more photos, because i finally got the QP photos from crewmate. i like them.



me and fellow crew.



wearing a prop.



me at my desk backstage poised to ring the bell. you'd only understand if you watched.



me on cans.



salene on her first stint as a dresser.



rizman's (rizman putra of Tiramisu fame) usual mentos pack. salene was obsessed. she also took a photo of corbidge's gstring but i don't think i should be posting that here.



the set. if you think that looks phallic, go with it.



with the crew. that's ching har, who did sound control for 'language', how cool is that. and this is the mirror i love, because it's 'so cabaret!'

+ posted by M @ 1:22 PM

...	Thursday, June 29, 2006

a photo post, because everyone loves looking rather than reading. and i haven't uploaded photos in a long time.

+ posted by M @ 1:12 AM

...	Wednesday, June 28, 2006

today i went back to cedele to collect my paycheck. i felt kind of happy, like i missed the place. which is madness really. but i didn't expect such a warm reception going back, especially from nana (the shift leader sam and i both feared and disliked most when i first started out but later got to know better). when she saw me she called me 'my melissa' which was strangely unexpected yet sweet and then insisted sam and i have iced chocolates. so we sat and talked for awhile and she basically asked us about universities and wished us luck and how's business, who's stayed who's left, things like that. usual jokes about going to the states and meeting brad pitt and things. then she asked if we wanted to have any cakes and we actually refused because we weren't hungry but she told us to pack it home and she kept insisting and finally asked someone to give me two slices of my favourite cake (CHOCOLATE TRUFFLE). i felt so touched in a way, because i kept insisting on one slice only but she kept telling them in malay to cut two slices thinking i wouldn't understand so it went something like this

me: okay, i'll take one slice
n: dyah (another favourite colleague of mine), potong dua chocolate truffle cake take away
me: no, JUST ONE!
n: dyah, DUA yah
me: just one is enough
n: yes, dua is one!

it really made my day.

sometimes i feel awkward because our lives are so different and she seems genuinely happy that we're going to further our studies even though we're more or less the same age and she makes comments about how she didn't study and we college-bound students shouldn't mix with 'stupid people'. and i feel like telling her that she's really made quite an impression on me in her own way. we all have different paths and i'm glad i met the people that i've met.

was also lucky because Manager and Big Boss were BOTH not there today, hah.

and paycheck is MUCH more than expected because i didn't work one whole week before i quit BUT i actually got a raise without me knowing it, so i was working for $5 an hour! and so am very happy i finally collected it. good $$$! also saw Liu Jun, The Love Of My Life Chinese Dishwasher but communicated very badly. he asked about school and things and i said, 'xue hai mei you kai' (translated directly from 'school hasn't yet opened') when it really should have been 'hai mei you kai xue' (this would be 'hasn't yet opened school') as he corrected me. chinese grammar is topsy turvy! today was the most i've talked to him ever and even then it wasn't for long and i still didn't ask about his tattoo. i asked him (or at least i did in my mind, but it came out very simplistically) if he'd learnt any english and malay, and really i meant has he learnt any upon his arrival in singapore but he thought i meant did he learn any in school and he launched into some explanation about his classes which i TOTALLY DID NOT UNDERSTAND. for shame! I HAVE MISSED HIM! with his shiny eyes, neverfailing dimpled smile and short black hair (which has grown out a little).

maybe i should really just become a waitress. the French movie 'Orchestra Seats' (not to mention 'Amelie) has sort of inspired me to pack up and work in a cafe in Paris but firstly i need to learn French and procure a visa. i was thinking, when i go to the U i want to learn japanese, french and chinese. and maybe a little italian/spanish. i've suddenly become fascinated by foreign languages and linguistics. oh geez. i really can't afford to be fickle and distracted and short attention span-ded now.

