The Drool Of Law

2 vignettes from my working life:

  1. I detect a slightly sour smell on the lapels of my jacket.

    After some sniffing and recoiling, I come to the conclusion that I must have fallen asleep (at my desk) and drooled on myself at some point earlier in the day. How very embarrassing.

  2. I have a little free time while waiting for a colleague to come give me work, so I start reading this perfectly normal, perfectly innocuous, merely wanky, i.e. totally work-safe (or so I think) “Best Triple Bill You’ve Ever Seen” thread on ILM just to take a break for a few minutes. Then someone posts “Missy Elliot” in reply to the thread title and I choke loudly and messily on my masala tea just as said colleague arrives. How very embarrassing.

Now I have to go to the dry-cleaner’s again. KNN.

Non-Cheesy Cheesy Poem

“And you and I, paring away the rind,

do you and I have a patient nose
for the creamy inwardness of things?”

– from The Demise Of Camembert (Ron Slate)

Read the whole poem, the quote doesn’t do it justice at all.

Caramon The Copycat

Plagiarism disgusts me. Therefore, caramonyeo disgusts me. If he disgusts you too, please feel to drop by his site and let him know what a loser he is. (Link found via Tomorrow.)

His response to comments which pointed out that he had plagiarised sarongpartygirl?

“I am surprised that its indeed similar, however its not the same.. thanks for pointing it out.. cheers..”

Newsflash, copycat: it doesn’t have to be the same to be plagiarism. Google it yourself to find out more. After all, you seem quite good at trawling the Net for content.

I was also amused by his “About Me” description:

“Well, to know more about me is like reading a book.”

Yeah, like reading a book…written by someone else!

Addendum: Just in case copycatyeo decides to delete the comment I made on his blog, I shall reproduce it here. In the past I’ve been quite sad to lose the comments I left on Xiaxue’s blog which she decided to delete (and ban me as well), and I’d rather like to keep this one.

Caramon: Your flaccid response disgusts me, as it should any blogger, Singaporean or otherwise, who actually takes the trouble to apply their mind to writing their own posts. It will obviously take years for you to bed a local girl if she fears that the minute she opens her legs you will Ctrl-C her chee bye and Ctrl-V it on your blog.

It’s quite easy to give credit to people whose writing you admire, you know? There’s this thing people use on the Internet, it’s called “linking”. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

You’ve been caught good and proper. At least be man enough to admit it and apologize.

Meeting In Meatspace

I must admit I don’t actually read the blogs of most of the people who were at Hideout last night, but it was nice to see them all getting along so happily anyway. mrbrown explains how it all happened here, complete with trippy facewarped photos.

Apart from reproaching Daryl for playing Gigantic with insufficiently huge bass (contrary to what he tempted me with previously), congratulating mrbrown on having his third baby on the way, telling Mr Miyagi that rather than appearing sick to his stomach he merely exuded “quiet confidence”, chatting briefly with 2 sarongpartyfrens, and being reassured by Little Miss Drinkalot that over the years, one does actually manage to re-adjust to being in Singapore and not London, I mostly sat shyly to one side with Alec and listened to the choons. Which were not as much to my taste as the last time (I prefer my house darker, colder and scarier – “haunted house”, if you will), and I had to leave just as he started playing some indie, but I still look forward to future sets by DJ Slapdash. Do a hip-hop one, Daryl!

And to the few people I did manage to chat with, albeit awkwardly and plagued by my old bad habit of not making eye contact, it was a pleasure meeting you.

One, Two, Three, Four…

…I declare Kitten War!

If there’s a kitten cuter than Squee in the universe, I fear I may not survive seeing it.

Addendum: a slightly odd conversation I had with Alec last night.

Me: At this Kitten War site there’s a kitten that’s shooooooo cute! It’s called Squee! There’s another kitten called Sox that’s cute too but there’s something special about Squee that I really like.
Alec, eyes half glazed over: So, is Squee a black kitten?
Me, surprised: Yes! How’d you guess that?
Alec: Well, in all these contests, you always like the black one.

