For more years than I can remember in running, I've been receiving loads of Christmas cards from my Secondary school friends. This year however they appear to have forgotten about it - which kind of works since it go to the point where I was chucking cards into a drawer without opening them (yes I am terrible in that way). This year however I received no cards (probably asking for it) and actually forgot momentarily that such a tradition even existed. Today however that notion once more came to mind when I received a card in the mail, albeit 2 days late.
It came from quite an unlikely person. For instance it wasn't from someone in my secondary school, then came the other odd thing - it wasn't from a girl! Still it's one of the best written and touching Christmas cards that I can recall (which er, probably doesn't count for very much given my terrible memory). So thank you Kaijun.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
The Top 10 Best Reads of 2008 is now officially over, and I declare Hierophant the winner (I'll pass you the choccy when I next see you). In choosing the books for this not-so-illustrious list I had a few select criteria; 1) attractiveness of plot 2) style of writing 3) the rapport I had with the characterisations of the characters 4) how much the story haunted me afterward. had Now let me continue with the list itself:
1. "It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. An expedition, I should say, which I will undertake alone, in the comfort of Mr Farraday's Ford; an expedition which, as I forsee it, will take me through much of the finest countryside of England to the West Country, and may keep me away from Darlington Hall for as much as five or six days."
Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day
This book almost did not make my list for the reason that as well as it was written, I didn't readily take to the character of Stevens. However the saving grace that led it to finally appearing on this list (which is not in any numerical order whatsoever) was how much it haunted me afterward, from the missed connection between Steven and Miss Kenton to the overall sense of loss that I associate with the book.
2. "In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times."
Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None/Ten Little Indians/Ten Little Niggers
This was another book I had trouble with not because it didn't 100% fill out the criteria above but more because I was afraid whether such a book belonged on this list of mine since it was effectively a child's book. Eventually however the sheer superiority of her writing could not be denied entry to this list - it is truly the most well crafted and suspenseful mystery I have read in my life.
3. "My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother."
Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated
Initially amusing and highly irrelevant, I thought this would be one of many impactless books. However the stunning climax (if I can call it one) where the nature of the title is revealed - everything is illuminated - completely won me over. The use of 'illuminated', such a happy word being cruelly subverted into the cause of such abject horror completely won me over. There were many times I felt like crying when I read the book. That and heavy doses of magic realism.
4. "The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms."
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections
I haven't actually finished reading this book yet. However the half that I've read has quite blown me away and captivated my imagination. The characterisations of the Lambert family are done splendidly, the depth and breath of them allowing them to be painted as a group of sympathetic characters who are all in conflict with one another.
5. "The pubs, likesay, dead busy, full ay loco-locals and festival types, having a wee snort before heading off tae the next show. Some ay they looks okay... a bit heavy oan the hirays though, likesay."
Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting
Never before have I felt such rapport and sympathy for a bunch of ne'er do wells. From straight out loud laughing at the predicaments of Davie at his girlfriend's house, to cringing at Kelly's actions in Eating Out and the wtf/omg/lol/wtf happenings of Renton's drug filled world, this book is a masterpiece of imagination and style put together in a nice controversial package.
6. "Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it."
"Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spend your free time finger painting or playing shuffleboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed-potatoes way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze.""
Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics
One night I stayed up till almost 4am reading this in bed. It is that good. One part literary and pop reference orgasm and other part fantastical mystery, this book blew me away in the middle of IOC season (I think, can't remember exactly when I read it, but I recall being distraught that I left it under my desk in school and asked Arjun to take it for me after Guitar Ensemble's FOA). The quirkiness of the illustrations in the book was also a nice touch which I really liked. The ending of the book make me all heart melt-ey too, in more ways than one.
7. "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August 1974. Specialised readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, "Gender Identitiy in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites," published in the journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you've seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That's me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes."
Jeffery Eugenides's Middlesex
This book was first recommended to me by Xian Yi, followed by Daryl. Again another magic realism filled story that is large parts Heartbreaking, the epic nature of this storyline won me over easily (I'm such a sucker for those kinds of novels). I especially appreciated the part about Calliope and her longing for The Obscure Object because it reminded me of my own experiences (albeit less happening). The language of this book actually reminds me of The Corrections now, come to think of it.
8. "The train was late. Under the dim lamplight, the platform was cast in half shadow. As Meng left the train, a snowflake floated down and landed on his neck. The wind was blowing open his coat at the bottom. It produced a whistling sound which reminded him that the weather here in Tiancheng was colder than he'd expected. Bag in hand, he walked with the throng towards the station exit, and though he kept looking about him, he couldn't spot the Song Dynasty tower that he remembered. Besides the darkness and the lamplight, he saw nothing but the ungainly contours of the high-rises, which looked the same here as everywhere else. No doubt the buildings had blocked his view of the tower."
Su Tong's Madwoman on the Bridge
This was the main reason I chose to not use the opening paragraphs from short stories, simply because it would have been too easy to guess. The short stories in this novel run the gamut, from commentaries on the changing effervescent nature of China's culture nowadays to horror stories (think Stephen King) of rural China. Su Tong perfectly encapsulates modern day developing China with the excesses of the liberated city dwellers to the slow decay of rural urban centres - all with an underlying sense of increasing loss. Perfect.
9. "Whenever I meet a man, I catch myself wondering what our child would look life if we were to make a baby. It's practically second nature to me now. Whether he's handsome or ugly, old or young, a picture of our child flashes across our mind. My hair is light brown and feathery fine, and if his is jet black and coarse, then I predict our child's hair will be the perfect texture and colour. Wouldn't it? I always start out imaging the best possible scenarios for these children, but before long I've conjured up horrific versions from the very opposite ends of the spectrum."
Natsuo Kirino's Grotesque
The above is an example of why I love this book. The characterisations are stark, odd, disturbing and oh-so-mindblowingly-well-done. They just blew me away. The characters are all dark and unsympathetic, all unreliable narrators with faults teeming from every page which made them so haunting in my mind. The prose flows beautifully as well, another stark juxtaposition adding to the overall creepy nature of the book. This book is darkly beautiful and truly lives up to it's name - Grotesque.
10. "It was a queer, sultry summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I don't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers - goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves."
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
Another author with a style of prose I am decidedly in love with, Plath's thinly veiled autobiography was simply the best book I read of 2008. Her depictions of a young woman's life being wrecked by depression were simultaneously horrifying and captivating. This novel has turned her into my favourite writer/poet. I even bought a biography about her I have yet to read.
-----
Honourable Mentions:
Yoko Ogawa's The Swimming Pool
David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars
-----
Thus this ends my list for 2008. Whether this will turn into a yearly thing remains to be seen. Happy Boxing Day (it's 1:12 am now)!
1. "It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. An expedition, I should say, which I will undertake alone, in the comfort of Mr Farraday's Ford; an expedition which, as I forsee it, will take me through much of the finest countryside of England to the West Country, and may keep me away from Darlington Hall for as much as five or six days."
Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day
This book almost did not make my list for the reason that as well as it was written, I didn't readily take to the character of Stevens. However the saving grace that led it to finally appearing on this list (which is not in any numerical order whatsoever) was how much it haunted me afterward, from the missed connection between Steven and Miss Kenton to the overall sense of loss that I associate with the book.
2. "In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times."
Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None/Ten Little Indians/Ten Little Niggers
This was another book I had trouble with not because it didn't 100% fill out the criteria above but more because I was afraid whether such a book belonged on this list of mine since it was effectively a child's book. Eventually however the sheer superiority of her writing could not be denied entry to this list - it is truly the most well crafted and suspenseful mystery I have read in my life.
3. "My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother."
Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated
Initially amusing and highly irrelevant, I thought this would be one of many impactless books. However the stunning climax (if I can call it one) where the nature of the title is revealed - everything is illuminated - completely won me over. The use of 'illuminated', such a happy word being cruelly subverted into the cause of such abject horror completely won me over. There were many times I felt like crying when I read the book. That and heavy doses of magic realism.
4. "The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms."
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections
I haven't actually finished reading this book yet. However the half that I've read has quite blown me away and captivated my imagination. The characterisations of the Lambert family are done splendidly, the depth and breath of them allowing them to be painted as a group of sympathetic characters who are all in conflict with one another.
5. "The pubs, likesay, dead busy, full ay loco-locals and festival types, having a wee snort before heading off tae the next show. Some ay they looks okay... a bit heavy oan the hirays though, likesay."
Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting
Never before have I felt such rapport and sympathy for a bunch of ne'er do wells. From straight out loud laughing at the predicaments of Davie at his girlfriend's house, to cringing at Kelly's actions in Eating Out and the wtf/omg/lol/wtf happenings of Renton's drug filled world, this book is a masterpiece of imagination and style put together in a nice controversial package.
6. "Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it."
"Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spend your free time finger painting or playing shuffleboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed-potatoes way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze.""
Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics
One night I stayed up till almost 4am reading this in bed. It is that good. One part literary and pop reference orgasm and other part fantastical mystery, this book blew me away in the middle of IOC season (I think, can't remember exactly when I read it, but I recall being distraught that I left it under my desk in school and asked Arjun to take it for me after Guitar Ensemble's FOA). The quirkiness of the illustrations in the book was also a nice touch which I really liked. The ending of the book make me all heart melt-ey too, in more ways than one.
7. "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August 1974. Specialised readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, "Gender Identitiy in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites," published in the journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you've seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That's me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes."
Jeffery Eugenides's Middlesex
This book was first recommended to me by Xian Yi, followed by Daryl. Again another magic realism filled story that is large parts Heartbreaking, the epic nature of this storyline won me over easily (I'm such a sucker for those kinds of novels). I especially appreciated the part about Calliope and her longing for The Obscure Object because it reminded me of my own experiences (albeit less happening). The language of this book actually reminds me of The Corrections now, come to think of it.
8. "The train was late. Under the dim lamplight, the platform was cast in half shadow. As Meng left the train, a snowflake floated down and landed on his neck. The wind was blowing open his coat at the bottom. It produced a whistling sound which reminded him that the weather here in Tiancheng was colder than he'd expected. Bag in hand, he walked with the throng towards the station exit, and though he kept looking about him, he couldn't spot the Song Dynasty tower that he remembered. Besides the darkness and the lamplight, he saw nothing but the ungainly contours of the high-rises, which looked the same here as everywhere else. No doubt the buildings had blocked his view of the tower."
Su Tong's Madwoman on the Bridge
This was the main reason I chose to not use the opening paragraphs from short stories, simply because it would have been too easy to guess. The short stories in this novel run the gamut, from commentaries on the changing effervescent nature of China's culture nowadays to horror stories (think Stephen King) of rural China. Su Tong perfectly encapsulates modern day developing China with the excesses of the liberated city dwellers to the slow decay of rural urban centres - all with an underlying sense of increasing loss. Perfect.
9. "Whenever I meet a man, I catch myself wondering what our child would look life if we were to make a baby. It's practically second nature to me now. Whether he's handsome or ugly, old or young, a picture of our child flashes across our mind. My hair is light brown and feathery fine, and if his is jet black and coarse, then I predict our child's hair will be the perfect texture and colour. Wouldn't it? I always start out imaging the best possible scenarios for these children, but before long I've conjured up horrific versions from the very opposite ends of the spectrum."
Natsuo Kirino's Grotesque
The above is an example of why I love this book. The characterisations are stark, odd, disturbing and oh-so-mindblowingly-well-done. They just blew me away. The characters are all dark and unsympathetic, all unreliable narrators with faults teeming from every page which made them so haunting in my mind. The prose flows beautifully as well, another stark juxtaposition adding to the overall creepy nature of the book. This book is darkly beautiful and truly lives up to it's name - Grotesque.
10. "It was a queer, sultry summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I don't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers - goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves."
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
Another author with a style of prose I am decidedly in love with, Plath's thinly veiled autobiography was simply the best book I read of 2008. Her depictions of a young woman's life being wrecked by depression were simultaneously horrifying and captivating. This novel has turned her into my favourite writer/poet. I even bought a biography about her I have yet to read.
-----
Honourable Mentions:
Yoko Ogawa's The Swimming Pool
David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars
-----
Thus this ends my list for 2008. Whether this will turn into a yearly thing remains to be seen. Happy Boxing Day (it's 1:12 am now)!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
2008 is quickly (rather regrettably) coming to an end. This thus calls for a list of sorts to mark the end of such a topsy turvy year that started out like shit and is now ending on the best of possible notes imagined (prom, Cambodia, Thailand). It is now my great pleasure to present the Top 10 Best Reads of 2008 - a list I have been gleefully compiling in my head since I started studying for the IB exams. This list will have a twist though, instead of just listing down the titles and reasons for why the book is on my list, I shall instead just type out a sample of the opening paragraph/bunch of really long lines (or from one of the short stories within if it's a collection of short stories) and leave it for you guys to guess. The winner gets a very nice bar of chocolate!
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1. "It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. An expedition, I should say, which I will undertake alone, in the comfort of Mr Farraday's Ford; an expedition which, as I forsee it, will take me through much of the finest countryside of England to the West Country, and may keep me away from Darlington Hall for as much as five or six days."
2. "In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times."
3. "My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother."
4. "The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms."
5. "The pubs, likesay, dead busy, full ay loco-locals and festival types, having a wee snort before heading off tae the next show. Some ay they looks okay... a bit heavy oan the hirays though, likesay."
6. "Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it."
"Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spend your free time finger painting or playing shuffleboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed-potatoes way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze.""
7. "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August 1974. Specialised readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, "Gender Identitiy in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites," published in the journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you've seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That's me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes."
8. "The train was late. Under the dim lamplight, the platform was cast in half shadow. As Meng left the train, a snowflake floated down and landed on his neck. The wind was blowing open his coat at the bottom. It produced a whistling sound which reminded him that the weather here in Tiancheng was colder than he'd expected. Bag in hand, he walked with the throng towards the station exit, and though he kept looking about him, he couldn't spot the Song Dynasty tower that he remembered. Besides the darkness and the lamplight, he saw nothing but the ungainly contours of the high-rises, which looked the same here as everywhere else. No doubt the buildings had blocked his view of the tower."
9. "Whenever I meet a man, I catch myself wondering what our child would look life if we were to make a baby. It's practically second nature to me now. Whether he's handsome or ugly, old or young, a picture of our child flashes across our mind. My hair is light brown and feathery fine, and if his is jet black and coarse, then I predict our child's hair will be the perfect texture and colour. Wouldn't it? I always start out imaging the best possible scenarios for these children, but before long I've conjured up horrific versions from the very opposite ends of the spectrum."
