Episode 1042: QC For Cabbies!

I might've said it before, but there seriously needs to be some form of quality control for cabbies in Singapore. Last night, it was a driver who ridiculously couldn't remember where Lentor Avenue was, which is by no means some random little road in a forgotten corner of the island. When asked to bring us to Yio Chu Kang, he went to Yio Chu Kang Road, but starting from the end not actually in the Yio Chu Kang area because he didn't know where Lentor Avenue was and therefore couldn't bring us to the right end of Yio Chu Kang Road, obviously. Tonight, it was a cabbie who was changing shift in Sembawang, and therefore drove me and my sisters to Yishun recklessly. Maybe, as Shirley said, I just have bad luck with taxis, but my experiences aren't unique. As much as I appreciate driving a taxi is a tough job in Singapore, I don't think I should have to suffer for it as a passenger. Anyway, I had a nice lunch today at Inagiku, right next to Shahi Maharani. Crazily expensive sashimi! Still think that the only sashimi I actually like is salmon. We actually wouldn't have eaten at the restaurant if my parents weren't Feed At Raffles members and could get discounts at this Japanese restaurant, so it was just a novel experience, I guess.

Episode 1041: A Couple Of Firsts

Cyril Wong's debut collection, squatting quietly, is one I've been trying to track down since I started buying local poetry. So imagine my surprise on spotting copies in BooksActually today. Seven copies to be exact, although their sale has been interdicted by the poet because he regards the collection as juvenilia. Too bad for me then! I did pick up a bunch of other local writing though, raking up a tab of nearly $90. The only non-local book was Christiania Whitehead's The Garden Of Slender Trust, which I've been aware of since she lectured us for EN121 in first year. Curious to see what sort of poetry she writes. Headed to the National Library to pick up some books and then it was back to Raffles City for dinner at Shahi Maharani with Claudia, Derrick and Thong. As Claudia pointed out later when we were having drinks in Brotzeit, the conversation we were having (mostly merciless ribbing) could just as well have been had in our JC days, with the obvious addition now of alcohol. I suppose that's a good thing actually, right? It's nice that some things don't change, even half a decade on. Before that, we were in Loof, so I've finally visited the rooftop bar at Odeon Towers. Not terribly impressed though. Overpriced, tiny drinks, and we had to ask for our change back after paying! Another first was paying a visit to CHIJMES after Brotzeit closed, in search of dessert. Thank goodness we found gelato at Lippolis, after a lot of semi-aimless wandering!

Episode 1040: Faith Enough To Doubt?

Managed to get the review done before heading to cell. It was close to 700 words, yet I was still left with the feeling that I hadn't done the collection justice. I guess I just feel uncomfortable with making general statements that due to space constraints, I can't always back up with rigorous close readings of the poems themselves. I usually try to include at least one fairly substantial instance of said textual analysis in a review, and it's a technique that seems to work pretty well. Cell was more interesting than I expected it to be. We started working on Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ while I was away, and this week's topic was about doubt. In my personal experience, doubt has never been a serious issue for me. I think it's because I'm predominantly an intellectual believer, and correspondingly, an intellectual doubter. Yet things like the problem of evil, which do bother other people, don't trouble me at a personal, day-to-day level, and therefore to me, they don't seem a justifiable cause to lose faith. I realise this could change as my life and circumstances change as well, but at this point, that's my position on the matter. Ultimately, I suspect that what we all need is faith enough to doubt.

Episode 1039: Unconditional Offer, Finally

Trying to get my unconditional offer from Warwick threatened to devolve into a paperwork fiasco. At least until I reminded the Postgraduate Admissions staff member that I'm in fact a brand new Warwick graduate, so there ought to be records openly accessible to prove that, Honours classification and all. That cleared things up pretty quickly, although it did indicate to me that she never even took a look at the photocopy of my degree scroll that I attached and just automatically disregarded it because it came via e-mail. No issues with MOE when I sent it in, although I still need to provide my final transcript, which is so far still MIA. What's up with that anyway? Going to try and bang out a bit of the review tonight before bed, but I suspect the most I'll achieve is re-reading the collection. 500-750 words can't take that long to write, right? Plus I think I've got my angle for the review, and it's definitely to do with the Christian-themed poems in the collection. Might be able to incorporate some of the ideas from my PWP reflective essay, especially Elizabeth Jennings's comments on Christianity and poetry.

Episode 1038: Successful Procrastination!

So I've managed to put off writing the review for yet another day. Am definitely going to finish Metro 2033 before I sleep though, so that's something at least. Not sure what I'm going to read after that though. Really want to start on those Ted Dekker novels because that's the reason I shipped all of them back, but there's poetry I'd like to read as well. I suppose I'll figure something out. TV backlog has been trimmed to a manageable size at least, with just the latest episodes of Covert Affairs, Falling Skies and The Nine Lives Of Chloe King remaining. Randomly, today I discovered that TNT's Rizzoli & Isles is based on Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli/Isles crime thriller series. I was a big fan of her earlier medical thrillers, back when I was in secondary school, and I've read a couple of the books in this Rizzoli/Isles series, so I'm adding the show to my list to follow. Or catch up on at some point anyway, since I'm probably already following too many shows as it is, and that's even before the new fall schedule shows I want to add to the list have premiered. I estimate it's basically going to double the number of shows I follow on a weekly basis, come September/October.

Episode 1037: ...And Getting Into The Swing Of Things

Just read the two submissions forwarded to me for The Cadaverine in the past weeks. Should have done it sooner really, as they turned out to be quite straightforward rejections. Didn't really have much concrete advice for the writers this time though, as there wasn't anything specific that could be tweaked for improvement. What was needed in both stories was more like a complete overhaul, which I tried to phrase as delicately as I could, particularly since one submission was from a 10-year-old via his mother. (That was an unusual one.) Tomorrow, I'm going to get on with my review of Sidereal hopefully, but I'll need to re-read it first. Or I could procrastinate by trying to finish Metro 2033! Really want to see how it ends, as this is a rare occasion that I haven't flicked through the last couple of pages to find out how everything ends. Need to get the review done by Monday though, in time for the magazine's launch. Then it's on to the review of Brittle Star that I've been sitting on for ages, before I'll finally have time to turn my thoughts to my 500-word dissertation proposal that I need to return together with my module choices to the department by 1 September.

Episode 1036: Catching Up...

Not suffering too badly from jet lag, although there were a few minutes in the afternoon, formatting submissions, when I felt somewhat sleepy. Otherwise though, I expect to slip back into a normal sleep cycle fairly quickly this time around. Had more than a month's worth of pieces to put into the queue, so that took up my late morning till early afternoon. All caught up on that front though, so there's now work lined up till late March. Many thanks to all the contributors so far! Bizarrely, someone's just e-mailed to ask if he can withdraw two out of the three poems I accepted so that he can try his luck with them elsewhere, seeing as I have a publication queue that stretches several months ahead at this point. (Yes, that was actually the full reason given.) Probably should have said no, the poems stay with me, but I suppose something like this was bound to happen sooner or later in any case. I mean, without meaning to put down my own editorial judgement (confidence in which David Tait has been instrumental in developing over the past couple of months), I'm under no illusions that a young online publication like mine is unlikely to command the same sort of cache among some writers as a more established publication. So while I thought the request was a tad on the crass side, I do have 236 pieces scheduled and can well afford to allow him to retract the two poems. (I draw the line at taking them back if March rolls around and no one else has accepted them.) Anyway, on the TV side of things, as of today I have 15 episodes of TV shows to catch up on, and I'm actually making good headway. Should have cleared them all by the middle of the week, along with the new episodes that'll be accumulating meanwhile too.

Episode 1035: WiFi, How I Have Missed Thee!

Originally, I didn't think I'd watch all that many films on the return flight, having exhausted the options that appealed on the flight to London. In the end though, I still made it through four. Toast is based on Nigel Slater's autobiographical novel of the same name, and while there was less food in it than I'd been led to believe, I still enjoyed the film very much. (Coincidentally, Issue 1 - Ramen of Lucky Peach, McSweeney's new magazine, was waiting for me on the table when I got home from the airport!) Then I saw The Joy Luck Club, another book-to-film adaptation, and it was a dreary two hours. I feel like I've seen this film before, or at least parts of it. It is also horribly racist in the way it perpetrates stereotypes about Chinese American families. I'm sure there's truth to be found in it (one of the plot strands reflects Amy Tan's own experience of discovering she has half-sisters her mother left behind in mainland China), except there's no subtlety to be found here and things get really saccharine by the end of the film. The next film I saw, Battle For Terra was entertaining enough. Visually pleasing, but failed to break new ground in storytelling (it's basically a low-budget Avatar that came out a couple of years before Avatar), except for when one of the chief protagonists was allowed to die in a blaze of sacrificial glory. Lastly, I saw Confession Of Pain, which had both Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro looking suitably brooding. I did think it was a little weird for the identity of the killer to be given away so early in the film though, as then the only outstanding question was why did he do it, and the audience is strung along until almost the very end before everything's properly revealed.

Episode 1034: Bye UK (For Now)!

Woke up to good news! 'Homecoming', my three-part poem about Singapore, has been accepted by Quarterly Literary Review Singapore for the upcoming issue, following significant rewriting. Really quite pleased, and it's a nice note on which to end my brief return to the UK. Also means QLRS is one of the few publications where I've successfully placed work more than once, the others being Calliope Nerve and Six Sentences. Stopped by an Oxfam store one last time, and walked away with a small stack of poetry books from Bloodaxe and Picador. That's me, heroically rescuing donated poetry books from not being read. Speaking of reading, I've done a fair bit during this week. Finished Rachel Boast's Sidereal on the flight from Singapore to London, the issue of Brittle Star I'm meant to be reviewing on the train from London to Leamington, and now I'm making considerable headway through Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033. It's mildly irritating how inconsistent spellings and grammatical errors keep cropping up in this novel though. I'll say this much though, it's enjoyably gritty, and I'm glad there's already a sequel of sorts, straightforwardly (or unimaginatively) titled Metro 2034. Parents have gone off to board their BA flight, so I'm just waiting for my gate to open...

Episode 1033: Warwick Castle

So I've finally been to Warwick Castle and I found it a little tacky, to be honest. It's like the historical aspect of it has been tarted up for popular consumption. As an example, the new Merlin Tower is basically trying to ride the popularity of the current BBC adaptation. The whole experience lasts about 15 minutes, and not a lot actually takes place. The Castle Dungeon is slightly better, although it's hard not to laugh at the costumed actors. This applies generally to the rest of the castle. I think Warwick Castle is like Disneyland, a place best enjoyed by young kids. Once you get to adolescence, it gets harder to achieve that suspension of disbelief that allows you not to find the costumed reenactments silly. I suppose it's okay to visit once, maybe even twice, but as far as castles go, give me the ruins at Kenilworth any day. Thought of bringing parents to Stratford, but as it began raining not long after we got back to the hotel, it's just as well that we didn't go. Actually took the 68 back from Warwick to Leamington, so that was a nice touch for me.