Panda Coitus

Today I met up with Cheam for lunch, before watching Hadi's play, Family Outing. We ate at a place I had found on hungrygowhere.com, because I was craving steak. It was disappointing. In turn, I did a very Singaporean thing: I wrote a bad review about the place. Then, we met Debbie, Mel, Paul and Eliel at the National Library to watch the play. It was by far one of the best plays I've seen in Singapore (which comes to about 5 proper non-school plays). It had a really good script, with good acting, lighting and sound. Quite a change from the usual standard of plays where I ended up feeling like I want to slap someone.

Afterwards the lot of us went to Seah Street to eat crepes (Debbie's suggestion). Pricy, but delicious as hell salted-caramel-butter-crepes. And I'm not even a big fan of excessively sweet stuff. Then Hadi came and the shop was closing, so we went to nearby Mcdonalds for Hadi to grab a bite. Then we all went off to get home, and I took the bus to my grandparent's place for dinner. After a delicious dinner of vinegar pig's trotters (sounds gross but, I try not to think of it as pig legs D: ), I ended spending ages trying to fix up my grandma's newly acquired toy: a voice recorder/mp3 players.

The highlight of the night however was after I had succeeded in fixing the player and had gone upstairs to see my grandfather for a while. The awesomely cold air conditioning (my grandfather likes it vaguely arctic) was a fantastic bonus. Upstairs, he first started off by complaining that I had arrived late for dinner (well they eat dinner at 5:50pm, wtf?). Then he went into his usual round of telling me that 'I have some bad habits that I need to change' (which include anyhow throwing things, and anyhow buying things - directly translated from Mandarin of course), during which I tuned out and made Mandarin Assenting Sounds like 'ORH'. As it happens the TV was turned onto CCTV4 (hello cable), and we're both watching TV as he's talking. It's some Panda breeding programme in Chengdu.

Given that my Mandarin is dismal from a lack of use and general suckiness, I'm not sure how but I remember understanding that they were closely monitoring the urine of the female panda to check for it's ovulation. Shots of pipettes (cool stuff) and vials of acid yellow urine appear on the screen. All the while my grandfather is working down his list of Things I Need To Change. Then suddenly the screen actually shows PANDAS and I'm like AWWWW, but I realise they're separated by cages. I'm still half listening to my grandfather at this point and he blocks out the commentator's audio for a moment with his monologue, and then next thing I see the bars between the two pandas is lifted up and one of the pandas goes into the other panda's cage. At this point I'm thinking "oh come on, no way in hell this is what I think it is".

But it is. Next thing I know I'm watching stunned as one panda (PROBABLY THE MALE ONE) fucks the other panda from behind. No this is not happening I'm thinking, I wonder has yeh yeh noticed it? And for a brief painful few moments I think maybe he hasn't because it's still pandas fucking on the TV. The male panda opens his mouth and makes weird moaning sounds. HOLY SHIT. And then mid panda groan, the channel changes abruptly to some Taiwanese game show. All the while my grandfather is still talking, but he falters slightly during the channel change. Um.

Even though the pandas fucked for maybe 5 seconds maximum on TV that day, I think that memory is forever, disturbingly, seared into my mind.

The Golden Notebook

There remains in my memory no other book which I have found so incredible, yet so difficult to read that I would not go through the experience again if possible. Lessing's The Golden Notebook is the first to fit into this ambiguous category: is it a good thing, a bad thing, or perhaps indicative of its remarkable nature? I don't really know.

The Golden Notebook was probably one of the most feminist texts I've ever read. Yet as Doris Lessing writes herself in the reader's guide that came with my book, she never intended it as a feminist text. It just was. Lessing's ability to portray human relationships, male-female sexual interactions in all their different shapes and messed up forms was mindblowing. She isn't one of those overwrought emotional writers which waste endless words, ink, paper on a simple interaction - her succinctness is probably one of the best I've seen. Yet at the same time due to the sheer mass of all her words, the density of content, made her extremely tiring to read. It was like eating a too rich cake. No wonder I could only plod slowly through.

Finally there is the aspect of mental illness: a theme I had not noticed as I read the book. Simply put, I had not noticed that it was there at all, because I legitimately thought that people did behave like that (and that it was acceptable). That idea, strikes me mostly more than anything else in the novel.

I guess I've found a book to add to the 2011 list.

Mints

My favourite mints are Tic Tacs. They're sweet, smell nice (in an artificial way) and have just enough minti-ness in them to do the job when my breath feels gross. I much prefer them to the more popular Eclipse mints, although I have to admit that the tin the Eclipse mints come in is way more fun to play with since the metal is malleable.

When I dream of cold hot chocolate, I dream one the one I first drank when I was on a date with Patrick and we ended up at Far Coast. It was not too sweet and had a wee bit of minti-ness to it. I loved it.

I am reading Doris Lessing now, and she makes me want to write things.

