90s revival post

oh my god here she comes

Something amazing happened this morning... I slept without air-conditioning on, and it got so cold I had to hide under a quilt. And, I didn't need to get up early at all.

*moments of magic*

Foodie January II

YAY A GREAT STORM CLOUD HAS SHROUDED SINGAPORE IN A DEPRESSING THOUGH NEVERTHELESS FLUFFY SHEET OF GREY, which is perfect weather for warming foods like stews, braises, roasts, etc. (I am also beginning to sound like this food writer from ST, whose chirpy prose about twee eats grates me to no end.)

In view of the imminent Ice Age, I am very happy to have brief ownership of the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I snatched it away from a rude librarian with thin lips and prominent and peculiar follicular scaling; our encounter over at Customer Service was fraught with passive-aggressive violence and the rapid darting of bitchy eyes. Anyway, the most important thing is that (1) I have the book and (2) I am going to cook from it. I also need to distract my domestic helper from the kitchen, because it is becoming apparent that she performs much better in non-culinary areas, and my grandparents' increasing distaste for her cooking is getting embarrassing and awkward. For example, my grandparents have taken to sending me out to buy lunch with the excuse that it's cheaper and tastier. My grandmother is getting pissed off at the lack of garlic in her meals. Oh well, wrinkly nonyas say the darnest things.

Anyway here's a list of things that I want to cook: (also included are recipes from Middle Eastern Bible that the debaters gave me, and Vegetarian with a Vengeance — a book I borrowed during a sudden desire to live meatlessly)

Braised fennel

Grilled asparagus with pistachio aïllade

Rosemary-roasted potatoes

Zuni roast chicken

Lentil–sweet red pepper soup with cumin and black pepper

Lasagne with leeks and gorgonzola

Falafel burgers with tahini dressing

Spiced pumpkin and tomato soup

Deep fried cauliflower

In related news, I love that it's raining and suddenly everyone's claiming that the weather's reflective of their inner landscapes + tweeting in cryptic verse + longing for the sun (perhaps also forgetting the discomfort of sweaty flannel and the heat-trapping ability of black leggings) + listening to sad bastard music. It's a very complex relationship that Singaporeans have with the weather.

Thoughts promenaded freely all over his face, fluttered about in his eyes, reposed on his half-parted lips, concealed themselves in the furrows of his brow, and then vanished completely — and it was at such moments that an expression of serene unconcern spread all over his face.

— from Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov

Under Stars

The sleep of this night deepens
because I have walked coatless from the house

carrying the white envelope.

All night it will say one name

in its little tin house by the roadside.

I have raised the metal flag

so its shadow under the roadlamp

leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes.

Now I will walk back

thinking of the few lights still on

in the town a mile away.

In the yellowed light of the kitchen

the millworker has finished his coffee,

his wife has laid out the white slices of bread 

on the counter. Now while the bed they have left 

is still warm, I will think of you, you

who are so far away

you have caused me to look up at the stars.

Tonight they have not moved

from childhood, those games played after dark.

Again I walk toward the wet grass

toward the starry voices. Again, I

am the found one, intimate, returned

by all I touch on the way.

-- Tess Gallagher

Foodie January

Scenes from my birthday dinner. Iberico is wonderful. I would eat it everyday. On the other hand, I wouldn't eat carrot cake everyday.

Birthday presents from my favourite sister (with financial support from my mum) — Magnolia Bakery cookbook, Valrhona chocolate and recipe markers. Tears of gratitude.

Scenes from the making of Buah Keluak: we haven't actually cooked it yet. (!) I felt very ethnic blending these exotic Asian spices into an aromatic, spicy paste. Talk about cultural capital.

Sister and I went to Basilico for the End of Freedom Lunch. The food was amazing, and my toes involuntarily curled with pleasure. Yes, it was embarrassing. Also, we arrived at The Regent quite soaked from the sudden downpour along Orchard Road, after passing the Massimo Dutti store that became famous for its floating stock during The Great Flood of 2010. We were very amused by the nervous shop assistants inside.

I'm also baking sugee cake with my grandmother. This recipe comes from an ancient cookbook, My Favourite Recipes compiled by Ellice Handy and published by MPH in 1952, apparently sold as a fundraiser for the MGS building. It's like Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking but for genteel British Malaya.

people sure had fun during the cold war

That last video is terrifying. 

semolina porridge:

In Swedish it is known as mannagrynsgröt, or boiled together with bilberries, as blåbärsgröt.

browlines

Top to bottom:

a. Paul Frank, Instant Intellectual

b. Ray Ban, Clubmaster

c. Paul Smith, Walsh

I'm looking for new spectacle frames: they have to be browline (i.e. the kinds pictured above) and within my very arbitrary budget. Also, it's preferable that I do not look like a Morrissey wannabe wearing it.

intentionally bad heartlander sitcom scene 1

EXT. ROW OF HDB KITCHEN WINDOWS - NOON - ESTABLISHING SHOT


A maid brings in the laundry.


