Bughis.

Thanks to a very vital student card that mysteriously disappeared within the last two weeks, I had to leap through a series of very anal bureaucratic hoops to get it replaced in time to leave for Thailand for the recess week. (Yes, I know Thailand had that whole military coup dealio very recently, but it actually sounds more dangerous than it really is.)

Along with going to the police post to issue a missing student card report, receive a letter from the Registrar's office at the University and fill out an additional form, I wake up at six-thirty in the morning and haul my ass over to the Immigration office via train. Between issuing a request for replacement at eight o' clock in the morning at the Immigration office and being told to pick it up at approximately four o' clock in the same afternoon, I decide to kill time in Bughis, which is one MRT stop away.

Bughis prides itself as being one of the largest shopping hubs in Singapore, and it isn't hard to believe such a claim. In addition to high-end stores in sleek, airconditioned spaces, there are tightly-packed mazes of outdoor stalls that sell cute and trashy clothes, hokey souvenirs, poseur purses and a bajillion other things. It strikes to me as the Singaporean version of L.A's downtown fashion district, only bigger and with more fishballs. As far as I'm concerned, no bacon-wrapped hotdogs here.

It is crowded today, or maybe it always is on Friday afternoons, or maybe it is the fact that the mid-autumn Moon festival is going on and people are simultaneously feeling more superstitious and materialistic than usual. A big golden statue of a laughing Buddha sits in front of one of the antique stores; people clamor up to it to rub his fat belly and stroke his beaming cheeks before dropping coins into a slot above his belly button for charity and good karma. Right in midst of all the mass shopping blitz there is a Buddhist temple and a Hindu temple open to the general public for incense-burning and outdoor worship.

The Buddhist temple is packed (since Bughis, like the majority of Singapore, is mostly Chinese) so I walk over to the Hindu temple first, which is far less crowded. I take a long time looking at all the deities enshrined in flowers and candles, and I imagine the caretakers who lovingly decorate and cleanse these idols every day for the countless strangers who come in to pray. One of the men looking over the temple invites me over to stand in front of the main idol; he cups a metal bowl over my head for a moment, hands me some herbal leaves to chew on and gives me red powder to mark my forehead.

I head a few steps down to the Buddhist temple, which is crowded with people burning incense sticks, kneeling on the ground and reading prayers from dogeared prayer books. Somehow, I fight against the current of people to get my own three incense sticks so that I can offer my own prayers as well. Three is a standard lucky number for incense-stick burning, but there are people who have as many as ten. Young, old, rich, poor--it doesn't matter who you are and where you come from. Everyone is in here to pray, whether it is for good health, money, love or whatever else, and some people have tears in their eyes as they lower their heads in supplication.

When you are burning incense sticks, the very tips begin smoldering into ashes and sometimes they fall against your hands, leaving behind brief, fleeting impressions of pain.

I bow my head and start praying. I don't really make a regular habit out of praying, so maybe that's why I stand there for a long time. I'm not exactly religious in the sense of ascribing to any specific religion and my prayers aren't all that original; it's the standard wish for good fortune and good health for the important people in my life. I wonder what everyone else is praying for. Maybe it does make sense that there should be a religious temple right in the midst of a shopping district. It's more convenient that way.

I walk around for a while. There's a mid-autumn moon festival going on, and randomly, there are Peruvian street musicians who are drawing a bigger crowd than the elderly Chinese men with their traditional, three-stringed instruments. I imagine that the elderly Chinese men must be peeved by this. They are about eight feet apart from each other, so they create a really weird cacophony of sound.

Eventually, I go pick up my new student card, and it goes by far more smoothly than I expected.

I'm finally taking the train ride back home and at some point I catch a glimpse of my own reflection in the subway window. It isn't until then that I remember that this whole time I've been carrying the red mark on my forehead from the Hindu temple. It shines bright against my forehead like a small wound.

Japan, out of all things.

[Pencil drawings from the Singapore Art Museum that tickled my fancy. Singapore Art Museum is a nice place.]

--

The J.E.T. (Japanese Exchange and Teaching) Programme as many people know, is a godsend for college graduates who have no idea what the fuck to do with their life, because it gives them a leigitmate excuse to postpone further concrete career plans for at least a year or two while they tutor English language to Japanese schoolchildren.

A lesser known fact about JET: there is also a position called Coordinator of International Relations (CIR) for people with semi-advanced to advanced Japanese skills who are placed in offices of local governments and other related organizations to help translate pamphlets, assist in welcoming guests and other various activities of an international nature.

