NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Goodbye NaBloPoMo – goodbye to posting every day throughout November. I’ll miss you, but it will be nice to going back to posting when I feel like it, not because I have to. Thank you for teaching me that one-liners can be fun.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
SmallMonkey came home from the school Christmas fete with a canvas photo of Elvis.
‘Do you know who that is?’ I asked. ‘Elvis.’ ‘What made you pick it out, didn’t you fancy a cupcake or a book?’ ‘I wanted some new designs for my room.’ ‘What did your teacher say?’ ‘She said WOW!’
I told him that’s what I thought too, and said we’d browse some YouTube clips so he could hear the songs. I said: ‘You know who LOVED Elvis? Grandma Jo…’
Quite honestly, if he’s going to start channeling my mum then at least she’s giving him some wonderful choices.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
A gym session, morning tour guide with Aunty Rosy, trip to airport and back for dropoff, school bus, homework, two hours of solemn carols and the bus home – well, you’d forget your NaBloPoMo blog entry too, I think.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Today we taught Auntie Rosy about property auctions. She bid against me for an inexpensive street and won. Meanwhile Mr PC was unusually careless with his cash and had to mortgage everything he owned. I had the smallest amount of money and some houses, but ended up selling most of them off. SM got bored and went to play at his friend’s apartment. No one wanted Geylang at first but actually we all realised it’s a nice little earner if you build a few hotels.
#singaporemonopoly
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Holy Cow, Richard Curtis, you don’t do things by halves, do you? I was warned about this one but still I never expected that when the film ended I would have to clench my legs to stop them from leaping in a cab to the airport and boarding the next flight back to London – then popping on the Piccadilly line to Paddington to catch a train to Cornwall.
Instead we went for lunch and watched the hot rain falling down over the sea, sat in a Japanese restaurant in the mall we like to go to, peering out at the cable cars and palm trees waving in the breeze, trying to equate what we could see with what we had just seen – nothing like those familiar chilly London streets. At times like this I know I am very far from Kansas (Camden, Treburrick whatever).
Homesickness comes and goes. Mainly, this year, it has gone, but when it comes back it comes back with a force that only the knowledge of future repatriation can appease. These sorts of films don’t help.
First you’ve got your streets of London: wet and drizzly, with the sort of rain that you know is needle-thin and cold and gets down the back of your neck – not like the fat warm drops pelting down sideways in a milky film just outside my sushi window. Streetlights blurry, Golborne Road, brick walls and London traffic, a soundtrack just beginning to be slightly retro, and what can ONLY be Maida Vale tube: and at this point you can’t help having a little wriggle in your seat because you know those stairs down and that exit, and when it’s somewhere you used to live – just down the road from that very tube, for instance, with the nice young chap who just happens to be sitting on the other side of his aunt from you (during a daytime bunk-off thanks to a nice spot of garden leave) – anyway, when you know all that it takes you back, doesn’t it, because we were right there, just like them. I know we held hands on an up-escalator just like they did, too, probably the same one. So that doesn’t help. I KNOW THAT, you want to shout, I KNOW ALL THAT! Aww, home…
Then there’s the sea and the fields, fudge-box vistas combined in a way that only your own personal Cornish coastline can do, and in front of those creamy views is a dusty, happy family with jolly nice accents, a ramrod eccentric but kind mother and a gentle, academic father in a house full of cr@p, plus the sort of mentally dotty sister there always has to be in these films (I’ll take that role, no problem). IT’S CORNWALL, you want to poke Mr PC, but he knows it’s Cornwall, he’s already making a point of sticking his face back in the popcorn box to make sure you don’t notice that his eyes are a bit shiny. He knows.
I won’t spoil it for you. If you’ve ever seen a Richard Curtis film you’ll know the format. It’s a good one, though – it works. By the time they get to my very own [SPOILER ALERT] Cornish funeral scene I am finding it hard to breathe, and fighting off the sad thoughts by sucking tears back between my teeth and digging my nails into my palm. As we all know, though, resistance is useless during beautiful films like this and later, in the restaurant, Mr PC leans over and tells me I have a dirty spectacle lens: ‘Looks like salt water,’ he says, and gives me the kind of fluffy warm smile you only get in those awful Richard Curtis emotional (ARCE) films; the kind of smile you actually need if you’ve just seen an ARCE film.
