Yumi on the coast

And the final end to my travel blog.

2007-03-19T01:39:00.000+08:00

INTRODUCTION

Before I arrived in Singapore, I had this vague, grandiose idea that my travel blog would serve as some sort of informal travel guide where I would give restaurant and club recommendations of Singapore, NUS survival tips, travel advice and all sorts of other hokey information that you would find in a travel magazine found in the front pocket of your airline seat. This worked maybe in the beginning when I would drunkenly type in the name of a dance club I just came home from on a blog entry (I believe my first club experience in Singapore was Ministry of Sound) before passing out on my dorm bed.

Over the course of several months, the whole pressure to make the blog so travel-y and informative faded away as it instead became just another personal blog about my life--which HAPPENED to occur in Southeast Asia instead of UCLA. So while you will see many beautiful, panoramic photographs of the beaches of Indonesia or the temples of Thailand that will undoubtedly make your jaws drop, you will also read several banal entries (my taking on a new skin-care regimen, my quarter-life-crisis musings) that have nothing to do with the joys of studying abroad and may be of no interest to you at all.

Upon retrospect, I am glad that I took this approach instead of simply making it a recitation of cool places to see and do. Studying abroad in Singapore isn't just about country-hopping to every tourist trap in Southeast Asia or taking cool pictures to make your friends jealous. It is also a very personal internal journey of reconciling your former attitudes with the sudden onslaught of a completely different cultural and geographical environment, which can bring about very uncomfortable or enlightening (usually both) revelations about yourself and the rest of the world. After a while, it becomes less about the glamor of being in another country and more about simply accepting the new changes as a part of your everyday life.

I have tried to record down as many relevant memories and observations as possible in this travel blog for future reference--not only for myself, but for other people. I could go on and on with a much longer introduction, but for your sake, I have decided to pass along some pearls of wisdom for future students who wish to study abroad in Singapore.

Keep in mind, though, that while there are many things that are written in this blog, there are also many things that are NOT included. One informal blog of one person's purely subjective experiences is certainly not enough to encompass all that there is to studying abroad.

SOME THINGS I WISH I BOUGHT OR KNEW BEFORE I WENT TO SINGAPORE

- This is just me, but I wouldn't bother buying a Singapore travel guide. Singapore is so freaking SMALL and so easy to travel around in, it is impossible to get lost in Singapore. If you want your fill of all the hokey tourist things to do in Singapore, you can easily get the information from other exchange students and locals. (And one important point: make really good local friends! They will show you the best of everything!) Personally, a better investment is Lonely Planet: Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Budget , which will give you highly informative descriptions and ideas on country-hopping all over Southeast Asia, which you WILL be doing. Which brings me to my next point...

- Invest in a good travel backpack. If you are a typical exchange student in Singapore, you will probably visit a minimum of five different countries in Southeast Asia by the time your term is over. Do yourself a favor and get a good travel backpack from REI or something--you'll look more like a hardcore traveler, not to mention be able to carry more stuff on you with maximum space efficiency. Plus, you'll be able to use it for future adventures when you are done with traveling through Southeast Asia and you have the travel bug to conquer the rest of the world. Which brings me to my NEXT point...

- For the love of God, invest in decent hiking shoes. This doesn't apply to you if you plan on sticking to chic urban places and all you want to do is shop, sip tea and explore antique stores. Chances are, though, you are a little bit more adventurous than that and you want to climb ancient temples, trek through forests, rice terraces and rugged mountain peaks. Right? (See this blog entry for what happens when you decide to go hiking with flimsy sandals.) Your rough and dirty nature adventures will be all the more rewarding if you are not worrying about falling flat on your face. Don't even think about buying shoes while you are there because chances are, it will fall apart within a couple of days--which is what happened to my friend while she was traveling with me in Vietnam.

- Bring some photographs, posters and mementos from back home to decorate your new home in Singapore. Because seriously, you are going to need something to decorate your bare dorm room with when you finally arrive to Singapore. And what's more depressing than sleeping in a prison-like room with no decorations when you are lonely, homesick and insecure with yourself for the first few weeks of being away from home?

- Bug spray and sunscreen. Unless you an immortal, you WILL get bitten by mosquitoes a lot. Bring all that anti-itch ointments and bug spray with you. For some reason, sunscreen is ridiculously expensive in Singapore so invest in one of those huge, economy-sized sunscreen bottles that will last you for a good chunk of your stay abroad.

- A bank account in Singapore. I didn't do this myself, but several of my fellow exchange classmates opened a bank account in Singapore so they didn't have to worry about transaction fees every time they withdrew money from the ATM. I kind of wish I did that myself, because all those small transaction fees of withdrawing money abroad really does add up. Something for people to consider.

- Get Skype. Bug all your friends and family members to get this free internet calling service. Then you can hear their beautiful, wonderful voices from across the other side of the globe. I think all you need is some headset or something like that. I personally did not utilize this myself, but this was a popular tool for people with significant others back home.

THE MORE UNEXPLORED SIDE OF SINGAPORE (The little things.)

So yeah, yeah, by the time you're all settled and comfy, you'll probably go to Sentosa Island, go to all those freaking bars in the Clark Quay region and if you are a lady, you will take advantage of lady's night on Wednesday nights where you get free admission AND free drinks at Double O.

Personally, I didn't care much for the popular tourist attractions, like the zoo, the bird park, and the orchid garden. As for all the popular clubs and bars, you will learn them fast. What I appreciated the most were the lesser-known nooks found either by accident or through a local friend. Here are some favorites:

- Books Actually. A little hole-in-the-wall indie bookstore on the second floor of some building near Chinatown. I only went to this place once maybe a week before I left the country, and I wish I had a chance to explore it more. In addition to having a great collection of books, there are also random quirky things (matchboxes bearing canonical book covers, cool indie magazines, old-school typewriters etc.) that may tickle your smug hipster pretensions. Sometimes they have art openings of local artists, and that always has free food.

- Somewhere on the third or fourth floor of the Esplanade, there is a small music, movie, drama and art library located next to a small indoor cafe. If you go to the very top of the building, you are rewarded with a wonderful view of the Clark Quay bay, where Singaporean high schoolers and couples hang out to enjoy the outdoor air.

- So much freaking good food. Okay, okay, so I said that you don't really need a Singapore travel guide, but you MAY want to invest in a FOOD guide of Singapore once you are at the country. There are so many great places to eat it's unbelievable. I wish I can remember specific locations of places that tickled my fancy the most, but there are so many of them I honestly can't remember. (I do remember three dishes that I absolutely love, though: char kway teow, carrot cake, and fried oyster. You do not know what they are now, but you will once you get there.) So yes. Invest in a good guide. And get a good local friend who will show you all the hot spots. Geylang has some great seafood, like red chili and black pepper crabs, I just don't remember the exact location. Like I said, make a really cool local friend. Speaking of Geylang...

- The prostitution quarters of Geylang. What the hell? Singapore says no littering and spitting, but yes to sex for money? Go figure. Maybe I'm just a shameless voyeur, but I had to see this for myself. Like the random hot eatery spots, I don't remember the specific location of this place, but you should enlist in a local friend to show you. (If you are a female, a MALE friend.) I won't say it was a particularly enjoyable experience, but it definitely was an eye-opener.

- The Buddhist Temple and the Hindu Temple in Bughis. Bughis is one of the central shopping districts of Singapore. It also has a Buddhist Temple and a Hindu Temple right next to each other in midst of all the commercial mayhem. I really like Bughis (not the indoor mall part, but the place where there's all the small vendors), it's a busy, colorful and diverse place. There are always traditional street performers, people trying to sell medicine on loudspeakers and a crowd of people burning incense sticks for good furtune.

- Volunteering at the Communicable Disease Center every Saturday. This isn't so much a place, but an activity, and probably one of the most rewarding activities I did while I was in Singapore. Through Professor Albert Teo (whose office I believe is located where the University Scholars Programme office is on campus), I learned of this opportunity to spend a few hours with AIDS patients and massage their arms and legs with massage oils. Not only do you meet a lot of amazing people outside of NUS, you are also exposed to another side of Singapore that isn't the government-promoted squeaky-clean image of economic prosperity and racial harmony.

AND NOW FOR THE REST OF SOUTHEAST ASIA:

First, I will list all the useful travel resources that you will probably be using when you want to country-hop the rest of Southeast Asia when you've been in Singapore for a month and you realize that you have already seen everything that the tiny country has to offer. .... okay, I'm just kidding. But Singapore really is SMALL.

- Lonely Planet, in addition to making great travel books, has its own website. While the book version is a lot more informative, the website can be a useful tool for giving a condensed version of the sights you want to see and the lodgings you should stay at.

- Jetstar is a budget airline for traveling cheaply in Southeast Asia. So is Tiger Airways and Air Asia. Chances are you will be using those three airlines the most when you are purchasing tickets to country-hop.

- The U.S. Government website on travel alerts. Southeast Asia, undeniably, has a lot of cool things. Like jungles, monkeys, temples, floating markets and motorbikes. That, and there's also civil unrest, terrorist attacks, typhoons, illegal sex slavery, bloodless military coups... well, you get the point. If you want to be a responsible and safe traveler, check up on travel alerts often.

A FEW BLOG HIGHLIGHTS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

- How durian looks like a jaundiced penis and other observations of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

- The beaches of Bintan Indonesia are absolutely gorgeous.

- Melaka, the historical town in Malaysia, that kind of makes you feel like you're in San Diego or Mexico, but kind of not.

- How you can shoot guns in Cambodia and all sorts of other crazy things that you probably won't do elsewhere.

- The ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous crowds of people of Hong Kong.

- Talking to a Buddhist Monk, riding an elephant, and visiting a lot of cool temples in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

- Thailand just had a bloodless military coup but I still went to Thailand anyway and I even took a shameless picture of myself posing next to an army tank parked in front of the capitol building.

- A long rant on how Singaporean law just doesn't make sense.

- I never had a chance to write a blog entry about this experience, but if you do have the chance, go visit Tiomann, Malaysia, where you can go snorkeling and see some really, really pretty and colorful fish.

People always ask me what my favorite countries to visit were, and I always say Cambodia, with a close second being Hong Kong and Vietnam.

There is plenty more in this blog, of course. You're just going to have to find them for yourself.

AND SOME CLOSING REMARKS

Everyone has their own personal style of traveling, but asides from having a very rough itinerary of knowing what city I was in for x number of days, I mostly winged it once I got there (with the help of a very beat-up Lonely Planet travel guide). Personally, I think it's more fun that way, and there is nothing like the exhilaration of an unexpected experience due to a chance conversation with another traveler or local.

Studying abroad is a life-changing experience. It's completely different from traveling abroad because visiting a place and living at the place are two very different experiences. I can give you another lengthy essay on why this is so, but rather than hear it from me, you should go out there and see for yourself.

So what are you waiting for? Life is short. College is even shorter. Who really has a chance to do this kind of thing when they have a stable job or are married with kids? Do yourself a favor and get out there already. Think of all those blank pages in your passport just waiting to be filled.

On a very final note, get yourself a travel blog. If you're not going to remember your experiences, who's going to do it for you?

- YS

And we are home at last.

2006-12-24T02:18:00.000+08:00

Friends ask me if it's been hard returning to the States after being away for so long. And my answer usually is no, not really. After five months of romping through Southeast Asia, I have yet to kill myself from driving on the wrong side of the road, although returning to a regular diet of Instant Mac and Carl's Jr. will probably give me a very American heart attack very soon.

And no, it's not so much that I have a hard time readjusting, but more like I have a hard time trying to get over the feeling that I had a lobotomy between the day I left and the day I came back. Now that I am far removed from the people and places that defined my stay in Singapore, I almost disbelieve all the very Southeast Asian experiences that I have experienced the last several months, whether it was riding an elephant in Thailand or scaling the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Surely it was all the imaginings of a coma-induced dream while mischievous little gnomes left exotic-looking stamps in my passport and pierced my nose in my unconscious sleep. And then as a parting gift, left me a pair of very wicked boots from Hong Kong as an apology for fucking with my head.

This makes more sense to me, of course.

And while I do still regret that I did not have a chance to embark upon a mini-adventure to another country all by myself, coming home makes me realize one of the benefits of having at least one more traveling companion with you: there is at least one other person out there who will remind you that yes, it really did happen. Unless the person gets a lobotomy.

--

Snapshot of me and Toubi from Vietnam. We are waiting for the bus to take us back from Halong Bay to Hanoi. We are sick of waiting. Traveling, when it is not glamorous or culturally enriching, is a lot of boring waiting. Our director gave us the command to look pissed off and annoyed. I look like I am trying to look like I am pissed off but I am not completely convinced of my own pissed-offness. Toubi, on the other hand, looks very cute when she is pissed off. This is because she grew up in Japan. You can't see it from here, but the back of her head has a hot pink anime vein throbbing in cute anger.

Not so long ago, I said that I would write about my ten-day adventure in Vietnam. I'll do my best, even though it's wholly possible that it didn't really happen.

--

While the glitzy-glitz shoppergasm of Hong Kong would have been a very fine way of concluding my adventures outside of Singapore, I wanted my last trip in Southeast Asia to be rugged, rough and a little dirty. Just like me.

So there was no money or time to look or act pretty in Vietnam, especially if you are planning on cramming as much as possible from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City in a matter of ten days. Toubi and I lived the hard-knock life of the grungy, penny-pinching backpacker and for the most part, it was fun. We trekked up three-hour mountain hikes, wore the same clothes for three days straight, slept on very uncomfortable sleeper trains and ate a lot of street food for less than a dollar. On one particularly uneventful night, we amused ourselves watching Jurassic Park on Satelite TV after a failed attempt on another channel to enjoy Mrs. Doubtfire dubbed entirely in Vietnamese. We both probably risked death when we hopped on the back of a motorbike and realized, while tearing through the very dark streets of Cat Ba Island, that our motorist reeked slightly of alcohol. I'm not sure what I risked when I ate a barely hatched duck fetus from a street vendor in Hoi Am, but thank God it was dark and I couldn't really see what the hell I was eating.

