I made a bag

I made a bag over the weekend (read: procrastination)

I followed the tutorial by Tiny Happy. Quite easy to make, except for the wonky sewing machine. (or maybe it’s my bad skills; haven’t handled a sewing machine since 2000 thereabout)
I bought the cloth at Joo Chiat Complex; the flowery one goes for $2.80 per yard (approx 0.9m) and the plain fuchsia cotton for $2 per yard. Cheap in my opinion (not to my mum though), especially when compared to the overpriced ones at Spotlight. The more I look at the flowery cloth, the more it reminds me of some summer kimono cloth. Heh.
Anyway, I want my own sewing machine. -pouts-

Deictic terms

That day I was trying to irritate my friends by speaking to them in entirely deictic terms.

So I did you know, then. They were like, what? And I sort of “that” and “this” and kinda did things.

I love deictic terms; they are so ambiguous. They can refer to all things (i.e. no fixed referent) and yet at the same time refer to nothing (i.e. when out of context). They can mean so much (e.g. when a pronoun replaces a 4534-word noun phrase) and so little (e.g. the pronoun I, which is a semantic prime and cannot be explained in other words). So, I love deictic terms.

And I feel a need to justify my love for prime numbers; they are about as self-centred as I am. They are only divisible by two numbers in this world, themselves and 1. They don’t give parts of themselves to other factors; it’s all-or-nothing when it comes to getting parts of them. That’s how I would like to work mostly; all-or-nothing. No half-fucking around. So see why I like prime numbers?

On writing inconsequential novels

Today I was just telling a friend that it’s pretty easy to write an inconsequential novel where nothing happens, because all one has to do is to be careful with his words and just write whatever that comes to mind. It’s getting published that is hard. But I guess if one can make his book sound arty-farty enough, publishers and reviewers will sanction it. And then I was saying that it’s pretty hard to write one of those grail-chasing novels (that I get duped into buying at every book sale, no doubt) because as an author one would have to keep up with the rest of the grail-writers so that one doesn’t get accused of plagiarism. And on a larger level, I think it’s quite phenomenal to be able to churn out 34861294381 grail chasing stories with the same schema, just different artifact, era, and characters.

So there. Just a little tidbit on what I think about the books I read.

In English, please.

That day I was in Semantics in Generative Grammar tutorial, and one group was presenting their answers to the class, and a girl blurted out, “sorry, I can’t read this in English.” Which was quite funny considering we were analyzing an English sentence. However that comment made me feel like Charles Eppes from Numb3rs, how the FBI will always asking to explain himself in plain English. If you knew what Semantics in GG is all about, I guess you’d feel the same way too. It’s tough and incomprehensible to laymen, which makes me feel a sense of achievement.

And during sociolinguistics class I was momentarily stumped when people started talking about Kress and Van-something, from Critical Discourse Analysis. Which I didn’t take, and neither have I taken Cinematic Discourse. So I couldn’t understand what they were trying to do with those theories (which don’t make a lot of sense to me) and I asked my friend, what have I been doing in linguistics for the past 3 years? It seemed that most of the class knew what was going on apart from me. So I really wonder what I’ve spent my time on for the past 3 years in college. It felt like I was missing out on something. But then again, it’s not like I’m interested in that side of sociolinguistics - to try to make sense of things based on an arbitrary framework that fails half the time. It feels too much like literature to me; trying to find intention from pieces which may not even encode that kind of intention in the first place, and reading them in ways that the theory and framework dictates. It just isn’t in me to do such things I guess. Maybe I just like to stay at the word and sentential level of things - morphology, syntax, semantics, and even phonology. Or maybe I just don’t like to study human behaviour that much. (That’s why I’m not in sociology.)

Book loot (edit)

I passed by this outdoor bazaar held by Carrefour at Plaza Singapura and I saw an amazing sign : Books $5.
I hurried over and grabbed 4.

1. The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, Adam Williams
2. Glass Soup, Jonathan Carroll
3. Who’s Who in Hell, Robert Chalmers
4. Bones to Ashes, Kathy Reichs

Have I failed to emphasize I love cheap book sales? I haven’t gone to a warehouse sale for some time, and I was getting annoyed at the increased prices of novels due to the increased tax. An average paperback novel will set me back at least $17, and with 10% discount, that’s still at least $15+. At those warehouse sales, I can easily nab novels at $5 or 3 for $10. Sure, the titles aren’t current or popular, but nonetheless I will always find something I like (and I can always find a Kathy Reichs or Lisa Scottoline in the pile.)

