Ink Inc.

So, pictures of my new bookcase.

I ran out of space in my room, so I can only place my bookcase just beside the door. And since it doesn’t come with doors, I got my mum to make a piece of curtain to cover the books from dust.

So far I’ve only filled half of the total number of shelves (and really, only half the total number of my novels are out here.) I can’t decide how I want to arrange them, so I got pissed off and stopped arranging. So far, the top shelf is what I call “Asian and Ex-Soviet Country Lit”, which contain things from Chinese writers, Russian writers, and even Albanian writers. The second shelf is the “Murder and Mystery Lit” shelf, containing writers like Kathy Reichs, Greg Iles, etc. (My sister’s book case has a “Tess Gerritsen” shelf; can’t see why she’s a fan of that horrible writer.) And the third shelf is the “Dead Authors” shelf, which has things like Dickens, Bronte, Austen … and the fourth shelf is a bunch of miscellaneous works I don’t know where to put (which is why I got pissed off). There stands a lone copy of Harry Potter (I think it’s Deathly Hallows), Middlesex, Where Lost Things Go, Eat, Shoots and Leaves, etc.

I have half the heart to mix up genres and just file in an alphabetical order by author name. Ack.

It’s certainly heartening to see a two-year-old grasp the concept of transitive verbs, particularly one that involves animate agent and undergoer. Here’s what happened:

Me : (nibble on niece’s chubby arm) Who bite mei-mei? (dimunitive for younger sister; which technically is an endearment for my niece.)

Niece: Yi-yi (endearment for aunt)

Me: Yi-yi bite who?

Niece: mei-mei.

In the past, a couple of weeks ago, she didn’t understand transitive verbs like that. All verbs then were intransitive consisting of only one argument. Now it seems almost like a milestone in her language learning. I guess ditransitive is the next step. One day she’d stop uttering “cut mama mei-mei” (which sounds strangely like a case of child abuse) - which actually stands for : mama cut cai4 for mei-mei. Well, baby steps, literally.

I can’t buy the right light bulb.

My dearie Nuts bought me that Ikea lamp I like so much, but it came without the bulb (blame Ikea, not the person who procured them because it wasn’t stated explicitly on the packaging.) So I said, never mind, I shall go buy my own lightbulb.

And I did. And they don’t fit. I feel like kicking myself in the rear right now. An almost-graduate student who cannot even buy a lightbulb. I think it just goes to show the severe limitations of our education system - we were taught to do calculus, measure gravitational force and make chemical compounds, but we were never taught how to buy lightbulbs, let alone how to change them.

But in other news, my dearie Nuts got me all the things I wanted - a Pilates book + DVD set (the book looks really simple; haven’t tried out the DVD yet) and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Somehow I seem to be asking them for books every year, ever since, 2006 I think. So far I think they have gotten me 6 books already. And I assume there’d be more to come

And, another good news - my Ikea bookcase is arriving tomorrow! (I sure hope it fits my room if not I will get skinned alive). It’s the Billy bookcase, but I’m not sure it’s this tall. I think I got the shorter one, in white. It’s a cheap, no frills book case that I desperately need because I need to clear up space for my school stuff. Currently my school stuff are forced to reside together with some softtoys in an inaccessible corner of my room. Either that, my novels will have to be stashed under my bed or something. So with this book case, I can finally proudly display my books. I didn’t order them with doors, so I reckon I will get some fuchsia cloth to make curtain covers. And oh yes, because it’s Ikea, they deliver my things unassembled. Half the fun of order things from Ikea is the assembling. I just can’t emphasize how much I love to assemble furniture. So I hope they’d deliver it on time tomorrow so I can spend my afternoon assembling my bookcase, another identical one for my sister, and a storage unit for my baby niece.

Tagged by Sulz.

Think of THE song that most inspires you to write, whether it gives you an idea for a story, script or just puts you into a better frame of mind AND/OR peek into the lyrics and find a verse that sums up the theme of whatever project it is you’re working on.

If possible, post a video of the song to convey to readers the full context of the song and the mood it puts you into. Finally, send the assignment to five other writers to do as well.

Well, I’m not sure this counts, but this song puts me into Emo Overdrive (which I assume is the state of mind MANY writers are perpetually in. Pardon me if I’m wrong.)