+ posted by M @ 1:14 AM

...	Sunday, June 25, 2006

i've semi-moved to livejournal because it has a lovely 'friends only/private' option. so it's not that i'm writing less, i'm just not really posting it here.

i'm also back from japan.

bea hasn't left yet either due to certain circumstances. things feel so 'the same' even when you've been gone for a whole week.

i miss osaka already, i think i want to live there when i grow up.

'when i grow up' - i find that i still keep using this phrase even though i've sort of lost the right to use it already, since you more or less should stop saying it unless it goes along the lines of 'when i grow up i want to be fireman/president/vet' and at this age i can't say i want to be those things anymore.

what do i want to be, anyway? chalene says i want to be an artist, but then it just sounds like a job. it just sounds like a 'word', as though that's going to explain everything when there are so many things to it. i think i might end up being A Waitress In A Cafe (because i actually quite like it, despite the sometimes unfair management and irritating customers) while i try to figure out what i should do.

but i can't take forever to figure that out, because i just don't have enough time. it's comforting to read about Ang Lee and how he said he spent 6 years in agony and rejection (and how they now feel like 6 weeks because of his success with brokeback mountain), and think 'there's hope for me yet. i'm only 19. maybe i'll magically have it all figured out by the time i graduate'.

but i realize in life (i only realize this on the most basic level, because i'm unable to accept it emotionally) that you spend your WHOLE life basically, figuring out what you want to do with your life - because that's what life is. so in the end you don't really ever KNOW because you spend your whole life TRYING to know! and that's enough, or at least it should be.

but i don't want to just try. i want to know. but we all want a lot of things that aren't possible.

i think there's always a point in time when you do know, it just doesn't happen at the very end of the road like we expect it to. life is pretty anticlimactic, in that sense.

anyway, japan is astounding. it's like the truman show - you somehow feel like everything is staged, that it's some giant imaginary town where things go exactly as planned all the time. people are always so painfully polite and graceful and bashful that i feel like an obnoxious, clumsy, foreign oaf. they laugh with their hands over their mouths, even the young punk-style boys hold open the elevator doors for your family, the goths with their black lipstick and multiple piercings act in a most docile manner, they all apologize profusely if they should so much as accidentally brush past you ... countless things. they also have very bizarre advertisements which my brother and i would spend nights watching and giggling at (because there were hardly any watchable english channels).

but i really love how the place works. though i don't know how i'd be able to survive there (i'd feel embarrassed at my messiness and clumsiness every single day) or get a job doing anything there because they're all so neat and precise and PERFECT!

it's almost to the point of being robotic but it really does fascinate me to no end. i'm just so amazed at how a whole nation can live that way. the crime rate is extremely low, with 3.4 crimes per 10,000 people in Osaka, and Osaka's already got the highest crime rate in all of Japan. it's just astoundingly orderly and even a little disturbing.

it's like utopia. that's the word. i was scrounging around in my pocket for a word to give japan and now i've got it - utopia. which has negative connotations what with the likes of huxley and orwell and atwood, but i think it's creepily apt.

they have very interesting clothes. i bought quite a lot of things because they just looked so ME. their clothes are so ME. another reason to live there forever. their food basements are also mindbogglingly wonderful. bright shiny happy food and fluorescent cake cases everywhere - perfect melons and grapes and cherries which lead into buttery biscuits and perfectly frosted strawberry cakes and wonderfully chilled macaroons and if you walk some more you find yourself amongst beautifully marbled steaks and gorgeous arrays of sashimi-type fish.

in japan the mantra seems to be - 'anything you can do, i can do better'. they've imported NYC, Parisian and Belgian bakery/pastry chains in their foodbasements and behind a glass counter the Japanese patissiers and bakers are frosting the cakes and desserts perfectly without even breaking a sweat or making any mistakes (they can't afford to in public view). and then there are the Chinese dimsum stalls where the Japanese chef is sealing the meat buns so gracefully as if reversing flower petals into a bud.

perfection, perfection, perfection. i'm so entranced by it all i could stare at them forever.

oh, i absolutely loved the crepes there. they wrap them up into this neat ice cream cone thing - basically it's like a crepe cone! why don't we have those here? and the fresh green tea ice cream, not the overly-sugarfied junk we get from haagen dazs. i bought fig bread to bring to work but i doubt i'll be eating it. we did a lot of walking, but still i must now go on a diet.

