thank goodness for SAF boots!

stop-and-shop-lobster-dinner

devil in the detail

beachy

snippet of fall break

Me: I didn't know you wear glasses
Meg: Yeah I do.
Me: But you usually don't wear them, do you wear contacts?
Meg: Nope I don't, that's why I can't see clearly most of the time. Heee heee hee!
Me: Wait, how does that work out?
Meg: Well, there are some things in life I don't really want to see.
Me: Wow, that's pretty deep.
Meg: heee heee heee!

(horribly misquoted, especially the 'heee heee hee!' bits)

do you know what I did last summer?

Link to KY's (or more affectionately known as Yan Yan) site with too many pictures of the trip:

Part 1

Part 2

Star Wars edit

Here's a video I made for my cousin's birthday a while back. I'm sure I'm violating a few copyright laws here.

I feel so much safer now

There and back again

I just realized I bought this in the States, brought it to London, Latvia, Russia, Mongolia, China, Hong Kong and Singapore and never ate it. It also previously contained another bar which was from the winter trip to Germany and London followed by the summer trip as well, but I threw it away since it was kinda gross. I do try not to be sentimental about such things.

Waiting

Waiting, the gaps between activities and purpose, the blank spots in my life spent on a train, on a bus, on a bed looking at the ceiling fan unable to sleep. There's just too much time to think while you're waiting especially at night when there's no activity or light to keep you distracted, just you and your thoughts in the darkness. It's torture as your mind wanders unconsciously to the portions of the brain you'd rather leave alone. Memories of home, of food, of romantic regrets, of things that could have been, of failures that you wish you could mend. And you scream for sleep, just so your mind can be at peace, just so you can get through the night without thinking, without having your thoughts prod your soul with a hot iron poker.

Pre-departure information

With Commencement done and the money made, I embark on a trip across Russia and Central Asia with 2 other blokes. Our travel blog, which will hopefully be updated is: http://toocheaptofly.blogspot.com/.

I didn't choose the name, just to clarify things.

Since there is a chance that I do not come back at all from this trip, I have decided to post the other video I made, against the will of my friend who is traveling with me (perhaps not the best of decisions). But if I don't come back, nobody else is going to see it, so indulge me, let me leave a little of myself behind.

Confrakes

We need to be careful of those damn Singaporeans

I found it very strange initially that the Americans like to leave their stuff around. A bag full of books here, a wallet there, an ipod on the table, shoes lying around in the locker room, student ID and room keys hanging from a closed door - I mean aren't they afraid that their stuff will get stolen. Whenever I leave stuff around, all the worst possible scenarios will come flooding into my head, things going missing, identity theft, what if someone deletes all my data when I leave my computer logged on in the computar lab, what if someone steals my clothes when I go swimming.

The other day while we were driving around, I noticed a lot of portable BBQ pits outside people's houses and I thought to myself: if this were any Asian country those BBQ pits would probably be gone but in an Asian country no sensible Asian would leave his portable BBQ pit in the middle of no where. (Of course I know I'm making a sweeping statement here, but let me go on for a bit.) And then it dawned on me that the very people who I'm afraid of doing all these evil things to me are Asians or perhaps more specifically Chinese (or even more specifically Singaporeans). We are a very careful race, perhaps a little too frightened. Kiasuism is the more precise word I believe. Damn, so this is how it all fits together.

On a related note, the other day when I was at a reception for graduating international students, this senior from India (I believe) comes up to give a speech (which I paraphrase), "I came here wanting to study economics hoping to get a nice high paying job in NY. But in the end I became a COL (College of Letters) major and I'll be spending the next few months writing." WOW! That's perhaps the most inspiring thing I've heard in a while (other than the now classic: If you get straight As all the time, you're not challenging yourself). Many of us are afraid of deviating from the set conventional path, afraid that we might not be able to get back on once we wander off. That's why we want to do economics, that's why we want to get that nice finance job, earn money and be 'successful'. What a skewed image of success we have! No right minded Asian would want to go away after graduation to some strange, obscure place, find an odd job and live there for a year or two just to see what it's like. We go straight for the 'right' jobs, rushing to find that financial security, rushing to find success. But life is filled with so many other rewarding experiences not found within the cubicle of an office. Yet we choose to confine our choices, we are really quite a frightened bunch of people.

