Friends Are:

People who won't find it strange that, at all of 26, you would just step into a store and buy $100 worth of Transformers toys, and spend hundreds more on them online.
[China Square Central, 9 Sep 07, 3pm]

People who don't mind that you take karaoke seriously enough to want to sing parts of songs solo, even if they requested those songs in the first place.
[Cash Studio Family Karaoke, Ming Arcade, 8 Sep 07, 11.15pm]

Most of all, people who understand when you don't want to show up for something not because you have anything else on, but simply because you genuinely aren't up to it.
[Home Club, 7 Sep 07, 11.34pm]

Thanks, disparate folks, for making my weekend.

The Great Mash-Up of Love

Tonight I walk into the hotel where my brother held his wedding dinner five years ago to attend the wedding of a woman who, had I been more courageous, would've been my first girlfriend nine years ago. I'm running late and when I arrive, everyone's in the ballroom and there's only one other guest at the registration counter—a girl whom I had a massive, crippling, consuming four-year-long crush on 13 years ago, and haven't seen in ages. If she recognizes me, she doesn't show it. We slip into the ballroom at the same time as the bride and groom, watching them march in to the song that started my friendship and eventually relationship with my ex-girlfriend, whom I broke up with last year.

All this happens in the space of one minute.

The next ninety are excruciating in the way that dinners with polite strangers are. There are summarized life histories, repeated job descriptions, qualifiers and disclaimers, opinions of the food, and small talk on utterly inoffensive, unfascinating topics. And then there is the video, the how-we-grew-up-and-met-each-other-video slideshow, which unfolds with cheesy aplomb. In its faded photographs I recognize the face that awoke many of my dreams nine years ago. I see the same smiling face in a photograph that I, in the days before digital cameras, enlarged in a photocopier and kept in a file close to my heart, in all its ink-scented, grainy glory. And I see everything else I saw behind that smile.

I suddenly remember, with agonizing force, why I loved her then.

Outside the ballroom, moving down the customary thank-you line, I meet the groom face-to-face for the first time. He knows my name. I'm surprised, and wonder if we knew each other through some other circumstances.

"I don't think so…I think I recognize you from photos. You were playing a guitar?"

Oh yes, that one. I should know.

She took that photo.

Bad Disco

Some club nights are like bad sex: you go through the motions, trying to convince yourself you're enjoying it, worrying that you'll just get up and walk out before anything happens, wasting the effort. Nevertheless, if you persist long enough, sheer friction overtakes everything else and there is some climax. But it is an empty one, with no real sense of release.

So it was last night at Home Club. There to check out the post-renovation decor with two friends, I found myself standing in the middle of the dance floor most of the time, allowing the music to pass through me like vapour. All around me youngsters were screaming with excitement as each song began, while I wondered what song could possibly evoke the same response in me, having heard them so many times in this way already. Eventually one came on, and I danced myself into a sincere frenzy for three minutes.

A while later, as we sat outside the club, I thought about how quickly I tire of these things. In 2005, I was going mad for the whole experience. Barely two months ago, I re-embraced it with great enthusiasm. Now, this. Then I had a strange thought: if I fell in love with a girl who recently discovered indie disco, would she renew the experience for me, or would it be a case of right person, wrong time? When we fuck, would I relish her, or just gaze emptily at her young breasts, wishing this had happened two years ago?

Mind Games

We sat on the bench to cool down, you clearly more spent than I.

I don't remember anything you said until the words: "she's flying there again in May."

Sensing an opportunity, I said: "I wonder how people like them keep it going. It must be hard."

"She must trust him a lot."

"And he must trust her a lot too," I added, trying to push the point.

"You never met him, did you."

I shook my head slowly, heavy as it was with unspoken things.

The conversation stopped there as you bent down to tighten your shoelaces, but continued unfolding with menacing speed in my mind, gathering force, a boulder rolling off my tongue, catching your sleeve and dragging us down an exciting, terrifying slope together.

