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and Zer0 got director's signature on his DMC DVDs!!!
in the first place, how did he actually get to meet the director of my fav anime mushishi???
how come he got all these lobangs one? what the hell? not like he has some otaku job and have contacts can fly here fly there. don't tell me the action figure's party project actually made him otaku famous? what, what ??
i'm dying to find out and read his back blog entries lah.
but then i remembered i'm suppose to be writing my paper.
i just want to graduate
trying out this new gadget i just put in my igoogle that allows me to post to livejournal directly.
been up to--
- trying to be better organized with the help of igoogle. haha..
- putting in my passion for the MRP (major research paper) so i can get into the mood to write 70-100 pages. telling myself, 'xiaxia u really love the things that you are researching.. remember?'
- hence the organizing, and trying my bestest to cut down on living in drama series life or anime life (but i'm too advance in watching anime so can't really crash watch all of them. only 1 episode per anime per week. quite safe there.)
yes life, i'm coming back.
what happened?
a rather heated debate happening in sg now, or maybe for some time already, is the government's decision to house some (dunno how many hundreds) bangladeshi foreign workers (most probably construction workers) at an old school in Serangoon gardens.
residents of serangoon gardens thus complained that they felt that the foreign workers will make their environment 'unsafe' because these workers are 'dangerous' people, to put it in a very blunt way. i dunno why they think that, erm maybe they the workers will kidnap your grandkids and hook up with your maids? ahh the works of racism and xenophobia.
so the government being the government, won't really change its mind on what it has already decided just because the people cried like spoilt little kids. (we all know lah) so the nanny.. ahem.. govt decided to place some house rules around the foreign workers' residence in order to appease the kids. they call it a buffer zone. what the hell is a buffer zone? oh well, i guess foreign workers can't look after themselves too, we have to lock them in for their 'own good', oh excuse me... for the 'good of others'.
anyway, jia wrote a very 'impassioned' letter to the straits times forum. in inverted comas, because u can't really be impassioned when u write to the straits times or they won't publish your letter. they didn't publish this letter anyway. so i say u should just go all out when writing a letter like that, so that when you decide to publish it on your blog after facing rejection from the bootlicker times, it will sustain more entertainment value and make an uber interesting read, of course.
the letter:
I am writing in response to the recent debate over the settlement of foreign workers in an old school in Serangoon Gardens. Minister Mah Bow Tan had previously said that foreign workers cannot be segregated from the rest of Singaporean society and that more can be done to facilitate co-existence. Yet, some of the latest official developments seem to suggest otherwise. The recent decision to house foreign workers is accompanied by plans to create a buffer zone the estate and the dormitory, with additional boundary fencing. I wonder if this measure does not prevent co-existence and mutual understanding between residents and foreign workers? Further, while the implementation of house-rules and curfews serve to assuage the worries of some residents, it seems also to further police and alienate these workers from Singaporeans. These measures could also serve to reinforce the common notion that there is a need to be fearful of these foreign workers. Could these barriers to co-existence not be removed to foster greater understanding between Singaporeans and those who work and live among us? I find this important especially since there are plans to set up more similar dormitories for foreign workers. Given the projected increase in foreign workers in our midst to meet the demands of our economy, there is a pressing need to recognize and accept these workers into our living spaces as a move to strengthen our social fabric. Serangoon Gardens could well serve to be an example of how locals and foreigners –both workers and talent – can truly share the same spaces, reinforcing that Singapore is really the multicultural society that it prides itself to be.
Ye Junjia
Visiting Scholar, Asian Research Institute, NUS.
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... if you are wondering who this fab oh so eloquent lady who wrote this letter is, here is jia's blog
http://jia77.livejournal.com/69697.h
the editors have crosses for eyes if they don't know how to appreciate... people giving you face ok. tone down anymore, and u won't get any content! heh, they probably just don't wanna deal with it.
anyway if first u don't succeed in writing to bootlicker times, try doing your own thing.
here's one- a podcast by mrbrown on the same incident. super funny. gotta listen.