+ posted by M @ 2:46 AM

...	Friday, June 16, 2006

i've been struck by the flu bug that's going around menacing everyone. i've not been sick very often this year, and when i do fall sick it gets very bad. i feel a little faint and can't eat anything the whole day. i also sleep a lot.

i leave for japan tomorrow for one week where i will ideally be spending my time consuming such copious amounts of kobe beef that i'll come back at the top of PETA's most wanted list.

to think i ever considered becoming vegetarian is unbelievable.

but of course there's that whole thing about free radicals and things. so ...

okay, life is really complicated right now. and i try not to mean this in a teen angst, 'my life sucks' kind of way but life really is very tiring and complicated now. i need this holiday that i'm getting. i think i'll be completely uncontactable in Japan because of how the phone systems work, i don't know how i'm going to live like that but it's good, i need the break. i need to recharge.

bea's leaving next saturday. let's observe a moment of silence, please. i don't really know how i'm going to live with one of my best friends not around. the person who's been a constant in my life for the past two years through everything, especially when njc sucked - whisked away to melbourne forever. i'm going to be taken off life support. well, i guess we're not in njc anymore. but still. going to miss bea a lot.

+ posted by M @ 6:45 PM

...	Sunday, June 11, 2006

i wrote something today, finally. a script, a draft. SOMETHING. i sat and wrote and what came out was completely unexpected. but it's always like that, i suppose. it feels good. i'm happy, very happy. it's like finally having an orgasm after faking it for the past few times, or something like that (i imagine that's how it feels). i'm not posting it here. i think i'm generally quite possessive about my work.

or it's like giving birth after hours and hours of being in labour. because it's yours, and it was painful but worth it.

now just to edit it and maybe develop it ... i'm incredibly unmotivated when it comes to editing.

+ posted by M @ 12:44 AM

...	Saturday, June 10, 2006

as thirty dialogues bleed into one

it was chinese new year. you asked what bands i liked. i told you death cab for cutie, and you were surprised. i tried to think of any valid reason as to why people would be surprised. was it because i was wearing pink and you were wearing black? but it was chinese new year, after all. i hated pink, but you wouldn't have stayed around long enough to know. you asked which album i liked the most - i said all of them and replied you with your question. you said the album with the song 'The New Year'. i said i couldn't remember which album that was. and for no reason at all, you started singing, 'So this is the new year...'

i never saw you again after that. it was one of those shapeless, transient meetings at boring, meaningless gatherings.

once in a while, i wonder about these people i meet and seem to know (you did art too) and how they are now (like you). i later learnt you were in a renowned local rockband and couldn't even pay your own phonebills. i thought it was charming in a strange, almost embarrassing way. maybe because i could very well end up being very much like you. just a week ago i saw an anonymous fan proposing to you on the 'singapore secrets' livejournal community and i laughed.

paths cross and uncross ever so easily.

+ posted by M @ 2:12 AM

...	Tuesday, June 06, 2006

this isn't your run of the mill 'what would your last meal be' foodie question.

i'm asking you, what would be the very last thing you'd choose to eat in SINGAPORE, if say, you were asked to leave this country forever but still be able to travel all over the rest of the world.

i'm asking this because i realized how my list of things to do with bea before she leaves basically consists of 'what to eat' - in a sense it's 'doing' because we have to get to the place and eating is a doing thing, but essentially ... ok, we're just eating, whatever. we're shameless ikea fans, it was a common ritual of ours back in njc. cut class if our schedules didn't fit, take 961 down to ikea - we'd both have swedish meatballs and chicken wings. occasionally, softserve vanilla ice cream.

