and with that, i go for real

few things sadder than

- a once-furnished apartment now empty, a life squared and packed away into boxes, a home reduced to cardboard, bubble wrap, limbo.

harry potter

A little late to the party, perhaps, but for those who aren't yet aware, J.K. Rowling now has her own website. And, she teases about the next book.

blogging

Incidentally, I may or may not want to continue writing here once I return to Singapore. I’m a little afraid that all I’ll do is be dreary and moan about the weather and be generally boring; plus, the purpose of communicating with the parents and friends while overseas has been served. Anyway, I’ll think about it.

San Francisco, CA

-- like all other cities of note, has a very distinctive smell – pretzel salt and overnight grease, smut and smog, Vietnamese cooking and vagabond stink. Less menacing that Manhattan, San Francisco neither embraces nor harasses you; it is, as far as cities go, demure, confidently metropolitan. No need for flash or glamour, just quiet presence, gentle ushering. I enjoy making trips there – but only on my own, sans pressure and the urgent demands to go tearing from shop to shop, participants in a race to see as much as possible in the confines of the day. Rushing around is an insult to SF – but so is the casual stroll (more appropriate, perhaps, for pseudo-cities like Nowheresville, Ohio). Ones approach to SF must be moderate – midway between purposeful and apathetic, savoring its culture while respecting its urban-ness.

This jaunt was a little different from previous ones. Taboo purchases suddenly became justified by the fact that I’m leaving the U.S. for a while, (which of course makes every Banana Republic in the country strike up the “Buy Something From Me” cantata in sixteen-part harmony). Unfettered from thrift, the plundering began. (To save the parents from heartache, I won’t go into the particulars of all that I bought, although I will say that Circuit City had Return of The King on offer - so please, could members of my family not go and buy a $2 bootlegged copy from Johor Bahru like you did last time? Thank you.) Went up Market, down Powell, and then on to side streets with x-rated video stores standing hip to hip with Radio Shack and Urban Outfitters. Lunch was quiche and salad with a tasty vinaigrette, and there was reading (Mr Ives’ Christmas - Oscar Hijuelos) over cappuccino – a whole book from cover to cover! – which I may book blog about if I find the time.

That’s it for new U.S. cities – and that’s also almost it for new entries (for a bit). We’ll be leaving Shaun’s apartment on Friday and staying at his aunt’s for a couple of days before Paris and wherever else the winds take us. I’ll post short bits and pieces when I get the chance over the next couple of days, and then…well, I’ll have my laptop but who knows when and where we’ll find Internet access, so don’t nobody be holding their breath or nothing. Take it easy everyone.

faulkner

From his introduction to The Sound and The Fury

“…I have tried to escape and I have tried to indict. After five years, I look back at The Sound and The Fury and see that that was the turning point: in this book I did both at one time. When I began the book, I had no plan at all. I wasn’t even writing a book. Previous to it, I had written three novels, with progressively decreasing ease and pleasure, and reward or emolument. The third one was shopped about for three years during which I sent it from publisher to publisher with a kind of stubborn and fading hope of at least justifying the paper I had used and the time I had spent writing it. This hope must have died at last, because one day it suddenly seemed as if a door had clapped silently and forever to between me and all publishers’ addresses and booklists and I said to myself, Now I can write. Now I can just write.”

couplet

for some reason, suddenly recalled:

a little nonsense now and then
is cherished by the wisest men

is that lear?

lines

After 24 years of going to Mass, I have to say that there are 4 of them that consistently pull at something within me. (Exaggerating to say that it is upon these pronouncements that my whole faith turns? Possibly, though not by much.) In no particular order:

*"Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church"
A fancier way of saying that we're all human. Crusades, indulgences, Pius XII and the Holocaust, slavery, sex scandals, Galileo - it's enough to lead any Catholic to despair. Yet people miss the obvious thing: being religious isn't the same as being perfect or divine, it's about having faith - and well, we have plenty of that.