I now have to get over it all over again, the displacement thing AND the funeral thing. So thanks Richard Curtis. Thanks a lot.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Next assignment due in a week. Getting ready to say ‘No’ to everyone, again. Thoroughly bored of this.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Something I’ve been mewsing on this week: the cats have now been living with my friend for as long as we had them. Perhaps that’s why I have been suddenly missing them again like crazy. Sorry kitties, it was always going to be horrible leaving you and it’s because it doesn’t get easier that I don’t usually like to think about it. Hope you are being good for lovely K & co, and not bringing her too many birds. She doesn’t like that, even though I know it’s SUCH a very special gift. Cooch under the chin for you both. Sniff xxx
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
It’s my friend’s son’s 17th birthday today. I remember when he was born, we were all so excited because she was really the first of us to pop one out. He was beautiful (still is) and we were all very pleased. We made him a time capsule and put silly things in it (and nice things as well). He has one year left until he’s allowed to crack it open and frankly I’m amazed that we’ve all actually waited this long. His mother has a vague idea of what’s in it and teases me – she knows me and the other time capsule contributors were probably a bit silly and naieve ‘back then’. To be honest I can’t really remember but the only thing I can say for sure that he’ll enjoy is the letter that I wrote him, because I have a feeling it will be a great little snap of the moment. Only twelve more months to go, Ollie! Happy birthday x
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
There’s a pair of big baskets at the Peranakan Museum. These are the ‘bakul siah’, ‘auspicious baskets’ used during the mammoth 12-day wedding ceremony to transport gifts between houses. They are huge things with many units, cylindrical, shiny with lacquer and grasped at the top by a big single handle. For some reason I really like them.
So this morning a few of us from the group went on a tour of the Baba House, a beautiful Peranakan home in town. There in the master bedroom were the baskets, and not just one pair but three or four (she was a lucky lady, this bride). After the tour a fellow student told us she’d seen an antique shop around the corner; even better, it was actually open (things open late in Sing). Three of us went along.
Like most antique shops it was stuffed to the rafters with things: shoes, a phone, Cola sign under an altar with neon candles. Just like my parents’ flat, actually, and as always in junk shops I felt immediately at home. Right at the back, half covered in a blanket, I spotted a dusty little box in three parts with a handle over the top. Red and gold (rather than the usual black and gold) and a great deal smaller, but unmistakeable. I fished out a tissue, started to wipe off the dust on the lid and the colours shone through. Magical.
I asked the owner how old? Seventy years. I asked him how much? In the back of the shop I asked my friend what she’d pay and, muttering out of the sides of our mouths, we came to the same agreement. I opened my wallet and started the bidding.
Now it’s sitting over by our bookshelves, has had a drop of water and a wipe-down, and looks completely at home. I have no idea how genuine, how old, how much of a good or bad deal the thing was or, in fact, whether I should have brought it home at all, but then I look over at it and know that really, I just don’t care.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Sorry, NBPM, missed a day again. It’s like that, this week.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
First formal presentation – all five minutes of it, in front of senior mentor, current mentor and two course members not from my group – checked off the list. I thought I’d plunge into a tall glass of v&t when I got home but in fact I decided to bury myself in Christmas gift wrapping. Mad: I’d usually be doing this about a month from now, with the carols going and the mulled wine mulling, but it’s my absolute favourite and most comforting thing to do each year and it just seemed like a nice way of wrapping myself up in a bit of cosiness. A virtual “PHEW”.
So, back to the red robins and gift tags. In mid-November. With the air con blowing. Funny things it’s making me do, this course.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Can’t stop, presentation tomorrow. TBM (see 15/11)
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
‘File size exceeded’ File size what? You heard: too big. Cannot. No, computer, no. I won’t believe it. File size exceeded.
