Saturday, January 03, 2004
Allegretto
I went for the Chung Cheng Ruan (a kind of Chinese guitar) gathering today at Orchard. 1:30pm I was at the basement of Wisma Atria, clutching a cup of coke, walking towards Orchard MRT station to meet the others…
Wow… what a crowd.
So they said to meet at Orchard MRT station, but where? This is chaos, before Pan Gu was born out of it and brought order to the world. Looks like nobody will bring order to this place. That’s the thing I don’t like about Orchard Road. It’s a place best avoided if possible. I come here, I want to faint. I always avoid the underpass if possible. You could go in there, die and nobody would find you until your body rotted and the stench attracted attention.
I thought I was late; everybody was to meet 1:30, so I looked out for a big group. Suddenly I heard someone calling my name; I turned around and found Ruijun. “Where’s everybody?” I asked. “No one’s here yet… Jie Ying’s gone to the toilet; Eliza’s on the way; the rest coming later…”
Okay, fast forward… Eliza arrived, and Jie Ying shocked Ruijun by appearing from the opposite direction.
Ruijun: “Okay, so what you all want to do?”
Eliza: “I dunno… I thought you planned something…”
Ruijun: “I never planned anything… you people tell me anywhere so I pick here lol…”
Me: “Okay, so what should we do now?”
Ruijun: “Eh you all eat already or not?”
Me, Eliza: “Eat already.”
Ruijun: “Okay… maybe we go somewhere and sit down and wait for the rest to come…”
Suddenly I recalled I needed to buy a CD. “Is Heeren too far?” “I think can walk lah…” “Okay, let’s go.”
We walked up to the Heeren and HMV. I bought my CD, then we milled about there, waiting for Huiyi to arrive. Then all of us go down to the fountain on the ground floor and sit there. Ruijun has brought her comics to show us. It’s titled “Ai Leen” (after our senior).
The first page is the list of characters. There’s Ai Leen (of course), Xiaojie, Anqi, Huiyi, Minzhi, Carol, Sylvia, Mr Yeo (our ex-teacher) and me. It guest-starred Wang Jianming, the erhu/basketball guy. Since I’m the only guy in the group (besides Mr Yeo) I was, obviously, the protagonist, the victim of a love-square. Think “The Bachelor” where three girls compete against one another for the guy. In the end I follow my chosen path: bachelorhood. Fictionally I get dumped by all three ladies. What a bad dismissal. I prefer to be single naturally.
We accompany Huiyi back to her workplace at Wisma, and went to Lucky Plaza to play pool to pass the time before the others arrived. We got a crash course from Ruijun, and the game went off. Once I got the hang it was a breeze. It was a matter of aiming in a straight line towards the ball (and if possible, the goal as well). Perhaps it’s a blessing I hunch often, because when I bent down frequently to study the ball’s projected path and to take a shot, I didn’t feel any strain on the spine. We played three rounds… the last round looked as if it wouldn’t end. There was one black ball and three striped balls. We kept hitting and hitting; none went into the goal for a very long time.
The others arrived during our third game. They read through Ruijun’s comic and had a great time laughing over about it. After the game we went to meet Xuefen, another senior, and then on to “disturb” Huiyi during her work; the ladies would enter the store pretending to be customers and ask her to serve them. It was a little odd for a guy to be in the women’s section.
We sat down at the MOS Burger store at Ngee Ann City to wait for Huiyi to finish work and to have dinner. I got down to serious business, discussing the projected composition with Ai Leen for her plucked-instrument ensemble. There was a lot of difficulty in writing a piece, because I had no idea what Ai Leen wanted, and I was afraid that what I wrote might not be suitable. There was a necessity to discuss about the piece. I was to write a piece about love, with Leslie Tong as the case study (I’m sorry it sounds scientific, but that’s the way I put it down in my notebook for my own understanding). The next step would be to do research on the topic of Leslie Tong and to listen to his music.
Oh, I might have earned myself another engagement: to do the arrangements of the songs that Jie Ying’s friend wrote. Golly, I’m really getting busy these days.
* * *
Today’s news reported about the detonation of firecrackers at Chinatown. I myself had witnessed firecrackers while visiting the Chinese countryside. Such wildly differing arrangements! Here, the firecrackers are treated as if they were bombs and people were made barricaded away from it. In China we stood a tolerable distance away from the crackers. The Singapore crackers were lit electronically and suspended on 10-metre high metal towers to prevent any accidents from happening. Workers were even stationed on the road below the overhead bridge in Chinatown to pick up the unexploded firecrackers. In China the crackers were suspended off the building by a simple wooden stick. One of the men lit a match, placed the flame on the wire and ran like hell before the crackers went off.
How bureaucratic they do things in Singapore! You need the police, fire department, government officials, workers, guest of honour just to enjoy a firecracker show. In China nobody gives the shit and blows the crackers like they care. Of course there’s nothing like the Philippines, where one cracker blew the entire arses of the other fireworks at a market and killed people. In Singapore, you screw up the show, you’ve earned a trip to court. Singaporeans are great at suing – law creates rich men – and then the government will make sure you never put up another show again. In other words, you’re FINISHED. ¶ 1/03/2004 10:23:00 pm
I went for the Chung Cheng Ruan (a kind of Chinese guitar) gathering today at Orchard. 1:30pm I was at the basement of Wisma Atria, clutching a cup of coke, walking towards Orchard MRT station to meet the others…
Wow… what a crowd.