[edit] Today (21/03/200 I went to the Times Books warehouse sale at the Expo! I nabbed the following books:

1. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare (3 for SGD10)
2. Splintered Icon by Bill Napier (3 for SGD10)
3. The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel (3 for SGD10)
4. Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle (SGD4)
5. Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom (SGD6)
6. China Lake by Meg Gardiner (SGD4)
7. The Fahrenheit Twins by Michel Faber (SGD6)

So, all in all, I grabbed 11 books for $50 within 2 days. I’m brimming with joy. Now I need to go get some more plastic film to wrap my books - I’m such a ngiao (stingy? fastiduous? We need an NSM explication on this term) person that I must wrap all the books I own and keep them in tip-top condition. I don’t know la, it’s just me.

Free-falling hamsters

I swear when whichever higher power gave souls to hamsters, he gave my hamsters the souls of acrobats.

There is Monsieur Pip (I think). He will climb to the ceiling of the cage, and free-fall. Chipmunk does that too. Is this a hamster thing?

Anyway, I finally bought them an exercise wheel and a box for the bath sand. Chipmunk (I think) loves to sleep in the sand. And now both of them insist on running on the wheel at the same time. Some duo circus trick?

Swollen Eye

See my swollen eyes, since Saturday afternoon after I got back from outside (sunny day!) It started as an itch and slowly developed to this. My left eye shrunk to half its size and my right eye shrunk to 75% its normal size. And the most disgusting thing is, although I have 5 clinics within 100m radius of my house, none of them were opened on a Saturday afternoon! So I had to stay home (alternatively I could have gone to A&E, but they weren’t hurting, so I guess what doesn’t hurt wouldn’t kill me that fast). These doctors can jolly well go to hell because it’s pretty obvious they’re more entrepreneurs than true healers by the Hippocratic oath. Or maybe I should say, people living in my area shouldn’t fall sick on Saturdays because the doctors decree so. Pffft.

After some differential diagnosis on myself, with contributions from my family, we gather it could be:
1. allergy to  dust generated by the renovation work that’s going on in the house above mine (bloody hell)
2. allergy to a certain ingredient in this curry spice my mother used
3. allergy to something I was exposed to when I went out
4. Sun exposure (well I was going round taking pictures in the sun for 3 hours …)

But seeing that my throat wasn’t closing up, I don’t think it was a serious allergy. (Even thought I had 2 small rash, one behind my ear and one on my arm.) And so I went and hid in my room and turned on the air-con and tried to keep out of the dust. And the itch stopped (hurrah) and today the swelling subsided considerably. (Although when I got up this morning, I had SINGLE eye-lid on the right eye. People who know me should know that it’s next to impossible for me to wake up with single eyelids any day. So the swelling must have been real bad.)

Ack. So my eyes are still damn puffy now. Unglam. And I can imagine the few more wrinkles that will appear after the puffiness is all gone. Whose fault? The stupid renovators and stupid Indonesia with their forest torching that’s creating all that haze in Singapore. Now my eyes are dry too because of them. Urgh.

And as such I’m in a bad mood. I apologize in advance to the people I barked/will bark at. Blame the renovators and Indonesia if you want.

Chipmunk and Monsieur Pip

This is Monsieur Pip François, a.k.a Pip, named after that pseudo-French kid with the beret in South Park.

And this is … Chipmunk. I have no idea if Chipmunk is male or female just yet. This requires closer scrutiny.

The Leap Years

I don’t like this film.

It severely lacks that something that makes me empathize with Li-Ann. Maybe she isn’t tormented enough in her everyday life; it felt as though she knew all along she’d end up with Jeremy. I don’t see how she thinks of him in those 12 years, apart from the few hours before her birthday. Maybe it’s the way the story is told that disallows that element. I need to see how she endured that 12 years without him, without knowing he’ll come back, without any news about him. And you know why I don’t like the plot? They fell in love too fast to be out of intellect or personality. It must have been physical attraction. And I hate it when Jeremy said meeting every leap year has become an obsession for him; that’s the wrong word to use in my opinion. And he victimized himself! He freakin’ victimize himself when it comes to trying to leave the ex-fiancee! That he stayed with her out of obligation, and not love. Like as though she was stopping him from moving on and finding his true love! How horrible.