INT. KITCHEN - NOON 


GRANDMOTHER, MOTHER and SON are in the kitchen cooking for Lunar New Year. 


GRANDMOTHER
(very slowly)
You must wash these shells with... uh... 
(beat)


Grandmother opens drawer with much effort, pokes at the back and removes a dusty glass jar with dubious cloudy suspension. Mother and Son recoil, disgusted.


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


GRANDMOTHER (CONT'D)
Just... a little bit of this. A little bit. 


Grandmother narrows eyes and gesticulates for emphasis.
(beat)
Must add just a little bit.


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


SON
Hurry up! I was in the middle of playing my computer games!


MOTHER
(ignoring) Do you have the right jar? What is this?


SON
Ya, why is it...
(beat)
grey? (makes a face)


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


GRANDMOTHER
This is, ah...


Mother and Son crane their necks forward in anticipation.


GRANDMOTHER (CONT'D)
Kee.


Mother and Son simultaneously exclaim "Kee?" with bewildered expressions.


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


GRANDMOTHER (CONT'D)
For kee zhang.


MOTHER
I see... kee...


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


SON
Kee zhang? What is kee zhang?


MOTHER
Oh... I don't know how to say it in English. 


Grandmother dips her finger into the jar. 


GRANDMOTHER
Yes, correct one.


Mother dips her finger into the jar as well.


MOTHER
It feels soapy!


Son seems to hesitate.
(beat)
SON
Ok fine, I'll try too.


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


SON
(amazed) It really does feel soapy!


In the b.g., Son walks to kitchen sink to wash finger. Before turning on the tap, Son has a taste, and immediately wrinkles up face.


SON
(to himself) Ew, gross!


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


MOTHER
(to Grandmother) Isn't this now banned here?


SFX: LAUGHTER of a live audience


SON
(overhears) What? That's terrible! That's disgusting! I'm going to my room! (storms off)(OFFSCREEN: "I wish I was ang moh!")


PENSIVE GUITAR AND ELECTRIC PIANO DUET


MOTHER
(sighs) Children these days. No respect for their culture and roots. In my time, we begged our parents to help out in the kitchen. But now? All they want is play play play. (shakes head, wipes the table) So Westernized. 


MONTAGE
1) Son as a toddler reading Baby's First Queen's English
2) Son as a toddler having a tea party with ginger-haired children
3) Son as thirteen year old with newly-dyed blonde hair


MOTHER (CONT'D)
Haiya, it makes me... Makes me so worried for the future! (breaks down)

SFX: COLLECTIVE SIGH of a live audience as they contemplate the homogenization of culture due to globalization and the proliferation of American pop culture, prompting nostalgic reminiscing of the past and a renewed desire to stay in touch with their heritage.


Grandmother looks down solemnly and wipes table.


FADE OUT

low-ku

all my ships have sailed
Feed me grapefruit and lemons
through a bendy straw

afternoon tapes

hello crabbiness

It is so difficult to articulate how truly insipid Singaporean life is, only because there are so many ways to begin, so many places to start a long-drawn but necessary diatribe. 

(Read more, ruin your day)

back to the beginning

I'm very sad because Trish Keenan (from Broadcast) passed away.

black light attack

So this is what I have been up to lately...

It was worth the small rip on my t-shirt, getting foot-stabbed by someone dancing with stilettos (smarten' up, lady), taking the Night Rider back home, and trying to sleep with my ears ringing like a fire-alarm at the centre for the hearing-impaired. Also, I don't want to do this again... Or at least until Crystal Castles comes back, which will probably be in the year 2033 as a sort of comeback tour at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

things that usually happen on a Saturday

[I am typing at my desk at home]

[doorbell rings]

VOICEOVER: No way! My package from Urban Outfitters has finally arrived!

[door opens, ENTER Grandfather]

BEAT

GRANDFATHER: Hi Samuel.

[canned laughter]

low fidelity cupcakes

There are too many words on this blog! Here are some pictures to document baking brown butter cupcakes with butterscotch cookie dough frosting (what a mouthful) with A earlier today. My 2 megapixel cameraphone has no focusing mode. Get over it.

You're supposed to notice the cookie dough hidden inside the centre of the cupcake, and exclaim, "Wow! There is cookie dough hidden inside the centre of the cupcake!" like it's some marvelous dream and you're having a bitchin' good time.

oy, make me some perogies

Hi, Amber. You are either a real person or a very intelligent spambot that has developed sentience. (Kidding.) Anyway, thanks for the question. It's easy to find out how KI is tested and what exactly is covered — you can find it here in the syllabus document. 

