Ris Low

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR65DOtYl5g

not that Singapore would ever win international beauty pageants. but didn't they realise that if they picked a stupid person it'd make the country in general look stupid. I don't even mean how well she speaks, it's just the absolute nonsense spewing forth from her self-absorbed trap.

The juxtaposition between the fluency of the interviewer and this miss singapore is almost cruel.

ohmygod it makes me cringe so much. was there no one else who was in possession of intelligence in the competition?

melaka trip

NEVER AGAIN.

ok the company and all was really merry and great but if I wanted to sit on my ass for a whole day and do absolutely nothing worthwhile, I would stay at home. but wait! if I stayed at home I would actually have gotten worthwhile things done, like practising piano or theory homework or reading some of my business notes for next year. oh! and I wouldn't have had to use squatting toilets, which is even more difficult for people who can't really squat with their feet flat.

after sitting in a van for three hours on the way to malacca, I expected to do some interesting things. like walk about jonker street or have another wander about the world heritage site while reminding myself of what it actually is. I did not expect to sit in the van while waiting for people to find things in the pharmacy that they can't get here without a prescription. Going to stores to buy biscuits wasn't completely unexpected. but hey, the point is, aside from lunch and dinner and maybe a snack it was a trip completely devoid of cultural value. it was a complete waste of my day.

Dolce Vita

GOOD GOD I love Dolce Vita. If I had a lot more money and a higher metabolic rate, I'd be a regular there. The food is great and the service is excellent. I mean maybe it's cause the place wasn't very busy at the time, but the maitre D kept coming over to check how we liked the food. the place has a warm hearty atmosphere and did I mention that the service is excellent?

Dad mum and I went to the mandarin oriental hotel to have dinner so I picked the italian restaurant cause I didn't feel like having chinese food or a buffet for dinner. might as well make obesity and heart disease your best friend if you go for buffet dinners.

and it's not like I'm a cheap skate or anything but they kept giving us free stuff. like some cold beef starter thing that I don't even know how to call, they just brought it out on dark slabs of stone and said it's from the chef for us to try. It just made it seem a lot warmer and friendlier and I could go on forever and ever researching synonyms to describe how warm and friendly it is but I think that's enough.

what did I have for dessert? a kind of citrus ragout topped with a lime-ish sorbet thing topped with foam that was caramelised on the top. that's right, CARAMELISED FOAM. how cool [and totally not a double entendre] is that! it made it a very light. ok the citrus ragout and chocolate bits and what not wasn't exactly light but it was yummy. they served it in a martini glass. ok presentation was really interesting as well. soup came in tea pots that the waiters poured out into dishes that made for semi shallow bowls.

ok I just love the place. I wish I could go there all the time and have some wine and write a book over hearty things. I'm totally gushing about how awesome it is because the place is so awesome. ok it might also has been the shelves and shelves of wine that I saw through the window, but I didn't have any of it anyway because I was with mum and dad and it might have been a little inappropriate.

ok let's just put it this way. if Dolce Vita were a stocky woman with dark hair and a good laugh because that is exactly what dolce vita would be if it were a woman, I would become a lesbian and go to the netherlands and have a civil union with her and we'd live in an apartment together while she fed me delicious things and we'd laugh about everything. we wouldn't have to work that much because of all the adoring devotees of dolce vita would just throw money at her like how people throw money into wishing wells, like people who throw money at churches, only a lot more. we'd be completely asexual though because restaurants don't have sexual orientations and I wouldn't actually be into lesbian activities.

hugs

hugs don't fix everything.
no, that's an understatement.
hugs don't fix anything.
they're quite comforting though.

mercurial

I was feeling very uneasy last night. I thought I might be going mad from the lack of company or conversation and too many old books and old stories.

and now there's rain and thunder. that comforts me. I love thunder. it reminds me that I am home. it makes me feel safe.

musing

I want to go lie down in a big field and think about life. No, let me be more specific, I want to go lie down in a big field in England when there's sun and no rain and think about life with a few friends with me thinking about life too and not getting bored. I chose england cause it wouldn't be as dreadfully hot as it is here today. I don't know of many people who'd want to do that with me though.

If I had as much money as I could ever want in the world, I'd hire a small orchestra to follow me around on some kind of moving platform and play music at timely moments. ok no, because that might be strange having a lot of people to witness tragic events or good times with friends. music makes me so happy. well, arts in general just make me happy. and when I say art I mean literature and music. and maybe old paintings and old artwork. I think that a good deal modern art hides behind artistic licence to excuse simplistic unskilled crap. meh, I haven't studied it. but paying 3k for a small piece of framed canvas that has a row of coloured squares is one ridiculous example that I will never forget.

goddamn it, sometimes I feel stupid for being so happy and for dreaming so much. I guess it's better now than in 30 years. I should be an artist. but you can't be an artist if you don't have any artistic skills.

old things

so I tried watching the 1983 version of jane eyre. I thought it might choke the life out of me if I continued with it. It actually made me afraid that I might wither and die from watching what appeared to me to be halting acting and small expressionless dialogue.

good god, I stopped the video before it sucked my soul out of me.

love

deep hearty laughs please. please give me that. and beautiful music always.