Whiskey Lullaby - Brad Paisley

It’s such a sad and depressing song that it sometimes makes me what to write a story based on this song. Like how this song applies different couples, spanning different countries, different era … I mean, I can’t prove that True Love exists, but I know there are some form of love out there that keeps people together, and till death do them part.

I like to shop at drugstore chains like Watsons and Guardian, just randomly browsing the range of products they offer.

And each time without fail, whether I am indeed searching for something, promoters will come up to me and ask me “miss, what are you looking for?” And in the past, being naive and trusting, I will tell these promoters that I’m looking for a facial cleanser, or a toner, etc. And I got duped too many times to trust these commission-driven bitches anymore. Once, I was looking for an alcohol-free toner (because my skin is sensitive to alcohol) and this promoter at Guardian insisted that whatever product she was selling was better, and that it is alcohol-free. I asked if I could test it, and she said, no tester, but it’s good because she herself uses it. So I bought it at a hefty SGD20, to come home to realize not only it is laden with alcohol, and that it only costs 670yen, which is less than SGD10 in Japan (where it was produced). Talk about being double-duped.

That is not an isolated incident; I have been blinded by these ruthless promoters in other instances. There was another time recently when I was looking for toothpaste, and this promoter came up to me, “miss, what are you looking for?” I honestly told her “toothpaste”, and in the back of my mind I thought, they can’t possibly have promoters for toothpaste, can they? Well it turned out true enough, she wasn’t a toothpaste promoter, and disregarding what I said, she started to promote some skincare product. I was pretty miffed at that point I wanted to ask her, “so miss, I can brush my teeth with this?” And recently, I met a relentless one who doesn’t seem to understand “never mind, I can look for it myself”. I feel that these promoters have this underlying assumption that I cannot make my own choice when it comes to buying things. I must have the face that says “I’m a sucker come fleece me”.

So my bottomline is, I hate promoters. I’m sorry to stereotype them all, but I have met more evil lying scheming promoters than genuinely good ones. So I can’t be faulted for being antagonistic towards them, and my tendency to avoid them, right?

And after discussing this matter with my mother and sister, we came to the conclusion the next time promoters ask me “miss what are you looking for?” I will reply henceforth:

1. Mas Selamat
2. Inspiration
3. money
4. opportunities
5. soy sauce (in a drugstore)
6. my primary school teacher
7. my true love
8. my mother
9. My pet snake that escaped
10. Glycol stearate-free products (or input any other cheem chemical terms to throw them off)

Have you see a fatter face than this?

Promptly after stuffing his face, he decided he wants to escape the cage.

These are such unflattering shots of his face face. Goodness.

That day I was in Charles & Keith, a homegrown shoe label, idling my time away when I overheard the store manager training their new employee. The manager had a piece of notebook paper, with the numerals 1 to 10 written on it, and she was reciting the numerals out to the staff in English, and making the staff recite it back.

I nearly died of shock. They employed a staff who clearly doesn’t speak enough English to even know the names of numbers. How justified is that? They must be paying her miserable pay, say 10% of what they pay a local Singaporean, right? If not I really don’t see the merit of employing someone like her calibre. Is it because she’s willing to scrub floors and kiss patrons’ smelly feet, among other things Singaporeans refuse to do? This really reminded of the recent Labour Day speech by the upperlings, about how we should appreciate foreign workers and not be antagonistic towards them, and not to think that they are “snatching our ricebowls” (i.e. stealing our jobs.) Well, taking things into perspectives, sure, we should appreciate foreign workers who toil at jobs Singaporeans refuse to work in, say the building industry, or dirty jobs like clearing gabbage. But this Charles & Keith example is really pushing the limit of foreign workers not stealing our jobs. Clearly, I’m sure Singaporeans wouldn’t mind working retail. So I don’t see why these foreign workers are favoured over our local community, since there is so much hassle in settling work permits. So I’m sure it can be inferred that these foreign workers must have been taken advantage of; given a lower pay and working more.

So is this still “appreciating” our foreign labour? Or are we giving industries the green light to employ foreigners for shit wages and increasing profit margins?

