31 "free" digital channels!

Am typing this in the middle of the night because wireless internet here is seven bucks a day and being miserly and Chinese, I don't want to waste it. Anyway, I'm now in Launceston (a city so often ignored, my spellcheck adds a red line underneath its name.) I'm staying at a hotel for a night before driving up to Cradle Mountain, and the town clocktower next door chimes actively and almost enthusiastically every 15 minutes — yep I'm gettin' lots of sleep here.

Also: hypothetically speaking, would I apply to an organisation that insists you operate on Netscape (in a javascript pop-up) every time you log in to submit form after form? (I mean, come on guys, who uses Netscape now anyway?) Additionally, submission deadlines don't agree with each other on different pages, the site's periodically down, etc. (and I have to deal with all this in a hotel room in Tasmania... brilliant.) But it's fine, I can do my own soul-searching on the mountain.

In happier news, check out what I've been up to for the past week! Includes: suspension bridges, kayaking in a frigid drizzle, walking on rocks, and eating rhubarb pie. Mmm.

My Vacation Rules

1. No Facebook, except when uploading photos. Even then, one has to contemplate On Photography while watching the upload bar.
2. When not doing anything, read a book. One may do chapter summaries if absolutely necessary. 
3. No creamy salad dressings, even when labelled organic. 
4. It's OK not to miss home. Not missing home is a grown-up disposition.
5. It's OK to eat Chinese food in Melbourne, but only with a critical attitude towards immigration policy.
6. It's Not OK to buy koala and kangaroo themed items, unless purchased for kitsch tastes.
7. Do not make comments about the retardedness of something or other, except in the company of people with a similar sense of humour.
8. Do not attempt do watercolour painting while on Cradle Mountain. One cannot paint in watercolours, and to do so will only result in frustration and self-doubt.
9. Be nice to the children on board the plane, and only burn effigies of them in the privacy of the lavatory. (If naked flames are prohibited, the pressure-activated flush is violent enough.)
10. It's OK to get fat on holiday, as long as fatness is not induced by McDonald's, Hungry Jack's Wendy's, frozen dinners, airline pudding, etc.

WELCOME TO CAPS LOCK LAND 3

I'M SUPPOSED TO WRITE MY ESSAY NOW BUT AS USUAL I AM DOING EVERYTHING BUT THE ESSAY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO:

STALKING NATALIETRAN (WHO IS IN SINGAPORE THE DAY I'M FLYING OFF, FML)

DRINKING LEFTOVER MUJI SODA. FOUL.

BLOGGING. (!)

ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK

From Easy A:

Brandon: Is there an Olive here? 

Rosemary: There's a whole jar of them in the fridge!

 Rosemary is my favourite character.

notes

Things I'm reading in Australia:

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

The Believer, September 2010

The Bible

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Being Alive (poetry anthology)

The Consolations of Philosophy

I also feel that I might suddenly, intensely, start to miss all the people back home while kayaking in a remote corner of Tasmania. 

Angela McRobbie (from Postfeminism and Popular Culture):

When in a TV advertisement (1998/9) another supermodel, Claudia Schiffer, took off her clothes as she descended a flight of stairs in a luxury mansion on her way out of the door towards her new Citreon car, a similar rhetoric is at work. This advert appears to suggest that yes, this is a self-consciously “sexist ad,” feminist critiques of it are deliber ately evoked. Feminism is “taken into account,” but only to be shown to be no longer necessary. Why? Because there is no exploitation here, there is nothing remotely naïve about this striptease. She seems to be doing it out of choice, and for her own enjoyment; the advert works on the basis of its audience knowing Claudia to be one of the world’s most famous and highly paid supermodels. Once again, the shadow of disapproval is introduced (the striptease as site of female exploitation), only instantly to be dismissed as belonging to the past, to a time when feminists used to object to such imagery. To make such an objection nowadays would run the risk of ridicule. Objection is pre-empted with irony.

A word I like: genuflect

Are physical spaces commensurable? Yardsticks are necessarily reductive (?)

Looking for local scholarship opportunities opens up depressing future after depressing future...

To bake: savory caramelized onion muffins

streams of consciousness + drowning

Ow my head hurts but I'm not terribly upset about it, because I got baptized today! V. glad my grandparents came down, as well as my fwenz A & J. My family went to Zhou's kitchen again, because it's a near a taxi stand, which supposedly helps my grandparents get around painlessly. I spent the entire afternoon shopping with parents around Novena, which was weird, because who shops at Novena anyway?? The whole family bought Salomon hiking shoes for trekking in Cradle Mountain, except me, because I am a simple man who can be content with comfortable Muji shoes. Speaking of holidays, we're all very excited and my sister now expends most of her intellectual energy on making wardrobe decisions (e.g. ensembles that revolve around the cable-knit jumper originally owned by my mum in the Eighties) and cool places to shop. Once again, being a simple man, all I am asking for is a visit to the state library in Melbourne, UNESCO City of Literature. I am looking forward to taking photographs with my cousin's DSLR + posing next to trees in the woods. Also, my head still hurts. And I need to pack my bag. I'll take a photograph of the pile of books that I'm bringing along to read. 

taffy

Things I miss: the debaters, baking, conversations with Mrs H, birthday surprises

Things I worry about: an intellect on the decline, drowning in the baptismal pool, looking out of the plane cabin's window and seeing the wing on fire, detecting nervousness and fear over the cabin intercom

Things I have eaten today, in chronological order: one grape, peanut butter on toast, wholemeal banana walnut muffins, a café latte, Hokkaido ramen, gyoza, chicken karaage, ice cream (matcha, vanilla and mango sorbet), molten chocolate cake, cubic Japanese candy, brown rice, sautéed sugar snap peas with baby corn, grilled cod and onion, Unsettling Grey Herbal Soup (opaque and nutty, thin and grainy)

Things I am looking forward to, not necessarily in any order: getting baptized finally, eating barbecued chicken, jetting around Sydney and then Melbourne and then Launceston and then Cradle Mountain and then Freycinet and then Hobart and then Melbourne and then Sydney again (while picking out gifts along the way), watching The Rocky Horror Show, finding a job/internship, macarons, YF camp 2010, Universal Studios, *secret santa*, not learning how to drive, "serving the nation", loaning books to the KI library, Christmas dinner

notes

!!!!! THE As ARE OVER !!!!!

Cheese consumed: none

Dream: I bought a small puppy and played with it all day. It learnt how to jump, and jumped right out of my window on the 12th level. It landed on a car. Blood, everywhere.

