This is the first night I've been home in what feels like ages. Somehow for someone who's not working, I seem to be spending a remarkable amount of time not-at-home and being busy. I had to seriously rack my brains just to recall all of this. Another wisdom tooth removal tomorrow D:
Sunday (31st July): Had a quick lunch at home before dashing out to meet Hidayah and Ianthe at Vivocity. Amazingly I took just 30 minutes to reach despite having to change both the bus and the train at least once. Eyed Red Army Cameras at Page One, despite the fact that I haven't touched my Diana in ages. Watched Winter's Bone with my parents at night, and a bit of Liang Po Po before I got fed up and switched it off.
Saturday (30th July): !nk gathering at Jia's place. Put too much salt in the zucchini almond I had brought. Arjun picked me up, and Steph sent me back home. Having friends who drive is excellent.
Friday (29th July): Had lunch with Arjun at Al-Ameen. Tried iced horlicks. Had my favourite butter chicken with garlic naan. We then wandered to Udder's and I had a green tea ice-cream. Went to Bukit Timah Plaza to buy groceries for the !nk potluck on Sat. Went home, showered, and left immediately to meet Nic at City Hall. The train was horrendously crowded, goodness. Finished reading Of Mice and Men on the way there, was quite blown away by how well it was written. Had a really salty Japanese soup at The Soup Spoon. Watched Mong's play, and had drinks with Mong at the KKK afterwards. Mong drove me home, driving at a scarily breakneck speed.
Thursday (28th July): Pottery class in the evening. Spent the day with my Dad, watching Wu Xia and then viewing Requiem, an exhibition at NAFA on war photography during the Vietnam War. Ran into my Dad's friend, and he joined us for the photography exhibition. Went shopping around Tanglin Mall and bought myself a mini Lego aeroplane kit. Decided to buy a pink Nanoblock pig kit for Jessica, as a gift. She hugged me in appreciation. Probably the least disastrous Pottery class thus far, with my coiling going well, guess I'm getting better.
Wednesday (27th July): Reached the office in the nick of time to catch Mr. Tan before he left for court. Spent an amusing time at court with the clients, remembering the old case. Got mistaken for an actual lawyer by another random lawyer, and had an entertaining time talking to him as I waited for the case to proceed. The case ended up getting settled out of court, for 34k. Had lunch with the client's at Furama. Spent the rest of the time hanging around the office, then following Mr. Tan as we went to Challenger to buy a portable hard disk. Ate popiah.
Tuesday (26th July): Had pottery class and spoke quite a bit to Jessica, a girl who's the same age as me, visiting from New Orleans. Promised to go for Thursday's class in order to see her one last time.
Monday (25th July): Celebrated Shu's birthday with the LSE people.
Sunday (24th July): Had brunch with Hadi and Cheam. Afterwards, I went swimming at my Uncle's place with my Mum, before the whole family gathered for a nice steamboat dinner. Played with my Uncle's new massage chair and spilled a wee bit of juice on it.
Saturday (23rd July): Spent the day at home, not doing very much in particular. HM dropped by for a wee bit.
Friday (22nd July): Movie marathon with Nic and Patrick. Had lunch first at Cedele, then watched Sandcastles (not worth the time) followed by Citizen Kane (lived up to it's reputation) and then Rocket Science (hipsterrrrr). Ended up walking around botanic gardens at night, using my handphone's puny flashlight for illumination.
Thursday (21st July): Visited my Uncle at the office, and found out about an old case I worked on in 2009 finally going for assessment of damages the next week. Had lunch with him at some bento place nearby. Went home and bummed.
Wednesday (20th July): Pottery, followed by pilates as usual. Painted my pottery pieces. Spent ages sanding down a badly done piece.
Tuesday (19th July): Went for Pottery in the afternoon. Visited my grandmother in the hospital at night. She checked out the next day.
Monday (18th July): Went to return costumes, took out stitches, bought Shu's gift. Visited my grandmother in the hospital.
Sunday (17th July): Watched Your Highness with Shu at night. Had a small supper/coffee time with her after in Coffee Club at Wheelock afterwards.
Saturday (16th July): Met Ianthe and Steph at North Bridge Road, to rent costumes. Ended up renting a silly quasi-Arwen costume in honour of the intended LOTR marathon Ianthe wanted to host. On the way there, I had a rather entertaining conversation with the taxi driver over chicken parts, HDB flats and studying overseas. Played some Call of Duty. Ate a delicious celebratory meal her brother, Ian, cooked. Watched 2/3 of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Friday (15th July): Met my grandmother in the morning, so that she could pick up a free luggage from a travel agency. Had lunch with her at Tampopo in Liang Court. While leaving the carpark, my grandma drove into a divider, knocking off a bit of the car. Watched Harry Potter at Shaw with Ianthe, Steph, JH, Liselle and another HM.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Somewhere Out There
When I was younger, pre-laptop times, I'd watch the night sky from my open air kitchen as I ate supper. As I got older I was more pressed for time, and often brought my supper to the computer to eat. I stopped spending time looking at the sky. Not that there was much to see though. When Google Earth first came out, you could barely see Singapore because it was covered with a massive cloud for good reason: Singapore is a very cloudy place. This cloudiness of course, affected any proper attempt to stargaze. That and the massive light pollution from all the street lights, which combined to make stargazing near impossible.
I remember when I was younger, I'd look out at the night sky, at the moon and think "this is the same moon my loved one is under". For a particular partner (I'm not being mysterious, I really can't remember who it is anymore), I even told him to think of me every time he saw the moon. So the moon became a quasi-symbol of love and remembrance for me. Today when I looked out however there was no moon at all. I'm not even being dramatic, I saw no sign of the moon. The internet tells me it's a waning moon, but it sure looked like a new moon to me (I just learned that no moon = new moon while trying to find the right terminology for this). I however did see an unusually bright twinkling dot, that made me think was a satellite, and three stars dotting the night sky. I do really wonder where the moon is.
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Today I am starting Steinback's Of Mice and Men. It already feels promising, pages in. Hopefully it's small size will be a welcome respite from the Forna that I finished today.
I remember when I was younger, I'd look out at the night sky, at the moon and think "this is the same moon my loved one is under". For a particular partner (I'm not being mysterious, I really can't remember who it is anymore), I even told him to think of me every time he saw the moon. So the moon became a quasi-symbol of love and remembrance for me. Today when I looked out however there was no moon at all. I'm not even being dramatic, I saw no sign of the moon. The internet tells me it's a waning moon, but it sure looked like a new moon to me (I just learned that no moon = new moon while trying to find the right terminology for this). I however did see an unusually bright twinkling dot, that made me think was a satellite, and three stars dotting the night sky. I do really wonder where the moon is.
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Today I am starting Steinback's Of Mice and Men. It already feels promising, pages in. Hopefully it's small size will be a welcome respite from the Forna that I finished today.
Rosoff and Forna
I read two books about the experience of war recently, Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now and Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love. Both books, failed to really impress me. Of the lot I suppose Forna's was better, but clocking in at 445 pages it really wore me out with it's excruciatingly slow pace and lack of dialogue. Rosoff's on the other hand, I blew through in 5 hours.
Both books were critically acclaimed, but I found the hype to be overrated. That and I didn't like the characters at all. Daisy in How I Live Now was overtly precocious in an annoying way, Edmond too self-assured to be a plausible teenager. A whole swathe of characters in The Memory of Love are overly indulgent with their emotions, choosing deliberately to linger on events and feel sad for years after with no actual steps taken to rectify things, the most annoying being Elias Cole who I wanted to strangle at various times.
While not being bad books per se, I found them nonetheless disappointing and unimpressive.
Both books were critically acclaimed, but I found the hype to be overrated. That and I didn't like the characters at all. Daisy in How I Live Now was overtly precocious in an annoying way, Edmond too self-assured to be a plausible teenager. A whole swathe of characters in The Memory of Love are overly indulgent with their emotions, choosing deliberately to linger on events and feel sad for years after with no actual steps taken to rectify things, the most annoying being Elias Cole who I wanted to strangle at various times.
While not being bad books per se, I found them nonetheless disappointing and unimpressive.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Fear
Last night just as I was about to sleep, I wandered onto bbc.co.uk and found myself transfixed to the live news stream about the Norwegian bombings and gun attacks. I slept late, unable to quite bear with the scenes of destruction being broadcast right to my wee laptop (the wonder of modern technology indeed) and yet unable to quite ignore it, despite the fact that I could do nothing. This morning I woke up to the news that of the gun attack, 80+ people had died. This was quite a change from the 4 quoted in the news before I went to sleep. He shot into the water even, eyewitnesses said, to kill those attempting to swim to safety.
I spent the morning in a vague haze of sadness. Sadness at the fact that the world seemed so violent and harsh, and how easily one person could destroy the lives of so many families. Sadness that no one really, could do anything about it. Sad too, for myself, because it made me feel that little bit more scared of the world.
The last time I really remember feeling quite like this was the night of my graduate prom in 2008. It was 28 November 2008, and I had spent an entire night being blinded by flashes in a darkened ballroom. My feet hurt from my really high heels, exacerbated by the fact that my stockinged feet slid in the shoes. My eyes were dying from the dry contact lenses, and my makeup was starting to smudge into the warm humid air of the night. I had gone with the !nk crowd to the old Color Bar in HV. Somehow I remember drifting into a blue funk at random times, feeling immensely sad at the thought of the Mumbai bombings, which my friends around me chattered. I'd walk away, and off into random corners to just think about how terrible the world was, and how sad everything was. Ultimately pointless, but I did it anyway.
Today HM came over for a bit, and we started talking about graduate school. The thought about how everything was so unknown, and how I didn't want my proverbial wings to be clipped, made me scared. She told me she was scared too, but it was one of those things where two scared people together only magnifies the problem. She had to leave soon away, she was going to have dinner at her grandmother's.
