If you too read the Archie comics as a kid:
The Vanity Fair article
The slide show of Archie art through the years
The intro to the show
And Sugar, Sugar!
Monday, January 22, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Dang1 ping1
My brother just called home. From the army. At the pay phone (they give army boys free phone cards; they should really just give them spare handphone batteries). Last Thursday my whole family went with him to Tekong (where all the other boys were accompanied by hordes of family too). At Tekong, after the ferry ride, the parents and assorted relatives have to go one way, to tour the premises, and the boys another, to get their kits and a pep talk. The tour of the bunks and recreation room is conducted by a rather cute army boy, very much like the smiling Sarayon. There is an air-conditioned recreation room decorated with army propaganda and equipped with a TV, some chairs, a fooze-ball table. The guide explains that it's for rest, but since there's one room for each company, 200 boys, the boys will have to ask their commanding officers for permission to use the room. The commanding officers (the guide hastens to say) will generally agree, but sometimes they won't, for example if there's some tough training the next day, and the boys should sleep instead. Not that the training's tough; ok it is tough (tough is good, says a parent), but these boys have all passed their IPPT, so they will be ok, and if they do very well they can win the company awards. (Our guide was the best recruit, or best something, of his platoon.) Then there is a guide to army gear, with a different and less smiling host. He (the different host) has dissected a pack or whatever it's called and pinned its entrails to some billboards. He has also dug up a demonstrator dressed in full battle order (I presume; war paint on his face and unconvincing rag leaves on his helment and the new load-something-something vest on this, though not hung with grenades). Someone asks about the weight of all that gear, and is told that that varies with weapons and the amount of food the boy chooses to bring along (which seems odd). We troop into the canteen to wait (there are many groups of eager relatives shuttling into Tekong). We are called to the auditorium. The commanding officer is a middle-aged man running to fat who takes some pains to explain the training architecture of the army to the parents. An army, he says, marches on its stomach, and so we have improved the army food. The boys sit together in the middle of the auditorium; they all look small and skinny and slight. Too small to wear the army pack and carry 20kg of weapons and ammunition (my father says), to small to be away from home. The commanding officer calls the boys to take the oath, which is flashed on powerpoint (of course). He starts the oath, I, Name, NRIC number, and there is a moment of confusion as every boy speaks his own name and NRIC number, loudly of course, because they've all been told to talk the army way now. I suppose the scene is meant to be touching, and it is a little, because they're so painfully young, but mostly it brings to mind the City Watch taking their oath (I comma square bracket insert name here square bracket comma do swear by square bracket insert deity's name here square bracket...). Then he says to the boys, I want you to promise to call your parents tonight, after 9.30 pm, can you do that? YES SIR! (Their training must have already started.) Now you've promised, you must call your parents first, not your girlfriends, ok? YES SIR! The girlfriends in the audience (not that many of them) shift in their seats. The boys leave first, line up in the corridor. The parents troop out row by row and claim their son. We all go to the dining hall to taste the SAF food. The boys are restless; perhaps a little eager; perhaps a little apprehensive, but not really by much; it's probably all a little unreal at this point, like a massive school camp; there isn't much to do after we've eaten lunch (which was edible); this is just waiting time, like the time in an airport before boarding the plane. We look for the bus back to the ferry. My brother walks us there, and there are hugs all around - my father shakes his hand instead, because he is all grown up now - and last minute instructions on washing clothes, sleeping early, not exhausting the handphone battery the first day. Other boys are hugging their assorted relatives, all a little sheepishly. Call us! we say. And then we board the ferry back.
A Map of Disappointments
There's a Zadie Smith article on why writers often betray themselves in aldaily.com.
The few things I've written have felt like betrayals when I was writing them - felt like I let truth slide away in favour of more familiar phrase or thought, some word or thought that came (too) readily to hand. And after writing whatever it was I was just glad to have written something, and ready to believe that it said whatever I meant to say.
I used to think that what one really required for a great novel, or poem, or any piece of writing, was courage. Throw away the lights and the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.
This follows a dinner conversation with xz when he said, I don't think you're happy at your job. What I said then, what I say to these things - I'm not unhappy. It's still interesting. There are good points. If I were better at it I would like it more; it's just a question of working harder. I have to do this, and being unhappy would just make it harder. (The last one on grimmer days.) And I thought this was a sign of growing up, of some kind of maturity; after all, being an adult is all about being sensible and letting go (even of things that used to define you) and doing things you don't want to do, isn't it? But I generally write even less when I'm fooling myself, and I haven't been able to write anything for a while now.
Which disappointments would you put into your map?
