Excerpt: Living To Tell The Tale (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

“I had just dropped out of the faculty of law after six semesters devoted almost entirely to reading whatever I could get my hands on, and reciting from memory the unrepeatable poetry of the Spanish Golden Age. I already had read, in translation, and in borrowed editions, all the books I would have needed to learn the novelist’s craft, and had published six stories in newspaper supplements, winning the enthusiasm of my friends and the attention of a few critics. The following month I would turn twenty-three, I had passed the age of military service and was a veteran of two bouts of gonorrhea, and every day I smoked, with no foreboding, sixty cigarettes made from the most barbaric tobacco. I divided my leisure between Barranquilla and Cartagena de Indias, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, living like a king on what I was paid for my daily commentaries in the newspaper El Heraldo, which amounted to almost less than nothing, and sleeping in the best company possible wherever I happened to be at night. As if the uncertainty of my aspirations and the chaos of my life were not enough, a group of inseparable friends and I were preparing to publish without funds a bold magazine that Alfonso Fuenmayor had been planning for the past three years. What more could anyone desire?”

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez rOxOrS so much. This already feels like an autobiography and a half, and I’m only 20 pages into one book of an intended trilogy.

Singapore Solo

After Edu-Dine on Friday I walked from City Hall to Boat Quay to meet Ken and Ida for drinks at Hideout. It was a cool night, and my higher-than-usual heels were surprisingly comfortable, so I walked. Round the back of Parliament House, past The Arts House, light playing on its walls to an actually rather charming version of that “Let’s take a little trip around Singapore town on a Singapore city bus” tune. Across Cavenagh Bridge, dotted with tourists oohing and aahing at the view of the Esplanade, facing one way, and down the quays, facing the other. Two real cats among the Kucinta sculptures.

In Hideout, Colin messaged asking if I wanted to go to Phuture, but I decided my toes were too vulnerable in my dressy shoes. When we parted ways for the night, I meandered through the streets, taking an extra-long route to the not-so-nearest bus stop, simply because I was enjoying the walk. Along South Bridge Road, tourists stopped me and asked for directions. I directed people to Clarke Quay, to the Fullerton Hotel, to the War Memorial Park. I finally reached Hill Street Fire Station, which I’ve always rather liked, and waited just beyond it for the bus home.

There seemed to be a buzz and a euphoria in the air that I don’t usually sense. The tourists seemed genuinely excited by what they were seeing, and where they were, and amazingly, I was too. Singapore is beautiful by night, whether you’re looking at gleaming restored colonial buildings around the Padang, the dark quiet hulk of skyscrapers in Shenton Way, or the fluorescent town centres in the housing estates.

A year on from my return, and I could actually stand to watch the National Day Parade today. I still rolled my eyes at a lot of the commentary eg. “This lively dance truly reflects the passion of our youth for arts and sports!” but I watched the singing of the national songs happily enough.

I’m still not sure I can sing along to Home with all sincerity – if home is defined by “where my dreams wait for me” and “where my senses tell me” then I’m afraid we’re still pretty much stuck in London. I’ve also always found the line “This is where I won’t be alone” particularly meaningless, in that I am addicted to London precisely because I can be completely alone there and still completely blissful.

But progress is being made, albeit in baby steps. My Friday night walk was a taste of what’s possible for me and Singapore, even when we’re all alone.

Private Parts (Esplanade Theatre, Singapore)

On Sunday I paid $45 to experience Michael Chiang’s flaccid Private Parts. I can safely say I have never felt so violated by transsexuals in my life.

The play’s biggest problem for me was that it was dreadfully paced. Starting the play with a drag/strip routine, good. Following this with a talk show scene where a housewife makes the same point about protecting the morality of society what feels like ten million times, each time as boring as the last, not good. Later on, when Mirabella was having her big long EMOTE! moment on the talk show, I sensed that this was the point where I was meant to be deeply moved by the loneliness and isolation of many transsexuals, suddenly realizing that this emotional hardship comes not just from without, but also from within. Unfortunately, I was more concerned with my own emotional hardship from being within the Esplanade Theatre watching this play when I was longing to be without.

Except for the actor who played Lavinia, the acting was mostly reminiscent of mediocre school plays. To call Jamie Yeo’s character one-dimensional would be crediting her with too much depth. The rest were insipid at best (Warren), and downright annoying at worst (Edward, Nurse Azman, the editor of the talk show).

When all else fails in a play involving sexuality, at least you can sometimes still glean some entertainment from the knob gags. Unfortunately not here. I like knob gags as much as the next Philistine, but not when I can see the joke coming 5 minutes beforehand.

I sat there twiddling my thumbs and stifling my sighs, and remembered a magical evening in London at an original practices production of Richard II, where a man in funny clothes (Richard) kissed another man in funny clothes (his Queen) and I was nearly moved to tears by the pathos of their goodbye.

On the Esplanade stage, I vaguely sensed important things were happening, and the play was probably near its end. Warren the talk-show host was being outed by his friends, the transsexuals, as having had to reconstruct his penis after a bizarre golf club accident. Mirabella was revealing her love for him and asking if he could ever love her back. I suppressed the urge to scream “Of course not, you whiny old bint!”, lay back, and thought of England.

