One of the other lawyers was teaching me how to research a ship.
Lawyer X: Okay, so if you can’t find it in Lloyd’s Register or the online sources, that probably means it’s –
Me: PIRATES!
Lawyer X, looking at me strangely: – not a vessel involved in international trade.
Me: Ah, yes.
I think I need to curb my enthusiasm a bit more.
One down, a lifetime more of heavy-lidded days to go. I’ve started work. Many rude shocks were involved with today. Waking up before noon. Being forced to use Internet Explorer, in which this blog looks like ass. (To everyone who views this site through IE, I’m not actually as mentally, structurally and aesthetically challenged as that browser makes this blog look.) Being told by my friend that my recent haircut, which I thought was subdued enough to help me blend into corporate zombiedom, is apparently still noticeably funky.
On the bus ride home I was trying to persuade myself to listen to happy harmonizing Northerners but found I was more in the mood for dark starburst guitars and a voice like a cracked slab of concrete. I know everyone says Antics sounds too much like Turn On The Bright Lights, but discussions on musical evolution and the sophomore album are really quite irrelevant when you’re teetering in a crowded bus with your iPod volume too high, heading home on the first day of the rest of your downhill life, because when the chorus hits in Evil, and Paul Banks announces “You’re WEIGHTless, you are exOTic, you need something for which to care” – for a moment, you almost forget where you are.
And so, on Friday, my life as a student finally ended. As usual, given that I’d had about two hours’ sleep the night before, I didn’t mark the end of exams with anything even vaguely hedonistic. I had a nice lunch with my mum, went to the library (due to exam stress there was a ONE WEEK period where I didn’t have any library books out, and it was terrible. I filled the void by rereading Watchmen, but I always like having something new and sexy along with my old comfy reads) and then to Waraku where I enjoyed ordering my first kaminabe (yes, I still find silly coincidences of language like this funny).
Apart from my fuck-yo-mamma steamboat, I was pleased to find a selection of “froats” in their drinks menu. (Edit: Picture added! Here.) After considering the charms of various froats, I eventually made the mistake of choosing alcohol instead and going with an oolong tea-maccha liqueur mix, which tasted like Pokka green tea I could buy from 7-11 except that it cost about 8 times the price. Ida ordered a dessert called “Pear for the Voluptuous” and I made a cruel joke. At one point the conversation turned to dreams. I said I often dreamt about my teeth falling out, and everyone was certain it meant something, though they weren’t sure what. I said I often dreamt about being chased by a shadowy figure, and everyone was certain it meant something, though they weren’t sure what. Then Fay said she had dreamt about being chased by the shadow of a penis.
I didn’t vote for Will in Pop Idol 1 because I was running a debating tournament on the day of the finals. I couldn’t vote for Fantasia in American Idol 3 because duh, I wasn’t in America. I’ve never voted in an election in Singapore because until recently my MP was the Prime Minister and my constituency was walkoverland. So tonight I took all the votes I’d never cast in my life and threw them all at Taufik.
Taufik Batisah, for the amount of money I spent voting for you tonight I could have bought a brand new Devendra Banhart CD at HMV’s usual exorbitant import price BUT IT WAS ALL SO WORTH IT BECAUSE YOU WON, CONGRATULATIONS TAUFIK BATISAH!!!!!
NON-MALAYS FOR TAUFIK, BIG UP YOURSELVES!!!
[The final was actually rather bad. Both of them seemed worn out, and who could blame them. I would be worn out too if you expected me to sing The Reason and All For Love and look as if I was enjoying it. Sylvester was unmitigatedly terrible on It’s My Life, Taufik’s voice sounded strained for the first time ever on the new song, and oh yes, the new song is really lousy.]
But anyway. In every Idol competition I’ve watched, my favourite has won, which is nice. It must suck to lose. Then again, I’ve always thought it must also suck to appear on national television doing incredibly moronic smirks and juvenile rock posturing, but apparently that didn’t seem to bother Sylvester much. As much as I cuss and swear along the way about the superficiality of the Idol public, it does usually seem to get it right in the end. Yay for talent!
My Civil Procedure paper was wild. Two fiendishly long questions and 40 short questions in 3 hours, each one of which involved frenetic flipping and re-flipping through voluminous notes and statutes, with an exhausted mind that had gone completely blank. I don’t know why anyone even bothers with extreme sports when they could be getting their adrenaline rushes from doing death-defying examinations in Civil Procedure.
