Dreams of a 22-Year-Old Nothing

Maybe I could star in Channel 8's 30th Anniversary Blockbuster if my acting career started now- or I could just continue Peter Birks' quest to make Restitution on the grounds of reversal of unjust enrichment as quintessential to the common law as the tort of negligence, right here in Singapore.

He's passed away, and a Google image search produced no photographs of him, only of his books. Just you wait - the third edition of the above book, incorporating his theory of absence of basis, will bear my name as editor.

Drawing Parallels

Last night, I tried unsuccessfully to convince Yalan that Channel 8's 25th Anniversary Gala 9 o'clock serial, The Little Nyonya, was sort of like Ian McEwan's Atonement.

I don't exactly appreciate all the misery characters in novels and films and cheesy local Chinese shows have to go through, but I continue watching or reading faithfully to the end (no flipping there directly for me!) because I like to see the Vindication of the Good People. No matter that there are pages of prose describing seemingly endless suffering to plough through, or that I have to sit through episodes and episodes of oppression and the Unfairness of It All. It's just Thoroughly and Extremely Satisfying when the Good Pretty Girl marries the Handsome, Kind and Generous Man and the Wicked Horrible People get their just desserts, usually by dying Horrible Deaths.

Just as you expected from the very beginning.

What a lot of capitalised words there were in that last paragraph!

But, judging by Atonement itself, some fairly recent Korean dramas (Stairway to Heaven, for instance) and the 9 o'clock show before last, Crimebusters x 2 (who comes up with these names?!), The Little Nyonya might well throw up some surprises and end with tragedy instead of a nice wedding and a Many Years Later epilogue in the last five minutes of the last episode.

Please, Channel 8, don't do that to me. Baz Luhrman changed the ending of Australia so Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman's characters could end up together. If there isn't a happy ending for Juxiang, you still have time to do something about it, although (the Very Pretty) Jeanette Aw is only Slightly Less Annoying and Simper-y as the titular character in the show.

It's your 25th Anniversay Gala Blockbuster Serial, after all. Do stick with a Predictable and Formulaic Plot. I can already see Cynthia Koh's character having an affair with her sister's husband, and I am eagerly awaiting the utterance of what must be the Most Famous Chinese Serial Line in all of your history:

爱情是不能勉强的, love cannot be forced.

On that note, Channel 8, I have to say that you've done a great job so far - it was very clever of you to decide to centre the story on the Babas. It has given you free rein to bring in all generations of MediaCorp actors and actresses to play random family members and friends.

A pity, though, that I might not be in Singapore for the last episode or the bulk of the show. But I'm sure there are ways for me to catch up on it.

***
I wish Jon would come to school. I want to buy a curry puff for a snack but I don't feel like going downstairs again, especially since I just bought a cup of tea and somehow it seems rather greedy to go down again for a curry puff.

Mid-Week Melancholy
Well, technically it's not the middle of the week anymore because it's Thursday almost-evening, but I had these melancholy thoughts yesterday, which was Wednesday, the real middle of the week.

Blame it on Jon. It was past ten at night and we were in one of the classrooms when he suddenly told me and Justin about a question his friend had been asked during a job interview.

You come to a crossroads; one fork leads to a village of normal people, the other to a village of cannibals. The cannibals always tell the truth and the normal people always lie. There's a man at the crossroads, and you don't know if he's a cannibal or a normal person. You can only ask him one question. What would that question be?

He couldn't remember the answer, so I googled it, and I got links to all sorts of horrible websites. But the most horrible one must have been the one I decided to look at because it looked interesting, which of course turned out to be a mistake. I didn't hang around the website long enough to see what it was really about, but from what I could gather people had been trying to shut it down with lawsuits and the like, and from what I could see the contributors to the website appeared to support white supremacy and race supremacy and all that sort of nonsense - in the name of God.

It made me feel sad, and when I went home I read the newspapers and felt even sadder.

