31 August, Merdeka

Jalur Gemilang, Melaka, 2004

Happy 50th Merdeka!!!

A strangely silent pause.

Just what's so happy about it though, I can't tell. I'm sure it's something to do with being free from colonial rule, something-something about being independent, and maybe a lot about not having to sip tea daintily all day (but hey, guess what our national drink is). Don't get me wrong, I'm no deviant, but I am somewhat tired of superficial celebrations where flag-waving and badly lip-synched patriotic songs are the best show our leaders can whip up. And as if to compensate for their lack of nationalistic lustre, we have an international fireworks competition! Yay! Surely that's something for the rakyat to cheer for!

Give me something else to believe in, leaders. Not smoke, fire, or short-lived flames. Give me something that will benefit all Malaysians, for that is what we are—Malaysians.

But who in their right minds would sacrifice such a position of unquestionable privilege and comfort for the sake of the masses?

( |o }===:::

On a livelier note, this Merdeka was probably my most happenin', ever. I purged eight times since yesterday. Knocked out from all the effort, I accidentally fell asleep before midnight and missed all the charades on TV and possible fireworks nearby. Dang.

Oh wait, I feel a ninth one comin'. Gtg.

Lennie develops on the night of the lunar eclipse

The blank Polaroid lay flat on the table. "Shake it! Shake it!" I said excitedly.

"No! That's the wrong way," said Rach. "You'll mix all the colours up." Tickled by the cleverness of the sentence in her head, Rach grinned and said, "Let's watch Lennie develop."

( |o }===:::

At times, the imposing nature of age—that always increasing, never decreasing number—gets the better of me. Almost. It is as if I were a subject strapped onto a sterile metal table in a lab, society and all her expectations giving me a curt, disdainful glance before proceeding with the mandatory exam.

Married? No.
Attached? No.
Car? Second-hand; purchased this year.
House? Parents'.
Income? Err... it's complicated.
Career success? Blank.
Goals? Blank.
Spiritual health?
Relationships?

And so they prod before the morphine kicks in and I am dreaming again that I am singing and playing in front of an audience, their monotonous queries fading into the background.

( |o }===:::

The office celebrated the August babies today, in what must have been a stroke of numerical genius in my favour. There were four candles side-by-side on the cake, and I had trouble blowing mine out without killing someone else's lifeline. You'd think that perhaps, one would get better at blowing out candles as they grow older, but no, that's simply not true. Your puff of candle-blowing power decreases from a developing bad posture, your accuracy suffers from neckache and your reluctance to answer to the call of a higher integer means that you need to try at least three times before you 'succeed', thus inadvertently prolonging the moment of symbolic aging in the spotlight.

( |o }===:::

I once bought a book at a warehouse sale that was about a white explorer who had been caught by the natives in some far-off land. As I don't remember the details, we shall imagine that they were bloodthirsty cannibals who hissed, snarled and sucked their ulcers dry at the chance to taste this exotic white meat. Did it taste like chicken? Or did it taste like the stillborns, only perhaps less tender (and much hairier)? While they danced around the fire and lowered him into the gigantic charcoaled pot, he suddenly remembered a piece of news he'd read a few weeks before embarking on this suicide mission. It had said that on this exact date, there would be a total solar eclipse happening in the region he was in. Battling fear and a semi-conscious urge to crap his pants, he cried out to the translator (for how else would the locals know what he was saying?) and the people: "WAIT!"

The croak came out dry, bouncing off the skin of the pounding drums and an earth that roared under the soles of hungry warriors. Again:

"WAAIIIIIIIIIITTT!"

The celebratory march stopped. Cold eyes peered at him, spears lifted. Warily, the white explorer gazed for a hint of hope in the sky—and there it was. A sliver. Pacman nibbling into the sun. Pointing to it, he put on his best imitation of God and said, "I will kill the sun."

Needless to say, the white explorer lived to tell the story.

