Ant-agonism

A dinner conversation. Context: Alec freaking out about the ants in his flat, which always seem to traumatize people from temperate countries a lot more than us from the tropics. During the day he’d managed to track down and poison two ant colonies, but had then found a third where the residents seemed worryingly resistant to annihilation.

Alec, ranting: So I bet when I get home tonight there’ll be this little ant rave going on in my living room, with their little ant glowsticks and their little ant dance moves. (Does little ant dance moves in restaurant.)
Me: And their little ant DJ, ANT-hony Pappa! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Alec: …
Me: Followed by special guests, BUGZ In The Attic! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I’m so funny! Aren’t I funny?
Alec: Why me?

London 2005: London Wetland Centre

Day Five: Monday 8 August

Russ suddenly realizes he has to drive to Oxford today to move his stuff back to London, so I improvise a London Wetland Centre plan. Much like the Dulwich Picture Gallery, it’s another place I always meant to visit when I lived in London, but never did.


Traditional conservation goes topsy-turvy

What’s pretty cool about the place is the story behind its creation: when four Victorian-era reservoirs became redundant upon installation of the London Ring Main water system, rather than abandon the area to indiscriminate development, the reservoirs were used as the basis for this wetland centre. I rather like the idea of turning reservoirs into conservation sites. These days it seems people are more likely to do the opposite.

 

So with existing migratory routes already covering the area, they worked on the Field Of Dreams philosophy of “If you build it, they will come”, built a wetland paradise and just waited for birds to discover it – and they did.


A wader on the mudflats

I end up seeing about a hundred times more birds here today than I ever have at Sungei Buloh, and as any real ecosystem is, it’s teeming with all sorts of plant and animal life as well. The grounds are well-planned but not overly manicured, so you don’t feel you’re at yet another bird park or public duck pond.

 


Natural blues

It also has headfucks for non-bird people like me (I assume bird people already know about the Oxyura australis), who then end up stalking ducks round ponds for ages in blue-bill-induced disbelief.

 

I finish exploring the whole place in three leisurely hours. On the way home I look at the bus routes leaving from the bus stop I’m using. Tooting! I know someone in Tooting! On the spur of the moment I call Jeff (unannounced, out of the blue), and an hour or so later I am eating dinner with him. And thus ends my hastily improvised day, which I couldn’t have planned any better.

Manual For The People

At Stylus, J. Edward Keyes does an interesting Playing God With REM’s Up. Unfortunately, I sold this album in my last CD purge and am therefore unable to experiment with his recommendations, but the article still makes for good reading and I love how it describes my favourite song on that album, At My Most Beautiful (which it repositions from track 5 to second last):

Coming near the end of the record, it sounds like salvation, the final beautiful destination we’ve been struggling towards for the last nine songs. It felt chintzy at the center of the record, a piece of rock candy on a plastic ring, but as a conclusion it’s a solid diamond, three-and-a-half straight minutes of melody as a reward for struggling around the record’s hundreds of tight corners. Stipe sang the word ‘smile’ and Mills went ‘doot-doot-doot’ and so everybody within throwing distance hollered ‘Beach Boys!’, and God only knows how many reviewers followed suit. It’s just as much Gary Wilson as Brian, though, a Botticelli done up in Day-Glo Paint. More, though: it captures that beautiful, holy, serene stillness that comes when you watch the person you love sleep. ‘I count your eyelashes, secretly’ – who does that? A better question: Who doesn’t?

Reluctantly Executive Summary

Graaargh. Being away from a computer the whole day during this three-month induction/rotation period for my new job is killing me. I have time to work, live, love, and sleep (5 hours a night, max), but doing more than that has been beyond me this week and last. But since I’m off shift-work today, here’s my attempt at an executive summary from last weekend till this one, minus the bits where I am actually an executive.

Gigs:

  • Mizeryfree/Zhen/Concave Scream at Bar None (last Monday): The first two bands made little impression on me, I was there to see the third. Concave Scream did a passable gig, but nothing as memorable as their Baybeats performance. Also, although I haven’t got tired of any of their songs yet, their setlist doesn’t seem to have changed much these three times I’ve seen them play – same tracks, same introductory banter, same encore.

