For the context let us go to the beginning. I was chilling out in a café one day when I bumped into Z. We talked for a bit, and then he said he was going to meet a mutual friend, D, whom I had not seen in 20 years. Naturally I was eager to see him. When Z told me that D had driven over, I finished my drink, and walked over to his car. Along the way the café owner gave me a rugby tackle. Turns out I had forgotten to settle my bill. Well how stupid of me.
Anyway, after a nice chat (even though most of it was recounting all the stupid schoolboy pranks we used to play on each other while we were on the same school bus) we agreed to meet again. On the second meeting, D’s girlfriend – call her N asked me if I wanted to be set up on a blind date. I was a little hesitant, especially after she added the qualifier that my blind date would not be particularly good looking. But she was a nurse. I know that I have a friend out there whose ears would be pricking up when talking about a nurse.
Problem was that Z was there that night and that was the first time that he found out that I was going to be set up on a blind date instead of him - this in spite of the fact that D and him were supposed to be closer friends than D and I. I couldn’t understand it very much. D told me that it was because I was a non-Christian, and she was one too. It was fishy, but I didn’t ask him too many questions. Later on, N would tell me that it was because of a chance remark that I made, that gave her the impression that I would be nice to my girlfriends. But I probably didn’t really mean that, or I meant it as a joke. Well, what’s done is done, and I also want to add that Z, even though he’s always struck me as a nice person, has always seemed a little immature to me. He’s a school teacher but he doesn’t see anything wrong in confessing that he thinks that his Sec 2 class monitor is a chiobu. That is a little shocking.
There were a few mix-ups along the way. D SMSed me on Wednesday and asked me if Sunday afternoon was OK. I said, “ya” and for some strange reason did not hear anything until Saturday. On Saturday, I went out without my handphone, and found that D had made 8 unsuccessful attempts to call me on my hp. So I called him back and I found that that blind date was still on. Finally it was confirmed on Sunday.
I think it was only on Saturday night that it dawned on me that I could be meeting somebody who might change my destiny. But I don’t know. My gut feeling told me that it wasn’t going to work out. On Saturday night, I had a dream. In the first part, I was in a place that closely resembled Napa valley, one of the places I had travelled to in Cali last year. It was a wine country, good for growing grapes. Probably a happy place. A marathon was going on. They are usually happy occasions, at the start, at least. I remembered that my half marathon was a happy occasion. The full marathon was not so happy but yet gave me a greater sense of achievement. People were cheering loudly. But suddenly I remembered that I wasn’t going to do any more marathons, so I got into a car and drove away, at that time passing by quite a few hordes of people. Long distance running was part of my past, not my future.
It’s interesting that this dream took place in the USA. Is the USA a part of my past or part of my future? Nothing was concluded. Later on, I was wandering through a hot and hazy landscape at night, I walked into an old decaying HDB 3 room flat. There was a piano, and then a middle aged Chinese woman who looked like she was quite pretty when she was young (think Mitsuko Uchida). I was intrigued. She said that she taught Grade 8, which was around my level of piano playing. Then I sat down for my lesson with her. Something was wrong when she said that they were going to start with sight reading. Sight reading is the one thing I sucked at while learning piano, primarily because I rely very heavily on my own ears when playing. Once I am familiar with a piece, I basically memorise it and play it from memory, I hardly ever read scores. Then she took a score I had never seen before, came up to me from behind and set it in front of me. This was eerie, because that’s the way they do it when you go in for a piano exam. I looked back nervously at the bench, there were 2 people sitting there - a Chinese woman, and a black man. Later on, I reckoned this was symbolic: most of my piano teachers had been Chinese women, and most of my music heroes have been black men. I tried to sight read - it was an abject performance. Later on, a gust of wind blew, it grew chilly, and a candle was blown out - so much like a classic Chinese Ghost Story movie that you half expected Tsui Hark to appear out of nowhere and yell “cut!” It wasn’t that they were scary ghosts, and it wasn’t scary (though eerie) but it was my brain trying to tell me - these people are ghosts - get it?
I woke up the next morning around noon. I got an SMS from D telling me that he was sick and therefore it would only be the 3 of us. He asked me how I was feeling, and I told him, “if we like each other we like each other and if we don’t we don’t”. Although this was not a bad attitude to have, it was also blase, and he may have detected that I didn’t have high hopes for a blind date. (Who does anyway?) I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t going to be around but I didn’t want to prejudge whether this was a good or a bad thing. If she wasn’t pretty we’ll see about her other qualities.
So I had time to burn until 4. Should I read a book? But I figured that if I were to read a book and shake leg in McD’s in front of a tub of coke (the soft drink not the drug), it would make me nervous and jittery. I hadn’t done any running that weekend so I thought I would go swimming, which I did.
I got there half an hour early, to grab a quick bite at Chippy’s - I got fish and chips. We were to meet at Gloria Jeans. They were late. That was OK, I suppose. A woman’s got a right to be a little late. But how much of a right? OK, N appeared first, and then later on my blind date - call her S - appeared. I tried not to hide my disappointment. She wasn’t the bubbly lively sort. She was actually quite dour.
I had a checklist of what I wanted. (Mofo pls take note). Could I chat with her? Could we exchange views on what we wanted to say? I don’t know. She didn’t seem to be a great reader of books. Was she lively? I had to take into account that she had just done a night shift, so she was sleepy. Whose idea was this? Was she enthusiastic about this being a date? I couldn’t tell.
I ordered drinks for all. This was Gloria Jean’s and drinks were a little steep but I had already resigned myself to buying the first round of drinks, so that was OK. OK, S was a nurse in surgery, so we could talk about a few things. But I did let slip that my sis did complain that some of her nurses did ask a few stupid questions, so I don’t know if that remark pissed her off. But I also wanted to see if she saw the funny side of it or would hold it against me. I couldn’t tell.
Then we went on to other things. They asked me if I played sports. I said - OK, I’m no sports man but I did some long distance running before, I swim, I play a bit of basketball. She said, “I dun even know if I can do my 2.4 anymore.” Sorry, this wasn’t what I was looking for. I made the discovery that you only found the energy to do a lot of things in your own time if you set aside time to keep fit. And anyway sporty girls are usually better in bed. If nothing else they have better bodies.
I was like, “God, please please please give me an excuse - any excuse at all - to like you” There was a slight flash of anger when I found that they were talking about dinner and I probably had to get through a longer period of time with her.
Kind and good people - generally speaking - are not lazy people. Why? For the simple reason that it takes effort to be kind and good. There are people out there who maintain an agreeable facade when they are in front of people, never do anything offensive. Never talk very much about themselves. People who don’t do very much to try to make the world a better place. I’ve seen people who are like that in social gatherings, and are OK when you’re with them in that environment, but they treat their boyfriends or husbands abominably. Why? When you’re not pro-active, when it doesn’t occur to you that in life you have to seek your own happiness, when you got it in your head that your boyfriend / your husband is the one who is responsible, you are in trouble.
