Archive for August, 2003

Two Memories

Yesterday, trying to wake myself up, I put on Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. In the first few seconds London is asked to make some noise for Public Enemy, and I remembered making lots of noise for Public Enemy, a few months ago, in London.

Last night, trying to get myself off to sleep. I put on Sigur Ros’s (), and lay there in the dark listening, remembering sitting entranced as that same opening track started their gig in London, that sparse beauty in the bass clef, that earnest weary voice singing words that mean nothing and everything at the same time.

  August 28, 03 | Londoner Forever | Closed
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Senorita Sucker

Senorita is a perfect example of how production and marketing can compensate for just about anything these days. Take mediocre song, imbue with mild catchiness by way of Neptunes beats, stir in some sultry honeys in clingy dresses gyrating to a song which isn’t particularly danceable in the first place, finally and most importantly add Justin Timberlake, and suckers like me will still be rooted to the screen every time it’s on.

  August 28, 03 | Music Geekery | Closed
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Get Thee Behind Me, Internet

Shit. I was meant to be making notes on the legal ramifications of IT outsourcing. Instead, I was:

Reading

Caring For Your Introvert:
‘Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially “on,” we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn’t antisocial. It isn’t a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: “I’m okay, you’re okay – in small doses.” ‘ (Jonathan Rauch)

Who responds to MAKE YOUR PENIS HUGE spam

Finding beautiful

Monsoon: Black and white photographs across South East Asia, water-themed.

Laughing at

The 3rd Annual Nigerian Email Conference:
‘Debate: Attend a lively debate between Lady Mariam Abacha and Mr. Godwin Oyathelem.
Topic: “The effectiveness of using all UPPERCASE characters.” ‘

Eric Conveys An Emotion

Strangely fascinated by

The dullest blog in the world:
‘As I was sitting down I became aware that the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold. This being the case I made no adjustments to the temperature control on the central heating.’

Bikini picture airbrushing: Featuring amazing expanding and retracting breasts.

Listening to

Whole Wheat Radio: The site design isn’t great, but the music is class.

If I hadn’t lived in a hall without Internet access in my final year of university, it would have been goodbye degree for sure.

  August 23, 03 | Links | Closed
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Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK

Handy coincidence. I was sitting here trying to think of a way to start this entry, and was looking through my CDs to choose one to play, and hey presto.

So anyway, this entry will be all about how I had a tough exam yesterday, and then had to leave straight after it to go to uni to do a simulated arbitration which I had done zero preparation for and could therefore have really sucked at, and how the day could have gone really badly, but it didn’t at all, and I’m happy. If all that sounds boring to you, that’s probably because it is. Go read The Onion if you’d rather. Otherwise, read on.

—

Waking up was agony. I used to have to stay up the whole night before most of my O’level prelims, given that I only tended to start studying the entire year’s work at 3 or 4 that afternoon. In the first year of uni, I remember a delirious conversation around 5 am with Esther the morning of the property law exam, trying to work out what the fuck the case Re Vandervell was all about. Those days seem to be gone. Yesterday, I’d stayed up cramming till 4, and woke up at 9 feeling like I’d been hit by a bus.

Sitting jittery outside the exam room hoping that the questions really really wouldn’t require a sound understanding of hedging or forward markets (i.e. the introductory chapter I didn’t understand) or, actually, international trade law at all (i.e. the entire course), that familiar old internal refrain of “In all fairness, Michelle, you don’t really deserve to pass this exam anyway, given this sort of preparation” was seeming as pertinent as ever.

But then the lovely old retiree who’s been invigilating these exams handed me the question paper and oh joy, oh providence, there were questions I could do, although forgetting all my cases couldn’t have helped, and I think I might just have gotten away with this.

I left jubilant, grabbed a coffee, and got on the bus to uni. Prepared doggedly for the arbitration over the next hour or so, fuelled only by a char siew pau and fear of humiliation, and managed to deliver a credible performance despite being mentally dead and feeling somewhat intimidated by the formidable abilities of everyone else. After class, the professor took us all for a drink. I swigged a strangely headless Guinness, got to know my rather personable and engaging coursemates a little better, and generally had a grand time.

—

Today, in contrast, has been sedate. Woke up in time for lunch. For dessert my mum whipped out a gargantuan tub of chin chow (grass jelly, it’s much nicer than it sounds), and I gorged myself happily. Lazed on the couch. The Discovery travel channel was featuring the World’s Top Ten Seductive Beach Resorts, all of which looked samey and artificial. After a while I got tired of seeing gooey-eyed couples embracing in the sunset, mostly because of my current geographic inability to do the same.

Channel surfing revealed a Hallmark movie featuring an inordinate number of grizzled old men in flat caps and tweed gathered on a rugged beach for a horse and buggy race. It was immediately obvious to me where this movie was set even before anyone opened their mouth and sounded lilting, and the appearance of the prosthetic-eared leprechauns confirmed my suspicions. So anyway this touching love story unfolded between an American, who of course had gone to Ireland to find his roots, and a sassy Irish woman, and there was, like, this PARALLEL love story between a fairy and a leprechaun, and obviously the uniting factor between both love stories was that they come from DIFFERENT WORLDS, and there are all these OBSTACLES to their love, but of course their love TRIUMPHS over all, because doesn’t it always, and at some point I fell asleep.

