Sister: Yeah, too bad for nature. I guess I needed one more trek into some naturalist's idea of paradise to get the idea slapped into my head that I am one for tall buildings, air-conditioning and a relatively bug-free environment. Wednesday, December 20, 2006 Nyu York At 9:17 AM today, I finished my last exam and thus am I done for my first semester in my university life. Initially, I had the hubris and delusion to imagine I could hold a 4.0 GPA easily because Americans are stupid. But it's a slow and sometimes painful revelation that some of them are actually pretty smart and deserve to get better grades than I do. Some of them are even smart and nice and their getting better grades than I do makes me happy for them. How unSingaporean! Thus am I quite happy that I got A for Creative Writing (my teacher even said that I should send a few of my pieces out for publishing) and A- for French even though I probably bombed Expressive Cultures and Economics. It irritates me a bit that I could have easily gotten at least an A- for Expressive Cultures because all essays I have handed in have yielded at least an A-, but due to an excessive amount of absences and a terribly written final exam (I didn't know it was open book/open notes thus arrived at the lecture theatre with only two pens), my grade will be docked a bit for that. I have also learnt that there are key differences in American culture and Singaporean culture that shouldn't be looked upon as a measure of how they don't live up to my standards. For example, Americna English, while easy to deplore and denigrate, is simply a different evolutionary product from the same linguistic roots as British and Singaporean English. And while their trash cans and elevators and soccer are jarring on the ears, they should be treated as simply exotic words for everday objects and activities. The same way a Singaporean uses 'spoilt' for things beyond foodstuff, which Americans wouldn't. Of course, there are still some pockets of American society that are asinine. Like the girl who begins teaching me econs with great gusto until it is apparent that she knows as much as I do, or even less. Like the people who raise their hands to give two-bit sound bites on the subject at hand that are more concerned with the so-believed impressive delivery than the content of what they are saying. Maybe the most important thing that I have to learn from Americans is that so many of them are doing what they want to do. It seems to me that everyone I have met has had fewer parental pressure to do The Right Thing and take subjects or a course that would make them oodles of money. After talking briefly to my mother about how I really didn't enjoy what I was doing, to which she responded that what I didn't enjoy would make me money and what I did would be as useless as if I didn't go to univeristy, I hated her for a bit, but I guess she has a point. And now it is up to me to find a compromise between what I want to do and what will satisfy my material desires (which are plentiful and never-ending). This is my dream: to make enough money to live like I do now writing fiction. This is the reality: unless I swap lives with J.K. Rowling, that probably won't happen. But I continue to dream, and while trying to make the asymptote of reality veer as close to my dream as possible, I probably should try to make some money. Tuesday, December 19, 2006 Why I love my roommate Mike: Hey, wanna join me in a little mochi ball eating? Me: You mean my mochi balls? Mike: No, mine; what are you talking about? Me: What are you talking about? We run to the freezer. Me: Oh my god, we both bought mochi balls. Mike: And they're the same fucking brand! Monday, December 18, 2006 What I did on Friday Night Ordered delivery from a place I can walk to in 7 minutes. Experimented with various types of pillows to see which one was the best for smothering someone in his or her sleep. We found out that limper pillows with a high thread count are the best, down pillows might as well be stuffed up the person's ass for all it did towards the aim of asphyxiation and that wrapping a plastic bag over a pillow before attempting the smothering almost guarantees suffocation. Discussed the redundancy of thinking of murdering someone with a pillow: if you plan to take into account the fact that the person to be smothered may not have a compatible pillow and thus consider alternate actions, you might as well not think about using a pillow in the first place. Slept till 2 AM. Woke up to play mah jong. Watched Sex and the City till lunchtime on Saturday. Monday, December 11, 2006 Oh What can I say but "Oh"? Oh, that's nice. Oh, really? Oh, but how does it work out in the end? Oh, I don't know... maybe. Oh, I see. Oh, I think so. Oh, so... that's it? And Oh, okay. Thursday, December 07, 2006 Will this horizontal line This is the wrong generation for Tori Amos. No one knows who she is here. I think I've come across a total of one person who knows who she is and some of her songs. I think the last of Tori Amos listeners are probably from my generation and maybe the year after mine. I've been listening to her songs all over again and went to hereinmyhead.com to download some live versions I remember to be particularly metamorphosed but most of the links on the earlier songs on that site are down. I really want to hear Lust and Carbon and Siren live again, but I guess I won't be able to. She's supposed to go on tour next year. Hopefully that means I'll get to finally watch her in concert. Thursday, November 30, 2006 First Date On the way to the cafe alone I saw an old man pushing a cart of junk, that putrid accumulation wafting back into him, piling up the nasal sonic boom the faster he walked, jarring the gloom of a grey street with the clunk of broken down clockwork beyond repair. On the way to the cafe alone I saw a mother clutching the hand of her son who, as tall as her hips, lifted his arm 45 degrees upwards, twisted in its socket, rocket-pointed parabola; her body leaned left and down, thus connected; a circuit of discomfort they shared. On the way to the cafe alone I saw climbing out of the sewers a twist of steam, breathing noise, leaving behind the clatter of subterranean movement - a low body hissing; then retreating - dissipating quickly into a cold curl of air. At the cafe alone I saw him sitting and waving smiling I sat beside him and laughed looked at him read the lines chalked on boards, the signs, almost touching that space of radiation between us thinking he's there he's there he's there. On my way home alone I saw one spark fall, collapsing into an ashy forgetfulness, tumbling from the cigarette's end into the black core of a night-lost street, seeking clockwork, dancing a spiral death spin last-breath-within shuddering flare. Tuesday, November 28, 2006 Not here It's odd to think that there are only 2 weeks left of the class, after which there are only several exams and then home. How fast the first half of freshman year has passed, during which time I felt in successive waves the excitement of being back in an atmosphere of learning, the disillusion of how stupid some people can be, the accomplishment of finishing essays, the building of an avalanche of ennui and tiredness that cannot be shaken but can be halted somewhat and sometimes that one day will crash and then it will start again from the wreckage of that first crash. It's odd to think that it's almost over, that I'm never happy with my station in life. That I can watch Army Daze in nine parts on youtube and think of how relatively brainless and easy being in the army was. And to think such days here are such privileges on those few weekends without the noose of an imminent deadline hungering for my attention. That I can stand on the brink of my life waiting for that great feeling of fulfillment and achievement without realising that the small breeze curling up the cliff and brushing my face is what that is. I saw a once beautiful woman on the subway who sat opposite me. Down her neck her hair fell like a twist of black flame now dry and scentless. She was a beautiful woman who had resigned herself to falling back into the face of an older woman's gentler face, sinking back into a soft pillow that rises up to support. Her cheeks sagged and glowed with a waxy lustre and her dark red, lipstick-painted lips retained the sum and nexus of her remnant sensuality. Her thighs yielded to the seat and spread, and she sat facing me with her bags of groceries staring sleepily out the window at the walls rushing by as fast as time behind me. She's forgotten to reminisce about when she wasn't middle-aged and tired. I wished I could have lit her hair on fire to watch that dark flame consume the wax of her years and melt away until what was left was that young girl on the precipice of everything, staring out over the cliff discontentedly waiting for her time to come, and tell her that that is it. She gets no second chance in life. Wednesday, November 22, 2006 Morning ramble I didn't think my karaoke virginity would be taken by a bunch of Americans. I've just got back from a karaoke session, I have two essays due today and it's 5:14 AM. It all amounts to grossness and (probably) lousy essays. Screaming into the microphone to songs I don't particularly like isn't my idea of fun, but give me a beat and I'm dancing and then everything is fine in the world. Dylan, this guy from Parsons, has the most amazing magenta hair. It's not obnoxiously purple; it's this light, pale shade that looks soft and silky. I'm not describing it very well, let me try again: it's a shade that looks natural, like, if there were people with genetically magenta hair out there, it would look like his hair. In local lingo, it looks so good I wanna bone him. No, I'm kidding. I don't wanna bone you, Dylan! (I'm just adding this disclaimer in case you ever read this haha [I DO WANNA FUCKING BONE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]) {kidding!} I got an A- on an essay assignment. And while there were only three people who got higher than a B at all, the fact that I was among the top and not at the top irritates me a bit. My friend taking East Asian Politics tells me that Singapore is ranked number one in the world in competitiveness. I'm not sure how they arrive at figures for competitiveness, but they have, and I'm displaying mild signs of it. I'd like to think that that's not true and that I am only angry because I enjoyed writing that essay quite a bit and I like seeing good grades on things I enjoy writing. Essay writing for me needs a good head. Kinda like a dexterous tongue but more enjoyable. Once I get a good opening sentence, the rest of the essay gets shat out very easily. People think I keep procrastinating because they catch me with Word open and empty, but the truth is that I'm trying out all these different sentences to start essays and deleting them and starting all over again. Okay lah, this is sometimes true, but it's mostly true when people peek at my screen. I feel like writing an email to Ms Lim now to find out how she is. Writing literature essays (even though the professor stresses that it isn't literature but, honestly, if 'explicate how Virginia Woolf delineates human subjectivity in To the Lighthouse, fully accounting for a method she uses to achieve this effect' isn't a literature exploration I don't know what is) makes me think of her and how she had never given me an A in any of my essays =( Except one, I think. But it was on my favourite Seamus Heaney poem......... shit, I can't remember the name of it right now. Sheds skin Mike: Hey, it's gonna be 34 degrees tomorrow. Me: Really? Wow! That's really hot! Mike: Fahrenheit. Me: Fuck. My inability to think in Fahrenheit aside, the weather has finally taken a turn for the worst. It's almost 0 degrees right now (in Celsius, of course: the only temperature measurement system that makes sense - besides Kelvin; basically, everything but Fahrenheit sucks). And I hate it! I wish I were in tropical climes right now! The only good thing about the weather is that today, at Bergdorf, that $795 brown trenchcoat with burnished clips and orange lining looked cheap and so worth it. I'm going back on Friday to see if they can take it in at the waist. It was a bit too big even in S. I also went to H & M and tried on this tshirt. I really liked it so I braced myself for an unfriendly price. It turned out to be $12! I also bought $3 gloves. I love cheap clothes that look really good. Severin has an amazing orange and black jacket that cost him $50 and that made me very jealous. Outside Saks, they had the same display they put up 2 years ago. Neon snowflakes that twinkle rather menacingly and in synchronity with techno jingle bells music every half hour. I remember the last time I saw it I had food poisoning and was rushing back to the hotel to shit and the techno christmas music really seemed like the background music to the movie of my bowelly-challenged life. I was going to talk about the weather and I ended up talking about clothes. I really have nothing else on my mind. But that trenchcoat was the most amazing thing I've seen in a while. Thursday, November 16, 2006 Extrapolating We're back to thinking too much back to a stage of such inner wells; gaze deep and tell me what swells into view. The debut of a familiar strangeness of 'it must be nice-' and 'i wish that-' once or twice, i really wish that- Tuesday, November 14, 2006 Yay for going home in a month and a half With regards to the previous not-quite rave, apparently music like that is rave music because all clubs here play RnB and stuff like that. Thank goodness I'll be home in a month and a half. Zouk really has everything one would need in one establishment. I tried explaining the concept of Mambo night to a few people but I gave up trying to convince them that loud retro music to which there are almost set dance movements is something that many Singaporeans find amusing and go for every Wednesday night for kicks. Trivia for the day: clubs here don't offer two free drinks per entry. Isn't that so awful? Even though I waste those drinks on sprites because going to the toilet by elbowing my way out of a dancefloor due to the extreme diuretic effect alcohol has on me isn't my idea of fun. In other yays about going home: My fucking bed!!! J'adore mon grand lit! The thought of lying about in my amazing bed listening to Lamb and Bjork blasting out of the overhead speakers makes me want to be home Right Now. Cheap hawker food! One of the first things I will do when I get back is to travel all the way to Joo Chiat to partake of Glory's glorious chendol. And the thought of being barbaric and ripping apart crabs stewed in rich, spicy sauces makes me SO FUCKING HUNGRY FUCK! My toilet!!!!!!!!! Oh sorry, I meant bathroom, since I'm in The Silly Country. I miss my black stone-floored, white marble-tiled toilet! I miss my huge black counter on which all my various primping shit are laid out in bathroom glory. I miss the little white stool in the showering area that I sit on to bathe because I'm too lazy to even stand to do it. I get to see all you amazing people whom I have not seen for evarrr!! Oh yes, you and you and you, but not you and you and you because you people decided to be silly and not come home for winter break. Ugh, I can't wait to get home now. Saturday, November 11, 2006 Finally So the rave turned out to be just a club with pretty good music. You know, the type of music that pulses in your bones; the type when the DJ doesn't rely on parlour tricks like shutting the music off at certain points so that the dance floor can sing along (mostly because the music played didn't have lyrics); the type that isn't obnoxiously loud that your eardrums starts to whine, but a good loud that leaves your ears muffled and ringing at the end of the night; the type where everything flows in a sinusoidal wave of up and down and up and down, and you don't have to 'let's just wait for a good song to come on!' because everything is trippy beats and deep, bone-shuddering bass. I'm glad I do these things without substances because I almost reach orgasmic points closing my eyes and moving to music; substances would make the whole experience waaay too trippy. Music's a good, non-abusive drug. I could have stayed there the whole night, moving and moving and moving and moving. Thursday, November 09, 2006 Cheebye large There is a sentence that I hate a lot and it is this: Singapore is, by and large, a conservative society. First of all, because the phrase 'by and large' means almost nothing other than to act as a qualifier to justify the statement's imprecise nature. The root of the phrase is nautical: a sailing ship could either sail by the wind or at large, which would mean at an angle to the wind's direction, thus 'by and large' means 'considering all possibilities' and is usually used (maybe even unintentionally) to indicate a certain amount of circumspection or imprecise generality of a statement. By saying 'by and large', it is as if the speaker of the sentence has been exempted from the need to prove with facts and statistics his or her claims. In the case of a government body using it, the statement then takes on a top-down, dictatorial tone which is meant to be accepted wholesale by its citizens. There are certain phrases that keep cropping up with homosexuality. There are the classics like 'unnatural' and the more specific 'aberration' (try to think, for example, of any occasion in which 'aberration' was used in some other context). Then there is the more up-to-date 'lifestyle', as if one could change from a homosexual lifestyle to a heterosexual lifestyle as easily as one could from an austere lifestyle to a decadent one. The Singaporean government has the honour of a culturally specific one: Singapore is, by and large, a conservative society. There is not a single mention of homosexuality from the government that does not include this massive over-qualifier thrown out there like some life-ring to save a floundering argument. To justify any restriction on the grounds that the liberal attitude necessary to accept that which is to be restricted is at odds with the social mores of a society is ridiculous. Casinos, for example. Wanton gambling and the related societal ills that arise from it. If Singapore, by and large, is a conservative society, why is it that the restrictions on casinos in Singapore has been significantly loosened? I remember the happy claims by the government that Singapore was starting to become a more open society and therefore it was time to open the doors to vice and addiction. I wonder if this celebrated openness is a selective openness. It seems paradoxical somehow, if someone says he's open about something but not about something else, does it not make him microcosmically liberated but even more narrow-minded overall? How selective Singapore's attitude is! according to our government. How flexible it is to accommodate anything the government wants to justify. So anyway, anal sex and oral sex are to be de-criminalised, but only for heterosexuals. And while serial blow-jobbers may celebrate joyously (because I'm sure there are so many females out there who cannot imagine a better pleasure than putting a hairy implement used to urinate and which may be smeared with traces of smegma into their mouths during sexual intercourse), it seems a like a huge step into discrimination. When it was illegal for everyone, everyone was equal in their rights to be pleasured orally or anally - i.e., not allowed to - but now there is a subset of society allowed to engage in deviant fornication while another group is not, thus generating an imbalance in the rights of all citizens. Deviant, because that majority of conservative citizens probably object to anal and oral sex anyway, regardless of the sexuality of who is performing it. So if there are dissident voices objecting to anal and oral sex in general, why are they being selectively decriminalised? At times like these I really wonder what the agenda of the Singaporean government are. What really is the political, social or economic impact of allowing homosexuals to have legal sex? Politically, the party which legalises it stands to lose the support of the ultra-conservative who in their deluded minds seem to think that attitude towards sex in the privacy of homes is their greatest priority in choosing political representatives. At the same time they gain more support from the more liberal citizens, in particular homosexuals who have suddenly been allowed sex without fear of legal recriminations. Socially, the effect is almost nil if not marginally good; less people, especially teenagers, would feel the urge to repress themselves and be depressed about their sexuality if they had the official support of the government. Economically, the so-called pink dollar would get stronger. Without fear of antiquated foreign laws, international businesses targetting the gay community would be more inclined to open up shop in Singapore. So what exactly are the bad aspects of legalising gay sex? My dear roommate Mikey-poo asked if it was possible that such a decision was reached due to the close proximity of Singapore to two very conservative Muslim countries. I've never considered that and I don't know the answer to it either since I lack almost all knowledge in international politics and shit like that. Does anyone know? It's an interesting perspective I want to know more about. Saturday, November 04, 2006 Pixel lie I dreamt that you were here and that we were taking mad pictures on my camera phone. When I woke up, I checked my gallery and there were no photos there because you are a continent and several seas away. It was just the pixellated lie of a restless night.  Monday, October 30, 2006 And then I did... In my first month in New York I spent 3000 dollars. I justified it by the fact that I had a lot of necessities to buy like carpets and ... erm... I had a lot of necessities. So in the second month I decided to be a bit more frugal and managed to cut expenditure down to 800 dollars. I was very happy that I managed to reduce my spending by 75% so I decided to reward myself by going shopping, which has ultimately blown my spending up by quite a bit. Woodbury Common is the devil. It sucks up my money very quickly. It's almost as if I can't step into a store without buying something. I swear that I will not go back there until next year; after all I have purchased all the clothes I need to last through this winter season. I bought a really really nice (and really really thick) Calvin Klein jacket with fur lining for about 200 dollars that is thick enough to see my through the bleakest of winter days. I can even throw on a tshirt safe in the knowledge that BigBrown is gonna keep me warm in that 15 minute walk to class. As I was showing my purchases to my neighbour, she said of one article of clothing, "Oh this is so you." She proceeded to tell me that I only wore green, brown, black and grey. I opened my drawers and I realised that she is correct. I do have a limited colour palette. But it's okay, because I'd rather have a whole wardrobe that matches than a disparate one from which it takes forever to assemble something wearably matching. Besides shopping at fantastic discounts, I have been doing a bit of interior decorating with my roommates. Look at my living room now:  I'm so happy with it that I am quite beside myself.  It's always good to put to use skills you've learnt in the army; it makes those two years seem worth it. While some people will never get to throw another grenade again, I can safely say that learning to use Photoshop has been something I haven't stopped using. Sunday, October 29, 2006 And then we did... Every Saturday is a chore when you don't want to do anything but the whole building in which you live finds it necessary to Go Out and Do Something. I just want to listen to Bjork sing and do nothing in bed. Or spend some time de-linting the carpet and washing my sheets. Or re-organising my desk. It's hard to do these things because while Bjork sings and there is laughter outside you feel maybe you should not be listening to Bjork and that maybe you should be out there doing things that invoke laughter. I miss the things that I could do unintruded upon at home that I can't do here. I'm going to draw now; I'm not sure what I'm going to draw, but I'll think of something as I am doing it. Tuesday, October 17, 2006 Update Hello, kids! Forgive my lack of updates. I had to write a short story for class and I just finished it today. It's 9 pages long with single-line spacing; it's longer than any essay I've ever written for school. I started writing it out in my blog, which of course meant that I had to finish it here too(and it is the post just below this, which is another reason I didn't update). I didn't make the deadline, but I submitted something else in its place that got full marks. Let me get my brag on and say I thought my teacher gave full marks for everything, but it turns out she doesn't; I've just had full marks for all my assignments so far. Brag off. I have to submit this new story today for workshop and all the times I gave people a hard time for their inadequate stories probably means they'll be very carefully reading my story so as to give me as much shit as possible. I don't really like this one, but I guess some people might. I still can't get the voice of the piece down right. I wanted a more impersonal tone, but I couldn't achieve it first person even though I tried, so I gave up and just wrote as it came out. In other news, I participated in a bake-off. Haha my dorm has this thing called Floor Wars where all 14 floors compete against each other for extra money to blow on a party and one of the challenges was a bake-off. We had one hour to bake cookies. And my apartment did our floor's cookies the only way we knew how. Mike searched for the recipe online and started mixing the main ingredients. I was off to buy chocolate chips and forego the original idea of a ganache coating for a caramel centre. Ary played tripping music on an amp and pranced about in an endearingly superfluous way and Severin complained about being horny and how we should 'trust (him), ferreal, (he's) not a virgin' until we banished him with a ban from the room until he came back with a condom full of semen that he did not produce by himself in the toilet. We knew the judges was going to be Liam, the cutest 6 year-old child of one of the professors, and his mother, so pandered to a 6 year-old's tastes and laughed at the pumpkin and banana rubbish the other floors baked. I stood next to cute Liam and urged him to Do the Right Thing for our cookies and manipulated him to curse the other floors' cookies. "Liam, what's 1 + 1?" "2!" "Clever boy! Now write that down next to 'originality' for Floor 4!' and we placed second overall. Yeah bitches, boring old chocolate chip cookies placed second in a bake-off due to manipulation of one of the judges and the 'ingenious' addition of a caramel centre. Liam was soooo cute after the judging. He had 14 floors worth of cookie sugery goodness in his system and he was just running up and down the corridor and banging into walls with a big grin on his face. I love little kids!!! Especially those I can manipulate with substances and verbal cues (big eyes and cute dome hair are pluses). I should have taken the babysitting job for Liam's younger brother. I would have had such a great time teaching Caleb and Liam shit. And making contruction cut-out hearts etc for their parents, of course. Saturday, September 30, 2006 Creative Blogging I have to write a short story by Monday that is worth about 15% of my final grade. I have no idea what I'll write about so I'll just start writing now and hand in the result on Monday: I was preparing dinner the first time I heard about it. Julian had just got home from school. He pushed open the kitchen door and greeted me with an inexplicable, "It's the big one!" "The big what?" I asked, "And hi." "Hi, Mom." He put down his knapsack and took out some orange juice from the fridge. "The apocalypse." "The what?" "The apocalypse," he repeated, taking a sip of juice, "The world is ending in a week." I didn't know what to say, so I turned back to my cutting board and continued to slice a tomato. He smiled. "It's all anyone was talking about in school today. Apparently, freaky doomsday prophets all over the world predicted that the world would end in seven days." He finished his juice and proceeded to wash the glass. "At 7:42 a.m. on the second day of November. Next Friday." "Not the ides of March?" "Mom!" "It's just weird, I guess. I didn't think that the world would end in fall. It's such an in-between time. I would have guessed deep winter. Or summer." I paused, searching for something to say. "So... where'd you hear this from?" Julian shrugged and mentioned some random tabloid I had not heard of before. "You bought a tabloid?" I asked. He looked at me and then sighed. "Hey... I had to find out for myself, you know. I think the world ending in a week is very important, don't you?" "Julian, you know what I think. Tabloids are a waste of money and we can't afford—" "It was only one paper! God! It cost me a dollar. It's not like I bought a car. Or a new bag," he said, picking up his tattered knapsack and heading out of the kitchen. "Oh, honey," I said, "you know I'd buy you a new bag if I could, but we have to save up for a while, okay? Money's just a little tight for the next few months." Julian turned back to look at me. "Thank goodness the world's ending in a week then," he said. "Dinner's in an hour!" I called after him. * We didn't have carrots. It pissed me off that I'd forgotten to buy the carrots the last time I went grocery shopping. It pissed me off even more that I refused to serve stew without carrots in them and would thus force myself to go out for carrots now. I hated going out of the house unnecessarily. I put on my dress and applied a bit of make-up onto my face. My lipstick tube had cracked, but I hadn't bought a new one in a long time. My compact revealed a cakey mass of powder but I touched it on anyway. And then I took a deep breath, inhaling the sticky sweet smell of old perfumed powder, and left the house. It was a five minute walk to the grocer but I hurried along because I didn't want to talk to anyone. I'd reached the door to the grocer's and was just about to open it when I heard Helen's voice behind me. "Marlene!" Fuck. "What are you doing here?" I turned. "I'm getting carrots," I said, "I'm making stew." "You haven't been by in a while," Helen said. "There didn't seem to be a point," I explained, "after a while." "Don't say that, Marlene! I'm sure he'll write again soon. He's probably just busy or something." "Please don't make excuses for my husband, Helen." I wanted to stop this conversation before it descended into a prolonged period of awkward silence. "I really have to get my carrots, so I guess I'll see you soon?" I smiled and entered the shop. Helen paused before entering after me. She looked at me for a second before nodding her head and heading off into the meat aisle. I thought back on our short conversation and realised that it had never occurred to me to ask what she was doing there. It seemed obvious now that she would enter the shop and now I know I'd avoid her simply because I had said goodbye already. A few months ago I would not have missed such an obvious question. But simple things like that eluded me now. Simple things like carrots, I suppose. I think I was better at this when George was around, but probably not. When he left the town suddenly "for work", it never occurred to me to ask what work, or how long, or when I would see him again. He sent me letters, the last fragment of our courtship romance, for we had eschewed the telephone for the written word when we were in university together. The envelopes always contained some money lined in carbon-paper ("so dishonest post-workers won't be tempted by the sight of money through the envelope," George had explained). George always asked how I was and how Julian was, but never included a return address to which I could respond to these questions. Our town was small and I had to go to the post-office to pick up my mail. Helen would say, "Another one in today!" and hand me the envelope through which I could see the black rectangle of carbon paper. After a while the letters slowly stopped coming. Helen would smile and shake her head as I entered the door and we would spend a few minutes talking about errant husbands, for hers worked the nightshift in a nearby glass factory and hardly spent any time with her. But after a while, when my visits seemed to increase the fewer letters that appeared, when it ceased being funny and started becoming pathetic, I stopped going to the post-office. No one else sent me mail anyway. I hurried to the vegetable section, picked up my carrots and headed to the cashier. Mr Gordon was watching the television behind the counter. He took my carrots and indicated at the screen with his jaw. "You see that? Earthquake in Tokyo. Thousands killed. What's the world coming to, eh?" I looked at the tabloids on the newsstand and paid him in exact change. "It's ending, Mr Gordon." * We had dinner in silence that night. Whenever I looked up at Julian, he picked up his water to drink and when I finally opened my mouth to say something, he got up and brought his plate to the sink. The carrots made a world of difference. * I heard Mr Sestina's rooster crow at midnight on Saturday. I woke up to the disorientation of darkness and my clock displaying 00:00. I shivered, turned away from the window and wrapped myself tighter into my blanket. My mother had told me that roosters only crowed at night when someone died, but it had seemed like the stupidest superstition in the world then. I remained unmoving until the unbearable tension of facing away from the window watching the shadows creep across my wall forced me to turn back and to stare out the window. I heard the door open and soft footsteps tread across the room toward my bed. "Mom?" I heard Julian whisper. He got into my bed and I hugged him until he fell asleep. I watched the clouds billowing across the moon as if some lunatic wind had been let loose in the atmosphere. The window rattled and the rooster crowed again. I watched that patch of sky until it grew bright and then I fell asleep. * On Sunday and Monday I scanned the obituaries but they were empty except for a black and white advertisement from the casket home. The rest of the papers were devoted to the increasing amount of religious figures around the world who were also announcing the end of the world and a similar number of geologists, astronomers and every sort of scientist indicating with iron-clad scientific data that no cataclysm in the form of storms of meteors or titanic earthquakes or lethal epidemics was forthcoming in the near-future. Julian came back on Monday with more stories to tell. Frederick Lee had been taken out of school. Mrs Lee went from house to house that afternoon, sheepishly handing out mandarins and muttering, "Just in case" to everyone who received one. She forgot my name as she presented me with one. But I couldn't blame her for that. Mr Lee came around even later to take back the mandarins. "I'm sorry for my wife," he apologised, "but we're a Christian household and we do not believe in luck." "Why did you take Steven out of school?" I asked, genuinely bewildered by that decision. "Do you honestly believe that the world is going to end on Friday? There hasn't been official word from the Vatican yet." Mr Lee shook his head as he turned away from my doorstep and headed out the gate. "Just in case," he said. * It was so unusual for the phone to ring that when it did in the silent afternoon I cut my finger in surprise on the kitchen knife. It was Helen. "Marlene! I insist we meet for coffee. It's been too long since we've had a good chat." "Helen, I'm flattered but..." I trailed off, not knowing whether saying coffee was an unnecessary extravagance or that I didn't particularly feel like meeting her was the nicer way to end this conversation. "Oh Marlene," she sighed, "I promise we won't talk about-" "Hey, you know what?" I said with uncharacteristic spontaneity, "Come over for dinner tonight. Julian's not going to be home." And at least I wouldn't have to buy an over-priced cup of coffee. Helen perked up immediately. "Sure! I'll be over at, say, seven? I don't want to be out too late." She laughed, "Should I dress up?" "If you wish. I'm just making a salad and pasta. Nothing fancy." "I understand," Helen said hurriedly, "see you at seven!" As I put down the phone, I wondered what had come over me to ask this gossipy post-office worker for dinner. I was certain that she was the reason the town looked at me with mixed pity when they saw me outside of my house. It was a terrible shame to be so uninteresting that your husband left you. A terrible, terrible shame. I had made the mistake of trusting someone out of circumstance when the flow of letters petered out and Helen had been conveniently situated behind the counter to lend a listening ear. She had told one or two people, surely not more than that, who had told one or two more people, and by the slow process of small town osmosis, everyone I had met in the last year had produced vague reassurances of the reappearance of my husband when conversations started dying. Before we left, George was well-liked and it surprised everyone when we had returned from college married. We were the only two going to that particular college and my friends teased me about getting to know him. I guess in a big city university, you cling on to the small, familiar things. And I was familiar to George if only because we both knew of the same streets and sights and smells that everyone else knew nothing about. I wrote him a letter and put it under his door after we had first spoken because the thought of calling him on the phone scared me. The next week passed in a haze of agitation until I returned to my room one day and saw a white note neatly folded by the door. The letters we wrote to each other grew more and more florid and, by senior year, George had proposed in writing, enclosing a ring in the envelope which contained the proposal. I planned on delaying writing back for a week, thinking to make him pay for that week he had made me wait after I had sent the first letter, but by the fourth day, the irresistible urge to shout "Yes!" induced me to write him an acceptance note and slip it under his door. It seemed foolish and romantic at the time. There was a smear of blood on the phone when I put it down. The incision was so small that I had forgotten I had cut my finger before picking the phone. I washed the blood off my finger and wiped the phone clean. Helen arrived in a cocktail dress. She burst into laughter when she saw my face and said that she couldn't help it. She had wanted to dress up and so she did. As I closed the door, I looked at my reflection in the glass, at my plain brown hair and my slightly sallow, tired skin, and hated her for making me look bad. But I laughed animatedly and we began to eat dinner. "So, Armageddon," she said between bites, "that throws me off a bit." "Does it really?" I asked. "It hasn't really affected my life that much. I mean, whether there will be an apocalypse of some sort or not in five days, I don't think I'd live my life any different than how I am living it now." "There has been a huge influx of letters at the post-office," Helen said. "Everyone's writing to their mothers, grandfathers, priests, husbands..." she looked at me and paused. "Everyone's trying to find out if everyone else is okay." "Why don't they just use the phone?" I asked. Helen looked at me in surprise. "Don't you know? Half the phone lines are not working. I was surprised that yours was. Electricity has been very erratic these few days." "I didn't know," I replied, "I guess I don't really know what's going on outside this house much." "Marlene! You really have to get out more! I mean, who cares what other people say? You need fresh air and something... I don't know, new! Maybe get a job? I know money hasn't been coming in..." I took a sharp intake of breath. "That is to say," she amended, "it's not good for you to stay at home all day!" I breathed out slowly and sighed. "Can we just finish our dinner please?" Helen looked down at her pasta. "Helen," I started, not really knowing how I was going to say this, "I'm sorry I'm this way. When I met George, I was happy. We were two small-town folk in a city and we clung to each other with a fervour that I was afraid would burn us out at any time. I felt after we came back that without the displacement being in a huge city made us feel, George began to find me dull. I was terrified that he would leave me." "Oh, Marlene," Helen said, reaching across the table to hold my hand. Her hand felt smooth and lotioned in my rough palm and I withdrew my hand slowly. "When I became pregnant with Julian I was ecstatic. Now George couldn't leave me, I thought." I laughed. "I thought an umbilical cord was strong enough to bind us together. And it did. For a few years. But then George seemed to be in a fog of distraction whenever he was around me. And it was 'Yes, dear' and 'mhmm'." I sighed. "And now, I don't even have that. I guess it's difficult. You devote your life to your husband and when it seems he devotes less of his life to you, you pour in more of your own life to fill the space. I turned down so many invitations to parties and gatherings that after a while my friends stopped calling me out. I guess it's difficult, trying to imagine starting a new life without my husband at my side." Helen nodded her head in understanding, but she didn't try to take my hand again. She stayed to help me clean the dishes. I washed them and handed them over to her to dry. She smiled whenever I passed a plate and I smiled in return. It was vaguely absurd, drying dishes in a cocktail dress, but she took it in good humour. I felt strangely exposed, sharing this