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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.

Chek Jawa At Long Last

I’ve wanted to walk the Chek Jawa intertidal wetlands at Pulau Ubin ever since I returned to Singapore after university, and after about six years I finally managed it. This was back in June, but first I was slow about processing the photos, and then Michael Jackson died.

A little background for anyone reading this who isn’t from Singapore: when nature enthusiasts discovered that the government planned to reclaim this area, they conducted a biodiversity survey, submitted a report to the government, and petitioned against the reclamation. They were partially successful – the government agreed to defer its plans until 2012, but after that Chek Jawa’s fate remains unknown. In the meantime, the National Parks Board has had to balance huge public interest in the area against the necessity to preserve the fragile ecosystem. An elevated boardwalk takes you through the wetlands without letting you trample them into oblivion, but if you want to actually set foot on them you have to register for a guided walking tour. These are only available on a handful of dates per quarter, due to the need for suitable tide levels and times and of course in order to control visitor impact, and are so wildly popular that places are snapped up almost as soon as the tour dates are released.

Boardwalk and viewing tower

After trying and failing to get on these tours since 2003, I was delighted when my company got a block booking and organized an employee outing. I’d missed the opportunity to join a previous employee outing because all available places were taken as soon as the email advertising it was sent out, but this time they sent out the email quite late on a Friday evening and I was one of the few poor sods still at work. Score, kind of! So here are some pictures of what I waited 6 years to see. I’m a little drained from all the Michael Jackson posts – they’re not easy for me to write – and tonight I enjoyed a change of scene.

The puddled ground of the sandbar shimmered in the morning sun.

Fiddler crabs scurried back and forth on the sand.

Tinier crabs clambered in and out of little assembled sandball piles, their homes. These are dotted everywhere and it’s almost impossible to avoid stepping on one every now and then. Sorry, crabs. :(

Our guide showed us:

Please, Powers That Be, let things remain as they are in this beautiful part of Singapore.

And just for once, let civilization advance no further.

Remember The Time

With apologies to anyone getting tired of Michael Jackson talk, I barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to say about him in my previous post, so there’s more to come.

It’s mainly due to the surreal realization that I’ve never heard Michael Jackson spoken about with such respect, admiration and compassion in all the years I’ve been a MJ fan than I have these past few days after his death. I never used to try explaining to non-fans what I liked about him because I felt people were uninterested at best, and actively hostile to him at worst. Now the mass media is awash with tributes and while I understand why most tributes concentrate on the same obvious things like I Want You Back, Don’t Stop Til’ You Get Enough, the Thriller video and the Motown 25 performance of Billie Jean, these don’t actually match my own list of what I will remember him most fondly for.

So, the next few posts will loosely represent a personal highlight list of sorts. Fans will already know them, but I’m hoping that anyone else who comes across these posts, perhaps newly interested in him since his death, will find something there to enjoy. Based on the title of this post I should end by embedding that funfest of a video, but I’m feeling pensive and this lovely song from 1975 matches my mood better.

This is part of a series of posts on Michael Jackson.

Only Human (Michael Jackson, 1958-2009)

Believe it or not, I made it to 1991 without knowing much about Michael Jackson. My brother loved the Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode and my sister loved musicals, so those were what I learned to love, along with the classical violin and piano that I’d been playing from a young age. I knew who Michael Jackson was and could probably recognize Thriller, Beat It and Bad if they were playing over the shopping mall sound system, but compared to knowing most of the Pet Shop Boys discography by heart and having transcribed (together with my sister) most of the lyrics to Les Miserables by hand, that really wasn’t much.

When I started listening to pop music a bit more on my own, I also started looking out for the music award shows Channel 5 would usually screen on public holidays. This was pretty much all I could get in those days before Singapore had cable TV, so I’d tape the award shows and watch them over and over until the next public holiday. This is how I saw the MTV 10th Anniversary show, which, incidentally, didn’t just introduce me to Michael Jackson, but also to a particular band fronted by a skinny guy wearing a beanie and singing plaintively about being in the spot, light, losing his religion.

