The Other Direction

It was supposed to be 10^23 not -23.

I goofed

Haha

Yeah I know

I dont think there are negative powers

There are

There are! How interesting

When you do 10^23

It means you move one way

For decimals

The positive

But 10^-23 would mean you move the opposite way

To make it smaller

Haha

*_* That’s astounding

I really like the idea of that

 

Math is inspiring. Take it seriously if you’ve still got it.

Pen*s p*nic Singapore

Pppp what? Pens panic? Pen is picnic? Before you raise the alarm that a porn bot has usurped my blog– or my mind in general– relax. 

 

I’ve just found another quirk to this little island I’ve grown up in. It doesn’t concern gum, caning, fines, littering or spitting. We were once afflicted with penis panic and it wasn’t even to do with the roses of Singapore writhing in the gutters of Bugis Street. Though I did research that four weeks ago and all the bawdy colour it did delight me with!

 

“In October 1967, rumours that local pork was impregnated with female hormones led to at least 446 men (and 23 women) turning up at hospitals insisting that their genitals had shrunk. One hospital had 97 patients on a single day and saw several men who had clamped their private parts with various objects so as to halt the perceived shrinkage; others arrived with friends and neighbours hanging onto them.”

 

From the Fortean Times, emphasis mine.

Creature comforts

In my bachelorette pad, I gotta have:

A thick comforter

Bath towels that pull the water off you

Cacti (one furry; one with cactus flower)

 

Yoghurt

Miso

Pasta cutter

Bread maker

Perpetual Beer (Singha for a regular day and Duvel for irregular days)

 

A projector (even an OHP will do)

Cintiq or better yet– DIY Wiimote whiteboard thingamajig

Decent sound system

Soldering iron

 

And something to warm to when it’s chilly. Like a dryer. Mmm warm clothes from dryer.

Ammunition round 2

Because I like procrastinating, especially when exam responsibilities are hot on my heels and I’ve already wasted time nosing around cloud kingdom. Doom!

 

I like:

• Late night conversations with my pearl of the seven seas/jewel toned blossom, Shar. She dusts all her words with gentleness and purring interest and I miss her absence all the time. Then Kex comes on Skype, her feathery bob a fitting halo, and we scurry about gathering snippets for each other.
• His serious voice on the line asking if I’d like to fill my belly with Al Ameen goodness in the dead of the night. His not-so-serious voice telling of trannies that whistle at his biking. Legs taking my lap for a footrest, the scuffs on his face and arms to trophy a day of adrenaline. Bob Dylan warbling as we’re not even attempting to disguise ourselves in the not-so-dark lane. Swarms of electrons in the inside of my hoodie when he returns it to me at 6.20am.

 

Still, conversation and this gentle escape do not snuff the old unrest. This lonely spell is a long time dying. 10 months now perhaps; I don’t know how anyone takes it for years.

10 days I’ve known you, I shouldn’t ask where this is going, or if it’ll go anywhere at all, but I want to bury my face in your hair and hear you speak. 

A shoutout to the boy with the x-acto knife and no time to reply: may I have my peace of mind? 

Bullet points

I love:

• Lists
• Cutting up the street directory and taping the roads edge to edge, the colours flushing together as I mentally plant trees and familiar people: little man queuing for his Today paper, lady with the tissue packets. I should have been a mapmaker instead.
• Snipping. Snipping hair, paper, I like a hesitating scissors through felt.
• Many adults packed into a car. Especially them boardroom suits, no stubble, the ones with polite lines in place of mouths; gingerly popping in and out so as to zip around the city.
• Giant fishballs. This evening I bought two and did not realize how obscene they were. Later I was so mindful I hid behind a pillar to eat them.
• The smell of carbolic soap.
• Specifically, the smell of soap on the back of necks after a shower at the end of a long day, which makes me want to drop this stiff facade and be my unruly self around you, mister.
• Your unruly attention span, mister.

23rd October Deadline

To submit my first runway design! Baby steps. 

 

My blood is pumping. Must make clothes this weekend and assemble portfolio.

 

The belle of the class just smiled at me in the middle of a lecture.  

It Will Messup Your Back

In Seoul I would periodically run into sprawling, crazy cheap vinyl record sales. I might be out with Marijn to get his camera fixed or to Sinchon to eat carcenogens and there they’d be– Korean pompadours from the 70s, Teresa Teng, the Beach Boys, Morrissey and even records to revive Dutch grandfathers. Musty and a tad folorn but sorted with OCD, they were surprisingly pristine. They nearly made me part with the money I’d carefully stowed away for pantyhose and other female nonsense. I was stopped only by the impossible task of getting them home unsullied (my luggage, I had to stomp on it for it to close).

 

Still for days I pondered. The extra pocket money I might have gleaned from the eclectic loot! The joy in my household! The excuses to visit Seoul! I pictured spreading a polka dot mat in a flea market or couching the records in a car boot sale, not to mention the hipster boys (um, hipster uncles maybe) who’d stop by, be stupefied and bury me in their money.

