Date Night

We had a date night. It involved Burger King and Bruno, and so gave rise to numerous jibes from me that we suck at date night. On the way home, we had this conversation:

Alec: I love Hungry Ghosts month. Yesterday when I was walking home with our ta pau [1. Takeaway], the guys at the bike shop were setting up their little altar outside. It had a bike wheel as its centrepiece. The boss was very strict with his employees, very particular about how he wanted the altar set up.

Me: Well of course he was! If the ghosts think you don’t give a fuck then they’ll get fucking pissed off lah!

Alec: Dear, I think maybe the Taoists would have a more sophisticated way of explaining thi…

Me: No lah! I bet if you could just understand what the boss was telling his employees in Hokkien…

Alec: He’d be saying “This altar looks like you pulled it out of your wife’s cunt”?

Me: Your mother’s smelly cunt. [2. Explained in full Hokkien glory here.]

Alec: Oh yah, sorry.

beat

Alec: Okay, you’re right. We really suck at date night.

Maybe Not Migrating Just Yet

While watching the opening scene of Once:

Me: Why the hell is he busking on such a shitty, dead street?!
Alec: That is Dublin’s main street.

Oops.

Fighting Words

I picked up this tan belt on sale at Mango recently. I like using belts to cinch my waist and draw attention away from my wide hips and large ass.

I wore it for the first time the other day and asked Alec what he thought.

Me: You didn’t notice my new belt! Do you like it?
Alec: Yeah, it’s a great belt.
Me: *beams happily*
Alec: When you wear it, you can pretend you’re the WWF champion.
Me: *seethes, considers a clothesline followed by jump off the top turnbuckle with sharpshooter to finish*

Unrelated wrestling amusement: Mick Foley reviews The Wrestler for Slate.

Unrelated fashion amusement: Elyse (still my favourite Top Model contestant ever) spots some spectacular fake Coach bag fail (scroll down).

Beau Selecta

Alec asked if he could bring me anything back from Ireland.

Sadly, my first request for my Holy Grail concealer (Almay’s Amazing Lasting) couldn’t be fulfilled, because the product’s been discontinued.

My second request was for vinyl records. Since finishing my lessons with Koflow, I’ve neither practised nor made any progress on researching a decks purchase. The latter because I’m still hung up about how it will be THE MOST EXPENSIVE THINGY I WILL EVAR HAVE BOUGHT, and the former because I feel bad about always having to borrow Koflow’s records every time I practise.

To facilitate Alec’s task, I sent him a list to work with. When he showed it to the record store guy, the record store guy gently explained that although the stuff on the list was really great and diverse, it was all over a year old and not in stock any more. (Yes, this stung.) So given that I couldn’t pull another list out of my arse at short notice, I took a huge leap of faith and said, “You know what, dear? You choose for me.”

I have not usually been the kindest judge of Alec’s taste in music and most other things, apart from his choice of a wife. If he likes music I think is good, I assume it must be because he has absorbed my impeccable taste. If he likes music I think is bad, I take this as evidence of his own actual paucity of taste. So this is a big moment for us, a mark of our maturity as a couple. Here is an example of our maturity:

Alec: Well, even if you don’t like the records I’ve bought, I like them so I’ll enjoy listening to them.
Me: Sure, you go ahead and have fun listening to them ON TURNTABLES WE DON’T HAVE! I WANT TURNTABLES BUY ME TURNTABLES PLEEEEEASE!

Alec returns on 28th September, and I await my records with trepidation. Best case scenario, they’re great practice material and stuff I can even bring along to play if I do any more public slots. Worst case scenario, the next time I do a public slot, it’s like that scene from Three Men And A Baby where they’re throwing a big party for cool people and when Tom Selleck goes to change the music he accidentally puts on Ernie singing Rubber Duckie instead and as every person in the place turns to look at him, bemused, he does this awkward non-committal little dance.

Wii Are Not Amused

Good: Having a husband who brings home a Wii from his business trip to Hong Kong.

Bad: Having a husband who, when setting up the Wii while you’re out, decides that this is the best way to depict his wife.

