Sunday, October 31, 2004
Rainfall
So. Tomorrow, I start "work".
I think part of me is in denial. It's been so wonderful, these past few months being on a perpetual vacation. Being master of myself again. (more or less) Waking up every morning and thinking - Windows 95! What do you want to do today?
It feels almost as if I wasted the time, and yet I've done quite a bit too.
Today, for instance, I fell down repeatedly trying to remember how to skate. That was fun. :)
A certain other "skating-newby" turned out to be incredibly graceful on the ice... because of her blading experience. Growl.
Anyway.
Note of the day :
Mammon Inc, by Hwee Hwee Tan - do NOT read this book. Shite book. Stupid star wars references. And I think it goes to show that people only see what they want to, and not what is really around them. She whinges about a horrible third-world backwater Singapore that she grew up in, and is so incredibly enamoured by the colours of london, and its antiquity and nobility, and then whinges about how she's marginalised in england because she's one of the only chinese people around.
Funny, I grew up in Singapore, same's her, and worked and lived in England for close to 8 years same's her, and I'll be blowed but she's not writing about either the same Singapore or the same England as I've seen, lived, tasted and breathed.
Singapore - ruled by superstition and taoism, where Christianity is an oddity and everything is all attap houses and underfilled rice bowls? Puh-lease. Roll eyes. I see a shiny, soul-less city populated by diverse groups trying to pass as a whole; I see Christians, Catholics, Taoists, Buddhists and... lotsa other people wandering the street looking hot, bothered and occasionally upset. What fool would claim Singapore is a backwater when nearly everyone has a car these days, and heaps of taxi drivers appear to be retrenched engineers?
London - bastion of the white man, and nobility and antiquity??? Geez louise. One wonders, reading her, if she's ever really stepped foot into the multicultural metropolis that is London - or, for that matter, ventured out into the rest of England. Curry is practically the national dish these days, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a really English-english person in central london. As for antiquity... the woman has clearly never seen a council flat. I don't remember a pretty mist settling daily on london, and I certainly don't recall the city turning a fuzzy shade of blue at dusk. I recall it usually turning from grey (rainy) to dark-grey (night) to dim orange (streetlamps) most days. Sometimes the clouds broke and we were treated to pretty spectacular sunsets. The city turned gold and slightly reddish-pink at those times. Other days the pollution and low-flying clouds caught the sun and the sky would fill with this weird smudge of fiery yellow, sorta like the northern lights only different.
I certainly never seen the london or even England she's writing about, and Professor A-doy? Coruscent tower??! Dagobath hall?!?!?!
Puke.
If there's one thing that's pathetic, it's a shite author taking herself seriously. She doesn't seem to be kidding around, slipping all these peurile references to the Force into her little collection of well-written doggerel. It's... not funny. :|
I think part of me is in denial. It's been so wonderful, these past few months being on a perpetual vacation. Being master of myself again. (more or less) Waking up every morning and thinking - Windows 95! What do you want to do today?
It feels almost as if I wasted the time, and yet I've done quite a bit too.
Today, for instance, I fell down repeatedly trying to remember how to skate. That was fun. :)
A certain other "skating-newby" turned out to be incredibly graceful on the ice... because of her blading experience. Growl.
Anyway.
Note of the day :
Mammon Inc, by Hwee Hwee Tan - do NOT read this book. Shite book. Stupid star wars references. And I think it goes to show that people only see what they want to, and not what is really around them. She whinges about a horrible third-world backwater Singapore that she grew up in, and is so incredibly enamoured by the colours of london, and its antiquity and nobility, and then whinges about how she's marginalised in england because she's one of the only chinese people around.
Funny, I grew up in Singapore, same's her, and worked and lived in England for close to 8 years same's her, and I'll be blowed but she's not writing about either the same Singapore or the same England as I've seen, lived, tasted and breathed.
Singapore - ruled by superstition and taoism, where Christianity is an oddity and everything is all attap houses and underfilled rice bowls? Puh-lease. Roll eyes. I see a shiny, soul-less city populated by diverse groups trying to pass as a whole; I see Christians, Catholics, Taoists, Buddhists and... lotsa other people wandering the street looking hot, bothered and occasionally upset. What fool would claim Singapore is a backwater when nearly everyone has a car these days, and heaps of taxi drivers appear to be retrenched engineers?
London - bastion of the white man, and nobility and antiquity??? Geez louise. One wonders, reading her, if she's ever really stepped foot into the multicultural metropolis that is London - or, for that matter, ventured out into the rest of England. Curry is practically the national dish these days, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a really English-english person in central london. As for antiquity... the woman has clearly never seen a council flat. I don't remember a pretty mist settling daily on london, and I certainly don't recall the city turning a fuzzy shade of blue at dusk. I recall it usually turning from grey (rainy) to dark-grey (night) to dim orange (streetlamps) most days. Sometimes the clouds broke and we were treated to pretty spectacular sunsets. The city turned gold and slightly reddish-pink at those times. Other days the pollution and low-flying clouds caught the sun and the sky would fill with this weird smudge of fiery yellow, sorta like the northern lights only different.
I certainly never seen the london or even England she's writing about, and Professor A-doy? Coruscent tower??! Dagobath hall?!?!?!
Puke.
If there's one thing that's pathetic, it's a shite author taking herself seriously. She doesn't seem to be kidding around, slipping all these peurile references to the Force into her little collection of well-written doggerel. It's... not funny. :|