10. "It was a queer, sultry summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I don't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers - goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves."
-----
If you were really bored/desperate, a clue would be to go digging through books I've read and blogged, because they would most likely be on the above list. Anyway guessing gogogo!
-----
1. "It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. An expedition, I should say, which I will undertake alone, in the comfort of Mr Farraday's Ford; an expedition which, as I forsee it, will take me through much of the finest countryside of England to the West Country, and may keep me away from Darlington Hall for as much as five or six days."
2. "In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times."
3. "My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother."
4. "The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms."
5. "The pubs, likesay, dead busy, full ay loco-locals and festival types, having a wee snort before heading off tae the next show. Some ay they looks okay... a bit heavy oan the hirays though, likesay."
6. "Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it."
"Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spend your free time finger painting or playing shuffleboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed-potatoes way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze.""
7. "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August 1974. Specialised readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, "Gender Identitiy in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites," published in the journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you've seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That's me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes."
8. "The train was late. Under the dim lamplight, the platform was cast in half shadow. As Meng left the train, a snowflake floated down and landed on his neck. The wind was blowing open his coat at the bottom. It produced a whistling sound which reminded him that the weather here in Tiancheng was colder than he'd expected. Bag in hand, he walked with the throng towards the station exit, and though he kept looking about him, he couldn't spot the Song Dynasty tower that he remembered. Besides the darkness and the lamplight, he saw nothing but the ungainly contours of the high-rises, which looked the same here as everywhere else. No doubt the buildings had blocked his view of the tower."
9. "Whenever I meet a man, I catch myself wondering what our child would look life if we were to make a baby. It's practically second nature to me now. Whether he's handsome or ugly, old or young, a picture of our child flashes across our mind. My hair is light brown and feathery fine, and if his is jet black and coarse, then I predict our child's hair will be the perfect texture and colour. Wouldn't it? I always start out imaging the best possible scenarios for these children, but before long I've conjured up horrific versions from the very opposite ends of the spectrum."
10. "It was a queer, sultry summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I don't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers - goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves."
-----
If you were really bored/desperate, a clue would be to go digging through books I've read and blogged, because they would most likely be on the above list. Anyway guessing gogogo!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The thing very terrible about JLC is that he's a very consistent blogger. This means that after reading his post on the Philippines trip, I no longer have any motivation or desire to blog about the trip :p Instead as a very sad cop out, I shall post in er point form about the trip from my perspective.
- MANILA AIR IS TERRIBLE. I was already recovering from a flu when we landed in Manila on the 9th. By the 11th I had trouble breathing, swallowing and I couldn't even speak anymore. Luckily I was able to recognise rather belatedly that I wasn't suffering from a continuation of my flu but instead was suffering from a rapidly worsening asthma. This led to me buying Seretide from Mercury Drug in Market Market! (which I described to the pharmacist as a powerful purple upgraded Ventolin). It was only in Palawan that my asthma properly disappeared. On the return leg of the trip when we flew back to Manila I instantly felt my lungs gum up with mucus and I started coughing again. Same for today -_________- It felt like April 2007 all over again.
- The room that I shared with Cheryl and Mai (and Patrick and Gerald for the overall suite) was infested with cockroaches. Luckily they were small baby roaches, so I managed to kill quite a few with tissue without getting freaked out. The thought of them was quite disgusting. I killed more cockroaches in those few days than I ever have in my life.
- The cockroach infestation then led to me meeting Roach Killer Man (or Boy). I confess I actually developed a mild crush on him, only because he was so amusing. When I open the door, the first thing I saw was him standing there right in front of me holding a can of bug spray in each hand. He looked me in the eye with a sly smile of his face and cocked his cans of bug spray. As my mind exploded in a thousand LOLs and WTFs, he went "where's the bug problem?" in this really suave voice. This repeated itself again the next day when I called him to the room.
- The water heater died. I swear this made my asthma worse because everytime I had to shower I literally felt my respiratory system contract. I was never happier to get hot water in Palawan.
- In Manila the tv had MTV on cable. This led to the discovery of the most wtf song/video every seen in ages: Wyclef Jean's Touch Your Button. It makes me think of The Color Purple -__-
- Shoppersville has nice clothes (and is abnormally huge - Cheryl and I got lost there). I wish I spent more time time. I also regret not buying the '70s style maxi dresses there. URGH WHY WHY WHY DID I NOT BUY THEM ):
- Filipino food is really delicious. I loved sisig and chicken inasal, along with random other dishes where I forgot the name. I also found it mildly fascinating how almost every fast food place there sold spaghetti, as if it was a staple in their food.
- I rode a rollercoaster for the first time! This was mainly because everyone moved so fast that I didn't really have time to start thinking and panicking till I was strapped in and stuck with Joash. During the ride I screamed, which made my asthma even worse. When the rollercoaster went upside down, I also thought my bag fell out so I halfway during the ride I ended up reaching about and groping for my bag to hold on to. I also spent the ride either closing my eyes or staring at my lap.
- Amusement parks in the Philippines are damn dodgy. Right before we were set to go onto the Viking Ship ride (which I spent clutching Elliot and screaming), the safety release mechanism failed, trapping a guy and a girl on the ride after every one got off. The Filipino solution: attach cable ties after they freed the guy. Ta dah!
- The airport in Palawan was a open air shack covered by a tin roof. Immigration was a guy sitting at a desk, recording names in a lined booklet. It was a surprise the luggage carousel was actually powered by electricity, and not some random pinoy cycling madly away at the end. The excuse given was that the main terminal was being renovated.
- I also experiened the worst touch down ever in an airplane. This took place on last night's flight back from Manila airport to Singapore. The plane seemed to be going too fast to make a good soft landing and when we finally hit the tarmac the plane lurched uncomfortably low for a nanosecond before springing up and rattling the insides of the plane and everyone inside. I guess the pilot was trying to make up for lost time as we had left Ninoy Aquino airport late.
- I rode on a motorcycle for the first time! It was actually as a pillion rider on the tricycles that are common in Palawan. Still it was interesting and rather fun. Pity that it was uncomfortable because I was too tall and kept having to stoop to avoid hitting my head on the roof of the tricycle.
- Manila traffic is terrible. I almost want to cry thinking about how bad it is. I would really go crazy if I had to deal with traffic like that everyday, so kudos to all those in Manila who bear with the traffic on a daily basis.
- We played Laser Tag and got owned by a bunch of 9, 10 and 11 year olds. The first round I ended up at the bottom of the player list, which made me really sad. Apparently everytime I kept my back to a wall, it turned out there was a hole in the wall that they were shooting through to get to me -_- In the second game I was in a team with Patrick, JLC and Mong and we ended up grouping together to get the high ground. I ended up sniping a lot of people in the back and ended up 2nd highest among all the class people (below the top 4 who were the kids and 5th who was JLC), so YAY!
- I have never ever felt so terrified by the prospect of terrorism before. On Pandan Island in Palawan, we were walking by the beach side when JC suddenly told us to turn back to the more populated area. This was because he had espied two suspicious characters on a boat docking on the shoreline there. Later on we found out that they were muslim wanderers (and thus an association with the Abu Sayyaf). This feeling was amplified by the countless security checks any time we entered a public area, like shopping centres.
- I have finally been introduced to the oft heard of 'Bleeding Love' by Leona Lewis. This is because it was the only song that the van driver we hired on Palawan had, a fact demonstrated by how the song was constantly on a loop for 3 hours+. Oh my.
- Emergency exit seats are excellent. They offer a lot of leg room, more than that even on a normal economy flight on a non-budget airplane. Emergency exit seats ftw!
-----
What a horrid mess of random thoughts about the trip! That is all my mind can spare at this juncture however as asthma + lack of sleep = bad organisation of thoughts. Oyasumi!
- MANILA AIR IS TERRIBLE. I was already recovering from a flu when we landed in Manila on the 9th. By the 11th I had trouble breathing, swallowing and I couldn't even speak anymore. Luckily I was able to recognise rather belatedly that I wasn't suffering from a continuation of my flu but instead was suffering from a rapidly worsening asthma. This led to me buying Seretide from Mercury Drug in Market Market! (which I described to the pharmacist as a powerful purple upgraded Ventolin). It was only in Palawan that my asthma properly disappeared. On the return leg of the trip when we flew back to Manila I instantly felt my lungs gum up with mucus and I started coughing again. Same for today -_________- It felt like April 2007 all over again.
- The room that I shared with Cheryl and Mai (and Patrick and Gerald for the overall suite) was infested with cockroaches. Luckily they were small baby roaches, so I managed to kill quite a few with tissue without getting freaked out. The thought of them was quite disgusting. I killed more cockroaches in those few days than I ever have in my life.
- The cockroach infestation then led to me meeting Roach Killer Man (or Boy). I confess I actually developed a mild crush on him, only because he was so amusing. When I open the door, the first thing I saw was him standing there right in front of me holding a can of bug spray in each hand. He looked me in the eye with a sly smile of his face and cocked his cans of bug spray. As my mind exploded in a thousand LOLs and WTFs, he went "where's the bug problem?" in this really suave voice. This repeated itself again the next day when I called him to the room.
- The water heater died. I swear this made my asthma worse because everytime I had to shower I literally felt my respiratory system contract. I was never happier to get hot water in Palawan.
- In Manila the tv had MTV on cable. This led to the discovery of the most wtf song/video every seen in ages: Wyclef Jean's Touch Your Button. It makes me think of The Color Purple -__-
- Shoppersville has nice clothes (and is abnormally huge - Cheryl and I got lost there). I wish I spent more time time. I also regret not buying the '70s style maxi dresses there. URGH WHY WHY WHY DID I NOT BUY THEM ):
- Filipino food is really delicious. I loved sisig and chicken inasal, along with random other dishes where I forgot the name. I also found it mildly fascinating how almost every fast food place there sold spaghetti, as if it was a staple in their food.
- I rode a rollercoaster for the first time! This was mainly because everyone moved so fast that I didn't really have time to start thinking and panicking till I was strapped in and stuck with Joash. During the ride I screamed, which made my asthma even worse. When the rollercoaster went upside down, I also thought my bag fell out so I halfway during the ride I ended up reaching about and groping for my bag to hold on to. I also spent the ride either closing my eyes or staring at my lap.
- Amusement parks in the Philippines are damn dodgy. Right before we were set to go onto the Viking Ship ride (which I spent clutching Elliot and screaming), the safety release mechanism failed, trapping a guy and a girl on the ride after every one got off. The Filipino solution: attach cable ties after they freed the guy. Ta dah!
- The airport in Palawan was a open air shack covered by a tin roof. Immigration was a guy sitting at a desk, recording names in a lined booklet. It was a surprise the luggage carousel was actually powered by electricity, and not some random pinoy cycling madly away at the end. The excuse given was that the main terminal was being renovated.
- I also experiened the worst touch down ever in an airplane. This took place on last night's flight back from Manila airport to Singapore. The plane seemed to be going too fast to make a good soft landing and when we finally hit the tarmac the plane lurched uncomfortably low for a nanosecond before springing up and rattling the insides of the plane and everyone inside. I guess the pilot was trying to make up for lost time as we had left Ninoy Aquino airport late.
- I rode on a motorcycle for the first time! It was actually as a pillion rider on the tricycles that are common in Palawan. Still it was interesting and rather fun. Pity that it was uncomfortable because I was too tall and kept having to stoop to avoid hitting my head on the roof of the tricycle.
- Manila traffic is terrible. I almost want to cry thinking about how bad it is. I would really go crazy if I had to deal with traffic like that everyday, so kudos to all those in Manila who bear with the traffic on a daily basis.
- We played Laser Tag and got owned by a bunch of 9, 10 and 11 year olds. The first round I ended up at the bottom of the player list, which made me really sad. Apparently everytime I kept my back to a wall, it turned out there was a hole in the wall that they were shooting through to get to me -_- In the second game I was in a team with Patrick, JLC and Mong and we ended up grouping together to get the high ground. I ended up sniping a lot of people in the back and ended up 2nd highest among all the class people (below the top 4 who were the kids and 5th who was JLC), so YAY!
- I have never ever felt so terrified by the prospect of terrorism before. On Pandan Island in Palawan, we were walking by the beach side when JC suddenly told us to turn back to the more populated area. This was because he had espied two suspicious characters on a boat docking on the shoreline there. Later on we found out that they were muslim wanderers (and thus an association with the Abu Sayyaf). This feeling was amplified by the countless security checks any time we entered a public area, like shopping centres.
- I have finally been introduced to the oft heard of 'Bleeding Love' by Leona Lewis. This is because it was the only song that the van driver we hired on Palawan had, a fact demonstrated by how the song was constantly on a loop for 3 hours+. Oh my.
- Emergency exit seats are excellent. They offer a lot of leg room, more than that even on a normal economy flight on a non-budget airplane. Emergency exit seats ftw!
-----
What a horrid mess of random thoughts about the trip! That is all my mind can spare at this juncture however as asthma + lack of sleep = bad organisation of thoughts. Oyasumi!
Monday, December 08, 2008
(For the first time ever, a cross posted post! Because I figure one of the intent recipients of this will check his LJ friends page more than the other blog)
Tomorrow I leave for the Philippines. This means that while I am off gallivanting with my classmates, trying to preserve the last dregs of this thing called Classmates, others will be checking into National Service. This means that people like Yeang and Song Yeong will be pretty much absent from my life/msn for the next few months - the forerunners to when the rest of my friends will disappear come early Jan.
The knowledge of this partly terrifies me, but mostly fills me with sadness. Coming from a school where the guys outnumbered females 4 to 1, that's like EVERYONE going in. It doesn't help that I have mostly chosen these people over my old class/schoolmates from MGS.
It must seen quite absurd for me to be worrying and getting distressed over such a thing seeing that I'm not the one who has to suffer by going for NS, yet the idea of almost everyone I hold dear to my heart disappearing from my life overnight scares me. Oh no! It is too soon, too soon! I am not the least bit mentally prepared for all that is going to happen over the next month or so. I don't want to grow up and have to let go. I don't want to be left behind!
But in the meantime: all the best to your NS foray Yeang/Song Yeong, and I'll see you come 6th Jan [ ): ].
Tomorrow I leave for the Philippines. This means that while I am off gallivanting with my classmates, trying to preserve the last dregs of this thing called Classmates, others will be checking into National Service. This means that people like Yeang and Song Yeong will be pretty much absent from my life/msn for the next few months - the forerunners to when the rest of my friends will disappear come early Jan.
