Yet another season is over...
Am flying off back to good ol' England... as it is with farewells, there's always that simulataneous feeling of anticipation tinged with sadness. Sadness for me, not so much that I'm leaving a familiar place of family and friends... but more for that chapter in life reaching its ending pages.
So I turn over the leaf to the next one tonight.
Today, the 22nd of September, marks a historic moment in my life.
No, not because I drove from where I was to my carpark at a record time (although that would have been nice).... but because....
I NOW OWN MY FIRST EVER VIDEOCAM!!!!!!!
It was such a pure sweet moment when I left the shop with the camera in my hands... it was a moment marked in my life. It was an elation uncaptured by words, understood by subtleties and etched in memory...
I have dabbled with various lame cameras before... but finally, I own one to call my own... and I can finally embark on that director's career I have dreamt about for so long, but have never had the chance to translate into reality. At least now that I have started with one, I can almost taste the string of increasingly sophisticated cameras coming my way. (when I finally reach the stage when I can actually afford them without having to repay my mum in installments for it..this one cost me a very painful $1,400. ouch. goodbye to the ipod i was saving for.. and the plan to upgrade my car in england...)
I spent a good part of the night left after I came home, filming my family... in particular my brothers. I uncovered a natural acting talent in the family : Sam. He is the atypical typical 17-angsty-year-old, good-looking, charming, desired by girls... but lazy, childish and....well, typical teenage boy, really. He provided various humourous antics for me to film, and I have discovered he has a natural disposition in front of the camera.... similar can't be said to the rest of my family who felt embarrassed to be in front of the camera, said 'hello' and waved me away. My mum insisted her hair was too messy and she was in Pjs, and that meant I can't film her.... I had to reassure her numerous times this was not going to be on national tv... but she wouldn't be appeased: don't go round showing this to your friends okay... , she pleaded. I was just amused.
After indulging in loads of filming and playing back, and getting the feel of the camera... I proceeded to unpack my box of camera goodies.... only to find that the bastards at the shop didn't include my ac adaptor in my box. ie. I can't charge my batteries... both of them, in fact. I bought an extra one to prolong my filming hours... and am now so annoyed that they actually left the most important item out. Funnily enough, the exact thing happened to me when I went to this same complex (think: Sim Lim) to buy my laptop almost three years ago. I was well excited about it (not as much as this, of course) and when I got home I realised I couldn't turn my computer on because they conveniently forgot to give me my adaptor. Which meant I had to go back all the way there the next day (think: half an hour travelling time!)... which means, I have to go back all the way there again tomorrow despite the fact that I haven't packed a single thing in my luggage, and I'm flying off on Friday.
sigh.
Am going out to walas to meet C and T now... was torn between staying and playing with my new baby, and going out... but I'm not gonna be home much longer so I better utilise the time left.
Now, I'm happy to say nothing can upset me further for now I own the most powerful art tool in my hands...
... words of a phrase that repeats itself in my head.
There are probably several reasons and several different levels to why that is so.
But - I have been accused of being melodramatic - twice in the same week. V mailed me to accuse me of that and said my blog posts haven't been the happiest lately... but it's not true, is it? Well, vic, you should remember the words of your favourite author fanny fern... who said:
No happy woman ever writes.
And then, today my last story for the summer was published. And J, who was featured in the story, just told me he was laughing out loud while reading it because it was too 'mama drama' - he said the headlines were too sensationalised.
But comon, if everyone read the way they spoke in plain English, newspapers would be out of business right now. The only reason why newspapers are such an integral part of modern humanity's everyday life is because they make boring information interesting.
So having said that, I'm not being melodramatic by saying it's just emotion taking me over... it happens to be a phrase in this song by Destiny's Child... and the strange part is it's not like I heard it on the radio today. in fact, the last time I heard this song was probably.... last weekend at Sentosa when this bohemian-like singer was busking at this cafe in the sunset. Why it suddenly surfaced, is probably a sub-conscious reaction from the inner recesses of my brain, reminding me of X.
