alright, the moment everyone has been waiting for: mel is officially jobless and will remain that way for the rest of the year.

as such, she is no longer excusable when she blows you off, does not reply your messages or take your calls. she will meet up with you to the best of her ability and she will stop sleeping so much in her spare time. i've got slightly more than a month left, people! (slightly more being very important to me because i am in a little denial) she will also bake for those she loves, including Sprouts (she almost forgot).

so to celebrate this, i might streak her hair blue. i say might because i am having second thoughts now because i am such a wimp.

here's a summary of the things she has done in year 2006

1. intern at zhaowei. worked under E. learned a lot of things and got to be on set for a short film. face also appears in said short film briefly and half of self was in the new paper. have been to crazy horse club as a result as would have never gone in own personal time. also smoked enough passively to last her a lifetime. on the whole, a very good experience. E was very good boss.

2. the maldives community service trip. scandalous trip, involved sleeping in the boys room some nights to escape the heat and a lot of gossip. because of inherently anti-social nature didn't really make friends with people other than the volunteers. saw things that have never seen in life and went fishing. maldives truly beautiful, appreciated nature for once, though briefly.

3. waitressed at cedele. this was an extremely exhausting job. was overworked and underpaid. really complained a lot about this but got to like it a little bit after a while after making friends with colleagues and having very good-looking dishwasher around. got to eat a lot of free goods while actually losing weight because of hectic lunch hours (saturdays were the worst. i tried never to work on saturdays and colleagues would call me, 'wow you big shot huh, how come not working on a saturday?'). this job toughened me up a bit, made me more aware of things. i have a soft spot for bengs.

4. interned at caketheatre. this corresponded with cedele and as a result i was very tired as i'd work 8 hour day shifts at cedele and then rush to Katong for rehearsals and eventually reach home at eleven or midnight. this went on for a month. there was a lot of bitching and unhappiness on this show but i think i learned a lot of technical things, and again, it taught me to be more resilient. you can't fall apart in the theatre industry, people aren't so forgiving.

5. worked at a deli. learned how to make coffee (though still have not fully perfected art of frothing milk) and operate a cashier. probably the job i stuck with longest, and honestly, though not as artistically enriching as internships or as out-of-comfort-zone as cedele - i think i was the most happy here. very nice having regular customers and i work better in a more personal environment. i just like it when the emphasis is placed more on the individual. also quite fun most times with colleagues who were all nice people which is always very important. this was the one job i was the saddest to leave. maybe because i knew it was my last job of the year, or maybe because i just really liked it? i don't really know.

i'll be leaving for college soon and i can't really believe it still. from this year on i'll see my years starting in september and ending in june.

+ posted by M @ 4:57 PM

...	Thursday, July 27, 2006

tonight at rehearsal michelle said (of the theatre practice), 'this kills me. but it's the only thing i allow to kill me.'

God that's true.

+ posted by M @ 11:05 PM

...	Wednesday, July 26, 2006

so today i talked to a customer who always comes in and orders a turkey sandwich, eats it quietly and leaves (either that or To Go). he looked about my age so i decided to ask if he was having holidays.

in that short space of time while aly made the sandwich i found out he was a rising senior, interned at UChicago's Singapore GSB campus over the summer and had dreams of Stanford. it's nice to find that out about someone. to know that people have their own personal ideals and dreams that they want to pursue though clearly very different from my own. it's so much more hopeful rather than hearing someone unenthusiastically say, 'i don't know, i don't really care, whatever.'

but then i can't blame people for not knowing what they want, yet i think in some way we all know in our hearts What it is that We Want.

+ posted by M @ 11:31 PM

...

ripped off from dawn, and only because i really need to amuse myself since i can't sleep and am freaked out about visa applications.

1. What do you think of me, iTunes?
Free - Corrinne May

that's optimistic.

2. Will I have a happy life?
Anything - Plain White T's

kind of wishy-washy answer.

3. What do my friends really think of me?
Crush - Jimmy Eat World

this doesn't make sense.

4. Do people secretly lust after me?
Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol

nor this.

5. What does [insert significant other] think of me?
Too Far Gone - The All American Rejects

this is kind of sad, though non-applicable.

6. How can I make myself happiest?
Love Song For No One - John Mayer

this is also sad.

7. What should I do with my life?
Night Drive - The All American Rejects

if only i knew how to drive.

8. Why must life be so full of pain?
The Middle - Jimmy Eat World

'everything will be just fine, everything will be all right, all right'

iTunes gives good counsel.

9. How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
Like A Virgin - Madonna

iTunes also has a sense of humour.