I know this because I have thought that I was the helpless innocent little one before. It grated people no end. You put the people around you in a no-win situation. If they make you happy, it is only because they have bent over backwards to make your happy, and they can’t be happy at the same time. If they don’t make you happy, then they are guilty for allowing such a bad thing to happen to such a poor innocent soul. And the way they portray themselves as a poor innocent soul is not entirely inaccurate because they are too thick to understand how the system works.
So, to answer the question - is she a nice person? I cannot say that I know at all. But my gut feel is - I doubt it. Even if she were a nice person after all - she is a nurse, and it is after all a noble profession - I also yearned for the type of niceness where she’s more fully developed, more mature. Or at least, more curious about what it means to be mature.
She wasn’t an intellectual either. This is not a sin, but this makes it quite difficult for her to be my girlfriend.
Hastily, I SMSed Z: “Dun worry you din miss much”. I wanted to vent my frustration on someone, and at the same time make him feel less bad about the whole issue. 5 minutes later the horrific realisation dawned on me that this was the kind of remark which, if taken wrongly, could end a friendship. Yipes!
After that, things got a little weird. S and I were not talking much, and funnily enough we were both talking more to N than to each other. Maybe I was too hasty in applying those tests on her one after another. But if we talk about stuff, it’s not a bad thing to just throw out a few things to see what catches on. Always have 1 or 2 funny stories on standby so that you could throw it out and see what comes back at you. But for the most part she maintained a stony silence.
Later on S went to the bathroom, and N asked me for “feedback”. I said, “I don’t think this is going to work out. She’s not the type I’m looking for.” And then she nodded slowly. I asked her if S wasn’t really interested, and she said that S is a person who’s quite timid, and she’s also tired. I thought, yah, what to do.
N wanted to go buy something, and she asked us if we wanted to go along with her or if we wanted to stay and chat. S said something like, “it makes me a little sleepy to hang around here” so I took that as a tacit agreement that things were not going to work out. Quite a relief I tell you.
We didn’t want to make it awkward. We made small talk along the way. S has this disconcerting habit of asking you something, and then skipping out of your field of vision while you answer. Later on, we had dinner. Maybe it was because N had started talking about more earthly stuff that made S feel a little more at ease.
During dinner they chatted about stuff that nurses usually bitch about, like horny doctors hitting on them, and how in a certain hospital, the culture is that you were not promoted based on your merit, but also on how pretty you were and on whether you slept with the doctors. This jolted me because I used to go to that hospital to get my braces fixed, and I recalled that the nurse was quite pleasant looking and quite pal-ly with my dentist.
A sudden realisation hit me, as S wondered out loud if she should visit Scandinavia. And she asked if Scandinavia was near to America. OK, not a sin to not know that. But that reminded me of my mother who liked to travel to other countries, not because she was curious about them, but because it was a form of luxury that she wished to partake in. S really resembled my mother! And that is a deal breaker, because anybody who resembles my mother is out. I couldn’t imagine living in a place where there was one more person like her. Sorry, but I don’t really get along with my mother. I know she’s my mother but I don’t approve of her character.
At that time, though, we were served by a waitress who was a little too cute to be a waitress. Of course I’m on a date and it’s quite bad form to gawk at a waitress, but I did succumb to following her around with my eyes a few times.
All the same, dinner wasn’t too bad. It was a relief to hear them talk. N was doing much of the talking. I wasn’t expecting S to suddenly come up with some exciting comment and she didn’t surprise me in that respect. I tried to keep the evening going as pleasantly as I could. Be good company.
OK, S and N are good friends. S is serious about her career. I would gather that she’s fairly competent at her job. I could have judged S a little too harshly. Let me remind all those people reading here that I have judged her on a very specific set of criteria, which is her prospects as my girlfriend. Somebody else having a different set could judge her much better. But it would have to be a quite different set.
We popped into a guardian pharmacy on our way back to the MRT station. While S was lining up at the cashier’s I started heh-heh-heh-ing to myself. N asked me what I was doing. I said I was laughing because this was going to be my last date with S. Then it was oops maybe I shouldn’t have said that. But I could tell she didn’t mind my honesty. I was sniggering to myself in the manner of a naughty boy who just crashed his bike, and decides that he should laugh at it rather than cry over it.
I don’t dislike her as a person, but I felt that she had more work to do before she became more eligible. (So do I, actually, but that’s a different matter.) S was going on the north line with me, so we got on the same train together. Coincidently that cute waitress was on that train too. She had just gotten off work. She put on earphones. (I was just commenting the other day that chiobus do that on public transport so that people wouldn’t try to chat them up) Then she did something that made my heart stop for a second. She pulled out a copy of DH Lawrence’s “Women in Love”. DH Lawrence! This is clearly a woman who is after my heart. For those of you not that conversant with English Literature, DH Lawrence is an author famous for writing about sexuality. He takes peoples’ sex lives and examines it from all angles. People in his novels have torrid, spiritual, wonderful sex. This waitress - what the fuck is a DH Lawrence reader doing being a waitress anyway? - this waitress clearly has an attitude towards romantic relationships that I am more sympathetic to, which is, I want something stupendous, mind blowing, sexy, dangerous, glorious. I want fireworks. Romance. I want to get high, drunk, I want to die with a smile on my face. Of course, this is something S also aspires to. But she wasn’t sending any such signals.
If S was not around, I could have tried to get her phone number. Damn it, this is the first time this has ever happened to me, there is this cute waitress that makes me interested, and suddenly she is off work and standing next to me. And I can’t do anything because my blind date is next to me. Is there no justice in this world?!
Afterword: A few days after the fact I met N and she told me that she arranged the blind date for me because she thought that I needed it. I thought that was funny. Usually in a blind date, one party is the one who wants a partner, and the other person is somebody who’s just curious to see what the first one is like. Now we had a blind date where both people are “just curious”! No wonder it didn’t work out.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Saturday, 14 February 2009
Songwriting Partnerships
Watched "Music and Lyrics" on the strong recommendation of Shorty.
I think some people have formed songwriting partnerships, because their talents complement each other. Some partnerships are divided upon pretty clean lines. Like Elton John writes the music, Bernie Taupin writes the lyrics. Burt Bacharach writes the music, Hal David writes the lyrics. Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Then there are other songwriting partnerships where there is a collective agreement, that if any one of those members writes a song, it gets credited to the group. REM and Sonic Youth have this arrangement, and it certainly didn't hurt the longevity of the band. Lennon / McCartney and Jagger / Richards had collective songwriting credit even after they've stopped writing together.
Then there are bands where 2 songwriters contribute to the ouevre of a band. This has often resulted in splits. After the Bell and Chilton axis drifted a part, Chris Bell left Big Star. After Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar found their styles incompatible, that was the end of Uncle Tupelo (but the beginning of Wilco and Son Volt). Even when you had Bob Mould and Grant Hart who wrote songs that were compatible with each other, the band could fall apart due to personality differences. But there is also the example of Teenage Fanclub, who have 3 different songwriters (although I can't really tell who wrote what by listening to the songs) and are still going strong today.