I am going to try to go in chronological order, but I already know that I will be leaving a lot of things out. I am going to focus on the little things. We love the little things the most.

--

Hanoi

I really enjoyed Hanoi. Toubi and I loitered mostly in the Old Town District near the lake, which is where all the cheap guesthouses and travel cafes are located. If I had come up here by myself with more time, I would have spent a majority of my hours hanging out at a cafe and people-watching all the cool Hanoi kids coming in and out of the streets on their bad-ass little motorbikes.

One of my favorite sights in Hanoi was visiting the Ho Chi Minh Masoleum. This is because you get to see Ho Chi Minh in all his dead, embalmed glory, bathed in a warm orange glow as though he is peacefully sleeping, guarded by four Vietnamese men smartly decked in their best military regalia. Never mind that Uncle Ho actually wanted to be cremated after he died; we can't always get what we want, right?

I'm not sure which was worse: the fact that I kept imagining Uncle Ho rising from the dead as a Commie vampire while creepy instrumental organ music started playing in the background, or thinking that the four Vietnamese army men guarding his corpse looked kind of hot.

I know, I feel dirty, too.

--

Sapa

Sapa is north of Hanoi, and it takes a good long train ride to get there. People go to Sapa to look at rice terraces and the village people still living their traditional village life in the mountains. When we went there, it was very cold.

Ky, our 26-year-old tour guide, was a badass in every sense of the word. Even though he originally hails from one of the many hill tribes living in Northern Vietnam, he showed up on our first day wearing a cowboy hat, a button-down shirt, well-tailored pants and dress shoes--and strutted through the winding mountain paths like he owned the whole place.

Ky was the very personification of jauntiness. If Ky lived somewhere else instead of a secluded mountain village, he would have been the life of every party. Even with his limited English skills, he was always quick to crack a joke or poke fun at our group, which was made up of me, Toubi and two Canadian college buddies in the middle of a seven-month global adventure.

On our last day, Ky lead us on a grueling three-hour hike through rice terraces and slippery mud paths to his house up in the mountains, where his sister cooked us food and he served us shots of his homemade rice wine. The one stereo in his house (and possibly the entire village) blasted Backstreet Boys music. It was a surreal moment. While the other village people stood outside his house to stare curiously at us, Ky fed us, showed pictures of his two-year-old son and gave us each a Sapa-grown cigarette to smoke. Although none of us were hardly regular smokers at all, listening to "Hotel California" while sitting in a small village house in the mountains of Northern Vietnam somehow compelled all of us us to uncharacteristically smoke one whole cigarette in the most uncoollest way possible because none of us knew how the hell to smoke cigarettes while looking cool. We felt like guests of a very bizarre, intimate party.

Before Ky left us back at the hotel, he fixed his cowboy hat, kissed his fingers and raised them in a jaunty salute as he walked out the door and into the mountain mist. All we could do was shake our heads in amazement as he disappeared from our lives forever.

"Crazy motherfucker," one of the Canadians said under his breath. None of us disagreed.

--

Halong Bay

Halong Bay is another popular tourist destination in Northern Vietnam if you want to see scenic natural things and spend a lot of time on a boat.

Coming here made me realize that I've been neglecting the nature girl in me all my life. As much as I am prepared to join the future urban yuppies of America, I realize that I really do enjoy the mountain hikes, the kayaking and the general soaking in of nature-ness.

I really want to do rugged, nature-related things in the States now. That, and actually start exercising so I can handle doing rugged, nature-related things without dying of exhaustion. I am such a weak oyster. :(

--

Hoi Am.

Hoi Am is a cute little town right in the center of Vietnam. I think one of my favorite activities there was biking through the town and trying not to get run over by a motorbiker. According to Toubi, I don't look very natural when I am biking. The fact that my bicycle chain came off about four times did not help much, either.

At Hoi Am, we also took a half-day trip to see the temple ruins at My Son. Now I feel like a jerk for saying this, but after going to Angkor Wat--the largest religious monument in the world--all subsequent religious temple ruins feel rather anticlimactic.

This, however, did not stop me from taking fun pictures of me and Toubi angering the gods.

--

Saigon

And then we concluded our trip in Saigon, otherwise known as Ho Chi Minh City. I am not exactly sure which name is used more.

I may have left Vietnam with a lighter wallet, but I may possibly have a greater love for Uncle Ho. No, I'm just kidding. But say what you want about the communists; love 'em or hate 'em, they make pretty cool posters.

--

And a little less than five months later, this travel blog draws to a close. I've been spending time with my family, my friends and my dog (!!!!!!!) Just yesterday, I spent a lovely night with one of my best friends riding through my neighborhood admiring the hokey Christmas decorations of less lazy folk. My near future adventures will be more geographically contained, but I have complete faith that they will still be fantastic, nonetheless.

And we leave you, ladies and gentlemen, with the final memories of Singapore. Going to the capital of Kitsch that is the 24 / 7 outlet mall in Little India, where you can buy a Merlion lighter that plays an instrumental version of "My Heart Will Go On." Hanging in Orchard Road where you can buy an ice cream sandwich--literally, because in Singapore, you eat your ice cream encased in actual bread! Going to a tiny art opening at an indie bookstore tucked away near Chinatown called BooksActually, where you can satisfy your smug literary needs by buying little matchbooks bearing canonical book covers.

Someone has to remember them, after all.

The End.

My emoticon is smiling right now.

2006-12-20T05:42:00.000+08:00

There is still much to write about.

But for the time being:

1.) I am finally home, and
2.) I want to see you. Yes, you, dear non-creepy reader-friend whom I've met at least once in my lifetime. No, not the douchebag behind you. YOU, for godssake! Don't look away now and pretend you don't know me. I have your phone number. I know where you live. I never forget a face and I never forget the specific scent of a human being. Hey, why are you walking away? Come back to me! You still owe me money, you stupid jerk!

I am happy to be here.

And very belatedly..

2006-12-13T22:33:00.000+08:00

Happy birthday KAY!!!!! Ouchi ni kaetara zettai asobu kara ne!

--

Being in Southeast Asia makes me think of all the people back home. When I was in Cambodia, I thought of Kim. When I was in the Philippines, I thought of the left vertical half of Robbie. Everytime I heard about Myanmar, I kept thinking how the Burmese government should give Conroy a medal of honor for being a DDR Champion and showing that the Burmese can triumph over anything. Now that I am in Vietnam, I am reminded of all the Vietnamese friends I have back home. Okay, so there's .... way too many of you to list. Be proud, my Viet friends. You have effectively infiltrated my social circle.

Six days, friends.

Hong Kong.

2006-12-08T12:46:00.000+08:00

Perhaps eons ago, the islands of Singapore and Hong Kong were born from the same volcano before the tectonic shifts of the earth gently nudged them apart and made them what they are today. Singapore and Hong Kong, separated by a three-hour plane ride across the Pacific Ocean, are both small, wealthy, densely-packed countries with a history of British occupation, a very undeniably Chinese culture and a well-earned reputation for fulfilling every gluttonous shopaholic's wildest dreams.

The comparisons, however, end there. Hong Kong is Singapore on steroids and crystal meth. Hong Kong, land of Bruce Lee and beautiful cinema, is mean, crowded, noisy, flashy, gaudy, busy and just plain glorious. The easiest comparison is to describe Hong Kong as the New York City of Asia, but that wouldn't do justice to the fact that it is only in Hong Kong where you can see the world's largest sitting Buddha, go bicycling along the river front, take a picture next to a statue of Bruce Lee, eat a lot of dim sum and do a lot of fabulous shopping all in one breath.

Not surprisingly, I have fallen in love with Hong Kong and once I download "Cantonese Language Skills" into my brain Matrix-style, I can easily see myself living there.

In most public places, people move in clusters, either as individuals or in small groups, with enough physical distance between them to mark the separation of social relationship.

In Hong Kong, that is not the case. People in Hong Kong move collectively together in a big fucking sea of humanity and if you want to go the other way, well, you're screwed. A telling example of this is just how big the crosswalks in Hong Kong are:

Yeah, see that big expanse of yellow lines? That's not enough to contain the masses of people who are restless to cross the street because in Hong Kong, everyone is constantly on the move.

--

One of my favorite activities in Hong Kong was wandering the busy streets all by myself. I took pictures of all the flashy signs, avoided getting trampled over and most of all, enjoyed people-watching all the hip and stylish youth looking painfully good with the right amount of disaffected urban ennui.

Don't ask me why, but being alone in the midst of a busy city gave me a peace of mind. Something about the surrounding chaos let me forget all the present troubles of the things that I should and shouldn't be worrying about.

--

P.S. For Arthi:

One of my favorite purchases from H.K., photograph courtesy of Zineng.

I am convinced that these boots have magical powers, that every time I wear them they will somehow start revolutions, find the cure for cancer and topple evil empires. If not that, at least make me feel really stylish. These boots, if they could talk, would shove brass knuckles against your cheeks and whisper with thinly veiled menance, "I'm gonna mess you up."

Either that, or "Damn, I look good."

The broke and the restless.

2006-12-07T23:23:00.000+08:00

I still need to write about Hong Kong; two art exhibition openings; the land of Kitschity Kitsch that is Mustafa, the twenty-four-hour mall in Little India; and whatever else.

--

Lately, I think about what I am going to do with myself when I get home and I get into a state of mini-panic. I will no longer be in a constant state of travel. No more new passport stamps, no more dog-eared copies of Lonely Planet, no more waking up barely coherent at four in the morning and throwing three days worth of clothes in my backpack a full half hour before crawling out of my room to take the taxi to the airport. I should get a straitjacket for myself to make sure that I don't punch someone in the face out of belligerent boredom.

So there we have it. The small germ of wanderlust that has always been circulating within my bloodstream has blossomed into a permanent fever. Once you get a small sampling of the world, there really is no turning back. Pyramids? Africa? Spain? Turkey? I don't know how and when, but I will find a way to get there. Eat my way through countries. Follow where the monkeys go.

Meanwhile, I figure that I should amuse myself with future mini-adventures within the country. After all, being abroad makes me realize that I am far from seeing all the grand and glorious things that Americana has to offer. Asides from touring the usual suspects (Grand Canyon, Chicago, New York, etc.), I really like the idea of driving many hours just to see and experience something that may or may not be ridiculous by other people's standards. Such as the Annual Garlic Festival. Or the World's Biggest Yarnball. Or heck, just for a really good steak. I like steak.

--

I leave tomorrow afternoon for Vietnam. Ten days from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. If you don't ever hear from me again, it means that I have decided at the last minute that my true life calling is wandering the countryside painting communist propaganda posters and eating pho. PHO' SHO.

December is awesome.

2006-12-05T21:39:00.000+08:00

Happy December!

I might have left my heart in Hong Kong. And by heart, I really mean life savings. Damnit! More details to come, friends!

In thirteen days, I will lay my head back down to the ample bosom of the sleazy, trashy, Botox-happy bitch-goddess that is Los Angeles. Tito's Taco or Pink's Hot Dog pilgrimage, anyone? Care to pencil in a lunch date where you watch me wolf down an In-N-Out Burger for the first time in five months with hysterical tears of joy streaming down my face? Museum-romping? Boba-cafe-with-wireless-internet-loitering? Really, friends, I am giddy to see all of you again!

For my own personal remembrance.

2006-11-30T23:49:00.000+08:00

My local friend Zineng, who probably has personal connections to practically every museum-affiliated person in Singapore, took me to an exhibition opening of a local artist's retrospective at the Singapore Art Museum. There was much free food, free wine and good art-viewing to be had, and the village rejoiced in a surprisingly unpretentious setting.

Anyhow, getting there involved riding on the back of his motorbike, which was a fantastic post-sunset experience of the island. Riding on a motorbike anywhere, really, is a wonderfully visceral way to experience any place. Maybe it's because watching the landmarks of the city whizz past you in the open air gives everything a more cinematic quality. Maybe it's because deep down, I know that I am too practical and un-badass to actually ever own and ride a motorbike, so better let a more experienced person drive while the wind whiplashes my face.

Oddly enough, motorbikes also remind me of The Last Life in the Universe--a movie made by a Thai filmmaker which takes place in Thailand, and stars Tadanobu Asano as a harmless librarian / Yakuza gangster / ridiculously attractive person. I know I name-drop this movie a lot, but only because it's one of my favorite movies ever. Plus, now that I've been to Thailand, I can appreciate the movie more once I watch it again when I come back from Singapore? Yes, exactly.

Gang-bangs, farewell dinner, and Christmas.

2006-11-30T10:42:00.000+08:00

Singapore is the goody-two-shoes, law-abiding hall monitor of Southeast Asiaits more ghetto neighbors would probably beat to a bloody pulp if it weren't so goddamn rich and powerful. The analogy I often give to friends back home is that Singapore is kind of like Orange County but with more fish balls: a very safe place to raise your kids if you want to shelter them from the social maladies of drugs and excessive gum-chewing.

Annabel Chong, who was born in Singapore, probably did not do too much drugs or gum-chewing when she was growing up. But that did not stop her from doing....a lot of men. By setting the world record for the world's biggest gang bang in porno history, she (or rather her vagina) says screw you, Singapore! And about seventy other men, too!

I learned about Annabel Chong and her sexploits (filmography includes: Sgt. Lonely Pepper Hearts Club Gangbang; I Can't Believe I did the Whole Team; feats include pioneering on-camera triple penetration) because last night Christine was sporting an I Heart Annabel Chong T-shirt and everyone knows that Christine is a pervert who wants to be just like Annabel Chong.

Oh, Singapore. Who would have thought.

--

Last night, the Japanese Crew and Its Associated People took me out to a joint farewell-Yumi / Jun's preemptive birthday celebration dinner. The girls surprised me with a very sweet homemade card signed from our friends, which made my heart melt right out of my halter-top and fall all over the floor in an ooey-gooey mess.

