Blasphemy

Earlier tonight, while watching Justin Timberlake: Down Home In Memphis on Starworld:

My mum: So who’s this?
Me: blah blah blah blah soooooo cute blah blah blah blah sooooo catchy blah blah blah blah fantastic dancer, look mum!
My mum: He looks like Gurmit Singh.

I have not the words.

[For non-Singaporeans: Gurmit Singh is a local TV personality, best known for an admittedly masterly comedy role as a dodgy building contractor sporting a mini-Afro perm, yellow rubber boots, and a large mole, best forgotten for an attempt at a talk show where he was probably trying to be Conan O’Brien but didn’t quite realize that only Conan O’Brien can be Conan O’Brien, and everyone else trying to be Conan O’Brien really just ends up as cringeworthy as Brooke Shields in Suddenly Susan. Suffice to say, he SO DOES NOT EVEN FAINTLY RESEMBLE JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, OR VICE VERSA.]

Hmm New Year

This is my 2003 entry for the mayfly project:

Finished Masters. Left London, sobbing. Difficult resettling in Singapore. Partial meltdown. Grateful for family’s support, Alec’s (long-distance) love. Cautiously optimistic.

* * *

What I wrote this time last year was fairly spot-on. My dread at The Return proved well-founded – returning to Singapore has been as bad as I expected, and then some. On the other hand, I think I can safely say my resolve to “carpe the fucking diem” for the remainder of my London life was amply realized.

* * *

I write this entry alone again for the first time in two and a half weeks. I said goodbye to Alec a few hours ago, and will probably not see him again until May. A few months ago, I melodramatically scribbled somewhere that the loneliest place in the world is the designs on the backs of my eyelids at 4 am. At that time, I hadn’t yet tried standing in the departure hall as Alec’s profile shrank into the distance.

* * *

On the way home from the airport on the bus, a sign on the expressway read “Welcome To Singapore!”

* * *

I wonder what I will write this time next year.

Bloody Merry

Merry Christmas, everyone. A pint of Hoegaarden is certainly not enough in itself to render me merry (especially at the sobering price of $19) but surveyed in the context of a fantastic trip to Thailand, a completely fuckup-free introduction of Alec to my various extended family units, and the divinely bonecrushing bass response of my brand new Altec Lansing speakers to Photek, it should be fairly obvious that you have before you a bloody merry Michelle.

At some point I had lofty plans for year-end music/movie lists, but much like the Christmas cards I haven’t written or sent yet, those might make their appearances some time well into 2004.

Postcard

Hello folks. I’m perched on a stool at an Internet cafe in Hua Hin, Thailand. Alec arrived on Tuesday, and since then I haven’t had the time to write any entries, although quite a number are planned for when we get back to Singapore on Christmas Eve. In the meantime, we’ve been having lots of fun muddling along in classic Alec-Michelle style, despite the dismaying tendency of things to not exist or screw up every now and then, and my bitter resentment at having to pay farang prices for most things because of my choice of travelling companion.

But ignore my little gripes, which I enjoy making rather too much to really be serious about. I’d forgotten this is what it feels like to be blissfully happy. See you all soon.

Good To Know

From Sour Sweet (Timothy Mo) (Triad leader giving street fighting masterclass to his thugs.):

‘Untrained man’s instinct is to kick this – Golden Target,’ he indicated the 49’s groin. ‘Very difficult to do. In fighting one is always conscious of the need to protect this spot. It is best to attack the groin with your hand – either Dragon fist,’ – he raised the proximal phalangeal joints of his left hand above the knuckles like two horns and executed a short uppercut just short of the 49’s testicles – ‘or grab them and pull. Incapacitates totally…Note: your opponent’s penis lies in front of and protects his testicles. His yang can save him. Deliver the kick like this.’ He tapped the instep of his foot just above the buckle of the crocodile shoe. ‘Drive upward, not forward. Short-range kick. It squashes a man’s testicles against the pubis. No protection. Even better to use knee-ram instead of foot.’

Iron Plank said: ‘Listen carefully. You hear secrets of a master.’

Mission Of Justice

Apart from one minor grovel a week ago I’ve mostly refrained from comment on the Asia Weblog Awards 2003. Today, however, I discovered a travesty and must report it.

No, it’s not that my blog isn’t winning. Frankly, I’m ecstatic there are even 36 people who’d vote for me in the first place, and very grateful to everyone who has.

It’s that in the Funniest Blog category, Little Yellow Different isn’t winning. I should say at this point that I don’t know the guy from Adam. I have absolutely no vested interests in pimping his site. It’s just that more than almost any other blog I’ve ever read, this one has cracked me up (as in, it’s laughing-out-loud ha-ha-funny not just minor-internal-titter funny) so consistently I could tell my (currently non-existent) health insurance company about it in a bid for lower premiums.