In other news, I've learnt how to operate the espresso machine at home. Caffeine habit for the holidays, here I come.

career plan (draft 2)

filmmaker

activist

cultural theorist

notes

Cheese consumed: Parmigiano-Reggiano
Dreams: Several, all rather unremarkable. Didn't bother remembering.

Banana and flaxseed wholemeal muffins
Caramelized onion, garlic and dill muffins

"The lignans in flaxseed appear to play a role in protecting against breast, colon, prostate, and perhaps skin cancer."

"Our study of 10 onion varieties and shallots clearly shows that onions and shallots have potent antioxidant and antiproliferation activities and that the more total phenolic and flavonoid content an onion has, the stronger its antioxidant activity and protective effect" — Rui Hai Liu, Cornell U

"Apart from offering strong tangy flavor, dill has many medicinal properties, which come from certain compounds called Monoterpenes. The protective Monoterpenes, are stimulants and activate secretions of an enzyme called glutathione-S-transferase (an power anti-oxidant) which is very effective in neutralizing carcinogens, particularly free radicals, thereby protecting from cancer." — source

Rachel Corrie

Tom Hurndall

Human shields

notes

Cheese consumed: Fourme d'Ambert (try naming your Pekinese that.)
Dreams: None

!!! ECONS IS NO MORE !!!
I'll miss studying econs. O, how I am ever so fond of it.
DEAR SELF, STOP PERSONIFYING KNOWLEDGE KTHX

Thai Express lunch!
A: Just think about it — one day, all our conversations will revolve around NS.

If another Korean War breaks out, maybe Singapore will send troops and I might actually die before 60. *rejoice* I want my youth to be immortalised in death.

ZW's birthday at Swensen's!
After waiting 15 minutes for her ice cream cake be returned after the waitress supposedly brought it back to slice it for serving...
Me: OH MY GOD WHERE'S THE CAKE? IT'S LIKE WAITING FOR GODOT
A Yew: IT'S LIKE THE CAKE CUTTING NEVER REALLY HAPPENED
W: Yeah like, what's his name? Descartes...

Tomorrow!
Paper 5 Day with J and R. Cafe in library@esplanade + literature + assorted baked goods + hot juicy gossip (not) + feminist discourse

Currently reading: If on a winter's night a traveler... by Italo Calvino. It's like the Inception of postmodern literature. So. Good.

sweet dreams are made of cheese pt. 1

I'm doing an experiment with cheese and dreams, based on this article: Cheese unlocks your wildest dreams, says study.

Current cheese: Fourme_d'Ambert, and oh my goodness it smells like this certain friend's B.O., squared.

Last night, I dreamt that I came to school for Paper 5 Lit, and forgot to bring all my texts with me. And my lit tutors just widened their eyes very dramatically and told me it's just too bad. Also, I was doing three papers at the same time, and a general question about Singapore came out for the international history section. It was horrible.

Also:

Truly Hybrid Questions: Economics and Women in Literature

Explain, in detail, the subprime mortgage crisis, paying close attention to how Otherness is presented in the texts of new and traditional media.

To what extent is a discretionary fiscal policy an instrument of the patriarchy? 

Compare and contrast the respective impacts of a refusal to acknowledge the complicity between privilege and oppression, and market failure. 

"The producer-consumer binary in economics only oversimplifies."

(a) Explain how the statement radically alters the foundations of economic reasoning.

(b) Discuss alternative models to explain how commodities are distributed in a premodern society.

And in the delicatessen, from time to time, the coins
in your palm will not translate. (Foreign)

Referring to two or three poems, discuss the ways and means that Duffy uses to present correspondence and disjunction in her poems. Pay close attention to images depicting the economy and international trade.

"Economists don't give answers, they ask questions."

Discuss how this may or may not be relevant to any two texts that you have studied.

"Every empire aims at immortality." (Adam Smith)

Is this a fair representation of patriarchy? Discuss, relating your response to globalisation as neo-colonialism. 

"The business of business is business." (Milton Friedman)

To what extent is this reflective of firms' pricing and output decisions? Express your response in a spiral narrative, making appropriate references to the style and form of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

Comparing across all three texts that you have studied, expand on how they come across as apt allusions of humanity's struggle to achieve the four macroeconomic objectives.

career plan (draft 1)

College: part-time assistant at a celebrated midtown cupcake place, following which I shall work in an independent bookstore.

Au pair

Curator

Food and travel writer

Owner of small, vegan café

(Teacher??? Lit??? KI???) (< 5 years)

Owner of small, vegan café

Economist

Surgeon

Professional jazz clarinetist

Professor of Agricultural Sciences

Dog trainer

etc.

melting point

9 posts ago, I hit my 1000th (published) blog post! (I have many drafts lying around, mostly dormant, occasionally vengeful.) I (unconsciously) celebrated with a shot of Baileys + Polish honey liqueur (slightly vile) + amaretto-soaked sponge cake and woke up with Violent Throbbing Headache Of Death. Such is the story of my life.

Anyway, seeing how my papers are going, I'm thinking of keeping dreams a little more real. I'll be OK in FASS. (Just eternally bitter, of course.) Also, the thought of being bonded for eight years is at once alluring  (masochistically) and horrifying (in a post-ironic sense). It is this conflict that animates all my decision-making processes. Moreover, there is a small, charitable and timid person inside me who feels bad about rejecting personalised, sincere and somewhat heartfelt offers, but oh well.

Additionally, I'm reading Mythologies (Barthes) and the selected stories of Robert Walser + planning Melbourne leg of Great Aussie Trip 2010. UNESCO City of Literature, here I come!

The rainy weather is making me think of Wet Warsaw.

new

My throat is on fire and there is a great miasma that the rain can never clear. Also, I've slept for approximately 13 hours (yay!) and the Throbbing Headache Spelling Doom has left me. 

Anyway, I dreamt that I was taking lit paper 5 at home (which was awful because I had no desk to write on), and there were only two sides to the question paper. I flipped to look at the Duffy questions, and the first one went mysteriously like "That distance between childhood and experience" and it didn't say "discuss" or "critically appreciate" or anything. The second question was really long and required you to discuss the ENTIRE collection in Mean Time, and for obvious reasons, I got very pissed because it wasn't in the syllabus. 

With a terrible sense of despair that crept to my bones, I turned to the Practical Criticism section, and found A LIST OF NAMES parading as a poem, and the question had two parts. It was all very S paper, and demanded you criticise the use of form and structure and how it was appropriate etc.. I didn't even look at the comparison questions, but I remember having a spankin' new Shakespeare play on my lap. 

