Casey At 5 Months

For weeks I’ve been accumulating a pretty large backlog of photos I’d like to put up here. Many record cultural observations, or moments of beauty or humour, capturing my view of the world around me in my attempts at artistic exploration.

However, none of those photos will be displayed in this post. Instead, here be cat pics.

Casey is now 5 months old. On her first visit to the vet, she entered gibberish into her own veterinary records by wandering onto the keyboard as the vet was typing. She is very strong and can pin big healthy adults to the sofa for hours on end, simply by draping herself across a belly, falling asleep, and generally being warm and fuzzy. Her favourite food is finger, but she never breaks the skin.

topsy turvy
Cute and she knows it.
inter-species love
Completely unposed, I swear.
turtle soup
Hasn’t quite grasped the distinction between terrapin food and water and cat food and water.

[Before anyone goes reporting me to the SPCA for cruelty to terrapins, let me just clarify that the terrapin spends most of the day clambering around the backyard and sunning itself. It only goes in that small tank to sleep and eat.]

My Pathetic Tribute To John Peel

I’m too wimpy to host mp3s myself here (bandwidth fears, plus that inconvenient future profession of mine), but I thought I’d mention some bands who I heard about through John Peel, and who (unlike the Shite Stripes) aren’t anywhere near famous enough yet.

  • The Crimea: Baby Boom is the song that got me hooked. Wonderful soaring guitar lines, thoroughly appealing melody, and the slightly hoarse wheedling tone of the lead singer endears me instead of irritating me the way Ben Gibbard’s does. Altogether it is rather like skinny-dipping in a lake of shooting stars on the happiest day of your childhood. You can listen to snippets of a couple of other songs here – try Bombay Sapphire Coma and Out Of Africa.
  • Knifehandchop: Mixes drum’n’bass with every sound known to man and then some. Completely manic, deliciously unpredictable, and generally as addictive as cocaine, complete with the tendency for nosebleeds. Already fairly well-known among people who keep up with the scene, but still not famous enough for me, so go check out his Peel Session, kindly made available for download at boomselection.
  • Murcof: I heard some tracks on the John Peel show, which then influenced me to buy a Leaf Label sampler, which in turn introduced me to Asa-Chang & Junray and some very strange dreams. Murcof isn’t for everyone, I’ll admit. I’d understand if people found him too cold and cerebral, but there’s something I rather like about the atmosphere he creates, like a room of shifting sands in an abandoned avant-garde funhouse. Try Memoria, off his excellent Martes album.
  • Magoo: I didn’t actually hear Magoo on the John Peel show, but the fact that he was a fan was the reason I decided to check out their gig at the Arts Cafe. I was completely floored, and have gone on to acquire all of their albums since then. No mp3 link here, I’m afraid, because there isn’t much about Magoo online and they’re almost impossible to locate on file-sharing networks because you tend to get a lot of Timbaland stuff instead. But if you pick up an album I’d recommend The Soateramic Sounds Of Magoo or Realist Week. Better still, see them live because they’re incredibly tight. Tour dates can be found at their official site.

Silence The Pianos And With Muffled Drum

John Peel has died suddenly of a massive heart attack. I didn’t listen to him as regularly as I did the Breezeblock, which I am now profoundly regretting. I wasn’t expecting him to die at 65. I was expecting him to be showcasing the latest developments in chainsaw folk techno well into his 90s.

The thing is, I don’t have to have listened to him 3 times a week to feel as if I’ve lost a hero. Perhaps I’m just generally in an overemotional frame of mind (see previous post), but for the first time in my life I’m listening to Teenage Kicks with tears in my eyes.

Till February

What I have learned these past three weeks is that it is always possible to be more in love than you were before.

I didn’t trust myself to drive home after seeing Alec off. For the second time this year, I sat in bus number 36 staring blankly into the distance, speeding towards one home and away from another.

Bet you thought this was going to be a sappy weepy post about the pain of long-distance love, but no! I’m actually going to write about Monster Movie’s Last Night Something Happened, my iPod album of choice on the way home.