Seriously. Read this and this and this. Web geeks will like this and this. And then there are his Ernie’s Mom stories. Look, just go.

Song Sifting

So I’m back from karaoke and wine with Ken, and for some reason the practice of picking discrete songs from a list rather than listening to entire albums has continued even now I’m home. Here are 5 songs. They probably don’t work particularly well in karaoke, but they sound bloody amazing on the speakers.

1) Black Steel (Tricky): I know trip-hop went out of fashion almost as soon as the term was coined, but there is still some trip-hop that is exquisitely, timelessly excellent, and Tricky’s Maxinquaye album epitomizes that. Black Steel is one of the very few covers I’ve ever heard that successfully reinvents the original and completely kicks its ass. Beats that sound like banging on the corrugated iron wall of a shanty town hut – hollow, desperate and rebellious. Martina Topley-Bird’s voice stalks through the wreckage like The Bride in Kill Bill, bloodied but resolute. Public Enemy, run for cover. This is the true hour of chaos.

2) Amongst The Books An Angel (Piano Magic): Piano Magic make a wide variety of weird electronic pop music. Not all of it is interesting or even listenable, but this is a pretty little track which deserves to be listened to on a good sound system. Laid-back beginning with acoustic guitar, fluttering reedy instrument, and earnest male vocals. Later on the backing instruments get more emphatic, more dense, and halfway everything breaks out into an Arabic warbling maelstrom. Randomly.

3) Just Be Simple (Songs: Ohia): No lie. It’s a simple song. Appealing melody, plaintive steel guitar, nice harmonies in the chorus, and full spotlight given to the lyrics. I particularly like “And everything you hated me for/ Honey, there was so much more.”

4) Break (Fugazi): I am wildly addicted to Fugazi riffs, and this has a great one. They played it as an encore when I saw them at the Forum in London, and at earsplitting volume, it sounded even better.

5) Dial: Revenge (Mogwai): If I ever wander on the astral plane, this will be my soundtrack. Acoustic guitar beginning (I’m such a sucker for that) and the guy from Super Furry Animals singing in Welsh. Then it builds to that lush cymbal (I didn’t think I’d ever be describing the sound of a cymbal that way but that really is the right word) that heralds the entrance of the orchestra and the music expands, a dim velvety universe enveloping everything. When it ends I don’t quite know where I am any more, but I have a hazy memory of being somewhere beautiful.

Don’t Think Of A Blue Elephant (Tangents Inspired By Love Actually)

A conversation yesterday:
Ken: So, Michelle, how’ve you been doing?
Me: Well, I’ve been having problems resettling into Singapore, and I’ve been missing London a lot.
Ken: Then whatever you do, don’t watch Love Actually.
Me: I’m watching it tomorrow.
Ken: Then watch it with someone you fancy. It’s a great date movie.
Me: I’m watching it with my mum.

Not the most promising prelude to Love Actually then.

Every time I go to the movies with my mum, I always manage to forget that apart from being witty and quirky, British romantic comedies are also fairly crude, or at least more so than their sanitized American counterparts. So there I am in the first two minutes of Love Actually, sitting in a cinema next to my mum as aging rock star Billy Mack gets the words to a song wrong for the umpteenth time and bursts out in a stream of “Oh fuck wank shit arse…” And while she isn’t quite so Puritan as to stand up and walk out or anything like that, she’d probably find it rather strange if I gave into my sudden impulse to sigh in happiness at the sound of those English terms I miss so much. “Wank”. “Arse”. And later in the film, “bollocks”.

Ken was right. The sight of London on the big screen almost physically knocked me back into my seat. The ice skating rink at Somerset House. Panoramas of the Thames. The Millennium Bridge. The Erotic Gherkin. Charing Cross Road. I could smell the winter air, feel the tug of my coat on my shoulders as I stuffed my gloved hands into its pockets, and hear the silence of London on Christmas Day.

The opening and closing scenes of the film make a big deal about how the arrival halls of Heathrow abound with love as people reunite. My first thought: my moments of highest emotion in Heathrow were always spent alone. Forget the arrival halls, every time my plane touched down on the Heathrow runway, I was already bursting with love. In the arrival halls, Russ would usually be there with a big hug and a strong arm for my bags, but the few times he wasn’t, I still walked through the airport, totally alone, giddy with happiness, straight onto the first bus for central London. When I left, forget what I went through in the departure hall saying goodbye to Russ and Alec – at least then I could cry freely. Sitting at the window of the plane as it accelerated and slanted skyward, surrounded by strangers, my face pressed against that tiny oval, and my body turned wholly away from everyone else so they didn’t see it shuddering as I tried to hold back sobs…well, let’s say that’s part of the London experience that wasn’t documented in this film. Unfortunately, it, too, came back to me vividly.