I hope I have the courage to wander off when the choice comes.

Billy Collins

I stumbled upon this, a poem by Billy Collins now set to moving images.
It reminded me of another poem I crossed years ago which is reproduced below,
And made me wish I could write with such glow.
(ugh that was bad)

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

monkeys

Yu [no. 3 sound] (link is working now)

I've been working on a personal video project which is based on the concept of people sharing a single interesting thought they have/had in college in their native language. The whole idea was to capture the thought in a form of physical/artistic memory (I sound like I'm making all this up right?) and also to work on my video editing skills. So far I've done two but one person has strong objections about putting it up on the web (I shall remember to make them sign a waiver in the future before spending numerous hours working on a video without being able to show it to other people), here is the one without any objections.

On jazz

'Now don't try to kid me man-cub I made a deal with you, what I desire is man's great fire so I can be like you.'

The bear opened its mouth and out from it came the most wonderful music. I was 7 when I fell in love with jazz. Baloo the bear and King Louis the orangutan of the Jungle Book were my jazz heroes. The songs were always the same, but the blare of the trumpets and the thump of the double bass had a terrific effect on a young mind. I grew up on jazz, while others were swooning over boy bands and all things shiny and new, I was interested in the dead people and some who were still alive. Maybe I got old too quickly. Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday spoke to me during times of love and loss while painting a picture of a previous era gone by through the sway and swing of their music. Martin Taylor and Joao Gilberto taught me that the guitar played solo can produce the rhythm of a whole band. From the subtle nuances to the crazy riffs, jazz to me embodies the irregularities, the improvisations and the moods of life – ‘it don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing’.

Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory

I recently reread The Power and the Glory and it is truly a fantastic piece of work. Graham Greene writes about out a more ‘realistic’ kind of Christianity, one that isn’t about smiling faces, happy communities and praise and worship songs, but one that it is filled with human anguish, with the heavy burden of sin and with redemption. I recently mentioned to my friend that the Christian community here is too damn happy, maybe I’m just being cynical. That’s how I see Christianity now, not in clear black and white, right and wrong but a Christianity where the boundaries are a little uncertain. I never thought I’d end up thinking this way but I guess I learnt how to sympathize. Maybe it’s just an excuse. I was particularly moved by a passage in the Introduction by John Updike:

“Greene, at a low ebb in his Chiapas travels, took shelter in a roadside hut, ‘a storehouse for corn, but it contained what you seldom find in Mexico, the feel of human goodness.’ The old man living there gave up his bed – ‘a dais of earth covered with a straw mat set against the mound of corn where rats were burrowing’ – to Greene, who wrote of the moment, ‘All that was left was an old man on the verge of starvation living in a hut with rats, welcoming the strangers without a word of payment, gossiping gently in the dark. I felt myself back in the population of heaven.’ Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I find beauty in imperfection. Perhaps it’s a way to negotiate through my failings and the fact that life more often than not slaps you in the face when you’re not looking. If the world were filled with good Christians, what a bore it would be. I mention Christians here in the conventional interpretation of being a good Christian one that is bounded by a certain set of rules. In the end, I find that it’s something to figure out between you and God and not just fitting into some specific mold society has created. That’s why I’m always suspicious of worship concerts or huge prayer rallies where some famous speaker comes and moves the crowd. These things don’t work for me. The potential for hypocrisy is just too great. You make yourself vulnerable to the effects of the music, lighting, atmosphere and words, mistaking it for a religious experience, saying and feeling things you don’t really mean. That’s why I like the traditional church service where the space is not taken up by a constant drumbeat or a deliberately stirred-up feeling, where there is space to meet God.