So anyway, after an indulgent dinner at Michelangelo (Me: This panna cotta is so wonderful, it’s solid cream! Everyone else: Michelle, that just sounds really gross), I was reading IS on the bus home and found finally, finally, a DJ at Zouk who I’d bother leaving the house for! Meat Katie! He was there last Saturday. Kan ni na.¹
I have to echo Laces’ plea for Zouk to bring in some interesting DJs and stop being so goddamn pedestrian. I want Diplo and Michael Mayer too. Also DJ/Rupture. Also Akufen. Amon Tobin. The Scratch Perverts. And world peace.
As I do every now and then, I was surfing around to find out how London is, and found out that DJ/Rupture was at 93 Feet East with Supersoul on Sunday, Ty is at Cargo tomorrow, and Eclectic Method are doing weekly video mashups at Herbal.
Again I am reminded of my grim theory that if the amount I saw and did over four years in London is anything to go by, the amount I’ll have missed this past year and over the next six is just…depressing. Then why, you shriek in aggravation, do you keep CHECKING UP ON WHAT YOU’RE MISSING, MASOCHIST? The answer is: because one of my biggest fears is ignorance. I would rather know what’s going on where things actually happen, even as it makes me chafe at my limited options here, than escape back to London years from now and be completely out of touch with everything that used to excite me so much.
In the meantime, I’m sitting at my computer listening to Amon’s Solid Steel Presents and shouting KAN NI NA to a funky beat.
¹ Definition here
During previous exam study periods, my walls have been adorned with post-its bearing various motivational messages such as “A 2-1 IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH”, “YOU CAN’T WRITE ESSAYS ABOUT ____________ (whatever book I was absorbed in at the time) CAN YOU??” and “STOP PLAYING DOPE WARS”. They worked.
This time I wanted to quote Dizzee from Stand Up Tall, but then realized that my mum wouldn’t take too well to “Can’t run the marathon without training or stretch the arsehole without straining” whenever she comes to my laptop for her Solitaire fix.The poor woman already takes issue with the photos I paste on my desk wall (of my life in England):
My mum: From these photos it would look as if you’ve had strings of boyfriends!
Me: Mum, two of the men with me in those pictures are priests, and another one is the preserved corpse of Jeremy Bentham.¹
My mum: That’s even worse!
¹ Upon graduation, I thought it was only polite to pose for a picture with the subject of my dissertation. (Jeremy Bentham, not his corpse.)
Sylvester was bizarrely bad this week, it felt like watching a car crash. After junking his previous identity (which I actually liked) for a less radical hairstyle and a lot of gummy smiles (while he was about it he might as well have junked the pathetic rocker poses which no one above the age of 12 should find cool, but alas, he didn’t), this week he seemed to have completely lost grip even of that second tenuous identity, and instead just tried to be everything to everyone.
I mean, Music Of The Night? (Or should I say, Der Music Of Der Night?) Has he heard Michael Ball singing it? And if he has, why did he even think for a second that he could? I haven’t cringed so much since Christopher Lee’s Josh Groban attempt, and even then at least Christopher had the right type of voice and good diction, neither of which seemed within Sly’s reach in this performance. His other two were less embarrassing but still stunningly mediocre compared to what I have come to expect from him. Boyzone’s Picture Of You??!! Ozzy Osborne run for covaaaaa, this man is truly a bad boy rocker. Kiss From A Rose is a nice song, but so hard to sing well that even Seal himself screwed it up when he tried to sing it live at the Oscars, and I think it was also slightly beyond Sylvester’s ability tonight.
Sly’s biggest mistake this week was in song choice. Music Of The Night and Kiss From A Rose need to sound effortless. Boyzone was actually a pretty good match because there are some similarities between his raspy style and Ronan Keating’s, but out of the cesspool of crap that is Boyzone’s repertoire, he certainly reached right down to the bottom and groped around. Sly is a good singer, who has impressed me many times in the past. But tonight confirmed that his rightful place must be third.
Olinda has the best voice in the competition, but I keep longing for her to grow some stage presence. As far as I’m concerned, that’s her biggest inadequacy. Her size and build is fine with me. I’d rather look at bubbly funky-haired Olinda than, say, the surgical (and sartorial) nightmare that is Nicolette Sheridan.
