Monday, March 15, 2004
Dirrrty
Walking home in the light drizzle that characterised most of today, really, I couldn't help but wonder - what IS it about England. Why do they painstakingly restore all those historic buildings, over and over again so they LOOK like they haven't been restored? Is that all culture is, cakes of dirt and congealed smog accrued through the centuries? If I was Mayor of London for a day, I'd get those water-jet guns out in force across the capital. And blast down those buildings, mebbe give em a lick of paint while I'm at it. And those grubby brackish-red london buses. And those underground trains, nevermind that they'll probably get blown up tomorrow. Speaking of which, I'd also mount missile launchers on top of the BT Tower, and possibly the London Eye as well. Well... it wouldn't hurt would it. It might even make those incomprehensibly camera-hungry little Japanese people think twice about lighting up the grey twilight that is London's daytime with their insufferably (but expensively) cheery Nikon / Canon flashes.
For some reason, brits like Dirty. The country is practically the Capital of Depravity. Compare it with Oz for instance. In oz, they make soaps about characters who, when they throw a strop walk out of the house. And strangely everyone gets really upset by it. Sometimes, in a clever plot device they've discovered, known as a Twist, they throw their boyfriends out of the house.
In the UK, when a character throws a strop, he joins the police force, tracks down his long-lost birth-mother, and then seduces (that's shags for all you slightly less educated Poms out there) his mother. And the music's always about getting down and dirty with someone.
The national preoccupation is Me, and how Me can get Dirty.
And for the longest while, I've been getting slowly infected by it.
So, you ask, you live here. How can you sell out like this. Well, I'm not Brit. Plain and straight. This is very definitely becoming my home, but
1) I don't like curry enough and
2) I don't sound Indian enough
to qualify.
What am I then? Well, at the risk of contradicting myself above, I'm nowhere. I don't feel like I belong, anywhere. Whinge whinge whinge. But seriously. I don't really belong back "home" either. I walk and talk funny now, and I kinda like my overcoat too much to abandon the richness and variety of life abroad for the perpetual summer of Singapore. And me-culture is, if anything even more prevalent back home. Except it's not how Me can get Dirty, but how Me can get seen with cool people, how Me can hang out at cool places, and how Me can get rich quick enough to afford a car, condo, and a cool woman / man to get jiggy with and make little kids to further the Me enterprise.
While I'm ranting, I might as well confess that I miss Yesterday. I don't know if I necessarily miss the You of yesterday anymore - I probably do. But the You today I don't know at all... and right now I'm too hung up on missing Yesterday, when things were so much simpler. So black and white. When the straight and narrow didn't have an elaborate network of alleyways branching out from it, where it could be easy to turn - grey. Like the city I live in now.
Forgive me. I'm slightly off my rocker. I'd have sent this as an email to Her once - just as it looks now, out of... I dunno. Just a need to be heard, and to hear I guess. A good need. Something that completed me.
Right now I'm just ranting out of distress. A Me need. A bad one. No real objective, no fulfilment. I stand at the brink of the Longest Week (well one of them). The Week of Nights. And after that, the Golden Chalice - a free flight home (thank you Kris Air!) to the stresses of family, and buying a new laptop and a new motherboard for my now deceased desktop.
On the bright side, I caught the final ever episode of Star Trek Voyager today. So at least I know that... Janeway died a hero. Pooh, bah, she always dies a hero in almost all the episodes, then comes back to life, or else was a clone of the original or something.
Why couldn't they make that vulcan guy die as the big hero for once. Or make seven of nine pregnant. Hmph.
Oops. There I go again. Dirrty.
I need out...
Walking home in the light drizzle that characterised most of today, really, I couldn't help but wonder - what IS it about England. Why do they painstakingly restore all those historic buildings, over and over again so they LOOK like they haven't been restored? Is that all culture is, cakes of dirt and congealed smog accrued through the centuries? If I was Mayor of London for a day, I'd get those water-jet guns out in force across the capital. And blast down those buildings, mebbe give em a lick of paint while I'm at it. And those grubby brackish-red london buses. And those underground trains, nevermind that they'll probably get blown up tomorrow. Speaking of which, I'd also mount missile launchers on top of the BT Tower, and possibly the London Eye as well. Well... it wouldn't hurt would it. It might even make those incomprehensibly camera-hungry little Japanese people think twice about lighting up the grey twilight that is London's daytime with their insufferably (but expensively) cheery Nikon / Canon flashes.
For some reason, brits like Dirty. The country is practically the Capital of Depravity. Compare it with Oz for instance. In oz, they make soaps about characters who, when they throw a strop walk out of the house. And strangely everyone gets really upset by it. Sometimes, in a clever plot device they've discovered, known as a Twist, they throw their boyfriends out of the house.
In the UK, when a character throws a strop, he joins the police force, tracks down his long-lost birth-mother, and then seduces (that's shags for all you slightly less educated Poms out there) his mother. And the music's always about getting down and dirty with someone.
The national preoccupation is Me, and how Me can get Dirty.
And for the longest while, I've been getting slowly infected by it.
So, you ask, you live here. How can you sell out like this. Well, I'm not Brit. Plain and straight. This is very definitely becoming my home, but
1) I don't like curry enough and
2) I don't sound Indian enough
to qualify.
What am I then? Well, at the risk of contradicting myself above, I'm nowhere. I don't feel like I belong, anywhere. Whinge whinge whinge. But seriously. I don't really belong back "home" either. I walk and talk funny now, and I kinda like my overcoat too much to abandon the richness and variety of life abroad for the perpetual summer of Singapore. And me-culture is, if anything even more prevalent back home. Except it's not how Me can get Dirty, but how Me can get seen with cool people, how Me can hang out at cool places, and how Me can get rich quick enough to afford a car, condo, and a cool woman / man to get jiggy with and make little kids to further the Me enterprise.
While I'm ranting, I might as well confess that I miss Yesterday. I don't know if I necessarily miss the You of yesterday anymore - I probably do. But the You today I don't know at all... and right now I'm too hung up on missing Yesterday, when things were so much simpler. So black and white. When the straight and narrow didn't have an elaborate network of alleyways branching out from it, where it could be easy to turn - grey. Like the city I live in now.
Forgive me. I'm slightly off my rocker. I'd have sent this as an email to Her once - just as it looks now, out of... I dunno. Just a need to be heard, and to hear I guess. A good need. Something that completed me.
Right now I'm just ranting out of distress. A Me need. A bad one. No real objective, no fulfilment. I stand at the brink of the Longest Week (well one of them). The Week of Nights. And after that, the Golden Chalice - a free flight home (thank you Kris Air!) to the stresses of family, and buying a new laptop and a new motherboard for my now deceased desktop.
On the bright side, I caught the final ever episode of Star Trek Voyager today. So at least I know that... Janeway died a hero. Pooh, bah, she always dies a hero in almost all the episodes, then comes back to life, or else was a clone of the original or something.
Why couldn't they make that vulcan guy die as the big hero for once. Or make seven of nine pregnant. Hmph.
Oops. There I go again. Dirrty.
I need out...
