sometimes things make me angry

This is a response to a comment in an article in The Independent's Student section.


The article is about 2 undergraduates from UCL and their experiences in jobs after graduation. One is an insurance broker in Cologne and another is a bowling alley attendant. So someone comments and says: 


"There's lots of lessons to be learnt from this. First is to be flexible in where your skills can be applied - from history to insurance company in Cologne, Germany. From neuroscience to bowling alley. 

But its also a case of sacrifice to get on the career ladder - no one is giving out free lunches. Katherine had to leave friends and family and familiarity behind to go live and work in Germany. Kiki put in long hours at a full time job at a recruitment company - but unfortunately couldn't cut it out with 12-16 hours, hours that lots of people actually work in London."

I'm taking issue with this bit: "Katherine had to leave friends and family and familiarity behind to go live and work in Germany." Sometimes I take things personally and I get mad and I have to get mad somewhere (I could go exercise, or manage my time, or do the laundry... but that is besides the point.) The point is that I'm a little angry. I know I won't be angry about this tomorrow, but I feel like this warrants me saying something. 

According to the internet, I am 6740.23 miles = 10847.05km away from singapore right now. If that's not "leaving friends and family and familiarity behind", I don't know what is. I'm just angry (and I know this is a relative thing) that Katherine is lauded for leaving England, and it sounds like such a ~dramatic~ change, but for pete's sake; Cologne is just a 2 hour flight away; you can go back for christmas, easter, long weekends; whenever you want. I can't go home whenever I want because a flight home is at least 12 hours away and costs about £563 if I went back in the summer. Well, the long and short of it is that I don't understand why it's so ~noble and brave~ for Katherine to move 2 hours away, and for me it's the expected thing. 

Because sg is so far away, I can't go back every holiday. I did just go back in december to get my visa done or else they'd forcibly ship me back, but after that I can't afford to go back. (I'm not sure if this is the bravado in me talking.) I also don't want to go back because it's disruptive to my adjustment and settling in; I can't take any long-term jobs or volunteering stints if I went back after every term. People usually go home in the summer, because the summer holidays are so long-- my school breaks in mid-june and only starts again in late september. I'm not planning to go back this summer at least, and I've already thought about this when I knew I was going to be in singapore for christmas.

Instead of flying to singapore, I'm doing the privileged thing by flying to chicago instead! woooop. On one hand, it's a "sacrifice" because I sacrificed going to singapore in the summer to spend time with family and "familiarity" to go to chicago. On the other hand, it's not a sacrifice at all; it's a treat even, to go to leakycon. It's funny, though, that I know that when I'm in leakycon it will be very familiar to me, even though I've never visited chicago in my life. It's not the city per se, but the people, the activities, and the environment that will feel familiar and comfortable. I could go so far as to say that I feel that the transient virtual thing called the internet and fandom is my home, because when I was in secondary school and JC I never felt at home, and never felt that I fit in, even though it was the place where I grew up.

It was precisely because of this reason that when I first moved to London, I didn't see moving away from my home country as a very big deal. For years I've been wanting to move away from singapore, because I felt that I didn't belong. So when people tell me, "oh, it must be hard to be so far away from home." I would answer that I didn't really mind being far away. To a large extent this was true, because I mostly don't feel any strong, rooted connection to singapore. But after a few months away, you start missing things, and I started missing the connections that I had been making since Nov 2009. The friendships that you've spent time and emotional investment in, can't be replicated with people you've just known. 

It was only in those last two years in sg that I realised that singapore wasn't this bleak place that my adolescent mind had made it out to be. There were people who were enthusiastic about art and writing and books and creating, who didn't care what you got for your A levels or which school you went to; there was even good music in singapore which I had missed out on. There is even a small but wonderful and supportive (also sometimes incestuous :P) LGBTQ environment that I didn't know about until I looked for it. Sometimes I think I got so settled in to the "scene" in singapore that it was hard for me to remember how much time it took for me to get adjusted in the first place. 

