there is a certain prescribed order for how this has to go. i am ready to move on to the next stage: philanthropy. following that, crime.

Currently reading:
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

blah

i mean, who am i kidding? all i'm doing is hemorrhaging money and getting fat.

sigh.

from Vernon God Little:

Say, for instance, two guys want to drag Taylor Figueroa to Mexico right away. One brings her roses, and says he has this plan to go to Mexico, and would she like to come along. The other dude turns up with a quart of tequila, a joint, and two tickets to the border. He doesn't show her the tickets right away, but says, 'I have hours to live - help me kill the pain.' He gets her wasted in three minutes flat, sucks her tonsils out of her throat, then pulls out the tickets and says, 'Ten minutes till the cops arrive and take you in as an accessory - let's jam.' Which one does she go with? You know the fucken answer, I don't have to tell you. And let me say, it ain't all on account of one being nice, and one being a slimeball. It's because one of them knew she would come. As Americans, we know this to be true. We invented fucken assertiveness, for chrissakes. But in amongst all the books and tapes, in between that whole assertiveness industry - and I don't mean how to fast-talk people, and increase sales and shit, like that's a whole other industry on its own, I mean the industry where you end up knowing like day is day that something's going to happen for you - you never once hear how to actually fucken do it. Like, for my money, just thinking positive doesn't cut the ice at all. I've been thinking positive all year, and fucken look at me now. My ole lady thinks a new refrigerator will turn up on her doorstep, but you ain't seen the fucker yet.

no, i haven't.

you know, it's not hard to be optimistic when schlepping around with friends during the day or ensconced with cuppa and book in galilee, but i have a feeling that deep down, buried under the self-enforced role of bon vivant, is the bone-chilling knowledge that for all i know things are not going to turn out all right.

update

no, la grand tournee gastronomique is not dead and buried, merely unchronicled. in brief, i've explored:

hougang - mostly in search of soon kway, which proved elusive. ended up eating pig organ soup in some mcmall.
zion road for famous char kway teow
club street - anyone been to windows? very excited about their sandwiches - tasty and quite affordable considering. i had the salt beef because they were out of ox tongue when i went, so another trip is in order. is this near enough to your workplace, yen?

on extraneous prepositions

Seeing as how the topic has been raised (once and again), I cannot but contribute my two cents.

"Chasing after" - indeed, very often abused by Singaporeans, but was there ever any doubt that it has a legitimate use? Local bastardizations, I suppose, usually involve the pursuit of some unidirectionally moving thing/person (e.g. "Wah lau, you let her run away for what? Go and chase after her, lah!"), the redunancy arising from the fact that you could not possibly be chasing said object/person in any other way. My take on it is this: where the preposition would come into play is if one were chasing some concept or abstraction that could be moving in any number of directions or none at all. So love, lucre, happiness, etc. Even then, I can think of exceptions (one wouldn't, for instance, (metaphorically) chase after rainbows/waterfalls (cf. TLC)) Also, the phrase seems to work much better in the passive voice. Hmm. Perhaps it's more a matter of style to insert the 'after' than one of grammatical correctness?

Another phrasal verb that always gets my hackles up is "entering into". On our lovely island, this seems to be interchangeable with simple entering - he entered into the room, the building, etc. - all of which are cases where the simple verb should suffice. Shouldn't the verb phrase be reserved for admission to things that are not obviously enclosed containers (e.g. Jesus entered into the world to save us of our sins)?

And last of all - "change up ". Yuck! Even if one did want to add a preposition, why "up"? There is no up-ness to changing! Aargh! The crosses we bear.

Books (since, now):
The Quantity Theory of Insanity - Will Self
Plowing the Dark - Richard Powers
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
and a ton of miscellaneous bridge-related stuff

and if you haven't heard Ryan Adams' In My Time of Need go download and listen and cry if in the mood

the absurd

the doorbell rings at about 7 p.m. today, and standing on the threshold is a good-looking chinese guy, in his twenties, someone i've not seen in my life. hi, he says, i was wondering if we could borrow a can opener. then, gesturing behind him by way of explanation, we live over there across from you. oh! i think, sure that just last week it was an expatriate couple living in that apartment, but willing to believe him because people move in and out of casa rosita like passengers in a transit lounge. i tell him anyway that sure you can have a can opener. then, being friendly: did you just move in? because just two days ago i did see the family movers in their ugly shirts hauling boxes and wire contraptions up the stairs. no, he says penitently, we're just having dinner. and i have nothing to say to that.

