Overheard on the bus this morning, in cute little British accents.
Boy,4: I want to write too.
Helper: What do you want to write?
Boy: I want a pink and green fire truck.
Girl,6: But fire trucks are red, not pink. Can you stop liking everything pink? Boys are not supposed to like pink. Boys like blue! I don't like pink.
Maid: What colour do you like, then?
Girl: I only like ten colours. I like all the colours except pink and grey.
(pause)
Boy: I like pink.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
A Tale of Three Cities.
New York is defined by what it lacks. The void of Central Park, presciently planned, and the void of Ground Zero, maliciously inflicted. It's a city that attacks you with its energy, just walking on its sidewalks. Its possibilities gush at you at the turn of every block, with the glaring lights reflected off buildings, the blaring horns of taxis, and the turbulent assault of fast walkers. It is a city of outbursts- chatter, cursing, conversations. I spoke to more strangers in four days (well, they spoke to me) than I did in four months in Singapore. Even the homeless shout at you their brand of propaganda. Something about how chinks should give to poor men on the street who aint got no place to stay, nor to go. Well I'm a chink so I figure it's fine that I repeat it here. If there's anything I learnt from Russell Peters, its that it's okay to laugh at yourself. But who're you calling chink?
Chicago accommodates you. Fairly politely. It knows you as a traveller along its trajectory of rise and fall, old and new, destruction and rebirth. It's a city that lies constantly on the cusp of something, like an unfinished sentence at the tip of your tongue. You feel the gentle boiling beneath the surface, bubbling with its instinctual urges for something more. It's as though the Great Fire of 1871 left an indelible mark in their psyche- a need for repeated tabula rasa, a cyclical need to be made new. To be new. The tour guide pointed out district after district that 'revitalised' themselves from ruin, as one through the fire. But its history seeps out at you like oil through pores, casting a sheen across the entire landscape. Chicago is beautiful. Like a well-worn couch whose leather has been burnished by the fabric of its many occupants, it is part polished and part cracked, but all of it charming.
Orlando is utopia. It is escape in its most literal form. I cannot imagine a city more direct in its intention and manifestation. It is completely artificial, and does not pretend otherwise. It is a two-dimensional city, and no, I do not mean that it is shallow, but that it chooses only, chooses deliberately, to show you one side of its face. Perhaps because the other does not exist. The show must go on, and you know what? The show never ends. In Orlando there is no past, and its future is an exact representation of the present. For is Epcot not an encased Tomorrow? It is not a city you visit for depth. It's interiority is only as convoluted as the twists and turns of its coasters, and even then, it's only a thirty second ride. Buy your fast pass, hop on, and enjoy the ride.
Chicago accommodates you. Fairly politely. It knows you as a traveller along its trajectory of rise and fall, old and new, destruction and rebirth. It's a city that lies constantly on the cusp of something, like an unfinished sentence at the tip of your tongue. You feel the gentle boiling beneath the surface, bubbling with its instinctual urges for something more. It's as though the Great Fire of 1871 left an indelible mark in their psyche- a need for repeated tabula rasa, a cyclical need to be made new. To be new. The tour guide pointed out district after district that 'revitalised' themselves from ruin, as one through the fire. But its history seeps out at you like oil through pores, casting a sheen across the entire landscape. Chicago is beautiful. Like a well-worn couch whose leather has been burnished by the fabric of its many occupants, it is part polished and part cracked, but all of it charming.
Orlando is utopia. It is escape in its most literal form. I cannot imagine a city more direct in its intention and manifestation. It is completely artificial, and does not pretend otherwise. It is a two-dimensional city, and no, I do not mean that it is shallow, but that it chooses only, chooses deliberately, to show you one side of its face. Perhaps because the other does not exist. The show must go on, and you know what? The show never ends. In Orlando there is no past, and its future is an exact representation of the present. For is Epcot not an encased Tomorrow? It is not a city you visit for depth. It's interiority is only as convoluted as the twists and turns of its coasters, and even then, it's only a thirty second ride. Buy your fast pass, hop on, and enjoy the ride.
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