After dinner I asked my mother why she decided to have children. She couldn't really give me an answer. I asked my maid, Felice. She couldn't give me an answer either. Blargh, I thought, about the future. It seems so unknown, and therefore so scary. Yet it's typically get an education, get married, have kids. It seems so simple and straight-forward, yet why do I feel so scared at how uncertain everything is? (At the same time I feel slightly resentful at how 'certain' it ought to be, but that's something for another time.) It seems I am always scared, and hence often sad.
And the's when I thought most about what I want to achieve from this year for myself: I want to live a life as best as I can free from fear. Fear of overcooking food, fear of not being able to get good enough grades, fear of being emotionally hurt by yet another person. I'm tired of being afraid, and I want to break free from what is arguably a pointless emotion.
I spent the morning in a vague haze of sadness. Sadness at the fact that the world seemed so violent and harsh, and how easily one person could destroy the lives of so many families. Sadness that no one really, could do anything about it. Sad too, for myself, because it made me feel that little bit more scared of the world.
The last time I really remember feeling quite like this was the night of my graduate prom in 2008. It was 28 November 2008, and I had spent an entire night being blinded by flashes in a darkened ballroom. My feet hurt from my really high heels, exacerbated by the fact that my stockinged feet slid in the shoes. My eyes were dying from the dry contact lenses, and my makeup was starting to smudge into the warm humid air of the night. I had gone with the !nk crowd to the old Color Bar in HV. Somehow I remember drifting into a blue funk at random times, feeling immensely sad at the thought of the Mumbai bombings, which my friends around me chattered. I'd walk away, and off into random corners to just think about how terrible the world was, and how sad everything was. Ultimately pointless, but I did it anyway.
Today HM came over for a bit, and we started talking about graduate school. The thought about how everything was so unknown, and how I didn't want my proverbial wings to be clipped, made me scared. She told me she was scared too, but it was one of those things where two scared people together only magnifies the problem. She had to leave soon away, she was going to have dinner at her grandmother's.
After dinner I asked my mother why she decided to have children. She couldn't really give me an answer. I asked my maid, Felice. She couldn't give me an answer either. Blargh, I thought, about the future. It seems so unknown, and therefore so scary. Yet it's typically get an education, get married, have kids. It seems so simple and straight-forward, yet why do I feel so scared at how uncertain everything is? (At the same time I feel slightly resentful at how 'certain' it ought to be, but that's something for another time.) It seems I am always scared, and hence often sad.
And the's when I thought most about what I want to achieve from this year for myself: I want to live a life as best as I can free from fear. Fear of overcooking food, fear of not being able to get good enough grades, fear of being emotionally hurt by yet another person. I'm tired of being afraid, and I want to break free from what is arguably a pointless emotion.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Top Ten Reads for 2010
Extremely long overdue, and not even fully complete because I no longer possess some of these books at hand and can no longer recall what drew me to each book: I present the Top Ten Book List of 2010 (in no particular order). There's a 11A and 11B this time (thus 13 books on the list), because each book alone was not quite enough to make me want it to be on the list, and I had quite forgotten I had read the remarkable A Clockwork Orange last year until I had fully typed out the details of 11A and 11B. My memory's not quite what it used to be, it seems.
Cheers.
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1. After Dark - Haruki Murakami
Eyes mark the shape of the city.
Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature-or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flickr and flair up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.
This was the first Haruki Murakami book I read, and it's setting left a deep impression on me. As seen in previous years (2009/2008), I have a soft spot for the underbellies of Asian cities, particularly Japanese ones. No one does noir-ish stuff as good as Japanese writers, somehow. I would and could launch into a pseudo-cultural commentary here about the reasons why Japan is so potent with this sort of stuff, but I shall refrain.
After Dark essentially follows a young woman around Japan (literally) after dark, when the last metro trains for the suburbs leave central Tokyo. She meets a whole host of characters of the nocturnal sort, cafe waitresses, musicians and even love hotel workers/working girls as she struggles to come to terms with her own feelings about her supernaturally comatose sister. I was left feeling with a strange sense of unease at the end, and didn't really like the supernatural bits about the sister. Still it was an overall transfixing narrative.
2. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China. The year was 1924 and China was in chaos. Much of it, including Manchuria, where my grandmother lived, was ruled by warlords. The liaison was arranged by her father, a police officer in the provincial town of Yixian in southwest Manchuria, about a hundred miles north of the Great Wall and 250 miles northeast of Peking.
2010 also marks the introduction of non-fiction books into the list, the next being Jon Ronson's Them. I remember lugging the super thick and battered copy of Wild Swans all the way to work, in hopes of a slow day as M/s A when I worked for them last year so I could read instead. A wonderfully told story of three generations of her family, following the ups and downs of the past few decades of Chinese history, this is a must to gain a first-person understanding of China during the Maoist era. The sheer scale and length of the narrative alone makes it a true, modern day epic.
I just don't trust her take on Mao from a historical point of view.
3. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
Do not set foot in my office. That's Dad's rule. But the phone'd rung twenty-five times. Normal people give up after ten or eleven, unless it's a matter of life or death. Don't they? Dad's got an answering machine like James Garner's in The Rockford Files with big reels of tape. But he's stopped leaving it switched on recently. Thirty rings the phone got to. Julia couldn't hear it up in her converted attic 'cause "Don't You Want Me?" by the Human League was thumping out dead loud. Forty rings. Mum couldn't hear 'cause the washing machine was on berserk cycle and she was hoovering the living room. Fifty rings. That was just not normal. S'pose Dad had been mangled by a juggernaut on the M5 and the police only had this phone number 'cause all his other ID's got charred? We could lose out our final chance to see our charred father in the terminal ward.
I loved Black Swan Green. I love David Mitchell. There is just something to his writing that sweeps me away, the way he writes is so clear and concise, yet the words still maintain a musicality. Little bits of the book jumped out at me, like being amused about that his father works for Greenland, a grocery store in the UK (hahaha, Iceland anyone?). Then there was the story about how Black Swan Green got it's name: the locals thought it'd be ironic. But there were the wonderfully crafted scenes of the slow breakdown of relations between his parents. The fight about the rockery was so perfectly crafted, conveying the strain between his parents, about how people fight seemingly little battles as a front to larger ones. The fight about the rockery was essentially one of a power struggle between his parents, with an extremely comedically tragic ending as the expensive koi gets eaten by a heron. Then of course there's the father's affair. Black Swan Green is not just a novel about Jason, the young protagonist, but about his parents and their struggle to find meaning in their middle ages.
4. Such a Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry
The first light in the morning barely illuminated the sky as Gustard Noble faced eastwards to offer his orisons to Ahura Mazda. The hour was approaching six, and up in the compound's solitary tree the sparrows began to call. Gustard listened to their chirping every morning while reciting his kusti prayers. There was something reassuring about it. Always, the sparrows were first; the cawing of crows came later.
Rohinton Mistry, is another master storyteller. Marrying a straightforward prose style, it made all the disturbing icky bits all the more clear an image in one's mind. Especially when it came to Tehmul and the doll, I remember having to put down the book and walk away for a while because I couldn't take the imagery. I replicate bits of it here for your pleasure:-
"Dilnavaz began undressing the doll… the pearl necklace, shoes, stockings, came off one by one, as Tehmul watched, fascinated. When she started to unbutton the dress, he became quite restless.
'OK Tehmul, pay attention,' said Gustard. 'You know what to do with this?' But Tehmul was engrossed in the undressing of the doll. Dilnavaz was down to the underclothing when a trickle of saliva started to descend from one corner of his mouth.
…On the way out he hesitated. The doll was stripped down to it's anatomically vague pink plaster. 'Ohhhh.' His nostrils flared; his mouth began to move in a manner of a ruminant's; a hand reached out."
Then there was the bit about Tehmul and him begging the prostitutes:-
"Pleasepleaseonceonly. Onceonlyonce. Fastfastrubbingpleaseonceonly. Pleasetakemoneypleaseplease. Letmetouchletmepressonceonly."
I died reading that. Rohinton Mistry wrote it so well. It's like watching a train wreck, but in prose form.
There were also a lot of memorable, strand out scenes in the book which struck me. There was the bit about the chicken, where Gustard fails at an attempt to relieve his childhood by killing a chicken because his children start to see it as a pet. Then there's his fight with his oldest son, Sohrab. Then his best friend Dinshawji's behaviour and his subsequent death. Dilvanaz's attempts to right her family problems through magic limes given to her by the neighbour, Miss Kutpitia. So many different intersecting strands of narrative, all sewn up together so well.
5. Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
A classic well deserving of it's status in literature, The Great Gatsby married both a wonderfully written narrative with a simple story. Same can't be said for Tender is the Night, which I read in Dec 2010 and absolutely hated.
6. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the back of the cab as it lurches forward in traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Peirce & Peirce and twenty six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.
One of the most disturbing pieces of literature I have ever read in my life, American Psycho nonetheless stands out for it's sheer ability to get to the heart of the darkest human psyches, and darkly compared the to the modern capitalist world. Bret Easton Ellis manages to craft Patrick Bateman, the literal American Psycho, into a character one can sympathise (but not empathise!) with. His brutal murders of prostitutes (HORRIFYING) are contrasted with insights into a deeply fractured mind. Easton Ellis' characterisations of Bateman's panic attacks are altogether so perfect and on the dot, and the way Bateman uses music as a numbing tool to block out his mind when he's using a chainsaw to saw someone to death, is sheer literary genius. Definitely one of the most memorable books on this list.
