notes from the underground

You know, when they first announced the MRT extension to Farrer and Adam Road-ish areas, I thought, why don't they just extend that to Bukit Timah?

But today, on reading the news of the Bukit Timah MRT line, the MRT stop within walking distance from the house, I wondered, why they can't just leave us alone! Sure, convenience, property prices might increase and all that. But 6 years of dust, noise, likely traffic diversions, and lotsa lotsa digging? Can't I say, No? I think the part of Bukit Timah I'm in is well served by buses. I get to Orchard Road in 20 minutes. It does take me a while to get to Clementi, but it's not a stretch. Plus, does an MRT line mean the removal of buses? Cos if comparing the actual rides, I'd rather a bus, where there's one way in, another way out, than the MRT where people push and block and just piss me off. I'd rather a bus, where I can watch the view, than those ridiculous ads that flash from the tunnel.

And yet, while I write this, I remember that it will take 6 years. The work will only begin in the middle of next year, or so they say. Where will I be next year? Not here.

eat up!

My mum made me breakfast!



And I got a delivery.
And I'm off to stuff myself for the third time this week. It started with Indian food on Tuesday, Japanese on Thursday, and today, some seafood is in the mix. Eh, it's not like it happens everyday.

Maybe later

July's reading hasn't started out well.

Finally picked up DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, but put it away quite quickly, although I'm not sure whether I'll ever pick it up again. Yeah I know it won the Booker, it's one of those dark comedy books, but eh, it's not for me.

A bit of a snoozer is The Moviergoer by Walker Percy. Also a book prize winner (National Book Award), also giving me trouble. At first I thought it's because I'm reading it when I'm sleepy (ie just before going to sleep), but then I realised, it's actually the book that's making me sleepy.

I'm in the mood for some fluff.

digital world

At the library this morning, I was reminded of our dependency on computers when I tried to borrow five books and the machine refused to accept my pin number. And so did the other. So I go to the counter and make noise and it turns out that their server is down due to a power outage. The lady behind the counter goes in search of their 'manual system', which turns out to be a small yellow notepad. She fills in my name and card number, then takes down the barcode of each book, stamps all the books, stamps the 'manual system' with the same date and then heads behind somewhere to run the books through to allow me to get out without setting off beeps at the exit.

It made me think of days spent at Queenstown Library as a kid, and lining up with my pile of books, all open to the back of the book, ready for the librarian to stamp them through. And of the library at my primary school, with its uneven floors and dull lighting, little cardboard pockets at the back of each book, holding the dates due.

nearly there

It's July, and I'm glad.

Because after some five months of emails, MSN conversations, Skype and IDD calls back and forth, I finally get to see R again. But it's just for two weeks, and then it's back to the virtual routine until December.

However, let's think about the after later, shall we? And begin the countdown to July 20th.

bookmarks

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

It was everything I expected - a detective novel, exciting, with a bit of a romance thrown into it, and yet, something I wasn't expecting, kinda funny.


Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

If I had known about the book burning aspect of this great novel, I'd have read it a lot sooner. A little bit hard to get into at first, and a little distressing to read (burning books!) but truly awesome.


84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

Yet another book made into a film which I have to see (Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft!). This one's a collection of letters between an American scriptwriter (and booklover) and an English bookseller from 1949 to 1969. It's just such a sweet book, and I stayed up to finish it as I just couldn't put it down.

Firemen

They walked still further and the girl said, "Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?"
"No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it."
"Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames."
He laughed.

- Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451

how's the wedding planning?

It's a question often asked of me, although lately the answer has been: nothing much happening. It's still early I know, as friends have warned about the stress during the run-up to it. I just want to keep it simple and sweet, and stress levels low. And hopefully it will end better than this:



(via {Furi Kuri} weddings)

Why do I...

always get a craving for a cup of coffee after watching Gilmore Girls?

Civilwarland in Bad Decline

From the back of the book:

"America, in the near future, is a country of artificial experiences in cheesy shopping malls; where the machines faking dreams are always breaking down, and a company purporting to let urban racoons back into the wild is killing them, to save effort... [A] brilliant collection of short stories... you can't help loving this outstandingly tasteless and amusing volume"

Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday

What goes on in George Saunders' head?
I cannot help but wonder as I plunge into Civilwarland in Bad Decline.

"So I dive in and drag her out. It's not very deep and the bottom's rubber-matted. None of the Basques are bright enough to switch off the Leaping Trout Subroutine however, so twice I get scraped with little fiberglass fins. Finally I get her out on the pine needles and she comes to and spits in my face and says I couldn't possibly know the darkness of her heart. Try me, I say. She crawls away and starts bashing her skull against a tree trunk. The trees are synthetic too. But still."

The Wavemaker Falters

One Amazon customer review suggested that this book have a dosage label, of one story a month. It is a short book, of 179 pages but I have to agree, breathing space is required in between stories, even though it's a library book (although one story a month is a bit much).
It's not that it's an exhausting read, instead it is funny and totally intriguing. But it can get a little repetitive. Perhaps because while the settings are somewhat different, the premise is quite similar - an average person struggling in a black-hole dystopia. And like the nun taking that leap, reading each story one at a time (with long intermissions) is like jumping off a cliff - your feet leave the safety of the rock, you freefall, your stomach seems to be making its way up to your throat and you're ready to scream when your toes, then your the rest of you hit the cushion of water below and you plunge into the comforting cool darkness. And when you shoot back up for air, you're all ready to take the dive again. Except without all the bashing of the head against the synthetic tree.

