Kara Okay

Where to begin.

There’s the bit about this weekend being pretty much one of the lowest points in my life, but I’m still thinking about whether a blog entry would necessarily be the best way of moving on and avoiding wallowing in self-pity.

There’s the bit about being #2 on the Internet for “nature bamboo gal”, which is, like, so not me.

There’s the bit about Chinky karaoke with Terry, where for the first time in my life I managed to sing more than 5% of the lyrics of a Chinese song! I think I’ll go with this. It’s happy and triumphal, unlike, er, the rest of my weekend.

I’ve documented my previous attempt at Chinese karaoke here. A few months later, I padded downstairs for the mail on an early spring morning in London and found two CDs Terry had sent all the way from Singapore. One was a Faye Wong compilation, the other was a compilation of his favourite mushy ballads, both came with tracklistings and commentary including his views on the stupidity of the singers’ names, and I listened to them lots. So the premise of Sunday’s outing was for me to flex my tiny little Chinky song muscles and enter the wonderful world of Chinese karaoke, under the encouragement and tutelage of my Chinky song benefactor.

I didn’t do great, but I did okay! I mumbled my way through Liang Ge Ren Bu Deng Yu Wo Men (I think this means Two People Don’t Amount To Us, but I’m not actually sure), and pretty much the only words I could manage in King Of Karaoke (stop laughing, it’s really rather nice) were its kickass “AI AI AI AI DAO YAO TU!” climax (translation: LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE UNTIL I WANT TO VOMIT!), but I managed to sing almost 70% of my old favourite Nan Ren Bu Gai Rang Nu Ren Liu Lei (Men Shouldn’t Make Women Cry) and Faye Wong’s Qi Zi (I have no idea what this means, but I can read the words and that’s enough), and I’m real proud!

Chinese karaoke certainly has its advantages over English karaoke. The biggest reason for this is the accompanying videos. For Chinese songs you get the actual music video, featuring the actual artist looking pouty/teary/suicidal (but still dee-lish, natch). For English songs you get some really dodgy shots of an “exotic” woman walking in slo-mo along the beach/by a fountain/in a flower garden that look like your granny put them together using all the cheesy fade-outs and romantic lighting filters she could find in DummyEdit Pro. Admittedly, given that all my attention was riveted on deciphering all those bloody fan ti zi (old, massively complicated Chinese characters which mostly resemble the blueprints to the Pyramids; we learned the dumbed-down version of these in school, but actual Chinese nations still use them), I was mostly too busy going “fuck me, that immense scribbly thing is rang?” to really appreciate the subtler points of Chinese music video artistry.

Reviews/excerpts: The Corrections, Brick Lane

Evidence of my general malaise and cultural stagnation is the fact that it took me six weeks to finish three books. (Well, there was some dabbling in Let’s Go South East Asia, Irish For Beginners and The Watchmen on the side, but it was mostly those three.)

I enjoyed Brick Lane, but at the same time, I don’t have a lot to say about it. I haven’t read any of the other Booker nominees for this year, but am frankly quite surprised it was a favourite to win. I’m quite a sucker for books about immigrant angst and cultural disconnection and the inner struggle of the Asian (in the sense that the Brits use it, meaning Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi) woman in contemporary British society feeling hamstrung by the traditional mores of her community, but the thing is I don’t see anything about this book that made it stand out from all the others I’ve read in the same vein. Meera Syal may not be considered a literary heavyweight, but Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee packed a hell of a punch. I guess I’d say that if you’ve never read any books with a similar setting, Brick Lane’s as good a place to begin as any, but if you have, it’s more of the same. Having said that, by “more of the same” I do mean more of the same high quality of writing, more of the same spot-on evocations of London, and more of the same poignance and well-captured frustrations.

Borrowing Purple America and The Corrections at the same time was probably a bad idea, because by the time I got to The Corrections I was finding it increasingly hard to view small town America with anything more than contempt and pity. Jonathan Franzen’s splendid writing only served to compound my condescension.

