Hyper

For the first time in ages I feel really hyper. I think it's a combination of having woken up early and done something (and it's only 3:26pm!) and the teh I drank. I woke up around 9:30am which is early by my slothful standards and went to meet Tiff at Serangoon to get our nails done. Reason why I went all the way to Serangoon to get my nails done was because Tiffany had bought a package at a nail parlour there for really cheap. The trip there was really fast, took me about 35 minutes in total. That's the time it takes for me to get to Dhoby Ghaut normally, and that's a far nearer location.

We walked about, went to NTUC and I bought lactose free skim milk, had lunch at Sushi Tei and then went to get our nails done. Was fun I must say, especially since I hadn't gone for anything of the sort in close to a year. I chose this colour changing shade (teal when cold, white when warm) which in hindsight is still cool but silly since Singapore is so warm all the time. As a result now my nails seem to be permanently white. Like I dropped too much correction liquid on them and just kept going.

Finished reading How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu on Saturday night. His writing style reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro's style. Very subtle. Show-not-tell. But so well done and vividly described that you can feel, empathise, understand exactly the flaws of his characters. Reading the book felt slightly stressful because I understood and remember every little bit of the tension that comes from a relationship not-quite-being-functional. Of loving someone but still being unable to live with them. Reading the book has made me feel even more UGH about relationships in general, reminds me of how tired I am of all the subtle strife and tensions of things-not-quite-articulated.

In other news I am now reading Othello. I'm not a fan of Shakespeare at all, but the storyline of Othello always appealed to me. The idea of jealously completely taking hold of someone and destroying them. I also realised that it seems no one studies Othello in Singapore for Lit. I personally had to study Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and Twelfth Night. I was NOT a fan of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night and studying King Lear was a chore (for IOC! Gosh that was ages ago). Am reading Othello now because I feel I should at least have some Shakespearean knowledge as an English teacher, even if it's not a title that my students are studying. Plus I can talk about it and sound smart, haha.

So far the only thing I must note about Othello is that I find the ribald lines very very appalling. Sort of surprised me how smutty some of Shakespeare's lines could be:

"Iago: Even now, now, very now, an old black ram 

Is tupping your white ewe" (Act I Scene I) 

"Iago: You'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse" (Act I Scene I) 

"Iago: I am one sir, that comes to tell you, your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs." (Act I Scene I)

In retrospect they're all lines said solely by Iago to provoke Brabantio. While reading it I thought Roderigo said at least some of them but I guess I was wrong. I guess using such coarse language fits with Iago's character in knowing how to provoke the worst in people.