Weekend Reading List

Yesterday it rained: I put on my old Nike shoes, because I hate hate hate the feeling of wet toes (germs and wriggling micro bugs thrive in rain water rushing of roofs onto pavements onto streets, right?), opened my checkered Burberry umbrella and walked to the library as planned. Don't get me wrong, I love a tropical rainstorm. The greyness, the clean, oyster coloured light that gives the burnt colours of the shophouses along my street the clarity of a glossy photograph. And I love the smell of the rain, both loamy and fresh, a smell like no other. And it got cool, so walking fast felt natural, and freeing; It felt like I was having a free day in Paris in the middle of fashion week.The rainstorm inspired me to look at Joseph Conrad's (top) collection The Eastern Stories, including The End of the Tether and The Lagoon. The introduction is written by Ban Kah Choon, who thought me English when I was in school. Dr Ban's jeans were always slipping down his back. And that was before rappers made bum cleavage de rigueur. One shelve below, I picked another book by Conrad, Victory. I had just read somewhere that Joan Didion read this book every year. It's set in Malaysia, in the year 1915.I wanted to read a Shakspeare for the end of the year, and I picked up King Lear, (again because) I read somewhere that Ernest Hemingway (above) read this tragedy annually. I would otherwise have picked Twelve Night - more bawdy and Christmas-sy, and anyway I prefer comedies.
My friend O met me at 5 o'clock sharp at my favourite McCafe, a block down from the library. He recalled that X often took him here on dates, when they were still dating, a long time ago. Now X is a body builder, and lives in New York. The rain had turned to a drizzle, but it wasn't quite dark yet, neither day nor dinner time, and so we drank iced Milo and O showed me pictures of his Mom on her birthday. And I told O that BG used to feed chickens from a red plastic pail, round about this time (dusk), when he was growing up in a farm in Chua Chu Kang. BG's chickens would flock to him when he called them "Beeek... Beeek..." and he would lead them into their wired coop, and lock them safely in for the night. And that when I was working in Bukit Merah, we would be walking to lunch and chickens would be scrabbling under the huge Casuarina trees that lined the road, for worms and such. I wonder if the chickens are still there - I haven't seen them in almost a year.After the rain stopped, O and I went next door to Bras Basah Complex and we looked at books and magazines and I bought the new Self Service, which had such a nice (Jurgen Teller) story on Kate Moss, and some Bruce Weber pictures of a model O said was called Rob Evans wearing Philip Treacy's hats. O knew such things.I settled in for the night. And just as the rest of Singapore was putting on their dancing shoes, and my friend B was getting safty pinned into a Marie Antoinette dress for a house warming costume party in Johor Bahru, climbed into bed, as safe as one of BG's chickens, and drifted off reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Artist of the Floating World. The rain had stopped.

Weekend Reading List

My friend HHH gave me a copy of Electric Youth, my first, somewhere between drinking a large carrot and orange juice in the basement of the Paragon, and drinking a large Mosburger iced tea in the basement of Takashimaya. In between we looked at Bally shoes and Zegna sunglasses, Lego bricks and wooden picture frames, a gold Cartier pendant in the shape of a screw ("It's a pendant for a top!" I said) and a Bulgari gold chain that's just the right length. It's my first Electric Youth, a large-format collectible, as it is one of 1,000 copies, and comes with a medium sized swim trunk in navy blue printed over with tiny silver stars. This latter I've stowed away in the drawer where I keep my briefs and shorts, still in its plastic bag. The magazine I cracked open that night and greedily skimmed through. This occasional, limited publication by American Apparel, part Tiger Beat, part Bel Ami, is an interesting concept on first encounter, but I quite quickly wearied of it, and before I turned the last page, was bored.Part of HHH's routine of an afternoon is a stroll through Kinokuniya , alighting with feathery quickness on this and that magazine, dipping into the fresh glossy pages, very much like those sparrows downstairs flitting and dipping and pecking on this and that all along the shop houses of Chander Road. This afternoon, after a protracted chat with a young lady at the magazines section, about essentially nothing really, he led us to the fashion books section, where we stood a long time looking at every page of the new Jurgen Teller book; I felt like a horse standing in its stable. This is where I bought David Downton's Masters of Fashion Illustration which is simply a must have, and Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (with illustrations by Karl Lagerfeld), which appears to be a transcript of a long conversation with Mademoiselle herself. It's fascinating of course, she does say so many eccentric things.MC gave me a book (we had dim sum at The Cathay overlooking Handy Road) because he said that the title reminded him of me - Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What can he mean? In it, he wrote: "Stay every bit as silly, unpredictable and wonderful as you've always been. Love, M".
Silly? Yes, undoubtedly. Unpredictable? Surely not. I'm one of the most predictable people ever.

Garden City

Inspiring: Ng Cheow Kheng's HDB flat in Bishan has a patio garden. A gardening enthusiast, his flat is one of the rare 52 units in Singapore that has this special, open area. He's filled it with orchids, bird’s nest fern, tall-growing ornamental, palm and fruit trees, rose bushes, bamboo and an interesting bauhinia vine. A dwarf banana plant produces fruits. Mr Ng’s pride and joy is his six-year-old chiku tree grown in a large pot that never fails to have fruits. These fruits attract fruit bats (this would horrify me) despite the precarious location on the 23rd storey. Mr Ng is a member of Community in Bloom, NParks.