“In the pageantry of weddings Enid reliably experienced the paroxysmal place of place – of the Midwest in general and suburban St. Jude in particular – that for her was the only true patriotism and the only viable spirituality. Living under presidents as crooked as Nixon and stupid as Reagan and disgusting as Clinton, she’d lost interest in American flag-waving, and not one of the miracles she’d ever prayed to God for had come to pass; but at a Saturday wedding in the lilac season, from a pew of the Paradise Valley Presbyterian Church, she could look around and see two hundred nice people and not a single bad one. All her friends were nice and had nice friends, and since nice people tended to raise nice children, Enid’s world was like a lawn in which the bluegrass grew so thick that evil was simply choked out: a miracle of niceness.”

Having said that, great characterization and one of those masterful bringing-it-all-together final chapters made even me begin to feel for the characters, Enid included. Quite an authorial feat, considering their various individual warts and collective dysfunctions. To that extent, the hype is justified. Some rather weak stretches like the bit on the cruise liner and anything and everything dealing with Lithuania really needed some editorial whipping into shape though.

So on Saturday I returned those and replenished my stash.

  • A Home at the End of the World (Michael Cunningham)
  • The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
  • East Of Eden (John Steinbeck)

More books that have been on my list for absolutely ages, yay! I can’t be culturally stagnating if I can feel this happy about a new haul.

Clown, reveal thyself!

I clicked on my Activity Log in the Movable Type system out of sheer boredom. Most of the actions it listed are fairly mundane. “Michelle added entry #614.” “Search query for: portishead.”

And then:
2003.09.30 22:39:04
217.148.41.216
Search: query for ‘Hello, Michelle. It’s Bobo the clown’

I believe this is what they call one of those what the fuck??!! moments.

The Sloth of Despondency

Lordy, it’s been a while since I managed to write something here, and unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot worth writing today either. The last week has been spent wading through international law research, getting to grips with the intricacies of extreme Microsoft Word formatting issues, and periodically questioning the meaning of it all.

As always, I list the small glimmerings in the gloom in my attempt to convince myself that not everything sucks. Because it doesn’t! (Attempt #1)

Attempt #2: French-pressed coffee at the Ritz-Carlton is a sexual experience. S$15 got a pot of Chocolate Raspberry blend for two with side platter of whipped cream, chocolate shavings and crystallized sugar stirrers. Vikram said the stirrers are normally chocolate-coated as well. Hell, I wasn’t complaining.

Attempt #3: I have a new baby, and his name is Thinkpad.

Attempt #4: I went to the OG Moving Out Sale at Great World City on Saturday and came out alive. Many of the middle-aged ladies present that day should be told they have lucrative career prospects as military advisors on reconnaisance, hand-to-hand combat and survival training. Perhaps I’ll write to my MP and suggest it.

Attempt #5: My other friends’ lives suck even more. I always pride myself on my ability to keep things in perspective.

Observatory/Kreidler (Esplanade Studios, 11 October 2003)

Well, whaddya know? After writing the previous post, I resigned myself to a quiet Saturday night in. No big deal. I’d divide my time between good movies on HBO and the ton of work I have for next week. Then Ida called, the first time we’d talked for a year (I was there, she was here, we’re both lousy at keeping in touch). In the midst of catch-up conversation she asked if, by any chance, I’d be interested in going to see some German group at the Esplanade tonight. She read about them in the papers and it sounded interesting. WAHOO!

We were both somewhat discouraged by the opening guy. He was hard to describe. He reminded me of the time I was at a David Grubbs gig and couldn’t figure out whether a particular “song” had begun, ended, or gone horribly wrong, except that compared to this guy David Grubbs’s song was a catchy pop gem. We decided it wasn’t our thang and popped out for a drink.

Observatory was next. I haven’t been around for four years and know nothing about the local music scene, but the quality of their performance suggests it’ll be well worth exploring. Again, they’re hard to describe, and in saying some songs were kind of like Air remixed by Thievery Corporation with immensely pleasant male vocals sort of like Calexico and jazzy flourishes on the keyboard, and others were like REM at their best with the occasional harmonica and journeys into shoegazy guitar, I’m not doing the band justice at all. Truly impressive, and a huge incentive for this prodigal daughter to find out more about what her own people are doing rather than buying expensive US indie imports all the time.