The right attitude can transform a train station into a rawking mosh pit.

Cute girls. And me.

I kick thee out of my sight, Japanese boy. I kick thee!

My idea of nationalism. Chomp.

One of the best things you learn about studying abroad is the reassurance that no matter where you go, you will find good people. I hope to see some of these kids again--maybe possibly in Japan if I end up working there a year from now. Who knows?

--

Orchard Road, one of the main shopping districts of Singapore, is all pimped up for the holidays in a blinding orgy of tinsel and stringed lights. It's quite the purty sight.

Now as my friends know, I LOVE DECEMBER and I LOVE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. I love all the cheesy things that start coming out of the woodwork at the end of the year: all the new holiday Starbucks latte flavors, how little pine green and holly ornaments start cropping up in random places and just the general sense of festivity heightened by the sudden crisp chill in the weather. Plus, my birthday is smack in the middle of all the merry-making. True, I probably get half the amount of gifts compared to other non-December babies (Here's your birthday and Christmas present, rolled into one!), but I figure that in the grand scheme of things, it just makes an already special month extra-super-special.

--

I'm leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow. I hear Hong Kong is like the New York City of Asia. We'll see how it goes!

Quakers, FIlipinos, and more.

2006-11-28T18:16:00.000+08:00

Scott: no really, we seriously miss you
Scott: you need to be back int eh new world
Scott: instead of some malaria infested island

Oh, Scott "Snap-snap-triple-snap, BITCH!" Wen. Thank you for reminding me where I really belong. Because walking through the mega-malls of Singapore in a grass skirt and a goat-skin bra was starting to make me feel really uncouth!

Now this is every woman's dream come true. Waking up to some Quaker. Not the edible oat kind, but the ones that come in the form of a certain hapa boy named Jonathan. Thank you for the care package, friend! This photograph will now go under my pillow before I go to sleep every night.

Thank you Robbie, for always talking to me and keeping me updated on your life...NOT. Where the hell did you disappear off to? The only way I remember you is from the fractured bones and bruises that still haven't healed from my one year of living with you. Why are Filipinos so goddamn abusive?

Speaking of Filipinos... I saw a whole bunch of 'em. A whole country of 'em! This must have been about a week ago. Or something like that.

By the way, somewhere between the two-hour distance that separates Clark Airport and Manila, there's an invisible rift in the fabric of time and space that transports you directly to downtown Los Angeles. Or at least that's what it felt like. Because some parts of Manila are so eerily similar to downtown Los Angeles I was ready to pee my pants. It might have been the fact that we were driving on the right side of the road. Or the ridiculous traffic and the smog. Or all the brown people who love Jesus. Or like, the fact that the Philippines was once occupied by the United States. In any case, it was kuh-ra-zee. You just had to see it to believe it.

So my one regret is that I didn't have enough time to properly experience all the Filipino things that the country has to offer. That, and I didn't have a thermal body suit to keep me warm when I rode that horrible nine-hour bus ride from Manila to Vican in an air-conditioned bus that gives a new defintion to the term freezing hell.

Toubie and I had fun, though. We ate a lot of pork / rice dishes, got made fun of by Filipino teenagers, played in random playground sets in the middle of the city, looked at churches, random art galleries and a bunch of other amazing, awesome things! I'm excited to travel to Vietnam in ten days with this girl.

We're cute little Japanese girls.

The best way to conclude any trip in Southeast Asia: Burger King. God bless fat.

--

I'll be home in exactly three weeks. Three weeks, friends!

The right answer usually involves sex, drugs and violence.

2006-11-22T11:30:00.000+08:00

Dear Singapore,

It has been brought to my attention that while only forty-three years old as an independent country, you are struggling with a low marriage rate and your population is in imminent decline. Several government ministries are scratching their heads and wondering why a country that is so young and rich and successful is not twisting its panties in a knot to screw like bunnies and make more babies for its fledgling nation.

And this might hurt a little bit, but I’m going to be brutally honest with you. And no, it’s not even about the size for once. For all your economic power, your island does absolutely nothing to turn me on. Even with your obvious phallic symbolism in boasting the world's largest man-made fountain and man-made waterfall, your tiny country-state crammed with skyscrapers and other erect physical structures is one libido-crunching black hole of regulations. Being reminded every other corner of the many fines I can receive for the many minor transgressions I may commit does not make me want to have more sex and bear children. It makes me want to walk around with hunched shoulders and constantly glance over my back to make sure that Big Brother isn’t watching me.

No littering? Okay, that’s fine; picking up trash does get a little anal after a while. But no gum chewing? And a death penalty for any possession of drugs? Isn’t that a bit too melodramatic? And no public dancing? First of all, what the fuck does that even mean? And secondly, how the hell can you expect your people to make babies if a mere rhythmic sashay of the hips is going to lead to a nasty run-in with the law?

What I fail to understand is that for all your fetishistic compulsion to make every harmless activity known to man illegal, you make the one activity that is antithetical to the production of happy families legal. That is, prostitution. You demand an outrageous fine for picking flowers off a lawn and spitting on the sidewalk, but you look the other way when your citizens get busy with some random whore off of Geylang Road. And then you act all surprised when your people aren’t getting married and making more little Hui Fangs and Jia Nings. What kind of messed up logic is that, Singapore?

Your censorship policies and one-party rule doesn’t work too well to the libido of your people, either. While beautiful people get by with being beautiful to get some booty, the rest of the average-looking folk use things like intelligence, a highly articulate mind and drug-hook ups to get into other people’s pants. But if there’s no open exchange of opium and opinion, why should there even be an open exchange of body fluids?

Exactly, Singapore. Exactly.

Because honestly, Singapore, when you cultivate a public psychological space that is hyper-paranoid of all things dirty and irregular, you are indirectly nurturing a subconscious fear of sex among your people. Because as much as you want to admit otherwise, sex is a very dirty and irregular business, and judging by the current state of affairs, no amount of government propaganda is going to make your people get busy any time soon.

Maybe you need to take a cue from your less rich but more sex-happy neighbors to instill some artificial danger and excitement into your little country-state. You know, give your citizens a sweet taste of death to kick-start their dormant libidos. For example, I have traveled to unsafe parts of Southeast Asia that have unpaved roads, no stoplights and really shitty drivers. Just the very act of crossing the street was a life-or-death situation. But guess what? It made my heart beat faster! It flushed my cheeks and made me sweat! And being in the midst of a dirty-ass ghetto with a poor infrastructure and constant muggings ignited my evolutionary instinct to go home to my hubby and make some babies!

How about this, Singapore? Loosen that collective necktie and order yourself a bottle of champagne. And ask that foreign fellow from Europe or North American to roll you a joint. How about as a social experiment, for one week you make prostitution illegal and everything else legal? There may be some mild bouts of anarchy. There may be some litter on the streets, and then possibly some meth-soaked bodies. But I assure you, all the bloody mayhem will make your country collectively horny as hell.

Think of the children.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Non-Singaporean

Some important business back home.

2006-11-22T08:16:00.000+08:00

Some cool cats of the male variety back home have decided to take on the Insomnia Film Festival and spend twenty-four hours of their life writing, directing, acting and editing in their very own short film "Countdown"!. Vote for them and make your mama proud. Heck, if Angry Asian Man thinks it's worth a mention in his daily updates occurring within the Asian American community, then you know it's something gosh-wow-kabam!

Coincidentally, the makers of "Countdown" are also a microcosmic sample of the ridiculously beautiful people who compose Lapu the Coyote that Cares Theater Company, an Asian American theater group that's been around UCLA for the last eleven or so years. Rumor has it that they are holding their annual auditions like, now, and you should like, check this shit out before you regret it for the rest of your life and die a lonely, bitter death. Now you really wouldn't want that, would you?

Before I joined LCC, I was a socially inept recluse with awkward conversation skills and no boyfriend. Two years later, I am still a socially inept recluse with awkward conversation skills and no boyfriend--but now with invaluable writing, directing and acting experience under my belt! Hot damn!

--

I just spent four days in the Philippines. I ate a lot of pork and rice. I will elaborate more on this later.

A small sampling of the people I've met in Singapore.

2006-11-16T03:29:00.000+08:00

Yuni

Two weeks ago, I had a chance to be aquainted with Yuni, who is a staff on the international relations office of N.U.S. (or something of that nature) and organized the weekend Tiomann trip for international students like myself. This is a weird, extremely narcissistic bias of mine, but people with "Y" names tend to subconsciously get extra brownie points with me--and the more similar to my name, the better. But not exactly the same, because then I would have to eliminate you. In addition to that, she apparently has a brother named Fayumi--whom she calls "Yumi" for short. Clearly, her parents have unexcelled taste in naming their children.

But Y name asides, Yuni was so concerned that one stray kitten chilling on the pier would somehow accidentally fall into the ocean she picked it up and carried it safely to the mainland. And it didn't end there. She bought ice cream and bread from the nearest food stand to make sure that this malnourished thing was well-fed. I was very amused. Not only that, I was moved. If someone is willing to put so much time, money and effort towards one flea-bitten, disease-ridden stray kitty (and for some reason, Tiomann is just swarming with them), then you can be certain that he or she has a pretty big heart.

--

Dr. Shen

Dr.Shen teaches the introduction to Asian theatre class that I took this semester. I know it's weird to call someone of his age "cute," but Dr. Shen is just that. A cute Chinese man. Maybe it's the way he holds the sheet of lecture notes over his mouth while he's talking like a shy geisha girl covering her teeth with her silk fan. Or how he constantly oscillates between self-deprecating humor and joking narcissism over his own academic brilliance. Or the way he... awww, shucks, just look at him! Don't you want him to be your cute, non-creepy uncle who shows you videos of Japanese puppetry when he's not busy working on the next academic thesis that will shake the very foundation of theater studies as we know it?

I kind of look whorish here because that day I had to act in a five-minute scene from a Chinese play where I played a saucy whore. Either that, or I'm making that up and I actually do wear six pounds of make-up every day.

--

Seno Gumira

Okay, so I didn't really meet Seno Gumira. I was indirectly acquainted of this Indonesian author through my Southeast Asian literature class because we happened to read his trilogy of short stories for a recent lecture.

But not only did Semo Gumira manage to write a short story that involves zombies AND a scathing criticism of the Indonesian government, he bears a very uncanny resemblance to my apartment mate Robbie.

Semo Gumira:

Robbie Akira Monsod:

Or maybe it's just very powerful wishful thinking on my part because as much as I hate to admit it, I really do miss having a domineering Japino around to verbally abuse me and tear down my self-esteem every time I think I lost something important when it's actually in immediate physical proximity of me. I hate you, slut. I mean, DON'T HURT ME I LOVE YOU

--

Arthi

I'm cheating here because Arthi actually lives in Los Angeles and I knew her before I even came here. But I talk to this hottie every day on AIM she may as well be in Singapore. Now if only.

Arthi is one of those amazing people who manages to have time to be a pre-med student and a very creative, artistic person at the same time. I don't know how the hell she does it. I can't wait to see her again--because our hang-out sessions always inevitably seems to end with one of us massaging the other person's back on someone's bed. I question my own sexuality every time I think of her. Sometimes late at night I touch myself and start sobbing uncontrollably for no particular reason. Oops, now that just really ventured into T.M.I. territory, didn't it? I was just making that up to be FUNNY! Ha, ha! HA HA HA HA HA! Ha, ha, ha...

On a completely unrelated note, I'll be back in five minutes...

--

Some Random Sister

Now I don't know who THIS sister in the hoochie black dress is, but clearly she knows how to keep it REAL. Even in a farewell buffet dinner at the Ritz Carlton hotel, she knows her ROOTS. You can take a fly girl out of Westwood, but you can never take the Westwood out of a straight up P.I.M.P.C.E.S.S., BITCH! Just want to give a quick HOLLA to all the homegirls hanging in the 310. Um, did you hear me? I said HOLLA, YOU STUPID DUMBFUCK HO BITCHES! Don't raise your arms all at once now. Seriously.

I don't smile in photographs because when you're straight outa WestWOOD, smiling is a sign of weakness.

Text message this, bitch!

2006-11-15T12:33:00.000+08:00

Apparently President Bush is going to be in town tomorrow because of a stop-over on the way to Vietnam. Not only that, he will actually be on campus at NUS. Chances are I won't see him because it'll be highly inaccessible to the public, blah-blah-blah, but kind of neat, en't it?

Speaking of Singapore, most recently a certain 23-year-old Singaporean woman beat the Guiness world record for fastest text-messaging. Congratulations, Singapore. Living in a tiny country is no excuse for not having nimble thumbs.

--

Thanks to a Southeast Asian literature class, I've had a chance to read a lot of good short stories from Singapore. Do you know what's so great about reading short stories from Singapore if you're studying abroad in Singapore? Chances are, if they ever mention an actual location within the country, you've already been there. Twice.

Speaking of reading, here are the books that I have read while being here:

- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
One interesting thing about this book was I wasn't particularly pulled into the story while I was reading it, but it wasn't until after I put down the book I couldn't stop thinking about it. Creepy and unsettling in a wonderful kind of way.

- The Giver by Louis Lowry
This is a reread of a young adult classic. Recommended rereading at least every five years.

- Best American Short Stories 2006
They really are damn good.

- The Merlion and the Hibiscus [A collection of short stories written in English from Singapore and Malaysia]
Southeast Asian fiction is sorely underrepresented in the publishing world. It's a shame a lot of these writers aren't known outside of their respective home countries.

- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
I can't believe someone my age wrote this book.

- When Broken Glass Floats by Chanrithy Him
One of the few nonfiction literature to emerge from the Pol Pot regime. A woman's autobiographical account of growing up in a Khmer Rouge death camp as a child. This is a really compelling read even if you've never been to Cambodia. If anyone ever wants to borrow it, let me know.

- Currently reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.
This is my reward book for sort of getting all the anal academic crap out of the way until finals. I am only maybe three chapters into it and I am absolutely loving it. Magicians? Comic books? Jewish people? What more could I possibly ask for?!