but i know if we had to choose the very last meal we could ever have here, it definitely wouldn't be italian or swedish. i mean the question lets me travel to italy and sweden (technically).

so i asked ed. and she said newton oyster omelette. i said katong laksa.

but truly, now that i think about it? probably river valley nasi padang. i don't know how i started eating curries. i don't even know how i started liking malay food because my brothers still don't after all these years. when it comes to food, i'm malay at heart. one of my favourite holidays is hari raya because malay friends send us all sorts of malay food. ketupat, sayur lordei, rendang - it's awesome. you don't even have to ask how i got like this. it's my dad. it's in the blood, man. i like this story. he claims he got it from his acs hockey days. most of my dad's best friends (to this very day) are indians. on the hockey team, most of his team-mates were indians. after training, they'd go to the nearby hawker centre to have curry together. why they picked malay style curry rather than indian curry? i don't know either. but there's just something about food rituals. whenever you eat something that has good memories strung on to it, you just feel good. i guess that's why my dad loves malay food and this somehow influenced my tastes. some of my fondest memories back when we went out regularly on sundays together consisted of (instead of buy back food like we do now) going to maxwell market, driving all the way to geylang for ipoh horfun, going to lavender market, going to balestier ... basically going to special places for special food.

food brings people together. food is magic. i mean just how does it have the ability to taste and smell so good when you mix it all up or put it on the stove?

it's sad. i don't really want to think about not ever being able to eat here again. the last week before i leave, i'll probably be frantically trying to eat singapore. and when i'm not eating, i'll be buying foodpastes, canned goods and collecting recipes to make sure i can continue eating singapore even while i'm in chicago. i'm gonna miss the lychees and the durians. my brother made this comment about how he hated tropical fruit and wished we had sweeter strawberries and raspberries. but i say, who cares about those when you can have champudat cupcakes? (my mom's got a recipe. they're mind-numbingly good.)

and then, there's sweetcorn and yam ice cream which clearly owns ben+jerrys. obviously.

so, i'm curious. to anyone who's reading - what would be the very last thing you'd eat here? i think it really says a lot about you and it's bound to make you think and remember a whole lot of stuff.

+ posted by M @ 11:52 PM

...

more than one person has asked me lately, 'are you sure you really want to go away?'

out of concern, i guess. these are the people who know me more intimately. when i say, 'yes, it's really something i have to do', no one is really convinced. they try to talk me out of it, citing tons of reasons.

i have thought carefully about it. the loneliness, the homesickness, etc. i'm not in denial here. i know that i most probably WILL be lonely. i WILL be homesick. i CAN picture myself going through one of my depressed periods where i just want to hibernate for a few months. i'm not naive, i know there's a possibility i could end up with zero-friends, zero-people i can turn to. i know some people do this, but i don't - fantasize about going there and meeting version 2.0s of all my friends here or finding some foreign blonde boyfriend immediately (for the record, i don't even like blondes). i have thought of all the worst possible things that can happen, because, well ain't i just little miss optimistic? but loneliness is something people deal with everywhere, wherever they may be. it's not a strong enough reason to make me stay. i've been throwing myself into a whole bunch of random gigs this year to prepare myself in some small way for the world out there. relationships and friendships in the working world are transient - people walk in and out the door faster than you can say 'bye'.

everyone says, 'you're going to miss your family. you're going to truly start appreciating the way things used to be. you're going to start appreciating singapore' and so on. i don't need anymore lectures. i know i'm going to miss things, i'm going to regret some things, etc etc. but i have to go there myself to find out - no point telling me about it because Conrad's right - we live as we dream, alone. i've got to experience this for myself. and if it means buying cans of mace and pepper spray, i guess that's what i'll have to do.