7. The Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
After her mother's death, Ruma's father retired from the pharmaceutical company where he had worked for many decades and began traveling in Europe, a continent he'd never seen. In the past year he had visited France, Holland, and most recently Italy. There were package tours, traveling in the countryside, each meal and museum and hotel prearranged. He was gone for two, three, sometimes four weeks at a time. When he was away Ruma did not hear from him. Each time, she kept the printout of his flight information behind a magnet on the door of the refrigerator, and on the days he was scheduled to fly she watched the news, to make sure there hadn't been a plane crash anywhere in the world
Jhumpa Lahiri's words and chosen language are unremarkable in their accessibility and mundanity, but these only serve as a backdrop, a reflector even, in the stories she tells. How her words reach deep inside into your emotions, caress them and make you empathise as much as you were the characters themselves. She is a magical weaver of worlds, with the material of the common man. Definitely one of the only writers of short stories that I trust.
8. A Short History of Tractors in Ukaranian - Marina Lewycka
Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed up memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.
I give this book, and highly recommend it, to all my close friends. This was also, coincidentally the first book I read of the year, and I read it on Pulau Sibu when I was on a holiday with my parents over the 2009/2010 new year. It was not even my book: the sea wind battered copy was borrowed from the little hotel's roving bookshelf. It apparently first belonged to the owner, who then left it there for the pleasure of the guests. My dad first stumbled upon it when he gave up reading Nicholas Spark's The Notebook, and he recommended it to me after I had tore through Ha Jin's War Trash (see 2009's list).
It was absolutely hilarious and heartwarming, all rolled into a ball. I was introduced to a world of Toshiba Apples, Botticellian Breasts and Lada cars, complete with an actual history of tractors. I literally rolled over with laughter at multiple parts. Somehow, Lewycka's first novel proved to be the best written of all her present novels.
9. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
'What's it gonna be then, eh?'
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what theses mestos were like, things changing so skorry theses days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog and All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with.
This was another book that was hard to read, for it's extremely violent content. Of course compared to American Psycho, reading this while on my trip to Amsterdam was comparatively much easier. Nonetheless the senseless acts of violence was quite jarring, and I especially felt horrid when I read about them attacking the old man. At least Patrick Bateman attacked bums and prostitutes quickly, much unlike this lot which enjoyed violence for violence's sake. Still, Burgess managed to create in Alex a likeable enough character - you see his love for music, the power struggle within his group, his attempts at redemption. What really struck me the most through was the role of the Priest/Pastor (I forget which now) in the book: he maintains that by the authorities forcibly removing Alex's ability to commit violence, they are taking away his humanity, his ability to make decisions no matter how reprehensible.
Throught provoking.
10. Them: Adventures with Extremists - Jon Ronson
It was a balmy Saturday afternoon in Trafalgar Square in summertime, and Omar Bakri Mohammed was declaring Holy War on Britain. He stood on a podium at the front of Nelson's Column and announced that he would not rest until he saw the Black Flag of Islam flying over Downing Street. There was much cheering. The space had been rented out to him by Westminister Council.
And thus so begins Them, with one of the most awesome beginning paragraphs I have read in my 21 odd years. Ronson managed to put a hilarious spin to what could've arguably been a very dry topic. Instead the way he documents his encounters with the extremists, like Omar Bakri giving out flyers at Holborn station, another's insistence that the world is secretly run by alien lizards, plus interviews with the modern KKK, is hilarious. Then there are the sobering bits, of governments gone simply mad and eliminating viewed extremists with no prejudice. What emerges is a rollicking ball of amusement. Next to Tractors, this is one of the other books I have made a point to give to friends as a gift, because it is simply worth reading. Such a hidden gem, considering I bought it for £2 for my favourite bookshop in Oxford.
11A. We Are All Made of Glue - Marina Lewycka
The first time I met Wonder Boy, he pissed on me. I suppose he was trying to warn me off, which was quite prescient when you consider how things turned out.
One afternoon in late October, somewhere between Stoke Newington and Highbury, I'd ventured into an unfamiliar street, and come across and entrance of a cobbled lane that led in between two high garden walls. After about fifty metres the lane opened out into a grassy circle and I found myself standing in front of a big double-fronted house, half derelict and smothered in ivy, so completely tucked away behind the gardens of the neighbouring houses that you'd never have guessed it was there, crouched behind a straggly privet hedge and a thicket of self-seeded ash and maple saplings. I assumed it was uninhabited - who could live in a place like this? Something was carved on the gatepost. I pulled the ivy aside and read: Canaan house. Canaan - even the name exuded a musty whiff of holiness.
Dealing with the protagonist, Georgie, undergoing a new separation from her husband. As she fights her own heartbreak and geriatrics for the discounted Sainsbury food, she runs into a host of new characters in her life - most significantly her elderly neighbour Naomi. Some bits made me cry, some bits made me laugh like mad. Some bits struck me with their meaning. But yet somehow, the ending made me feel a little dissatisfied. Hence We Are All Made of Glue barely made the list, and pales far in comparison to Tractors.
11B. The Way Things Look to Me - Roopa Farooki
Asif Declan Kalil Murphy has a brooding resentment of his name, and by extension, of his deceased parents, although he resents them for many more things than his name, up to and including their untimely departure from life. The trouble with his name he thinks, is that it promises so much more - it promises that he will be interesting and exotic, larger than life, Irish charm and whimsy blended with South Asian mysticism and romance. Asif finds it impossible to live up to his shining name, and so shudders moth-like just behind it; avoiding introductions and hiding behind initials.
I was drawn to this book because one of the characters in the story is a high functioning autistic. I smiled at the bits of her I recognised in my brother. Rather, this book was about the impact of the autistic child on the family's relations, one of the more honest bits of writing about autism I've seen to be honest. In the bitter sister, I recognised bits of myself growing up. In the brother, I recognised the role I'd soon have to undertake as sole caregiver. The characters were likeable enough, yet somehow as a whole it rang slightly hollow at the end.
Disappointments
1. Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami): spent most of the end bits of the book going WTF?!
2. Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald): felt that Fitzgerald was being overly self-indulgent, too needlessly wordy
3. Two Caravans (Marina Lewycka): narrative too scattered and messy
4. Possession (A. S. Byatt): extreme and gratuitous literary wanking, stopped reading 1/3 through lest I act on my impulse to immolate the book and it's annoying characters
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I'll attempt to be more conscientious with this year's list, hahaha.
Cheers.
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1. After Dark - Haruki Murakami
Eyes mark the shape of the city.
Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature-or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flickr and flair up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.
This was the first Haruki Murakami book I read, and it's setting left a deep impression on me. As seen in previous years (2009/2008), I have a soft spot for the underbellies of Asian cities, particularly Japanese ones. No one does noir-ish stuff as good as Japanese writers, somehow. I would and could launch into a pseudo-cultural commentary here about the reasons why Japan is so potent with this sort of stuff, but I shall refrain.
After Dark essentially follows a young woman around Japan (literally) after dark, when the last metro trains for the suburbs leave central Tokyo. She meets a whole host of characters of the nocturnal sort, cafe waitresses, musicians and even love hotel workers/working girls as she struggles to come to terms with her own feelings about her supernaturally comatose sister. I was left feeling with a strange sense of unease at the end, and didn't really like the supernatural bits about the sister. Still it was an overall transfixing narrative.
2. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China. The year was 1924 and China was in chaos. Much of it, including Manchuria, where my grandmother lived, was ruled by warlords. The liaison was arranged by her father, a police officer in the provincial town of Yixian in southwest Manchuria, about a hundred miles north of the Great Wall and 250 miles northeast of Peking.
2010 also marks the introduction of non-fiction books into the list, the next being Jon Ronson's Them. I remember lugging the super thick and battered copy of Wild Swans all the way to work, in hopes of a slow day as M/s A when I worked for them last year so I could read instead. A wonderfully told story of three generations of her family, following the ups and downs of the past few decades of Chinese history, this is a must to gain a first-person understanding of China during the Maoist era. The sheer scale and length of the narrative alone makes it a true, modern day epic.
I just don't trust her take on Mao from a historical point of view.
3. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
Do not set foot in my office. That's Dad's rule. But the phone'd rung twenty-five times. Normal people give up after ten or eleven, unless it's a matter of life or death. Don't they? Dad's got an answering machine like James Garner's in The Rockford Files with big reels of tape. But he's stopped leaving it switched on recently. Thirty rings the phone got to. Julia couldn't hear it up in her converted attic 'cause "Don't You Want Me?" by the Human League was thumping out dead loud. Forty rings. Mum couldn't hear 'cause the washing machine was on berserk cycle and she was hoovering the living room. Fifty rings. That was just not normal. S'pose Dad had been mangled by a juggernaut on the M5 and the police only had this phone number 'cause all his other ID's got charred? We could lose out our final chance to see our charred father in the terminal ward.
I loved Black Swan Green. I love David Mitchell. There is just something to his writing that sweeps me away, the way he writes is so clear and concise, yet the words still maintain a musicality. Little bits of the book jumped out at me, like being amused about that his father works for Greenland, a grocery store in the UK (hahaha, Iceland anyone?). Then there was the story about how Black Swan Green got it's name: the locals thought it'd be ironic. But there were the wonderfully crafted scenes of the slow breakdown of relations between his parents. The fight about the rockery was so perfectly crafted, conveying the strain between his parents, about how people fight seemingly little battles as a front to larger ones. The fight about the rockery was essentially one of a power struggle between his parents, with an extremely comedically tragic ending as the expensive koi gets eaten by a heron. Then of course there's the father's affair. Black Swan Green is not just a novel about Jason, the young protagonist, but about his parents and their struggle to find meaning in their middle ages.
4. Such a Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry
The first light in the morning barely illuminated the sky as Gustard Noble faced eastwards to offer his orisons to Ahura Mazda. The hour was approaching six, and up in the compound's solitary tree the sparrows began to call. Gustard listened to their chirping every morning while reciting his kusti prayers. There was something reassuring about it. Always, the sparrows were first; the cawing of crows came later.
