Personal – Page 15

The Tyranny Of Distance

So Alec arrived on Friday, and this is how we spent the weekend.

Friday: Dinner and drinks at the beach (Peperoni, then Beach Hut).

Saturday: Hainanese chicken rice for lunch, siesta, meandering frivolously through Far East Plaza, quick dinner in the fabulous Plaza Singapura food court before watching The Sea Inside.

Sunday: Wakeboarding (attempts) at Punggol, curry lunch at the Banana Leaf place on Ceylon Road, siesta, Mass, Eurasian dinner at Casa Bom Vento, Tiger Cup support (YAY!) over beer/stout/pork scratchings.

Perhaps you wonder – after a year and a half of long distance, they’re finally reunited for the foreseeable future, and that’s how they spend their first weekend together again? Sounds pretty much like how any couple in Singapore would spend any weekend, doesn’t it? Where be the lavish celebrations?

The thing is, the best thing about this weekend was precisely its total normality. The most unnatural thing about long distance relationships – where time differences, telecommunications costs, and fleeting holidays rigidly define your time together – is how difficult it can become sometimes to just enjoy the moment without feeling the pressure to make the most of it.

Normal couples enjoy luxuries, perhaps without even realizing it, that we haven’t really had for one and a half years. Wasting an afternoon away napping. Good night kisses. Being able to do things which are totally devoid of local cultural merit, instead of feeling guilty that Alec’s spending holiday time in the exotic Orient watching a European arthouse film in an air-conditioned mall cinema. Making whatever stupid remark we think of at the time we think of it rather than having to try and remember it for later. After a while of this I’m sure we’ll start missing our trendy London Shoreditch twatness again, but for now we’re just happy being heartlanders together in Katong. (Don’t worry, I won’t lose my edge. To prove it the title of this post is yet another indiegeeky music reference.)

And going back to stupid remarks, here are Alec and Michelle Reunited’s hard-hitting views on the profound issues encountered in our first weekend back together.

On Modesty
Me: I’m a bit doubtful about this bikini, what if it shifts when I fall in and I don’t realize it’s given way?
Alec: You’ll realize pretty soon.

On Acronyms
(Alec is considering volunteering at Riding For The Disabled)
Alec: What’s the web address again? RCA dot com dot sg?
Me: Um, I think that would be RDA. Given that it is called Riding for the Disabled and not Riding for the Cisabled.

On Fiscal Discipline
Me: Okay, so apart from wakeboarding tomorrow and swing camp in February, we’ll have a frugal lifestyle with no other extravagances. Right?
Alec: Except if something really good comes up.
Me: Exactly.

Thou Shalt Not Say Anything About Anything

The following unspoken rules characterise most of the conversations I have had with the law students who have surrounded me since my return to Singapore. (Though obviously there are exceptions, who should know who they are.)

If asked what you did over the weekend (which is rare) it is acceptable to state the title of the movie you watched, or the club you went to. But be so bold as to actually venture an opinion of the activity you participated that goes beyond “Yah, not bad lah, quite fun” and all of a sudden you’re the weird one, because no one actually gives a shit what you think, especially when you do weird things that they’ve never heard of or considered doing.
Personal information beyond the most mundane facts eg. “I have a cat” or the most trite statements “It’s important to try and still have a life even though we’re working” is unnecessarily revelatory and must be kept top secret. If someone is asking you about yourself, answer in monosyllables. Perhaps they have an ulterior motive. If they continue to try to draw you out (the flaming cheek!) answer in banalities to bore them into submission.
Never give in. These upstarts must learn.

I am getting more socially awkward among these people by the day, because I don’t know how to behave. In England I behaved as confidently and talkatively as I felt like being on a given day. I met my best friend within freshers’ week, and within a month he told me things about himself he had never dared to confide in any other friend. In my public debating debut at the UCL Debating Society, I argued for the legalization of hardcore pornography, accused the other side of wanking under the table instead of listening to my team’s case, and rejected one guy’s incessant points of information by telling him he’d ejaculated quite enough. The club embraced me. In the pub, I let on that I was a practising Catholic. The club still embraced me. Throughout my time there I was an oddity, Chinese and female and Catholic in a club that was predominantly white and male and degenerate, but I never felt it.