But it was just awfully disappointing to see a performance of Holding On For A Hero that sounded even better than Fantasia’s, but featured Olinda just…well…bobbing around. Hopelessly Devoted To You was a boring song boringly performed. Olinda is not good at looking dewy-eyed, although she’s fine at conveying less sweetie-pie emotions. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina is a case in point, especially that one brief shining moment (brownie points if you can name the musical those last four words come from) where she thrust the mike downwards so that her (fantastic) high note wouldn’t deafen everyone, and she was utterly compelling.
I want more of those moments from Olinda, which is why I don’t want her to leave this week. I want to see more of those moments from her in the finals, where she really does deserve to be.
Every week I worry about Taufik the same way I used to worry about Fantasia – after such a good performance, how is he going to top that next week? And then I see him the next week and am amazed, and so I start worrying about the week after. True to form, if he gets through this week you can bet I’m going to be worrying about whether he can top Ain’t No Sunshine in the finals.
Unlike Sly, Taufik did know how to sing a song from a musical, and knew how to change his voice accordingly. Unlike Olinda, Taufik knew how and when to just ground himself and radiate presence even while standing still, and I don’t think anyone can deny that where dancing is concerned, he’s head and shoulders above the other two. The only criticisms I could make are that he did go flat a number of times during This Is The Moment, and his outfit for True To Your Heart was awful, but really, assessed in completion, Taufik ruled this night.
But! DO NOT ASSUME TAUFIK IS SAFE. Sly has crazy teenage minions, and Olinda has money. If you think Taufik’s pretty good but can’t be bothered to vote for him, then for the first time ever on this blog I must appeal to your sense of patriotism. Just imagine Sly representing us at World Idol. Cringing? Good. Text 2 to 43657. VOTE FOR TAUFIK.
So after The Vagina Monologues on Saturday we headed to Little India. We wandered down the main thoroughfare and found ourselves on Desker Road, where some of our number insisted on seeing the back alley “sights”. It was quite significantly more sordid than Geylang, and was one of the rare situations where even I felt uncomfortable. After dinner we eventually ended up in the wondrous temple of consumerism that is Mustafa Centre. While staggering through the food section, I found these Indian instant noodles and bought them in a fit of endearment.
I had the Macho Masala this morning. It was pretty spicy, but I was man enough for it.
All the Mandopoppers are going to vote for Sly because he sang Jay Chou’s An Jing, and all the aunties are going to vote for Olinda because she sang Teresa Teng. I dare not make any predictions for Daphne, because I generally find it easier to understand why someone would vote Bush for president than Daphne for Singapore Idol, but lots of people obviously do like her.
I thought Taufik sounded great on both songs he sang. I did miss his nifty moves, but given that every fast Asian pop song I have ever heard has been unmitigatedly terrible, it was probably the right decision to stick with the ballad and the smooth mid-tempo number. Which means…do not relac one corner! UNDILAH TAUFIK!! (How weird is it that I know how to say “Vote for Taufik!” in Malay, but not in Chinese?)
So I’m broke, exhausted, and have exams in less than twenty days which I haven’t started studying for yet, but at least I had a good weekend. Reasons why:
Resfest (more detailed review intended in future post), and the pleasing coincidence of attending it with the only two people I know in the world (Benny on Saturday, Jeremy on Sunday) who I can uninhibitedly discuss music with. (James, from what Alec’s been telling me, by the next time we meet I hope you’ll be the third!)
Showing Benny bits of Singapore I actually like. We had dinner at Satay Club under the flyover, and later walked all the way along the river from the Asian Civilizations Museum to Cocco Latte. Cocco Latte didn’t disappoint either, from the surprisingly good mashups (from all my Internet searching it’s rare enough that I even hear one mashup I rate highly, but they played quite a number) on the ground floor to the great mix of hip-hop upstairs. Benny had already been saying “Have I mentioned I really love this place?” at regular ten-minute intervals downstairs, but once we went upstairs and the DJ was playing stuff Benny didn’t know I think that sealed matters as far as respect was concerned. (Random fear, though: the place is getting more and more popular, which makes me worry that it will eventually fall prey to my two pet peeves about Phuture – the ridiculous overcrowding, and too many gropers.)
Feeling virtuous for making it to 11.15 AM mass, despite only having three and a half hours of sleep (and even less than that the night before). Of course, I also felt as if I was about to keel over and die, but that suited today’s theme of making painful sacrifices for one’s faith remarkably well.
Coming back from mass bleary-eyed, and finding a beautiful bouquet of flowers waiting. Today marks three years with Alec.