*"For the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory are Yours"
For very little reason other than the fact that it is a powerful oratorical line, the stresses all falling cleanly where they should be. Incidentally, I prefer this modern version to: "For thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory"; the statement seems more majestic somehow when it leads up to the possessive pronoun; we know, when it comes, precisely what it is that is thine.

*"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
Saying this gives me chills every time, this expression of tremendous humility in the face of infinite love. I don't even know what else to say about how it feels. Well - I do, but it's mildly sacrilegous - if you recall the scene at the end of Return of the King where Aragorn says that the hobbits bow to no one or some such and then you get the wide angle shot of the mass genuflection and something catches in your throat? Yeah, it feels something like that, just more.

*"May the Body and Blood of Christ bring us all to Everlasting Life"
The priest gets this line after he consecrates the Host. He's not required to say it out loud (I think) and many don't. I kind of feel they should. After all, what else is all of this about?

And those are the religious posts off my chest...for a while at least.

passage

-- with thanks to the mother for sending me this more than a year ago

From The Sacred Romance - Brent Curtis and John Eldredge

“Life, said Woody Allen, is divided between the horrible and the miserable. A cynical assessment, perhaps, but if we're honest we'll have to admit our journey is hardly along the primrose path. Pretending that life is easier or more blessed than it really is hinders our ability to walk with God and share him with others. Faith is not the same thing as denial. Blessings come, to be sure. But they tend to be infrequent, unpredictable, and transient. In the day-to-day pattern of things, our journey is shaped more often by dragons and nits - crises that shake us to the core and persistent troubles that threaten to nag us to death. Dragons and nits: Are they tragic events and random inconveniences, or are they part of the plot through which God redeems our heart in very personal ways?”

ipod (addendum)

By the way, I got the green.

Currently reading:
The Sound and The Fury - William Faulkner
~ I have a feeling that interspersing classics with crapola is probably not a very good reading habit, but what to do? I need to find some writing that is the equivalent of sorbet, something to cleanse the palette in between books by writers of vastly different calibers.

ipod (part 2), a.k.a. the real point

Warning:
This bit, though the main point, is still rather trivial.

(6)
So anyway, the Ipod Mini, for those of you who aren't familiar with the product, comes in 5 different colors: blue, green, pink, silver and gold. They're all very nice shades: no gaudy flamingo pink or off-putting bile green. Rather than describe them all, just go take a look at them here

Now, the question, of course, once I had found an amicable seller, was what color I wanted. My first inclination was towards the blue. Blue, in general, suits me, and as far as accessorizing goes, it matches well with my Palm Zire and with colors in general. The more I looked at it, though, the less I liked it - it kind of reminds one of a toy (or worse still, the Nokia 2100/3100. Ugh.) The gold (which is really more like champagne), was very appealing, though it may possibly be perceived as quite obiang in some circles. Silver...feh. Too much like any other gadget out there (and again, easily mistakable for a handphone). Pink, as the Monty Python guys would say, is way out.

I wasn't very sold on the green at first, but the longer I stared at the brochure, the more enticing it seemed. It was kind of summery, not too overstated, but something clearly unique. The thought that Su-Lin would be pleased crossed my mind. I thought about it. I thought about it some more. I e-mailed they guy to ask him what colors he had, and he told me that he only had blue, green and silver left. Scratched out gold. Still hated the silver, so was left with blue and green.

Looked at the blue. Looked at the green. Looked at the blue. Looked at the green. Composed an e-mail to say that I wanted the blue, then deleted it and looked at the blue and the green some more. Blue. Green. Green. Blue. One fish two fish red fish blue fish. Went for a walk to admire the kaleidoscope of colors that exist in the world besides baby blue and apple green and then arrived home and contemplated the decision again.

Anyway, I'm sure you're heartily sick of this by now, so LONG STORY SHORT...I realize from this and other recent events that I am horribly, painfully indecisive. I never really realized that before. I always assumed that my tendency to pass the buck was because I was easy-going, but no! in actuality, I just can't make up my bloody mind. It's bad! And although I appreciate the Heaney and the Voight and all the people who try to justify procrastination and vacillation, this is something that must be stopped. Now. Can one make resolutions in the middle of the year?

ipod (part 1)

warning:
this entry is long and boring and probably not worth your while

(-2)

~~ some months ago
me: you know mom, if you're thinking of a graduation gift/birthday present, i've been eyeing the apple ipods for quite a while now.
(later)
me: although, you know, if you feel it's too expensive or anything, that's ok, i understand.
(later still)
me: but surprise me.