experience with someone outside the family, but the routine comforted me. We were at the point of laughing when the door opened. Helen gasped. "George!" she exclaimed. I spun around. It was him. My wayward husband. * Later that night, after I managed to get Helen out of the house, I sat down with George at the dining table. I wasn't sure what else to do. I wasn't sure if I wanted to kiss him, or kick him, or talk to him, or even have sex with him. So I just looked at him and waited for something to happen. "Well," he said, "here I am." I exploded. "'Here I am'?" I yelled, "You don't get to say 'here I am' after leaving me for more than a year! Fuck you, George! What the hell were you doing all this time? What was this 'work' that you had to do? Tell me!" I started to cry. "Tell me, please! Tell me why I should not fucking kick you out right now!" "How's Julian?" he asked, "Where is he?" I tried to calm down, but it was so fucking difficult. I had a year's worth of grief fermenting in my bowels. I wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. "Julian is over at Steven's house, some school project. He kept asking about you for the first few months. But then he stopped talking about you altogether. Why are you back?" I asked. "Worried," he said. "Don't tell me you're thinking about that stupid apocalypse thing, George!" I exclaimed. "And it doesn't really make me feel better about this to know that it took the world ending for you to come home. Where have you been?" "Working." He paused. "Marlene, please. I... I don't really know how to explain to you everything that has happened. I just don't know what to do. I think I'm allowed some confusion in my life right now. Isn't it enough for now that I had to see you? I had to see you, Marlene, isn't that enough?" There was a deep ache in my bones. "George, I think it's best if you slept on the couch tonight," I said as I stood up, "I don't think I'm ready to let you into my bed yet." "Our bed," he said slowly. "My bed," I said, "You lost rights to it a long time ago." * The next morning, George was gone. I could not sleep the previous night. At first it was because I worried about how Julian would react to seeing his father sleeping on the couch. But then George slipped a letter under my bedroom door. Five minutes later, the front door opened and shut and I knew George had gone. I picked up the letter, still unopened, and I took out the box in my closet which contained the letters George and I had written to each other in college. He had given the ones I had written to him back to me after we were married and I had carefully folded each in half and slipped them into each other that the whole correspondence formed a chain of paper that ended in the separated last letters he had sent me in the past year to which I had no replies to link them. I started to read them, starting with that first terrified note that I had slipped under his door. When I reached the perfumed note in which he had proposed, I started to cry. When I had stopped crying, I put his last unopened letter into the box with the rest of them and fell into a sleep devoid of dreams. At breakfast I did not mention George at all. After Julian went to school, I spent the rest of the day preparing dinner. I didn't stop, not even for lunch. Not even when the sky turned black for a minute and the dogs of the town howled as one at the afternoon's midnight. * "Mom," Julian said that evening, "can I skip school tomorrow?" "Don't be ridiculous. Eat your dinner." "Mom! Half the class wasn't in school today!" "Why on earth would I allow you to not go to school?" I asked him. "The word is ending! I want to do something fun!" "You can have fun after school. You don't have to do any homework this week, how's that? You're going to suffer the consequences of that next week when you have twice the homework to do, but let's just get this foolish week over with, okay? Besides," I added, "even if the world were really ending, I don't want you to die ignorant. Let's just get Friday over with and then you can go back to pretending you think school is important for your future, okay?" "Well, you went to college and I don't see you working. If we had-" And I slapped him. Julian's eyes were large enough to contain more surprise than I felt and I wanted to take it back right then and hug him but he pushed his chair back and ran into his room before I could say anything and left me with the remains of a dinner that had taken me all day to prepare and that I sadly packed away and refrigerated for my lunch the next day. * Someone broke into our house on Tuesday night. I heard the shatter of glass and heavy footfalls in the living room as if whoever was down there didn't care if the residents of the house knew that he was in there. I stared at the door and waited for it to open because I wanted Julian to creep into my bed and fall asleep in my arms but my door never opened and in the morning, Julian was gone before breakfast and the television set was stolen. It amused me that someone had stolen our television set. As I swept up the glass of the broken window, I imagined the thief sitting at home with our television set. I imagined him sitting in front of it frustrated that half the channels didn't work anymore because they had shut down for the week and the other half showed nothing but news reports of the increasing violence and unrest that had swept the entire globe in the general belief that the world was going to end on Friday. I imagined him watching an endless barrage of footage of people breaking into houses and I wondered if he maybe felt guilty about breaking in to our home. * Julian was making breakfast on Wednesday when I walked into the kitchen. I said, "Good morning" but he looked at me without saying anything, cleaned up the egg shells and left the house with his knapsack slung ostensibly across his back. The Vatican had still not said anything but a small town in Europe had committed mass suicide and had caused a panic for the few visitors who had travelled to the town to buy its hams. I read the newspaper from front to back and idly wondered why it was still being delivered to the house. I decided to call Helen. "Hey, Helen, it's Marlene." "Hi, Marlene! How did it go with George?" I had forgotten that she knew about it and it surprised me to realise that it didn't make me sad to say that he had left and I didn't know where he was at this point in time (and I resisted the urge to say that I didn't care because maybe I did, or maybe I didn't, but it still did not feel comfortable to say that). "Hey, do you want to go out tonight?" I asked. "Out?" She sounded surprised. "Yeah, I'm in need of some fun. I haven't been out in ages!" "Well... it's kind of a weird time to start wanting to go out, Marlene." "It's fine, Helen, I understand if you are not in the mood to-" "Oh, Marlene, don't be mistaken, I'm really glad that you have finally decided to brave the world. Sure, I'll go out with you! What will we do?" "I don't know...I'm sure we'll be able to find something to do. We need to spend a lot of money, that's all." Helen laughed. "You want to spend money, Marlene," she teased, "are you starting to believe that the world is going to end on Friday?" "No," I replied, "but it's been too long since I've been out of the house for more than a trip to the grocer's." "Mr Gordon not good enough for you, eh?" "Oh, Helen, shut up." I laughed. "Could you come by my house at 8 o'clock?" "Sure! See you, Marlene!" "Bye!" I felt strangely exhilarated when I put down the phone. It was uplifting. It made me feel as if I should stand on tiptoes. I took two eggs out of the refrigerator and picked up the saucepan to fill with water but at the bottom of the saucepan were two eggs; Julian had already boiled them for me and I stopped feeling as if I had to stand on tiptoes. I took them out and peeled them slowly. It made me sad that Julian was the first to make peace when what he had said was perfectly true. I was wasting away in this house. Tonight, I was going out for fun; I would start my life over tomorrow. I heated a quick dinner, ate my share and put the rest of it in the microwave for Julian. Helen arrived eleven minutes late. I counted the seconds impatiently, the blood draining from my stomach in an attack of nervous anxiety. When she rang the doorbell, my teeth chattered in an inexplicable chill and I opened it with a flourish. "Ready to have fun?" she asked. I giggled and stepped out of the house. * I woke up with a headache at 11 am on Thursday. The local bar had been strangely deserted the previous night and it depressed us to sit alone with the bartender. "Everyone's home with their family," he explained, "Me, I don't have a family. So I guess I'll just stay here until I die. Be that on Friday or when my mom finds out where I've run away to!" By the end of the night we had drunk enough alcohol to laugh at the most outrageously normal things. Mr Gordon had come into the bar later on and it seemed like the biggest joke in the world that I escaped the grocery store merely to find him in the bar. We bought him drinks and I did not have to worry about washing up the mugs and shot glasses after we were done with them. I went downstairs to look for something to eat. Julian had made toast for breakfast and had left two slices of it buttered on the kitchen table. The toast had become soggy by then but I ate them in silence and contemplated the rest of my life. I started by doing the dishes. I washed the congealed butter off the plate and washed the glasses. I washed the sink and it was my headache, it was just my headache, but I started to cry again. I swept the floor and I dusted the cupboards and cleaned the windows with the weak vinegar solution George had told me was the most efficient way of cutting through the grease and I cried. It was strange how I had taken all these things for granted in the past. But on that Thursday morning, the sun was bright and it rarefied the air with a sort of saturated electricity that made everything seem so much more significant, so much more worthy of attention. In the afternoon, a woman carrying a baby arrived in a battered car. She was looking for George because he had left the house suddenly and he was not contactable by cellphone and he had mentioned something about visiting an old college friend by the name of Marlene and she had remembered Marlene's address from one of the letters that he had asked her to post for him and that was why she was here, desperate, all this end of the world stuff, don't you know, with the baby and had Marlene seen George? No, Marlene had not seen George and hadn't in a long time. Not since college, so the woman had heard. Although she didn't remember Marlene from college at all and it was weird that George had not invited Marlene to their wedding two years after they had graduated from college. George's baby? Yes, it's his birthday tomorrow, how ominous, huh? George was hardly around - his work, Marlene had to understand - but he had been around so much this past year after the baby was born and the woman thought that he would have stayed around for his first birthday. But, no, Marlene had not seen George and she'd love to come in for tea but it was best if she were on her way, sorry for the intrusion. "Not at all," I called from the door as she got into her car. "Not at all." She waved. "By the way, what's your kid's name?" But she had closed the car door by then. She started the engine and then she was gone. * I awoke at 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, looking at my reflection in the dark glass, for the electricity had been cut off the night before. I went down into the kitchen and started to make pancakes. When Julian came downstairs, we looked at each other over the excessive mound of pancakes I had made and then we sat down simultaneously. We ate in silence. At 7:30 a.m., Julian helped me wash the dishes and then he picked up his knapsack and walked to the door. "Julian," I said. He turned to me with a look of terrified calm in his eyes, his hand resting on the doorknob. "Mom?" "I'd like you to stay at home today." I walked towards him and he took his hand off the doorknob and reached for my hand. I opened the door, hugged him and, together, we looked out into the dawn. Monday, September 25, 2006 More Word grievance I had to use Internet Explorer for some reason and I noticed that the Creative Retelling entry was fucked up. Since Word uses 'smart quotes' - you know, the curly inverted commas instead of the staight-down ones like these '' " - and since those are not standard script, it comes out like shit in IE. Why some of you are still using IE is beyond me. I have turned off smart quotes in Word and now everything is readable. Culture Shock I was extremely shocked to discover that my yoghurt drink expired two years ago until my room mate told me that 'October 04' means '4th of October'. Damn americans, even simple dates they have to go and fuck up. Does anyone know why americans write their dates month/day/year? I haven't come across someone who could explain that bit of idiocy to me. Friday, September 22, 2006 Fuck effort I finally figured out why I hate Microsoft Word. I hate seeing those squiggly red and green lines appear in my text. Especially when I know I'm right and the correction will be wrong. It pisses me off to see something inanimate assume it knows more than I do when it clearly doesn't. It is the height of annoyance when it doesn't even give you squiggly lines but just corrects what it assumes to be a mistake for you. I'm sure Teh Su Ching can relate to that, as Word will automatically change 'teh' into 'the'. It must be frustrating to have to keep manually changing your name back to what you originally typed because a fucked-up program thinks you're stupid. I also hate the thesaurus function. It makes people lazy. It makes people put words into their compositions without really knowing what those words mean because not all words in a thesaurus can fully encompass what you want to say and using the longest/most convoluted word doesn't make a composition better, it just makes it more frustrating to read. So french homework. Every other word is underlined by red or green squiggles. That pisses me off. It's so symbolic of an american program to assume that it has to be wrong merely because it doesn't make sense in english. It also pisses me off because I got my first 'essay' assignment back today and I got a B+ and 'bon effort wen en!' written on it. Fuck effort. Effort is what chronically unsuccessful people console themselves with when they cannot achieve. I want an A and a 'super!' or 'magnifique!' on my paper. Times like this I feel I should have taken Calculus instead. We are allowed to revise the essay and hand it back in again, after which the average of our new and old grades will be the final one. So I will run it through a few french-speaking friends and make damn sure all my mistakes have been weeded out so I can get an A, then it'll at least be an A-. I hate the whole GPA system. It stresses me out to care about attendance and participation and homework. Oh well, I guess I'll put in more effort next time. Ugh. EDIT: I found this brilliant poem online: Candidate for a Pullet Surprise Often called "An Owed to the Spelling Checker") by Jerrold H. Zar I have a spelling checker. It came with my PC. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss steaks aye can knot sea. Eye ran this poem threw it, Your sure reel glad two no. Its vary polished in it's weigh, My checker tolled me sew. A checker is a bless sing, It freeze yew lodes of thyme. It helps me right awl stiles two reed, And aides me when aye rime. Each frays come posed up on my screen Eye trussed to bee a joule The checker poured o'er every word To cheque sum spelling rule. Be fore a veiling checkers Hour spelling mite decline, And if were lacks or have a laps, We wood be maid to wine. Butt now bee cause my spelling Is checked with such grate flare, Their are know faults with in my cite, Of none eye am a wear. Now spelling does knot phase me, It does knot bring a tier. My pay purrs awl due glad den With wrapped words fare as hear. To rite with care is quite a feet Of witch won should be proud. And wee mussed dew the best wee can, Sew flaws are knot aloud. Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays Such soft ware for pea seas, And why I brake in two averse By righting wants too pleas. Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Creative Recounting Hahaha we were supposed to 'create a scene with two people talking' for Creative Writing, so I got my roommate to ramble on and I typed as he spoke. I imagine all of one of you will bother to read this but I kinda like it. I think I'm going to enjoy Creative Writing after all. It's also kinda a test for the teacher as well; if she objects to this piece of work then I know she isn't gonna be the kind of teacher I want to have. Editted for clarity and dramatic effect and all that shit: "Ary, I think you should put on some clothes when you play the guitar. The sofa's kinda dirty. Also, the door is open." He looks at me while playing his guitar. He is fresh out of the shower and has nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. "Fuck, say something. I have to write a dialogue for class." "I like to play golf. Miniature golf, that is." He strums a line. "Macaroni. Life on Mars." "Do you think you're sexy playing the guitar almost-naked?" "By all means, I mean, there is no other way to play a guitar. And, also, if you play the guitar and you have clothes on, the cloth dampens the sounds of the vibrating strings. If I play naked the acoustics are better." He demonstrates. "That's nice." "Look, my skin's peeling off." He shows me a bit of skin pinched between his thumb and index finger which he proceeds to flick onto the living room floor. "Oh my god, why?" I ask, "Which part of your body did that bit of skin come from?" "Skin's soft after getting wet, so it comes off the fingers while playing the guitar." He strums a bit more and I imagine an accumulation of skin on the strings. "Oh wow, I'm only at half page." "That's not bad," Ary assures me. "I have to write two pages. So... Ary, what did you do today? Please tell me, and, if possible, in great detail." "So first I woke up, realized it was 9.26, had class in 4 minutes. I tried to wake you up. But you didn't wake up." "Did you really? I can't remember." "Yeah, but you mumbled something like 'go away'. So I left you and I went to class. Did some lab work later where I built a circuit. Then I ate some chicken nuggets." "Were they good chicken nuggets?" I interjected. "They were pretty good. Then I came back here. Chilled... And... I don't know what I did here. Then I had a music history class. Then... I watched Momento. Oh I also got coffee at one point during the day. I don't know if that's relevant. Then I watched Cops on the television in the girls' room down the hall. And after you forced me to I decided to shower. And now... I'm playing you the guitar. Like some Mexican dancer." He punctuates his story with some random guitar noises. He stops after some frenzied playing to check that no more skin has fallen off from his fingers. He lifts an eyebrow inquiringly. I type down his rambling as fast as I can while asking him when the last time he danced naked was and that maybe he should do it now. He pauses. "I danced naked back in the shower. But, uh, if I danced naked right now, I'll probably get my penis dirty. Then I'd have to shower again." He gets up, re-positions his towel, and walks to the fridge to take out some water. "I also dance naked in the morning." "Really? I don't notice. God, this is the most random conversation ever," I sigh as I lean back into the sofa. "Oh jeeze, I want some cheese." Ary rhymes, scanning the contents of the fridge. "We need to get crackers." "You know, I'm gonna read this tomorrow and then think maybe I shouldn't use this. Do you want a piece of my cookie?" "I'm good, sunshine. I had a bit of that cheese." "Jarlsberg? That's pretty good." "Yeah. Once I went for a holiday for a week and when I got back to LA, I was like, 'woah, I haven't taken a shower!' I just completely forgot about the whole concept of taking a shower." "Please," I plead, "for the sake of this apartment's cleanliness, take frequent showers. You know what, I wish the school would require us to write a thesis." "You want the school to require feces?" "Thesis. Like Princeton's senior thesis." "Oh. Thesis. Why?" "Because..." I pause and look down at my laptop, "Oh, I don't need to tell you; I've got my two pages." Flaunt vs Flout You flout rules and you flaunt your flouting of rules. It is incorrect to say 'I will flaunt your rules' when you mean that you will disregard my rules. This is basic, simple vocabulary. My creative writing teacher used the sentence 'Flaunt your parents' (and she meant 'flout your parents' rules'). I feel like dropping out now. It just doesn't make sense to be in a class about words when the teacher can't even use a basic one correctly. Okay lah maybe not drop out. It's not that hard a class and the homework is something I enjoy doing anyway. Endure, Wen En. Aiyo, that sounds like a fucking motivational phrase some random PTI would shout to people running their 2.4. Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Timbalak I've been listening to songs from Justin Timberlake's and Evanescence's new albums and Justin trumps Amy in almost every way. Kinda sad. I really like Evanscence's sound, but it's exactly the same from track to track and, now, album to album. There is very little variation in instrumentation and melody. It gets boring as shit after a while. Justin TImberlake, however, has really taken strides musically. While his NSync songs are funny to sing for a laugh or two nowadays, his new sound is infectious stuff! I am going to use this nice 25% discount voucher at Virgin Records to buy the album and stop listening to songs online. I'll start bopping down the road to school when the album finds its way into my ipod. How embarrassing. Friday, September 15, 2006 Pantaloon It's on rainy days and when I see the darker bands of wet fabric around the bottom of other people's pants that I smugly appreciate the marvel that is a good alteration. My ankles are not cold and damp the entire day! Pants should be at least half an inch from the bottom of your flatest shoes! And dammit, I should have bought that Pucci umbrella to disperse the cloud of black umbrellas all around me. Tuesday, September 12, 2006 Time Laundering I'm beginning to consider wearing pants for 3 days before washing them because doing the laundry sucks. And I'm too obsessive compulsive not to do it. My sheets and blanket are freshly laundered and smell like a cloud of fabric softener. Oh, the first time I did the laundry, my roommate, Mike, helped me put in fabric softener and start my dryer load (isn't he nice? awww). When I came back to take my laundry out, I came across a funny piece of paper in the dryer and yelled, 'Who the fuck littered in my laundry!?' Apparently, that was the fabric softener. How embarrassing. I always though it came as a powder or liquid. Monday, September 11, 2006 A half-day boy I voluntarily woke up at 9 AM on Saturday. It's weird, I know, but I had good reason: I was going to Woodbury Common to shop. For those of you who don't know, Woodbury Common is a huge outlet mall that sells all the designer goods you can possibly dream of at great discounts. I shopped from 11.30 to 5 and I didn't even get to cover all the shops I wanted to visit. I bought my first Gucci item - a jacket - at 60% discount! I can't wait till November so I can begin to wear it! I got a bag, 2 t-shirts and a sweater at French Connection, all for less than $100 dollars. That's how cheap things are there! Apparently, some shops estimate that 40-50% of their sales are to Japanese people and I understand why: although you will find some moderate sizes there, a lot of clothes are either S or XL, thus benefiting the smaller-sized Asians and fat Americans - and most fat Americans are probably content to shop at Walmart. Although I did try to focus on getting winter stuff, I bought a lot of non-winter shit and hardly any wintry stuff. My Gucci jacket can't even be worn in the midst of winter since it's suede-like, thus melting snow would ruin it. However, I was so happy that I finally was able to live out my dream of coming back to my place laden with shopping bags that I could dump on the ground while I collapse, exhausted, into a sofa. Until the next time someone crosses the corridor, of course, then I'm up to model my new purchases for them. Waking up at 9 AM and getting back at 6 PM, and having had 5 hours of sleep the night before, is usually longer than I'd like to be out for. I declined my friend's offer to bring me to an actually good club with actually legal people as opposed to under-aged little Americans because I was too tired to even contemplate being out the entire day. I'm a half-day boy; if I do something in the morning, I won't be able to do anything in the afternoon and if I do something in the afternoon, I'll usually sleep late to conserve energy. I don't understand what reserves of energy people who are out the entire day tap on to fuel their mad capers. But dammit I want some of that shit too. Saturday, September 09, 2006 0504 It felt weird saying, 'I have to do my homework' after a three-year hiatus from saying such a thing. It seemed strangely alien and familiar at the same time. I just let it guide me to its inevitable conclusion: I procrastinated. Nathanael admonishes that procrastination is like mastubration - it may feel good at the time but in the end you're just fucking yourself - but I think procrastinating is better than not doing anything right? That is, I think it is better that I rush to complete my homework at 3 AM in the morning than not do it at all. My record for the first week of class: late for 2 classes, overslept for 1 class and all homework and readings completed. Not bad, if I do say so myself. It kinda sucks that all my days start at 9.30 AM when there are people prancing around early in the AM because their classes start at 2 PM or they don't have classes at all. Particularly, people with no classes on Fridays are enviable and are thus vile. The sad thing is that this is the best I can work my schedule out to be if I am to take all the classes I want. It infuriates me that I couldn't register for classes until almost every single person in the university registered for their classes. They should have let us register for classes along with everyone else instead of having to wait until after our orientation. I keep seeing myself as Bree Van Der Kamp because I am using household chores to ward off my problems. My problems being of the homework variety. I cleaned the toilet - oops, sorry, I meant bathroom - instead of reading my french textbook; I took out the trash instead of doing my econs homework; I rearranged furniture and decorated the apartment instead of emailing my academic advisor; and now I'm writing in my blog instead of going to the creative writing department to see if I can get off the waitlist and actually join the class. Okay, maybe the last one isn't a household chore. I've been trying to make this place as nice as possible; my latest genius (of relatively ungenious proportions) is using my flat bedsheet as a tablecloth since with fitted sheets I'm never gonna use my flat sheets. One more carpet, a few pieces of fabric, one bean bag and one cardboard box are still on my list of things to get before I will feel this place is complete. Pictures:  This is my room. I sleep on the left side. I am neat. My room mate is not. Tsk tsk.  This is my bed. The thing on the wall is a photo I took of the view outside my window and then photoshopped and cut up. That's my name in Chinese. I found out that writing in Chinese in America is exotic because it doesn't use the standard alphabet.  This is my desk. Which is not really that neat and will probably get messier in time. Note the red man bookend that matches Mr Redman!  This is the living room. I've rearranged furniture, bought a carpet, placed a mirror there etc to make it look nicer and spacier.  That's the kitchen with dirty dishes in the sink that my roommate promised to wash but has not done so. I will stick post-its all over his bed to remind him to do them. I'm passive aggressive like that. It's been fine these past two weeks. Not particularly homesick yet. I heard an anonymous crack emit from the building and it sounded exactly like the periodic crack of my mother's joints as she walks around and that did make me feel a bit homesick but apart from that, I'm doing fine. Come visit me soon, all you people on the east coast! A few things still confound me - like WTF?!? why the shit do the binders and the hole-punchers here come in the three hole variety?? how fucking idiotic and inefficient; two holes make for smaller hole-punchers which can fit into pencil boxes - but New York is treating me nice. So far. UPDATE: I didn't get into the creative writing class! Damn. Now I'll have to either wait like a retard in the waitlist or find a new class. As they say in vernacular indigenous to... I'm not sure who or what region: mofo shit! Monday, September 04, 2006 Konichiwa Random Girl: So where're you from? Me: Singapore. Random Girl: Oh! You're from Japan! Me (relating the above exchange): My friend's friend had it worst; when she said she was from Taiwan, some American told her she loved Thai food. Gracie: How could she mistake the two? Taiwan and Thailand are completely different in my mind. I see Taiwan as tropical and Thailand as very built-up. Me: So I have two younger sisters. Gracie: Wait... your parents had three children? I thought there were tax incentives if you only had one child. Lisa: That's only in China. Gracie: oh. Haha okay first of all, Gracie is very nice (this is just here so she won't kill me if she ever reads this), but I've always wanted exchanges such as these to actually happen to me so I can personalise the anecdote so often trotted out when conversation turns to close encounters of the American kind. Although, I suppose it's a bit hypocritical to laugh at Americans for not knowing things about Asia because if someone told me he or she was from... Utah or something, I wouldn't be able to tell you where it is. Thursday, August 31, 2006 Club Culture Oh my god, what the hell. Clubbing should only be done with good friends and in Singapore! This is all based on a short club trip in New York that ended in boredom and irritated blog ranting. First of all, I probably shouldn't be going with underaged people. It's just wrong to be so excited about everything that happens in a club. It's not that exciting. It's just sweaty people moving randomly in a dark room, people! I also find it distressing that there actually lives that stereotypical american girl who goes into a club with the pupose of hooking up with guys and the girl who hooks up with random guys just so she can make her friends jealous by talking about how she didn't enjoy it at all the next day and the girl who gets jealous anyway (even after being told what the previous girl is trying to do). Oh well, stupidity has to be paid for. And I guess I paid for it in this entry. Fucking hell. I'll make a brand new start of it Me: Can you imagine me living by myself? ZH (instantaneously): No. You'll come out of your room saying 'Maria! Maria!' (mimicks me looking very lost) before realising you don't have a maid with you. I'm happy to report that Zhenghui is wrong! Or at least for the past two days. I've been folding my blanket and tucking in my sheets like a good army boy. I suppose the army did teach me some good habits. I bought white sheets and white pillow cases and white blankets because it both satisfies some deep-set aesthetic sensibility and it also is very obvious when in need of cleaning, thus, one would hope, spurring me on to change the sheets more often than I would otherwise. Dearest Kevin Kwan (bad taste in sofas aside) has told me of a place I can get my laundry done and folded for 80 cents per pound of laundry and I must say that sounded like music to my ears. Caveat: I have to speak in Chinese to the laundry woman for her to be extra nice, so I'm not sure if I will be able to engender extra-niceness in a little old chinese lady. But try try lor. Then I'll be spared having to do shitloads of laundry every week. I'll just have to wash my own sheets. There is a trick to sheets! Put them on your bed before going over them with a steam iron! It's easier than ironing it before putting it on the bed. When a cheap laundry service and tips on ironing seem like the most innovative things you have heard in a while, you know you're on your way to independence!!! Okay lah, maybe not, New York is still alien to me. Hoping that will change soon. This rotund black girl in a car smacked her gum loudly at me and this other asian and shot us a dirty look while passing us and I find it funnily ironic that a black person was being racist. I am a bit retarded: I scheduled myself an 8 AM class every day! It's this intensive French course that gives me 50% more credit while cramming two semesters worth of classes into one semester. It's quite a good deal really. Or so I'm telling myself now. Luckily, my classes are pretty spread out. I registered for Creative Writing, Human Evolution and Einstein's Universe on top of French. The latter two fulfilling some of the requisite diversity for graduating from college. I think I found required courses which look interesting as well, so I'm pretty happy. Two more required courses next semester are courses I want to take anyway, so yay for a happy confluence of interests! I kept Friday free, so after French ends at 9.15 I am free for the rest of the weekend. I will probably sleep it away to get over to shock of waking up so early for so many days of the week, but I keep telling myself that I should be used to it already since I was waking up at 6 at one point last year to get to camp on time by 7.30. That was quite awful, I must say. It's 3 AM now; I'd better go to sleep. I have nothing to do for the rest of the week so I don't know what I'll fill my days with. Watching Project Runway tomorrow on my RA's Tivo (for pausing and comment-making). Thank god for cable service with Bravo! Watch What Happens, bitches! Okay maybe that was a bit too obscure a reference. Watch What Happens is Bravo!'s slogan and I thought it was pretty appropriate with regard to my life at the moment and I've just wrecked it all explaining it in so prosaic a manner. Thursday, August 24, 2006 Being on a motorcycle makes me less chatty Maybe it's just that thinking of imminent death roaring in my ears reduces me to a reticent cycle of 'What?' 'Oh.' 'Yah.' 'Huh.' What's better than spending your last night in Singapore with a cute guy? Spending your last night in Singapore with a cute guy who misses a seminar he wanted to attend and who forces your very lazy ass to pack =) haha thanks! Missing people already. Missing the fact that I won't see another sunset in Singapore for 4 months. Hah, what a lie. I'm usually asleep at sunset. My roommate seems nice, so I am a bit more optimistic about this whole venture than I was before. By the way, Mike, I just added this paragraph so that should you eventually discover my blog and read past entries, you'll see this paragraph and get an ego boost. Anyway, I have to continue packing. Still have to decide between one more pair of shoes or a pair of sandals. My mother told me to bring three pairs of shoes. If you didn't think that that was ridiculous, sorry, we cannot be friends anymore. If I do indeed forget anything, I will just get Ruoxi Tham to bring them over for me! hahahaha On top of the slippers, hangers, underwear, chicken rice packets etc she asked me to bring the last time I went, I'm sure Suching will also think it adequate compensation for the keyboard Ruoxi made her bring back to Singapore. Tuesday, August 22, 2006 Nothing's gonna change my world I should really be packing. It isn't good to leave packing for a 4 month jaunt to the last minute, but I guess I don't learn my lesson. I'm not really sure what I'm doing with my life. I feel a bit underwhelmed by myself, but at the same time I lack the momentum to get out of this comfotable rut. Friday, August 18, 2006 Dying OMFG I'm going to die. I guess it was time for my last-minute ventures to turn sour in my face. Thursday, August 17, 2006 Clockwatching So... the sun's coming up, I haven't bathed and I am stickily updating my blog while uploading photos and exchanging information with my roommate on Facebook (because wow Wen En decided to be proactive and get in touch with the person he'll be living with for maybe a year, maybe 6 months). I guess I'm done clubbing in a while. I don't think I'm going again before I leave and I highly doubt I will go when I am in America considering most of the people I will have to consort with are the 18 year old kind who are not allowed into clubs. It's all kinda good because I realised on the way back that it was a little silly to go clubbing hoping that a good selection of music plays (and cheering when particular songs of interest are piped in through the blaring speakers) when you can organise and choose your own music precisely at home. It also occured to me that my roommates are born in 1988; I am going to be staying and fraternising with people who would have been in J2 in Singapore or, in more horrific scales of measurement, people who are one year older than my youngest sister. That truly baffles the mind and makes me feel like an old shit condemned to be surrounded by nubile and non-geriatric people. There're a lot of things left to be done and I haven't started on them yet. I keep telling people that I'll get back to letting them know when I am free to meet up because I need to sort out my schedule and I really do need to sort out my schedule. Thus far I have been procrastinating, getting things done slowly and probably cramming everything at the last minute. Individual meetings are all but impossible to schedule now because I am leaving on the 24th of August Yeah, everyone keep that in mind! Don't bother coming to see me off, because it's in the morning and I will probably arrive at the airport late and grumpy, but that is next thursday; if you wanna get in on any Wen En action you'd better act fast! In the works: ex-class party. I really wanna see my old classmates again and maybe even play hide-and-seek-in-the-dark again!!! Fun to the max k. But I'm not sure what day I can fit that in. I picked up my IC from camp finally and with it came a Certificate of Service upon which it is written that I was deemed as having had 'Outstanding' performance and conduct during my NS career. Hahaha it really is a huge joke that Tang Wen En can get Outstanding in the army. I had a very nice testimonial from my old boss justifying the dual oustandings and it made me sad that I seemed so much more proactive in the army that I am now. The sun's finally up. My legs are getting achey and I'm using some NYU form to rest my hands on so that my desk doesn't get sticky too. Ew. I will bathe, go eat breakfast and then sleep for a while (because I haven't the time to sleep for a whiiiillleeee) and then I will see what I will do. Sunday, August 13, 2006 Unfaithful Oh wow, I'm angry and I'm angry that I'm angry. I've been hearing Rihanna's Unfaithful on the radio here and there and I've always loved the song because of the really lush instrumentation with that tinklyplinkly piano. But today when I heard it again I actually listened to the lyrics (because her whiny voice really isn't the kind you want to pay attention to) and it's about how she cheats on her boyfriend and how she 'doesn't wanna do this anymore' and how she knows it's 'killing him inside' and thus she is 'a murderer'. OMG PLS. I always thought before that it was about her boyfriend cheating on her, which made it 'just there as a melody placeholder' lyrics. But this is retarded! The song is about a girl trying to garner sympathy and whining about the fact that she is cheating on her boyfriend. What the fuck!? If you don't wanna do it anymore, then don't! I'm so pissed off that I can't listen to that song anymore due to irritation at the lyrics because I really like the instruments and stuff. If someone knows where to find a minus one version I'd be really happy and I will treat you to cake. Monday, August 07, 2006 Mispell Only the Straits Times would have the balls to start a column professing to correct badly used English and place it just a few pages after an article which contains two misspellings of someone's name and a grammatical error. Oh, and in reference to the edition of the Sunday Times two weeks ago, when you refer to yourself by your name, it's called referring to yourself in the third person, not the first person. Thus, when you quote Saddam Hussein saying, 'Remember that Saddam Hussein is a military man and should be killed by firing squad and not by hanging as a common criminal' you don't conclude it with the pithy observation 'Saddam Hussein, and his penchant for referring to himself in the first person'. Ugh. Seriously. Friday, August 04, 2006 Let your conscience be your guide You quote me I quote you lor. With names removed. sheila. says: have you gotten X a present yet? pixellated duck says: good gosh, no i haven't got X's or Y's presents yet nor a costume for Y's party sheila. says: i haven't gotten X's or Z's :/ what are you supposed to go as? does X's have a theme? i forget! pixellated duck says: nope oh he does! i just remembered sheila. says: what is it? pixellated duck says: beach wear. we're supposed to adjourn to happy (which is across the road) after that sheila. says: oh really? beach wear? how come i didn't hear about this! oh dear are you sure? are you just trying to make me turn up in something FOOLISH? Too bad I decided to tell her the truth in the end. After I had carefully planned it too (told people to corroborate my story should Sheila ask). Monday, July 24, 2006 Birthday! As usual, I didn't get to talk to everyone, I didn't get to sit down for more than 5 minutes and I didn't get to eat, but it was fun anyway =)  The dessert table, which was the main reason for the theme in the first place.  