conversations with p-andrew

P standing for Penguin. On the subject of Christmas presents:

“P-andrew, what do boys like?”

“Sex!”

“That is not the right answer!”

“It is, it is very accurate and fits everyone. Aren’t you getting something for John who’s leaving in December?”

“Excuse me who is John?!”

“Eh uh Peter!”

-_-;; “No it’s for Jin and Irvin and you. It has to be mail-able.”

“Send a beer, an exotic beer.”

 

Discussing his troublesome relationship with a girl:

“I’m adopting a Tefal mentality.”

“Tefal? Non-stick?”

“Whatever happens, let it slide. If it doesn’t then just cook with it.”

Quickie

I’m not an outdoor animal. My foray into sports is limited to the mean 10km walked during a shopping trip, as purported by one of Smoo’s many advertising campaigns. And perhaps training my eyes to follow the pulsating grape in the flash game my classmate is playing (if you can name this game I will frolic about the great outdoors and maybe even don a skinsuit).

 

D: So I asked the German guy, why is ping pong so popular? He said, “It doesn’t matter if you’re short tall thin fat rich or poor! Because ping pong is DEMOCRATIC!”

 

N: Sports marketing is so sweaty sounding.

impishness at 1am

Oh woeful day. I

• suffered internal bleeding doing an online midterm exam.
• am feeling epic stress, working up the courage to talk to a beautiful girl (how much worse will it be in a couple of weeks when I have to repeat the process with a beautiful boy?)
• still have not decided on the topic for Friday’s technology paper
• have suspected mouse in throat. Hack cough hack. 
• have expensive, immoral urges. 

Clarification: I haven’t been actively swallowing rodents- that is a level of adventure I shall stay away from. Also I have no diabolical interests in aforementioned girl, I just need a model to pose for a mini portfolio.

 

Craigslist is my perpetual mood lifter. Sometimes I have to stop myself from snorting, hooting or exclaiming loudly. 

“You were probably visiting someone in the building that afternoon since you emerged from the visitors’ elevator and walked across the 2nd floor. You were absolutely, mind-bogglingly beautiful. You had shoulder-length hair and were wearing a deliciously summery brown dress with a floral pattern of sorts. You walked with such poise and had a bum that could stop traffic all on its own. The new traffic police: the BUM SQUAD.

If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to have your hand in marriage and devote my life to your well-being. If you were visiting a significant other in the building, no worries, we can arrange to have him whacked or something. 

I’m, frankly, not in your league, but here’s hoping you have a thing for slightly eccentric, metrosexual finance nerds and aren’t terribly fussy about the faces attached to them. Mine tends to frighten little children.”

SDU needs in on this.

 

I am suddenly reminded of ask-your-boyfriend-not-to-punch-me from Arts Fest. Which in turn assures me that the opposite gender is attracted to pasty creatures in all black, preferably frazzled, scuttling and gasping under three plastic chairs. Take a hint ladies. 

 

Time to stop reading craiglist. One of these days I’m really going to write a post selling my green-and-white dental mold, primary 4 prefect tie and brand new pricey lingerie (because the uniting feature across my dating history is a firm belief that undies are to be abolished not enjoyed– yeah even you Art Boy). And the only people on Singapore Craigslist are suspect to say the least. They might use my dental mold as an ashtray. Cook my tie with pasta! The horror. 

 

A piece of wisdom from an ex-classmate:

Female classmate: -resolutely- I don’t want to have sex, ever.

Male classmate: Really? How about when you get married?

Female classmate: Not even after marriage.

Male classmate: What about your husband?

Female classmate: -total confidence- I’ll find a husband who doesn’t want to have sex with me!

The Professor Speaks

Reason to faithfully attend all her classes. 

“For example if I say Woman, with a capital W, I mean Woman as a social concept. You say, ‘Alamak! You open your pants, pull down and can see if you’re a woman already.’ But you don’t call a lionness walking around a woman lion do you? “

 

“I took you to the cemetery, you went ‘WHOA WHOA WHOA’ all around it and at the end of the day we had done an ethnography.” Actually that is really what we students did.