That's why I miss singapore a little bit. I miss the cheap (and good) food, booksactually, the pigeonhole, the substation, club st, DYMK, the arts house, CBTL. I hate that I am missing out (and have missed out) on events like the M1 Fringe Fest, Arts Fest, Night Fest, SWF2011, Spring Awakening, and just THINGS that I would normally go to and be involved in if I were still living there. They were things that made me learn and made me happy from volunteering with them. I miss going to poetry readings and being able to point out silly things like, "oh that's Ng Yi-Sheng, that's Yong Shu Hoong" and so-and-so that you would see attending artsy things regularly. There would be my sec 1 drama teacher who sat next to me when I watched my friend's play at the esplanade, and who turned up at the short playwriting festival that I volunteered at.

It's strange, saying now that I miss the people and the community, when all the time when I was in singapore was complain about how small the scene was.

Back to my point! I miss singapore a little. Yes, I'm jealous of people who get to go home during half-term. My egoistic self wants someone to tell her that she's doing this noble thing and enduring hardship and because she's 6740.23 miles away from home that makes it even more laudable. The egoistic self also thinks that it's not fair that Katherine is praised and she is not. But the proud self with bravado also doesn't want others to pity her, saying that she's all alone, away from home, so poor thing. The proud self wants to say that she's adjusting very well to living on her own, thank you very much, and she doesn't need any sympathy.

I feel two different things, and like Esther Earl said, sometimes it helps to talk about feelings. I've gotten this off my chest. Thanks for reading till the end.

CanManSG

SO. There's this thing called CanManSG, which is short for "Can Man Live on Social Media Alone?" And here's the twitter of the person from SG who's doing it. It starts today, I think, and she (daphne, whom I will refer to as CanManSG here forth because I have beef with the project, not the person) is starting to travel around london for a week. In my opinion, the project is stupid for a number of reasons:

1) Because I've had friends over and backpacking on the cheap, this just feels like a very glorified way of sponging off other people. The whole travelling-to-london-on-no-money thing is not too far away from backpacking. I don't see it as something extraordinary or special. People do it all the time-- they save money by staying at other people's houses, get around by hitchhiking, try to find free things to do. It's not altogether impossible to "live on social media alone".  

2) It's been proven already, so many times. I don't get why it has to be proven _again_. Take amanda palmer, for instance. There were so many occasions where she's tweeted and someone has supplied her with a keyboard or ukulele, or she's planned beforehand and had fans feed and house her and her band in return for tickets or merch. Even that time crabstickz and his friend tweeted for a place to stay in amsterdam and Lidewij and Sanne answered the call. If one thinks that the usefulness and power of social media has yet to be proven, I don't think he is very familiar with the current community that exists within social media. 

3) As far as I can see, this project offers no renumeration or form of exchange. The person participating is basically going around london asking for free dinners. Obviously if CanManSG was relying on someone who was well-off, then the person could afford it, but as a broke-ass student I see no reason to have to pay for someone's dinner when I don't even know the person. If I knew the person as a friend, and the person has done things for me, then yeah I wouldn't mind.

I have issues with this, because even couchsurfing has the mutual understanding that the visitor returns the favor of his host in some way. The visitor could offer his language skills, for example, or cook, or buy his host a few drinks. This understanding is present in WWOOF-ing, too, or with au pairs. There is no mention of exchange in this project. 

While CanManSG's facebook page has said: "I will be tasked to carry out various tasks of charity and contribute towards several good causes.", there has been no mention of the specific acts of charity that will be done, or the organisations who will benefit from this project. All recent updates so far on both the facebook page and twitter have been about CanManSG's experiences of finding places to stay and meeting people, not on the volunteering CanManSG is supposed to be doing.

4) From reading the twitter feed, I genuinely don't understand why people find this so exciting and are so fascinated by it. It's honestly nothing new, and for me it's not unheard of. It's like treating Social Media as this wonderful magical thing capable of doing all the good, which it is, but I don't think it's fair to exploit it and make people sympathise with you and pay for you to be a tourist. It would make more sense if this was happening in 2008, when everyone was new to Web 2.0, and twitter was still a new thing, but it doesn't make sense now.

