regarding my chinese roots

i am struggling to unearth them, or to keep them from vanishing into linguistic quicksand.



while visiting a friend's blog 2 minutes ago, this ad appeared on my screen. imagine the panic when i encountered chinese paid ADVERTISEMENTS on a webpage! said ad affirms my country's [taiwan, currently] eligibility in some lucky draw for some green card, enabling emigration to the US. this whole IP thing is quite freaky, really. now even an unknown server knows where i am!

the thing about being in taiwan, is, that i am being forced to equate the chinese characters i see with some kind of meaning. and even if, for the life of me, i can't quite decipher about 65% of the words, it is important to skim through until the recognition of a few characters begins to allow my mind to form a connection between the visual and mental. this happens v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y. yeah, total immersion in a partly foreign culture does that to you.

plus, when polite conversation requires even the most basic knowledge of the language, i find myself hardpressed to fish appropriate words from my [very] limited vocabulary. what a tedious yet effective way to learn a language!

but i'm throughly loving the buy-cheap-stuff culture, and fast embracing the instant gratification i get via long business hours and a great number of shops offering an equally great variety of goods. choice. that's what i have. back in melbs, the flatmate and i would feel slightly conscious of the fact that, past 9pm, most of the shoppers at QV's Safeway are asian.

perhaps we prefer the 'outside' of the city to the 'inside' of our homes. perhaps we've grown up in relatively small abodes, and yearn for the entertainment that the 'outside' provides. perhaps we don't know how to deal with too much time spent on our own at home, or with the family or friends. whatever the rationale behind this odd phenomenon, i am strangely proud to claim that asians in cities don't sleep much.

who would've thunk?!

well well well. those aren't short legs. they belong to me and my momma... and guess which 2 happy campers got upgraded to SQ's business class on our flight to taipei? heh. heh heh heh. sure made my day.

christmas day is just another day over here - there's no public holiday nor fanfare involved. just yuletide-related songs piping from every store i pass, and loads of hedonistic consumerism (heck. any reason will do, eh?) and the characteristic cold of the northern hemisphere as is fitting for this time of the year.

who doesn't like to spend a cold christmas all wrapped up, hey? have a blessed one, and many warm fuzzy feelings to all.

that getting-old feeling

overheard at mustafa's, over at the stationery section:
A: 喂，你以前有没有放 glue 在你的手上，然后等它干了才慢慢 peel off？
B: 有！很好玩 hor？

i was in two minds as to how to react to this snippet of dialogue: whether to grieve over most Singaporeans' (myself included) ineptitude in both languages, or to reminisce a full 5 seconds about my odd affinity for smearing craft-glue over my palm and peeling it off after it dried.

that was one of my favourite doing-nothing activities between the ages of 7-8.

by simultaneously loving and hating this feeling, i am reluctantly admitting (and reinforcing) my helplessness. i hate it when i'm powerless to change the course of an event which, on hindsight, i'd have no real clue to which i would've liked better.

small world, small land, small mind

after being back in sunny-rainy-humid singas for more than 3 weeks now, i am beginning to tire of it. sadly, it must be admitted that singaporeans have nothing better to do. for lack of a better description, the reason for shopping and eating to become the national pastime has dawned on me.

as a land-scarce island, we lack the option of taking a drive, of getting away from the [madding] crowds. i once watched a show put up by 2nd-year theatre students about stereotypes. one of them being "asians like to live in small spaces". tough though it is to debunk this, i'd certainly not find any reason to, as i dodge members of an errant crowd on orchard road. the 10pm crowd is as viscious (and viscuous) as the 6pm one.

that the giant christmas ornaments lend a rather contrived atmosphere bothers me to some extent. i can't remember feeling this way in earlier years. even my jam-phobic dad (who'd go to any extent to avoid traffic jams) used to willingly get stuck in the orchard-road jam in order that we could admire the lights from the air-conditioned interior of our car. adding to more pollution than if we had been outside jostling with the crowd, i know. but still.

in order to promote a robust economy made up chiefly of year-end spending, shopping centres - even those in the heartlands have lent their horses to the bandwagon of parting more-than-willing customers with their cash. junction8 has become a veritable strawberry-shortcake wonderland, with a stage set up for competitions, lucky draws, road shows and various other forms of marketing gimmicks. it has become a labyrinth i would have loved to lose my 8-yr-old self in. still, i suppose there has to be something left by way of "childhood joys" for the kids of the present generation.

the crowds on the streets and in the characterless malls take on a sinister appearance once i realise they have nothing else to do with their free time, save more shopping and window-shopping and hanging out where "the lights are much brighter, listening to the music of the traffic in the city, lingering on the sidewalks where they neon signs are pretty..." petula clark sure knew what she was singing about, downtown.