Yes, You Could Say We Know Each Other

I can picture this: him pausing for a moment, thumb resting on the call button, wondering why he has to collect himself. I can sense the swing in his emotions as she tells him she's already having dinner with someone, but he could join in anyway. I don't know what his car looks like, but I imagine it swerving restlessly past rows of occupied lots as he agonises over his thwarted chances tonight.

I feel the lump in his throat as our eyes meet.

For the rest of the dinner, I can only wonder about the extent of his inner struggle: trying to inch his way further into her favour while delicately maintaining a professional distance with me. It's a clumsy performance. But I help him--and perhaps myself--by hijacking the conversation. What both of us separately hoped would be a night with her then becomes a night between us, cordially discussing the intersections in our lives; plumbing the depths of our useless but endless troves of general knowledge; wandering into philosophical territory without really disagreeing (but of course; I wouldn't dream of disagreeing with him). And through it all, she sits on the sidelines, listening in.

It should've made me angry. Instead, it was thoroughly refreshing, not only because of the privilege of seeing him with his defences lowered, but also because being able to engage him in conversation made me feel smarter than I've felt in years (he is a really intelligent person after all; just look at where it's gotten him in life). I parted ways with them feeling strangely invigorated and pleased with myself.

This feeling stayed with me until many hours later, when I imagined her closing the door of his car at the foot of her flat.

Down and Hold It There

When the lean, sprightly Physical Training Instructor bellowed for us to go into push-up position, I felt the indignity of failure creep up my arms.

It emerged from somewhere deep in the ground, cutting into my palms and winding up my trembling veins. An exercise normally used as a punishment for trainees in the armed forces, I had not assumed the position in years. I wondered if my sense of helplessness was because I shouldn't have been made to do it, or because I couldn't.

As I hung my head waiting for the first count, I saw between my awkward legs rows upon rows of sloppily dressed men, no longer soldiers but the fathers of children and the managers of employees. In their low-hung heads and raised asses, I playfully imagined a tacit, unspoken shame: the shame of being deemed too unfit to defend the nation in times of war, despite everything else they had achieved in life.

Good Ol' Fashioned White Supremacy

There's nothing a little beer can't fix. So even if no-one else felt the strangeness of being the only Chinese male in a room of four Chinese girls and their Caucasian boyfriends; even if no-one else was a little overwhelmed by their Caucasian-ness and annoyed by their repeated flouting of the non-smoking rule; even if no-one realised my karaoke songs were being queued forever because everyone was inserting songs ahead of those I'd chosen; I was soon one with them in inebriation, hamming it up with air guitar and bad rock star impersonations.

And who am I to talk, really, when the only music I like, the only music I've ever listened to, and the only music I can be arsed to sing is made by people with surnames like Anderson and Butler?

A Stranger on the Train

There are girls who are cute. There are girls who are pretty. There are girls who, with some self-convincing, can appear cute or pretty. These girls inspire protective, macho shit tendencies in guys.

But every once in a while, there is a girl so goddamn beautiful that all she makes you feel is weakness. I saw one such girl on the train to work today. I kept stealing glances at her, every faculty in me quivering; trying desperately to memorise her face, her aura and her manner in the minutes I had. I did this because I knew I would forget them--and maybe even the fact that I saw her--by the end of the day.

Hours later, some of it remains. I could easily mention what it is, but in many ways, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think, therefore, that it is sufficient to record that I experienced it like an arrow, rather than defile it by reducing it to misunderstandable, incomplete words.

DIY Kuala Lumpur

And so it was a weekend of firsts: my first ever sleeper train ride; my first night in a backpackers' hostel; my first holiday planned and executed all by myself. Perhaps a little stranger was that it also was my first time in Kuala Lumpur proper. Before I left, I kept telling people I hadn't been there in ten years, which was my way of saving myself the trouble of dealing with "you mean you haven't?" questions.

It was the perfect escape--close to home, cheap, not particularly exotic but still different enough to warrant experiencing. The real reason I was there, though, was to catch Muse in concert, having missed them when they played at Fort Canning in January--but well, why not have a little merger with my country's erstwhile hinterland while at it?

