The long weekend

I managed to have a bit of relax at last this weekend.

Because the 'rents are away, David came over to keep company and we held a swell movie marathon.  The choices were well-thought out and cleverly scheduled, even if I may say so myself.

We started with The Sting which was surprisingly more light and funny than I expected it to be, then went on to Persepolis because David is deeply interested in the Middle East.

And last, of course, my obligatory Christmas favourite: The Nightmare Before Christmas.  I watch it every single year and even have all the movements down.  It has delightful music, the stop-motion is charming and unusual and it is peppered with tiny jokes and amusements - perfect if you want something festive but not saccharine.

A few things I've learnt about a successful movie marathon:

1)  It's vital that everything isn't cloying since you're going to be watching for ages, from the combination of the movies to the snacks of choice.  Ours was a very sophisticated prawn keropok and spicy sauce.

2)  The order of the movies is as important as the movies you pick - it's important that the more difficult movies go first for prime concentration.

3)  It's good to get out of the house in the middle, particularly for a Starbucks Christmas Coffee run.

4)  A Lord of the Rings marathon does no one any favours.  I can't count the number of times I've stared my way through Helm's Deep.

5)  Choice of companion is also important.  You've both got to love ploughing through arthouse movies or have the same fondness for three hours of Schindler's List. 

6)  If you're going to be watching a movie marathon with me on the other hand, a tolerance for loud singing, violent arm movements and light conversation is essential.  

Flat

Last night, Mel and I decided that we would go to Mustafa to do some late night shopping.  Let me wax lyrical about Mustafa for a moment.  

Despite the fact that it has been in Singapore for years now, I think there are still some who cannot fathom the brilliance that is Mustafa Shopping Centre.  For starters, some people are frightened at the prospect of Little India.  I remember once bringing a pair of non-Desi friends there.  They clutched desperately at each other at the sight of so many Indians and refused to wander out of my sight even though I'm mixed meself (cue heavy eyerolls).  

I have been to many places - to Tesco and Costco and Carrefour and Giant and K-Mart and Target - and even though I've enjoyed them all, none of them has been able to live up to the departmental store right at my doorstep.

If you've never been there, Mustafa is basically a twenty-four hour shopping centre that sells everything.  And I mean everything.  It is four or five stories high, comprises three buildings connected by bridges and underpasses and even has duplicate stalls scattered throughout the store just in case you miss something.  It has its own travel agency and hotel.  The store interior is so crammed that it has been shut down for being a fire hazard several times. 

There are at least twenty rows of just soap and shampoo.  Ten rows of vitamins.  A make up selection to rival Sephora.  Three whole rows dedicated to deodorant.  The shelf of spices is longer than my house.  The luggage section sells everything from Samsonite to Camel to American Tourister products, but at a lower price.  Crocs that cost $70 in the shoe shop cost $50 here. 

Like any self-respecting supermarket, it has a fresh baked goods section but on top of that, also a section selling plants, a mini bookstore and an entire floor dedicated to electronics (home of Big, my camera).  The gold section is larger than any jewellery store that I've ever been in (though most of the pieces wouldn't look out of place in a temple) and don't even get me started on the floors for clothes, sporting goods and homeware.  And when you emerge with your plastic tie-bound bags, there is dosai and chai masala waiting on every corner.

It is quite simply, the best place I've ever shopped at.

You can't quite appreciate the wonder of Mustafa until you visit it yourself.  Every time I go there, I see the same thing - a tourist staring round in glazed wonder and saying, "My god, this place is insane," and his local friend exasperatedly replying, "I told you.  They sell everything." 

"How can people not like Mustafa?" Mel texted me yesterday.

"I wonder if it's a racist thing," I smsed back. 

We arranged to go late at night to avoid the crowd and headed for tze char beforehand.  When we finally rolled into the car, fully stuffed, I eagerly pulled out of the parking space... to a horrendous grinding sound.

"What was that?" Mel looked alarmed.

I already had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I stepped out to take a look anyway.

WELL.

I know how to change a tire.  In theory.  I've never actually had to do it before and of all times for this to happen, when my parents were out of town.  We inspected the damage for a minute then decided that we were going to attempt changing it ourselves.