----------------------------------------------------

From reading CanManSG's twitter feed, many companies and hotels have offered to pay for the person's meals or accommodation. Personally I have no problems with this win-win situation when it's a marketing and PR event, rather than an individual's quest to test social media. I think it should be presented as such, because I'm not sure how individuals, as opposed to businesses, can stand to gain from helping CanManSG out. 

the sexi

HELLO.

so I'm a little bit annoyed by the sexi. I just have a very personal thing about it because
why am I pressured to have sex even though I don't feel the need to?
I feel like I'm OLD why am i feeling this I don't need to be feeling this. Only kids in middle school feel this.

There are tumblrs (girl/girl, guy/guy, girl/guy) which talk about their respective partners and how they fuck with them and sleep in their beds and shit

And every time I read them I think "is there something wrong with me for not having sex?" I'm 19 and I haven't had sex. In Never Let Me Go (having just reread it it's at the top of my consciousness) they have sex all the time when they're 16-18. There are all these people on tumblr my age who have had sex. Apparently you're supposed to go to college and have all this sex in freshman year. Even at uni, sex seems to be a very common thing-- people feel each other up a lot at parties, and stay over with the intention to have sex, etc.

With some of the lgbt people I hang out with, they have even more sex, or rather they find occasion to talk about their recent "accomplishments" a lot. Granted, they might be more likely to do this amongst queer people because they can't talk about these things with heteronormative people. This makes me feel even more pansy for not having sex with ALL OF the girls.

I'm not annoyed at people who post about sex. I think it's an important thing to be able to openly discuss. It's great that there's an environment where there isn't a stigma about sex or that it's a mythical magical thing; it just IS. I like the sex-positive nature of tumblr, or at least of the blogs I follow. I like the intellectual environment that I am in which says that it's ok for me to have sex if I want to.

I don't exactly want more action either. Physical intimacy is something which means something to me, and while it is entirely possible, I don't want to just go making out with people in clubs and sleeping with them. I mean I like talking to people in clubs and dancing with them, and switching from partner to partner as I feel like, but I don't like making out from partner to partner. Sometimes in clubs there's the tendency to get felt up and there is a lot of room for unwanted advances, so to speak; there was one party I went to where a gross guy inserted himself between two girls dancing, one of which was me. There are so many instances where guys give you the ol' look over while they're talking to you...

(I'm trying to figure out where I stand on this issue, and whether my being bothered by all this talk of having sex is related to creeps approaching me in a sexual way.)

Part of the reason why I don't have sex or snog people at parties is because I hate it when guys approach me with the intention of doing so. (That doesn't really explain anything, does it? Reread the sentence. It merely excludes me/guy snog pairings.) To go further, I don't want to snog creepy guys because mostly they stink of beer, vomit, sweat, bad cologne or whatever, and I don't want to come away smelling like them. Also whenever this happens I feel like they zhan (wo de) pian yi, or they chi wo de doufu heh I don't know how to say it in english but basically it means I feel like I'm getting the short end of the stick. They gain more happiness from feeling me up than the happiness that I am gaining. (Soon this will elapse into Kantian theory if I'm not careful.)

Additionally, I don't think you necessarily *need* to have sex to prove that you're properly into each other. Sometimes I like someone a lot and I don't feel like I need to have sex with him/her. I'm just okay with the way things are and I don't feel the need to go any further.

The penultimate reason! (for me at least) Is that sometimes it hurts. It hurts a lot when someone screws you over (pun unintended) and uses physical intimacy as a weapon or blackmail. It hurts when you get close to someone and you trust them and they betray your trust, or they don't want to listen. Like they're telling you the same things over again and what you say doesn't get through to them. I don't want to put myself in a vulnerable situation where sex can be used against me. Physical closeness means something to me, and it's painful when afterwards the person says, "I didn't mean anything by that. It doesn't mean anything. I'm not really interested in you, sorry." #baggage #Ishouldtellyou #RENT

So I suppose to some people, physical intimacy doesn't mean much to them as it does to me. Other people have sex in situations where they won't get themselves hurt emotionally. That's perfectly fine. Ah ha. That's why people on tumblr/ real life/ Never Let Me Go say the things they do. Other people's sex lives are none of my business, even though I am privy to it on the internet.
I've found it out! I have a few answers now. I feel the way I do because of past experiences I have, and maybe different value judgements. The issue isn't *altogether* settled but I have a better understanding of it now.