And when I meet Him, I ask, ‘help me in my unbelief.’

this is rock and roll

Too much fun

Report from the Asian front

All is quiet on the Asian front. In Spanish class, we sit together in a row facing the rest, a conference table filling the divide. Was it a conscious effort that gave us our place on this side of the table? Or rather, was it a conscious effort on their part to sit on the other side? Who knows? The professor jokes, the rest laugh, we smile, trying desperately to make sense. Questions are asked and answered naturally but we sit there, a wall of silence.

Perhaps we are afraid of being judged, perhaps the words simply escape us, perhaps we unconsciously hold on to the subservient Asian attitude and feel beaten down, perhaps we're just quiet.

"It could be because your command of English isn't that good so you may find it a bit difficult," the professor said.

Yeah right.

".....wept for the darkness of man's heart"

Chinese Death Rites

I found this book, "Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore" by Tong Chee-Kiong quite a while back in the library but only recently had time to read it. I was quite surprised to see it, firstly, because I never imagined seeing it here and secondly, because I've always been interested in Chinese death rites and even had pipe dreams of making a documentary about it. But it seems someone has already gone ahead and wrote a book about it.

Below are some notes I took:

Rituals:

• Pearls are placed in the mouth and hands of the deceased. They are said to have preservative qualities to protect the bodies of the deceased. They can also be used to bribe the judges in Hell.
• Shou yi or generational clothes - each layer represents a generation of the deceased's descendants - the more layers, the greater number of descendants
• Beside the chair is a wash basin filled with a cup,toothbrush, toothpaste and towel
• Back portion of the coffin is hidden from view by a screen with the words zhong xiao chuan jia (loyalty, filiality and continuation of the family name) and yin rong wan zai (your voice and appearance are with us). The screen also depicts the 24 acts of supreme filial piety found in traditional Chinese classics.
• Burning of joss paper must be done slowly to ensure the deceased gets all the money that is dues to him. Unburned or partially burned joss paper cannot be used by the dead.
• These chants revolve around the idea of informing the deities of the rituals being carried out for the deceased
• The funeral procession is headed by musicians dressed in military-style uniforms and playing discordant music - meant to frighten away malicious spirits
• The most common requests are for wealth, prosperity, good health and for the children to do well in school.
• The prayers to the ancestors often sound more like a bribe or a blackmail
• Relatives of the deceased are expected to cry, the louder the better.

Significance of Rites

• In this world, a person without a home, money or food is considered a beggar; a homeless and hungry spirit is considered a hungry ghost
• Throughout the funeral, great care is taken to ensure that the deceased is adequately fed and that he has always some money in his hands
• Grief is necessary when the father is an "unrefined ghost". Crying stops when he is transformed into an ancestor
• The funeral is a presentation of the family to the public, and a grand ritual enhances the social status of the family in the community
• The supreme act of filial piety is the performance of the mortuary and funeral ceremonies for the parents
• Mourning grades are based on the formal consanguinal and affinal ties to the deceased - the coarser the clothes the closer the person is to the dead and to death
• The desire to outdo others gives a clue to one feature of Chinese death rituals - by demonstrating to the deceased one's filiality and loyalty, a person hopes to further self-interest, expecting the deceased to reciprocate with material rewards
• Inheritance creates an obligation to worship the deceased
• The desire to enact an elaborate funeral and spend lots of money is motivated not simply by the inheritance but the potential for greater benefit
• So much effort is put into dressing up the dead to be more impressive than he actually was in this life
• The potential for reciprocal gains may explain why descendants compete with one another for the affections of the deceased during the funeral
• By impressing the father with one's filiality and generosity, one hopes to increase the father's obligation to reciprocate
• Spirit money acts a medium of exchange between the living and the dead creating a reciprocal relationship, enhancing the social interaction between the two parties
• Transfer of authority - by elevating the deceased into a transcendent and eternal force, the social group is not just anchored by political power, but also by emotions, beliefs and fears
• Status, or main zi is extremely important, and in the form of prestige and renown attached to a family, it is readily convertible back into economic capital
• Social indicators: quality of the coffin, type of ritual specialist (Buddhist priests rank higher than Taoist priests) and number, paper offerings 'Mercs', large announcements in obituary sections, the 're nao'ness of the funeral
• Death rituals have little to do with personal feelings toward the deceased, but rather with a sense of duty and obligation
• Social allegiances are dynamic and death allows for the articulation of allegiances, divisions and feuds within the family

