Hmm…

I wonder, for policy-makers,

Is the plural of anecdote data?

Since Bali

So, I haven’t blogged since that last past about Bali.  That’s a gap of more than eight months.

I’ve wondered why.  Simple laziness is the tempting and probably substantially correct answer, but I feel there’s more.  Maybe part of that is busy-ness, though goodness knows I haven’t been too busy to eat a lot and sleep a lot and read a bit and cruise the Web in near-obsessive, increasingly desperate hunts for pointless utterly pointless sports news.  Maybe part of it is the sort of busy-ness that squeezes mental stamina out of you, the sort of mental stamina that then has to be replenished by idly allowing your face to be tanned by the light from your desktop LCD screen over the weekend.  Maybe part of it is just lack of inspiration, or the self-perceived version of same (but when is something not self-perceived anyway?).  And maybe part of it was the (self-perceived) meaningless-ness of whatever I would have written.  Or maybe, the question is the wrong one: I wondered why I haven’t blogged; maybe it’s more apt to ask why I should have.

Hmm.  Well.  I should have, because I thought I liked to blog.  I think I like to blog.  It’s troubling that there was that long period of time during which I apparently did not want to blog.  *thinking thinking thinking* Blogging is writing, yes?  So, maybe I wasn’t writing well at work.  Or was writing too much.

(Heh, funny how I came to “work” as a reason for not blogging.  But maybe it’s not so funny – “funny” as in “strange” – maybe it’s not so funny, since we work for so much of our lives.  If there is a reason I haven’t blogged, it’s probably linked to my work, just based on the universe of reasons in my life it can possibly be linked to.)*

###

Anyway, while I have not been blogging, I’ve collected some thoughts to blog about.  A lot of these surfaced during my various work trips.  I was in Brussels earlier this year, and when I came back home and cleared out my suitcase, I found a red-tipped matchstick, nestled amongst my clothes.  I don’t smoke, the hotel room I was in was a non-smoking one, there was no sign that anyone had tampered with my suitcase, so it was a complete mystery how a red-tipped matchstick ended up in my suitcase.  But maybe what happened was, the lady who cleaned out my room smoked and carried around loose matchsticks and inadvertently dropped one in my open suitcase.  Something innocuous and non-esoteric like that.  Maybe.

###

I think it was during the second-leg flight to Santiago.  I ran through the in-flight entertainment system’s various contents, and there were two Jason Mraz albums, a studio album and a one with songs he performed “live”.  Both had the song “I’m Yours”.  I’d of course heard the song several times over the radio by this time, but listening to the “live” version in a artificially closed personal space – with the crowd going wild after the first two notes of guitar twang and Jason Mraz’s free-wheeling slightly raw style – was a more moving, more buoying experience, and something I credit for keeping me sane during that flight.  (I then listened to it on repeat nearly the entire way back to Singapore.)

I saw a few sides of Chile.  Santiago looked a little unmaintained, but walk-able and open, with wide wide streets.  Wine tasting at the Concha y Toro vineyard was an… experience, with the sommelier brandishing his classic sommelier’s nose and the likeably pretentious sommelier’s jargon, and truly in my view enriching our enjoyment of the bottles of red and white on show.  Valparaiso looked in many ways like a modern European seaside town, with posh developments all around.  We had lunch at a restaurant along the Valparaiso coast, and the appetiser of lightly blanched white fish, clams, crab meat, prawns and squid, fresh from the sea and drizzled with lemon juice, hit the spot!

###

Long-haul flights offer one time alone, to be introspective.  I think that’s the only enjoyable bit about them.**

###

I spent many hours with my bosses during these work trips.  One of them, retiring soon, is a generous, opinionated man who’s been doing his job for longer than I’ve known about Transformers.  Recently, back in Singapore, he was in a meeting, at which several briefings had been scheduled for very important and busy people who’d just joined the ministry.  The briefings were overrunning, as they do, and near the end of the day, even though it wasn’t his turn, my boss gave his briefing.  What he did not know was, there were some colleagues from another department outside the meeting room, who had been waiting and waiting for their turn to brief, and that in fact they had been scheduled ahead of my boss.  When it turned out that my boss’s briefing would be the last one these very important and busy personages would be around for that day, the colleagues from this other department were understandably quite upset.

This department is located on the same floor as ours, and, once he’d settled some matters in his office, my boss walked over to this other department to apologise to each and every colleague who had waited for their turn which never came partly because my boss took up some time to do his own briefing.  His was the good-natured sort of apology, “sorry about it”, with a smile, unreserved, un-phony.

I gave my boss a hard time about skipping the other department’s turn (well, as hard a time as I could – I know my station in life) – how could you!, I said to him.  When I heard about his apology afterwards, I really had to shake my head, in admiration.  Will miss him.