The knowledge of this partly terrifies me, but mostly fills me with sadness. Coming from a school where the guys outnumbered females 4 to 1, that's like EVERYONE going in. It doesn't help that I have mostly chosen these people over my old class/schoolmates from MGS.
It must seen quite absurd for me to be worrying and getting distressed over such a thing seeing that I'm not the one who has to suffer by going for NS, yet the idea of almost everyone I hold dear to my heart disappearing from my life overnight scares me. Oh no! It is too soon, too soon! I am not the least bit mentally prepared for all that is going to happen over the next month or so. I don't want to grow up and have to let go. I don't want to be left behind!
But in the meantime: all the best to your NS foray Yeang/Song Yeong, and I'll see you come 6th Jan [ ): ].
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Fifth Day - 4/12/08
In the morning I woke up early in order to send the group that was leaving a day earlier off - Hadi, Cheam, Deb, Wang, JLow and Jeremy. I ended up tagging on the minibus to Reaksmey with Cielo because she wanted to go pick up her laundry from there. We ended up walking to the baguette place, which was quite a walk. On the way we encountered something very rare... A TRAFFIC LIGHT! It was the only one I had seen in Siem Reap in days.
The baguette shop was quite interesting. It looked like a version of a Malaysian kopitiam. It's walls were lined with many photographs of the shop owner and his family, including a few of them with the Merlion. The shop owner was quite interesting too in that he spoke Mandarin (which reminds me, it was really surreal using Mandarin in Cambodia - multiple times to talk to others during bargaining with the shopowners, once to order food here and sometimes to talk to Neath). The baguette was filled with some sort of minced pork and slices of ham. It was pretty good.
After breakfast Cielo and I took a tuktuk back to the Reaksmey vincinity where she got lost trying to find where she dumped off her laundry. I was left in the tuktuk to wait for her, and the tuktuk driver and his friends/other tuktuk drivers were laughing at the sight of her running back and forth frantically as she tried to find the laundry place. I ended up finding it for her later. Then we went back to the hotel.
At the hotel I met with Stephanie and we both went off to the Old Market together in a tuktuk. We both wanted to do some shopping since we were leaving the next day. I have discovered I am a terrible bargainer because I am soft hearted. When the woman does "my profit very little, give me $1 pleaseeee" I start to feel bad and think about how fortunate I am comapred to them. That is where I fail. Steph on the other hand is an excellent bargainer. I ended up relying on her expertise most of the time. After old market, we took a tuktuk to Central Market where we ended up shopping a bit more before being plesantly surprised by the appearence of the guys who Paul had apparently guilt tripped into appearing.
Lunch was at some random place off Pub Street, where I had Khemer curry. It was there that I first ordered a draught of Angkor beer (which I got confused with Anchor, and another imaginary one called Angchor that I attribute to bad pronounciation) which was probably the beer I like the best since it was quite sweet. Yeang, Jit and Paul also ordered a draught. At 50 cents, it was even cheaper than water -____- This got amusing later because Yeang turned bright red and fell asleep when we went to have dessert at the Blue Pumpkin.
Again I don't really remember anything very significant about this day at the orphanage, except that it might have been marker day. Marker day was the day the kids came running out with their faces completely painted with markers. The most memorable thing about it was that one of the kids had gotten hold of a black marker and had blacked out both his eyes.
Other happenings at the orphange during this time include some minor construction work going on in the orphanage, with the kids were running around and playing in the area. I was carrying someone on my back (either Neath or Channa) and chasing Cheam around when I tripped over the transparent fishing line the construction workers had lay out to demarcate the area and fell on my knees. Amazingly the kid on my back did not fall off, nor make a peep, so I got up and started chasing after Cheam again.
It was this day when I was carrying Neath around again for the xxxth time that I realised that it was going to be my last day in Cambodia. I started to feel really sad, and wonder about how her life would be years from now, after I was long gone, and if she would remember me (answer is no to the last one, since scientific research shows you don't remember till 4+). That night as we walked out of the orphanage, Neath came running to the wall for the first time to say goodbye. She struggled with the older larger kids who were crowding the area and climbed up on the walls. As I leaned over to hug her, I didn't want to let go. It wasn't the last day, but I felt the saltwater already forming in my eyes as it came to my conscious attention that my time with her could not last forever.
We then left to go to Reaksmey for a short rest before heading out to this terrible terrible place along Pub Street with a prison theme. The food was full of bugs and other rubbish. It was utterly disgusting. We ate quickly and headed to walk around the Old Market which was mostly closed and then walked to Central Market. From Central Market we ended up at Night Market, which was honestly better than I expected from hearsay. The only problem with the Night Market was that the flooring was rough gravel/stones. This made already tired legs and knees more tired due to the extra need to balance. For a good part of this foray, I ended up sitting down with Paul, Yeang and Arjun to rest and wait for the others to finish shopping. There I also touched Paul's scar on his leg, and it seemd a lot larger yet less swollen than mine. I guess it's the 1 year difference or something.
From there we ended up walking to this gay bar along Pub Street. It was incredibly dodgy. Stephanie and I were the only girls there. As we walked in, I felt tens of eyes staring through my very being, the pressure of their stares screaming "what is she doing here?!" When we sat down in a small alcove, I saw all their heads turns to stare (thankfully) this time at the guys. Ohohoho. We were also seated next to the bathrooms, which I found amusing because it seemed to be a unisex one, except it looked like a generic large male bathroom for multiple men. It did cross my mind for a few moments to go there and see what happened, but in the end I didn't dare.
The drinks there were also mixed quite strongly. This is bad because the drink I had was tasteless, so I drank it quickly, dismissing it as being badly mixed. This tastelessness however was probably due to the alcohol content being so strong that it cancelled out the juice content. The result of this was that the alcohol went to my head for a while, something which I did not enjoy. When we wanted to leave the pub, we had to go off and search for a missing Jit and Paul. It later transpired that they were being entertained by card tricks that the bartender was performing.
As dinner was so unsatisfactory, we returned back to Reaksmey for an instant noodle party. This was partly to finish the bowls of instant noodle we had brought and bought for the trip. Yeang and Jit went down first with the bowls to ask the minimart people for hot water, a request they very nicely accomodated. After a while Yeang came running back to get us to go down because they had too few hands for too many bowls. While waiting for the others to have hot water added to their noodles, I started eating a few bites in the minimart. This made me recall back the days in MGS where I used to camp out and eat instant noodles in Mobil, probably around Sec 1 and Sec 2. Now this odd event was taking place again around 12 midnight in Cambodia. I felt a bit awed by the contrast and similarities.
After the instant noodle party finished back in Yeang and Paul's room, Jit and Arjun again sent us back in a tuktuk. Back at the hotel I started packing and rearranging my things, in preparation for the next day's departure.
The Sixth Day - 5/12/08
I woke up early. This was because I thought I heard Stephanie's phone alarm go off and was hungry. When I picked up her phone to check the time, I thought we were late because the time was 7:16am. After waking her up, I realised it was really 6:16am local time -________- This was after I had washed up and changed. I ended up lying down on the bed and falling asleep again. I finally woke up about 1 hour later, which prompted rushing on Steph's part to get changed.
We ended up rushing through the remaining packing, breakfast and checking out (which they mysteriously did not charge us for a glass I had broken earlier in the trip) because we thought we'd be late to see the kids. When we got to Reaksmey to dump our bags, we thought the guys had already gone to the orphanage since it was about 8:16am local time, so we ended up lugging them upstairs to the 3rd floor (staircases and all) only to be met by them a few minutes later when they were coming back from breakfast.
At the orphanage, Neath was ignoring me for some reason. She was pretending that the other volunteers and I didn't exist. I was a bit upset about it, but I realised it might be some defense mechanism of sort to buffet the effects of our departure. However when I started playing with another kid (her friend), she came running over and pulling at me again, so I ended up carrying her around again.
After playing with her for a while, I noticed Kheum crying again. I picked her up and was trying to console her by patting her when I walked over the grilles of a drain and fell through. The mysterious thing about it was that I had walked on it multiple times before, but it never gave way. Nevertheless I got a nasty dirty shock. However the first thing on my mind was again the safety of Kheum. To my immense relief I had not dropped her and her pretty white frock remained relatively spotless. As people came running to help me out, I started patting her more as she got increasingly distressed and started to wail from her scare. One of the caregivers soon came to take her away from me and one of the older children led me to a pipe to wash up.
As I sat drying on the table, watching the others play with the kids, random other kids came to tug at me. I initially resisted them, since I was now barefoot, but eventually relented and carried them around. I must say that being barefoot like most of the children was an experience it itself, having to walk on their sharp stones from the gravel that lined the place was painful, yet the kids had gotten used to walking on it. The accident also had another implication, that of this girl running up and pointing at the grille, and asking some words in Cambodian. Whenever I replied yes (since I assumed she was asking if I fell through the grille), she and those around would start giggling uncontrollably. OH WELL, LOL.
Around 10am, Yeang started saying that we had to go. At this moment I was playing with some kid, and the idea brought tears to my eyes. I started crying a bit after putting the child down. I even had to remove my glasses. As I was trying to stop the tears, Channa came running by and demanded to be picked up. I played with her by tossing her around a bit before putting her down. One of the other girls who I had played scissors paper stone earlier with in the day (and who I think said xoxo gossip to me) came by and asked me to come back. This really touched me and made me tear more. Thai came by too and hugged me. When I asked if he wanted to me to come back, and said yes. Then I did a terrible thing. I promised him I'd come back.
I hate the idea of making promises that I can't keep/am unable to 100% guarantee. Yet at that point of time, I was poweless to stop myself. I did want to go back and writing this now a few days later, the feeling has not abated. I do have the next 9 months free to myself, but it would be odd to go to the orphanage by myself (just like it will be really odd when the guys go to NS). It would take another mass trip like this one to enable such a visit (so dare I propose another one when the guys ROD from NS?) I knew all of this, and yet I had made that promise.
Walking out from the orphange was another ordeal in itself. I had stopped crying by then, but when we were at the walls of the orphanage with the kids climbing about trying to say bye, I started crying again. Scissors Paper Stone girl started crying too when she saw me crying and I went over to hug her. I hugged a few of them again too as I left, including Channa and Thai. Neath as usual, was no where to be seen. It took about another 10 minutes before we started to walk away from the wall. Walking away was so terrible a feeling that Yeang and Jit who had a later flight in the evening didn't want to return for Goodbye Number 2.
Back at Reaksmey there was some last minute rushing before we got on the bus which would take us to the airport. While checking in Steph and I met John Loh/w's? (apparently he was a Y7 councillor, but I had no idea he existed - luckily Steph knew) parents who were behind us. The conversation first started when they asked me about a bag I was carrying that I had bought from a NGO in the Night Market. They also asked if Stephanie was from MGS, because she sounded like an MGS girl. LOL.
I ended up having to borrow $3 from Paul (which I still owe him) in order to pay for the airport tax, which I was unaware existed. I assumed they had added it to the cost of the ticket, but apparently not. Oh well. We ended up doing some random survey about tourism in Cambodia while we waited to board the plane, which was really long. It reminded me about how much I had spent on the trip (eeek).
Back in Singapore as we were waiting for the luggage to come out, I saw Paul's family. A vague wave of surrealism washed over me as I realised I recognised his sister who was my junior in guides. She was again another one of those people I never expected to see again in my life. This feeling was contrasted with the most relucant knowledge that I would probably hardly see the people who I had travelled with on the trip anymore as school was now over and they had NS. It again pained me a bit to think about losing another set of people who I had now become friends with.
All in all, I must declare that this was the most insane and intense trip I have ever been on (let's see if the upcoming .9 trip can top this!). From hearing CieloJin voices while on happy pizza, having my hotel room turned into a happy pizza and happy pizza ingredient den, watching ladyboys gyrate on poles, kids cramming themselves onto swings and repeatedly singing EIEIO (which I had to lead on the 4th day), kids swarm others as they clamoured for sweets and snacks, an instant noodle party in the middle of a brightly lit minimart at midnight and visiting a gay bar, it has been one of the msot surreal and awesome trips of this rather short life of mine. I would love to go back and experience it all again (hint hint).
In the morning I woke up early in order to send the group that was leaving a day earlier off - Hadi, Cheam, Deb, Wang, JLow and Jeremy. I ended up tagging on the minibus to Reaksmey with Cielo because she wanted to go pick up her laundry from there. We ended up walking to the baguette place, which was quite a walk. On the way we encountered something very rare... A TRAFFIC LIGHT! It was the only one I had seen in Siem Reap in days.
The baguette shop was quite interesting. It looked like a version of a Malaysian kopitiam. It's walls were lined with many photographs of the shop owner and his family, including a few of them with the Merlion. The shop owner was quite interesting too in that he spoke Mandarin (which reminds me, it was really surreal using Mandarin in Cambodia - multiple times to talk to others during bargaining with the shopowners, once to order food here and sometimes to talk to Neath). The baguette was filled with some sort of minced pork and slices of ham. It was pretty good.
After breakfast Cielo and I took a tuktuk back to the Reaksmey vincinity where she got lost trying to find where she dumped off her laundry. I was left in the tuktuk to wait for her, and the tuktuk driver and his friends/other tuktuk drivers were laughing at the sight of her running back and forth frantically as she tried to find the laundry place. I ended up finding it for her later. Then we went back to the hotel.
At the hotel I met with Stephanie and we both went off to the Old Market together in a tuktuk. We both wanted to do some shopping since we were leaving the next day. I have discovered I am a terrible bargainer because I am soft hearted. When the woman does "my profit very little, give me $1 pleaseeee" I start to feel bad and think about how fortunate I am comapred to them. That is where I fail. Steph on the other hand is an excellent bargainer. I ended up relying on her expertise most of the time. After old market, we took a tuktuk to Central Market where we ended up shopping a bit more before being plesantly surprised by the appearence of the guys who Paul had apparently guilt tripped into appearing.
Lunch was at some random place off Pub Street, where I had Khemer curry. It was there that I first ordered a draught of Angkor beer (which I got confused with Anchor, and another imaginary one called Angchor that I attribute to bad pronounciation) which was probably the beer I like the best since it was quite sweet. Yeang, Jit and Paul also ordered a draught. At 50 cents, it was even cheaper than water -____- This got amusing later because Yeang turned bright red and fell asleep when we went to have dessert at the Blue Pumpkin.