Doing the usual cake cutting and stuff.  Thanks for the presents! (In particular, Christie and Shirlene's present makes all future wrapping of presents a futile attempt of mediocrity) But thanks for the cards even more! I love reading cards and I have every single card I've ever received stashed away somewhere. I'll upload the rest of the photos soon. Thursday, July 20, 2006 Cinap It's always the reverse before getting mirror-imaged with the deadline zooming into view at the speed of days. Sunday, July 16, 2006 Yucks I always hate people asking me what I have been doing with my life because I don't really know what to say. I discovered at that point that I had run out of conversational topics and had to therefore garner more life experiences to be able to regale people with insights to life with regards to empirical evidence I had that in no way really represented the world as it is. But then the momentous forces of ennui and innertia struck down my plans to pick up my life and do not just stuff but to Do Stuff with which I could attach the capital letters of significance. So I laze and lie about in the most ennervated of fashions doing what I do best: doing nothing. So I do nothing and whenever conversation comes round to what I have been doing I admit to having done nothing and then that feeling that I have run out of things to say returns to me but fades away yet again in the face of the activities I'd have to engage in to be able to upgrade my answer from a nothing to a something. Freedom was much sweeter and more cherished when I had the semblance of being controlled but now freedom is taken for granted and freedom is much wasted space like my bean bag which is so full of white space-occupying fluff I had to empty it out to make it conform to my body more. Quote Me: Oh my god, take your feet off the kitchen table please! That's disgusting! I eat off the table sometimes. Sister: Um... Don't you think that's what's gross? Tuesday, June 20, 2006 Maths Oh my god, I totally suck right now. Can anyone help me please? You have 8 items in a box. You take them out one by one 4 times, and every time you take an item out, another one like it is put into the box. What're the probabilities that you'll end up with 4 different items, 3 different items, 2 different items and one kind of item? Extra: I could work this out mentally so I'm (a little) proud of myself =) What is the smallest integer value of n such that n^200 > 5^300? Thursday, June 15, 2006 uber(?) So I've finally tried the 1 oh 1 burger at uberburger today. It's a wagyu beef patty with a slab of foie gras embedded in the centre topped with slices of truffle and a truffle cream sauce, all of which is put between two sesame seed-less buns. Generally I wouldn't pay $101 for a burger, but I've won a bit gambling so I'm spending a bit to empty my drawer of money. Verdict: not worth it. The main problem is that the patty is minced and the foie gras is put inside it. This means two of the best reasons to eat those foods - the texture of a steak of wagyu and the pan-seared crispiness of the foie gras contrasting with its soft centre - is forsaken for the sake of making it a traditional burger. Had they put a piece of wagyu steak inside with a slab of pan-seared on top then maybe I would have liked it more. But as with all overpriced food, it's for the experience blah blah etc etc. I was discussing what I called the shrine quandary with my sister while in Japan, which basically is that paying to visit shrines (or temples or museums or... you get the idea) makes it awful because all the time you are in the shrine you are quantifying your experience to see if its value is on par with the money you just paid when that experience is supposed to transcend the materialistic scruples of trying to get the best bargain. In other news, I have not spent a cent on the Great Singapore Sale! Isn't that amazing. I feel proud of myself. Just today my mother called from Kenzo and asked if I wanted to join her but I declined. I can't remember the last time I bought an article of clothing besides this cheap kimono-patterned belt from Japan. I suppose lazing around at home is a great way to save money. Oh actually there is something I want to buy: a pair of brown Puma by Alexander McQueen shoes. It's sold out in my size in Singapore. If someone knows where I could get a pair, please tell me where. No, ebay doesn't have it. Dalglish Chew Xun Rui has a pair from Hong Kong but when I asked if I could buy it he rudely didn't respond to my SMS. I allow everyone to slapslap him the next time you see him. Tuesday, June 13, 2006 Japan looks like shrines Hello kids! For those who care (like... all of one of you? Half? Anyone? Anyone at all...? *sob sob*) I have just come back from the land of super-polite waitstaff. This is the last family holiday I am going on; please remind me of this sentence when if I forget about it in the future. I just don't enjoy myself very much with them around. My mother loves sightseeing and my father ladidums and allows his wife to wreck havok on her kids' dispositions and tempers by dragging them to every single fucking shrine in Kyoto then every palace then every 'quaint' district then every rock garden. Whereas I like to laze around in the hotel, only venturing out for eating and shopping. No japanese food for me for a while; I ate a little too much of it to want to face a sashimi platter in a few weeks. But who can resist the gigantic pyramid of golden tempura prawns fried so superbly that pouring light soya sauce over it did not make it less crispy at all? All fried food would curl up in shame to be in the same room as such glorious, oily, crackly perfection. Or sashimi so fresh there were still spots of blood on the fish? Yeah, that took some getting used to, but was so worth the initial 'ick!' of reflex. On the way back home from the airport, I was depressed at the sight of all the ugly outfits people were wearing in Singapore. While I cannot fault singaporeans for not being able to layer due to the weather, the Mango top + jeans for girls and threadbare tshirt + jeans for guys is so overdone I want to puke. People-watching in Japan is so fascinating because there are people who dress up really well, and people who dress up really weirdly and no one stares at all. Guys over there carry shoulder bags, not effeminite gay men with sashays in hips and bends in wrists, but straight men with girlfriends in tow. I was outraged for one second when I saw what I thought was a fucktard girlfriend making her boyfriend carry her handbag for her until I realised that it was his bag; she was carrying her own. Ooo, I wanna talk about girls who make their boyfriends carry their handbags. If anyone I know does that, stop now or I will slap you before telling you to cease and desist. What exactly motivates them to hand over their bags to their boyfriends? Maybe they want a display of confidence in a guy, but the phenomenon is widespread enough that handling a handbag does not make a guy confident: it makes him look henpecked. Or maybe it's for the sense of power; the whole 'wearing the pants' thing (and, by the way, the phrase 'wearing the pants' cannot be uttered by anyone I know either as it is sexist and retarded and only substandard interviewers in local publications use it with regards to newly married celebrities and their marital relations). What outrages me most, however, is that girls pay money for a handbag that suits them, and then they hand it over to their boyfriends, completely defeating the purpose of buying bags to match outfits altogether. You might as well take off your skirt and hand it to your boyfriend too, you retard. You might as well wear a trash bag, since you don't seem to care about style at all. But back to Japan. I'll get pictures from my sisters, since I didn't take any; I couldn't bear the idea of lugging a camera (and mine is a dinosuar which would be well camoflagued if painted red and put next to a pile of bricks) on those endless walks through XYZ shrines. Oh! An old lady gave me a pack of writing paper for being kawaiiiii! =) Okay, no, we were in a restaurant, we started a conversation with four old japanese women (if you can call not understanding a single word either party speaks a conversation), and when it ended one of them came over and dug in her bag, smiled and (my sister maintains) offered the paper to all of us but I just grabbed it first. Nonsense! She was obviously looking at me and smiling her gummy smile at me while proffering the packet. Memorable quotes: Me: What does 'ohayo' mean? (Yes, I'm ignorant; almost as ignorant as insular americans) Mother (distractly): It's an American state. Random Tokyo inhabitant on holiday in Kyoto who struck up conversation with my father: Kyoto is suteke (pronounced sootecky: 'nice' or 'wonderful' in Japanese). Father: Kyoto? Sticky? No it's not! Singapore is sticky ('humid' in I-don't-know-Japanese)! Monday, June 05, 2006 Overheard in Singapore Me: I find your race in general irritating. Random American: I represent that! (pause) I mean I resent that! Sister's Friend: 'Smart Keith' is an oxymoron. Keith: Hey! I'm not a moron! Or you can just go read the original: overheard in new york Wednesday, May 31, 2006 Leopards Wow, it pisses me off when people change in certain ways that bewilder people but in fact are just utilising new methods of pretending not to be themselves like they have done, as normal, and always will be. It makes me laugh at how absolutely pathetic people can be; layering themselves with nacre and calling themselves pearls when in fact they are still the grain of grit they always were and always will be. That is why your friends are on rotate; because the oldest will know that all that resurfacing means nothing and changes nothing inside; because new ones still regard you as a novelty not yet worn thin of overexposure; because a few will be amazed at such changes perceived over a long time of absence and you disengage quickly before their gratifying amazement can turn into knowing condescension; because you feed on the perception of superiority that pretending to be pretending to be regular gives and that perception of superiority comes about when people think you are so clever to be ironic about trying to be normal when in fact you just don't fit in at all. Save the world some condescension. Stop pretending and admit to the reality that you're the sad little infant still in need of attention and adoration that you always were and always will be. Wednesday, May 03, 2006 A voice once stentorian So for the one or one of you who are interested in what I have been doing, my answer is: Nothing Much. I have all these one word drafts in my blog because I always intend to write something then... nah... so I leave reminders of what I want to blog about. Here's a new link: postsecret.blogspot.com . Too bad they don't do archiving. And here's another: colinandkero . The best word I can use to describe them is 'foolhardy'. I just hope they don't break up soon or else they will validate a lot of perceptions about young gay relationships. Has anyone been to Glory for their ginger teh tarik and chendol? OMG. If it weren't in JOO CHIAT of all far off exotic lands I would go there more often. I hate their pineapple tarts though. I don't know why they're rated the best in Singapore or whatever. I always love good pastry on my pineapple tarts and, unfortunately, Glory's pastry is quite terrible. I used to bite off the pastry and dump the jam, but growing up has done awful things to me e.g. instilling virtues like 'waste not want not', 'thou shalt not commit adultery', 'the early bird gets the chickens before they're hatched' etc. so I eat the jam now. You know what is the worst? When there are cloves stuck in the jam. Yarks. My house is infested with lizards. It's quite gross. The airconditioning system was malfunctioning and when the repair people came, they discovered the cause of the malfunction to be lizard eggs in the ventilation shaft (or some other part, but I only can name the ventilation shaft part of the airconditioning system so I'll use that). Gross! And lizard shit magically appears everywhere without the lizards having to be present. It's like they're having a war with each other which involves a lot of shit-slinging. I see so many lizard babies everywhere. I want to kill them, but they're so small and cute and they eat cockroaches, the smaller ones anyway, and I hate cockroaches more than lizards, so I endure them as a welcome addition to the food chain in this house. Thursday, April 27, 2006 What a slut! So anyway, we were discussing someone whom I thought wasn't hot enough to be ogled until it descended into a bitchfest about my favourite person to hate. *ruoxi says: (censored and editted) blah blah blah etc etc i love kueh tutu says: i bet if she wore a cheongsam she'd twist the bottom half halfway round so the slit's in front for easy access Wednesday, April 26, 2006 Ji Mo I spent 10 hours at the mah jong table today after not sleeping for 36 hours, stopping only briefly twice for dinner and a toilet break. If there's something I can do all day non-stop... Friday, April 21, 2006 Lucky Twenty-two Over Seven I think Pi (my dog) gives my family luck. When my father was gambling with his friends in our house, Pi was under the table the whole time. The next morning I asked him if he won, he said yes. And I asked if I could have ten percent. He paused and said, 'That's too much.' And he still won't tell me how much he made! Today, I was playing mah jong and not doing too well until I patted Pi's head and then I won! I tried to coax her under the table but she ran away. So sad. Maybe I could have won more. Maybe I should boil her down into an elixir and bring the vial to Las Vegas, drink essence of Pi and put $100 into a jackpot machine. I'll just have to remember to get my winings from the counter since the machines don't dish out money if you win above a certain amount. This is, by the way, how I lost $1000 in Las Vegas last year. I didn't know you had to collect and I thought that maybe having three red 7s in a row did not mean anything at all when in reality they paid x500 or something like that so I blithely pressed the button again. These kinda things wouldn't happen if I had essence of Pi with me. Or if I snipped a lock of her fur off and wore it in a locket around my neck. Monday, April 17, 2006 Self-Satisfied Freak I have nothing better to post so here're more Wenenisms for your viewing pleasure. We were in my grandmother's house and my father showed me a picture of his ex-girlfriend when she was still young and nubile. I put the picture beside my mother, who was sleeping unglamorously with her mouth open on the sofa, and said, 'I think you made the wrong choice.' Sister: I'm supposed to meet them at 7.30. What time is it now? (checks watch) Oh damn, I guess I'll have to be fashionable late. Me: There're only some people who can pull off fashionably late. For you, you're just tardy. Thursday, April 13, 2006 Check The problem with a person who organises his life so well is sometimes I feel that I am on his to-do list and with a tick I am out of his mind until I come up again in his schedule. The stark lack of communication after compares irritatingly with the happy proliferation of SMSes and calls before. So I wait till after fades into the before of something new and this cycle of being on a to-do list can start again. Tuesday, April 04, 2006 iThink Has anyone seen the iGallop advertisement where Ix Shen sees Jacelyn Tay/Lee/Yeo/Whatever riding a horse and goes, 'Jace! I didn't know you rode horses!' etc? Every time I see that advertisement I feel it is completely audacious of them to even begin to call themselves actors. They're terrible! I was watching Gray's Anatomy and even the walk-on actors who appear for all of five minutes are more convincing than these Singaporean actlets. And which Muse inspires these advertising companies to produce such retarded advertisements? She should be dragged screaming from Halicon and carved open with exquisite pain upon a sacrifical stone to the god of fraud. The music is awful, the production is amateur, the actlets can't act and, most importantly, the script wouldn't pass a primary school functional writing examination. And what is up with iGallop? iThink putting an i before your product's name just acknowledges the fact that your marketting executives have no creativity whatsoever and are mindless copycats. iPod was cute; everything following that is puerile. What is up with the i? Do they even know that it represents imaginary numbers? Maybe it is supposed to symbolically represent the imaginary ideas behind their concepts. Fuck! And Tiger Beer with Jessica Alba. Yeah, I'm sure her disinterested mug in the advertisements will definitely sell more cans of that awful stuff. It just makes me mad that most Singapore-made advertisements have the style of a soiled diaper. The only local advertisements I think are quite innovative and well done are the MacDonald's ones. Those are usually saved by really good scripts that demand very little from the actlets, thus negating their abysmal abilities at thespianisim. 'Horse back riding tones the abdominals, ties and is good for your posture too!' Monday, April 03, 2006 Blinds Laughs are rough when clowns get knocked down - We paint our faces pale With a red grin; it's sin the way Our basis for getting along Comes wrapped in foundations Pretending to be strong. Friday, March 31, 2006 TTYL, Cuixian! So I was telling Cuixian about how no university seems to want me and: cx says: don't have too much hope for berkeley cx says: cos it's a uc the joy of rejection says: yeah i know about berkeley the joy of rejection says: i'll get rejected, i'll go UGH and then i'll move on cx says: where? cx says: what's ugh? the joy of rejection says: HAHAAHAHAHA the joy of rejection says: UGH as in onamatopoeia cx says: OH!!! Tuesday, March 28, 2006 Convalescing I haven't updated this piece of shit for a long time because I had problems with blogger.com for a week and then when the problems stopped I was distracted by other things and also there is nothing really that interesting to blog about so yeah. I found a place with an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet for 26 dollars, which is fantastic. You can eat five handrolls, which typically cost 4-5 dollars each, and make up the cost of the buffet already. Oh it's a sit-down-and-be-served buffet too, which is great for lazy people like me. I can't wait for Debbie to come back so I can tempt her with more food and hear her whine about my evil plan to fatten her up and drop her into a desert of famine-plagued cannibals. I bought some Godiva chocolates last week and forgot about them. Now my money has been turned into a brown, sticky conglomeration at the bottom of my bag. It looks kinda gross but it still tastes great. I say that to myself a lot. I also tried the Chocolixir, which is prominently advertised outside the Godiva shop in City Link Mall. It's really quite fantastic, since they use chocolate to make the drink unlike most ice-blendeds which use cocoa; you can still chew on bits of chocolate as you drink. I don't get to have my IC back till the 10th of April, exactly one month after I ORDed. This is because my medical check-up, which has to be done before they'll give the IC back to you (to ensure you leave the organisation in the same condition that you arrived in it I guess), has been postponed twice, the latest postponement due to an absent medical officer. I'd whine and remark about this last blow of inefficiency that the SAF had to deal me, but there's no point when I have an IC already. I lost mine a long time ago, you see, and I went to get a new one before my old one was returned by some Random Kind Soul. There are too few RKSs left in this world. I also have two 11Bs and two passports. Symbolic indication of a psychological confusion/split-personality perhaps? Anyone wanna watch Jamie Cullum with me? I want to go after hearing a cover of High and Dry that he did. Really nice. Made me actually like that song. If you're wondering why you didn't see that Jason Mraz post until now, it's because of those blogger.com problems that fucked it up so it only got displayed about half an hour ago. I radioblogclubbed Jason Mraz and unfortunately the magic of his voice and performance cannot be captured in very well recordings. It's too bad people can't watch him live before listening to a recording; he'd have many more fans. I don't have any more friends, but that's okay because I've got a very nice distraction to help me cope =) I've also re-read 100 Years of Solitude and Of Love and Other Demons and am about to start on Love in a Time of Cholera before moving on to Strange Pilgrims. There's still no one who I like to read better than Gabriel Garcia Marqeuz translated lusciously by Edith Grossman or Gregory Babarossa. So You Think You Can Dance is a piece of shit. I'd rather see more dancing and less life-stories. Some of them look like they can dance very well, but you can't really tell because the only times they show the dancing is when they mention their names in passing. They also love to focus on the bad dancing, which is not the point of the programme. Oh wait, I suppose if you are more entertained by people making public fools of themselves than seeing good dancing then it is the point of the programme. Gray's Anatomy is great. Last night's episode had me screaming everytime they went into commercial breaks. Fantastic stuff. I'm now a hardcore fan, although I still am put off a bit by the fact that the asian is yet again the straight-talking, hard-working, wise-ass female and that they parsimoniously decided that the asian and the african american should have sex to break down all racial barriers at once. More subtlety please? Lost is such a fucked up show. I could write a script for a show like Lost. I'll start writing with a basic idea of what happens and then invent all sorts of idiotic twists while I'm writing with no effort to think about how I will resolve these twists until I come to a point where I have to. Let's see: An ah-mah is trapped in the hinterlands of northern Siberia and she does not know how she got into the hut she wakes up in because her last thought was about her son in Singapore saying 'I'll do whatever job I want! Don't come between me and Melissa or else...' and then she goes to sleep and wakes up in the freezing hut. She goes out and sees footprints that lead into the hut, but not away, so, frightened, she looks around the hut for someone but she discovers no one. She leaves the house and a sound of a door closing inside makes her look back, but she decides to press on. She discovers a supermarket that sells Singaporean things like laksa and chicken rice in packets but she cannot get the lone saleswoman to understand her. When she leaves, the saleswoman smiles takes out an English book to read, saying into a microphone on her lapel 'It's done.' She gets another flashback of her son, who is going out with Melissa, a girl she disapproves of. She walks into a forest covered in snow all the while the flashback plays and at the end, when we focus on Melissa's face, she realises suddenly that the salesgirl was Melissa, but when she goes back there is no supermarket, only a fishing tackle shop with a gnarled old man at the counter. Fuck, move over Lost, make way for 'Where am I harh?' Saturday, March 18, 2006 Jason Mraz His voice is so fantastic live! You know how most recording artists sound better on their recordings than in concert? He completely doesn't have that problem. Too bad I don't really like his recordings haha but if he comes out with a DVD of a concert or a live performance or something like that I'll definitely buy it. Ahhhh he sounds so SEXY and he's so cute on stage!!! *gushgushgush* Jason Mraz can be my remedy any day. I still can't access my blog. I'm hoping some people can. Monday, March 13, 2006 Go and Die So anyway, my father vetoed my idea of having my birthday party in a graveyard (complete with the theme 'Go and Die'). Fuck. That's two ideas down the drain. Now I have to think of a third. Sunday, March 12, 2006 Yak Some groan-inducing quotes by me! Me: I thought you were boycotting Loof? Looks like your boycott was a baby cot. Nikki: Yeah, I broke under peer pressure. Me: I suppose when Suching's the peer you're under it's easy to break. Me: Eh! Do you still have the Brokeback Mountain DVD? Sister's Friend: Yah I do. Me: You better return it tomorrow or I'll broke your back! And a Wenenism: Me: But I don't want to go there; that's an outdoor cafe! Fans are a poor man's air-conditioning. And my best this year: Suching: Do you think I should shape my eyebrows? Me: You mean your eyebrow? Hahahaha! er... Oh all of you are no fun. Wednesday, March 08, 2006 Grandmother My grandmother has just turned eighty and my great-grandmother threw a party for her. That is to say, my great-grandmother bullied all her granddaughters-in-law into organising the event while she sat back like a matriach and played mah jong. It was held in the Conrad ballroom and while there were ten tables of guests, only one table was filled with people my grandmother had invited because at eighty years of age most of your friends are dead; you rely on your children to supply the guests to bring cheer and noise to an occassion. The tables had names that meant 'luck' and 'prosperity' in chinese instead of numbers so when the guests started to arrive my sister and I frantically consulted our cousin about which table said what and who was sitting where. Dinner was interminably long, filled with dishes with typical chinese names like 'superior' and 'longevity'. There were speeches of nostalgia and performances by grandchildren, including me. I played a piano piece I titled 'dai fei po' especially for my fat grandmother who liked it but complained that I called her fat. Some people didn't believe I wrote it because I'm a vagrant child with no special talents and my uncle, whose son (my cousin) sang 'you raise me up' and who sings very well and who sings everywhere, could not give me a superior look, and as much as I'd like not to admit it, the only reason I consented to be showcased like a circus animal was to negate the oneupmanship of my uncle. While my grandmother was the undeniable star of the proceedings, the spotlight shone uncomfortably bright and hot on my cousin and his new wife because she'd just got pregnant and repeated reference to my great-grandmother becoming a great-great-grandmother in eight months was made throughout the evening. I couldn't help but feel sad intermittently because my fat grandmother, who gave the concluding speech and said in both English and Cantonese for the benefit of everyone, 'I love you, mom', would soon lose her mother to death. Although I am optimistic of the longevity of my great-grandmother, the reality is at one hundred and two years of age you have very few years of life left in you. Having known your mother for the entire eighty years (and hopefully much more!) of your life before losing her must be extremely devastating and I have a delusion that my great-grandmother is an eternal woman who will never die and that my grandmother will not have to suffer the heartache of losing her mother after losing her husband who would thus not be able to console her. But maybe I'm just a sentimental deluded freak. Tuesday, February 28, 2006 Copper Me: Do you like my new pants? (twirls and preens) Sister: Quite nice. Me: Notice the green? Sister: What green? Me: Um... in the pants? Sister: No... Me: There! It's inside the corduroy lining! Sister: That's not green; it's brown. Me: Liar! Sister: I'm not! Me: It's not nice to make fun of colour-blind people! Sister: I'm not lying! Me: Mother!!! Tell me these pants are green! Mother: No, they're brown. Shit lah, I can't believe I bought a pair of pants thining they were coppery green and it turns out they're not. I've been matching them with clothes thinking they were green! Thank goodness everything turned out all right and fashionable in the end. I guess some of us just have it hahahaha Sunday, February 26, 2006 Just because Just because you shop in designer stores doesn't mean you're fashionable, it just means you have money. Just because you can eat in the best restaurants doesn't mean you're a gourmet, it just means you could have got your meal half as expensive elsewhere with the same level of enjoyment. Just because you read the right books and know the right words doesn't mean you're literary, it just means you have a checklist of pretension and interminable free hours to scan books line by line. Just because you dismiss pop music doesn't mean your tastes in music is better, it just means your taste in music is different. Friday, February 24, 2006 Pretty Girl I feel sad for my mother's gay friends who have to endure her, 'So when are you going to get married?' Everytime I overhear her say that, I feel like shouting, 'He's not going to get married because he's gay!' But that's the quickest way - short of exposing them as serial murderers - of making my mother a non-friend of theirs. They don't say it, of course, and I don't know for certain, but some of them are obviously not breeders that my mother has to be particularly blind and/or deluded not to see it. Her insistent 'But what about that pretty girl I saw you with?' makes me feel like slapping her and laughing at the same time because she objectifies people of the same gender as she. Just because they're pretty, it stands to reason that they make good wives; just because they're pretty means that inter-gender platonic relatinships are impossible. (And maybe she thinks just because they're pretty they can cure homosexual tendencies, using the word 'cure' as if being gay were a disease.) There's always this uncomfortable-masked-as-blase laugh that they give. A huge manly guffaw that hints at a predilection for playing the field and not wanting to settle down. Yet. Because there always is that implication of a 'yet to allay suspicions. That somehow they know they are not man enough to pull off the facade of an unrepentent bachelor, thus they allow people to think that they themselves recognise that one day they might grow tired and want to just do the conventional family thing. And I feel sad for them too because they have to pretend to be something they are totally not just so a friendship can be upkept. What sort of friendship is it when you dare not tell the truth? Monday, February 20, 2006 Happy Birthday To me! Hahahahaha I know I've been spouting this whole thing about how when my birthday comes around in July, 21st birthdays will be old hat and everyone will be tired of them and so I'm probably just not gonna really do anything about it. But then last night Nicole gave me an idea for my birthday party and I am getting excited 6 months in advance thinking about it. If you read this then you're invited! No, really haha Unless I don't know you, of course, then you're not invited. Oooo right now Ruoxi is giving me all kinds of ideas and I am getting more and more excited! I said no to belly dancers and male strippers though. Those are not my thing. Really! I can't say what it is yet, because I don't know for sure that my parents will be willing to pay for everything but once I know I will start planning proper. Hahaha I know it's an excuse to celebrate, but honestly, what better excuse? Thursday, February 16, 2006 The truth of the passage of time Oh my god, I was going through the sent items in my mailbox because I like reading about all these things that happened in the past and PastWenEn writing all these emails to people and I came across an email I sent to Annabella in 2004. Near the end of it was this bit: 17 more months to freedom. Seems like forever plus a few more eternities to mock me with. Oh well, I hope you're having a muchmuch better time than I am, or else going to university isn't worth it. I don't believe how long ago I wrote that! It's now 12 more working days to freedom and it seems like the momentary deafness just before you reach the surface of the water and can breath again. Wednesday, February 15, 2006 Heat Visiting my grandparents always makes me want to write. I find old age the most fascinatingly sad thing in the world. To defeat the interminable heat, Chan Hui Yu infused cold water with chopped cucumbers before splashing the astringent water onto her face. Her tongue tasted the saltiness of her old age as it was washed into the sink and for a brief minute she felt blessedly cool until the heat baked the water off her and came back with renewed vigour. By that time she had already turned her attention to her current project that she did not notice the sticky nectarine heat except for how it made her feel translucent. When her husband died a few years ago, she had been beset with an uncompromising clairvoyance that she would live long into her old age and that, despite the filial piety of attentive children, she would live out the rest of her days with loneliness. Filled with the irresistible impetus of ennui, she had conceived of the notion to expand her kitchen and give lessons to her children's friends who were interested in learning to cook authentic Cantonese meals. The contractor had already built the boundary wall of her new kitchen and was beginning to lay the electrical lines into the ground. As she observed the men work through the haze of her translucence, she suddenly remembered that she had yet to find out how wide a standard dishwasher was and whether she had made enough room in her counter for one to be slotted in beside the sink. She picked up her phone and dialed her daughter's number. Her grandson answered the call and, first in English, then Cantonese, before finding their middle ground in Mandarin, he got her message and promised to call her back in ten minutes while he went to measure his dishwasher. Chan Hui Yu hung up the phone and sat by it to wait for the return call. She dipped her hands into the basin of cucumber water again and luxuriated in the opacity of her fingers. Palms faced down, she could see the network of blue veins webbed through her hands and she suddenly felt the ache of her loneliness. The refracted sunlight shimmered like separate veins of gold on the back of her hands and, as she contemplated their wavering nature, the translucence she had felt earlier returned stronger than ever at the contrast in temperature of her cool hands and the rest of her body. The sharp angles of the cut cucumber pieces reminded her of green crystals and her heart ached with the impotence of resignation. When fifteen minutes had passed and her grandson had still not called back, defeated by the persistence of a mosquito, Chan Hui Yu got up and returned to supervising the construction of her kitchen. Steven had come home from his paternal grandparents' house two hours before his maternal grandmother called him. His father kept to this weekly visit with the exactitude of automation and, when he was out of the country, which his mother kept to with the inconsistency of forgetfulness. The truth was that, despite intending to call his maternal grandmother back after he had carefully measured the width of his dishwasher, Steven had been distracted by the smell of strawberry pancakes. Puzzled, he looked around his kitchen for the cause of that familiar smell for it was his grandfather who had made strawberry pancakes and he was five years dead. His grandmother had told his cousins and him that in their sixty years of marriage his grandfather had not once made for her the strawberry pancakes with which he had sweetened his proposal to her. Pestered endlessly by curious grandchildren for a week, he had finally invited them to breakfast one day where the only thing on the table had been perfectly round strawberry pancakes, pats of butter and a jar of strawberry jam. Steven remembered the buttery sweet smell of those pink circles after all this time and when he concluded, after checking the refrigerator and microwave for those pancakes of unknown origin, that the phantom odour had been nothing more than a memory triggered by a phonecall from his grandmother, he decided to make strawberry pancakes right then so that he could savour the bittersweet recollections of nostalgia. When he was five years old, he had watched his paternal grandmother and his twenty year old cousin make a cake. The final step was a gentle folding of different mixtures together so they would not lose their individual consistency. He had volunteered to do the folding because the pancakes he cooked for breakfast all by himself at home required him to fold the egg whites into the batter before scooping dollops of the frothy mixture onto the frying pan and thus he thought he knew something of the folding of batter. His paternal grandmother laughed and said it was fine, she could handle it and while he felt the sting of rejection what affected him more strongly was the taste of indignation that his grandmother had thought him too young to competently fold cake batter. The fact was that Liu Gek Sim would always think of her grandchildren as never fully grown. Her eldest grandson, who started practising law three years ago, endured platters of food brought to the table because although he had passed the stage of puberty his grandmother still thought he was a growing boy, and growing boys had to eat because food gave the nutrients required to grow into boys for Liu Gek Sim could not conceive that her grandsons could be anything but boys, surely never men, always boys. She lowered the speed of the ceiling fan because although it was stifling hot that afternoon her husband had begun to complain of a chill wrapped tightly around his emaciated limbs and he was lying motionless in bed directly under the fan. The biggest boy in her life was close to ninety years of age and while she thought of her grandsons as children the constant wiping of her husband's chin, the spoon-feeding and the assistance she gave him as he went to the toilet made her think of her husband as an infant old man. He had reached the stage of debilitating senility that lucidity was so precious and rare when it came to him only once or twice a week. Liu Gek Sim had already got over the incomprehensibility which emanated with a brutal light from his eyes as he looked at her. She had always believed that people as old as she was, who moved with excruciating slowness on decrepit limbs, had traded in their bodies for memories. And while on one hand she acknowledged the reality of a difficult childhood, on the other hand she saw it as a golden time in her life, tinged with the halcyon sepia of her creased and faded photographs. She found it a salve for aching joints to function one loop of time before the present, steeped in the nostalgia of painless memories. It was this belief which devastated her as she looked at her husband, who by this time had had all of his memories siphoned into oblivion that his body and the most instinctual of memories, like how to breathe and how to eat, were the sole focus of his days. Without the escape of happy reminiscence, she believed her husband suffered the reality of his body with inflexible rigour. Sometimes she did not know if he was displaying lucidity or abject dementia for the two seemed so alike that they bled into each other. Once, he had shouted out loud in anger for the saints to stop watching from the ceiling as he lay in bed because he was Methodist and did not believe in sainthood. It alarmed her that she could not decide whether this was an episode of delusion or of unyielding faith. Steven, who by this time had finished pureeing the strawberries to be added into his batter, had once thought that his maternal grandfather had had it better, for he had died while taking a shower and the last thing his maternal grandmother had heard was his voice calling out her name in surprise as death took him. He had been healthy to the last and did not have to endure the frustration of fading memories and failing bodily functions. And while it made him guilty to think about it, he often wished that his paternal grandfather would just die right then and save himself from the inglory of decrepitude. He had never shared these thoughts with anyone because he knew that the idea that death was a release and not an end did not occur to most people, least of all anguished children who felt that their parents should live longer simply to postpone the inevitable moment of grief. Liu Gek Sim recalled with a prophetic shudder the cremation of Chan Hui Yu's husband five years ago. Her own husband could not attend, for he had been warded in the hospital two days before, and while the cremation had been performed behind a thick pane of glass, she felt the intense heat of the flames beat at her side at which her husband could not sit, but who was at that moment experiencing the shame of allowing a nurse to clean his genitals for him. Liu Gek Sim felt the unbearably heat of the fire turn her bowels to wax and when she got home that day she cried herself to sleep thinking of the day she would have to perform a similar rite for her own husband. She asked her husband if the fan was still too strong for him but he did not answer her, so she walked over to his bed to check that he was covered properly with his blanket which was at the same time the best and most futile recourse against an internal chill that did not respond to physical heat. Chan Hui Yu had requested that they sort through her husband's ashes to find the crystal that was the distillate of the virtue of a man during his life. They had uncovered a small green crystalline substance amongst the grey ashes which she had kept in a gold-plated box with a glass top and placed beside the jade urn containing the ashes which sat in a corner of her bed room. The first night she had slept with that urn and crystal in her room she dreamt that her husband waved at her from an infinite field of flowers and she woke up smiling but with her pillow wet with tears. During Chinese New Year for many years after that, she gave her grandchildren red packets and persisted in telling them that it was from gong gong and her. She forgot to include her husband as a giver of the red packets one year and it only occurred to her later when she remembered that she had finally consigned her husband to memory utterly removed from physical presence. The green crystal in the gold-plated box bloomed one day with an incipient fuzz that Chan Hui Yu took care to wipe away but it returned with a tenacity that defied her most delicate attempts at its removal while preserving the integrity of the crystal until she surrendered to the fate of the fuzz and allowed it to creep over the red satin lining of the box, feeding off and diminishing the crystal until the box contained nothing but a jade powder which dissipated rapidly upon opening the gold-plated box. As he fried the last of the pink batter into a pancake Steven felted somewhat robbed of reminiscence for the aroma of his strawberry pancakes differed completely from the memory of the smell of his grandfather's pancakes. As he sat down to eat the unsatisfactory product of his culinary nostalgia he saw the measuring tape on the kitchen table and suddenly remembered that he had promised to call his maternal grandmother back an hour ago. Cursing, he stood up to measure the dishwasher again, for he had forgotten the dimensions of it. When the telephone rang, Chan Hui Yu was recuperating in her bed with two cucumber slices pressed over her eyes and the oscillations of the ceiling fan to ward off the heat which she felt threatened to evaporate her body entirely. Her grandson graciously apologised for calling so late before informing her of the exact dimensions of his dishwasher. After she had hung up, energised with a renewed vitality, Chan Hui Yu got out of bed and proceeded to supervise the building of her kitchen again with the authority of knowing exactly where and how much space her dishwasher would take up once installed. She had regained so much control over her molecules that later on before she slept, she stripped to shower and managed to see her entire body in the mirror; it still sagged with the heaviness of solitude but at the same time was imbued with the astonishing opacity of potential that even the blue veins under the skin of her hands were not visible anymore. As soon as Steven had hung up, the phone rang again. He wiped the sweat from his brow and picked it up. It was his paternal grandmother who, with the absolute calm of unbearable anguish, asked him to call his father to the phone, for his grandfather had just passed away. Monday, February 13, 2006 Justified Come on, who could watch this and not instantly be in love? Watch it even if you don't like him. Honestly. He doesn't sing, so you can't complain about his mumbling. http://www.youtube.com/w/Jay-Playing-Piano?v=Hi2i-k3mFZU&search=jay%20chou And here is one of him giving music lessons in a Taiwan college. Although he demonstrates improvisation and beat-boxing to classical music, I think the impressive thing is when he fucking plays La Campanella at the end! Okay lah, just a snippet. But still! http://www.youtube.com/w/Jay-giving-a-lesson-in-a-college-(taken-by-a-fan)?v=6Nrh2FJtMSc&search=jay%20chou Jay Chou Rox My Sox/Roxors My Boxors. Friday, February 10, 2006 Ready My father has started a reading spree that I find very cute. Some time last year he developed the notion that he had not read enough in his life and decided that he should read more to be more literate. Although I find his motivation for reading suspect (reading should be like any other pasttime right? That is, done for enjoyment), I think reading, regardless of impetus, should be encouraged so I gave him some books to start him off. Not to kill his enthusiasm early, I gave him 'easy' books like 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'The Horizontal Instrument' that would be of immediate interest. When he'd finished and bought some books of his own to read, I gave him 'better' books, among them 'Oranges are not the only fruit', for obvious reasons, which he read without comment. Maybe the only irritating thing about all this are his admonitions to read more, which come more frequently now and are charged with an air of authority derived from his current reading, which he could not have included in his tone before. It is because we see reading differently - while he sees it as a way to better himself, I read to... read and thus don't have yearly quotas or particular books I have or cannot read - I don't bother to argue with him. It'd be pointless to dissuade him from his mindset if all it does is dampen his persistence to read. I was reading '100 years of solitude' at dinner one day and, perhaps attracted to its cover the same way I serendipitously picked it up in the bookshop so long ago, he asked me, 'Can I read that?' 