( |o }===:::

If you didn't already know, a total lunar eclipse happened today. Rach called it a 'happy birthday present to you from God' as we watched it live over the Discovery Channel website while engaging in collective oohs and aaahs. Sure, it was cool, very cool in fact, but a more meaningful 'present' were some simple acts of care showed by thoughtful friends. Overall, it was a very nice birthday, and a possible reminder to a weary cynic of 'churchese' that God cares. So thanks to you guys who rock so well.

"Lennie develops, 2007"

Polaroid: RM3.50. Company: Priceless. Line: So corny

Fried Green Tomatoes

Last weekend's Pay Less Books sale saw me scavenging for cheap reads. In less than an hour, I'd rounded up 7 books. The first to be devoured was Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. My verdict: I love it! It's funny, lovable and you feel an affinity for the characters. Here's one of the funniest chapters, regarding a character called Evelyn, a woman facing menopause:

September 1, 1986

Ed Couch came home Thursday night and said that he was having trouble with a woman down at the office who was a “real ball breaker,” and that none of the men wanted to work with her because of it.

The next day, Evelyn went out to the mall to shop for a bed jacket for Big Momma and while she was having lunch at the Pioneer Cafeteria, a thought popped into her head, unannounced:

What is a ball breaker?

She’d heard Ed use the term a lot, along with She’s out to get my balls and I had to hold on to my balls for dear life.

Why was Ed so scared that someone was out to get his balls? What were they, anyway? Just little pouches that carried sperm; but the way men carried on about them, you’d think they were the most important thing in the world. My God, Ed had just about died when one of their son’s hadn’t dropped properly. The doctor said that it wouldn’t affect his ability to have children, but Ed had acted like it was a tragedy and wanted to send him to a psychiatrist, so he wouldn’t feel less of a man. She remembered thinking at the time, how silly… her breasts had never developed, and nobody ever sent her for help.

But Ed won out, because he told her she didn’t understand about being a man and what it meant. Ed had even pitched a fit when she wanted to have their cat, Valentine, who had impregnated the thoroughbred Siamese cat across the street, fixed.

He said, “If you’re gonna cut his balls off, you might as well just go on and put him to sleep!”

No doubt about it, he was peculiar where balls were concerned.

She remembered how Ed had once complimented that same woman at the office when she had stood up to the boss. He had bragged on her, saying what a ballsy dame she was.

But now that she thought about it, she wondered: What did that woman’s strength have to do with Ed’s anatomy? He hadn’t said, “Boy, she’s got some ovaries”; he had definitely said what balls she had. Ovaries have eggs in them, she thought: Shouldn’t they be as important as sperm?

And when had that woman stepped over the line of having just enough balls to having too much?

That poor woman. She would have to spend her whole life balancing imaginary balls if she wanted to get along. Balance was everything. But what about size? she wondered. She never heard Ed mention size before. It was the other thing’s size they were so concerned about, so she guessed it didn’t matter all that much. All that mattered in this world was the fact that you had balls. Then all at once, the simple and pure truth of that conclusion hit her. She felt as if someone had run a pencil up her spine and dotted an i on her head. She sat up straight in her chair, shocked that she, Evelyn Couch, of Birmingham, Alabama, had stumbled on the answer. She suddenly knew what Edison must have felt like when he discovered electricity. Of course! That was it… having balls was the most important thing in this world. No wonder she had always felt like a car in traffic without a horn.

It was true. Those two little balls opened the door to everything. They were the credit cards she needed to get ahead, to be listened to, to be taken seriously. No wonder Ed had wanted a boy.

Then another truth occurred to her. Another sad, irrevocable truth: She had no balls and never would or could have balls. She was doomed. Ball-less forever. Unless, she thought, if maybe the balls in your immediate family counted. There were four in hers… Ed’s and Tommy’s... No, wait… six, if she counted the cat. No, wait just another minute, if Ed loved her so much, why couldn’t he give her one of his? A ball transplant… That’s right. Or, maybe she could get two from an anonymous donor. That’s it, she’d buy some off a dead man and she could put them in a box and take them to important meetings and bang them on the table to get her way. Maybe she’d buy four…

No wonder Christianity had been such a big hit. Think of Jesus and the Apostles… And if you counted John the Baptist, why that was 14 pairs and 28 singles, right there!