(-1)

~~ graduation day
no gift in evidence; instead, a card with a sufficiency of money within

(0)

(a) which, if you think in economic terms, actually maximises ones utility by putting one right on the consumption possibilities curve. did i get that right? it's been a long time since a level econ.

(b) in psychological terms, however, it places one in an immediate dilemma. choice breeds uncertainty! perhaps the parents did not, for some reason, intend for one to have an ipod. perhaps this is a subtle form of discouragement. an advocation of frugality. the card gives no indication of how the money is to be spent, no apology (for example: 'did not have time to go shopping'/'unsure of what model to buy'), nothing.

(c) j_____, i said to myself, you are overthinking things again.

(1)

~~ 11 days ago, California
trying to figure out what configuration of things to get. the 15GB model? comes without dock/carrying case/remote. 20GB? kind of expensive, and of the three extra things i only really need the case. none of them come with a usb cable. the numbers keep adding up.

(2)

~~ 9 days ago
shaun informs me that if we buy the thing in the berkeley store we get a 10% discount. we troop over there. the salesman gives me the pitch, and the wallet is halfway out the pocket before the proverbial spoke in the wheel makes its appearance. shaun starts asking about the ipod mini (4GB). the salesman shows us his. it is tiny, lighter than a handphone, and (although i hate the word) positively chic. if it were a drink, it would be a mimosa. two sips of it in a tiny glass flute. if it were an actor, it would have the body of michael anderson and the head of matthew broderick. if it were an analogy, it would be neither of the previous two, because they were indescribably bad.


(3)

~~ next 7 days
telephone calls:
circuit city
radio shack
every damn mac store within 100 miles of berkeley CA

online searches:
apple
amazon
half
cnet.shopper
ebay

etc.

an ever-broadening hunt reveals:
no stock of ipod minis! anwyhere! in the continental united states!
(which has been the case for 2 months now)
(save for sketchy second-hand sellers obviously out to scam the inexperienced, and those who have jacked up the price to completely unaffordable levels)
(apparently, apple severly underestimated demand and are running one of the biggest backlogs in the history of manufacturing)

(4)

oh well, i think, i guess i'll just stick with the white 15GB model after all.

(5)

~~yesterday
by pure luck, find a seller on half.com who was actually coming to berkeley (and selling at a price only slightly above retail value). shake (online) on the deal.

which brings me to the real point.

coffee

In Such A Long Journey, one of Mistry's characters makes the comment (and I must paraphrase because I'm too lazy to look up the actual quotation) that tea is a beverage consumed not merely for its flavor but for the status it confers upon one of observer. This remark was made in the context of tea-drinking at an Indian railway station, but it is, I think, more generally true as well. Having a cup of tea (or coffee) in front of one while sitting at a cafe is a statement. It's as if one has a large placard on the table: "I'm not going anywhere for a while." (and the secondary message: "Please don't disturb me, my cuppa is my companion".) I guess that's why a good mug of coffee is so essential to me when I want to spend an afternoon reading. Yes, it's a stimulant, but it also helps to shut out the rest of everything, reduce the universe to me, my book, and my brew.

Sadly, the charm is not failsafe; I was interrupted mid-chapter today by a very unlikely pair - acquaintances from Duke who graduated last year and are now in the Psych department in Berkeley working on their PhDs. How they spotted me while driving by I will never know, but long story short, it looks like I'll have to get a meal or something with them tomorrow out of politeness. I suppose I shouldn't be so grudging about it - they are nice people - it's just that seeing them reminds me of Durham, and insufficient time has passed for me to want to be nostalgic about North Carolina. I don't know whether this makes sense but clean breaks are important to me, at least initially. No sense in leaving bits of the past trailing behind you when you're trying to get on with life.

