Clubbing Protect-tor

Something I didn’t say in Saturday’s Fabric report: It would all have been a lot less fun without the company of Russ, who always manages to be the best dancer in the club, yet never (well, hardly ever) hits me even while dancing right behind me (which is why, yesterday, I only described my experience in the drum’n’bass room as being battered from almost all directions), and somehow manages to keep me feeling safe and secure even as I’m stumbling completely blind through smoke.

Worst Asian Fetish Subject Ever

I didn’t actually mean to leave the house today, but there was this strange French guy staying in the next room (when Easter holidays begin, spare rooms in my hall get let to tourists) who paints Picasso pictures on neckties, and wanted to take me for a walk and talk to me about China and have me speak Mandarin to him. This continued even when I explained that I wasn’t from China and speak only very bad Mandarin.

“Oh, ze gai-rls from China, you arre so preeeetteee.”
“Actually, I find Chinese beauty too boring. They all have long hair and meaningless smiles.”
“Yessss, you have ze shorrt hairrr. Eet ees so charrrming and fool of life.”
“Um, thank you. I actually have a lot of work to do today.”

Exeunt hall, to computer room.

Epiphanies

At some point last night in Fabric, blinded by smoke and battered from almost all directions by too many pilled-up people crammed into too little space with music that was probably too loud (although I’ve probably already damaged my hearing enough to have lost awareness of this), I thought about how one day, I might look back on these antics of my youth and shake my head in rueful amusement.

And it will be a sad day.

Because last night, when the bass was so powerful I felt my bones shudder in submission, and the beats so compelling it seemed as if they’d assumed control of my pulse, it was visceral and euphoric and exhausting and uplifting and (shall I use it? shall I use it? It’s way too overused but what the hell…) transcendental, all of those at once, and even though I know there are moments far worthier of immortalization and with far greater depth than a night in a drum ‘n’ bass room, I arrived at one of the many little epiphanies that brighten up my life in the UK, that this was one of the things I came here for.

They come to me at wildly different times and places, these epiphanies. The last one was when I was sitting in my debating society’s annual Foundation Debate, watching MPs engage with each other and the students in the audience in a way that was stunningly different from the sterility that permeates Singaporean political awareness.

They’re not an indication that I will go home to Singapore and look at it as a poor substitute for life in London – over the summer at home, I had similar little moments of clarity when I suddenly realized I was in the middle of something wonderfully unique which I would have to go without during my next nine months in London.

I guess you could say they’re moments when, wherever I am, I am suddenly aware that the fabric (no pun intended) that is my life will be variegated and Technicolored, and I hope I’ll be able to look back on both the glamorous and the mundane and wear it all with pride. At the same time, there’s the awareness of the inexorable passage of time, and how “looking back” will still only be looking back, which is only ever bittersweet at best.

And I am here in London for these three years, and I feel that old, cliched fear, redolent of high-school prom night sobbings and adolescent angst, but still resonant to me nonetheless, that things will never be the same again.

End Of Term! Beginning Of Studyness!

And term is over! Or at least, it’ll be over in ten minutes, as soon as my property law essay gets printed out and I shove it gleefully into my tutor’s pigeon-hole. Disturbing but viciously gratifying mental pictures abound.

I spent all of today enslaved to the essay, due to a highly enjoyable meeting last night with friends I don’t often get to see. Walter had come over from the States on his spring break, Vikram was down from Cambridge, and Jeff was in from, er, Tooting. For reasons I’ve described before, their company last night was worth today’s misery.

Later tonight is an outing to Fabric Live to celebrate Nick’s birthday, anticipation of which was one of the main reasons I didn’t slit my wrists a few hours ago in mortgage-related boredom.

But on Monday, yes, MONDAY, studying for the exams starts. I mean it.

Photoshop 0.1 and some thumbscrews

Whee, Django’s got all used CDs at $7.99 for a week. I hope I haven’t just made a huge mistake by buying The Sebadoh.

Radiohead played songs from the upcoming Amnesiac at SXSW. The uncanny “similarity” between Kevin Raub’s report at CDNOW and these track descriptions at a fansite makes me wonder who’s been plagiarizing who. Meanwhile, Kid A continues to grow on me, and Amnesiac looks set to be interesting listening at the very least.

My heart goes out to Bushonics speakers everywhere, not. Ah, politics. It almost makes you long for those good ol’ Stalin days, where Photoshop 0.1 and a couple of thumbscrews were all you needed to conceal the terrifying truth about politicians from the great unwashed masses.

Darwin And Our Fire Drill

At 7.15 a.m. today the fire alarm went off in my hall. In the bleariness that generally defines me at any time before, say, 3 p.m., I floundered around in absolute confusion for a while before I realized that it wasn’t my alarm clock having delusions of grandeur, and stumbled downstairs. Trying to find something to do other than shiver while waiting for the fire alarm drill to end, I squinted at a plaque on the Anatomy Building saying something about Charles Darwin having lived there. And I thought about London in 1666, a city built of timber and pitch, ignited by a spark and then burning for four days, and I thought about fire alarms, and fire drills to make sure the fire alarms work and people react the way they’re supposed to. And I somehow drew parallels between this and Darwinian evolutionary theory. And then the fire drill was done, and we could all go back in, and I went upstairs and got back into bed and fell asleep.

Strange But Memorable Encounter Of The Week

I’m in Virgin Megastore on Tottenham Court Road, pottering around in the hope of finding a bargain with their 2 for £15 offer. I am a freshly cut n’blown Toni & Guy Academy guinea pig (originally drawn to their doors by the free haircuts rather than the pursuit of funkiness, but now admittedly rather keen on looking all choppy and Chrissie Hynde), and having courageously opted for the Restyle, Baby! over Comfort Zone Trim option, I now look edgy and windswept and anime.

A guy comes up to me. One of his hands clutches at his scarf, the other flutters nervously over the rows of CDs.

“Um, hi, I know this is going to sound weird, but, but, I’m part of an artist collective, we’re in Brighton, and um, would you be interested in appearing in a video for a club?

I probably raise my eyebrows or do something equally cynical and unreceptive, because he twiddles the scarf even more frantically than before.

“We do, we do visuals and installations, in Brighton, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a club, but it’s for projection on the walls, it’s the Zap Club, but we’re doing some filming in Whitechapel and, um, I’m not actually in charge of recruiting people, but you just look so fantastic and I had to ask if you’d be interested.”

Call me a sucker, but at this point I become a little more receptive.

“But, um, of course this is just an offer, and we’d pay you at least £20 an hour, and we have a website, I can give you the address so you can see it’s not dodgy or anything, and, oh, do you even like clubbing?”

I’m a whore. The 20 pounds has me interested.

He writes the information down for me. He asks what I do. I tell him I’m a student. He asks what I study. I say Law. His eyes pop. He sees the New Model Army CD I’m holding. His eyes pop again.

“So, um, please do look at the website, this isn’t a pickup or anything, but you just look so fantastic, and I really hope you get in touch.”

He pats me awkwardly on the shoulder and leaves.

So here’s the thing: should I do it? I checked out the site. He’s the creative director. It doesn’t look like a cunning ploy to abduct unsuspecting flattered females and sell them into prostitution in Haadyai…

Stardust (Neil Gaiman): Tangents

So there I was last night, brimming with domestic bliss from a successfully cooked dinner (peppery chicken with capsicum, carrots, onions and garlic stir-fried with hoi sin sauce and chilli. And rice with the fluffiness and fragrance that no one does better than Thailand), and I decided it would be a great thing to continue in achievement mode by getting a start on my property essay, due this Friday.

I was convinced of this all the way up the stairs to my room.

Then I came in, saw Stardust (thanks Vikram!) on the bed, and before I knew it I was happily snuggled under my duvet, propped up by Sheep cushion and hugging Butterfly cushion (thanks Esther!) with my warm honeyed lemon tea nearby, Kind Of Blue from the speakers, and the BT Tower with its top lost in clouds through my window.

I don’t know whether it’s just me and my Neil Gaiman obsession or that he really is damn good, but there’s something about his writing that always makes me feel the wonder I felt when I was six years old, and JRR Tolkien told me about an intricate, intriguing fantasy world populated with creatures that had always wandered the fringes of my imagination, but were always one-dimensional caricatures before Tolkien gave them language, culture, mythology, life.

My initial enchantment with fantasy didn’t really last. I love David Eddings (despite his self-plagiarising tendencies), but more because of his humour and the uncanny parallels between his world and ours than because he actually manages to unshackle me from reality. I appreciate the originality and humour of Terry Pratchett, but somehow reading his books always feels like there’s a list of obvious jokes and references you’re supposed to get, and I find myself exhausted within minutes of beginning. I ploughed through six of Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time tomes, and finally gave up when I realized I hated almost all the characters and couldn’t care less about their fate or the fate of their world. In general, most of what I pick up seems to be much of a muchness, and I usually find myself reading for the sake of getting through the book, rather than because I actually give a damn.

Neil Gaiman’s worlds are whimsical beauty with flashes of incredible morbidity. You can read his stories just for simple enjoyment, but if you explore the plethora of mythological, literary and cultural references he throws in, you’re amazed by the richness and diversity of the material from which he draws his inspiration: that amazing repository of the human imagination. The good part is that he doesn’t club you over the head with any of it – his writing style is infinitely accessible, and you almost don’t notice the craftsmanship that’s gone into it.

So that’s how I spent last night: body snuggled in bed, mind roaming the serewoods and skyharbours of Faerie.

Addendum: Reading over that again, I feel the need to say that I am not one of those strange types who swears she has gossamer wings and leaves bits of sugar around for her invisible fairy sisters. I only like Neil Gaiman’s fairies, and most of them look horrible and micro-demonic.

Turning Twenty-One, And Did I Mention I’m Twenty-One?

I’m twenty-one. :)

Friday night was the UCL Debating Society Foundation Dinner, where we all dress up for a black-tie dinner, and invite MPs to debate the motion This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty’s Government (Tories proposing, Labour opposing) after that. It all sounds wonderfully civilized until they start accusing each other of shagging chickens on Clapham Common. Freedom of speech be praised.

On Saturday morning I was led stumbling and blindfolded through London to be temporarily deserted in Hyde Park in the rain while my friends ran off and hid. Once everyone had been found, we decided that a good lunch would be better than my further public humiliation, so we went to Magic Wok in Bayswater. My fortune cookie told me “You will grow old gracefully.”

I had meant to meet Nick after that for coffee, but ended up rather hideously late, and he left after waiting half an hour in the rain. I slunk home guiltily to find CDs (Goldfrapp as gift, Stereo MCs returned, and Kruder & Dorfmeister on loan) and a sweet unblaming note in my pigeon hole.

Dinner was at Navajo Joe’s, Ken’s treat. After a fleeting appearance at Russ’s sister’s party, we set off for The End, where Gilles Peterson, Peter Kruder, Layo and Bushwacka! awaited. From here, strange things happened to Ken, who’s either really having an existential crisis, or has read The New York Trilogy too many times.

For posterity’s sake, here’s a summary of the stuff that made up my twenty-first birthday:

Birthday serenades:

  • soon after midnight from the debaters
  • my family over the phone, with my father considerably out of tune and time
  • after lunch from the Singaporeans
  • after dinner from Russ and Ken
  • on Sunday from my hallmates

Birthday cakes:

  • chocolate topped with flakes of white and milk chocolate (lunch)
  • brownie nestled among votive candles (dinner)
  • chocolate jam sponge (Sunday)

A pleasantly manageable amount of alcohol.

Satisfyingly large (and expensive) meals.

Presents:

Good friends who made time for me. Special mention to three in particular:

  • Esther and Shoop, for deciding I was too hopeless at planning anything, and taking it upon themselves to throw something together. They’re darlings.
  • Russ, for bravely facing physical exhaustion, acute work crisis, and large levels of inconvenience and expense to be that often quiet but always appreciated presence nearby at the debate, the lunch, the dinner and the club. Thanks to him for being wonderful and then some.

I’m twenty-one. :)

Hallamak!

I just found out that I didn’t get back into UCL-run halls for next year, which means it’s either the streets or an armless, legless, kidneyless existence in exorbitantly priced London housing.

Zen calm. Zen calm. Zen fucking calm…