'What do you mean by can?' I asked. 'Do you have the ability, or are you asking permission?' 'Ability? What, you think I'm illiterate, is it?' Came his indignant reply. I said it was a fair question and my mother agreed it was but while I said that I would lend it to him once I finished, the truth is that no one who doesn't enjoy reading for the sake of it or is forced to for some literature class will read '100 years of solitude ' and finish it. Having read it a few times, I still can't really give you an adequate synopsis of what it's about but I remember the sensual way the imagery and language hums in my mind and makes me re-read sentences I've just read and the desolation every character in the novel feels. So I gave him 'Of love and other demons', a shorter, more straight-forward book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I figured that the best thing to do is not to supply his urge to better himself, but to change his perception such that he will begin to enjoy reading for reading itself. And when it does change and it will be read without thoughts of 'why doesn't he just hurry up and tell me what happens next!', I will lend him '100 years of solitude'. Monday, February 06, 2006 Sister quote Sister (putting down her glass of water): I used to think that water smelt like fish until I realised that fish probably smell like water. Toilet trained I occasionally list out stuff that I will miss when I go overseas and in that list are the generic things like chendol and hainanese chicken rice*, but I suppose the non-generic item I have on the list is toilets. I don't know why not more people notice this, but the lack of those black obscuring strips of rubber between cubicles in America disturbs me. If ever there is a queue for any cubicle, the person next in line to use the seat would be able to tell exactly how long more he'd have to wait by looking into the cubicle and estimating by what the guy inside was doing. Pushing, wiping or getting up. He wouldn't even need to peek because the gaps between doors and walls are so fucking huge. Once in Philadelphia I came across a toilet which had cubicles with doors that were perfectly placed against the walls. No more holes! I thought, happily occupying myself with the kinetic contractions of bladder and bowel. Then I realised that the door was low enough that any middle-height American could look over the door anyway. The door actually curved down in the centre to facilitate peeking! What the fuck. Is it an obsession with Americans to be blatant about their toilet activities? A point of pride? Or are all toilets constructed by the same company, whose boss has voyeuristic tendencies? While gaps in toilet walls usually elicit puzzled looks and scrunched up faces vaguely trying to remember if it is so (it is), the fact that American toilets don't have squatting cubicles irritates me as I prefer to squat and not sit puzzles and disgusts people. Drop dead lah, I'm the one who's puzzled and disgusted by everyone's preference of sitting on the toilet bowl instead of using the squatting stalls. It's so much more hygenic to squat! Even if you line it with paper and sit on it gingerly, why bother with the potential or the reality of tiny bits of contact with a dirty rim when you can hover your butt half a foot away from everything remotely dirty? I will also miss my bidet, which is a contraption to wash your butt on after you shit. After using one, you will always feel dirty when you don't wash your butt and pat it dry every time. Butt (haha, in all other circumstances you probably would have thought I merely wanted to lengthen but and make it sound whiny and dramatic) toilets are not the main thing I'll miss. It's privacy. Sometimes, when I am in a public place and I need some privacy, I just go to the toilet and sit there for a while in a cubicle. I always feel a sense of calm. Especially if there's easy listening muzak wafting like much fumes in there. * The Bellagio in Las Vegas, from which I took the picture that would become the current blog's main design thing, had hainanese chicken rice on their room service menu and it tasted like shit. Nothing at all like normal hawker chicken rice and twenty times as expensive. Ruoxi made me carry packets and packets of stuff to New York for her, including a box of Hainanese Chicken Rice and I think that box would probably have tasted better than the hainanese chicken rice at the Bellagio even though the label on the box funnily said 'Hainanese Chicken Rice: just add chicken and rice' hahahaha How about the Hainanese? You mean there's a population of chinese people in the box? Friday, February 03, 2006 Serendipity We smile at each other with the complicity of incipient freedom because it's a weekday and here we are in Orchard Road, doing precisely what we haven't been for the longest time. It's almost like post-JC again. Wednesday, February 01, 2006 Shamed On some online forums that I visit, I go by the name 'shamed'. Sometimes, it's because I am ashamed to visit that particular forum and 'p3dantic' is kinda an obvious giveaway. Okay lah, fuck, I go by 'shamed' at jay-chou.net although I haven't posted anything yet; I just registered so I could read lyric translations. Really! Ahem. Another thing I am going to confess to is that I am an avid fan of the letters to the Straits Times forum page. Every day is a new instance of a stupid Singaporean with lousy opinions and too much time on his or her hands. I especially love things like this one from last week: 'I am from a single-sex school in the Bishan area'. Fuck you lah, Mr Maybe-not-quite-sorta-in-RAFFLES. I really hate reverse snobbery because, on top of being a snob, you're being pretentious. OUT AND PROUD can? Be a snob and be happy you're a snob, not a fucktard who hides behind the transparent veil of words. If you really didn't want people to know you're from Raffles, you could omit 'in the Bishan area' altogether without any loss of meaning to your pathetic letter to the forum. Oh my god, I don't believe I went this far without getting to my point. Singapore is a country that supports and believes in employing shame as a punishment. Maybe this is related to the fact that the asian person's 'face' is as important as the person himself and the 'loss of face' consistutes a shaming so deep it destroys a person. This is evident in simple things, like letters to the forum of the Straits Times. On many occasions, people who write in ostensibly looking for redress aren't - their main agenda isn't the compensation for the fifteen dollar lunch they had in which they found a cockroach leg but about which the waiter didn't give a hoot; had it been, the first avenue for redress would be the management of the resaturant, not the Straits Times - what they're looking for is to tarnish the reputation of the establishment with whom they are unsatisfied. Somewhere in the annals of the Straits Times, someone discovered that he could submit a whiny letter to the newspaper and it would be published. Apparently, his personal vendentta was officially endorsed! Oh happy day for petty cowards without the spine to complain face-to-face. I think it's rather drastic to want to cost a company a loss in revenue merely because you were given bad service once by a particular waiter or staff who probably didn't embody the philosophy of the organisation anyway. Always, the poor companies have to respond in the papers and offer to 'retrain' their staff but, honestly, if it didn't hold the first time, I don't think they're gonna repent and put aside their grumpy and inefficient ways on second training. The worst instance of shaming I can think of is the publishing of the names of those HIV positive guys who just happen to be gay because they donated blood. I don't even know where to begin describing which part of that I don't agree with! I mean, their crimes surely don't warrant their being castigated for the rest of their HIV-shortened lives right? And Balaji must have been drooling at the prospect of such an easy example of HIV = Gays therefore all my idle speculation and finger-pointing is not necessarily justified but accepted by the public and really, that's all that counts when everyone's too stupid to think logically that a few examples don't an entire case make. I've always thought of punishment as an extreme way to teach and teaching shares nothing with shame. I can't imagine how shaming someone deeply 'teaches him a lesson'. Even the phrase 'teach him a lesson' is used not so much as a phrase meaning, well, teaching someone a lesson, but as a way of justifying a punishment that involves shaming and said with relish and satisfaction. Most of the time, if you ask 'What lesson exactly was he taught?', the utterer of that retarded phrase will have no satisfactory answer. So these poor HIV individuals who have been forcibly outed to the entire population of Singapore are supposed to learn that peer pressure in the army doesn't mean that you cannot, essentially, tell your superiors you're gay when they ask why you can't donate blood. You see right, if you don't tell them, then we will tell the whole of Singapore lor! So you'd better tell them you're a dirty gay, you faggot! This is your punishment. May you learn from it, even though what you could learn escapes us right now because no matter how cleanly you live your life out now, you will have three things known about you that will cause problems for you in the world: you're gay, you're HIV positive and you have a criminal record. Good luck trying to find a job before the medical bills your family has to pay to make your time on earth more pleasant overwhelms your jobless ass with their cost. Majulah Singapura. Gambling account for the third day of CNY: -$10 Total account thus far: -$20 Monday, January 30, 2006 Falalalala Tis the season to be jolly falalalala lalalala Deck the halls with baos of money falalalala lalalala This'll be the last Chinese New Year I'll spend in Singapore for at least 4 years. It makes me kinda happy; the eldest cousin on my mother's side just got married in January and when he gave me an ang pao I said, 'This is weird' to which he replied, 'Yeah it is'. Since I'm the second eldest, I suppose I can assume that questions of marriage and its precursors should start up in earnest next year or the year after and I'm so glad I'll be thousands of miles away from shrunken relatives too politely inquisitive for their own good. Today, I got re-introduced to a host of second-cousins and I did not afflict myself with the torment of remembering names because we'll just be re-introduced again the next Chinese New Year I'm in Singapore and the next one after that and the next one till our parents and their parents die and the bond of second-cousin snaps and falls into the gutter of oblivion. During an interminable reunion dinner at my paternal grandmother's house I whispered to my sister that, next year, she'd have to solo it and she shot me a look of such terror that I felt sorry for her for a brief second. We exchange notes on how to remember names and attach the appropriate ones to the correct faces but when my father's brother asked my sister, 'You're Wen Ting, right?' I found it pathetic that after a lifetime, the family gathers merely for the sake of traditional symbolism and starts afresh, like amnesiacs re-learning their entire life story the second time round. Patient questions and thoughtful nods of the head litter tables as we laugh at our similar tastes in Chinese New Year sweets and assume an air of familiarity that we think such common traits give us the right to. Such sweet vindication little red packets stuffed full of joy give us. Gambling account for the first day of CNY: -$10. Fuck. Thursday, January 26, 2006 Why I'll never be accepted by the masses My parents threw a party for my father's old classmates the other day and one of them brought his two daughters. I was given the task of entertaining them. Me: So... how old are both of you? Sister1: I'm 12 and she's 15. Me: Really? Wow I thought you were older. You look as if puberty's knocked you up already. Sister1: Uh- Me: What're you names? Sophie: Sophie. RandomName: RandomName. Me: That's nice. So what did you do wrong? RandomName: What do you mean? Me: Why're your parents punishing you? Sophie: How are they punishing us? Me: Forcing you to come to a party where everyone's above 50 seems like punishment to me. Did you throw tantrums and injure people? Sophie: No... They said we had to come and have fun. Me: Hah! That's a good one. What evil parents you have! During dinner. Me: Okay, between dinner and home'll be about 2 hours you're stuck in my company. Tell me what you want to do that'll entertain you. RandomName: We're fine. Me: No you're not. You're lying. You're sitting there fiddling with the synthetic weaving of the table. That's not fun. Do you play poker? Sophie: Our friends tried to teach us, but we kinda didn't get it. Me: Oh damn, I wanted to teach a chinese version called you chor dai di so I could brush up for chinese new year. RandomName: We'll teach you Cheat. Me: Card game? RandomName: Yes. What you do is you (blah blah blah) Me: Aie! Stop. Tell me how to play after dinner when we have cards in our hands. Your australian accent's too thick for me to understand you. I'm done with my dinner, let's go! Are you done? Yes you are, it's curry and you probably don't eat that in Australia and you're pretending to eat but you're really hating it. Come upstairs! The next day. Father: My friend told me he was talking to you. Me: He did? Father: Yah, he said he asked how old you are and you told him twenty. And then when he said that was quite old you said, 'Twenty's old? You're one to talk!' Me: Oh yeah... I remember. But I was joking! Wednesday, January 25, 2006 Me, as illustrated by fictitious accounts At Cafe Cartel (I think the owner can't know what 'cartel' means to have named his outlet that). John: I'll go place our orders, can one of you get the bread? Pause. Zhenghui: I'll go get it. I saw the shocked and indignant expression on your face. Wen En: That's not true! * So anyway, I was on time for an appointment the other day and I had to wait for people to show up. I was a bit irritated. Usually, I never arrive on time so I don't have to wait. I think there is a moral lesson in here somewhere that I should - Oh! Butterfly! Sunday, January 22, 2006 Rolling Bomber Special http://www.compfused.com/directlink/991 Funniest thing I've seen all week. Ahhh the power rangers were the most retarded superheroes ever. Bad costumes, bad enemies, bad acting, bad sets, bad production etc. And they got rid of both minorities (black american and asian american) by the end of the second season. I suppose if you wear a mask and latex costume you'd have to emote with over-the-top hand gestures. The worst thing's probably that they took themselves so seriously. But who can not admit to having liked the power rangers before? hahaha Saturday, January 21, 2006 Isn't it ironic I have been talking a lot about this these days and I thought I'd officially declare it here: people with no sense of irony, including self-irony, are the most impossible people for me to be friends with. Irony is the MSG sans undesirable health consequences of everyday life. Like those spice traders who paid for star anise and nutmeg their weight in gold, I must confess to valuing highly the spice that is irony; like nutmeg and saffron, there's nothing essential in irony, but it adds such a zing to relationships that not having it would lacquer all in panels of plastic dullness. Everyone who's gone to the US to study complains about the fact that Americans lack irony and that is very frightening to me because I am going to study there. I imagine myself saying something and it being taken in utter seriousness and already I get shivers down my spine. Is it stereotypical to say that it befits a superficial culture to see nothing but the face value of words? Probably, but then again Sheila assures me that all the stereotypes in movies and books are real. They exist and are on the loose on university campuses all over America. How scary. But I suppose the worst of it is people who lack self-irony. People who take themselves too seriously and think that their image is sacrosanct, never to be sullied with the little foibles that melt the glacier of unfamiliarity faster then any polite conversation can. People whose litle personal anecdotes seem to meander into unfavourable and humble territory only to, by the end of it, regale the listeners to how such a person came to Triumph and Win over the antagonist. People who are pretentious and believe themselves more genuine than their brittle veneers suggest, who act as if their veneers protrude all the way from their core and are thus not veneers but solid stuff. Oh these people are a poison unto themselves, because they are found out, and mocked, and they cannot know it because they refuse to know it. And they refuse to know it because they believe that, deep down, they really are all that. Pffffttt. Pauperazzi FUCK THE FUCKING CHEEBYE DUCKS! I couldn't pay a $50 bill with my UOB debit card today because I didn't have enough money in there! NAH BEI! Why am I so fucking broke?! Actually, I have an American Bank account too, but everytime I am tempted to use that card, I remind myself that I'll lose money in the exchange from US$ to S$. So I am kind of broke until I set foot in America. Oh... and as I type this, my left hand is sitting on an invitation to the launch of the spring 2006 CK collection but I know that they hope my enjoying 'the traditional lunar new year cakes' would be merely a lubricant to actual purchase of items if I went. Why is everything in life so difficult? My only consolation is that Chinese New Year is two corners away and I can already smell the sweet smell of mandarins, mah jong and money. Salman wondered over SMS why I was taking buses and MRTs - 'were there no taxis?' - but the truth of the matter is that I am living as frugally as humanely possible (yeah, humanely, not humanly, because it's inhumane to eat anywhere that does not have air-conditioning and is fast food) until I can secure income post-march. If anyone has any ideas, let me know please. I can't give tuition; I imagine poor kids at my mercy in maths or english and I pity them already. Currently, the best offer I've got is a part-time job at my uncle's design company which is actually pretty great because it involves all these design skills I've picked up these past two years in the army. I'm also thinking of enrolling in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts's part-time multimedia course for a basic diploma in multimedia but that would mean not being able to travel a lot and I'm not sure if it's worth it. But ultimately, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want, I wanna (ha) I wanna (ha) I wanna (ha) I wanna (ha) I wanna really really really wanna MANY MONEYS. Wednesday, January 18, 2006 Quotes Me, on SMS: Fuck, I can't help it. I have to tell someone. The shapelessest butt in the world is standing right in front of me now. It looks like soft boiled potatoes lumped into a denim sack. Actually, her whole body looks as if someone sewed a vague cloth silhouette of a woman, filled it with beans and then shook it so the beans settled in all the wrong places. I just love that description. I think it's my best in a long time haha but yuck! You should have seen it. If you went ew at my description, imagine seeing it for real. Totally gross. * I have been craving chendol since december, but since my lassitude trumps all, I did not Take the Initiative to go out and have chendol until last Saturday. So my mother and I went to the Island Cafe in Tangs so I could satisfy my illogical psychological dependency and, as we passed through the children's section, this actually happened. Mother (picking up a stuffed toy): Oh look! This is you! Me: Huh? Why? Mother: It's a little cow! Me: Mother, it's a lion. * Sister: Oooo I really wanna take a photo of that hobo sleeping on the bench! Mother: Why don't you? Sister: I'm scared! What if his minions attack me? Mother: If he had minions, I don't think he'd be a hobo. Saturday, January 14, 2006 Bleurgh Will someone please tell me the detrimental effects of bulimia? I've been periodically regurgitating food for the hell of it. Today, I had a milkshake and chendol at Tangs for tea and, figuring that these items were priced based solely on their enjoyment value and not nutrional value, I went to the toilet immediately after finishing both items and proceeded to stick my finger in my throat to throw them up. Because my stomach juices had not yet the chance to digest the food, everything tasted exactly as it did going down without the acrid tang of sour acid. As I flushed the toilet, I figured that there had to be a reason why everyone was not doing this after consuming luxury food items (food which is consumed without a thought for nutrition). I mean, it's an effective way of enjoying food and not getting fat, right? Friday, January 13, 2006 Does not follow Stupid people irritate me so much. I know it's not their fault they were born with faulty genes and I know that I should be tolerant and accepting but it's just that when someone is impervious to clear logic it makes me so violently angry and when they refuse to try to follow the links of an argument and instead prefer to wallow in ignorant introspection it makes me want to kill. Thursday, January 12, 2006 Parties cannot be named I was talking to someone yesterday and I find that I have to reiterate a point I've made periodically on my blog but which seems to go unheeded by certain lots of ignorant people. As far as you are concerned, dear reader, everything you read here is fiction. It never happened, I never did that, that was never said. I am really a 30 year-old female living in various parts of America depending on where I park my trailer for the night. Even that may be fiction. Just take everything here as a novel in first-person. | T minus Trolls | "... and I heard from Sida that you can do body rolls very well." Sida! Stop harping about my body rolls! In other news, I've body rolls that are not a type of outdated dance move. Shit! This means my annual dip in the pool. Damn it, all this exercise frustrates me so. Sunday, January 08, 2006 Cycle In yesterday's newspaper was an advertisment by Balenciaga. It was a half-page white space with the word 'Balenciaga' in bold type in the centre and nothing else. The effect, obviously, is that Balenciaga is so well known it can't lower itself to do explaining or actual advertising: just a name that'd do all that for them, thank you very much. As I looked at it, I kinda realised that that kind of advertisment is slowly dying out. There is a sort of daring cachet attached to that kind of advertisment because that's fifty thousand dollars you spent to ostensibly buy white space and ten letters in the papers. But what's supposed to be the unsaid freebie that comes with it is exclusivity; you show that money is a luxury you can well afford to spend on such uninformative advertisments. But nowadays it's not rare to see that kind of advertisment everywhere, thus the freebie, which the little asterisk next to informed you in small text was of limited stock, has run out. Now it's just cliche. And because the smell of cliche chills the blood of creative-types, they'll try to run from it, thus, the advertisments, which has got as minimal as you can get, will start to fill out again. Maybe I'm wrong but that's what I think will happen. I think we'll be back to those classic advertisments from the 60s where there is an overabundance of exclamation points, posterised families smiling from the dinner table and such provincial quotes as 'is really of better quality than other brands if administered to the whole family daily'. I was going to relate this to fashion and how to be fresh they have to plunder what was stale, thus giving rise to revivals of retro fashion but I'm so fucking tired suddenly. I wanna go to sleep. So goodnight. Tuesday, January 03, 2006 It's true I do imbue my blue Today, my BMT mate told me he was going to clear his leave starting mid-february and it suddenly hit me very hard that I won't officially be in the army anymore in two and a half months. I mean, I knew, naturally, that my time was coming, but it never really struck me how soon it all was. And it's true, what they say about elation brought low by resentment because when I say "I can't believe I've been in the army for two years already!" my tone vacillates between excitement and horrific disbelief that I am two years late for university. I started out wanting to prolong my university life as long as possible just so I could be relatively responsibility-free for four years or so but now I just wanna finish as quickly as I can just so I can get on with it, although it would be a fair question if you asked me "on with what?" I'm not sure. Life? That's a bit too general, I think. But first up is the anticipation of post-March because I intend to travel a lot. Maybe some of you may know that I had intended to extend my ORD to help out in NDP 06 but I realised that if I did I'd have to take leave to travel and I don't think I'd have enough. Japan in March, California in April, Cannes in July and university in August/September. That's the itinerary, subject to change of plans and change of destinations. Oh I can't wait! Sunday, January 01, 2006 R.I.P. One day, I saw Gary doing exercises utilising a chair in an odd way and I asked him what he was doing. "Exercising. I'm trying to lose weight." "I don't think it's working," I said. He smiled, which made his eyes crinkle into slits and which exposed abnormally straight and white teeth, and continued with his exercise. Gary cannot be said to be overweight but like his exercising with a chair for the lack of any proper apparatus he had goals and he would steadily plod on towards them because he was that kinda person. Slow and deliberate. He wanted to make money and he read all these books that had to do with marketing, investing and making money and he tried to foist them onto me with serious expressions and I never had the heart to laugh at his earnest face and desire to educate me with books I would not touch with anything but lighter fluid and a spark. To fend him off I lent him my Christina Aguilera CD which he took and then never returned. He worked somewhere near City Hall because although he never would tell me what he did he always asked me to go down to meet him there, where he promised he'd tell me what he did. I told him I did not buy prostitutes and he laughed again with his eyes narrowed to slits and I never went down to see him at City Hall. On the last day of his life, Gary was riding his bike when he got into an accident. He will always be twenty-one to me in a black and white photograph. I dedicate the first post of the year to Gary because I was half a world away and could not attend your funeral and I will try to drag you into 2006 although you will never experience it alive. Wednesday, December 28, 2005 Dear Diary Z Back. Can't believe I'm back. Just a day ago I was eating sashimi in the Bellagio. Wow, this is the don't-know-how-many time I've not spent Christmas in Singapore. Thank goodness! Whenever we're in Singapore on Christmas, we have to attend a huge Tang dinner with uncomfortably non-familiar cousins from branches of the family I never knew existed. Plus they never give good presents. I saw two Cirque du Soleil productions in Las Vegas, which is probably one too many. I'm kinda glad Jane (as they say in... disagreeable parts of Singapore) pang sehed me in San Francisco or I'd have had to watch three productions. But I have to recommend seeing O if you are ever in Las Vegas. It's typical Cirque du Soleil but with a floor that can sink into water. Most of the acts involved the water somehow: floating, diving, emerging; it's all very magical. There're pictures here. With more to come when I get them from my sister's camera. Oh yah, I found my prom pictures lying around so I uploaded them too. No weird collage this time because I'm tired and I'm going to sleep now. I can't wait for March 06 because, after that, I'll get to travel as often as migratory birds again. No, I'll get to travel more often, because migratory birds only fly to migrate. Erm... Yeah. Anyway, this is probably the last post of the year so Happy New Year, everyone! Friday, December 23, 2005 Dear Diary Y I love Las Vegas. Love love love. It's the tackiest, most over-done, ostentatious place I have ever been to, rivalled only by the Star Cruise ships (and those are too small to be competition), and it makes me laugh and gape and leaves me quite in awe and horror at the utter tastelessness of everything that in some odd and curious way makes complete sense. The best part is that almost everything I do here is free. The hotel suite is free, any spa treatment I do is free (I went for a facial today. My first! The therapist: "I'm happy that I was with you on your virgin experience."), every meal I eat is free, and I can raid the mini bar with impunity! How fucking awesome is that?! I asked my mother if we could and she said sure and my sisters agreed that it was a rare occurance that a chinese mother would allow her kids to raid the mini bar. Apparently, everything is free because my father's friends gamble so much that the casinos invite them to Las Vegas and pay for everything in exchange for moving the economy or some shit like that and my family's just tagging along to enjoy the fruits of their gambling. Me: So what are the stakes like when Uncle ___ plays? Mother: Hundred and fifty? Two hundred? Me: Two hundred dollars per round? That's all?! I don't get it! Mother: Two hundred thousand. Me: Oh... wow. New aim in life: Make enough money so that I can gamble with that kind of money. Actually, I have a few aims in life that I have made up on this trip. Among them is the ability to fly first class everywhere on my own money without it turning my wallet to dust and setting up a scholarship for prospective university students whose bond is to offer a scholarship to other students once they graduate and make a ton of money (I copied this idea from Debbie). This means that I have to make a lot of money. A fucking ton. I don't know how I'm gonna do that but by golly I'm gonna try! Hahaha how five-minute motivation. Tomorrow I'm going shopping for Christmas presents for some of you. Yeah, I know, I said some. At least I'm being honest. My shopping policy is if I see something that I know someone will like, I buy it, not 'I have to get this person and that person a present and shit! it's totally last minute let's just get a random gift that he or she will not appreciate at all'. The thought may count but I'm not rich yet so the cost of a present which will not be cherished with all heart, soul, etc counts too. The odd thing about Vegas that my mother pointed out is that Christmas is not so much out in force here. There are no Jingle of annoying Bells, no Paramp of Pum Pa Rum Pums, no Santas going hohoho in odd corners, not many decorations (and the ones that are put up are totally overshadowed by the normal Vegas decorations and ornaments). My sister conjectures it's because Christmas is about home and family and nobody really lives in Vegas so they don't bother putting up decorations here. I'm not very sure that's right - Las Vegas outside the Strip has to be pretty normal - but it sounds plausible if you let yourself be ignorant so I'll pretend to be dumb, accept pat explanations and say hmm how astute. So that's the thing; no matter how superlative I get about Las Vegas, I wouldn't want to live here. Not in a million years. I'm sure I'm not qualified to make this analogy, although I'm pretty sure it has to have been invented independently by many people, but I think of Las Vegas as a mirage in the Nevada Desert: beautiful, shimmering but ultimately unreal. Missing Singapore. Missing people. Missing my house. Even missing the army hahaha so fucked-up, kill me please. I have a meeting the day after I return to Singapore, which sounds awful but is really mildly exciting because after months of doing Practically Nothing, I get my job back again. The homily which assures you of the unnecessity of ever working conditional to pleasure derived from your job is a bit too simple to encompass the totality of it: if only the environment I work in was not military. But lemonade from the sourest lemons huh? Luckily, I like my lemonade sour. Saturday, December 17, 2005 Dear Diary X Yesterday, I went snowmobiling, which involves a snowmobile and a penchant for turning nouns into verbs. It's much more fun than skiing because skiing involves standing up whereas your ass is firmly planted on the seat of the snowmobile at all times which do not involve sudden losses of altitude. How you know you've played way too much Mario Kart Double Dash: I tried to drift round corners to cut on Mario (the guide in a red jacket) in front. I was on my own snowmobile on the way to this shed in the woods in which we ate lunch, but I shared the snowmobile with my sister on our way back because, while I drove, my sister would shoot shells (snowballs) at my mother and make her slip on banana peels (snowlumps). Two days ago, we went to this restaurant that served fries. How mundane! you exclaim. Truffle fries, I reply. When the fries were placed at the centre of the table, the heady scent of overly-priced fungi almost made me dizzy. Or maybe the air up in the mountains did that dizzy thing to me; I've been dizzy a lot these days. And then yesterday, we went to another restaurant in which my father and I ordered egg yolk tortellini in butter sauce with white truffles. The flat yellow pasta came out sans truffles and, as it is, it was so fucking perfect already. But then the chef came out with a basket of truffles, said hello, allowed us to fondle the white lumps and then instructed us to say 'when' while shaving truffles over our dishes. Oh goodness! An appetiser that good kinda makes you very happy for the rest of the evening. The main course, unfortunately, passed by me in a haze of the memory of truffle fumes but then dessert came! Desserts, I should say because what I ordered was called a Chocolate Tasting, which consisted of a slice of chocolate tart, a warm chocolate cake, a chocolate milkshake and a pecan pie with chocolate cream. This is the second best chocolate thingie I've had, losing out only to the fondue at Pod in Philadelphia. As my last night in Aspen, tonight totally kicked asses right and left. I won US$800 gambling! Talk about a fortuitous windfall to come my way right before going to Las Vegas to shop shop shop. So over all, I've won $700 because I lost a hundred to my father on the not getting sick thing. But ladida, my father already promised my sister and me $500 each to gamble in Las Vegas so losing a hundred to him doesn't really hurt that much. There're about ten Singaporean families here this year, so much so that the place we're staying in has hung up a Singaporean flag to show their appreciation of our patronage. Actually, some establishments say 'Singapore's coming to town' when we go to eat or shop; we probably contribute a significant amount of money to Aspen's merchants. I hope our hotel room in Las Vegas has free internet access too. Pictures when I get back to Singapore. In case there's no internet from now till I get back: Merry Christmas everyone! See you all in the new year. I'm thinking of a new year's party (not a new year's eve countdown party because I think everybody's probably invited to a few already) but I'll see if I have enough time to prepare and stuff. Jingle bells! Friday, December 16, 2005 Project Runway I've been watching the second season of Project Runway (thank goodness for the American cable habit of running consecutive episodes of shows) and while I think the designers are, as a bunch, stronger than the previous season, their personalities are not as interesting. No bitchy but adorable Jay, no flamboyant but ironically serious Austin, no self-effacing but quietly funny Kara. Some of them are getting on my nerves already. Oh yeah, something awful happened. I've been adamant that no one tell me who the winner of season one is (and I've been waiting since Christmas last year when I first caught Project Runway in New York) and then, in a trailer for season two, Heidi "auf wiedersehen" Klum does a voiceover: "...and the winner will receive a spread in Elle magazine...." and - poof! - they show the spread from Elle featuring season one's winner and then cut to the winner's victory walk down the runway. Daaaamn! But I'm not surprised; the winner's my favourite anyway but I was pretty sad that another person I liked didn't get into the final three, who each got to do a collection for a runway show, and someone who totally didn't deserve it did. Haha I have avoided all gender-specific pronouns just so no one will be in the least spoilt. I think, minus