Sunday, December 12, 2004
That's a Wrap
I wish weekends lasted longer. Onepointsomething days just isn't long enough. Sigh.
So anyhow, after returning home from my on call and collapsing dead into bed, the next thing I know is I wake up to the sound of my mom clanking around the house. (She moves around much more loudly and more often than absolutely necessary whenever her son is lying prone or supine in bed. Well, that's how it feels, anyhow. Sometimes it feels like she's walking around in circles outside my door playing drunken sailor...)
A bare one hour later.
So my dreams of a sleeping beauty slumber into eternity horribly dashed, I decided to take a sojourn out of my humble abode in quest of sustenance to feed the vastly hollow receptacle of my brain. (shrug. feeling long-winded today. sue me.)
In truth, I went to buy some medical textbooks at Bras Basah. I tried to get Surgery for Dummies but apparently they don't stock that title, nor Basic Appendicectomy made easy for Morons. So I had to settle for a surgical management textbook and a large atlas of operations the size of a small pony. You know how they say knowledge can be lethal? You bet, just thump someone onna head with one of my two new textbooks and I reckon they'd either die instantly, or awaken thirty years later from their coma to discover that the world has been overrun by hostile machines. Or something.
It wasn't that hard lugging the stuff back home though, since my wallet was now considerably lighter.
On the way home...
... I swung by St Andrew's Cathedral. St Andrew's is the cathedral church of the Anglican diocese in Singapore. My mum and I visited occasionally when I was a kid (let's not go into that, except to say that I've been to loads of different churches by my mum's side as she seeked for whatever it was she was looking for) but we were never really frequent flyers there, although her best friend is one of the senior choir members. Still, it's always felt like... I dunno, home... to my faith, and we'd visit for Christmas watchnight service and stuff (but never stay late, or even for communion, because my mom has this thing about leaving before the crowds get heavy and traffic becomes difficult. She's not exactly an expert driver.) and in my later years I used to try to persuade her to visit St Andrew's more often (as opposed to not going to church at all, or attending some really dodgy church somewhere near my place)
It's funny how some memories bubble back through the mists of time, and you can almost feel yourself back there again, just as you were when you were young. You can almost even see the way the light hit the buildings, at - just that angle - and smell the smells of yesteryear.
Just for an instant, before reality drags you back into the present, and all the cranes and construction thingummies appear pop back into existence and uglify the scene you were holding close to your heart, in your head.
*****
Today I watched a fencing "friendly" competition at Fencing Masters, and it was wonderful.
Fencing competitions from my past, when I was a contestant rather than a spectator, were sterile, rather Singaporean events.
They're traditionally (and to present day, still are) held at Clementi Sports hall, a huge, hot, cavernous structure housing heaps of tennis courts. The competition takes up only an eighth the floor space, and people continue to play badminton around you as you fence.
Contestants sit grouped in their own little cliques and shoot each other dirty looks; and in between they pulverise the fencing dummies set up around the peripheries of the action.
Food is on a BYO basis. Supposedly the competitions are well-organised and efficient, but it always felt to me that there was still a phenomenal amount of time wasting, and equipment failures - which are essentially part of the sport all over the world, and somehow fundamental to the experience. Dramatically waving your arms around to dispute a dodgy president-call (much like tennis) is important for showmanship... it's all part of the game.
I never really thought about it, and it just was the way things were always done.
Till today when I showed up at Fencing Masters. It's not a huge place; the studio is probably smaller than the average dance hall.
It was packed with sixty fencers sitting / lying on the floor chatting to each other, playing cards, and in the main part of the room, fencing on three pistes in close proximity to each other. It had a very homely feel to it all, and people were really getting to know each other, and more importantly, having fun. Registration fees had gone into food for the contestants (instead of into the organiser's pockets) and into Kinokuniya book vouchers for lucky-draw winners which were being announced periodically.
It was great. And that's precisely what the sport needs - fencing is a very esoteric sport. The usual TV clips of competitions in Clementi are dry, and show two white-bedecked figures mathematically pricking each other with oversized needles. It makes the average viewer lie back and switch off, and think - poncy gits with their fancy expensive equipment.
Fencing needs exposure in Singapore; it needs people to join up because they enjoy it - because it really, honest-to-god, is fun. The crying shame of it all is that there are so few of us who do it, still (even despite media blitzes over the last few years) - because it's not seen as something you do for fun, but something you do to waste money on (eg young professionals, or spoilt brats of rich kids.)