My two days there were a haze of gargantuan malls (Berjaya Times Square: ten flippin' storeys!); a maze of light rail, monorail and intercity trains; a grid of scorching sidewalks, and a blur of tourist traps which I was more than happy to embrace in the name of hanging loose and letting go. I experienced the claustrophobia of a room with two beds, a table, a dim bulb and no windows. I had my best, cheapest foot massage ever (60 minutes for RM35, that's less that SGD15.50 folks!). I ate some really oily food. I collected my concert ticket from a nice, sincere, complete stranger I met online. I went on some thrill rides at an indoor (yes, indoor) amusement park alone, but stopped short of the testicle-shrinking, haemorrhoid-curing roller coaster which curled too close to fellow shoppers for comfort.

And when the hour arrived, I moshed with the craziest of Malaysians, elbowing my way from the RM113 section to the RM233 section of the stadium, screaming every word of every song I knew, having a litre of sweat squashed out of me, fending off slamdancers and the flailing limbs of bodysurfers until I reached the front of the stage where people were screaming "Air! Air!" (which, interestingly, is pronounced as 'eye-er' and means "water" in Bahasa Melayu).

Two hours later, with only a change of t-shirt, cruising at over 80 km/h down the dark North-South highway in a coach set up like an commercial plane (in-drive entertainment, supper), I could only lean back with a small sense of triumph. Some people can't understand why I'd travel anywhere alone; with such quick and cheap thrills to be had, why not?

Gone Xi Fa Cai

I remember reunion dinners at Woodleigh Park: all noise, redness and grease. I remember scampering through imaginary adventures in that stale colonial house, eagerly awaiting the countdown; the showers of sparks on the dark grass, the creak of the swing, the sleepy agitation in the ride home.

I remember the greedy ang pow tallies, calculating what toys I could buy; I remember pilfered chocolates in my pockets, endless car rides to somewhere and nowhere, word games with my brother, pointing and laughing at silly things from the comfort of a rear window. I remember enough faces and places to fill two, three whole days on end.

Those days are long gone--not only with the passing of extended family members, but also with my childhood, the old family car, and my parents' energy (they are coming to 70). Over the years, we've scaled back on everything. This year, for the first time, we missed the countdown. The next day, we house-hopped out of sync with the extended family, missing all of them until we reached our final stop, where I was saved from an excrutiating night of staring, nodding and smiling by a Star Movies telecast of Fantastic Four.

Today, my father was slumped in his lazy chair outside my room for hours, age digging heavily into his bones. Not having to go to the office, I scrambled together a been-meaning-to-do agenda: re-read parts of my business school admissions essay books, try my hand at drafting outlines, make personal travel arrangements, do some of my freelance work. It was refreshingly productive. In the evening, I headed with my parents for the last visit of the year like an afterthought.

And as I stood there on the pavement, waiting to cross, it suddenly occured to me how sad and funny it had all become--now, what makes my Chinese New Year feel like a holiday is not the visiting, but the lack of it.

It's Good to Be Home

It's been too damn long.

And what else is there to do when her boyfriend's just flown into town, but to jump on to the dancefloor feeling "But she's touching his chest now / He takes off her dress now / Let me go / And I just can't look / It's killing me" pulse with new meaning?

Suddenly, everything is fresh again: the deep booms and high shards of sound from the speakers; the rush from the opening bars of a favourite song; the lunging against walls when the feeling is too much to take. The charming naivete of teenage boys in blazers, and the delicious proximity of young girls who seem to know too much.

The madness of everyone appearing to know the lyrics of every song, and the joy in remembering many of them myself, even if I haven't heard them in a year.

And this time--the four of us--we did it with no trips to the toilet, no beer runs, no retiring to the sofas...just dancing to the point of exhaustion, dancing away our working-world frustrations, our white-collar stupidity, our small and embarrassing existences, just the way it was meant to be.

Reality Cheque

Like all wide-eyed inductees into the world of salaries, bonuses and credit, I've been spending my money as if I printed it. The feeling of receiving a few thousand dollars a month is overwhelming at first, but thereafter it's a joyride. Suddenly you can afford the things you couldn't as the proverbial poor student; suddenly a lot of things don't matter anymore. There's always money, and even if it's spent, it can be earned back.