Partnerships weren't really meant to last. Jazz bands are much more promiscuous than pop bands, they typically don't last much more than 1 band. I think that most people consider themselves as session musicians. Or maybe the rules of bebop are well known enough to everybody that they can just slot themselves in anywhere and jam along.
But perhaps songwriting is an activity where the partners need time to get accommodated to each other. It’s fairly unusual that a novel will be co-written with anybody else, so songwriting must be slightly different.
In that movie, Drew Barrymore says (but this is improbable: she seems to be lecturing somebody 10 years older who had been a star, and who’s sold millions of albums) that melody is like the great first impression that you make, and lyrics are more like the content of the song. In a way she is right: it is possible to write a song in 5 minutes, but not the entire lyrics of a song. But sometimes melodies also create a lasting impression. You can read some words once and after that it’s just not the same anymore, because you got the meaning already. Whereas you can play the tune over and over again and not get tired of it, almost as though it were like doing a physical exercise, or like you were fucking somebody.
Speech has an accent (accent is about where you came from and how you speak but it is more precisely about which syllables get how much emphasis). A melody also also has certain notes which get emphasised more than others. The idea of matching music to melodies is to match the patterns of emphasis.
I've been reading a book about the Beatles so I can see a songwriting partnership in action. Lennon and McCartney are unusual in the sense that both of them write music and lyrics. Usually in other collaborations one is the composer and the other the lyricist. (Bacharach / David, Elton John / Bernie Taupin, Joe Strummer / Mick Jones). When one writes the lyrics and the other the words the division of labour is straightforward. In the case of Lennon / McCartney anything goes. Some songs which are labelled like that are real collaborations but most belong to one of those two, with the other one offering some tips and suggestions.
Then there is Manic Street Preachers where 2 of the guys write the words and the other 2 write the music. But they are not very good at fitting the music to the words. Radiohead is another band that does not bother too much if the words do not fit the music.
I've never written lyrics before the music. But I read a comment by Mick Jones of the Clash. He looks at the lyrics, and the accent of the words are so strong and rhythmic that a melody suggests itself. "Alfie", which Burt Bacharach lists down as his favourite composition, was an example of how the words were written first. But when you hear it now, the amount of melodic invention in that one is remarkable.
I think that one of the hallmarks of a good song is that it has an interesting chord structure. It is like saying that a model is beautiful because she has beautiful bones. That is not easy. Lou Reed, when he was writing for the Velvet Underground said "one chord is fine. Two chords you're pushing it. Three chords you're into jazz." Fine, the Velvet Underground has a reputation for using very few chords. But how many chords does "I'm Beginning to See the Light" have?
This is combinatorics. The more chords you play with, the more likely you will find something interesting. One of the examples I can think of is "Yesterday". Remember how every chord change triggers a change in emotions. By that measure, "Yesterday" is a roller coaster ride. Every note in the scale appears in the baseline at least once. Consider:
Yesterday, (mood: contemplative)
Love was such an easy game to play (mood: tragic)
Now I need a place to hide away (mood: here you release the tension of the tragic chord)
Oh yesterday (mood: somber)
Ended suddenly (mood: a slight lift as you resolve to the tonic)
(tonic in musical jargon means you are at home base again)
Why she (mood: tension. Stand by for descending bassline)
Had to go I don't know (mood: melody and bassline go in different directions. Drama.)
She wouldn't say. (mood: a series of resolutions brings you back to the tonic. Repeat this again.)
I said something wrong now I long for (mood: same as above)
yesterday (mood: there is a similar resolution here as the last line, but it is higher. This resolution is more resolute. Chorus is over, go back to the beginning.)
Notice that just as in sex, there is a series of alternations between cranking up the tension and releasing it. It is possible that humans were made to understand the joy of music so that they can also understand the joy of sex. This also explains why, once you are a rock star you can basically fuck anybody you want.
I think some people have formed songwriting partnerships, because their talents complement each other. Some partnerships are divided upon pretty clean lines. Like Elton John writes the music, Bernie Taupin writes the lyrics. Burt Bacharach writes the music, Hal David writes the lyrics. Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Then there are other songwriting partnerships where there is a collective agreement, that if any one of those members writes a song, it gets credited to the group. REM and Sonic Youth have this arrangement, and it certainly didn't hurt the longevity of the band. Lennon / McCartney and Jagger / Richards had collective songwriting credit even after they've stopped writing together.
Then there are bands where 2 songwriters contribute to the ouevre of a band. This has often resulted in splits. After the Bell and Chilton axis drifted a part, Chris Bell left Big Star. After Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar found their styles incompatible, that was the end of Uncle Tupelo (but the beginning of Wilco and Son Volt). Even when you had Bob Mould and Grant Hart who wrote songs that were compatible with each other, the band could fall apart due to personality differences. But there is also the example of Teenage Fanclub, who have 3 different songwriters (although I can't really tell who wrote what by listening to the songs) and are still going strong today.
Partnerships weren't really meant to last. Jazz bands are much more promiscuous than pop bands, they typically don't last much more than 1 band. I think that most people consider themselves as session musicians. Or maybe the rules of bebop are well known enough to everybody that they can just slot themselves in anywhere and jam along.
But perhaps songwriting is an activity where the partners need time to get accommodated to each other. It’s fairly unusual that a novel will be co-written with anybody else, so songwriting must be slightly different.
In that movie, Drew Barrymore says (but this is improbable: she seems to be lecturing somebody 10 years older who had been a star, and who’s sold millions of albums) that melody is like the great first impression that you make, and lyrics are more like the content of the song. In a way she is right: it is possible to write a song in 5 minutes, but not the entire lyrics of a song. But sometimes melodies also create a lasting impression. You can read some words once and after that it’s just not the same anymore, because you got the meaning already. Whereas you can play the tune over and over again and not get tired of it, almost as though it were like doing a physical exercise, or like you were fucking somebody.
Speech has an accent (accent is about where you came from and how you speak but it is more precisely about which syllables get how much emphasis). A melody also also has certain notes which get emphasised more than others. The idea of matching music to melodies is to match the patterns of emphasis.
I've been reading a book about the Beatles so I can see a songwriting partnership in action. Lennon and McCartney are unusual in the sense that both of them write music and lyrics. Usually in other collaborations one is the composer and the other the lyricist. (Bacharach / David, Elton John / Bernie Taupin, Joe Strummer / Mick Jones). When one writes the lyrics and the other the words the division of labour is straightforward. In the case of Lennon / McCartney anything goes. Some songs which are labelled like that are real collaborations but most belong to one of those two, with the other one offering some tips and suggestions.
Then there is Manic Street Preachers where 2 of the guys write the words and the other 2 write the music. But they are not very good at fitting the music to the words. Radiohead is another band that does not bother too much if the words do not fit the music.
I've never written lyrics before the music. But I read a comment by Mick Jones of the Clash. He looks at the lyrics, and the accent of the words are so strong and rhythmic that a melody suggests itself. "Alfie", which Burt Bacharach lists down as his favourite composition, was an example of how the words were written first. But when you hear it now, the amount of melodic invention in that one is remarkable.
I think that one of the hallmarks of a good song is that it has an interesting chord structure. It is like saying that a model is beautiful because she has beautiful bones. That is not easy. Lou Reed, when he was writing for the Velvet Underground said "one chord is fine. Two chords you're pushing it. Three chords you're into jazz." Fine, the Velvet Underground has a reputation for using very few chords. But how many chords does "I'm Beginning to See the Light" have?
This is combinatorics. The more chords you play with, the more likely you will find something interesting. One of the examples I can think of is "Yesterday". Remember how every chord change triggers a change in emotions. By that measure, "Yesterday" is a roller coaster ride. Every note in the scale appears in the baseline at least once. Consider:
Yesterday, (mood: contemplative)
Love was such an easy game to play (mood: tragic)
Now I need a place to hide away (mood: here you release the tension of the tragic chord)
Oh yesterday (mood: somber)
Ended suddenly (mood: a slight lift as you resolve to the tonic)
(tonic in musical jargon means you are at home base again)
Why she (mood: tension. Stand by for descending bassline)
Had to go I don't know (mood: melody and bassline go in different directions. Drama.)
She wouldn't say. (mood: a series of resolutions brings you back to the tonic. Repeat this again.)
I said something wrong now I long for (mood: same as above)
yesterday (mood: there is a similar resolution here as the last line, but it is higher. This resolution is more resolute. Chorus is over, go back to the beginning.)
Notice that just as in sex, there is a series of alternations between cranking up the tension and releasing it. It is possible that humans were made to understand the joy of music so that they can also understand the joy of sex. This also explains why, once you are a rock star you can basically fuck anybody you want.
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Hot, Flat and Crowded
Limpeh has hung up his running shoes. Whereas before I ran I was 80% certain that my first marathon was going to be my last, I am now 99% certain. However I am entitled to be an armchair critic and give advice to people who might want to do the marathon one day. Of course he would be better off talking to people like our former colleague from PRC who did a sub 5, or the colonel who also did a sub 5 even as a veteran.
1. The sooner the better.
First the enrollment for the marathon has increased every year since 2002. I should have run in the early days when there were like less than 10000 participants. It is always more difficult with more people. Your running route is actually that much longer when you have to overtake people all the time every time you run. The other compelling reason is that everybody's growing older all the time, and fitness goes downhill after 30. I ran at a time in my life when I could afford to burn all the weekends I wanted to.
The first marathon I actually saw live was the Boston marathon. I was there for the weekend, and when I woke up it was going on, I could see them running a few blocks away from my friend's window, so it was a nice surprise. A cursory check finds that the qualification time is 3:20, so I don't think I will ever run that race. In Singapore anybody can participate.
2. Do your half marathon first.
I have my own half marathon timing from last year, and my running buddy's. Also I have both our marathon timings. In both cases the marathon timing is approximately 3 times that of the half marathon. A simple calculation will tell you that if you want to run a marathon in 8 hours (you have to because after that you don't know when the marshall will stop the race), you must do a half marathon in 2:40.
3. The one factor that determines whether you will get injured or not is your running style
If you are flat footed (I have a low arch) or if one of your legs is longer than the other then you should not run a marathon. Considering how easily I got injured during my marathon I concluded that I was actually a little lucky to finish the race. I should have been more careful about my running style. My feet get bashed up before I hit 25 km, so after that it's enduring the pain.
I had problems training. There was once I bashed up my feet while doing the rounds at McRitchie once and for the next few weeks was not able to go beyond 15 km.
4. Training
I undertrained. At the 28 km mark I realised that that was actually the furthest I had ever run in my life. My eyes popped out when I saw that the recommended running distance was 60 km a week. At my maximum I only ran twice a week, and a total of 35 km. It also recommended that you do a maximum of 32km at a stretch, while I only ever pushed myself up to 24 km.
I achieved what I wanted in the end - but barely. I would have run much harder if I was going to make a regular habit of marathon running, but I don't think so. Well I got what I wanted in the end so no point complaining.
Running on an empty stomach could make it more difficult for distances of more than 10 km.
5. Buddy
It is a real slog training for a marathon. Of course the buzz you get from running is good at relieving boredom. But even though I managed to do half my training on my own, it is good to have a buddy who is after the same objective as you are, and who is not going to fuck up, and whom you are not going to fuck up on. It helps greatly if he is of roughly the same fitness level (but my buddy is slightly better)
One reason why I have given up on marathon running is that the length of the time involved in training, and the having to recuperate and sleep a bit more after every run. The real marathon is not the 42 km but the training you have to put in for 4-5 months before the run.
6. National service
I would not have been able to do this without first having gone through national service. The big reason why the Singapore marathon is so well attended is the surfeit of people who have gone through national service. Running the race for me was only possible because I had foreknowledge of what it is like to eat shit. I found myself pushed to limits of endurance only previously encountered during NS. People who are eating shit for the first time will find it more difficult. Of course many others who have never put on a soldier's uniform before have run this race.
7. Singapore
Since Singapore is a tropical country, it is one of the toughest marathons on earth. Not a large part of the route is shaded. I realised that I had spoilt myself my picking shaded routes for my training (but I would not have it any other way. Why kill yourself training?) It is also tough because it is very crowded. But it is also easier than other marathon routes because it is flat. It is perfectly flat, I believe. You know the Thomas Friedman book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded"? That's the Singapore marathon.
In Singapore they stop the marathon after 8+ hours, because I didn't see any finishing times after 9 hours. I saw that in NY they allowed people to walk the marathon for 10 hours (this was mentioned because a walker - a 66 year old man - died after that).
Actually I have done some wikipedia-ing for marathons. I need to change my statement. I am 99% sure that I will never run another marathon in Singapore.
1. The sooner the better.
First the enrollment for the marathon has increased every year since 2002. I should have run in the early days when there were like less than 10000 participants. It is always more difficult with more people. Your running route is actually that much longer when you have to overtake people all the time every time you run. The other compelling reason is that everybody's growing older all the time, and fitness goes downhill after 30. I ran at a time in my life when I could afford to burn all the weekends I wanted to.
The first marathon I actually saw live was the Boston marathon. I was there for the weekend, and when I woke up it was going on, I could see them running a few blocks away from my friend's window, so it was a nice surprise. A cursory check finds that the qualification time is 3:20, so I don't think I will ever run that race. In Singapore anybody can participate.
2. Do your half marathon first.
I have my own half marathon timing from last year, and my running buddy's. Also I have both our marathon timings. In both cases the marathon timing is approximately 3 times that of the half marathon. A simple calculation will tell you that if you want to run a marathon in 8 hours (you have to because after that you don't know when the marshall will stop the race), you must do a half marathon in 2:40.