I literally rolled up my sleeves and retrieved a set of intruments, sans jack, from that boot, but they looked like they were meant to open wine bottles.  After poking them ineffectually at the flat, I decided to change tacks and looked for the manual instead. 

We found the jack under one of the seats eventually and all systems were go.  Mel read from the manual while I attempted to carry out all the instructions.  Except that she kept getting lost, and I had no idea what some of the things meant.

"Unscrew the cap and take out the spare," she read.

I did it and held it up to my chest huffing and staggering.  "Then?  Quick, Smelly, then?!"

"I..." Mel scanned the booklet frantically.  "Where are we?"

"Smelly!"

Eventually, sweating and clawing, we got the spare round the front and decided to go ahead even though we had nothing to chock the flat.  We jacked up the car and even loosened the nuts of the flat with great difficulty.  At one point I tapped the spare and wondered out loud if the tire pressure would be okay.

Mel gave me a despairing look, pointed at the flat and yelled, "It has to be better than that, right?" which sent us into ten minutes of hysterical howling on the carpark floor.

As we were about to swap the wheels, it suddenly occurred to me that I was not very strong.  I'd literally had to stand on the nuts to loosen them and even if I did change the wheel, I wasn't sure I was strong enough to screw the nuts tightly back in in the opposite direction.  A horrifying vision came to me, of driving at 80 and the tire flying off on the ECP.

"Um... Smells?"

Several dollars later, we were safely ensconced in a tow truck, on the way to a tire shop.

We made it to Mustafa eventually.  Mel bought something like a thousand dollars worth of toiletries while I went round snapping photos.

Part of the electronics section that sells tablets, computers, cameras, lenses, filters and anything else you can think of.

Can you believe they have such adorable shoes for $16.50?  If you just hunt, there are some gems out there.

Bits of the never ending toiletries section where we got lost for an hour.  Anyone remember the Impulse brand of body spray from school days?  We used to spray the vanilla scent in the classroom and everyone thought there was baking downstairs.

Endless walls of makeup and perfume.  The sections are so huge I simply can't get them all in view, so these photos feel a little bit futile because they look like any other store.

And the all important Victoria's Secret section, where everything goes for $16 - $5 cheaper than the store in Marina Bay.  Delicious.

Of course, I didn't leave empty-handed either.   

The awesome B.U.M equipment Converse lookalikes were $20!  I wish I'd bought another pair.

By the time I got home, it was almost two in the morning.

I was a little sleepy driving, but trust me, the repeated thoughts of tires flying off kept me wide awake.

Oh so quiet

The house is slowly winding down as the last geese leave for Winter.  

My two brothers have gone to Canada and Melbourne and it'll be some time before we meet again.  HS has been in Melbourne for several years anyway, so I'm kind of used to him not being around, but this is the first time HW is leaving home for so long.  

On the one hand, the peace can be nice.  I can spend the evenings doing work or reading with a very sleepy dog who constantly scratches himself.  

One of my favourite ways to spend an evening, when I get the chance to stay in, is with a cup of hot tea, a biscuit and the time to while away the hours.  My mother recently bought this amazing snack from Isetan - we'd had these biscuits once before and afterwards I went searching high and low but was unable to track them down till now.

The milky, white biscuit has a mild, sweet subtlety that goes beautifully with the darker, slightly salty headiness of the almonds and I love the crispness of the edges.   I'm a crunchy cookie kind of person - I much prefer these to their softer, more doughy cousins. 

The garden is also currently in full bloom.  My father planted these Bauhinia about two years ago and they're finally flowering in balls of incredible colour.

On the other hand, I miss my brothers.  Loads.  The house is too quiet and while I used to rush into the room next door with news and giggles and youtube videos, it's now completely empty.

When we were children, my brothers and I loathed each other.  Nothing delighted them more than stepping on me at bedtime (I slept on the floor) and dancing wildly round the phone and shouting "Pansy!  Pansy!" when I was talking with my first boyfriend (the poor soul's name was Andy).