Is the teapot thing that enchanting?

alma mater

jiahao, shiny new mbbs initials and all, took a trip with me to ri to pay the annual respects to the ones who will claim to have gilded the path we now walk on. (yah right. many of our teachers were great and all that but the fact remains that most gep kids all but teach themselves. the most important job of gep teachers - at least this is what i think they are told - is to lay the smackdown when we decide that anything other than grades is supremely important.) almost a decade on, almost all of the teachers i give a damn about have left for greener pastures (or in ms. santha's case, presbytarian high - guffaw with me now) with the exception, of course, of ms. chiang who clings on to the reins of rv with the tenacity of a limpet on rock. florence lee, for those who care, is in indonesia, either being an eremite or discovering the meaning of life or both. low seng eng has disappeared through a rip in the fabric of space-time, although having said that von will no doubt leave a comment informing me not just of her mailing address and telephone number but where she had her hair done last tuesday.


emerging from the staff room, we are spotted by ms. quah. the lightbulb appears but fails to turn on and i have to supply her with a name before it all comes gushing out by association, ending with the rememberance that i was the one who (co-)wrote that play, the one with the ducks, the infamous one that was inflicted upon generations of lower secondary RI kids (though in fairness it probably took some of the edge off drunken prawns, in the same anthology). 'it spoke to them', she says, lying through very small incisors. 'we show them the video and everything and they really enjoy it.' i try not to die on the spot, and she starts babbling about how teachers are always encouraging her to publish an anthology of drama feste scripts so they won't be lost forever, and then there is rushing about and taking down of email addresses, and i ask her half-jokingly if i'll get royalties this time and she laughs and i laugh and feel a little ill.


shortly after, we finally married up with ms. chiang, trying to solve the usual crises - missing music lab keys, getting 40 teenage boys safely to orchard cineplex to watch les choristes (in lieu of choir practice - how come we never got to do that?) we had a brief, awkward chat, told her that we would try to make it to one of their christmas performances (still in the garden hotel after all these years). the last stop was for jiahao who wanted to catch up with miss mani, chief librarian and boss-of-him for 4 years. we took off for HML, still sequestered in the wooden underground beneath the boarding house dining hall. pining for the old days took a while, but we stopped short of getting the dime tour because of wanting to go catch a movie (although i couldn't resist spending a few minutes on the grand tradition of going to see my name misspelled on the pioneer boarders plaque in bayley house, something that makes me laugh to this very day).

and the movie was harold and kumar go to white castle which i actually kind of liked so there.

things that cause one to snort coffee out of nose

in the forum page:

Please keep Channel i

I was shocked to find out about the media merger.

I have been a supporter of MediaWorks and Straits Times TV since they started operations. I find the shows on MediaWorks to be of more substance that its rival's (ugh). It feels funny to know that these two media giants are merging all of a sudden.

.
.
.

Though there are a number of English channels, they cater to different people: Channel 5 (masses)(!!), Kids/Arts Central (children and arts enthusiasts) and Channel News Asia (people interested in the news)(no way).

As for TV mobile, it is strictly not a channel as it features live shows such as Singapore Idol, soccer matches and charity shows, or repeats of programmes.

This being so, is it not possible to have one more channel catering to the masses?

Masses! HAHAHA! Emma Lazarus would have been tickled. To death.

things we would rather forget about

by some feat of black magic, shaun managed to uncover this, a project that I was sure had been lost in the mists of time. i only did it for von.