Michael opened the show with Black or White, which I knew but didn’t like (still hate it), and Will You Be There, which was new to me. As I went through my rewatching ritual over the next few weeks, the Will You Be There performance became the part of the show I watched the most repeatedly. At first I just liked it for its spectacular staging, with the backing choir on raised platforms all over the stage. Then I also started enjoying the song – I hated the soppy bit at the end, but really liked the verses and that gently propulsive beat.

And finally, the man performing the song started to fascinate me. He’d been electric in the Black or White part of the performance, sure, but there was something special about him in the slower song. Until then I’d thought pop stars only danced to fast beats and I’d never seen someone move so rivetingly to what was essentially a ballad. It wasn’t even the big moves that hooked me, it was all the tiny ways in which he inhabited the music – the subtle pops of his shoulders even as the rest of him was ostensibly standing still [1. Around 4.40 in the video] and the way he could make just taking three steps across the stage into something sinuous and hypnotic. [2. Around 5.00 in the video] And while I know most people will not be able to understand this, I also found him very physically attractive. I don’t think I was at all aware that I was supposed to find him strange looking, because to me Michael Jackson had always looked like this. I thought his long hair was cool. I liked his piercing eyes and the way his smile lit up his whole face. I didn’t know he was black, but I didn’t know it was supposed to matter that he no longer looked that way. To this day, although I do find Thriller era Michael very handsome, I still love looking at Bad and Dangerous era Michael most of all.

Fast-forward a year, and you have 12-year-old me in the nosebleed seats for the first of two dates he does in Singapore for the Dangerous tour. He postpones the second date because of a migraine, to the anguish of many fans who’ve flown in from all over South-east Asia to see him and can’t change their return tickets. I raid my angpow money, persuade my mother to drive me to where people are lining up to get refunds, and I walk up and down the line pleading until I score a 10th row ticket.

Fast-forward 2 years from that, and in 1994 my family is among the early adopters who get Internet access at home. One of the first things I do online is to join a Michael Jackson mailing list. There aren’t any Singaporeans on the list when I join, but one year later I see an email from a Singaporean called Kelly, asking about the making of the Thriller video, and I promptly get in contact. I later also grow close to two other Singaporean fans, and the four of us spend many happy hours together, united first by Michael Jackson fanhood but soon also by firm friendship. There are eventually quite a lot of Singaporean members of the mailing list, and we even have a local MJ fan club and magazine, which I contribute some articles to.

Fast-forward 2 more years to 1996, and please don’t tell my mum the horrifyingly lewd things 16-year-old me screams to Michael from my place in the front row of his HIStory tour gig in Singapore. (I get this golden ticket because of one of the dear friends I’ve made from the mailing list.) Earlier that year I’ve already seen Sonic Youth live, the band that changes the way I listen to music forever, but seriously? Nothing ever really compares to front row at a Michael Jackson concert.

And now, fast-forward 13 years to 2009, when I wake on the morning of Friday 26th June to two text messages on my phone from the friends I first met over a decade ago, both with awful news. I spend the day in a numb daze, comforted only by contact with those few people who understand how I feel, and an amazing outpouring of text messages, emails and calls from other friends who, whether or not they understand how I feel, understand enough to guess that their friend is really fucking miserable.

There is so much more I haven’t written here, and it’s quite possible that the stuff I’ve left out of this post will lead someone to conclude I’m one of those blind fans who’d support Michael Jackson even if he were a child molester. (I wouldn’t, but based on everything I know about the allegations made against him, I don’t believe he ever was. And trust me, the number of other things I wanted to slap him silly for is probably longer than any list a non-fan could ever come up with.)

I might write about all that stuff another day, but none of it was the reason for this post. This post is to capture where I find myself now, several days after his death, where the picture emerging is one of a deeply unhappy person too flawed and troubled to save himself from himself, surrounded by an entourage of handlers who could not or would not help either, a person whose artistry spoke to millions but left him, in the end, so totally alone. And I find myself back at the beginning, with the words I first heard him sing eighteen years ago. And I’ve never found a soppy song so bloody heartbreaking before.