Because I grew up with boys, I was a lot more rough and tumble than many girls my age and frequently got into trouble at their behest.  Instead of playing with dolls and plastic fruit, we played war games (I was the field nurse) and constructed makeshift gymnastics apparatus by flipping the couches upside down.  It was always a frantic race to right them before my parents came home.  

Once, we discovered that talcum powder on a parquet floor made the wood slippery and dumped an entire bottle of Carrie's Medicated onto the bedroom slats.  My mother came home into a fog of white, only to see scarved skaters whizzing by in socks on the powdered parquet.  Needless to say, the scolding was massive. 

I'll never forget the time they thought it would be prudent to teach me to ride the family bicycle down the exceedingly steep ramp to the common carpark.  "Don't be a chicken.  Just don't brake," HS instructed with typical boy blitheness, "and you can zoom right up the ramp on the other side without any effort."  I had never seen a wall come at me so fast.  Horrified, the boys ran behind me screaming, "Brake!  Brake!" and "Turn!  Tuuuurn!" as I slammed full speed into the concrete and lay on the floor, seeing stars for a full five minutes afterwards.

Another time, we were playing at being war journalists and climbing up and down a high wall edged with razor sharp stucco.  As HS tried to help me down, HW held on to my arms at the top of the wall, and I got stuck between them.  Annoyed, I snapped, "Let go," which both of them promptly did.  The sight of the blood streaming from a gash my leg alarmed HS so much that he tore his t-shirt off like Jacob Black, screaming, "Wipe it!" as he ran to get a first aid kit.  I still have that scar today.

The violence wasn't limited to play time.  We also got into raging fights involving punching and clawing.  Once, HS had to disguise HW's black eye with my mother's concealer before our parents got home. As we got older, the stakes got higher, from hiding a black eye to the theft of the family car. 

Somehow, as children are wont to do, we grew up and became best friends.  Discovering that we have the same sense of humour and are united by our pasts didn't hurt.  We told and kept secrets, gave advice and continued tossing around good-natured jibes.  We spent hours and hours talking about everything - our parents, the future, our worries and dreams.  Sometimes, we would even read each others' minds.  Some people tell me they wish they had relationships like that with their siblings. 

After HS left, HW and I went on long walks round the neighbourhood just so we could talk and each time we passed the gate of our house, he would look at me and say, "Come on, Che, just one more round."

I will miss that.  I will also miss coming home and sitting with him watching youtube videos for ages and laughing our heads off at every silly thing.  Just before he left, we formed a Nicholas Cage hate-club of sorts.  I've never been a Nic Cage fan and when I was in the UK, a friend showed me just how bad his acting was from numerous clips on youtube.  I shared them with HW and we were hooked.

One night, we discovered a particularly choice scene from a horrendous-looking movie, Deadfall.  If you've never heard of it, I strongly advise you to check it out.  I mean, this is a movie so heinous that people rate Nic Cage's hammy supporting turn as the most unintentionally hilarious performance in the world.  HW laughed so much he started to cry.

For my birthday this year, he printed and laminated the funniest still from the movie.  I've tacked it in front of my bed so that it is the first thing I see every morning.

We watched the clip one last time, all three of us, before they left.  I've been overseas to study and I can only imagine how excited they must feel, starting something new.  HS is going to look for work and start building a life and HW has years of learning ahead of him.  I'm thrilled for them.

But it remains that I will miss them because home isn't the same without them.  And that I already can't wait for them to come home.

In the meantime, I leave you with this.  I hope it brings some laughter to your day too. 

Not a pretty picture

I apologise if this picture of my inner thigh is unpalatable, but oy, is it ever a shiner.

I don't bruise very easily, as least not on the skin.  I'm a clumsy person and I walk into doorknobs and bump my head, but you can very seldom tell.  That's part of the reason why I'm taking pole-dancing lessons.  I'm clumsy, and it's hard.

Other girls in my class who are of typically Singaporean build and lithe and skinny hang off the pole with ease.  I'm not light on my feet or graceful and the entire class is often a struggle for me.  But that's why I do it.  I wanted to go back to doing something that hurt, that made me weep with effort, that if done right would one day make me feel invincible.  I wanted a fight.  