Wyoming, China

The closest I’ve come to Wyoming is well, Nevada (so says Google maps). Wyoming is a place I can hardly imagine, yet Annie Proulx’s Close Range: Wyoming Stories cut straight to the heart. I think it’s best described as Michael Knight did in a Wall Street Journal review: “Ms. Proulx writes with all the brutal beauty of one of her Wyoming snowstorms.” (via Powells). The best known of the stories is of course the romance of Ennis and Jack heartbreaking Brokeback Mountain, which was of course made into the Academy Award-winning movie. But all the other stories, of harsh, unforgiving lands, filled with lonely cowboys, despite being worlds away from what I know, are completely absorbing and affecting.



And on another continent....
It's not normally a book I would pick up, but the Picador Book of Contemporary Chinese Fiction seemed like a good introduction into well, contemporary Chinese fiction. There were even a couple of names I recognised (although hadn't read), like Su Tong (he of Raise The Red Lantern) and Wang Meng. Many of these short stories have morals behind them, such as Lin Xiu-wen's Black Walls, where a Mr Zhou is seen by his neighbours painting the walls and ceiling of his room black. The neighbours call a meeting and discuss what they should do and consider calling the police. Of course, one neighbour's young grandson pokes his head into the meeting and asks, why, if Mr Zhou is only painting his room and not everyone else's, do they kick up such a fuss? (groan). While this (and others) made me feel like I was reading a Moral Studies textbook, the collection on the whole was rather entertaining. It helped that most of the stories are pretty short and easily read while waiting for the bus. One of my favourites is Wang Meng's The Lovesick Crow and Other Fables, on the other hand, is quite a delight. The fables, such as The Comedy of Ducks, where ducks are riled after the publication of The Ugly Duckling: "Down with lakewater! Down with the farmer! Down with the turkeys! Down with the Chinese people!" they cry. The farmer, of course, solves the issue, the way a farmer will.

Ah, Caffeine

That moment of clarity.
When you sit up, your brain switches back on.
Hello!
The thoughts flow, the fingers fly on the keyboard.
The journal article you read once over and made no head or tail of, suddenly has a head, a tail, and even a whole body.
Time to make use of it while it lasts!

Roast

Watching Cookworks the other day made me feel like having roast chicken. The show's feature was really a turkey, and it looked moist and tender. And I wanted a moist and tender piece of meat heading straight for my mouth. A roast chicken would have to do!

I fell back on good ole Jamie Oliver, or at least an improvisation of his recipe, with ingredients I could find in the kitchen. Did I have rosemary? No. Did I have bacon slices? No. Still, the roast chicken was pretty yummy.



Pair that with a simple salad of butterhead lettuce, button mushrooms, a couple of small tomatoes, an avocado, dressed with some pepper, olive oil and lemon. Happy days.

flagged

The evening ceremony was about the same as in the morning, just done in reverse. The flag glided down the pole and was put away in the wooden box. The flag doesn't wave at night.
Why the flag has to be put away at night I have no idea. The country still exists at night, no? And plenty of people are hard at work. Doesn't seem fair that those people can't have the same flag flying over them. Maybe it's a silly thing to worry about - just the kind of thought a person like me is liable to fret over.

Haruki Murakami's Firefly
From Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

“House Taken Over”

My library is not a single beast but a composite of many others, a fantastic animal made up of the several libraries built and then abandoned, over and over again, throughout my life. I can’t remember a time in which I didn’t have a library of some sort. The present one is a sort of multilayered autobiography, each book holding the moment in which I opened it for the first time. The scribbles on the margins, the occasional date on the flyleaf, the faded bus ticket marking a page for a reason today mysterious, all try to remind me of who I was then. For the most part, they fail. My memory is less interested in me than in my books, and I find it easier to remember the story read once than the young man who then read it.

Alberto Manguel writes about his 30,000-volume library

ex libris

There are some books that you race through, the exciting plot drives you on, the pages flip madly as you head for the finish line, sometimes even staying up way past bedtime.


And then there are books that you just want to take your time with, and hold back that need to read more. That's how I've been feeling about Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris. It's a collection of 18 essays she wrote over a period of four years, and they're all about books and reading.



As she says in the preface:

Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves. How could it be otherwise?

She writes of marrying her and her husband's libraries together, how their American collection is alphabetised, whereas their English collection is in chronological order (and chronological even within each author).

"You mean we're going to be chronological within each author?" he gasped. "But no one even knows for sure when Shakespeare wrote his plays!"
"Well," I blustered, "we know he wrote Romeo and Juliet before The Tempest. I'd like to see that reflected on our shelves."
George says that was one of the few times he has seriously contemplated divorce.

Oh definitely a book that's to be savoured, page by page, word by word.


Read an excerpt here.

Where have you been all my life?

Oh boy, are we going to be such good friends!

Because when you can turn this


into this


(ok not such a great picture, but it's actually Leek and Potato Soup)


You've won me over. At first pulse.

mothers day

As I'm not much of a fan of cheesecake, it's something I've never made. But my mum does. So here's a lemon orange non-bake cheesecake. Happy Mothers' Day!

Decipher

A series of fourteen cryptograms for when you're bored at work, or just want to do something else than write reports.

let it rain

Every morning I wake up to a slightly cool (well compared to the night before) morning breeze and the faint hope that it will rain, that it will storm, that the temperature will not keep rising and that the dense humidity will not envelope me and leave a shiny sheen on every inch of my skin.

Oh for some of this



Or this


And on that note, some suitable songs, but as with most songs about rain, they're sad ones:

Tilly and the Wall - Let It Rain
Madeleine Peyroux - California Raining
Regina Spektor - 20 Years of Snow
Emiliana Torrini - Snow

Lightning flashes when you glance
I'm thunderstruck walk in slow motion
Ran a hand on a rainy railing
Cats and dogs falling but kept on walking
(The Postmarks - Looks like Rain)