Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Nourishment
On a Hay Dairies ad at a bus-stop: Goats' milk is more nutritious than cows' milk because what matters "is not what you swallow, but what you digest".
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
The thing about Singapore Idol
and the ones who can't sing:
(1) Why don't their friends stop them? and
(2) Especially the ones who go away sweetly and sadly - at least they're out there, and they're trying, and on national television. From where I stand, that must count for something.
(1) Why don't their friends stop them? and
(2) Especially the ones who go away sweetly and sadly - at least they're out there, and they're trying, and on national television. From where I stand, that must count for something.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Farm visits today!
First to Farmart, which is a kind of permanent farmers' market. Some of us bought quails' eggs; WN bought a pack (brace?) of quails. We weren't there at the right time, but on Sundays at about 1 pm the shop sells fried quail. Cab to Hay Dairies, a goat farm - the signboards at the farm said it used to be a pig farm, but converted to a goat farm with the help of the AVA (then PPD) when pig farms were phased out. Back in its pig farm days, it kept chickens and "a crocodile to dispose of chickens". Some very sweet baby goats, and some distinctly less sweet adult goats. The farm keeps different breeds of goats and has helpful signboards to elucidate on the distinctive characteristics of each breed: one tended to be high-strung, another tended to emit a distinctive complaining sound. There was one huge, hairy brute whose horn stumps glowed purple. Full of kids (of the human variety) offering the goats little plastic bags of hay. Then a trek to Bollywood Veggies (Ivy Singh-Lim's farm) and a wander into Green Circle, quite by accident. Green Circle is an organic vegetable farm, and would appeal to all the hippie yoghurt-loving tree-hugging East-Village-health-food people. We only stopped at Bollywood Veggies for lunch. Very yuppie - think of what a farm-themed restaurant would look like, and there you have it.
birthday greetings
Thank you, loves. Hot Russian sailors to you too, Fay. Mid twenties, late twenties; as JY said, at some point (quite soon), this will be a moot point and we will be indisputably in our late twenties.
My parents got me a fountain pen; my mother said that they figured that since I liked banging away on the old typewriter, I'd like a fountain pen. I am progressing backwards in technology.
My parents got me a fountain pen; my mother said that they figured that since I liked banging away on the old typewriter, I'd like a fountain pen. I am progressing backwards in technology.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
flowers
To say that the orchids are opening up and my mom plucked away all the pollen - sacs? - from the lilies and I've converted my hookah into a vase for the ones which look like sunflowers but are not.
(To say, thank you.)
(To say, thank you.)
Friday, May 05, 2006
how Singapore prepares you for China
Daniel Bell on teaching political philosophy in Beijing. I didn't know he taught in NUS in the 1990s.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
so
Steve is doing a visual arts/poem thing at the central library basement Thursday evening (7pm to 8.30 pm). There'll be words, and moving pictures, and music with rocks in it (probably). (This is the subtext time slot, but obviously something else and more fun.) Come by if you're in the neighbourhood.
Monday, May 01, 2006
I like this Edna St Vincent Millay
Since we were talking about sonnets. I'm sorry darling; I've got it straight now: Milton - epics; Shakespeare - sonnets (and never mind the plays?).
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
In vaguely chronological but really no particular order
(1) Paul Theroux (at the NLB last Thursday) said that to be a writer, one must do two things: (i) leave home, and (ii) tell the truth.
You don't find it gets harder to tell truth to power in this line of work?
(2) Steve gave me a bar of green soap to carve.
(3) Wonderful dinner at J's place on Saturnight - we had roast lamb and poulet con leche and roast potatoes with onions and garlic and chipolatas and potato pancakes and corn muffins and spaghetti coated with butter and cheese and cream and a hint of lemon, and then molten chocolate babycakes (molten baby chocolate cakes? which is it which is tiny?) and pumpkin pie for dessert. All the major food groups: potato, meat and chocolate.