I've never understood girls who are shy about exercise blue-blacks and who hide them under long pants and maxi-skirts.  I like my battle scars to show.  It's like saying: "I'm challenging myself and I'm taking great pains to do it."

Yesterday's lesson was particularly difficult.  I've been having an emotional time and to cap it off, I'm terrified of heights.  I'm at the bottom of the class, always a step behind all the girls around me.  But I'd like to think I get there eventually.  I'd been working hard the last couple of weeks, and my flesh finally caved.  Finally, I came home and admired the bloom under my skin and wondered why I feel this way about display.  Then I remembered this bit from a novel I really like, White Oleander.

The protagonist, Astrid, has spent time in a children's home, watching one of the girls cut herself and wondering why she keeps tracing over old scars.  Eventually, in a foster home, she gets attacked by stray dogs and gets a face full of wounds herself:

"I walked past her and took the first of the Vicodins, scooping water from the faucet.  I went down to my room without saying a word, closed the door, and lay on my bed.  In a perverse way, I was glad for the stitches, glad it would show, that there would be scars.  What was the point in just being hurt on the inside?  I thought of the girl with the scar tattoos at the Crenshaw group home.  She was right, it should bloody well show."

                                                 - Janet Fitch, White Oleander

A year from now

Yesterday, I had lunch with my friend Mel.  

I have several very good friends whom I would move mountains for, and whom I know would move mountains for me.  But over the years, there have been two that I can truly call best friends and who always have my back: Becky and Mel.

While Becky is a rational, safe, stabilising force for me, Mel is the friend who has managed to inject humour into every situation, no matter how bleak (and I'm sure she won't mind me juxtaposing her with some scallops).  Even when she's going through a tough time, as she is now, she finds some small happiness, sometimes with my help.  We've both been through many ups and downs this year, but each time we meet, we do everything we can to get a good laugh.  When my grandmother died in April and I cried my face off, she came to the wake and we hunkered down at a table, giggling silently over cake.  

Yesterday, we talked about lots of serious things but ended up horsing around, too.  She's going through some tough times and I admire how well she's holding it together.  We discussed what it meant to find ourselves after having been through a storm and how things can change at any time.  We talked about staying positive and what it meant for the future; how it was important that we stood up for ourselves.

She posed for pictures (thank goodness she isn't camera shy) and we went shopping.  Well, she shopped, I watched.  When she asked whether I wanted to buy anything, I pointed to the new Canon and said that I'd just spent a lot of money at once and was planning to hold off for awhile.

She considered this for a minute, then cackled with typical Mel mischievousness and said, "Yes, but who's going to the UK anymore?  Who cares?"  (My ex is from the UK and I had been planning an expensive trip up this November.  It turned into Krabi instead.)  We laughed a lot about that, and I felt better. 

Afterwards I came home and started on some work.  On a break, I stumbled across a blog and read this amazing post.  I'm not religious so I don't necessarily subscribe to other things she says, but when I read this story, realisation suddenly hit.

The truth is that I'm there myself.  I try very hard, every day, to get through work, to put my best in, to be a functioning member of my family but I'm so tired.  On the outside, I seem like I'm handling things well, but on the inside, I'm a crumbling mess.  And in all honesty, I just feel like there's a big dead space in the centre of my chest because I don't really care about anything anymore.  

The books and the people tell you that "one day you'll feel normal again" and "it'll creep up on you and suddenly realise you're okay".  Some friends say things like "one day you'll love again".  But I'm not even sure what that means.  I can understand this intellectually, but I can't feel it.  I can't even see myself being with someone else in a meaningful way.  I just keep going through the motions and hoping that no one will notice.  

For once, I just don't care.

In all my navel-gazing, I've figured out that it's not just because of one breakup but because of all the other relationships lined up before it and all the deeply co-dependent people I have ever known in my life.  I'm so tired.  I'm so tired of dating people who tell me they're depressed because they don't know where their lives are going or they have no clue where they see themselves in five years but aren't willing to at least work towards some kind of understanding.  I'm tired of having to be vulnerable with and put trust in these people anyway.