Oh, it was all so simple to her now. How had she been so blind and not seen it before?

Yes, by heavens, she’d done it. She’d hit upon the secret that women have been searching for through the centuries…

THIS WAS THE ANSWER…

Hadn’t Lucille Ball been the biggest star on television?

She banged her iced tea on the table in triumph and shouted, “YES! THAT’S IT!”

Everyone in the cafeteria turned and looked at her.

Evelyn quietly finished her lunch and thought, Lucille Ball? Ed might be right. I probably am going crazy.

- Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Gone

Today, I understood a bit of what a monkey, squirrel, bird, panda, tiger, fern, crawler experiences when it loses its hideout to men in chainsaws and tractors. You feel bare. You feel like you could run for a thousand miles with your little heart churning out blood and fear, yet still end up in the jaws of a well-camouflaged croc or at the end of a shotgun. You dart for cover, but to your disgust, it's a measly hibiscus plant. To quote 99% of horror movies: You can run, but you can't hide.

Then there's the excruciating heat. The ground burns beneath your feet, and whatever overhead shelter there was from the scorching sun has blown away; collapsed; ceased to exist. If you're unlucky and wear a thick fur coat in this hot and humid climate, you begin sweating like a pig. If you're an actual pig with a thin epidermis, sunburn and skin cancer might just kill you off before a pack of hungry coyotes. You become a helpless victim to the elements.

This afternoon, I lost some of the "protection" I've known my whole life when I arrived home to a facade that looked different. It was our mango tree. It was missing. Suddenly, the whole house and garden seemed naked. Anyone on the street could look right in. In fact, it felt mighty weird, as the mango tree had been with us from as far as I can remember (which is a very long time ago), and had served us well, bearing luscious fruit and generously sharing its shade.

But today, its stem held itself up proudly for a last time; its branches grandly bowed and swayed for a nondescript finale. Only my dad was there to see it go. As the men started hacking into its 30-degree inclined trunk; as they fell blow after blow into termite-infested branches, the tree's two decades of love and labour became mere memories. The same tree I had tried climbing as a kid; the same tree I had curled up with a book in (and failed, for it wasn't destined to multitask as furniture); the same tree my parents and relatives spent hours gazing up its branches for signs of a yellowing fruit; the same tree my mum fell from and oozed blood from her head; the same tree a pair of yellow birds in the neighbourhood frequently sang lovesongs on; the same tree the garden squirrels played hide and seek in; the same tree the bats and birds loved to lepak in (while relaxing their anus muscles over my car)—this same tree was now gone. All that remained, when I returned home, was a story half a foot tall; sawdust and debris all around; roots still in the ground.

And the Sunday sun blazed down as usual. Only this time, there was no one to shelter me.

Neighbours Pt II (Wildlife edition)

A fly sticking around before the rain

A cat imitating a punk headbanger after the rain (click to zoom)

Rabbit vs. Grandma

Rabbits are territorial, and so are grandmothers. If you lived in my house, you'd soon realise that the toilet downstairs is akin to a battlefield where a silent but tense power struggle is waged out every day between rabbit and grandma. The former loves to dash in for a quick poo if no one's looking; the latter tries to clampdown on such loose behaviour by constructing an elaborate rabbit-proof barricade before she heads off to bed (which is when Lump roams the lands). So far, it's been effective. For someone who's 97 years of age, I think her contraption is brilliant.

Lump surveys the mountainous terrain ahead

A closer look reveals the extent of creativity at work here

Neighbours

One rainy Saturday a few weeks ago, I decided to document my neighbours. I must admit, I've never spoken to any of them. My family used to trade New Year cookies for Raya ones with the neighbour on the right, but that tradition dissipated into a mere childhood memory when the 'datuk' from next door passed away.