  • Localbarboy at Hideout (last Wednesday): I told Joe that since I hardly know any pre-2003 local music, the mark of this gig’s success was that I still thoroughly enjoyed it. The immensely likable band, great song choices (how hard does Singapore Cowboy ROCK?) and happy supportive crowd made for a good gig vibe. After the gig the DJ just played the same ol’ same ol’ Singapore indie clubbing staples (doesn’t anyone else get tired of dancing to the same songs every time?) so I left – but not before some muppet-dancing with Alec to Here Comes Your Man. That was fun.

Parties:


Are we hot or not?
  • Bad Taste (two Saturdays ago): At which Alec wore his famous spandex. Many other guests at the party were a little disappointing though, mostly because I feel they hadn’t made themselves look unattractive enough. For example, Ali Baba trousers shouldn’t have been paired with a flattering black top but rather something utterly hideous. Others fell into the trap I narrowly avoided while deciding on my outfit – accessorizing into hipness. The more I added belts, bracelets and necklaces, the more it looked like a cool outfit straight off the streets of Harajuku. So in the end I just stuck to the core items you see in the picture – black and white striped top, 70s retro dirty green skirt, bright green bag, grey trainers, black socks pulled up as high as they could go.
  • Dance Dance BBQolution (last Saturday): Kris’s birthday party cum sendoff to Trinidad. As can be expected for someone like him, the guests at his party reflected his diverse passions, from members of the Toa Payoh Community Centre Guitar Club to the multi-nationalitied denizens of the local tango scene. Later in his flat, I found myself dancing merengue, bhangra, my first ever tango, lots of madcap lindy to an awesome Indian swing track, and finally, the chicken dance.

Theatre:

  • Quills (last Friday): I attempted a review.

Books:

  • Morvern Callar (Alan Warner) is a very odd book, but perhaps you have to be an existentialist music geek with mild lesbian tendencies, a penchant for Southern Comfort and sufficient butchery skills to hack up your boyfriend’s corpse after he’s slit his own throat on your kitchen floor to really understand it properly. Unfortunately for me, I only identified with the music geek bit. Okay, and maybe the mild lesbian tendencies.

  • Love In a Blue Time (Hanif Kureishi) was rather disappointing compared to the effortless charm of The Buddha Of Suburbia. None of the stories really drew me in except perhaps for My Son The Fanatic, which took on fresh significance due to events transpiring in London since it was first published. A lacklustre read from a writer who previously delighted me.

Quills (DBS Arts Centre, 23 September 2005)

The hype about the unprecedented amount of full-frontal male nudity in this play was misplaced – it was a notable effort for far better reasons than that. Rehaan Engineer’s magnificent Marquis de Sade was mincing, offensive and completely riveting all at the same time. Deprived of the ability to speak later in the play, even with nothing more than whimpers and contortions of his beleaguered body to express himself through, his sheer presence continued to dominate the stage as he submitted to the increasing cruelties of his wardens. Daniel Jenkins also acquitted himself commendably in the challenging role of Abbe de Coulmier, which I think could have grated terribly if attempted by a lesser actor.

But speaking of lesser actors, I’m afraid I have to say that this was yet another local theatre production I have watched where the “foreign talent” so obviously outshone even well-regarded local actors such as Lim Kay Tong and Karen Tan that it was embarrassing. Where Rehaan Engineer, Daniel Jenkins and Andy Tear (the architect) were able to enunciate every word clearly and make the most of the dramatic possibilities of every line, Lim Kay Tong and Karen Tan seemed to struggle even with clear diction and effective voice projection. Tan did manage to inject her lines with a fair amount of life later in the play but Lim continued to deliver his lines with a frustrating lack of nuance or timing right to the end.

Set design was as impressive as in the other luna-id/Samanatha Scott-Blackhall play I’ve watched (The Physicists), though I’m afraid I don’t know enough about theatre production to know who should get the credit for that. Where it would have been easy, even easily justifiable given the play’s setting in a mental asylum, to go for a stark minimalist sort of set design, this production featured set design so versatile, creative and simply beautiful that it just made minimalism look lazy.