So I sat through this film, filled with scenes of the place I love, sounds of the accents I love, jokes in the humour I love. I didn’t even feel the slightest desire to rearrange Andrew Lincoln’s annoying fishlipped face the way I normally do. Conversely, my usual lust for Colin Firth was wholly overwhelmed by longing just to be walking the same London streets. (Don’t think I don’t realize how crazy this sounds, how mawkishly sentimental, how downright “unpatriotic”. I know.)

And all the time I sensed a creeping dread that at some point, this film had to end. When it did, with those scenes of the Heathrow arrival hall again, and the opening notes of God Only Knows, something triggered a perspective switch, and then only the most rigid control was keeping me from bursting into tears. Because in one week’s time, in the Changi Airport arrival hall, that will be me. That will be Alec. God only knows what I’d do without you. God only knows what I did to deserve you. I have lost London, but I still have so much.

How Will I Live?

From The Onion: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn’t Own A Television.

“Green has lived without television since 1989, when his then-girlfriend moved out and took her set with her. ‘When Claudia went, the TV went with her,’ Green said. ‘But instead of just going out and buying another one — which I certainly could have afforded, that wasn’t the issue — I decided to stand up to the glass teat.’

‘I’m not an elitist,’ Green said. ‘It’s just that I’d much rather sculpt or write in my journal or read Proust than sit there passively staring at some phosphorescent screen.’ “

I’m not normally a big TV watcher, but at exam time I undergo a bizarre metamorphosis. Nothing is too banal, nothing too dull, it’s all good as long as it continues to provide an excuse to sit slack-jawed on the couch instead of gritting my teeth at my desk over comparative financing mechanisms of international trade transactions.

Which is why, over my back-to-back exam periods of the past few months, I developed certain, shall we call them, attachments, which cruel reality now threatens to deprive me of.

The Bachelor 3 had me screaming abuse at bitchcat Kirsten, with her shiftygoogly eyes and infuriating tendency to speak only from the back of her throat, Survivor had me screaming abuse at Jon the vicious conniving shrimp with bad hair, and Am I Hot? had me screaming abuse at the judges every time they dismissed someone who floated my boat. I writhed on the couch cursing David E. Kelley to hell and back in a particular episode of Ally McBeal where he made it look as if Ally might dump sweet sexy plumber Jon Bon Jovi for Fred Durst’s evil twin (played by fat-faced Matthew Perry). Let’s not even go into my hours of MTV hoping for just one glimpse of Justin Timberlake.

But as I stagger out of exam haze and re-enter the world of the living, a small part of me feels an acute sense of loss. The Bachelor is over. Ally’s broken up with her plumber. Survivor continues, but self-respect demands that I actually leave the house on Friday nights. Similarly, the Am I Hot? finals are tonight (black guy who’s an English teacher! black guy who’s an English teacher!), but I’ll miss them because I’m having dinner with Pei Ee. Tomorrow I’m taking mum to see Love, Actually (Colin Firth! Colin Firth!), which means I have to miss Punk’d.

I’m not proud of this promenade of plebeianism, but Armchair Psychology 101 suggests that the first step towards regaining my intellectual cred is to come clean and document my fall. Meanwhile, ongoing attempts to wean myself off the glass teat include If on a winter’s night a traveller and The Brothers Karamazov (still not quite Proust, but they’ll do for now), half-written poems stuffed in drawers (don’t even bother with the obvious jokes, y’all) and, quite importantly, admitting to some of my friends for the first time in a while that I actually exist.

Wha?!

I obviously don’t check my site counter referrals enough. If enthymeme hadn’t helpfully pointed out that some nice person (who? ‘Fess up!) apparently nominated my site for best Singapore blog at the 2003 Asia Weblog Awards, I would have blissfully continued neglecting this blog in favour of teaching myself Dancehall 101 via Soulseek downloads and this raggalicious thread at I Love Music, as I’ve been doing the last couple of days.

Now I’m under pressure. Of all times to get nominated for a blog award. I live in London for 4 years, writing about my swinging life, deep intellectual thoughts, and ubercool pursuits, and no nominations for anything. Then I return to Singapore, sink into depression, boredom and frivolity, with the nearest things I have to a life being reality TV (last week I even descended to watching Am I Hot, I kid you not) and making love to the Marine Parade library, and pow.

So. Huge sycophantic grin. If you can get past the fact that all the other nominees have, like, good design and good content and are actually complete, unlike my half-arsed straddle between blogging at syntaxfree and everything else still at ineffable because I have just been too crap to transfer stuff over, and if something about this blog perhaps appeals to you a little more than the other nominees do, and if the men in white coats agree to undo the leather straps once you’ve convinced them of all of the above, please vote for me.

If you don’t, I might just take that as a sign that my content doesn’t have enough mass appeal, and start posting pictures of furry baby animals. And porn. And furry baby animal porn. You have been warned.