I also checked out a copy of Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen in Japanese and since I read the book already in English, I figure my focus can be on feeling out the general rhythm of the language rather than trying to pick my brains figuring out all the details of the plot. I'm excited!

--

It's raining! My spaghetti-strap top is colored like a fruit-roll-up! I love exclamation points!

Cambodia (Part III.) The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

2006-11-11T16:42:00.000+08:00

One of the best classes I’ve ever taken in college was a course in Holocaust-related film and literature. I spent a good chunk of my past summer reading Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking.” And one of the most memorable places I’ve visited so far in Southeast Asia are the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the killing fields right outside the capital city.

I don’t think it’s so much that I enjoy learning about these subjects. Maybe it’s more akin to a grotesque voyeurism that comes from watching the aftermath of a car accident amplified by a tenfold. Maybe it’s because no matter how much you learn about it or read about it, there is always this huge unanswerable question looming over the historical facts, and no matter how close you reach the edges of the black hole existing in every human being, the very depths of it can never be truly comprehended or rationalized.

Someone needs to take care of the dead. It’s in our civilized desire to make sure that the people who pass away are properly buried or cremated. Even for those who don’t necessarily believe in an afterlife, there’s a certain innate idea that the human dead should be taken care of, not disposed in the streets like animals or garbage. We all hope that when the time comes for us to die, that our loved ones will take care of us even if we won’t experience it ourselves.

Over two million people died under Pol Pot’s regime, and someone needs to take care of the dead. Someone needs to make sure that the photographs of the nameless victims are on display, that the skulls have open air to breathe and that the museum is there for anybody who wants to learn. I wonder if the tour guides and people who run the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum ever wish they were doing something else. Or if they are so used to reciting the same grisly historical data day in and day out that they have become desensitized to it. Maybe they have simply accepted that taking care of the dead is their everyday job.

I love kids drawings.

2006-11-10T01:24:00.000+08:00

Why yes, I have been enjoying my stay, thank you very much!

Things I've been up to:

- Weekend getaway to Tiomann, a scenic island beach off the coast of Malaysia. Got a lot of good snorkeling and general beach-ing done.

- Hanging out with Toubi and her friend Ai, who came to visit from Tokyo for a week.

- Went to the Biennale exhibition at Tanglin Camp, some of which involved walking in very drenching rain with no umbrella.

- Gloating over the fact that I changed one dreadfully dull class to Pass / No Pass.

I know, what a fake update of a post. I will write something substantial more later. I promise.

--

My days here are numbered. Which further fuels my rationale to eat as much cheap Singaporean food as my budget allows. I'm kind of torn between wanting and not wanting to leave. The decision, of course, has already been made for me.

Just as how the idea of coming to Singapore was an abstract, faraway concept in the days leading to my departure, the idea of coming home is, well, strange. It's too huge of a rupture in the geographical location and everyday rhythm of living that I've come to know as well as my own skin. Something's waiting for me when I finally come home, I'm just not sure what.

A public service announcement by yours truly that has nothing to do with Southeast Asia.

2006-11-03T11:10:00.000+08:00

A message I sent four days ago to a friend:

To:	[My friend] (CSU Fullerton)
Subject:
Message:	How I can't stop singing the praises of acne.org! How I love my newly clear skin! How I love the fact that I don't even wear colored foundation anymore! I feel more alive! Hotter! Heck, I feel like a better person! I share with you because you are the only person I know who understands! ♥

--

As far as physical qualities go, God has been kindly to me. I have decent capacity of all five senses and as much as I would have liked an excuse to bear a rusty metal hook for my left hand and go completely apeshit on society, I don't have any horrible physical deformities that would relegate me to the status of the lackey family member who eats fishheads in the attic.

However, God has decided to test the extent of my mental endurance by giving me bad skin. Which has lead to many awkward years of trials, tribulations and concealer.

Which is why when a certain wonderful friend of mine (Hi Hans!) whose opinion I always trust started raving about the skin care regime found on Acne.org, I figured, oh, why the hell not?

Anyway, long story short, it's been about three weeks and it works really well. One day, I was walking to class carrying all my sketchbooks and I accidentally took my glasses off, and the class president asked me out on a date! And then I was elected Prom Queen! And then I realized that it's important to stay true to yourself at the expense of superficial popularity!

I won't be a spokesperson for any Neutrogena ads anytime soon, but my skin hasn't been this happy since I was, oh, I don't know, twelve.

If you're the rest of the 99 percent of the population who doesn't have beautiful, gorgeous skin every day, try it! And tell me about how wonderfully it worked for you. Then we can get drinks at the local pub and crow about our newly improved faces while trying to pick up members of the opposite sex.

It's raining fobs.

2006-11-01T19:11:00.000+08:00

As much as I don't like to admit it, I've been in a bit of a rut lately. First, it's the semester system; I'm used to having everything shoved down my throat in ten succinct weeks and having the academic window of time stretch beyond and beyond what I'm used to is killing me. I've been tired, lazy, uninspired and prone to more disgruntled behavior than I am used to. Furthermore, I have been obsessing over things that are beyond my present control and I do not like how it is robbing me of my present happiness.

But things aren't so bad. It rained today, and not only that, there was a thunderstorm.

One thing that is great about Sinapore is how nutty the weather is. This little island country has the most schizophrenic weather ever--hot and humid one minute, raining cats and dogs the next. It is as though the fucked up weather is a subconscious compensation for everything else that is so strict and regulated in this country.

Singapore, by the way, has the highest incidence of people being struck by lightning.

I've always had a romanticized love for rain. Rain is a great aesthetic, cinematic and literary device for heightening emotions in dramatic situations. Lovers look hotter and more desperate when they make out with wet hair and drenching, near-transparent clothing. The background sound of rain makes music sound better, tea taste better and conversations more meaningful. When I am bored out of my mind in the afterlife and I make a top ten list of all the physical sensations I will miss from living on this earth, one of them will be waking up and falling asleep to the sound of rain.

And this is what happened today; I woke up to rain and thunderstorm, and for some reason, the burden of all the mundane and not-so-mundane things that have been bothering me felt temporarily lighter.

I was walking to class in this weather and it was raining so hard it was practically pounding holes into the flimsy, fobby umbrella I bought for three dollars at the local supermarket months before. The flash of lightning and roll of thunder were so close together I was afraid I was going to get burnt to a crisp. Even with the umbrella and all, my feet, my hair and my clothes were completely soaked.

It was glorious. Make-out buddy or no make-out buddy.

--

Akira Kurosawa likes rain. I can't believe it took me almost twenty-two years to finally sit through an entire Kurosawa film, but better late than never, right?

Rashomon has always been one of those movies that has been floating in the back of my head under the category of "MUST WATCH BEFORE I DIE" and for the lack of a better description, it kicks ass. You are getting yourself immersed into the storyline and just when you start thinking Kurosawa is so brilliant and awesome and he couldn't possibly be any more brilliant and awesome, POW! He pulls something else out of his sleeve that makes everything all the more brilliant and awesome. It keeps going on like this for the whole duration of the movie. I think I needed to smoke a cigarette when I was done.

In conclusion, I need to watch more of his movies. Gotta love a man who loves his rain.

--

Last weekend, Toubi dyed my hair and cut my bangs and as a result, I look very .... Japanese. I look like an underage fob! I am both pleased and disturbed by the final outcome.

Pictures from CDC.

2006-10-28T20:16:00.000+08:00

I stole these pictures today when I went to CDC. They were taken two weeks ago.

Look at the handsome fellas I get to sometimes volunteer with every sporadic Saturday! (One of them is a priest-in-training, by the way, and I suspect that the rest of them are gay. Shame.) By the way, I'm holding a chocolate ball in my head. The woman with the camera caught me unguarded so the only choice I had left was to hold the ball of chocolate awkwardly in front of me. Mmmm, chocolate.

Soup.

Gloves.

I learned today that the massage oil we use to massage the AIDS patients cost twenty five dollars a bottle. Dude, that's expensive.

--

The best part of volunteering at CDC? Meeting really great people. Spending time with AIDS patients. Honing my massaging skills.

The worst part? The sterile smell of latex gloves on my hands afterwards. Plus, I always feel immensely exhausted by the time it's time for me to go home. One of my really good friends who took a massage course said that there is this holistic theory that when you give people massages, you are absorbing some of the negative energy that is released from your patient's body when you ease the tension in his or her muscles. I don't have a hard time believing that.

--

I need a massage. Someone needs to beat the shit out of my poor, tense back.

We like new.

2006-10-28T00:08:00.000+08:00

I finally bought a new sketchbook and a black marker from the university bookstore, which has been long overdue.

There is always something very exciting for me about starting on a new sketchbook. I can't help but wonder what big and momentous life event I will be drawing about next. Something big and momentous and life-changing always happens in the duration of every sketchbook.

My last sketchbook began on December 9, 2005 and it's somewhat of a relief to put it away. I am happy for all the blank pages that are waiting to be filled in this new one.

--

I am almost done with this book. I still have a lot more to write about Cambodia.

--

Because I am a semi-regular volunteer at the Communicable Diseases Center, I was invited to go to the 9th anniversary celebration dinner of the Patient Care Centre Committee, which CDC is under.

Few things are as inspiring as knowing that there are good people out there working hard to ensure the well-being of less fortunate people. Plus, you can't beat spending a Friday night going to a free event that has free food.

I'm sad that tomorrow will probably be my last day volunteering at CDC. This has probably been one of my more rewarding experiences during my stay in Singapore.

This is me with Professor Teo, the person who got me into volunteering at CDC in the first place. He's a sweet man who owns an Astro Boy watch!

Some of the other volunteers whom I see on the sporadic Saturdays that I am able to volunteer. I wish I had a chance to get to know many of them better. We're a cute bunch.

Cambodia (Part II). A pizza that's too happy for its own damn good.

2006-10-26T20:59:00.000+08:00

Lonely Planet may have some interesting information on a happy pizza in Phnom Penh.

--

Oh, monkeys.

Monkeys in the park. Monkeys by the temple. Monkeys climbing trees.

Monkeys!

This is what you do when you are broke at the end of the trip and the only money you have left is the transportation to take you back to the airport and out of the country.

You look at monkeys.

--

After spending five days in Cambodia, there is an initial cultural shock when you finally come back to Singapore. You are in a country where the majority of its people live on one U.S. dollar a day and three hours later, you are in a country where they have sanitizer dispensers in the airport restrooms for toilet seats.

It felt strange at first to be riding the MRT back home where people had iPods, digital cameras and designer clothes. After a while, though, this feeling wore off and I seamlessly melded back into this rich world of modern conveniences. This is, after all, the only life I've ever known.

Cambodia (Part I.)

2006-10-26T01:46:00.000+08:00

I shot my first gun in Cambodia, a shooting range that is a little outside of the country capital Phnom Penh. It was a little anticlimactic to say the least, only because this American M-17 was such a big, unwieldy gun that propped awkwardly against my shoulder and I couldn't even really see if I was hitting my target or not. What was I expecting anyway? An intense bloodrush of pure power? A sudden pixelated transformation into a gun-toting sex vixen? Va-va-boom! Maybe I should have chosen a smaller handgun instead.

These are the kind of things you can do in Cambodia that aren't available in a tiny, meticulously clean country like Singapore. You can go to the Happy Shooting Range where, along with whatever Russian or American gun tickles your fancy, you can order a can of beer from a laminated menu like you're at some freaking restaurant. You can ride on the back of a moto through very unpaved, bumpy roads interrupted by puddles from the previous night's rain. You can amuse yourself watching monkeys at a local park, eat a very happy pizza (more on this later), climb hilltop temples with precariously steep steps and soak in the everyday rhythm of a country that has, as an understatement, gone through a lot of shit.

According to the United Nations report, Cambodia ranks in the world's fifty poorest countries. Everywhere you go there are street children, beggars and people with disfigured limbs who have learned enough English to beg Western tourists for money. Just barely three decades ago, over 1.7 million people (with some estimates as high as 3 million) perished under Pol Pot's oppressive regime. The unmarked graves in the killing fields outside of Phnom Penh and the haunting photographs in the Tuol Sleng genocide museum testify to this horrible event.

I don't want to paint a completely bleak picture, though, because that would be misleading. Unlike the hustle-bustle touristing blitz of Bangkok, Phnom Penh has just started opening its door to the rest of the world. While many cheap guesthouses have started cropping up near the river and lake districts within the capital, this city still remains a less trodden path compared to its glitizier Southeast Asian counterparts.

I like this place. Adolescent boys fish in the river, families play badminton in the open courtyard near the National Museum and people take naps in the park by Wat Phnom. Everyone rides a motorbike to everywhere, and life continues on.

I would daresay that out of all the countries I've visited so far, Cambodia has been the most eye-opening and most rewarding. It's a beautiful country with a lot of sadness and despair, but tentatively stepping towards a more hopeful future.

--

Angkor Wat, which is located in Northern Cambodia, is freaking huge. It was built in the 12th century and represents the classical age of Khmer architecture. According to Guinness World Records, it is the largest religious structure in the world, and I don't have a hard time believing that.

Most people buy the one-day pass to access the majority of the temple sites. You can also buy a three-day pass or a week-long pass. Unless you are an archaeologist, a Southeast Asian art historian or someone who happens to get off on ancient temples, I suggest you just buy the twenty-dollar one-day pass. Because after a while, in spite of the grandeur and the sheer enormity of it, all the temples kind of start looking the same.

As I told my fellow traveling companion, I think I've seen enough temples in Southeast Asia for the next thirty or forty years.

--

So a tiny trivia point that is slightly related to Angkor Wats that is only interesting to dorks like me. If you haven't seen "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" or any Hayao Miyazaki movie, look no further.

According to Jun, my Japanese exchange friend who may or may not be a filthy liar, Hayao Miyazaki modeled the look of the island of Laputa from the temples of Angkor Wats for the movie "Laputa: Castle in the Sky," especially one of the temples that is known for having a tree protruding out of its stone walls.