Then, I got back my answer script for paper 1, and saw that some invigilator had written an irregularity comment on the top of my script, claiming that I didn't "flip back" my paper in time. Some nightmare. 

Post A Level Menu

Abuse

Paracetamol soup

Oranges

Fear

Split-pea porridge

Decaf

Hey I need to get this off my chest:

I CANNOT WAIT FOR PAPER 1 TOMORROW! I HOPE THIS SUSPENSE WILL LAST.

LUBX WILDE LUBX I TELL YOU, I ONLY HAVE LUBX FOR HIM ( + ONE HOPEFULLY BEAUTIFUL, CONCISE, ELEGANT & ALLUSIVE ESSAY.) OK WITH RHYS ONLY, BUT SAD FOR HER AND SAD FOR HER ANGSTY POSTCOLONIAL CONCERNS. CANNOT WAIT FOR PC. MIGHT SCREAM AT CPE IF THERE ARE DELAYS/WRONG EXAM PAPER.

a study in contrasts

When I turn 60...

No. I cannot make such claims, because I will not live to see 60. I shall will myself to die; 59 is too old, even. It is the age of mid-life crises, pot bellies, gastrointestinal upheaval and bad flatulence, monstrously loud sneezing, heart disease, and the start of dreadful hospital visits. It is mostly a terrible time to be alive.

The only other terrible time to be alive is between the age of 80 and death (which is really ageless), because you have no quality of life to speak of. Your friends are dead, you are kept on the life-support of the healthcare system, you can't see or hear or speak properly to the people you love, walking to the toilet feels like a marathon, and the loud sneezing and uncomfortable gastrointestinal problems of the middle ages still remain.

Technology will be so new, so complicated, that it becomes conceptually inaccessible. You cannot grasp the fundamental idea behind new-fangled gadgets — it's almost as if the whole world has learnt a new language. (It goes deeper — the world has began to live differently.)

You cannot make sense of this new reality, which has arrived only gradually and surreptitiously, creeping up day by day. Your existence is fragmented and utterly divorced from everything else. In a sense, you have already died.

Poems

When you come back to me
it will be crow time
and flycatcher time,
with rising spirals of gnats
between the apple trees.
Every weed will be quadrupled,
coarse, welcoming
and spine-tipped.
The crows, their black flapping
bodies, their long calling
toward the mountain;
relatives, like mine,
ambivalent, eye-hooded;
hooting and tearing.
And you will take me in
to your fractal meaningless
babble; the quick of my mouth,
the madness of my tongue.

- Ruth Stone 

Now read this Wikipedia entry.

economics

When despairing and feeling exhausted, and when the phrase "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" sounds batshit crazy, I will gaze upon this picture and remind myself of What and Why and When and How.

WELCOME TO CAPS LOCK LAND 2

HELLO I'VE JUST WATCHED THIS MOVIE AND AM PARALYSED BY THIS "AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE" TO THE EXTENT THAT I CANNOT UNPRESS MY CAPS LOCK KEY. THIS PASTICHE (FILM NOIR + HIGH SCHOOL MOVIE) REALLY WORKS FOR ME; I WISH EVERYONE SPOKE LIKE THIS. THEN AGAIN MAYBE NOT. ALSO, I AM IN HIGH SCHOOL BUT THIS IS NOT MY LIFE. DOES THIS APPEAL TO ME BECAUSE IT IS ROMANTICISED, AND WITHIN THIS MODE OF DISTORTION WE FIND ESCAPISM, OR BECAUSE I IDENTIFY WITH THE FILM. WHERE ARE THESE SITES OF IDENTIFICATION ANYWAY. + JGL'S GLASSES ARE WEIRD BUT IT GROWS ON YOU. I HOPE I CAN FIND THE SOUNDTRACK SOMEHOW SOMEWHERE.

bed of roses duvet cover of moss

Okay, so KI was ok, ok? I am pretty satisfied with my 2 essays (but more pleased with one than the other.) Still. There's international history tomorrow afternoon, and everyone else has maths.

(I also cannot comprehend why people have to speak so loudly — practically shout — on the phone, even when they're not agitated or angry. Baffling + annoying enough for me to write about it.)

Additionally, while doing papers, I cannot help but feel a wave of melancholy and loss. It's the last time I will ever write about the topic, and the topics that were not covered in the paper are gone forever, and I never got a chance to say goodbye. What is wrong with me, I need to stop personifying knowledge, it's an unhealthy habit. 

halloween, pt. 2

Seeing how there has been an unprecedented level of Abject Horror stemming from A level papers this year, I am dumping all expectations and trudging in anticipating nothing but bad surprises. Every paper is now a life lesson about damage control. Thrilling times, these. I have a bad feeling about KI tomorrow (also stemming from a very human predisposition to observe trends + make predictions based on arbitrary patterns), so here are the more likely questions for tomorrow.

'Epistemic agents are not necessarily human.' Discuss.

Compare and contrast the nature of testimonial evidence, referring closely to Eastern and Western culture and philosophy.

To what extent do you agree that fields of knowledge are demarcated by methodology rather than claims to knowledge?

'Certainty is.' How far do you agree?

'Knowledge is essentially an instrument of the patriarchy.' Discuss with reference to aesthetic and moral knowledge.

'The only knowledge we have is knowledge we construct ourselves. The knowledge we construct ourselves is based only on the knowledge that others construct.' How far do you agree?

Explain and evaluate the arguments for anarchy in both the natural sciences and ethics.

To what extent is epistemology in the 21st century an ethical position?

Discuss the significance of paradox and polysemy in any three fields of knowledge.

'We were kidding about justified true beliefs. We made it up. Plato never said that lol.' Organise your response based on fields of knowledge, in alphabetical order.

'Organisers of information are, really, the constructors of knowledge, and should be given grants and stuff, cuz that's what keeps them going, and they should also be nicer to the poorer peoples, and be like, more forgiving maybe? Like give out knowledge, I mean, because it's for the best of all the nations and the countries and the poorer people and democracy... as well as.' Evaluate and discuss this position, referring closely to Edward Said's arguments in Culture and Imperialism, relating your response to objectivity in Kant's categorical imperatives. Compare and contrast your conclusions with the Horatian satire (Appendix A) on page 3. Additionally, structure your essay according to the syntax of a specified foreign dialect, commenting on the significance of your choice.

southeast asian history in food

While in Starbucks last Saturday, S and I sat around talking about the A Levels, because that seems to be what our life has been boiled down to. 

"SEA history is coming up first and I can't seem to remember all the details I need!" groused I, nibbling on a warm and soggy caramel waffle.