But they told me
A man should be faithful
And walk when not able
And fight ’til the end
But I’m only human

This is part of a series of posts on Michael Jackson.

Time Travel

On Saturday, I took this photo of the lazing feet of an Ubin boatman, after alighting at the jetty on the way to Chek Jawa.

Tonight, I am writing this post at 1.31 A.M. at my dining table, elbow deep in legal documents, as a brief insanity-fighting respite before I continue working.

The Year Before Thirty

I really meant to write about my birthday weeks ago (because with my increasing old age I would probably forget how I celebrated it if i didn’t), but I was trying to cram too much in a post and everything got unwieldy so I kept lying on the couch in the middle of writing and falling asleep. So basically, in my birthday week I:

Pigged out: Iggy’s, Peramakan, favourite Indian veggie place in the East which I don’t know the name of (it’s on Ceylon Road next to the Hindu temple), Tung Lok a la carte buffet at Paramount (last mentioned here, and it’s still awesome), far too much oyster omelette, BBQ stingray, teh ping and beer.
Finally watched the Watchmen.
Attended Of Montreal, Battles, and Cinematic Orchestra gigs.
Took delivery of my new mixer.
Threw a recession party (home made soup and bread).

Reading all that back, I don’t seem to be very grown up and mature. Oh well! (More details on some of these in future posts.)

Possibly The Most Narcissistic Entry To Date!

(And in eight years of online exhibitionism, that’s saying something!) Yup, I did the Facebook meme, because why the hell not?

1. I lose any game of luck. Every visit I’ve ever made to horse or dog races, I’ve won nothing. The last time I got anything in a lucky draw was a scratch and win KFC towel when I was 7.

2. I dress like a grandmother. For my granny’s birthday, my mum suggested I buy her a new handbag, something simple with minimal compartments to confuse her with (she is 88). After some shopping I ended up buying her the same handbag I carry to work because it seemed the most suitable candidate. At Christmas, I bought her a blouse which turned out slightly too small for her. So I kept the blouse and have been wearing it myself.

3. I am really, really good at a 90s arcade game called Tumblepop. When I used to play it in arcades, sometimes people gathered round to watch me.

4. When I was a kid, we didn’t do any gourmet eating and the only Parmesan I knew was the powdered stuff in the green Kraft canister. My mental name for it (which I possibly also announced in front of other people from time to time) was “vomit cheese”.

5. I get why some people like affirming, self-esteem boosting mantras, but they are not right for me. I need to be constantly aware of where and how I suck, or else I will always be too lazy to improve.

6. I get irrationally annoyed when people ask me whether I’ve permed my hair, even if they have the best of intentions. Because WHY WOULD I PAY MONEY TO MAKE MY HAIR LOOK LIKE THIS???!!

7. I get irrationally upset when people do nice gestures, however small, which don’t get fully appreciated for whatever reason. Once, my Chinese tuition lesson got shifted two hours earlier in the day. I didn’t tell my mum, and she brought home some snacks for us to enjoy during the tuition session, except of course that by the time she arrived the lesson was over. It was totally inconsequential to her and the snacks just got eaten some other time instead, but I felt shattered and still remember it to this day.

8. Books and moving images have almost never made me cry, but music has brought me to tears countless times.

9. Oh wait! Actually, TV quite recently brought tears to my eyes. It was Yodsaenklai and his mom on The Contender: Asia.

10. I spend the work week suppressing almost every aspect of my personality, because it would not be well received in my work environment. I accept this as part of adult life, but also think I’ve withdrawn into myself as a result, and sometimes I struggle to bring the real me back to the surface even when I’m out of work with more like-minded people. I wish I were better at finding the balance.

11. I love watching lion dancing, especially the music that accompanies it. The rhythms of the crashes and bangs give me the same happy feeling that good drum’n’bass does.

