Episode 322: Happy Birthday, Ethan!

Went out for lunch at Bussorah Street with Diego and the Humanities people. I ordered ayam penyet without knowing exactly what it was, apart from that it had chicken in some form. Turned out to be a good choice in the end! The others headed off to Geylang for durians, while I doubled back to try and find the bus stop along Victoria Street that 980 stops at. After several failed attempts, I gave up and walked slightly further down to the bus stop outside Fu Lu Shou Complex at Rochor Road, since I knew for certain that 980 passes by that stop. So I finally managed to make it to Uncle Pak Chee's house for Ethan's birthday party. Got there before Hui Juan and Sarah, and ironically, I passed by the area where Hui Juan was supposed to pick Sarah up, but the latter was tardy, as usual. Ended up spending the rest of the day there because we were invited to stay for dinner, so I've actually only just got home. Estoy cansado! Still need to see about getting tickets to the Wednesday performance of The Crucible, since Claudia and Eugene have both reconfirmed their interest. Think I'll get around to doing that tomorrow. Hopefully, the tickets won't have sold out by then!

Episode 321: I Didn't. Did You?

This year was one of the few when I didn't watch the parade, except for the closing bits. Couldn't be helped because my parents stayed back after service to practise for an item, but if I'd been at home, I wouldn't have watched the parade on TV anyway. I guess now I'm just a bit too detached in the way that I look at NDP, so I don't feel like I'm missing out terribly if I don't see the parade. Then there was the whole business about getting everyone to recite the pledge at 8.22 pm. My dad actually did, even though we were already at home by then. I spent most of the car ride home idly speculating on whether Singaporeans in various situations would drop everything just for 30 seconds to do that. I'm not sure whether or not this exercise is actually meaningful. Intuitively, it sounds wonderful. Singaporeans all across the island (and the world) coming together for a brief moment, united by our affirmation of the words of the pledge. Yet if you start thinking about it, why is it that we only make a big deal about the pledge on National Day? How about the other 364/365 days of the year? Are we living out the meaning of the pledge? As for all those people happily taking the pledge overseas, I'm not denying that it demonstrates a connection to our country. I would like to know though, just how many of these people could have flown back for National Day, but didn't. I guess you could say that I'm a quiet patriot. I'm proud of my country; I just don't see how encouraging me to say the pledge at 8.22 pm is supposed to make me feel prouder.

Episode 320: Roaring Twenties Dinner Party

The theme for Mel's dinner party was the Roaring Twenties, but since men's fashion hasn't drastically changed since that era, I just wore a long-sleeved shirt and my Ted Baker waistcoat. My only concession to contemporary fashion? That skinny tie from Topman. The final look is devastatingly sharp, at least for me. Makes me look like the frontman of some up-and-coming 'it' band. Haha! It's completely horrid to be out and about wearing this outfit in Singapore though, due to the humidity. I was roasting on the way to Mel's house and back. Dinner was a strictly vegetarian affair, but it was delicious all the same, so kudos to Eugene, Mel and Vaish for putting everything together for all of us! As for how my reading's going, I'm still making my way through that book of anecdotes. Am close to being done, after which I'll get back to Tomas Tranströmer's poetry. Have an intriguing book waiting for me after that, but I'll blog about it when I've started reading it. It's one of those works where content and design attain a synergistic state, so I'm quite excited to read the thing, having had my eye on it in the National Library for a long time now.

Episode 319: Class Gathering

About a third of the class came to the gathering at Rui Min's place, which I guess is pretty good, considering it's been four years since graduation and some absences couldn't be helped in the first place. Surprisingly, I was the first to arrive, despite thinking that I was going to be fashionably late and taking a wrong turn after getting off the bus and crossing the overhead bridge. A couple of people were going off to party, so it was pretty much just dinner and chitchat before they had to be off. I meant to bring that book of anecdotes out, but changed my mind in the end. I'm finding it just a bit tedious to get through it at present, but that's partly my fault for coming to it with too high expectations. I was looking to be entertained by wit bursting from every page, but what I'm getting instead is more of an assortment of random bits of trivia. To be fair, there are occasional moments of amusement, but not of the laugh-out-loud variety. I actually thought of giving up on the book and moving on to something else (there're plenty of choices piled on my table, not counting what I'm planning to read for next year's modules), but have elected to soldier on manfully and finish what I've started. Haha! Just hope there aren't any other duds in my pile from the library, especially that book about food and drink that sounded literarily (and literally) scrumptious.