It's true, what the Bible says - how the Israelites turned away from God, how the Jews didn't recognise Jesus as their true saviour. How it speaks of people building their own altars, creating their own gods, turning to iniquity. We often blame God, asking why He would allow pain and suffering and Pure Evil, oftentimes using that as justification for not believing in Him. But what we fail to realise is that many times we are the ones who have chosen evil, and our hearts gradually become hardened and steeled against what is good and right. Crowley in Good Omens was right; people say things like The devil put me up to it, but they actually think up things to do to each other quite independently of any other supernatural being which might exist.

It's not even about hate crimes, or torturing babies. Some weeks ago we were watching I Survived a Japanese Game Show, and to fight elimination, Donnell and Mary had to "become" chickens - wear a chicken head piece, roll around in oil and feathers, and burst huge balloons shaped like eggs by sitting on them, whereupon a yellow liquid would spurt out.

The Japanese in the audience were laughing away, but I didn't really find it that amusing - and my mother said, This is so demeaning and stupid. I'm not going to watch anymore. The Japanese are really sadistic.

And I realised that she was right. What's more, God never created human beings for this sort of nonsense. He created us in His image, full of dignity and grace, but we've rejected that image of Him for something cheap and worthless, all in the name of fun, entertainment, money. Things which aren't wrong in and of themselves, but sometimes you wonder at just how far people are willing to go.

Oh dear, I am becoming such a prude, and this sounds like an Annoying GP Essay.

But you know, there really is a lot of pain and suffering in the world, and the least we can do is enjoy and appreciate our health, safety, peace and sanity, instead of doing what is clearly utterly ridiculous and unnecessary, for an end I think only God knows we are trying to achieve. Although I think what we might be trying to achieve is, really, life without Him.

The answer to the question, to save you from having to google it, and not getting the answer but links to strange websites, is Which way to your village? If he's a normal person, he'll point the way to the cannibals' village. If he's a cannibal, he'll also point the way to the cannibals' village.

Of Exams
One of the library staff members looks like my mum. She has the same kind of thick black hair, cut in a fringe, and is always decently dressed. By that I mean that she never dresses up, but she looks presentable. Jeans, a polo shirt maybe. A kind face, black eyes.

This morning she and another staff member were decorating the notice-board at the library foyer, for Christmas. They decorate it for all the major festivals, Hari Raya they had ketupat shapes in shiny green and yellow ribbon; Deepavali saw flames cut out of construction paper.

Right at the turnstiles where you have to tap your matriculation card to enter the library, there's a yellow and red sign which reads: CAUTION! You are entering a quiet work zone. Students studying for exams.

Every night, 15 minutes before the library closes, one of the librarians will announce this fact and that they're going to turn off the lights in 5 minutes. Recently they've added, the library staff wish all students all the best in their exams. Really Annoying muzak will then begin playing, I can hum it. There's this part with awful, fake trumpet sounds which I absolutely loved to try and annoy Jon with by attempting - and failing - to replicate it, very loudly, on our late night walks down Bukit Timah Campus Mountain.

Last Thursday when I came out of the school showers, and one of the librarians was there. She was going to meet her friend and they were going to the gym together. Probably one of those ladies ones, where middle-aged women go to escape their lazy husbands and housework.

It must be nice to be a librarian.

The Best is Yet to Be

As much as I want so badly to accept the other side of the story, including Mrs. Chan's implicit approval of Mr. Lynn not scolding the girls for the ragging there and then, there is just something so inherently mean and vindictive about what they did to that girl that continues to disturb me. Throwing a little food around is okay, especially on birthdays, just so long as you don't expect someone else to clean up after you. I've done it, we've done it. Our kids will probably do it. But tying somebody up, actually man-handling her in the process and then throwing food at her while she was defenceless crossed the line.

This shattered the last vestiges of school pride I had. I'm thoroughly ashamed to say I'm from ACJC now. Already I tried to dismiss the rich brat, party school stereotyping - I did have a good time in JC, and I learnt some of life's best lessons there.

So much for the best is yet to be, and Christian values. It's terribly disappointing.

I want to know why so little was said and done about it. Or why my brother, when I told him about it, said it's just a birthday prank, then pointed to the fact that Mr. Lynn was there. As if that made everything okay.

Furthermore, Singapore's entering a recession. Shouldn't they have at least thought about not wasting food?

Sometimes I think AC/MG kids are proud of the stereotyping they receive. I know I was, to some extent. But I know now that it's really not in the least cool, especially when you can't speak your mother tongue to save your life.

I just hope they all grow up and learn to have some sense of responsibility eventually.

How anyone could have ever thought that that would be a "fun" birthday prank is beyond me.

Happy Families
I played that game with my neighbours in primary school; I'm sure you did too. Garish, highly coloured cartoon drawings of people, printed on cheap cardboard. The pack of cards we played with came in a 4-in-1 special, with packs for Donkey, Old Maid and Snap too. I used to dread Donkey and Old Maid, no child likes to be called either, even if you were lucky and the jeers only lasted for one round and the misfortune befell someone else. But woe betide if you ended up the Donkey or Old Maid for consecutive rounds, or worse still, the very last round before it was time to go home for dinner.

Snap was also painful - literally.

Happy Families, on the other hand, was much safer. Is Mr. Baker home? The sons and daughters in each family had alliterative names: Bobby Baker, Percy Plod.

***
Sundays leave a strange taste in my mouth, not least because it's the only day of the week where there doesn't seem to be much else to do after going to church and visiting my maternal grandparents, which means I can take an afternoon nap. My mouth always tastes a bit funny when I wake up, a taste reminiscent of lunch gone by.

It's also probably the only day of the week that I interact with my family for almost the entire day, given said activities. We even participate in the taking of the afternoon nap together when we get home, albeit in different parts of the house.

When I was 11 - it might have been 12 - and starting to think less about boys as slugs but as members of the opposite sex, I greatly desired one of those large, traditional families which seemed de riguer if you were attending a Methodist school. Or amongst my friends, anyway. Having cousins, especially male ones who attended ACS seemed like a big deal because it opened up new avenues to get to know boys. Admit it, getting to know boys was so the in thing to do at that age. Well, maybe not. But at some point or another it would have been THE thing to do.

It wasn't just that, though. It was also because these large families always seemed so happy. They would have a grand meet-up on Saturdays, and I vaguely recall thinking that it must have been fun because all the cousins (and their parents) were either from ACS and MGS, and close enough in age to relate to each other. There were maids to take care of food or at least cleaning up, and big houses with family rooms exclusively for watching TV in. In fact, I was so envious of friends with that sort of large, traditional family (large house for family meet-ups included) that I drew up an extensive list of fake relatives in my journal - and by extensive I don't just mean there were many of them. I gave all of them full names, names which I liked, like "Geraldine" and "Andrew". I was particularly fond of "Zhi" for boys' Chinese names, and "Ling" for girls'.

Personally, I hated my name until I grew used to it, because "Chloe" wasn't very popular with my generation and teachers would either pronounce it wrongly or directly call me "Mercy," which of course resulted in a lot of teasing. To top it all off, my Chinese name is "Wei Ming," which sounds like a boys name when you read the hanyu pinyin.

And I still suggested to Jon that we name our daughter 'Carmel.' (It IS biblical!)

I even went so far as to write fake autographs to myself in my autograph book, from fake male cousins - though I don't think they were very convincing, being far too neat for boys' handwriting, even though I did my best to make it look different from mine, and messy.

I still have those lists and that particular autograph book, if you ever want to see them do let me know.

***
My maternal grandparents live in a 3-room flat in Marine Terrace together with my uncle, who's a bachelor. They've lived there ever since they had to move from a shophouse in Little India, and that was where my mother stayed with her four siblings when she wasn't staying in the university hostel. It's a nice place, on the top floor; the front view is of the sea at East Coast Park and there's a nice breeze. There was upgrading too, recently: the lift now stops on every floor, and there's an extra room attached to the kitchen.