  August 23, 03 | Lawyering | Closed
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Spunky

After a day of studying international trade law, it is immensely refreshing to meet friends for dinner and learn from Jeff that there is a Bollywood movie called Jism.

While we’re on the topic I must also alert you to a recent important scientific discovery. The last paragraph in particular is a real breakthrough.

In yet another related story, I’m pleased to see that scientists at UCL are maintaining its international standing as a serious research institution.

Can you tell I’m bored?

  August 20, 03 | Easily Amused | Closed

Home Sour Home

Recent silence is due to the severe illness of my laptop. It happens every summer when I come home – frequent freezing, blue screens of death, restarting itself (and I use Windows 98 so the Blaster worm doesn’t affect me), switching itself off, telling me “Operating system not found” when I try to start it again – and the problems magically disappear when I bring the laptop back to England. Except of course this time there’s no return to England in sight, so I think my baby is toast.

This is just great. Not only does Singapore reduce me to a miserable existence – constantly red eyes, nose won’t stop running, eczema reappears – it also targets one of the few things that makes life here bearable.

As you may have gathered, I am extremely grumpy right now.

  August 20, 03 | Singaporean Sometimes | Closed
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Poem: Peaches (Peter Davison)

What English can do: ransack
the warmth that chuckles beneath
fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet
richness, plashy juices.

– Peaches, Peter Davison

Today’s Writer’s Almanac poem is lovely. Taste it all over your mouth like wine.

  August 17, 03 | Uncategorized | Closed
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Last Legs

I just realized the last few times I meant to type “stipulated” in my international trade notes, I typed “stupilated”. Time for bed. I feel stupil.

  August 17, 03 | Londoner Forever | Closed
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One down, three to go

One down, three to go. Studying three topics for an exam where I had to answer three questions was probably not very clever, but let’s move on.

Life has been mildly more muesli, less Weetabix these past few days in that there have actually been enjoyable bits, and not everything has been dry, dull and turd-like.

I had four hours to kill between the exam and meeting people for dinner, and atavism took over – I went shopping. In the same way Gabrielle’s Greatest Hits is an inseparable part of the UK girlie shopping experience, market researchers here still seem to think tragic techno of the Forever Dance Anthems ‘98! variety is what will get those halter-neck tops flying off the shelves. Other things have changed since I was last around. There’s nothing quite like a recession for improving quality of service – I was greeted and thanked in every shop, and it even seemed sincere. There’s also Dorothy Perkins here now, which I find difficult to understand given that it makes clothes for fat English frumps and Singaporean girls tend to be none of the above.

Dinner involved Luke, Vikram, Zakir, Luke’s friend whose name I shamefully can’t remember (it was Chinese) and parts of what must have been a scary mofo of a swordfish. I went home happy.

Today was one of those rare days where most things go right. I woke up early, got to NUS in time to meet classmates and prepare for a presentation, got a decent amount of study done, and didn’t fall asleep at all at any point. I met Terry, Yish, Yen, Don and Zak to smoke hookahs on Arab Street, and for another few blissful hours exams didn’t exist.

I won’t go into a long sentimental ramble about how special old friendships can feel when you realize you haven’t seen them for a while but you still feel comfortable, conversation still flows, and you’re having a great time, but I think these few days it has been exactly those inner sentimental ramblings, and the company that inspired them, that have pulled me somewhat out of the doldrums.

  August 16, 03 | Singaporean Sometimes | Closed
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Excerpt: The Singapore Story: Memoirs Of Lee Kuan Yew

I may have had to wait four years to wrestle The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew away from the rest of my family, but at least I’m finally reading it. It’s great. Here’s a passage:

“By his unpredictable and inconsistent twists and turns, Marshall had alienated not just myself and the Liberal Socialists, but his key Labour Front members. His wanting to restart the talks to save himself was too much for them. “You cannot eat your own vomit,” as one Liberal Socialist delegate put it in vivid Hokkien. Half an hour into the meeting, Marshall knew that if he tried to resume negotiations, he would have to do so on his own. He had overplayed his hand and was isolated.

That night, he went to a performance of Madam Butterfly with Lennox-Boyd and Lady Patricia Boyd, and then on to a Spanish restaurant to dine to the tune of guitars and the stamping feet of flamenco dancers. Meanwhile, I decided to stop him from staging a recovery. At a press conference that same evening at Malaya Hall, I made it clear that the PAP would have nothing to do with a reopening of the conference. I said it was a ‘final, desperate attempt to hang on to office, a sign of incredible political ineptitude’, and rounded it off with ‘Never in the history of colonial evolution has so much humbug been enacted in so short a time by so erratic a leadership.’ “

  August 14, 03 | Uncategorized | Closed
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