The Emmy results

-- were, for the first time in recent memory, almost completely satisfying to me. My major grouse (to get that over with first) was with James Spader beating out Gandolfini for Best Actor in a Drama Series - even if he did do a good job, The Practice became completely irrelevant about 4 years ago, which I reckon should have counted for something in the voting. Anyway, that blemish aside, I was actually in complete agreement with the choice of winners in the rest of the major categories. Bruckheimer rightfully beat out Burnett's deadly duo in reality programming (a pair of shows that will no doubt be joined by The Contender next year, unless lawsuits knock it out first, which will only make it that much sweeter when TAR completes its hat trick). Allison Janney got her 4th award, which I shall not begrudge her despite my opinion that Edie Falco is a better actress who happened to have a diminished role in the 2003-2004 season. Angels in America deservedly snagged everything in sight in the miniseries department (and if you haven't watched it yet, for the love of all that's holy, please do) and the extremely-funny Arrested Development got its due as well (was sure that they were going to go with Sex and the City but for once the sentimental favorite lost to a show of actual quality. Anyway, the nod to SJP should keep them happy, I guess.) Most importantly though, my beloved David Chase finally finally finally won himself Best Drama for his show, an award far too long in coming IMHO (No explanation in heaven and hell as to why the superlative 3rd season should have lost to The West Wing, already in rapid decline). Oh, and Terence Winter, my hero, won himself a writing award. Good stuff.

if there is a hell for those who download tv shows illegally, i think it can safely be said that my spot has been labelled 'With Extra Brimstone'.

on free time

It's the typical fantasy of every working man - what would I do if I had all the free time in the world? Answers: varied and plenty, which does not at all explain the behaviour of the people for whom this is reality. I know this because I have, over the past few years, become an inveterate blog-surfer, and could easily point you to the websites of several strangers who seem to do nothing but go through a never-ending cycle of lying around and complaining online about how lying around is all they ever do.

I admit that I slept through most of yesterday's rain-drenched afternoon, something I promised myself today would not happen again. I'm writing, but one can only write for so many hours a day (usually a night-time thing for me), and ploughing through the Classifieds is typically a ten-minute affair on weekday mornings. I figured that I needed something to fill the slow-passing afternoons, so my plan is this. I will

(1) eat, and
(2) walk

It's really quite perfect. I like eating. I like walking. I've always wanted to explore the nooks and crannies of far-flung Singaporean hawker centers as well as the obscure gems near my home that I have overlooked. Food here is cheap, and the walking to places will save on transport as well as make sure I don't end up whale-sized. And I'll get to recommend things to people and become the Guru of Makan-dom, or something.

For my maiden expedition, I decided that Bencoolen Street might be a good place to uncover something tasty. After a fair bit of wandering, I lighted in this new Thai cafe in Sunshine Plaza. Its selling point is that all proceeds from sales go towards charity, and it displays the fact loudly in rather too many places considering that it only seats around 20. The decor is cheery though - cartoon sketches by amateurs on the tables; happy, playgroup colored walls. I had local-style kopi and their purported specialty - steamed bread with a Thai-style kaya. The kaya wasn't really all that different from the Singaporean stuff - less eggy, I guess, and the same hue as the emerald green pencil in a Staedtler colouring set. Tasty nonetheless, and what was different was that it came in a bowl, fondue-style, with a swirl of butter mixed in. (The bread was cut into cubes, for dipping) . Two other plusses: it's a nice place in which to read, and the manager was pleasant and attentive without being irritating. I'll give it a B+.

I took a detour through MacKenzie Road on my way home, bumping into a lost Golden Retriever who tried to pee on me and then ran away. Of course I couldn't resist a Selera curry puff (a thousand times better than Old Chang Kee, which has frankly become quite horrid since the whole franchise thing began), which then made me think about ACPS. When I was in that school, it was still on Coleman Street (where the Registry of Marriages is now), and I used to be ferried home every day in one of those boxy, light blue school buses that let out enough exhaust to kill a small rhinocerous. The bus uncle was a fat, intimidating man, always yelling at the kids in the back to stop being rowdy (and who could blame him? Primary school children really are monsters). Just like in the movies though, heart of gold, etc, and on the last day of every term (or perhaps it was every semester, I forget), he would take a detour from his usual route so that he could treat us all (one whole busload of kids) to curry puffs. I didn't really think much of it at the time, but years later I realized how phenomenally generous that was considering the pittance he must have been making (and I'm sure he had a family to look after too). Anyway, the place we stopped at was on MacKenzie, just across the way from Selera. I think it was called Rex (my dad will be able to confirm this), and it has closed down since, a victim of location and the southward sweep of the center of commerce. As the first kid to be dropped off, I always had the honour of sitting (with Justin P'ng, no less) in the front seat, a honour that also entailed the almighty responsibility of taking Uncle's money, counting the number of kids, sliding off the bus, walking into the store, and purchasing the piping hot treats to be carried out in four large, greasy paper bags. We never took that responsibility lightly. For three years, right up till we finished our PSLE, Justin and I did our duty bravely, and this is why now, when I get my head chewed off as his bridge partner, I know that it's all for my own good. Tested by fire, etc.