And retail is not an isolated industry. Recently too, I came across a few Chinese National bus captains. I was really miffed at that fact because these people can’t possibly know Singapore’s geography better than someone born and bred here. Being a bus captain is more than adhering to your bus routes and making sure people pay their bus fares. You need to be able to tell people the route your bus takes. I’m sure if I went up to these Chinese bus captains and asked them if a bus went to “Plaza Sing” or “Palais Rennaissance” (with the due French pronunciation) or “Dua Poh” (Hokkien for “big slope”, which is somewhere near Clarke Quay area), they wouldn’t know shit.

So while I understand it’s good that we have foreign labour willing to toil at menial jobs Singaporeans refuse to take up, and the expat professionals who are presumably able to contribute much innovation and intellects to Singapore, the examples I myself have encountered above aren’t justified at all. The only reason that I can think of remains at “low wages”. Is this conducive for the job market? Is this being fair to Singaporeans? Are the industries trying to force Singaporeans to push down their minimal wage to compete with these foreigners?

Exams are over, and thus concludes my third year in university. One more year to go.

—–

That day Sulz wrote a post on what she might want a 27-year-old Sulz to tell her 22-year-old self, crossing time boundaries (and sounding eerily like The Lake House, but no matter). I responded to that post by saying that I would like my 27-year-old self to tell me that whatever choices I make regarding my academic and career life now will not come to naught. And possibly all the love I am holding back now will go to someone who deserves it.

Sounds terribly unlike the usually confident (and obnoxious) me?
But you can’t fault me when people around me create doubt in me. Children only learn to doubt after they have been doubted first. So, in a way, it’s because of how people keep asking me what I intend to do with an English Language degree that opens the Pandora’s Box. And how everyone seems to be in pursuit of the One true love, or simply, True Love, that makes me wonder if that’s something everyone should aim for in life. So I guess the best way is combat this doubt is to have an older wiser me tell me to screw them all and lead my own life the way I want it to be. Like the song lyrics I posted a few days ago, each birthday we’re just getting closer to who we’re going to be. I like that idea that somehow someday I’d just get on form, and be my destiny.

Maybe you’d ask me, how does a person who doesn’t acknowledge any divine powers believe in destiny? Good question. I guess destiny to me it’s a personal and subjective categorisation; no one can tell you what your destiny is except yourself. It’s when you feel the best about yourself, and feel as though that’s what you’re meant to do/be, and that you’d have no regrets. Then I guess that’s your destiny. We don’t know for sure when we’ll feel it, or what it’ll be, but I’m dead certain we know it when it comes.

A simple greeting dearth of true regard is nothing but an act of hypocrisy
based on the predominant societal obligations that I have no eyes for.
“How are you” is just fakin’ it as much as the wayward whore
just that she doesn’t shroud her ware with embellishments.

My exams are almost over. I am left with only 1 last paper on Wednesday; Semantics in Generative Grammar. The “lightest” exam I have taken, for it accounts for only 20% of the final grades. Which explains why I haven’t revised it AT ALL, and am still watching Bones off Tudou (well, to be exact, I *listen* to Bones, and play Cooking Mama on my NDS Lite at the same time; this is called multi-tasking, an extremely important skill to be acquired if you wish to be a seasoned procrastinator.) Anyway, I still have 30 hours before the paper (it’s at 5 fricking PM) to draw up a cheat sheet, and plus revise say, 6 chapters worth of Chomskyean grammar. Oh well.

Anyway, I bought a box of DIY hair dye today! Sure, I said I want back to black after the exams, but I couldn’t resist and got myself a box in “Deep Purple”. It looks iffy, will probably turn out iffy, but I don’t care. It’s one of those things you should do at least once in your life - dye your hair pink or purple (or both, but I can’t find DIY pink dye, so I’ll make do with purple). (Another thing everyone should attempt to do in their life is to turn up early, for ANYTHING. I reckon for many people I know, that is harder than dyeing their hair purple.) I should dye my hair tomorrow just for the fun of it. If it turns out bad, I will simply cut my hair and get the professionals to turn in back to black or something. We’ll see.

And so, another semester gone. Next semester, I’ll be a Year 4 senior. Sounds terribly terribly old and uncool. Someone asked if I will be writing a thesis, and still my answer is, “I don’t know.” There’s a few ideas floating in my head, but nothing concrete. Oh well, we’ll take a step at a time. Maybe I’d do so badly for exams this semester I won’t be allowed to write a thesis.