I wish I’d found the time this week to tell you about watching Womb Raider at the olde curiosity shoppe that is the Yangtze Cinema, or muse about the tumbleweed silence that follows whenever I tell people that I enjoyed the sex scene in Brokeback Mountain and wish there had been more, but unfortunately I didn’t, and this weekend it’s SEAjam time again.
I will regrettably be much more inept at this one than I was at last year’s. I’m totally out of practice and unfit these days, which means that last year’s goal of dancing with Frankie Manning is pretty much off the cards this time. Being wholly outdanced by a 92-year-old man is fine, but I’d rather not have him carry me fainting off the dancefloor.
But anyway, I just wanted to say that I know this blog’s been rather meh lately, and I do intend to pick things up again once my work/life balance improves. Or rather, once I TAKE POSITIVE STEPS TO IMPROVE my work/life balance. I read my first ever self-help book recently, can you guess?
I don’t know if this is already all over the Singapore blogs or not, but it made me burst out laughing at my computer and I hope it does the same to you too. Via Notchet, Google is setting up a Paypal-equivalent service.
It’s called Gbuy.
[Non-Hokkien speakers, see here.]
I was in the bus this morning, listening to M83’s Before The Dawn Heals Us for the first time in over a year, and all of a sudden I got it in my head that A Guitar And A Heart is rather like the ending half of November Rain.
Is this just a desperate abstraction thrown up by a mind that wants to be anywhere else than Monday morning, or do you think I actually have a point? This is driving me mad, I’ve listened to the M83 song 3 times at work already but it’ll be more than 12 hours before I can get home and dig out my old GNR best-of mixtape (which is TEH AWESOME by the way, no one better be hatin’), and in the meantime I can’t decide for sure.
Singapore’s extreme humidity is generally a bad thing for me.
The eczema I’d had my entire life here disappeared completely for the 4 years I was in England, only to return with a vengeance almost as soon as I returned.
I trekked happily through Turkish desert heat with no problems, but every time I perspire here I break out in heat rash.
In England my hair is capable of being fairly attractive. In Singapore it is an unmanageable mess of frizzy curls unless regularly and expensively fried to within an inch of its life.
When I was giving my flat in London the final massive clean before moving out, I spent days surrounded by dust-thick air with not a single adverse reaction. In Singapore the mere act of sweeping or vacuuming renders me snot-nosed (or more accurately, sdot-dosed) for the next hour.
By now I bet you think this is another of my pointless I-hate-Singapore rants and are beginning to think that this blog has seriously jumped the shark.
HOWEVER!
None of the above is the point of this post at all. It is all merely prelude to my referring you to this discussion on static electricity and the stroking of cats, which has given me the first reason ever to be grateful for humidity.
Yay humidity. Yay fingers and faces buried in warm fur, yay little damp noses on smile-plumped cheeks, yay purring shock-free footrests. Sparks fly daily between my family and this beauty, but they’re all metaphorical.
Regular readers of this site may be aware that I keep a fruitless and ultimately masochistic vigil over what’s happening in London. Normally, finding out that I could watch Calexico and Iron & Wine at the Forum if I were in London on 23 April would be a KNNBCCB moment.
But tonight I’m actually able to take it philosophically, because on 23 April I shall be returning from a trip to Hanoi with Alec, the only travel beyond Bintan and KL we’ll have done together since he moved here.¹ Needless to say I’m very much looking forward to it, and if you’ve got any Hanoi travel tips, do share!
And if you’re in London, GO AND WATCH CALEXICO AND IRON & WINE OR I’LL KICK YO’ ASS.
¹ This isn’t at all from want of trying or interest, it’s just that circumstances have conspired in the worst of ways in the past year to prevent us travelling for any decent length of time together. First I was doing my pupillage, which you can’t take leave from. Then I finished my pupillage but he’d just started a new job, so I went travelling in Europe alone. Then he was finally able to take leave but I’d just started my new job, so he went travelling in Europe alone. But from April onwards we should finally be able to start escaping Singapore on a regular basis, and thank God for that.
The first sign I’ve been out of England too long came a while ago. I was in a conversation with someone about British conceptual artists and drew a temporary blank on someone I really should have remembered instantly. “You know…the stroppy one…really minging…lives in Shoreditch…put her bed on display with used condoms and stained underwear…fuckfuckfuckwhoisit…TRACY EMIN! How could I forget Tracy Emin??!!”
The second sign I’ve been out of England too long was during a conversation with Alec and Benny where we were reminiscing about London music venues.
Benny: Where was that place we saw Public Enemy again?
Me: Um…er…dammit I can’t believe I can’t remember the name. Alec, it’s the same place we saw Fugazi. What was the name?
Alec: Uh…hmm…oh feck I can’t remember either.
Benny: Northern line tube station.
Alec: A few stops above Camden, I think.
Me: In a dodgy area. But the venue was beautiful, probably a converted old theatre.
Benny: …
Alec: …
Me: …
All: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
[Ten minutes later, when we had totally moved on in the conversation]
Me: I GOT IT! The Forum! In Kentish Town! Thank God!
[Yes, we are dorks.]
And the third sign I’ve been out of England too long came today, when I read this transcript of a recent speech made by Rowan Atkinson and wondered in a fit of obvious idiocy why on earth the Archbishop of Canterbury was making a speech opposing the religious hatred bill.
Tired out from all the Chinese New Year socializing we’d had to do, Alec and I decided to spend Monday just relaxing together. In hindsight, going to Little India and Mustafa Centre on a public holiday was probably not the best way to achieve relaxation and tranquility, but we had a great time.
Alec was happy because he managed to score enough cheap razor blades to last him longer than his testosterone’s actual lifespan. I was happy because I got some Nando’s sauce for $2.90, and pictures of the following wonderful products:
iBod?
At first glance you might think this box contains beauty supplies of some sort – stockings, tacky makeup or the like.
But you’d be wrong.
Not quite Granny Smiths.
I like the subtle dig at Maybelline in this next product’s packaging. Plus, of course, the total WTFOMGness of the text.
Are you colognesome tonight?
(Previous Mustafa product joy captured here.)