 

[I realise that money features too prominently in this blog. Perhaps if I were a business major this would be not a problem. But I am not. I fear my future children will catch pneumonia in their paper clothes. Potato chip bag shoes. In relation to the present, I wonder if they sell hotdogs in halves for people like me who spend lunch money on Holgas. I bought a Holga 120N.]

 

But I didn’t picture other, utterly sinister possibilities from a burgeoning habit in vinyl collection. My good fortune to have tripped over the genius of Stefan Glerum on crate digging. I am relieved and gasping with gratitude for I never knew what a drop it could have been. And I adore the fluidity of his pencil work!

 

Why am I writing on a silly flake of not-real-space? Why am I making presentation slides? Draw draw draw like there’s no tomorrow! Or at least make clothes. Menswear. Make men swear.

10 Things You Might Not Know About Me

As tagged by the winsome Nida.

 

I am tempted to make you regret knowing a few… But that should be saved for the ultimate Craigslist w4m post I will one day write just to see who responds to a perfectly truthful perfectly appalling description of me. Come on! I’m sure even the most delectable of you lot can make yourself sound revolting. Something to think about before bedtime.

 

But let’s stop stalling–

10) For nearly 10 years I have loved Shiina Ringo (and now her band, Tokyo Jihen). The woman is an aural tour de force and you know how much I hate code switching into languages I don’t even use unless I can’t summon an adequate equivalent in English. Or maybe you didn’t. Lucky you, two facts for the price of one. 

 

9) The subject of code switching has joined my higgledy piggledy spread of interests. Though I prefer not to code switch (switch… codes…) I greatly enjoy hearing other people do so regardless of how well I understand any of the languages used.

 

So you can “Shui2 je il suki nowadays?” me and I will blossom with mirth and sparkle. “I never realized… It was none other than you!” Imagine my rapture at getting to research the social and cognitive effects of code switching for a paper this semester.

 

8) Like a mexican jumping bean on glucose, I can’t stay on one thing. Crochet one moment, turntabling the next, tree climbing on Mon and marzipan sculptures on Wed. I am as interested in Dodie Smith as I am in Patrick Watson, which is to say intensely for a short-lived burst. For the same reason I have to change my hair several times a year or feel extremely ill at ease. 

 

7) You may think the same applies for people. I have fallen in and out of favour with some friends, broken bonds with people I once bent over backwards for. But for the large part I cling a little too long to people who stun me, whether we hung out twice or for two years. Yes I would save up for the plane ticket to see you.

 

6) Ironically I have a bad memory for lots of mundane things. If I cut class twice you can be sure I’ll be confused about which block the class is in.

 

5) I am not very demonstrative but if you’re my friend I adore you and probably tell lots of other people. “You know, I have this friend and she has a nose! Heart star zing koala!” I will probably write a garrulous blog entry listing your name in a flurry of sprinkles and sentiment.

 

4) I enjoy hearing about boyfriends’ ex girlfriends, not for the sake of undermining them/feeling unreasonably jealous but because I am a sucker for all love stories. That is also why I like hearing how people’s parents meet. And why I still talk to ex boyfriends. About their new girlfriends. Sometimes my ego gets a bit lumpy– “She cooks for me, just like you did! But she got her Michelin 3 stars last week”– still, stories they are so addictive.

 

3) If we eat good meals together I might accidentally fall in love with you, resulting in the usage of an argot where you are referred to as ‘Mushrooms’, ‘Glassesboy’, ‘Pine Marten’ and other such random nouns. Quite the way other people get indigestion. ‘Good’ is relative. I once fell in love over boiled asparagus, saltless pasta and frozen beef sauce.

 

2) If you wear a hat I will make sheep eyes at you especially if this is Korea. Me: “He’s cute.” Julienne: “No he’s just wearing a hat.” But this is not Korea anymore, so instead I ask all my friends if they know you. “Do you know this guy with a pointy hat?” “You mean the class dunce?” If you don’t smell good though not even the hat will do a thing for you, I am an olfactory elitist that way.

 

1) Tea and beer in all their flavours set me aflutter. Ideally, beer at 9 in the morning and tea after a hot shower with the crickets a-chirping.

‘you need a light, i find a match’

I don’t know you, but increasingly I’d like to.

 

It was the one day you were stoning on the bench at Business block that did me in. Plus the other one day on the escalator, which makes me look forward to the next time I’ll ride that confounded junk to Marketing Research class. You’re so cool and I’m so messy, unevenly tanned, 50s-haired and unable to carry my huge laptop. No New Urban Male for you, no school tees, those clothes of yours they grow well on the frame. You make me want to make menswear! 

 

‘I’d buy you Rogaine 
When you start losing all your hair 

Sew on patches 
To all you tear’

(Ingrid Michaelson. The Way I Am)

 

I’m still on the mend. It’s nice to dream and get away from the niggling feeling that it’s going to be a lonely year. Over in Seoul, the heat’s dying down, maybe falling leaves brighten the sidewalks and you walk every day with hands in your pockets. The subway releases you, you go drinking with your face half in shadow, I imagine you’re smiling and hope it stays that way.

 

I’m not trying to forget, it only ensures I’ll never be able to. So I just keep moving, thinking of the warm meal that’s ahead of me and the next green light at the crossing.