!!!!!!!!!! NOW HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?!?!?

By the way, somewhere in Japan, they sell a reproduction of the necklace that Shiita wears in the movie, the magical stone from the floating island that gives you the power of levitation. I know this because my Japanese friend Toubi owns one, who got it as a present from a friend. And now I freaking want one, even more than all the Men's Pocky, softcore Japanese porn books and Hello Kitty vibrators in the world.

Now I am not the type to demand jewelry from my male admirers (an impromptu present of yellow legal pads and Sharpie pens would be more likely to steal my heart), but if anyone ever buys me this necklace.... I will bear you a son. I will bear you a goddamn baseball team!

For our honeymoon, we would go to the Studio Ghibli museum in Japan and look at neat things like this, which is also from Laputa:

Not shown: the part where we ride off to the sunset on a Catbus.

Language.

2006-10-17T12:16:00.000+08:00

If there is one thing I am going to miss about studying at N.U.S., it's just how freaking diverse everything is. There are so many international students here it's not uncommon to be in a group of people and have at least three nationalities and three languages going on. Usually, what happens is that everyone is conversing in English, and then little translations of whatever native tongue goes on the side of the main conversation.

It's an interesting concept. There are things that are said on the surface level, but then you never know what the other person is really saying in his or her native tongue. I rather enjoy participating in this linguistic hodgepodge.

Because after a while, asking people if they are from Norcal or Socal gets kind of old.

--

So I'm trying to become more literate in Japanese, and since I figured that reading newspapers and books are out of my league, I'm going to start small. I joined Mixxi (the Japanese equivalent of myspace) and I read blogs. I look up the words that I don't know and I read them again.

After a while, you give up trying to imagine what the English equivalent is. You listen and read the words for what they are, not as stand-in symbols for something else. Because no matter how hard you try, even the best translation in the world will never capture the rhythm and implied silences that come with every word and every sound. It is what it is.

And this is my unrealistic dream of mine, to one day be so literate in Japanese I can actually read their newspapers and books as well as I can in English. Maybe even write in Japanese. Now how cool would that be?

I have a long road ahead of me.

--

Languages are sexy. They're like people. They have their own personality, history, quirks and rhythms. You may fall in love with it upon first sight or hearing, but it takes a whole lifetime to truly know it as well as your own skin. And like most people, the more intimately you know a particular language, the more rewarding the whole experience is.

As a friend of mine once said, write it like it's hot.

--

I'll be back in the States on the 19th of December. More specifically, I'll be arriving in Los Angeles at approximately 11:05 AM.

It feels strange, thinking about that.

--

Hey, to person whom I owe a guest blog: I haven't forgotten you. While I have been thinking about other things, there's something that I am waiting to experience this weekend and it may be worth writing about. Yes, I know, I am being purposely vague. Now I hyped it up too much for you. Forget I said anything.

2006-10-15T01:06:00.000+08:00

[Added cool art pictures from City Hall in previous entry. Check it out!]

Terrence is a Malay-born Chinese who went to engineering school in Singapore but decided afterwards that priesthood was his true calling. I had a chance to talk to him for the first time today when I went to go volunteer at the CDC. He is currently in his second year of priesthood training and spending time with the AIDS patients is a part of his job.

While we waited for the other volunteers to arrive, he asked me if I was Christian and if I ever gave serious thought towards any religion. I told him that while I did not prescribe to any particular religion, Buddhism was probably the most compatible with my philosophy of thinking.

"Religion is something everyone should seriously look into at some point in their life," Terrence said. "People don't really give enough time to thinking about their spirituality."

And indeed, I've never been a very religious person, and I wonder if I ever will be. Even my so-called spiritual explorations from childhood have been cursory at best and has never amounted to anything permanent. It goes something like this: light Bible-reading in fifth grade; awkward eighth grade agnosticism; and rabid high school atheism bred from a regular diet of Ayn Rand, Nietzsche and Camus. And now, I'm a typical godless Angeleno who uses the phrase "not religious but spiritual" to sum up occasional private conversations with a vaguely benign deity, exploring Buddhist temples, hanging out with my Hindu friend and not being Christian.

After I was done volunteering, I thought of all the things that would suddenly become irrelevant if I were to completely immerse myself into a pathway of God. Things like whether or not your shoes match your purse, or if so-and-so has a crush on you, or if you have a crush on so-and-so, or what shiny new furniture to buy from Ikea to make the living room in your apartment look the right shade of effortless hip. Filtering everyday life through the prism of a higher calling does not necessarily make life any easier or simpler, but I would imagine that it negates a lot of unnecessary crap.

I went to Singapore's National Library for the first time today to check out an exhibition opening of Singapore's woodcut artists.

I really like big libraries in big cities. If I weren't so tired, I would go into more specifics of how awesome they are.

But for the time being: big libraries good.

Black and white good. Do you know what else also good? The free food and drink that came with the exhibition opening. Boo-ya!

This cutie-pie on the left is Zineng, my Southeast Asian Studies classmate who has been kind enough to give me the down-low on all things worth checking out in Singapore. Not surprisingly, he also has a really cute story about how he met his girlfriend involving an airport and a love letter.

What the fuck, these things are only supposed to happen in movies. What a jerk!

--

Hung out with two Japanese exchange students the day before.

Hanging out with them makes me realize that the gaps in my Japanese language are a lot bigger than I previously suspected.

The weather was nippy that day. Get it? GET IT?

I'm cool. I look at art.

2006-10-12T23:54:00.000+08:00

While Singapore may not quite have the dirty and chaotic rhythm of other Southeast Asian countries that actually allow trash on the streets, this little island-state tries hard to prove to the rest of the world that having ridiculously strict laws does not necessarily equate complete death of creative expression. Hence the country is now hosting an international art festival where artwork by artists from all over the world are displayed in public venues scattered throughout the country, whether this occurs in former government buildings, religious temples or random outdoor spaces.

Spent an entire afternoon today checking out the venue at City Hall. Since people no longer use the rooms within the actual building, artists have installed photographs, paintings, video art and media installations within empty courtrooms and hallways. Considering how much censorship goes on within this country (not to mention the fact that there is basically only ONE political party representing all of Singapore), I was surprised by how political many of these pieces were. The fact that they are all situated in a former governement building further heightens the tension and irony of it all.

For the most part, I was very impressed with everything that was showcased here. They were either conceptually intriguing or simply wonderful, beautiful eye candy. It reminds me that divine moments are still possible in art.

David took a picture of me and Jeremy, with me looking very serious and contemplative. This is Ahhhhhrt we are dealing with here, Ahhhhhhhrt with a capital A! Too bad I don't really look like this all the time in real life; otherwise, I might actually have a chance of fooling older men into thinking that I'm a real woman of depth and intrigue.

My actual thoughts in this photograph: "I LIKE TACOZZZ!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!"

--

Every time I make any conclusive statement about where I stand regarding my own creative life, I start believing in the opposite sentiment a few days later. I miss charcoal. I miss painting. I miss the physicality of it, the tactility of it. When will I ever learn? Just shut up and do it.

This girl cracks me up. Especially when she does an imitation of my so-called Socal accent.

Run, Yumi, run!

More quarter-life crisis musings. This has nothing to do with Singapore or Southeast Asia.

2006-10-09T17:44:00.000+08:00

My ideal job title is to be a professional Yumi. A professional Yumi does what a Yumi wants to do and is paid to do so. But since that job title does not quite exist yet, I wonder if maybe I should go into either the visual arts or writing, or some fantastic combination of both. When I am not thinking about either of those things, sometimes I wonder if I am meant to be an academic and lock myself up in an ivory tower translating Japanese literature into English and vice versa. This might actually not be too bad.

I feel less burdened not having to take studio classes this quarter, and I can't tell whether this relief stems from being able to fully absorb myself into words and essay-writing, or the complacency of not having to torture myself by the aesthetic challenges that studio classes inevitably present. A part of me dreads having to go back to taking studio classes once I am back in the States, and I wonder if this is a temporary thing.

I read a phrase in a friend's information booklet for a visual design school and under the components of fine arts, it described painting as "visual research," which couldn't be more accurate. Approached correctly, art is a valid science that requires vigorous methodologies, experiments and constant intellectual questioning. Truly great artwork does not spring spontaneously out of fanciful, sporadic sweeps of inspiration; the process of art-making is and should be considered research, however dull and tedious it makes it sound.

At this point in life, visual research for the sake of visual research doesn't appeal to me. As I've been telling a dear friend of mine, the more I think about it, the more I realize I love art best when it is framed under the context of narrative--whether it is in film, animation, graphic novels or even some fantastic paintings that aren't necessarily included in the cloistered world of musuem space. Art in terms of storytelling. Art that inexplicably seduces you into that grand narrative sweep that words alone can't quite do.

So where to channel my art-making outlet in the greater context of collective culture, if at all? The answering of this question, for the time being, is on temporary hiatus. I only hope that I will be brave enough to rise to the task when I do think I have an answer.

--

Very recently, I named my writing muse Bob and my drawing muse Rob. Bob and Rob tend to lead very separate lives, and do not mingle with each other too much. Bob is quite predictable and is more of a nine-to-five regular working man who reads the paper at breakfast, while Rob is the kind of fickle bitch that comes and goes whenever he damn well pleases, the muse equivalent of a charismatic asshole boyfriend you love to hate and hate to love.

Bob and Rob are quite wary of each other. I am hoping that one day they'll at least want to hold hands, but that might be asking for too much.

The land of infinite Pocky flavors.

2006-10-08T14:09:00.000+08:00

How my working in Japan after I graduate is a win-win situation for everyone:

For myself:
A chance to postpone finding a real career for at least one year while not starving myself. I will also finally conquer my subconscious penis-envy by eating a whole package of Men's Pocky and growing a moustache.

For my parents:
They will be thrilled that I want to spend time in the motherland. They will also happily convince themselves that I will come back from my work experience more Japanese and engaged with a very Japanese husband.

For my friends:
They will have a place to crash for free when they visit me.

For Japan:
They will have claimed yet another consumer culture-whore. Hello, Hello Kitty!

For Tadanobu Asano:
He doesn't know it yet, but the mental parcels of love I telepathically send him will be received even more strongly now that I will be in greater geographical vicinity of him.

The only people who lose:
The legions of imaginary admirers who will all commit mass suicide upon my imminent departure. Either that, or beat their hairy chests while howling in enraged anguish: "WHY, YUMI, WHYYYY?!?!?!?!"

Insomnia.

2006-10-08T04:03:00.000+08:00

I hardly ever draw in my sketchbook in the time that I've been here, and I wonder why.

But speaking of the haze, there is a terrible haze going on in Southeast Asia right now. Due to the smoke arising from people burning down rainforests in Indonesia, Singapore is now awash in this sickly gray smear. While it is not as severely affected as other surrounding countries, it was bad enough to cancel a hot-air balloon riding activity,with the argument that you wouldn't be able to see anything once you were up in the air. (This hot-air balloon riding activity organized for the EAP students, by the way, is less glamorous than it sounds; the hot air balloon is still tethered to the ground while you are up in the sky, hence giving you a panoramic, albeit stationary view of the whole country.)

As I was telling a friend earlier today, this is far worse than the perpetual smog that casts a yellowish-brown cloud over Los Angeles. I never thought I would hear myself saying that.

--

In the rare weekend when I am not country-hopping, I try to make time to volunteer at the Communicable Disease Center, where myself and a handful of other volunteers spend about two hours talking to AIDS patients and giving them massages for their weakened leg muscles.

Unlike other developed countries, Singapore does not give a state subsidy for drugs used in treating AIDS patients, which makes them unaffordable for the average Singaporean. Government officials claim that the focus should be on prevention education as opposed to treating those who already have the disease, which cannot be completely cured. While a big portion of HIV infections in this country are contracted by heterosexuals engaging in sex with prostitutes (whether locally or overseas), some activists argue that Singapore's antiquated laws making gay sex illegal between men creates an obstacle in improving the situation.

In this tiny country where littering is illegal and people celebrate the opening of yet another gargantuan shopping center, human cases like the homeless and HIV patients are considered gross anomalies in the backdrop of an island state that is clean, abundant with green foliage and rich.

The Mid-autumn moon festival reached its end on Friday, so when I came to volunteer on Saturday all the patients had a plastic inflatable toy by their beds and a whole mooncake sitting on their food trays. This is to remind them, I suppose, of the world that extends beyond their hospital beds.

One of the patients I spoke to is one of the luckier ones; he will be able to rejoin the outside world in less than a week once he has gained enough strength in his leg muscles to walk on his own. His name is David, and he instantly picked up on my American accent when I first met him. He told me about how he used to live in the United States before he eventually got a job as a marketing consultant in Taiwan.

David said that as far as he can remember, he has never traveled extensively for his own personal pleasure, even though his marketing consulting job sent him to countless countries for business-related trips. He said the ultimate example of this was how he had been to Beijing many times but had never seen the Great Wall.

He's forty-two-years-old, and once he is released from CDC, he will be going on a two-month trip to the United States, starting with Los Angeles to visit an aunt, working his way up to San Francisco and heading back to his former hometown of Chicago, where he once lived as a college student. I imagine that it will be a wonderful vacation for him.

--

Peter was the first patient I massaged when I first started volunteering at CDC, so he has always been a personal favorite of mine. I was told today that he passed away last Saturday.

His friend Tan, a fellow patient, was depressed by this recent event. Even though he had a limited command of English, my friend and I tried to console him as we massaged his legs and arms, which ached from a recent injection.

"You shouldn't be sad," said my friend, who is better than I am at saying the right things at the right time. "Your friend in a peaceful place right now. He doesn't have to suffer anymore."

Because I can.