P.S. I have to say, when I tell/ ask my friends about it, they're like: "You have sex when you want to, not when everyone tells you to!" and a few years ago someone said, when I asked them what sex was like: "You'll know when you come to it in your own time." I don't think I appreciated the full gravity of those words at that time, but I do now.

BEDA #30: last day!

hello!

It's the last day of BEDA :O

[interruption] I want to go to berlin! It's so pretty and the museums are pretty and the signs are in a language that I can kind of understand. xD (even if I only know how to say "bustenhalter" and other useless things.)

haha it's only because of this: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.429109752232.206832.220905087232 It's a facebook album of when troy chin went to Berlin as part of an art exhibition for The Resident Tourist. (TRT) TRT is a comic set in singapore; hits home in so many ways; is awesome.

Back to berlin! It's so much like amsterdam. The trains are like the ones in NL, the whole bike-riding thing is so dutch. (eh? eh? am I getting it right?) And according to shari, it's easier to find vegetarian food options. I could practice my german! There are even canals, like in NL. xD and if I went in the summer I could eat at outdoor cafes, and pretend I'm in Amelie. (yes Amelie is set in France, but it's kind of european and yes it is presumptuous of me to compare the two so I should just go to France anyway if I want to pretend I'm in Amelie but I can't speak French. However, I could pretend to be an american tourist with the full-blown accent, then it will be like Anna and the French Kiss, or like 13 Little Blue Envelopes... speaking of, I should check if the bookstore has The Last Little Blue Envelope because it is OUT and I'd love to read it, and maybe have maureen sign it in july, but that just means I have to bring more books to leakycon. I DIGRESS.)

There's a lot of "german food" in the album: bratwurst and bier, but I don't eat meat and I don't like bier. Hmm. I like sauerkraut, though! I could totes look for vegetarian sausages.

So yeah. I'm talking about TRT so much because I attended the book launch/ discussion of TRT 4 last night at booksactually, the local indie bookstore I've been going to for a few years. (and which I was surprised that a lot of people whom I got to know knew too. Does that make sense? I brought kimberly there, and you absolutely have to come when you visit sg.) Troy Chin talked a lot about his life and his creative process, and I'm done reading TRT 4, and the themes just hit home really hard. So now I'm going to write an extremely long, obsessive diatribe to him. #yay #fanmail

So that about ends BEDA! In 2009 I did some fancy schmancy stuff to celebrate the end, but nothing special has happened today. It's all humble. Keepin' it real.

I liked getting accustomed to trying to think about something to blog during the day. That was nice. And writing/ typing things out helped sometimes to organise my thoughts. Although I think in some cases I've overshared during BEDA. xD So to reiterate: the good stuff stays after a predetermined date-- I can't remember when-- it's may something, and the bad stuff gets taken down. #funfunfun

How did you find BEDA? Like it? Found it annoying?

BEDA #29

so everyone's making #8in8 videos, because Neil and Amanda cajoled us to.

Neil and amanda and kyle cassidy are tweeting all the good videos, and I'm like !! :D Because it's pretty awesome. Though personally I don't think the videos made so far aren't that good. Some of them are funny, and clearly took some effort to make, and it's fun to watch them. :)

I'm not sure whether to go on watching music videos of other songs, because I want to make a music video too, and I want to create it without having seen other people's stuff. I'm listening and relistening to the EP and thinking which songs would be good to do, and thinking about my ideas. To be honest I haven't been making videos lately because my main camera's memory card is blown, and I can't record anything longer than 7 seconds. I've discovered that the camera has been doing this with successive memory cards ever since I connected the memory cards to the Macbook, so maybe there are compatibility issues. I don't know. So my dad has lent me another spare memory card, so I'm going to try to use that.

Also I haven't had much time to make videos, what with trying to get on top of work, and exams coming up, and uni application paperwork to wade through. haha and I've realised that it also requires some planning-- a good video requires that I take the morning or afternoon off, and a bit of the night to edit, and it requires it to be sunny, when I'm usually only free after dark, and I need to be wearing a certain type of clothes... so yeah. planning.