The subject itself is bathed in an aura of mystique much like Mata Hari at the turn of the century — mysterious, exciting, dangerous and sometimes downright skanky. Many people have asked me "KI" questions like "Why is snow white?" in a smug register that we KI students later ridicule, occasionally behind their backs. It's true that KI is one of the most challenging subjects in the syllabus, but it's also true that I'm saying this primarily because I've done it before and suddenly feel as if I have the license to comment extensively on it. 

As such, here's a general list of misconceptions that scare young 16 to 17 year olds at the start of their lives in JC. 

Myth #1: KI students answer questions such as "Why is a table a table?" and "When is a cat not a cat?" at the A levels.

If you think you can write an essay based solely on these questions, YOU ARE WRONG. Our questions are far more abstract, including things like "Why is?" and "What can be?" (OK sorry, I lie. KI students do not really have to deal with these. Instead, we're concerned with epistemological concerns, i.e. questions related to the nature of knowledge — what does truth entail, what constitutes knowledge, how knowledge is constructed, who really constructs knowledge anyway, etc. We also have a critical thinking paper, where we evaluate arguments. It's fun. Just read the syllabus document.)

Myth #2: KI is like philosophy at A levels.

Again, some areas of philosophy are relevant to our exploration of epistemology and epistemology is a branch of philosophy, but the pedagogy of KI is quite different from that of most philosophy courses.

Myth #3: KI is really subversive and you'll definitely lose your religion, etc.

A very, very fundamental assumption in not just KI but any A level course is that most students have brains, and that these brains enable them to possess faculties for cognition. KI is where people re-examine, evaluate and grapple with their own beliefs, strengthening these beliefs or finding new ones. Essentially, it teaches students not to be overly, unhealthily and irresponsibly dogmatic. Because dogmatism ain't cool.

Myth #4: KI is stressful, and people die.

The Independent Study component is not a terrible thing. In fact, it's the most enjoyable thing about KI, because you can research on a topic of your own choosing. Most students do topics that they are genuinely interested in. No, people do not die. (Unless you're doing five other coursework-based H2s/H3s. In which case, you may die, or you are James Franco.)

Myth #5: KI is easier than GP in that comprehension skills aren't tested.

I would rephrase that. KI is more interesting than GP in that comprehension skills aren't tested, but rather expected of the candidate. You have to read passages and then comment and evaluate them, freestyle. It's neither easier nor more difficult. It's just different and that perhaps that makes it more interesting.

Myth #6: KI students are elitist pigs.

KI students are generally misunderstood. People think they are geniuses who can prove the existence of God in three minutes. People also think they are tightarses who voluntarily hole themselves up in a KI classroom but are really crying bitter tears of loneliness and exhaustion. It's not true. (Well, most of the time, anyway.) Like most other subjects, KI people take pride in their knowledge about knowledge and critical thinking skills. Unlike most other subjects, the candidature is small and, perhaps, select. ("Select" only insofar as passing a diagnostic test is concerned.) Minorities have it really hard.

Ultimately, KI is a really fun subject. The workload is usually OK (save for countless journal articles from JSTOR, but hey, that's the nature of the game) and small classes make for a close-knit community, (in my college, at least.) If you're up for it, KI will be one of the best things that will happen to you in JC.

Liz Lemon! I love you!

Of late:

I have been staying up till 2 a.m. watching 30 Rock and SNL episodes and eating kimchi directly from the container. Yes, I do have a personal kimchi pot. No, I will not spare you any. And no, I do not have a kimchi problem. This offends me.

Also, It's JaBaWeBuAcEvWeCaBeBaWeItDeOnTheInAyeGuess! (January Baking Week But Actually Every Week Can Be Baking Week It Depends On The Individual I Guess) The opening ceremony was held yesterday, featuring the spanking out of the reborn version of lemon poppyseed N from his two loaf pans. Other random and fragmented dispatches: J is meticulous — a quality that will reap plenty more baking successes. E tasted the cake and pronounced it good. Domestic Saint P approved of it, especially with afternoon tea. Grandparents loved it; exceeded expected quantity of consumption because of lack of knowledge that 9 eggs went into it. Parents adored it. Personally, this experience has prompted me to investigate other possible ways to prevent poppyseeds from sinking to the bottom of the cake batter. It forms a pretty gradient effect though, making it at once photogenic and delicious. 

Unfortunately, the sudden disappearance of the whisk attachments for my handheld mixer (povo Kitchenaid) has ruined my plans for a giant pavlova. I am somewhat shaken, but JaBaWeBuAcEvWeCaBeBaWeItDeOnTheInAyeGuess has also taught me resilience in the face of disaster and tragedy. 