(4) My dad tells me that Low Thia Khiang spoke the purest teochew at the Hougang rally last night. Political rallies: does one vote as if for a local election (and may the best man win) or a national election (where - presumably - other considerations come in)?
(5) I appear to have been cross and out of joint for some two and a half years now.
(6) J lent me Richard Powers' Time of our Singing, which I really will read. Everyone seems to love Richard Powers (with the exception of jy, who doesn't read things that other people read on principle) and I have tried to read Galatea (can't spell it) but couldn't get past the first few chapters.
(7) I'm really not made for this job. Every time we're at the negotiating table I feel I'd rather be on the other side - rather be on the side of advocacy and passion than common sense and fiscal prudence. Better to sell a dream than to cut it down to size.
Nonetheless. The job that's in front of you, right?
(8) So was it Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or Jane Eyre?
You don't find it gets harder to tell truth to power in this line of work?
(2) Steve gave me a bar of green soap to carve.
(3) Wonderful dinner at J's place on Saturnight - we had roast lamb and poulet con leche and roast potatoes with onions and garlic and chipolatas and potato pancakes and corn muffins and spaghetti coated with butter and cheese and cream and a hint of lemon, and then molten chocolate babycakes (molten baby chocolate cakes? which is it which is tiny?) and pumpkin pie for dessert. All the major food groups: potato, meat and chocolate.
(4) My dad tells me that Low Thia Khiang spoke the purest teochew at the Hougang rally last night. Political rallies: does one vote as if for a local election (and may the best man win) or a national election (where - presumably - other considerations come in)?
(5) I appear to have been cross and out of joint for some two and a half years now.
(6) J lent me Richard Powers' Time of our Singing, which I really will read. Everyone seems to love Richard Powers (with the exception of jy, who doesn't read things that other people read on principle) and I have tried to read Galatea (can't spell it) but couldn't get past the first few chapters.
(7) I'm really not made for this job. Every time we're at the negotiating table I feel I'd rather be on the other side - rather be on the side of advocacy and passion than common sense and fiscal prudence. Better to sell a dream than to cut it down to size.
Nonetheless. The job that's in front of you, right?
(8) So was it Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or Jane Eyre?
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Consider all the relevant posts linked
I do still think we should have a book club. Not to improve literacy and not to read or refuse to read milton, but just to be able to read the same book at the same time (for once, excluding Pratchett, which is a constant) and talk about it. I'm thinking of the conversations between A. S. Byatt and Ignes Sodres on six books they liked (which I believed was called Interesting Conversations or something like) - that sort of thing. Everyone should get to pick something in turn, and yes I guess you can pick Paradise Lost and yes I guess you can refuse to read anyone who's still alive, who writes from a minority point of view and all the rest of the rules - but probably good to start with something we all wouldn't mind reading and which doesn't require three years of prior study and who can reasonably be read on the train and in bed and the odd moments of time we have entirely to ourselves.
Stuff
1. Did you know o.k. stands for oll korrect? (I still owe you ten minutes for that.)
2. Dinner on Friday with the usual crowd at Kalinka-Malinka, which has excellent shashlik and some unpronounceable cabbage roll thing (but avoid the dumplings), and later coffee and cake and Milton and Donne and the existence of free verse. Lunch on Saturday with WN and then dinner with S, SX and mf at a cosy little dim sum place in Tanjong Pagar where we ordered one of everything on the menu except the porridge. Then mf had to go off for a supper date so the rest of us ended up at Bakerzin talking about comfort books (children's books) and TV shows (anything written by Aaron Sorkin) and drinking milk. (I can't remember if I've said this here so I might as well say it again - watching Aaron Sorkin's TV shows is like reading Pratchett. It's not that he's the world's greatest writer exactly - it's that one buys into his moral vision. You watch the show/read the book and think yes that's how the world should be. And if you're me, you think it's how the world is, but that's a different story.)