Also yes I realise my video frequency rate is pretty crappy, but really it's the longest time that I've stuck to any internet obsession besides blogging, of course, so I suppose that's something. I really should plan out time to make videos, but what with everything I have to deal with, I don't want to do it if it just makes me even more overwhelmed and stressed. Jeez I used to be so productive when I had to go to school every day, taking advantage of public holidays to make videos. Now I don't have to go to school, I don't really do that anymore. hmm. I need to make a googledoc of video ideas and get my shit organised! I also have a couple unedited videos sitting in iMovie just waiting to be released. Just so you know.

I just feel like talking about my ~creative process~ after hearing Troy Chin (graphic novelist) talk about his work habits today. He's so productive! And so hardworking. I should take a few tips from his book. It's pretty funny, whenever one meets an author, because most of the time they are nothing like what you expect them to be. Also it's important to separate the creative product from the creator, and not judge the quality of the piece by whether you like the creator or not. It's fairly hard to do, because of inherent personal bias. Sometimes I also feel that I'm unable to fully critique the author's work, having met the author in person, because I feel bad about saying negative things about the work. Having met so many authors, I think I'd like to keep a safe distance from them. xD

This excludes LitDay, though! eep eep I'm so freaking excited; I just realised that a lot of the authors that I've ~worshipped~ for the past few years are going to be there-- DAVID FREAKING LEVITHAN, for example. And Stephanie Perkins, author of Anna and the French Kiss. I've only read half of that book, but it was still good. Not to mention John Green and Maureen Johnson. I'm not sure which books to bring for them to sign! I was thinking of bringing Let It Snow and Will Grayson, Will Grayson, because then I don't have to pack too many books. xD I can't seem to find my copy of wgwg, even though I clearly remember buying it and reading it. Ah well, I have a few months. I need to start a packing list! I'm afraid that I'll forget something critical, like my books to sign or my sunglasses.

Today I checked my chictopia account: http://www.chictopia.com/tumblenc and I realised that 2 of my favourite blogger-people commented on my last picture. :D :D even though it was uploaded 3 months ago. I want to do more chictopia pictures, and style everything in my closet. The time is ripe for another trip to salvation army-- the last time I went was 4 months ago. Maybe for another flea market too. That one was 2 months ago. I've discovered a strategy-- to go when they are closing, when people want to get rid of their stuff-- everything goes at ridiculous prices! I got a dress at $5 because of that. haha and I usually get 2nd-hand stuff. My favourite shirt at the moment costs $3, and with the $5 shorts from salvation army, my outfits get pretty cheap. ^_^ Maybe I shouldn't go, because I need the money for merch at leakycon. A few more months won't hurt.

BEDA #28: a NSP rally

hey guys.

About the muse song, Supermassive Black Hole, my friend, who’s a big Muse fan, tweeted “Supermassive ASSHOLE” and it’s so hilarious and I kept on thinking of this phrase when I read the sex scene in Colm Toibin’s Mothers and Sons. Because they must have had supermassive assholes to be able to do that...

AHEM.

right. back to srs bsns. Today I went to an NSP rally, mainly to hear Nicole Seah speak. I think everyone else was there to see her speak too. It was such a large turnout! let me find a picture...
http://blogs.todayonline.com/singaporevotes/2011/04/28/photo-supporters-at-nsps-rally/

but the WP (worker's party) rally had an even bigger turnout:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/d7R_wAFJAu408dn2EexKWlnB_qOGnjBj9XDhUKcZxtk?feat=directlink

it was my first political rally, and it was pretty exciting. There weren't any specific constructive solutions, though, just a lot of riling. But I got to know the individual candidates better, so that was good. I took notes and followed the live tweets of the rally on my phone. My legs ached. It was an interesting experience. Geez all this and I can't even vote. xD

Maybe I'll attend an SDP rally next, or a WP rally. I've got to be prepared to stand a lot; because in the front there's no sitting room. Well it was mainly because I was a pansy and spent most of the 3-hour rally sitting down, while a lot of other people were standing. A frog hopped next to me and a few other people in the dark.