the runway part, my favourite part of the show is when they go fabric shopping. The right fabric can totally make or wreck a design still in concept. My mother's friend, who used to be a model, told me once that the real bosses in the fashion world are the fabric houses. All designers have to ultimately bow down to what the fabric houses decide are 'in' this season and choose to print. I wanna go fabric shopping! Anybody wanna go? I don't even know where to begin in Singapore. Pencil in another Wen En Project*: Design an outfit from scratch. *Wen En Projects, or WEEP, include colouring a children's book my sister illustrates and selling that book in Zouk's flea market or something similar and burning a CD of songs I wrote for non-selling since I am realistic about the marketability of anything I write on the piano. Thursday, December 15, 2005 Apples To: Her Royal Highness, the Princess Mafolde Susudin Re: Denial of Request Dear Princess Mafolde, It is with great regret that we have to deny your request of a Basalisk Rod. While we are deeply honoured by your writing us, we cannot, by laws your father set, deliver a Basalisk Rod to your address due to the potent nature of such an object and the treacherous route through which such a delivery has to be made; it would be to your father's severest disadvantage should such an item be stolen and fall into the hands of a common bandit. Additionally, the rod, when used, merely ossifies the subject for half a day; I am sure you agree that that is insufficient for your purposes. We possess no item of similar but permanent power. As we sympathise with your position, might we suggest alternative items towards the riddance of the mentioned 'miserable midgets' with whom you have had to keep company these past weeks? Attached please find a catalogue of all our items. Please bear in mind the additional 10% delivery charge and 50% royalty tax. With deepest respect, Astarte Apothecary * To: The editor-in-chief Re: Urgent request for front-page advertisment space Dear Sir/Madam, Attached is an advertisment from my establishment which I request be posted on the next issue of The Daily Silvus with the greatest urgency. I am aware that front-page space is costly, but I am willing and able to bear the price; I kindly request that you consider my advertisment before all others. Thanks you and regards, G. Noam The Owner Fiftieth Oak Sweetshop The Fiftieth Oak Sweetshop requests that all uneaten Candy Apples bought in the last month (hereafter refered to as The Incorrect Goods [TIG]) be returned immediately for a refund worth twice the purchase price. Due to a supplier's mistake, the latest order of Candy Apples was mixed up with an order from Astarte Apothecary. All persons who have consumed TIG are to call up the Fiftieth Oak Sweetshop to obtain more information before visiting a Dejinx facility immediately. Relatives of Princesses Living With Seven Dwarves (hereafter, PLSD) are kindly requested to contact the dwarves with all haste to enquire about the possible consumption of TIG by the PLSD. Should that have occured, a heterosexual prince on a noble steed must be found as soon as possible, who should call the Fiftieth Oak Sweetshop for instructions and a monetary compensation for such services rendered towards the ends of fulfilling said instructions. The Fiftieth Oak Sweetshop apologises for any inconvenience caused by this mix-up and would be glad to further assist any such persons with additional queries or problems. * To: The Owner of Astarte Apothecary Re: Defective Goods Dear Sir/Madam, Having been a regular customer (loyalty programme number: C18820666Z) of your establishment for about a century, I am shocked and utterly disappointed by the quality of the latest item that I purchased last week. As is customary in my kingdom, the most beautiful of the king's princesses is sent to live with a random gathering of seven dwarves in the mining hills in order to put to practise the domestic skills necessary in running a successful household (the rationale being that such skills magnified is what runs a successful kingdom which can be seen as an extraordinarily large household). My only grand-niece, being the most beautiful princess by default (though she is ugly beyond belief and it would amuse me greatly if any of the last forty proposals by princes from neighbouring kingdoms had anything to do with her physical charms), was thus sent on this so-called rite of passage two months ago. Her birth had been a thorn in my flesh for the last twenty-five years due to the fact that I was, until she appeared, next in line for succession of the throne (baring flimsy rumours of my exile, had her parents passed away and she never born, the people would have to acknowledge me as their queen). Having heard of a particular good of yours which might have aided my quest to be queen, I bought the supposedly highly potent, though highly specific, Innocuous Apple and, disguised as a beggar woman, sold it to that fool of a grand-niece. Self-administering the apple, she stood as if in a swoon and I clapped my hands and, contrary to popular stereotype, did not cackle in glee. However, instead of the fainting dead away that I expected, she immediately started sweeping the really dusty dwarven abode (her two weeks spent there had been extremely unhappy and unproductive due to her spoilt nature and an aversion to men shorter than she, that brat), singing all the while! Puzzled, I hid in a nearby thornbush to observe if these were symptoms of the curse in the apple of which I was not informed. When the seven dwarves came home covered in dirt and smelling like a midden heap, she smiled so coquettishly that their tired spirits were immediately lifted. She proceeded to massage their shoulders one by one and, this horrifies me so much that I have had to administer two draughts of your Becalming Solution before my trauma was somewhat abated, proceeded to get intimate with all seven of them! She is now pregnant with one of those dirty dwarves' seed, thus placing eight other people between my claim for the throne. Yes! Eight! The king, as distraught as he was, had no choice but to acknowledge that the father of his daughter's child had to be the ruler of his kingdom upon his death and, my grand-niece being unable to discern which of the seven dwarves was her child's father, made the horrific decision of allowing the first case of royal polygamy in his kingdom's illustrious history. The kingdom is in uproar over this and, similarly, I must confess to a certain amount of anger, although this anger is entirely directed towards your establishment. What, may I ask, happened to the (and I quote this directly off the woven bag in which I bought the Innocuous Apple) "supreme soporific effects" and "confounding counter-curse involving a heterosexual prince on a noble steed" that were supposed to have been brewed into this item? Naturally, I usually concoct my own recipes of mischief but (just this once, mind) I decided that a store-bought curse would be sufficient for my purpose. This episode further convinces me of the ineffectual nature of ready-made jinxes and, I assure you, unless proper and sufficient compensation is made, I intend to bad-mouth your establishment to every Sister of the Craft that I meet. In a completely unrelated matter, having not spent as much on your goods this year, my Prefered Status on your loyalty programme is about to expire unless I accumulate another 254 points i.e. spend another 5080 gold coins in your shop. This is an entirely separate matter, mind; I was merely curious if there was an alternative method in which I might be credited those points. Regards, Eval Widdershins * To: Comrade Gerals Servil Re: Report #21 Dear Sir, The Daily Silvus has finally been convinced to publish a reminder of the decree you issued last week. This came about after the voluntary resignation of its editor-in-chief, Proktre Losien, and the promotion of Comrade Dieldrin Mosvain, an ardent supporter of our cause from the first. If my opinion was to be asked of, sir, I would humbly state that it seems completely unreasonable that a request for all practisioners of magicks to turn themselves in be denied publication in what is supposed to be the largest such newspaper in the kingdom. I mean, aren't the consequences of muck-ups like the one which involved that renegade apothecary and sweetshop (I'm shocked that such a place would dare sell unannounced charms to customers although, I must admit, inexplicable happiness and a receptivity to suggestions [such as those to buy more confectionary from the Fiftieth Oak Sweetshop printed on the so-called Candy Apple wrappers] is rather clever and, this is completely idle speculation, sir, please understand that, I wonder if the charm contained in the apple might be a practical way to sway people to our cause?) enough to convince these deviants of the dangers of the 'art' they practise? I must admit that I am a bit saddened by the deaths of the king, queen and their daughter. Although I understand the necessity of their executions to, in accordance to kingdom law, elect a new ruler, I have to say that the king was fair and just in all his dealing and his daughter, while ugly as a gnome in monthly shedding, afforded me and my friends much amusement when she threw one of her tantrums. This, of course, does not detract from my utter disgust that they were so supportive of the independence of magicks and their users, I hope I make this very clear. The death of the princess's seven 'husbands' does not move me at all. I have long suspected dwarves of earthern magicks which allow them to find valuable ores before normal, human miners. Perhaps it might be prudent to jail all dwarven miners and convince them to admit to their abuse of the magicks? It appears that rumours of a surviving aunt of the king's is unfounded. We acted on a tip-off and raided the hut in which it is said Eval Widdershins lived but we found nothing but a statue of, I suppose, her likeness in front of the fireplace. It cannot be doubted that she practised the magicks as a cauldron attached to an enchanted stirring paddle was found among the books and various items of nature too repulsive to write about in a hidden attic. We burned all flammable items and, while it was not a well-regarded suggestion, I asked three comrades to smash the statue in case that was enchanted too. It is forunate that I did, sir, for inside was discovered a silver device a foot long and covered in gems which clearly had to be mystical (not that I could discern such an aura, sir! but because no device of such ostensible beauty but with no obvious, practical, non-magickal function could exist that didn't contain a mystical function [perhaps, if you don't mind me offering a suggestion, sir, you could include a waste of resources on non-honest items to the Sovereign Rationale?]). We smashed the device too, naturally. Inscribed on its bottom were the initials AA but we could not conclude who or what this might indicate. Perhaps it is related to the letter we found crumpled in the trash which read as follows: 'Dear Madam, your status has been upgraded to Prefered indefinitely and included please find something which might meet your approval. We cannot include here instructions on how to use the item as it is highly potent and, we hope you do not mind, illegal to make such a delivery; however, we trust your undeniable knowledge might help in discerning what such an object might be used for. We sincerely apologise for the mistake and wish you well in your future endeavours. Signed, AA'. We could not make head or tails of it but perhaps your superior knowledge might avail you some answers, sir? As always, I make this report with deepest respect, Comrade Falon Musven P.S. I cannot express how much gratitude I have, sir, for allowing my family to continue their mining business in spite of all this upheaval. Upheaval, I say, but for the Better! Postscript And I'm sick, fucking hell. There goes my $100*. *Before leaving I had a wager with my father worth $100 on whether I would get sick on the trip. Tuesday, December 13, 2005 Bulletin I'm in Aspen, in case any of you are thinking of calling and are averse to a heavy international call rate. I'm sad sad sad sad sad. Wednesday, December 07, 2005 Statisteaks So I was reading the newspaper yesterday and on the front page was this little innocuous box about how an estimated 1 in 25 gay men in Singapore is infected with HIV. How do they come across these statistics, I wonder. Have they found the Gay Gene and then go about clandestinely tagging all gay babies and, on the pretext of some blood test in their future, check the blood for HIV? But that goes against the whole idea that being gay is a choice, which is the official view of the government, doesn't it? But that, obviously, is retarded, so what I think they do is divide the amount of gay men who go for testing by the amount of them found to be HIV positive. So, for them to do this and publish such a statistic (and thus be responsible about a certain level of accuracy), they have assumed two things: 1) An unbiased sample of all gay men go for HIV testing; and 2) all men who do not declare that they are gay are not gay. First, I think it's safe to say that if you're a gay men and you go for HIV testing, there is a high probability that you have engaged in unsafe sex and are thus worried that you might have caught the bug. This flaw severely diminishes the probability of an unbiased sample because, while I'm sure that many gay men have to be horny fucks (just like, I might add, many straight men), a huge percentage are not and thus do not go for HIV testing, safe in the knowledge that they are not infected by a random encounter with a random person in a random toilet of a random club. Second, while they might ask men if they've had sex with other men for statistical purposes during or before testing, there will be a certain amount of gay men who will not declare gayness for a variety of reasons e.g. stigma, embarrassment, even simple "I don't see the point"ness. You take these factors into consideration and suddenly, it seems that Balaji, again, has come up with highly questionable claims. That being said, I find I have so very little sympathy for most gay men who contract HIV; baring the damn suay guys who both got HIV from their parents and are gay, the vast majority of gay men get it from unsafe sex. These people are fucking stupid (take 'fucking' as an expletive and a verb - it works both ways here). Fucking use a condom, fucking don't have so much sex or fucking die quietly and don't expect any sympathy from random passers-by who will only say you deserve death for being gay. Fuck. Tuesday, December 06, 2005 Daze I hate Microsoft Word. I hate the way it thinks it's smarter than you are. I hate the way it auto-corrects what it deems wrong and has the brass balls to underline perfectly serviceable sentences with an ugly green squiggle. I hate the way it frustrates so much because it insists on auto-fomatting even though I don't want it to happen. I hate the fact that I can never know what pressing enter or tab or the space bar will do to the document. I use Notepad, because it's friendly and, in it, I have total control; the Microsoft Word environment tries to wrest that control from you at every turn. This post really has nothing to do about word processors, but you probably knew that already. Sunday, December 04, 2005 Songs I'm gonna get me a working copy of Adobe Audition (pirated, of course), and then record and mix my songs and then burn copies for people to listen to! Thankfully, I won't be able to do this in time for Christmas, so everyone (to whom I will offer this bit of myself to) will be spared a month of my music, although one month of Christmas carols is not really that great an alternative. Oh what tremendous hubris! Shawn Poon is thinking right now. This little upstart of a boy trying to encroach on my turf! Don't worry, Shawn, you're still the m'original maestro (m doesn't really stand for anything, it's just alliteration to make you sound more catchy, like pneumonia or mnemonic or mhmm)! I am merely getting this urge out of the way so I don't have to think about writing songs anymore and then focus on other equally random things. Like designing and colouring a children's book of my sister's stories and illustrations then trying to hawk copies of it in zouk's market thing and finishing this triptych of images I've already bought the frame for but have not had the inspiration to finish the last two panels. Yes I have many unfinished things that I wanna finish and so little time!!! No, wait, time is the one thing I have in abundance. So many things so little motivation! Saturday, December 03, 2005 Swell Why is it whenever I meet up with people I've met in the army, it inevitably dissolves into one side whining about their fucked-up lives, the other side bragging about their not-so-fucked-up lives while I sit in one corner thinking I never should have turned up? Today, I tried to be Pro-active Guy, who normally hides very well in the loops of synapse. I asked questions about what they're gonna do after their NS lives and I got some answers. Then a potential classmate at NTU, who was someone we knew in the army, came up in conversation and it was back to the army. My uncle, who never served in the army, says he regrets it a bit because there is a bit of experience that his friends will have that he will never have. I told him he was a deluded fruitcake*. There is no way I will exchange two years of time for the ability to swap sordid stories over drinks. Another uncle always loves to make little comments about how he had the easiest time in NS and he only went three times a week and no one could 'beat him' and I always smile in a superior fashion before finding someone else with more engaging conversation. I have this rule: whenever I find myself unconsciously starting to talk about the army outside the army, I allow myself 3 minutes before changing the topic. A few months ago, I went for ATP, which is an annual live firing test. Out of the 17 shots i took, I hit the targets 16 times and then the rifle I was using, which I have never touched before, jammed, so I missed the last 11 targets. 16/28 is a pass but 23/28 is marksman standard; I was so pissed that I wanted to reshoot, which would mean two more days at an unspecified time in the future spent in thick clothing with no air-conditioning or even a fan from 6 in the morning to 11 at night. I was prepared to endure mosquitoes and sweat just to get that fucking marksmanship thingie! Then the next day when I woke up literally, I woke up figuratively. What the fuck, I was all outraged over an SAF award I didn't get. So I donned Normal Wen En, who doesn't hide enough in the spark of synapse if you ask me, and I stopped caring. * Speaking of fruitcakes, here is a conversation I had with my father#. Father: This one has two more inches! Me: So what? Father: Bigger is better! Me: You're such a size queen. (Okay lah, the subject of conversation was handheld DVD players' screens.) # Speaking of my father, here's a conversation about a certain someone I know who is going to Parsons+. Me: Hah! He'll probably get a boyfriend in the first year. Father: Is he gay? Me: No, but apparently 90% of Parsons's male population is. Father: So? He's not gay what. I think that says something positive about my father some of you will understand, but some of you will remain clueless about forever. + Speaking of Parsons, my favourite designer on Project Runway@ is Jay, who is funny and a good designer. His Chrysler Building-inspired dress was... inspired. @ Speaking of$ Project Runway, Channel 5's design a bag with only twenty dollars worth of grocery stuff is the best competition they've come up with (even though it's another copy). The best bag - and if you disagree you obviously lack all discerning taste - is the one made of measuring tape. Wait, let me show it here:  Since I'm hyper-linking from the channel 5 site, this will probably be gone in a few weeks. So anyone reading this in the archives, too bad! No bag for you! $ Speaking of 'speaking of', I've run out of random symbols to add footnotes. Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Splintered "Over the bridge we go looking for love" I wish you the easiest heartaches and kindest emptinesses. I wish you a happiness-shaped potential and wish you will find the means to fill it eventually. * When we started we dared not look into each other's eyes. We were small and accidental and our secret only spread to those who held their secret too and we thought to coalesce the clandestine into something manageable so we would not have to be alone. You took my splinter into your flesh and it seemed embedded too far in to extract. * We were all disparate and there was me, who didn't really do anything at all, but that was okay because we had money and we thought money could buy anything but as we pointed out our purchases we realised that what we really wanted was not in the inventory and we began to decay from that point of impossibility. * You took the lead for all the celluloid reasons and thereby imparted the prejudices that governed too much of everything. So I escaped through tightly closed doors and I breathed air not laden with the odour of mothballs and the clack of skeletons. * In the great purge of the body all foreign objects are expelled. I now speak Urdu and have smoothened away all splinters. Tuesday, November 29, 2005 Blank You know, I always thought that the essay was the easiest part of university applications but my mind is drawing a fucking blank at such generic rubbish as 'How have you taken advantage of your educational opportunities to prepare for college?' and 'In what way can you contribute to the college?' Blardy Hell. But take, for example, University of Chicago's uncommon application (you can already tell from the name of the application that the essays topics will be good), whose essay topics include: 'a mind that does not stick' and 'destroy a question with your answer'. Oh my god. Now those are essays worth answering. Yeah, I know, I'm procrastinating again. Maybe I should sleep on it. Yeah... that makes sense. Sunday, November 27, 2005 Jay Chou! Er... I mean Fiona Apple. Friday, November 25, 2005 Candyhouse Ahhhh what the fuck. I can't be arsed to write stories. Anyway, they were too long to write here without going mad. Back to the regular schedule of writing nothing. Tuesday, November 22, 2005 Eek Lesson learnt today: a ONS cannot become a TNS. Corridor He took my last duty of yours and I wondered if that was how things ended. A host descending upon the charter and snap-snapping up everything until I, who hangs back at the edge of the melee, finds nothing left to pick up. The last token taken away broken. Sunday, November 20, 2005 I think Persian is a really beautiful language. I wish I could read Persian poetry, but I can't, so here are a few words I've found that I think are particularly unique with no English equivalent: wamadat: the intense heat of a sultry night samir: one who talks at night by moonlight kashr: laugh till the teeth show mubshar: exhilarated by good news ghalidan: to move from side to side as lovers izraf: producing ingenious, witty children raskh: transmigration of the human soul into a plant or tree Of course, you get weird stuff like turd which apparent means delicate/fragile and shit, which meants dust. So turd shit means delicate dust. Tuesday, November 15, 2005 Infinitude I've discovered that my favourite type of book is non-fiction. And that is really too broad a genre to like but usually the type of books I read nowadays contains stories of actual people and the amazing or useless (and sometimes both) discoveries in science or maths that are related to them. For example, I have just completed a book on the rediscovery of the coelacanth, a fossil fish thought to have been extinct for 15 million years. And, after giving up on a book about the Riemann Hypothesis (a conjecture on the supposed order of primes) because the person who wrote it, who is a professor at Dartmouth all your Dartmouth people listen up, writes in such a fucked up way - very pompous and redundant (too bad, because the subject matter was interesting) - I have started on a very interesting book on the nature of infinity. These three books I got from that second-hand bookstore in Philadelphia and, after seeing the pictures of my little jaunt on Debbie's blog and photo album, I feel all sad that I'm back in Singapore and not gallivanting in various dirty parts of America. Met up with secondary school friends for someone's birthday on Sunday. I keep wondering at how the bitchiest people I know are all guys. Isn't bitchiness supposed to be a typical female trait? Actually, I can't think of very many bitchy female friends. Oh dear, none at all, in fact. If you may have noticed, there really isn't a point to this post. Just a "Yes, I'm alive" kind of post, I suppose. Wednesday, November 09, 2005 To Narrate So I'm back. And I'm severely jet-lagged. Although I probably don't help it much by sleeping as and when I like. The nice collage I did isn't showing in the previous post because I have exceeded the bandwidth allowance given to me by my webhost or whatever the online storage thing is called. Fuckety fuck. I've just signed up with flickr/flcker/fliker/fuck(?), hopefully, they'll be kinder to large photos and collages. The pictures represent a very small percentage of what I actually did. The week seemed so bloody long (in a good way). I've not travelled so much in a single week before. 21 hours by plane to New York. 3 hours by train to Providence. 2 by plane to Philadelphia. 2 hours by train to New York. 3.5 hours by train to and from New Haven to New York. 18 hours by plane to SINGAPOREFUCK. Plus miscellaneous half hour travels by taxi and subway everywhere else. The worst thing about travelling by yourself, or myself at least, is that I get paranoid. If I can get lost on the bus and MRT in Singapore, isn't the chance of getting lost in a foreign train with bad announcements and horrible signage increased tenfold? Luckily, I never got lost*. Save that 45 minutes trundling around downtown Providence in the shiveringly cold night trying to find my hotel. But it also meant that I was hardly rested on these long journeys; I had to continuously keep a lookout for signs and stuff to make sure I wouldn't get stranded in the middle of backwater America (and a lot of stops on the train were to little towns where, no doubt, murders of shocking nature happen every hundred years and throws those little hamlets into national limelight for a few weeks). Erp erp erp. I'm pretty sure if you ask me about the details of the trip in person I could give you a better and livelier account. Or maybe not. Aiya, I'm just lazy to write everything out lah. So I shall avaunt and quit my blog site (oh no, don't roll your eyes at the pun). *Due in large part to Debbie, Ruoxi, Yishi and Suching although I suppose I just get lost together with Suching. Thank you all! Muah Muah haha Tuesday, November 08, 2005  More photos in my photo album. Wednesday, November 02, 2005 Mid Term Report I'm in Debbie's room in Penn now using her internet while she rushes off at 9.50 to see a professor at 9.45. Somethings will never change haha Full debrief when I get back but a few things at this time: After freshman year, getting someone to clean my room/apartment and pick up after me is imperative. $70 a week is nothing compared to clean floors and a gleaming bathroom. Some might consider that bratty but I'd like to think of it as a quirk of personality. A rather fastidious quirk that in no way compels me to clean up after myself. Most of the time anyway. The weather has been fantastic the past few days. Sunshine and butterflies. Okay, maybe it was a moth, but moths are not idyllic. Good weather is bad in a way because it bites my ass both ways. See right, if I do get to the universities I want, I'll expect weather like this every day, which won't happen, thus leading to unhappiness and moths, whereas not getting into universities would result in my getting jealous that other people get to enjoy such nice weather that I can't, thus leading to unhappiness and moths. I'm so glad Debbie is a photowhore because I took as many photos with her in a few hours than I did in the four days before that. Too bad she's photowhorish in Penn and not Brown, because I'd like to have a few more photos of that wonderfully pretty place. Erm... I think she's back from seeing her professor so I will bid you adieu and go and wash up. Adieu! Wednesday, October 26, 2005 Sorts This is probably the last post I'll make in Singapore for a while so I will blab about a fews things to update people on my life and stuff and I know you're all so bloody interested. I have yet to finish my Early Application Essay for Brown. In fact, most of my application is rather undone and I have to finish it by friday latest before I fly off. I got my SAT scores back yesterday. I had to retake them because they've updated the format and Brown doesn't accept the old format, those goat-sucking buzzards (No, I'm only joking, Brown's admission board! Don't judge me based on some rambling I'm doing here). I worried that I had got stupid, and I have. When I took my SAT Writing last, I got 780, now, in the portion which is the eqivalent of that, I got 690. That's a 90 point drop in intelligence, measured SATpoint-wise. Maybe they can make people take SATs every year and chart statistics like and say things like 'ooo the population has grown smarter by 65 SAtpoints'. Most pissing was the essay, which was graded 8/12. 8! Which, according to official scoring guidelines means that it is 'passably coherent'. Passably! What a disgustingly moderate word to use. The worst part is that I could not find someone to share this irritation with. It only came to me how positively Rafflesian it is to be so pissed off over grades like that when I realised all the people I wanted to complain to were Rafflesians. In every other quarter would be rolled eyes and assurances of the perfectly acceptable nature of the grades. Only a person tainted with Raffles would be able to commiserate with how perfectly unacceptable perfectly acceptable grades are when they don't match your own standards. And, in matters of essays, 8/12 certainly doesn't live up to mine! All passports are supposed to be over 6 months from expiry before most countries will allow you into their borders; mine has 6 months and a few days left over starting from the day I arrive back in Singapore. I wonder if that is enough to not be stranded at US customs by an unreasonable and stupid american (sometimes, I think that a redundant phrase, but I generalise so much more here than in the previous paragraph even) custom officer who wants to make trouble with a stupid illegal immigrant-looking chinese alien. God, I hope it's enough. It never rains but it pours. I am actually able to type that idiom without irony because the truth of it never strikes like shattering lightning until you are up to your waist bailing water from the rowboat. Between university applications and essays, change of command videos and programmes, souvenir posters, anti-smoking presentations, intinerary changes and bookings and confirmations, almost redundant winter clothes shopping ('redundant' because I already have some, 'almost' because they're hideous) and the mandatory procrastination, I seem to have no time to do much besides sleeping and getting my pants and shirts altered. It is almost time to go to camp again and I haven't slept nor rendered the final copy of the change of command video nor downloaded the picture to add to the souvenir poster. Oh for the ability to stop time. But if I did have that, I'd probably stop it and never start it again. The ultimate procrastination, where the eternity of doing nothing stretches inside a filament of time less than a second long. Saturday, October 22, 2005 Visage of Evil The second half of the fourth season of Angel revolved around one of the most interesting antagonists* to ever grace television screens. Jasmine was a god whose mere presence caused people to worship her. She believed in peace, love and harmony and her devotees willingly took on her beliefs. Her powers included preternatural strength and the ability to heal the wounds of her followers. However, she had two traits that were causes for concern: her presence itself (even when seen on television) gave her followers no choice but to worship her, that is, she took away their will; and, every day, she consumed a few hundred people. Her two weaknesses were her blood - if it somehow got into someone's bloodstream - and hearing her real name. Either of these things returned people's will back to them and allowed them to see her for what she 'really was', which was a head full of maggots and mealworms. Naturally, one by one, Angel and Co. get knocked up by divine blood and and decide that they have to Put a Stop to It. All except one. When they forcefully introduce Jasmine's blood into Connor's bloodstream, nothing changes about his worship; it turns out that he was immune to her glamour and had always seen her as she 'really was'. This raises two qustions about morality which I think are interesting enough to warrant two paragraphs explaining in detail a television show I know for certain none of you watch. The first is what I'll call the visage of evil. Upon regaining free will and seeing a maggoty and mealwormy face, Angel and almost everyone else assumes that Jasmine is evil. Connor, however, doesn't because he attaches no value to her facial features.There are certain trends in any form of fiction. The hero is always handsome, the virtuous princess always beautiful. The hero has a strong jaw; even, white teeth; usually has blond hair and blue eyes etc. whereas the villain has a weak chin; nasty yellow teeth; lanky, greasy hair and prone to having shifty eyes. These features, these characteristics which, for the most part, are genetically determined and cannot be helped now have value. Beauty is innately good; ugliness is innately bad. Of course, it's a little more complicated now. You don't meet someone and think, based on his or her appearance, 'oh dear, he's going to kill me and take over the kingdom' or 'oo look, she's virtuous and virginal'. You may think, however, 'he looks like a brainless jock' or 'she doesn't look like much fun'; something less polarising than Good vs Evil but equally judgmental before you even know the person. You add value to your opinion of someone and, subsequently, your interactions with him or her are weighted and biased. The best face to have is the valueless face. It is these people, and not the people who are the best-looking or most beautiful, who will, everything else being equal, find life among other people easier than others. An example? Take the last two US presidents. To me, Bill Clinton has a valueless face. It's not the sort of face you make a judgment about. George Bush, however, suffers a countennance which is reminiscent of a chimpanzee. Connotations of being a joke and such ensue. Maybe I was too young then, but I don't remember the world complaining about Clinton as much as they do about Bush. Please note that I'm not saying his face causes people to whine about him; it is merely a catalyst. My face has value; people who meet me for the first time think that I have a a clean mouth and study a lot. Upon knowing me better, they are surprised to realise that I study as often as I fart standing on my head and, without having to resort to cheap hokkien expletives (usually anyway) I have one of the dirtiest mouths ever. They then have to build their opinions of me up again, always slightly suspicious that their initial impressions couldn't be that far off. The value of having a valueless face (weird phrase) is that people are willing to engage you cleanly, without preconceptions of what you might be like. Every bit of your personality that they bring away with them is within your ability to control. The second: Is the value of free will greater than anything? Here I make the assumption that having a god in whose presence no violence is done, who promotes, and delivers, peace and who can cure any ailment instantaneously is 'heavenly', towards which it is reasonable to assume that everyone aspires. When Angel finally reveals her true name (some unpronounceable susurrus and growl) to the world as Jasmine appears on world-wide television and causes everyone to get their will back, chaos ensues. Everyone rejects Jasmine and she is left with no worshippers. In the inevitable showdown between Angel and Jasmine, she accuses Angel of literally stopping peace on earth. When he argues that it was necessary, she defends her eating of hundreds of people a day by saying 'hundreds died so that hundred thousands may live' and her taking everyone's will by saying 'they were happy and now they're not'. Isn't free will a bit overrated? Usually, all it does is directly impede happiness. First, the agony of indecision. Which choice is the best and how will I arrive at my decision? Then, when the choice is made, satisfaciton is often hampered by thoughts of the potential satisfaction that could have been derived from another choice, which then leads to regret. Free will forces you to be responsible. You have to know the consequences of every possibility and then, upon making your choice, knowledge of every unchosen possibility suddenly becomes obsolete as they are no longer applicable to you. However, what is the point of living without choice? If there was a singular route upon which someone must travel till death, can that person truly be said to have been alive? Having no choice grants a power we don't conventionally have now: clairvoyance. Without the web of possibility, a person could map out his entire existence by considering the consequences of all his singular and predictable actions. In a way, life is choice. To be said to be living, we have to feel as if our existences are our own, that there isn't some predestined fate which awaits us. Every decision we make confirms this ownership, enhancing our indepedence and sovereignity over the part of the world that is us. Then the question is altered to: is life - is feeling as if we own ourselves - of greater value than 'bliss'? But then it becomes the question of religion. You are given free will by God of the gods or whatver you believe in, and yet what is 'right' is told to you. Your path narrows considerably. In front of the heavenly gates hangs the carrot that you can only reach by forgoing choice and accepting completely the doctrine of your religion. To quote Tori, "Is your place in heaven worth giving up these kisses?" Maybe if the right person came along. Just maybe. *Antagonist merely means someone who opposes. If you skipped down to see what the little asterisk indicated, read the rest of it first. If you read the whole thing and still don't know why I made that clarification, there was no point in you reading it at all. Sunday, October 09, 2005 For Sale One SAT preparation book for the new format. In pristine* condition. Oh how typical, my need to get good grades stops being so driving after buying a book that can help me get those grades. * Pristine means original or primitive, not clean. Sometimes language runs away from meaning and is unsalvageable. I've just checked dicionary.com which states that the secondary meaning of pristine is original or primitive. Oh poor pristine, so misunderstood. Friday, October 07, 2005 Nadir I've been on friendster a lot in the past few days. Bored of blogs and stuff. I keep reading my and other people's testimonials (I honestly can't say this with a straight face) and I think the ones I write are the best ones although no one seems to agree hahaha my favourite is a succinct six words ('chee bye pai kiah ah lian') for RuoxiPig. Short, sweet (er... maybe not) and ringing with the clarity of truth. I've just written one for someone else: His penis gave me a stomach ache, but other than that he's a nice guy. I wonder if he'll accept it. Wednesday, October 05, 2005 Double Entendre While talking about college application essays: Mother: You should blow your own trumpet. Me: Yes... I am actually capable of that. Mother: Don't be timid... Me: WHAT? Are you mad? Timid? I think I know how to blow my trumpet, thanks a lot. Mother: ... or you'll never get in anywhere. Me: I'm good at this! I have great skill at blowing. Er... Oh Mother Dearest, you don't want to know how general my statement really is. Cycle I've settled into a routine, doing the same things in the same order everyday. It's kinda depressingly weird because I have never really been a geat believer of routines. To me, a routine constitutes an excuse for not having to think, and I like to think. I've slowly morphed into a Boring Person without mindwork and it occured so insidiously slowly that for a great long while I didn't realise what was happening. You know something is wrong when your Dialled, Received and Missed Calls lists read like miniature phonebooks whose sole purpose is to be searched for 'people with whom Wen En works'. You know something is really wrong when your Money Drawer is overflowing with blue notes because you haven't been out there actively spending them. Yes, I have a Money Drawer. When I shared a room with my sister in my old house, we created a Money Drawer inspired by that cartoon duck Scrooge's money vault. It was an arresting sight to open the drawer and hear it clink, laden with coins and paper. When the air-conditioning broke down in my office one day, I sought refuge in other offices, among them Andy's. While I complained that the new recruits stank up the corridors after going to the gym, he said, "You get used to it." Get used to it? It seems to me rather sad that the only solution to an amazingly mephitic problem is to get used to it. Just carry on as normal and everything will start to dull. Pain, brain, smells, days. Until everything blurs into something watercoloured and nice and pleasant and nice and nice. There's a song by someone called Melvina Reynolds (totally unrelated, I am told, to Melvynah Lim or Kelvina Chan) that speaks of little boxes on the hillside which are made of ticky tacky and all look just the same and inside each one resides a family - there's a doctor and a lawyer and a housewife and boys and girls who will grow up to marry and move away to another hillside to live in a little box made of ticky tacky which may be green or blue or orange or yellow but in the end live in little boxes which are all the same. I break routine in three weeks and two days when I fly off to America once again to, ostensibly, Visit Colleges to appease my parents who think I should know what I am getting into lest I complain and whine and bitch (which I will anyway, no doubt, but maybe now a bit less), but, really, it's just another holiday involving New York and Philadelphia and Debbie and Suching and New Zealand (oops, I meant New Haven) and Ruoxi (if she doesn't manage to think up an excuse to avoid me, again) and Sheila and a sense of being resuscitated from an overwhelming asphyxiation on bile and drudgery and cattywampus. But as is with all the best of routines, my current one imparts a loyalty into me that refuses to be shaken off. I'm excited and I want to go, naturally, but at the same time a viscous ennui oozes about my feet and makes the thought of jettisoning the routine tiring and apprehensible. Like a slingshot whirled round and round and round in a cycle of acceleration before being flung out into a direction that, with the best of aim, may not be what you intended anyway. Saturday, September 24, 2005 More Parental Capers Around the Dinner Table Father (coming back from the phone, laughing): That (name removed) wants to sue me! He claims I insulted him while playing tennis. Mother: What did you say? Father (looks at his offspring): Er... I'll tell you later. Me: Oh come on! Sister: Yeah! Tell us! Father: I called him an... idiot. Me: Yes, and you have stupid children who believe everything you say. Tell you what, I'll list out all the swear words you possibly could have said and you just nod your head when I get to the right one. Did you call him a penis? Father: No. Me: A cheebye? Mother: Hey! Me: A fucker? You know, it'd be so much more pleasant if you just tell us what you said. Father (grudgingly): I did call him an idiot... but there might have been an f-word involved. * Me: Lateral thinking question. A man walks into his house. His daughter screams and covers her face. He sighs, turns to his wife and shoots her. Why? Father: Was the wife having sex with another man? Me: No. Mother: The daughter was having sex with another man! Me: No... Mother: I know! The mother was having sex with her daughter. Me: No! Father: Is there any sex involved? Me: NO! Sunday, September 18, 2005 Inequalities The truth of inequality is that while you ache to conform to some ideal others possess and you don't, there is someone else you don't know about who resents your existence. Monday, September 12, 2005 I have Bleeding on me One day quite a while ago, I bumped into Gang Wei at Coffee Club in Wisma Atria. In his typical I'll-grudgingly-open-my-mouth-wide-enough-to-allow-sound-out fashion, he said, "I knew I'd find someone I know here." He was kinda right. While I complain that Singapore has so little to offer it always made me a little happier when I was in town and had little serendipitous encounters with people I know. It was almost something you could count on when you went out and if you didn't see anyone you knew you'd go, "Where did everybody go?" despite the thronging mass of humanity around you. It usually meant stopping to do a little 'Wow! You're here too! That's nice'; sometimes with the combining of two groups to make one happy conglomerate; occasionally, if the guilt was high enough, a flurry of exchanged SMSes promising to meet up the next day or next week. Early last year, I was in Sakae Sushi after picking up two cheesecakes from NYDC, trying to balance the two cake boxes with the two platters of sushi I ordered for a party. I gave up after almost destroying all my food so I put everything down and said with conviction to the woman who is not Japanese but says that little Japanese phrase of greeting whenever you enter one of these places, "I'm gonna leave my stuff here. I'll be back in five minutes." I went downstairs to hunt in Borders. In three minutes, I found someone who I had invited but could not make it to my party. After a minute (I did promise I'd be back in five) of the "Wow! You're here!" thing, I guilted her into going upstairs and helping me carry the stuff to the taxi stand. Nowadays, I can't do that. I walk through Borders almost every single day when I get back from work and I have not seen someone I know for the longest time. I'm bleeding, hemorrhaging friends. It's as if everyone I know have upped and left. Left the building, left the world. Left the country. As in, literal country, not a metaphorical reference to a place in which I am. Steven called me up long distance and talked and nattered about a lot of things that were frightfully uninteresting (because they weren't about me). Although I interrupted a lot with attempts to talk about myself, I couldn't really do that because I realised that most of our - most of everybody's - conversations are about people and I seem to have no one to talk about. My old class met up twice this summer vacation. One down from the last vacation. And I was thinking this is it. The vacations roll by and we have (n - 1) gatherings until (n - 1) becomes 0. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Everytime I think of those lines I think of looking up at this floating disc that decays at the centre until I am looking up at a big fat zero drifting on nothing. Monday, August 22, 2005 Phallic Phases "We had a manicure and pedicure and they were so good!" gushed my mother, "They made you feel like a king." "Really? They made you feel like you had a penis?" I asked. "Almost," my mother replied. Yeah, I don't really get this conversation either. Sinply Sintillating The geekiest reason to be excited: Orisinal has a new game! Bless ferryhalim, whoever the fuck he/she happens to be. Wednesday, August 17, 2005 A Story of One of Countless Maybes It started, as some do, once upon a time, for Matthew strode across the face of the sundial to lean against the triangular dial. Its shadow had been swallowed by the noonday sun and, were it not for the strange importance of this meeting, he would have been inside, preferably with the curtains drawn and the air-conditioning on. He watched the tip of the sundial's shadow peek out and begin to describe an eliptical path away from him before disappearing into the greater shadows of evening before his first visitor showed up. "Say hi to your favourite uncle!" his sister twelve years from now said to her four year old son. "I'm his only uncle," Matthew observed wryly. She smiled at him. "Yes, dear, sometimes you are." He ignored the veiled insult as unconsciously as he had ignored them the twenty-third time he had received such from his family. How could it matter anymore? "Here he is!" he exclaimed in mock-enthusiasm as his nephew tottered out of the gloom and immediately clutched his mother's hand. Sparing one more smile for his nephew, Matthew turned to his sister's future. "I haven't seen you in a while, in a sense, although, here, I have not seen you yet either. But tell me what have you been doing. It would not be too much to ask, considering I do not - cannot - attend the family dinners?" She smiled. "No, not too much to ask. I have been well. Just back from New York..." She looked at him then, the smile still on her face but with unmistakable question in her eyes. "Over," he said firmly, with knowledge of events he had not yet encountered. "But I thought..." She paused. "Is that why you-" "Perhaps. But you were telling me about yourself." "Well... yes, like I said, George was on a business trip and I thought I'd accompany him there for... Oh I'm not sure, I haven't been anywhere in a while, you know, with Andrew here being such a handful," she said as she ruffled her son's hair. He giggled, then his eyes widened and he shifted closer to his mother. She looked at him then and suddenly smiled as if she had only just remembered something. "Our parents are fine though, just back from Italy. You know how Mommy loves those bloody cathedrals. She's invited us for dinner on Tuesday..." "How's George?" Matthew asked suddenly. "Never around when I need him, as usual. But I think I managed to convince him to come, tonight. George!" she called out into the darkness. "I'm here," a voice called out grudgingly. He appeared at the edge of the sundial and looked at Matthew with a guarded expression. "Dear, we really have to go now, I have a flight to catch and..." "Yes, I remember. You have been, after all, reminding me about it since we left the house." She turned back to Matthew apologetically. "It's nice to see you." She paused again. "Where did you-" "Lisa. Any word from our sister?" A second of confusion bloomed in her eyes before she shook her head. "What about me?" Lisa said as she stepped out of the darkness. Matthew turned to her. "We were just wondering when you'd come back." She laughed. "I don't know, I'm not that far ahead yet." "Oh." "I elope tonight, you know? Or my tonight anyway. Elope. Hah! What a fucked-up word. I only thought Channel 8 serial characters used it." "Oh." "Yeah... Michael here's being all reluctant to meet the family, but I told him to come. I told him you weren't gonna do your whole Inquisitor thing on him. I'd thought you'd have had enough of that... from our parents." Dimly, a man stood behind Lisa. "Oh come on, no one's gonna bite." The man, Michael, stepped upon a time. Matthew had never seen Michael before and thus he looked at Michael with genuine interest. So this was the man with whom his sister was going to run away with. Well, not much to look at, was he? "23rd of February 2012." "What?" "Today. Tonight. Your tonight. It's the 23rd of February." Two sisters looked at each other. "Yes... It is the 23rd," Lisa said slowly, "I suppose you would know that." "I forget, actually. Until I take out the letter you wrote - going to write? - me. You always titled your letters and signed off with a date, both at once. Kinda bugged me." Lisa laughed. "Too late, I wrote it already and I'm not going back to cancel one of the dates." "Dear..." George called from the darkness. "Coming! Andrew, why don't you go to your father first? Let me say goodbye?" Andrew let go of his mother's hand and ran towards his father, looking back once to see the three siblings under the moonlight and wondering if he would have any sisters and if he would be as bad to them as Uncle Matthew was to his or to Grandpa and Grandma. "Well..." Lisa began, "I have to go too, actually. Gotta plan this shitty eloping properly, you know how it is..." She laughed again and hugged her elder siblings before taking Michael's hand and disappearing into the night. "Our parents speak of you sometimes..." Softly spoken, as if merely a thought unconsciously expressed, Andrew felt the weight of it still. "Well, they know where to find me. After all, they did buy me that apartment before... well, you know." "You won't talk to them?" "No." "Not for another twenty years, he won't," his mother said, hobbling towards her children. "But he did, in the end. At the end." She stopped in front of both of them. "In the end, remember we are always your parents; even the most cutting of words cannot sever that." She kissed her son gently before taking hold of her daughter's hand and moving off into the darkness together. Matthew observed that his sister had done nothing but smile for the length of her whole visit. No one else came to speak to him. During the night, familiar faces appeared briefly at the edge of his vision before hurrying off into the night, one face, one face so familiar as to almost have been family, once, in New York, stopping for an intake of breath before moving back into the night. Matthew waited till morning and, contemplating something he had thought about a long time ago in conversation with a friend named Kay, that time does diminish friends but multiply family, he woke up to an unsettling amnesia which wiped most of the possibility of his dream away. Friday, August 12, 2005 Bon Voyage My sister left for the USA yesterday, dragging along with her three huge bags and two parents and smacking away the other sister with a "You stupid girl, you're making me cry" when the other sister would not stop hugging her. The next time I'll see her is in December, possibly November, and I believe this whole thing is known as a catalyst. Imagine NationalService and WenEn to be reagents in a simple chemical process which produces Resentment and BitterWenEn. Having wrapped myself up tightly into myself, NationalService had less surface area to react to, thus, the process was very slow, perhaps - I had thought and hoped - perhaps so slow that there would be some WenEn left over when all the NationalService was used up. Alas, a mad scientist dropped in the aforementioned catalyst and suddenly the environment seeths with huge, miasmic, mephitic, oozing bubbles of viscous Resentment at the heart of which lies a perfect specimen of a BitterWenEn. I thought I had tamped it down to a mere spark, I thought that enjoying my job would bring relief if not eradicate that inferno, but that spark found something volatile. It found the vast acres of time into which I pour my life uselessly, like drops of water trying to quench a desert. It's always back to this: that no matter how happy, how pleasantly eventful (or, if you prefer it, uneventful) your life in NS is, it is still life in NS. My unwillingness to speak of NS when there are females around doesn't stem from a desire to be polite - hah! - but from a mind to keep myself from getting angry. There's the dismissive roll of the eyes and the 'they're talking about NS again' you sometimes get. Well, fuck you, females, should we roll our eyes when you start complaining about your temp job, or your schoolwork? Those consume your days; NS consumes ours (and eats ours and spits it out like much garbage) and if we can be polite enough to be interested in what you say, you can, at the very least, not immediately glaze your eyes when a poor male talks about NS. But mostly, it is the intransigient ignorance and the platitudes that are the product of it that irk me. I want to snap a 'you try it for two years and see if that's not an eternity' when greeted by mollifying tones and 'it'll be over soon'. As my sister walked into the passengers-only area of the airport after letting out a resounding shriek which drew many many stares when Isabelle groped her boob in farewell, I thought of the times that I visited her room just to talk about a book she had stolen from mine and had just finished reading; the times we'd play Super Smash Brothers on our Gamecube and she'd beat me soundly with the Ice Climbers; the times, when perplexed, our parents would stare at us three siblings doubling over the dining table in laughter and tears at something that to everyone who isn't us isn't really funny at all; all this I thought of and thought that I'd miss her till November or December. Today, I found out that she is currently staying in a suite in Las Vegas with her own room, which has a balcony with a stunning view and in whose toilet hangs a plasma television set, and has won three thousand dollars gambling in the casinos. Now I hate her. Wednesday, August 10, 2005 Very Late Haha I know this is like... two weeks late but I've just found this picture on Jane's blog so I stole it and here it is:  When the waiter came and asked, "Who's the bitch?" whereas the usual, normal question is "Who's the birthday boy?" before putting the cake and its expressive plateful of chocolate sauce in front of me, I knew it could only go uphill from there. Easily the best birthday cake I've had ever. Woof, bitches. PND So one more burst of fireworks and NDP 05 is finally over. I think I have a slight case of PND, or Post NDP Depression (which is weird because it's an acronym in an acronym which happen to be anagrams of each other... er never mind). It's not like I'm weeping fat tears over NDP being over, but I think memory wastes all work. Or, more accurately, memory's fallibility wastes work: no matter how much effort you put into accomplishing something, in the end, the tendency to forget and thus remove your accomplishment from past to oblivion consigns your spent energies to effectively naught. I suppose the most accurate description of what I am feeling now is this: -_-" hahaha I must thank WH for teaching me these quaint little horizontal faces even if he is harsh and terrible and calls me a dickass (what the fuck is a dickass?). I'm more used to the sideways versions like =) or :p. (Oh! To digress a bit. My father's come up with his own emoticon that he uses in his SMSes for no reason other than satisfying the want to use it: ^|^ = Yeah, he takes two lines to make his smiley and he still laboriously does it all the time.) Now, I'm not sure what will happen to me. Everyone assumes I'll be leaving for next year's NDP committee soon or something but I'm not sure when or if I'll be going. I like to be pessimistic so nothing can disappoint me. But should I go - and here I allow myself some speculation implying an acceptance of a certain amount of optimism - I hope to God the Chairman EXCO doesn't choose the ugliest NDP logo and approve my ugliest ticket design and give us sufficient funds for only the blah-est printing and paper for tickets. Tuesday, August 02, 2005 Purity Take me like a martini glass; that disc of my alcoholic meniscus wide but diminishing with every mouthful until you drain me to a crystal apex inverted, shooting out lightning-like along a stem of transparent resistance. Ground me like an earthing rod; from firmament to firmer dust, diffuse my potential into the heart of all things. Wednesday, July 27, 2005 France So as you probably know, I've just come back from France. Those of you who didn't know, well, assume I said something to you that was cutting and psychologically damaging. The great irony of my expedition into the sun-baked streets and non-air-conditioned interiors of Paris and the slightly cooler climes of Cannes came in two parts. The first: I went there to escape NDP for a while; however, we arrived on the 14th of July, a date which should be intimately familiar to all Modern European history students: it turned out that I had left one National Day behind just to be caught in the throes of another. Champs-Elysees was cluttered with rows of barricades as the French armed forces marched and paraded and drove and flew their ways across the streets and into the hearts of those sweaty, thronging patriotic Parisians. At night, the Eiffel Tower spurted coloured jets of light like blood from mortal wounds as fireworks burst overhead like the sound of an angry mob storming the Bastille all over again. The second part was more insidious; my mother insisted on her special brand of holidaying known as 'sight-seeing with a vengeance'. Instead of the kicking back of heels and relaxing that I had expected and wanted, I ended up running around France seeing sights between exhausted breaths before being whipped away to the next Site of Motherly Interest, negating my need to relax after running about the whole Singapore liaising with various sponsors. I can safely say that I tramped up and down more French roads in two weeks than I have Singaporean roads since January. Before the trip, my mother's friend warned me about my mother's obsession with ABCs, which she explained as an acronym for Another Bloody Cathedral. I have seen more churches in other countries than I have in Singapore. On the fourth day in Cannes, I finally put my foot down, literally, and refused to go sight-seeing anymore; the sea breeze blew tantalisingly towards the apartment, which was facing the beach. It was typical of my mother, with whom the trip to Hawaii involved more volcanoes and cultural grass skirt-type things than beaches. I read the days away, each day marked not by the hours but by the chapters of the book I read. I lost a bag in the Charles de Gaul Aeroport but that is trivial. I am asked how was Paris? Did you enjoy yourself? But really, the most important thing was that I left tension and stress buried deep in a pointless hole dug on the beach in Cannes. There are pictures (and longwinded captions which almost make up one whole blog entry by themselves) up on my webshot account. There're more, but I am lazy. The rest will probably go up tonight. This was the first time I've celebrated my birthday overseas, which was nice. Those of you who forgot that it was my birthday, assume I insulted your lineage so badly the shame is carried down ten generations. Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Logophile You can tell you have an obsession with words when: 1) You are wary of using words like 'tear' in written metaphor because readers might be unable to decide whether you meant teer or tare. 2) You come from a family where it is normal for your sister to scream in delight when your other sister reads aloud sentences like 'Using a big wooden spoon, he stirred the bubbling stew in the pot'. 3) Someone in the army says he's 'on off' while not in camp and you laugh at the unintended oxymoron. 4) You can forget the entire story after reading a novel but you remember specific phrases: 'glacial exhalation', 'city of mirrors (or mirages)' - 100 Years of Solitude; 'adroit fillip' - Mayor of Castorbridge; 'filament of time' - Horizontal Instrument. 5) You like reading poetry out loud to yourself. 6) You think rappers are rapers of word sounds, but in a good way. 7) You secretly like otherwise awful advertisements because of the clever permutations of verb and noun like 'Respecting command; Commanding respect'. 8) Writing down song lyrics when you are sad makes you feel better. 9) You think one of the greatest mysteries is what the plural possessive of 'passer-by' is (passers-by's? passers's-by? passers'-by?). 10) You put together Logophile for your title because 'logos' means word and 'phile' means friend in Greek and, on checking dictionary.com, realise that such a word actually exists. Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Email My Heart A spam email I received today: SINGAPORE BABY & PARENTING WEBSITE You are invited to www.IDOBABY.com, the only Largest Baby & Parenting Website in Singapore! *Merchant Directory *Reading articles *Live 24-hrs online chat session with Singaporean parents and mothers-to-be in our discussion forum *Large collection of Singaporean baby pictures for your viewing pleasure at our IDOBABY gallery *IDOBABY provides real time pregency tickers in Asia. *A place for parents to buy & sell baby & children related items. *Online Pregnancy Journal in IDOBABY forum *Monthly gathering by the IDOBABY community. *The Largest Recipes Corner in Asia Enjoy www.idobaby.com I find it really funny that this group of insipid people decided that the URL for their site should be 'I do baby'. How paedophilic. I wonder what type of 'Singaporean baby pictures' are in the IDOBABY gallery. Maybe they'll have captions like 'naughty in nappies' and 'pacifier of desire'. Wednesday, July 06, 2005 Gentle What I regret is not giving you a chance before giving you a try. Tuesday, June 28, 2005 Lost! I lost my handphone last Wednesday and have bought a new one. Same number, new phone. SMS your numbers, people, I may not have them. This post could have been about how losing the physical phone wasn't a big deal but it was the saved messages and memories inside that I wanted - blah blah blah - but it's not. I was fucking put off by Lost's inability to give any answers or resolution at all (which I know is stupid because it is only the third episode), so I decided to poke around online and find out what the hell it all means. I won't say what, obviously - some of you actually want to continue watching unspoiled - but I can finally free up an hour on Thursday not watching Lost. Monday, June 27, 2005 Four Minutes We were so sure it would be a choice of Right and Wrong but when it came to decision time we realised in horror that it was a choice between Right and Right. What's right for us, what's right for them. What's right for the status quo of a community. What's ever wrong about things that are three-dimensional; can they ever not be seen from a different perspective? Maybe we fear the sphere, which is the same from all angles. Thursday, June 23, 2005 Silver Feline Revisted Hahaha! I've finally bought the silver pair of Puma shoes I've been eyeing and salivating over for weeks! It is fucking obiang but for some reason I M deepdeep in luv wif them. I am a secret ah beng, I think. There were two pairs at Blackjack - one grey/black pair (which is actually something that will match everything I have) and the silver pair (which will match almost nothing I have). I tried them both on and then wanted to buy both but money no enough so I had to choose. I met someone there who said definitely the silver ones and when I was concerned that the silver would flake off he said that I'd probably get sick of them before that. That's kinda true, probably, because it's really a Big Impulse purchase but from $465 to $251 - 46% discount! - fuck, I'd buy a whore with syphilis at that discount. Argh I really don't know what to wear with these shoes. I suppose a white shirt and black jeans will match them but nothing else. Any colour at all would immediately clash. I have another pair of Troublesome Shoes that match very little things I have but I like to think positively - really! I do! - it all probably means I need to buy more clothes. I am so glad Club 21 is on mucho discount now. This is an utterly bimbotic post but, on top of being a secret ah beng, I think I am a secret bimbo too. But shhhh don't tell anyone. Tuesday, June 21, 2005 Life I've come up with a list of things that you have to do before you either die or hit 30 or else your life transforms into a monstrous thing not worth the time you wasted on earth. 1) Travel to the Vatican 2) Get a brazilian wax 3) Buy an article of clothing that costs more than $500 4) Get drunk 5) Make a balloon out of a condom 6) Learn a language that you didn't study in school 7) Eat a bug knowingly 8) Have sex with someone of the same gender (if you're straight) or someone of the opposite gender (if you're gay) 9) Smoke/Pop/Inject a recreational drug 10) Take photos of yourself 'propping up' the Leaning Tower of Pisa, 'picking up' the Statue of Liberty and 'leaning against' the Eiffel Tower. 11) Learn how to play a musical instrument 12) Go clubbing on a weekday and go to work the next day without sleeping 13) Get mugged in New York City 14) Crash a party 15) Perform on stage 16) Eat at Tetsuya's in Sydney 17) Bunjee jump 18) Sleep on a beach 19) Bake a cake of your own recipe 20) Get to call someone your 'best friend' and mean it I haven't done some of these, but I can tell you that by 30 I will have. I'm not really sure how to go about getting mugged in New York but I think maybe walking around looking vulnerable and as if I am carrying a ton of spare cash might help. Saturday, June 18, 2005 He imagined worlds Fucked that space oddity shaped like a hole, Black sucking gravity in exchange for a soul. Felt-tipped pens and felt-hatted mens Are fleet of foots and a telescopic lens Bring homed a comedy and run out of lucked; Hole: a like-shaped oddity space that fucked with my head. Wednesday, June 15, 2005 I'll incarcerate you! Highlight of my day, honestly: Someone from camp randomly called TWH: I'm sad sometimes. Me: About? TWH: What do you think? Me: I don't know, you tell me. TWH: Well, there are three things that a man can get sad over. Me: Um... Money... love... incarceration? TWH: Fuck you! Me: What?! What did I say? Do you know what 'incarceration' means? TWH: It means... (does a cutting gesture in front of his groin) Me: Er... that's castration. Incarceration is the removal of freedom. TWH: Oh. I'm so sorry, TWH, but that was really funny. If you're not happy with it I'll let you beat me up haha Monday, June 13, 2005 Flu I have not wanted to write anything for a while. My brain has officially been contaminated and made blah by the SAF. I can't be bothered to think anymore. I don't want to think. I don't want to do anything. What a long time the SAF took to finally breach my last defense. You notice that I use very military terminology. This I do to amuse myself. I don't wanna read, I don't wanna write, I don't wanna do anything that sniffs remotely like that mephitic fume of intelligence. Blah blah blah. I'm flying off to Paris and Cannes in exactly one month and all I can think of is the hassle of moving from here to there and then back again. I want to eat Lay's potato chips. Argh... Monday, June 06, 2005 Ghoul In 2003, someone asked me how I was and because, I had just broken up with someone, I said that that was a difficult question. He said, with surprising insight, "That's not a difficult question, but you might have a difficult answer." It is very easy to offer yourself out without much thought. Cash and kind to less fortunate people through school and organisation; donations to third world countries through hotlines and annoying flaggers on Orchard Road. Mindless giving that justifies yourself and rounds out your personality. I cared a bit, you tell yourself, karma bless me, and then you go back to your selfish life. "How are you?" and "Where have you been?" are easy questions to throw out there to attract those birds of friendship. Like old men in parks, we sit, sedentary, while casting the crumbs and feeding the birds for no reason beyond having crumbs and knowing they attract birds. Why do we feel the need to maintain friendships that offer us nothing? My mother asked me about my friends once but I could not answer any of her questions. I didn't know about their families, their lives or anything but those brief passages of time they spent with me engaged in some friend-ly activity of some sort. So insular and yet yearning for some kind of connection. Perhaps the phone is the greatest catalyst of superficial friendships. Without the need for the effort to write, without the need for eye contact, we can connect. I may be confiding in you some tentative secret scared to show itself and you may be having three conversations in MSN simultaneously, offering me the appropriate 'uh-huh's and gasps of indignation when required, half listening to something you have no need to listen to. For want of maybe some dint of compassion, I told him in brief sentences what made answering that question difficult. He said, "Oh, are you okay?" "Yes." And he never spoke of it again. Here comes the child with his parents in tow and he runs laughing through the flock of birds and they scatter into the air in a burst of feathers, leaving bread crumbs naked on the floor. They'll come back, the old man knows, so, unconcerned, he waits. Friday, June 03, 2005 E-Balloting I am advertising for NDP: Please go here to ballot for NDP tickets. It takes less than two minutes and we need numbers, so get your family to ballot as well. Fewer people applied this year than last year, so the chances of your getting tickets after applying is higher. Apply lah! Wednesday, June 01, 2005 Sticky I'm so very tired. It's not like I do a great deal, I grant you, but I'd like to, for one whole day, just sit at my computer terminal at work and vegetate or do something remotely sedentary and then leave the office on time. I don't want to run around Singapore speaking to nasty sponsors who take advantage of poor NSFs anymore. I vaguely remember having a choice when I was in my previous camp. To choose this or to choose a quiet life in 4SIR, making videos some of the time and soporifically sitting in front of my computer doing almost nothing the rest of the time. I chose this because I thought it'd be fun. It's fun, yes, in a way, actually having some responsibilities is fun, negotiations with stubborn sponsors is fun, a lot of it is fun, but it is also very tiring. Today was my first day back at camp this week and already I am really tired. I was so tired that, when I got home, I got my mother to feed me dinner. She did the whole 'aeroplane zooooom' thing and the 'one more bite'|'don't want'|'just one more bite lah' exchange with me. Hahaha! Goodness, that hasn't happened in years. Anyway, I'm gonna sleep early and since it is now not that early, I should go right to bed. *goes goes goes and he's gone* Tuesday, May 31, 2005 Silver Feline The problem with me is that there is nothing I want so badly that I'll fight for it and die if I do not get it. Thursday, May 26, 2005 Sever The first age of loss crept up on us so insidiously that we did not realise it until we started losing. There was no crumbling of our physical selves, no decrepit state towards which our bodies collapsed, only the violation of our innermost spaces and the deletion of those intangible things that accumulated in absence before they were noticed. [Look for me hiding in a hollow tree. We tumble from generalstate to specificstate and the devil of recognition creeps unbidden in the details that cannot be displayed for the sake of my sanity.] Tuesday, May 24, 2005 Salty Dog My dog has suddenly developed this penchant for swimming in the day when it gets hot. It's kinda cute. I joined her one day and we raced back and forth trying to catch a rubber bone my sister bought when she discovered Pi's most recent hobby. For a dog less than a year old she swims damn fast.  woof! No, that woof is a lie; Pi doesn't bark, she kinda is silent until she swims, then she emits these odd grunting noises. Monday, May 23, 2005 Dipstick Hahahaha! The full name of this particularly memory-ful snack is Yan Yan Dip-stick Snack Chocolate. For the benefit of those of you who do not read Sheila's blog, Yan Yan has decided to include 'fun lines' on their dip-sticks. I don't want to spoil the surprise, so you must go buy a Yan Yan Dip-stick Snack Chocolate and read them for yourselves. Bun in her oven I hate the phrase 'bun in her oven'. I think it's offensive to think of females as kitchen appliances and babies as food. This is the only reference to the title in this post. Anyway, after one and a half years, I have begun baking again. The reason for this long drought of delicious Wen En goods (haha) is that I was slightly unsure of my new kitchen. I had not got used to it yet. Now it is as familiar as, well, something that is almost completely familiar so I decided to take a risk, take the plunge blah blah and use it. I still am not exactly sure where everything is - I can't twirl mid-stride, open this drawer, extract a knife, complete twirl, put butter back in fridge, skip back, add sugar to batter and bend, putting whisk back in the drawer while turning off the blender in a huge kitchen dance anymore - so I ask my maid where this is, or how to work that appliance, but in the end everything works just fine, if only a bit slower than in my old house. Some of you might have come across my culinary disasters before. I am sure Jane, for instance, would delight in telling anyone who'll listen about the time I forgot to put the butter into a, she will tell you, butter cake (it was a lemon pound cake, you ninny). Or my maid can attest to my creation of a dateless date tart (which is like one pun per word haha) due to the rotten dates (expiry date: 12 Oct 1990 [I am not kidding]) I almost used but threw away, thankfully. Perhaps some of you will remember the pear pie I made while forgetting all about the pears. Alas, it seems that the number of times I have forgotten key ingredients in recipes is embarrassingly high. I am glad to say that this has all changed because, nowadays, I haven't the patience for recipes anymore. I bake on a want-something-to-eat-too-lazy-to-buy whim now. I go to the kitchen and peer into shelves and cupboards and imagine what I could make with the ingredients at hand. Some were disastrous, like my fig and spice cake that crumbled like mortar and sand in the mouth, and yet others were - oh just say it, Wen En! - quite delicious, like the nutella and peanut butter chip cookies. The problem with my latest trend in baking is that they are all one-time goods. Not having a recipe to follow and not using any measuring instruments, I will never be able to duplicate the things I have made that turned out to be successful. The last nutella and peanut butter cookie was eaten with vague regret. Actually, I think the regret stemmed from the fact that I ate ten at once and that they'd probably end up in my gut more than not being able to create them again. Ms Lim once asked the class which we preferred: movies or plays. Most of us preferred movies but she preferred plays. She explained it like this: a movie is going to be the same, no matter how many times you watch it, but a play... sometimes, when everything goes right - the actors know their lines and timing perfectly, the audience is properly responsive - there is this magic about that one performance that can't ever be duplicated and if you caught it, you'd feel that magic. Because she's quaintly melodramatic, she raised her clenched fist as she spoke the last words to drive the point home. I kinda can't forget that. I'd like to think that, one day, with the correct choice and blend of ingredients and timing, I'll be able to create that same ephemeral magic in my kitchen. Friday, May 20, 2005 You know you're a lazy ass when... You have two sets of toiletries - one for the shower and one for the sink - because moving your toothbrush or toothpaste or facial wash from one end of the bathroom to the other is so not worth the effort. You flag down and hitch a ride from a random lorry on a deserted road lined with construction sites because you cannot imagine walking two hundred more metres in the sun to Pasir Laba Camp's guard room. You have a stool in your shower area to sit on while you bathe because standing for the required ten minutes is unthinkable. You ask people if their stop is after yours on the MRT and ask them to wake you up when you reach your stop. You sit in your chair typing in your blog late at night not going to sleep because you can't sleep without bathing and collecting the assorted items like clothes and towels for bathing is too much effort at the moment. Wednesday, May 18, 2005 Toward Down this road lies satisfaction and a hollow feeling between my shoulders whereas to navigate that more familiar road brings about simple contentment. If only I could choose one and stick to it and not veer and careen precariously off-track. But that is my nature: to throw everything into the air and then want to catch every piece before they shatter on the floor. Tuesday, May 17, 2005 So much easier than thinking up an entry I listen to what my family has to say and then type it down. Mother: How hardcore was your studying today, Ting? Sister: Not very... Mother: Softcore? Sister: More so-so-core. Sunday, May 15, 2005 Oops I did it again. Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Queen After watching Madama Butterfly. Father: Ahh... the age-old story of the SPG. See how prevalent they are? Seventy or eighty years ago and they were around already. Another SPG bites the dust... Don't quote me on your blog! Hahaha! For all purposes, this is an entirely fictitious account. Sunday, May 08, 2005 Quick! To the Thinktank! What possesses companies to rename their products sometimes is beyond me. I cannot imagine a motley crew of suited men sitting around in a conference room seriously discussing the impact a name change will have on the product. Take, for example, Jif, which is now Cif. Jif/Cif is a common household cleaning agent. Sometime last year or the year before, Jif decided it wanted to be called Cif instead. Why? What's the point? If you ask me, Jif was a better name because it suggested speed and efficiency - it sounded like 'jiffy' (trivia: which is an actual measure of time [one hundredth of a second]) - which, to a housewife embroiled in the perpetual motion of house-cleaning, sounds pretty damn good. Now Cif. Cif! It means nothing and suggests nothing! Why change the name of your product to a stupid, meaningless and unconnotative word? Everyone I've asked has said, 'Oh... I thought it was still called Jif', highlighting both the familiarity with a now-obsolete name and the monumental failure of Jif's brilliant idea to rename itself. Sometimes, the change in name stems from plain cluelessness. What used to be a comfortably named Baker's Inn is now (oh come on, I bet all of you know this by now, but I'm still putting this long bracketted sentence here for dramatic effect to highlight the stupendous ridiculousness of the new name) Bakerzin. No one, absolutely no one I know, approves of this change in name. The first (and the last) time I entered this newly named instituition, I read the rationale for the change in name in the menu. It went something like 'to appeal to the younger generation' blah blah blah 'a more hip-sounding name' blah blah blah etc. To put it bluntly: what the fuck where they thinking? How patronising is it for a restaurant to think that they could ever appeal to me, a member of this exclusive target consumer group called 'the younger generation', by conglomerating two perfectly innocent words and forcing a 'z' to act like glue, sticking both of them together? A 'z' does not an appealing product make! They have this ginger milk pudding which I really want to try but I'd never - never - set foot into a place that calls itself Bakerzin. Zo much for your ztupid ideaz, Bakerzin. Of course, there are some name changes that are so... pointless is the only word I can think of. K.F.C., that fat-in-the-shape-of-chicken place, is now called KFC. Err... what's the difference, you ask? Well, KFC is no longer an acronym which stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken; it just stands for KFC - three meaningless letters. I don't even know what to say about this one besides if the company who owns a product changes, I think you should be a bit more creative than just erasing the meaning hidden behind the acronym. Names are very important. I tried to name my NDP newsletter 'Bloom' but it was vetoed rather quickly because it just 'wasn't the right image'. Sometimes people ask me why I don't have an English name, since I'm such an anglophile, but I could never imagine myself with any other name. Wen En means learned and filial and connotes gentleness and I'm, well, not any of those things thus making the name ironic, which is the perfect tone for me. Friday, May 06, 2005 Odd I've just realised that 'peeled' and 'unpeeled' mean the same thing, kinda like how 'inflammable' and 'flammable' mean the same thing. 