"Why don't you sort out your case studies through pictures of food, like you did with the shoes?" S offered, perched precariously on one side of the armchair but still maintaining perfect balance.

"What a great idea!" I concurred, pleased with her brilliant suggestion. (And the smell of fresh coffee wafted around like a happy yellow butterfly.)

Hence, I am going to psyche myself up for tomorrow through pictures of food. (I feel terribly self-conscious doing this because C, the much-revered SEA History Queen [, is obviously better at this than I am, and is probably cackling in anticipation of a very favorably-plotted bell curve.) I am citing the sources that I shamelessly and unethically ripped pictures off from through the links at the bottom of each photograph.

Roti Jala/Roti Kirai

Is this roti jala or roti kirai? Still, though, roti by any other name is just as delightful. Besides its obvious country of origin (Malaysia), the seemingly aleatory method of producing the swirled pancakes is reflective of the pluralism of Malayan nationalism — the gaps that separate and demarcate are suggestive of separation between the different ethnics, a result of the divide and rule policies of the British. Example: the Kesatuan Malayu Muda (Young Malays Union), Malayan Communist Party (which also cooperated with the British during the Japanese Occupation, etc. etc. this comparison is so contrived.

It's a little awkward to organise knowledge by country, but I'll try my best. Economic development: New Economic Policy! Development of domestic automobile industry! Sabah's involvement in Muslim Separatist Movements in Southern Philippines + Lebanese intervention (!), MAPHILINDO, etc. etc. Federal Land Development Authority

Mohinga

Excitingly, you can actually buy this in Clementi. Mohinga is a Burmese dish consisting of chickpeas (loves) and very tasty stock. However, all that races through my mind are the AFPFL, Burmese Socialist Programme Party, Aung San + U Nu + Ne Win, "No Footwear Controversy", the whole debacle with India's independence, YMBA, Buddhism vis a vis national unity policies, Kachins & Karens, the pongyis and monastic education, direct rule, focus on economic equality due to socialist-driven policymaking, nationalizing of the economy, The System of Correlation of Man and His Environment, financial incentives for rice farms, real economic growth: income per capita increased from US$80 to $174 (as if I will actually write that into my script), yay - import substitution to export oriented growth! (for rice)

The mysteriously titled "Soup Number Five", ambiguously named for a very good reason

On to the Philippines. Cronyism and nepotism abound! Stuff (in no chronological order): Bangsamoro movement, US aid, Marcos and military rule, Commission on National Integration scholarship programme to integrate Filipino Muslims, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim, Integrated Social Forestry Programme, etc. etc. etc.

Avocado shakes

AVOCADO SHAKES, LUVVEM. The connection is not apparent, but it comes from Indonesia. Indonesia's my favourite case study (DID I ACTUALLY JUST SAY "FAVOURITE CASE STUDY"? THIS IS SO GEEKY AND GROSS, but then again I'm blogging about tomorrow's paper.) because after watching the The Year Of Living Dangerously (was that it?) the violence of the Gestapu Incident is still incredibly shocking. (Also, must not confuse with Madiun Incident.) Additionally, I bet refreshing avocado shakes were served during negotiations in the Linggandjati Agreement and Renville Agreement. Other details (in no chronological or thematic order): dwifungsi, Acehnese separatism, SI, PKI + TAN MALAKA (- thanks C), priyayi, abangan, santri classes, national unity policies, OH ME OH MY

Thaipan Olive Rice (that I still haven't tried because I misordered, whoops)

Sakdinah nationalism, Hmong Hill Tribes and Boat People, Military Patiwat, student demonstrations, Wild Tiger Corps, Nation-Religion-King, forced assimilation of Muslims in southern provinces, role of Buddhism, blah blah blah

OK I'M TOO LAZY AND SLEEPY TO INCLUDE LAOS + CAMBODIA BUT I'LL THINK OF THEM ANYWAY.

Words that make me giggle: "politicisation" + "political awakening of the masses"; "constructive engagement"; ASA (inside-joke); "labour intensive"

OK: wonderful plan for tomorrow - morning run, taxi to school, glamorously arrive, write brilliantly, accept J's peppermint mocha with open arms, go home to sleep.

pudding

James Franco: 

I finally took the plunge and experimented with the form myself when I signed on to appear on 20 episodes of "General Hospital" as the bad-boy artist "Franco, just Franco." I disrupted the audience's suspension of disbelief, because no matter how far I got into the character, I was going to be perceived as something that doesn't belong to the incredibly stylized world of soap operas. Everyone watching would see an actor they recognized, a real person in a made-up world.

A Star, A Soap and the Meaning of Art: Why an appearance on 'General Hospital' qualifies as performance art 

and oh by the way, he has enrolled in Yale's English PhD programme and the Rhode Island School of Design, after completing an MFA writing programme in Columbia, a fiction writing course in Brooklyn College, a poetry writing course in Warren Wilson College, and a graduate filmmaking programme in NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, all at the same time. All that while finding time to be the face of Gucci, performance impressively in a couple of movies (HELLO? AS ALLEN GINSBERG IN HOWL? IS THERE A LIMIT TO HOW COOL A PERSON CAN BE?), eat some food, etc. I think I have a man crush on James Franco, but Susan Sontag will always be my one true love.

(I'm still working on my SEA-history-and-food post!)

you are now leaving planet derrida

I did not do anything today. (I did spend time with my sister, who, in return, spent time with Pride and Prejudice, which in return made her more literate. And literacy is the key to economic mobility.) It's that point in your revision where you're like, Do I Really Need To Know This, and you start making plans to visit a flea market, bake cupcakes, and write an analytical essay on Crystal Castles' entire discography. 

Anyway, I baked a batch of Guinness chocolate + dulce de leche + Baileys-frosted cupcakes! I derive short-term pleasures from such culinary adventures that, in the long run, help me to develop as a person. Ta-da! Holistic development, check. 

In other news, the KI and literature t-shirts are *finally* here. Yay! They are very beautiful. I cannot wait to set them loose. The aesthetic experience really makes the organisation of very trivial garment-related concerns totally worth the weeks of torment and suffering. Oh what the hell, at least I emerged "braver" and "stronger" — I should write this into my testimonial, why don't I. 

Also: conjunctive adverbs are your friends!

rusty hangers

My sister and I are scooping batter into cupcake liners.


Sister: The batter's dripping everywhere, this is really messy.
Me: Yeah, you need really steady hands to be a cupcake baker.
Sister: Or to perform abortions.

overheard

Mum: OK take a look at this. Regarding the blood test I went for just now, I'm checking this website and it's about chromosomes and lung cancer detection.