Speaking of strange, something odd happened to me today. I was in town walking in an underground pass after walking out from a bakery to buy some stuff for my family's breakfast tomorrow... and then in my pre-occupied state of juggling all my bags of shopping, putting my change back into my bag, and making my way to the next shop I had in mind, I heard this person calling me from behind in Mandarin:
Miss, Miss...
I turned around and saw before this bizarre-looking middle-aged woman who was short, unkempt, with strange bespectacled eyes. When I say bizarre-looking, it meant she had a look that was somewhere halfway between normal-looking and deranged-looking. So I looked back at her quizzically and she said:
Can you give me one dollar ninety cents for me to take a bus back to Tampines?
She said this with a pleading/deranged look on her face, yet no please, no elaboration, no why-on-earth-are-you-randomly-asking-me-for-money kind of explanation...
I had no idea why I did what I did, but I gave her this wildly surprised look and then walked quickly away to my next shop, which was just in front of me. When I stepped in it, I was immediately plagued with guilt. Obviously I can afford two dollars, hell, I would give her more if she told me why she was randomly asking strangers for money!
I don't know if I should feel complimented that she obviously thought I looked enough of a kind soul for her to approach me for money, or embarrassed that she thought I looked easy enough to fleece and surrender money without reason...
I guess it was just the shock of being approached by a psycho-looking person that made me flee... it's one thing to look at scruffy beggars on the streets of London, and another to be approached in the full-face with a dodgy person demanding for money.
But I felt terminally bad about it.
So after making my purchase, I went out with money in my hand, determined to give it to her, if she was still lurking in corners of the underground pass, waiting to pounce on innocent kind-looking girls... but I couldn't see her any longer.
Just as I was pushed by the crowd to the opening of the underpass, I gave one last look and glanced behind my shoulder... and then I saw her in the far distance, wandering with a blank look on her face. I thought to myself: did she lose her friends, her family, or her money... couldn't she have called home, approached security..or do something...anything? It's just not a situation that's likely to happen to someone in fisrt-world country Singapore in the year 2004 - everyone has a home, everyone has money. supposedly.
By that time, I had advanced too far forward... I hesitated for a moment and wondered if I should walk back... incessant questions and speculations on her plight surfaced in my head...but I didn't.
Most of you will probably not know this till it's splashed on front page on newspapers tomorrow morning.
But it's been announced - SPH suspended trading today. And Channel 5, 8, and Channel u and i are gonna be part of a new joint venture company where mediacorp will hold 80% while SPH holds 20%.
Today and Streats are merging - Mediacorp 60%, SPH 40%...
I know many of you who read this are not gonna understand what this means, esp if you don't live in sg.
But it just basically signals the end of media competition, and the start of a very complicated monopoly involving, ironically, two previously rival media companies.
What is most lamentable, for me at least, is that it doesn't look that I'll be able to go back to TV journalism after graduating. Not unless by some miracle some other TV station, (maybe the BBC? hah) offers me a job.
Am hoping ex-colleagues are not gonna lose their jobs at the station...
after all that trouble setting up the competition... this is regression at its best.
Love, be still. Love, be sweet.
Don't you dare, change a thing.
I want to photograph you with my mind.
To feel how I feel now, all the time.
Say that you'll stay, forever this way.
Forever and forever, let it never have to change.
Don't move, don't breathe.
Don't change, don't leave.
Promise me say you'll stay, we'll stay... this way.
Words from Jewel surface from the past.
How sobering that once we thought for that moment something could be so certain, hearts so full of conviction in the later years finds itself somewhere in the haze lumbering slowly finding direction. How sad that somehow unknowingly you walk a path and suddenly find yourself in the middle of nowhere, far from a direction you intended, a direction that morphs in stages, into an unrecognisable form that renders you powerless. And then there comes a point you reach the line and you try to tread slowly and carefully. But nothing changes the fact that once you reach its borders, vulnerability surfaces and leaves you susceptible to fate beyond your control.