10. Will I ever have children?
Son Of A Preacher Man - Janis Joplin

me, marry a missionary? no don't think so.

11. Will I die happy?
Tears Of Pearls - Savage Garden

is this meant to be encouraging?

12. Can you give me some good advice?
Don't Leave - Ben Lee

maybe i shouldn't, since it's such a pain getting an American visa.

13. Do you know where your children are?
Sympathy - Goo Goo Dolls

14. What do you think happiness is?
I Love A Man In Uniform - Gang Of Four

you're right about this.

+ posted by M @ 3:07 AM

...	Tuesday, July 25, 2006

it's evident from all six seasons of SATC that really sometimes the only people you really need to have are your girlfriends. it wasn't the fact that all their relationship problems were sorted out that got me, it was when carrie met them up at their usual brunch place and the foursome were screaming and smiling and laughing. i really kind of miss everyone. i feel a bit like i'm left behind now, with melbourne slowly abducting all of my friends especially beatrice lim ching (who doesn't even read this).

i want that. having weekly weekend lunch with girlfriends and phonecalls and everything. why do we all have to be apart? my whole life has more or less revolved around wheelock place. it used to be 'okay let's meet at 1 at wheelock' no questions asked as to what exactly we would eat after or do just the understanding that it was our thing, our routine.

or obsessing over the oc and mark ruffalo and ikea's meatballs and never forgetting the scene at the departure gates

'you know i love you right, mel?' before she walked in by herself.

gee this is sad. people keep asking if i'll miss singapore, but the fact is even if i stay my heart will still be very much preoccupied with other continents. this place isn't the same anymore without you.

+ posted by M @ 2:25 AM

...	Sunday, July 23, 2006

my brother and i were talking about a teacher of his who recently got married,

brother: he's so happy
me: how do you know?
b: you can just tell. it's always like that what
me: what do you mean?
b: in the first months of marriage people are always very happy. and then after a few years they find it's not working so they get pissed off
me: God, when did you get so cynical?

+ posted by M @ 8:53 PM

...	Thursday, July 20, 2006

i live in confusing times. too many choices, too little choices. what to do?

i'm trying hard and i'm trying desperately to be. i'm eighteen. i'm me, a person, not an intern or the girl behind the cash register or someone who sits across you on the train. i am my own person. we are all people. i think we spend our whole lives trying to be a person and trying to show everyone else that we are one. our formulative years are spent trying to grow into our bodies and learn how to use our hands and senses. trying to get used to this bizarre world outside our mothers' bodies and the food it offers us, the cloth we drape over our bodies and the way of life where we live. cars, technology, sounds, tastes - all one big adaptation. and then after that we spend the rest of our life trying to feel like a person, like a completion of something we can't explain. and it never ends, not even when you're eighty and characteristically wrinkled because there will always be people who will never see you as a person.

i do it sometimes and i hate that i do. i look at people but i don't really see them. it's so sad how we know nothing about so many people - and obviously it's impossible to know the whole world intimately, but i feel it's just too lonely. not knowing them as the people that they are and knowing them only as the waitress or the shopgirl or just for the things they did.

i'm not even sure what i want to do anymore. there's art. there's food. there's poetry. there's theatre. there's film. believe it or not i seem to want to do all of it. gayle once told me, 'mel you have so many options. you write, you cook, you draw and you like film and drama.' it's natural for everything to overlap i guess, life is art. but to combine it all? sometimes i think i'm a purist at heart. not very experimental when it comes to theatre. i talked to someone about my tastes in books and plays and she concluded that i was a very 'classical' person - just words, words, words. i mean there are so many ways of writing nowadays, stream-of-consciousness and all those modernistic styles but when it comes down to it i'm just more than satisfied with a Graham Greene. his writing is beautiful without being delicate, alive without being contrived. which explains why i really haven't read much of murakami or zadie smith or jonathan safran foer and all that. which i really should some time but i'm too busy getting through the 20th and 19th century lit i like best. i think shakespeare is king of all, and i think that says a great deal about my taste when it comes to plays. i do like pinter and beckett though. basically the 20th century intrigues me endlessly - the whole obsession with existentialism, theatre of the absurd and all these theories. which is why i might just end up doing comparative literature. these days what is it that's shaking us and showing up in writing? gay politics ... and then, more politics? or exquisitely beautiful books that are a bit too dainty and surreal. what happened to the raw reality of love, existence, life?

i think of Language and i feel like that's enough. just people talking to each other, meditating on love, life, relationships and the way people are. i really want to get back to art and catch up on all the lost time. i want to spend a year doing my coursework, gathering photos, thinking about my piece, sketching and resketching - piecing it all together and then exhibiting. i want to do all that.

the incredible thing about art and poetry is when it comes down to it you could make do with a paper and a pen and it's all you. it's so easy to start writing or drawing - millions of dollars don't have to be spent.

i missed out on the theatreworks 24hr playwriting competition this year and am quite upset about it since i promised myself i would take part this year since i had no other worries. i had no idea the deadline was past. an old classmate asked if i wanted to volunteer ... i was frustrated - i refuse to help out and watch people write when i should be writing.

sometimes i think life is one big 'i'll try'.