I think this all the time but don't say it - it's so good to be with friends who will argue about poems and free verse (or the denial thereof) and the importance of children's books. And TV shows whose characters are involved and stimulated by their jobs and not willing to give anything less than their all and whatever else Dana said to Casey.
3. Sunday, sadly, was spent staring into space a lot and doing homework. I'm basically indifferent to a lot of what I'm supposed to be doing - in the sense that I've no emotional or ideological or philosophical (this one very rarely) preconceptions about these things - so it's mostly ok. I don't think one should work in (for?) the administration/regulation of something one really does love. I'm a little saddened every time we talk about schools, and especially universities, as a place to churn out workers. I guess that's the sensible way of thinking of it, but the part of me which values academic work can't help thinking about what Sayers had one of her characters say about Oxford - that Oxford has been called the home of lost causes; if the love of learning is a lost cause, then in Oxford at least it has found its abiding home.
4. Suyin - my dear, congratulations (very belatedly)! Hope you're feeling better.
5. My computer says it's eighteen minutes to Su-Lin's birthday. Happy birthday darling!
2. Dinner on Friday with the usual crowd at Kalinka-Malinka, which has excellent shashlik and some unpronounceable cabbage roll thing (but avoid the dumplings), and later coffee and cake and Milton and Donne and the existence of free verse. Lunch on Saturday with WN and then dinner with S, SX and mf at a cosy little dim sum place in Tanjong Pagar where we ordered one of everything on the menu except the porridge. Then mf had to go off for a supper date so the rest of us ended up at Bakerzin talking about comfort books (children's books) and TV shows (anything written by Aaron Sorkin) and drinking milk. (I can't remember if I've said this here so I might as well say it again - watching Aaron Sorkin's TV shows is like reading Pratchett. It's not that he's the world's greatest writer exactly - it's that one buys into his moral vision. You watch the show/read the book and think yes that's how the world should be. And if you're me, you think it's how the world is, but that's a different story.)
I think this all the time but don't say it - it's so good to be with friends who will argue about poems and free verse (or the denial thereof) and the importance of children's books. And TV shows whose characters are involved and stimulated by their jobs and not willing to give anything less than their all and whatever else Dana said to Casey.
3. Sunday, sadly, was spent staring into space a lot and doing homework. I'm basically indifferent to a lot of what I'm supposed to be doing - in the sense that I've no emotional or ideological or philosophical (this one very rarely) preconceptions about these things - so it's mostly ok. I don't think one should work in (for?) the administration/regulation of something one really does love. I'm a little saddened every time we talk about schools, and especially universities, as a place to churn out workers. I guess that's the sensible way of thinking of it, but the part of me which values academic work can't help thinking about what Sayers had one of her characters say about Oxford - that Oxford has been called the home of lost causes; if the love of learning is a lost cause, then in Oxford at least it has found its abiding home.
4. Suyin - my dear, congratulations (very belatedly)! Hope you're feeling better.
5. My computer says it's eighteen minutes to Su-Lin's birthday. Happy birthday darling!
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Google, or, A Remembered Conversation
My little brother took part in the Google worldwide programming competition (or something like). Anyone can take part. The top 500 in the world get through to the next round. The top 250 get a tee-shirt. The top 50 get to go to California for the final round.
Him: But I don't get to go.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because I'm not 21. So at best I get a tee-shirt.
Me: That's not a very balanced incentive structure.
Him: It's a cool tee-shirt. It's got "Google" on it.
Postcript: And so it does.
Him: But I don't get to go.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because I'm not 21. So at best I get a tee-shirt.
Me: That's not a very balanced incentive structure.
Him: It's a cool tee-shirt. It's got "Google" on it.
Postcript: And so it does.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Well, was it untoward?
From one of the Sports Night transcripts:
Dan: Our anniversary. Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Jeez, Danny, that night in Minneapolis with the Jaegermeister, we didn't do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: (getting up and going backstage) Good.