by the way

- not that i enjoy tootling my own horn, but i am teochew and spell immaculately

(punctuation, on the other hand, gets me every time)

get rich quick

this will make no sense to almost everyone, but it has to be said. i walked into ‘games of berkeley’ this afternoon and lo and behold! urza’s saga packs are retailing at us$11.99 a pop. they were sing$4.00 when they first came out (and I actually bought them at that price), so I make that a 500% markup. the friendly man at the counter confirmed that 11.99 is indeed market value due to a combination of factors - limited print run, popularity and speculation. a subtle plan involving judicious repacking, superglue and ebay comes to mind.

the choonping

well, we've all linked to his page, so i suppose i must do my bit. welcome, choonping, to the world of spilling your guts in public and regretting it profoundly afterward. of putting yourself at the mercy of people who will tear your grammar, spelling, style and personal dignity to shreds.

to all who do not know choonping: feel free to drop in, but keep your fingers well away from the cage. he bites.

moniker

there is just something wrong with naming an indian restaurant "naan and curry". it's almost like going out of your way to proclaim your own unspecialness.

Currently reading:
Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
- it was Clay who recommended this to me, I remember now. I bet it's rubbish. If anyone knows this to be fact, please warn me off before it's too late.

ugh

there was a time (long ago) when i labored under the misapprehension that someone who augured bad fortune was a “harbringer”. this seemed to make logical sense, what with the word “bring” comfortably nestled among those extra letters, and the word meaning what it does. anyway, I was put in my place by my betters, and figured that that was the end of the story for that particular word. until today, when I discovered that “harbinger” can be either a noun or a transitive verb (as in “john was ever the one to harbinger bad tidings.”), and the worms spilled forth from the can anew. harbinger as a verb? so having done so in the past is to have “harbingered”? and in the continuous form, are you harbingering? (my spell check seems to approve of both of these words so I suppose so.) it’s ugliness all around, but the alternative, I guess, is far worse: harbinge as a verb is just plain wrong, and harbinging sounds like a group of cantonese people feasting on prawns. (god help me, I’m channeling tjan.)

bookstore

browsing in a well-stocked bookstore is, without doubt, one of life’s great pleasures
i could spend days in the regulator, or black oak books
weeks
at the same time though, one can’t help but feel a wistful sadness while perusing the ceiling-high shelves
because:
among the thousands and thousands of volumes of display
most of them i will never read
almost all of them i will never own
missing out on good stuff (superlative stuff!) is inevitable
it’s kind of like that old game show, supermarket sweep
except that life is the supermarket
the produce are the books
and god is dale winton, holding you back as you bob excitedly at the start line
and when he says you can go, you burst into activity, dashing, swerving, careering through the aisles
and it’s all free, and you can take whatever you want
once it’s in your cart, it’s yours!
until the whistle blows anyway
mania! grabbing! elbows!
and meanwhile, dale is there on the sidelines, smiling and smiling as your time runs down
don’t miss out on the turkeys, he’ll say
or: j_____ just dashed right past the bonus item…and didn’t pick it up!
and, just as you’re getting warmed up, the buzzer goes, and you have to limp back to the checkout counter
no turkeys
no ben and jerry’s chunky monkey ice cream (now dioxin-free!)
and all the stuff you bloody regret picking up.

st. mary magdalene's

- is in northern Berkeley, up Milvia Street, an unpretentious white building that blends in well with the residences neighboring it. It is the fifth parish I've attended Mass in this year - and probably the church in which I've felt the least at home. Largely, I think, because the service I attended was pitched at kids (mostly third graders who had just had their first Communion yesterday).

Still, it was not terrible - for a start, the celebrant seemed genuinely happy to be there, unlike some priests who sulk their way through Mass and read their sermon in monotones off one side of an 8.5 by 11. The choir was passable, joyous even, although I still maintain that if you know you can't sing in parts you shouldn't try.

And then there was the Q & A during the sermon:

(the gospel, of course, was from john: " peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.")