Cool Lim Family Fact

• Lin clan ancestral hall: 14 wooden boards in the clan hall reflects the conviction that the virtues of the ancestors can bring glory to the descendants, brought from China, inscribed on them are the names of ancestors who had attained high honors of zhuang yuan in the Imperial examinations

Women

• Women are apparently suppose to be extremely polluting especially during menstrual periods or pregnancy. I couldn't help but notice the similar "polluting" aspect in the Sambia culture in New Guinea where the women have demarcated places and objects in the house which they are restricted to and the men are secretly afraid of being polluted by the women.
  

Blast from the past

The Breakdown

1. Tiny Toons - 0:00
2. Animaniacs - 1:00
3. Pinky And The Brain - 2:14
4. Freakazoid - 3:16
5. The Pirates Of Dark Water - 4:17
6. Tailspin - 5:17
7. Darkwing Duck - 6:17
8. Goof Troop - 7:17
9. Bonkers - 8:18
10. Aladdin - 9:18
11. The Critic - 10:19
12. Sam And Max - 11:36
13. The Maxx - 12:07
14. Mighty Max - 13:07
15. Pokemon - 14:06
16. Batman: The Animated Series - 15:07
17. Superman: The Animated Series - 16:08
18. Batman Beyond - 17:13
19. Samurai Pizza Cats - 18:11
20. Sherlock Holmes In The 22nd Century - 19:41
21. Futurama - 20:42
22. Gargoyles - 21:10
23. The Adventures Of Super Mario Bros. 3 - 22:11
24. Captain N And The New Super Mario World - 22:41
25. Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog - 23:19
26. Sonic The Hedgehog (Yup. A different one.) - 24:18
27. Sonic Underground (And another one.) - 25:22
28. The Tick - 26:30
29. Back To The Future - 27:23
30. Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventures - 28:20
31. Dragon Warrior - 29:22

I actually watched most of these cartoons before! This is so 90s.....sweet!

Johanson's Temptation, Sausages and Good Company

Johanson's Temptation is a Swedish potato dish which turned out quite well except I forgot to add salt so it was quite flat :( After peeling all the silly potatoes and grating till my hands ached, I didn't get it right.

We had a sausage (not that kind of sausage!) night at Mark's place and essentially bought all kinds of sausages to eat till we got sick. There was quite a bit of leftover so we saved it and ate it again the following morning for breakfast together with the leftover Johanson's Temptation which I threw in a pan and mashed up making quite a tasty pile of unruly looking potato bits.


I also got a chance to see Saturn (dust rings and all) with my own eyes, of course through a telescope, courtesy of Mark and the Astronomy department. It was almost a childlike feeling of wonderment and amazement finally seeing this image firsthand. I think the thing about space and the stars for many of us is that it's almost like a mythical concept, sure it's there, but it's so big and inaccessible that we just tend to ignore it or brush it aside as something beyond us. Believe me, if you haven't looked at the stars/planets through a telescope, you have no idea what you're missing out on. It's perhaps one of the most beautiful things you'll ever see.

Yes, this is what it actually looks like! (well, at least something like that)

I need a bloody drink

Sangria (La sangre en inglés es 'blood')

Ingredients:

• Juice of Two Limes
• 3 tablespoons superfine granulated sugar
• 1 liter of cheapo red wine
• 1/2 cup cognac
• 1 cup orange juice
• Random fruits

Wash and slice fruit. Dissolve sugar in cognac. Add sugar, cognac, orange juice and fruit to a pitcher or punch bowl. Pour in wine. Stir to mix in fruit. Chill overnight or for at least eight hours before serving.