I've been entertaining ideas of working abroad in Japan for a year or two ever since I came to Singapore, and reading about the CIR position further solidifies this idea. This is a position that I am definitely interested in applying to. If I don't get this position, then something else that will allow me to work in Japan. Maybe I just love the idea of uprooting myself too much--the idea of being temporarily helpless, confused and miserable in a completely new location and having to struggle your ass off to rediscover the equilibrium between yourself and your new environment. Not to mention the fact that I will finally be forced to further finetune my Japanese language skills, and also be closer to extended family whom I hardly ever get a chance to see.

Not to get all Amy Tan on you but it's ironic, I suppose; essentially, a reverse-migration of what my parents had to do when they were in their mid-twenties. My theoretical future venture back to the motherland is slightly less dramatic than my mother's migration to Southern California. When my mother was 25, she randomly tagged along with a local church group taking a tour of the States. At the end of the tour, she simply decided that she wasn't going back to Japan. She was not fazed by the fact that she did not speak English very well and that she had never lived outside of Japan before, let alone all by herself. Her parents demanded that she stop entertaining such outrageous ideas and come home immediately, but she firmly resisted. Why? She just loved the weather in California that much.

I think I get a bit of my restless nature from my mother, who, motherly concerns asides, always tells me that it's great to have a single life and there's no rush to get married because there are simply so many things to see and do in this world. Indeed, indeed.

--

For those of you who don't know, it is illegal to have homosexual sex in Singapore, in spite of the smattering of gay bars, clubs and bathhouses that exist within the country. With my local friend from my Southeast Asian literature class, we sat in a lecture that featured a Singaporean gay activist as a guest lecturer. Alex Au (who has his own website here) is a very articulate, intelligent and witty man. It is not very common in Singapore to come across someone who is willing to have such a frank discussion on the topic of sex. For about two hours, he engaged the students in a dialogue concerning the gay rights movement in Singapore, the politics of sexuality and the obstacles of creating an advocacy movement out of something that carries so much social, religious and political stigma.

It was inspiring, to say the least, especially how calmly he presented his arguments when confronted by the usual questions that come from people who aren't exactly thrilled with the idea of homosexuality, i.e. If gays can marry, then why not allow pedophilia and bestiality? Now few things piss me off more than homophobia. Even though I don't identify myself as gay, my blood pressure raises a few notches when people make assumptions that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, that there is no need for a gay rights movement, or gay people shoudn't be allowed to marry, or whatever else you may think of that is essentially looking down on the homosexual community. If I were a guest lecturer, my response to these kind of questions and comments would be a sort of angry, half-splutter of, "What?! Are you... are you STUPID?"

Alex was not fazed by these comments and questions, of course, even when a girl with a particularly shrill voice asked him if he considered this whole gay movement effort to be worth trying at all. He simply carried on in his calm, persuasive manner because he understands that everyone has different points of views, even if that particular point of view may happen to be a full-on denouncement of who you love and how you live your life. I wish I can be more like him--someone who is so brave and opinionated.

What principles and ideas are you willing to die for? It's a question that's been circulating in my head recently.

--

Is this semester almost halfway over already? I'll already be home before I know it. I'm still undecided as to whether my birthday will be spent in Southeast Asia or back in the States. Maybe it'll occur over the Pacific Ocean when I'm flying home.

I'll be 22 by then, and as strange as it sounds, I'm looking forward to turning 22. I like the numerical symmetry of the age; I like how it's divisible by eleven, a prime number. 21 has too many connotations, too much psychological pressure to finally reap the bounty of legal drinking. 22 is just a nice number, but full of endless possibilities.

Vitamin Water, Elixir of the Immortals.

A certain wonderful lady friend of mine decided to send me a care package that embodies everything that I miss from back home. Now what would this magical substance exactly be?



You know it.

Now I've never been a very religious person (and I ascribe this to the fact that my parents made me go to a Christian preschool and a Buddhist Japanese saturday school when I was a kid). However, I do place a lot of faith in the healing powers of Vitamin Water, that it will revive me when I am wiped out from a particularly intense ping-pong game, give me endurance to scale the Himalayas and energy to finish this darn Power Point presentation I've been procrastinating on! Need I also mention just how clever these label-writers are? These clever labels make me feel like a clever person when I drink these drinks, and you can't really get any better than that.

The point being, I love Vitamin Water and if you supply me with it, I will love you forever.

