Introducing..... the camera whores!

Forget the latest fads - camera whoring is the new in thing.

I thought it was just a random phase a good girlfriend on mine is going through...
but it has dawned on me it's not just a one-off thing... first it was a friend, then another, then another.. and my cousin! on the streets i even spotted the ah bengs camera whoring today.... this cultural phenomena spreading even quicker than.... anorexia.

We have been so trigger happy this hols and I can't remember when I've taken as many photos in Sg as I have taken this hols.. and am increasingly annoyed that I can't post pictures frivolously on my website.

Therefore, as the practical solutions provider...


I am setting up a new photoblog!

Have been meaning to for ages and now is the perfect time for it - you will know the address is due course but it won't be linked to this.

It has been a mad crazy past few days for me.. have caught up with so many people I should rightfully have done so quite a long time ago. but it's only when you leave when there's a mad scramble to do everything you want to do - at the last minute.

Again.

Sigh. Once a procrastinator - always a procrastinator?
I refuse to accept my fate.

Yet again, it is less than 24 hours before I due to fly and my luggage is still unopened. Yes, I have packed nothing (Lynne, this is WORSE than when u were struggling!).
I attempted to just now and to my horror, my big luggage - on which I was going to begin the immense task of dumping everything in - is spoilt. On the inside.
So nobody realised it and now I don't have a luggage! (Resisting all temptation to wail.)

I will sort this out tomorrow - on the bright side, I get my beauty sleep. Which I am dying for. You would think that when I stopped work I would have more sleep but I've ended up having less.

I also finally did something I've been wanting to do for ages and went to get some curls in my hair with W today!
It was painfully expensive but I'm very happy with the result. hehe. Then went for dinner with the cousins today and we proceeded to Kbox... a previously unchartered territory.
But I had so much fun.

Singer(s) in the making... don't play.

We came across this tune - Emil Chau's Peng You (translated = Friends) [okay, Chau is this really previous-generation singer] and we used to belt this song out at graduation in our secondary school days. Suddenly, I was caught in an emotional moment - it's great us cousins have become closer. And it was also almost painful.... bittersweet... to recall those MG days. And how far we have gone from there. All the cam-whoring and photos taken this hols have just nailed the feeling right home that every moment no matter how intense is only ephemeral. And all that we've left are our memories. Which we try our best to solidify... but can never return to.

This summer has now ended... and once again, another chapter begins. Somewhat the last of a certain era.

I fly tomorrow so all you guys, I'm gonna miss you so much. Thanks for such a wonderful summer... I'm going to have the photos to remember it by, trust me. I'll be back next October to start a really different phase...

but for now



I feel an era wiser.

short and sweet

1. I am a virgin manipedi-goer no more! I went and got a beautiful french manicure today... plus a good pedicure. It was all very interesting and pretty... I was captivated by the detailed work of the manicurist and the pains they go through to get nails looking good. It had all been previously a very stupid frivolous affair to me, I never thought much about girls and nails.. (since I play the piano, I have to have short, unpolished nails) but I have to say in all fairness, it does require quite a lot of skill.

My manicurist said I have really nice-looking nails and I was happy - cheap thrill I know. But it's not the first time I've heard it and it's always nice to hear a compliment! haha..

I am getting slightly annoyed with the fact that you have to be careful with things you do - I didn't realize how hard I exerted while doing some stuff till today. Not entirely sure if I'll do the manipedi again in the near future.. but at least now I'm in the know!

2. A particular newspaper have recently reported to be in the black finally after 4 years. very conveniently neglecting to mention that the primary reason why that happened was because its competition was eliminated and with no one to compete with horizontally, the only way they should go is up. Feeling extremely bitter about being left with one less choice to come back to simply because money is the most important and the bottom-line for any business - with nasty shareholders that don't care for anything except that. I hate monopolies. And injustice. And greedy people.