It turned out quite good and refreshing but was a tad on the stronger side.

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.

el corazon

think twice the next time you bite in

broken slipper

The slipper which I brought with me to NDU on the 1st day of enlistment has finally snapped. Being in the middle of no where, I have resorted to the desperate measure of using rafia string which I took (in copious amounts) from the ikea packaging station, to make it functional again. I shall have to wait for summer to get a new pair. Slippers, I have found, are essential for cleanliness.

the reluctant tourist

berlin - prague - munich - bavaria - salzburg - munich - berlin - london - edinburgh - london - oxford - london

So I was sipping coffee in a McDonald's in Salzburg thinking: what the hell am I doing here? Well it only costs 1 euro for a hot drink and a warm place to sit down. It's funny how I am once again drawn back to these representations of globalization and American homogeneity, these Golden Arcs which bring both comfort and contempt, ever ready to warm one's heart with reliability and affordability. You really can't run away.

I spent winter break in Europe, Christmas in Prague and New Year's in Berlin. It was certainly quite an experience especially since my friend, Debbie, had already been in Berlin for 2 weeks and knew some of the strange nook and crannies of the city. We also met up with two of her friends in Munich who were adventurous enough to drive us about the Bavarian Alps.

Christmas in Prague really fit the image of an 'ang moh' Christmas I've always had in my mind. We arrived on Christmas Eve night by train into Prague and had lousy Chinese food forways had in my mind, Christmas Eve dinner. (It never ceases to amaze me how the Chinese can really be found everywhere and I give a cheer inside my heart whenever I see a Chinese restaurant in the last place I expect to see one.) It was a little foggy and the orange lights of the city glowed through the fog, the light being dispersed gave the place an almost magical feel. The center of the old city was alive with people and a Christmas markets with shops selling mulled wine and strange looking pastries. At midnight, the church bells rang for the midnight mass, accompanied by an orchestra, opera singers and a throng of tourist (ourselves included) - we left 15 min later as we didn't know what the heck was going on.

In the Old City center

Strange yummy pastry

We visited Cesky Krumlov on our last day in the Czech Republic. It's a small town and bloody long bus ride away from Prague but it's definitely worth the sore behind as it's damn beautiful with a bizzare castle. The castle was painted with colorful reliefs and sculptures and it almost seemed as though the king didn't have any money to get any real sculptures done and decided to paint it on instead. It also had a dry moat around it with a bear inside to eat up any poor soul that fell in.

Painted Castle

Bear in moat.

Berlin is a dirty place with lots of graffiti, art, and chairs that don't match.

The oldest toaster in the world.
Where the oldest toaster in the world was found

After continental Europe I went over to London. London has too many people. I met my cousins in London, secondary school classmates, JC classmates, MIDs batch mates and random friends. Other than the social gatherings, London is a dreary place, I guess I'm tired of life since I'm tired of London. Maybe everything is just too damn expensive.

Dear cousins

Candice has a leather couch, I wish I had one too.

Friends from the cesspool.

Edinburgh was beautiful for various reasons not confined to geography or architecture.
Oxford has nice nature paths to walk about.

Rachel and Deb in St. Peter's College bar (I wish I had a college bar)

The thing I like about Oxford and Edinburgh is the good mix between city and country. You can always run away to somewhere quiet if you wanted to or go down to the pub for live music and a drink if you feel like it. There is nothing in Middletown.

I have seen enough castles, museums and galleries to last me another 10 yrs. Like a dear friend of mine said, you can still do all these things when you're old and perhaps a little richer. I should live a little dangerously while I still can afford it.

Here are the pictures to prove I've been to this and that monument, here are the smiles of tourists posing. I hope for different pictures next time.

Next stop, Siberia.