Although I’m still undecided about the ability of our local actors to pull off roles set in contexts very different to ours, I’m slowly but surely beginning to regain my faith in local theatre productions. I’ve spent about $100 on theatre tickets this month alone, and don’t regret a cent. When’s the last time you went to a local theatre production? If it’s been a while, maybe you should consider returning.

Illmatic In The Morning

This morning I seek refuge in beats and verse and the pretence that I’m somewhere else. I stagger from my house (straight out the fuckin’ dungeons of rap), sprint for the bus (I ran like a cheetah with thoughts of an assassin), sit slumped on my seat (be havin dreams that I’m a gangster – drinkin Moets, holdin Tecs) as I lurch and jerk towards work.

I’m not here. I’m on New York streets, sewin’ up the blocks to sell rocks, winnin’ gunfights with mega cops.

I’m not living with the consequences of a decision I made when I was 18, working the next 6 years for pay dwarfed by that of my peers. I’m livin’ like Capone, with drug scripts sewn, or the legal luxury life, rings flooded with stones, homes.

Escapism is easy on four hours’ sleep. I sit in my bus seat, dead to the world but alive inside. Inhale deep like the words of my breath: I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death.

Then New York State Of Mind finishes, and the next song starts. It features the rousing refrain: Life’s a bitch and then you die.

London 2005: Spitalfields, Mass, Nav (on Trisha!), Grooverider

Day Four: Sunday 7 August

(My Sunday photos were lower in both quantity and quality than for the other days – I was too busy shopping. But I’ll bung some in anyway, it brightens up the page. As usual, click for larger versions.)

A Just Married red London bus with open top deck
Match made in London.

I see this on the way to Spitalfields, but just miss the bridal couple leaving the upper deck, unfortunately. What a lovely idea for a summer wedding in London. (It just wouldn’t be the same on a bendy bus now, would it? Routemaster forever!)

 


Saddest welcome ever.

Yes, for the third time in four days I am back in the Spitalfields/Brick Lane area, which is a bit much even for a Shoreditch twat like me, but it was always such a happy Sunday place that I can’t resist, plus I just have to go to Spitalfields before the fuckers-that-be bulldoze the whole place.

 


Off Cheshire Street.

As usual, Spitalfields is full of beautiful things, most of which I’m too cheap to buy. The new “(Up)Market” (yes, really) is, thank God, no more upmarket than Spitalfields, and has the advantage of being a little less crammed with stalls and people. Throughout the markets I resist the various epicurean delights on offer because I know that as long as I can hold out till I reach Brick Lane, heaven awaits me in a Beigel Bake hot salt beef bagel. (Lovely photo here.) I end my shopping in Beyond Retro where I find, sadly, that even the British woman of yesteryear is still bigger than me and no clothes fit.

Total damage:

  • A photo-print board for Alec from Tom Shedden Photography in Spitalfields. Can’t find the one I bought on the site, but it’s a close-up of an old black and white horseracing photo mounted on weathered wood.
  • Thingy which can double as a scarf, belt or hairband, also double-sided with lovely prints on either side – £5, Spitalfields.
  • Pacman badge! £1, Up(Market).
  • 2 vintage scarves – £1.50 each, Beyond Retro.
  • Hot salt beef bagel! £2-something, and worth every hot salty beefy penny.

I rush to Ogle Street for evening mass. Fr Fudge (stop laughing) is as powerful a preacher as he always was, and like last year, I savour the differences between mass here and mass in Singapore. Old hymns, none of this meandering nu-Christian pan-pipes tedium that I keep getting fed in my parish at home. A sermon I couldn’t have just made up myself from common sense. No bloody mobile phones going off, no bloody mobile phones going off, no bloody mobile phones going off! I roll my lips and tongue and heart around the small differences in the prayers here – Trespasses. Lead us not into temptation. Became incarnate of the Virgin Mary – and treasure the taste of the Blood in my mouth.