Dad: You do realize that you're on the website for the Journal of Applied Research in Veterinary Medicine, don't you?

brunch

chickpeas with maple syrup, garlic, nutmeg and lemon salt (- thanks J!)

bed of (leftover) wild rocket and young spinach

Greek yoghurt

caramelized onions 

slivers of parmigiano reggiano

(rocky road ice cream)

BEST BRUNCH EVER

notes

1. Books to read: À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans and Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. Both are about decadence and sloth. 

2. No really, why do people study at Starbucks? The wooden chairs are too hard and the very comfy sofas are only conducive for sloth and leisure. Whatever makes people happy, I guess. I am also very hard to please. I mainly hang around for the food (and the smell of food.) 

3. Stupid Favorite Word of the Week: defenestrate. 

4. Eerily Recurrent Word of the Week: ferment (As in, "the livid but long-drawn ferment of the subjugated peasantry.")

5. BEST. POETRY. ANTHOLOGY. EVER. HEARTS UNTIL CANNOT HEARTS ANYMORE. (The cover bears the most unfortunate resemblance to Currently Popular Vampire-Romance Series That Needn't Be Named, but still, it's already too ridiculously perfect. If I were a silverfish, I would only settle for a book like this. I will grow fat on the pulp, and then explode happily and messily all over the cover.)

6. Note to self: respect thy body, flee from all evil, i.e. Vile Coffee. 

7. I'm going to collect the literature t-shirts tomorrow! All Is Groovy!

currently reading

like a potato in my hands

Today I realised that even if I don't get straight As out of this exam, get myself a place in Columbia, or get a scholarship to become fabulously upwardly mobile, I will still be happy and thankful for the education, memories and love that these two years have afforded me. 

!!! OMG NEW FAVORITE BAND !!!

 EVERYTHING'S IN JAPANESE. I WILL PRETEND TO KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN, BUT I'M SURE IT'S MOSTLY ABOUT WONDERFUL HAPPY THINGS.

there is a happiness to be found in yellow squash

Today, I made three hyperexotic wholemeal pizzas. I woke up and the sun was up and I was like, Shit, I've got the entire day to myself. What can I ever do to occupy myself all day? I've forgotten how it's like to wake up without needing to meet anyone or do anything for someone other than Me Me Me, so I was of course thrilled and happy. 

As always, my grandparents quickly found things for me to do. I had to buy slippers, a mobile phone, bank in a cheque and get afternoon tea by the time I flipped open The Straits Times. 

To cut to the chase, I wound up in Orchard and took a stroll from Far East Plaza to Plaza Singapura. I went to Carrefour and spent 50 bucks on three bags of exotic produce. No cai xin and kai lan for me! I zoned in on yellow squash, fennel, wild rocket, baby spinach and grape tomatoes (which aren't exactly that exotic either, but at least they don't use hanyu pinyin in their names.) I also procured buffalo mozzarella and parmigiano reggiano, and my hand hovered over some mould-covered goat cheese but I managed to contain similar Urges. 

Anyway, I spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen having some Me Time (in a parodically Sensitive New Age Guy manner, of course) and kneading pizza dough, while mournfully recapitulating all that went wrong in my Literature Paper 5 Drama P5. Lifts and bangs. I had a hard time with the dough, because it turned out shaggy, sticky and very hostile to my kneading. The kitchen became gluten hell. However, I added more wholemeal flour and tamed the dough somewhat. This type of satisfaction is difficult to attain in everyday situations. Lifts and bangs. 

I was not about to add pineapples and ham because I'd rather scrape my teeth on a smoking pizza stone than make a dumb old Hawaiian pizza with homemade dough. For the first pizza, I drizzled olive oil, fresh rosemary and freshly minced garlic all over slivers of yellow squash. I stupidly forgot to take a picture of the pizza after it came out of the oven, but this is pretty enough. (I love yellow squash.)

The next pizza was a slightly more experimental. I caramelized onions and fennel together and spread them over the dough. Next I sautéed asparagus and weaved them into strips of smoked salmon, casually and effortlessly scattering them over the dough much like they do in Iron Chef. Or Top Chef. I don't know my cooking shows very well. Anyhow, I finished it off with wild rocket and chopped walnuts, though I think it could have done with more caramelized onions. 

The last pizza had tomatoes and very pricey buffalo mozzarella, which I adored, so it wasn't so hard on the pocket. It came out of the oven and I remembered to take a picture.

There was also soup. I made a cold soup of yoghurt, dill and cucumber. It was surprisingly well-received; in actuality, I was expecting Asian-style Cultural Alienation And Familial Abjection when I offered everyone chilled soup. Perhaps the humidity of the afternoon had radically changed tastes and preferences. In any case, I hope to introduce gazpacho in days to come.

Phew! Who knew that procrastination could be so exhausting?

friday

Urrp! Bestie x Bestie Episode 2 is out! This is a pretty good week! Yay! In other news, I managed to consult the elusive and enigmatic Mr H for the first/last time in my life. Also, I did not eat bibimbap today, and will have it for lunch tomorrow. Definitely. (Also hankering for something breakfasty and oniony and maple syrupy tomorrow.)

Dinner Menu For Stressed People With Nevertheless Adventurous Tastes

soup

cucumber, yoghurt and dill soup

salad

lightly curried roasted grape tomatoes, arugula, mint, lime

starter

apple and smoked mozzarella mini-calzones

mains

kefta and zucchini kebabs

bulgar and spinach pilaf

dessert

chocolate caramel tart

why I ruled out teaching as viable career choice

Reason #1:

A 57-page lesson plan revolving around the children's picture-book, The Enormous Turnip.

YO IMMA DEFENDING MY NATION BITCHES

Actually, I'm dead exhausted now after administering a Kick to myself in my dream earlier. It had two levels:

Level 2: I am at a Velocity-type shopping mall with ABA looking at sports apparel and engaged in a very trivial conspiracy. As I pick up an orange dri-fit t-shirt from the rack, something explodes somewhere, and a large aluminum water bottle falls on me from a shelf high up on the ceiling. 

Level 1: I wake up and find myself sitting on the carpeted floor of a medium-sized padded room with other choir members who have already graduated. It appears to be a large hotel, because there are gaudy gold swirls all over the room. Ms T bursts in wearing a large flowy gown and tells me to come into another room to give a pep talk, and I am extremely apprehensive about it. I walk out of the room, realising I am in fact also wearing a suit. On the way out, I meet Ms Th, WE and J in their choir gowns, and we start running really quickly along the corridor, with the white paneled walls blurring past. After a while, I realise I am in a dream, and WE tries to give me a kick (i.e. kill me) by hitting me repeatedly with a blunt object.

