sometimes you win

Screw essay marking—I'm going DANCIN'!

Last week has been all sorts of amazing: Sunday I found myself marking scripts at the Cider Pit + late night dimsum; most of Monday was spent at the Mango Dollies' Artistry gig followed by yuzu martinis at Bar Stories; I took Tuesday and Wednesday off to lead a relatively more subdued life; Thursday found me at a farewell tea party cooing over a red velvet cake frosted with coconut, nursing a tiny macchiato, and stealing lemon poppyseed cake and cheesecake from J and D, which was followed by sweatpants-hunting, and then another gig at BooksActually before hopping from Coq and Balls to Maison Ikkoku, another pretentious watering hole, where I had a rosemary yuzu thing (again) and gazed longingly at the salted caramel drink beside me; on Friday I went to YH's and had a vegetarian paella that wanted to be a risotto; I ended off Saturday nursing a headache and chewing on pieces of wonderfully salty-cheesy spinach-ricotta ravioli alla pastora and tucking into a gula melaka ice cream after rehearsal. Today I am dreading the final week of term because it harkens my slow descent into essay marking hell, and unsentimental goodbyes (mitigated by brownies, that I have to bake now) to my classes. 

I am looking forward to: hate-watching The Great Gatsby, Star Trek, making hummus multiple times, and fussing over the trip to Sydney. I've learnt to create my own spaces for happiness because happiness isn't going to come to me like flies to a cesspit. It doesn't work that way. 

duomo

Confession—I have been rather underwhelmed by Mast Brothers' Stumptown Coffee Chocolate Bar. The flavours are complex enough: it opens with a hit of cherry and dark, dark muscovado, then melds into something pleasantly tarry, astringent, and rather green. However, its slightly granular texture bothered me with its reticence to commit to the crunch of whole beans or the velvet smoothness of a more refined chocolate. On the whole, I like this bar but would rather pick out Almonds & Sea Salt or Papua New Guinea next time.

Although we merely speak of chocolate bars we really are alluding to a different source/locus/medium of pleasure/pain.

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If writing is a muscle then unfortunately it has atrophied and the remnants of connective tissue have been divided and cast into lots to be sold as raw materials for glue manufacturing.

the persistence of discredited beliefs

To what extent has growing up been a fucking retarded process thus far? Illustrate your answer with examples.

"You will never be truly happy unless you radically overhaul the conditions of your current existence." Do you agree with this statement?

Comment on the view that adulthood is merely the loss of imagination and commonsense.

How far are human relationships purely ephemeral objects of melancholy?

Discuss the view that you only have yourself to blame.

in praise of mary pinchot meyer

i. 

Mary Meyer was an enigmatic woman in life, and in death her real personality lurks just out of view. Her life was domestic and private, as were the lives of her female friends. As independent as she seemed to her female friends, it is unlikely any of the men in Mary's life ever thought of her as an equal. She and her friends were surely affected by the condescension of their men, an attitude that has survived the decades since her death. "Who wants to read about a bunch of unhappy women?" one of their ex-husbands, a prominent Washington attorney, said when told that any book about Mary Pinchot Meyer would also involve the lives of her friends.

A Very Private Woman - NYT

ii.

Life, University, etc.: The Story So Far

Having been rejected by Expensive Dream College in a a grimy crime-ridden city with stupendous levels of inequality, and finding no money in time to fund an education in the The Land of Opportunity, I have decided to keep things decidedly vanilla and stay in Singapore. I will count the hours spent staring blankly out of the window (sanitised), sighing and wondering what could have been and what will be. But this has been the story of my life time and time again—never quite getting what I want and blaming myself for it, but realising how everything turns out for the better.

iii.

Notes towards a deterioration iii:

Dinner: you ask: who is the girl

seated next to me:

uh: that's your granddaughter