怎么办

Accomplishments this week (yeah, we aim for small and slow but several to make it all add up big): bought 3 pairs of seriously formal (all daintily pointy and heeled ) work shoes at a steal from JWEST & Bonia, one ridiculously flattering top from BLUM that I can pair with shorts and still look adorably professional at work, plus two dresses from BLUM again for those unknown and unexpected occasions, watched 251 (so long as you don’t expect depths, not even of the shallow kind, it should be relatively pleasing), watched Conversations With Other Women (loved it), ate at Menotti for the first time to celebrate April’s birthday (hated my dish but April’s order was yummy), ate at Lawry’s for the first time with my sis (food and place are overrated) and of course the ultimate achievement: making up with Po. I can now boast to know a law professor “really well”!

Nevertheless, there are still things in life to grieve and despair over. My first driving lesson went pretty well. It also made me appreciate drivers and so I was still smiley when Mr Dimples text-ed: how many times did the car die? C’mon, I could drive smoothly! I was cruising, at a supremely slow rate, of course.

But today, I sucked. I was, in a word, terrible. In more words, I was 手忙脚乱. Sigh.

Yes, the car either died many times or it spluttered and jerked to life in the most offensively half-hearted way.

Depressing because I thought I was smarter than this. The only defence I can think of is that I absorb more when I read. Listening to conversations and woes of friends is one thing, but hey driving instructions sound like they are transmitted in the oddly familiar language I should know but just don’t register most of the time.

The tragedy of the situation was defused somewhat when Mr Dimples came to fetch me for a late lunch. He surprised me with two tubes of hand lotion in (cherry blossom and coconut lim verbana) that he had earlier bought from Bath & Body Works from US. Oooh I thought you don’t do souvenirs, said my raised eyebrow. Oh I give my closer friends. Ha. Okay. I love gifts so I shall not embarrass him and left it at that.

How can I be a good driver? Mr Dimples looked at me, beamed and baited me with his car keys: want to drive my car? And promptly withdrew the offer when I said 那我真的不客气了哦.

Why is it so hard to be independent????!!!!!

有梦有朋友

After confessing my “am I too sentimental” paranoia for remembering only the good times in an email three years late, he held out his version of the olive by admitting his pleasure at hearing from me “truly”. We shared regrets and profuse apologies, and concurred whatever happened to make us cut each other out from our lives must have been silly.

Po used to be my most ardent arts companion in the sense he is the one and only person who badgers me more than I pester him to catch shows together. In true Po fashion, after we had ascertained to a good extent we are still as affected and affectionate as ever, he asked if I were interested in 《北京人》, which unfortunately I had already bought tickets to watch with Wang Yun, Kaiwen & Shimin. Then again, even if we had not “quarreled”, he would not be in Singapore either and I would still suffer the indignities of depending on the goodwill of friends for arty-farty companionship. Then, then again, I could have flown to UK & US where he had been to catch all the musicals I like. That’s beside the point though. I’m glad our friendship is back on track. There’s an established easy familiarity with old friends (all in all I have known Po for 13 long years!) that’s very comforting. You know, insiders’ joke and all that, which Time and Being Apart would not change. We remember.

I am unusually light-hearted today. Maybe because Po belongs to a past I’m very fond of and being in contact again makes me feel youthfully buoyant and invincible.

Incidentally, Po is also the only friend in my posse who is successfully living out his dreams and ideals. Congratulations!

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Earliest mention of Po in this blog, during happier times, before we went our separate ways a week later.

Addendum/Disclaimer: Very obviously, Po is NOT Mr Veins.

My Modern Malaise

(which sadly, is an apparent universal condition and not peculiar to me, and hence, I am no different in reacting with mock indifference, saved – alas but not saved from! - with more abandon and aggression, thus contributing again to existential anxiety and angst and anger about living in vain when it is vanity I am striving for.)

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest transformation. The eighteenth century called upon man to free himself of all the historical bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and in economics. Man's nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest possible extent. However, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others. Nietzsche sees the full development of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggle of individuals; socialism believes in the suppression of all competition for the same reason. Be that as it may, in all these positions the same basic motive is at work: the person resists to being leveled down and worn out by a social-technological mechanism. An inquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to solve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up between the individual and the super-individual contents of life.

The Metropolis and Mental Life, Georg Simmel

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The only meaningful way to authenticate and validate my existence when not writing is a toss between voyeur-ing and flaneur-ing through plays, movies and concerts. I like to believe some answers can be found there, when we have combed through the coarser themes of life, love and lust over and over again in the careless, heartless persona we have all learnt to so carefully project. Where answers fail, inspiration falls and we can still pretend that some things really don’t matter. Like being depressed, like missing you. They will pass; they always do, so I try not to mind the haunting too much. But it gets to you and then you welcome the distractions when answers are not forthcoming (honestly, they will never come).

Just how much harder can I try to live and how much more can I run away from with no embracing end in sight?

I now place all living hopes in my yet-to-be-published novels and poetry and my songwriting buddy Hwee.

*

Someone confessed to feeling like my spare tyre. That was bizarre. Because I have gone out only once with the person. That aside, it is also not easy to be a spare tyre or substitute can. Do you know how many spares or subs there could be before you or me? How fortuitous that you are next in line and being asked at all. And lucky me that you have agreed so that we can know each other better. So that there’s always a chance that we can be the first one the next time round. Like seriously, think of when I last asked you out. If the answer is more than 6 months ago, it’s probably a combination yes, I have met more exciting people, yes, you don’t really figure in the grand schemata of things, yes, I don’t even want you to be a substitute – I think you’d suck.