Rohinton Mistry, is another master storyteller. Marrying a straightforward prose style, it made all the disturbing icky bits all the more clear an image in one's mind. Especially when it came to Tehmul and the doll, I remember having to put down the book and walk away for a while because I couldn't take the imagery. I replicate bits of it here for your pleasure:-
"Dilnavaz began undressing the doll… the pearl necklace, shoes, stockings, came off one by one, as Tehmul watched, fascinated. When she started to unbutton the dress, he became quite restless.
'OK Tehmul, pay attention,' said Gustard. 'You know what to do with this?' But Tehmul was engrossed in the undressing of the doll. Dilnavaz was down to the underclothing when a trickle of saliva started to descend from one corner of his mouth.
…On the way out he hesitated. The doll was stripped down to it's anatomically vague pink plaster. 'Ohhhh.' His nostrils flared; his mouth began to move in a manner of a ruminant's; a hand reached out."
Then there was the bit about Tehmul and him begging the prostitutes:-
"Pleasepleaseonceonly. Onceonlyonce. Fastfastrubbingpleaseonceonly. Pleasetakemoneypleaseplease. Letmetouchletmepressonceonly."
I died reading that. Rohinton Mistry wrote it so well. It's like watching a train wreck, but in prose form.
There were also a lot of memorable, strand out scenes in the book which struck me. There was the bit about the chicken, where Gustard fails at an attempt to relieve his childhood by killing a chicken because his children start to see it as a pet. Then there's his fight with his oldest son, Sohrab. Then his best friend Dinshawji's behaviour and his subsequent death. Dilvanaz's attempts to right her family problems through magic limes given to her by the neighbour, Miss Kutpitia. So many different intersecting strands of narrative, all sewn up together so well.
5. Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
A classic well deserving of it's status in literature, The Great Gatsby married both a wonderfully written narrative with a simple story. Same can't be said for Tender is the Night, which I read in Dec 2010 and absolutely hated.
6. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the back of the cab as it lurches forward in traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Peirce & Peirce and twenty six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.
One of the most disturbing pieces of literature I have ever read in my life, American Psycho nonetheless stands out for it's sheer ability to get to the heart of the darkest human psyches, and darkly compared the to the modern capitalist world. Bret Easton Ellis manages to craft Patrick Bateman, the literal American Psycho, into a character one can sympathise (but not empathise!) with. His brutal murders of prostitutes (HORRIFYING) are contrasted with insights into a deeply fractured mind. Easton Ellis' characterisations of Bateman's panic attacks are altogether so perfect and on the dot, and the way Bateman uses music as a numbing tool to block out his mind when he's using a chainsaw to saw someone to death, is sheer literary genius. Definitely one of the most memorable books on this list.
7. The Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
After her mother's death, Ruma's father retired from the pharmaceutical company where he had worked for many decades and began traveling in Europe, a continent he'd never seen. In the past year he had visited France, Holland, and most recently Italy. There were package tours, traveling in the countryside, each meal and museum and hotel prearranged. He was gone for two, three, sometimes four weeks at a time. When he was away Ruma did not hear from him. Each time, she kept the printout of his flight information behind a magnet on the door of the refrigerator, and on the days he was scheduled to fly she watched the news, to make sure there hadn't been a plane crash anywhere in the world
Jhumpa Lahiri's words and chosen language are unremarkable in their accessibility and mundanity, but these only serve as a backdrop, a reflector even, in the stories she tells. How her words reach deep inside into your emotions, caress them and make you empathise as much as you were the characters themselves. She is a magical weaver of worlds, with the material of the common man. Definitely one of the only writers of short stories that I trust.
8. A Short History of Tractors in Ukaranian - Marina Lewycka
Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed up memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.
I give this book, and highly recommend it, to all my close friends. This was also, coincidentally the first book I read of the year, and I read it on Pulau Sibu when I was on a holiday with my parents over the 2009/2010 new year. It was not even my book: the sea wind battered copy was borrowed from the little hotel's roving bookshelf. It apparently first belonged to the owner, who then left it there for the pleasure of the guests. My dad first stumbled upon it when he gave up reading Nicholas Spark's The Notebook, and he recommended it to me after I had tore through Ha Jin's War Trash (see 2009's list).
It was absolutely hilarious and heartwarming, all rolled into a ball. I was introduced to a world of Toshiba Apples, Botticellian Breasts and Lada cars, complete with an actual history of tractors. I literally rolled over with laughter at multiple parts. Somehow, Lewycka's first novel proved to be the best written of all her present novels.
9. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
'What's it gonna be then, eh?'
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what theses mestos were like, things changing so skorry theses days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog and All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with.
This was another book that was hard to read, for it's extremely violent content. Of course compared to American Psycho, reading this while on my trip to Amsterdam was comparatively much easier. Nonetheless the senseless acts of violence was quite jarring, and I especially felt horrid when I read about them attacking the old man. At least Patrick Bateman attacked bums and prostitutes quickly, much unlike this lot which enjoyed violence for violence's sake. Still, Burgess managed to create in Alex a likeable enough character - you see his love for music, the power struggle within his group, his attempts at redemption. What really struck me the most through was the role of the Priest/Pastor (I forget which now) in the book: he maintains that by the authorities forcibly removing Alex's ability to commit violence, they are taking away his humanity, his ability to make decisions no matter how reprehensible.
Throught provoking.
10. Them: Adventures with Extremists - Jon Ronson
It was a balmy Saturday afternoon in Trafalgar Square in summertime, and Omar Bakri Mohammed was declaring Holy War on Britain. He stood on a podium at the front of Nelson's Column and announced that he would not rest until he saw the Black Flag of Islam flying over Downing Street. There was much cheering. The space had been rented out to him by Westminister Council.
And thus so begins Them, with one of the most awesome beginning paragraphs I have read in my 21 odd years. Ronson managed to put a hilarious spin to what could've arguably been a very dry topic. Instead the way he documents his encounters with the extremists, like Omar Bakri giving out flyers at Holborn station, another's insistence that the world is secretly run by alien lizards, plus interviews with the modern KKK, is hilarious. Then there are the sobering bits, of governments gone simply mad and eliminating viewed extremists with no prejudice. What emerges is a rollicking ball of amusement. Next to Tractors, this is one of the other books I have made a point to give to friends as a gift, because it is simply worth reading. Such a hidden gem, considering I bought it for £2 for my favourite bookshop in Oxford.
11A. We Are All Made of Glue - Marina Lewycka
The first time I met Wonder Boy, he pissed on me. I suppose he was trying to warn me off, which was quite prescient when you consider how things turned out.
One afternoon in late October, somewhere between Stoke Newington and Highbury, I'd ventured into an unfamiliar street, and come across and entrance of a cobbled lane that led in between two high garden walls. After about fifty metres the lane opened out into a grassy circle and I found myself standing in front of a big double-fronted house, half derelict and smothered in ivy, so completely tucked away behind the gardens of the neighbouring houses that you'd never have guessed it was there, crouched behind a straggly privet hedge and a thicket of self-seeded ash and maple saplings. I assumed it was uninhabited - who could live in a place like this? Something was carved on the gatepost. I pulled the ivy aside and read: Canaan house. Canaan - even the name exuded a musty whiff of holiness.
Dealing with the protagonist, Georgie, undergoing a new separation from her husband. As she fights her own heartbreak and geriatrics for the discounted Sainsbury food, she runs into a host of new characters in her life - most significantly her elderly neighbour Naomi. Some bits made me cry, some bits made me laugh like mad. Some bits struck me with their meaning. But yet somehow, the ending made me feel a little dissatisfied. Hence We Are All Made of Glue barely made the list, and pales far in comparison to Tractors.
11B. The Way Things Look to Me - Roopa Farooki
Asif Declan Kalil Murphy has a brooding resentment of his name, and by extension, of his deceased parents, although he resents them for many more things than his name, up to and including their untimely departure from life. The trouble with his name he thinks, is that it promises so much more - it promises that he will be interesting and exotic, larger than life, Irish charm and whimsy blended with South Asian mysticism and romance. Asif finds it impossible to live up to his shining name, and so shudders moth-like just behind it; avoiding introductions and hiding behind initials.
I was drawn to this book because one of the characters in the story is a high functioning autistic. I smiled at the bits of her I recognised in my brother. Rather, this book was about the impact of the autistic child on the family's relations, one of the more honest bits of writing about autism I've seen to be honest. In the bitter sister, I recognised bits of myself growing up. In the brother, I recognised the role I'd soon have to undertake as sole caregiver. The characters were likeable enough, yet somehow as a whole it rang slightly hollow at the end.
Disappointments
1. Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami): spent most of the end bits of the book going WTF?!
2. Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald): felt that Fitzgerald was being overly self-indulgent, too needlessly wordy
3. Two Caravans (Marina Lewycka): narrative too scattered and messy
4. Possession (A. S. Byatt): extreme and gratuitous literary wanking, stopped reading 1/3 through lest I act on my impulse to immolate the book and it's annoying characters
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I'll attempt to be more conscientious with this year's list, hahaha.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Random Ramblings: July 2011 Edition
Yesterday I realised as I was looking around the pharmacy that I was really really not prepared to be a mother. This thought occurred to me as I was in the condom/baby stuff/pregnancy test/eye wash (eye wash?!) aisle, and there was a cute teddy bear for sale that I was drawn to. If I'm still at an age where I am drawn to cute stuffed toys, I am not yet old enough to be a mother. This is because it dawned on me then, that I might fight with my baby for possession of the cutest stuffed toys to hug. Ergo, I am not old enough to be a mother.