You know those bits of trance dance tracks which are so euphoric that even without drugs you still find yourself with your head thrown back and your hands reaching for the sweeping laser lights, and you’re so caught up in the moment you don’t even realize you look daft? Monster Movie made a whole album’s worth of music like those bits, except slow and with guitars and pulsing organic harmonies.

You know those bits in films where a song kicks in during a particular scene and suddenly you’re plunged headlong into a world so intensely beautiful you’re almost drunk on it, and you realize that there will never be another song more perfect for these images than this one? Monster Movie made a whole album’s worth of songs like that.

You know how when you’re in the grip of pretty strong emotions but are trying not to show anything on the outside, with the result that you feel as if your heart is literally swelling in your chest, and you close your eyes and mouth tight so that nothing will leak out if it bursts?

I guess that last one didn’t actually have anything to do with my listening to Last Night Something Happened, but the album is pretty perfect for moments like that too.

At least this will be the last time. And February isn’t that far away.

New-Age Sensitive Man

We were trying to figure out what the movie on TV was.

“That’s Denise Richards,” Alec declared with an air of certainty.

“Ew, she looks bad. Was this, like, before she became famous or something?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “I can’t say for sure until I’ve seen her cleavage.”

* * *

Monsoon skies opened during our drunken chicken noodle lunch on Jalan Alor, which confirmed that a mall was the easiest place in the vicinity to spend the rest of the afternoon.

After two hours of wandering around after me, Alec was getting silent and morose.

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” I said, “Are you getting bored of shopping?”

“No,” he said, furrowing his brow, “I’m just really disappointed. The stuff on these floors just isn’t anywhere as good as the stuff you were buying yesterday.”

Sometimes I Get That Not-So-Fresh Feeling

We found out from a Singapore guidebook that the Sultan Mosque was designed by an Irishman named Denis Santry. This delighted me.

“So, in Denis Santry’s salad days, when he was a young wild man living on his own, what did they call his little flat?” I asked Alec.

“What?” asked Alec, in a voice already steely with pain and resignation.

“The SANTRY PAD!”

I’m so witty.

Par-taying

Clawing back still in progress. This is about Saturday.

I’d originally been pissed off at myself for not snagging us tickets to Maxim Vengerov (kowtow kowtow) performing the Beethoven violin concerto at the Esplanade that night, but in the end when we got asked to three separate parties on the same night, we were glad we weren’t tied down to it. We finally decided we could only make two, and picked the first two we’d been invited to.

* * *

Kelly’s housewarming party came first. We brought a dessert Alec first made for me in London, and which I have subsequently decided is one of my favourite desserts in the world: pears poached in red wine, cinnamon and other stuff, topped with mint-infused mascarpone cheese. Bloody tedious to make, and it looks a bit vile while you’re eating it because the cheese mixes with the wine, but it’s my idea of dessert heaven and I’m not even a dessert person.

I had a great time, but was probably not at my socializing best because I kept getting distracted by the classic music videos among Patrick’s DVD collection. I’m incapable of watching Coldcut’s Timber and making conversation at the same time, unless the conversation is about the utter genius of the video. I probably managed some half-witted remarks during Amon Tobin’s Verbal, but I don’t actually remember what I said or who I was talking to.

I also vaguely remember demanding, in my usual overemphatic tone, that Patrick play the above two videos once I realized he had them. This is of course the best possible way to interact with someone you have only just met. Sigh. I’d like to blame the beer but I don’t think I’d had much at that point.

Anyway, thanks for having us, Kelly and Patrick, and happy housewarming. I eagerly await my next invitation. :)

* * *

Sue’s birthday was at China Jump, which is…really not our kind of place…but it was still nice to see Sue so happy.

Our night there started off badly, but we fortified ourselves with more beer, and danced to Naughty Girl. I also danced to the few aggressive hip-hop tracks they played, until they realized that hardly anyone else wanted to dance to that, and changed back to cheese.

And then we spotted the empty pool table. I’m sure there have been better feelings in my life than making the winning shot in a pool game by perching tipsily in a flimsy tube dress with my left bum cheek on the side of the table and my right arm twisted around my back in order to get a shot at the black, AND THEN POTTING THE FUCKING BLACK THEREBY ROUNDLY KICKING ALEC’S ASS, but this one will do for now.