Naturally other variables apply ie I love you but I love other people more, we both love each other but can never find the time, you love other people more than you love me, you have a boyfriend, and usually – you have not demonstrated sufficiently of your desire to be loved by moi etc

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In local context, people asking for more pay should be challenged to venture beyond to see if they would command a similar paycheck, and not be indulged in their ridiculous fantasies that they are worth all that. Hell, I would know. That’s what my CEO told my seniors when collective unhappiness was raised about the salaries the monolithic industry is dishing out and that was the final word on the silenced subject. You do see the parallel and the inconsistency, don’t you. Yes, I have no doubt my CEO is paid supremely well either.

Everyday I find new reasons to leave this place and uproot from the motherland.

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In other news, I signed up with online job engines today.

有些女人不能碰

You know how you can be quietly happy just by seeing someone online without resorting to messaging, simply because it means the person is at home and not anywhere else, with anyone else?

I wonder if anyone feels the same about seeing me online.

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I have been thinking about the: So how do you treat your boyfriend to be in a way that is distinctly different from towards friends such that there is preferential differential.

And come to the one critical criteria based on ongoing trauma and agony: I will expect him to watch with me all the theatre productions and movies that I ask him to, so that I never have to watch them by myself; I will never have to miss any again just because it took forever to find company and tickets sold out; I will never have to resort to my friends’ goodwill (read: light emotional blackmail)and be utterly dependent on the rare occasions our tastes do coincede and $/timing is not an issue; I do not have to pay double ie my share and that of my sis’s as the ultimate last option.

It would be nice if he actually appreciates and enjoys such productions. Then again, if he doesn’t, he cannot be The Boyfriend.

Disclaimer: he doesn’t need to watch everything with me, only those that I really can’t find anyone to accompany me to. Would it be too much to ask that he actively seeks out productions and pre-empt my desires by presenting me with a pair of tickets now and then?

I suspect I will have to watch Exquisite Pain alone. Oh, delicious irony.

Fall Out vs Fall In

On Wednesday night, I told Mr Dimples in a friendly but frank and firm manner that he sucked and that he had let me down horribly in two ways: not offering a decent and acceptable apology is one and second is not showing care and concern either from the standpoint of a good friend or that of a human being (in particular one who was the indirect cause of my being robbed).

Am I not a good friend? I asked earnestly. You have to tell me if that is so, and I can happily demote you from my hierarchy of friends and stop the delusional thought that we are indeed quite pally. I do expect my inner circles of friends to conduct themselves in a suitably loyal and staunchly supportive manner and I am honestly distressed that you chose to abide by the silent code of neutrality in this instance. Are you lesser the person I believed you were and that I had terribly misunderstood my importance to you? Do not take me or my reaction for granted, please.

I learnt two things about him that night: that he is “boh sim” (in his friends’ words and he readily agreed) and that what I considered to be a commonsensical sign of either goodwill or strong friendship, he sees it as a monumental gesture exclusively reserved to his girlfriend/wife/family member. Just as I am surprised (me: Don’t you need to practise to see what you are capable of giving?), he is equally stunned (him: So how do you treat your boyfriend to be in a way that is distinctly different from towards friends such that there is preferential differential)? He also committed to heart that I like people to do mind-reading and attempt the pre-emptive strike ie take the initiative. Like I told him, now that I have shared with you how I feel, whatever apology that comes after that, I no longer value, because I had to literally request and earn it, when it should have easily been mine.

We did meander a lot in the course of the 2 hours + phone chat. But it went better than I hoped. He took it well, if only because I was careful not to pick aggravating words and focused on describing why I am upset and disappointed: nothing to do with being robbed but rather his lack of reaction that made me feel shortchanged as his friend.

It was 2am by the time we decided to call it a night. I felt slightly better that he spent so much time talking with me despite having to work the next day just so to seek closure for the unfortunate JB incident that could destroy my favourable impressions of him (whereas I was on leave). Given that he has not talked so late and so long for 6 years + (according to him) this can only mean I’m a blue chip in his friendship stakes?

*

Two nights later, I was horrified to see him approaching my Ben n Jerry’s table at which point I happened to be caught red-handed in the presence of two other guys. He had walked over to say hi as he was with his uni/jc pals (guys and girls) window-shopping in Cathay and then saw him. While my companions were definitely not specimens I would be ashamed to be seen with, I was strangely mortified and could only stammer weakly and wish him away: yes, you, leave, now! I will not introduce my friends to you!

*

And yesterday, we were msn-ing about watching the phantom opera together. From nowhere,

He: Hmm. Tell you what. You go get good circle 1 seats for Sat or Sun afternoon - 5th or 6th May. I'll pay for both tickets as apology for your robbery in my car. (NB: I get the tickets in my name first ‘cos I get discount. But like I laughingly pointed out to him later on, why should I help you save $ at the expense of my time and efforts if you are paying for my ticket already in the first place?)

He: How's that?

Me says *after a long, long pause* : That's a very kind thought but you don't have to.

Me: Was this because of what i said on the phone that night?

He: It's not related to our conversation that night

He: I would have offered this even without our conversation that night. Paying for a new phone or new camera is too ex for me, but a show as a perk for your traumatising robbery in my car, I can do.

While I was mulling over what to reply that wouldn’t hurt his feelings and would maintain my dignity in the face of rejection, he called to explain again and turns out he is also throwing in a capped at $100 dinner per pax at a place of my choice ie for me and him.

It’s quite lovely to be spoilt and another to actually accept, I think I will just do a really good dinner at his expense and pay my own way for the phantom. Nevertheless, it is super cool that he is acceding to my pristine standards of a good friend. I am at peace now.