###

The influence I wield over the lives of colleagues that I supervise/manage/lead is unexpectedly heavy.  This struck home when a conscientious new (well, sort of new) colleague called me on the phone to tell me, in between choking sobs, that her dad had been diagnosed with cancer and the doctor had given him only six months to live.  As I held the phone to my ear and listened to her crying, I could only cast about for something to say, something comforting and decent and supportive and helpful and which did not betray the fact that one of my first thoughts in the mess of things, as I remember it, right alongside “what must she be feeling now?”, was “how about her work?”.

###

A couple of things I have enjoyed these months, that I’d like to share:

1. Theme song from “Cheers” – Over the years, I think I’ve enjoyed other sitcoms more.  But not other theme songs.  Poignant and meaningful and true.

2. 戒不了 – I enjoy this Malaysian writer’s little pieces of whimsy and philosophy.  (They are in Chinese, which in my opinion can carry boundless nuance in a small space in a way that makes one marvel at the human capacity for creating meaning.)  Try these two: http://kitcheah.blogspot.com/2011/09/blog-post.html (title loosely translated as “Only for a little heartbeat”, about why one writes) and http://kitcheah.blogspot.com/2008/05/blog-post.html (“Reason for being happy”, about how one is no longer another’s reason for being happy)

*There have been some changes at work – five new colleagues since March.  And more changes to come.  Big, scary monster-type ones.

**On one of these flights, I saw a flight attendant who behaved in the same way I’m sure a colleague would have if this colleague had been one.  (It’s times like this when I think there may well just be a finite number of types of people in the world.)

Letter to next occupant of Villa No. 10, Villa Bali Asri

Hi there.

You probably don’t know me, and that’s okay. I just want to tell you a little bit about the time I spent at this villa – I’ve just come back to Singapore after a week-long stay here with my family.

Things to know:

1. The villa’s amenities include wireless broadband. The password can be found in the brown information binder you’ll probably find on the dining table or coffee table at the sofa.

2. Prepare for surprise visits by critters. We saw leeches – my brother pried a fat one off his foot, and there were a couple of rather more slender ones looping around – as well as a titanic gecko that, amazingly, moved along the walls as agilely as its smaller brethren. It looked as if it should plod rather than skitter. There were crabs scuttling all over the place – some like to play dead, and then once you seem to have lost interest they would skedaddle away – and many frogs and toads “serenaded” us every night.

3. Prepare for mosquitoes. I don’t quite know how – I just treated mosquito bites and itches as a matter of course – but maybe a malaria jab may be useful?

4. The locals were friendly and helpful. I never once felt in danger from them as I walked along the streets and paths at night. If anything, the condition of the streets and paths and the fact they were typically poorly lit were more dangerous – so bring a torch.

Things to try:

1. The villa’s very own barbecue dinner is worth it at around 60 USD for our family of five. Try the seafood one (there’s also a just-palatable beef option which my non-seafood-eating sis had) which for us came with king prawns, red snapper and squid (oh the squid!! *drool*), as well as steamed rice, stir-fried veggies and sauteed potatoes. Worth trying just for the squid, which was grilled to mouthwatering just-rightness :)

2. There is an Italian restaurant called Ultimo’s that opens at 5pm. It’s about a 30-minute slow walk from the villa, along Laksmana. Try it. The spaghetti vongolle (with other seafood – when I was there, it turned out they didn’t have vongolle and substituted with squid *grin*) came in a generous portion with many whole (small, but whole ;p) scallops and freshwater shrimp and diced capsicum, and was very yummy. The almond parfait was perfect the first time we were there, but was a bit soft when we next went, likely because it was a busy night and the fridge the parfait was kept in was opened too frequently :p

3. Tanah Lot is worth visiting. Great views. Pity about the tourists and their littering.

4. And one thing to not try. The babi guling (roast pig) at Ubud is overrated, and not worth the aggravation of queuing for and the poor service, in my humble opinion :)

That’s about it I guess. All the best for your stay :)

P/S. I would likely not have written this if my sister had not written an actual letter to the next occupant of the villa and left it in the bedside drawer of her room.

 

Aggregated Facebook updates

If I were a compulsive updater of my Facebook status, here are some of what you might have seen over the last few days.

Sim Li Chuan likes his colleague’s new haircut!

Sim Li Chuan is on a one-Haruki-Murakami-short-story-a-night-before-bed diet.

Sim Li Chuan will remember to prepare for meetings in future.

Sim Li Chuan just had extremely shiok! bak kut teh – soup was hot and peppery; tenderloin was tender; kidney was cooked just right; salted veges absolutely hit the spot – and the kungfu tea was… extremely skilled :p

Sim Li Chuan is happily catching up – hang on, need to talk to colleague I haven’t seen in a while – with a colleague he hasn’t seen in a while.

Sim Li Chuan is enjoying a roadshow by some colleagues and admiring their presentations and poise.