How Dare They

What a week. Lots of stuff I wanted to write about got swallowed up in the demands of the professional legal course I’m on, where it seems they are starting to want us to, like, learn actual stuff about being a legal professional. How outrageous. The entries that follow are my attempt at catch-up.

Reason To Celebrate

Today marks one year since I returned to Singapore, and one year Alec and I have spent in different continents from each other. It’s also Alec’s birthday.

During this year, I have drawn much-needed comfort from him at some of the lowest points in my life, discovered countless new things to love about him, and embarrassed myself frequently while alone in public when the thought of him brings a smile to my face.

Many people don’t believe that long-distance relationships can work. I’ve become accustomed to the look of polite disbelief that passes fleetingly across people’s faces when I tell them I don’t agree. I don’t really blame them, given that everyone has examples of this friend who got cheated on and that friend who got stifled by jealousy and still more friends for whom romance without physical proximity was just unsustainable.

Theoretically, I understand how all these problems can arise, but from the personal experience I’ve had so far, I can’t actually identify with any of them in reality. If I feel this lucky and blessed and loved now, what more when he finally moves over? In the meantime I wait, hope, and thank God for him.

Goodbye Mr Stephens

Mr Jim Stephens was my lecturer and tutor in criminal law in my second year at UCL. Two years later, he would still smile and say hello whenever we happened to meet on the streets of Bloomsbury, or in the corridors of the law faculty. This would perhaps be understandable if I had been a good student of criminal law, but I wasn’t. Through no fault of his, I missed at least a third of the lectures, and was usually woefully unprepared for tutorials. But even though I certainly entered the doors of his room with very little in my mind, I always left with much more.

He bewildered and frustrated us at first. The robustness that cut through the dead air of lecture theatres and kept even sleepy me awake as he snarled “Hey, FATTY!” in lectures on provocation was almost too much to handle in his faculty room, where each of us in turn would be hemming and hawing at the end of his penetrating gaze as we racked our brains for the answer he was looking for. He insisted on a highly systematic approach to dissecting the many different elements of a problem question, and in my conceptual haziness I chafed as what I thought were reasonable answers were often not considered precise enough. Over time though, things got clearer, and everything started to make sense. I believe his rigour in those tutorials was behind my eventual First in criminal law.

It would be inaccurate to frame this post as a goodbye to a beloved teacher. The nature of my university life was that I engaged with my teachers as little as humanly possible, because I was acutely aware that I was quite possibly their laziest student, and if they didn’t already know that, I didn’t want them to find out. But when I heard the news today, memories of Mr Stephens were easy to find, easier to find than memories of most of the people who have only just lectured me in NUS. I remember a clear blue gaze, a ready smile, and pavement conversations where he seemed genuinely interested in what and how I was doing, and all this for a student who faltered on questions like “What is the leading case in defining recklessness?”

The next time I am in London, Bloomsbury, and the corridors of the UCL law faculty, will feel a little emptier.

Hell Is Other Lawyers

Snippets from the professional course I’ve been spending my days at:

  • A girl talks throughout a lecture, not softly, but in chatty conversational tones with her friend beside her. Everyone around her is struggling to concentrate on what is already a very dull lecture, looking at her, looking at each other, rolling their eyes, but somehow no one says anything to her. I want to, but while I keep thinking of a polite way to phrase it, the only words that come to mind are “Shut the fuck up!” and some sort of inner reserve prevents me from saying that to a stranger. I keep thinking she must have a clue, she must realize this is disturbing everyone around her, she can’t be that much of a self-absorbed rude cow, surely she’ll stop soon? And of course she doesn’t. (She’s from your uni, Tamara!)
  • I mention this to another girl later. “Oh, actually I did that before too,” she twitters, “but I decided I shouldn’t do it any more lah, because then I don’t get anything out of the lectures.”
  • A girl sitting next to me has such overwhelming perfume that I have to change seats. Note that my sense of smell is so bad that a very real concern for me in chemistry QA practicals was that ammonia gas would be released and I wouldn’t smell it.

Three Poems For Edmund, Who I Do Not Know

He asked, and just to prove poetry and Prince don’t jostle on the same territory, at least where this blog is concerned, here are three. (Excerpts, with links to full versions.) I hope you like them, Edmund, but even if you don’t, thanks for reminding me. :)

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My bad cello! I love it
too much, my note to almost note,
my almost Bach, my almost Haydn, two who
heard things falling off a shelf

Nabeya!

I thought Tamade was a one-off occurrence of a Japanese restaurant here with a name which is a swear word in another language (Mandarin), but today my family had dinner at Nabeya.¹ It appeared that I was either the only one who knew which swear word it sounded like, or the only one puerile enough to be secretly amused by it.

Sample conversation in the run-up to dinner, and I am so not kidding:
My mum: So, where are we going for dinner?
My sister: Nabeya.
My mum: Nabeya?! No, I don’t feel like it. Let’s go somewhere else.
My sister: But I only feel like Nabeya.
Me: Yah, mum, why not? Nothing wrong with Nabeya what.
My mum: Okay, fine then. Nabeya.

¹ Tips as to meaning can be found here and here.