101 Things To Do On The Internet circa. 1999

From One hundred and one things to do on the Internet (Wallace, Quaye, Wray, & Wingate, 1999)

No. 3: Carry out a keyword search

No. 21: Preview a future event (link broken)

"The web is a useful resource for finding out about events that haven't happened yet. For example, the next olympics will be held in Sydney, Australia, in the year 2000, but you can already visit its Web site at http://www.sydney.olympic.org"

No. 46: Explore a film website

No. 51: Add to a neverending story

No. 59: Create a virtual pizza (personal favorite!)

No. 61: Put your recipe on the web

No. 75: Explore a green city

why it sucks to write, usually

I'm still trying to write about my holiday. It is tremendously difficult. Not only am I starting to reconstruct my memories from the photographs I took (instead of the Mind's Eye of my visual memory,) I am starting to sense that nothing is ever adequate in expressing joy, and now, that intense longing. Because my interior landscapes are bigger than yours, this has opened up a larger, more pressing sphere of query and reflection. (I hate that word.)

Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impresión on you — how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment. But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions. Some must be subdued; others emphasised; in the process you will lose, probably, all grasp upon the emotion itself.

from How should one read a book? by Virginia Woolf

As Woolf so observes most eloquently and allusively, the amateur writer often struggles with recreating experience with the vocabulary of language. Actually, I think it's a condition that afflicts all people attempting to write — there is no word that can encapsulate an emotion, a feeling, a thought in its visceral totality. The lack in the lexicon of language becomes so overwhelming because it denies the possibility of elucidating an interiority; the lack is best described as a gaping void that, at worst, eats into the soul of writing. (Whatever that means. Maybe it's an ineffable drive in humans that animates the whole enterprise? Maybe it's the fundamental yearning to express our humanity, to preserve it in the face of time?)

What, then, is the writer to do? Writing appears to be futile, desolate and meaningless. And from where does satisfaction now stem from? Why write and, for that matter, why privilege language and literacy over other forms of human communication? The clichéd analytical framework of settling for The Best We Can is perhaps the most pragmatic solution, but in fails in the sense that it acts as a salve for the writer, but doesn't change what is written. 

Since the problems associated with writing are, well, problematic, maybe I should approach writing with a slightly altered attitude. It isn't the mimetic representation of an experience, but the reconstruction of an imagined (recent) past framed by human cognition. It acknowledges the perceiving subject twice over — firstly, that the subject experiences the event, and secondly, how the subject is necessarily selective in framing and filtering the experience into language, whether immediately upon perception, or meditatively, in hindsight. On a larger level, this turns a limitation into a celebration of cognition. (It's kind of like, Yay for writers! They can create sophistication in meaning that is incommensurate with the simplicity of words strung together!) 

Of course, it is naïve to think that the writer and his words exist in a closed system. Obviously, they speak to an audience (whether imagined or real) and the meanings of texts are often utterly contingent on the reader, i.e. the whole Reader-Response thing that is worth taking a look at on Wikipedia. (Maybe even the context. Then again, I ramble.) The relationship between the writer and the reader is thus a "messy" one disguised as a straightforward transaction between producer and consumer. Although it is worth discussing the limitations of the supply-demand model in the market for writing and publishing (two altogether separate yet symbiotic processes), the root issue lies within the realm of Meaning. Is signification (in the sense of the relationship between the signified and the signifier) a stable element in the text? Is it distorted, diminished over time? What kind of effect does it have on the reader, and do readers care anyway? It's something that Italo Calvino explores in If On A Winter's Night A Traveler but ultimately there are no definite conclusions, only ideas that trail off and reappear like fairy lights on a tacky fibreglass reindeer.

notes

The domestic helper who's taking care of my grandparents is a saint. She must be inherently amazing for being able to take care of them 24/7 AND do the laundry. I feel bad for her. 

In fact, anyone who's able to take care of the senile is worthy of our respect. (Personally, an hour trying — vainly — to engage in meaningful conversation has a very debilitating effect on me.) 

Like I said, I need to die young. Preferably heroically, in NS, or in a shower of sparks over the Atlantic Ocean in a tragic airplane explosion, or as a human shield in Palestine. Old age is more frustrating (for all parties involved) than that insipid sepia-tone Werther's Original commercial. It's Grandpa Simpson-esque without the comedy. If any, the laughter is bitter.

Y'all, y'all, I haven't stopped blogging yet — it's just that I'm in the middle of writing an entry about my holidays and you know how difficult it is to summarize unbridled happiness. Also, I'm making friends with spam bots. Oh well. Antivirus Free Viagra eBay Free Movies Free Channels Enlargement Real Estate Discount Pills Pfizer. 

Have some puppies! Yay!