Again I don't really remember anything very significant about this day at the orphanage, except that it might have been marker day. Marker day was the day the kids came running out with their faces completely painted with markers. The most memorable thing about it was that one of the kids had gotten hold of a black marker and had blacked out both his eyes.
Other happenings at the orphange during this time include some minor construction work going on in the orphanage, with the kids were running around and playing in the area. I was carrying someone on my back (either Neath or Channa) and chasing Cheam around when I tripped over the transparent fishing line the construction workers had lay out to demarcate the area and fell on my knees. Amazingly the kid on my back did not fall off, nor make a peep, so I got up and started chasing after Cheam again.
It was this day when I was carrying Neath around again for the xxxth time that I realised that it was going to be my last day in Cambodia. I started to feel really sad, and wonder about how her life would be years from now, after I was long gone, and if she would remember me (answer is no to the last one, since scientific research shows you don't remember till 4+). That night as we walked out of the orphanage, Neath came running to the wall for the first time to say goodbye. She struggled with the older larger kids who were crowding the area and climbed up on the walls. As I leaned over to hug her, I didn't want to let go. It wasn't the last day, but I felt the saltwater already forming in my eyes as it came to my conscious attention that my time with her could not last forever.
We then left to go to Reaksmey for a short rest before heading out to this terrible terrible place along Pub Street with a prison theme. The food was full of bugs and other rubbish. It was utterly disgusting. We ate quickly and headed to walk around the Old Market which was mostly closed and then walked to Central Market. From Central Market we ended up at Night Market, which was honestly better than I expected from hearsay. The only problem with the Night Market was that the flooring was rough gravel/stones. This made already tired legs and knees more tired due to the extra need to balance. For a good part of this foray, I ended up sitting down with Paul, Yeang and Arjun to rest and wait for the others to finish shopping. There I also touched Paul's scar on his leg, and it seemd a lot larger yet less swollen than mine. I guess it's the 1 year difference or something.
From there we ended up walking to this gay bar along Pub Street. It was incredibly dodgy. Stephanie and I were the only girls there. As we walked in, I felt tens of eyes staring through my very being, the pressure of their stares screaming "what is she doing here?!" When we sat down in a small alcove, I saw all their heads turns to stare (thankfully) this time at the guys. Ohohoho. We were also seated next to the bathrooms, which I found amusing because it seemed to be a unisex one, except it looked like a generic large male bathroom for multiple men. It did cross my mind for a few moments to go there and see what happened, but in the end I didn't dare.
The drinks there were also mixed quite strongly. This is bad because the drink I had was tasteless, so I drank it quickly, dismissing it as being badly mixed. This tastelessness however was probably due to the alcohol content being so strong that it cancelled out the juice content. The result of this was that the alcohol went to my head for a while, something which I did not enjoy. When we wanted to leave the pub, we had to go off and search for a missing Jit and Paul. It later transpired that they were being entertained by card tricks that the bartender was performing.
As dinner was so unsatisfactory, we returned back to Reaksmey for an instant noodle party. This was partly to finish the bowls of instant noodle we had brought and bought for the trip. Yeang and Jit went down first with the bowls to ask the minimart people for hot water, a request they very nicely accomodated. After a while Yeang came running back to get us to go down because they had too few hands for too many bowls. While waiting for the others to have hot water added to their noodles, I started eating a few bites in the minimart. This made me recall back the days in MGS where I used to camp out and eat instant noodles in Mobil, probably around Sec 1 and Sec 2. Now this odd event was taking place again around 12 midnight in Cambodia. I felt a bit awed by the contrast and similarities.
After the instant noodle party finished back in Yeang and Paul's room, Jit and Arjun again sent us back in a tuktuk. Back at the hotel I started packing and rearranging my things, in preparation for the next day's departure.
The Sixth Day - 5/12/08
I woke up early. This was because I thought I heard Stephanie's phone alarm go off and was hungry. When I picked up her phone to check the time, I thought we were late because the time was 7:16am. After waking her up, I realised it was really 6:16am local time -________- This was after I had washed up and changed. I ended up lying down on the bed and falling asleep again. I finally woke up about 1 hour later, which prompted rushing on Steph's part to get changed.
We ended up rushing through the remaining packing, breakfast and checking out (which they mysteriously did not charge us for a glass I had broken earlier in the trip) because we thought we'd be late to see the kids. When we got to Reaksmey to dump our bags, we thought the guys had already gone to the orphanage since it was about 8:16am local time, so we ended up lugging them upstairs to the 3rd floor (staircases and all) only to be met by them a few minutes later when they were coming back from breakfast.
At the orphanage, Neath was ignoring me for some reason. She was pretending that the other volunteers and I didn't exist. I was a bit upset about it, but I realised it might be some defense mechanism of sort to buffet the effects of our departure. However when I started playing with another kid (her friend), she came running over and pulling at me again, so I ended up carrying her around again.
After playing with her for a while, I noticed Kheum crying again. I picked her up and was trying to console her by patting her when I walked over the grilles of a drain and fell through. The mysterious thing about it was that I had walked on it multiple times before, but it never gave way. Nevertheless I got a nasty dirty shock. However the first thing on my mind was again the safety of Kheum. To my immense relief I had not dropped her and her pretty white frock remained relatively spotless. As people came running to help me out, I started patting her more as she got increasingly distressed and started to wail from her scare. One of the caregivers soon came to take her away from me and one of the older children led me to a pipe to wash up.
As I sat drying on the table, watching the others play with the kids, random other kids came to tug at me. I initially resisted them, since I was now barefoot, but eventually relented and carried them around. I must say that being barefoot like most of the children was an experience it itself, having to walk on their sharp stones from the gravel that lined the place was painful, yet the kids had gotten used to walking on it. The accident also had another implication, that of this girl running up and pointing at the grille, and asking some words in Cambodian. Whenever I replied yes (since I assumed she was asking if I fell through the grille), she and those around would start giggling uncontrollably. OH WELL, LOL.
Around 10am, Yeang started saying that we had to go. At this moment I was playing with some kid, and the idea brought tears to my eyes. I started crying a bit after putting the child down. I even had to remove my glasses. As I was trying to stop the tears, Channa came running by and demanded to be picked up. I played with her by tossing her around a bit before putting her down. One of the other girls who I had played scissors paper stone earlier with in the day (and who I think said xoxo gossip to me) came by and asked me to come back. This really touched me and made me tear more. Thai came by too and hugged me. When I asked if he wanted to me to come back, and said yes. Then I did a terrible thing. I promised him I'd come back.
I hate the idea of making promises that I can't keep/am unable to 100% guarantee. Yet at that point of time, I was poweless to stop myself. I did want to go back and writing this now a few days later, the feeling has not abated. I do have the next 9 months free to myself, but it would be odd to go to the orphanage by myself (just like it will be really odd when the guys go to NS). It would take another mass trip like this one to enable such a visit (so dare I propose another one when the guys ROD from NS?) I knew all of this, and yet I had made that promise.
Walking out from the orphange was another ordeal in itself. I had stopped crying by then, but when we were at the walls of the orphanage with the kids climbing about trying to say bye, I started crying again. Scissors Paper Stone girl started crying too when she saw me crying and I went over to hug her. I hugged a few of them again too as I left, including Channa and Thai. Neath as usual, was no where to be seen. It took about another 10 minutes before we started to walk away from the wall. Walking away was so terrible a feeling that Yeang and Jit who had a later flight in the evening didn't want to return for Goodbye Number 2.
Back at Reaksmey there was some last minute rushing before we got on the bus which would take us to the airport. While checking in Steph and I met John Loh/w's? (apparently he was a Y7 councillor, but I had no idea he existed - luckily Steph knew) parents who were behind us. The conversation first started when they asked me about a bag I was carrying that I had bought from a NGO in the Night Market. They also asked if Stephanie was from MGS, because she sounded like an MGS girl. LOL.
I ended up having to borrow $3 from Paul (which I still owe him) in order to pay for the airport tax, which I was unaware existed. I assumed they had added it to the cost of the ticket, but apparently not. Oh well. We ended up doing some random survey about tourism in Cambodia while we waited to board the plane, which was really long. It reminded me about how much I had spent on the trip (eeek).
Back in Singapore as we were waiting for the luggage to come out, I saw Paul's family. A vague wave of surrealism washed over me as I realised I recognised his sister who was my junior in guides. She was again another one of those people I never expected to see again in my life. This feeling was contrasted with the most relucant knowledge that I would probably hardly see the people who I had travelled with on the trip anymore as school was now over and they had NS. It again pained me a bit to think about losing another set of people who I had now become friends with.
All in all, I must declare that this was the most insane and intense trip I have ever been on (let's see if the upcoming .9 trip can top this!). From hearing CieloJin voices while on happy pizza, having my hotel room turned into a happy pizza and happy pizza ingredient den, watching ladyboys gyrate on poles, kids cramming themselves onto swings and repeatedly singing EIEIO (which I had to lead on the 4th day), kids swarm others as they clamoured for sweets and snacks, an instant noodle party in the middle of a brightly lit minimart at midnight and visiting a gay bar, it has been one of the msot surreal and awesome trips of this rather short life of mine. I would love to go back and experience it all again (hint hint).
Saturday, December 06, 2008
The Second Day - 1/12/08
In the morning everyone woke up early despite the fact that we had all stayed up late the night before. We went to eat breakfast, then went back to our rooms. It was here that the lack of a real itinerary really came and bit us on the heel. Tired from last night and with no purpose, almost all of us lay down on our beds and fell asleep till almost lunch time, when we were woken up by a bored Cheam.
The bunch of us, Wang, Deb, Hadi, Cheam, Steph and I ended up eating in some Mexican place called Viva! Afterwards we ended up wandering to the Old Market where we ended up doing a bit of shopping. Then Deb and Wang left and the rest of us continued walking to the orphanage. At the orphanage however, we were waylaid by Zi Yang and herded to see Robert Service (not really his surname, just that no one can remember it), the manager. Then some rubbish followed which pissed me off and made a 'kao buay' expression appear on my face, and I was left to sit fuming in a corner of the orphanage.
My mood only lifted after I followed Arjun and Paul up to where the Y5s were painting the boys dorms. Since I was in no mood to play with the children, I ended up doing painting instead. Some of the older kids came to help paint too, but we had to monitor what they were doing. There Arjun and I ended up talking to Timothy, and we discovered that he was another victim of the WTY curse. I also ended up having to climb onto a shelf which was too big and heavy to move to paint the parts that couldn't be reached, since I was the lightest one around that was still painting upstairs. I had climed up there through the help of a ladder, but coming down was another issue because the ladder had been moved. I ended up climbing down with the use of the shelves after refusing to jump and land on a bed/Jit.
After the painting, we wandered downstairs and ended up playing with the children. I ended up carrying Joi (or boy Noi as most of us called him) around and playing with him, along with random other assorted children that I can't quite recall. This day marked the first day the glue balloons first appeared, which was wildly popular with the children. I remember failing at blowing them because the gum got stuck to the yellow paint on my fingers, ruining the balloons.
Dinner was at some random place next to Swensen's, and I had chicken amok. Before that we also ran into some Caucasian who spoken accented English and asked us about our plans in Cambodia, which weirded us out. We later ended up at a place called Funky Munky to drink for a while before we dispersed. Some of the guys staying at Reaksmey joined us back at our hotel - Arjun, Paul and Jit. The rest went to buy happy pizza. Happy pizza is a very special pizza. It's like some Hawaiian pizza, but with the pineapples arranged in a smiley face. Cambodia is one of the few places that sells happy pizza.
So anyway for some reason, a happy pizza party started in the room I shared with Stephanie. This meant everyone except JLow, Yeang and Jeremy ended up crashing our room, with some of them smoking happy pizza ingredient on the balcony. A few of us also played Heart Attack in the room, which made us giggle like crazy. After a while, my room started smelling like happy pizza ingredient, which made me a little annoyed. As the night advanced, people started dissipating from my room, leaving Hadi, Steph and I to clean up as best as we could before trying to sleep.
However just as I was getting ready for bed, I heard laughter and went to investigate. What followed next was about an hour of utter rubbish and stuff I can't say here. Just know that 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' is an apt description of the feeling experienced. That and hearing pillows singing in tv voices, bad spelling, and feeling thirsty like you never have before. That had to be the most insane hour of my life.
The Third Day - 2/12/08
I was woken up in the morning by Cielo I think. I felt completely dead and extraordinarily tired. I shuffled about to wash my face, then quickly joined Jit and Arjun and the others for the only touristy action of my entire trip - a visit to the Tonle Sap and the Angkor Wat. On the bus and the boat ride along the Tonle Sap, Arjun and I were the only ones consistently awake. The rest were drifiting in and out of sleep.
Lunch was some really weird beef lok lak in some dodgy place. Then we went off to walk around the Angkor Wat. The group of us got separated, so I ended up walking about with Arjun, Jit and Cielo, with Arjun worrying about random unexploded land mines in the temple grounds. Then it was back to the orphange. This was the day that I first really remember playing with Nyet, the 3 year old girl who stuck with me for the rest of my trip.
Nyet has large eyes and a tendency to not look at the camera. She smiles occasionally, gets violent and aggressive when my attention is on other kids. She likes playing with the curtains in the hall and hiding inside their dark quietness. She likes being carried, seems to speak Mandarin (or it might be the happy pizza's doing), calling out 'Bao!' (carry) and saying 'Lai!' (come) to me. She is also damn heavy to carry for a prolonged period. She also ignores people when they try to call to her, something which she also did to me on the last day for a while despite her running to me every previous day I was there. And for some reason, she really reminded me of myself as a child.
Today something insane also happened at the orphanage. The Y5s donated a swing. The kids (some 20++ of them) immediately crowded round it and were jostling to get on. There were pushing, shoving, slapping and crying. The combined weight of the kids made the already badly built swing more unstable as the base flew up a bit with every swing. Then the singing started. It soon became apparent that they only really knew EIEIO from Old Macdonald Had A Farm, the Alphabet Song and bits from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was pure chaos and insanity, with a large dosage of surrealism as the volunteers all gathered around to watch the kids swing madly.