Episode 318: Mahjong!

Went over to Eugene's place for a mahjong session with Ben Woon and Patrick. I got off lightly as the smallest loser, since Eugene won a good deal of everyone's money. We had to play three-player mahjong before Ben arrived, and I'd forgotten how easy it was to make combinations when only three people are playing. I also didn't know that McDonald's has a lunchtime promotion with prices that have never been seen since I was in my early teens. Have just found out that The Crucible is being staged at the SRT next week, but there's almost no chance that I'll be able to see it. Warwick party on Wednesday, Alpha on Friday, cousin's wedding on Saturday. My only free evening'll be Thursday! Does anyone want to catch The Crucible with me? I don't desperately have to see it, but it would be nice to pay a visit to the theatre again before leaving Singapore. Maybe Shirley's right. I should just plan to catch something in September instead. There's a couple of really cool exhibitions that I want to go to as well, but I doubt I will end up doing so, since I don't feel like going down alone and my dad's not free to drive me down. Sigh...

Episode 317: Ennui Assails

Went to get a haircut today, and then had sinfully oily KFC for lunch. It was fried, and it was good. Okay, not really, but every so often, I feel the need to clog up my arteries. (Why is it just arteries? Do the veins have some special biological self-cleaning mechanism? Or is this purely a figure of speech?) I spent the entire afternoon playing meaningless games of Civilization IV. I say meaningless because I've never bothered to become any good at the game, so I just set it on the easiest difficulty setting and use it to while away the hours. It sounds a bit pathetic, I know, but I needed a change from staring at poems on a page. Am finding it really hard to read Tranströmer, in case you're wondering. Watched The Hand That Rocks The Cradle on mio TV after dinner, but on fast-forward because it was really predictable, and my mum and I basically figured out what the plot was going to be after 15 minutes. Started on a new book as well, The New Oxford Book Of Literary Anecdotes, edited by John Gross. It's quite entertaining, so I think I'll take that for the bus ride to Eugene's house tomorrow morning!

Episode 316: Rewriting's Done!

Today has been filled with various minor accomplishments. To begin with, I finished reading The Devil's Blind Spot: Tales From The New Century. The short stories in this book draw on historical characters and events, and they make for pretty compelling reading. All this gives me hope that someday I will actually develop a love for the discipline of history. (No offence to all the historians who might be reading this blog.) So from that, I've moved on to reading Tomas Tranströmer's The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems. Then I went back to RJC to give a quick talk to the current batch of Humanities students. It just blows my mind that the campus is still undergoing renovation! Now there's even a covered walkway from the main building to a side gate that opens on an entrance to the Marymount MRT station. Kids these days have it so good! I'm still terrible at spontaneous public speaking. Dyed my hair when I got home, so now it's dark brown, which you can sort of see when the angle of the light is right. Most significant thing accomplished though, was finishing my edits and additions, and sending everything off to Yee Hung for him to add his stuff. Took me way less time than I thought it would, and left me wondering why in the world I was procrastinating to begin with! I've also demonstrated to my satisfaction that I have a better memory than my mum when it comes to remembering where my stuff is. First the receipt for my MOE claim, now my KrisFlyer membership card. Both claimed to be in my room, both discovered in hers. Haha...

