On the bus to the symposium on Wednesday morning, I got strange looks. I’m not sure if it was the way corners of my mouth tend to curl uncontrollably while reading the Economist (which I often find ha-ha funny – gems from that particular issue included “Yet, for the first few months in office, Mr Bush managed to focus relentlessly – sometimes even comically – on his campaign promises. Thus his tax cut was trumpeted as an answer first to an overheating economy, then to a sagging one and finally to higher energy prices. It sounded silly, but he got his tax cut.”) and trying not to chuckle audibly, or the fact that I abandoned the Economist for The Muppet Show when it started showing on the TV (yes, we have TVs in buses in Singapore), and then couldn’t help a suppressed giggle when Kermit got surrounded by a group of cheeses who wanted to perform various numbers on the show, such as the Cheddarnooga Choo-Choo.

After the symposium I rushed to RJC for the Creative Writing Club’s annual Afternoon of Poetry and Music, which always tends to turn itself into a CAP reunion of sorts, which is good in a way, but has the potential to turn everything into too much of a masturbatory clique if taken too far. So I tried circulating, cocktail reception style. I suppose it was just my bad luck that the first person I talked to who I didn’t already know then followed me around for the rest of it, trying to make conversation that I honestly wasn’t that interested in listening to, because he bored me, and I then had to seek refuge in people who I knew. I chastised Yi-Sheng for dying his hair, not to mention actually starting to comb it, and for wearing a proper shirt and trousers. I felt this burgeoning attention to appearance marked an unwelcome break from his previous genius-poet image, where he went around in uncool clothes and ignored hair.

Dinner was in Holland Village with most of Council 2001, and Terry, and then us oldies went to Orchard Road in a failed attempt to watch Save The Last Dance, which was sold out. We ended up in the Borders bistro where Luke started drawing me on the (paper) tablecloth. Don then drew Luke, Zakir drew Don, and I drew Zakir. I still have problems drawing lips. It’s always the lips that scupper it all, dammit. Zakir looked reasonably like Zakir until I got to the lips, and then he looked like Marilyn Monroe with short hair and specs.

Phew. A googleworth of thoughts have been building up in my head over the past couple of days with little opportunity for release, with the result that they’ve been boinging off each other and my already frail grey matter in classic Brownian motion. My eyes are getting a little glazed, and I’ve been surreptitiously checking my ears every now and then for leakage.

Let’s start with today, which is as good a place as any, and which was impressively productive. I judged three debates, gave three adjudication speeches, and slipped out between the second and third debate to Funan Centre with my sister, where we bought Handsprings. I now own yet another gadget I don’t reaaaaaaally need, but shamelessly lust after anyway. Yay. :)

The debates were preliminary rounds in the national JC debating championships, and I have to say that the competition’s either undergone an considerable increase in quality, or the debating gods were smiling on me, because I didn’t get a single debate that made me contemplate suicide or pray for spontaneous combustion. Scrutinizing my notes on the way home, I was amazed to find a marked absence of the “??!!!“s, “STUPID“s and “OH, PUH-LEASE“s that used to feature regularly in my scribbled comments (these, of course, manifest themselves less offensively in my formal adjudication speeches).

I spent Wednesday and Thursday at a symposium for tertiary students, attending at the behest of my future employers and current sponsors of my university education. It was basically two days of talking about Singapore in the region, Singapore in the global economy, Singapore society, Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.

Do I sound bored to you? I was, but not because I find the subject of Singapore intrinsically boring. I think it’s a fascinating study in politics, governance, development and economics that doesn’t seem to have been replicated anywhere else I can think of in modern times.

I was bored, I guess, because it just seemed like the same thing over and over again, which any Singaporean with half a brain who doesn’t live in a media vacuum would know about: the challenges facing Singapore, the need to stay competitive, the need to innovate. The same old questions from the assembled students: how free is the press, what use is political activism when nothing changes in response to it, yadda yadda yadda.

There are a couple of scattered things I want to write about, some loosely connected to the symposium, some not. But right now, I want to have lunch with Ken and go to the library. Maybe later.

I like well mixed weekends. Saturday morning was spent reading the latest Economist, pulling white hairs out of my father’s head, and downloading MP3s, Saturday afternoon was spent helping my mother, and dinner was with the family.

Satisfied that I’d fulfilled the requisite “time at home/with family” requirement for nag-free living in the household, I then left for drinks at the Liquid Room with old classmates May, incredibly toned Willy (dirty mind, quell thyself) and Stan, and then Zouk, where we spent most of our time in Velvet Underground (soulful house/acid jazz) with periodic excursions to Phuture (breakbeats, my favourite room in Zouk) at my pleading.

Sunday was quietly but pleasantly spent, with chai dao kuey (literal translation: carrot cake, but it’s not carrot cake. It’s complicated. But yummy.) for lunch, ironing and The Sportswriter in the afternoon, mass in the evening, and dinner at Ah Hoi’s Kitchen, which I proclaimed the best dinner I’d had since coming home – there was crispy fried baby squid, honey glazed ginger chicken, chilli kangkung (it’s a vegetable) and lots of durians for dessert. I may have my gripes about Singapore, but damn, it’s a food paradise.