Holland Village

Bearing absolutely no correlation to anything in this post, I thought I'd load up a picture of a very charming desk I spotted on etsy.

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I spent most of today at Holland Village.

I met Sharyl for brunch, eating at Breko Cafe. I had a rather unsatisfactory pancake with Canadian-sausage meal, mainly because it was cold and started to feel greasy. It was good meeting up with her though, seeing as that I haven't seen her in over a year. It transpired she was going to Canada in a few weeks to study in university, which came as a pleasant surprise to me. Of all the friends I still keep in touch with, she really was the oldest one, from when we were both in Secondary 1.

After brunch, I went over to her house for a bit. Partly to help babysit, partly because I wanted to see her niece and nephew, partly because I didn't want to go home and return to Holland Village in a matter of hours. I learned something today: looking after kids is tiring. In the house there were a grand total of 4 adults (Sharyl, me, her dad, her sister) to 2 kids (one 3 year old girl, one 1 year old boy) and they ran everyone ragged. Not only that, I had trouble figuring out what was appropriate for the 3 year old's age group. When she said she wanted to go to the babytv website to play games, I wtf-ed because 3 years old is hardly a baby right?!? I really don't know. Then she said she was hungry and went to eat a sweet that her grandfather gave her, and that's enough to make her full?!? Then I realise I don't know phonics and all and was trying to figure out how to get her to spell 'dancing' and attempted to get her to write C by saying it in a S-sound way (it's like danSing right, come to think of it?!?). Then the 1 year old started crying like mad because he couldn't find his parents.

Ok good thing I won't be a mother any time soon.

Afterwards I met N Seow, and spoke to him as he was getting his haircut. After that I ate Chili at Wendy's because I was dying of hunger. Then when Kyle came to pick up Nic for his farewell dinner, I went home. I spent a good 8 hours at Holland Village.

Phuket

I've been to Phuket 3 times in my life. First time was in mid-2004 with my parents. Second time was with my classmates in IB, in early 2007, to aid rebuilding work. Third time was the past few days, with my mum, to celebrate her 50th birthday.

Spent most of it doing nothing. Started reading two books together, The Golden Notebook and The Book of Tomorrow. Both acclaimed female authors in different fiction fields, both about women and their diaries. Both going along very different courses (hello Nobel Prize winner, hello chick flick author), providing a lovely illuminating contrast to the women in the novels. Went to the beach and as I swayed while wading in the sea thanks to strong monsoonal tides, I tried to imagine what it was like when the Tsunami hit. The lifeguard kept blowing his whistle to chase people who had wandered beyond mid-thigh sea water level out of the surf. Ended up shopping alot (because naturally of my mum). I wondered what happened to my beloved Danger! Mines! shirt that I bought in Siem Reap as we browsed the touristy t-shirt stores.

I ended up sending loads of postcards out. A roadside vendor in Patong Beach charged me 40 baht for a 15 baht stamp. Later, I stumbled upon a post office along Patong Beach and went in to get more stamps. I ended up stumbling slightly backwards in shock when I entered it. I had walked into the darkness of the post office to be greeted suddenly by 5 pairs of staring, idle eyes. It was the emptiest post office I had ever seen in my life. Most post offices it seems, tend to be packed with tired public, all struggling to get a piece of underfunded public services. At least this is the case of what I've observed in Singapore, the UK, Germany and France. Thailand it seems, is unique in more ways than one.

I realised the tasty 'White Curry' that my class was served on our 2007 OEP trip was actually a soup: Tom Kha Gai. I dreamt terrifying dreams every night. Once I dreamt of Shu falling down a muddy slope, and her slipping out my hands as she tumbled down a yellow-ey mud precipice. Then I dreamt of a tiny dog stuffed into a ball that opened in the middle, and me losing it as it ran out of sight. Another night I dreamt someone was spreading a frightful rumour about me, and I was doing my best to stop it. Then last night I dreamt of R, that we were friends and I touched his arm, feeling his smooth velvety skin. I dream in colour, feel textures, feel real emotion. I dream in bouts, sometimes I go weeks dreamless, then suddenly I can't stop dreaming at all.

I ate a lot of drunken prawns tonight for the celebratory dinner tonight. My mum turned 50.

Funky Forest/Do the Right Thing/Poltergay

I spent today having yet another movie marathon with Patrick and Nic. We watched the immensely wtf Funky Forest (Nic's), followed by the rather bleak Do the Right Thing (Patrick's) and rounding out with my absurd selection of Poltergay. For dinner we ended up at Ghim Moh, eating at De Burg, some hamburger place at a kopitiam. It was then I realised that in a week and a half's time, Nic would be gone for Oberlin, that he wouldn't really be around anymore. That everyone was really going on their separate ways now. It felt rather strange.

Afrer, we ended up walking around Kent Ridge Park, and mucking about NUS to see the new campus. Then, they drove me home.