Dan: (following) You recited the St. Crispin's Day speech from the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.
Casey: (examining himself in the mirror) Well, was it untoward?
Dan: No, it was just embarrassing.
Dan: Our anniversary. Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Jeez, Danny, that night in Minneapolis with the Jaegermeister, we didn't do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: (getting up and going backstage) Good.
Dan: (following) You recited the St. Crispin's Day speech from the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.
Casey: (examining himself in the mirror) Well, was it untoward?
Dan: No, it was just embarrassing.
Do not depend on fairness of face, or why women always need new clothes
"[I]n Precepts for Women, written by the great woman historian, Pan Chao, the virtues and appearance of good women are described:
- From a brief survey of Chinese women and literature in Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung's Women Poets of China, which Yisheng pointed me to one day.
The virtues of women are not brilliant talent, nor distinction and elegance. The virtues of women are reserve, quiet, chastity, orderliness, governing herself to maintain a sense of shame, and conducting herself according to the rules of Confucian etiquette.
The appearance of a woman does not depend on fairness of face. The principles for a woman's appearance are to wash away dirt, wear clean and new clothing and ornaments, bathe often, and keep her body clean."
- From a brief survey of Chinese women and literature in Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung's Women Poets of China, which Yisheng pointed me to one day.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
When we grow up
I think we should have a bookshop, and I think it should be like Books Actually - except actually with books.
What I'd have (in addition to novels, I mean):
(1) A decent poetry section. Which means that twentieth-century poets cannot be limited to the collected poems of Yeats and Auden (separate collections, I mean).
(2) A decent non-fiction section. Why is it that Singaporean bookshops hardly ever carry non-academic non-fiction? Including personal essays, humour (I'm thinking of Thurber), travel, journalism with footnotes (I'm thinking of Eric Schlosser and Timothy Garton Ash), critical essays (I'm thinking of Northrop Frye's radio lectures? - The Education Imagination, and Anne Carson's wonderful book-length essays), political essays (but only if very good; can't think of an example), food, and so on. And some academic books (I'm thinking of Benedict Anderson).
(3) Children's books.
What I'd have (in addition to novels, I mean):
(1) A decent poetry section. Which means that twentieth-century poets cannot be limited to the collected poems of Yeats and Auden (separate collections, I mean).
(2) A decent non-fiction section. Why is it that Singaporean bookshops hardly ever carry non-academic non-fiction? Including personal essays, humour (I'm thinking of Thurber), travel, journalism with footnotes (I'm thinking of Eric Schlosser and Timothy Garton Ash), critical essays (I'm thinking of Northrop Frye's radio lectures? - The Education Imagination, and Anne Carson's wonderful book-length essays), political essays (but only if very good; can't think of an example), food, and so on. And some academic books (I'm thinking of Benedict Anderson).
(3) Children's books.
Catching up
I just started reading the blogs after a long absence and I am completely lost.
Random and less random thoughts:
There is no Swedish restaurant. It is a place of legend and myth and wishful thinking.
My dear, I had no idea his family were so horrible. How dare they? I can imagine being upset about a former lover's marriage, quite apart from what I thought about him. In this case, the man is clearly an idiot and a louse.
And if it's not too late to say my piece - I don't understand how you could have thought us smug and complacent and the other thing (there were three things, weren't there?). (From here I'll drop "we" and just speak of myself.) I do think of you and J as standard-bearers, and I am very proud of you, but I don't think that justifies my own laziness. I say "laziness" because it helps me to think that I could do anything I wanted to, if I just put my mind to it; but if I were honest I would admit that I don't think I could have got into grad school. What would I possibly study? Anything I enjoyed at undergraduate level (I realise now), I enjoyed on the level of emotion rather than intellect - I enjoyed reading Mill's "On Liberty" for the passion in it, rather than the argument (not that the argument was complicated - another reason in its favour). I'm afraid I can't think and I can't write; sometimes I'm afraid I couldn't think and couldn't write. How can it be that you don't think what you do is real work? I've always thought that scholarship was real, more real than the work I do. I remember being very lost and afraid and alone in Oxford; I also remember being in the Old Bodleian along one Saturday morning and reading (a translation of) the Phaedrus(?) and watching the sunlight slanting in and colouring the pale wooden desks a soft gold. At least teaching has some connection to language; I'm afraid I've lost all that.