Priest: So, children, what kind of things give you peace?
Girl in third row: Playing
Priest: Playing, good, anyone else?
Another girl: Sleeping
(Heh. I approve.)
Priest: Sleeping. What else can give us peace?
Precocious boy right at the front: Money!

*
Then there was the homeless lady with long straggly hair who, as she passed me in the aisle on the way to receive the Eucharist, leaned over and asked if I could spare her some change. Stunned, I instinctively refused (almost always do, according to the give a man a fish philosophy), and then felt bad because I was in church, and then felt angry because she probably knew that and was trying to use the location to guilt people out of their money.

(My feelings were somewhat assuaged when I saw her guzzling half of the chalice of wine before high-tailing it out the back door).

*
Attending church in all these different places has been good in giving me perspective, refreshing me, shaking me out of the rut one gets into by attending the same service in the same church for months, years. Mass in Stella Maris (in Bermuda) was (for want of a better word), earthy - not in the sense that it was crude, but rather that it was atavistic, truer to the original Mass than its contemporary form (though not in Latin). St. Egbert's (Beaufort) was a parish of great spirit and joy, infected, I suppose, by the verve of the Bible Belters. And St. Mary Magdalene...well, it sort of defies description at the moment, but we shall see. One more week here. No more children's Masses for me, though.

service, bad

thought i had seen the last of racism in restaurants, but our server in the seafood restaurant we just came back from (which shall remain unnamed) was definitely One Of Those. rude and inattentive (while swooning and fawning over the caucasians at the next table); did not name the specials; did not give us extra butter when asked; did not ask us how our meal was; flung dishes at us, etc. his tip: one green penny. we were going to give him singapore coins but none of us had any.

self-policing

"one of those books that everyone seems to love but i" or "one of those books that everyone but i seems to love"? both, i think, are technically right, but the latter runs into the problem of the verb jarring because it disagrees with the proximal pronoun. shaun asserts that the latter syntax is more correct, but it seems yukky to me. i don't know.

may 13/14

bored, walked down to the berkeley public library yesterday to see what i could see. bored because: only books in current possession are history of the world (just read), wuthering heights (just read), penelope fitzgerald's the blue flower (presented to me by minz but i've put off reading it because the blurb just doesn't sound appealing for some reason) and shaun's copy (for class) of to the lighthouse which is one of those books that everyone seems to love but i. thus, no books; thus, staring at white walls and ceilings with unhappy cogitations past, present and future; thus, the need to get out, wherever out may be.

plus point of library:
25 cent paperbacks

minus point of library:
most of these paperbacks being old jeffrey deavers or about breastfeeding.

further unhappiness upon discovery that only californian residents can apply for library cards (admittedly, the temptation to abscond would have been great), but what can you do about it? browsing, emerged with a couple of old john irvings, jitterbug perfume (tom robbins), recommended by someone (forget who) in the past few months, and the things they carried (tim o'brien) which i think minz blogged about at some point in the not-too-distant past. started on the o'brien and was about 2/3 done when most unceremoniously chased out by fierce asian-american librarians because the place was closing.

finished o'brien today in barnes and noble - surprisingly impressed with it overall. was not what i expected it to be (i.e. along the lines of norman mailer/james jones etc.) very meta-; the bits where he talks about stories and war literature are, i suppose, what make the book. and, in a way, clarify the genre, and to a certain extent, all writing. take our blogs: how much of what we write is true? so much of what i say is made up it's not even funny. stories, as o'brien points out, objectify experience, but in order for them to do so, we have to fudge the details. fabricate, obfuscate, take artistic liberties, condense, change names to protect the innocent.

i mean, honesty is hard and lying is convenient for the purposes of narrative and blogs are more fun if they're bits and pieces of a story so really, why not?

anyway i digress. library. vast and varied collection, but as i said, check-out service only available to californian residents and distinct lack of decent places in the library itself to read. most comfortable location: three grimy armchairs, vacant because the vagrants of berkeley use them in turn as napping spots during the day. further minus point: no coffee. coffee a must when reading, particularly for long stretches at a time.

conclusion: barnes and noble better hangout. update: pressganged shaun into checking books out from the school library, thus relieved from woolf in the evening (for now).

Currently reading:
Such A Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry

barnes

Remember this bit in History of the World?

“’We must love one another or die,’ wrote W.H. Auden, bringing from E.M. Forster the declaration: ‘Because he once wrote “We must love one another or die,” he can command me to follow him’. Auden, however, was dissatisfied with this famous line from ‘September 1, 1939’. That’s a damned lie!” he commented. ‘We must die anyway.’ So when reprinting the poem he altered the line to the more logical ‘We must love one another and die.’ Later he suppressed it altogether.

Ah, Auden.

stanford

- is by far one of the most picturesque campuses in the United States of America. Had I known, I would have applied to go there. Alas, all I can do now is visit once in a while and admire The Oval and the Mediterranean architecture from the vantage point of visitor, perfuming the air with sighs as is my wont.

drowning

Have you ever had the experience where you confide in someone because you think it will make you feel better, and for a while after it does, but then you kind of realize that it has only brought you to a state where you feel like your heart is coming out of your chest and your head is being pressed in a vise and every breath you take feels like it’s a mixture of lime and chlorine? No? Never mind then.

disclaimer

ok, here we go again. i have said this before, but this time i shall make myself eminently clear, since making this blog public seems to have visited grief on all of us in some way shape or form.

1) things written on this blog are NOT about you. unless:
a) your name is in the entry
b) the entry is unambiguously about an event of which you were a participant
c) the entry links to a page created by you or about you

2) like the hippies of yore, i am all about the love. i only sound bitter because the world often snows me under with unkindnesses and bad chinese food.

3) if you leave a snarky/caustic comment on my comments board, you are fair game for my sniping back at you.

so can we please get along? i believe in free speech as much as the next person and i don't want to have to shed tears of blood and tear away my flesh every time i write an entry because i have to consider the myriad ways i might be delivering a crushing blow to your ego. if you have been given the url to this page, i think that you are in some measure a special person to me, and it matters to me that you're not hurt, especially not by me.

i know what it's like to hurt.

so please please please IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU

in transit

Berkeley, CA

Self-proclaimed "Durham's Best" taxicabs sent us a vehicle that broke down halfway to the airport leaving us (Mom, Mike, I) stranded unhappily on the highway for nearly half an hour waiting for a replacement. In consequence, my mom and brother arrived at the terminal with little time to spare and were eventually thwarted by queues that snaked out of the building. They missed their original flight (10:30 a.m.) and the next one (12:45, full), and the one after that because of an administrative cock-up on the part of the UA receptionist. We're United behind you indeed. I ended up leaving before them (although my flight was originally 6 hours after theirs), and one can only hope that they're now in New York at the time of this writing.

Myself, I'm in Shaun's apartment, being bullied around mercilessly as usual (don't touch this; don't do that etc.) The good(?) news is that there will be blogging per normal, probably in copious amounts seeing as I am going to be abandoned to myself quite a bit, for the next few days at least.

Currently reading:
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

graduation, thoughts

(1)
And so it ends

(2)
As T.S. Eliot famously said:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.


(3)
Which, in a way, is a comforting thought, although who knows how applicable it is in the world as we know it. People nowadays don’t see college as a time of exploration. It has definable start and end points - matriculation and commencement – and everything in between is filler, a way to get to the prize. Or it is other things: an overpriced library subscription, a passport to inebriation, take your pick. The process is no longer as important, as long as you reach the finish line in the end.

(4)
And after all that, the finish line is “commencement”. The end is where we start from (Eliot again).

(5)
The actual ceremony takes place in Wallace Wade stadium in the baking heat. Graduation garb and the summer weather don’t go well together; I am, of course, in black from head to toe – black mortarboard, black gown, black shoes – absorbing all wavelengths of light on the visible spectrum and wishing they would get on with it. They give out each class of degree separately and there are approximately eight million of them. Madeleine Albright speaks. I find the contrast between her and our Convocation speaker, Maya Angelou, vaguely amusing. On arrival, a poet – be idealistic, dream, learn; and when it is time to go, an honored politician – be useful and productive and for heaven’s sake don’t fuck up the rest of your life.

(6)
Betsy and Knuth seem shocked to hear that I’m not going directly on to grad school after the endless discussions we’ve had about it over the past year. They try to hide it, but of course it’s in their expressions, clear as anything. I trot out my well-rehearsed speech about the decision being “the best thing for me at this time”, a speech that I will no doubt have to give ten thousand more times in the next few months.

(7)
Everyone talks about the time when it “hits” them. It wasn’t during the ceremony for me, not was it when I was saying goodbye to my friends. Rather, it happened on Monday morning, just after sun-up, when I walked through Duke Hospital to Main West for the last time in quest of an Internet connection and a bagel. Then it hit me: this is it. No more Duke Hospital, no more West Campus, no more sunning ourselves on the quad. No more late night Dillo runs or early morning cups of French vanilla.

And I think: wow, it really is over.

break

due to circumstances (i.e. no connection, parents), will probably be unable to blog for a while

next entry probably from the other side of the continent. monday? maybe.

take care all

friends

- is, despite what anyone might say about it, really Our Generation's show, one of the programmes that got us started on television, and it is sad to see it end. Beyond humor/entertainment/etc., I'm kind of glad that S'pore started airing it in its early days because it's given me immediate common ground with most Americans, is often one of the few matching threads in our growing-up experiences, and has helped me break the ice with people on innumerable occasions. (Friends facilitating friendships. Geddit? Wokka wokka.) Episodes get linked to memories - Chandler and Monica's wedding reminds me of my first days at Duke, the recent thanksgiving episodes recall spending time over the break on an empty campus with the folks who always stay behind - Karen, Siyin, Anu, the crazy Language Dorm guys. Farther back in the past, I associate Ross and Rachel's "we were on a break" arc with RJC, reading spoiler scripts in that novelty shop in Holland V (forget the name), daydreaming in class while Rollins read us Gulliver's Travels from cover to cover.

I'm a nostalgia freak, and though I hate playing into the hands of the media, with this show they have me where they want me. Everyone needs mental hooks on which to hang their important memories, and somehow, these have become some of mine.

so there

to those who say i'm eternally critical of others: i tipped the waitress at breakfast an extra 50c because she was interesting and talked about her experience at cornell studying textiles without being insipid or pretentious and because the home fries were really good as was the biscuit.

packing

suitcases: unliftable

things that do not fit into suitcases:
- wall posters, 36" x 28", three
- "Tubey" Amazing Race bag, yellow
- yearbooks, hardcover (thick and heavy), two
- leather shoes, black, very uncomfortable
- tailored jacket
- Gap winter coat
- box of random assorted junk - glass swan paperweight, Beanie Baby dog, shotglasses from all over the place, Spring Chicken, photo frames, etc.

hot and bothered

for the sake of organization, titles

what it says

genetics

over coffee and cake, we discuss the human genome project

why, asks one my friends, do people still carry around the notion that a genome is a program for building an organism? the metaphor doesn't hold - all humans, for instance, have the same set of genes but come out entirely different based on environment, promoters, activation of transcription factors etc. if anything the genome is a suggestion. a nudge in the right direction.

because, we conclude, the arts people need some romanticized notion of what's going on so that books like jurassic park and can be written and films like godsend can be made and bad art exhibitions with copper wire double helices and vials of human blood can be put on display.

and now, i await the indignation.

midget

There's a midget on the new season of The Amazing Race! I'm highly amused.

books, buying

Dilemma: I would like to have personal copies of -
- a complete set of Ishiguros (A Pale View Of Hills; The Unconsoled; The Remains of the Day; An Artist of The Floating World. Have I missed any? I already have When We Were Orphans at home)
- Life of Pi
- The Power and The Glory

- all of which I have read but know that I will want to re-read at some point in the (hopefully near) future, and most of which can be had new from half.com at 99 cents (plus shipping). The problem is that I'll have to have them sent over to California and will then be forced to lug them all over Europe, unless Shaun's mom will kindly acquiesce to bringing them back with her (awkward to ask. Are you reading this Dax?). Poor planning as usual. Isn't this such a Minz problem? I recall her complaining about something similar before visiting here.