Reality: I wake up with the sun in my eyes and groan slightly, with my sister fretting about after the A Maths paper.

And then during dinner, my dad casually informed me that I'm enlisting on the 9th of February 2011. FUN TIMES LIE AHEAD FOR ME, SHOWERS OF GRATITUDE FOR LIFE CROWDED WITH INCIDENT. + LOVED ONES WHO PROMISED TO SEND ME OFF, PLS REMEMBER THANKS. NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS, IMAGINED COMMUNITIES, YAY.

!!! THINGS ABOUT BIBIMBAP !!!

BIBIMBAP

BIBIMBAP

BIBIMBAP

BIBIMBAP

cribs

My recent and disgusting gentrification fantasy, conceived while walking around Toa Payoh Industrial Estate with a cutesy Diana Mini and wearing American Apparel:

The leases for industrial spaces finally expire, and people can now buy old factory and warehouse units as homes. The corridor on the fourth floor is sooty with oil stains and no amount of wallpaper or lavender-and-clove parfums can ever cover up the smell of turpentine and sawdust, but it's all OK and cool, because I can strip off the old chipped tiles to expose the smooth concrete and call it Post-Industrial Deconstructionism. I suppose it could complement the sleek lines on the Miele induction range in the microkitchen. (Who can, of course, leave out the mandatory Kitchen Aid in the corner? In blood orange, no less.) The entryway can squeeze only three (extremely waif, Nordic-looking, portfolio-toting) people with space left for maybe a large wooden easel for my keys, and maybe three vintage recycled-paper gift tags hanging from cream-painted walls. A garden gnome dressed as a pink flamingo stands at the gate, because it is ironic. 

Upon entry, my footsteps create loud echoes because the ceiling is so high, and because I have stripped off all the plaster and installed steel beams to suspend the rice paper mobiles that a performance-artist friend from Belorussia created for my birthday. Come in, I motion to you, and you leave your (comme des garcons knitted) shawl hanging on a chrome hook next to the easel. The sitting room (no one does living rooms like they used to anymore, you demur while spritzing your face with an evian atomizer) opens up to large windows with the bamboo blinds drawn up. It is also cool to reuse old milk crates, and I have covered the entire height and length of one wall with crates-as-shelves, filled with first edition Nabokovs, maybe some Walser (they are so hard to come by these days, I explain) and old Super 8 film cameras. I play a recording of Arvo Pärt's Summa for string orchestra, and you recline on a Le Corbusier chaise lounge. (So ubiquitous, you condescend.)

While you ask me about my work in the Susan Sontag Foundation and my thoughts on Jung's Synchronicity, I stare into the depths of my glass of 1999 Château-Chalon, feeling screwed existentially within this nightmare. 

halloween

Domestic Worker is expected to arrive sometime at the end of this week. It sounds like we're waiting for the delivery of a new refrigerator. No.

I hung out with the A, MX and S after KI today. We went to Aston's, where I had a sirloin steak for the first time in a very long while. I ate the charred fat. Loved it. We sat under a broken Tiffany's pendant lamp, listening to bad country music, discussing Why It Would Be Totally Awesome To Live In Serangoon Gardens, and observing (with a mixture of horror and amusement) A take a short after-meal nap.

I'm not sure of my feelings for steak. I'm not sure of my feelings for chicken. I'm not sure of my feelings for the onion rings that were included in my sides. I am, however, sure of my feelings for the bitchin' good chocolate ice cream from Awfully Chocolate. ("I AM SO HAPPY NOW. I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW," thrilled MX.) There I sat, shell-shocked, confident, that I had just experienced something life-changing. Sunlight streamed through the full-length glass windows. Nearby, kahlua chocolate truffles sat inside a glass case, watching the lazy traffic of a mid-afternoon amble past.

Plagued by the guilt of having recently consumed rich and divine foods, S and I decided to walk to Paya Lebar MRT station. I like covering great distances — when I go back to NYC again, I'm going to walk the entire length of Broadway, from Lower Manhattan to the Bronx. (OK, maybe with a group of friends.) Am thinking: if J and N go to NYU and I do get to Columbia, I swear I'm going to drag them on This Great NY Expedition, armed with coffee cups, trudging through grey wintery sludge and swearing profusely + profoundly. 

notes

1. This is supposedly the last day of school, but here I am, finding myself packing my school bag for lessons tomorrow. It makes the farewell concert a very elaborate farce, but in a good way, because it was so campy to begin with. (K-pop parodies and photomontages of the same people over and over again, anyone?) It was all very showy good fun. I especially loved the lit department's item, in which Ms W rekindled old wounds wrought from the "zen koan" form, Ms C and T went clubbing and sang songs, while Ms N emerged resplendent in green uniform as Lit Ingenue Most Annoying and proceeded to make frantic and panicked phone calls to her tutors. Sigh, literature pride — now to get my grubby, ink-stained hands on a certain 100 pounds + work on brilliance of expression because every essay is now a delicate performance that straddles a very bohemian sort of impetuousness with the controlled persuasion of the rational mind.

2. Also, the Importance of Being Earnest themed party was sort-of-a-success. Ms C and N came in with cucumber sandwiches and muffins from Cedele, and I brought in carrot cake cupcakes, having worked my ass off grating three damn cups of carrots by hand for the whole of yesterday afternoon. (For the record, I only do this for people I truly love.) For tea, we had bottled ice lemon tea and green tea from Pokka, which can, I guess, in theory, be still considered "tea" if standards and expectations were to be lowered. However, movements were not delicate, and dainty pinky action was painfully forced. Wilde continues to roll in his grave.

3. A brief moment of quiet introspection: do I really want to spend 8 years of my life in the public service? Or do I just want to want?

4. The medication I'm taking for my leprosy — I mean, the zit from hell — has weight-gain as a side-effect.  (Source: Wikipedia.) It's all about trade-offs: one can either be slim and covered in acne, or of impeccable complexion but morbidly obese. Life sucks inasmuch as appearances concern you the most.

5. Sister is bemoaning the loss of a mark because of one mistake in the vocabulary section of the English Paper. National examination fever has now descended upon the Lee household, but my grandparents' mobile phone ferment continues to exist unrivaled. 

What I Would Talk About When I Talk About Running, Not That I'm Insane Enough To Think In Prose While Crossing The Finish Line

This Nike 10k T-shirt is really bright.

Oh, look, I'm only at the 3 km mark.

I can't run and drink from a paper cup at the same time, stupid.

I wish I didn't eat those Sweet Onion Kettle Chips for breakfast.