Sim Li Chuan will absolutely remember to prepare for meetings in future.  Goodness!  *Angry at himself*

Sim Li Chuan is looking forward to late night coffee/dessert with his pal.

Sim Li Chuan is disappointed.

Sim Li Chuan appreciates the talks he has most nights with a too-generous-and-good-natured-for-his-own-good colleague.

Sim Li Chuan is opening an ill-deserved gift.

Sim Li Chuan makes a resolution.

Sim Li Chuan is impressed with himself.  He remembers who Dan Roam is.

Sim Li Chuan is enjoying talking to a colleague and relating the time Calvin said, “By my troth, I’m off!” and his mother said, “Whither goest thou, young rogue?”.*

Sim Li Chuan and his colleague agree that it would have been even more surreal if Hobbes were the one speaking in Shakespearean with Calvin.**

Sim Li Chuan just had a quite satisfying prawn bee hoon-mee dinner, and is trying not to have some more food before bed.

Sim Li Chuan is mulling over something his boss told him.

Sim Li Chuan just had more food.

Sim Li Chuan marvels at his former colleague’s ability to wrap a gift.

Sim Li Chuan wonders how to end this post.

* Here‘s that strip.

** And if you like Calvin and Hobbes, this is a great link :)

clever!

I saw a few things I thought were clever.

One was a device placed over a sink.  It holds a bar of soap.  Below the soap is a grater, and you can use it to scrape soap shavings onto your hand when you want a quick wash.  I think that’s really smart, and economical and environmentally friendly :)

Another was this interview with Sherry Turkle that Fast Company did.  Sherry Turkle is an ethnographer who studies how people interact with technology, and has written about it in her new book “Alone Together”.  Her words convey her research findings in a very genuine and accurate way.  She speaks of how the speed and frequency of incoming information have led us to shorten our interactions with others, that “[w]e’re not necessarily putting our investment in the ties that bind; we’re putting our investment in the ties that preoccupy”.  She speaks about how the metaphor of addiction is misused when we apply it to our relationship with technology, which is abundantly useful when used “in accordance with [one’s] social, professional, and personal values”.  She speaks of how this relationship with technology has created a “constant connection”, via social media or always-on email, which results in a sense of loneliness when one is not connected – the connection is the drug one could get addicted to then, maybe? – and a loss of the capability to be alone without being lonely.

And another was Laura Schroeder’s blog post about why people would work for House, everyone’s favourite brilliant misanthrope doctor, and even hang around after they’re kicked off the team.  (I appreciated the post so much partly because I’m a huge Hugh Laurie fan, from Blackadder The Third times :p)  She comes up with a very plausible answer :)

Oh, and this game too was I thought clever.  Trailer for your viewing pleasure below.

Happiness and other musings

I was quite early at a colleague’s wedding last month, and picked a good spot, directly looking at the live band.  And so I got to see the live band play, and it was a good band, versatile, could sing in a few languages (appropriate since my Malay colleague was marrying a Chinese), enjoyable to watch. 

About two thirds into the night, the band began to ask for guests to join them on stage to sing.  One guest did, performed ok for an amateur; and then another went on stage, and really just stole the show.  It was clear that this middle-aged chap was used to performing with a band, and this band all strangers were just another group to jive and make music with.  And so he did, improvising a jazzy up-tempo version of some song I’ll remember later, and he did it so joyously, he was so into it, that the band, bland and professional earlier in the night, began to flex and stretch themselves too, and put their energy into it, so that, when the second and last song ended with a flourish and the chap departed the stage to rapturous applause from the band and an audience roused from its postprandial doze, I couldn’t help but think that, if the bride and groom find the sort of happiness this mat rocker did making music with his newfound friends, they would be together for a long time indeed.

*****

I was in Solo, Indonesia last November for work.  And was disproportionately joyous when I saw bolsters on my hotel bed.

*****

My pal got me a CD of instrumental renditions of some of 梁文福’s most memorable songs and I love it to bits.  My pal got the same CD from her pal, and found that she didn’t like it much.  Darned.

letters of note

I used to write letters, inspired by a friend who liked to write too.  I knew the exact sort of pen I liked to write letters with.  I remember the aching and crimped fingers at the end of a long one, and the lazier calligraphy that would accompany that tiredness.

Now she doesn’t, and I haven’t for a long time.

Recently I came across a blog called “Letters of Note”, after coming across this post about a letter that a kamikaze pilot wrote to his children. 

I read that letter, and I see a father’s love, and a conviction that, if passed on to his children, would not bode well for peace. 

How to be alone

I came across this video of Tanya Davis’s performance of her poem “How to be alone”, and found some of its combinations of turns of phrase wonderfully lyrical, and I just had to listen to it and transcribe it here [with the very occasional comment in square brackets]. 

