interfacing

Hello there, I've discovered the magic of emailing blog posts from my blackberry! (As I type this, I am fully aware that the previous sentence wouldn't have made any sense fifty years ago. "Blog posts? You are referring to those flimsy structural supports in your quaint asian fishing villages and shanty-towns?")

Anyway I am very excited about holding the 30 rock marathon tomorrow night, baking super healthful cookies, and maybe pretending I'm leading a normal life by complaining heartily about public transportation, weird smells emanating from the void deck, celebrity babies etc. etc.

curds how delicious

This is how my day ended: walking along Tanglin Road in the darkness, slightly tipsy from drinking Swedish apple cider, trying to remember where I left that last issue of artforum, pretending I'm at a Twin Shadow gig and having the time of my life, realising that I'd rather be alone on a Saturday night thank you very much, waving off migrants trying to sell me calendar pens for charity, contemplating a box of 12 macarons and then deciding to postpone pleasure because my motto for the month of June will be The Calories Can Wait (this will not work, however), reaching home laughing hysterically with E about something that happened this afternoon involving a ball and mysterious cat poop, etc. etc. And then I had a cup of tea from ikea and now I feel almost intensely Swedish this evening. Like there should be at least 2 umlauts in my name. 

I also took photographs because the sunlight was lovely, much like a kitten licking your eyes. But that wouldn't be awesome, because apparently cats have tiny hooks on their little pink tongues, or so I read in a 100 Amazing Facts-type book in the springtime of my existence. Anyway —

I like to think of my dinner as a sort of justice served after today's Macbeth picnic dinner didn't work out with S and M. (That did not come out right.) We were planning to have meatballs, a lovely warm potato casserole and a refreshing summer salad on a picnic mat with killer plaid detailing, but the tickets were just so darn elusive. It was a sad time in our week. Anyway, I managed to snag a small table away from the children's play area to "relax" and "read a book" (but really, I was mostly staring at my Blackberry screen and marveling at how it can display more colours than my family's first desktop computer. Technology is amazing!) 

In the afternoon, A and I went to the FASS open house and (I'd like to think that) we charmed our way into the central library. We entered and asked the librarian at the desk, in her fancy important swivel chair, whether we could perhaps visit the library even though we weren't studying here yet. The thing with librarians in Singapore — are they all sisters or something? She looked just like the librarian in Bishan, who looked like the librarian in my secondary school, who looked like my librarian in JC. They seem to share the same kindly eyes, much like garden gnomes, and Condi's pursed lips. It's constantly fascinating, you know, like in the Sims, where the NPCs all look the same despite having different names? Exactly.

I digress when sleepy. Anyway, she was like, You don't study here so I cannot let you come in. But!— I saw the cheeky gnomic twinkly eyes that said Kids I'm screwin' with ya and played along, giving just a hint of a dejected pout. I'm not sure what A did but she let us in (also pointing out that the entry gate isn't locked.) Also I just want to say here and now that I'd like to die in this library, in between shelves of Spivak and Butler and Eagleton, right there on the immaculately vacuumed carpet. 

I think this giant tome about highway pavements... really expands your world of experience.

Gothic, Victorian things that might be fun to read.

When I get a car, I want to name it Love's Madness.

"Disinterested" marginalia next to a paragraph about Miss Havisham, making this doubly interesting. Ooh.

BADIOU. I feel very intellectually cutting-edge when reading continental philosophy! It's like the comme des garcons of intellectual thought! I am that shallow!

Part of a series called Rewriting the Canon

And we were also lured in with fancy cupcakes that are very Now.

Also I'm too lazy to write much — look, I didn't even format the post properly — but here are pictures of breakfast. There was plaster prata and paper prata. Yay, alliteration + plosives! Lordy lordy I feel like the king of sonics tonight.

I've lived here all my life

tonight I am consuming:

fingers like the hedge in winter

flowers

There is a scene in Yesterday My Classmate Died where everyone is learning about the death, and its abrupt interruption of daily routine was this jarring mixture of humour and horror that is now rearing its terrible head in Real Life. And I am trying to make sense of sadness and the silences right now, because if I — someone who never really interacted much with her — am struck by the tragedy of the situation, what more the people who loved her? Loved her so much she's still alive and having a cheeseburger with them tonight, loved her so much it's hard to say she really died. 