The neighbours on the right

An old Chinese lady used to live on our left, but a few years ago, she opted out, and sold the place to the management of a printing factory nearby. The management then proceeded to conveniently dump what must have been a hundred and two male Nepalese workers in that house. The feisty, loud-mouthed neighbour two doors down kicked up a big fuss, and recently, the number went down to ninety-nine. I don't have a major problem with them... except for well, perhaps one. There's this young Nepalese chap who thinks it's very amusing trying to peep at me whenever I get down from the car, close the gate, etc. Once I was trying to wash the car, and a bunch of them—him included—just returned from the factory. He grinned, sat down at the porch and proceeded to gaze in my direction as if I were some kind of Saturday matinee Tamil movie. I felt like throwing my dirt-soaked sponge at him, but for the kinky connotations such an action could imply.

The neighbours on the left

My room faces the back, and the dudes at the back are total slobs. I don't waste my time observing their daily routines, but take a look—doesn't it just look like a junkyard? The water drainage pipe is hanging from the roof, and each time there's a thunderstorm, some part of the house creaks and falls away.

Room with a view: the neighbours at the back

And as a bonus, check out this back neighbour's neighbour (pictured below). Is it too much to ask that the people in my neighbourhood be more civilised?

The back neighbour's neighbour

Andy McKee playing 'Drifting'

I stumbled into the arms of an amazing fingerstyle guitarist today. No, not Tommy Emmanuel. StumbleUpon, that nifty surfing tool, introduced me to Andy McKee playing a song he wrote called 'Drifting'. I immediately forwarded it to my guitar buddies online, and soon, an oasis of sorts (saliva, actually) had formed on our keyboards.



Stuff like this inspires me to want to pick up fingerstyle guitar. It's the most comprehensive style that allows you to perform solo yet still sound 'full'. Don't know where I can find a teacher, though, and the time. Roger Wang lives too far away and Az Samad is in Berklee. Sighs.

Mating season

I have spotted an opportunity for baby bunnies to exist. I have seen the flashing neon sign, alternating between "Single & Available" and two hearts overlapping as one. I smell sweet love in the air.

The two suitors don't know it yet, but I have *evil* plans. Recently, I found out that a colleague of mine has a rabbit, and not just a rabbit, a female rabbit! And not just a female rabbit, a FEMALE ANGORA RABBIT!!!!

She's brown like Lump and a cutie (though Rach thinks she's on the hairy side). Look at this picture I stole off the owner and judge for yourself:

Potential girlfriend #1

Her name's Raisin. I like her eyes—they look so much more gentle compared to Lump's 'how-can-I-outsmart-my-owner' look (and is that mauve mascara?). Given a male bunny's natural stamina, I guess he's also distressed that he's still a virgin.

Now I've only got to convince Raisin's owner that both rabbits would totally dig a romantic evening out frollicking in some garden, and that depriving them of that would be a devastatingly cruel act against the laws of love. Hmmmmrrrmph.

Janice is back! But where are the housemates?

"lol", 2001

Janice, a good friend who used to hang with me in Canberra, is back in Singapore after spending some time in the States dancing and making coffee and going for Bible classes. Wheeeee! If you didn't know, Janice is a professionally trained psychologist who prefers working in a cafe and trying out new recipes. She's a good person to talk to, and one of the handful who can stand shopping with me. So she totally rocks. See you soon, Janice!

Since I'm reminiscing my uni days, here is an ex-housemate of mine, Nat, caught reading during the summer hols. She used to blast Britney over her hi-fi and torture the rest of the housemates with it. Hers was an amazing display of consistency, except for the times when she blasted the Backstreet Boys. Then when Jess, my other housemate, tried using Hootie and the Blowfish to out-blast Britney, Nat would retaliate by knocking up the volume even more. Things could get pretty ugly, especially if you had to study with 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' on repeat. Besides that, Nat also dressed a lot in pink. Shocking pink. Tight tops in shocking pink. But what's most shocking is that she was the oldest amongst us at—what, 26 then? Yep.

"Natalie in Summer", 2001

And here's Jess, my musical buddy, singing in the N1 laundry where we used to jam till the grog or our throats ran dry, or until Nat or the weird neighbour from upstairs appeared, yelling at us to shut-up-do-you-know-what-freaking-time-it-is? How I miss those good ol' days.