3. I bought Estee Lauder lip gloss today - a very extravagant expense for something I don't usually give two hoots about.
(and now I realize I should have just bought it at duty free this saturday!!!! urgh)

4. Someone sent me a text that made me smile today from right inside.

5. T and I were sharing a cab home today and we were talking about many things... also about boyfriends... and uhm... heights. After she left, the taxi driver who wore whitish-silver funky glasses (the only part of him I could see through discreet glances at the rearview mirror) started speaking to me and he said


you know ah... this is very true. But short guys ar, are handsome yknow... and tall guys are ugly. It's true! God is fair you know.. that's why it works like that.

If tall guys are handsome then short guys how? how are they gonna marry?

I was very amused... so I said there are tall handsome guys around what...

yahh.. that's true. but if you take a short good looking guy, and a tall good looking guy and compare, I assure you ah.. the short one would definitely look better... that's how they make up for it!

So uncle... you're short or tall?

Laughter.

Short, lah...

Orh.... I knew it!

More laughter.

After a conversation about men and race and their infidelity, I finally reach my destination.

I take a good hard look at the taxi driver from where I was and okay... he really didn't look too bad.

I do a mental run-through of various men in my mind and realise there was actually some truth in his statement (though obviously, there's always the exceptions to the rule)

As I got out I thought to myself, when I'm old and... look like an 'auntie' (touchwood)... Am I still going to call the taxi driver 'uncle'?

In my mind, taxi drivers, not matter how old they are, will always be 'uncles' to me who tell funny stories.

Destination: SIN city

The fine city of sin - where bodies get dismembered and the statistic is higher for getting murdered than mugged on the streets.

Is there some kind of irony we're missing out on?

Someone once told me every country has its own set of problems... it's just a matter of which set of problems you choose to live with.

All this and more have surfaced in the last two months or so - and I sent L off at the airport today (lucky ibiza-bound babe, i'm very jealous!) which reminded me of the last time I was there sending someone else off.. I've said this about the airport before, but it's such a non-place, where the atmosphere of transition and loss and hope simultaneously juxtaposed gives it such an ephemeral quality. It's like stepping into a portal from one dimension and entering into another where you get lost somewhere in time and space, where your clock gets messed up and some kind of semi-conscious crisis is lurking in the recesses of your mind.

I don't think I've ever thought so hard about the future as I have this past summer - albeit a very jammed-packed fun-filled and eventful one - it is probably one of my most sober ones too. Remotely, I start thinking about Anderson's theories of the imagined communities and the so-called nationalist movements, the emergence of nationalism after the disintegration of belief in the meta-truths and the higher order... is it one big fallacy that we're believing in - a constructed ideology designed to help mankind deal with his indentity crisis and insecurities?

I've never considered myself a big fan of SIN city. I was in constant rage before I left - which somewhat disappated when I was living somewhere else - then was revived again in the first two weeks I got back. I remember raging down the streets in town with D, completely disgusted and agasht with the state of civility and general lack of ability for enunciating words. But, the rage would go on and then it will suddenly go away as sudden as it came on. And then I found myself re-integrated back to where I grew up and would call home and suddenly it all didn't matter anymore.

I find it slightly ludicrous that I have never been one to call myself a nationalist or claim to have any sort of vague national consciousness... but it seems when the situation arises that a foreigner passes a comment on my (like-it-or-not) homeland, I find myself rising in anger, all ready to defend any barrage of words or criticism that comes my way like a true soldier fighting at the pointless front line. Especially if that foreigner happens to be someone close to you... It doesn't happen all the time... but each time it does it makes me acutely aware of the different dimensions I'm living in and the sublimal feeling of insignificance one gathers in thinking about the 6 billion and growing people living in the 194 countries of the world. Has anyone wondered it might be like had Columbus never had his stupid adventures and modes of transport never invented. We'd still be living in our little igloo communities oblivious to any form of existence other than the existence we're living in - there wouldn't be a white or black or brown or yellow, the concept wouldn't make sense. Would we have been better off?

The crisis of place is at once limiting and irrelevant. How difficult is it to be mobile... how hard can staying at one place be? My friends are suddenly getting married and being pregnant. Everytime we have a conversation it's I can't believe we're actually thinking about things like... houses, property, investment, incomes, bonds, marriage, kids... the future. Such an emblematic, enigmatic, exciting word. Scary, too.

I think when the time comes that I no longer express any surprise or fear that we're thinking about such scary 'adult' issues, that's when we finally accept it and just grow up. Sleep is no longer an innocent bliss where responsibilities are shouldered by immaculate parents and it's all just plug and play.

I'm going to savour every single second of this coming academic year. I crave some stimulation. It's with trepidation that I embrace my small-girl-in-a-big-city situation, but how exciting would it all be. A dizzy array of stories to be discovered, contacts to be made, networks to be established and grades to be got.
I hate the underground but I've got to get over it.

Forget about the back-for-good and think about the life-changing-year.

So bye SIN city, Destination: LON. Here I come!

Plugged, or Unplugged?

I was on the bus the other day with my bro and I lamented about my aggravated state of mind that morning.. possibly due to getting off the wrong side of the bed.

He proceeded wryly to tell me my bed was against the wall so there's only one side to get up from anyway.

But that wasn't the point, it's all figurative speech, I rolled my eyes.
Then I said I feel like I'm occupying some kind of alternate reality..

And he asked, so are you plugged or unplugged?

I raised my eyebrows.. what are you talking about

Y'know.. the Matrix... which reality are you occupying?

Oh...

Few seconds silence.

Unplugged, definitely unplugged.

It's just been one of those times in the course of your life when reality just seems too real and questions ceaselessly revolve in your cluttered mind, a vicious cycle perpetuating itself in a storm of doubts...

you wake up somedays and it seems like you've emerged from a slumber into a grey and decaying world, where everything is at once both alien and familiar and the chilling feeling of experiencing the uncanny disorientates you further..

What happened to all that innocence, unsullied trust and faith of youth? Its too easy to lose your way sometimes.

Even as I'm typing this.. I can feel two possible ways this post can go: an exposition of all my serious thoughts, setting the world to rights and so forth... and abandoning all of the above to a short, cryptic, summary of general things... probably eventually descending into frivolousness due to obvious tiredness and a tummyache.

So guess which way it's going?

It's too easy to be worried. Think: you could be without arms and legs on the beaches of Patong.
Or two, you could be deaf and blind like Theresa Chan.

If you haven't watched Be With Me - it's worth the while.
It has all the pretentiousness of an art-house attempt but that is inevitable. If I made one, someone out there is bound to say the same. Although there are the great masterpieces where there is a general consensus about its excellence. It's all a very fine balance. philosophy and pretentiousness. but it's stunning ending has all of redeemed all its flaws. it's still a great piece of very graphic images - cinematography was excellent and I can't kept admiring the consistency of colour throughout - always very hard to achieve with films of lower budgets.

There could be so many things worse than what you're faced with... but why should we settle for less when we can achieve more? Is achieving more going to make us happy in the end?

If you comapre yourself with others, you may become bitter or vain, for there will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Listen to the dull and ignorant, for even they too have their stories. Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

I'm restless... I can't wait to get back. I should finish reading Alias Grace. I desperately need some intellectual stimulation. Self-absorption is evil.


Maybe after all, it's better to be plugged.

Apple Convert

I finally did it! Yay yay yay!

Here before you is a virgin Mac user no more.. I have consumated with my recently purchased, spanking-new, pristine pure and ever so beautifoool Powerbook.

Even as I'm writing this entry... I am unused but extremely happy at the bright array of icons lined up in a perfect, attractive order right before my eyes at the bottom of my screen. My first post on my new pbook!

It's been so long... after thinking about it, talking about it... all of dreamed of it. and having to encounter numbers discouragement and anxieties... I've finally conquered it all to lay my hands on one I can call my own.

So, now what?

I excitedly registered my products (oh yes, I forgot to mention? I got a 6GB green ipod mini too... to compliment my purchase) and installed the necessary software and suddenly I'm at a loss of what I should do next. It's like a sea of opportunities have flooded onto my screen and I don't know where to take the plunge in first.

For pussy computer users, you probably won't even understand a fraction of my delight - but this means I can finally upload all the footage I have on my mini-DVs and actually edit my shots to make my first proper film. After all, they don't say a thousand miles begins with a single step for nothing. And yes, I know what future problems there might be in terms of compatibility etc etc but I'm ready for it!

My getting here was a very arduous journey, though. I hate crowds and the very word doesn't even begin to describe the throngs of people I had to beat. I don't even want to mention the horrid traffic jam into the area... made worse by the rain. And Thank God for season parking... all the barriers were closed off to all cars. Mum even had to wind the window down and holler Seasong Parking! to the guy guarding the safety barrier (of which all have printed on them: This is not a safety barrier. (As duckshoe pointed out, if it's not a safety barrier, then what is it?) before he finally moved the barrier in the torrential rain to let us in. She wasn't even sure if our season parking was still valid. We made our way in, with no way to reverse out, crossing our fingers and hoping it'll get us in....

And it did!

We smugly drove past all the cars.

But it wasn't over. The crowd was just draining... and to cut the story short, I hurriedly made my way there, realised it was a much better deal than it was 4 days ago. And purchased it immediately. And hurriedly made my way out.

I do realise now, however, that they shortchanged me of some RAM and I'm gonna have to call them up again. *ugh* I hate doing stuff like that.

Have been working like a pro the whole night, moving from one computer on my left table to the new precious on my right table with my swivel chair. trying to back-up stuff, and transfer some files. The process is excruciating. And it's definitely not gonna take me only one night... I'm resenting the fact I have to work tomorrow. I wanna stay in and play with my new toy!

Then again, there's only so long you can look at one screen (although D will probably defy all such records) and right now, I just want to get some music onto my ipod so I can go to bed and have some music to listen to (at last!) while on the cursed bus to work.

I feel like I've just started a new journey! Now let's just hope iMovie isn't going to be a bitch to use...

(I've also now realised that my site's layout is not as it should look on Safari. Sigh.)

Part II

Have you ever almost written one long post and then just when you're reaching the end, you accidentally hit a series of keys because you work too fast and it accidentally wipes out your entire post?!

Well, that just happened to me. So this is going to be a lot shorter than what it originally was (damn you, slow computers).

In an attempt to colour your imagination while reading my previous post, these images have been created to aid that process!

I recently finally got prints for some of my favourite pictures that I've taken over the last couple of years... I must say I'm really happy with them and quite impressed with the quality. The shop recommended to me by a friend was indeed cheap and good... There's just such a feeling of satisfaction thumbing through your painstakingly taken pictures and feeling that elation of an image well-taken! (I wish I could post it all but that would take forever)




Here's the Very Real Patong beach, on a beautiful sunny day. Did you know that you have to pay to sit on those chairs you see in the picture? We went to this other island in the middle of the ocean and we had to pay 100 baht just to sit under the shade! Everywhere you go, it was just baht baht baht... it slightly ruined the otherwise paradise illusion.




Sunny Patong beach... this is not even half as beautiful as the other islands we saw.




Patong street - Samsui-looking woman...




... and Patong street's very own makeshift Neighbourhood Police Post! (It's a coincidence that their tent is sponsored by Honda and there's a Honda car just driving past. It isn't always there. And no, it certainly isn't a road show.)




This is the lovely view we got from our balcony. I love the sunken pool bars.. it's the only time you could slide off your chair disgracefully, holding a cocktail in your hand and be proud of it.




This was in the toilets at the Phuket International Airport. It was absolutely hilarious, I was pissing myself... oh wait, no. I was pissing myself even before I actually took a piss. (if you don't understand the brit lingo, nevermind. just move on) What kind of debris were they expecting!

Oh, and did you know you had to pay 500 baht just to leave the airport?! If that's not shameless tourist exthortion, then I don't know what else it can be called. Even at the airport it was still baht baht baht... (I can still hear the hagglers' voices in my head like the incessant clucking of chickens...)


And I have so many more I wanna post! But for reasons of anonymity.. I can't really indulge. Sigh. Oh, and most of the pretty pics off the islands and out at sea were taken on my disposables, which surprisingly, actually turned out much better than I thought it would. Might get them to make me a digicopy when I get some reprints of it...

I love taking pictures on holiday!

Today at work, I got dumped some shit work again to bloody assist somebody else's story. I want my own!

(chill. Two and a half weeks more to freedom...)

Fairy Tale versus Very Real

Right. I have finally decided to breathe some life.

I had a million things to write about - but something akin to the mechanics of the fallacy of aggregation happens whenever I have too much to write about, I take too long to write it and thus I don't write it at all. (if you don't get the analogy, it's because it has happened all too quickly in my head in a flash of brilliance and I can't be bothered to go through it in words)

Have just finished filing a story at work and my eyes feel so tired it waters every time I close it. Took me the whole day to finish one story - I haven't been at a very productive level of late. I intend to kick myself when I go home in the privacy of my bedroom, just so hopefully, I can kick myself into some action in my life.

I have been feeling increasingly stupid about several things that have happened. And when I say stupid, I don't mean it literally of course. Just figuratively. Many things have been considered from a different perspective and I wouldn't say I'm wiser, but at least I have an idea of where I am headed now. Not that I could avoid any sort of disaster, should it place itself on my path anyway.

Phuket was crap and amazing in a lot of ways. Patong Beach was not the beach I imagined... but Maya Bay and the other islands were better than I dreamed. Seriously, I moved from the Very Real on Patong Beach... to the Fairy Tale on Phi phi islands and the like, in the middle of the ocean, snorkelling and diving off speedboats into crystal clear water and pretty fishes, basking in the sun and gazing at the blue horizon, spotting dolphins in the blue ocean and feeling the wind blowing through my hair on the bumpy ride on the deck of the speedboat.... to the Very Real on Patong Beach again where the water is dirty, and you get tut tut-ed every single second while you're walking, where the hagglers exhaust you and the shameless try and guilt you into giving you money by capitalising on their unfortunate circumstance... where your hotel room is a nice lovely luxurious room but you aint enjoying it and where reality enacts itself right in front of your eyes and you look, and you wonder, but you can't just do anything about it.

So when you think about the nastiness of the Very Real, it is equally astounding how we go to the Fairy Tale with such beautiful places and it is so peaceful and so beautiful and you wish you could just stay there forever and find some peace in your life - but when it comes down to reality, you don't actually really want to do that.

If there is one thing I have realised over the past two weeks, it is that fantasy and reality, is a fucking real distinction. Yeah, no shit. You may think. Stating the obvious? What if the obvious is even more obvious than the obvious you perceive in your head?

You may know what I'm referring to, you may not. But a smiliar analogy could be applied to this: I was working on a story featuring Asia's sex tourism... and you read about all the details and dynamics of what happens in the seedy trade... and you think you know what it's like. You think you know what it's about.

But it would never prepare you for the real experience, would it?

I walked down the infamous B street and I just grew increasingly sad as I ventured further and further, being acosted by some cabaret lady boys desperately trying to get us to watch their shows. Then, at the end of the street, almost reflecting the repulsing trade going on, there is the most pungent odour of (let's just put it nicely) sewage... that reeks the entire street of unfortunate girls meeting desperate guys.

A tarty looking prostitute in jeans, a tight top and heavy make-up gets off the taxi-bike she is sitting on as feminine as she possibly could.

She looks at me and my companion and shoots me a dark, dirty... and possibly jealous look.

Some are forced into it. Some embrace it shamelessly.

I can't get my head around alot of things I have been thinking about recently. It's all just made me really sad.
People search all their life for happiness, and calm, right? They certainly search for some kind of truth and certainty either. My struggle lies in the fact that I love that life is unpredictable, but I want that 100 per cent certainty about... something. which no one could take away. And how are you going to find that in a life where the only certainty is uncertainty?

And then I think about the maxim I often repeat to people around me: Nothing is ever absolute.

So I guess that search and process is one hell of a bitch ride.

....but the beauty of it is, I can just close my eyes and place it at His feet.

Some ask me if He's even there, or not.

I don't have the answers.

But there's nothing I can do. Some things you cannot control. Whatever happens there just has to be acceptance.

I hope I'm a lucky person.

And I do have to say this: Avoid B street if you look vaguely Asian/Oriental, have long hair and are tanned.

If one more person mistakes me for Thai, I'm personally going to box them.