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.)

Random Joo Chiat

I’m a bit weddinged and kittened out. Here are some photos of Joo Chiat instead.

Can you believe this is just sitting in a Joo Chiat driveway? I did a double take as we walked past and Googled my hunch once I got home – yup, I’m pretty certain it’s a Ng Eng Teng work.


Another view

Peeling pillar on the five foot way

Not the best photo – I was too busy drooling in anticipation of this place’s divine otah. You can get better in restaurants, but as far as cheap street-side otah is concerned I haven’t tasted better. The site says it’s open from 7 am to 7 pm, but they’ve definitely also sold us otah before at about 3 am, which is of course when it tastes the best.

Shits And Giggles

Apologies in advance – there might be rather more wedding-related content here than you’d prefer between now and September, since the preparation will be taking up a fair amount of my time these last 6 weeks. I will, however, try to keep vapid gushing about people Sharing Our Joy! to a minimum, and instead, focus on anecdotes like these:

#1: My cousin has four adorable sons, three of whom will be participating in stealing the show at our wedding mass. My mum called my cousin’s wife to discuss the boys’ outfits and emailed me an update, according to which our ring-bearers will be wearing “long pants and shits and waist coats”.

#2: While waiting for the bus home, I started a reply to a friend’s RSVP text message, intending to inform him that “Yish is considering wearing a sari to the wedding.” As my bus was arriving, I continued texting without looking at the screen as I walked towards it and boarded. Once on, I took my seat, glanced at the screen in preparation to send, realized the predictive text system had inserted “rash” instead of “sari” and was beset by immediate giggles which continued bubbling up intermittently and embarrassingly throughout the long journey.

Finally Facebooked

After too many “Are you on Facebook?” questions from old friends when we met up with them recently in London, I decided that joining would be a good way to keep track of everyone and finally signed up today. I don’t know my way around yet but have managed to ask Jeremy Bentham to be my friend and provide an option for people to throw sheep at me. It makes for a pleasant diversion from the struggles of wedding guestlist wrangling, trying to give a fuck about floral decorations, and the anguished screaming of ignored to-do-list items.

My Baby Just Cares For Me

Alec, happy with his new phone, informs me that he went looking for some songs to use as ringtones for various people. Excited to find out what mine is, I take out my phone and dial him. “You’re poison, running through my veins,” blares out.

Truly, my future husband is a man capable of profound, heartfelt expressions of love.

Singaporean Chivalry

Here’s a nice counterpoint to my story on Singaporean Generosity.

When I’m running late for work, I can shave 15 minutes off my hour-long commute from the East by changing buses at Fort Road. And, as anyone who knows me will not be surprised to hear, I’m running late for work pretty often.

There’s a crowd of regulars I’ve come to recognize at that Fort Road bus stop. One is a guy in his mid-twenties, tall, well-groomed without looking like he takes too much trouble over it if you know what I mean, basically quite good looking as Chinese guys go. He always has a book in hand, which he reads while waiting and also on the bus. Most recently, it was Crime and Punishment.

Two weeks ago, the bus that arrived at our stop wasn’t particularly crowded, but there weren’t any free seats. I was one of the first to board, so I walked right to the back and stood there. As the bus pulled away from the bus stop, I noticed that a heavily pregnant woman had also boarded the bus. It’s possible someone would have given her their seat if she’d walked deeper into the bus, but I can quite easily believe that her public transport experiences so far as a pregnant woman in Singapore might not have been sufficiently encouraging for her to bother trying.

So she stood right at the front next to the driver, I was standing right at the back, and the guy – let’s call him the Rare Reader – was standing about 2 metres behind her. Noticing the pregnant woman too, he turned round, tapped the shoulder of the guy seated nearest him, spoke to him and gestured towards the woman. The guy duly got up, the Rare Reader then walked to the front of the bus to let the woman know there was a seat for her, and she took her seat with a smile for both men. I, still standing at the back with my early morning grumpiness dispelled by what I’d just seen, couldn’t help thinking that if I were still in the market for dates I would have asked the Rare Reader out on the spot.

Singaporean Generosity

[Edit: I’ve made some changes to the wording of the entry, as it’s been suggested that it may have come across to some people as slanted and mean-spirited. I disagree, personally, but it’s no loss to me to change the words since my conscience is clear anyway. If the amended version changes your view of the events, feel free to say so.]

When I heard a colleague of mine had got a good bargain on a premium brand sale item which is usually quite expensive, I mentioned that Alec had been thinking of buying something similar, and asked if the sale was good. She said it was, and also that she’d gotten a $10 voucher with her purchase which had to be used on the same brand within the next week or so. Her mum had it at the moment, but if her mum didn’t use it she could pass it to me.

The following Monday, this colleague emailed me saying she’d brought the voucher, and could sell it to me for $5. She added that I could take it first, and only pay her if Alec ended up using it.

I have subsequently learned that we were operating under a misunderstanding – she thought we were going to share the cost-savings from the voucher, whereas it would never have entered my head to perform such calculations in the first place. But that doesn’t leave me any less bemused by the mindset.

I don’t mean to look gift horses in mouths, but surely I can’t be the only one who would just give a voucher like this away without a second thought? If it’s something I don’t intend to use and it didn’t cost me anything, I’d be ashamed even to charge a complete stranger for it (I’d have given it to the next person in the queue for the cashier quite happily, for example), let alone someone I know, and I’m not even a particularly generous person! (In case anyone’s wondering, this person is no worse off than me, so while not rich, she is hardly short of cash either.)

Your views? Was I unfair to have burst out laughing the moment I read her email?

Landmark

Gay’s The Word, the last gay and lesbian bookstore in the UK, is in financial difficulties (rising rent, losing out to chain booksellers etc.) and trying to raise money. Unlike the people quoted in this article I can’t pretend it had any profound influence on my life. However, when I lived across the road from it, the sight of it cheered me up on gloomy days, and it was a very convenient landmark for directing people to our flat. Also, given that I now live in a country where the main gay equality lobby group gets rejected every time it applies to be registered as a society, gay sex remains a crime on the statute books and bafflingly idiotic articles (well shredded by Jol here) about how gay porn marginalizes gay men can get printed in our national broadsheet, it is nice to be reminded that other parts of the world are not like this. If one of my London friends feels like popping the price of a pint on my behalf into whatever donation box I assume the shop has, I’ll pay you back when I see you in May. :)

1UP

I was wandering round City Plaza and spotted this shop.

I normally keep random camphone shots like this for my own amusement and don’t bother to post them here, but since I only just discovered last week that you can play Super Mario Brothers and about a million other old console games online without having to do the whole emulator thing, I figured spotting the shop might have been a karmic directive from the cosmos to share the link. Just to make sure all your lives get ruined too, you understand.