So they said to meet at Orchard MRT station, but where? This is chaos, before Pan Gu was born out of it and brought order to the world. Looks like nobody will bring order to this place. That’s the thing I don’t like about Orchard Road. It’s a place best avoided if possible. I come here, I want to faint. I always avoid the underpass if possible. You could go in there, die and nobody would find you until your body rotted and the stench attracted attention.
I thought I was late; everybody was to meet 1:30, so I looked out for a big group. Suddenly I heard someone calling my name; I turned around and found Ruijun. “Where’s everybody?” I asked. “No one’s here yet… Jie Ying’s gone to the toilet; Eliza’s on the way; the rest coming later…”
Okay, fast forward… Eliza arrived, and Jie Ying shocked Ruijun by appearing from the opposite direction.
Ruijun: “Okay, so what you all want to do?”
Eliza: “I dunno… I thought you planned something…”
Ruijun: “I never planned anything… you people tell me anywhere so I pick here lol…”
Me: “Okay, so what should we do now?”
Ruijun: “Eh you all eat already or not?”
Me, Eliza: “Eat already.”
Ruijun: “Okay… maybe we go somewhere and sit down and wait for the rest to come…”
Suddenly I recalled I needed to buy a CD. “Is Heeren too far?” “I think can walk lah…” “Okay, let’s go.”
We walked up to the Heeren and HMV. I bought my CD, then we milled about there, waiting for Huiyi to arrive. Then all of us go down to the fountain on the ground floor and sit there. Ruijun has brought her comics to show us. It’s titled “Ai Leen” (after our senior).
The first page is the list of characters. There’s Ai Leen (of course), Xiaojie, Anqi, Huiyi, Minzhi, Carol, Sylvia, Mr Yeo (our ex-teacher) and me. It guest-starred Wang Jianming, the erhu/basketball guy. Since I’m the only guy in the group (besides Mr Yeo) I was, obviously, the protagonist, the victim of a love-square. Think “The Bachelor” where three girls compete against one another for the guy. In the end I follow my chosen path: bachelorhood. Fictionally I get dumped by all three ladies. What a bad dismissal. I prefer to be single naturally.
We accompany Huiyi back to her workplace at Wisma, and went to Lucky Plaza to play pool to pass the time before the others arrived. We got a crash course from Ruijun, and the game went off. Once I got the hang it was a breeze. It was a matter of aiming in a straight line towards the ball (and if possible, the goal as well). Perhaps it’s a blessing I hunch often, because when I bent down frequently to study the ball’s projected path and to take a shot, I didn’t feel any strain on the spine. We played three rounds… the last round looked as if it wouldn’t end. There was one black ball and three striped balls. We kept hitting and hitting; none went into the goal for a very long time.
The others arrived during our third game. They read through Ruijun’s comic and had a great time laughing over about it. After the game we went to meet Xuefen, another senior, and then on to “disturb” Huiyi during her work; the ladies would enter the store pretending to be customers and ask her to serve them. It was a little odd for a guy to be in the women’s section.
We sat down at the MOS Burger store at Ngee Ann City to wait for Huiyi to finish work and to have dinner. I got down to serious business, discussing the projected composition with Ai Leen for her plucked-instrument ensemble. There was a lot of difficulty in writing a piece, because I had no idea what Ai Leen wanted, and I was afraid that what I wrote might not be suitable. There was a necessity to discuss about the piece. I was to write a piece about love, with Leslie Tong as the case study (I’m sorry it sounds scientific, but that’s the way I put it down in my notebook for my own understanding). The next step would be to do research on the topic of Leslie Tong and to listen to his music.
Oh, I might have earned myself another engagement: to do the arrangements of the songs that Jie Ying’s friend wrote. Golly, I’m really getting busy these days.
* * *
Today’s news reported about the detonation of firecrackers at Chinatown. I myself had witnessed firecrackers while visiting the Chinese countryside. Such wildly differing arrangements! Here, the firecrackers are treated as if they were bombs and people were made barricaded away from it. In China we stood a tolerable distance away from the crackers. The Singapore crackers were lit electronically and suspended on 10-metre high metal towers to prevent any accidents from happening. Workers were even stationed on the road below the overhead bridge in Chinatown to pick up the unexploded firecrackers. In China the crackers were suspended off the building by a simple wooden stick. One of the men lit a match, placed the flame on the wire and ran like hell before the crackers went off.
How bureaucratic they do things in Singapore! You need the police, fire department, government officials, workers, guest of honour just to enjoy a firecracker show. In China nobody gives the shit and blows the crackers like they care. Of course there’s nothing like the Philippines, where one cracker blew the entire arses of the other fireworks at a market and killed people. In Singapore, you screw up the show, you’ve earned a trip to court. Singaporeans are great at suing – law creates rich men – and then the government will make sure you never put up another show again. In other words, you’re FINISHED. ¶ 1/03/2004 10:23:00 pm