Also, I hated the stereotyping in this film. I really really hate it. Our protagonist needs to be successful in her career, pretty and has a group of friends who are not comparable to her. This group of friends must consist of a bimbo (Kim), a chainsmoking wreck (Suneetha) and someone “gay” (Jenny). Jenny can be easily replaced by your stereotypical male homosexual fashionista and it’d still turn out the same. Get what I mean? These friends don’t change from chick lit to chick lit; the categories remain the same, just the names different. And then obviously you need a self-sacrificing male friend who’s been carrying a torch for our protagonist since they were X years old, just to prove that our protagonist isn’t exactly “unwanted”. The more I think about this, the more I hated the plot. But you can’t really blame the producers; this is adapted from our beloved Catherine Lim.

And let’s not talk about how the clothes/technology/figures of speech/etc do not fit the time period they were trying to portray. And how the protagonist just HAS to drive past Paragon and Takashimaya to get to Cecil Street from The Arts House (near Clarke Quay). Really careless loh.

But I think there was just this one line they could have put into the movie that might have made it infinitely better. Something that goes “You said it takes courage to resist being with someone for the sake of being with someone. I think it takes more courage to walk away from the person you love telling him to stop loving you.” (Those who watched the show, I think you can guess which scene this should go into.)

Oh well. Who cares.

Liver-intestine inch-break

So I’m writing this 2800-word essay on “The Chinese Obsession with Innards: An NSM approach to Chinese set phrases”. I picked out 3 set phrases (chengyu) to analyze, all involving the innards, such as the intestines or the liver or both.

The one above is a gloss of 肝肠寸断, which literally means the liver and intestines breaking off at inch-pieces. Quite the gruesome imagery, I know. Yet this constitutes one of the deepest emotions - the feel of devastation, extreme sorrow and grief. It is usually used in the contexts of death, and lost love.

I was trying to look for actual examples of this phrase in use from Google, and I was brought to this really interesting page where someone tries to compile a list of 100 most 肝肠寸断 forum signatures (but this list was entirely subjective). I picked out a few interesting ones (translations provided below each entry):

1. 你在做什么？我在仰望天空。30度的仰望是什么？是我想念她的角度。为什么要把头抬到30度？为了不让我的眼泪掉下来……
   Q: What are you doing?
   A: I’m looking at the sky.
   Q: What’s with the 30 deg angle of elevation?
   A: It’s the angle which I think of her.
   Q: But why 30 degrees?
   A: So that my tears wouldn’t fall.
2. 爱情就像乘法，其中一项为零，其结果永远为零
   Love is like multiplication, if one of the variable equals to zero, the result will always be zero.
3. 走的最急的是最美的景色，伤的最深的是最真的感情
   The most beautiful sights often leave the fastest, just has the deepest love often hurt the most.
4. 都说牛郎和织女是最痛苦的，一年只会一天；我说他们其实是最幸福的——有谁364天都被思念着呢？
   Everyone says that the Cowherd and the Weaver are pitiful because they meet only once a year, but I say they are the most fortunate because whoever else is being pined after by someone for 364 days a year?
5. 知道吗，男孩站在女孩的左边是因为那样可以离她的心更近一些
   You know, a guy should stand to the left of the girl so that he’ll be closer to her heart. (Aww.)
6. 地球之所以是圆的，是因为上帝想让那些走失或者迷路的人能够重新相遇……
   The Earth is round because God wants those who have lost their way to be able to meet again.
7. 爱情就像两个人在拉猴皮筋，疼的永远是后撒手的那个
   Love is like two people tugging hard on a rubber band; the last to let go hurts the most.
8. 如果你看到你自己的影子，别怕，那是因为你的背后有阳光！
   If you see your shadow, do not fear, for that means the sun is behind you.
9. 结婚那天你一定要来做我的伴郞，因为我们承诺过要一起走进婚姻的殿堂.
   Please be my Best Man at my wedding because we once made a promise to enter the matrimonial church together. (Aw.)
10. 我颠倒了整个世界，只为摆正你的倒影.
    I turned the whole world around just to put your shadow the right side up.
    

(I apologize for the really strange translations; I just randomly did it.)

I really like 5 and 7. One’s so sweet and one’s so real, I guess they both appeal to different sides of me.

PS: Ok, I’m thinking that 9 is weird. “伴郞” refers to the Best Man, but that usually is on the groom’s side, right? A bride does not usually have a Best Man, right? So if it’s “my” best man … then … (please draw your own conclusions) Man, that just made it sadder.