3. The one factor that determines whether you will get injured or not is your running style
If you are flat footed (I have a low arch) or if one of your legs is longer than the other then you should not run a marathon. Considering how easily I got injured during my marathon I concluded that I was actually a little lucky to finish the race. I should have been more careful about my running style. My feet get bashed up before I hit 25 km, so after that it's enduring the pain.
I had problems training. There was once I bashed up my feet while doing the rounds at McRitchie once and for the next few weeks was not able to go beyond 15 km.
4. Training
I undertrained. At the 28 km mark I realised that that was actually the furthest I had ever run in my life. My eyes popped out when I saw that the recommended running distance was 60 km a week. At my maximum I only ran twice a week, and a total of 35 km. It also recommended that you do a maximum of 32km at a stretch, while I only ever pushed myself up to 24 km.
I achieved what I wanted in the end - but barely. I would have run much harder if I was going to make a regular habit of marathon running, but I don't think so. Well I got what I wanted in the end so no point complaining.
Running on an empty stomach could make it more difficult for distances of more than 10 km.
5. Buddy
It is a real slog training for a marathon. Of course the buzz you get from running is good at relieving boredom. But even though I managed to do half my training on my own, it is good to have a buddy who is after the same objective as you are, and who is not going to fuck up, and whom you are not going to fuck up on. It helps greatly if he is of roughly the same fitness level (but my buddy is slightly better)
One reason why I have given up on marathon running is that the length of the time involved in training, and the having to recuperate and sleep a bit more after every run. The real marathon is not the 42 km but the training you have to put in for 4-5 months before the run.
6. National service
I would not have been able to do this without first having gone through national service. The big reason why the Singapore marathon is so well attended is the surfeit of people who have gone through national service. Running the race for me was only possible because I had foreknowledge of what it is like to eat shit. I found myself pushed to limits of endurance only previously encountered during NS. People who are eating shit for the first time will find it more difficult. Of course many others who have never put on a soldier's uniform before have run this race.
7. Singapore
Since Singapore is a tropical country, it is one of the toughest marathons on earth. Not a large part of the route is shaded. I realised that I had spoilt myself my picking shaded routes for my training (but I would not have it any other way. Why kill yourself training?) It is also tough because it is very crowded. But it is also easier than other marathon routes because it is flat. It is perfectly flat, I believe. You know the Thomas Friedman book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded"? That's the Singapore marathon.
In Singapore they stop the marathon after 8+ hours, because I didn't see any finishing times after 9 hours. I saw that in NY they allowed people to walk the marathon for 10 hours (this was mentioned because a walker - a 66 year old man - died after that).
Actually I have done some wikipedia-ing for marathons. I need to change my statement. I am 99% sure that I will never run another marathon in Singapore.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Bullshit
The Chinese astrology is spectacularly wrong about one thing: the year of the bull. Consider:
1973: Oil crisis. Biggest worldwide recession since the 1930s.
1985: Recession in Singapore.
1997: Asian financial crisis. No problem with the US, but it was crap in Singapore and the region. Later on, Russia, Brazil and Argentina would catch the Asian flu.
2009: Probably another year of recession.
Moral of the story: either stop believing in Chinese astrology, or change it to the year of the bear.
nb: while I was typing this story, a bull that was hanging on the wall fell to the ground.
1973: Oil crisis. Biggest worldwide recession since the 1930s.
1985: Recession in Singapore.
1997: Asian financial crisis. No problem with the US, but it was crap in Singapore and the region. Later on, Russia, Brazil and Argentina would catch the Asian flu.
2009: Probably another year of recession.
Moral of the story: either stop believing in Chinese astrology, or change it to the year of the bear.
nb: while I was typing this story, a bull that was hanging on the wall fell to the ground.
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Suicide
I saw a New Paper headline, “this hunk is a Government Scholar” on the New Paper. A few days later, I saw another headline where a scholar, ostensibly because of the failed pursuit of a girl from China, jumped to his death. Maybe they should take a picture of the mess at the bottom of the HDB block and headline it, “this gunk used to be a Government Scholar”.
They are making a big deal out of it isn’t it? People usually kill themselves for larger reasons than just the end of a love affair. The decision to die involves the ending of a life, and it usually reflects the belief, rightly or wrongly, that definitely more than one aspect of the life have failed. It could not possibly be that a girl had just rejected him. He must have felt that he failed in other aspects as well. The way that the suicide was reported therefore makes the reasons seem unnecessarily frivolous. Maybe he had just come home from a place where winters are extremely long and dreary. Maybe he couldn’t fit in socially with his new workplace.
There are 2 general meanings of suicide. One of them is a cry for help. The other one is a true unwillingness to carry on living. The first could come across as a little disingenuous: you don’t really want to kill yourself but you’re sending a strong signal that you want people to help you. In the second you don’t give a damn and you just want it to end. Statistics on suicide usually show that women attempt suicide more often, and men commit suicide more often, which highly suggests that the first reason appeals more to women and the second reason more to men.
There have been 2 times when I seriously considered suicide, and thankfully it has stayed this way for quite a few years. During the second time I was in the uni and yes – I had just ended a relationship, but I think it was more than that that drove me to despair. I couldn’t find an easy way out of my troubles, my future was murky, I didn’t know how I was going to slog through the rest of my uni years. There had been a period of optimism before that, when I thought that I had solved a lot of problems in my life, and later on I found out that at least some of the solutions were temporary. For the record I am acquainted with another scholar who “attempted” suicide. She was female.
Thank goodness nothing happened. I could deal with the fact that my life was over, but what would happen if my name was splashed across the papers, as an example of a recipient of privilege who cocked it up in a uniquely spectacular fashion? I would be dead by then, of course, and unable to know anything about the consequences, but my God, the shame! Thank goodness it never got to be a thought in my mind.
-----------
On another note, I recently heard that a divorce had taken place. It was sad. I didn't know the couple that well but it never seemed to me that the couple had anything in common. It was sad because that wedding was one of the first I had been to, and I saw what it was like when the groom (he was a colleague at that time) was scurrying around to fix things up.
I am a little superstitious. I have been to like maybe 3 dates in 10 years, but I noticed that if I were to go dating in places that close down soon after, the relationship is near the end. There was the annex of a spaghetti restaurant (the second floor was closed soon after.) There was a date at Scott's food court not long before it got closed down. Both didn't last. OK, one of them petered out to its fairly unseemly conclusion, in the other case both of us didn't click and we didn't pursue it.
OK, it's superstition. But psychological research shows that human behaviour is very much shaped by its environment. I suppose that the strength of a relationship - any one, not just a spousal one - depends on there being a shared environment. That's why I would want that environment, that context to be a lasting one. If an environment that symbolises a relationship were to disappear without being adequately replaced, that is very dangerous.