+ posted by M @ 5:54 PM

...	Wednesday, July 19, 2006

yesterday on the bus carol shared with me 'The Sutra About The Deep Kindness Of Parents And The Difficulty Of Repaying It'.

i didn't read the whole thing but what i read of it i thought was very profound and beautiful. there are ten types of kindness bestowed by the mother on the child and for each kindness a poem was written.

i liked this one best:

8. THE KINDNESS OF ALWAYS THINKING OF THE CHILD WHEN IT HAS TRAVELLED FAR

The death of loved ones is difficult
to endure.
But separation is also painful.
When the child travels afar,
The mother worries in her village.
From morning until night, her heart is
with her child,
And a thousand tears fall from her eyes.
Like the monkey weeping silently in
love for her child,
Bit-by-bit her heart is broken.

+ posted by M @ 11:49 PM

...	Monday, July 17, 2006

typically these days i wake at two or later (when i'm not working). i wake up to too many messages on my phone which insistently beeps to remind me of it. most annoying is when i get messages that remind me i've double-booked people accidentally on one day and have to cancel on someone. i really should write out my week-to-week schedule at least so i don't forget who i'm meeting that day but really i'm just too lazy.

i don't know if i'm getting confirmed. i haven't submitted the form. i don't feel ready, not when i'm practically spiritually non-existent.

i stayed up by myself watching sex and the city last night and drinking raspberry liquor. that activity sounds a little scary - am i becoming a thirty year old woman too soon? sigh. maybe thirty is the best age to be, as evident by SJP's incredible wardrobe and their ability to always be eating at exquisite restaurants on dates. maybe the artist's path of starvation and lack of money is not for me - maybe what i really want is to become a thirty-something yuppie who sips on cosmopolitans after work and writes a column for some magazine. how hard can it be, right?

no actually i think i'll stick with my artistic ambitions. i just want to date a thirty-something man who can afford all those expensive restaurants, ferry me around in his car and pay for whatever clothes i desire. actually clothes aren't even that important - it's just the FOOD. and the car. how could i have judged all those tai-tais before when it's suddenly so appealing now?! oh well i'm not looking to marry this man, maybe just while i'm in college to take care of all my needs. very 'In Good Company', i loved that movie!

this is why i have to stop watching tv.

+ posted by M @ 1:50 PM

...	Saturday, July 15, 2006

"hello"
A group devised performance by Sprouts Theatre


A: I want to go back.

B: Where? Where do you want to go?

A: Where we were.

B: Where is that?

A: Don't you remember?

B: All I know is here.


When the Other Half leaves her abruptly in search of something else, she is left alone to pass the hours with only thoughts of the past, and the Half.

In a train, an unexpected meeting and connection with a stranger offers her an escape from a stagnant world of yellowing pages.

The now less-of-a-stranger builds a house, and she furnishes it. Together they reach a comfortable place.

She still thinks of her missing half sometimes, but is it wise to choose a romanticized past over a certain and comfortable present reality?

Set in an unnamed place that constantly changes, "Hello" is about meetings and partings between 3 characters, going places and going nowhere, and one person's desire to not be alone.

Venue: Substation Guinness Theatre
Date: 4th August 2006
Time: 8pm
Tickets at $6 sold at the door.
For bookings, email: sproutstheatre@gmail.com

About Sprouts Theatre

Sprouts consists of four graduates of the Victoria Junior College's Theatre Studies and Drama programme. In devising performances as a group, Sprouts believes in the power of creative tension behind the attempt to communicate and articulate within a group.

Vanessa is currently a make-up artiste with M.A.C; Michelle is a speech and drama instructor with Acts of Life; Arika works with children using drama as a means; while Carol helps youths articulate and write creatively.

Being young and out of their minds, this is their first work as a collaborative group.

those who do want to come, do book tickets so it will be less chaotic at the door. if you think it weird to email them or whatever, just do so through me! inform me quickly! PLEASE DO COME. yes, thank you.