It's probably because it's their first rally, so they didn't outline any plans yet. But what disappointed me was their lack of planning; a lot of candidates said "I don't know what to say" and sometimes points were repeated. While the lineup evidently was planned beforehand (one could notice the huge difference in quality of speakers from the beginning to end) their speeches weren't, and they should have been more strategic in this aspect.

ok. I'm going to end here today, because I have to get up early to meet a friend tomorrow at 10AM. EVIDENTLY I have been keeping odd sleeping hours. night.

BEDA #27: nomination day

oh my gawd. I just realised that there are only 3 more posts left to the end of BEDA! #tear

I’ll definitely keep this up, mostly politics and rants, and I’ll talk about not-so-intimate topics. But I’ll take down most of the informal grumpy posts on... May 4th. That sounds like sufficient buffer time. So only the well-structured posts will remain, and even then I might edit them.

I don’t know whether I want to talk about Nomination Day today. There’s nothing much really; just the groups contesting in the different constituencies were confirmed. There’s a walkover in just 1 GRC-- the one Lee Kwan Yew is contesting in-- that’s my GRC, so my household won’t get to vote. This is tons better than the last election in 2006, when there were walkovers in 7 constituencies. All in all, it’s pretty exciting, especially for an ~impressionable~ youth like me. I get to feel that Change is in the air, and there might actually be a chance for the opposition to secure a substantial number of seats.

The papers are saying that parliament hasn’t been this contested since the 1970s, so that’s cool. I’d mostly like to see the PAP majority ended, but even that’s a lofty goal. I’m really impressed actually by Nicole Seah of the National Solidarity Party-- she sounds very formidable in contrast to PAP candidate Tin Pei Ling. And she’s only 24! I can’t wait to see what she has to bring to the table.

After nomination day means that campaigning starts, and the earliest opposition rally I know of is the Worker’s Party rally at Hougang tomorrow night. The political candidates are getting all geared up, and I saw the PAP’s posters in Holland/ Bukit Timah GRC this afternoon. Ah ha. update. The SDP is having a rally at Commonwealth at 7, and the NSP at Marine Parade GRC, near the library. hmm hmm which one to go to? SDP is the one with Wijeysingha, but I also want to hear Nicole Seah (NSP). There will probably be many more rallies to come, so I’ll get other chances. We’ll see.

OH OH OH #8in8 http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/nighty-night is being released under CREATIVE COMMONS :D :D that means we can make music videos :D :D :D I’m so going to do one.

This is more of a note-to-self than anything else: http://ispeaktree.bandcamp.com/

I’ve been consciously avoiding anything remotely leakycon-related-- pottercast, wrock-- for the past few months, because I don’t want to get too excited about going. I’m worried I won’t be able to go, and I feel guilty about having enough money to go. : /
I know So. Many. people who would give anything to get to go, and I just feel so bad being able to go and leaving my friends behind. I don’t want to talk about it, but since nobody reads this blog, it won’t matter anyway. I can’t tell anybody I’m going, but the planning is something I’ve finally got my mum to agree to, and I’ve started booking everything, and thank GOD I managed to get Lit Day tickets before they sold out. #conundrum

BEDA #26: the PAP feels the heat.

hey guys.

song of the day: (it is so cute like regina spektor x3) Just press play and it will make you happy.



Today I’ll be talking politics again! Because tomorrow is Nomination Day, the day the candidates file their papers, and we’ll know who’s contesting who in which GRC (group representational constituency). Basically Singapore is divvied up into sections called constituencies, and political parties vie for each constituency. To be honest I’m not sure about the exact mechanisms, so to the website I go! http://www.elections.gov.sg

“For the upcoming General Election, there will be 12 SMCs and 15 GRCs making a total of 27 constituencies and 87 MPs. There are altogether 2,350,873 electors on the registers of electors of these 27 constituencies”

There you go.
Also the wiki page, which my friend says will make you shit brix.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singaporean_general_election,_2011

Basically it just feels-- as in the political climate is feeling really desperate at the moment. The PAP seriously feels threatened by the opposition, I think. On sunday in the Straits Times they did a full-page tear apart of the SDP’s (Singapore Democratic Party) Tan Jee Say’s paper on singapore’s economy, and his suggestions for improvement. Which is basically a position paper, but I lack the vocabulary to describe it properly. Also I don’t want to rephrase “SDP’s/ Tan Jee Say’s”. #grammar

Secondly, on tuesday (today) they make a stupid cheap shot at the SDP’s (I cannot for the life of me remember how to spell his name) Vincent Wijeysingha’s youtube video where he attends a gay rally. I mean, okay, to some voters it makes a difference if Wijeysingha wants to pursue a gay agenda, or if he was gay. But if he really wanted to pursue the agenda, he would have already MENTIONED it by now, since the issue itself generates so much attention. More publicity for the SDP.