It's something I never talk about now, but I know precisely how it feels like to lose a loved one to suicide. I never looked into the casket because I wanted my memories untainted. I refused to be left with an image of a bruised head for a goodbye. But what still haunts me is this: I still wonder how it feels like when the equilibrium on the ledge disappears and you're plunged into the horrible emptiness of the night air, hitting the floor like an angry bullet.

sigh x sigh

fantasy itinerary #1:

Singapore to Reykjavik

Reykjavik to Oslo

Oslo to Stockholm

Stockholm to Helsinki

Helsinki to St. Petersburg 

St. Petersburg to Riga

Riga to Warsaw

Warsaw to Sopot

Sopot to Gdansk

Gdansk to Warsaw

Warsaw to Singapore

fantasy itinerary #2:

Singapore to Milan

Milan to Rome

Rome to Barcelona

Barcelona to Marseille 

Marseille to Paris

Paris to Brussels

Brussels to Amsterdam

Amsterdam to Bremen

Bremen to Frankfurt

Frankfurt to Munich

Munich to Zurich

Zurich to Singapore

fantasy itinerary #3:

Singapore to Nagoya

Nagoya to Tokyo

Tokyo to Seattle

Seattle to Tacoma

Tacoma to Portland

Portland to Sacramento

Sacramento to San Francisco

San Francisco to Los Angeles

Los Angeles to Singapore

fantasy itinerary #4:

Singapore to New York

New York to Philadelphia

Philadelphia to Baltimore

Baltimore to Washington DC

Washington DC to Detroit

Detroit to Chicago 

Chicago to Milwaukee 

Milwaukee to Minneapolis 

Minneapolis to Cody, Wyoming

Cody, Wyoming to Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone to Cody

Cody to Denver

Denver to Montreal

Montreal to Toronto

Toronto to New York

New York to Singapore

fantasy itinerary #5

Singapore to New Delhi 

New Delhi to Tehran

Tehran to Istanbul

Istanbul to Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Jerusalem to Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv to Athens

Athens to Cairo

Cairo to Singapore

le sigh le sigh le sigh

curtain

I've reached that stage in pre-adulthood where I can look at my juniors and immediately flat-out die of pride. Yesterday night, I suddenly felt this incredible anger while watching them sing, because it was beautiful and magical and lovely and, reminded of SYF, I realized there and then that I hated the idea of judging beauty, hated the notion that it could be cheapened by medals, hated the enterprise of competing because you have to and it's a key performance indicator that's wrongly made out to be tangible and objective. And worse: the popular opinion that the choir is defined by what is handed out — that it is constrained, forced to treat the stigma as a hurdle, given deadlines and ultimatums.

Yesterday I was reminded that TJChoir is one of the few special choirs here that refuse to be tied down to parochial standards that are universalized, misapplied and abused. We (and I use "We" because once you're a part of this, you never leave. But not in a creepy way of course.) are devoted first and foremost to our music, not our reputation. We are selflessly involved in creating beauty, hopelessly devoted to pursuing that moment when the wrinkles in the air cause prickles in your skin and send goosepimples licking up your back. We are constantly humbled before our music, because what we create is always, always larger than then mere sum of our parts. We give away ourselves to the making of each performance. And it is a wonderful thing to be in this choir, to expand your worldview so profoundly that, looking through the sepia-tinted lenses of experience, you are shamed by your seeming naivete in the past but also willing to forgive the self and accept that growing up requires that upward progression from inexperience to maturity (duh). So, we don't just sing; we express our humanity — all the sorrow and the joy, pain and pleasure, fragility and undying fortitude. And this is just me and my little manifesto that took a year to hatch.

salty sweet

Nyargh I am tormented by visions of junk food. Apple pies (deep fried), French fries slathered with garlic mayonnaise and then smothered with Tabasco sauce, crackly pork knuckles, springy Japanese cup noodles in all their monosodium glutamate umami goodness, hot cinnamon churros and gently warmed salted caramel, the peanuts in a snickers bar, peanut butter milkshakes with a dark chocolate drizzle, fatty pork belly slices melting into the cream-coloured broth in a bowl of ramen, soup dumplings in 49 different colours, truffles encrusted in the skin of fried buttermilk chicken, shots of Irish cream lined up next to a just-assembled pavlova with raspberries falling off the sides, macarons in a magnificent tower, the knobs of sun coloured butter bubbling on a heated cast iron pan, cream cheese in poppy seed bagels that you eat only in launderette-smelling hostels in Manhattan beside a pool table, crisp pancetta and a golden yolk atop a plate of carbonara, the smear of nutella across a crepe inviting the sprinkling of toasted slivered almonds, neat gelato counters with flavours like risotto and peach melba, Peking Duck sandwiches, deep fried mushrooms, crumpets and cold butter. I am so hungry.   

sheol

Today I went for breakfast with Sister, walked around Tiong Bahru pretending it's the cultural equivalent of Brooklyn vis a vis Singapore (age, gentrification, etc.), had lovely truffled fries and carrot cake (E does not believe it's homemade), attended Kat's wedding, endured a totally meandering journey home, took passport photographs, cut my hair again and it's beginning to look ridiculous, endured the crowds at NEX to get a soy chai frappuccino (and ordering it like a boss), and then rushing back home to have dinner, watch 30 Rock (the season finale, frowny face here), and type this paragraph with the memory of a blazing sunset in my head. 

I love soy frappuccinos. They're refreshing, and end off with that lovely creamy soy aftertaste which reminds you that Hey, This Is Soy And It's Lighter And Healthier, So Good For You! I wish I could recline in my bed, on my crinkly muji sheets with the latest issue of Acne, but I have to go back to camp and it sucks. But breakfast is good. But it's still camp. But I won't have to see my platoon today. But I'm still missing out on sleep. I hate my life. I hope I can make friends with whomever I'm prowlin' the night with.

travel

We're so postmodern, nostalgia isn't quite the same anymore. It's easy to access archives of memories, reconstructing experience in your head, reconstructing other people's experiences in your head. It's lovely. But photographs are fundamentally melancholic, because without saying anything, they remind us of what has been lost. That instant in time has a distinct singularity, like a fingerprint. Photographs exacerbate the bittersweet wounding that nostalgia inflicts. 

(OK, I am now in show-and-tell mode.)

This image is an artifact on several levels. Firstly, it is an image of the blue car that appears in the following photograph, the self-immolation of the monk Thích Quảng Đức to protest the Diem government in Cochinchina:

If you look closely at the first picture, there are two framed photographs exhibited alongside the car. One is hung on the wall much like an information panel, seemingly an accompaniment to the spectacle of the rusted blue car, as if merely there to validate its historical value and authenticity. The other photograph is placed on the windshield within a more elaborate frame. It is the same photograph, only in solemn repose. It is funereal and contemplative. It is interesting to view the original photograph again within the frame of the windshield, as if it's forcibly giving us context — the car, much like the people in the background as well as the people looking back on history, is a spectator partaking in the horror and the humanity of the scene. Not only is the car an artifact of a shared collective memory, it contains the photograph which in itself is an artifact referring constantly to the past. The framed photograph is an artifact within an artifact, both interlaced in a relationship that mutually reinforces the experience of seeing each other. This relationship has been captured in the first image, making that an artifact within an artifact within an artifact. (Yay!)

Let's take this a level further. There is the implied photographer within the photograph, with motivations, intention, unconscious psychological undertows, etc. (Really, it's just me.) The photograph is not just a testament to the the existence of what it depicts, but an expression of sight, a declaration of seeing. It carries the weight of the photographer's response to the scene in front of him. In this case, it was that strange, overwhelming sensation of being so close to a mythical piece of knowledge about Southeast Asian history that I studied from a scholarly distance. At the same time, the violence and tragedy embedded in the blue car felt confrontational; encountering it within the grounds of a temple made for further emotional dissonance. The photograph is not only an artifact within an artifact within an artifact, it is also an artifact relating to the inner life of the photographer himself.

It (an abbreviation for all the levels of meaning in the photograph) is also an object of nostalgia, in that it replaces past experience (like, Gestalt holism) with visual record. We now recall the past in terms of images that we take with our cameras, and I think that opens up a different world of experiencing nostalgia — that it privileges the ocular simply because it is now the primary way of experiencing the world. (Our memories are arranged in images, anyway.) Yet at the same time, there still lie memories (mostly forged unconsciously) that don't revolve around vision and image. Familiar smells and sounds provoke a nostalgia that is surprising, and in this way, somewhat more intense. 

I hope my bunkmates never find this blog.

anterior

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss BMT so much. Conversations went something like this:

"What delightful croissants we have been gifted for breakfast this morning. Oh, why, hullo there! I'm Samuel — and you are?"

"Oh my! What an amusing coincidence! I am also Samuel! What a pleasant day it is."

"Indeed! I hear you are from __(__)? Do you know of a certain ____?)

"_____? Of course! I have worked with him before. We attended a theoretical physics conference in Geneva just last June. A highly esteemed and diligent gentleman, our man ____ is. I believe he is worthy of all our respect. May the road rise to meet him, may the wind be always at his back, and may the sun shine warm upon his face wherever life may lead him."

"Amen to that, old chap!"

"Ha! Ha! I would be slapping my leg with the jolliest laughter now, had the sergeant not glared at us from that table."

This is all made-up hyperbole. But the contrast between normal conversation and all that gaiety is similar to the contrast between the primitive Neanderthal grunting I hear everyday now and normal conversation. Yay, analogies! 

important clarification

Apolitical ≠ apathetic

the heart is an avocado

Labour Day dinner: Martha Stewart's crispy baked potatoes, portobello and shaved asparagus, mussels, caramelized soy chicken. There is dill in almost everything because my dill plant is becoming a monster in my tiny HDB corridor herb garden. 

Also I cannot express enough how stoked I am about my friends' wedding in June. There are going to be fairy lights! We're wearing crisp shirts and khaki coloured pants! The wedding cake has sea salt and caramel frosting! Porcini mushrooms for lunch! Vintage polka dotted fabric! Bow ties! A picnic for a photoshoot! No sharks' fin soup! Yay! I know it's going to be lovely and I am so honoured just to help out.

dorsal, notes

Chiam See Tong makes me cry.

I had a life-altering macchiato in the evening. 

Food cravings are getting ridiculous.

The word "lassitude"

Should I bother watching Norwegian Wood?

I want to live in an abandoned firehouse. 

2.50 for one artisan-looking pau is really steep for a bun.

Pages that smell nice.

Need to sleep.