--











Life in Singapura has been pretty pleasant these days, in a lowkey kind of way. Buffet sushi, gay clubbing, chilling at the Boat Quay and whatnot. Went to the Chinese Botanical Garden to check out the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, which was rather anticlimactic, but provided amusing photo opportunities where we pretended to be fairies from the kingdom of Gay being born out of rainbow-colored flowers.



I know, there's definitely a recurring pattern in the EAP people I spend time with. They're big dorks, and they're fun.





P.S. Note: my beautiful new glasses. They look like candy. If they weren't so eyesight-improving, I would eat them!



--

Maybe not so randomly, thanks to a classmate in my Southeast Asian Literature class, I am now a part of the Southeast Asian Studies Student Society. It's a rather small, cozy organization composed of Southeast Asian studies students and faculty, which is a great opportunity to meet really intelligent, interesting people.

Anyhow, I met a Japanese exchange student named Seitaro who is from Kyoto University. Seitaro asked me to meet up with him to help him with his English pronunciations. For an hour, we met up on campus where he already had a worksheet prepared for himself and for me. In very neat handwriting, he wrote out a list of paired words (raw / law, right / light, etc.), in which he would read one of the paired words and I would circle which word I thought he was pronouncing. Afterwards, we would compare results to see how he did with his self-imposed quiz.

By the way, the stereotype that Japanese people can't pronounce their letter r's worth shit is true. This is because Japanese is a highly phonetic language, so a lot of weird sounds like 'th' and 'r' force native Japanese speakers to shape their tongues and lips in really awkward, counterintuitive ways that they are simply not used to. The fact that in Japanese romanized script, the l sound is SPELLED with the letter r doesn't help much with this phenomenon.

Our "lesson" went something like this.

ME: Try saying the r sound. Rrrrrrrrrrr.

SEITARO: Llllllllllllluuu.

ME: RRRRRRRRR.

SEITARO: LLLLLLLLLLLUUUU.

ME: .... That's close enough.

--

Everyone knows about American pop culture. In the heart of Melaka's historic district, you see posters of High School Musical on windows of random stores. Even in Singapore I have to fend off the one annoying question that shrivels the heart of every person who has grown up in Orange County: "So is the O.C. really like that?"

Studying abroad makes me realize just how horribly one-sided this influence is. Teenagers in Malaysia and Sri Lanka are well-versed in the melodrama of an American high school prom from all the bad teen movies that we export internationally, but no one back home cares to know what it's like to grow up in Thailand or Singapore.

I've had several international exchange students from various Asian countries tell me how much they envy my American accent. These symbols of power, however arbitrary, are so subconsciously ingrained into our minds it's almost disturbing.

Melaka.

To get to Melaka from Singapore, take the Singapore-Melaka Express from the Lavender-Kallang-Bahru junction, which is a ten-minute walk from the Lavender MRT station. It is a four-and-a-half hour-long bus ride across the Singapore-Malaysian border for sixteen Sing dollars.

--

Melaka was once considered one of the most powerful trading posts of Southeast Asia due to its strategic midway location between India and China. Over the centuries, it has switched hands among Chinese-Muslim princes, Islamic sultans, Portuguese missionaries, Dutch settlers and at the very end of the nineteenth century, fell into the general sweep of British colonization until Malaysia became its own independent entity in 1946.

This dazzling mosaic of past power struggle is evident in the sensory overload you experience upon arriving at the town square. A huge brick red church with an accompanying clock tower is the most obvious allusion to former Portuguese rule. Surrounded by bright periwinkle buildings adorned in tiny Christmas lights, you would almost think that you were in Mexico if it weren’t for the Sari shops and the smell of chicken satay just down the street.

Walk maybe fifty feet down the road and across the river, and you’re smack in the middle of Chinatown, where clustered amongst private art galleries and antique shops, you can see Chinese people of all ages practicing dance moves in a tiny community hall. At night, if you are a girl wearing short shorts, you will most likely get hit on by a drunk Portuguese street musician named Max and a Chinese barfly whose name I don’t remember, both of them old enough to be yo’ daddy. (This Chinese barfly in question, by the way, claims to have several international girlfriends, including a 23-year-old Finland native and a middle-aged German woman with a husband.)

Unlike the sleek urban center of Kuala Lumpur where you can buy a Gucci purse and a Coffee Bean cappuccino, Melaka is a more quirky and colorful neighborhood, the city equivalent of the crazy aunt who wears too much gaudy jewelry and too much perfume, but always has great stories to share.

