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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