The PAP is so afraid that they will lose the vote that they mention things like this. It’s not that I think that it’s wrong to pursue a gay agenda; Wijeysingha totes should-- I’d be overjoyed if he actually did. But to do so is not strategic as it would make one lose a huge percentage of the vote, since most singaporeans are staunchly conservative. Another angle SDP party members are taking is that the fact that Wijeysingha is gay has no implications on his ability to serve. Which is entirely true.

The whole issue just makes me so angry because the PAP is taking this opportunity to talk about 377A, which hasn’t been raised so far, and using it to divide the electorate. To distinguish Us from Them. However, 377A ISN’T a bread and butter issue that concerns most singaporeans. LGBTs in singapore still remain a minority, and being queer myself, I quite frankly am comfortable with the amount of leeway the authorities give us. Repealing 377A would be a good thing, but it would only affect a small percentage of singaporeans. This repealing would also be a symbolic move, which the present government is unwilling to take. It says that the government is supportive of LGBT issues, and it would pave the way for legalizing gay marriage, but given current social attitudes, it is too much to ask.

I think the General Election should be about issues that affect all singaporeans, such as the economy-- housing prices, minimum wage, the government’s allocation of resources-- and not about controversial issues that are only brought up to attract attention.

The third reason why I think the PAP is desperate, is that they’re making Lee Kuan Yew contest in the Tanjong Pagar GRC. The PAP is quite literally pulling out the stops. That dude is famous and all, but what about the statement where they said LKY was just going to act in an advisory role? How much can he do, now that he’s semi-retired and is 87 years old? He’s been in power since 1965, and had political influence a few years before that. That’s almost 50 years. If singapore wants to call itself a developed country, it should have a fair and just government to match. No other developed country has a leader in power for this long. And his SON is contesting in Ang Mo Kio GRC to boot. The PAP should have faith in its current lineup of candidates, and not have to play this card just to be confident that they can win the vote.

I’ll update tomorrow, and probably end up blogging for longer than BEDA.

[interruption: I’m listening to #8in8 and it is surprisingly good for the short time they had and I don’t want to spoil it so I’m listening the rest tomorrow and then tomorrow I will wax lyrical about it, so you guys might have a bonus blog; the 8in8 blog and then the nomination day blog. yeah. run on sentences ftw.]

EDIT: I'm reading through the facebook comments on the note, and realising that things are pretty crappy for non-nuclear families-- gay families, single-parent families, and there is a lot more to 377A than I thought, symbolically speaking. And also a lot more queer friendly singaporeans. :)

someone says, "Don't get drawn into a debate about the 377, Nicole. It's a distraction, focus on the political issues. As Margaret Thatcher supposedly said "if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left". So please just keep hitting their political weak spots, not suck into personal issues." #agree

BEDA #25: Walking With a Ghost review

Album Review
“Walking With a Ghost”-- The White Stripes

Being exceedingly familiar with Tegan and Sara’s version of “Walking With A Ghost”, I was I had high expectations with this cover. On first listen, The White Stripes’ version sounds discordant and screechy. On subsequent plays, I found that the instrumental breaks added character to the song, and I enjoyed the guitar riffs and tuning. This version has a harder, grittier feel.

The live version of Same Boy You’ve Always Known has a distinctly acoustic feel, which tends to be absent from Walking With a Ghost. The ordering of this song after the first provides a contrast which highlights its acoustic, bare-bones nature.