This is not to say that Melaka is a pristine time capsule completely unscathed by the march of modernization. If you wander a little astray from the heart of the old historic district, you can go get some burgers and fries at their local McDonalds. At this point, the cynic in me cries, “God bless globalization!”

--

So far, I’ve been ridiculously lucky with all my travel accommodations outside of Singapore, and going to Melaka was no exception.

Thanks to the omnipotent power of Lonely Planet, I found the Sama-Sama Guesthouse, which is a 300-year-old Dutch house that has a huge painting of Bob Marley’s face on the wall of its lobby and is decorated with all sorts of weird knick-knacks everywhere. Don’t be surprised to see a Spiderman mask nailed onto the doorway, or a weird seashell-and-Rubik’s-Cube wind chime apparatus hanging from the second-floor of the courtyard.

I freaking love this hostel. It’s a cluttered, clunky little place bursting with greenery and old-town charm. The hostess of this guesthouse is a sweet, bespectacled woman from Switzerland who also likes to keep a bunch of cats, dogs and fish. Even the bathroom has a makeshift fishbowl made out of an empty Pepsi bottle containing a single beta fish.

Right outside your doorstep on the second floor, you can sleep and read in quite possibly the most comfortable red hammock in the world.

At night, they decorate the tiny courtyard and koi pond with candles.

Just one street over, you can go visit the night market and buy a lot of cheap, useless things. If you are bored with that, then you can eat deep-fried ice cream, among many other goodies.

--

I bought a shitload of shit in Melaka, and I think I’m going to need at least a week to recover from this materialistic binging. The fact that shameless haggling is a socially acceptable phenomenon does not help much for my banking account, either.

Among clunky necklaces, cute tops, postcards of Chinese pin-up girls and other cheap junk, I also bought this:

Yes, it is strange that it would be in a night market in Melaka, out of all places, where I would come across an old Time magazine featuring an article on Tristar’s horrible remake of Godzilla. Or maybe it isn’t so strange after all. It was inevitable. For reasons that some of you understand, I had to buy it and it is right beside me now on my desk in Singapore.

--

P.S. Caroline, I got your letter yesterday. Thank you for thinking of me while you were at work, you have no idea how much it brightened my day to see your scratch-paper letter. Much, much love, my dear! I will write you an e-mail soon.

(wander)lusting.

I have always been struck with wanderlust, and it is nerdily exciting to plan itineraries for places I've never been to before, whether it be for a short weekend getaway to a neighboring country or a longer 8-day romp to say, Thailand. I've never been too big of a fan of big organized tours; I would rather explore places at my own pace rather than having a pack of strangers constantly breathing down my neck and crowding my view of panaromic sights. For this purpose, Lonely Planet is now one of my favorite links, which provides general travel information for pretty much any country in the world.

While I visited this website today with the original intention of looking up more information for Melaka (a historical port city of Malaysia that I plan on exploring this weekend with two other lady friends), I was amused to find that Lonely Planet even includes travel information on Antarctica. Apparently, tours to Antarctica are actually possible for the general public, albeit a wealthier segment of the public--whether from the tip of Argentina or via domestic sight-seeing planes from Australia. Asides from bearded, one-eyed explorers and polar bears, I am surprised that there are actually people who would want to take the time and money to take a trek down to the southernmost continent of what is essentially an icelandic wasteland. I suppose if one day I am very rich and very bored, I would maybe consider meandering way down south for kicks--that is, if it hasn't entirely melted away by then.

--

Coming to Singapore makes me appreciate Los Angeles from an outsider's perspective because it makes me realize just how little I still know about the city I've been living in for the last three years. Reading Lonely Planet's blurb on Los Angeles (and the greater United States) from a tourist's perspective is interesting, not only because of what they recommend but moreso because of what is not included.

Certainly they are going to include the easy tourist draws like Universal Studios, the Getty Museum and the Viper Room, but it takes a good few years and maybe even more to really know and appreciate a place by your own terms. It's one thing to have a whirlwind flash-bang tour of all the big and exciting places that everyone goes to, but it's another thing to really fall in love with the living, breathing rhythm of a particular place, warts and all, minus the rose-tinted glasses of a wanderstruck tourist.

It makes me feel nostalgic for the lesser known gems of Los Angeles that I've come to love for my own personal reasons. Here, I send my overseas valentine to: Museum of Jurassic Technology, Meltdown Comics, Crepes to Go and the Mountain Bar, to name a very few.