I was originally going to call this entry Thosai, after celebrating the fact that I found out I was not carrying a little R Daniel Narang on my person (it'd be a 1/4 Indian baby come to think of it) by devouring a Thosai from a Komala Vilas branch at Tanglin Shopping Mall after pottery class. I don't think I've ever enjoyed eating with my hands so much before. I was originally going to eat my Thosai with utensils, and even took some from the counter. I ended up using my clay-powdery fingers to attack the Thosai. It was immensely satisfying. On another note: I do wonder how much clay I ingested as a result of my enthusiasm.
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I was going to also perhaps call this entry Postcard. I am sending postcards again, with the most beautiful non-touristy ones from Cat Socrates in Bras Bersah. As hipster as that place is, walking in really makes me feel happy and calm with happy-hipster-vibes. I was there on Monday, running errands and returning to costumes Ianthe and I borrowed for her birthday celebrations on Saturday. I ended up eating at KFC and having a tasty Zinger burger by myself. I noted that all the pictures and names used in the current KFC advertising/interior design campaign were all Caucasian.
And then there is this:
The postcards I went to send off to ones away from me.
And the middle one: an ode to Dr S-'s rhotacism, which I have fallen in love with. I would sit in lectures and listen to the lull of his voice, and smile to myself. Weally, weally, he'd say, instead of really, really. And then because he's German when he tried to say Jewelry he'd say Jewry and I'd think of those old-school Nazi era racist math questions, and giggle to myself (offense, totally not intended, I just posses a healthy sense of irony and inappropriateness). Bureaucracy'd turn into buwocwacy and the like. His speech reminded me of Elmer Fudd. Nonetheless, I fell for his speech impediment, which I found utterly adorable.
His postcard is of a person floating in a parachute.
I was originally going to call this entry Thosai, after celebrating the fact that I found out I was not carrying a little R Daniel Narang on my person (it'd be a 1/4 Indian baby come to think of it) by devouring a Thosai from a Komala Vilas branch at Tanglin Shopping Mall after pottery class. I don't think I've ever enjoyed eating with my hands so much before. I was originally going to eat my Thosai with utensils, and even took some from the counter. I ended up using my clay-powdery fingers to attack the Thosai. It was immensely satisfying. On another note: I do wonder how much clay I ingested as a result of my enthusiasm.
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I was going to also perhaps call this entry Postcard. I am sending postcards again, with the most beautiful non-touristy ones from Cat Socrates in Bras Bersah. As hipster as that place is, walking in really makes me feel happy and calm with happy-hipster-vibes. I was there on Monday, running errands and returning to costumes Ianthe and I borrowed for her birthday celebrations on Saturday. I ended up eating at KFC and having a tasty Zinger burger by myself. I noted that all the pictures and names used in the current KFC advertising/interior design campaign were all Caucasian.
And then there is this:
The postcards I went to send off to ones away from me.
And the middle one: an ode to Dr S-'s rhotacism, which I have fallen in love with. I would sit in lectures and listen to the lull of his voice, and smile to myself. Weally, weally, he'd say, instead of really, really. And then because he's German when he tried to say Jewelry he'd say Jewry and I'd think of those old-school Nazi era racist math questions, and giggle to myself (offense, totally not intended, I just posses a healthy sense of irony and inappropriateness). Bureaucracy'd turn into buwocwacy and the like. His speech reminded me of Elmer Fudd. Nonetheless, I fell for his speech impediment, which I found utterly adorable.
His postcard is of a person floating in a parachute.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Sigh
So just before I was about to go to bed, I decided to go into my brother's room and check in on him. As I raised the blanket to cover him, I noticed a strange panelling that looked oddly familiar, lying in a weird piece next to him. I went back to my room and checked my new trekking bag. Surprise! My brother decided to cut out the panelling at the back of the bag, which was meant both to give the bag structure and promote air circulation. I suppose it's because it stuck out and didn't lie flat against the bag, and somewhere this totally fried his brain, and thus he decided to cut it off.
I have no idea where he got the scissors from. We hid all the scissors after he decided to cut up all the photographs downstairs. Also I locked my damn door before I left the house to go out.
Upset, but still sticking to the plan, I went back to his room. I pulled the blanket off fully, and as I raised in in the air to tuck him in properly I saw them. Next to my brother, sleeping angelically on his side, was all the panelling cut into pieces. It was like a horror movie, when the scene is fully revealed and where the blood was previously hidden, it turns out to be everywhere.
I can do nothing but sigh. I want to sleep now, badly, but I'm not sure if I can anymore.
I have no idea where he got the scissors from. We hid all the scissors after he decided to cut up all the photographs downstairs. Also I locked my damn door before I left the house to go out.
Upset, but still sticking to the plan, I went back to his room. I pulled the blanket off fully, and as I raised in in the air to tuck him in properly I saw them. Next to my brother, sleeping angelically on his side, was all the panelling cut into pieces. It was like a horror movie, when the scene is fully revealed and where the blood was previously hidden, it turns out to be everywhere.
I can do nothing but sigh. I want to sleep now, badly, but I'm not sure if I can anymore.
A person: a mirror
I often wonder if I have aged very much over the past 2 years. I am, as always, an experience collector. I collect experiences. And I find lately I emerge from them with new wrinkles. I feel as if on the inside, I am much more wizened than my outer appearance suggests (a fact mentioned many times by the teens I met on the cruise: they thought I looked 18).
10 years had passed since I first started watching Harry Potter. Today, I saw it with Liselle, Hui Min, Ianthe, Steph and JH. A true end of a decade. I wonder where I'll be in 19 years time indeed.
10 years had passed since I first started watching Harry Potter. Today, I saw it with Liselle, Hui Min, Ianthe, Steph and JH. A true end of a decade. I wonder where I'll be in 19 years time indeed.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Alabama, Arkansas
Last week was spent being quite a social butterfly.
3/7/2011 - Sunday. Spent it at Ianthe's place hanging out with Steph and Jiahui playing Little Big Planet 2. Missy, the Siberian Husky, was scary. She licked me randomly, which was really creepy/disturbing, but licked Jiahui way more.
4/7/2011 - Monday. Spent it having dinner with Chang Hong and Tiffany, then I had supper with Mong, Hadi and Andrea to celebrate Mong's 21st birthday. Conversation topics were rather dodgy, but no one was around to really eavesdrop. Brought Ryan for a walk in the afternoon.
5/7/2011 - Tuesday. Hadi came over to wach My Blueberry Nights. He liked it, hooray!
6/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery class in the morning, and then pilates class at night. I am unfit. Both in moulding clay and physical fitness.
7/7/2011 - Thursday. Lunch with Jiayun in Holland Village, then another pottery class at night. While at Holland V Jia ran into an old family friend. His fly was open. I pointed it out and he zipped it up. I borrowed a trashy novel from the EMI bookstore.
8/7/2011 - Friday. Met Patrick and Nic Seow at Dempsey, came back mid-afternoon to watch a silly Japanese movie I had rented the previous day.
9/7/2011 - Saturday. Had lunch with my mother, went out at night for dinner with Mong to celebrate his birthday. Ended up wandering around the Zouk area at 1am in the morning, eating roti prata and seeing the mess the Zouk partiers left around.
10/7/2011 - Sunday. Had lunch at Putien with my guo mah, then had dinner with my grandma, grandpa and uncle's family. Made my cousin very hyper by playing with him.
This week was more sedate.
11/7/2011 - Monday. Got my wisdom tooth taken out. Complained a lot. Felt like dracula (sucking my own blood). Ate porridge for dinner, sigh.
12/7/2011 - Tuesday. Stayed at home, but took brother out in the afternoon for a walk. Cleaned out my cupboard. Watched Broadwalk Empire with my Dad at night.
13/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery and pilates again. Results came out in between, was OK. Neither particularly happy nor displeased with results. Felt resigned to being forever an underachiever. Friends did really well, which is awesome. Kinda. Watched 8 Femmes.
14/7/2011 - Thursday. Had lunch with Ianthe at Rail Mall. Gave Ianthe her birthday gift and she seemed rather happy with it. Ended up seeing Elliot and then another person from LSE. Went home and watched Helen and the Baby Fox. Wanted to watch Broadwalk Empire but mother hogged the TV to watch 8 Femmes.
TOMORROW: HARRY POTTER IN 3D!
Can't wait.
3/7/2011 - Sunday. Spent it at Ianthe's place hanging out with Steph and Jiahui playing Little Big Planet 2. Missy, the Siberian Husky, was scary. She licked me randomly, which was really creepy/disturbing, but licked Jiahui way more.
4/7/2011 - Monday. Spent it having dinner with Chang Hong and Tiffany, then I had supper with Mong, Hadi and Andrea to celebrate Mong's 21st birthday. Conversation topics were rather dodgy, but no one was around to really eavesdrop. Brought Ryan for a walk in the afternoon.
5/7/2011 - Tuesday. Hadi came over to wach My Blueberry Nights. He liked it, hooray!
6/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery class in the morning, and then pilates class at night. I am unfit. Both in moulding clay and physical fitness.
7/7/2011 - Thursday. Lunch with Jiayun in Holland Village, then another pottery class at night. While at Holland V Jia ran into an old family friend. His fly was open. I pointed it out and he zipped it up. I borrowed a trashy novel from the EMI bookstore.
8/7/2011 - Friday. Met Patrick and Nic Seow at Dempsey, came back mid-afternoon to watch a silly Japanese movie I had rented the previous day.
9/7/2011 - Saturday. Had lunch with my mother, went out at night for dinner with Mong to celebrate his birthday. Ended up wandering around the Zouk area at 1am in the morning, eating roti prata and seeing the mess the Zouk partiers left around.
10/7/2011 - Sunday. Had lunch at Putien with my guo mah, then had dinner with my grandma, grandpa and uncle's family. Made my cousin very hyper by playing with him.