The few things I've written have felt like betrayals when I was writing them - felt like I let truth slide away in favour of more familiar phrase or thought, some word or thought that came (too) readily to hand. And after writing whatever it was I was just glad to have written something, and ready to believe that it said whatever I meant to say.
I used to think that what one really required for a great novel, or poem, or any piece of writing, was courage. Throw away the lights and the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.
This follows a dinner conversation with xz when he said, I don't think you're happy at your job. What I said then, what I say to these things - I'm not unhappy. It's still interesting. There are good points. If I were better at it I would like it more; it's just a question of working harder. I have to do this, and being unhappy would just make it harder. (The last one on grimmer days.) And I thought this was a sign of growing up, of some kind of maturity; after all, being an adult is all about being sensible and letting go (even of things that used to define you) and doing things you don't want to do, isn't it? But I generally write even less when I'm fooling myself, and I haven't been able to write anything for a while now.
Which disappointments would you put into your map?
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Placeholders for memory
1. Christmas was a family affair - I think the first time in 6 years that we were all together for Christmas. We had candles, and flowers, and turkey. (I stuffed it! And cut/chopped stuff and stitched up the turkey and peered anxiously at it and all the things that kitchen helpers do.) Turkey is over-rated; next year we'll do some other meat.
2. New Year's Eve was at Changi Village - Steve reached Singapore very, very early in the morning on the last day of last year; in the afternoon, we took a bus to Changi Village, stopping some way before to peer at the military buildings (where the Changi Murals short film was shot) and walk through the old hospital. Leaving the place later on the first day of the year, we went past another film site - an old, abandoned, army building; probably a training school of some sort - with high archways and long corridors and "for glory and honour" in faded paint in what must have been the hall or assembly room. Steve said, wouldn't this be a good place for a Yo La Tengo music video?
3. Does anyone want to watch Yo La Tengo in March?
4. Dinner at S's place on the day itself, with M and R.
5. My family was in China the week just before Christmas, so I took a lot of time off from work and spent it mostly in bed reading WN's Lucifers, and not thinking.
6. When you were in the States I practised not missing you. I miss you now. (It hasn't yet sunk in that I'm not going to see you any more.)
7. This is what I used to mock: the HDB flat, the 1.25 kids, 0.25 car (or whatever the national figure is). Whether it's the recent spate of engagements and weddings (because I'm at that age now), whether it's my biological clock betraying anything I've learnt over the last 26 years and I'm reverting to type - I do want to move on to a new phase of life. (It's a terrible thing to learn about myself, that love's not enough. Enough for what?)
8. There was something, I think in aldaily.com, a while ago about how nice a person Leonard Woolf (husband of Virgina) was. It quoted a researcher on Virginia Woolf who had Leonard Woolf's photograph on her bedside table and used to write to him, especially when her research was going badly - used to write him "letters for healing, not for reading". Thank you for the letters and the photographs. That I can write to you (though my letters are tardy and uninformed) is healing enough; that you write to me is a gift.
2. New Year's Eve was at Changi Village - Steve reached Singapore very, very early in the morning on the last day of last year; in the afternoon, we took a bus to Changi Village, stopping some way before to peer at the military buildings (where the Changi Murals short film was shot) and walk through the old hospital. Leaving the place later on the first day of the year, we went past another film site - an old, abandoned, army building; probably a training school of some sort - with high archways and long corridors and "for glory and honour" in faded paint in what must have been the hall or assembly room. Steve said, wouldn't this be a good place for a Yo La Tengo music video?
3. Does anyone want to watch Yo La Tengo in March?
4. Dinner at S's place on the day itself, with M and R.
5. My family was in China the week just before Christmas, so I took a lot of time off from work and spent it mostly in bed reading WN's Lucifers, and not thinking.
6. When you were in the States I practised not missing you. I miss you now. (It hasn't yet sunk in that I'm not going to see you any more.)
7. This is what I used to mock: the HDB flat, the 1.25 kids, 0.25 car (or whatever the national figure is). Whether it's the recent spate of engagements and weddings (because I'm at that age now), whether it's my biological clock betraying anything I've learnt over the last 26 years and I'm reverting to type - I do want to move on to a new phase of life. (It's a terrible thing to learn about myself, that love's not enough. Enough for what?)
8. There was something, I think in aldaily.com, a while ago about how nice a person Leonard Woolf (husband of Virgina) was. It quoted a researcher on Virginia Woolf who had Leonard Woolf's photograph on her bedside table and used to write to him, especially when her research was going badly - used to write him "letters for healing, not for reading". Thank you for the letters and the photographs. That I can write to you (though my letters are tardy and uninformed) is healing enough; that you write to me is a gift.