In truth, after the initial investment in your kit, and your weapon, expenditure from then on is pretty static. It's sorta like buying three tennis rackets, and nothing more from then on. (or a really expensive ipod...)
Typically nobody from the press was there, but if any of you pick up on this article (hard stare at MB) - there are video clips available of the gathering.
What fencing does NOT need is sterile, barren efficiency. It needs a human touch to make people interested in it - it doesn't need to be corporatised.
Sorry, V, but I don't think O's doing it any favours - even if she thinks she is.
*****
Dinner was with pleasant company at an establishment called Iggy's.
The food was good, and the ambience was excellent. It was a good night out. Not quite on par with the "haute coutour" I've been lucky enough to dip into in the UK, but very good nonetheless. And as Ignatious the owner tells me, they're still ironing out all the creases.
*****
The A train
I got on a Healthy Lifestyle train today.
The entire train was plastered with pictures of Zoe Tay caught in mid stride (yeah right) healthily climbing up a stair (singular, making it really a step) sans case.
It had interesting trivia on it, like "I exercise 30 minutes a day, 5 times a week" and it even had Tay Someone Else (some bloke) telling people to eat healthy.
Eat healthy. Exercise. Live healthy. More fruits and vegatables, less fat. Do neck stretching exercises to relieve stress. It's cool to be healthy! Be like Zoe Tay! (ie whore yourself shamelessly to the government for money. Funny how the posters don't tell us how much ice cream / chocolate she eats or how late she sleeps to everyday or... whatever little skeletons she might have in her closet.)
AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhh
somebody get me the hell out of this place.
I think I can honestly hear the mouse clicks up there in the sky now, as some White-beshirted official decides what the next best thought for the Layman to think is.
And an entire MRT train worth of the SAME healthy lifestyle stickups, posted ad nauseum?
AAAAAAAAAAArg.
To show my utter contempt for the climate of micromanagement of the sheeps' minds, I gouged a hole in Zoe Tay's left breast with my fingernail, surreptitiously, behind my back as I leaned against a glass panel. Ha.
Honestly, we are exactly like sheep in a pen here, with a big TV screen in the middle. We graze contentedly, day in and out till we die, doing our own little thing, and when the TV screen flickers to life we pause mid-bite on our cud to goggle dully at it while a Thought is rammed into our mash-for-brains, before returning to grazing.
We're really living in the Matrix. OR maybe the Trumann Show.
So anyhow, after returning home from my on call and collapsing dead into bed, the next thing I know is I wake up to the sound of my mom clanking around the house. (She moves around much more loudly and more often than absolutely necessary whenever her son is lying prone or supine in bed. Well, that's how it feels, anyhow. Sometimes it feels like she's walking around in circles outside my door playing drunken sailor...)
A bare one hour later.
So my dreams of a sleeping beauty slumber into eternity horribly dashed, I decided to take a sojourn out of my humble abode in quest of sustenance to feed the vastly hollow receptacle of my brain. (shrug. feeling long-winded today. sue me.)
In truth, I went to buy some medical textbooks at Bras Basah. I tried to get Surgery for Dummies but apparently they don't stock that title, nor Basic Appendicectomy made easy for Morons. So I had to settle for a surgical management textbook and a large atlas of operations the size of a small pony. You know how they say knowledge can be lethal? You bet, just thump someone onna head with one of my two new textbooks and I reckon they'd either die instantly, or awaken thirty years later from their coma to discover that the world has been overrun by hostile machines. Or something.
It wasn't that hard lugging the stuff back home though, since my wallet was now considerably lighter.
On the way home...
... I swung by St Andrew's Cathedral. St Andrew's is the cathedral church of the Anglican diocese in Singapore. My mum and I visited occasionally when I was a kid (let's not go into that, except to say that I've been to loads of different churches by my mum's side as she seeked for whatever it was she was looking for) but we were never really frequent flyers there, although her best friend is one of the senior choir members. Still, it's always felt like... I dunno, home... to my faith, and we'd visit for Christmas watchnight service and stuff (but never stay late, or even for communion, because my mom has this thing about leaving before the crowds get heavy and traffic becomes difficult. She's not exactly an expert driver.) and in my later years I used to try to persuade her to visit St Andrew's more often (as opposed to not going to church at all, or attending some really dodgy church somewhere near my place)
It's funny how some memories bubble back through the mists of time, and you can almost feel yourself back there again, just as you were when you were young. You can almost even see the way the light hit the buildings, at - just that angle - and smell the smells of yesteryear.
Just for an instant, before reality drags you back into the present, and all the cranes and construction thingummies appear pop back into existence and uglify the scene you were holding close to your heart, in your head.