And that’s how I grew to love Dropbox
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Saturday. Mr PC away. Rain. Carnage on the soccer pitch. Put my bag down in a puddle. Damn assignment just won’t die.
must.finish.it.must.finish.it
Hey though. Three episodes of Masterchef Australia to watch, so every cloud…
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Singapore loves its acronyms. Today I’m reminded of one of my favourites.
On my Fine Art college degree at Humberside Polytechnic (probably now called something like Hull University) there was a course known as ‘TBM,’ or Time-Based Media, something that I think is still studied today. No one really knew what it was but from our relaxed seats in the college canteen it seemed to be to do with cameras, lights, fiddly bits of kit and dark rooms, and was studied by earnest and slightly angry young men wearing corduroy trousers and goatees all darting about in an intellectual rush, unable to stop and have a cuppa with us because their subject was obviously far more superior than ours. So we came up with another phrase to match the course acronym: ‘Too Busy, Mate’.
Now I find myself back at college and, thanks to a proposal due in on Sunday at 5pm, I’m a little bit TBM myself, today…
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
OMYGOD I missed a day! Oops. Sorry, NaBloPoMo. Does this mean I’m kicked out?
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
SmallMonkey gets off the bus in tears:
‘I’ve been borrowing money,’ he confesses, ‘because I’m so hungry. There’s a note in the book.’
If you know SM then you’ll know how this could tug at a person’s heartstrings: you can play the piano on his ribs. His food fads are legendary and clearly come from the maternal side (although my waistline sadly shows how I’ve fast got over all that). He’s already been banned from buying snacks in the canteen because this is precisely how his diet ends up: all Oreo, no sandwich. So it’s not a crying matter but still, it’s not really OK.
There is indeed a note in the book, as well as the lunchbox containing one and a half wilting specimens. There has been a class meeting about the proffering of coins and the polite note asks: could we please pay the money back? SM is contrite.
After emptying the pocket money pig, counting out the required cash (it’s not a lot, between you and me, but that’s not the point), drawing up a new lunch menu, sharing a bit of fresh apple and finally talking about how it is the duplicity of the secret canteen-snack habit that is the NotOK thing, I tell him a story:
Mum used to tell me and my sister, with a rather wistful pride, of how she threw her sandwiches in the hedge on the two-mile walk home from school. I’m not saying it’s OK, I tell him: I just want him to know I can see where he gets it from.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Depends how I’m feeling. Sometimes they have gone. Sometimes both our mums pop down and pay me a visit. During the run on Sunday, just as I spot the halfway mark and feel a bit smug, Drop The Pilot starts up on my iPod and it is all of a sudden Mum who is cheering me on, not the person on the side with the loudspeaker.
Today at college the lecturer said that his mother ‘…ended up going to live in Ipoh where she attended a Catholic convent school.’
There is only one such school that I can think of; I’ve seen it. It’s the same one Mr PC’s lovely mum went to. An instant prickle behind the eyes. At the end I ask the lecturer what year his mum was there and we are ten years apart but still; it’s a nice little spiritual loop.
I am probably lacking in sleep; whatever. I like these happy visits.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
My sister thinks I’ve been abducted by aliens. Why else, she says, would I go running three times a week, and then (this morning) actually take part in an organised event (just a 5k, but still), and then post sweaty selfies on Facebook? And then – weirdest of all – talk about getting ready for the next one and THEN, think about making it a 10k?
Strange things happen when you move countries.
#GreatEasternWomensRace #bigfun #alienvoice
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Saturday. Mr PC takes SM for football training, allowing me to get on with essential coursework. After a worthy amount of study I switch the kettle on and follow a link posted by someone in my group – cue repeat episodes of The Little Nonya. This is better than Kylie and Jason!
#hooked
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Another museum college day, and another two-minute presentation in front of my group, which meant another restless night followed by another extra-early morning get-up to read and re-read and time myself and generally jitter about the place until it’s bus stop time. Two months in and already I am wanting to ‘get down from the table’. Am wondering if I’m turning into one of those serial adventurists who starts grand new ventures only to experience the pleasure of giving them up? Poor score. Could do better.