Sandcastle

I like it. R really, really likes it.
Sandcastle, directed by Boo Junfeng in his debut feature-length film, is a coming-of-age movie about a Singapore boy, En, age 18. That just about sums it up. But. It's alot more as well, thoughtful, felt and immediately engaging. The reviews so far emphasize the political commentary that is brought in by En’s discovery that his dead father was an activist in Singapore in the 1960s, but thankfully, this does not define the movie. What moved me was the movie's simple telling of En's getting to know his family, the nature of family bonds, the passage of life. Joshua Tan, the lead actor, really carried the movie in a mature, understated performance. En's relationship with his Chinese neighbour was the weakest link, and felt perfunctory and unconvinced. The art direction wasn't overwhelming, and didn't make Singapore either overly exotic nor pretty, but dignified and realistic. It feels fresh. It looks fresh. For this I'm grateful.

Oh, and the dragonflies. I think that the dragonflies completely lifted the movie into importance.
There are now two new talents to watch and this is exciting.

A Pair of Sunbirds

A pair of olive-backed sunbirds have decided to build a nest in the longkong tree on my balcony. They have been busily flying in and out for a week or so, with industry that is inspiring. Initially, I noticed that the floor around the longkong tree (well, a sapling in a blue glazed Vietnamese urn) was littered with bits of dirt and I thought it was from the overflow of my mother's vealous watering. I just swept it up. But it persisted: And day after day, got more untidy. And then I looked up and there in the top-most branches, almost hidden by the large leaves was what looked like a loop of furry, mud-speckled, bark-encrusted string. It's not pretty, and looked nothing like what you'd think a nest looks like.

But mother and I grew fond of the birds, and thrilled at the prospects of having the eggs and the baby birds in the coming month. We get worried when the winds blow the branches violently in the afternoons, lest the nest tumble down. I try not to get in the birds' way when I'm putting out or taking in the laundry. When I'm in sight, the birds make a U-turn in mid-air, 12 stories up, and hover at a distance, or swoop about, untill I go in, or out.

Every morning, over coffee, mother and I would talk about our sunbirds, and the progress of the nest-building; It has more shape now, like a straggly gourd, or a pouch with a clear opening in the belly for the mother bird to lay her eggs in.Mother left some coloured yarn out on the balcony railing and hung some on the branches "So that they won't need to fly so far to pick up those string and things".

So far, the birds have not picked the yarn out, only the breeze.

I've grown very fond of the rustling the birds make in the longkong, and I miss the sharp twitter and squeaks they make when at sunset, the sunbirds leave off nest-making and go and take their much-needed rest somewhere (I wonder where?).

I can't wait to see their blue-green eggs, and I can't wait to see the little ones appear and start to sing, and the drama of the feeding of the babies (will there be more to clean up after?).

I would be so sad when they leave!

Keeping and Chucking

Strangely invigorated after more than an hour of being pulled, thumped, pinched, ground, elbowed and beaten beaten to a pulp by a 23 year old Shenyang boy at my local Wan Yang (maybe he transferred all his angry energy to me?), I decided to start a spring clean exercise, one closet at a time. First, the lower left, two-shelf commode where I store my modest CD collection (yes, whoever heard of CDs anymore? I haven't played one since... six months ago?). Let's see what lurks there shall we?
1. Greasy almost full bottle of Clarins Eau Dynamisante Huile Satinee Body Oil. Missing cap. Oh, so this is where you've been hiding. And I thought BG had stolen it. What is it doing in my CD closet? (Shampoo and store in shoe closet, can mist over legs when I wear sandals.)
2. Nokia phone warranty booklet and instruction manual (Chuck. I haven't used the phone since 2006)
3. Ipod earphone sponge covers, not in a pair. One in black, one in orange. (Chuck. Both disintegrate when I tried to get it out of tiny plastic pocket.)
4. Nicholas Tse VCD (Chuck. Have not watched it ever; Lay Leng gave it to me in 2001.)
5. Two Breakfast at Tiffany's DVDs. Why do I have two? Mysteries never cease chez moi. (Keep one, give one to Blake, so he can give to horrid actress girlfriend.)
6. Audio book of Jane Austen's Persuasion (read by Geraldine McEwan). I bought this hurriedly from Borders ages ago, by mistake: I thought it said read by Ewan McGregor. (Give to Jacq)
7. 1999 verte Tiffany & Co calfskin diary, contains many gems. Sample: "Coconut Lagoon for curry lunch (what else?). Wonderful feeling of being amongst nice people. Boys playing football in a inner courtyard. Think saw Maggie Cheung in villa. Think architecture has something to do with it." I went to Kerala that year. (Can't possibly chuck this!)
8. Formula 17 VCD. (Chuck!)
9. Keeping Mum DVD: It's got my faves Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas - how can two such brilliant women end up in this slack movie? (Chuck!)
10. Tony Bennett CD The Art of Romance. (Chuck - someone must have given it to me - don't believe I've even ever played it. Do not like Tony Bennett.)
11. Can of OFF! half empty. (Chuck. Smells disgusting.)
12. Classical CD Poeme. (Can give to P)
13. Mad post-massage rubbish buy - Oriental Wisdom from the Mandarin Oriental Spa, 12 track CD. (Give to P)
14. Gwen Stefani CD Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Must have bought it in fit of trying to be hip and young. Never played. Disgusting waste of money, very unhip. (Give to B)
15. 'Lost' DVDs: Penelope and Innocence. (Watch when free, then recycle)
16. One Duchy Originals teabag (chamomile) in a CD book. (Use immediately)
There. Much better...

My Space

Every morning the birds start to twitter around the same time the mosque calls mournfully out to the faithful. And then the Sikh temple right downstairs start to clang its bells. I walk down the short street, my street called Chander Road, that turns out onto Race Course Road. I flag down a cab right outside an Indian Restaurant called Spice Queen, which is screened by a row of mango trees. There's always that one pigeon on the lampost. It's so cute.