Dinner was at the Dead Fish, where there were crocodiles and random ducks walking around the place. I knocked over my glass of pineapple juice there. Stephanie wasn't feeling well, so Hadi and I deposited her back at the hotel before going to a place called In Touch which had live music. The others were already there, and I ordered a Daiquiri. The live music was pretty amusing because while the girl was singing jazz, she often sang in funny keys, which made her funny accent even worse. After a while we headed out and those who weren't tired went to X Bar. There, I finally got my Sex on the Beach (something which the others found amusing). After a while we wandered off to Sok San (which I keep thinking is called Sovnarkom) which had loud music, disco lights and dancing lady boys (well they were supposedly female, but the bits of light that shined on their face betrayed this fact) and I had a Pimm's. By this time I had gotten a bit high since I was tired and they were more generous with the alcohol content in Cambodia.
After the club, we ended up walking back to Pub Street as Paul wanted to do some dancing. Deb didn't trust my state and ended up leading me about by the hand, something which made me giggle more. Finally after sitting at the next club/pub for a few moments, I was led out again by Deb and we all headed back to the hotel. Back at the hotel I started drinking lots of water and eating some random cookies I bought earlier. I called them JLow cookies, which made the others think I was high on alcohol -______- (he recommended them to Arjun who then recommended them to me). Then I went to sleep.
The Fourth Day - 3/12/08
Today was the only full day I spent at the orphanage. Sadly enough it also appears to be the day I least recall, for some odd reason. In the morning Steph and I headed for the orphanage by ourselves. There, we found the guys from Reaksmey already playing with the kids, and the Y5s doing the final touches to the study area they had built. The Y5s also had another surprise for the kids, they had ordered 2 more swings after seeing how popular 1 had been (and for some reason now I keep thinking about the chart of deminishing consumer satisfaction). The two new swings were put in the front, facing each other.
Similar to yesterday, an explosion of kids occured. They clamoured onto the new swings, ignoring the older one. After a while they started singing EIEIO again, over and over, much to the amusement of all of us around. There's a video of it to be found here. As the Y5s were leaving, a small certificate ceremony was held to give out the certs to all the volunteers, even though it wasn't our last day.
I was also horrified to discover that bottles of turpentine were placed in normal clear plastic bottles and left among the children. As it was, the children were already snatching the bottles to drink the water inside. However acting on some hunch, I grabbed a bottle away from Joi (which made him kick up a fuss) and smelt it. As the strong fumes hit my olfactory senses, I felt a wave of horor wash over me because a child under my care almost drank something poisonous. I ended up taking the bottle away and dumping it somewhere. After that I smelt every single bottle the children had, and ended up finding another such bottle filled with turpentine.
Upon leaving the orphanage for lunch, Stephanie was faced with an amusing prospect - having to walk in broken sandals. She ended up limping slowly, and hopped across the road on one foot as I supported her. The Cambodians around were laughing. We ended up taking a tuk tuk back to the hotel to get her shoes and went to a place called easy speaking in Pub Street. I remember I had chicken amok again. At around 2pm, most of us returned to the orphanage and went to the manager's room where he said he had plans for us to do specific projects, like painting murals and planting new shrubbery, nevermind that we said we would only be there for one more day.
We ended up taking out the art materials for the kids to play with, on the pretense of getting them to draw subjects for the mural. The kids ended up making a right royal mess of things, with markers thrown all over the place and some random abstract scribbes that looked like worms writhing in agony. Thankfully, the older ones drew more coherent images which featured lots of rainbows. I think that was because of a communication fail when someone drew a rainbow first to demonstrate what to draw.
My memory gets really screwed up when it comes to the orphanage, mainly because a lot of the things that went on repeated themselves everyday. I chased the same kids, threw the same kids into the air, carried the same kids and played with the same kids. Because of this I find myself unable to differentiate most of the days from each other. For instance there was a day that I carried Nyet (or Neath as the real spelling of her name) past the newly constructed study area and sang I'll Follow You Into the Dark to her (inappropriate song, but oh well) as the guys played with the younger children nearby.
Today there was the first feeding frenzy in the orphanage. This was because Jeremy and JLow were leaving the next day, so they bought treats for them. Those who gave out treats soon found themselves completely swarmed and overwhelmed by children jostling for food. I managed to worm out of every single one of those sessions. Heh heh. Instead I was manipulated by Nyet multiple times to get food easier and faster by being carried by me. That and I had to open sweet wrappers for multiple children, some who had already unsucessfully attacked the sweet wrapped with their teeth, leaving the wrappers slimey with saliva.
At night we ended up eating together at Burgers Without Borders. Arjun had a Chicken burger, hahaha. The burgers there were really big, and I enjoyed the tomatoes and the beef. Afterwards we met the other group at X Bar, walked to Sok San togehter and then ended up at Warehouse after deciding how horrible Sok San was. At Warehouse we ended up splitting into two main groups playing bridge. When the other group joined us again, they started to play pool with some random caucasians. I remember a few things about the night, mainly they played One More Time which I immensely enjoyed, I lost every game of bridge (my poor partners), I wasn't in the best of moods and JLow knocked over his drink, causing the glass to break. When we finally decided to head back, Steph and I were escorted by Jit and Arjun to our hotel by tuktuk.
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Argh I'm tired and it's late again. I shall try and finish up tomorow.
In the morning everyone woke up early despite the fact that we had all stayed up late the night before. We went to eat breakfast, then went back to our rooms. It was here that the lack of a real itinerary really came and bit us on the heel. Tired from last night and with no purpose, almost all of us lay down on our beds and fell asleep till almost lunch time, when we were woken up by a bored Cheam.
The bunch of us, Wang, Deb, Hadi, Cheam, Steph and I ended up eating in some Mexican place called Viva! Afterwards we ended up wandering to the Old Market where we ended up doing a bit of shopping. Then Deb and Wang left and the rest of us continued walking to the orphanage. At the orphanage however, we were waylaid by Zi Yang and herded to see Robert Service (not really his surname, just that no one can remember it), the manager. Then some rubbish followed which pissed me off and made a 'kao buay' expression appear on my face, and I was left to sit fuming in a corner of the orphanage.
My mood only lifted after I followed Arjun and Paul up to where the Y5s were painting the boys dorms. Since I was in no mood to play with the children, I ended up doing painting instead. Some of the older kids came to help paint too, but we had to monitor what they were doing. There Arjun and I ended up talking to Timothy, and we discovered that he was another victim of the WTY curse. I also ended up having to climb onto a shelf which was too big and heavy to move to paint the parts that couldn't be reached, since I was the lightest one around that was still painting upstairs. I had climed up there through the help of a ladder, but coming down was another issue because the ladder had been moved. I ended up climbing down with the use of the shelves after refusing to jump and land on a bed/Jit.
After the painting, we wandered downstairs and ended up playing with the children. I ended up carrying Joi (or boy Noi as most of us called him) around and playing with him, along with random other assorted children that I can't quite recall. This day marked the first day the glue balloons first appeared, which was wildly popular with the children. I remember failing at blowing them because the gum got stuck to the yellow paint on my fingers, ruining the balloons.
Dinner was at some random place next to Swensen's, and I had chicken amok. Before that we also ran into some Caucasian who spoken accented English and asked us about our plans in Cambodia, which weirded us out. We later ended up at a place called Funky Munky to drink for a while before we dispersed. Some of the guys staying at Reaksmey joined us back at our hotel - Arjun, Paul and Jit. The rest went to buy happy pizza. Happy pizza is a very special pizza. It's like some Hawaiian pizza, but with the pineapples arranged in a smiley face. Cambodia is one of the few places that sells happy pizza.
So anyway for some reason, a happy pizza party started in the room I shared with Stephanie. This meant everyone except JLow, Yeang and Jeremy ended up crashing our room, with some of them smoking happy pizza ingredient on the balcony. A few of us also played Heart Attack in the room, which made us giggle like crazy. After a while, my room started smelling like happy pizza ingredient, which made me a little annoyed. As the night advanced, people started dissipating from my room, leaving Hadi, Steph and I to clean up as best as we could before trying to sleep.
However just as I was getting ready for bed, I heard laughter and went to investigate. What followed next was about an hour of utter rubbish and stuff I can't say here. Just know that 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' is an apt description of the feeling experienced. That and hearing pillows singing in tv voices, bad spelling, and feeling thirsty like you never have before. That had to be the most insane hour of my life.
The Third Day - 2/12/08
I was woken up in the morning by Cielo I think. I felt completely dead and extraordinarily tired. I shuffled about to wash my face, then quickly joined Jit and Arjun and the others for the only touristy action of my entire trip - a visit to the Tonle Sap and the Angkor Wat. On the bus and the boat ride along the Tonle Sap, Arjun and I were the only ones consistently awake. The rest were drifiting in and out of sleep.
Lunch was some really weird beef lok lak in some dodgy place. Then we went off to walk around the Angkor Wat. The group of us got separated, so I ended up walking about with Arjun, Jit and Cielo, with Arjun worrying about random unexploded land mines in the temple grounds. Then it was back to the orphange. This was the day that I first really remember playing with Nyet, the 3 year old girl who stuck with me for the rest of my trip.
Nyet has large eyes and a tendency to not look at the camera. She smiles occasionally, gets violent and aggressive when my attention is on other kids. She likes playing with the curtains in the hall and hiding inside their dark quietness. She likes being carried, seems to speak Mandarin (or it might be the happy pizza's doing), calling out 'Bao!' (carry) and saying 'Lai!' (come) to me. She is also damn heavy to carry for a prolonged period. She also ignores people when they try to call to her, something which she also did to me on the last day for a while despite her running to me every previous day I was there. And for some reason, she really reminded me of myself as a child.
Today something insane also happened at the orphanage. The Y5s donated a swing. The kids (some 20++ of them) immediately crowded round it and were jostling to get on. There were pushing, shoving, slapping and crying. The combined weight of the kids made the already badly built swing more unstable as the base flew up a bit with every swing. Then the singing started. It soon became apparent that they only really knew EIEIO from Old Macdonald Had A Farm, the Alphabet Song and bits from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was pure chaos and insanity, with a large dosage of surrealism as the volunteers all gathered around to watch the kids swing madly.
Dinner was at the Dead Fish, where there were crocodiles and random ducks walking around the place. I knocked over my glass of pineapple juice there. Stephanie wasn't feeling well, so Hadi and I deposited her back at the hotel before going to a place called In Touch which had live music. The others were already there, and I ordered a Daiquiri. The live music was pretty amusing because while the girl was singing jazz, she often sang in funny keys, which made her funny accent even worse. After a while we headed out and those who weren't tired went to X Bar. There, I finally got my Sex on the Beach (something which the others found amusing). After a while we wandered off to Sok San (which I keep thinking is called Sovnarkom) which had loud music, disco lights and dancing lady boys (well they were supposedly female, but the bits of light that shined on their face betrayed this fact) and I had a Pimm's. By this time I had gotten a bit high since I was tired and they were more generous with the alcohol content in Cambodia.
After the club, we ended up walking back to Pub Street as Paul wanted to do some dancing. Deb didn't trust my state and ended up leading me about by the hand, something which made me giggle more. Finally after sitting at the next club/pub for a few moments, I was led out again by Deb and we all headed back to the hotel. Back at the hotel I started drinking lots of water and eating some random cookies I bought earlier. I called them JLow cookies, which made the others think I was high on alcohol -______- (he recommended them to Arjun who then recommended them to me). Then I went to sleep.
The Fourth Day - 3/12/08
Today was the only full day I spent at the orphanage. Sadly enough it also appears to be the day I least recall, for some odd reason. In the morning Steph and I headed for the orphanage by ourselves. There, we found the guys from Reaksmey already playing with the kids, and the Y5s doing the final touches to the study area they had built. The Y5s also had another surprise for the kids, they had ordered 2 more swings after seeing how popular 1 had been (and for some reason now I keep thinking about the chart of deminishing consumer satisfaction). The two new swings were put in the front, facing each other.
Similar to yesterday, an explosion of kids occured. They clamoured onto the new swings, ignoring the older one. After a while they started singing EIEIO again, over and over, much to the amusement of all of us around. There's a video of it to be found here. As the Y5s were leaving, a small certificate ceremony was held to give out the certs to all the volunteers, even though it wasn't our last day.
I was also horrified to discover that bottles of turpentine were placed in normal clear plastic bottles and left among the children. As it was, the children were already snatching the bottles to drink the water inside. However acting on some hunch, I grabbed a bottle away from Joi (which made him kick up a fuss) and smelt it. As the strong fumes hit my olfactory senses, I felt a wave of horor wash over me because a child under my care almost drank something poisonous. I ended up taking the bottle away and dumping it somewhere. After that I smelt every single bottle the children had, and ended up finding another such bottle filled with turpentine.
Upon leaving the orphanage for lunch, Stephanie was faced with an amusing prospect - having to walk in broken sandals. She ended up limping slowly, and hopped across the road on one foot as I supported her. The Cambodians around were laughing. We ended up taking a tuk tuk back to the hotel to get her shoes and went to a place called easy speaking in Pub Street. I remember I had chicken amok again. At around 2pm, most of us returned to the orphanage and went to the manager's room where he said he had plans for us to do specific projects, like painting murals and planting new shrubbery, nevermind that we said we would only be there for one more day.
We ended up taking out the art materials for the kids to play with, on the pretense of getting them to draw subjects for the mural. The kids ended up making a right royal mess of things, with markers thrown all over the place and some random abstract scribbes that looked like worms writhing in agony. Thankfully, the older ones drew more coherent images which featured lots of rainbows. I think that was because of a communication fail when someone drew a rainbow first to demonstrate what to draw.
My memory gets really screwed up when it comes to the orphanage, mainly because a lot of the things that went on repeated themselves everyday. I chased the same kids, threw the same kids into the air, carried the same kids and played with the same kids. Because of this I find myself unable to differentiate most of the days from each other. For instance there was a day that I carried Nyet (or Neath as the real spelling of her name) past the newly constructed study area and sang I'll Follow You Into the Dark to her (inappropriate song, but oh well) as the guys played with the younger children nearby.
Today there was the first feeding frenzy in the orphanage. This was because Jeremy and JLow were leaving the next day, so they bought treats for them. Those who gave out treats soon found themselves completely swarmed and overwhelmed by children jostling for food. I managed to worm out of every single one of those sessions. Heh heh. Instead I was manipulated by Nyet multiple times to get food easier and faster by being carried by me. That and I had to open sweet wrappers for multiple children, some who had already unsucessfully attacked the sweet wrapped with their teeth, leaving the wrappers slimey with saliva.
At night we ended up eating together at Burgers Without Borders. Arjun had a Chicken burger, hahaha. The burgers there were really big, and I enjoyed the tomatoes and the beef. Afterwards we met the other group at X Bar, walked to Sok San togehter and then ended up at Warehouse after deciding how horrible Sok San was. At Warehouse we ended up splitting into two main groups playing bridge. When the other group joined us again, they started to play pool with some random caucasians. I remember a few things about the night, mainly they played One More Time which I immensely enjoyed, I lost every game of bridge (my poor partners), I wasn't in the best of moods and JLow knocked over his drink, causing the glass to break. When we finally decided to head back, Steph and I were escorted by Jit and Arjun to our hotel by tuktuk.
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Argh I'm tired and it's late again. I shall try and finish up tomorow.
Friday, December 05, 2008
After coming home today (well not quite, I got dumped at my grandma's place) I mucked about a bit before going to sleep. It was quite a weird dream. I dreamt that I was doing something and had multiple fainting spells. Then somehow I was transported to outside the Raffles Swissotel ballroom where I saw a few classmates. Then more and more school people started coming and I went around asking 'what's happening? What's happening?' but no one gave me a coherent reply. Then it dawned on me it was some official gathering. I looked down and saw that the strap on the shoes I was wearing were broken, and quickly ran down to buy new ones with Cheryl.
Then I found myself outside the ballroom again, and everyone was dressed up nicely (like prom). I was talking to someone, then I saw Charles L. from school walk past, and I went to talk to him. The conversation went like this:
Me: "I fainted right?" (so therefore the events that appeared to be occuring were only in my mind)
Charles: "Yes"
Me: "Am I going to die?"
Charles: "Yes"
And then I woke up.
-----
The First Day - 30/11/08
I woke up feeling tired. Ended up dragging myself around the house, getting the little minute details ready. Then I was herded into the car by my parents and set loose in Terminal 1... but my flight was departing from Terminal 2! As a result I ended up taking the skytrain from T1 to T2, slinging my bag on my shoulders. At T2, I met up with the rest of the group heading to Cambodia. After checking in, we gathered again at the other end of the checking in counters. The only reason I mention this is because shortly after we gathered there, a hidden pipe burst within the fake foliage and started showering a dirty stained water in the surrounding area. It seemed like an omnious sign of what was to follow in the days ahead - absurdity being the choice theme. And almost as if the prediction was right, absurdity became the underlying theme almost everyday.
This trip was also the trip I was most ignorant about. I mean this because I literally knew nothing, and had not bothered with the details. For instance I thought I was flying on Cathay Pacific (hence ended up at the wrong terminal). Then even after checking in and boarding the plane, I had no idea where I was headed for except for the words "Destination: Cambodia" floating in my head. It got to a point that I picked up the inflight magazine and realised there were 2 destinations in Cambodia and asked Stephanie which one we were flying to. Yes. That was terrible of me. Still, I managed to arrive in Siem Reap in one piece.
The group of us staying at City River were dropped off first, and then rest of the group staying at Reaksmey were carried off on the minibus. After checking in, we wandered to a nearby restaurant and I had some odd fried egg that was rolled up. Then we went back to the hotel and deposited our stuff in our rooms. After bumming around for a bit, watching some freaky Korean quiz show (in English) for kids on general knowledge - they were like robots, Steph and I left to walk along the river side. We made a loop around and took some pictures before heading back to the hotel and then walking to the orphanage based on Steph's memory.
And thus began my unhappy first encounter with Cambodia traffic - trying to cross roads without pedestrian crossings. Somehow, we made it to the orphanage safe and sound in one piece. At the orphanage, Stephanie immediately headed to Noi Noi. Feeling out of place among the rest of the group who were playing with the children naturally, I ended up sitting around stoning on the stage with Arjun and Cheam. Eventually however, I warmed up to the children and played with a little boy and girl. Though for the life of me now I can't remember which two they were. I think it might have been petrolhead.
I also noticed something when I sat there, watching others play with the children. Their faces really lit up, and you could see the genuine happiness written on the faces of children and helpers alike. This touched me to no end. People I could never envision adopting such a role did, and my perceptions were thrown wildly into the dusty Cambodian air.
At 5pm+, they started to kick us out. Walking out from the orphanage, we headed to Reaksmey where majority of the guys were staying. On the way there however I encountered a nasty habit of the Cambodians - indiscriminate littering. Someone had thrown a small wooden skewer on the road, and for some odd reason as I walked it flew up and pierced my left foot.
Feeling a small sharp pain in my foot, I looked down. To my horror the stick was jutting out of my foot at some 30 degree angle. I instantly felt faint and wanted to scream in horror, but restrained myself. I can't really remember what happened next because I was too freaked out, but I remember leaning on Stephanie as JLow stooped down and removed the stick for me. Then he handed the stick to me. The tip of the skewer was pink with B+ blood. I broke the stick up into bits and threw it back on the ground.
As I limped to Reaksmey to wash the wound, images of tetanus flooded my mind. I felt really scared. However after applying antiseptic cream and a bandage, nothing else worse appeared to happen. So phew. Steph and I ended up in Jit and Arjun's room, so to pass the time till we met for dinner, we played bridge, which they had to teach me.
For dinner we ate at this Indian restaurant that was next to Reaksmey. I can't remember what I had (but it was't butter chicken), but the portions were huge. Aftewards we headed back to the hotel, where Stephanie and I found the most wtf movie ever. It was basically Hot Chick/Freaky Friday, but with a lesbian and a ladyboy cross dresser. Also, it was entirely in Thai. Still, we ended up watching the entire movie, laughing like crazy at a great portion of the movie. The rest of the night was rather screwed up, because we spent it (+ Wang, Deb and Hadi) waiting for someone to come back to the hotel room. After the person finally came back at 1am+ local time, we went off to sleep.
-----
I'll continue tomorrow. It's really late now.
Then I found myself outside the ballroom again, and everyone was dressed up nicely (like prom). I was talking to someone, then I saw Charles L. from school walk past, and I went to talk to him. The conversation went like this:
Me: "I fainted right?" (so therefore the events that appeared to be occuring were only in my mind)
Charles: "Yes"
Me: "Am I going to die?"
Charles: "Yes"
And then I woke up.
-----
The First Day - 30/11/08
I woke up feeling tired. Ended up dragging myself around the house, getting the little minute details ready. Then I was herded into the car by my parents and set loose in Terminal 1... but my flight was departing from Terminal 2! As a result I ended up taking the skytrain from T1 to T2, slinging my bag on my shoulders. At T2, I met up with the rest of the group heading to Cambodia. After checking in, we gathered again at the other end of the checking in counters. The only reason I mention this is because shortly after we gathered there, a hidden pipe burst within the fake foliage and started showering a dirty stained water in the surrounding area. It seemed like an omnious sign of what was to follow in the days ahead - absurdity being the choice theme. And almost as if the prediction was right, absurdity became the underlying theme almost everyday.
This trip was also the trip I was most ignorant about. I mean this because I literally knew nothing, and had not bothered with the details. For instance I thought I was flying on Cathay Pacific (hence ended up at the wrong terminal). Then even after checking in and boarding the plane, I had no idea where I was headed for except for the words "Destination: Cambodia" floating in my head. It got to a point that I picked up the inflight magazine and realised there were 2 destinations in Cambodia and asked Stephanie which one we were flying to. Yes. That was terrible of me. Still, I managed to arrive in Siem Reap in one piece.
The group of us staying at City River were dropped off first, and then rest of the group staying at Reaksmey were carried off on the minibus. After checking in, we wandered to a nearby restaurant and I had some odd fried egg that was rolled up. Then we went back to the hotel and deposited our stuff in our rooms. After bumming around for a bit, watching some freaky Korean quiz show (in English) for kids on general knowledge - they were like robots, Steph and I left to walk along the river side. We made a loop around and took some pictures before heading back to the hotel and then walking to the orphanage based on Steph's memory.
And thus began my unhappy first encounter with Cambodia traffic - trying to cross roads without pedestrian crossings. Somehow, we made it to the orphanage safe and sound in one piece. At the orphanage, Stephanie immediately headed to Noi Noi. Feeling out of place among the rest of the group who were playing with the children naturally, I ended up sitting around stoning on the stage with Arjun and Cheam. Eventually however, I warmed up to the children and played with a little boy and girl. Though for the life of me now I can't remember which two they were. I think it might have been petrolhead.
I also noticed something when I sat there, watching others play with the children. Their faces really lit up, and you could see the genuine happiness written on the faces of children and helpers alike. This touched me to no end. People I could never envision adopting such a role did, and my perceptions were thrown wildly into the dusty Cambodian air.
At 5pm+, they started to kick us out. Walking out from the orphanage, we headed to Reaksmey where majority of the guys were staying. On the way there however I encountered a nasty habit of the Cambodians - indiscriminate littering. Someone had thrown a small wooden skewer on the road, and for some odd reason as I walked it flew up and pierced my left foot.
Feeling a small sharp pain in my foot, I looked down. To my horror the stick was jutting out of my foot at some 30 degree angle. I instantly felt faint and wanted to scream in horror, but restrained myself. I can't really remember what happened next because I was too freaked out, but I remember leaning on Stephanie as JLow stooped down and removed the stick for me. Then he handed the stick to me. The tip of the skewer was pink with B+ blood. I broke the stick up into bits and threw it back on the ground.
As I limped to Reaksmey to wash the wound, images of tetanus flooded my mind. I felt really scared. However after applying antiseptic cream and a bandage, nothing else worse appeared to happen. So phew. Steph and I ended up in Jit and Arjun's room, so to pass the time till we met for dinner, we played bridge, which they had to teach me.
For dinner we ate at this Indian restaurant that was next to Reaksmey. I can't remember what I had (but it was't butter chicken), but the portions were huge. Aftewards we headed back to the hotel, where Stephanie and I found the most wtf movie ever. It was basically Hot Chick/Freaky Friday, but with a lesbian and a ladyboy cross dresser. Also, it was entirely in Thai. Still, we ended up watching the entire movie, laughing like crazy at a great portion of the movie. The rest of the night was rather screwed up, because we spent it (+ Wang, Deb and Hadi) waiting for someone to come back to the hotel room. After the person finally came back at 1am+ local time, we went off to sleep.-----
I'll continue tomorrow. It's really late now.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The night before Prom itself, I had a semi-nightmare that everything about prom went wrong. I woke up feeling a bit worried. The rest of the day was spent watching Dexter, coupled with a mad rush around 3pm to get showered and changed into my dress and stockings. Finally around 3:50 I met Stephanie and Toh at Far East Plaza, and there we wandered to the hairdressers. To my dismay the hairdresser I made an appointment with was missing, and I was stuck with two confused and evidently lost hairdressers who didn't really understand much English. The joy. After helping me translate a little, Stephanie went off to another hairdresser's.
As I sat seething in the chair, I started thinking about how everything seemed terrible enough to ruin the rest of the night. I started to get even more pissed when the girl doing my hair was curling my hair into tight small curls, not large and loose like how I originally wanted them. I began thinking about how this must be some sort of screwed up karma for the thousands of ants that I've killed in my room. Finally after the girl was done, I waited a while for Stephanie's hairdresser to finish. Then the 3 of us walked to Isetan Scotts for the makeup.
The makeup with a bit of a disaster too. For instance whenever the girl did anything to my eyes like mascara and eyeliner, they'd start tearing and the makeup would smudge. It was terrible. Anytime she touched my eyes, I felt my body react through sudden jerks which I had to fight hard to suppress. During the times she wandered away, I would stare out of the window at the people walking by. I noticed something peculiar. Any men that were walking by the window would look at me, and meet my eyes. The women on the other hand, upon spotting me would quickly avert their eyes. I'm not really sure where the different genders reacted to disparately.
After the makeup session, the girl helped me put on and adjust my veil. Then it was a rush to Pacific Plaza where I arrived just in time to get into Mr Hadi's car. Leaving Orchard Road, there was a jam. Later when we arrived near Fullerton, there was also a jam. All in all, traffic was quite a nightmare.
At the ballroom himself, I first met Lex and Ted Kin and started talking to them. Then I later met more and more people I recognised and before I knew it, full blown camwhoring had started. We later shuffled into the ballroom and I sat at table 14 with Daryl, Gen, Ted Kin, Darren, Emil, Shao Xiong, Mai and JC. After the dinner was over, we also ended up celebrating Chun Wui's 18th birthday with a nice NYDC cake. Then commenced more photo taking where I ended up with my most beloved picture of all night:
YAY!!! (look how far apart we are standing ): )
After deciding that my feet were killing me nice and throughly, I followed Kyle and Jon Pang up to their room to collect my flats that I had dumped there earlier. We ended up staying in the room as more people (and 80% of the KKK) started streaming in. Finally after about 30 minutes+ we started walking out and walked from Fullerton to Clarke Quay. After deliberating for a while if we wanted to go to Arena where everyone was or go to a quieter place. We ended up going to the quieter place - Clinic. I ordered my usual Vodka Lime there and was happy sitting there talking about rubbish with Nic, Jon Pang and CNE when Yihang smsed me asking me to go for the post post prom party.
A while later he came along and I finished the last bit of my drink and followed him, Clement, JTek and DLai to take a cab to Holland V where he opened up Color Bar for us to laze about. A short while later, the !nk people came - Jiayun, Daryl, Chong Wee, Gen, Kaijun and Brendan. After a foray to the nearby 7-11, alcohol was acquired in plentiful amounts and some of the guys started drinking. I wandered downstairs to rest, needing a break from the excessive mental stimuli of the night's events. After a while, more and more people started arriving downstairs, seeking to be away from the 3 non-!nk guys upstairs who were getting increasingly inebriated. A typical !nk rubbish talking session commenced, with the main theme being gossip.
After a while we went upstairs and encountered a drunk DLai and JTek flopping about the floor. Every few minute JTek would protest that he's not drunk, then promptly die the next second and become unconscious for about half a minute. It was the most amusing thing I saw in ages. He also tried walking down the stairs, which was a really scary prospect in case he fell down. Somehow, the two of them survived the night and the 3 of them, plus Clement, went back around 6am on the first bus back.
After they left, we gathered around the table (sans Gen who left for home around 4am) and started talking about how we all first met and became friends. Thinking about something that happened recently (in a 1 year ago versus 18 years of our lives way), yet had created such a strong bond in us made me think about how sad it was that after this year, such gathering would be few and far between again. Still it felt significant that we had all opted to stay together, awake thoughout this significant night.
