The Mitre Experience

It takes a special sort of person to appreciate the Mitre Hotel, which is why the only people I’ve ever taken there have been the Orgers and Alec. Last week a second Orger outing was organized by Don and Yen, who hadn’t had the “Mitre experience” yet but were determined to before the place either got a) more popular or b) razed to the ground by order of the public safety powers that be. And of course, as we knew they would, they loved it. (Read Yen’s love here.)

We perched on the dusty couches, sipped our sub-$4 beers, and talked about ghosts. (Terry and Don had just seen Shutter and were impressed.) At first we were the only ones there. Later, a couple swam into view, apparitions emerging from the black deeps beyond the porch lights. At some point a dog started howling in the distance.

I forgot to bring my camera this time, so these pictures are from when I took Alec there. They’ve been left fairly dark and dingy rather than sexed up too much in Photoshop, but still don’t even come close to evoking the atmosphere of the place – they lack the creepy walk up the driveway, the smell of musty decay, the feel of the brittle upholstery crunching beneath you as you sit down and crane your neck at the gaping holes in the ceiling.

Interior of Mitre Hotel bar
From the bar, looking towards the door
Mitre Cat
On the wall next to the bar
Old Door Grill
A close-up of the door grill, including the pack of stray chairs which lurk outside

Water With Stuff Floating In It

This is the photograph I have been trying to take for years. To all my long-suffering friends who have had to stand around patiently while I interrupt whatever we’re doing, stare intently at water with stuff floating in it, and start snapping away, this is what I was actually trying to achieve.

And now that I’ve seen the promised land, I’m afraid I’ll just have to continue asking for your indulgence. If, one day, I take a photo like that one, it will all have been worth it, won’t it?

Chicago Bean, File Magazine

Shit.

It would be easy to sit back and laugh at America, to say they’ve made their bed and now they must lie in it, except for the small fact that the rest of us in this world are also uneasy and involuntary bedfellows with that retard and his appetite for destruction. Also, all the American bloggers I read happen to be Democrats (pure coincidence, since all I ever look for in a blog is intelligent and interesting writing, not political affiliation. Go figure) and the genuine anguish I am reading all down my bookmark list makes my heart go out to them.

But enough of ugliness and depression for now. No doubt there will be much more of that to come in the four years ahead. Here are some happy pictures instead:

Chicago was never particularly high on the list of cities I’d like to go to in America some day (let’s make that some day more than four years from now), until I found out about Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture, also known as the Chicago Bean. And fell completely in love.

FILE Magazine publishes “images that treat subjects in unexpected ways.” I read a lot of online photography zines, and this is the one I keep coming back to. There are so many photographs I love at this site that it would really be pointless to list them all, but here is a shortlist of five:

Sibu

Was great, by the way.

Sibu at sunset

Wish I had time to write more about our weekend in Sibu, Alec’s adventures in Singapore, MY NEW IPOD MY NEW IPOD MY NEW IPOD THANK YOU ALEC, the joy that was White Chicks, and our plans for next week. But I don’t, unfortunately.

(So happy.)

When Brain Dead, Seek Pretty Pretty Pictures

My friend Tony takes pictures I like.

  • I saw the Waterstone’s building on Gower Street every day for four years, and until the day I left I never stopped noticing new light conditions and angles from which its beauty could surprise me. Tony’s photograph captures another of these surprises.
  • I also really like this one of the detergent aisle in Safeway – talk about finding magic in the mundane.
  • Finally, this abandoned deckchair on an empty Rhodes beach is just utterly gorgeous.

Every day at wordphoto.org, a new word is picked and people submit photos which that word inspired them to take. Recent words I’ve rather enjoyed have been bend, invasive and point.

And finally, I just want to say that I can’t imagine what I’d do with a digital Rolleiflex, especially since its current technical specifications aren’t very high, but good God it’s beautiful.

All My Pretty Ones

It is rare that I watch a Colin Firth movie for sources of eyecandy other than him, but Girl With A Pearl Earring is just that beautiful.