2006-10-07T13:16:00.000+08:00

A complete list of the many modes of transportation that was used during my 8-day stay in Thailand:

- Plane.
- Taxi.
- Ferry.
- Tuk-tuk driver.
- Bus (big and small).
- Minivan.
- Walking. Lots of walking.
- Very brisk walking when creepy European men started following us.
- Sleeper train.
- Bamboo raft.
- Elephant.
- Moped.

A semi-complete visual list of the meals consumed during Thailand:

A complete visual list of the cutest animal pictures taken during Thailand:

[In a Northern Hill Tribe village]

[At the elephant riding place]

[At the Doi Suthep Temple. I can't think of any cute cat puns that involves the word "meow" and reaching enlightenment! "Spiritual purrfection" is just too easy, don't you think?]

A complete list of the girl who needs to get a life whose name starts with 'Y' and ends in 'umi':

It's so that bitch Joanna!

My adventures in Thailand: shiny places of worship.

2006-10-07T00:00:00.000+08:00

As much as I like to pretend otherwise, the post-college future terrifies me.

But we're not going to talk about my imminent quarter-life crisis, about how I'm going to start dating men twice my age and start smoking compulsively or join a commune in Spain. We're going to look at very shiny things.

--

In addition to hookers, elephants and spicy peanut sauce, Thailand has many beautiful temples.

[The Doi Suthep Temple in Chiang Mai.]

[The Grand Palace in Bangkok.]

[The Reclining Buddha in Bangkok.]

--

For some reason, I really enjoyed looking at the Reclining Buddha. Maybe it's because when I first read about it, I assumed that it would be the size of say, a very big couch, so it was a bit of a sensory shock to finally see it in real life.

Plus, there's also something very satisfying about seeing something so big and horizontal. Buddhas tend to look peaceful and relaxed to begin with because they already have that enlightenment business going on. But a reclining Buddha? Even better.

Buddha deserves to get some reclining action going on because if I were Buddha, I would get sick of constantly sitting cross-legged or standing reverently in prayer. That, and showing up on T-shirts that says "Rub my belly for good luck" but that's a whole another story.

If Reclining Buddha could talk, he would say: "Listen, buddy. I'm sure you've heard that I've been spending a lot of time wandering the earth, thinking about the nature of suffering and meditating under trees. Don't get me wrong; I was born to do this kind of thing! But it's a little hard on the joints, ya know what I'm sayin'? Now if you don't mind, I'm just going to recline here for a little bit. I swear, it'll be for one minute. Just like this. ...."

--

One of my favorite tiny details about Doi Suthep was a wall decoration on the entrance of a smaller temple.

I don't know why I was drawn to them so much. Maybe because they remind me a little of the drawings that I like to do.

--

It's interesting to see the different ways different cultures approach their aesthetics when it comes to building places of worship. You can go the minimalist route and worship in natural cave formations like the indigenous people of Okinawa. Or you can go all out with your blingiest holy bling possible with the intention of blinding the shit out of those damn heathens who dare to speak against your gods.

Thailand likes to pimp their temples. I dig it.

--

Now I may not have reached the same state of Zen as Buddha, or even Oprah, for that matter, but I am pretty content in this picture. Never mind how sweaty, sticky and broke I am. This is because we are at the end of our Thailand adventure and we've seen some TANKZ!!!1111!!!!!

Thinking in Japanese.

2006-10-06T00:02:00.000+08:00

For dinner I went to the very yuppified Holland Village with my two Japanese exchange friends Seitaro and Toubi. I probably didn't realize this until today, but they are probably my first real Japanese friends that I can only speak Japanese with. Indeed, I have a lot of Japanese friends back home, but there's really no need to speak only Japanese with them.

I really enjoy their company. They marvel at my American pronunciations (especially words that involve the letter 'r') while they patiently explain difficult Japanese vocabulary to me when I don't understand. Unlike my Japanese language school experiences growing up, I don't feel so intimidated about making mistakes or sounding stupid when I speak. We sat around in a Mexican restaurant and then an ice cream place for about four hours talking about everything from international politics to basic cultural differences between America, Japan and Singapore.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe my attitudes concerning these two languages is cliche: English is the language of my brain, but in the end, Japanese is the language of my heart. I can pretend to be clever, intelligent and witty in English, but I feel more safe when I hear and speak Japanese. After five hours of trying to keep up in conversational Japanese, reverting back to English somehow feels a bit cold and impersonal.

Sometimes when I am walking back home I repeat random phrases to myself like a mantra; just the very act of shaping Japanese words with my lips and tongue gives me a sense of security.

--

Speaking of Japanese things, the online edition of the New York Times did a feature travel piece on one of my favorite places in West Los Angeles, Sawtelle Boulevard. The easiest way to describe this place is Little Tokyo condensed to three blocks. Good place for crepes and hipster credibility.

--

EDIT:

Holy freaking shit, how could I possibly forget?

I was walking out of a club with a friend when this fat, balding European guy comes up to me.

"Excuse me," he asked. "Are you Japanese?" I told him that I was.

"I knew it!" he said triumphantly. "You have a very Japanese way of walking. I noticed the way you were walking at the club and I just had to go up to you and ask."

He then went on to tell me about how he loves Japanese culture, how he goes there every year, how he participates in their festivals, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah it's not like I haven't heard this before, mister.

Now Iike any other Asian girl living in the States, I've had many a share of yellow fever-related collisions, whether it comes in the form of some white guy empathetically speaking about his Japanese fob girlfriend while giving me a very leery look or some black guy at a bus stop telling me how much he just LOVES Oriental women.

But the way I walk? Amusing, I suppose.

Next time I go clubbing, I'm going to carry a samurai sword on my back.

God bless cheese.

2006-10-04T20:59:00.000+08:00

Projected travel itinerary for the next few months:

October 19 - 24: Cambodia, possibly Laos.

Early November: Malaysia again?

November 18 - 22: Philippines?

December 7 - 15: Vietnam? (With this one, I am most excited about eating a lot of food. Everything else is secondary. If things go as planned, I will celebrate my birthday in Vietnam!)

By the end of December, the following countries will have been added to my passport:

Singapore
Malaysia
Indonesia
Thailand
Cambodia
Laos (?)
Phillipines
Vietnam

That's a whole lot of Southeast Asia, dude. I think my sweat is already starting to smell like garlic chili pepper sauce. Sorry to Myanmaar, Brunei and East Timor; maybe in another lifetime.

When I finaly come home, I want to go all out on the American activities that I have been deprived of for the last five months. I want to eat a whole block of American cheese, celebrate Thanksgiving a month late, waste napkins, use three toilet seatcovers at a time and re-colonize all the countries that I just listed.

--

To the five people who actually read this blog:

Hi!

My Thailand adventures: Chiang Mai (Part II.)

2006-10-03T22:01:00.000+08:00

This is what happens when you are hiking through the forests of Northern Thailand, it's raining hard, and your sandals have absolutely no traction so you keep falling on your ass literally every five minutes:

Many minor scratches.

A whole lot of mud on your legs.

A slightly bruised ego.

:(

But a great forest view.

Not to mention a chance to use a wooden crossbow to shoot at a papaya in some random hill tribe!

Oh, yeah. Look at that. I'm a motherfucking badass. I'm gonna git you, SUCKA.

My Thailand adventures: Chiang Mai (Part I.)

2006-10-03T11:06:00.000+08:00

Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand known for their Northern hill tribes, temples and traditional handicraft. We spent two nights there and on the third night, took a 12-hour sleeper train back to Bangkok.

The MCU Buddhist University in Chiang Mai has this program called Monk Chat that was created about six years ago. Basically, Monk Chat is a program that occurs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 5PM to 7PM where foreign visitors are invited to talk to the monks studying at the university. It gives monks a chance to practice their English while allowing non-Buddhists to learn about the lives of monks on a more personal level.

The monk I spoke to is 23 and still learning English, so we talked about simple things, such as our families, what we are studying and what we like to do in our free time. Maybe I had this romanticized notion that all monks radiate with this inner glow of serenity because they chose to live a spiritual path dedicated to God, but it was somewhat of a relief to know that even student monks get tongue-tied, have awkward silences and shift their eyes when they speak. It makes them more human that way.

I wish I could speak Thai fluently because I’m sure in his mother tongue he has so many complex, interesting ideas that could only come from choosing to live this kind of life. Still, I find it rather miraculous that we were able to have a conversation in the first place because our respective worlds couldn’t be any more different. Me, a college girl from Los Angeles weaned on wireless boba cafes, trashy hipster culture and iPods; him, a young man born in a small village in Thailand who spends his days begging for alms and meditating.

“Do you miss anything from your former life?” I asked.

He smiled and said, “I already have everything I need here.”

Even if they may speak the same language as you do, a whole world of differences still sets you apart. It is one thing to speak the same language in terms of vocabulary and syntax, but a whole other thing to speak the same language of shared experiences. And by shared experiences I mean the particular rhythm of a language that cannot be taught but only lived, whether this rhythm manifests itself in regional slang, a certain type of sarcasm or making references to bad 80’s movies.

So they may know English, but they don’t know your English. It’s a fragile connection, but a connection nonetheless.

It’s frustrating having to speak in a second language. I feel the frustration when I have to argue with my parents in Japanese and I have a limited ammunition of vocabulary to choose from. I can see the frustration in other international students, who, having learned English only in a classroom setting, now have to write essays, go to lectures and talk to their peers in this completely foreign language. You can see it in the way they pause mid-sentence and furrow their eyebrows as they search and falter for the right words. They have a whole world of ideas to express at the tip of their tongues, but they can only mouth crude reproductions of what they really want to say.

I think I’m lucky with my bilingual-ness. While my Japanese is certainly not up to par as my English, I at least know Japanese well enough to occasionally dream in it.

Maybe I should try to learn Spanish again after a five-year hiatus. Maybe.

--

Contentment finds itself in the most unexpected places. I remember thinking this when I was laying sprawled on the upper bunk of a sleeper train eating peanuts from a bag and watching the scenery go by. I remember thinking to myself: I am riding a train to Bangkok and I am eating peanuts; I am content.

My Thailand Adventures: Phuket

2006-10-03T02:26:00.000+08:00

Ying makes a good traveling companion. Because she was also my only traveling companion, I now have a shitload of photos of her on my laptop. It's too bad she doesn't have any rich stalkers or something; otherwise, I could sell these pictures to them for a really good price. "You have pictures of her coming out of the shower wearing just a towel with a look of surprised anger on her face? Pshh, fuck that, I have a picture of her riding an elephant. Yeah, that's right. A fucking elephant from Thailand. Bet you don't have THAT, motherfucker."

Our very rough itinerary of Thailand:

PHUKET: September 23 - 25.
BANGKOK: September 25 - 26.
CHIANG MAI: September 26 - 28.
BANGKOK: September 29 - 30.

Today, I will focus on Phuket, a Southern province of Thailand known for beautiful beaches and swarms of tourists.

--

My parents would probably kill me if they knew that I just spent eight days in Thailand, especially considering that they just had a military coup (albeit a bloodless one.) They would also kill me if they knew that on the second day there, I was riding on the back of a moped driven by a 33 year-old-man I just met ten minutes ago.

In a bad teen slasher film, the above scenario would have lead to a series of horrors where the seemingly nice guy leads us to a secluded shack and subjugates us to his sadistic experiments made especially for unsuspecting female travelers. Fortunately, what we ended up getting was not horribly disfiguring chemical burns or cut-off limbs, but a nice place to crash for free.

This moped-driving man in question was Dennis, a Filipino American married to an Australian woman named Lydia. They were traveling together with Lydia's brother, a chronic traveler who had stories of traveling solo in South America for over a half decade. Ying and I randomly came across this trio when we were stranded in Phuket Town after spending a night at one of Southern Thailand's renowned island beaches that, while beautiful, was actually kind of dirty and so shamelessly touristy it left a bad taste in our mouths. Since we had no idea what the hell to do with ourselves until our flight to Bangkok the following morning, the couple invited us to join them at their hotel alongside one of the beaches. They all had their own rented mopeds, so I hopped onto the back of Dennis's moped while Ying went with Lydia's brother.

Few things are as exhilarating as riding on a moped, especially if it's done during late sunset on an exotic coastline. The only thing that was missing was a song playing in the background that captured both the excitement and uncertainty of being young!

While Dennis and I passed through what seems like an endless procession of bars, restaurants and hotels, we swapped details about each other's lives and where we've been in this world. Dennis was the former owner of a nightclub who just sold his business, which was ample excuse for him and his wife to take a two-month trek across Southeast Asia. He described to me the beautiful beaches of the Philippines, how Sydney was one of his favorite places in the world and how he didn't miss living in Los Angeles a single bit now that he was in Seattle with his wife of six years.

I asked him if it was true that it rained a lot in Seattle. "To be honest," he replied, "We just say that to keep the Californians out."

Dennis and Lydia met each other randomly when Lydia was traveling alone in North America and happened to pass through Seattle. They were the kind of happily married couple who called each other "sweetheart" and "babe," and you could tell that they were having the time of their lives trekking through all the exotic locales that Southeast Asia had to offer.

I mentally added this scenario as another possibility of where I could be fifteen years from now: tearing down some random coastline on a rented moped, with a husband as crazy as I am.

Finding one's garden.

2006-10-02T00:12:00.000+08:00

During my travels in Thailand, I thought a lot about Candide, a writing by Voltiare that I probably haven't read since senior year of high school. I forget the details of the story, but the general gist of the story is that the hero, after experiencing a series of bizarre, fantastic and cruel adventures that involve bestiality, cannibalism, war and whatever else, finds himself at the very end of the story tending a small garden plot with his other fellow adventurers. And they are all happy about this.

As strange as it sounds, I like the idea of knowing that somewhere down the road, I will no longer feel so restless to see the world. Instead, I will be perfectly content to tend my own mundane metaphorical garden, whatever and wherever that may be. There is a certain beauty in routine, so long as it is not stagnating or limiting to one's personal growth.

My metaphorical garden better include some avocado trees.

A view from Bangkok.