Well that wedding took place in a place that closed down soon afterwards and while I never allowed myself to think that the "curse of the closing down location" would affect this guy, this does fit in with the natural pattern. I would be very wary about closing down places.
------------------
An update on this earlier post - I think that water girl is still living in my block. I bumped into her at the lift. She still looks great, but I feel much less crazy about her than years ago.
They are making a big deal out of it isn’t it? People usually kill themselves for larger reasons than just the end of a love affair. The decision to die involves the ending of a life, and it usually reflects the belief, rightly or wrongly, that definitely more than one aspect of the life have failed. It could not possibly be that a girl had just rejected him. He must have felt that he failed in other aspects as well. The way that the suicide was reported therefore makes the reasons seem unnecessarily frivolous. Maybe he had just come home from a place where winters are extremely long and dreary. Maybe he couldn’t fit in socially with his new workplace.
There are 2 general meanings of suicide. One of them is a cry for help. The other one is a true unwillingness to carry on living. The first could come across as a little disingenuous: you don’t really want to kill yourself but you’re sending a strong signal that you want people to help you. In the second you don’t give a damn and you just want it to end. Statistics on suicide usually show that women attempt suicide more often, and men commit suicide more often, which highly suggests that the first reason appeals more to women and the second reason more to men.
There have been 2 times when I seriously considered suicide, and thankfully it has stayed this way for quite a few years. During the second time I was in the uni and yes – I had just ended a relationship, but I think it was more than that that drove me to despair. I couldn’t find an easy way out of my troubles, my future was murky, I didn’t know how I was going to slog through the rest of my uni years. There had been a period of optimism before that, when I thought that I had solved a lot of problems in my life, and later on I found out that at least some of the solutions were temporary. For the record I am acquainted with another scholar who “attempted” suicide. She was female.
Thank goodness nothing happened. I could deal with the fact that my life was over, but what would happen if my name was splashed across the papers, as an example of a recipient of privilege who cocked it up in a uniquely spectacular fashion? I would be dead by then, of course, and unable to know anything about the consequences, but my God, the shame! Thank goodness it never got to be a thought in my mind.
-----------
On another note, I recently heard that a divorce had taken place. It was sad. I didn't know the couple that well but it never seemed to me that the couple had anything in common. It was sad because that wedding was one of the first I had been to, and I saw what it was like when the groom (he was a colleague at that time) was scurrying around to fix things up.
I am a little superstitious. I have been to like maybe 3 dates in 10 years, but I noticed that if I were to go dating in places that close down soon after, the relationship is near the end. There was the annex of a spaghetti restaurant (the second floor was closed soon after.) There was a date at Scott's food court not long before it got closed down. Both didn't last. OK, one of them petered out to its fairly unseemly conclusion, in the other case both of us didn't click and we didn't pursue it.
OK, it's superstition. But psychological research shows that human behaviour is very much shaped by its environment. I suppose that the strength of a relationship - any one, not just a spousal one - depends on there being a shared environment. That's why I would want that environment, that context to be a lasting one. If an environment that symbolises a relationship were to disappear without being adequately replaced, that is very dangerous.
Well that wedding took place in a place that closed down soon afterwards and while I never allowed myself to think that the "curse of the closing down location" would affect this guy, this does fit in with the natural pattern. I would be very wary about closing down places.
------------------
An update on this earlier post - I think that water girl is still living in my block. I bumped into her at the lift. She still looks great, but I feel much less crazy about her than years ago.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
Big Bang
OK, I’ve supposedly read “A Brief History of Time”, but that was 10 years ago, at the very start of my 10 year old reading binge and possibly I just read the words without fully understanding most of the stuff. A lot like how I used to study a lot of stuff at school and haven’t had much time to think through it (because I have a bad habit where every semester I will take a subject I have never encountered and consequently do not have a background in.)
Now, when I read the biography of Stephen Hawking by John Gribbin, I start to understand how strange his big bang theories are. The first strange thing that we know about are black holes. We know that stars are made of massive lumps of hydrogen which are densely packed, owing to their own weight. Due to the heat generated by the release of gravitational energy, nuclear fusion takes place – a process that produces massive amounts of radiation and converts hydrogen to helium.
In the late stage of the development of stars, after a certain amount of hydrogen is used up, the sun swells up to become a yellow giant or a red giant. When even more hydrogen is used up, the star becomes more dense (spent hydrogen fuel is more dense than hydrogen – anything other than hydrogen is more dense, for that matter) and starts to collapse under its own weight. I think that the nuclear fusion process helps to make the star less dense by counteracting the gravity but I don’t remember how. Then you have stranger stars like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes.
Black holes are the most interesting. They occur when matter becomes so densely packed that nothing – not even light can escape it. In Newtonian physics, gravity is merely an attractive force between 2 massive objects. Einstein changed this concept slightly with his general relativity, and showed that gravity is actually a warp in the space-time that produces an effect similar to an attractive force, but with 1 difference – gravity also works on light. So far, everything is understandable from what we know from our intuition about physics.
Here’s when it gets weird. Hawking found out that black holes produce radiation. Black holes, supposedly a triumph of gravity over everything else, produces radiation. Just like a black body! Now, one of the main features of the black hole is the event horizon, which is effectively a curtain separating the black hole from the rest of the universe. Because of how the black hole distorts space, within the event horizon, all space leads inwards. There is no way you can get out of a black hole. However, due to quantum theory, which posits that by chance, small amounts of matter and its anti-matter can form spontaneously, it is possible that some stuff is formed on both sides of the event horizon. That stuff can emit a small amount of radiation, known as Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation was calculated using some maths that was traditionally used to reason about thermodynamics. For this reason, black holes are thought to have this property called “temperature”, which analogously to other forms of matter
Another cool thing about black holes is that they have very few properties. They are matter which is so dense and collapsed that they don’t really exists like other kinds of matter which exists in the form of atoms and molecules and have chemical properties. If you have 2 black holes with the same event horizon radius, angular velocity and electrical charge, they are basically identical. All black holes are perfectly spherical because the gravity makes it that way.
The really strange part is how you could have a spin-off universe within the event horizon, and how some rip in the space time fabric could cause there to be “baby universes” whose existence is not detectable to us because they exist in dimensions that are orthogonal to our 3 dimensions. (just as people who live inside a sheet of paper cannot conceive of the universe outside of that sheet of paper). I thought, well that’s really weird. He’s really pushing it this time. Is the big bang the result of the formation of a bubble universe? He posits that the big bang is not a singularity (ie everything is squeezed into a geometric point, which is mathematically troublesome because you have a lot of dividing stuff by zero.) Instead the geometry of the big bang looks like the North pole, where you keep on going north until you reach a point where you can’t go north anymore because everywhere else leads south.
I’m like, fine. You want to say all this, it’s OK. You can keep on scratching out weird maths equations on your paper and talk about weird stuff that goes on out there that we don’t know about, that’s fine. But it is freaking weird. Is it freakier that we are coexisting in some mother universe which exists in dimensions that we are not aware of, or is it freakier that there is some heavenly father out there who said, “let there be light” and everything came to be? Is the creationist theory more compatible with the singularity type big bang, or the smoother continuous north pole style big bang?