Wii are not amused

Hatty Birthday To Me

I used to have a big green leprechaun hat in London, a gift from Brian and Esther when a visit of theirs coincided with my birthday one year. Unfortunately, when I was leaving London and drastically pruning my possessions before shipping them back to Singapore, I ended up having to leave the hat behind. Alec promised to donate it to a needy leprechaun, but you know you can never trust these wily Irish and their meaningless promises.

But once I’d been in Singapore a while, I started to really miss my hat. I could have replaced it with one of those Guinness hats the Irish pubs give out for St Patrick’s Day, but I’m usually too busy celebrating MY DAY MINE MINE ME ME ME to be in the pub letting some snake-wrangling saint dude steal my thunder.

So when Alec asked what I’d like for my birthday, I jokingly said I wanted a Guinness hat. I was too lazy this year to throw a sequel to my 2006 Craic Whores birthday party, but someday I will, and I’ll need a good hat.

So there I was a week ago, the night of my birthday, on the way to meet Alec for a nice dinner at Senso. Alec had messaged that he was already at Maxwell hawker centre, where we’d meet and walk to Senso together. I got off the bus and walked towards the big traffic junction to cross over to Maxwell, phoning Alec to say I’d arrived. He didn’t pick up. I shrugged and figured I’d just walk into Maxwell and probably find him somewhere among the uncles nursing a beer.

I reached the junction, pressed the button to cross, and waited impatiently for a few seconds. Then I saw a man diagonally across the junction, standing very straight and tall and still, getting anything from furtive giggles to outright laughs from the locals standing around him, almost like they thought he was one of those human statues and they were trying to figure out what would happen if they tossed him 50 cents. Standing there, looking straight at me from across the junction. Wearing a Guinness hat.

[BTW, this is not the “simultaneously best and worst present ever” I mentioned earlier. Still working on an entry about that one, photos are crucial and I might even try a video.]

Pretty Good Year

My mother started 2008 in hospital with dengue fever, so until she was discharged yesterday I really didn’t have the mental wherewithal for any sort of goodbye 2007, hello 2008 blog entries. It was as much as I could do to monitor her condition, do what was necessary at work for a lotsamillion$ deal we signed yesterday, and fill the gaps in between with especially escapist TV.

In any case, it’s pretty obvious that getting married to Alec was the best thing that happened to me in 2007. He started 2008 by spending hours keeping my mum company in hospital (he’s starting a new job soon and had a few days free) and cooking me lovely dinners when I came home at night exhausted from stress. I will cut the mush because I’ve already given you enough of that before, but I am continually amazed at how I managed to luck out with this man.

I’m looking forward to the year ahead. I loved our wedding and it was totally worth all the planning hassle, but ironically one of the best things about finally being married is that we now have far more time and energy to devote to our individual hobbies, which of course also includes ridiculing each other about the lameness of said hobbies. Also reading, which is the perfect excuse to ignore each other entirely, and TV, which allows us to pretend we are spending quality time together when we actually are not. Marriage rocks, guys.

Every time I resolve in writing here to do something I inevitably fail to do so, but I think sharing these three things will be safe enough. I’ve already started on the first two, and the third is so wimpy that it is a cop-out from any actual brave resolution-making.

  1. Make more stuff with my imagination and hands:
    The Internet’s record of the crafting renaissance suggests that being inept and mediocre at this doesn’t discourage lots of other people. Inspiring!
  2. Become less financially clueless:
    Because continuing to let my life savings languish in a POSB savings account seems really, really, stupid.
  3. Exercise more than I did in 2007:
    This is easy, because I did fuck-all in 2007.

What are your resolutions, if any? (If they are actually worthwhile and will make me look pathetic, please don’t share them.)

Alecversary

Two conversations from the weekend:

#1

While discussing this recent post (where the comments closed before I found the time to write a proper response to Jol’s comment and I can’t figure out how to turn them back on, argh!), I brought up Jol’s impression that Christian ethics involve the belief that people can be banished to Hell for failing to believe.

Me: It’s definitely not anything I’ve ever been taught in all my years of Catholic education and weekly churchgoing. Did they teach you that in Ireland?
Alec: Of course not!
Me, satisfied: Good, I thought as much.
Alec: In school they taught us we were all going to Hell. For wanking.
Me: ……
Alec: It makes God blind or something.