The three of them are lovely people, although I used to hate being told by my mother to give my uncle a kiss because his chin was usually covered with prickly hairs. And before life got harder for wai por Sundays in general meant the taste of her chicken rice, Chinese New Year Sundays the taste of her pineapple tarts and tang yuan, and Birthday Sundays the taste of her soy sauce chicken with mian sian and an egg. Always the egg. Dumpling Festival Sundays meant the the taste of her zhong zi, Mooncake Festival Sundays the taste of her mooncakes.

Gong gong (Kong kong?) used to be a school teacher, in a time when teachers were highly respected, and deserving of that respect. He had a stroke when I was 7, and wai por has been taking care of him all these years. They hardly get out of the house nowadays, because his mobility, severely impaired by the stroke in 1993, has been steadily decreasing over the years.

Now he just shuffles about slowly, and he has to be wheeled around in a wheelchair because walking is just too tiring for him, and he takes too long to move about. But pushing the wheelchair is tiring for wai por and she has gout - her joints hurt - so what can they do?

It will be his 78th birthday this Saturday, and we celebrated it last Sunday - all my aunts were there, and most of my cousins. Wai por looked so happy to see that we were all gathered as a family, and for once her hurting joints didn't really matter because it gave her joy to prepare food for us, to see how happy we were to eat her good cooking.

Because it was so crowded and there was so much noise I couldn't take my usual pre-afternoon nap nap, so I simply sat around observing things and people.

There are skeletons in the closet of the familial nature which are too personal to publish in such a public space, but last Sunday I was reminded of how strongly I had used to want a normal extended family of the sort which all my friends seemed to have. Doting aunts, jolly uncles. Grandparents with deep pockets who gave out fat red packets for almost every conceivable occasion, from birthdays to getting PSLE A stars. Per A star. Cousins one could relate to.

Or what I thought was 'normal' for immediate family, even. A father who would pick me up and send me to places instead of telling me that I had legs and walking was cheaper than petrol; a mother who would bring me shopping at 'cool' shops where I could purchase Roxy or Rip Curl items instead of me having just one pair of Giordano jeans for almost all of secondary school; a brother who was older than me instead of younger.

It will soon be time for me to bring Jon to meet my extended family, and I've been feeling ashamed that I am ashamed of some of them and thus ashamed to let him meet them.

I don't think those large, traditional - rich - families are all that happy either. Every family has skeletons in the closet, or don't they?

Come what may, blood will always be thicker than water. I'm older now, and I've come to truly appreciate my upbringing and admit that my parents knew best, but I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to truly appreciate all of my extended family. Visiting gong gong (I remember fretting over its spelling the time he had a stroke and I made a Get-Well Card) and wai por is like entering a whole different world, far from the trees and grass and large houses with one too many cars in their huge porches in my neighbourhood, far from the people I come into contact with daily. English speaking, healthy and able-bodied, well turned out, and as comfortable and content as the middle-class usually is, which sometimes means not very.

Birthday cakes from Awfully Chocolate or a hotel bakery well-known for cake, instead of Bengawan Solo ones topped with jellied fruit, flower-patterned marzipan lining its sides, held together with cream too light in texture to be pure cream. Cake a treat, only to be had on birthdays, always bought by the same aunt who's a cashier at Guardian Pharmacy.

I've come to realise that where gong gong and wai por and all my relatives are, is where the heart of Singapore really is. Not Orchard Road, not the CBD or the Esplanade Waterfront or the upcoming IR (Dear Government, please don't bail Sands out because then you might become partial in regulation of the IR).

And I'm glad of it, glad I'm a part of it.

***
Jon and I went to the National Museum and the Singapore Art Museum last Friday, and just before we went to the latter I said that I really wasn't in the mood for anything too high-brow and artsy fartsy. He assured me that This is Singapore man!.