'Inflammable' confuses because the prefix 'in' looks like it means 'non' but is in fact an intensifier derived from the latin preposition 'in'. This means that something that is inflammable probably is more volatile than something flammable. I suppose the 'un' in 'unpeel' derives from the same latin root. Thursday, May 05, 2005 The Club Sister (cups hands together and blows into the cavity, thus creating the hooting sound of an owl): I used to have a club in primary school, you know. Me: A club? Sister: A club of people who could hoot. (demonstrates) Remember Shiling? Me: The girl who got her head trapped in our window grill at your seventh birthday party? Sister: Yah, that one. She wanted to join our club, but she couldn't hoot. Me: So did you let her join? Sister: No, of course not! She couldn't hoot. So she practised and practised until she could hoot. Me: So she joined your club lah. Sister: No, we still didn't let her. Me: Why? Sister: Didn't want to, I guess. We called ourselves The Hoooters. Me: What?! Sister: No lah, we didn't know what that meant then. Me: I'm sure. Anyway, what happened to her in the end? Sister: She got suspended. Me: Really? For what? Sister: For breaking into the staff room. It was her last day before going overseas and she thought it'd be funny to mess it up. But she was caught. And suspended. Then she couldn't go overseas for studies anymore. Monday, May 02, 2005 You Live If only I were a better friend. If only I did not think of it all in terms of ounces and pounds, weighing my actions against your reactions and balancing what you did not say with what I was going to do. Yet I cannot see beyond this: when I say 'we are friends', I imagine that the implication that you are a friend holds as true as the fact that I am a friend. There must be some manner of mutual transaction before my wells run dry, but one always gives more than the other. That is the nature of friendships. I cannot take this imbalance and yet fear that, finding a perfectly equated friendship, I will traverse the plateau and wonder, 'is this all?' Wednesday, April 27, 2005 Three I started this thing where I bought clothes that 'weren't me' just to be different because, well, being different is me (although I argue not arbitrarily for-the-sake-of). I have a polo t-shirt that has been much maligned. Dubbed the pandan shirt by unfriendly friends (who have no taste), it is striped green and beige and looks like the kind of thing a PRC scholar would wear to visit a library. Putting on my pandan shirt, I noticed something about fashion. Fashion isn't just the clothes, it's the clothes and the person wearing them. Friends who have known me for quite a while laugh when they see me in the pandan shirt. 'That is so not you!' 'Haha! You look like such a straight-laced boy, you liar!' etc. More recent acquaintances, if they mention it at all, say it's a 'nice shirt' without irony and without sniggering. People I don't know take it entirely as normal. At 4SIR, a regimental policeman (RP) asked me to open my bag for him to check when I booked out, but another said, 'Check for what? Look at him; you know he's such a good boy.' Erm... whatever works to smuggle out my excess of contraband items. My sister said recently, 'You know, after a while, if you keep buying things that aren't you, they'll become you.' But maybe she has an immutable idea of me. We are all struck with first impressions that seldom change over time. I have a friend who used to be fat and bumbly but who is extremely muscular and yet I cannot ever see beyond the fat and bumbly boy whenever I meet him. It's ingrained and will not go away. People change all the time, it is foolish to imagine anyone will stay the same over the years and yet we try to reconnect the tattered threads only to find them tied emptily to the past. We have nothing else to talk about and justifying trying very hard based on 'but we used to talk for hours on the phone about everything!' is futile. I learnt to let go and move on. Tuesday, April 26, 2005 Winter I was supposed to do an article on NDP, but the article became this thing. Hi! I am the NDP logo and I will take you through the motions of dissent Which moves so passionately regardless. I repent, I sing, I confess to the grilled father - take off your veil And show me the face of god - but still it fails; No barren rock for my fertile seed, it grows. Oh my god, I need to... well... yeah. Conversation I have been told before that the reason the army calls our pay 'allowance' is that, this way, we do not have to contribute some of our already paltry earnings towards our CPF accounts. However, I think that the reason we receive allowances because, if it were called pay, the SAF would be guilty of employing at way below minimum wage of just about every first world economy. Thank you, Dalglish. Now I know Singapore has no minimum wage. I earn $1.77 per hour. I'm too tired to fully bitch about my working hours, which are unnecessarily long; what I want to say is that expecting me to design creatively while simultaneously dulling my brains with eleven-hour working days (13, if you count transportation) is a self-defeating contradiction. [Hurry and finish this video. Have you finished the newsletter? If you have not finished your work, I expect you to work overtime.] I'm not a factory. I don't churn out products with the efficiency of a conveyor belt. A little space, a little time, and a little trust and I'll get to it eventually. Above all, a little trust. I find it insulting how little I am trusted. With myself and with my designs. I don't care what you rank is, I think I represent the average consumer of NDP-whatevers better than a 40-50 year old entrenched in the army for the better part of his life. What a difference a word makes. From 'pay' to 'allowance' and unpleasantness is circumvented. To call something differently and all is changed. My name is Wen En. Sunday, April 17, 2005 Dust The word 'dust', curiously, has two contrary meanings when used as a verb. To dust something involves either lightly sprinkling with a powdery agent - as in dusting a cake with icing sugar - or removing the powdery agent - as in dusting a cabinet. I think it is comforting to know that contradictions can live so harmoniously in a single entity without either jostling for elbow room. Room, which means at once an enclosed volume of specific dimensions and a quality of spaciousness. Is there room in my heart for you to follow your heart? Friday, April 15, 2005 Ur-Bane Urban, the weekly fashion supplement to the national rag's Life!, is a piece of shit. The problem with it is that it is pungent shit; everybody wants to go sniff it for themselves. The very first and very apparent problem with Urban is the quality of its paper. For some reason, Urban is printed on paper inferior to that used for the rest of the newspaper. It feels scruffy and cheap and the ink seeps through to the other side, especially those large coloured pictures. There's this cooking programme on called something like 'Never trust a skinny cook'. In the same way, one should never trust an ugly plastic surgeon or fashion articles on lousy paper. How can anything sheathed in a cheapo exterior profess to have superior knowledge of what exteriors I should be sheathed in? Embarrassingly lousy paper aside, Urban, like all fashion rags (you will notice that I consistently refrain from elevating its status by refering it as a fashion guide or, worse, a fashion magazine), strives to cultivate an aura of glamour about it. That's perfectly reasonable. After all, any talk of fashion has that glitter about it that excludes the unlettered plebeians and so, to ensure readership, Urban has to glamourise and include. The problem arises at the execution. Here, Urban has resorted to the most awful and tacky of ways: liberally sprinkling articles with 'darling's and 'honey's - which serves the dual function of personalising and adding that sprinkle of posh implication - and making persistent reference to gay best friends or metrosexual boyfriends - both suggesting to the average peasant hedonism, excess and luxury. Urban also attempts to up its mass appeal factor by performing makeovers on a random common person every week. This fails spectacularly because the makeovers are never convincingly drastic nor wow-inducing. Let's talk about the 'Urban vs SubUrban' portion now. When Debbie used to work at Life! and had to write the predecessor of 'Urban vs SubUrban' once ('What's Hot vs What's Not', I believe), she told me of this horrific woman who called her up to complain. 'Who are you to decide what's hot and what's not?' she had apparently said in a huff before hanging up. Well, the answer to that is 'no one qualified'. Debbie wasn't qualified to tell Singapore what was hot and what wasn't (sorry, Debbie!) but that hardly mattered; the focus of that little portion wasn't making sure people knew what was hot and what wasn't, it was the humorous wordplay in the comparisons. The same with 'Urban vs SubUrban'. However, once, I noticed that Buffy was Hot one week and Not the next. Well, I rationalised, one week is enough for something to change, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. But come 'Urban vs SubUrban' and they don't even bother to put a buffer of one week between inconsistencies. Take last week's issue, for example. Peacock feathers were, apparently, SubUrban (bad taste, lousy, should not be done). Five articles later, a headdress composed of an excess of peacock feathers was greatly praised. This week: Metrosexuals are SubUrban (and Machosexuals are Urban, apparently), but because, as previously mentioned, Urban has to make postive reference to metrosexuals, metrosexual boyfriends are still the best accessories since fake Fendi bags or whatever stupid comparison they used this week. (Also, metrosexuals, if we can ignore the shudder of such a horrible coinage, probably won't stand to be accessories; they'd want to shop for themselves too, you know, that's why they're metrosexuals. Get a boring 'machosexual' if you want a meek companion on your shopping escapades.) Actually, let's talk about -sexual for a bit. It has become an awful trend to invent new -sexuals lately. Metrosexual, machosexual, jetrosexual, happysexual etc. Let's get something straight: -sexual had the original purpose of being a reference of sexuality to a few prefixes. Thus, hetero-, of Greek origin, meaning other, made heterosexual, or preference for the other sex; homo-, meaning same, made homosexual; bi-, meaning both, made bisexual; pan-, meaning all, made pansexual; a-, meaning without, made asexual etc. Now, -sexual has become the methode du jour to signify a class of people with total disregard for sexuality. Jocks of yesteryear find themselves unable to pronounce their new class, machosexuals, because it has too many syllables for their little minds; the jet set puzzle over being called jetrosexuals considering most have never had a sexual preference to aeroplanes; artsy poseurs can now hide behind the generally positive 'metrosexuals' and, while once considered fake and flaky, are now desired by stupid females dying for a gay fix that isn't, you know, gay. But back to Urban. It sucks. Yeah. Wednesday, April 06, 2005 Traditional Much to my annoyance, my father bought a PDA. Ooo Father, how exciting! After learning how to put in addresses you'll give up learning how to use it. I told him straight up that I hated PDAs and would not learn how to use it just to teach him (as is the case for all technological appliances beyond his ability to follow applicances' instructions and operate them: all of them). He looked a bit shocked, dismayed and betrayed. Too bad. In the end, he got my sister to read the tedious instructions to teach him how to navigate the road system on the electronic map of Singapore contained therein. In some aspects I am a frightfully traditional person. It's not only PDAs which irritate me, but other little things that are supposed to save time, but frustrate me for approximately the amount of time saved anyway. I should have known this about myself years ago when, in order to make pancakes, I refused to use an automatic egg-beater but took a whisk and manually beat the egg whites myself. I took especial pride in being able to beat them so stiff that when I inverted the bowl, nothing spilled out. What is up with PDAs? I have alway championed the cause of the notebook and pen. I bring to camp an old ACS exercise book in which I record all my National Day nonsense and in one and a half months I've filled in a third of the book. Whereas writing in a book affords you the small pleasure of flipping through pages of work - making you feel like you have actually accomplished something - the only equivalent in a PDA is to scroll through the notes. Somehow, that doesn't seem as satisfying. In fact, the pen and notebook combination can replace many (what's the antonym for 'outdated'? 'Indated'?) things. Whenever I have to write an essay, I prefer using a pen to a word processor. I like forming the letters with my pen and the feeling of finality when you come to the end of the essay. With a word processor, text can be so easily shifted around that reaching the end of an essay merely means the start of a lot of re-paragraphing and editing. Word processorts in general require less thought because the ease with which you are able to manipulate the order of words, sentences and paragraphs means that you are less likely to worry about the structure of your essay. A few days ago, the button on my army uniform popped. Aghast, I asked my friend to help me buy a sewing kit from eMart so (sew) than I could mend the garment. When he came back with the kit, I reached inside to take out the needle and was accosted by a subsidiary pouch labelled 'instant buttons'. Curious, I took it out and read the back, which was a set of instructions on how to pierce, hook and snap a button on without having to sew, but by the aid of a thin plastic rod attached to the button. Contemtuously ignoring this little bit of ludicrity, I took the needle and thread out and sewed the button on myself. As he was playing with his PDA, my father dropped his handphone. Picking it up, he checked the camera lens for cracks. 'When was the last time you took a picture with that phone?' I asked. He could not remember. Flipping through the photos, the latest one turned out to have been taken by me. I had stuck the phone half-way into my mouth and had taken a blurred shot of the cavernous pink interior. Ahhh... the wonders of teknologi. Tuesday, April 05, 2005 Date Above The reason I refer to the date is because I have too many disparate things I want to write about that don't connect to each other at all. So here we go. * As I left camp today, I bumped into my chief clerk. Chirpily, I said, 'Hi ma'am!' She looked at me and said I looked familiar and finally recognised me when I reminded her that I just posted in from 4SIR to help out in NDP. All the way to Jurong MRT interchange, we talked non-stop and I didn't even have to try. It's weird, because conversation with tiny old ladies seem easiest to me. Take a twenty-year old boy and a sixty-year old woman and I'd be more comfortable talking to the old woman. It's weird too, talking to an established personnel in the SAF. It's not all monolithic and conformist. She casually hates her job in the battalion. She remembers the days she worked in MINDEF HQ and tells me how it was like working in a private sector firm. I was at the moving of MINDEF from Tanglin to Bukit Gombak in 1989, you know, she tells me (but in reality she tells herself and she remembers the plaque celebrating the move on the left of the main entrance when you enter MINDEF). We arrive at Jurong Interchange and we say goodbye and I smile because knowing the chief clerk personally is one of those things that makes your life easier in camp. * I think the word 'casual' always indicates a certain level of deliberation. Think about it: She casually leaned on the table. Isn't there a connotation of calculation there? As if she positioned herself just so to attract the attention she wants. The moment you think of the word 'causual' you are no longer casual. 'I don't like you' is more devastating than 'I hate you'. The former cannot be salvaged whereas the latter is ameliorated by the innate hyperbole in using it without irony. To say 'I don't like you' softly decimates because of the carefully constructed neutrality while 'I hate you' hesitates. You have to stop and think of the tone in which it is said, then you have to study the person's face for its meaning. 'I hate you' is too ambiguous to affect immediately. * The funniest thing I've heard today. Father: Let me tell you a story. It's apparently true, but... anyway, there was this golf player who won a tournament and, as he was leaving the club, a lady accosted him in the car park and asked for money. She said her baby was dying blahblahblah and asked for a thousand dollars and the guy gave it to her. The next day, the club manager told him that all the caddies knew that the lady in the car park was a con-woman. The golf player asked, 'So there's no actual dying baby?' 'No.' 'Oh thank goodness!' My sister laughed while I waited. My father looked at me. Father: You don't get it? Me (truly clueless): No... was there something to get? Father: Well, when he found out there wasn't really a dying baby, he was thankful for that. Me: Uh... oh. Sister: Oh don't bother, he doesn't understand jokes involving nice people. Monday, April 04, 2005 We Lie 'Honey, I must tell you something,' she said, turning to face his side of the bed. He looked at her with maybe-love and smiled. 'I haven't been truthful to you.' He began to frown. 'My name isn't Susan.' He blinked momentarily and then laughed. 'Oh Susan, you're so full of shit.' He looked into her eyes, waiting for the twinkle of complicity which never came. 'No, you don't understand; My name is really not Susan. I never went to church before we got married and my parents are not really dead.' He could not believe his ears. He shook his head as he sat up. 'Wait... you're joking, right?' 'I never joke about such things,' she said, looking him straight in the eye. 'Fuck! Who even talks about such things? Susan, don't tell me these things. Don't... Susan...' 'Don't call me that. I wanted to tell you the truth because I thought you deserved to know. You're my husband, after all.' 'This is... Susan, this is past funny already.' She sighed as she got out of bed. 'I knew you would take this hard. Take your time.' She walked slowly towards the door, opening the closet on the way to take out the suitcase she had packed earlier. 'Where're you going? Susan! Come back! I need to know... you can't just say things like this and leave in the middle of the night!' He paused as a terrible realisation dawned upon him. 'You're not leaving me for another man, are you?' For the first time, she laughed. 'No, I'm going to stay with Mindy for tonight to give you space.' 'Does Mindy know... all these things you've been telling me?' 'Mindy's my sister.' 'Fuck!' She turned and looked at him. 'Do you still love me?' The question was so utterly unexpected that he heard it and then forgot it all in an instant. She repeated herself: 'Do you still love me?' 'Yes...' he answered too quickly. 'Of course, honey, I just want answers. Why're you telling me all this?' She sighed because she knew that tomorrow, or the day after, or one day soon, he would stop pretending and leave her. She was too utterly reactive to be the one who broke it off. She clung to everything regardless of veracity. She clung to things that she had no rights to save for the lies that had obtained them. She clung to things she had no jurisdiction over and ruled falsely for respect. He would leave, and she would feel sad and helpless - more sad and helpless than usual - but she'd thought that, after a life of unsatisfaction, it was her time to take control and develop a normal relationship, regardless of the lies she had to tell to get it. Inside the paradigmatic reality of her elaborately-constucted tales, she could live normally and believe that the bigger environment outside that glass house did not exist. It ended now because she was a socket into which her idea of her past inserted a plug that drained and drained her energy endlessly and she was tired. She was tired of this continual documentation of ersatz information that issued from her mouth. Tired of the compiling, the updating, the cover-ups. Most of all, she was tired of the truth, which croached ominously around the corner waiting to ambush her, take her money and leave her to be eaten by a callous city. Inside Susan, she was cushioned against truth. It was a barrier insurmountable by all but herself. Inside Susan, she believed she could take enjoyment by the hand and not patiently wait for it to tangentially include her because they had common friends. She owned Susan's soul. But how unexpected it was that a fabricated soul could be lost to someone else! Oh love, you fool! Eating from that which is not real. Oh love! Why did it not blindly infect mutually? Because here it was: she was insulted that he prefered Susan to her. Susan, that bitch. That mistress. That soul-whore. How could she say that he'd ever loved her when he'd married Susan? For certain, terrible instances, she wondered if she was the bitch, mistress, soul-whore who lurked poisonously to wreck a marriage she was not part of. There was that mirror smashed because of an ostensible accident; oh Susan, would that you were not a reflection, completely opposite of everything she was, divested so cleanly from reality that she could not ever hope to inflict pain upon Susan's body. But there was also this: that impervious Susan was her creation; she was god over Susan and with one lightning bolt of truth, she had completely destroyed Susan. Obliterated her and now he clung to the tattered remnants that had begun to fade so quickly they would evaporate completely when the sun came up. Five years into their marriage, and Susan's biggest climax in the bed wasn't sex but death. I will tell you how I did this to you. I will tell you the truth and wonder if you could ever replace Susan's memory with me. I am no evil bitch. I am no accomplice to my own crimes. I think of you sometimes but it is impossible to think of you alone. Susan laughs at me, interlocked and twined and twisted so excruciatingly tight into you and into my thoughts of you. Silver Nitrate Photographs are not infinitesimal slices of time. They are synthetic constructs; from film to paper to subjects to photographer. We frame, we smile, we select, we make sure we take the best and leave out the worst. That was what made the allure of photographs so alien to me. Words were my medium. Words record memories better. I'd trade the picture for the thousand words. But now I fear I have been wrong all along. In my words I hide meanings like a zebra strategically placed in front of black bars. Sometimes, I amalgamate three memories and blend them into a single recollection, manipulating the reality of memory. Sometimes, I have no idea where my words will take me, like an shipwreck survivor at the mercy of arbitrary waves. Sometimes, I have no idea what I was writing about months after. Words are no less confounding and dishonest than photographs. What I have been doing with words for the longest time I have begun to slowly learn the parallel in Photoshop. To enhance, to detract, to disguise, to obscure. 'a dirty secret (and a giraffe)': embarrassing graphic symbols hidden in a single photograph that I will not remember in a while. Zul (whom I haven't heard from in ages) once asked what the black bars in the photograph were. They were the easiest code if you squinted down from the top of the monitor. I look at this photograph and think that no amount of text could ever replace the visual gratification of it. I read this poem and the subservience it began with, to describe another thing, is cast away as it transcends the subject and becomes its own entity. What I used to compare once I now realise are completely different mediums: my ice and steam have become protons and electrons. Take this picture and let me adjust its contrast and blur this portion and pretend the halcyon oblivion of our happy faces is genuine. I'll write you a song so utterly insincere it becomes our truth. Friday, April 01, 2005 Selected I think the irony of having to type 'selected' before being able to permutate to 'rejected' while smsing is sometimes too much to take. Oh, I fear Somehow you'll find the need To spit out my name Like a watermelon seed Thursday, March 31, 2005 Flaps My cute dog is teething right now, so she bites things indiscriminately. Last night, she scampered up to me and started gnawing on my loose jeans and I wondered what would have happened if I had had flabby thighs. Would Pi have gnawed on my fats? Jane, I think you'd better stay away until Pi stops teething. Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Inauspicious Sign My father came home today and said, 'Your application has been rejected.' Fuck, I thought, I didn't make it to Brown? How did he know so early? Why???? ARGHH!!! It turns out that it wasn't that application; UOB rejected my application for an savings account and a debit card, dammit. 'Why?' I asked indignantly. My father produced my application forms from his bag and showed them to me. 'You had to sign three times, and all three signatures are different!' I snorted, peering at the sheets of paper before me. 'Nonsense! I... oops.' For, indeed, my signature had given birth to two dopplegangers and had spread them around the application. My sister looked at my signatures and laughed. 'What on earth is that?!' she giggled, indicating at my artistic squiggle, 'If I turn it on the side will I get a chinese word?' I snatched the papers from her. 'Do you remember the signature you invented for yourself that became your chinese name when you turned it to the side?' she asked, chortling. Hmph. Fuck, now I have to redo those damn forms. Even more embarrassing: I have to practise my signature first. [postscript] Fuck! I've just wasted my time filling in another set of forms because at the end of them, my signatures were different again. At least my signature is like the most un-forge-able lah; even I can't copy it. Saturday, March 26, 2005 My sister the realist Sister: You know, I got this email from the admissions board of University of XXX saying 'based on your excellent SAT, O and A level grades, we'd definitely want you in our school'. (pause) I think I shouldn't go there. Liar You're a big fat liar. Only two of Dan Brown's novels speak of the church at all. So why the third book? Maybe weird computer viruses are the heralds of the Second Coming huh. Just admit you have lousy taste in books. I knew it would happen one day; the Angus Ross committee ran out of funds to hire real literature teachers to vet the scripts after they discovered Angus Ross never existed; some rich person in the past merely found it funny to hand out accolades named after an anagram for 'gross anus'. Thursday, March 24, 2005 Misinformed Fuck fuck fuck! Whoever comes before 2 will not be allowed into the house. Salman, I'm going to kill you. My father: They thought it was at 9 AM? You don't wake up till 1 PM! In a semi-related note, Jane sent me this hilarious sms a few days ago: Help! I'm on time! Welcome, Jane, to Wen En's True Circle of Friends, where being late is early and being early unpardonable. Wednesday, March 23, 2005 Oh no! I'm officially obese! No, I'm not, in case you were wondering. (shut up, all of you) I've been reading The Straits Times recently. It isn't some sudden thirst for knowledge because, well, there have been certain articles in that rag lately that have made me want to violently end some of the reporters' lives; it's more a time-filler in camp when I don't want to do anything else. Anyway, there was this article last week about how, because they altered the healthy BMI range for asians, a percentage of people have suddenly become fat. Then they had a little table on the diseases this group of people were 'suddenly' in danger of contracting. Hahaha oh my god, that's damn funny lah. These statistics are supposed to be gathered from a study of people and then tabulated; they are an effect of people getting fat. The Straits Times suggests that the statistics are the cause and people in danger of these diseases the effect. That's ridiculous. If you are wondering why the change in layout, it's very simple: white gives me a headache; thus, black. Plus I've been listening to Vespertine a lot these days. Tuesday, March 22, 2005 Aurora treading the glacial head looking for moments of shine from twilight to twilight Strength and hope and space and love. Strength to endure diminishing hope filling an empty space vacated by love. Where am I now in this equation? Lost in the constellation of numbers zooming about in absolute truth; where two divided by itself is one. One side must be equal to the other or the statement collapses in absurdity. I tumble down on my knees fill the mouth with snow the way it melts I wish to melt into you Monday, March 21, 2005 Swirling Black Lilies Oh my god, what the fuck am I doing? Down every conceivable path lies bitterness and disappointment. Friday, March 18, 2005 Lotuses and Red Beans I have been listening to a lot of Faye Wong songs today, isn't that weird? I don't understand a freakin' word she sings (except hong dou and ying xiong and that's because they're the names of the songs) but I like it anyway. Anyway, I don't have much to say today. HAHAHA oh my god, you know this quiz-like thing you always get in your email? The one where you write down a list of numbers and then assign names to some of them, songs to others and, somehow, they're supposed to freakily resonate truly in your life? The song that, apparently, is associated most closely with my life is Criminal, by Fiona Apple. Oh dear! I hope I'm not a bad bad girl. 'cause I'm feeling like a criminal and I need to be redeemed to the one I've sinned against' Wednesday, March 16, 2005 Chronologue Oh my god, this ranks as one of the most interesting sites I have ever seen before. I'm too lazy to do html linking so: http://web.archive.org/web/ It's like a huge archive which stores websites. I typed in melvynah.blogspot.com deviance.blogspot.com and found them both resting undustily and spanking new in there. Ah... I missed those sites a lot. Basically, I did a bloghop back in time and it was really oh-my-god-ing. The familiar and forgotten layouts; the words... hahaha I got to mercurial.blogspot.com, which I skimmed briefly; said person is not as whiny anymore, although he's still rather petulant (eek! don't [...] me! hahaha). Oops, I was about to write something about the bad memories reading through some of these old websites brought, but I think I'll keep this entry fluffy. Monday, March 14, 2005 Space Dust I have a heavy feeling inside my stomach. Like, I'm gonna burst or something. Like a water balloon you keep filling and filling and it either sinks till the curve touches the floor or it blooms into a huge hydroflower. I'm not really sure what this feeling is all about. As in, I can't define the cause of it. Maybe I should try, but I seriously cannot think of anything that would give me this feeling or maybe I can think of too much and I just can't decide among all of them. Over the bridge we go, looking for I'd like to show you a few magic tricks. Remember that, no matter what fantastical feat I perform, it's a trick. Distraction and misdirection. I'll smile with one hand and claw with the other. On one hand crying softly and on the other laughing hysterically. It's the beginning of a New Age. I saw a woman on the MRT yesterday. She was middle-late-aged. She was dressed in some confectioner's uniform (I cannot remember which - a type of cake or something) and in black polyester pants held up with elastic. She had just gone for a haircut; I could tell because her hair was cropped perfunctorily close to her head and there were remnant waxy hairs sticking to her neck, caught in the folds of wrinkles. Her eyes were kinda sunken and her butt stuck out because the elastic band went around her waist and pulled the polyester up the slope of her ass. She looked tired but the seats were full so she stood next to me. Maybe she was leaning on the railing, but she was so short I could not really tell if she was perpendicular to the floor or at a slight angle. Oh what a cruel fate to be maybe forty-something and forced into a genderless body! When was the last time her hypothetical husband kissed her and told her in all honesty that she was beautiful? Do her children still visit once in a while? Does she even have children? So much life contained in that body and so much of it forgettable. I wished that she had friends to go home to. Maybe on the phone or maybe around her estate. Maybe she got off the MRT, went home, took a shower and went out to drink tea and gossip with her coterie of familar faces. Maybe she bitched lusciously about a co-worker to sympathetic faces (we must forgive her her petty malice if it affords her pleasure). I wished that she had something besides nothing. There are so many things that fill your time and life but ultimately implode in a vacuum of memories and leave you more hollow than before. I'm wishing on a star to follow where you are. I'd like to think that the star I wish upon isn't a black hole. Collies My blog has become a rather public arena. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - I am, after all, a narcissist - I'm just saying that the main point of my blog, which is free expression, is slowly being encroached upon. I type posts and then go naaah and delete them; sometimes I even publish posts and go naaaaah. It's very hard to decide what can go up and what can't. I have a problem with compromise. I have a blog whose address no one knows. Actually, it's more a diary than a blog because, besides being online, I treat it exactly as if I were writing in a diary. I bring this up because I would never ever show that piece of online embarrassment to anyone. Without the obscuring fog of metaphor, everything I write there burns my face red. But I keep it anyway. It is my only outlet of truth. Everything else I say and write and do anywhere else is tinged with the silver lining of deception and camouflage. I have a problem with compromise because I cannot seem to find a comfortable reconciliation between that blog and this one. No middle ground of the sort of posts that are truth but restrained. For quite a while now, I've been thinking of changing my blog address again, but what's the point? Once in secondary school, I was following my friend home in a non-air-conditioned bus. It was hot and our noses were slick with sweat. I kept pushing up my glasses, which kept sliding down my nose. My friend took off his spectacles, wiped his nose with tissue and then put them on again. Changing your blog address is like my pushing up of glasses: a temporary fix to the problem of too much traffic. I was thinking about all this today because I wanted to post something in the category of amusing anecdote but was afraid that the person concerned might have found his way here. Oh fuck it. There are some friends that are better not seen and not heard. I'm not very certain what type of friends these ones are called but we strive on anyway. Last night, I called my friend to ask if he wanted to go out to do nothing. Not dinner, not movie, not talking, not coffee; just nothing. He agreed. The moment he consented, immediately, I did not want to go out with him anymore. Dilemma; how to tell him I no longer wanted the unpleasure of his company after hearing his voice? So I took the conniver's way out. I said, 'Hold on, my mother's calling.' And then, very loudly, away from the phone, 'Yah? What do you want?' I counted a minute before putting the phone back to my ear and mouth. 'I'm sorry, I can't go out tonight. I have to go to my grandmother's house; it's her birthday.' 'Damn it,' I added for good measure. He understood and said no problem, some other time then, 'but call me if your grandmother's thing ends early'. No problem, I replied with relief before hanging up. One social disaster avoided, loneliness suddenly felt sweet. Sunday, March 13, 2005 Caocao I thought I'd post this so that next time when I read my archives I will remember it and my mouth will ache with longing. Anyway, last night, I went to the Raffles Hotel's Bar and Billard Restaurant to have their buffet dinner and the food was bloody mediocre but the saving grace was the big bowl of spiced cocoa they had on the dessert table. I ladled myself one cup and it was fucking blissful, drinking it slowly and blowing carefully across the steaming brown surface. It was thick and rich but had enough tang from the spices not to be cloying. Oh my god, I'm so hungry just thinking about it! Saturday, March 12, 2005 Soledad Eh fuck lah, it's 7.00 pm on a saturday night and I'm at home updating my blog. I think it doesn't matter what you say - all this 'I wanna be home alone for a weekend' or 'I just want peace and quiet' - in the end, being at home alone sucks. My family is in Fraser's Hill enjoying our house there one more time before it is sold and I have not talked to anyone today besides issuing haughty imperatives to my maids. No lah, I'm lying, I'm very nice to hired help. Next time I tell you I just want to stay at home and shut out the world during the weekend, fucking slap and ignore me. Shit lah, what's wrong with me. Friday, March 11, 2005 p3dant on the loose Someone sent me the following message this morning: I wanted to kill the SWEETEST, SMARTEST, SEXIEST, ATTRACTIVE & the most GOOD LOOKING person on the earth but then I realised... SUICIDE IS A CRIME. I replied: So's bad grammar. No comparative clause before 'attractive' and superfluous 'the' before 'most good looking', which lacks a hyphen. Also, killing anyone at all is a crime. The response I got was succinct: You are a bloody english freak. Well, at least I'm bloodily and freakily right. Wednesday, March 09, 2005 The Word is 'Fuck' I keep asking myself what I've got myself into. In the morning, in the evening and all the times between, I am filled with a rising horror. I try to tell myself that I chose this, I can't complain, and I won't. Choice destroys your right to complain about your situation, but sometimes, I can't help but complain about the fact that I chose in the first place. Being proactive was never me at my best. It'd be so fun! I thought. Oh stupid me. It was never about the event; it was always about the people. Fuck fuck fuck. The word is 'fuck'. Twas Brillig I'm on a cloud. On its side is imprinted the number 9. I hope it doesn't rain soon. This whiplash of silk on wool embroidery. Monday, March 07, 2005 A Point I was very young once and when I was this tender very-young-once age I was more certain about particular things than I am now. At one obligatory family function many many years back (when i was still very-young-once) my cousin asked me what he considered an unanswerably question: 'What is the meaning of life?' I answered immediately: 'The meaning of life is to work your way into heaven.' I was amazed that such a simple answer eluded my cousin, who is at least ten years older than I am. Remember that I was a devout christian at One Point in my life in which time the idea of saying 'fuck' callously shocked me to the core. I would say the word to myself in my room and thrill at the illicit nature of its hard consonant sound erupting with a flick of my tongue. But now I understand. At this age, I could not give you an answer to that question. There are two scopes: one overarching, where one ponders the nature of life itself on this planet and why it exists; smaller, a basic quesioning of the point of your own life. Are there unique reasons for every single person's life on this planet? Why did life infect you and not a rock? Salman and Jireh were arguing over the finer points of certain religions once. There is, I think, only one reason why someone should argue over religion: to deepen your understanding and appreciation of your belief. It should never be about trying to convince someone else that he is wrong or deluded. It should always be to enlighten. Because I find the only reason for religion is comfort and it is not in the slightest decent to rob someone of his comfort. Words about Jane Mother (regarding my easter party): Why don't you get Jane to dress up as a bunny? Me: 'Cause she'll kill me? Mother: Not any bunny, the playboy bunny. Hahaha Jane, you make the best impressions. Thursday, March 03, 2005 Master Argh! I'm going to murder the next person who calls me a 'multimedia expert'. There is a particular individual called Mr Ron (who is reading this; somehow he has time to read my blog but no time to talk to me in camp) who has been my superior during last year's NDP as well as this year's. Before I moved over to 30SCE, my current camp, he told people here that I was a 'multimedia expert', quotations serving the dual function of indicating that those are the exact words and as emphasis for irony. That would be fine if said once or twice. But, I don't know, it seems that's what I am to people over here. The problem: I am not an expert. Hello, I didn't even know how to use Photoshop until I was asked to design stuff for NDP last year. Just half an hour ago, Andy's (of 2AO1B'03 fame) friend (the battalion's dyS1 [I think]) exclaimed, 'Oh! You are the one' and told him about how S1 had emailed my previous camp to request for this 'multimedia expert', the phrasing no doubt lifted straight from Mr Ron's mouth. Aiee! Haha at least Andy raised an eyebrow and said, 'You're a multimedia expert? Since when?' You have no idea how troubling this is. The problem is not being called an expert, which is fine, because I like to pretend I am an expert in everything haha the problem is that there are expectations attached to this seeming accolade. The last time I was in this camp to transfer files, someone asked me to help him fix the CD burner. When I told him I knew absolutely nothing about fixing CD burners, he seemed disbelieving. 