Meanwhile Rosy leaves us today to travel to Perth, the second leg of her SE Asia tour. She entrusted me with her passport last night and then reminded me about it this morning. No prizes for guessing the winner of the Ageing Brain contest; I think mine’s just full up.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
We’re taking Auntie Rosy on a walk around the Botanic Gardens when she points at something and beckons.
‘I’ve got this in my garden,’ she says, ‘come over here.’
I’ve seen the garden of her little Malaysian front porch. It’s tiny. Still, I dutifully trudge across the woodchip mulch towards her, looking out for ants or worse. When I get to her she is muttering: ‘serai, serai, serai.’
‘Look,’ she says, ‘lemongrass.’ And sure enough, on a little plaque by the spiky, rushy plant, it says: Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) Serai.
Other words of wisdom from today: i) The man who walked past us earlier in the gardens, bare-chested, ‘had breasts’ ii) Standing with your knees bent and swinging your arms gently up and down was Mao Tse Tung’s way of keeping young.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Auntie Rosy is here! She’s great at chatting people up. In just over 24 hours we have already learned that:
• The old couple in the Flower Dome were from Hong Kong
• Our friend is actually Catholic and goes to a church around the corner
• The girl serving us lunch is single and agrees that it is because she is ‘choosy’
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
I’m bunking off college to go to a Melbourne Cup Party. Apparently it gets messy. Don’t wait up.
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
The For Real bird is back – I heard one high in a tree the other morning, and today as well, from our open upstairs window. It’s been on a leave of absence for a while, I don’t know where. This is all just as another person announces their departure.
Much is written about the bittersweet business of friends who move on. This is a person I met through the school and in fact the irony is it’s her who coined the name of that funny bird that toots a loud cry from the tree tops; obviously this is because it sounds like the bird is saying: ‘For Real’. Funny that the bird reappears just as the friend who named it is on her way to Departures.
I’ve missed the bird’s loud, two-note call, but I wouldn’t call it a fair swap.
Christmas tree, Tanglin Mall
It’s not switched on yet but it’s here. The foam tree at Tanglin spits out Ibiza-type bubbles every evening throughout the festive season. Last year we didn’t make it – this year we’ve swimsuits at the ready
(NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November)
NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November
Look at this. I took it after standing in that for an hour. Doesn’t look too bad from high up but at ground level you could really feel that there were loads of us. I thought it was a wonderful example of the strange Singaporean blend of practicality and total uselessness.
This was the queue to collect a race pack for the upcoming Great Eastern Women’s Run. They are still queuing as I type. Can you see how well organised the line was? Probably not from where you are, but it was a masterpiece of static choreography. We had to start in the dark corner on the far left and then we were steered to a spot by the basement escalator, still on the left. A pause in front of the main doors to let the queue on the other side deplete and then we moved over to the right of the main doors before finally crossing over to the red carpet, where we snaked up to the tills, and that’s where it got silly:
More than 15,000 entrants were bargained for, said the website, with three days to collect the kit between the hours of 11am and 7pm. So let’s call that 5000 people per day. So 5000 people / 8 hours = 625 per hour. And I counted, well, about 12 tills. So 625 people / 12 tills = 52 people per till per hour. It wasn’t going to happen, was it? By the time they’d Twitted to ask us to stop arriving until after the lunchtime rush, we were all embedded in exactly that.
I’m making a specific point here. I’m not simply complaining about being stuck in a long queue: we’ve all had that. Or the fact that there weren’t enough tills: oversight, so what? I’m talking about the fact that a portion of the event was so expertly arranged (men steered you through every section, it was like a ballet), only to fall flat at the final hurdle because half the planning was pants (‘rubbish’ in colloquial English).
It didn’t really matter because the queue was slowly moving all the time so you never felt stuck, and there was a sweet old lady handing out gerberas, which was our wedding flower, so that was nice. I just thought it was a great example of how, OverHere, you often get that infuriating blend of Logic + Nonsense. I guess you could say there are examples of it all around the globe, but I do think it happens a lot in Sing.