I'm so tired of being in a relationship where my other half whined to me that they didn't know how to study and so the nights before my exams were spent memorising facts for them instead.  I'm so tired of people telling me that they felt like I filled a hole if only for a while, as if I was dispensable.  And I'm so tired of vampires who only get in touch when they need help or a placeholder.   

I think there is nothing nicer than being in a partnership (even if it's with friends or family) and having someone to hold your hand and walk the difficult bits with you.  Maybe even carry you at some points.  And I am more than happy to return the favour.  It's a special kind of something to weather a storm with someone and it creates bonds that are not easily broken.   

But I've realised now that that's entirely different than actually walking the road for somebody.  It's not the same as having to wake up at six in the morning because someone is throwing a temper tantrum a thousand miles away, and needing to suggest solutions to a problem that's already occurred three times prior.  

I'm so tired of being with people that don't meet me halfway.

When you get desperate, you will try anything.  Enough is enough.  And I'm starting to get to that point where I feel like it's just better to be on my own and work on whatever I please and solve my own damn problems at last.  I spent so long fixing unhealthy relationships that I have a whole slew of baggage about not getting any help in return.  

It sounds whiny to say and maybe childish to have come to it so late, but I really do need to be my own person, and a whole person at that.  Even if I start off feeling broken and emotionally detached inside. 

Later, on the same blog, Chantel recounted how she had given herself a year to do whatever she wanted, just to feel like herself again.  I've been attempting this in bits and pieces with some success, so I thought I might as well see if I felt any better in a year too. 

There is no ambition for anything big. Just to develop personal peace and cultivate relationships with strong, problem-solving people who love me and are happy for me to be strong and problem-solving too.  I want to do all the quietly nerdy things I love without having to answer to anyone or worry about being a rock.  

And I've told myself that if at the end of this journey, a romantic relationship has no place in my life, then so be it.  Mel's right.  Who cares? 

Starting today, I am learning to let go of the hopes I had with all the co-dependent people and rebuild hope for myself, partner or no.  

Three hundred and sixty five days is a long time.  I hope I can make it work.

Merry, and bright

 

Christmas came early for me this year.  My middle brother, HS, is back in town from Melbourne, my other brother, HW, is home from the army and yesterday the whole family came to pick me up for dinner.  I slid into the car after work, exhausted and a little shaken, and HS handed me a little box.  "What's this, hmm?" he teased.

They'd bought me a new prime lens for my camera.

I'd been feeling very down the last few days and it showed.  To cheer me up, HS decided to get me the relatively inexpensive, but wonderful little Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens.  I was moved by their generosity and the fact that amid all the hustle and bustle, they had noticed.  After we got home, I put it on and started trying it immediately.

As mentioned in the last post, I'm far from a photography aficionado so I'm still dealing with all kinds of weird lighting, focus and composing issues, but I'm so caught up in the joy of all the new things I'm learning that I don't care. The new lens is great at letting in tons of light and of course, all the colour quality of Canon.
 
I just go round snapping anything I can get my hands on from the warm Christmas lights at work (check out the little bokeh in the corner!  I'm thrilled!) and my bedtime reading, to my beautiful friend Amanda while we marked work at Starbucks.     

At present, my biggest issue is learning how to really sharpen the parts of the image that I want and make sure that the pictures are clear.  Right now, practising with focus points, handshake and my astigmatism are contributing to erratic results.  I'm also learning a little more about metering as I go.

I'm just going to continue experimenting and enjoy the mistakes and the successes, and hopefully my photography will improve a little on the way.

I bought these incredible highlighters called Mildliners yesterday for $1.95 each at Popular.  For someone who has to stare at students' neon stripes and scribblings every day, these are such a pretty relief!

And finally, this last picture isn't from the prime lens.  It's from the 18mm - 50mm kit lens, but I think it's a fully justified addition, don't you?

Winning Big

So I totally finished Nanowrimo on time.  At about one in the afternoon on the last day of November in fact, after having lunch with my family and with three hundred words to go.  I ended it while my parents were watching the making of Downton Abbey, and with very little fanfare.  And I thought - ain't no thing.