Kreidler continued my long-running streak of never being disappointed by anything German. (I clarify: obviously I wasn’t alive during the World Wars.) Interesting sounds that evolved rather than doof!doof!doof!ing on for ages the way some electronica does, endearing crowd manner, and although I was too comfy sprawling on the floor for most of the gig to dance, it certainly kept me bobbing my head and tapping my toes.

But as good as all the acts were, the star of the gig, for me, was the venue. It’s not going to be very difficult to convince me to attend anything at the Esplanade Studios in future, because I have never heard such amazing sound in a gig in all my born days. Crystal clear, wonderfully-balanced, loud enough to dominate the room and send reverberations through the floor, yet not so loud that conversations had to be screamed. A floor so clean you could sprawl on it without having to coat yourself in spilled booze or cigarette ash. Recent letters to the papers here in Singapore have asked if the building of such an expensive concert venue was really worthwhile, and whether it actually makes the arts accessible to the masses or only caters to a certain wealthy elite. I paid $21 (about 8 pounds) for a great gig, with the best sound I’ve ever heard, in beautiful surroundings, and the price even included a drink. All I can say is that I’m an incredibly satisfied customer (mad props to the Government!), I think it really is a world-class venue we should all be proud of, and I’m going to be throwing my money at it fairly regularly from now on.

To Glitch Or Not To Glitch?

Wow. Kreidler tomorrow at the Esplanade Studios, Luomo and Farben next week at Zouk as part of an electronica festival. The last two in particular would be a coup to be trumpeted even for glitch-capital-of-London the ICA. Every time I start getting bored with Singapore it does tend to surprise me with things like this, bless it.

The next question is whether I really want to go. First, I don’t know anyone else here who’d be interested. And while I have a certain geeky interest in seeing high-cred music types live I’m not all that sure I’d enjoy it much if I was there alone. I don’t find house music absorbing enough to be listened to as foreground music, and microhouse is even worse. I can certainly tolerate it and sometimes even enjoy it (albeit on a somewhat clinically detached level), but not if the beat’s my only friend there.

BENNY! I MISS YOU!

Sinfest

Every now and then I read a Sinfest strip or fifty. Most can be bypassed but occasionally one does deserve to be highlighted. Well, maybe two or three.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep going back there. I think it’s because the chick has great hair.

Poem: Exhaustion (Elton Glaser)

I lie down in the Dark Ages, another night deficient in ecstasy.
I’m tired of the old laws and the new laws and the laws they’ve been thinking up
     between breakfast and delirium.
(……)
I’m not feeling world-historical tonight, though I can still smell the stench of a
     rotten hypothesis, like eggheads left out too long in the sun.
My mind’s one wrinkle away from ravenous black

Last of the summer wine

The entry begins as a flippant comment on how it probably doesn’t do much for my indie cred to be giving props to the new Fountains Of Wayne album, but fuck me, Mexican Wine is catchy, and then I think about a line in the song (“but the sun still shines in the summertime”) which is undeniably vapid when considered in a vacuum, but less so when I realize I no longer live in a place where “summertime” has any real meaning; when I realize the last time I had wine, Mexican or not, was the Saturday of the weekend I left England, when we finally went to Incognico and things were said that keep me going on lonely nights here, when we went to the South Bank and the Royal Festival Hall had been transformed from cheerless 60s edifice into a phantasmagoric Bollywood playground (we missed the stunt skateboarders in saris, dammit) and the night was a riot of colour and exuberance next to which my past two months here can only be described as monochrome.

[I realize this represents a bit of a regression from my recent efforts at perspective. It can probably be chalked up to the fact that I’ve had a shitty week, and the weeks to come offer no respite. But fear not. I continue to see the glass as half full, it’s just that right now I happen to be drowning in it.]