Around 7am, we left Color Bar to go eat breakfast at Crystal Jade. I had a rather sad Beef and Fish congee. The congee was savoury, but the meat tasted poor and badly done. We also started speaking a bit in Cantonese there. Finally after breakfast around 8am, we started leaving for home. Kaijun and I stayed about a bit longer because we were getting a ride from Yihang's mother. It wasn't till about 9am that I finally got home and showered, and oddly enough I didn't feel that tired so I went to upload pictures to facebook. Finally around 10am, some 24 hours after I woke up the previous day, I started to read Everything is Illuminated and felt sleepy shortly after. And thus ended my nocturnal adventures for 2008 ACSI Prom.
-----
Tomorrow morning I leave for Cambodia - so see you guys when I get back on the 5th of December. Bye!
As I sat seething in the chair, I started thinking about how everything seemed terrible enough to ruin the rest of the night. I started to get even more pissed when the girl doing my hair was curling my hair into tight small curls, not large and loose like how I originally wanted them. I began thinking about how this must be some sort of screwed up karma for the thousands of ants that I've killed in my room. Finally after the girl was done, I waited a while for Stephanie's hairdresser to finish. Then the 3 of us walked to Isetan Scotts for the makeup.
The makeup with a bit of a disaster too. For instance whenever the girl did anything to my eyes like mascara and eyeliner, they'd start tearing and the makeup would smudge. It was terrible. Anytime she touched my eyes, I felt my body react through sudden jerks which I had to fight hard to suppress. During the times she wandered away, I would stare out of the window at the people walking by. I noticed something peculiar. Any men that were walking by the window would look at me, and meet my eyes. The women on the other hand, upon spotting me would quickly avert their eyes. I'm not really sure where the different genders reacted to disparately.
After the makeup session, the girl helped me put on and adjust my veil. Then it was a rush to Pacific Plaza where I arrived just in time to get into Mr Hadi's car. Leaving Orchard Road, there was a jam. Later when we arrived near Fullerton, there was also a jam. All in all, traffic was quite a nightmare.
At the ballroom himself, I first met Lex and Ted Kin and started talking to them. Then I later met more and more people I recognised and before I knew it, full blown camwhoring had started. We later shuffled into the ballroom and I sat at table 14 with Daryl, Gen, Ted Kin, Darren, Emil, Shao Xiong, Mai and JC. After the dinner was over, we also ended up celebrating Chun Wui's 18th birthday with a nice NYDC cake. Then commenced more photo taking where I ended up with my most beloved picture of all night:
YAY!!! (look how far apart we are standing ): )
After deciding that my feet were killing me nice and throughly, I followed Kyle and Jon Pang up to their room to collect my flats that I had dumped there earlier. We ended up staying in the room as more people (and 80% of the KKK) started streaming in. Finally after about 30 minutes+ we started walking out and walked from Fullerton to Clarke Quay. After deliberating for a while if we wanted to go to Arena where everyone was or go to a quieter place. We ended up going to the quieter place - Clinic. I ordered my usual Vodka Lime there and was happy sitting there talking about rubbish with Nic, Jon Pang and CNE when Yihang smsed me asking me to go for the post post prom party.
A while later he came along and I finished the last bit of my drink and followed him, Clement, JTek and DLai to take a cab to Holland V where he opened up Color Bar for us to laze about. A short while later, the !nk people came - Jiayun, Daryl, Chong Wee, Gen, Kaijun and Brendan. After a foray to the nearby 7-11, alcohol was acquired in plentiful amounts and some of the guys started drinking. I wandered downstairs to rest, needing a break from the excessive mental stimuli of the night's events. After a while, more and more people started arriving downstairs, seeking to be away from the 3 non-!nk guys upstairs who were getting increasingly inebriated. A typical !nk rubbish talking session commenced, with the main theme being gossip.
After a while we went upstairs and encountered a drunk DLai and JTek flopping about the floor. Every few minute JTek would protest that he's not drunk, then promptly die the next second and become unconscious for about half a minute. It was the most amusing thing I saw in ages. He also tried walking down the stairs, which was a really scary prospect in case he fell down. Somehow, the two of them survived the night and the 3 of them, plus Clement, went back around 6am on the first bus back.
After they left, we gathered around the table (sans Gen who left for home around 4am) and started talking about how we all first met and became friends. Thinking about something that happened recently (in a 1 year ago versus 18 years of our lives way), yet had created such a strong bond in us made me think about how sad it was that after this year, such gathering would be few and far between again. Still it felt significant that we had all opted to stay together, awake thoughout this significant night.
Around 7am, we left Color Bar to go eat breakfast at Crystal Jade. I had a rather sad Beef and Fish congee. The congee was savoury, but the meat tasted poor and badly done. We also started speaking a bit in Cantonese there. Finally after breakfast around 8am, we started leaving for home. Kaijun and I stayed about a bit longer because we were getting a ride from Yihang's mother. It wasn't till about 9am that I finally got home and showered, and oddly enough I didn't feel that tired so I went to upload pictures to facebook. Finally around 10am, some 24 hours after I woke up the previous day, I started to read Everything is Illuminated and felt sleepy shortly after. And thus ended my nocturnal adventures for 2008 ACSI Prom.
-----
Tomorrow morning I leave for Cambodia - so see you guys when I get back on the 5th of December. Bye!
Friday, November 28, 2008
The last 24 hours have simultaneously filled me with the greatest of joys of my young life and its experiences and the melancholy that is reality. In order to deal with these two disparate emotions as best as I can, I shall deal with the latter one first before dealing with the former so that in my absence it shall be a happy post that greets readers.
I first heard about the Mumbai terrorist attacks on the car ride to Fullerton Hotel. Hadi gave me a ride in his car, along with Cheam. All day I had been sequestered either reading/watching Dexter at home/getting my hair done/getting my makeup done, and has not heard the slightest peep of the world outside. Hearing it on the radio, in the middle of a jam, was almost surreal. In that instant I felt a flood of Melancholy flow over me and seep into my pores. Passing by the large screened led television outside a building in a CBD, I was assailed by images of a plane flying smack into the twin towers some 7 years ago.
There I was all set to engage in a night of frivolity, and there were these people who were terrified into an inch of their lives, and forming new scars of emotional terror. I felt ashamed for being so insensitive and uncaring. I felt sad that I was unable to do anything. I couldn't jump out of the car, change into some cheesy spandex suit and fly off to beat the living hell out of the perpetrators. Instead I was just a silly girl, sitting in her prom dress with layers and layers of makeup.
We soon reached however, and the general euphoric mood of the ballroom soon pushed any such negative sentiment to the back of my head. And thus I forgot all about life outside the confines of the hotel, my thoughts more centered upon the early death of my camera's battery and how much shoes were beginning to make my feet tired. This continued till almost the end of the post-post prom party at Yihang's Color Bar in Holland V.
We had just returned from wandering to Cold Storage when we saw the newpapers just delivered to the doorstep, and someone brought it up. Daryl and Chong Wee immediately started attacking the papers. It wasn't till I wandered near however that I saw the headline and I the forgotten emotions came back to me again.
As I sat semi moping in one of the chairs used for hairdressing, watching JTek and DLai flopping about on the floor in a semi drunken/exhausted stupor, I thought of a few things. One was that I remember I cried when I heard of Sept 11 and saw the repeated videos of the planes crashing into the towers/the towers buckling and collapsing. Most striking however, were the images of people who opted to jump out of the upper levels of the towers. The images conveyed emotions, feelings and thoughts that words would never have been sufficient enough to convey.
The second thought I had was that no matter whatever I became in life, I could not save anyone. I could change nothing. This thought really really struck me and made me upset. I was just a human being, a person to be filled with hopelessness and to futilely rail against the cruel mechanisms of fate and destiny. Forget all those rubbish motivational things people say, that I Can Change The World, Make It Into A Better Place, because I can't. No one can. Any faith placed in the ability of humanity to Save The World is only bound to be replaced by disenchantment and disappointment because at the end of the day we are just mere humans. It is the unfortunate circumstance that we have been alotted in this life. That doesn't mean however that we are unable to change things on a micro scale, and perhaps even a macro scale - it simply means that when it comes to the bigger bigger picture, we are powerless to end the everlasting cycle of human suffering and conflict.
Another piece of news also came to me today, that of JTay's mother passing away. I had known her and him far before I had even heard the name ACSI. The last time I saw and talked to her however was before I left church some 2 years+ ago. She used to be my old Sunday School teacher. The last time I had really spoken to JTay was some time ago too, when I first came to ACSI and he tried to talk me back into going to church. I saw him yesterday during prom too, and said hi to him. I can't even begin to imagine what he's going through now, and my heart really goes out to him. So please, keep him in your prayers and thoughts tonight.
I first heard about the Mumbai terrorist attacks on the car ride to Fullerton Hotel. Hadi gave me a ride in his car, along with Cheam. All day I had been sequestered either reading/watching Dexter at home/getting my hair done/getting my makeup done, and has not heard the slightest peep of the world outside. Hearing it on the radio, in the middle of a jam, was almost surreal. In that instant I felt a flood of Melancholy flow over me and seep into my pores. Passing by the large screened led television outside a building in a CBD, I was assailed by images of a plane flying smack into the twin towers some 7 years ago.
There I was all set to engage in a night of frivolity, and there were these people who were terrified into an inch of their lives, and forming new scars of emotional terror. I felt ashamed for being so insensitive and uncaring. I felt sad that I was unable to do anything. I couldn't jump out of the car, change into some cheesy spandex suit and fly off to beat the living hell out of the perpetrators. Instead I was just a silly girl, sitting in her prom dress with layers and layers of makeup.
We soon reached however, and the general euphoric mood of the ballroom soon pushed any such negative sentiment to the back of my head. And thus I forgot all about life outside the confines of the hotel, my thoughts more centered upon the early death of my camera's battery and how much shoes were beginning to make my feet tired. This continued till almost the end of the post-post prom party at Yihang's Color Bar in Holland V.
We had just returned from wandering to Cold Storage when we saw the newpapers just delivered to the doorstep, and someone brought it up. Daryl and Chong Wee immediately started attacking the papers. It wasn't till I wandered near however that I saw the headline and I the forgotten emotions came back to me again.
As I sat semi moping in one of the chairs used for hairdressing, watching JTek and DLai flopping about on the floor in a semi drunken/exhausted stupor, I thought of a few things. One was that I remember I cried when I heard of Sept 11 and saw the repeated videos of the planes crashing into the towers/the towers buckling and collapsing. Most striking however, were the images of people who opted to jump out of the upper levels of the towers. The images conveyed emotions, feelings and thoughts that words would never have been sufficient enough to convey.
The second thought I had was that no matter whatever I became in life, I could not save anyone. I could change nothing. This thought really really struck me and made me upset. I was just a human being, a person to be filled with hopelessness and to futilely rail against the cruel mechanisms of fate and destiny. Forget all those rubbish motivational things people say, that I Can Change The World, Make It Into A Better Place, because I can't. No one can. Any faith placed in the ability of humanity to Save The World is only bound to be replaced by disenchantment and disappointment because at the end of the day we are just mere humans. It is the unfortunate circumstance that we have been alotted in this life. That doesn't mean however that we are unable to change things on a micro scale, and perhaps even a macro scale - it simply means that when it comes to the bigger bigger picture, we are powerless to end the everlasting cycle of human suffering and conflict.
Another piece of news also came to me today, that of JTay's mother passing away. I had known her and him far before I had even heard the name ACSI. The last time I saw and talked to her however was before I left church some 2 years+ ago. She used to be my old Sunday School teacher. The last time I had really spoken to JTay was some time ago too, when I first came to ACSI and he tried to talk me back into going to church. I saw him yesterday during prom too, and said hi to him. I can't even begin to imagine what he's going through now, and my heart really goes out to him. So please, keep him in your prayers and thoughts tonight.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
I just realised JH linked me on our other blog, so I guess the time has finally come from me to introduce twigs&tweed to the random people who read this blog. I was at first a bit reluctant to reconcile the two because one blog features my personal world and the other is my outside frivolous world that I think about when I need a break from Bigger Thoughts. While they are both parts of my and my personality, I sometimes feel ashamed for engaging in such thoughts when I know that everysecondsomeonedies/someoneisbeingrapedatthismoment/someoneiscryingnow/someoneisgoinghungrynow.
Okay why does this make me sound depressed again -_________-
Whatever it is, twigs&tweed, meet thechartreusetiger!
Okay why does this make me sound depressed again -_________-
Whatever it is, twigs&tweed, meet thechartreusetiger!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Today I attended someone's 18th birthday party. It was quite unlike any other one I have attended before - there was a DJ, loud music, a 'bar' and a swimming pool - a potent mix when teenagers are thrown in. Even though I was eventually joined by my classmates and two girls I met there, Tian and Clarissa, I have not felt so 'out' of it in ages.
I really couldn't understand the behaviour of majority of the people there. They were dancing, drinking, and in general being happy and having the time of their lives - and I was sitting in a corner talking to people. I even felt annoyed as I saw them staggering about from too much drink. By the time I left the place with Jim, Charles, Lex, Elliot and Joash, I had encountered 2 girls who had drunk so much they flopped over and died, countless others who were clearly wasted, random patches of puke and some girl pissing in an alley. I also lost my respect for the people I saw dry humping on the dancefloor. Apparently I also missed an epic make out session between S.Y. (not Suat!) and random guys (which I thank for the preservation of my sanity and sight).
I was definitely not the only one there who felt uncomfortable with how the party went, yet somehow the whole thing really struck a chord with me. Part of it was when I knew I was getting annoyed and people told me to 'chillax', something which only served to make me more annoyed. They say you learn something about yourself everyday - today's lesson is the understanding that I could never live in that manner.
Still, the party brought about little blessings. Like how I talked to a few people I never really talked to before when school was in progress. Mr Intense Stare was also there, with a dye job that someone described as 'a golden monkey', and that made me giggle. But all in all, I hope I don't have another such experience again soon.
I really couldn't understand the behaviour of majority of the people there. They were dancing, drinking, and in general being happy and having the time of their lives - and I was sitting in a corner talking to people. I even felt annoyed as I saw them staggering about from too much drink. By the time I left the place with Jim, Charles, Lex, Elliot and Joash, I had encountered 2 girls who had drunk so much they flopped over and died, countless others who were clearly wasted, random patches of puke and some girl pissing in an alley. I also lost my respect for the people I saw dry humping on the dancefloor. Apparently I also missed an epic make out session between S.Y. (not Suat!) and random guys (which I thank for the preservation of my sanity and sight).
I was definitely not the only one there who felt uncomfortable with how the party went, yet somehow the whole thing really struck a chord with me. Part of it was when I knew I was getting annoyed and people told me to 'chillax', something which only served to make me more annoyed. They say you learn something about yourself everyday - today's lesson is the understanding that I could never live in that manner.