 

“If you went to a culture and they were not wearing clothes, they were wearing bits of bark and whatever around the what’s-it-and-the-what’s-it … The primitive fellows give a good example of what happened to you before.”

 

About Margaret Mead’s anthropological findings, in which her Samoan informants had lied to her about casual sex: “These ang mohs wanted to know about sexy things.”

 

“Don’t take my lectures for my lectures. Wrap your mind around it and form an opinion. An opinion is what I want in your exams. Give me one and you’ll never fail. Don’t just yes, no, yes, no, so hard to talk to you, you know. If you say ‘no’ I want to know why. Wilfred if you want to jump in with a tip, just jump in k.”

 

In imitation of a shallow observer: “The womb-shaped tombs– damn stupid man! Women’s wombs don’t look like that!”

 

Student offers food. “No thank you I’m on a diet. Been eating all day all night.” Pouts cutely.

 

Notices that the ribbon on her skirt is undone halfway through talking about presentations.

“I can’t knot it… Then I look like I have a belly in front” Demonstrates.

“Why don’t you tie it at the side?”

“Then I look like I have a wart on my side. Dede the Tree Man.”

 

A black and white shot of Malinowski. “Social scientists are sexy!” I second that.

 

Imjad asks how romance is conducted between the Trobriands.

Prof: “I think Imjad is asking… If they are not wearing clothes how then do they entice!”

Imjad: -panic- No no no no no! 

 

Love at work. I don’t talk in her class because I love hearing what she says.

1300 hrs in GSR 3.14

Dialogues with Dar*h

The D: “I think Confucius is very respectable… I don’t know, maybe because of his beard.”

 

Dar*sh returns disappointed from Mr Bean: “Mr Bean soya milk is very… creamy.”

 

Nisa: Your dress is very nice Dawn.

Me: Thanks, it’s good for buffets. I’m trying to make all my clothes buffet clothes.

Nisa: Buffet clothes?

Me: Yeah you can eat all you want and it’s fine.

Sue: No bulge.

Dar*h: No you shouldn’t have buffet clothes. Then you’ll get too complacent.

 

Everyday we Celebrate our Differences

In Chinese custom, paper effigies are burned as a sort of postal service to the dead. Xihao wrote in our Google doc:

“Apparently the afterlife has a booming red-light district. In April 2006, China’s deputy secretary of the Ministry of Civil Affairs prohibited the burning of ‘adult’ items such as paper condoms, karaoke hostesses and Viagra.”

Me: Why do the dead need paper condoms? Are they going to produce dead babies? Or get dead STDs that will kill them a second time?

 

Me: Where do animals go in Islam?

Nisa: All animals go to heaven. Even pigs. Pigs are halal in Heaven. Can eat pigs in heaven. -smack smack- Can’t wait for that.

 

Nisa: If I eat it and I feel bad about it, then it’s wrong. If I don’t feel bad then it’s not wrong.

 

In Islam it is forbidden (haram) to eat pigs.

Nisa: It’s what’s in the pig. Cause they wallow in their own crap and eat it. 

Dar*h: So you can’t eat any scavengers? Like prawns?

Nisa: Crabs are scavengers, I can eat crab. It’s not scavengers, just animals that are not exactly clean… Like insects. But crickets are ok.

Dar*h: What’s the difference between crickets and ants??

Nisa: Basically I can’t eat anything that lives in two worlds.

Dar*h: ?!

Nisa: I can’t eat amphibians. I can’t eat turtles. Basically I can’t eat reptiles. Or anything that’s clawed.

Dar*h: But that’s crabs!

 

Sue: There was a period where my friend was going to convert to Islam, because of a boy lah. … When she told me she broke up I was like, “Can we go eat xiaolongbao now??”

 

Dar*h: Can you take me one day to the mosque?

Nisa: Can! But you gotta dress properly lah.

Dar*h: Can you sneak me into Mecca one day??

Nisa: Yes. But we need male escorts.

Dar*h: We need male escorts!

 

Also, I learnt alot about Patron Saints:

Adrian of Nicomedia is the patron saint of arms dealers and butchers.

Lawrence is the patron saint of cooks, as he was roasted alive by the Romans on a gridiron.