What I mind about where I am is not the part about selling out but that I'm bad at it. I think it could be a worthy job and it could require a good deal of hard work and dedication; I'm unwilling to put in the hard work and dedication because that would only get me to average, and I'm unwilling to work at being average. I don't think much about it nowadays, and that worries me when I do think about it. I'm afraid not so much of losing desire but the desire for desire.
Common experiences and shared books are one thing (two things), but surely not all? Wouldn't we (all) be close anyway, whatever we did or did not choose to do?
Random and less random thoughts:
There is no Swedish restaurant. It is a place of legend and myth and wishful thinking.
My dear, I had no idea his family were so horrible. How dare they? I can imagine being upset about a former lover's marriage, quite apart from what I thought about him. In this case, the man is clearly an idiot and a louse.
And if it's not too late to say my piece - I don't understand how you could have thought us smug and complacent and the other thing (there were three things, weren't there?). (From here I'll drop "we" and just speak of myself.) I do think of you and J as standard-bearers, and I am very proud of you, but I don't think that justifies my own laziness. I say "laziness" because it helps me to think that I could do anything I wanted to, if I just put my mind to it; but if I were honest I would admit that I don't think I could have got into grad school. What would I possibly study? Anything I enjoyed at undergraduate level (I realise now), I enjoyed on the level of emotion rather than intellect - I enjoyed reading Mill's "On Liberty" for the passion in it, rather than the argument (not that the argument was complicated - another reason in its favour). I'm afraid I can't think and I can't write; sometimes I'm afraid I couldn't think and couldn't write. How can it be that you don't think what you do is real work? I've always thought that scholarship was real, more real than the work I do. I remember being very lost and afraid and alone in Oxford; I also remember being in the Old Bodleian along one Saturday morning and reading (a translation of) the Phaedrus(?) and watching the sunlight slanting in and colouring the pale wooden desks a soft gold. At least teaching has some connection to language; I'm afraid I've lost all that.
What I mind about where I am is not the part about selling out but that I'm bad at it. I think it could be a worthy job and it could require a good deal of hard work and dedication; I'm unwilling to put in the hard work and dedication because that would only get me to average, and I'm unwilling to work at being average. I don't think much about it nowadays, and that worries me when I do think about it. I'm afraid not so much of losing desire but the desire for desire.
Common experiences and shared books are one thing (two things), but surely not all? Wouldn't we (all) be close anyway, whatever we did or did not choose to do?
Sunday, February 05, 2006
So what have you been up to?
(1) The week before Chinese New Year was full of yakitori and sake. The bacon and vegetable yakitori at Nan-ban-teh (the one at Far East?) is highly recommended.
(2) I've started driving lessons again and am abysmally bad at them (as usual). Ten years from now I'll still be saying that I'm starting driving lessons again, and in the same cause of hopeless optimism.
(3) Happy Chinese New Year! This year I learnt to fold paper cranes.
(4) My grandfather came over to our house for reunion dinner (long story; that side of the family is mildly dysfunctional). He said we had to visit Hainan Island with him before he died so he could show us the jia xiang. The jia xiang is somewhere in the countryside. There are over 20 rooms - I think there are several houses - but only 3 people living there still: his brother's children. One is an odd-jobs man, one a retired teacher, and the other I think one of their wives. They plant vegetables and cultivate chickens (my mom: oh do you make chicken rice?) but only enough for themselves because they're lazy (my grandfather said) and because one can't earn much from selling produce. There is one toilet. He built it; he's been visiting every couple of years or so, and he built it on one of his last visits. It's outside the house and has a septic tank and pump and all. Before he built the toilet, they either dug a hole somewhere or just walked some distance from the house (I gather; he was a little evasive on this point). Now the sewage is pumped outside the jia xiang and left there. My grandfather said he wouldn't invite any of us there if there were no toilet, but now there is, and so we should go.