Door Bitch

Strange, isn’t it, that when I walk unaccompanied to the door of China Jump and ask what the cover charge is, the woman manning it says “You do know you have to be over 25, right?” with a distinct tone, but when I walk to the door with Alec, no one even mentions age?

I guess white is the new black. Or maybe white has always been the new black. If you know what I mean.

Speakee The Singlish

During a meal at Sibu, I was explaining nasi lemak to Alec, saying that lemak refers to the coconut used to infuse the rice. “If you’re having curry and there’s loads of coconut milk in it,” I mentioned, “you might hear someone say the curry is very lemak.”

After we returned to Singapore, I’d bought Alec a cooking lesson at Cookery Magic to learn how to make laksa, satay and peanut sauce, which are all dishes he likes. (My mother can teach him most local dishes he’s interested in, but she doesn’t do these.)

During the lesson, the teacher was encouraging Alec and the other woman attending to taste as they went along. Alec tasted the laksa gravy and remarked that it was “mmmm, quite lemak“. Cue sudden dropping of jaws, as the cooking teacher and other student (a Malaysian woman) stared at him dumbstruck.

Sibu Island Resort (Sibu Tengah Island, Malaysia)

I’ve been too stressed trying to juggle coursework, Alec, and other social commitments to write stuff down, which is a big pity because there’s been lots for the blogging. Let me try and claw some back. Here’s more about Sibu.

* * *

I could find so little written about Sibu Tengah online and in guidebooks that I was a little worried about having booked us on a weekend there. I had alternate visions of a mosquito-ridden hellhole, or at the other end of the spectrum, a hermetically sealed Four Star Resort 101 with no real character of its own. Thankfully, both those fears were unfounded. We are neither militant backpackers nor cleanfreak kuniangs,¹ and Sibu Island Resort suited us just fine.

Well-maintained grounds (with deer and rabbits randomly running around!), clean and comfortable (even if not luxurious) chalets, and decent food meant that our creature comforts were satisfied enough. The staff are either totally brainwashed, brilliant actors, or genuinely like their jobs. We were greeted at the reception by the resident band singing a welcome song, and when we left, nearly 10 members of staff were at the jetty waving goodbye. Kinda cheesy, yes, but also rather endearing, and I like the idea of a place that would bother with stuff like that. In general, service was warm and largely efficient throughout our stay, and more than a few members of staff went beyond the bare bones of what was necessary to be helpful.

We snorkelled twice on the Saturday, once in the water just off the island itself, and once off Sibu Kukus, a small uninhabited island 30 minutes away by boat. I don’t know much about snorkelling, and I’m aware there must be much better snorkelling out there than at Sibu, but I had a great time. We saw lots of fish, often swimming right among schools of them, and gawked at huge violently purple anemones and other weird coral formations. Alec’s back is still peeling.

On Saturday night, the resort put on some sort of cultural performance cum games entertainment during dinner. Nothing that would knock your cultural socks off, but again, we were endeared by the sheer enthusiasm of the performances, which weren’t by a professional dance troupe but by members of staff. It turned out that one of our regular waiters was the chief choreographer.

During the games segment, men were getting pulled up on stage to see who was the best at copying sexy cha-cha moves for a prize. Alec had resolved to leave the area safely before this segment began, but was artfully distracted by yours truly into staying. “It’s all right,” he muttered desperately, “I’ll just avoid all eye contact and they won’t pick me,” upon which the MC started demanding the presence of “That handsome guy over there! Let’s have that handsome guy up here!” Alec sat tight and insisted he was ugly, but then the MC said “Maybe the pretty girl can convince him!” and I was far more susceptible to flattery since my dignity wasn’t on the line. I grinned broadly, patted him on his (sunburnt) back, and gave a thumbs-up to the MC. And so it was that Alec cha-cha’d.

As I said in my previous post, Sibu was great.

¹ Not defined in the Coxford Singlish Dictionary! It kind of means delicate squeamish girlies.