12. My most hilariously undeserved life achievement to date is my Distinction in AO’level oral Mandarin. I got an Ungraded on the first try, which was fair. Then on the second try, the conversational topic was something damn easy like “How do you spend your spare time?” so I listed whatever hobbies I could actually name in Chinese (whether I actually did them or not), and tacked on the indispensable coda of BUT OF COURSE IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO ALSO SET ASIDE TIME FOR MY FAMILY AND AGING PARENTS.

13. To tolerate and/or fake enthusiasm (if it feels polite to do so) for babies/kids that don’t endear me, I pretend they are cats, because every cat endears me, even the ones which aren’t cute and behave badly.

14. I love temperate climates, including the darkest, shortest winter days.

15. I wish I knew which of my friends actually read my blog, not because I feel I am owed such attention, but because I don’t like the idea of boring people when we converse in person/email by recycling stuff I’ve written about there. I have other stuff to talk about, of course, but sometimes the blog stuff is fresher in my memory.

16. I eat unhealthily when I eat out, and quite healthily when I cook at home. This is because my top unhealthy loves (deep-fried stuff and rich creamy cheesy stuff) are more inconvenient/expensive to reproduce at home than simple vegetarian meals (which I often cook if I’m feeling too stingy to buy nice meat). I’m glad being cheap and lazy at least benefits me in one way.

17. I have never eaten yong tau fu in my life. It looks so totally unappetizing when other people eat it. [Edit: As a result of the rather entertaining comments that resulted from this list on Facebook, a friend has insisted that I allow her to introduce me to the joys of laksa yong tau fu, so I will be losing my yong tau fu virginity soon. This meme has CHANGED MY LIFE!!]

18. One of my happiest recent memories was when Alec threw me a surprise birthday party. I know it’s probably no big deal to other people but I’ve always had birthday angst and had secretly wanted one my whole life. It was a genuine surprise too!

19. My primary school collections included stamps, stickers, erasers, miniature metal airplane models, pencil lead (as in, if your colour pencil broke, I would ask you for the broken bit of lead and put it in my little container) and pencil sharpenings (a short-lived collection, the upkeep was messy). These days all my collections are digital, and include a Google Doc of dirty jokes.

20. I did a couple months of relief teaching in my old school to pass the time before university. For my last lesson with one of my classes, I was ahead of schedule with the lesson plan and had some spare time. So I told them dirty jokes. I acknowledge this was inappropriate.

21. Before the Internet, I used to listen to the American Top 40 every week and record each week’s list in an exercise book. I couldn’t imagine a day when I would not recognize any pop song on the radio within 10 seconds. That day has come, not because I stopped loving pop music, but because I started hating radio personalities.

22. In the early-mid 90s, there was a CD shop in Katong Shopping Centre which rented out CDs for $1 a day. They had a fairly good indie selection including Smashing Pumpkins, Sugar (can’t remember if they had Husker Du itself, but Sugar is what led me to Husker Du), Sonic Youth, Jesus And Mary Chain and the Velvet Underground, among others. I was shy at the time and barely exchanged words with the person working there (not sure if he was the owner), but if I could meet the owner today I would probably not stop thanking him/her for hours.

23. The chapel of Newman House student hall in London is a very special place to me. In a perfect world where expense and inconvenience to other people were no object, I would have wanted to get married there.

24. The day I left London to move back to Singapore was one of the most miserable days of my life and involved public sobbing at Heathrow.

25. I married my first boyfriend. Not a very 21st century thing to do, but when happiness is this easy, you hold on to it.

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).

Bridging

2009 has started with lots of small happy things for me, though it’s quite possible that a notable feelgoody achievement for me is a non-issue for someone more active and productive. Writing a letter, as in with a pen, on paper, to be sent in the post! Completing my Chiang Mai photobook only 2.5 years after the relevant holiday! Watching girls viciously beat each other up in a muay thai tournament at Golden Mile, while some of the best fried chicken I’ve had in a while (Diandin Leluk’s) was still travelling to my fat ass!

I wanted to add a photo to this entry to break up the text overload here lately, and with apologies to the boys, it’s not going to be the girl-on-girl action. Instead, here’s my favourite picture from another happy thing I started the year with, a night visit to the Southern Ridges aerial walk: