What’s Your Favourite Scary Movie?

The unexpected consequence of watching The Exorcist at age 13 (and being utterly terrified by it) was that the experience somehow inoculated me against future horror movie misery, at least in the various horror movies I’ve had occasion to watch since then. I don’t actively seek them out and haven’t watched many of the classics like Suspiria or even The Shining, but at least I’ve been able to weather lesser stuff like teen slasher flicks or Asian horror movies quite unflappably. My blood pressure still spiked when Sadako made her awful, ungainly stagger out of the television screen in Ringu, and I still jumped when the sloth victim in Se7en moved, but at least none of that stayed with me afterwards.

Mildly emboldened by this, I have usually indulged my occasional inclinations to scare myself whenever they arise, spending hours reading about the Zodiac killer after watching Zodiac, and reading various Scariest Movie Scenes lists for pointers as to which scary movie to watch the next time I feel like watching a scary movie. But then I got married and moved out of my family’s home to an apartment where things frequently go bump in the night due to wind and neighbours, and where I live alone every time Alec goes on a business trip.

Such factors coalesced into a perfect storm of goose-bumps when, after Alec had left for yet another business trip mere hours after we returned from Kyoto, I made the mistake of getting caught up online reading reviews and discussion of The Orphanage (which I’d watched and loved on the flight) in our empty dark home, and ended up terrified of our navy blue, child-height laundry basket which I had earlier placed carelessly at the end of a corridor.

The problem is that, unable to admit from this experience that I am obviously still a total pussy, I haven’t been able to stop this self-sabotage. I’m sorely tempted to finally watch The Shining and read Naomi’s Room and The Haunting of Hill House, and some say Exorcist 3 is hugely underrated and a worthy successor to the first film. But these are really all very bad ideas. I don’t even know why I’m writing this post other than to link back to in future, when I’m frantically typing my last ever blog post while Alec chops down the door with an axe.

Taxi Jiver

Back from Kyoto! While I do the usual dawdle about processing photos and writing travel blog entries that abruptly end halfway into the holiday, have a random LOL: I was enjoying the snarky comments at Metafilter on The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget, especially when people added their own anecdotes about their most memorable cab rides. Like much other Internet messageboard hilarity, the comic genius of designbot’s contribution is best appreciated unspoiled, and read in context with the rest of the thread, so I won’t explain here what I love about it, or post any excerpts. I just wanted to direct you to it because it totally made my day.

I Remember +353

We’re off to Kyoto, Miyajima and Takayama from tonight till next Monday for a much needed holiday.

I kept meaning to share Popagandhi’s wonderful post The Country Codes My Girlfriend And I Have Known with you from when I read and loved it last week, but tonight is still a pretty good time. It still gives me a real kick to actually walk through departure gates with Alec, as opposed to waving dolefully to each other separated by glass.

Bonus little blip of enjoyment: if you haven’t already heard Dengue Fever’s Tiger Phone Card[1. Second best song on Venus On Earth, which is otherwise rather patchy. Here’s the best song, Seeing Hands.], it complements the read really well.

Tokyo: Day Two

In usual EPIC FAIL style, apart from never completing any travel blog series of entries I’ve started (or never even starting any at all, for Sarawak, Siem Reap and last year’s UK/Ireland) and wholly failing to write anything here about the awesomeness of my last three birthdays, my wedding or my honeymoon, I just realized while packing for tomorrow’s trip to Japan (to Kansai region and the Takayama festival this time), that for our February trip to Tokyo, I only managed to capture a few hours on the day we arrived!

So in a comically pathetic attempt to improve this record, I now present: DAY TWO of Tokyo!

We were lucky enough to be able to meet up with the closest thing we had to a local expert, our old hallmate Hsien Li, who was in Tokyo for a one year research stint.

After morning mass at the Franciscan Cultural Centre near Roppongi, she took us to Gonpachi, which, depending on who you believe, was either an actual filming location for the teahouse in Kill Bill or merely Tarantino’s inspiration.

 

Happily ensconced in our booth, we caught up with Hsien Li over nice inexpensive food (Frommer’s is so right when it says that from the outside you expect this place to be much more exclusive than it is) and lots of ocha.

 

Sated, we hopped on a bus to Shibuya, which is exactly what one expects it to be like from TV, and walked through it to Yoyogi Park. I tried out my A650IS’s swivel screen at a flea market we passed along the way.

 

The Sunday atmosphere at Yoyogi Park was great, with lots of bands strategically spaced out along the pathways, tinny-amp-sound-projection-length apart, some clearly dressing and performing to be noticed, others earnestly performing boy-band J-pop.

 

Tokyo’s rockabilly boys and girls were also out in force, and we joined their crowd of very entertained onlookers for quite some time.

 

Encircled by our gawking, they danced completely without self-consciousness, sometimes interacting with each other as they struck poses and whooped when a new favourite song started playing, sometimes absorbed in their own personal enjoyment of the music. It was pretty delightful to watch.

 

These rockabillies sure don’t do things by halves.

 

Hsien Li and Alec finally managed to tear me away from the rockabillies and we headed to the famous bridge where the Harajuku kids congregate. It’s an interesting experience being there, not quite like what I expected. I’d always assumed the sole motivation for dressing up like that and turning up there was to see, be seen, and pose for tourists, or else why not hang out with your friends somewhere more pleasant and spacious than the side of a bridge? But although they tolerate the crush of tourists jostling to photograph them, most of them are far more focused on their own little social groups and don’t play to the cameras at all.

 

Of course, I joined the throng of tourists too. This photo has garnered more views on Flickr than any other from my Tokyo set so far, probably because before a Flickr commenter informed me that the girl on the left was cosplaying the guitarist of Dir en grey, I just assumed the girls were gimps and tagged the photo accordingly.

 

Elsewhere along the bridge: a “Free Hugs” girl, a swarthy middle-aged man facing away from the pedestrians and into the road, blasting U2 on his boombox and screaming along in Engrish even though his voice was so hoarse it was nearly gone, another guy in his 20s/30s dancing wildly to music on his headphones which no one else could hear. Again, I know nothing about J-rock or cosplay iconography, so I have no idea who this girl on the right is. These living dead sure dress nattily though.

 

You’ve seen this one before, but I still love her so I have to include her here too.

 

It’s amazing how the tranquility of the Meiji shrine is only minutes’ walk away from the madness of Harajuku, in the middle of a forest. It was the first of many Japanese temples and shrines in muted green and weather-beaten wood that I soon realized I liked much better than their gaudy Chinese equivalents.

 

There was a wedding in process at the shrine. Although I’d initially thought none of my photos of the wedding procession would be any good because I was reluctant to charge forth and get too much in their faces, I somehow like how this one turned out, especially the beautiful expression on the bride’s face.

 

After this, we parted ways with Hsien Li, who had been a marvellous guide and incredibly tolerant of my incessant photo taking, and went to the Ukiyo-e Museum to try and understand what the big deal is about Japanese wood block paintings. Apart from the process of production, which clearly requires great skill and dedication, I unfortunately still find the aesthetic of the finished products rather unappealing.

Much walking, some gleeful cosmetics and toiletry buying for me, and a Maisen tonkatsu dinner later, we were ready to call it a night. But this first real day in Tokyo had done serious battering ram damage to the anti-Japan fortress I’d built in my prejudiced heart. The days that were to follow continued this assault. Oh and lastly, photoblogging a trip to Japan just wouldn’t be properly done without documenting some kawaii. We spotted this more than life-sized snow couple along Omote-sando. KAWAII!!!

 

Brutal Kisses

I spent Saturday night celebrating a good friend’s birthday on the very Brutalist roof of Peace Centre, a bleak expanse of mottled concrete interrupted somewhat haphazardly by a fitness corner, playground, barbecue pit, a scattering of benches and the occasional spindly potted plant, the roar of the F1 engines transmuted into ghostly sirens by the time it wafted up to us on the clear night air, like a distant apocalypse powerless against the forces of beer, black pepper chicken and conversation. It was great.

On the way to the party, this rather endearing hoarding (on either Paradiz Centre or the building just next to it) caught my eye.

Bizarre Must Awesome Want

For the hell of it, an old friend and I made a pilgrimage to This Fashion, an extremely cheap chain of clothing stores in Singapore where we used to shop ten years ago. I was hugely amused by this T-shirt but managed to talk myself out of actually buying it. Picked up a cute LBD though!

 

Beau Selecta

Alec asked if he could bring me anything back from Ireland.

Sadly, my first request for my Holy Grail concealer (Almay’s Amazing Lasting) couldn’t be fulfilled, because the product’s been discontinued.

My second request was for vinyl records. Since finishing my lessons with Koflow, I’ve neither practised nor made any progress on researching a decks purchase. The latter because I’m still hung up about how it will be THE MOST EXPENSIVE THINGY I WILL EVAR HAVE BOUGHT, and the former because I feel bad about always having to borrow Koflow’s records every time I practise.

To facilitate Alec’s task, I sent him a list to work with. When he showed it to the record store guy, the record store guy gently explained that although the stuff on the list was really great and diverse, it was all over a year old and not in stock any more. (Yes, this stung.) So given that I couldn’t pull another list out of my arse at short notice, I took a huge leap of faith and said, “You know what, dear? You choose for me.”

I have not usually been the kindest judge of Alec’s taste in music and most other things, apart from his choice of a wife. If he likes music I think is good, I assume it must be because he has absorbed my impeccable taste. If he likes music I think is bad, I take this as evidence of his own actual paucity of taste. So this is a big moment for us, a mark of our maturity as a couple. Here is an example of our maturity:

Alec: Well, even if you don’t like the records I’ve bought, I like them so I’ll enjoy listening to them.
Me: Sure, you go ahead and have fun listening to them ON TURNTABLES WE DON’T HAVE! I WANT TURNTABLES BUY ME TURNTABLES PLEEEEEASE!

Alec returns on 28th September, and I await my records with trepidation. Best case scenario, they’re great practice material and stuff I can even bring along to play if I do any more public slots. Worst case scenario, the next time I do a public slot, it’s like that scene from Three Men And A Baby where they’re throwing a big party for cool people and when Tom Selleck goes to change the music he accidentally puts on Ernie singing Rubber Duckie instead and as every person in the place turns to look at him, bemused, he does this awkward non-committal little dance.

Mouldy Speeches

I’d hoped to start posting straight away after unveiling the redesign, about my swinging single lifestyle this month while Alec’s been in Ireland on a long business trip, about the joys of overnight sexy scrabble sleepovers with old friends, about weeknight wagyu + foie gras burgers and weekend garage sale gold-digging.

Then, I found mould on a bunch of my t-shirts in a cupboard and was unceremoniously catapulted into a world of laundry pain. The washing, the cupboard cleaning, the bamboo pole fumbling, the ironing – I washed the rest of the clothes in there, just in case – have effectively cockblocked me from any sort of sexy swinging life this week, and when, in exhaustion, I declared Tuesday night a laundry-free zone, I was only fit to lie slack-jawed on the couch watching my new Entourage box set (from aforementioned garage sale, 3 seasons’ original box sets for $15).

After all this, there’s been precious little time for correcting the remaining errors I’ve spotted in the redesign or putting something in that blank About page, so bear with me – there’s a first time for every excuse and I’ve definitely not used this one before but: I blame the evil spores.

Oh, and Portishead’s Third album is still the best album I’ve heard this year. What’s yours?

Female Mechanic Now On Duty

Hello! If you see this, that means I have escaped a big kaboom! The redesign’s more or less done, give or take a bunch of borked permalinks, incomplete side pages and probably some inexplicable error messages. I just wanted to stop being such a bloody perfectionist and fling it out there, or else I knew I’d get stuck with the old template for five more years. I figured showing the new thingy to all of you would motivate me to finish tying up all the loose ends faster, rather than keep tinkering with it indefinitely.

Please let me know if you encounter stuff that’s broken, and I’ll make myself a stiff drink and dive back in to fix it. But please bear in mind that I’m neither visually creative nor highly knowledgeable about web design, so what you see here really does represent the limits of my ability. Anyway, enough blathering for now – further boffiny details will go on a side page if I bother to write it, but in the meantime I’ll just mention that major credit goes to WordPress, K2, Google, Absolut Pear, the swear words kan ni na and chee bye, and you, wonderful readers, in whose patience and indulgence I continue to trust.

The Dancing Sky (National Museum of Singapore Night Festival)

The National Museum has cottoned on to the truth I have always known – that crowded outdoor events during the heat of the Singapore day are invariably miserable sweat-sodden affairs – and organized a rather delightful Night Festival instead. Here are some photos from The Dancing Sky, last weekend’s performance art spectacular by Italy’s Studio Festi. I haven’t a clue what any of it meant but it sure was pretty. I was in a rather bad position for photos and other people’s photos on Flickr are much much better, but I’m still happy enough with what my darling F31fd managed handheld.

The first half of the performance used the museum building as backdrop. There was a huge flying sailship and a grand piano that soared through the air complete with dancer on its lid, but unfortunately my photos of those weren’t very good.

 

The second half was set in the Singapore Management University garden, and it started with the projection of images onto a screen of water in the centre of the garden, like so:

After this, performers appeared on platforms dotted around the perimeter of the garden. A good place to watch all these performers was the centre bit where the water screen had been earlier, so that’s where I stood to watch this girl dancing:

Shortly after I took the above picture, the water screen came on again without warning, so I spent the rest of the event looking like an extremely low standard entry into a wet T-shirt contest.