[To put things in context, here are some recent reality TV favourites of mine: Fantasia, LaToya, Jennifer, George (LOVED all of them in American Idol 3), Uchenna and Joyce (Amazing Race), first Anwar and then Vonzell after Anwar got boring (American Idol 4).]

Ubin Witch

I took this picture in a Pulau Ubin quarry last Sunday, but only saw the witch’s face later when I viewed the photo on my computer screen. It’s not just me who sees her, right?


* * *

Later, we tried to take photos of ourselves in another quarry and were less than pleased with the results.

Russ, who had long abandoned his shirt: I look so gay!
Me: Well, I guess the nipple doesn’t help.
Russ, noticing his photographed nipple for the first time: Aaagh!
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Russ: STOP LAUGHING AT MY NIPPLE!

It echoed across the calm waters as the sunset bathed everything in gold.

KL Notes

Our long weekend in KL was exceedingly pleasant but not particularly blogworthy. I’m just writing my notes here for future reference, but if you’re after more interesting stuff I promise to try and post my Pulau Ubin photo of a scary witch-face rock fairly soon.

Ate well: yummy chicken porridge on Jalan Alor, great pork ball noodles and poh piah on Jalan Imbi, the biggest otak piece I’ve ever seen in my life at Madam Kwan’s (thanks Benny!), sublimely moreish joo hoo char at Old China Cafe, fun at Kim Gary’s with Macau pork sandwiches (thanks to umami’s review) and boiled Coke with ginger, and last but by no means least, Nando’s. I know Nando’s isn’t particularly Malaysian but as far as I know there aren’t any branches in Singapore, and we like it lots.

Sightsaw slightly: Ogled the Petronas towers like everybody else, wandered from mass at St John’s cathedral past the Masjid Jamek (beautiful mosque, pity about the overwhelming smell of sewage) and Merdeka Square, then down the Petaling Street market crush where I found it laughable that anyone would actually buy anything.

Wall stencil graffiti of a skeletal beggar
Down the road from St John’s Cathedral

Shopped badly: like many other intense sensual experiences, this second shopping trip to Sungei Wang just didn’t live up to the first. Bought nothing worth mentioning.

Met up with Benny: for dinner and a trip back to his house, during which he illustrated a few of the differences between Malaysia and Singapore. “Eh, ‘dilarang masuk’ lah!” I said, as he blithely steered his car past a big DILARANG MASUK sign. “This is Malaysia lah!” Benny said, “The sign only means you shouldn’t enter, not that you cannot enter.”

Generally took things easy: Sleeping in hostels formerly used for housing refugees (Zagreb), backtracking from irrelevant bus stops along Polish highways in search of unpronounceably named salt mines and national parks, exploring the ruins of Ayutthaya on foot in the blazing sun – these things are for other holidays. In KL we take cabs, feel no compulsion to seek out “culturally enriching experiences”, and sleep till noon every day. Quite a refreshing way to holiday, once in a while.

And So It Goes

Via J-Walk, and The Huffington Post before that, this is apparently from Kurt Vonnegut:

Dearest Iraq:

Act like me. After 100 years of democracy, let your slaves go. After 150, let your women vote. At the start of democracy, ethnic cleansing is quite OK.

Love you madly!

Uncle Sam

Do you guys like Kurt Vonnegut? This quote makes me feel like rereading Slaughterhouse Five but I’m strangely worried that I won’t like it as much now as I did when I was 15.

Wakeboard The Blue Sky

Kelong
Yes, Toto, we’re still in Singapore

Saturday morning was my third wakeboarding outing. I can now heel, toe, move outwards over the wake, and move back in over the wake.

Saturday morning was Russ’s first wakeboarding outing. He can do all of that too. Either I’m a slow learner, or he’s fucking annoying.

Also fucking annoying: his sixpack.

Sixpack

But be not deceived by the attitude I’m faking in order to conceal my innate sappiness. Truth be told, the feeling of wakeboarding past kelongs, seagulls in my peripheral vision and two people I love in my sights, was fucking wonderful.

Wakeboard and sky