Yes, it was difficult.  I slept at two or three every morning, with work the next day and two extra projects weighing on my head.  I actually kept my word count up on holidays even if I was nodding over the keyboard in a hotel room.  I had loads of writer's block.  Loads.  I swear that at least half the story is incoherent.  But it was easier than I thought soldiering on, not turning back.  Sometimes you just need to do something to know it can be done.  I feel now like I need to put my 50,000 American Typewriter font words in a drawer for a little while and work on what I've been hungering for this whole time - short stories.  Knowing that I can write the equivalent of a short story in two days now is a powerful tool.  It doesn't need to be good to start with.  It just needs to be there.

I haven't won Nanowrimo officially or anything.  I didn't even sign up on the website because I was so doubtful of my ability to commit (turns out it exists).  There is no one now to certify that it wasn't just all gibberish or the same word repeated umpteen times.  It's cool.  I know I did it.  (And my parents, who were subjected to reading scraps and pieces).

Lots of my friends finished too, and I'm very proud of them!  It was a great refresher course.  From here on out, the writing can start again, work or no.

So, I did what you do when you finish a project.  My brother HS and I went out, and I did some serious damage.  I bought Big.

I have been wanting a DSLR camera for a long time.  At least four years to be specific.  But I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to get the fanciest tools to motivate myself to learn something at the start.  It embarrasses me and makes me feel spoiled.  I didn't want to be one of those kids toting a huge gadget and only being able to shoot in automatic.  Instead, I waffled for several months about getting a camera with manual settings and settled for a Canon G11 back in 2009.

I'm not a photography fanatic.  I wouldn't even say I'm good at it.  I don't think my photos are fantastically composed or coloured, but I'm not fussed.  I just enjoy documenting the things I see and live and I thought it would be nice if I could take better pictures than the flat, unfocused ones on the teensy Panasonic Lumix my father had bought.

I went to Barcelona with that camera, for example, and I couldn't even get the sky to look blue.  So I blew $800 on a Canon G11 with manual controls.  One of the best investments I've ever made.  I taught myself to shoot in manual and learned about the holy trifecta of shutter speed, aperture and ISO.  (I'm still slightly clueless, but I tried to get the basics down.)  I read up on contrast and the ever elusive depth-of-field and different types of lenses.  I spoke with all the professional news photographers I used to work with and some of them even let me play around with their massive Nikon D3s.

There was no way I was going to buy a camera to put it in a friggin' drawer.  I took pictures of my surroundings at least three times a week, if not every day.

That G11 followed me everywhere.  London, Warwick, Oxford, Dublin, Paris, Wales, Thailand, The United States.  It went on boats and planes and trains and in hostels and hotels and on airport floors and out in the freezing cold and rain and snow.  I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures of my friends and myself and food and the English countryside and documented everything I did so that I could email pictures to my parents.  A couple of the pictures even got published in the newspaper when I was working as a journalist.  And finally, finally I felt like I had earned the right to carry a DSLR, so Big came home to meet Little.

The Canon 600D (or as it's known in Europe, the Rebel T3i, which I prefer) cost me less than $1,000 from, don't laugh, Mustafa.  And it came with a tripod and bag.  And a whole lot more to learn.  Once again, as with anything new, I'm out of my depth.  I have to learn even more about light and focusing and controlling my depth of field.  I have to figure out how to best use lenses, how to shoot around the weight of the new guy and how to make the most of the equipment I can afford.  I'm not getting rid of Little, of course.  He'll follow me on holidays and to music festivals and when I just don't think I can manage carrying a massive bag.

Sure, I'm not an expert, nor do I think I'll ever be.  I'm just one step closer to documenting life the way I think I see it.  And that really excites me.  When the man at Mustafa's Canon counter, Raja, was ringing up my purchase, he said, "Make sure you use your camera okay?"

"Of course, Uncle.  Why would I pay so much for something not to use it?"

A little sadly, "I know a lot of customers like that.  They take it out one, two times, and say it's too heavy.  Then they stop.  Three months later they take out and try to shoot.  Got fungus already."

I shook my head.  "I promise not to do that, Uncle.  I'll be back to see you soon."

And do you know, with all I've learned, and all there is to learn, I probably will be.