restless

I was so sick this morning. I've been ill since that stupid lunch at the equinox. I stayed up all night watching jane eyre, which made it worse. good god that's a little lame. I had to go to the national eye centre this morning as well, and the registration and consultation took so much time. they dilated my eyes. I could barely see anything when we got outside, because it was all too bright. It was kind of like being blind, I closed my eyes most of the time. and when I got home I walked in past the gate with my eyes closed and walked too quickly into the car. when I took a shower the sun was coming in and I had to hold my hands up to shield my eyes while trying to feel my way about the bottles. and when I looked into the mirror, my irises had become a thing ring surrounding my pupils. I slept the rest of the day.

future

I can't imagine having children. It IS a distinct possibility though seeing as how I've heard that most women go mad after a certain age and are absolutely bent on shooting one out of themselves. I had to listen to mum and company squawk about aunty june's grandson and whether he has diarrhea or god knows what earlier. I can't imagine having to go through that much trouble for a baby. they throw up and crap and cry all the time. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I had one.

I think I'd be a really bad mother too, if I had to be one. I'd be so lost and I wouldn't know myself enough to give a child a sense of security or confidence or what not. good god I bet it'd be a boy too. If I had to go through the pain of labour, I wish I could at least have a girl. It's almost profoundly unfair that you don't get to pick despite all the pain and irreversible damage that pregnancy renders on you.

When I say I don't know myself, I mean, I get confused about myself. mum says that I'm an adult now and should wear make up when I go out. and lots of people do that, but after 21 years of looking at my face every day without having to smudge any colour on it, I think it looks funny when I do try to smear something onto my eyes or cheeks. and as far as dressing goes, sometimes I get the feeling that I'm supposed to dress more maturely but I'm not doing it. I still wear t-shirts and roll out of bed and go out in my pyjamas and it doesn't really bother me. and I feel like I'm not supposed to, and it makes me nervous. like there's a right and a wrong way; I'm not even sure it there is that. I feel like I should be more dignified but I still imagine myself getting chased down the street by a vicious baboon as a distinct possibility.

and everyday during this time, I feel that I'll be happy playing the piano forever. That I'd drink cheap wine and be spread about with manuscripts annotating things down with my fountain pen. But the other side of that is that won't be happy to wear a thread bare coat when it's cold, or die of a cold because I can't afford to go to the doctor. I spoke to seok teng about the Waldstein. she said it's beethoven's most difficult sonata. I was a little surprised because I suppose it meant that melvyn has confidence in me because he assigned it to me to learn. that was a gratifying thought. although, I only spoke to her about it because I've been having a lot of difficulties with it.

what to do, what to do, with life? some people seem to know what they have for them, but I don't. and I'll have a midlife crisis every year or at least biannually for the rest of my life.

ill

I went for lunch at the equinox today. It was mum, aunty june, aunty doris, aunty aggie, uncle edmond and me. I think the equinox has got a new chef now. Either that or the old chef is going through some kind of mid life crisis and has decided to pour additional buckets of sugar into the desserts. The confit de canard I had was dry and stringy. The ingredients in the squid salad were really dry. The only things that I liked were, and this really says almost nothing in favour of the standard of the chef's work, the bread, the sashimi, and the sweet brioche served with foie gras. most of those things don't involve intense cooking skills. especially since sashimi is raw.

and so, at the end of this wonderfully desiccating meal I was ill. I am still ill. I am sitting on my purple chair, ill. aside from the actual food, mum and the aunties kept squawking about this or that, that it finally gave me a headache by the end. I could barely drink any of my insipid tea because of it and I was shivering as I made my way down to the bathroom. Mum's friends are nice and all, but NEVER AGAIN.

it's kind of like when we were young and would travel with mum and dad and we'd all sleep in the same room. After a while it came to a point where dad's sonorous snoring would steal my sleep such that I had nothing to do but sit in the tub and read with the bathroom doors shut. In the same way I have vowed to NEVER AGAIN sleep in the same room as mum and dad. or at least if I have no other choice I'd make sure to get to bed much earlier than usual.

confusion

your absolute devotion to an ideal that is not absolute disappoints me. cotton ball stuffing.


poets need to cry. I need some inspiration.

good times and good memories and warmth.

bleak house

I finally finished bleak house after spending one month plowing through the over eight hundred pages of that brick. When I reached the end I had the strange feeling that all of it seemed to happen so quickly, as if it didn't actually take me more than a month to read it. As if it only took me a day.

It's so well written and I love it so much. I am in awe of the way he creates suspense in some places and how he touches the soul at others. I actually cried when mr george was reunited with his mother, when I was sitting on a bench in a public place trying to not look ridiculous. and at the end when they're in yorkshire, the setting is all so divine and the world seems to spread out and slow down and become peaceful. There is such a strong sense of goodness and kindness at the end of the book that it makes me so happy to read it. and I do, over and over again. I like how the wind would always be westward by the end. it seemed to signify happy times forever and ever.

good god the ending is like a breath of fresh air. It's like I've never really had a breath of air and when I read all of the last of esther's narrative, I'd finally started breathing.

once I get back to the real world I'll stop doing that because these sentiments are on the edge of too gay.