Episode 315: Procrastination Is An Art Form

Made use of mio TV today to watch Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Dialogue was a bit clunky, but plot was a standard affair, even the part where the male lead dies in an act of noble self-sacrifice. So yeah, I kind of wasted nearly two hours of my life on that. I have a soft spot for the Final Fantasy franchise though, simply because Final Fantasy VIII was the first RPG that I played. That and my parents disapproving of its imagery. Anyway, I woke up today, sat down in front of my laptop, and within five minutes, I figured out the gist of what I'll be talking about tomorrow. It's all laid out in point form in a PowerPoint presentation, which I will hopefully not actually need, just because I kind of hate Powerpoint. Now that that's sorted out in my head, I can spend Tuesday evening and beyond on the script. I'm procrastinating not because the rewriting I'll need to do to accommodate the recommended changes is substantial, but it's scattered throughout all the scenes I had a hand in scripting, so the task feels somehow bigger than it actually is. So instead of getting on with it, I've been reading. Ostensibly, my excuse for that is that all this reading is going to spontaneously erupt as pages and pages of writing next term, but hey, who am I kidding? In slightly less important news, Threadless is having a sale again, but I refuse to be tempted! Do you hear me? I will not allow myself to spend more money that I don't have! I am turning over a new leaf. It's temporarily imposed by necessity, but with time, it may transform into something self-perpetuating. I hope.

Episode 314: Need Motivation...

So I'm going back to RJC on Tuesday to talk about university and stuff. Have no idea what I'm going to say. Uh, Varsity Warwick has cheap drinks on Thursday nights? Costcutter does not actually cut your costs? Will have to give this some thought tomorrow because I don't think I'm that good at improvisation. I'll even be slightly paranoid and whip up a quick PowerPoint presentation, just in case. Once that's done, I'll start work on the script. I tried to start on that poem I had an idea for yesterday, but the first couple of lines started to sound like a prose piece, so now I'm kind of torn between making it a prose piece with an observer judging from the sidelines, or leaving it as a poem. On a side note, I'm almost done ripping Eugene Chan's DVDs! Had to give up on one because there were just too many errors, and my laptop would just overheat and shut down anyway. Everything else has gone fine though. I have yet to start running regularly, or at all for that matter. Some nights I wish I had something more insightful to say here, but it's so much easier to hide behind a book instead. Besides, if you're reading this, you'd better have spoken to me in real life at least once.

Episode 313: The Library Is My New Best Friend!

Today, while I was on my way to church for singing practice, I suddenly had an idea for my next poem. The central image is going to feature one of my worst habits: taking my handphone out and pretending to check a non-existent SMS. I promise that the poem's going to be better than it sounds right now. Was at the library again, this time in Queenstown. Come to think of it, I've been going to the library so often that I haven't actually read anything for next year's modules. I've finished reading Iambus, The Enclosure Of Love and Means To An End, all by Toh Hsien Min. You can definitely see a stylistic evolution, moving away from strict rhymes in his first collection, to looser, more relaxed forms in the subsequent collections. My next comment is going to sound completely facetious, but I'm being quite serious when I say that I like how many of his poems are fairly lengthy. You just don't get that very often in contemporary Singaporean poetry. Not that length necessarily correlated with quality, but after reading some Singaporean poetry, I'm left wondering if all the poet meant to give me was a couple of images that don't seem to add up to something more. I suppose the word I'm looking for shouldn't be 'length', but rather 'density'. I'm suddenly very tempted to buy his three collections, should I see them in a bookstore.

As for the rest of the books I've been discovering at various libraries in Singapore, I will blog about them as and when I get around to actually reading them. I have this terrible habit of borrowing books and then finding myself incapable of sitting down to concentrate on them. Am getting slightly better at it now though, so that's a good sign. I've just finished Look At My Striped Shirt! This is a somewhat amusing read from the people at ThePhatPhree.com. I had to say 'somewhat' because it starts out a real hoot, but given the brand of humour being employed, there's only so much you can take before it all becomes somewhat repetitive. The tagline, 'Target. Observe. Ridicule.' is pretty much a summation of the book's purpose, in which it succeeds, for better or worse. By the way, my dad is slightly concerned that I bought The 48 Laws Of Power. It's not like I'm suddenly out to take over the world or anything! I just thought it would be, you know, useful. That and the historical anecdotes make for rather interesting reading. Next book I'm cracking open is that book of Alexander Kluge short stories I was blogging about yesterday. After that, time for some more poetry, I think. At some point in the coming week, I'm going to edit my bits of the musical script.