These are weighty questions – portentous in the extreme and bearing absolutely no practical relevance whatsoever. No wonder even when I went to a university which had one of the best physics departments in the world I ended up not doing Physics but more real world stuff like – uh mathematics.
On another note, my book jacket is from Times the Bookshop, at its imperious phase before Borders and Kino came to town and totally pummeled its business. Some of us have been in Singapore for long enough to remember when it was the biggest book chain in Singapore. We remember the love hate relationship with that bookstore. It’s wonderful to see so many books around, but they had such a lousy small range of books.
I will list down the branches that Times used to have. Pls note that Times as of today has around 5 branches.
Times Centerpoint (this used to be the largest Times around and the flagship store. Now go look at what’s happened to it.)
Times Raffles City (Taken over by MPH, and then MPH moved to the basement.)
Times Plaza Singapura (this had to close when the entire building had to have a makeover. Now there is a smaller one on the 4th floor)
Times Lucky Plaza (I kid you not. closed down.)
Times Marina Square (see entry for “Plaza Singapura”)
Times United Square (United Square had a makeover, and then there was no more Times)
Times Northpoint (Driven out by Popular?)
Times World Trade Centre (same as “United Square”)
Times OUB Centre (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Holland V (see “Lucky Plaza”. I think its now a steakhouse.)
Times Columbo Court (see “United square”)
Times Bishan (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Kesington Park (This means Serangoon Gardens. see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Kovan Centre (Never been there)
Times Kalm’s Marina Centre (Why do you need 2 bookshops in the same place?)
Times Apex Jurong East (never been there)
Times Ginza Plaza (never been there)
Times Clarke Quay (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Hougang (never been there)
Times Toa Payoh (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Tiong Bahru (see “Northpoint”)
MPH actually had the biggest bookshop in town. I can’t bear to look at it now because they’ve changed it into a furniture shop as the location turned out to not have very much traffic going there. Armenian street used to be one of the coolest places around, because you had the big MPH on one side of the street, and on the other – the substation and the National Library. Now the national library is gone – demolished, like Arthur Dent’s house, to make way for a highway bypass. The MPH I think had been running up losses because there’s not much passenger traffic going there – a bookshop must always thrive on passenger traffic. And I suspect that the authorities are not too unhappy to separate the respectable symbols of informal education away from the less respectable artistic weirdos at the Substation.
Now, when I read the biography of Stephen Hawking by John Gribbin, I start to understand how strange his big bang theories are. The first strange thing that we know about are black holes. We know that stars are made of massive lumps of hydrogen which are densely packed, owing to their own weight. Due to the heat generated by the release of gravitational energy, nuclear fusion takes place – a process that produces massive amounts of radiation and converts hydrogen to helium.
In the late stage of the development of stars, after a certain amount of hydrogen is used up, the sun swells up to become a yellow giant or a red giant. When even more hydrogen is used up, the star becomes more dense (spent hydrogen fuel is more dense than hydrogen – anything other than hydrogen is more dense, for that matter) and starts to collapse under its own weight. I think that the nuclear fusion process helps to make the star less dense by counteracting the gravity but I don’t remember how. Then you have stranger stars like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes.
Black holes are the most interesting. They occur when matter becomes so densely packed that nothing – not even light can escape it. In Newtonian physics, gravity is merely an attractive force between 2 massive objects. Einstein changed this concept slightly with his general relativity, and showed that gravity is actually a warp in the space-time that produces an effect similar to an attractive force, but with 1 difference – gravity also works on light. So far, everything is understandable from what we know from our intuition about physics.
Here’s when it gets weird. Hawking found out that black holes produce radiation. Black holes, supposedly a triumph of gravity over everything else, produces radiation. Just like a black body! Now, one of the main features of the black hole is the event horizon, which is effectively a curtain separating the black hole from the rest of the universe. Because of how the black hole distorts space, within the event horizon, all space leads inwards. There is no way you can get out of a black hole. However, due to quantum theory, which posits that by chance, small amounts of matter and its anti-matter can form spontaneously, it is possible that some stuff is formed on both sides of the event horizon. That stuff can emit a small amount of radiation, known as Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation was calculated using some maths that was traditionally used to reason about thermodynamics. For this reason, black holes are thought to have this property called “temperature”, which analogously to other forms of matter
Another cool thing about black holes is that they have very few properties. They are matter which is so dense and collapsed that they don’t really exists like other kinds of matter which exists in the form of atoms and molecules and have chemical properties. If you have 2 black holes with the same event horizon radius, angular velocity and electrical charge, they are basically identical. All black holes are perfectly spherical because the gravity makes it that way.
The really strange part is how you could have a spin-off universe within the event horizon, and how some rip in the space time fabric could cause there to be “baby universes” whose existence is not detectable to us because they exist in dimensions that are orthogonal to our 3 dimensions. (just as people who live inside a sheet of paper cannot conceive of the universe outside of that sheet of paper). I thought, well that’s really weird. He’s really pushing it this time. Is the big bang the result of the formation of a bubble universe? He posits that the big bang is not a singularity (ie everything is squeezed into a geometric point, which is mathematically troublesome because you have a lot of dividing stuff by zero.) Instead the geometry of the big bang looks like the North pole, where you keep on going north until you reach a point where you can’t go north anymore because everywhere else leads south.
I’m like, fine. You want to say all this, it’s OK. You can keep on scratching out weird maths equations on your paper and talk about weird stuff that goes on out there that we don’t know about, that’s fine. But it is freaking weird. Is it freakier that we are coexisting in some mother universe which exists in dimensions that we are not aware of, or is it freakier that there is some heavenly father out there who said, “let there be light” and everything came to be? Is the creationist theory more compatible with the singularity type big bang, or the smoother continuous north pole style big bang?
These are weighty questions – portentous in the extreme and bearing absolutely no practical relevance whatsoever. No wonder even when I went to a university which had one of the best physics departments in the world I ended up not doing Physics but more real world stuff like – uh mathematics.
On another note, my book jacket is from Times the Bookshop, at its imperious phase before Borders and Kino came to town and totally pummeled its business. Some of us have been in Singapore for long enough to remember when it was the biggest book chain in Singapore. We remember the love hate relationship with that bookstore. It’s wonderful to see so many books around, but they had such a lousy small range of books.
I will list down the branches that Times used to have. Pls note that Times as of today has around 5 branches.
Times Centerpoint (this used to be the largest Times around and the flagship store. Now go look at what’s happened to it.)
Times Raffles City (Taken over by MPH, and then MPH moved to the basement.)
Times Plaza Singapura (this had to close when the entire building had to have a makeover. Now there is a smaller one on the 4th floor)
Times Lucky Plaza (I kid you not. closed down.)