But what worked so well for me in England seems to be anathema here, in my “homeland” where I should feel anything but an oddity. Confidence is overconfidence. Chattiness is met by reticence and suspicion. Before I went to England, I knew all this. I dealt with it by acting shyer than I really was, which seemed to make other people more comfortable with me. Since returning to Singapore, I’ve reverted to that old strategy, and I try to follow the rules when I actually know what they are, but it terrifies me. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I have become my disguise.

I really want to believe that all these people have great personalities which they just choose to keep hidden. Perhaps they have Personality Parties on the weekend, where they let it all hang out, and then button their stuffed shirts up for the week ahead, and I just haven’t been invited to these parties. Perhaps every dull statement made is actually code for “On the weekend I had a threesome and one of us was a goat.” But if so, why stay locked in this vicious cycle of conversational nothingness, where I say nothing because I think they’re boring and they say nothing because they think I’m boring?

Some days I wish I just had Tourette’s syndrome. That’d be a great excuse to break the fucking ice.

Coming Across Her Naughty Bits

You know you’re stressed when, while preparing a research document on the passing of property and risk in carriage of goods by sea, you start smiling every time you come across references to “ship’s flange”.

(Non-shipping lawyers: The flange is a part of the ship. Property and risk in goods are often agreed to pass from seller to buyer as they are moved across it in the process of loading.)

(Non-Brits see here for double-meaning.)

You know you’re stressed but bored when the next thing you do is a global search-and-replace of “flange” with “minge”.

You know you’re stressed, bored and playing with fire when the third thing you do is a Google search for “minge” in order to provide another definition for non-Brits, and then break into giggles at the results. I present:

The Black Forest Of Katong

There I was, standing awkwardly outside Katong Mall at 11 pm on Boxing Day, having just been told by the mall security guard and the 7-11 staff that they were absolutely sure there was no Black Forest Bar in the basement, and in fact that the entire building was closed.

At this point I was sorely tempted to go home, since the wisdom of scouring the dodgy bars of Katong (basically, that would be all the bars of Katong, and there are lots of them) in search of a random ang moh I only knew on the Internet seemed debatable to say the least. Also, the ah peks in the coffee shop across the road were giving me curious glances, even though I was dressed quite conservatively because of a party I’d attended earlier. Also, I had a geography teacher in school who we used to call Black Forest for puerile reasons (it wasn’t racial), and the words still make me giggle.

So there I was. And then suddenly, I spotted a sheet of paper stuck to a wall, with Black Forest Bar and a down arrow scribbled on it, and a little stick figure turntablist. I followed the arrow into the bowels of the building, and when I heard Dizzee Rascal in the distance I knew I’d finally found the right place.

I was a little shy, because it’s always weird meeting an Internet person in real life, and I didn’t drink enough to really reduce my inhibitions either. This was, however, a good thing when Jacob played The Knife’s Heartbeats, because that always makes me imagine thrashing around in suffocating black velvet. Anyway, Jacob and his friends were a lot of fun. I wasn’t just impressed by his record-playing choices, but also his karaoke choices, which included Lemon Tree and It’s A Small World After All. This is clearly an ang moh who truly understands the joy of karaoke.

I’ve never sung karaoke in a bar area, just the tacky faux-opulent private rooms in lounges, but I wasn’t spared. After telling J my number one song for the year was Toxic, I later found it cued up on the karaoke system and the mike thrust into my hand. I did my best but without the air stewardess uniform I felt like a phony. I followed this by mauling half of An Jing with my speech-defect-quality Chinese, and belting out All Out Of Love with Joe Ng. The thought crossed my mind at some point that I was singing karaoke with a voice that had been played on John Peel. My geekiness deepens by the day.

Oh, and Black Forest Bar is unbelievable. It has a pond with actual fish in it, and fake greenery everywhere, and it’s almost completely empty. Alec, the next time you come here I’ve got another so-shit-it’s-lovely bar to take you to!

Exactitude

After the ang moh food overload of Christmas, we headed to Joo Chiat today for belachan chicken, claypot seafood beancurd, sweet potato leaves, and, my favourite, fried lard with a bit of tau chio fish on the side. There’s been a lot of talk lately about Geylang spreading its Tentacles of Vice into Joo Chiat, but I didn’t really notice any more sleazy KTV bars and massage parlours there than there always have been.

However, the shop across the street from Joo Heng was called “Purplish Trading”, which made me happy.

