Thus friends absent speak

Friday is my default day off.  I like waking up early in the mornings, taking walks, dawdling over breakfast.  Some Fridays though, when my mother asks me what my plans are, I put on my haughty Downton Abbey voice and say, "I will now be taking care of my correspondence."

I'll be the first to admit, it's romantic to think of sitting at a desk on a windblown weekend and penning elaborate missives to various suitors (hah!), but the reality is that I also just really enjoy writing letters to friends.

There is something deeply exciting about receiving letters, postcards and packages from friends.  I love guessing what's inside, opening them up and noticing all the little personal touches like comics, drawings, stickers, the quotes that have been chosen, even the paper they were written on.  One of my most treasured letters comes from a cousin who wrote it from a cafe in France, in flourishes all over sheets of thick cream paper studded with lavender petals.  In contrast, another was mailed halfway across the world by a friend and is hastily scribbled on a torn sheet of notebook paper and covered with scrappy cartoons.

In return, I love writing letters, thinking of the surprise that people will get when they shuffle through bills and flyers.  The time delay aspect of it is exciting and I like to put a little bit of effort into the kind of stationery I use.

Previously, I would buy expensive stationery from places like Artbox or Stationery Island.  Don't get me wrong: the paper quality is delicious and the designs are ridiculously cute, but I've recently discovered that in terms of value for money, you absolutely cannot go wrong with Daiso.

I recently popped into the Plaza Singapura branch with Ann-Marie and was pleasantly surprised to see that their stationery selection has increased exponentially.  An entire aisle was devoted to letter paper and notecards and at $2 for 10 to 12 sheets of paper and envelopes, the stationery is definitely more wallet-friendly than, say, Artbox's $4 for five sheets or so.  Some of the packages even come with stickers to seal the letters with!

Needless to say, I quickly stocked up and now have enough paper to correspond with half the world. 

The designs are pretty cute if you can ignore the ridiculous Engrish.  (Actually the small ladybird notecards are cracking me up because they rather ominously warn "There is a person who wants to inform..." and I want to give them to students as encouragement for their exams.  I sometimes pretend to be menacing in class, so I know they'll get the joke.)

The paper quality is rather uneven.  I've already sent out several letters - the adorable rabbit paper, which is my favourite design, is thin though not offensively so, but the floral blue paper is actually thicker than a normal sheet of A4.  I guess it's a little bit of a gamble, but as long as you write with a ballpoint, it should be all right.

I broke the paper in by putting together a package for something that I'm doing with my colleagues, Amanda and Rebecca, called Project Box.  The idea is that every month, we'll post a package of stuff to each other based on a theme that we've picked.  The theme this month was "Greed" and we were free to interpret it as we liked, through photos, articles, snacks and so on.  My version involved collecting a bunch of things that I was feeling greedy over and paying them forward to someone else (washi tape!). 

If you like writing to friends and are not too fussed about paper quality, I highly recommend a Daiso run. 

I'm also already planning the next batch of letters and if you enjoy receiving random letters and don't mind participating in some old school conversation, I would be happy to add new "penpals" to the list!

On a sidenote, Ann-Marie and I really enjoyed lunch at Hoshino Coffee that day.  The food was simple and tasty and I was so enamoured by the way this cheesy, fluffy, golden souffle looked that I had to take a picture.

I was also in the mood for a good coffee (Ann-Marie said, quite rightly, "When are you not?!") and the latte was not foamy but quite nicely balanced. 

The rest of my weekend is aimed at wandering around and taking some photos for practice.  I hope you enjoy yours!

Zoo: Part Four, Miscreants

This last batch of pictures that I took at the zoo is of other random animals that I didn't spend all that much time shooting.  I enjoy them and I'm glad that my zoom lens was able to pick out some of the cool details like the thousands of little ridges on the elephant's skin or the green stain of leaves round the mouth of an Aldabra Giant Tortoise.  

All in, this was a really good lesson for me.  I tend to spend too long waiting for a moment and end up missing good shots because I have an idea of how things "should" look in my head.  I'm not very impulsive, but in this area, I should be.  

I love the pygmy hippos and how ridiculous they look.  One of my favourite things about the Singapore Zoo is that because visiting it is such a childhood rite of passage, we grow up with the animals.  When I was a kid, Gambir the elephant had just been born.  And the pygmy hippo exhibit had a new baby which came up to his mother's knees.  Now the hippos are the same size!

This black crowned crane picture is a great example of my problem with speed.  In the viewfinder, his head was in perfect focus and because I waited a moment too long, he shifted and his feathers moved into stark relief instead.  It's not a horrible photo, but it's not what I wanted and it's a pity because the light was shining beautifully on his golden mane.

As my father says, shooting birds and insects takes the most skill.

Inuka was flat out snoozing when we went by his new enclosure.  Edie expressed her solidarity outside instead.

 At the long end of the zoom, I'm noticing quite a lot of what looks like purple fringing outside the focus point.  Damn zebras! 

Giraffes are cool and all, but you haven't visited the zoo until you've seen a giant beast unleash a stream of pee into hot, frothy bubbles.  That went on for well over a minute, no lie.

I've had a soft spot for babirusas since I found out that their canines grow through their skin.  When we got to this exhibit, there was a man with a camera actually throwing things at the hog and trying to get it to look up.  Edie and I glared at him and I said, purely out of reflex, "What the hell?"  He cringed and slunk away into the crowd.  Children, don't throw things at animals.  I mean, come on.

Another funny moment: Edie read this sign and waved me over.  We stared at it for a moment and then just burst out laughing.  Yum!  Anus food!

And of course, the two biggest miscreants at the zoo that day.  Thanks for the outing, Eddie!

Papercuts

Sometimes I think that rather than growing, people are diminished.  That we are all chiselled, or whittled down, by the experiences of life and that what is left right at the end - the shapes, the dark hollows - is what makes the man.

We are only who we are in the moment, until another piece is cut away.

This evening, my mother pulled down a stack of my old notebooks and photos and made me pore through them and decide what to throw away.  They were cluttering shelves we needed for my brothers, she said.

There were pictures of me, a nineteen year old bridesmaid at my best friend's wedding, seventeen and awkwardly smiling next to a crush at a class barbecue, twenty four and pretending to be worldly far away from home.  

There were old planners in which I had made tiny, confessional notes in the margins of the day:

"In which the cab driver looked in the rearview mirror, told D and I 

that we made a nice couple, and I couldn't answer for laughing.  

Later though, at work, he sent me a message that said, "I think he's right".  

There were old letters pieced together from quotes from Beatles songs and catchphrases that I used to throw around with friends that I don't see anymore. 

And there were photos such as this one, of a girl who knew what it was to be loved and held and to be loving, and holding. 

Whenever I'm faced with memories like this, I experience a strange mixed feeling.  One part of me wants to drink them in, absorb them, scatter them on the floor like shards of glass and lie in them so they become imprinted forever; hundreds of tiny cuts on my skin.  Desperate, I want to gather them in armfuls and kneel and weep for everything gone by.

Another part of me can't get away from them fast enough.

At first I wonder if I should save the photos, every last one of them, then wonder what I'm saving them for, if anyone will ever care as much as I did.  I start throwing them out indiscriminately; who cares what I looked like in my prom dress?  Who cares who my best friends were if they're now just shavings on a woodshop floor?

In every photo I see a woman in a new phase of life - a friend, a girlfriend, a first time lover, a newly-minted wanderer - and I see the face of someone who thinks she's finally found her place.  But I put the pictures down and it's back to me, just me, whose priorities and centres of gravity have changed yet again.

The thing about life is that we move through so many experiences so quickly that we have to try and keep something from each one.  And so we think we know who we are and each time, we are wrong the moment we lose something else.

I don't want to juggle rusty razor blades.

What does it matter, I think, if the memories go forgotten?  I don't need reminders of what's been cut away, of who I am not anymore. 

I think that's why I was a serial monogamist, once upon a time.  Each time you move on to someone new, it's easy to forget about what has been left behind.  Now though, there is no dulling the sensation of each cut.  At least I'm finally feeling honest. 

I threw away a great deal tonight.  But I kept that photo. 

Maybe something in me still believes - looking at that picture of a girl who was once loved with a joyful, almost obsessive abandon before it all went sour - that not everything has been lost in vain.

Sunlight coming through the leaves...

... is one of my favourite reasons for waking at dawn and walking round the neighbourhood.

Auckland calling

Wei-Yuen was on a flying visit to Singapore for a few days and she stayed at mine for one night.  I was absolutely delighted for the chance to catch up with her, not just over chats but long walks, late night tea and giggles and some shenanigans that may have involved dropping and shattering a full bottle of red wine in an upmarket grocery store.

I love hanging out with her because I feel like we're a pair of friends who can be honest with each other.  When I was first in the midst of heartbreak, she gave me a card with a cute cartoon on it.  There was a stick figure bird who had fallen apart and some distance away, a whole bird which was watching, shouted, "Oh for God's sake!  Pull yourself together!"

I was startled by the candid message, but it also made me laugh and WY later told me that she had given it to me because she knew she could get truthful and give me "tough love".  We've been the same way with each other ever since, and I really appreciate the trust that is both given and received.

Luckily for me, Wei-Yuen likes taking photos (I don't think I've had a post with so many pictures of me in it!) and we were simultaneously lost behind the camera and keeping up good conversation.
We spent the morning hanging out at Blackbird with our friend Nina (amazeballs granola-coated french toast, if you like cinnamon), the afternoon having coffee and wending our way through Chinatown taking tonnes of photos, and the evening chatting and laughing at Cocotte with the equally down-to-earth Shirin. 

At night, we talked with my mother and told each other silly, made up stories till we fell asleep in our pajamas.  It was a once-in-a-blue-moon event, almost fading into a dream now, and I wonder at the fact that it even happened at all.

Thank heavens for pictures.