Ten days and counting...
Back to a country alien and familiar... a place more home than home, but where everything's the same... and everything's different...
all at the same time.
So I guess another sub-chapter of my life has closed...
I am officially done with my summer stint. And let's just say things didn't end with a big bang, unlike the way i left the other newsrooms.
Perhaps I berate myself too much... or expect too much - friends seem to always tell me that. But I have left with an immense taste of dissatisfaction, which I can almost even physically taste at the tip of my tongue. Never mind I didn't hit a personal target I set for myself, but I reckon the least they could do was give me my by-line - have never had one denied to me before.
So okay, it's not that big a deal. This story and another, published today was written by me, fyi. But I wasn't attributed for it for God knows what reason. And another paper picked up the same story too, from us, and rewrote it. But hey, on the bright side, I keep my anonymity huh.
A friend said to me: 'don't worry.. the world's not over just because of two by-lines'...
well, if only it was just that two by-lines that's messing me up.
Mixed. Emotions - good, bad, sublimal. Disgust, respect, indecision. Understanding, repulsion, coldness. Sophistication, inhuman, mercenaries. Age, competence, condescension. Youth, brilliance, downfall. Blind, old, fucks. Narrow, grated, individuals. Gratefulness, happiness, unfulfilment. Ambitions, dreams, circumstances. Hopes, fears, regrets. Expectations, anticipation, nonchalance. Failure, success, meaning. Millions and billions, shades of feelings. How does humanity manage to sieve through the maze of unspeakable thoughts. What happens to you - what the fuck does it matter in comparison to the pathetic state of the world. The world - it happens to you. You don't happen to the world.
I'm sick of speaking and writing in riddles.
Indecision is a curse of humanity.
Thinking and contemplation is the greater irony.
I started this post thinking I should write something profound and reflective as this is my second last day at work and many thoughts have been swirling in an incoherent mass which I have found it either hard, or inappropriate to articulate...
So I was musing to myself about how to begin, when I received a headline on my msg system:
Singapore government lifts ban on Cosmopolitan magazine
Ahh, screw profound thoughts, this makes a more interesting story. although I don't read cosmo (except when my typical girlfriends buy it and leaves it on the kitchen table for me to peruse during periods of boredom while waiting for water to boil)
Lynne> I reckon among all my readers, this will interest you the most, for obvious reasons. haha...
Source: AFP
AFPLifestyle-Singapore 09-02 0270
Singapore government lifts ban on Cosmopolitan magazine
SINGAPORE, Sept 2 (AFP) - Singapore media authorities on Thursday lifted a long-standing ban on the popular US women's magazine Cosmopolitan.
The Media Development Authority (MDA) however warned that the magazine must not contain "exploitative sex and nudity".
Every copy of Cosmopolitan must also be shrink-wrapped and the cover must prominently feature a label warning consumers that its contents are "Unsuitable for the Young," the MDA statement said.
"Cosmopolitan will be available from this month... provided they do not contain exploitative sex and nudity," the statement said.
"The relaxation on the importation of Cosmopolitan is in line with calls from the public for greater choice in media content."
Cosmopolitan has been banned in Singapore for more than 20 years for allegedly espousing extreme liberal values which local authorities view as offending family and moral norms in the conservative city-state.
Singapore earlier lifted a ban on the popular American TV series "Sex And The City".
Despite removing the ban on Cosmopolitan, authorities have indicated that they are not about to take a similar step regarding Playboy and other magazines depicting nudity.
Singapore has been dubbed a "nanny state" because of strict social controls. The government is trying to loosen the apron strings somewhat in an attempt to promote a more cosmopolitan image.
Authorities have removed curbs on a number of previously banned activities such as bungee jumping and bar top dancing.
What do you know, maybe they'll allow chewing gum back on board soon....
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