If you are at first lonely, be patient.  If you haven’t been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait.  You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library.  Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there.  Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books.  You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there

There’s also the gym.  If you’re shy you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.

And there’s probably transportation, because we all got to go places.

And there’s prayer and meditation, no one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple.  Things you may have previously avoided based on your “avoid being alone principles”.

The lunch counter, where you’ll be surrounded by chow-downers, employees that only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell-phone.

When you’re comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself to dinner.  A restaurant with linen and silverware.  You’re no less intriguing a person when you are eating solo dessert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger.  In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies, where it’s dark and soothing.  Alone in your seat amidst the fleeting community.

And then, take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you.  Stand on the outside on the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you.  Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not.  And, if they are, assume it’s with the best human intentions.  The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting.

Dance until you’re sweating and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things.  Down your back like a brook of blessings. [Goodness what a turn of phrase :)]

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.

Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence, if only for a minute.  These moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though.  Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements.  Like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them.

Well lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless.  And lonely is healing if you make it.  You could stand, swathed, by groups and mobs, or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.  But no one’s in your head, and by the time you translate your thoughts some essence may be lost, or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high-school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay.

‘Cause if you are happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you.  All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you.  For this, be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach.

And it doesn’t mean you are not connected, that community’s not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it.  If you have an art that needs practice stop neglecting it.  If your family doesn’t get you or if a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be, in an instant, surrounded if you need it.

If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.

There’s heat in freezing, be a testament.  [Interesting ending.  A tad rushed and disjointed, I thought.]

Dreams

I’ve been having some vivid dreams lately.

In one memorable one, I am coming near the edge a grass verge leading down to a windswept pier, looking out at the sparkling sea and the curve of coast a little further beyond, all draped in a light dusting of mist, and I feel a bit lost – I’m not sure what I am doing here, in my dream; it looks a little like Cape Cod, only utterly deserted, and I feel vaguely marooned – when I see a familiar figure walk up the shore, to a boathouse I did not know was there.  It is a colleague and friend I know well, and as I wave and smile at her, the relief I feel wakes me up and makes me long to find out what we would have talked about.

In another, I am in a hammocky contraption in a deep doze late at night, when the treehouse I am in shivers, and my eyes open to slits and I look about expecting a vague but very real threat – I would open my eyes further and get up and look around but I cannot I am so tired – and the threat is real and urgent, so I desperately keep my eyes open as long as I can, and I see a pug dog, in the traditional pug pose, sitting up, head tilted, questioning and solemn – as if it is saying, hey, it’s ok, I’m here – and reassured I close my eyes and settle back to sleep.

Later, I’m not sure how long later, it’s about 5.30am, and I wake up to a loud storm, pelts and lashes and waves of rain mixed with crashes of thunder and lightning so bright it leaks past the sides of my curtains.

Skinny pizza again and a Corrine lament

Since I discovered Skinny Pizza (see reviews here (with pics of the below-mentioned squid ink pizza) and here) last year when my colleagues and I happened upon the Wheelock Place branch for lunch, I’ve been there maybe six or seven times.  When I introduced my sis to the place, we had the truffle fries (a must-try that has gotten less and less special with each visit; I think it’s gotten more oil-laden and less truffled…) and the curry chicken babaganoush (we agree that the hard-boiled eggs are a touch of genius, and that the Skinny Pizza folks could be more generous with the curry gravy).  When I introduced my pal to the place, we had the squid ink pizza at the Suntec branch, and it was good – the squid ink gravy that soaks the centre of the pizza is an appetising mix of savoury and slightly sweet tartness.  And when we had it again last Friday at the Wheelock Place branch, the grilled calamari and prawns were done to perfection, with just the right bit of char.  The only imperfection was the red onion slices that were strewn over the dark crust and that left a lingering sting in one’s palate.  On Friday we also had the bitter chocolate tart, and while this was yummy on many levels – like a multilayered piece of fine chocolate – it also packed the sort of richness (heatiness, we Chinese would call it) that has been known to lead to spontaneous nosebleeds.

Later in the evening, we heard Corrine May’s Song for Singapore over the radio.  Corrine May has a wonderful rich voice, and I think she puts up a great performance for this song.  It’s just a pity that some of the lyrics are cringe/wince-worthy.  Seriously – “I want to sing, sing a song for Singapore”?  “You’re my brother, you’re my sister”? 

P/S.  I am reading a joke book.  I have been unable to read heavy-going fiction recently; “A Heartbreaking of Staggering Genius” and “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” sit mouldering and unread on my table and my bookshelf, respectively.

PP/S.  So here’s a joke from the joke book: “Men like cars.  Women like clothes.  Women only like cars when they take them to clothes.”  Funny, and with a decent level of accuracy :p

PPP/S.  Opposite to cringe/wince-worthy are the lyrics for Sarah McLachlan’s “Do What You Have to Do”: