I Don't Wanna Be All By Myself

I will be staying by myself in M Hotel for the next 3 days.

I’m also wretchedly ill.

I feel pathetic. Miserable. Alone.

If you would like to visit, please come only if you are bringing me hot food.

Or if you are determined to make me happy.

I will like to be happy.

Alas, I’m alone and sickly in a hotel, far away from home.

One Wedding & One Week Later

Hi! Angeline reporting not-so-live from Grand Plaza Park Royal Hotel. I looked cheery and chirpy, I know, but really, I am quite, quite distressed at losing the first of my closest friends to the dark forces. A threshold has been officially crossed. April has ROM-ed!!!! Ahhhhh!!! Nevermind that husband Hanrong is a decent guy specimen and comes in the approved package of tall, dark and handsome. This major, major event took place exactly a week ago. I was panic-stricken enough to commit the faux pas intentionally - are you sure you want to do this??? I whispered loudly at the glowing bride who ignored me completely at the critical moment.

Well, I tried to save my friend from adulthood and wifely duties and steely commitment and wondrous love. On one bright side, when their flat is ready, she will live just across me!!! Whee!!!

In the presidential suite which was loaned to us for an hour to take photos. Doesn't April look gorgeous? Doesn't Hanrong look great? Don't I look, erm, extra????


Wah, the presidential suite got upstairs and downstairs one, sprawling space that was linked by a spiraling staircase. Very dramatic and princessy. How opulence was opulent: the toilet taps were in gold - real or not, I don't know. But I should think so. It's a presidential suite what.


Lingxiu and I with April: The friendship started in 1997 in Temasek Junior College where we were placed in the same orientation group.

The 姐妹s. Yes, that's Angel from TJC. I am seeing her for the first time in 8 years but we yakked like we were always together. No awkwardness at all! This is 缘分

Oh, The Horror Of It

Dear Dream Academy

Little Shop of Horrors was frothy and frivolous fun. As an avid theatre-goer and someone in a related industry, I am nevertheless put off by the blatantly misleading advertising - just look at the keyart.

For a production so heavily marketed as a Dim Sum Dolly act, I am appalled that they played very supporting and secondary roles. I watched LSOH because I believe I can see the Dim Sum Dollies in heavy (and hot, but of course) action. Unfortunately, I walked out feeling cheated and shortchanged, that my goodwill as a paying audience member was abused and fond memories of the trio was desecrated. Frankly, I would not have caught this performance if not for the Dim Sum Dolly affinity, simply because the other characters and performers were never in the limelight so much. Hossan is grand and Denise is FABULOUS but hey, they have to tragically ride on the coat tails of the dolls.

It's great that you are putting to good use a familiar brand name to bring in different productions and to raise the profiles of other actors and actresses by association, and to make some money in the process.

It's a pity that in this same process, you have stooped lower to reach higher and alienate me. I'm sure there are many of me who share same sentiments. There must be some other balance you can seek and attain without resorting to such desperate means and exploiting people who genuinely want to see the trio taking to stage like the previous times. Singaporeans may be silly but they are not stupid (some of us are not, really) and while LSOH may be a box office success, it is not sustainable for subsequent Dim Dum Dolly productions. For future such productions, I would think twice before attending because of this bad experience.

I enjoy Dream Academy productions greatly but in the case of LSOH, it was not so. I sincerely hope this does not happen again.

Spillover effects: In addition, no thanks to the false advertising, you have successfully created a more cautious and wary audience member and I would scrutinise subsequent productions by any theatre company as well before parting with my money.

Indignantly yours,
Angeline

*

I was prepared to let it pass me without taking active action (Telling friends about the horror and sharing mutual disgust do not count). But I received another email asking me to catch the show before season ends, and well, couldn't not do anything about it.

It's truly maddening. That my goodwill for an iconic production in the local theatrical landscape is abused and exploited so very thoroughly.

Childishness

Person A: Anybody got idea for a good place cheap good food...please say out also. Thanks.

Person B: Tiong bahru market! wAHAHAHAHAAH.

Person C: Eat with scholar must show some class ok?

Person D: So where we eat :) How does this look: http://www.botakjones.com/

Person A: Hi Person D, for the dinner gathering tonight can postpone it...maybe lunch would be better.

Person D: Is that a statement of intent or sheer suggestion? Let’s see, I have had a lousy day so far, and a meeting 5-6pm outside. But life goes on, dinner gets eaten, and misery shall get other company.

Person B: Hey, since such the case, we shift to lunch next week ba. Ok?

Person A: We are all simple ppl. not happy say not happy. Happy say happy. Got intent or sheer suggestion? Not happy go and say those that make you not happy, not un-important ppl like myself. Just like, durian u eat or don't eat. If eat then drink water cos heaty. Dinner tonight, i cannot make it. but after 10pm can.

Person C: Durian? Are we eating Durian? Whose treat? I want D24 only.

Person B: Oh durian…huummm.. geylang better…eat along the streets at night. Very nice. But we will all get heaty so must calm down and drink lots of water

Person D: Then we eat durian and drink water at night next week lah. (No wed and no thu though…)

*

Are we quarreling on email? The other two seemed to think so, hence their ridiculous replies. In any case, I don’t understand what he is saying in his uncharacteristically long retort.

How fast things turn sour :(

The Schoolgirl

The girls at Weini's wedding dinner on 1st Nov @Grand Hyatt. The one beside me was my first best friend and we have known each for two decades! Looking at this picture, it's hard to believe the four of us were primary school-ers once and were in the same class for three years (before I left for my second primary school). *gulps* We have obviously aged.

*

Speaking of schoolgirls, please allow me to entertain (and jinx) a schoolgirl crush.

I remember when I was an adolescent, crushes were crushes, period. Having a crush on someone then simply meant one big, fat, happy reason to go to school, to sit in the same classroom, breathe in the same air, to talk and tease and, nothing more. I didn’t want (need) to be a girlfriend to somebody and boyfriends were an alien concept. I just want to like somebody and bask in that feeling. There never was any agonizing of whether the crush liked me in return (sorry, it’s given, how can anyone not like me is beyond comprehension). So yeah, it was a self-gratifying emotional high, very much self-masturbatory in nature but as long as I’m happy. It was all too easy to be happy. Nothing too deep, or profound: I was damn happy to go to school everyday at the prospect of bumping and interacting with The Crush can. Of turning into a corner and realizing he’s there, perhaps hiding in waiting for me! Oh, the possibilities without fretting over reality because there was no Reality. I don’t need a future, a name, much less commitment and a sense of belonging. It warmed me enough to know that the crush was attainable and sorta like me in the way I sorta like him, and that was as far it needed to go for my sense of well-being.

I think I may just have found a bigger, fatter, happier reason to go to work.

*

He was listening to The Songs when I barged in and I was secretly pleased when he started humming His Songs subsequently and sporadically at the weirdest timings when I’m around.

When my intern visited him, he started chanting His Name, which he must have known at some point, such madness will be told to me. Was that the intent: to reflect an obsession?

I left an unintended mark on the mac and now every time he does his work, he will be tragically reminded of me but he seems happy enough about the scarring, that this is something (or rather, the screen is) he looked at more than anything, or so, he said.

When he confessed he neither drinks nor smokes, I put on a look of sheer horror and declared he should clean up his image, for he sure looks like someone who does for someone who doesn’t.

Talking to my another guy friend in the room next to his, he came in, stood there and watched us for awhile (pervert!).

*

It’s fun to act in genuine bad faith, to know that the schoolgirl crush is just a long corridor away, and that his eyes light up upon seeing you.

Nevermind that he is so not my type. He is less than 1.7m, wiry, looks like he belongs in a 蛊惑仔 movie or at ease selling durians, that sort of thing. Besides, I know he has a girlfriend.

Who cares, when I have a big, fat, happy reason to go to work.

Not like I faint, every time we touch
It's just, some little thing, a crush
Not like every thing I do
Depends on you

So let it be, what it'll be, don't make a fuss
And go crazy over you and me
Here's what I'll do, I'll play the wuss
Not like we have a date with destiny

The Platonic Buy, Boy, Whatever

I blame the headlined article in LifeStyle today.

I wondered aloud why single attractive female millionaires couldn’t even get a decent casual date. Was age truly the factor? Where were all the eligible men? Of which the latter was the perennial stupefying question that my gaggle of single, attractive and intelligent girlfriends with big personalities to boot never fail to, er, fail to answer.

Mr Dimples let known that incidentally his guy friend asked him the same question the other day, albeit from the male’s perspective: why are they, single attractive, eligible young men, so single? Were they too picky?

Which of course, as I reminded him over brunch at Wild Rocket, the presumptuous rhetoric presupposed that there were actually fruit for the pickings. Were there fruit of any labour and leisure at all to be harvested?

So we launched into a pretty long discussion with each of us representing our sex and trying to reconcile why, if there were eligible men and women who are looking for dates and partners, that it seldom and rarely happens to the friends around us: referring to The Hook-up

Somehow, in the course of arguing for my side, I let spilled the ex-existence of Mr Veins and declared I was over with waiting for any guy to make a move. Either they move, or I move on and everything is easily dismissed as casual and coincidental.

While this is sheer violation of the self-imposed law to avoid talking about relationships with a guy on a one-to-one basis, I was hugely relieved that I did. Strange.

Now that I think about it, probably because I can now officially placed Mr Dimples in the platonic category, that I decided to tell him about Mr Veins in the appropriate context.

Of course, I think this with a tinge of wistfulness. As we sat in his car and drank Baileys and chatted for the last bit of the evening, I concluded he is really a nice and obliging guy. Very eligible.

But like I say, I’m over with waiting. No more agonizing over whether every next date is the one the guy will proclaim and propose.

It’s just lunch. It’s only dinner. Let’s chill and cheer with Baileys. Thou shalt not think, much less analyse, because there is nothing to fret the brains with, really. Really.

*

In other news, I was quite tempted to buy my first designer bag and the one that caught my one was a LOEWE Amazona. It was affordable, that is, if I don’t buy anything else (or eat, or drink, but that’s beside the point) for the rest of this month. A limited edition It Bag, it was the last standing in the store and in Asia. With mock prudence, I insisted I had to think about it, even with Shimin egging me on. Now 1.5 days later, when I returned today with Mr Dimples in tow to DFS, it has been sold. I don’t even have the pseudo enjoyment of struggling and straddling between the ethical dilemma of to buy and the not to.

Do I really have to settle an LV?!

Misery Finds Happiness

Things That Make Me Happy (from the last two weeks to the next two weeks)

Oh yeah. Another desperate attempt to count blessings in life and dismiss its callousness.

1. Watching Summer of Love, Prestige and The Departed
2. Receiving two of Corrine May’s albums from Shimin
3. Watching Global Chinese Music Awards with national shooter (I kid you not)
4. Buying light sticks and waiting by the red carpet with screaming rabid fans (It was super fun for us both because my friend is Andy Lau’s fan while I, of course, like Eason Chan. These two jokers, like us, were seated together during the awards.)
5. Watching Little Shop of Horrors yesterday with Shimin
6. Attempted threading, I mean allowing threading to be done on me for the first time
7. Having lunch and tea with Ex-Boss and senior colleague I love yesterday
8. Taking half day leave on Fri
9. (the thought of) Drinking Baileys
10. Lunch with Mr Dimples at Wild Rocket on Sunday
11. Talking to Shimin & April
12. Realising I do have work connections. Like wah
13. Having Ally McBeal Season 4 in my hands: the Larry saga that I have missed in entirety

Work is less great at the moment because while I’m doing something that’s totally kickass and I really, really like professionally and personally, I don’t feel that certain resources are as supportive as they should be at a neutral level. I certainly don’t expect them to be as passionate and driven as I am but please don’t let us go to the other spectrum either.

So what makes this whole affair a pleasantly bearable one is really the ad hoc talking cock with my producer and designer who are my age. I feel less alone because of them. The producer dreams of directing a new short film (which I will be its producer) and the designer dreams of running his own design business. I of course, am going to be The Next Big Thing in the literary field and get my stories published. We will lead better lives than now.

I feel loved when the two stayed back to do my commercials on a Friday night. And I felt love when my designer found an important work-related article and quietly scanned to send me without my knowledge. Not to be corny, but I was strangely moved by his thoughtful gesture. These guys are even more overworked than I am but they found time to do stuff for me, little me!! I do have hardcore supporters for my cause!

Highlight of next week has to be our first dinner as a foursome (another girl designer will be joining) together outside of the work context but in which we will definitely touch on work and it’s a chance for more curious questions to be tossed around.