Currently (re-)reading:
A History of The World in 10.5 Chapters - Julian Barnes. Von made me read this back in the salad days of Low Seng Eng and $2.50 ban mian and I've been through it about once every 2 or 3 years since then. I like it muy much.

errata

Reading over that last long entry, I realize that I quite dislike some of what I have said. Are retractions possible in blogland? I feel rather loath to take it all down - nescit vox missa reverti and all that.

Also, one should use expressions correctly if one wants to use them at all.

Waiting for wonderful smelling sponge cake to come of the oven so that we can start on homemade tiramisu. Made with real Grand Marnier and mascarpone cheese, and almost with cognac as well except that it was rather too expensive.

What makes a bad book? Evans (I think) once told us that bad books are those in which everything happens for the purpose of plot, that any development of character, theme, mood etc. is incidental and subordinate to the Story. The Hollywood Syndrome, if you will, where "if there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last." [Anton Chekhov] I wonder sometimes if this isn't just snobbishness (snobbery?), because while it's true that a lot of bad books fit this mold, what of classic hard-boiled American fiction, Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Cain et al.? Not to mention top tier SF writers who produce largely plot-driven books which critics would still consider objectively "good".

I ask because I feel like I was on shaky ground last night in a conversation about Dan Brown, specifically the fact that one of my friends is rather inexplicably on her second round through his books. Was one round of the vapidness (vapidity?) insufficient? Or am I just not allowed to offer an objective opinion that his books are bad because she thinks that they're the best things since Marble Slab Creamery? No matter how much hair-pulling you engage in, there's always the brick wall of "but I like it", and all you can do is bite your tongue and pray that people will experience enlightenment like Saul on the Damascan Road.

I freely admit that in some subjects (specifically: books, TV, movies) I'm awfully hardnosed, but surely one has to have conviction in some matters; if you stand for nothing you will fall for everything, etc. What I need is some kind of Grand High Authority, a catalog that I can flip through. It will have the following categories:

1) Books that you May Read Once, and Quickly, perhaps when No Other Books are Available, and Never Again
2) Books that you May Read if You are Stranded On A Desert Island with No Other Reading Material Available and Even Then Think Twice
3) Books that you Should Under No Circumstances Touch With a Ten Foot Pole
4) Books that Should Never Have Been Written and Whose Authors Should Be Roasted Over A Slow Fire for Inflicting Such Dreck on Humanity

etc.

Was clearing out my hotmail box when I found this contribution from a Raffles Voices alumnus. It reminds me of a cappella warm ups (and it's tricky to get them in time so they harmonize exactly)!

Over dinner last night, we mused over dubbing Han with a Christian name, and someone suggested Cole, so he could be ColeHaan like the shoes. We also pondered why Americans actually manage to say his name right (rhyming with barn as opposed to van) and decide that they probably would not have before Harrison Ford was Han Solo in Star Wars and everyone took to that pronounciation.

That was moderately uninteresting.

Anyway, we returned to his apartment at around 10 to get a party started - a farewell cum birthday party which Han threw in honor of himself, even buying his own cake. That's one way to make sure no one forgets your birthday. Other lesser contributions mostly came from Karen, and consisted of everything that had accumulated in her refrigerator over the course of the past two semesters, including: exceedingly moldy gruyere, garlic and feta cheese dip, 6 boxes of Table Water (half-eaten), a box of Familia Swiss Muesli (no added sugar) and several questionable oranges (a la Monica's on last week's Friends, which was the second last one and which no one in Singapore has seen yet neener neener). Han broke out the umpteen cans of Busch Light which have been sitting in his own refrigerator since before I left for Xmas break and practically begged us to drink them. (No one did). After that: gin and tonics, gin rummy, South Indian techno tracks, faux-Cosmopolitans, and finally falling into bed at 3:30 in the morning when the last of the crowd had drifted away to get a few hours shuteye before early flights to places distant.

And so begins the series of goodbyes. I don't think I'll cry, but if I do, I'm not going to admit it.