That last bit - not serious, but these nostalgia trips, I don't know. I mean, all around me people have become grad students and teachers and doctors and policy-makers, Old Chang Kee has spread like a fungus across the land, and I feel like all I do is look backwards and wish that it was 1990 again. Sometimes I think that reminiscing is the mental equivalent of lying around and complaning; even if it isn't overt, there's always that kernel of desire for regression, atavism. The more I tell myself to look ahead, the stronger the pull to languish in the past.

So I'll try not to nap any more. But maybe eating and walking will, eventually, work out to the same thing.

hmm

Go here and tell me if the first paragraph doesn't sound wrong to you.

lesson of the day: there is such a thing as too much mashed potato.

So there will be no raiding brothels and running around yelling "CID" because in their infinite wisdom the SPF has decided not to hire me. The news came in a shockingly brusque letter that I opened while still feeling very satiated from a fine cheesecake parfait at Cafe Rosso in Holland V. As such, the disappointment didn't immediately hit, just a kind of numbness that only crescendoed to full force this morning when I discovered that I did not want to go to church, or eat breakfast, or lunch for that matter. Moped and slept until about 1:30 when Jiahao called me asking if I wanted to go out, whereupon I decided that since I wasn't dead I'd better get on with the business of life. So, got up, showered, watched episode of Six Feet Under went out, watched The Terminal, had Japanese dinner and came home, bringing us to now.

It is tempting to just feel totally disgusted with myself and whine about how the last 2 months have been a total waste of time, but really, they haven't. For one thing, I'll go into the next interview, whenever it may be, that much less intimidated. For another, working in NIE has helped me figure out that unless I want to be utterly miserable for the rest of my life, I'd better plug away at getting a job I actually want to do rather than grabbing the first thing in sight. Perhaps my optimism will do me in, but all my life I've been taught that I can do anything I want to do, be anyone I want to be, and damn it all, that's sure as all hell not going to change now.

quitting, and such

I have sort of quit. I turned in the final draft of my report yesterday and the boss told me that short of wanting a "grossary", she was quite satisfied with everything and no longer needed my services. Unless, she said, you want me to give you more work. Much head-shaking, hurried emptying of drawers, etc.

"Sort of quit" because there is one more gala meeting next week which I (unfortunately) have to attend, apart from which I am once more free as the Easterlies. Lunch, anyone? Dinner? Tea? Second breakfast?

Felicitations have already been received from Yen, Fay, Sulin and CP (whose name gets abbreviated from now on because I'm too damn lazy to type it keep typing it out in full) over dinner last night at Annalakshmi (was that what the place was called?), Indian restaurant in Excelsior where you pay as much as you wish for however much you eat. Ordering was a bit of a trial because no one really knew what anything on the menu was, but we ended up with a spinach cottage-cheesey thing, stuffed capsicums drowning in curry, a cong1 you2 bing3-like dish that was either utthapam or uppatham or neither and a multiplicity of rotis, all very oily. oh, and samosas and cauliflower in batter to start, and gulab jamun and rasmallai at the end, no kulfi because they were out, and everyone remembering A Sense of Shame because of what CP dubs our shared something-or-another textuality, otherwise known as being forced to read the same crap in secondary school, titihoyas, mockingbirds and all.

ouch

i have bit my inner lip no less than three times in the same spot over the last two days and it is presently bleeding and swollen to the approximate size of canada

to Jiahao

A crap-ass poem :P

Will, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.
Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;
All things give way before it, soon or late.
What obstacle can stay the mighty force
Of the sea-seeking river in its course
Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?

Each well-born soul must win what it deserves.
Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate
Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves,
Whose slightest action or inaction serves
The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still,
And waits an hour sometimes for such a will.

week 8

choonping sees me in the nie canteen and looks like he's about to throw up. 'you're here for good, aren't you?' he asks. i deny the fact. 'then why are you still around?' he asks. and about ten thousand answers spin through my head and none of them are right.