So, not paying much attention to the list of exhibits at the entrance, we went up the stairs and the first thing we saw was a silver dog with the face of a joker lying on its back on a red cushion in a Venetian gondola. The dog also had a very huge and obvious penis.

My disgust soon turned into amusement as I read the explanation accompanying the work. It was by Vincent Leow (not the cute Evidence tutor, my mum thinks he might be the guy who was caught for cutting his pubic hair in public) and there was some long convoluted explanation about holidays and pets and photographs of the two. Something like that. It was Awfully Pretentious and we had a good laugh when I read it out in a Fake Pretentious Angmoh Accent. Just like the author probably intended.

It was then that we noticed that Ong Kim Seng's Heartlands was showing, explaining the bamboo poles with clothes hanging out of one of the museum's windows. When we turned into the first gallery showing his paintings there was a crowd of people gathered there, some taking notes, all listening to a man dressed in a short-sleeved, light blue shirt stretched a little too tightly over his belly, who looked just like a nice neighbourhood uncle you would smile at in the lift talking about the paintings.

I kept telling Jon that it was Ong Kim Seng himself, but he insisted that if it was everyone there would have been wearing suits and evening dresses. We even had a $2 bet on it, which Jon has already paid up with school canteen cai fan because I was correct.

I liked his paintings very much, much more than the strange silver dog-man. So much for modern art. Or modern all things, for that matter. Modern some things, yes. But not all.

Do You Remember?

This morning, I encountered a group of MGS girls on the bus. They weren't the terribly annoying kind who result in you making all sorts of unfair stereotypical assumptions about kids from 'elite' schools as you get off the bus. They were about as annoying as I probably was at that age, making a little too much noise, but still at a tolerable level. Better yet, they were talking about nice, normal school girl things that I believe all girls that age talk about, regardless of how much money your family has.

And I felt Horribly Old and Boring.

It's never the rich spoilt brats I encounter who make me feel old and boring - well, they do, but in a different way. In a dismissive, You Ought To Grow Up Or Be Given a Good Spanking sort of way. It's the normal, nice kids who aren't too good at hiding the insecurities brought on by puberty who make me feel like I want to be 16 again. Not that life was terribly exciting, and in fact, it was pretty terrible. Maybe that's why. No regrets, but sometimes I do wonder what it would have been like if I'd chosen differently then.

Although I probably wouldn't have been able to.

There You Were, Thinking That Something Earth-Shattering Had Happened
I have decided to stop showing Annoying Year Ones that I'm annoyed with them. Firstly, it's not very Christian behaviour. Secondly, I seriously doubt that their entire year are Annoying Twerps - the very definition of an 'Annoying Twerp' entails that you've had the misfortune of encountering one. So it's not fair to generalise and dismiss the Not Annoying, Non-Twerps as being tarred with the same brush. And one hopes that they will all naturally transform into Not Annoying Non-Twerps as they grow older and realise that The World Does Not Revolve Around Those In Law School.

Right.

That being said, I had the misfortune of encountering one such Twerp this morning. On the way up Bukit Timah Campus Mountain I had to keep biting my lip to keep from laughing out loud - because if I'm not going to be Annoyed, at least I can be Amused. I know I'm able to laugh at how seriously I took myself when I was younger (read: in J1 maybe, but not in Year One), although I'm not so sure they'll be mature enough to laugh at themselves in a few years' time.

How Grown Up and Mature I sound!

***
Today I told Liz that I wanted to be a bear, Paddington specifically, because he gets to eat a lot and even when he displays a total lack of social grace he's excused. He gets to celebrate his birthday twice a year, and Mrs. Bird always bakes him a cake with lots of marmalade. Also, unless the weather doesn't permit it, he has 'elevenses' with Mr. Gruber at his antique shop in Portobello Road every morning - buns from the bakery where he has a standing order, and a thermos flask with hot cocoa.