(5) Over the new year period, I watched (a) a whole bunch of Stephanie Sun music videos, (b) Fearless (full of China pride and improbable honour), (c) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (on DVD) (a little too clever in parts, but excellent overall), (d) The Pianist, (e) all of the five minutes of Batman Begins.
(6) The horoscope for monkeys born in 1980 (the big one on the pillar at Bugis, where all the Chinese temples are) says to stay away from alcohol and women this year.
(2) I've started driving lessons again and am abysmally bad at them (as usual). Ten years from now I'll still be saying that I'm starting driving lessons again, and in the same cause of hopeless optimism.
(3) Happy Chinese New Year! This year I learnt to fold paper cranes.
(4) My grandfather came over to our house for reunion dinner (long story; that side of the family is mildly dysfunctional). He said we had to visit Hainan Island with him before he died so he could show us the jia xiang. The jia xiang is somewhere in the countryside. There are over 20 rooms - I think there are several houses - but only 3 people living there still: his brother's children. One is an odd-jobs man, one a retired teacher, and the other I think one of their wives. They plant vegetables and cultivate chickens (my mom: oh do you make chicken rice?) but only enough for themselves because they're lazy (my grandfather said) and because one can't earn much from selling produce. There is one toilet. He built it; he's been visiting every couple of years or so, and he built it on one of his last visits. It's outside the house and has a septic tank and pump and all. Before he built the toilet, they either dug a hole somewhere or just walked some distance from the house (I gather; he was a little evasive on this point). Now the sewage is pumped outside the jia xiang and left there. My grandfather said he wouldn't invite any of us there if there were no toilet, but now there is, and so we should go.
(5) Over the new year period, I watched (a) a whole bunch of Stephanie Sun music videos, (b) Fearless (full of China pride and improbable honour), (c) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (on DVD) (a little too clever in parts, but excellent overall), (d) The Pianist, (e) all of the five minutes of Batman Begins.
(6) The horoscope for monkeys born in 1980 (the big one on the pillar at Bugis, where all the Chinese temples are) says to stay away from alcohol and women this year.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Mustafa
is all new and shiny and organised now, which takes away the fun. But it does still have signs that point to (a) stationery, (b) artificial flower (yes, just the one), (c) furniture, and (d) gardening/car accessories.
Overheard - a man on his handphone somewhere behind the next shelf: "You want big or small?...How much? One inch?...One inch cannot lah..." To which all the women and gay men of the world agree.
Overheard - a man on his handphone somewhere behind the next shelf: "You want big or small?...How much? One inch?...One inch cannot lah..." To which all the women and gay men of the world agree.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
this weekend
I read Thud!
The library came through after all.
I also (re-)read Homecoming and The Runner, after borrowing sl's (argh) Come a Stranger that day.
And I painted my room! With my father helping to shunt furniture about and paint and rearrange the room and rebuild shelves (the do-it-yourself kind that's all unpainted wooden planks and bolts), though I have much less shelving space now.
And I found books that belong to various people, mostly Minz. I will return them. Really.
I'm going to get flowers tomorrow to put in the house.
The library came through after all.
I also (re-)read Homecoming and The Runner, after borrowing sl's (argh) Come a Stranger that day.
And I painted my room! With my father helping to shunt furniture about and paint and rearrange the room and rebuild shelves (the do-it-yourself kind that's all unpainted wooden planks and bolts), though I have much less shelving space now.
And I found books that belong to various people, mostly Minz. I will return them. Really.
I'm going to get flowers tomorrow to put in the house.