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.

Stray Thoughts

Over time my family has come to be responsible for the care and feeding of about nine stray cats, three of which live in our house and six of which hang out regularly in our driveway. The numbers change over time depending on which cat wanders into the neighbourhood and gives birth (my parents sterilize as many as they can but some slip through the cracks) or which cat meets with tragic death.

Mandy was a orange tortoiseshell kitten who, when carried, would snuggle blissfully in our arms, look up adoringly at us and beg to be carried again once we put her down. We loved her, and were in the process of slowly cleaning her up for life indoors with us. On the same day Alec took me to Sultan Shoal to propose to me, back at home my mother gave Mandy a bath, let her scamper around on our carpet until she dried off, and then put her outside to play. Shortly after, she wandered into our neighbour’s driveway and their dogs mauled her to death.

My family ran over when they heard the commotion but it was too late. My mum tried to carry Mandy out from under their car, where she’d crawled, but Mandy was in terrible pain and bit my mum deeply in the hand. My sister then took over while my mum attended to her gushing thumb and carried our dying kitten back to our driveway. Her body fit perfectly into a small shoebox.

Not wanting to spoil what they already knew would be a joyful weekend for me, my family didn’t tell me what had happened until I returned the next day with a ring on my finger. At mass that evening, I knew I was meant to be happy, thanking the Lord for the wonderful blessing of having Alec in my life, for the rest of my life. But I couldn’t stop thinking of Mandy.

I didn’t write about her here at the time either, because I was trying to focus on being happy about what had just happened in my life, and to share that with all of you. Since then my family’s fallen in love with two black and white tom kittens, adopted into our home in anguish after their brother got killed by a car and we couldn’t bear the thought of them meeting the same fate. So we’ve gotten over Mandy, as well we should, because like it or not, these things happen to strays, and we can’t give all of them homes. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten her. I don’t think I ever will.

I don’t have a picture of her to show you, but I take pictures of the orange tortoiseshell strays I see, because they remind me of her. Here are two of my most recent ones:


On the way to Aljunied MRT

In Old Airport Road hawker centre

I know the hawker centre cat looks a bit sullen here but he was actually very friendly and got lots of pats from people passing by on their way through the hawker centre. When an aunty at the popiah stall saw me taking photos of him, she came over excitedly and asked if I could help take some for her on her camphone, which she didn’t know how to use. “Can you put the cat as my wallpaper?” she asked (in Chinese), “My husband’s photo is there now but I want the cat instead.”

There isn’t really a point to this post, it just struck me that it’s been nearly a year since Mandy died, and I haven’t written about her, plus with the new camera I’ve been photographing lots of cats lately. Be kind to strays, it’s a hard (and often very short) life for them.

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.

Pitch Perfect

Tessa organised Pitch Perfect, a cosy little iPod DJ event, at Pitch Black on Saturday night.

I used my 15 minute slot as follows:

  • Gareth Brown Says (McLusky): I’ve always liked the rather surreal playground taunting of this one – “All your friends are cunts / your mother is a ball-point pen thief”.
  • Drunken Butterfly (Sonic Youth): Because if I don’t play Sonic Youth at every public opportunity to impose my taste on other people, somewhere a fairy dies.
  • How Can I Love You If You Won’t Lie Down? (Silver Jews): Awesome title aside, this is a rather delightful departure from Silver Jews’ usual, rather minimalist, formula of alt-country (though even that’s been good enough to sustain nearly a decade of my fanhood). It’s a lovable, sturdily unpretentious little ditty and I always love singing along with the girl echoing David Berman – “Lie down” “Lah daawn!” – in every word of the chorus.
  • Fuck You Pay Me (Killer Mike): My most recent aggro-hip-hop-dancing-in-my-bedroom song of choice. Though it does get a bit embarrassing when I listen to it while walking along the pavement and have to stifle some of those moves.
  • Sh-Boom (The Chords): Enough aggro, let’s finish with some happy! And this is, quite simply, one of the happiest songs I have ever heard.

Later on, I learned that because Ci’en hadn’t brought her iPod, Peishan had ingeniously appropriated Ci’en’s 15 minute entitlement to play a second slot. This got me thinking (and looking craftily at the empty-pocketed fiance sitting next to me), and so it was that about an hour later DJ “Alec” made his public debut. And I must say I thought his, uh, “choices” were truly magnificent.

  • Enter Sandman (Fade To Bluegrass cover): This isn’t just a novelty cover, I do actually think the bluegrass harmonies and musicianship are pretty tight.
  • Pussyhole (Dizzee Rascal): Sorry about the pun, but this is just such a banger.
  • Long Snake Moan (PJ Harvey): Big dense noisy riffs, quintessential PJ Harvey attitude and a chorus which you just have to shout along to. “You wanna hear my long snake…MOAN! You oughta see me crawl my…ROAR!”
  • Dance Music (Mountain Goats): It took me a while to warm to the Mountain Goats, but this is the song that sold me.
  • All The Things She Said (Cinerama cover): You shouldn’t expect this song to surpass the original because, well, nothing can really surpass Russian lesbian pedophilia. But I like Cinerama’s take well enough, especially the weighty stabs of the chorus and the pensive guy-girl harmonies that bring us to the close.

Experimental Theatre

Sometimes the Onion still gets it so right. From Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended:

In an innovative, tradition-defying rethinking of one of the greatest comedies in the English language, Morristown Community Players director Kevin Hiles announced Monday his bold intention to set his theater’s production of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in 16th-century Venice.

…

According to Hiles, everything in the production will be adapted to the unconventional setting. Swords will replace guns, ducats will be used instead of the American dollar or Japanese yen, and costumes, such as Shylock’s customary pinstripe suit, general’s uniform, or nudity, will be replaced by garb of the kind worn by Jewish moneylenders of the Italian Renaissance.

Whatever Makes Her Happy, On A Saturday Night

A good Saturday night – chicken claypot rice, coffee pork ribs and sambal petai for dinner in Geylang, then lazy couch potato-ing at Alec’s place watching Children Of Men (lots of cats, a random flock of sheep, Clive Owen being a motherfucking rockstar and the best movie-making I’ve seen since Downfall) and Humbug (one of my favourite X-Files episodes ever) over cider, with Alec bearing my periodic exclamations of “Cats!”, “Sheep!” and “Rockstar!” with admirable indulgence.

Oh and just for the hell of it, here are some photos taken over the weekend with my brand new Fujifilm Finepix F31fd, which I’m very happy with. They’re not spectacular from an artistic point of view, they’re just my attempts to test out the universally raved about low-light capability of this camera. Basically, the following pictures were taken totally hand-held without much forethought or technical knowhow whatsoever.

Clarke Quay, Singapore
Clarke Quay restaurants
Clarke Quay reflections, Singapore
Clarke Quay reflections
Durian stall in Geylang, Singapore
A durian stall in Geylang
Red lanterns in Geylang, Singapore
Cornershop temple in Geylang
Clarke Quay canopy, Singapore
Study of the Clarke Quay canopies (my favourite shot)

As much as I loved my previous camera (Canon Ixus 430), there’s really no way it could have managed these – the darker shots, in particular, would have come out totally unusable or at least would have required a lot of post-processing. I’m very new to a lot of what this camera has to offer, such as aperture and shutter priority modes, but if it gives the above results to a clueless user, I can’t wait to see what it can do once I get to know it a bit better.

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?