On the subject of singing, I've broached the idea of going caroling this year to Eekia and Choonping and have been met with but moderate enthusiasm. It's been a long time since I've done Proper caroling (last year's Rhythm and Blue Carol of the Bells debacle does not count) and it honestly isn't too difficult to set up, doesn't have to be a big deal in terms of rehearsal time, procuring scores and so forth. Also, it is the time of year where hotels and such are practically begging the festive trollers to emerge and help up the festive quotient of their establishments so that tthe money will pour back into the coffers so that the whole lovely cycle can start up again the next year. Or we could do churches where pitch transgressions don't matter quite as much. Or hell we could just stand on a street corner somewhere with an overturned fedora.

I suppose this might be wayward nostalgia more than anything else on my part, but who cares? I've given up being embarrassed about my attachment to the past. There comes a point where one has to draw the line, admit that yes, we're changing, but there's a part of us that will always be us.

In Bishan, about a week ago, I happened by the old Base (which became World of JJ several years after we left RI), and which has now closed down and moved across the way near the S-11. I was kind of upset by that for a while (upset enough to call someone about it, yes, I'm an idiot), but you know what, I went to check out the new place and the old fat auntie is still there, as is the shorter, thinner one who looks like what Tammy from The Apprentice will be like in 30 years, and aside from things being a little glossier and the lights being a little brighter, everything is more or less the same. See, I can live with that; it's not as if I get eternally mired in the past. But let's not burn down the shop altogether; that would make me sad indeed.

Belatedly

-- I would like to second Von's recommendation of A Short History Of a Small Place - it is unpretentious, inviting, and genuinely funny. It took me forever to finish reading it, not because I wasn't dying to, but because reading time nowadays is scant. If they had a reading of it by Arlo Guthrie, I would have bought that in a heartbeat because he would have read it absolutely prefectly, cf. Alice's Restaurant. Anyway, to tempt people to the book (particularly the people reading this who sing), let me give you a sample:

We were trated to a minute or two of coughing, sneezing, nose blowing and general uneasiness among the congregation once Reverend Wilkinson had returned to his chair, and following some elaborate arm waving between Mrs. Rollie Cobb at the front of the chapel and Miss Fay Dull at the back of it Mrs. Cobb got herself properly set and anchored at the piano and then assaulted the keyboard but with such limited success that she had to break off and start in again and the second time around she got underway in fairly good form. However, Mrs. Cobb commenced to put a little pace on the melody directly and it became so frantic with embellishments and excesses that Miss Fay Dull had a difficult time cueing the sopranos and the altos, which was all she could cue since the baritones were still outside on the landing and could not see her from there. So the sopranos and the altos simply jumped aboard at the first available chink in the tune and the baritones waded in shortly thereafter and they all managed to draw together presently into what sounded very much like singing. This particular selection called for a solo and Miss Fay Dull had nominated herself, so once she choked off the competition to her satisfaction she made a fine entrance into the melody and brawled with it all the way to the refrain where the rest of the choir showed up to help her vanquish it entirely. Then they all sang together for a couple of bars before things got a little uptown in the middle and called for the baritones and sopranos to bark back and forth at each other while Miss Dull trilled away between and underneath them and Mrs. ROllie Cobb bludegeoned the whole business with some rather ponderous fingerwork. We were entrained in this fashion for what seemed an inconsiderately lengthy spell and by the time the melody began to shut down, the whole business had turned into a kind of slilgfest for soprano, choir and Seventh Day Adventist and we were pretty much relieved to see the animosities brought to a close, especially Daddy whose ears had become as red as firecoals

On a separate note, Richard Powers is a bloody genius, and for some reason he has chosen to write about all the topics dearest to my heart.

for those who are leaving

A Farewell - Lord Alfred Tennyson

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver;
No more by thee my steps shall be,
Forever and forever.

Flow, softly flow by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river;
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be,
Forever and forever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
Forever and forever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
Forever and forever.

oh! and harold perrineau, who was mercutio

Lost

New fall premiere that looks pretty cool. JJ Abrams! Dominic Monaghan! Terry O'Quinn! With my luck, though, it's going to be cancelled after the third episode.