Still, the party brought about little blessings. Like how I talked to a few people I never really talked to before when school was in progress. Mr Intense Stare was also there, with a dye job that someone described as 'a golden monkey', and that made me giggle. But all in all, I hope I don't have another such experience again soon.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Running is like blogging. Once you stop and accumulate lots of fat, you don't feel like running anymore because there is so much more effort needed to get back to prime condition. And I am a lazy person. NYEH.
-----
IB Exams ended on Thursday, 10:00 am on the 20th of November for me. This is an idea of the physical mess is created:
November 3rd
November 16th
November 20th
GOODBYE MESS! YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED AT ALL.
-----
As some of you might have noted, I was dealing with a hypocritical troll on my tagboard (hello troll if you see this, I do believe you need a better use of time - may I suggest volunteer work so you can do some soul searching?) during this period as well. I chose to not carry out any action, choosing to see what happens. The results brought tears to my eyes, both of an amused and sentimental nature.
"SC(A)
yo melodie! exams almost over! time for tequila!
anonymouse
Dear SC(A), why you say time for tequila. you elitist bastard bear dog. is jolly shandy not good enough for your ass. huh huh huh. i am a mccain man
anonymouse
actually i would say that the ULTIMATE drink would be the bacardi breezer. such a kick, unbeatable high. its INSANE
SC(A)
what a fag you are anonymouse. what a coward hiding behind an unidentifiable internet name. i dare you to reveal your true identity and challenge me to a drinking contest of the fearsome breezers.
SC(A)
face to face if you dare!
anonymouse
oh you elitist brog (beardog), using such great poly-syllabic words like unidentifiable and internet. why you not say iDuNkNoWz and wEbZ.
FloopyDick
*Flip**Flop**squirt*
anonymouse
that would have been more normal and less upper-crust. ooh i despise the way you subtly look down on people like us. tsk. (i am unafraid of these radical alcoholik, i am a true gangsta) yo yo yo
anonymouse
ah FloopyDick, what a stroke of genius. HAH GEDDIT STROKEE OF GENIUS LIKE STROKEEEEE ( @i hAv sUcH gR8t sEnZ oF hUmoUrZz)
FloopyDick
the world use dvd now. no space for my floppy dicks. my size too small.
pohkee
did i hear somebody say floopy dicks?"
I'll really miss the madness during Math Studies.
-----
On Thursday after the paper, I met with Daryl, Kaijun and Chong Wee at the Spaceframe. We then ended up taking a cab to Raffles City, because Kaijun is a bum/the bus stop was exploding. There, we ended up bumming around various locales like the really fail toy showcase on the 3rd level. They sold fake doll food for $10! Can you believe it? $10 will buy you plenty of real life food, much less fake doll food -____- what a damn waste of money.
After a while, Sir Brythain came and we went to Sushi Tei for lunch. (I feel like listing, so I'm going to start now)
- I ended up distributing the Salmon Roe that came with my rice to everyone
- The Tuna sashimi was really good
- We had some interesting pineapple and chocolate dessert
- Sir Brythain treated all of us (thank you Sir!)
- Sir Brytahin regaled us with lots of dodgy humourous stories about previously unknown school life
- We walked from Raffles City to Takashimaya's Kinokuniya
- Played word games alone the way like thinking of words that had 'wwo' and the like in them (which I was fail at)
- Kinokuniya had 20% discount for members, so I bought 5 books :D
- Then we wandered to Borders, where I bought 2 more books
- After Sir Brythain left us, we wandered over to Mos Burger to bum
- At 4pm we all started to leave for home
So this is the sum total of books I was acquired in recent months that I have not posted about:
1) Everything is Illuminated (reading this now)
2) The Decameron (also reading this)
3) Genome (non-fiction)
4) Canterbury Tales
5) In the Country of the Young
6) Every Visible Thing
7) Forgive Me
8) Love in the Asylum (finished reading it on Friday)
9) The White Tiger
10) Prozac Nation
11) The Memory Keeper's Daughter
12) Jim Giraffe
13) The Corrections
14) World Without End
15) My Mistress' Sparrow is Dead (also reading halfway/not in the picture)
----
At night I was out with my classmates to drink at Angel's Share. Everyone in our group chose the Free Flow option, for S$47 (+ tax). As usual when you have teenagers and alcohol, you have wasted people. Time time it was Lex, Mong and Nic who were wasted. Cheryl appeared to be wasted - but she kept protesting she wasn't. Not sure what to make of that.
I had 4 1/2 drinks because I didn't want to get drunk. The first was a mojito, then a black russian (which I hated and gave to Nic), a peach margarita which was really nice and sweet, a sex on the beach - which was also really nice and finally a tequila sunrise. I ended up being the person who drank the 2nd least, the person drinking the least being JLC. Which is good, because we both escaped unscathed from Hangover Hell.
Then Chun Wui, Elliot, Lex and I took a cab home. After we dropped Lex off, he apparently had some druken encounter with the guard, which I found really amusing. So oh well. So that's it. The end of IB with a night of random drinking and failed drinking games.
-----
On Saturday I went with my parents and brother to his school to buy new uniforms for him. As usual he started to act up from having to wait around, so after his measurements were finally taken I brought him outside to sit on a bench. After a while, he stood up and pulled me gently to the side. As I stood up and followed him, he led me to a playground that was hidden at the side. There, he sat on the swing and I joined him. As I was swinging away in a swing that was way too small for me to sit in, I started to think about how long ago it was that I played in a playground. I felt old and young at the same time. The thought of university scared me.
My brother stopped and went over to the rest of the jungle gym, so I climbed up and joined him. I tried to play with the monkey bars and epic failed. As I nursed my aching joints, I felt a bit sad, because in Primary school I used to be really good at the monkey bars! Giving up recess time to go play on them. One time the bar came loose and I fell down. That really hurt. I was snapped out of my reminiscing by my brother sliding down the slide, so I jumped down and went to sit on the see saw. As I was bouncing around (it was one of those with the springs) my brother came on joined me on the other side. He was so heavy that the see saw became lop sided, and it took a great effort for me to bounce him up on the other side. I felt a bit weirded out, because it hit home that my brother was now physically larger than me, even if he lacked about 10+ years of mental development to balance it out.
Prompted by a phone call from my mother, I led him back to the bench area. Waiting there however, he got bored again and pulled me along. What followed next was quite interesting, because it is unprecedented in the behaviour of my brother. From leading me to the playground, he now led me to the bike area where there were some small DMX bikes and he climed on to play with them. So I tried to join him, and failed because the bikes were too small -_________-
Then he stopped and led me upstairs. At the 2nd level however, there was a grille blocking entry. After I told him it was locked, he led me back down and to another staircase near the general office. It turned out to be open. He then headed for the computer room and opened the door where there was some people around. After about a minute there, he led me out again and down the corridor to where the bathrooms were. He tried the locked grilled staircase again, then walked back to play with the cold water from the water cooler. Finally he led me back to the computer room area and we took a lift down where my father was now waiting with the car.
The thing so unusual about this was that my brother seemed to be showing me around his school, like telling me 'This is my school! I want you to see it!' without speaking at all. For someone with an IQ of 50, this is an incredible feat because it shows both intellectual and emotional cognitive thinking- and I had never seen such a side of my brother before. The whole experience left me feeling touched and 'AWWWW!'-ing internally.
Then today he threw and epic tantrum, scratched my arm and tried to bite me twice. Bye bye tender feeling.
-----
I really need to sleep.
-----
IB Exams ended on Thursday, 10:00 am on the 20th of November for me. This is an idea of the physical mess is created:
November 3rd
November 16th
November 20th
GOODBYE MESS! YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED AT ALL.
-----
As some of you might have noted, I was dealing with a hypocritical troll on my tagboard (hello troll if you see this, I do believe you need a better use of time - may I suggest volunteer work so you can do some soul searching?) during this period as well. I chose to not carry out any action, choosing to see what happens. The results brought tears to my eyes, both of an amused and sentimental nature.
"SC(A)
yo melodie! exams almost over! time for tequila!
anonymouse
Dear SC(A), why you say time for tequila. you elitist bastard bear dog. is jolly shandy not good enough for your ass. huh huh huh. i am a mccain man
anonymouse
actually i would say that the ULTIMATE drink would be the bacardi breezer. such a kick, unbeatable high. its INSANE
SC(A)
what a fag you are anonymouse. what a coward hiding behind an unidentifiable internet name. i dare you to reveal your true identity and challenge me to a drinking contest of the fearsome breezers.
SC(A)
face to face if you dare!
anonymouse
oh you elitist brog (beardog), using such great poly-syllabic words like unidentifiable and internet. why you not say iDuNkNoWz and wEbZ.
FloopyDick
*Flip**Flop**squirt*
anonymouse
that would have been more normal and less upper-crust. ooh i despise the way you subtly look down on people like us. tsk. (i am unafraid of these radical alcoholik, i am a true gangsta) yo yo yo
anonymouse
ah FloopyDick, what a stroke of genius. HAH GEDDIT STROKEE OF GENIUS LIKE STROKEEEEE ( @i hAv sUcH gR8t sEnZ oF hUmoUrZz)
FloopyDick
the world use dvd now. no space for my floppy dicks. my size too small.
pohkee
did i hear somebody say floopy dicks?"
I'll really miss the madness during Math Studies.
-----
On Thursday after the paper, I met with Daryl, Kaijun and Chong Wee at the Spaceframe. We then ended up taking a cab to Raffles City, because Kaijun is a bum/the bus stop was exploding. There, we ended up bumming around various locales like the really fail toy showcase on the 3rd level. They sold fake doll food for $10! Can you believe it? $10 will buy you plenty of real life food, much less fake doll food -____- what a damn waste of money.
After a while, Sir Brythain came and we went to Sushi Tei for lunch. (I feel like listing, so I'm going to start now)
- I ended up distributing the Salmon Roe that came with my rice to everyone
- The Tuna sashimi was really good
- We had some interesting pineapple and chocolate dessert
- Sir Brythain treated all of us (thank you Sir!)
- Sir Brytahin regaled us with lots of dodgy humourous stories about previously unknown school life
- We walked from Raffles City to Takashimaya's Kinokuniya
- Played word games alone the way like thinking of words that had 'wwo' and the like in them (which I was fail at)
- Kinokuniya had 20% discount for members, so I bought 5 books :D
- Then we wandered to Borders, where I bought 2 more books
- After Sir Brythain left us, we wandered over to Mos Burger to bum
- At 4pm we all started to leave for home
So this is the sum total of books I was acquired in recent months that I have not posted about:
1) Everything is Illuminated (reading this now)
2) The Decameron (also reading this)
3) Genome (non-fiction)
4) Canterbury Tales
5) In the Country of the Young
6) Every Visible Thing
7) Forgive Me
8) Love in the Asylum (finished reading it on Friday)
9) The White Tiger
10) Prozac Nation
11) The Memory Keeper's Daughter
12) Jim Giraffe
13) The Corrections
14) World Without End
15) My Mistress' Sparrow is Dead (also reading halfway/not in the picture)
----
At night I was out with my classmates to drink at Angel's Share. Everyone in our group chose the Free Flow option, for S$47 (+ tax). As usual when you have teenagers and alcohol, you have wasted people. Time time it was Lex, Mong and Nic who were wasted. Cheryl appeared to be wasted - but she kept protesting she wasn't. Not sure what to make of that.
I had 4 1/2 drinks because I didn't want to get drunk. The first was a mojito, then a black russian (which I hated and gave to Nic), a peach margarita which was really nice and sweet, a sex on the beach - which was also really nice and finally a tequila sunrise. I ended up being the person who drank the 2nd least, the person drinking the least being JLC. Which is good, because we both escaped unscathed from Hangover Hell.
Then Chun Wui, Elliot, Lex and I took a cab home. After we dropped Lex off, he apparently had some druken encounter with the guard, which I found really amusing. So oh well. So that's it. The end of IB with a night of random drinking and failed drinking games.
-----
On Saturday I went with my parents and brother to his school to buy new uniforms for him. As usual he started to act up from having to wait around, so after his measurements were finally taken I brought him outside to sit on a bench. After a while, he stood up and pulled me gently to the side. As I stood up and followed him, he led me to a playground that was hidden at the side. There, he sat on the swing and I joined him. As I was swinging away in a swing that was way too small for me to sit in, I started to think about how long ago it was that I played in a playground. I felt old and young at the same time. The thought of university scared me.
My brother stopped and went over to the rest of the jungle gym, so I climbed up and joined him. I tried to play with the monkey bars and epic failed. As I nursed my aching joints, I felt a bit sad, because in Primary school I used to be really good at the monkey bars! Giving up recess time to go play on them. One time the bar came loose and I fell down. That really hurt. I was snapped out of my reminiscing by my brother sliding down the slide, so I jumped down and went to sit on the see saw. As I was bouncing around (it was one of those with the springs) my brother came on joined me on the other side. He was so heavy that the see saw became lop sided, and it took a great effort for me to bounce him up on the other side. I felt a bit weirded out, because it hit home that my brother was now physically larger than me, even if he lacked about 10+ years of mental development to balance it out.
Prompted by a phone call from my mother, I led him back to the bench area. Waiting there however, he got bored again and pulled me along. What followed next was quite interesting, because it is unprecedented in the behaviour of my brother. From leading me to the playground, he now led me to the bike area where there were some small DMX bikes and he climed on to play with them. So I tried to join him, and failed because the bikes were too small -_________-
Then he stopped and led me upstairs. At the 2nd level however, there was a grille blocking entry. After I told him it was locked, he led me back down and to another staircase near the general office. It turned out to be open. He then headed for the computer room and opened the door where there was some people around. After about a minute there, he led me out again and down the corridor to where the bathrooms were. He tried the locked grilled staircase again, then walked back to play with the cold water from the water cooler. Finally he led me back to the computer room area and we took a lift down where my father was now waiting with the car.
The thing so unusual about this was that my brother seemed to be showing me around his school, like telling me 'This is my school! I want you to see it!' without speaking at all. For someone with an IQ of 50, this is an incredible feat because it shows both intellectual and emotional cognitive thinking- and I had never seen such a side of my brother before. The whole experience left me feeling touched and 'AWWWW!'-ing internally.
Then today he threw and epic tantrum, scratched my arm and tried to bite me twice. Bye bye tender feeling.
-----
I really need to sleep.
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