--

One of the little things I like about the Lonely Planet website is that as a heading for every locale, they provide a one-sentence blurb at the top of the page that supposedly sums up the general feeling of the place. This is an impossible task, of course, but fun to read because they range from the wonderfully lyrical to the downright dumb. I imagine that it must have been frustratingly difficult for the anonymous writer to come up with these one-liners for so many places. New Zealand: "From the peaks of adrenalin to the laps of luxury." Cairo: "Where the ancient and modern mix furiously." Singapore: "From the opium-dens of the past to the hi-tech wizardry of today." Um, what?

So far, I like LA's one-liner the best, which is actually in the form of a question: "Is LA a figment of its own imagination?"

I wonder.

Damn, that's fine.

A nightly plan to smoke hookah with hall friends was aborted at the last minute, which means that I have a legitimate excuse to sit around in my underwear and update my travel blog. Isn't life grand?



If there is one thing that got annoying after a while, it was people telling me, "Now don't be chewing gum or littering over there!" upon hearing that I was studying abroad in Singapore. As though I spend every second of my life throwing trash on the streets while snapping a piece of pink bubble gum really loudly.

Singapore has some pretty wacky laws, and knows it. This is evident in all the T-shirts, shot glasses, refrigerator magnets, key chains and other hokey tourist item known to man that boast all the notorious fines that this country is known for. While most of the laws enforced within this tiny country-state seem rational enough (No urinating in lift? No littering? Fine for not flushing? Sure, why not?), other laws start venturing into what-the-fo-sheeeeeez territory. No flower-picking or bird-feeding? That's a shame. I personally don't have too much of a problem with the no gum policy, only because I am more of a mint person, but no public dancing?

Now I've only seen this particular fine touted on tourist items, so I don't know the specifics of it. However, it makes me wonder where the enforcement officials draw the line at the definition of public dancing, and why this limitation was even created in the first place. It is one thing to get into a crotch-grinding freak orgy in the middle of a busy traffic intersection, but what if you happen to have a very jaunty walk and a nervous tic of snapping your fingers? What if your epileptic fits somewhat resemble avant-garde ballet?

A friend of mine suggested that this is a ripe goldmine for a possible musical.

Which brings me to present an idea that has been cultivating in my head for the last few days or so....

TRASH! The Singaporean musical
A tale of forbidden love, revolution and TRASH

SYNOPSIS:

JIA XIANG is a beautiful young woman living in the uptown of Singapore whose life couldn’t be more perfect. Recently engaged to the prominent government official YUN HAN, Jia Xiang still cannot help that something is missing in her life and she doesn’t know what… until meeting the mysterious foreigner CHARLIE, who changes her life forever! Charlie is a dashing young man with a daring heart, much unlike the cold and bureaucratic Yun Han who only cares about rules and regulations. Charlie tells Jia Xiang of how in distant lands, people are allowed to litter, chew gum, pick flowers and dance in the streets! Jia Xiang cannot believe her ears, and Charlie breaks out into a song…

CHARLIE:

If only you can see

Sprawled like confetti

Litter all around

Like stardust on the ground

CHORUS:

TRASH!

On the streets and in the air

TRASH!

It brings color everywhere

TRASH!

Oh, what lovely freedom…

He then picks a flower off private property (which is illegal!) and gives it to Jia Xiang. The scene ends in a passionate kiss.

Charlie and Jia Xiang continue their forbidden affair behind Yun Han. A very jealous and suspicious Yun Han somehow finds out and frames Charlie as the criminal responsible for vandalizing a government buildling. In an emotionally wrenching scene, Charlie is publicly caned before Jia Xiang’s tearful eyes and immediately deported out of the country, never to be seen again.

Heartbroken beyond words, Jia Xiang realizes that she cannot go back to her strictly regulated life after meeting Charlie. She decides to go against everything she’s known to start a revolution….

I’m not sure what happens next, but the climax involves a dance-off between the rag-tag civilians and the government officials. The government officials come in clicking their canes, which of course are used as instruments of oppression than fancy musical accessories. Through the power of dance and free love, the restless, repressed young people of the country-state overthrow the entire infrastructure of Singapore. In the grand finale, the entire cast is completely stoned out of their minds (posession of drugs is a death penalty in the country, of course) and throw packets of gum out to the audience.

If all goes as plans, the audience breaks out into a riot after curtain call.

I hope I don't get fined for writing this.