"Nights at N1", 2001 (My favourite shot of Jess)

3a.m. in a living room on Foch Road

I'm on the last leg of my Singapore trip. The guys are already asleep--William felt sick after walking in the drizzle with me and Cheok didn't have a weekend. He's been working non-stop on a pitch, and tomorrow it's yet another day at work, except that he has a shoot tomorrow, which sounds slightly more relaxed. I would say I'm so glad to be out of advertising, but I just checked my new office email and there are some pretty out-of-this-world deadlines there. They are rather impossible IMHO, taking into account I'm just one person, and I am technically on leave/holiday till Monday. But anyway. Might be forced to do it tomorrow before taking the bus home.

William has just walked past me looking quite green. He's now in the toilet, but I haven't heard major puking yet. Okay, he seems alright. Maybe he's just tired. I did, after all, wake him up at 8.30 this morning to lead the way to the MRT station so that I could meet Felix at Buena Vista and go to church. Church was... rather standard.

There's been a cool breeze blowing since I got back. We're on the 12th floor, with a rather good view of what used to be a red light district haunted by transvestites. There are some dodgey pubs around. Coincidentally, I read an article earlier that said that transsexuals are recognised in Singapore, except that they need to undergo a full sex-change operation. The gender on their birth certs don't get changed too. Some male-to-female transsexuals turn to prostitution because they're out of money and can't find anyone who'd be willing to employ them.

But the streets below us are now empty and quiet--it's friggin Monday tomorrow after all. Somewhere, some construction is going on as I can hear a machine drilling and smell the black oil carried by the night air. The occasional car passes by every minute or so. At this moment, life is slow and I don't want my holiday to end.

The air is brilliant and blowing, and this moment belongs to me, here.

Singapore Pt. II

Singapore is a fine city. In both senses of the word. It's my second visit to Singapore in a year, which makes that a personal record. One day I imagine I might work here, since I know more than five people and therefore shouldn't feel completely lonely, and also because it's a fine city. If you earned the same amount as you did in that country up its border (where I currently reside), all you'd need to do is multiply that by 2.3 and wahlau, you'd be rich! Your parents would be happier with the extra pocket money and so would you. Yes, I might work here one day. (I'd just have to deal with not being able to understand Mandarin-speaking cabbies and waitresses.)

What I have been doing since getting here on Friday night.
Eating fine food (had Jap and one of those real-meat-with-juices-flowing burgers today), tossing between getting a Macbook or a normal laptop or the office's Dell one, hanging out with my ex-colleagues Cheok and William who have been really angelic, walking in and out of shops, spending a bomb on stationery, shopping, getting fat, learning to surf the web on an iBook and discovering the joys of two-finger page scrolling, oversleeping (woke up at 1.35pm today; how absolutely piggish), and attending the TOMMY EMMANUEL concert at Esplanade.

I'd been wanting to see Tommy in action for some time now, but when I was in Australia for a month last year, he was shuttling in between some weird-named Scandinavian country and another planet. Then this year, while reading Mia Palencia's blog, she happened to mention that she'd been to a Tommy E gig last year. Lo and behold, a whim like a dim sum came ker-plonk into my brain, and so I googled "Tommy Emmanuel" and "tour", and excitedly found out that he was going to be playing in a few months in Singapore!

So who's this Tommy guy actually? Well, he's an oldish chap from Melbourne, Australia with two daughters and a few more kids via World Vision, who also happens to be among one of two(?) Certified Guitar Players in the world. He's most known as a fine fingerstyle player, which is a playing style that combines a moving bassline, rhythm and melody/lead section played at the same time by the same guitar player. He also does rather crazy stuff on the guitar. I mean, he doesn't pick strings with his teeth or salivate all over the strings, but what he does is beat it up real bad till it sounds pretty good. Like today, he used a drum brush to beat the guitar body below the saddle to create a purely rhythm jamming session. The pickup on the first guitar used today is also VERY sensitive, and each time he thumped over the soundhole, a heavy 'boom' akin to a kicked bass drum was produced.