I wish it was a Saturday.

I wish the ground would open up and spew lava, forcing the run to be cancelled. Now.

Hey, I've been here before.

I wish a massive brown cloud would come our way, bringing the PSI to 2000 and forcing the run to be cancelled. At once.

I wish I ignored the last kilometre-marker and had a pleasant surprise upon discovering a 2 km advancement.

I wish I fell into a warp in the space-time fabric to find myself at crossing the finish line.

Oh, look, 3 km left.

Damn, I see my juniors. Avoid avoid avoid.

Do I have mini cupcake liners at home?

I don't appreciate the victory gestures you made while overtaking.

Look who's laughing now, dumbasses.


The finishing line. About time, too. The clock says 30:20. Seriously? Clock, do you mock me? Meh I'll just check my D-Tag timing online.

SHITE I FORGOT TO THINK OF S AND A but I'll think of them as I collect my bag. They'll be forgiving.

I feel weak and fragile.

The finishers' item this year looks like the Ribena blackcurrant on crystal meth, seriously.

I FLIP MY HAIR BACK AND FORTH

AM: Woke up. First conversation I had was with my grandmother who wanted me to get her a mobile phone. I'm thinking, what's new. While eating a roasted soya bean and pumpkin seed mix (delicious, by the way), I contemplated ways to work around the Mobile Phone Issue. I thought of feigning death, and having seen how she handled my grandfather's stroke, I would most likely be left alone on the floor. Alternatively, I could also burst out crying, ripping off my t-shirt and smearing Greek yoghurt violently and agitatedly all over my hair to scare her out of the kitchen. 

I am not a mean grandson — it's just that vision and hearing-impaired octogenarians and near-microscopic devices do not a happy partnership make. I found a company that designs mobile phones for "seniors", but the emergency SOS button at the back of every handset is more likely to invite countless false alarms than give us a peace of mind. 

LATER: Met J and C at AMK library. C, being smaller and more agile, sprinted into the library as the glass doors slid open and the crowd of studious and desperate teenagers diffused sullenly inside. My slipper fell off while I politely elbowed and shoved my way up the stairs. Also: met SY, LM, MX (who seemed genuinely shocked to encounter me) and C (on the bus, telling me about her new house in Bishan). Tried to complete a brilliant essay on Duffy; heartbreak ensued. Brushed up case study knowledge for SEA history; dozed off. Bibimbap lunch = new favourite meal.

PM: Went to NTUC to purchase baking supplies for carrot cake cupcakes. I remembered to get everything but the carrots.

TOMORROW: Nike 10k Run — may I magically develop streamlined features on my body and slice through the haze like a hot knife through butter. May I also have a life-altering Forrest Gump moment as I dash past the Nigerian/Tanzanian/Jamaican/etc. guest runners at the last 500 metres. May I not pass out 5  minutes into the race. May I wake up on time. 

surreal cheese

Omg I'm totally loving this simultaneous depreciation of the USD + appreciation of the SGD + discovery of awesome online shopping + FREE SHIPPING DAMMIT + financial hubris + slightly pompous feeling one gets from saving a tonne of cash + the impending arrival of seriously inordinate amounts of free time + the impending arrival of a life with an income (no matter how meagre) + flux of life, 'play' of the text, genius in art + other aesthetic shit + contemplating moving to williamsburg, growing a beard and writing for pitchfork in new life as hipster-aesthete + the phrase "thumb drives vanish like summer bubbles" + addition signs + the fact that the Lit Tees are only 10 bucks apiece! + quality tea + edgy interview-wear + et merda et merda et merda

Also see:

Umbilical Cord iPhone Charger

notes

1. I will be very dramatic if the Nike 10k marathon is cancelled due to astronomically high PSI levels. 

2. Everyone is suddenly in a relationship (almost). A revival of the Temasek Lonely Hearts Club is in order.

3. Ambitions for the coming week: write a brilliant 24/25 mark lit essay, bake magnificent desserts, run 10 km in choking haze, re-read novels by Robert Walser, actually decide on something concrete to study in college.

4. My favourite Radio Dept. song went mysteriously missing early this week, and I have found it again. I am overjoyed to have it restored to me. It is most propitious. 

5. My family's hiring a domestic worker to take care of my grandparents. I'm not sure how I feel about it at the moment.

6. Purchased: The Collected Dorothy Parker (Penguin, 2001) Whore of Kinokuniya, me.

7. I NEED TO GET AN A FOR ECONS, IT'S VERY BAD VERY BAD + KNOWLEDGE OF CASE STUDIES FOR SEA HISTORY SUDDENLY— RAPIDLY— SUCKING. 

dismantling the bullshit of self-deception

Recently, a zit has appeared on my right cheek conveniently right smack in graduation photo-taking season. On a black-and-white recording of my practice interview this afternoon, it showed up as a dark mole almost engulfing my entire cheek. Coupled with the sense of the Uncanny, after viewing myself from the outside and experiencing the dissonant juxtaposition of the familiar and the unfamiliar, I am left with bad psychological scars that will haunt me in recurring nightmares, forever. (Additionally, in the style of Hollywood genre conventions, I will jolt upright in bed and my eyes will immediately widen in terror.)

Loving this:

There should be something about you

in the poem. But

there is just me

being stupid. 

It's by Tao Lin.

to bake

1. Beet cupcakes
2. Chocolate stout cake
3. Nutella cream cheese swirl brownies
4. Carrot cake with maple cream cheese frosting (for graduation day!)
5. Deep chocolate sour cream pound cake
6. Buttermilk red velvet cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese frosting
7. Chewy molasses chocolate chip cookies

oriental chicken

I don't know why I'm so sleepy. Lately, I have been taking long afternoon naps. This is most uncharacteristic of me, because I detested these siestas as a child. Either (1) muji sheets are so darn inviting or (2) I have a sleeping disorder and have 2 months left to live. Anyway, chocolate at Max Brenner's was a little disappointing for me, only because I ordered the hot white chocolate drink which tasted most uncannily like Anlene. I'm glad I caught up with friends, though! We had soup after that, so it wasn't too bad. (I'm sleepy so this post will be brief, by my standards.)