I meet Nav for dinner at Carluccio’s, where I am crushed to find they’ve taken my wild boar ragu off the menu. I try the spicy sausage penne but it isn’t as nice. A few months ago, Nav came to Singapore and broke the news that she was going to be in the audience of Trisha. This of course filled me with absolute glee, and I along with everyone else there at the time who were familiar with Trisha began reciting clichés that Nav totally had to get up and slam the guests with, e.g. “Once a cheat-ah, ALWAYS a cheat-ah!”, “Yuh need to get up and take responsibilit-y for yuh life, innit?” etc.etc. Tonight Nav updates me on this, and as usual, she doesn’t disappoint. Apparently she chewed out the mother of a murder victim for whining on TV about all her problems when she’d never sought professional help. I love Nav so much. My only disappointment is that she didn’t put on an estuary accent.

From here, Russ picks me up and we head for Herbal. Grooverider’s there tonight, and I get in for free. BOOYA! It’s a little too jazzy for my tastes at first, but the last hour is great, sweaty, junglist action. I relish the feeling of being the only yellow skin on the dancefloor (there’s a Japanese couple around, but they don’t dance), although I do wish the three immense black guys in front of me weren’t strenuously disproving that old chestnutty stereotype that all black people have rhythm. They certainly share my tastes in jungle though – Grooverider drops an amazing raggalicious track and they go wild in what I can only describe as an ape-like dance, stomping and swaying from side to side while crouched over, heads arching and rearing with each sway. One grabs the other’s shoulders and they do the dance together, laughing and cheering. If you’re looking for racism anywhere here, don’t bother – it is the perfect dance to that song, and a perfect end to the night.

Tangled Up In Bluegrass

A few posts ago, I wondered whether there was a bluegrass scene in Singapore. Jacob didn’t know, but in typical Jacob fashion he decided to make one.

Jacob with straw hat, bandanna, dungarees and bottle of moonshine
Host with the most.

It’s a pity the photo doesn’t capture the tighty-whities visible through the open sides of the dungarees – those really drew the whole costume together. Note also the bottle of “moonshine”.

 

I wore dungarees too. I’d like to say I bought them specially for the party, being far too hip and funky to ever have such items of clothing in my wardrobe, but I can’t. First, I last wore them as recently as the age of 17. And second, I kinda like dungarees. They’re very comfy. (People on my Flickr friends list can view our double-dungaree atrocity. Please note that in this second picture we are deliberately trying to look like the products of inbreeding.) [Edit: Just to clarify, I’m happy to add anyone who knows me in real life to my Flickr friends list, though I don’t see why you’d bother if you’re not already a Flickr member – me looking retarded isn’t exactly a rare sight.]


To All The Sushi I’ve Loved Before

Eatin’ some down-home sushi on a Willie Nelson bandanna, just like we used to back on the farm.

 


Unsquare dancing

It was quite a riot. I think we all have a reserve of country music dancing skills hidden deep within us, it just takes an appropriate occasion and sufficient alcohol for them to surface.

 

Throughout the evening I was never very satisfied with the photos I was taking, because, well, it’s dang hard to photograph wildly dancing people. I either had to use the flash, which I ordinarily prefer to avoid, or settle for extreme blurriness. But you know, I think the photo below does actually capture that party quite well – happy people, clappin’ and dancin’, all viewed through an alcoholic blur.


Betrayal (DBS Arts Centre, Sept 9 2005)

The day Alec and I decided to stop circling around each other and become a couple, we were supposed to go to a Harold Pinter play, but that never happened because we were held up by my inexpert inefficient cooking of the worst steak I’ve ever eaten. On Friday, nearly four years later, we finally made it to a Harold Pinter play, except this one was about relationships torn apart by infidelity and deception. Heh.

Anyway, the Singapore Repertory Theatre’s production of Betrayal was quite impressive and very much worth the forty-buck price of admission, but I don’t really feel like writing a detailed review because the Second Link one exhausted me. This Flying Inkpot one should do the trick for you though. (Aside: At the same site you can also find a Second Link review written by my companion at that theatre outing. It’s way better than mine was.)