+ posted by M @ 3:50 PM

...	Friday, July 14, 2006

i realize kings of convenience sound a little like simon and garfunkel and maybe that's why i like them.

these days i feel like days are swallowing me whole and chewing a little bit of me away as each second goes by. i feel like i have done nothing productive at all this whole year. what have i done? the months have just flit past and it's almost september and i'm leaving for the states and i am still unchanged, unrefreshed. i know it's not objective to discount all the jobs and things i've gone through the past few months but i really just feel incredibly stuck with tonnes of inertia at my heels.

sigh. sleep is good, sleep is always good.

i don't seem to have any will to write, or read, or enrich myself much these few days. in fact i've become a little withdrawn and anti-social (not that i wasn't always). maybe it's just one of those weeks where the entire contents of your sandwich fall out, when your nail polish drips all over the table, when your eyeliner gets in your eyes, when your phone won't stop buzzing on the day that you get to sleep in, when all your clothes don't seem to fit, when your brain refuses to wake up, when the people around you seem sullen and unavailable. next week will be better.

+ posted by M @ 12:40 AM

...	Tuesday, July 11, 2006

coldplay was so beautiful that i could cry. chris martin has the most beautiful voice i've ever heard. they've played the most beautiful songs i ever heard. this concert was the most beautiful one i've ever been to my life. it has changed and touched me in ways i cannot imagine. this is what all music should be like. BEAUTIFUL!

oh my God! like Holden would say,

'IT KILLS ME!'

+ posted by M @ 12:01 AM

...	Monday, July 10, 2006

if you want my honest opinion, i don't think dick lee is very talented. and i've never bothered to watch any of his musicals. but then you know, i realize i don't enjoy musicals as much i used to. maybe i've become more serious ... or maybe it's because Westside Story really sucked. i don't know. and you ask why i'm ranting about this so early in the day but i suppose it's because yesterday at the samsu uchicago gathering (YES, i did go) it went something like this every single time -

'what are you majoring in?'
'possibly theatre.'
'that's so cool. hey you know we staged beauty world last year?'

and then i was subjected to videos of beauty world and dick lee on tv and 'omg beauty world is the seminal singaporean musical!' X 10000.

i don't want to sound white-washed or like i'm straying from my roots or anything but, beauty world? no self-respecting theatre major would really care much for staging it. at least not me. well as it is i don't take musicals very seriously anyway. they're just enjoyable and good entertainment but it kind of stops there.

what IS intrinsically singaporean anyway? does it have to be something drenched in singlish and slapstick humour - because if that's so, it explains why i feel so displaced from this country. how ironic that my poem made it into that piece of ndp drivel that was 'what makes us singaporean'. because singapore could mean so much more to me other than the cabaret or hokkien. is that such a distorted or wrong view?

there are so many other local works much more worthy that people don't care to shout about. something of alfian's, eleanor wong's or the necessary stage or something. reproduce those. heck, CHAY YEW'S stuff is awesome (though previously banned here of course)! so enough about beauty world and dick lee. like, enough, seriously.

+ posted by M @ 3:29 AM

...	Sunday, July 09, 2006

i really miss bea.

+ posted by M @ 11:05 AM

...	Friday, July 07, 2006

COLDPLAY.

YES YES YES!

+ posted by M @ 1:51 AM

...	Saturday, July 01, 2006

so far this week i've bought blue hair dye, blue nail polish, goth eyeliner. almost bought underwear. i buy really random things like mood clocks and lomos as well which i never end up using. i'm still holding out to see if i can ever find days of the week underwear that's printed according to The Cure song -

MONDAY you can fall apart
TUESDAY WEDNESDAY break my heart (there'll have to be two pairs of this i guess)
THURSDAY doesn't even start
IT'S FRIDAY I'M IN LOVE
SATURDAY wait
And SUNDAY always comes too late

yeah, don't think i'll ever find them. i wonder if there are places that customize underpants.

oh, not to mention SATC and Friends pirated DVDs. like aly says, i really have to control myself.

i have this great urge to dye my hair blue and I DON'T KNOW WHY! i always wanted to dye my hair clementine red, but never thought about blue and now i'm suddenly going nuts over blue. my mother will have a heart attack. but I'M YOUNG, and it's IMPERMANENT!

my hands smell of a strange mix of bacon grease, coffee and soap because of work.

things just don't feel the same without bea around and with chalene not at starbucks anymore. by the end of this year there will be so many holes in my heart it will be leaking. yet all arteries lead to the heart so it will be okay. i don't know why but there's something incredibly profound about our anatomy which sometimes makes me reconfirm my beliefs that God is both a scientist and an artist and the most beautiful things are created when both are brought together.

+ posted by M @ 6:40 PM