Other things that are beautiful, and which will not cost you $6.50 to enjoy on a weeknight, are this photograph out of many others at this exceptionally well-designed site (in Japanese, but you can’t have everything), and these recent black and white photographs Scott (of erasing.org) took in an empty airport at night.

I want you all to have something beautiful to look at. I’ve been video-chatting with Alec a lot these past few days, and am feeling everyone else deserves visual treats too.

[Addendum: Random surfing just yielded an audio clip of Anne Sexton reading the poem this entry is named after. If you’re a fan, treat yourself. If you’re not, become one.]

Reflection

In Bruges I photographed the reflection of a medieval building in a gleaming red car hood. It’s one of my favourite pictures that I’ve taken, but I think this puts mine to shame.

East Coast Afternoon

The weather’s been moody the past week with sulks and squalls every now and then, and on Saturday in the car on the way to Pasir Ris every drop of rain seemed to think it was a kamikaze pilot seeking final glorious death on the windscreen, but yesterday, yesterday it was breathtakingly sunny, and I got lured outdoors.

The Marine Parade library’s one of the best ways to enjoy a beautiful day – tall glass walls let the light in, but air-conditioning and frappucinos protect you from the heat. On a Monday afternoon you escape the Sunday crowds, but there are just enough people to give it a contented buzz, more than enough comfy chairs to go round, and no queue at the Starbuck’s. I was disciplined and kept my four book limit in mind when scouring the shelves, instead of the way I usually end up staggering around with over ten books, most of which I later have to discard sadly, and settled down happily for the next two hours or so.

Final choices: The Passion (Jeanette Winterson), The Eye In The Door (Pat Barker), and the Lonely Planet guide to Turkey. I still had Let’s Go Greece 2001 on my card from two weeks ago, so that made four.

While waiting for the bus, I took a patriotic picture – the walkway in the public housing estate was festooned with flags in preparation for National Day, which is on 9 August. Lately our public housing estates have been looking more and more like condominiums, but the old building in this one does actually correspond with more typical ideas of “public housing”.

At my bus stop I decided it was still too pretty outside to go home, and walked to Katong Shopping Centre for black economy delights. If you’re Singaporean, you’ll know what I mean by this. If you’re not, let’s just say that in certain stores here they sell lots of flat shiny things with lots of other people’s intellectual/artistic property on them for very low prices. At least, that’s what I go there to buy. I daresay the middle-aged men in certain sections of the shops trying to conceal their salivation and callused right hands were after pleasures neither intellectual nor artistic.

I took the long way home, walking along the entrance to the expressway, and was conveniently informed that when I leave here for London on August 31, it’ll only take me 9 minutes to get to the airport. I love this home, but I still can’t wait to get back to that one.

Street Photography Shyness

Strange: walking around Singapore with the digital camera, I see things I want to photograph, but feel shy about doing so, whereas I’d snap away without a second thought in London. I tried to pinpoint the source of this reticence, and kept hearing this little voice going “don’t look at me like that, I’m not a tourist, God forbid that I should be mistaken for a foreigner in my own country…”

I suppose this makes some sort of sense. In London I take it for granted that people see me as a foreigner, so walking around acting like a tourist changes nothing. The thing that puzzles me is that this Singapore shyness is extremely uncharacteristic – usually, if people are looking at me, the temptation is to mess further with their heads.

The sillliest thing of all, of course, is that this is what’s most likely to happen: Michelle plucks up courage, takes photo. Starts stewing in the juices of cultural discomfort, “aretheylookingatme? arepeoplelooking? what can I do to subtly show I’m not a foreigner but just someone walking around taking photos, DAMMIT, is that so strange?”. Average Singaporean walking by on the street gives her a casual glance, and forgets her the next nanosecond. His next thought is “Eh, where to makan tonight ah?” (Singlish translation: makan = eat, eh and ah = exclamations we add on beginnings and endings of sentences, just…because.)

This all means I should stop being silly and unMichellian.