Born This Happy Morning

Apart from when I saw Nick Cave sing The Mercy Seat live, the music that has made me battle tears in public most often has always been sacred music. (Okay, also God Only Knows at the end of Love, Actually, but that’s kind of sacred too.) It’s the same with weddings – in church weddings I often feel like I’m about to cry when the couple is pronounced man and wife, but in the first secular wedding I attended I was shocked to realize that it didn’t touch me anywhere as much, or feel as meaningful. (To me, that is, of course I know it was deeply meaningful to the couple.)

Today in Mass during O Come All Ye Faithful, as the organ arpeggioed up towards “Glory to God! Glory in the highest!” and as the music softened down again for “O come let us adore Him” I had to close my eyes and stop singing. There’s no cool way to say this, and I guess some of you would rather I get back to talking about stuff like how I start every day with Satan, or my gay-soaked childhood, but at that moment I felt stunned by His glory, without which I really am nothing. Despite more than a year of feeling almost completely disconnected from Mass in Singapore, I imagined my life if I continued to keep God out of it, and it felt empty.

That’s all. Merry Christmas, everyone. We now return you to this site’s regularly scheduled blips of indie music blathering, frivolous vulgarity and cat pictures.

Dedication

On one of the first few pages of the latest edition of Street on Torts: This book is dedicated to Lukas, though I hope he never gets the urge to read it.

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.

From the bar, looking towards the door

On the wall next to the bar

A close-up of the door grill, including the pack of stray chairs which lurk outside

Youngest Fag Hag In The World

My two oldest guy friends are Ken and Roy. (Well, I had a good friend called Cavan Wee in kindergarten, but we lost touch once we entered primary school. Email me if you ever read this, Cavan!) We all lived in the same condo. I spent countless hours of my childhood with them.

Last night, the following exchange of text messages took place:
Ken (Think I deleted this message, so I’m paraphrasing): Am at Mox now and you’ll never guess who I’ve just run into. Roy! He’s gay and out!
Me: My childhood just got a lot weirder.
Ken: He says you’ve been a fag hag since five.
Me: When we were kids I was totally more manly than you guys.
Ken: We agree.
Me: Our repeated viewings of Ms Universe are easily understood now. Less easy are our SMALL METAL PLANE MODEL BEAUTY PAGEANTS…ask him to explain.

(You can read Ken’s account here.)

It is somewhat ironic, in hindsight, that at our condo playground neither of them dared to slide down the pole.

Lord Denning Cuts The Crap

Lord Denning begins his judgment in Buttes Gas and Oil Co v Hammer and others [1980] 3 All ER 475 with this:

“Abu Musa is a small island in the Arabian Gulf. Early in 1970 oil was discovered nine miles off its shore. Each of two American oil companies claimed the right to exploit it. They started litigating about it in October 1970. Now ten years later the action is nowhere near trial. It has only reached the stage of discovery of documents. On this interlocutory point the argument before us took nine days, with five leading counsel and as many juniors. We have had excursions into the law of the sea, of territorial waters and the continental shelf, into sovereign immunity and diplomatic immunity, into the rules of court and goodness knows what else. No expense has been spared. No stone left unturned. McNeill J in the court below exploded. Even at that stage, when the application was before him, he said that the length of the proceedings was ‘outrageous and comes perilously near to an abuse of the process of the court’. Even more when it reaches us nearly a year later. Still we must go on with it. It looks like outdoing Jarndyce v Jarndyce (see Dickens, Bleak House) except that these litigants are not likely to run out of money.”

And ends with this:

“I return to where I started. This is merely an application for discovery of documents. Yet it has taken the master, the judge and the Court of Appeal many days of argument and many pages of judgments. All the territorial matters under discussion have passed into history. They were settled by international agreement eight years ago. The continental shelf of the Arabian Gulf has been apportioned out. The oil revenues have been divided by agreement. All that is left is this interminable action arising out of a speech by Dr Armand Hammer on 5 October 1970 at the Great Eastern Hotel in London. It is high time to let bygones be bygones. I would not allow any further discovery by either side. Let these two oil companies fight it out as best they can with such materials as they have available or can get hold of. By subpoena or otherwise. There is quite enough of it in all conscience. Take out a summons for directions. Either side can demand that it be tried by a jury. I pity the jury. Set the action down for trial at once. Let it hang about no longer. For goodness sake get rid of it one way or the other.”

Lord Denning rOxOrs so hard sometimes.