notes

1. I want to write about one of the two important things that happened today involving a life jet-setting around the world being BFFs to leaders everywhere and living in a manhattan loft while writing brilliant research papers (this is, of course a grossly over-romanticised view), but bearing in mind the lack of privacy this blog affords, I'd rather not blurt. You can ask me in person. It was so nice talking to everyone, though! Also: thank you, J for supporting me at the starbucks base camp!* While waiting, I wished A and S were present too, but oh well, such is the way the cookie crumbles. (I think: I wonder what flavour this metaphorical cookie is. I also recall: Quiznos has mind-blowing, life-changing cookies that you must eat.) 
2. The other important thing: MY GRAMPS IS BACK, I MISSED/LOVE HIM SO. Thank God he recovered well, but now he's more frail and doesn't speak much. I want my father to get a new TV for him. I would forgo my iPhone 4 (as if that has crossed my parents' minds!) for that. Once, a very long time ago, I wept at a silly memory of him bringing me to kindergarten and entertaining my classmate. 
3. I'm going to bake a carrot cake with my DG on Saturday! I hope it turns out edible. I also hope it will be a good-looker.
4. NYT - The Frisbee of Art — ellipses are everywhere. This is worth a read.
5. I HAS STARBUCKS CARD!
6. Now reading: Rilke, Tagore, Sontag. Will move on to Kafka by next week. 
7. My sister's reading Off Centre by Haresh Sharma for Lit. It's a play that is tremendous and overwhelming, while speaking in the language and vocabularies of the underclass and the marginalised. I hope they stage it again!

*I shall refer to my friends by their initials because it's so classy, like in espionage movies. I love it!

sites of identification

Being Sontag-whore, I purchased Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, a selection of journal and notebook entries by Susan Sontag edited by her son, David Rieff. Naturally, this sparked off a series of comparisons in which I trawled the pages for glimpses of myself in the person of Sontag. I am taking the cultural phenomenon of fan-boying to creepier and more shameless levels. 

Susan, age 15:

... And what is it to be young in years and suddenly wakened to the anguish, the urgency of life?

It is then to be blind to the faults of the rebellious, to yearn painfully, wholly, after all opposites of childhood's existence. It is impetuousness, wild enthusiasm, immediately submerged in a flood of self-deprecation. It is the cruel awareness of one's own presumption...

Me, age 15:

I look at my report book as if it was a bad smell. I type and get more frustrated because language is such a limiting way of expressing oneself, despite the supposed vastness of vocabulary and diction available. As if we pick up stock words and phrases from a supermarket shelf and arrange them nicely in the cart. I am infuriated when caught in the whole pretence of cultural constructs and expectations, and the roles, and the expectations, and the responsibilities, and the expectations.

(Well sure, she obviously articulates teenage angst with greater elegance than I do.)

Susan, age 15:

Wasted the evening with Nat [Nathan Sontag, SS's stepfather]. He gave me a driving lesson and then I accompanied him and pretended to enjoy a Technicolor blood-and-thunder movie.

After writing this last sentence, I read it again and consider[ed] erasing it. I should let it stand, though.—It is useless for me to record only the satisfying parts of my existence—(There are too few of them anyway!) Let me note all the sickening waste of today, that I shall not be easy with myself and compromise my tomorrows.

Me, age 15:

And my father is complaining about the teachers who have started to call in sick already. (Before I had to fix the "My Gmail's all in Hebrew!" problem.) I asked Esther where the postcard box was, and she said Isn't it that G&H thing? and I said No I think we've changed it now, so she got up and found the old biscotti box that we transferred the postcards to and I said Oh I remember now! And we were happy. [...]

Am I so bored? Do I have to resort to mentioning such insignificant bits of information henceforth? I'm just tired of learning things that I don't feel much for. 

(Hey! We had share the same experience of futility and embarrassment in our writing and recording of our lives! We could have been besties. Intellectual Besties, of course.)

Susan, age 16:

I was very moved by Goethe, although I think I'm far from understanding it—the Marlowe is just about mine though — for I put in a good deal of time into it, re-reading it several time, and declaiming many of the passages aloud again and again. 

Me, age 16:

I've just returned home from watching wall-e with elizabeth! It is exponentially more appealing than the clone wars. Ha. 

On a sliding scale of Pixar movies, it's in the same league as The Incredibles, and better than last year's Ratatouille. At least, I've never gone misty-eyed as a result of watching robots holding hands to tunes that seem to come from a crackly old transistor radio (in actuality, it was a grimy iPod nano. I guess in years to come, that could translate to a kind of romanticism for people like us).

(I am not exceedingly insightful when comparing works of art, am I? Still, I don't say things like the Harper Lee is just about mine though, etc.)

Susan, age 16:

I HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED TO CHICAGO WITH A SCHOLARSHIP OF $765

Me, age 16:

I've returned home, and I noticed that I had an email from Them.

It redirected me to the ISP where I was informed by an electronically-generated message that I did not get in. But it came with best wishes! I am so deeply touched. 

Shall invest my time somewhere more worthwhile then.

(Clearly, you can see the juxtaposition between our various fates. Well here I am, and I haven't looked back since.) 

fragmentation

to eat

1. Veganburg
2. wild rocket at mount emily
3. Fou de Fafa
4. Awfully Chocolate (I know right? I HAVE NOT EATEN ANYTHING FROM THERE STILL. ASHAMED.)
5. Naive
6. PS Cafe
7. The newly-renovated Canele at Raffles City

what did you have for dinner today?

In the same Google Image search, these pictures turned up on the same page:

sudden organ

Beardsley claimed, somewhat heroically, that aesthetic experience is distinguished by its unity, intensity and complexity. Dickie argued, in reply, that such characeristics were either not plausibly necessary conditions of aesthetic experience, or else that Beardsley's description of them was inadequate. Part of Dickie's attack was completely beside the point, since he confused aesthetic experiences with the experiences of works of art; the fact that some experiences of works of art are not as Beardsley describes is, or should be, irrelevant. But it cannot be denied that Dickie was right that even if the problems of characterizing the three features were resolved, it would still not be remotely plausible that the three Beardsleyian features are necessary (or sufficient) conditions of aesthetic experience. Nevertheless, all that would show would be that Beardsley's account of the aesthetic is inadequate. That Beardsley's extraordinary and heroic Trinitarian doctrine cannot be maintained does not mean that the notion of the aesthetic should be abandoned. That would be a flawed induction from a single instance. 

(from SEP, by Nick Zangwill)

the selby is not in my place (2)

From top to bottom:
i. Entrance to The Lair
ii. I miss my math teacher and his adorkable ways
iii. FEMALE cookbook 1979
iv. CAN YOU SAY FLAN PARTY>>???>
v. Dioramic scene from the Cupboard of Kitsch. Note: plastic cockatoo, teachers' day quote, Nineties-era McDonalds porcelain figure and miniature tangerine tree.
vi. An old book I found lying around detailing the short lives of other people. Published by Picador.
vii. For example, Billie Holiday had a short life.