Liz suggested that I try the whole buns and cocoa thing, but I told her what was more important was transposing the 'elevenses' concept to the Singaporean context, read: pau and coffeeshop drinks, milo perhaps. However, that really hinges on which coffeeshop you go to and the brand of paus they sell.

I may not be a bear hailing from Darkest Peru (nor practically a shoo-in for the U.S. presidency because nobody in their right minds would want a Vice-President who thinks running the country is about as difficult as the talent segment in a beauty pageant), but I think I've figured out a way to leave my mark in this world.

It will all begin with the following letter:

Dear Makers of Lim Kee paus,

Thank you very much for making the paus who have been my preferred breakfast or tea companions for the past few years, although they don't provide companionship for much longer than 5 minutes or so because by then they're in my tummy.

I have noticed that you don't produce a Halal range of paus. Could you please consider doing so, because then I can suggest to my school's administration that they replace the Kong Guan Halal Range of paus in the canteen with yours? I am sure that this will enable me to leave my mark as the One who ushered in a New Era of Good Pau in the School Canteen.

Alternatively, you could also give the Makers of Kong Guan paus, Halal or otherwise, some tips to making their paus more palatable. I'm sure this will not be a difficult process, as all you need to do is tell them to improve the quality and quantity of the pau filling, and maybe impart to them your recipe for pau skin. As your paus and their paus are factory made, I seriously doubt this will entail an increased need for labour.

However, Kong Guan has managed to produced curry puffs which are extremely Solid. There is no other word to describe them. Perhaps you could consider producing a range of curry puffs too.

Yours Sincerely
Chloe

***
About three months have passed since I came back from Beijing, and I don't think I'm ever going to recover from my fondness, now, for schmaltzy Chinese pop. If anything, my collection has expanded, with Khalil Fong (fang1 da4 tong2) and Lee Hom (you DO know the MUSIC MAN) joining the songs I think I'm listening to One Too Many Times.

I felt like being spastic today while I was on the cross-trainer, and singing along loudly and lustily to the (Chinese) songs playing on Stonie (my trusty MP3 player, no prizes for guessing which brand and model he is) and waving my arms about and acting all drama-mama, in a highly exaggerated simulation of what could be almost any Chinese singer's concert.

My grandmother has half a cup of 3-in-1 coffee with some McVite's biscuits every evening at around 5:30p.m. She dips the biscuits into the coffee because then they're softer and easier to chew. Old people like to fuss and hate to be left alone, even if they're alone only because they're in a different part of the house from somebody else.

She happened to be having her teatime treat when I was seized by the urge to channel a Chinese pop concert, and although I'd gladly go through the whole shebang for my mother's benefit and amusement, I was the teensiest bit embarrassed to do so in front of my grandmother. I felt like I wanted to be alone; she would suddenly ask me about things that happened yesterday because she thought they'd happened today. The remote control would suddenly malfunction and I would have to explain to her how to manually change the channel or turn off the TV. She looked childishly frightened when she saw the annoyance on my face, her eyes and the apology and plea not to be forgetful or forgotten in them making me feel guilty, making me promise that I will be more patient with her.

I was reminded of how the songs sounded different when I was alone on those long bus rides home from school with nothing but trees and sky lining the roads on either side. When nobody on the bus knew me and even if I'd just sung out loud suddenly I would have received strange looks but they wouldn't have cared because people in China don't bother themselves with other people, there are too many of them.

It's claustrophobic in Singapore sometimes, at home, in school - even when I'm outside I feel like it's shrinking. Since we purchased a cross-trainer, there are days I don't dare venture to the roads for a run because I don't feel like I have what it takes mentally to battle the sheer amount of traffic; drivers horning each other - you can hear the impatience in every short horn blast - exhaust fumes and the roar and warmth of buses travelling above the speed limit, drivers of cars trying to overtake them and each other.

And the saddest thing is that I can't bear to be alone for too long.