In As Ugly As I Seem, vocalist Jack White whispers softly into the microphone. The recording sounds intimate and quiet, as if he was playing to a living room, rather than an entire stadium. Using live recordings for this EP makes the emotion that is conveyed in these songs all the more tangible and real. It feels like Jack and Meg White are playing to a group of people and speaking directly to them, as if I was being directly acknowledged.

The Denial Twist begins with a guitar riff and screechy vocals that are reminiscent of early AC/DC tracks. This is my introduction to The White Stripes, to be honest, so I’m new to their style of music. It was interesting to observe Jack White’s versatility and range of emotion, from the emotional Same Boy You’ve Always Known to the old-school rock style of this song.

Screwdriver, too, reminds one of old-school rock. The White Stripes carry off the attitude that comes with this music with aplomb. Meg White more than makes up for the lack of other instrumentation with drumming that synchronizes perfectly with Jack’s guitar. “You need to know the difference between a father and a lover” has traces of Freud, but obviously, taken in context, has a feminist tone.

I have to admit, I only bought this CD because of this one track. Other reviews compare The Kills to The White Stripes. I’ve only heard The Kills’ Midnight Boom, but to put The White Stripes in the same boat would be a mistake, as they sound nothing alike, beyond the initial male/female duo arrangement.

BEDA #24: The Tracey Fragments

hey guys.

I just realised that my first exam paper is in exactly 2 weeks. I am feeling the heat. The thing about not being in school is there's no tangible sense of stress that is felt amongst you and your schoolmates, so um, the date kind of crept up onto me. There was a general sense of urgency from the beginning, but now it has stepped up a notch. In other words, I am so screwed.

SO. To spare you from the discomfort of ranty rants, I think I'll talk about The Tracey Fragments. I was only reminded of it when I saw Ellen Page's tweets in my feed today, and she's so deadpan in her tweets, and oddly like the characters she plays. I love the characters she has played, by the way. Not that I've watched all of them. xD But I like Juno and, well. Tracey from the Tracey Fragments.

There is so much I like about the movie; and I'm not even sure if I've talked about it before.

The soundtrack by Broken Social Scene = haunting and appropriate and awesome. The way that the director uses split screens 70% of the time is great; I like that the audience doesn't get a chance to get bored. It's also very illustrative of Tracey's mind; that there are different plausible situations that she's thinking of, and there are so many concerns. Despite her apparent madness, Tracey is fleshed out to be a very realistic character, with her flaws and her innocence displayed in full view. It's very hard for the viewer not to feel for Tracey, especially when she seeks acceptance in the form of a mysterious boy at school, and when she rocks out with abandon in her daydreams.

I like the lack of a chronological narrative in the film; the scenes go back and forth on the timeline, which is pretty cool. It allows the reader to be in Tracey's mind, so to speak, as she recollects the events which brought her to a certain stage. At the beginning it was hard to differentiate the scenes of Tracey's daydreams and events that actually happened. This is relevant to Tracey, though, because from this you can tell that she's trying to forget her memories out of shame or regret, and replace them with her daydreams.

The way they edit the film is something great to take note of, because sometimes you realise that they could do it a completely different way, and the narrative would kind of be the same. That's the flexibility of this film. The director and producers released all the footage from the movie for anybody to re-edit into music videos or trailers, and made a competition for those remixing the footage. Which is super exciting, right? You could choose to tell the story in a completely different way, or be inspired to change the split screens, or omit the split screens, or make the WHOLE FILM split screen-ed which would be a lot to swallow. omg what if there were just 2 screens, one playing the narrative chronologically and one chronologically backwards, and there would be a point in the film where the events would MEET and it would be at this point where the footage from both screens would be exactly the SAME. The audio would be a headache to deal with, though. I KNOW they could just play Broken Social Scene throughout, and have subtitles. Or no subtitles, and have the audience figure out the plot with Tracey MIMING everything.

Sorry. There's something I have to clarify.

It's very rare that I write blogs in one sitting. If I do, you can tell, because it's a singular topic for the entire post or there's flow. But usually I put blogger up on a tab, gmail on the other, dailybooth on another, etc and I just flick through the tabs like TV channels. My attention span is fragmented!

I have to end early today, because tomorrow is a long day and I have to wake up early to go to the post office, to post some supersecret packages. yeah. see you :)