This week was more sedate.
11/7/2011 - Monday. Got my wisdom tooth taken out. Complained a lot. Felt like dracula (sucking my own blood). Ate porridge for dinner, sigh.
12/7/2011 - Tuesday. Stayed at home, but took brother out in the afternoon for a walk. Cleaned out my cupboard. Watched Broadwalk Empire with my Dad at night.
13/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery and pilates again. Results came out in between, was OK. Neither particularly happy nor displeased with results. Felt resigned to being forever an underachiever. Friends did really well, which is awesome. Kinda. Watched 8 Femmes.
14/7/2011 - Thursday. Had lunch with Ianthe at Rail Mall. Gave Ianthe her birthday gift and she seemed rather happy with it. Ended up seeing Elliot and then another person from LSE. Went home and watched Helen and the Baby Fox. Wanted to watch Broadwalk Empire but mother hogged the TV to watch 8 Femmes.
TOMORROW: HARRY POTTER IN 3D!
Can't wait.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Prednisone
I've never really spoken much to my friends about my brother, except in jest or to relay some silly anecdote about something hilarious that happened involving him/he did. I always try to make light of the situation, painting him in a very silly light, laughing at times at him. Sometimes it's to the point that I suspect my friends think of him as a mere joke, because all I tell are the funniest stories. Fact is, making fun of things is the coping strategy my family decided to adopt when it was revealed that my younger brother suffered from severe autism. That and perhaps my Dad was always a joker, even before any of us were born.
Brought up in a large, supportive, extended family I had always been relatively sheltered from the day to day minutiae of bringing up my brother. I never had to take care of him, and as a result never really saw him as a real sibling. He was just an irritant when I was younger, destroying my toys, stealing my food, and taking my parents away from me. Just a creature that I shared a house and DNA with, but with no real affection. It was hard after all, for me to understand why my younger brother was the way he was, especially since as a child I was already questioning everything. It was hard to accept the answer "he just is like that", as an explanation for the millions of things he did that upset me. Then when it came to things he destroyed, because he wandered into my room, I would get scolded in turn because I should have "known better than to leave things lying around".
There was a time too I remember, when he got into a drawing and biting mode. I was, and still am an incredibly chaotic and messy person with my belongings. There were times where my textbooks would get chewed up to the extent that pages and covers would fall off. Then there was a flower drawing phrase, where every paper-like object would get flowers scrawled all over it, including my homework. One time, after my brother destroyed my math homework, I recopied it out without the working. My parents wrote a note to the teacher, who I was already terrified of. She took the note, accepted my new clean homework. When she gave them back however, she forgot completely about the note my parents had written and instead mocked me in front of the whole class for having such 'neat' homework that I didn't need to do any workings, implying heavily that I had copied all my work from someone. Strange how little things like that stay with you.
It wasn't till I was about 12 that my attitude towards my brother started to change slowly. I was growing older, more used perhaps, to things. It wasn't a rapid change, but an incredibly slow one. I had always been rather protective of him when I was younger, even though I wasn't a huge fan of him, so that didn't really change. What changed however was that I started to see him more as a living, breathing person, rather than just an It. It was then that I really started to become a sister, finally able to let him into my heart and play little silly games with him. Then, I could pick him up in my arms and swing him around until he laughed with delight. I could tickle him until he curled up into a ball. I could appreciate fully the fact that he was smiling at something I had done for him.
I'm not sure when the next turning point in my life came, though I suspect it was around the time I was 17. I say that because I remember a classmate noticing a bite mark on my wrist in class one day, and me not being unduly upset about the bite to make a big fuss of it to my friends. It's like I finally understood, "it just is". This was where I finally transitioned from sister into quasi-caregiver. These were a hard few years, with my brother finally hitting puberty. He rapidly outgrew me and most of the family in height, increased in muscle strength, became more defiant. It was harder to control him now from behaving badly in public. Plus physical force, like dragging him away from something, no longer worked. I still played with him, but I could no longer lift him up even though he'd pull my arms around his waist like before. He also became less ticklish. I started helping out a bit more, disciplining, bringing him to and from classes.
Almost exactly a year ago, my brother threw a massive tantrum and was completely freaking out. My parents barricaded themselves in their room, waiting for him to calm down. I had been preparing to go out clubbing with friends, and so even though knew something was happening, didn't quite know the extent or root cause. In my distracted mind, I decided the best way to get him to calm down and go to sleep would be to stick to the routine. I took his toothbrush, put toothpaste on it and called for him a few times to come and brush his teeth. Instead, he got more frustrated and lunged at me, grabbing me by the shoulders while digging his fingers into my skin and leaned over to try and bite me as I screamed and screamed for help. My parents ran out of the room to help, and I went back to my room to cry because I was so shaken by the incident. I had never been so scared of my brother before.
The first time I really brought my brother out alone before was just last week. I was going for a walk to clear my head of R, and decided to ask my brother along since he looked so bored. We walked to a park about 15 minutes away from home in the sweltering heat, and I watched my 17-year-old-but-still-a-baby brother squeeze himself into the playground set, some 50cm too tall for everything. Still, he was happy there, never having grown up in his mind. Getting home proved a bit tricker, since he didn't want to leave. Later in the week, as I left the house on Thursday to meet Jiayun in Holland Village for lunch, my brother ran to the door, hoping I'd take him out. It made me sad to have to tell him I couldn't, as he looked at me with those large eyes of his.
Today as I walked with my father and brother back to the car from an emergency trip to the doctor's, I mused how just 24 hours ago I was being a totally irresponsible youth at Mong's 21st birthday party. Now, I had just brought my brother to the doctor's, registered him, applied cream as he scratched away from a major allergic reaction afterwards (hives, just like me last time). It was but a drop in the massive ocean of responsibility my parents carried everyday, and I thought about this was how just the beginning of me one day fully taking ownership of my very special brother. I thought about the duplicity in my life, I thought about Rajan and how he'd really be the only person that'd fully understand. I thought about how I missed him the teensiest bit.
Right before I wrote this, I went to check in on my brother. From going to bed just 15 minutes earlier, he was soundly asleep. Looked like the many antihistamines we gave him before we desperately visited the doctor's finally knocked him out. It was a nice change, from just hours earlier when I was trying to sponge him with a cold towel to stop the scratching. I had seen the welts and the redness spread all over his body. I had tried to hold him hands to get him to stop scratching. I thought about how good it was that I was home this time round, so I could help out. I think now, about my future, and how I'll never really be alone in this life because my brother is wholly dependent on me. It's both a scary and a comforting thought.
Brought up in a large, supportive, extended family I had always been relatively sheltered from the day to day minutiae of bringing up my brother. I never had to take care of him, and as a result never really saw him as a real sibling. He was just an irritant when I was younger, destroying my toys, stealing my food, and taking my parents away from me. Just a creature that I shared a house and DNA with, but with no real affection. It was hard after all, for me to understand why my younger brother was the way he was, especially since as a child I was already questioning everything. It was hard to accept the answer "he just is like that", as an explanation for the millions of things he did that upset me. Then when it came to things he destroyed, because he wandered into my room, I would get scolded in turn because I should have "known better than to leave things lying around".
There was a time too I remember, when he got into a drawing and biting mode. I was, and still am an incredibly chaotic and messy person with my belongings. There were times where my textbooks would get chewed up to the extent that pages and covers would fall off. Then there was a flower drawing phrase, where every paper-like object would get flowers scrawled all over it, including my homework. One time, after my brother destroyed my math homework, I recopied it out without the working. My parents wrote a note to the teacher, who I was already terrified of. She took the note, accepted my new clean homework. When she gave them back however, she forgot completely about the note my parents had written and instead mocked me in front of the whole class for having such 'neat' homework that I didn't need to do any workings, implying heavily that I had copied all my work from someone. Strange how little things like that stay with you.
It wasn't till I was about 12 that my attitude towards my brother started to change slowly. I was growing older, more used perhaps, to things. It wasn't a rapid change, but an incredibly slow one. I had always been rather protective of him when I was younger, even though I wasn't a huge fan of him, so that didn't really change. What changed however was that I started to see him more as a living, breathing person, rather than just an It. It was then that I really started to become a sister, finally able to let him into my heart and play little silly games with him. Then, I could pick him up in my arms and swing him around until he laughed with delight. I could tickle him until he curled up into a ball. I could appreciate fully the fact that he was smiling at something I had done for him.
I'm not sure when the next turning point in my life came, though I suspect it was around the time I was 17. I say that because I remember a classmate noticing a bite mark on my wrist in class one day, and me not being unduly upset about the bite to make a big fuss of it to my friends. It's like I finally understood, "it just is". This was where I finally transitioned from sister into quasi-caregiver. These were a hard few years, with my brother finally hitting puberty. He rapidly outgrew me and most of the family in height, increased in muscle strength, became more defiant. It was harder to control him now from behaving badly in public. Plus physical force, like dragging him away from something, no longer worked. I still played with him, but I could no longer lift him up even though he'd pull my arms around his waist like before. He also became less ticklish. I started helping out a bit more, disciplining, bringing him to and from classes.
Almost exactly a year ago, my brother threw a massive tantrum and was completely freaking out. My parents barricaded themselves in their room, waiting for him to calm down. I had been preparing to go out clubbing with friends, and so even though knew something was happening, didn't quite know the extent or root cause. In my distracted mind, I decided the best way to get him to calm down and go to sleep would be to stick to the routine. I took his toothbrush, put toothpaste on it and called for him a few times to come and brush his teeth. Instead, he got more frustrated and lunged at me, grabbing me by the shoulders while digging his fingers into my skin and leaned over to try and bite me as I screamed and screamed for help. My parents ran out of the room to help, and I went back to my room to cry because I was so shaken by the incident. I had never been so scared of my brother before.