2006-10-01T17:34:00.000+08:00

In retrospect, visiting a country that just had a bloodless military coup is probably not the best idea in the world. However, for the stupidly adventurous or the just plain stupid, it is a chance to experience history firsthand. And by experience history firsthand I really mean taking tasteless pictures of myself flashing a fobby peace sign in front of army tanks situated by the Bangkok National Assembly.

What can I say, it was bloody worth it.

Earlier in the week I was in Southern Thailand, riding in the back of a moped driven by a man I just met roughly ten minutes ago (more on this later). He asked me, "So what do your parents think about you being in Thailand?"

"They don't know," I reply.

--

I just experienced a sample platter of Thailand in a whirlwind eight days and while it was certainly one of the most adventurous weeks of my life, right now I am relieved to sit around in my underwear in front of my computer and do absolutely nothing adventurous or culturally enriching.

Beaches, Buddhas, elephant-riding, spicy food, tuk-tuk drivers, night markets, a five-minute peep of a really sleazy Bangkok sex show, getting ripped off, floating markets, even more Buddhas, chatting with monks, hikes through forests, getting hopelessly lost, oh my! so many things to write about and so many pictures to post. More soon, my precious, more soon.

Bughis.

2006-09-23T00:45:00.000+08:00

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.

2006-09-21T21:44:00.000+08:00

[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.

2006-09-20T23:38:00.000+08:00

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.

2006-09-14T02:36:00.002+08:00

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.

2006-09-04T22:22:00.000+08:00

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.

2006-09-03T21:49:00.000+08:00

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.

Waffles, et cetera.

2006-08-31T02:13:00.000+08:00

This picture is so self-contained it does not need a caption.

For an off-campus late night dessert on a Tuesday night, you can easily take the 200 Bus Route from Heng Mui Terrace to Holland Village, a former home of British soldiers that has now turned into a rather yuppie expat stronghold catering to the very Westernized tourist. Once you arrive, you can go to a dessert cafe (its name currently escapes me) and buy waffles and ice cream for half the regular price, which comes out to roughly three to five sing dollars.

I plan on going back there eventually to get my non-Asian food fix. As weird as it sounds, I really miss eating spaghetti and pasta.

--

Today, I had lunch with a Malay boy living in my hall whom I grew to immediately like only because he does not like participating in hall activities, and the sixteen-year-old loser in me always feels an immediate pang of sympathy for antisocial people forced into hyper-social situations.

He also dons longish hair and chipped black nail polish, and carries around a small notebook of poems scrawled meticulously in tiny handwriting. Somehow, knowing that emo people exist in Malaysia cheers me for no apparent reason.

--

While I dearly love my Southeast Asian Literature class, all my other classes (or modules, as they call it here) feel like a rehash of every other general education course I've bullshitted my way through freshman and sophomore year of college.

I don't really have a problem with this. Studying abroad is an oxymoron.

During my Chinese Studies lecture, I finished rereading The Giver, a book that I haven't read since I was probably eleven. Revisiting a book from childhood through a more adult perspective is an odd feeling. It's somewhat akin to reading a letter that you wrote to yourself sealed in a time capsule to be opened several years later, but then maybe not.

When I was eleven, I had really big glasses and long hair. I liked to rollerblade a lot, and I had a crush on my next-door neighbor. I liked math, the color purple and Italian food.

It's never too late to read The Giver. It can easily be read in one sitting, or several inconsequential lectures.

--

I already booked my plane tickets to Thailand for the weeklong semester break at the end of September. Technically, this window of time is supposed to be treated more as a study session for midterms and projects, but bloody hell to that.

I think about many of you quite dearly.

Indonesia.

2006-08-29T10:59:00.000+08:00

Making a weekend getaway to Indonesia is a relatively easy task. For 45 Sing, you can take a round-trip boat trip from the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Bintan, one of the largest islands in the Riau province. Once you arrive, you can take an hour-long taxi drive to a relatively isolated strip of beach occupied by a handful of private wooden beach huts. If you don't mind the lack of air conditioning, you can spend a night there for the rough equivalent of 9 U.S. dollars and meet Lobo and his family, the people who run this idyllic little place.

I shit you not, my friends. You can literally spend a night in a wooden beach hut.

--

How do you describe the perfect weekend getaway (which is a cliched phrase in itself) without resorting to cliche? What do you do when, without a single shred of exaggeration, the ocean really is clear, the stars brilliant (you can see the Milky Way!), the food excellent and the locals friendly? When the lettering on the wooden sign welcoming you to Shady Shack is so wonderfully worn-down you can almost swear that it was done on purpose for kitschy effect? Perhaps the crowning moment of this near-perfect surreality was when we were offered a drink of coconuts, handpicked from the tree right before our eyes and consumed with a straw straight from the shell. These things aren't supposed to happen in real life.

The lazy writer's way out, of course, is to post a bunch of pretty pictures. And swear that they were not cut out from a travel brochure. [Photos courtesy of the ever-crazy Chris Hsien.]

Everyone rides motorbikes in Indonesia. It is the Indonesian equivalent of the family mini-van. On our way to Shady Shack, it was not uncommon to see an entire family--a mother and a father cradling a small child on their laps or in-between their bodies--all fitting on a single motorbike.

I really want to explore the rest of Indonesia. Kids play soccer on the streets and random street festivals occur throughout the city. Unlike Singapore, there is litter on the ground fucking everywhere. There is something about this place that is downright raucous, dirty and thrilling.

--

That weekend, all we did was play. We forgot about time and pretended we were kids again. We swam when we were hot, sunbathed on the beach when we got lazy, ate food when we were hungry and immersed ourselves into feeling the texture of coral washed up on the shore or watching a tiny jellyfish struggle against the ocean current.

At night, a young woman named Rina served us homemade Indonesian food with steamed rice. Someone made a makeshift bonfire right on the beach. And then someone else started playing the guitar and everyone in Lobo's family started singing songs in Indonesian.

When you have a combination of fire, music and beer on an Indonesian coastline, you can pretty much say that life is grand at this point.

The five of us from the States wandered away from the huts to gaze at the stars. At one point, we decided to lie down and fell asleep right on the beach. We woke up an hour or so later to sleep properly inside the hut. We then woke up at six in the morning to watch the sun rise and walk across the shore where the tide was low. We watched tiny, near-transparent crabs dart briefly across the sand before digging themselves into tiny holes in the ground.

It rained very briefly. Melissa and I (the only two girls on the trip) fell asleep back at our hut to the sound of rain and ocean. We woke up again for a very late breakfast--omelette and coffee with a lot of condensed milk and sugar.

We had a final dinner at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the ferry site. They served us many small plates loaded with squid, chicken, beef and vegetables--most of them covered in something really spicy.

We didn't get back to NUS until maybe eleven in the evening. Since I didn't bring a camera with me, the only thing I have to show for my trip is a dark tan and a lot of Indonesian sand falling out of my hair. I was so exhausted I fell asleep like that, all sticky from sunscreen and ocean air.

--

It took me maybe four weeks to get to this point, but I feel like finally, an equilibrium has been reached between my external environment and my internal landscape. I no longer feel so randomly anxious, and I dare say that NUS is starting to feel like home.

It's liberating to be reminded that the human mind can adjust to any situation if given enough time. A mundane routine can be made out of the most foreign circumstances.

A true story from Kuala Lumpur.

2006-08-24T02:59:00.000+08:00

The dress is a loose, backless thing that ties around the neck and falls just above the knees. It is only twenty ringgits, but looks like one of those expensive dresses that you eye longingly in the shop window of a tiny vintage shop in downtown Los Angeles. Furthermore, there is something about the decorative blue and orange patterns on the fabric that fulfills my vague ideas of what a bargain dress from Malaysia should look like--exotic, skin-baring and tropical. The kind of dress you wear with sunglasses and a tan that your friends ogle over when you come home bearing presents and stories.

I find it in some nameless store in some big mall plaza in Bukit Buntang and it is love at first sight.

Hours later, we are being driven home in a taxi cab by some fat, Chinese man whose thick accent we can barely understand. I pay for the fare and as we are walking into the dormitory, I suddenly realize that I left the shopping bag with my beautiful dress in the cab. The cab, of course, has already driven away by the time we run back out to where we were dropped off.

"Well, there are two things you can do right now," my friend says. "You can either say that it wasn't mean to be and leave it at that. Or we can try to go back to Bukit Buntang right now and try to find the taxi driver with your dress."

I agonize about it for maybe five seconds. I say: "I want my fucking dress."

So it's maybe one in the morning and we are driving back to where we were just thirty minutes before, for quite possibly the most ridiculously impossible task ever. I am pacing up and down the streets around busy intersections and taxi stands searching high and low for a red cab that is driven by a fat Chinese man. I walk up to a hired cab in the middle of the street and open the passenger door, only to find that the driver is someone I've never seen before. At one point, my friend interrupts a small cluster of Indian taxi drivers who are killing time by their unoccupied cabs. We ask them if they happen to know a co-worker who is a fat Chinese man.

They laugh in disbelief and ask us, "Do you know his cab number? Do you have his number?"

We don't, of course.

We give up at some point and go home a second time. I keep half-hoping for some bizarre miracle that will deliver the dress in my hands again, but of course that is never going to happen. Maybe, my friend says, another woman will come across the dress and it will fit her perfectly and a man who sees her in this dress will fall in love with her. They will get married and raise a child who will find the cure to AIDS, and it all wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for my stupid careless mistake of leaving the dress in the car.

Maybe.

Kuala Lumpur.

2006-08-22T23:56:00.000+08:00

Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, is one of those magical-sounding places that sounds like it shouldn't exist--like Timbuctu or Translyvania. Just saying it feels sexy on the tongue and lips. Try it.

Kuala Lumpur also has strings of lights hanging from the palm trees that outline their streets, so at night the city is in a state of perpetual golden rain. In the evening, women dressed from head to toe in black intermingle with men dressed up as near-grotesque caricatures of women. Homosexuals do this to avoid persecution because while it would be socially unacceptable for two men to hold hands in public, no one bats an eye if two mannish-women donning eyeliner and high heels walk down the street as a romantic couple.

Apparently, it would also be strange that a brown girl and a yellow girl would be walking down the street together as friends because here in Kuala Lumpur, the different ethnicities tend to stick with their own kind as much as possible.

Nabiha and I should guest-star in a Malay Sesame Street episode where we teach Malaysians the importance of interracial friendship.

--

Nabiha and I have been friends since we were in first grade. While our lives have taken us to very different directions since we graduated from high school, it was by pure happenstance that for a window of time she would be in Malaysia and I would be in Singapore.

I can't tell you enough how much I love this girl to death.

Who would have thought that two childhood best friends from the suburbs of Southern California would, years later, end up smoking hookah and sipping Bloody Marys smack in the middle of Malaysia? We both relished in this happy twist of fate. Over the weekend, we did girlish things like shop for shoes, strip down near-naked to get cheap body massages and gossip about everyone we've known since elementary school. We wondered outloud what random country we would both end up meeting in next.

Being twenty-one is a ridiculously young age.

--

On my first night in Kuala Lumpur, we tried durian for the first time. Durian, for those of you who don't know, is a thorny Southeast Asian fruit with a distinctive pungent smell that has been likened to rotting sewage, gasoline, stale vomit and other unflattering things. In Southeast Asia, it is illegal to take a piece of durian on the train or on the bus because its overpowering odour might be mistaken as a gas leak.

In spite of is notoriety, people seem to like it here. A lot.

We bought a plastic-wrapped package of it from a random fruit stand for five riplings. I said it looked like mini pig fetuses. Nabiha said it looked like a shriveled, jaundiced penis.

In spite of forewarnings from fellow exchange students who have sworn that they will never eat such a nasty-tasting piece of shit a second time, my virgin durian experience was rather anticlimactic. It had a strange, nutty-flavor with a slimy, porridge-like consistency. I expected for it to taste like rotting flesh, or at least burn a hole in my inner cheeks.

It didn't taste that great, but a morbid curiosity made me keep me eating it. It was like the gustatory equivalent of watching a bad B-movie: you kind of want to walk out, but then you kind of want to see how it ends. And you're too goddamn cheap and too goddamn lazy so you're just going to sit through the whole thing anyway.

I hope my next relationship isn't like that.

--

--

I've been thinking a lot about why people get so wrapped up in storytelling and why we still need them in the first place. One of the many conclusions I reached was this: we need good stories because we wish good story structure for our own lives.

We crave recurring motifs and place unnecessary significance on them because it makes our lives seem less random. We wonder if minor, arbitrary coincidences are foreshadowing of something bigger and better. We hate it when there are loose plot threads, unresolved chapters or lack of poetic justice. We both love and dread suspense, embrace closure and laugh at irony, so long as it's not so tragic and it doesn't happen to us.

My current tentative post-graduate life plan of the moment is to find a random job in Japan. Work hard, get to know the language better. See what happens.

2006-08-19T13:52:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I took a seven-hour bus ride from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. There is something inherently liberating and wonderful about traveling alone to a country you've never been to before. I can easily get lost or get killed in a freak accident in the middle of nowhere, but there I was, sitting on my lone side seat with nothing but a backpack and a hand purse in a bus full of strangers with passports from Indonesia, the Phillipines and other surrounding countries.

Coming to Singapore did not quite give me the inward jolt of entering another country. After all, it is a highly developed city-state and everyone speaks English anyway. For the lack of a better comparison, I consider Singapore as the Orange County of Southeast Asia--a safe, clean country, almost to the point of being sterile. It is the kind of sheltered, highly regulated bubble-environment that parents would trust their kids to go study abroad for four months.

Entering Malaysia for the first time was another story. Through my bus window, I saw young boys in school uniforms, women covered from head-to-toe in black except for a single slit of skin around their eyes, jaded-looking teenagers navigating their motorbikes through traffic. Unlike Singapore, there is graffitti on the walls and litter on the streets. Finally, i thought, a place that is a little rough around the edges.

