Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

of handwritten letters

snailmail.
it's been on my mind for no small while now.

when i was a wee lass, 'round 7 or 8 years old, it was jokes and hand-drawn pictures and some puzzles i'd mail to my parents. on awkward kiddy handwriting, i'd scratch my own address on brown envelopes, lick and stick the stamp (a bee on a yellow-green background!) and send it back to my own house.

of late, the thoughts of a close secondary school friend, J, bob close to the surface of my mind. we used to write epics to each other every few days. and they were handwritten(!) on anything from cheapo li'l bobdog letterpaper, to more luxurious cute sanrio notepaper, or when we couldn't be bothered, on school foolscap paper. it was weird in a way, where we would have a mandatory word-count at the end of each letter. the longer, the better, of course. sometimes it would go up to over 1000 (omigosh! that's an essay worthy of year 1 at most universities!) while most times it would hover between 500-800 words. and many times, (or should i say, as a result), the letters were filled with a barrage of mundane information we'd otherwise have found out while chatting after school anyway: test scores, secret crushes, gossip about various teachers and friends, etc. the usual. it's funny how 2 girls, who'd be talking anyway, have so much to write to each other about.

secondary school life was awkward and disorientating enough, and it was a blessing to have a friend to write to, or to confide in. we'd go shopping together, or hang out at mcdonald's, or discuss how best to polish our boots, or discuss the cute guys in teenage magazine (hahahah!). i'd go over to her place often, since it was just opposite our school. her mom was a tuition teacher and her 2 older brothers were smart and cute and friendly. and her dog was a hyperactive white fluffy thing that liked nothing better than to hump the legs of any passing person. there was something about girls' schools and how they tend to churn out rather generic handwriting styles. because i've kept a box of old cards and letters from bygone years... remnants from church camps, gb camps, school camps and everyday life - and they tend to look similarly decorated!

it's sad, because i can't really recall if we kept in contact during our days in different junior colleges. but i remember we went for the jars of clay concert at the harbour pavillion sometime in '98. that was the weird in-between time of odd jobs and slacking, after a-levels and before the dreaded day for the release of results. wish i had her contact details now.

anyways. the last i knew of J was that she'd read law at university. and i even googled her, and found some bogus webpage of some law firm. but she wasn't there. and for some reason, i'd made a conscious effort to turn down her invitation to her 21st birthday party, just so i could avoid awkward silences when i met other long-time-no-see friends. that was stupid, but typical behaviour from me.

now that i'm stuck in melbs, the incidence of me hand-writing snailmail and sending them off to friends is much higher. though it has been part of past years' resolutions, it never really took off until last year. sms, emails, IM are for people who actually keep in touch regularly enough to see each other for frequent-to-occasional meals. but snailmail's the stuff of long ago, for people who matter.

Monday, March 13, 2006

clogs, tissue sellers, street vendors and the ventriloquist

Image hosting by Photobucket

i know that, recently, the blogging community at large (back home) has been milking SingaporeGaGa dry (but not quite yet), and i'm dying to watch this for myself once it gets to melbourne. this nearly unbearable itch is due partly to the fact that it hinges strongly on my research topic, namely, curiosity on the [familiar] streets.

have already strongly recommended it to my cool and not to mention uber-techie mom, and i've told her to bring her friends too! so. to whoever reading this, WATCH IT! WATCH IT! WATCH IT! and yeah, i see that SingaporeGaGa has no lack of fans, from Lianhe Zaobao, to Today, to several blogs-from-the-horses'-mouths. so i'm not too worried about them not being able to cover costs. yay!

i remember my dad setting the timer to start taping that radio show (is it called happy hour? i forget.) with victor khoo and charlee on saturday mornings. my best friend even called in once with her riddle, and won herself a fanta hamper! you bet i was green-eyed. heh.

and there's a mad scramble to retrieve margaret leng tan's The Art of the Toy Piano CD from my audio pile. bought it a few years back when she had a concert in singas, but was too shy to ask her to sign it back then. it was my birthday, too. regrets, but life goes on. there is an odd desire to listen to the strangely surreal strains of a miniature version of the upright piano i've grown up on. guess that's what bachelard means when he talks about one's continuing journey back to their 'first home', eh? more recently, a friend bought me a toy piano from one of those lovely old toy shops in chinatown. but i fear once i touch it, its magic will somehow be lifted and broken.

when i last went back to humid ol' singas, i set about with my totally novice get-up (nope, guess who did not inherit the techie-gene?) of muVo mp3 recorder and videocam, and tried to document the street sounds and scenes for my own research. of course, the result was intended to be scratchy - why else would a financially-dependent student not do the documentation in a more professional manner?! for once, without my headphones stuck in my ears, i walked the streets of home, and i listened. but this film's done it all. and won my heart.

and i heartily cannot wait to see it. and own it.

the singaporean vernacular is ever-present (even from the clips) and i can already hear the soundscape of home.

being away from home sure makes this international student prouder of where she came from.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

the other f word

bloody hell.
it's the 'Flu.

it sucks.

Monday, March 06, 2006

moving on

just changed the time-settings on my lappie to reflect melb's time zone. it's taken a full month after singas to ride out the jet lag. for about a month i've glanced at the top right-hand corner and had to add 3 hours to the time it registered - just so i could pretend i was back home.

thinking about my recent trip back, i realise i've met up with most of the friends i'd intended to meet - some unexpected, and merely chanced upon, and, to my chagrin, i've forgotten to contact some friends i'd wanted to meet. it felt good to be back, surrounded in a humid cloud of the familiar.

and i've reinforced my odd trauma-attack brought about by phone conversations. maybe it's a late onset of mild, conversation-related autism. i just don't handle the whole 'instantaneous reaction' thing very well (not that face-to-face conversation was ever a cinch). the unease of not being able to tell the other party's expression and predict the response does not sit well with someone whose thinking-on-the-spot skills are well below socially accepted standards. it amazes me, sometimes, when i think of how friends doing marketing/business are so quick on the uptake. uh-uh. not happening here... i need lecture notes and tutorials just to comprehend stuff sometimes.

it's most comfortable to be hiding behind an alternate persona, and allowing a bit of reality to peek through at my discretion once in a while. IMs, emails and snailmail are the way to go. no pressure for an immediate response, and lots of time to doctor my reaction.

anyways. downloaded these pretty nifty photoshop CS brushes off jason today. via dooce, whose site i visit semi-religiously. adobe's good. keeps me distracted from my readings, yet requires none of the stress of having to predict responses. just click, apply, scrutinise, undo, and redo. no mess. no trauma. QED*. (this appeared frequently at the end of math problem solutions. in those damnable ten-year-series compilations of exam questions just about every student in junior college were pressured to indulge in. and. i. hated. it.)

*QED - quite easily derived/done, i think. unless my friends in JC were pulling a fast one on me - a fast one that has lasted a decade now.

eep. am on the fast track to becoming an otaku.