#2

Alec, sulking: I didn’t have enough time to linger in the library, so I had to just run to the section nearest to the door and grab some books to borrow.
Me: Aw, that’s a pity.
Alec: Yah! So all my authors literally start with B, but because I didn’t even get enough time to go look for Batman, I had to settle for Brecht instead.
Me: Batman is not an author.
Alec: Yes he is. He’s an author OF DESTINY.

I just realized on Sunday night that back on November 6th, our sixth anniversary as a couple came and went and we didn’t even remember it. It’s hard to believe we just forgot a day we used to celebrate quite dutifully, but we weren’t too bothered. I’ll try to remember it next year (any excuse for a nice meal), though in many ways it feels like the importance of that date to us has been overwhelmingly superceded by the new life we now get to enjoy together on a daily basis.

Anyway, just so I can say I did something to celebrate having this lovely man to myself for 6 years now, I hereby rename the sub-category formerly and boringly called just “Alec”, repository of classic Alec stories like Spandex Party Boy and the particularly ugly bird, to “Alecdotes”, with all credit for the name due to James (for coining it in his best man speech at our wedding party).

Gettin’ Down To Catchin’ Up

Perhaps my longest absence ever, but let’s look on the bright side, I probably won’t disappear like this again till the divorce. I’ll leave gushing about the wedding & honeymoon to future posts – the point of this one is just to flex long-idle blog muscles (ow ow ow) and reassure you that now I’m married I no longer have to spend quality time with Alec on stuff like meaningful conversations and showing love and support. I can instead devote myself to aimless websurfing, calculating how many maids I can afford to sub-contract for that whole child-rearing thing and generally letting myself go.

(Kidding! I’ll just make Alec pay for the maids.)

(OK, OK, still kidding! It’s just that jokes like these don’t seem to go down very well with people when we make them in real life so I’m using this as an outlet.)

Since returning from our honeymoon we’ve unfortunately had to work pretty long hours. Spare time has been spent converting a tall ang moh’s “gentleman’s-club-influenced” bachelor pad into a marital home capable of housing a small Chinese wife with crippling Internet addiction and a penchant for bright colours.

Now that the teabags are no longer stored 2m off the ground, our next priority is making sure everyone who helped with our wedding knows just how grateful we are, because distracted thank yous and hastily dispensed gifts on our wedding day are really not enough.

And once that’s sorted, we’ll finally, hopefully, get some time to reconnect with all our personal joys again before we become one of those boring couples whose main interests are each other. I’m so out of touch with music at the moment that I don’t even know who the latest overhyped mediocre Internet indie sensation is, and Alec hasn’t worn spandex in public for months. And as for you, dear readers, if there are even any of you left, please keep popping in! I can’t pretend I just write this for me – if I did, I’d keep it on my hard drive – and although I’ll need to put in some work to make it worth your while to keep reading, I’m really hoping you won’t give up on me just yet.

Big Day Coming

It’s just over a year now that Alec and I got engaged, and in less than a week’s time we will be married. Perhaps that’s why I’m a little emotional on the subject, but my sappiness shouldn’t detract from this guy’s amazing proposal, which has now “spoiled market” for the entire male population of the Internet.

I teared while watching it, mostly when I saw the surprise and then giddy joy on his girlfriend’s face as she realized what was happening, but also a little bit when I tried to imagine our wedding day, this Saturday.

It certainly won’t be as cool as whatever that other couple will eventually do, but we’ve put a lot of effort into organizing a celebration that we would enjoy attending ourselves, and have received so much generous and enthusiastic support along the way from friends and family that I almost feel like lots of things could go wrong on Saturday and it wouldn’t really matter.

With a few days to go though, it’s still worth putting in some effort to make things go right, so although I wanted to pop in and mention this, I’m not sure if I’ll have time for another entry before the wedding. If I don’t manage it, I’ll see you on the other side.

(And just to show you I haven’t completely lost my edge, I’ve retained my lame practice of using indie rock references as blog entry titles.)