The first time I really brought my brother out alone before was just last week. I was going for a walk to clear my head of R, and decided to ask my brother along since he looked so bored. We walked to a park about 15 minutes away from home in the sweltering heat, and I watched my 17-year-old-but-still-a-baby brother squeeze himself into the playground set, some 50cm too tall for everything. Still, he was happy there, never having grown up in his mind. Getting home proved a bit tricker, since he didn't want to leave. Later in the week, as I left the house on Thursday to meet Jiayun in Holland Village for lunch, my brother ran to the door, hoping I'd take him out. It made me sad to have to tell him I couldn't, as he looked at me with those large eyes of his.
Today as I walked with my father and brother back to the car from an emergency trip to the doctor's, I mused how just 24 hours ago I was being a totally irresponsible youth at Mong's 21st birthday party. Now, I had just brought my brother to the doctor's, registered him, applied cream as he scratched away from a major allergic reaction afterwards (hives, just like me last time). It was but a drop in the massive ocean of responsibility my parents carried everyday, and I thought about this was how just the beginning of me one day fully taking ownership of my very special brother. I thought about the duplicity in my life, I thought about Rajan and how he'd really be the only person that'd fully understand. I thought about how I missed him the teensiest bit.
Right before I wrote this, I went to check in on my brother. From going to bed just 15 minutes earlier, he was soundly asleep. Looked like the many antihistamines we gave him before we desperately visited the doctor's finally knocked him out. It was a nice change, from just hours earlier when I was trying to sponge him with a cold towel to stop the scratching. I had seen the welts and the redness spread all over his body. I had tried to hold him hands to get him to stop scratching. I thought about how good it was that I was home this time round, so I could help out. I think now, about my future, and how I'll never really be alone in this life because my brother is wholly dependent on me. It's both a scary and a comforting thought.
Friday, July 08, 2011
The Big Sleep
It wasn't all too long ago that the thought of sleeping alone presented me with a palpable anxiety. Growing up with doting grandparents and a small house, I had spent most of my childhood sleeping with other people in the room, to the sounds of late night Chinese television blaring. It wasn't till I was 13 that I really tried sleeping in a room alone, and even that was briefly ruined when I got dragged to watch Ju-On one day by a friend.
When I was Christoph, we spent almost every alternating night asleep together. Last academic year he had a nice double bed in his flat in Elephant and Castle, and this year I had the double bed at my place. I hated his pillows, which were really soft. In turn he said I was a blanket stealer. As this year rolled about, we eventually drifted to separate blankets. He preferred the super-warm-but-better-quality-Marks-and-Spencer single quilt, and I was happy with my crappy-but-large-and-enveloping-Argos-Value double quilt. I had my awesome and cheap £5 for 2 hollowfibre pillows from Marks and Spencer too. We were happy. He slept like an unmovable rock and I rolled about on my side of the bed.
The nights he didn't spend next to me however, I slept badly. I'd have trouble falling to sleep, because I missed his presence. I missed being able to reach out and touch him. Missed listening to his soft snoring. I'd think and think, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, about the daunting future and feel anxious. Having him around reassured me, somehow, that as long as he was here things'd be okay. I'd stay up later than usual as a result.
But of course it wasn't all unicorns and double rainbows. There were nights where despite him being there, I'd be unable to sleep. I'd still toss and turn, except now I'd be afraid to do so in case I woke him up. Then there was one very bad memory where one night, we both had trouble sleeping and just as he'd fallen to sleep, I'd woken him up. After he got frustrated and told me he was awake, I went to the kitchen and cried as he went to sleep. I didn't sleep at all that night and ended up having a nervous breakdown. Sometimes if I wanted to sleep early, and he wanted to sleep late, we'd be forced to compromise. Other times were more normal, where I'd get frustrated at him being able to sleep so soundly next to me as I did the insomniac's march (bed-toilet-bed every 10 minutes), and feel alone in my misery. Not that I wanted him to be unable to sleep too, it's just that him being able to sleep so soundly felt mocking.
Then one day he left and I suddenly had a double bed all to myself. I ended up using it as a dumping ground for my once-worn clothes. Books. Newspapers. Sometimes files and papers. Stuffed toys. Sometimes I'd lose things in the mess. At night I cuddled with my clutter. It felt strange in a way, like a smaller person occupying the bed with me. I started to regain control of my sleep, relearning how to sleep alone and on my own terms. I started to forget what it was like sharing a bed with another person.
And then one fine day, Rajan came into my life, and I found myself (albeit briefly) sharing a bed again. In what I found surprising more than anything else, although I initially welcomed the idea of falling in love again (HAHAHA MISTAKE), I began to resent the idea of sharing my bed with someone else after all the freedom I had been accorded.
First there were all the idiosyncrasies: no outside clothes on bedsheets/lying on the quilt top with outside clothes is ok/but then how do you tell someone this nicely? Then my sleep times were horribly wrecked, as I finally met someone who had worse insomnia than me, and I compromised by sleeping ever-so-late even though I was so tired. Even my stuffed toys weren't spared, as Rajan picked them up and tossed them around the room, probably deeming them amusing. It also turned out that Rajan was a tosser and turner in bed too, just like me. On my cheap bed, I could feel the bed move every time he turned. Which was often. ARGH.
Then came the blanket problem. Being with Christoph and then myself for the past few months had spoiled me into not sharing a blanket. Sharing a blanket (now that it was Summer and I had no other thin quilts) felt downright uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was wrap myself up in a blanket and I couldn't do it anymore because there was someone else in the bed. Plus I was quite sure I was still a blanket stealer in my sleep.
The mornings felt strange too as I rolled about to see someone next to me. I had gotten used to waking up slowly in the mornings with sunlight and a book. Now when I woke up I couldn't open the curtains, and had to deal with another not-morning-person even though I wasn't a morning person either. Rajan brought a whole new set of things to get used to, a whole new lot of things to compromise on.
As today rolls around, I realise it's been almost exactly a month since I've last slept next to someone, and in my strange way I revel in that fact. I loved it when someone slept next to me, but now I can sleep as late or as early as I want, and wake up however I want without worrying about the person next to me. I can wrap my blanket around me, or kick it off as I sleep if it gets too warm without fear of any repercussions. I can turn on my side as many times and as often as I want, punch my pillow into a good shape and sprawl all over the bed. The bed is mine, and mine alone. Phew.
When I was Christoph, we spent almost every alternating night asleep together. Last academic year he had a nice double bed in his flat in Elephant and Castle, and this year I had the double bed at my place. I hated his pillows, which were really soft. In turn he said I was a blanket stealer. As this year rolled about, we eventually drifted to separate blankets. He preferred the super-warm-but-better-quality-Marks-and-Spencer single quilt, and I was happy with my crappy-but-large-and-enveloping-Argos-Value double quilt. I had my awesome and cheap £5 for 2 hollowfibre pillows from Marks and Spencer too. We were happy. He slept like an unmovable rock and I rolled about on my side of the bed.
The nights he didn't spend next to me however, I slept badly. I'd have trouble falling to sleep, because I missed his presence. I missed being able to reach out and touch him. Missed listening to his soft snoring. I'd think and think, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, about the daunting future and feel anxious. Having him around reassured me, somehow, that as long as he was here things'd be okay. I'd stay up later than usual as a result.
But of course it wasn't all unicorns and double rainbows. There were nights where despite him being there, I'd be unable to sleep. I'd still toss and turn, except now I'd be afraid to do so in case I woke him up. Then there was one very bad memory where one night, we both had trouble sleeping and just as he'd fallen to sleep, I'd woken him up. After he got frustrated and told me he was awake, I went to the kitchen and cried as he went to sleep. I didn't sleep at all that night and ended up having a nervous breakdown. Sometimes if I wanted to sleep early, and he wanted to sleep late, we'd be forced to compromise. Other times were more normal, where I'd get frustrated at him being able to sleep so soundly next to me as I did the insomniac's march (bed-toilet-bed every 10 minutes), and feel alone in my misery. Not that I wanted him to be unable to sleep too, it's just that him being able to sleep so soundly felt mocking.
Then one day he left and I suddenly had a double bed all to myself. I ended up using it as a dumping ground for my once-worn clothes. Books. Newspapers. Sometimes files and papers. Stuffed toys. Sometimes I'd lose things in the mess. At night I cuddled with my clutter. It felt strange in a way, like a smaller person occupying the bed with me. I started to regain control of my sleep, relearning how to sleep alone and on my own terms. I started to forget what it was like sharing a bed with another person.
And then one fine day, Rajan came into my life, and I found myself (albeit briefly) sharing a bed again. In what I found surprising more than anything else, although I initially welcomed the idea of falling in love again (HAHAHA MISTAKE), I began to resent the idea of sharing my bed with someone else after all the freedom I had been accorded.
First there were all the idiosyncrasies: no outside clothes on bedsheets/lying on the quilt top with outside clothes is ok/but then how do you tell someone this nicely? Then my sleep times were horribly wrecked, as I finally met someone who had worse insomnia than me, and I compromised by sleeping ever-so-late even though I was so tired. Even my stuffed toys weren't spared, as Rajan picked them up and tossed them around the room, probably deeming them amusing. It also turned out that Rajan was a tosser and turner in bed too, just like me. On my cheap bed, I could feel the bed move every time he turned. Which was often. ARGH.
Then came the blanket problem. Being with Christoph and then myself for the past few months had spoiled me into not sharing a blanket. Sharing a blanket (now that it was Summer and I had no other thin quilts) felt downright uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was wrap myself up in a blanket and I couldn't do it anymore because there was someone else in the bed. Plus I was quite sure I was still a blanket stealer in my sleep.