And the same guy who looks after shepherds looks after murderers.

Overheard in the BE Studio

Because I am a chump who comes to school on Sunday and steals the school radio studio to have a project meeting in (kind members of BE, thanks for not clubbing me to death), you get today’s post:

 

Singlish at its finest in the spirit of learning:

A: “That time I was very stressed… Studied business law until I cried because I didn’t understand.”

B: “Why you cry, business law not meant to be understooded one! … My prof just needs [me] to regurgitate.”

 

“You know that it won’t happen but you still need to talk about it.”

 

“I give up! I shall not do… Doeth! This! Stuff.” 

 

Girl A: “It’s not hard to be smitten with X… “

Guy J looks doubtful.

Girl A: -proudly- “The girls I hang out with, if guys don’t chase after them there must be something seriously wrong with them.”

 

Overheard in Ethnography

It’s a joy to work with my ethnography team, everyone is so generous and eloquent with their thoughts, so individually varied yet synchronized. But what fun would there be in posting the glamour alone?

 

Actually let’s skip the glamour for today.

 

Xihao, lone male in a group of 5: “Females are getting more empowered. You all have the ovaries, you have the eggs! You can screw the men. You can keep your father’s surname when you get married.” 

On Indian surnames versus Chinese.

Sue: “Pakir?”

Darsh: “Yah it’s like an Indian Tan… No it’s not like a Tan.”

 

Sue’s t-shirt brings back whiffs of Korea: “I GOTS TO KRUMP/ I GOTS TO KRUMP/ I GOTS TO KRUMP.”

 

Context: it is Ramadhan so all our Muslim friends are fasting.

Nisa: “Oh shit… I needed to call someone at 5.30 to wake them up.”

Everyone glances at clock: it is 6.43pm.

Me: “Couldn’t he just set an alarm?”

Nisa: “I needed to call him to wake up and fast.”

Me: “But if he’s sleeping he’ll be fasting… He can’t sleep and eat at the same time.”

 

Naturalistic Observation

This is set to be the most enthralling term I’ve ever had, though in SMU terms this is quite a shrimpy comparison (excitement in freshman year was measured by the number of buffets I partook in a month– thrilling, you’ll agree).

 

But at the very least I have some idea of a future vocation as ethnographer/spy/alien, which makes me wonder again why I’m a psychology and marketing double major instead of an anthropology, ninja skills or aerospace expert-in-training. I comfort myself by thinking that a nuclear energy company will employ my expertise in deciding if a little village might take kindly to a nuclear plant. The heaps of money poured on me will more than make up for being stoned by said villagers. And in the event that I am not employable, I’ll simply fall into the livelihood of building homes out of tin cans and cardboard. Is brilliant plan.

 

I’d like to write my 1.5 month-overdue list of goals for this academic year but my professor is talking about multiplying dollars from cows, which sounds smashing. So instead I’ll leave you with a virgin foray in the naturalistic observation that will, eventually, create an Ethnographer Extraordinaire:

 

OVERHEARD IN SMOO

SMUggles

“Finance is a tragic addition to my life!” – Hot hipster boy in Booklink

 

“The Singaporean accent… It’s hints of British… But mostly rural!” – Canadian exchange student

 

“When I was going through puberty, I used to be embarrassed, cause, you know… But now I’m not. Because I’m an adult!” – Girl in Developmental Psychology class.

 

A discussion on the presence of husbands during labour: “Is it more painful for the man or the woman?” – Adorable clueless friend in Developmental Psychology class.

 

Professor Tan: “Which of you is a marketing expert?”

Dude with headband raises hand.

Professor Tan: “You look like a samurai wrestler.”

 

Love and SMUt

“The eye candy for this sem are the exchange students… They’re like a magazine cover, they won’t talk to me!” – A certain Miss Nida K. 

“I’m not sure I can pull my pants down for another woman.” – Darshini Y.

 

The Wisdom of Sue-Ann C.

“Watermelons give me strength!!” 

 

Me: during a game of Taboo. The word is ’shower’. “You take a what to be clean?”

Sue: “A piss??”

 

Fruitful observations aplenty.