But what THE highlight of the night was for me, by far, a song called 'Initiation', which he wrote after spending time with the Aboriginals in Alice Springs as a lad. I'm not sure of the time span between the inspiration and actualisation of the song, perhaps 30 years as he joked, but what he had wanted to do was to capture the sounds of the Aborigines and produce that on a guitar. Today, he did just that, immaculately, splendidly, magically. Using heavy delay effects and certain other effects (I'm guessing a Phase Shifter though I've never used that effect myself), he created a populated oasis in the middle of an arid bushland, where the calls of the original inhabitants of Australia melded with their droning beats, clucks, atmospherics and waaah-waaaaah didgeridoo sounds. It was the most amazing thing I've seen produced on a guitar, ever. (The Esplanade has wonderful acoustics too, which did wonders to the listening experience.)

With that, I'll end my adventures for today. Tomorrow, if I wake up on time, I'll visit Felix's church with him. Then on to more shopping! :D

Lump is cute, but have you seen him wet?

When wet, my rabbit looks like a rat.

(This is for those of you who have only seen pictures that depict him as this outrageously cute fluff ball. He IS, but he can also look pretty scrawny. Tee-hee. These were taken at least a year ago, maybe two.)

Anson & Alex do their thang

More fluke shots from Ai Mei and Terence's wedding. Here we have Anson on rhythm guitar and Alex on congas. Motion is natural—my PhotoShop skills ain't that advanced. :)

Focus

Experiments in crazy

Yesterday's wedding rehearsal involved musicians, singers, shofar blowers and dancers. Here is Janet dancing, and me having no freaking clue what's happening with all the light. They do, however, seem intent on dancing with her.

Experiments in candlelight

In the days to come, I'll probably be writing less and shooting more. My new toy has left me as poor as a church mouse, especially once I pay the credit card company for it. But for now, I'm still trying to figure out the mysteries of the camera and photography in general. I wish I were a lot more technical in this area, but all the f/x-number, aperture and whatnot is rather confusing. Still, it's digital and I can afford to push any combo of buttons and just shoot. Whee!

Candles in the Anglican church where Ai Mei and Terence will be wed tomorrow

Made in 1910

My maternal grandma is 97 years old. For someone her age, she's in pretty good shape and fiercely independent, but when you're almost a century old, your body does get worn, and her leg muscles have been grumbling incessantly in recent days.

Despite having known her all my life, I haven't been very civil to her since my rebellious early teens. Now, I am past acting like James Dean but our static relationship has come to be the accepted way of life. The lack of conversation partly explains why my Cantonese sucks so bad. But even if I could speak the language, she's now hard of hearing. I do help her with stuff on occasion and when she asks, showing the care through actions, but I know it's far from ideal.

I don't know how long God's mercy on her will last, but the fact is that she isn't a Christian and doesn't seem close to being one at this point in time. Which leaves me feeling blue, as I recall her sacrifices for me particularly when I was a kid; how she's served and taken care of me. Despite her controlling ways (as the mother of seven, grandmother of 13 and great-grandmother of five), I do, after all, love her.

I took these shots because I needed to preserve her on 'film'—memory is so unreliable.

Poh-poh, June 07

Cheers, Mate

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with... B!

~


Beer. Also known as:
- belly girth enhancer
- burping agent
- better days ahead

This is an early celebration for the latter. (Crosses fingers in hope that it's not premature. Otherwise, darn, those calories coulda been saved for later.)

Also presenting my new Nikon D40x baby. I <3 superzoom lenses.

reCAPTCHA & Other Reads

You know how leaving comments on people's blogs sometimes involves having to figure out some squiggly alphabets that are hard to read? Well, I just learned that some of these are linked to reCAPTCHA, a programme that digitises old scanned texts by having humans solve these 'puzzles' around the world, all the time. It's pretty interesting and if you go to the site, you can actually help digitise scanned words. (After 20 'successes', I also realised it's easy to get addicted to reCAPTCHAing.) Anyway, never once did it cross my mind that all those annoying validation processes potentially have a noble cause.

Two other pretty good reads:
The Worst Jobs in Science 2007 (from Popular Science) - think 'Whale-Feces Researcher' or 'Elephant Vasectomist'
The Formula (from New Yorker) - what if we built a machine to predict hit movies?