Times Marina Square (see entry for “Plaza Singapura”)
Times United Square (United Square had a makeover, and then there was no more Times)
Times Northpoint (Driven out by Popular?)
Times World Trade Centre (same as “United Square”)
Times OUB Centre (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Holland V (see “Lucky Plaza”. I think its now a steakhouse.)
Times Columbo Court (see “United square”)
Times Bishan (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Kesington Park (This means Serangoon Gardens. see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Kovan Centre (Never been there)
Times Kalm’s Marina Centre (Why do you need 2 bookshops in the same place?)
Times Apex Jurong East (never been there)
Times Ginza Plaza (never been there)
Times Clarke Quay (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Hougang (never been there)
Times Toa Payoh (see “Lucky Plaza”)
Times Tiong Bahru (see “Northpoint”)
MPH actually had the biggest bookshop in town. I can’t bear to look at it now because they’ve changed it into a furniture shop as the location turned out to not have very much traffic going there. Armenian street used to be one of the coolest places around, because you had the big MPH on one side of the street, and on the other – the substation and the National Library. Now the national library is gone – demolished, like Arthur Dent’s house, to make way for a highway bypass. The MPH I think had been running up losses because there’s not much passenger traffic going there – a bookshop must always thrive on passenger traffic. And I suspect that the authorities are not too unhappy to separate the respectable symbols of informal education away from the less respectable artistic weirdos at the Substation.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
Little Nyonya
I was surprised when a colleague told me that he wanted to go home in time to catch the last episode of the series. Little Nyonya fever has spread over Singaporean households, many of whom have not seen a period drama from Mediacorp in a long time. Sure, the marketing blitz probably had something to do with this. Plus the fact that mediacorp has not showed period drama serials ever for a long time hint that there might be budgetary restraints, or else it is difficult to find people who lived in the old days, and are still young enough to be writing scripts for you.
These days drama serials are divided into 2 categories. The first category revolves around yuppies – probably mediacorp executives and their 5Cs dealing with the banal trivialities of their banal trivial lives. The second category revolve around HDB folk who are not very bright, probably even retarded dealing with the banal trivialities of their banal trivial lives.
So it is quite refreshing to see period dramas of life before 1965, when Singapore was a genuine 3rd world country, even though in the late 80s they were churning this out on a more regular basis.
This series has been a favourite of my father’s for a few reasons. One is that he and his siblings, like Juxiang and Yueniang were at the wrong end of polygamic politics in their childhood. So it was like seeing the getting pushed around by the other side of the family all over again. The formula is very simple: Xiang Yun = my grandmother. Jeanette Aw (both the dumb one and the speaking one) = my father and his siblings. Not all the siblings, actually, since I had 2 aunts who were given away because my grandmother couldn't afford to raise them.
The other thing is that his fairy godmother was a peranakan. His father’s mother was sympathetic to the family of the third wife (this third wife is my grandmother who is still living with me today). So we carried over some of the traditions – mainly culinary. Yes, belachan was pounded in my house until quite recently. No, there's none of that stupid sewing beads or women gelek-ing around the house in strange costumes. No, nobody in my house speaks Malay (except my grandmother) - as opposed to some other Peranakans I've met at work. Yes if you are Peranakan (or Hainanese, for that matter) you have a higher than average chance of being an Ang Mor Pai (although I prefer to be called "Ang Mor Buay Pai"). Yes I ate dinner while watching the last episode and suitably one of the things I ate was ayam buah keluak.
So there would be some of those comments – “that’s slow. I could draw water from the well faster than that in those days.” Or “yah – those beaded stuff. People used to do those things. Very tedious and boliao”. Or he would call the maid to pay a little more attention to the parts that dealt with the cooking.
It was less dramatic in those days, of course. There was no big family fortune. My grandfather had a middle class salary but it wasn’t so middle class when you had to divide it between 3 families. There were no servants, no attempted murders, no getting impregnated by Japanese, no rapes, no pimping of wives, no bribing angmohs (actually not sure about that). But there were stuff like getting shit from people from "the other family", feeding the chickens before you went to school, loansharks hammering at the doors, etc etc. I actually went to the house they lived in before it got torn down and converted into HDB flats. I was 6 years old and couldn't remember much. It looked a lot like Liu Yidao's shack.
The younger generation like me have more serious things to think about, for example how compilers work.
Update: The corporate ethos, actually the Temasek ethos in particular demands that if there is something to be milked at all, you have to milk it for all it's worth.
These days drama serials are divided into 2 categories. The first category revolves around yuppies – probably mediacorp executives and their 5Cs dealing with the banal trivialities of their banal trivial lives. The second category revolve around HDB folk who are not very bright, probably even retarded dealing with the banal trivialities of their banal trivial lives.
So it is quite refreshing to see period dramas of life before 1965, when Singapore was a genuine 3rd world country, even though in the late 80s they were churning this out on a more regular basis.
This series has been a favourite of my father’s for a few reasons. One is that he and his siblings, like Juxiang and Yueniang were at the wrong end of polygamic politics in their childhood. So it was like seeing the getting pushed around by the other side of the family all over again. The formula is very simple: Xiang Yun = my grandmother. Jeanette Aw (both the dumb one and the speaking one) = my father and his siblings. Not all the siblings, actually, since I had 2 aunts who were given away because my grandmother couldn't afford to raise them.
The other thing is that his fairy godmother was a peranakan. His father’s mother was sympathetic to the family of the third wife (this third wife is my grandmother who is still living with me today). So we carried over some of the traditions – mainly culinary. Yes, belachan was pounded in my house until quite recently. No, there's none of that stupid sewing beads or women gelek-ing around the house in strange costumes. No, nobody in my house speaks Malay (except my grandmother) - as opposed to some other Peranakans I've met at work. Yes if you are Peranakan (or Hainanese, for that matter) you have a higher than average chance of being an Ang Mor Pai (although I prefer to be called "Ang Mor Buay Pai"). Yes I ate dinner while watching the last episode and suitably one of the things I ate was ayam buah keluak.
So there would be some of those comments – “that’s slow. I could draw water from the well faster than that in those days.” Or “yah – those beaded stuff. People used to do those things. Very tedious and boliao”. Or he would call the maid to pay a little more attention to the parts that dealt with the cooking.
It was less dramatic in those days, of course. There was no big family fortune. My grandfather had a middle class salary but it wasn’t so middle class when you had to divide it between 3 families. There were no servants, no attempted murders, no getting impregnated by Japanese, no rapes, no pimping of wives, no bribing angmohs (actually not sure about that). But there were stuff like getting shit from people from "the other family", feeding the chickens before you went to school, loansharks hammering at the doors, etc etc. I actually went to the house they lived in before it got torn down and converted into HDB flats. I was 6 years old and couldn't remember much. It looked a lot like Liu Yidao's shack.
The younger generation like me have more serious things to think about, for example how compilers work.
Update: The corporate ethos, actually the Temasek ethos in particular demands that if there is something to be milked at all, you have to milk it for all it's worth.
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