The bus kept driving along. I fell asleep for a while and when I woke up, the city has disappeared and instead, there was an infinite expanse of green outside my window. As far as the eye can see, nothing but a sea of palm trees covered in vines and other knotted jungle foliage, broken by the occassional billboard advertising potato chips or tourist traps. For probably the first time since I came here, I felt very calm inside. After some time, I fell back asleep. We still had several hours to go before we finally reached our destination.

--

We (as in Nabiha and I) are going to leave soon to haggle for some cute shoes, but when I come back, I want to tell you more about smoking hookah at one in the morning and how the live musicians broke into a cover of 'Hey Jude' and it was such a wonderfully perfect moment.

Girls.

2006-08-17T03:24:00.001+08:00

These girls are way too freaking cute. Amy is an exchange student from China, and speaks Chinese and English. Toubi is a Chinese-born exchange student from Japan, speaks both Chinese and Japanese, and is currently in the process of learning English. Amy and Toubi speak Chinese to each other, Toubi and I speak Japanese to each other and when all three of us want to engage in conversation we speak in English. Quite an interesting linguistic ecosystem to participate in, but somehow it ends up working all the same.

It's raining hard over here.

2006-08-15T13:54:00.000+08:00

While I am thrilled by the newness of everything, I miss the familiarity of everything.

Yumi Sakugawa E209
Temasek Hall, National University of Singapore
12 Kent Ridge Dr.
Singapore 119243

If you ever happen to have a pocket of time for letter-writing, consider thinking of me. Give me your address, and I will do the same for you.

Very brief snapshots from Sentosa Island.

2006-08-15T01:50:00.000+08:00

Ironically, my favorite experience about Sentosa Island was probably both getting there and leaving there via cable car. Everything else in-between was rather besides the point.

---

Still rather floating, still trying to rediscover my rhythm of living on this hot and humid island.

Boo-urns. Booooooo-urns.

2006-08-14T01:05:00.000+08:00

Today, I went to Sentosa Island with the EAP crew, which is essentially a big, fat tourist trap full of big, fat tourist-y things like laser light shows, 4-D movies, a big statue of a Merlion with eyes that glow neon green at night, and other flash-bang attractions intending to fool you into shelling out money to buy their hokey souvenirs. The point is, somewhere between the morning of boarding the bus and the evening of being back in the residence halls, I lost my cell phone.

Now if Robbie (my apartment mate) was here with me, he would probably find it in a very obvious place where I misplaced it and call me a slut, which is what usually happens when I am back in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I am in Singapore, which means that somewhere between NUS and Sentosa Island, my cell phone is being held hostage by a very malevolent force. Sad, sad, sad. I guess I will have to shell out approximately one hundred Singaporean dollars tomorrow at Clementine, the nearest shopping center, to regain cellular connection with the rest of the world.

In spite of my immense irritation / confusion, I am trying hard to keep things in perspective. After all, there are far worse things to lose when you are traveling abroad. Such as: a passport. Or a wallet. Or a limb. Or your soul.

--

Even if you are in another country, you are still occupying the same internal landscape of your own personhood. It's a naive expectation on my part that going to the other side of the world will somehow allow me to escape certain issues that I have been mulling over before I left. As someone pointed out to me, you are still you even if you happen to be in Singapore and not back home.

Going abroad has a way of making you overly contemplative.

--

UPDATE:

So just kidding. Someone found my cell phone on the bus. I am one lucky duck.

Went to Singapore's one Ikea store today. Unfortunately, they did not have what I was looking for: Christmas lights to amp up some mood lighting in my otherwise bare and boring room. The search continues.

The Singapore Zoological Gardens, Rec Day, etc.

2006-08-12T18:34:00.000+08:00

How the National University of Singapore (NUS) show off their pride right before the school year:

Every hall and faculty spend at least four months and pull several all-nighters in preparation for this annual event that occurs on the weekend before the school year starts. Essentially, your group or organization design an elaborate float with moving parts constructed entirely of recylable trash, whether it be aluminum cans, cardboard, colored paper or whatnot. The float is usually accompanied by a troupe of choreographed dancers wearing very bright, outlandish costumes.

While our hall did end up winning the prize for 'Most Cost Efficient' (or some other crap like that), some other hall won the more prestiguous Best Float award. I felt like I was in the Southeast Asian lovechild of the Rose Parade Float and a J-rock concert.

While we were waiting in a hot and sweaty crowd to hear the results, my EAP friend David asked my hall people jokingly, "So what do you think of Yumi?" A local named Jonas replied, "She is quite bubbly."

I believe that is the first time anyone has ever used that adjective on me.

--

One interesting about Singapore is the different sounds of English that you hear on a daily basis. There is the rapid staccato-fire of Singlish spoken by the locals, which is essentially English spoken in a very heavy Chinese accent, with stresses on the last syllable and spiced up with 'lo', 'la' and 'meh' at the end of phrases and questions for emphasis. (Overheard while waiting in a line to board a tram: "Quick-ly, la!") Then there is the English spoken by the Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese and other Asian students whose English-language education has given them a more subdued British lilt to their pronunciations. And then of course, every now and then there is the brash American accent overheard on subways and in many popular tourist locations.

I realized today that I have subconsciously began mimicking the enunciations of the people around me. When I am around my hall people, I stress the last syllables of my words, I stretch out words in weird ways and my Southern Californian origins are no longer so horrendously apparent in everyday speech. I suppose this is all a part of living in another country.

--

The Singapore Zoological Gardens

--

Whenever I have spare pockets of time, such as when I am waiting in line to take the campus shuttle, I read The Best American Short Stories 2005. Reading this is like going to a good dim sum restaurant: little tidbits of different word snacks that keep your literary appetite very satisfied and entertained. I do like my short stories delicious.

--

When I was waiting at the Southeast Asian department for a woman in the office to finish with my paperwork, another woman at the front desk noticed that I was waiting and offered me a cup of tea with sugar and cream. I must say, the academic bureaucracy at NUS are quite nice.

--

--
Every other Saturday, I am going to try to go to the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) and help volunteers with the AIDS patients as a way to get off-campus and know the rest of the country on a more personal level. I went today for the first time and met three very cool locals, two of them who are or have studied at American universities and one of them who is a fourth-year student at NUS.

The AIDs patients at CDC usually get cramps and aches in their weakened legs, so it helps for them to get massages for their limbs. I sat with an older male patient with a sunken left eye and we talked about movies, music and politics while I massaged his thighs and feet with lemon-scented oils. I told him about the sights I've seen in Singapore while he disclosed his love for Harry Potter movies and house music, and how before his legs got weakened he would go to disco clubs and dance all night long.

"You don't look Japanese," he told me. "You look like a China doll."

I am Merlion, hear me ROAR.

2006-08-11T01:15:00.000+08:00

I met up with David (a cool cat from UCSB) for lunch and we both had Muslim food at the food stall in the Arts and Social Science faculty. It was really, really delicious.

Today, I randomly met an exchange student from China who happens to live on the same floor as I do. I really like this whole meeting people from different countries thing.

--

The Merlion--part lion and part fish--is a big trademark symbol of Singapore. Singapore used to be known as Temasek (coincidentally the name of the residence hall that I am currently living in), which is the Javanese word for sea. In the 11th century A.D., a prince from the Sri Vijaya Empire rediscovered the island and according to legend, came upon a mystical beast which he later learned was a lion. As a homage to this sighting, he changed the name of the island from Temasek to Singapura, which is Sanskrit for Lion (Singa) and City (Pura). Hence, the merlion is a symbolic representation of Singapore's past and present--the country's past as a humble fishing village and the present as a thriving port city.

Also, according to marketing research, Merlion is more feasible for the country's tourist industry than Merplatypus or Mergoat.

So I didn't take a picture of this, but I did see the Merlion from a river boat!

--

Usually, I don't think much about how peasants and the rural class contribute to the greater sociopolitical and economic dimensions of Southeast Asia, but the professor who was signing my forms to add a class in the Southeast Asian studies department happens to be teaching a class in that particular subject. He also happens to be a rather young professor with stylish bifocals and a very wry, self-deprecating sense of humor. He also happens to be kind of good-looking.

If I sign up for this class, does that make me a total intellectual sell-out?

Naw.

Too much debauchery.

2006-08-10T01:18:00.000+08:00

Highlights of today:

Making a pilgrimage to the east coast of the island to eat some good sea food. Had black pepper crab, chili crab, and sting ray (texture of tough fish) with three other EAP people. By the time I was done, my lips and tongue were numb with spiciness. I am satisified. They had frog legs, which hopefully I will experience before I leave this country.

Happy birthday, Singapore! Singapore is 41 years old today. I wore my red and white spaghetti tank top in commemoration of this wonderful event. Singapore is such a harsh young mistress with so many arbitrary rules. Quite sexy and domineering, this Singapore. Singapore really knows how to crack the whip and cane. Rarrr!

Went to Double-O, a club / bar that is not good for the liver. Wednesday is lady's night in Singapore, which means that you get free entrance and in some cases, free drinks if you are endowed with the double-X chromosome. I drank far more than I should have. Excessive drinking is bad. When will I ever learn? Woe is the ignorance of the young.

I've only been in this country for a week, and I am already itching to visit another country. Such wanderlust. I am so young (and so not sober.)

Peace out.

Chinatown.

2006-08-09T04:00:00.000+08:00

Showering always feels good in Singapore, because nine times out of ten you feel very hot and sticky at the end of the day.

I went on a night safari today, which meant I got to see lions (and leopards and tapirs, oh, my!) and other cool rainforest animals that I usually don't see in a daily basis. After we got dropped off back to our respective halls, myself and two other EAP students randomly came across three locals chewing the fat and hanging out in the Eusoff halls drinking beer so we joined them for a while. They gave us tips on good places to eat exotic sea food such as frog legs, turtle soup and sting ray (apparently all on a street on the east coast of the island called Geylang Road) and sordid details concerning the drag shows of Thailand. I am very much excited to experience both at some point in my four-month stay here.

--

The warning sign posters that they post in the subways can be quite unintentionally funny, such as this one below:

It isn't enough that the expression on the man's face is the picture-perfect definition of swarmy. Some big wig in the advertising department took one look at a rough draft of the poster and said, "You know what, someone needs to photoshop in a wolf silhouette because otherwise the message won't be clear enough." Everyone else in the meeting room let out a collective "ooOooooOoooohh." Hands were shaken, and champagne bottles were opened, and everyone patted themselves on the shoulder for having a successful brainstorming session.

Or something like that.

--

I went to Chinatown yesterday.

Singapore has a very interesting demographic. Among the 3.32 million permanent residents, 77 percent are Chinese, fourteen percent are Malays, and eight percent are Indians. Whether you are walking through the city or riding the subway, you will always come across women in saris, headscarves, Indian men, and foreign tourists. Which is why you would find something like the Sri Mariamman temple, a Hindu place of worship, smack in the middle of Chinatown.

--

It's always the little things you miss when you are abroad. Such as:

- napkins. To reduce the littering, I guess.
- toilet seat covers.
- Vitamin Water. God, how I miss Vitamin Water. Their brightly colored drinks, their snarky little labels. I used to have them every day. They were my life blood. I'm going to go cry myself to sleep now.
- My red Christmas lights in my room back home.

I also miss having the freedom to litter extensively without fear of being fined.

I'm finally here.

2006-08-07T20:05:00.000+08:00

Where to begin?

I've been in Singapore for almost a week now at the National University of Singapore. It's three in the morning, and it's raining outside. Singapore is oftentimes hot and humid, but breaks into sporadic fits of intense rain, which is why you should always carry an umbrella with you wherever you go.

The first thing you notice when you take the taxi ride through Singapore is just how green this place is.

I've done and seen and tasted so many things I don't even know where to start. So maybe I'll start with pictures first.

Archana, a freshman from India, one of the first girls I met my first day here at the Prince George Palace residence building that is known for housing international students.

I secretly believe that Singapore, because it's such a tiny country that has only been around for forty-one years, has a subconscious compulsion to create the world's largest man-made things. Apparently this thing over here is the world's largest man-made fountain, located in Suntec City.

Little India is literally like stepping into another country, with its own distinctive smell of spices, jasmine garlands and incense.

Little India is also where, out of all places, we came across this CD in a music store, boasting a very non-Caucasian depiction of Jesus!

Finally, Little India is where I got my nose piercing for 35 Singaporean dollars. I'm so elated!

Jurong Bird Park.

This is where all the owls and other nocturnal birds are kept, among other dark and evil things.

Flamingos!

A night view of the Singapore River.

Fragments of an international buffet dinner that was quite possibly the best day of my life.

We are waiting for Indonesian cuisine, and we can't contain our excitement!

--

Little thoughts:

The locals I've met in my residence hall, Temasek, are quite friendly. They know more about American pop culture than I do.

Dragon fruit juice is delicious. So is papaya juice, kiwi juice, mango juice, soursup juice and honeydew juice. I like how when it comes to fruit juices, Singaporeans go right down to the nitty-gritty of it. No preservatives, yogurt or protein shakes. Just straight-up fruit fed into a blender and shaken up with ice in a plastic cup.

So I never experienced the freshman fifteen when I first entered UCLA, but I won't be surprised if I come back fatter from my Southeast Asian travels. Food is ridiculously cheap and ridiculously good. I wonder, though, if two weeks from now I'm going to start craving hot dogs and french fries.

Clubbing at the very lavishly decorated Ministry of Sound, one of the newest clubs in Singapore that has three themed dance floors that plays hip-hop, retro music and house. There are few places in the world where you get hit on by a Malay-Chinese boy with earrings who buys you drinks and tries to get your number.

--

In Little India, I was waiting in line with a friend to buy some cheap samosas at a tiny hole-in-a-wall restaurant. I turn around and an Indian man walked right by me who seemed to have some kind of skin condition that gives him white, irregular splotches across his face and the rest of his body. It surprised me, and I immediately recoiled in fear.

I feel guilty about this. He probably gets this kind of reaction all the time.

--

I may be across the other side of the world, but you're all in my thoughts.