The mornings felt strange too as I rolled about to see someone next to me. I had gotten used to waking up slowly in the mornings with sunlight and a book. Now when I woke up I couldn't open the curtains, and had to deal with another not-morning-person even though I wasn't a morning person either. Rajan brought a whole new set of things to get used to, a whole new lot of things to compromise on.
As today rolls around, I realise it's been almost exactly a month since I've last slept next to someone, and in my strange way I revel in that fact. I loved it when someone slept next to me, but now I can sleep as late or as early as I want, and wake up however I want without worrying about the person next to me. I can wrap my blanket around me, or kick it off as I sleep if it gets too warm without fear of any repercussions. I can turn on my side as many times and as often as I want, punch my pillow into a good shape and sprawl all over the bed. The bed is mine, and mine alone. Phew.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Like the pine trees lining the road
I have an urge to take a few days off my next academic year and follow the North Downs Walk, walking from Rochester to Canterbury, and ending in Dover. According to Google Maps, it's about a 43.3 mile walk (why the heck is this in the Imperial and not Metric system?).
But then again I have many urges and to-dos, including so far:-
1) Doing Wing Chun when I get back to London
2) Travelling to Colchester by myself to look at the Roman ruins
3) Travelling (back) to Helsinki by myself to explore the city
4) Writing about my recent Baltic Cruise
5) Writing about my ethnic identity, as per an essay topic suggested by a website I stumbled upon, of which I have already jotted down some points
I have a very bad habit of not following through with plans, and instead bowing to random bouts of impulsiveness and laziness. I hope I manage to urge myself to follow through with these.
But then again I have many urges and to-dos, including so far:-
1) Doing Wing Chun when I get back to London
2) Travelling to Colchester by myself to look at the Roman ruins
3) Travelling (back) to Helsinki by myself to explore the city
4) Writing about my recent Baltic Cruise
5) Writing about my ethnic identity, as per an essay topic suggested by a website I stumbled upon, of which I have already jotted down some points
I have a very bad habit of not following through with plans, and instead bowing to random bouts of impulsiveness and laziness. I hope I manage to urge myself to follow through with these.
Clay
Yesterday I attended my first pottery class in Singapore. Pottery has someone always been one of my interests, there's just something to feeling the malleable clay between your fingers and moulding it into something coherent with your hands. This class, much to my appreciation, was stocked with adequate equipment - enough wheels for everyone - much unlike my last class where everyone had to compete to use the two wheels among eight people.
So there I was, shyly smiling at everyone, the way I do with unfamiliar people. One was a cute little boy, around perhaps 6, who had the most beautiful bluest eyes and blondest hair. Another was a woman, looking eager, who apparently was new. Another woman sat at a mechanised wheel, working on an existing project, wearing denim bermudas and a white and blue striped collared shirt. It was the eager woman who struck me the most.
She was the one who attempted to start a conversation. She was French it transpired, and when the little boy said he was French too her eyes lit up. They started pattering away in French, as I smiled to myself, feeling like I was in a quaint French movie. Then she spoke to me. She talked about how this was just her 2nd week into a 1 year stay in Singapore. How she missed home, how she skyped her family everyday. How she couldn't get used to the temperature and the food. She easily looked in her 30s to me. I spoke about how it was when I first went to London, that it'd get better. Still I knew such words were of little comfort to her, platitudes even. But we had not yet reached the level of intimacy, and I could not quite remember what it was like when I first went to London.
It struck me then more so than ever, that even though we get older we don't necessarily get used to the changes life brings. I always knew in my heart, and that is perhaps why I try to be sympathetic when my friends complain about their parents, that even parents are just older people who are trying to do what they think is best. That they're only that much more wiser, and that all they've really mastered is some experience and a lot of Looking Like What They Know They're Doing When They Really Don't. I spoke to my Dad about it a few days ago, and he laughed, saying Now You Know. Still, it was different hearing it from the French lady. Hearing it in person that being an adult doesn't mean you know what you're doing - and that perhaps you'll never really know what you're doing despite your age.
So there I was, shyly smiling at everyone, the way I do with unfamiliar people. One was a cute little boy, around perhaps 6, who had the most beautiful bluest eyes and blondest hair. Another was a woman, looking eager, who apparently was new. Another woman sat at a mechanised wheel, working on an existing project, wearing denim bermudas and a white and blue striped collared shirt. It was the eager woman who struck me the most.
She was the one who attempted to start a conversation. She was French it transpired, and when the little boy said he was French too her eyes lit up. They started pattering away in French, as I smiled to myself, feeling like I was in a quaint French movie. Then she spoke to me. She talked about how this was just her 2nd week into a 1 year stay in Singapore. How she missed home, how she skyped her family everyday. How she couldn't get used to the temperature and the food. She easily looked in her 30s to me. I spoke about how it was when I first went to London, that it'd get better. Still I knew such words were of little comfort to her, platitudes even. But we had not yet reached the level of intimacy, and I could not quite remember what it was like when I first went to London.
It struck me then more so than ever, that even though we get older we don't necessarily get used to the changes life brings. I always knew in my heart, and that is perhaps why I try to be sympathetic when my friends complain about their parents, that even parents are just older people who are trying to do what they think is best. That they're only that much more wiser, and that all they've really mastered is some experience and a lot of Looking Like What They Know They're Doing When They Really Don't. I spoke to my Dad about it a few days ago, and he laughed, saying Now You Know. Still, it was different hearing it from the French lady. Hearing it in person that being an adult doesn't mean you know what you're doing - and that perhaps you'll never really know what you're doing despite your age.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
How Many Roads?
After I ate lunch today, I stood up to clear my food away and instinctively looked at the fields behind my house. There was a man there, dressed in a white t-shirt, sitting amongst the tall grass. He sat with arms around knees, tucked to his chin, and looked as if he was rocking back and forth. The grass in the field is tall, and has not been cut since the last time I was home months ago. Snakes live and flourish there.
He didn't seem normal. I was worried. I wanted to call the police, but I wasn't sure. What if he had gotten lost?
I decided to wait. I came back to my room. Read an email. Went to shower and cried.
After I got out of the shower and looked again, the man was gone.
He didn't seem normal. I was worried. I wanted to call the police, but I wasn't sure. What if he had gotten lost?
I decided to wait. I came back to my room. Read an email. Went to shower and cried.
After I got out of the shower and looked again, the man was gone.
Friday, July 01, 2011
Like the Fool I am/And I'll Always Be
I played Blowing in the Wind today until my fingers could not take it anymore. Because my father said I Got a Name would be a wee bit too hard for me to restart 8 years of non-playing guitar on. He was right, but then again he usually is. Then I sat down and finally wrote one of those tough honest, emotionally charged emails to R.
As I lay down in bed, finally trying to put my mind at rest, I got the urge to eat salted peanuts. At 4:15am in the morning. Nevermind that I was just starting to feel sleepy. But I felt my soul would not rest until I ate some damn peanuts. So I went downstairs and ate peanuts. Then I decided to blog about it. Because I'm awesome that way.
I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get over this damn jetlag. Also, my untimely and odd urges amaze me.
As I lay down in bed, finally trying to put my mind at rest, I got the urge to eat salted peanuts. At 4:15am in the morning. Nevermind that I was just starting to feel sleepy. But I felt my soul would not rest until I ate some damn peanuts. So I went downstairs and ate peanuts. Then I decided to blog about it. Because I'm awesome that way.
I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get over this damn jetlag. Also, my untimely and odd urges amaze me.
Happy
One of my favourite stories is that of the original Grimm's Fairy Tale, The Little Mermaid, where she turns into sea foam at the end because she can't bear to kill the one she loves. She gives and she gives, and even till the very end cannot bear to stop giving.
It was my favorite story when I was 15. Now that I'm 21, it still remains one of my favourite stories.
It was my favorite story when I was 15. Now that I'm 21, it still remains one of my favourite stories.
Handphone
Second time in less than a week that I've woken up in utter confusion by my handphone ringing. Handphone. That's an asian Chinese word. Taken directly from shou ti dian hua, which literally means hand phone. Everyone else in the world calls it mobile, or cell. Me? I still can't not think about that device as a handphone. It's too deeply ingrained into my psyche.
Anyway so I just got very weirdly woke up by Hadi.
I woke up at 10am today and forced myself out of bed. At 12pm, a mere 2 hours later, I decided I might as well lie down and nap until Hadi called me around 3pm. I set an alarm for 1:30pm. At 12:45pm when I woke up to use the bathroom, I decided to reset the alarm for 2pm. I went to sleep and dreamed a weird dream. It seems I've been dreaming every time I fall asleep nowadays. At 2pm my alarm rang and I woke up for a second to grab the phone and turn off the alarm, then I went back to sleep. At 2:09pm, Hadi called, and I got woken rather bizarrely by a device vibrating on my chest.
It was rather fortuitous I suppose, that my sleep addled mind a mere 9 minutes earlier decided the safest place to store a handphone was by balancing it on my chest, because my handphone was on silent mode. The vibrations woke me up, and a very confused phone call commenced next.
Anyway so I just got very weirdly woke up by Hadi.
I woke up at 10am today and forced myself out of bed. At 12pm, a mere 2 hours later, I decided I might as well lie down and nap until Hadi called me around 3pm. I set an alarm for 1:30pm. At 12:45pm when I woke up to use the bathroom, I decided to reset the alarm for 2pm. I went to sleep and dreamed a weird dream. It seems I've been dreaming every time I fall asleep nowadays. At 2pm my alarm rang and I woke up for a second to grab the phone and turn off the alarm, then I went back to sleep. At 2:09pm, Hadi called, and I got woken rather bizarrely by a device vibrating on my chest.
It was rather fortuitous I suppose, that my sleep addled mind a mere 9 minutes earlier decided the safest place to store a handphone was by balancing it on my chest, because my handphone was on silent mode. The vibrations woke me up, and a very confused phone call commenced next.
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