'But you're supposed to be the multimedia expert!' his look seemed to say. I'd like to think of myself not as a multimedia expert but a selectfewmedia apprentice; yesterday, I watched an actual expert use Photoshop and the great difference is that I am so uncultured; I don't even use keybaord shortcuts, everything is point-and-click for me, whereas he was like press-here-click-there; kinda like playing a piano and I've only learned how to play the tune with my right hand and have not yet mastered the integration of the left hand playing the bass. Tuesday, March 01, 2005 Incipience I thought that this was the beginning, but I'm beginning to realise that, no, it's just the prelude. To wish for a climax is within my rights; to wish for a happily ever after wishful. Sunday, February 27, 2005 Idiots Something that amused me greatly in the latest American Club magazine: Q: I recently noticed that I stop(sic) receiving The Club magazine. Did you stop sending them out? A: The Club magazine is alive and well. [...] Please drop Jun an email at [email address] with any change in details, be it address, email address, contact numbers, or the company you work for. That makes sense; printing a response in the magazine the member isn't getting. Father Lucifer We live in the future. Every action we make is in response to anticipation and anticipation is what may occur; we respond to things that haven't happened yet. I'm sure this hypothesis doesn't stand up under serious scrutiny but since the army has made me silly I can invent such hypotheses and not rigorously defend them. Aahblaa says the army boy. I think a few weeks ago someone Up There wrote in to the Straits Times to defend the army's ability to make army boys think. It was in response to someone who said that the long gestation period of NS gave birth to brainless men who have to go on to university or work. But a letter by someone in the firmaments of the army hierarchy means nothing. If they really wanted a definitive answer on whether the army was beneficial or detrimental to poor Singaporean boys then the people to ask, naturally, are the poor Singaporean boys and I will bet one million dollars against increasing my NS liability by ten years that most of them/us will say it's detrimental. Tuesday, February 22, 2005 Vanish Because I slept at 8 pm last night, I woke up very early this morning. I decided, just to do something different, to go downstairs for first parade. Save the COS, I was the only one there. I picked up the attendance book to mark everyone in my branch present, and when I went down the list, I suddenly noticed that my name was not inside anymore. I am no longer inside the nominal roll. This means that I belong nowhere right now. Technically, I can't be charged for AWOL because my attendance isn't even recorded anywhere. Of course, the symbolic significance of this episode inevitably came to me. But I won't bore my poor blog readers with a discussion on my trials and tribulations via the conduit of a straw-grasping symbol. It is 8.08 am and hardly anyone's awake. The COS said ominously that one day soon, everyone's going to Get It, but, until that happens, no one will show up for first parade or actually get to the office on time. Except me, on select occasions. Kinda like a limited edition article of clothing. Except me; except, I don't have to. Because even if I don't turn up and they punish everyone who isn't there to personally mark their own attendance, my name won't be there. Sunday, February 20, 2005 How I Made $100 in Thirty Seconds Me (after my father comes home at 2.30am): Hello! Did you gamble? Father: Yah I did. Me: Did you win? Father: Yes... Me: Gimme money. Father: What? Why? Me: Because it's lucky to give me money. Father (rolling his eyes): Fine. hehe! In other news, thanks to her South African trip, my sister is now a proud Krisflyer Silver Elite member. ARGH! She's one step closer to PPS membership, something I've wanted for years and years and years. It makes me want to fly around the world just to get my PPS card. I need to fly more. I feel so ashamed when I look at my blue coloured Krisflyer card. Saturday, February 19, 2005 Meltdown I suffered a meltdown of hair. We all have the extrapolation of ourselves into our folicles growing on heads containing too much life and fervour to be put down with simple words and callous thoughts. They fall one and two and storm into teacups when the toxic is mental and metal bands like rings fall around fingers extended beyond their ability to comfortably grasp and hold things silently and tiredly. Slipping past the velocity of fingertips catching at air and molecules of smell of smells of smells in minute quantities I'd like to think it remains a smell of smells on my skin gently like a coating of coatings on coatings.  Eeks! I am in love. I am in love with . Let me explain: we have a new dog. Her name is . She's the cutest most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I call her cutie. Aie! Look at her! She doesn't make a sound at all. The only time she barked was when her bone fell out of the enclosure. Aw she's so adorable. I love you, !Go to my photo album for more pictures of this most perfect, irrational dog. Friday, February 18, 2005 Market Rate Today, Zul mentioned that some girls are only faghags because straight men don't pay them any attention; that is, they're ugly or frightfully boring or both. Actually, the idea of faghags irritates me, but I will strive on anyway. My current fascination is livejournal; it's like Friendster with blogs attached. Actually, it's more insidious because if, say, you like someone based on the pictures he posts on his livejournal, you can add him as a friend and claim you love the way he writes, whereas you cannot do such a thing on Friendster. Zul and I sit at our desks the whole day surfing livejournals and sometimes a familiar layout on his computer catches my eye and I realise I have been to the blog he's currently reading and it makes me realise how small this virtual world is. But all this is supposed to segue into my main point. Here it is: While jumping from livejournal to livejournal, I came across a community of faghags. I'm not really sure how all these things work, but I think a livejournal community is like a joint blog. So these faghags go on about their 'boys' like gay men are their pets and they are so proud when their 'boys' come out and they find them so cute and bitchy and they can totally confide in them because, unlike straight men, their 'boys' totally 'get it'. Ohmigod, I felt like puking. Way to make a whole sexual orientation objects, idiots. These specimens and the whole lot of slash-ers (girls who love to arbitrarily make boyband members/fictional characters gay and read and write stories of them falling in and out of love and bed) are chasing an illusion. They have absolutely no idea what being gay is about. They wouldn't know a real faghag if she bit them on the breasts. A real faghag is a, to use a gay word, fabulous person who knows that the term 'faghag' is not a label but the acknowledgement that there will be nothing but a platonic attraction between a gay man and her. She knows that lusting after gay men is tacky and not something to be done. Anything else is dross that should be burnt on the stake along with the previously mentioned specimens. The only gay aspect of the man that should have any importance is the fact that he'll never be interested in her boobies and bushies. Cut the gal pal crap; cut the in touch with his feminine side crap; cut the bitchy crap. The relationship between a faghag and fag should be no different than any other; that is, based on mutual trust and understanding and an ability to connect. The market rate of a friendship should not be valued on the sexual orientation of either party. Just because someone is gay doesn't mean he'll automatically become your best shopping partner. Thursday, February 17, 2005 Polish My Rim Argh. The MSN conenction in my camp is tenuous at best. Nowadays, it logs me out more often than I say 'oo la la' (which means it happens a lot because I say 'oo la la' a lot). Considering I have really nothing else to do in camp, this added barrier to my pleasantly passing the hours of boredom reall irks me oo la la. I've been listening to Tori on repeat the entire day - Little Earthquakes and Under The Pink on iTunes and The Beekeeper on radioblogclub.com oo la la. I wrote a review of The Beekeeper on my livejournal which I will shamelessly paste over here: Tori Amos's new album just doesn't cut it, if you ask me. Something I have noticed over the years is that Tori's pronunciation gets worse and worse, especially during live shows. She does odd things to all her vowel and dipthongs. 'Been', for example, becomes 'ban' on Martha's Foolish Ginger. I'm listening to Pretty Good Year at this moment and I miss her perfect enunciation on her first few albums. It's like she got more and more idiosyncratic that she totally morphed the way she sings words; the scary thing? I understand what she's singing, as, I am sure, any toriphile/EWF/etc worth his or her salt could. It's as if, paradoxically, as her albums become more and more commercially viable (all these special editions and bonus tracks and easy listening songs), the very way she sings becomes more and more niche. But that isn't my only grouse with The Beekeeper. Another thing I dislike is that she relies less and less on the piano. Gone are the interestingly long passages of piano solos. Whereas the piano used to be its own voice before (most obviously in Under the Pink), now it's nothing more than a simple accompaniment to the songs. Even on her only piano solo song on the album, Original Sinsuality, the introductory riff sounds tired and very much like any other. In fact, it sounds like a mesh of Tubular bells and Foolish Games. Her lyrics are not as cryptic as before. Most people would probably think this a blessing, but I prefered the cryptic lyrics of her previous albums. That's because somtimes, years after I've been singing a Tori song, I suddenly 'get it'; the lyrics suddenly make sense and that moment of little epiphany is one of the things I enjoy most about Tori Amos songs. It's not all bad, however. I'm listening to 'Cars and Guitars' now and it's my favourite song off the new album. The chorus has some of the unbridled passion she has slowly traded in for controlled calm over the years. 'Still a thought says what if I/ Keep on driving/ Keep on driving' the last two lines of which make me think of her riding in a convertible and letting the wind blow her red hair like a plume of flame about her head. 'Martha's Foolish Ginger', besides the weird 'been' pronunciation, is another good song. The piano and drums follow a very march-like feel and lends an interesting contrast to the narrator, who sings about her boat (named Martha's Foolish Ginger), which in turn may be a metaphor for her relationships. 'Sweet the Sting' has a very nice gospel feel to it with the organ and the choral voices that crescendos at several points make the song feel like a rousing sermon. But a nice sermon. If there're such things. The title track is very odd, not by itself, but by its placement in this album. It's like the remix of 'Professional Widow' on Tales of a Librarian; somehow not in sync with the rest of the album. It's the only electronica-sounding track on the album, kinda choirgirls/venus, while the rest are mostly a combination of any of these: vocals, oddly high-pitched background and harmonic vocals, piano, drums, bass, organ and guitar. 'Hoochie Woman' is interesting because the narrator declares that she's fine if 'he' solicits with 'Hoochie Women' because 'boys, I bring home the bacon' and I keep wondering if her marriage has anything to do with the song. 'Witness' has the best bridge section of all the songs. It reminds me of 'Space Dog' in treatment. Another thing that I've noticed is that Tori's songs hemorrhage bridges as more albums are produced. I love bridges, they shake the song up a bit. I think only 'A Sorta Fairytale' and 'Sweet Sangria' have bridges on Scarlet's Walk. Summary? This album cements Tori's transition from angry young female who sometimes sacrifices form for unbridled angst to placid mother with supreme control over her songs, as if the 'girls' that they are suddenly have not a friend from whom to emerge, but a mom to look after them. It's up there with Scarlet's Walk as the most easy-listening albums she's ever produced. Is that a good thing? That's up to you. Personally, although I'm happy for her family, I've always prefered a little anger in Tori. Fariq The senior medic in my camp is not a very nice person. Today, he came in to my office to return Zul something and, as he left, he turned both air-conditioners to high fan speed and lowered the temperature to sixteen degrees celsius. He just stood in front of the wall-attached remotes, nonchalantly pressed the required buttons repeatedly and then walked out. Somewhere in him, a bone of evil made him press those buttons to make Zul and me and anybody else who'd incidentally come into the room uncomfortable. It's like someone taking a random cat and drowning it without thinking about it at all: a senseless act of malice. Once, in the cookhouse, I happened to be sitting behind him and his conversation consisted of telling people about the last time he went to Geylang to fondle bought breasts and cunts. The adulterous fucker is married. Of course, he could be lying, which would make him an insecure fucker instead. Either way, he is an uncouth individual who, to me, represents the worst of the SAF. The bottom-feeders, the ooze which eats of itself. I'm sure most regulars in the SAF have their reasons for signing on, some of them actually valid (this clause, by the way, is here because a particular LTA Feroz may be reading this haha hello! Go study lah), but 2SG Fariq is the typical person who, acknowledging to himself that he'll never be able to succeed anywhere else in life being such a nasty piece of work nobody would want to employ, decides to sign on so he'll have a modicum of power and a guarrantee of promotion and pay increase regardless of how fucked-up his attitude is. So, deep breath, and I'm done bitching. Have a good day! Wednesday, February 16, 2005 PostScript I've just thought of a to-the-point slogan that Singapore could use to battle the declining birth rates: Copulate to Populate. Needless Needles Everyone will probably think I'm a bitter spinster, but no, I'm not. Truly! haha Valentine's Day irritates me because I think that the very fact of its existence causes people to build up expectations leading up to the day and, when it arrives, most are disapointed by the prosaic reality of commercial romance. Mostly, I ignore Valentine's day, unlike birthdays (which I generally ignore because I think parents should be the one who are to be acknowledged for someone's birth, although sometimes they should be acknowledged with a fist to the gut and a retroactive cut to the ovarian tubes), although my cavalier dismissal of both apparently isn't always taken well. This year, I was in camp and I decided not to go out. I was going to sleep early and wake up early, for once. But then Nikki called, and the only reason she did was because she was on a caffeine high and had a sucky day so probably decided I could put things in perspective by making it suckier. In between insulting each other I invited her to my house for dinner because my parents were having a party. We were making plans to disrupt everyone's Valentine's Day. For example, going to Jacelyn's house and 'surprising' her and Karl as they stumble into her room to make out; throwing eggs at random couples from her convertible as she sped down Orchard Road; and sounding a siren and shouting 'Police!' in the Botanical Gardens and watching the bushes quickly empty of couples denied copulation. But we ended up bitching about random people before she went home. I don't think there's been an occasion for universal unity in emotion in which I did not want to participate, but in the contrary. From asking my grandmother to pose with a 'V' sign beside my grandfather's coffin to wearing black during Chinese New Year (the only consensus to red being three red fuck bands on my wrist), the collective emotion of any event only makes me want to go against it; not wanting to immerse myself entirely in something that I forget for once the total sense of myself to the greater tide of people. I know it was extremely mean of us to plan the demise of rising libidos on Valentine's Day but right now I am feeling big waves of regret for not carrying out the dastardly deeds. Oh well, I'll put aside a few eggs so they'll be really rotten by next year. I am reminded of Milan Kundera in Laughable Loves. A young protagonist complains to his hero, a veteran lover, that his courtship and ultimate bedding of a matronly, but sexy, nurse was disastrous because she kept talking about, and comparing him to, her son while they were having sex. To the contrary, the older man told him that it was probably the best sex he'd ever have. Twenty years from that point, he would mostly likely remember that episode of love-making, above and beyond the other faceless and silent experiences he'd had before and would have in the future. I'd like to think I'll be making some couples' Valentine's Day memorable. Sunday, February 13, 2005 Watchwork Orange This is a work of fiction. You are allowed to skip this post, but you are not allowed to skip previous and future ones. When I was in BMT, I got rather addicted to peeling and eating oranges whole. That is, without separating the segments and munching it like an apple. One day, this convoluted fictional thought came to me. It's kinda like this. On his birthday, Timmy received many presents. His father had given him an automated heart, and when he put it into his manual chest, he felt a surge of energy which had once been reserved for keeping his regular heart beating for the past eleven years of his life. Uncle Melvin gave him one cubic feet of private air which Timmy's mother objected to strongly as these rarities were extremely costly and should not be wasted on little boys. But Uncle Melvin insisted, and Timmy received the shimmer of translucence with wonder and excitement. Auntie Senji gave him a new scanner, which, unlike the standard model, not only told you the name of a person and his relation to you to three degrees when his barcode was scanned, but told of his social status and sexual preference as well. Timmy replaced his old scanner with this newer one and went around the table scanning everyone. Everybody was Heterosexual and everybody was Upper-Middle-Class, his father and Auntie Senji Ascendant, Uncle Melvin and his mother Stagnant. This made his parents ask a smug Auntie Senji what had caused her social status to change from Stagnant to Ascendant, to which she replied in a whisper that elicited knowing looks from both of them and a sigh of resignation from Uncle Melvin. Timmy did not have a suffix. But the best present of all came from Timmy's mother, who gave him a watchwork orange. It was the size of a fist and its skin was carefully programmed to display a matrix of irregular - 'natural' - dots. A subtle fragrance was periodically released from those pores and it filled the room with a smell quite different from the metallic smell of air that had been through the government-regulated filter, de-ioniser and purifier. The watchwork orange caused more of a stir of interest among the adults than Timmy, who saw it as an odd, but beautifully constructed jewel than anything else. "I saw an orange once," Uncle Melvin said, "a real orange. Grandma used to keep one in her drawer to show us. Remember, Allie?" Timmy's mother nodded wistfully. "Of course, it wasn't a fresh one, like this watchwork orange here. It was dried. Preserved. She had had a packet of them, she said, and for some reason she'd never eaten the last one. Saving it for a special occasion to share with the family, she said. But then one of our cousins stole it, didn't they? I wonder who it was... Poor Grandma was terribly affected. Grandpa had willed her that packet just before he'd died." There was a silence that Timmy knew meant the adults were either processing the appropriate Memories(tm) onto their contact lens projectors (Uncle Melvin and Mommy) or receiving the feed via pixelpax to share the experience (Auntie Senji and Daddy). "Where did Mom bury her?" Timmy's mother asked absent-mindedly. "In that field simulation. We managed to make a fairly accurate Memory from her tattered recollections and asked the company to reconstruct the field she grew up in and then we were all there..." "They used my Memory of her, didn't they?" Timmy's mother asked. "Yes, they did, you knew her best, after all. You were her favourite granddaughter. I remember we were standing there and when you signed that release clause she suddenly appeared in the simulation, a bit pixelated and ragged around the edges, but it was her, down to your Memory of her smell. Here, I'll send you the feed of my Memory." "Oh yes..." Timmy's mother said after a minute, "There I am, god, I was fat then, wasn't I? Look, we're closing the box simulator now..." Overcome with curiosity, Timmy directed the feed into his own projector. He saw his great-grandmother's image wave one more time from the box before it was closed and sent into hyperreality. Before the Memory dissolved into another one, Timmy's vision was blanketed in static. He screamed in horror, imagining for a brief moment that he had been deleted. But then his vision cleared and his mother was standing before him, her arms crossed. "Timmy! What have I told you before of accessing adults' Memory feeds? It's the height of rudeness, Timmy, and I will not tolerate it in this house! Not even on your birthday! Go to your room!" Timmy wept, and, still clutching his watchwork orange, ran to his room. He wept in relief at not having been deleted, but let Mommy think what she wants, especially if it may make her feel guilty for sending him to his room on his birthday. He lay on his antigravity field and brought the watchwork orange to his face. He could hear the tick-tick of the internal mechanism working. At that very moment, the orange released its fragrance and, up close, Timmy could see the pores all opening slightly. The scent of orange was heavenly sweet. Sweeter than the best esters Mommy made in her kitchen. The scent lingered but was fading as the molecules of smell were quickly passed through the filter, de-ioniser and purifier and neutralised. Suddenly, Timmy wanted to smell even more of the orange. He couldn't wait for it to release its carefully watchworked smell again. Feeling rebellious, he dug his fingernail into the orange skin and started to peel it off. The skin came off in strips and, finally, he held in his hand a perfect globe of orange translucence divided into twelve segments. Mommy would have a fit. He held it up to the Sunlite rays and it glowed like the most beautiful topaz could have. With one layer gone, the tick-tick of the inner mechanism could be more clearly heard now. The segments were divided into smaller, teardrop-sized... things. Timmy called up his visual encyclopaedia and searched for 'orange'. The teardrop-sized nodules were pulp. Held together by a transparent membrane. The Orange is a Fruit. Fruits have been extinct, along with all the Trees, somewhere in the late twenty-second century due to hyperharvesting. Many people all over the world enjoyed the Orange as part of their regular diet. As IntraVene had not yet been the norm for nutritional intake, they would consume the Orange by putting it into their mouths and using their teeth to apply pressure onto it before swallowing it (see Biting and Eating). It was said to have a sweet and sour taste. It provided the approximate nutrition of half a Fibrepill and one VimC tablet. Timmy closed the entry and patiently waited out the sponsorship advertisements. The last one was new. Sunlite was promoting their new rays, which contained hyperviolet radiation, a healthier alternative to standard ultraviolet. The advertisement ended and his vision cleared. He looked at the watchwork orange (at this point, it had released the smell again, but this time it streamed out, almost liquidlike, without the limitation of pores) and had the sudden desire to Eat it, not feed it directly into his IntraVene tube, but to actually put it into his mouth and feel it go into his throat and down into his stomach. Mommy had warned about the wear and tear that teeth went through while Chewing but Timmy was fascinated by the orange. He raised it to his mouth (he could hear the tick-tick even louder now). When it touched his lips, they tingled with anticipation. He opened his mouth, placed his teeth against the watchwork orange and took a big bite... Upelevator, Timmy's mother was in her room. She opened her dresser and took out the shrivelled-up orange that she had stolen from her grandmother so many years ago. It was almost finished; she had nibbled it too much in the recent months. But how to admit to this addiction to Eating? Her husband would send her immediately for corrective mindwipe, and were they not currently a topic of controversy? The last person to be cured of a manual labour addiction had had his mind completely wiped out. They didn't know how it had happened. Maybe manual labour was all he knew? They were still investigating. She nibbled on it, it was dry and tasted nothing like the hyperreality feasts she could program, but for some reason, Chewing on it comforted her in a way that not even her electro-massager could. It made her feel Real. Real? She laughed to herself. What was Real nowadays? What was Real? A loud bang suddenly resounded through the house. No time to carefully hide her stolen orange, she rushed out of her room and in seconds was standing in front of Timmy's forcefield. It didn't need to be opened to see what had happened in his room. Her contact lenses recorded the Memory and saved it into her database: Timmy, flung across the room from the antigravity field, his left hand twisted oddly, his type hand a bleeding stump, his eyes unblinkingly wide open, his lips incinerated and his mouth half-torn away. Thick, black smoke billowing out of his head and the shwoop-shwoop of the purifier as it worked overtime to clean the air of the soot. Timmy Lee. Ex-son. Zerosexual. Deceased. Stagnant Friday, February 11, 2005 Deux I've always wondered how non-Chinese people would respond when told about an ancient custom of married adults giving money in red packets to children on a few special days of the year. Something I take for granted as an annual occurrence would seem strange and exotic to the non-Chinese person. Imagine the children - a brief flash of imagination and jealousy at not being able to accrue positive cashflow for simply being Chinese children. But what is the proper way of keeping angpaos? As I took one from my godmother, I wryly admitted to not knowing a way to keep the red packet in an elegant and tasteful manner. To stuff it into a pocket quickly would seem a bit too hasty, like a greedy child gorging himself with food; as if one intended to hurry it up and garner more of these bundles of free money as fast as possible. To put it into a bag would seem too calculated; as if one had thought beforehand of the joyful cash and decided to carry a bag around just to contain these happinesses. I employ the discreet method: when no one is looking, I quietly and hurriedly slip it into my pocket and pretend I never got one. How to receive red packets is another quandary. Does going up to everybody and happily chirping 'Gong Xi Fa Cai' seem a bit desperate? I always imagine my cheerful greeting would engender thoughts of ulterior motives; perhaps I wouldn't have had been so friendly had they no money to dispense upon me? I feel uncomfortable when, upon catching sight of me, various aunties pick up bags and start rummaging through them. To watch them, eagle-eyed, as they search for these carefully prepared presents seems rude and mercenary. Thus, I pretend not to notice and, when presented with my packet of money, look taken aback and go 'Oh! Thank you! Gong xi fa cai!'. Upon arrival at home, I collate everything into a mound of red. Opening angpaos is a heady experience. One fraught with pitfalls and excitement. It almost feels like the gambling I did a few hours earlier. Fumbling with the adhesive or undoing a fold, the first glimpse inside is for colour. If the note is auspiciously red, then it comes out without thought and is placed on the table. Unless they happen to be two red notes, clasped together by a crease: these are the minor magic moments. Seeing purple is a nasty surprise, like a 2 and a 5 in blackjack, neither here nor there. Then thickness counts; a finger on either side of thin packet, I press lightly to discern the amount of notes. If it is especially thick, then I remove the notes, usually five, put it on the table, and heave a sigh of relief. If it isn't, the singular or double purple notes are brought out and quickly put on the table while rapidly moving to the next one, as if to erase memory of that particular ordeal. Green is rare. To see blue is one of those magic Chinese New Year moments in which you want to crystallise your emotions and carry it with you for a while. Today, my mother asked if we had already opened our angpaos. 'Yeah, I did,' I said. Turning to my sister, I exclaimed in horror, 'Oh-my-god, did you get those purple notes as well?' 'Yes!' she confirmed emphatically, 'Who could have done such a thing?' 'Next time,' I deliberate, 'I think we should record the names of everyone on their respective packets so we'll know for sure.' While my sister agreed, my mother accused us of being 'so bad, you two'. So tomorrow is another day of getting gold dust on our fingers, handling those generic red packets with golden characters on the front (a mixed bag; those could come with any amount, whereas the matt-finished maroon packets with embossed family names or a tasteful relief pattern almost always contain the magical double-red): some things about Chinese New Year money just cannot buy. Wednesday, February 09, 2005 Gimlet Chinese New Year begins and it's another year of odd relatives and unfamiliar parents' friends. Tonight was the reunion dinner and the pertinent question, perhaps the question to define my existence at these familial gatherings from now on, is when is it my mother's turn to be a grandmother? Get started, Wen En, wife and children await our dispensing of care and guidance and a huge inheritance if you'd just get on with it. Mother tells of her friend - I'm not implying anything! she protests - who rewards every son a million dollars for every grandson they produce. Payment for blood debt. Father tells of the house he will buy me - but wait; here is the condition - if I get married. If? I ask. If, he confirms. When, he amends. When? I raise an eyebrow. When, he nods presumptuously. Never, I smile painfully. Never. When you get married, I will cook for you, says my grandmother. I'm so glad I got married to your uncle before your elder uncle got married, reminisces my auntie, or else my grandmother would not have seen my wedding before she passed away. Where's the girlfriend? A collective of voices. Where's the girl? Have you ever fallen in love? Sometimes, it's hard for some people to fall in love. The last said over my head in knowing wisdom. Turns to me: When you meet the right girl, Cupid's shaft will pierce your heart and you will not know what to do. Cupid's shaft already pierces. Cupid's shaft pierces so that it assaults. But not my heart. That artful betrayer is all it is, when skin-to-skin it tells, unspoken, of my rush of inaudible emotions. I'm not getting married. (I throw these words cautiously on the table like the two of hearts hoping the two of spades doesn't show. In my hand, a flush to win.) When you get married, I will give your wife my jewellery. My beatific grandmother. I'm not getting married? (Pass. Pass. Waiting for the last.) When you get married, you can use any one of my granddaughters for bridesmaid! I have 5, proudly exclaims my auntie. (Two of spades, an automatic all-around pass, and a straight and they win.) Zero Point: your time is coming. Peripeteia It got a little hazy in the mire. All of a sudden, it seems the arrow is out of the nock, draw, aim. All of a sudden it flies so swiftly in a humming trajectory straight towards my horizontal line. The moisture clears and we see the bulls-eye winking at us from the distance. Thwack! Silence in the forest as we assess the marksmanship. Bulls-eye! Congratulations Wen En! Nock your second arrow and fire blindly into the woods; blindly, any tree's a target and any point's a bulls-eye. Monday, February 07, 2005 Parody Because this is the cynical generation, there are certain things that have shed their skin of intended meaning and allowed crusty pessimism to crinkle through. The drums to indicate the punchline, for example, if done nowadays, still indicate the point at which the audience is supposed to laugh; however, it is done in full irony. The thing you're supposed to laugh at isn't the punchline, but the fact that they are using the cliche of the drums. Saying 'That's so amazing!' never actually means 'That's so amazing!' anymore. Generally, it means 'Oh god, that's damn boring/idiotic/stupid'. Unbridled enthusiam is no longer allowed and is viewed with suspicion. Stereotypes have reversed and have become tired. The dog is now afraid of cats, the cat is now afraid of rats. All used in bad jokes to play on your original perception of these animals. I have a cat. It's new and I think it's siamese (I'm not very sure because I hardly see it). It's name is Taufik. Full name: Taufik Tang. Taufik lives in the kitchen at night and disappears to god-knows-where during the day. He's usually in time for dinner. He's also deadly afraid of rats, for real. There are rats in the house. When I went into the kitchen one night, a rat nimbly hopped off the kitchen counter and disappeared under the fridge. 'Where's Taufik!' I yelled. Taufik, apparently, was hiding from the rat. The next day, when I walked into the kitchen, Taufik came up to me and meowed furrily on my leg, which was surprising, because he had never been affectionate towards me before. Then the rat scampered across the floor and I realised that Taufik just wanted to get out of the kitchen. Well, too bad, Taufik, I closed the door after me to force him to find the rat and eat it or whatever cats do to rats, but he didn't. So now we need a dog to chase the cat to chase the rat. And if that doesn't happen, then a stick to beat the dog to chase the cat to chase the rat. Or if the stick's lazy then a fire to burn the stick to beat the dog to chase the cat to chase the rat. Or if the fire refuses to do that then a pail of water to douse the fire to- oh fuck it. You get what I mean. Sunday, February 06, 2005 Do Rae Mi and Me There is a reason why I do not tune in to Classical 92.4 FM. It's very simple really; I can't stand how every DJ on that frequency pronounces it clair-sickle. It makes me want to shove a big, spotted penis into their mouths. Clah-sickle, shitheads! Not Clair-sickle. Fuck, everytime I hear them say clair-sickle I feel so mad. Actually, most DJs do that. Dance, trance, last, past. All pronounced wrongly. Unsolicited Americanisms are things that rank with huge cockroaches as the most irritating things on earth. * Since I'm on music, let's talk rap. What is it, exactly, that inspires rappers, when asked to feature on some singer's track, to name themselves and deliver a self-congratulatory declaration when it's 'their turn'? This is Jay-Z on Beyonce's Crazy in Love: I'm warmed up now, let's go Young Hov, y'all know when the flow is loco Young B and the R-O-C, uh-oh Ol' G, big homey, the one and only Stick bony, but the pocket is fat like Tony Soprano, the ROC handle like Van Axel I shake phonies, man, you can't get next to The genuine article I go, I do not sing though I sling though, if anything I bling, yo' A star like Ringo, roar like gringo Crazy, bring your whole set Jay-Z in the range, crazy and deranged They can't figure them out they like hey is he insane Yes, sir, I'm cut from a different cloth My texture is the best fur chinchilla I been healin' chain smokers But how you think I got the name Hova I been realer, the game's over Fall back young, ever since the label changed over To Platinum the game's been wrap, one Shut the hell up and sing something related to the song, yo! Saturday, February 05, 2005 Meaning If you message me on ICQ or MSN or SMS and the sum of your text is fewer than 7 words, I'm not replying. This is because there probably is not enough meaning in those 7-or-less words for it to be worth my response. Exceptions will be made generally if there are less than three articles, two adjectives and no onomatopoeia and exclamations. Friday, February 04, 2005 Oneiric Encounters Of late, my dreams have become tainted with the possibility for reality - a sort of wish-fulfillment undone by my waking up. Last night, the genie of sleep granted me a dream that was so perfect, so completely perfect. Afraid I was being watched, I sat up in bed to look around and it slowly occured to me that, in that one movement, I had travelled from dreamscape to realscape. Fuck, I thought. I sank back into my pillow and closed my eyes, but the route is strictly one way. So, fresh with memories-that-aren't, I constructed the dream in my head and tried to play it out to completion, but it no longer wore the mantle of reality; it had become a harmless fantasy in my mind. I wonder what would have happened if I had died before I sat up in bed, tearing through the dimensional gate that links dreams and reality. If reality is what our senses perceive as 'real', then, dying before realising that I had been dreaming, would I have died in a perfect reality where I would have expired in perfect happiness? Once, as I was talking to someone, I made reference to a conversation we had a few days ago. He had no idea what I was talking about even after many prompts and it was only later that I realised: the conversation we had had been in a dream. Tuesday, February 01, 2005 Clothes There is a reason why I don't like shopping for cheap clothes. It is not that I am a snobshit, although that, unrelatedly, is true or because I am a Label Whore; it's just that if I ever see anyone wearing an article of clothing that I have, immediately I dislike said article of clothing and will never wear it again. When you do not shop at Giordano and its assorted ilk and avoid moderately expensive clothing on discounts, the chances of seeing someone in your outfit is lowered considerably. I confess that I have one of those awful 'me' tshirts from Esprit. But I didn't buy it! My mother thought, for some strange reason, that giving my sisters and me variations on that tshirt theme was a good idea. None of us wear those 'me' tshirts; chances are, if you select a random day to walk down Orchard Road, you'll see a plebeian in one of those. If you are like me, the shop to avoid at all costs is Topman. This is because, although I like their printed tshirts, Topman is the mainstream answer to the grungy question. Assume AgentX wants to wear something that sits comfortably in the low-key category while being mildly stylish, the easiest place to go to is Topman. AgentX thinks what he wears is downplayed stylish, unique even, and he would be, if not for the fact that five other people probably bought the same outfit that same day. Debbie (or The Woman Who Never Picks Up Her Phone) once shared with me a little anecdote. I will re-tell it here but substitute names so as not to embarrass people: One day, Debbit was out with Jeralt and they were in a Nike shop and Debbit was bored and exasperated as she stood around waiting for Jeralt to decide between two Nike tshirts. "Frankly," Debbit told me, "I couldn't tell the difference between the two." Finally, he picked one. His justification? "The Nike Tick was larger on the tshirt that he had picked!" Debbit exclaimed in horror. Oh, Debbit, I totally understand your horror. Label Whore is a, well, label that encompasses a broad sweep of humanity. To me, there are a myriad of ways to define Label Whore. Let us take a closer look at Jeralt, an example of the Label Whore Ostentate. The LWO's favourite brands are Louis Vuitton and Armani Exchange. Louis Vuitton is their favourite because most of its stuff is monogrammed with that awful awful LV sign. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the design is because, due to successful branding, a LWO would feel it justified to pay a premium just to display the repetitive diagonals of LVs running amok on their purchases. Armani Exchange suffers these LWO by offering them bins of brainless tshirts, each simply designed and whose main focus are the words Armani Exchange emblazoned across the chest. I get the idea that they have one guy sitti |