I've diligently kept records of my expenditure for the past 12 months, always intending to look at them at some point, but never putting aside time to.

So with my financial adviser pestering me for a decision on her company's latest insurance product, I finally whipped out the figures this afternoon and did the sums for three randomly selected months.

In October 2006, after deducting the fixed stuff: my CPF contribution, my contribution to household expenses and utilities bills, my mobile phone bill, my parents' allowance, my university study loan--and the random stuff: food, transport, clothing, grooming (haircuts and massages), entertainment, impulse buys, wedding ang pows, ad hoc treats for family and friends...I saved the princely sum of $117.69.

Wow. I think I need more than just insurance. I need something that can save me from myself!

Dinner and Drinks

A lovely night out: noodles at Maxwell Food Centre; experiencing the buzz of Lunar New Year-season Chinatown by osmosis. Telling stories and tossing ideas about casually before wandering into a chic little enclave; savouring its plush seating area and nice lighting. Being pleasantly surprised by who else turns up.

The key, quite simply, is not to try too hard. And when it succeeds, don't milk it too much. For the first time in months, we met up without a 'concept' in mind. Like magic, it worked much better than anything we'd tried recently.

Winning

Sometimes, you have to know when to walk away. I tried to several times last year, but I lost the plot, missed my opportunities and sank into a quagmire of doubt and desire. Fortunately, having been away from her for a few weeks, I’ve gained a fresh perspective and am now kicking myself for letting it last as long as it did.

I clung on for months, hoping that she’d come back; wanting to know how she felt about the whole affair, how she could’ve gone from being so passionate to being so cold, whether she really erased the memories from her mind or was just suppressing them, at which point she turned, and why.

Part of me still wants to know. But what would that achieve? Maybe I don’t really want to know; maybe I just want to hear a “I still think you’re rather cute; I feel a little embarrassed that I allowed you to have so much of me, but it was nice while it lasted; let’s move on and keep this as a nice memory yah?”.

Much as my male ego wants to know I had her physically and still have part of her emotionally, it wants even more to avoid being thrown into submission by learning that I, in fact, don’t.

So when she—in a surprising turn of events—tried to broach the subject today, claiming she was “finally ready to talk about it” (maybe those weeks apart did something for her too), I felt the best thing was to brush it aside.

That, really, is the only door out of this which I can walk through with my head held high.

History Repeating

It’s one thing to re-create histories of decades past, with little to rely on beyond old photographs, words in books and flaky newsreels. There, artistic license prevails; filmmakers have the freedom to use whatever methods they have at their disposal to invoke a sense of verisimilitude.

It’s quite another to re-create a history that is merely ten years old, especially if its pivotal moment is a televised speech for which there is little room for artistic manoeuvring. And so, in featuring Queen Elizabeth II’s tribute to the late Princess Diana in his latest effort The Queen, Stephen Frears did the only thing he could do: re-create the five-minute broadcast shot-by-shot, word-for-word, down to the background and clothing—except with Helen Mirren instead of the monarch.

It was a bold move which, for me, sealed The Queen as a near-perfect movie, over and above its outstanding cast (and casting), skilful storytelling, pacing, and sensitive treatment of subject matter. As a film which purported to tell the story that “wasn’t told” in the week of Princess Diana’s death in 1997—specifically, the British Royal Family’s reaction to it—it delivered both the public and private narratives beautifully. Never before have I seen such a compelling and flawless interpolation of archived footage, re-enactments of actual events and depictions of fictional ones.

There’s normally a high sense of artifice when movie characters watch archived footage, but re-enacting two of them (a tribute by Tony Blair as well) collapses this film’s reality with ours. Throw in a priceless performance by Helen Mirren (who was so convincing that halfway through the movie, I struggled to recall what the real Queen looks like), and you have one brilliant piece of work.

Test Post 3 - Ecstacy Set to Be Worldwide Scourge

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Test Post 2: Home and Dry

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