my strongest reason for going away isn't because i hate this place. i don't hate singapore. i might grumble about the weather, the government, the people. but at the end of the day - i love the food and i love the idiosyncracies of this country. i might not be able to call it 'home' convincingly like they do on national day, but i know this place does mean something to me. the late night stingray suppers, one-dollar ice creams, getting from antique little india to the city in less than half an hour, not having to ever worry about winterwear. i'm not leaving because i want to run away from my family, either. i'm happy with them, despite our conflicts and squabbles.

as i've so often said before (and i really, really honest-to-God mean this) i'm leaving for a better education which i know i definitely will not be able to get here. yes, i'm leaving because i really want to learn things. this place has never given me enough opportunities to grow academically, i feel. i've never truly felt myself in this system. it's stifling, it's suffocating. i know it sounds demanding - why do i demand opportunities, shouldn't i make my own? but the fact is, i'm not ready to stand on my own. at this point, i'm not so individualistic that i can take being thrown into NUS lit faculty with crappy classmates (mostly only there because they've no other option) and teachers and not getting broken. i like people. i like hearing what they have to say, i like learning from them. i want to be in a class where every single person is there because they WANT to know about Donne or Shakespeare or Beckett, not because they barely passed their A Levels and the NUS Lit degree was the only one they could qualify for. i need to be around people which provide intellectually-stimulating opinions, vibrant classroom discussions and all those things you always dream about when you think about College in America. and it would be completely pointless if i were going to some random school in the states (where i'm sure they're almost as disinterested as the students i just described above) but i'm going to Chicago, a school that believes in 'the life of the mind'. the students talk about sometimes-weird things on their lj community and sometimes take themselves a little too seriously, but i like it.

i need to go away, and i need to want to come back on my own accord and noone else's. i need to live my own life and be my own person. i think that's incredibly important. at this stage in our lives, we're all getting ready to be the people we are on our own and not because of anyone else. we have to do this ourselves. it's called 'coming-of-age'.

i have to finally become a story i want to tell, a story that i'm sure of, and not something that just pops into my head in dribs and drabs.

and the truth is, i am scared. i can't say i'm not. it boils down to little fears even, that in the end we'll all just completely drift apart because of the different directions our lives are heading. i can imagine feeling left out once local U orientation starts for everyone and they're making 'new friends' and all excited about 'new friends'. it'll probably be like jc1 orientation again, so much so that people might forget to send me off, forget that in a month i'll be gone for four years, forget that i exist even. everyone will be swapping stories of Uni and i'll be completely unable to relate. but it's inevitable. i'll admit to all of these insecurities and embarrassingly juvenile fears. bea's leaving next week and starting school for herself soon, and i know i'm going to miss her terribly. all the different places we're heading seems to further cement how apart our lives will be. but at the end of it all, i have faith that things will be ok because God will make it ok. and i know that in the end, it's totally going to be worth it. and the people that will stay, will stay. even when i leave.

+ posted by M @ 12:10 PM

...	Friday, June 02, 2006

i watched death and the ploughman and i was drifting in and out of sleep for at least a good ten minutes of it. i start off my artsfestbingespend with such a bang.

it's not that it wasn't good. technically it was very good - the acting, lighting, etc. even the direction, though questionable at times, was strong. but it was far too weighty for a friday night and i was really very tired from work and i just couldn't feel for it.

so so so looking forward to A Stranger At Home. ROYSTON!!! (i admit i don't even know the director's name for this production)

short term lifegoals:

1. watch all the things i wanted to see for Arts Fest
2. acquire Grey's Anatomy S1 and S2 cheaply and watch all
3. acquire scrubs, friends and frasier dvds and watch till in comatose state
4. try to understand YH's msg and reply him. i woke up the other morning to this msg ... okay i realize i deleted it but it was about 'dreams being layers upon layers that turn like a jigsaw puzzle piece to fit and thus the dreamscape is always evolving'? is it supposed to make sense at all or do i not have to feel bad for failing to understand it?

great!

+ posted by M @ 11:28 PM