*****
Today I watched a fencing "friendly" competition at Fencing Masters, and it was wonderful.
Fencing competitions from my past, when I was a contestant rather than a spectator, were sterile, rather Singaporean events.
They're traditionally (and to present day, still are) held at Clementi Sports hall, a huge, hot, cavernous structure housing heaps of tennis courts. The competition takes up only an eighth the floor space, and people continue to play badminton around you as you fence.
Contestants sit grouped in their own little cliques and shoot each other dirty looks; and in between they pulverise the fencing dummies set up around the peripheries of the action.
Food is on a BYO basis. Supposedly the competitions are well-organised and efficient, but it always felt to me that there was still a phenomenal amount of time wasting, and equipment failures - which are essentially part of the sport all over the world, and somehow fundamental to the experience. Dramatically waving your arms around to dispute a dodgy president-call (much like tennis) is important for showmanship... it's all part of the game.
I never really thought about it, and it just was the way things were always done.
Till today when I showed up at Fencing Masters. It's not a huge place; the studio is probably smaller than the average dance hall.
It was packed with sixty fencers sitting / lying on the floor chatting to each other, playing cards, and in the main part of the room, fencing on three pistes in close proximity to each other. It had a very homely feel to it all, and people were really getting to know each other, and more importantly, having fun. Registration fees had gone into food for the contestants (instead of into the organiser's pockets) and into Kinokuniya book vouchers for lucky-draw winners which were being announced periodically.
It was great. And that's precisely what the sport needs - fencing is a very esoteric sport. The usual TV clips of competitions in Clementi are dry, and show two white-bedecked figures mathematically pricking each other with oversized needles. It makes the average viewer lie back and switch off, and think - poncy gits with their fancy expensive equipment.
Fencing needs exposure in Singapore; it needs people to join up because they enjoy it - because it really, honest-to-god, is fun. The crying shame of it all is that there are so few of us who do it, still (even despite media blitzes over the last few years) - because it's not seen as something you do for fun, but something you do to waste money on (eg young professionals, or spoilt brats of rich kids.)
In truth, after the initial investment in your kit, and your weapon, expenditure from then on is pretty static. It's sorta like buying three tennis rackets, and nothing more from then on. (or a really expensive ipod...)
Typically nobody from the press was there, but if any of you pick up on this article (hard stare at MB) - there are video clips available of the gathering.
What fencing does NOT need is sterile, barren efficiency. It needs a human touch to make people interested in it - it doesn't need to be corporatised.
Sorry, V, but I don't think O's doing it any favours - even if she thinks she is.
*****
Dinner was with pleasant company at an establishment called Iggy's.
The food was good, and the ambience was excellent. It was a good night out. Not quite on par with the "haute coutour" I've been lucky enough to dip into in the UK, but very good nonetheless. And as Ignatious the owner tells me, they're still ironing out all the creases.
*****
The A train
I got on a Healthy Lifestyle train today.
The entire train was plastered with pictures of Zoe Tay caught in mid stride (yeah right) healthily climbing up a stair (singular, making it really a step) sans case.
It had interesting trivia on it, like "I exercise 30 minutes a day, 5 times a week" and it even had Tay Someone Else (some bloke) telling people to eat healthy.
Eat healthy. Exercise. Live healthy. More fruits and vegatables, less fat. Do neck stretching exercises to relieve stress. It's cool to be healthy! Be like Zoe Tay! (ie whore yourself shamelessly to the government for money. Funny how the posters don't tell us how much ice cream / chocolate she eats or how late she sleeps to everyday or... whatever little skeletons she might have in her closet.)
AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhh
somebody get me the hell out of this place.
I think I can honestly hear the mouse clicks up there in the sky now, as some White-beshirted official decides what the next best thought for the Layman to think is.
And an entire MRT train worth of the SAME healthy lifestyle stickups, posted ad nauseum?
AAAAAAAAAAArg.
To show my utter contempt for the climate of micromanagement of the sheeps' minds, I gouged a hole in Zoe Tay's left breast with my fingernail, surreptitiously, behind my back as I leaned against a glass panel. Ha.
Honestly, we are exactly like sheep in a pen here, with a big TV screen in the middle. We graze contentedly, day in and out till we die, doing our own little thing, and when the TV screen flickers to life we pause mid-bite on our cud to goggle dully at it while a Thought is rammed into our mash-for-brains, before returning to grazing.
We're really living in the Matrix. OR maybe the Trumann Show.