Photo by e-chan
Residents of a small town think they have to fend off alien invaders!
got to credit the maker.. so here's where i got the podcast..
http://www.mrbrownshow.com/2008/09/08/t
Hisaishi is famous for his soundtrack music compositions for Studio Ghibli's animes and Takeshi Kitano's movies.
he's middle age, he's bald, but his music is damn good.
youtube bombardment coming up..
having a field day at youtube watching joe hisaishi's concert performance. although not as drama as how yann would play his accordian, this piano piece is as captivating, music from Kitano's movie Hana-bi.
then i saw this video of him performing the theme song for another of kitano's films 'kids return'. an arrangement that includes an erhu and also other string instruments like the violin. very nice.
this the trailer of kids return, music has a different instrumental arrangement
now what has kids return and The story of the first king's four gods, ie the legend, ie the korean drama series that i have watched for four days to finish because of Bae yong joon and its now showing on tv?
watch this
wah kao, joe hisaishi not only composed for both the movie 'kids return' and the korean drama series 'the legend', he also recycled the main themetic song. no wonder when i was watching the legend i find the music so familiar... that's because i've heard it from kids return. duh.
but i still love joe hisaishi lah. ec will kill me if i say this, but he's prob better than yann tiersen at times. y? because i wanna imagine what his mind might be like, storing and producing music like this, that are sometimes gentle and sweet, sometimes youthful and energetic. even when it may sound sad, its a kinda sweet sadness.. ehh quite hard to describe music here. but yann tiersen can sometimes be melancholy and heavy because he likes to use repetitive chords and sequences to compose melodies. his is very much techniques. very ingeneous and i admit very fun to play, but sometimes dark. in other words, through his music, joe hisaishi sounded much happier. also make me the listener more happier. heh. though maybe his music wouldn't be that fun to play, haven't tried yet but keeping my fingers crossed.
other videos to check out - these are composed for Miyazaki Hayao anime movies OST
Spirited Away "one summer's day" piano solo played by joe hisaishi
Howl's moving castle- my fav theme song! for now...
performed with a full orchestra
ahhhhhhhhhh...........
but before i begin my rant, i have to thank all my friends and family for remembering my birthday, giving me a call, asking me out, treating me and all that. i'm really touched because i didn't inform anyone about it, but everyone remembered.
so i turned 27 a couple days ago on the 27th.
Jiha told me once that 27 is a good number, a good age.
it must be my 'lucky' number.
on my birthday, i fell on the mrt station's escalator while chasing after the train.
stubbed my right toe and while i was flinching in pain, it managed to flood itself in a puddle of blood.
after cleaning up my toe and sandal and taping a couple of plasters over it i decided to take a taxi instead.
n the taxi driver didn't know how to get to my destination.
today, i received some unfortunate news from my friend. very sad.
then while talking about it over the phone, i broke a table in a restaurant as i was leaning on it with my ass. omg. i swear i did not sit on it. feel super bad for the owner.
shit now that i think about it, i should have been more careful, i should have known. earlier today while helping my grandma clean her new apartment, i broke the handle of the spray bottle (with liquid for glass cleaning) and i sorta broke some plastic piece of the window while trying to lock it (but it was fixed back) whoa lao eh. why wasn't i more careful today after breaking so many things in the day?
come back still need to settle my bro's problem. actually it isn't much of a problem, just some things that need to be thought through. but my mom made such a big deal of it, it became a problem because everyone was unahppy.
ok that's just today. actually aside from the troublesome stuff, i had a good time talking to people today.
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but wow, if i think about how i dislocated my thumb earlier this month, i have to admit that's a record number of unglam things that i've done within just 1 month.
i mean look at how they happened- i caused a hole in my toe because i was chasing a train because i was late, broke a table with my butt while talking to a friend, dislocated my thumb while i was just trying to sit on the floor.
all these sustained injuries and 'portrayl of strength' were not heroic 'throphies' but are really dumb incidents. well, they did some good in giving a few laughs ...
coincidence? or maybe i'm getting careless.
i have to say, the month of May really is my month.
what i saw outside my house today...
don't really know what insect that is, but i think its a huge moth with a broken wing, trying desperately to fly. but it could only flip around in circles under the heat.
i think i'm getting used to this TO-SG-TO-SG-TO-SG moving about and changing of environment. physically, i wasn't suffering from jet-lag and mentally, being in SG this year was very normal and ordinary. no cultural shock, extreme food cravings or over-emo situations.
soo.. what have i been doing since i've got here... whoa almost 3 weeks liao.
1st week, i was piah-ing my essay -- left over work from toronto... hehe.
2nd week, jia came back to sg n i spent most of the week with her, partying and celebrating her bday TWICE.
3rd week, started hanging out at this new place call the post museum in little india.
in between all that, i met some friends, visited people from my internship last yr, dislocated my thumb, interviewed a few people, baked 2 cakes, had a huge mother's day pot-luck dinner with my extended family, and got hooked onto Bae yong joon's new korean drama. (maybe not so new in korea, but new in sg)
as for my research, i did do some interviews, did a lot of observations attending events, n talking and meeting artists.. , n very little reading...
ok i'm really gonna pull up my socks on the readings and the interviewing otherwise i will die from work overload in july ...
but bae yong joon is beckoning me ........ahhhh!
i did notice some change in sg though, most obvious is that the no. of chinese (from china) immigrant workers has increased A LOT since i was here last yr. i had much more contact with them than i had to last yr. they were selling food at the foodcourt, at the supermarket, at shops in shopping malls... all of a sudden i had to communicate in chinese almost everywhere. felt a little self-conscious of my mandarin because after 8 months in canada, my chinese really cannot make it. n many of these chinese nationals are probably new immigrants cause they can't speak eng at all. i'm already feeling quite handicapped with my half past 6 mandarin liao, but what about the rest of the non-chinese-speaking population in sg? how do the malays and indians and the ang mohs communicate with these chinese people? suddenly i thought, 'whoa.. heng mrt have chinese words and announcments man.. otherwise the china chinese dunno how to look out for suspicious not-chinese,not-malay-looking person leaving black bags under mrt chair and then know to report to mrt personels or dial 999.'
walked around chinatown for abit since i kept meeting friends there (at maxwell market to eat n visit some bookstore)
hmmm.. chinatown quite multi-cultural huh... saw this white guy selling german sausages there at one of those small stalls, somemore ask me want to 'ta bao' anot. he says he has been selling sausages in sg for 5 yrs and at chinatown for the last 3 yrs, been living in sg for 10 yrs. maybe its my ignorance lah, it seems like he is quite famous judging by the newspaper articles featuring his stall pinned up well .. at his stall.. and everyone i asked all know about him leh. thinking chinatown not really chinese anymore...maybe it wasn't in the first place? just all for the tourist. i dunno. but this ang moh uncle made me think that singapore's people are changing.. he is doing something that seems to be very local, vernacular, u know things that only local people know about and do like living in flats and speaking very singlish singlish. its quite common to see malaysians and singaporeans hawkering. but a white person? someone that is often thought to be working in offices, speaking proper english or english with an accent, people who are suppose to be very the 'up' ones in society and live in condos.
talking about singlish, i started to realise that non-singaporeans are picking up singaporean accent... when i first heard it last summer, it was quite funny actually. not that singlish sounded funny, but singlish coming out from the mouth of a japanese, or a bengaldashi, or an ang moh has the most surreal real feeling. foreigners whose english is their 2nd or 3rd language and are learning and practicing english in sg is picking up our accent!! its strange and cool at the same time. i came home one day and ay! ELMA ALSO SPEAKING SINGLISH!! how come i didn't realise?
what makes you a singaporean? every national day the newspapers never get tired of asking that question. answers also always the same, top 2 popular answers are food and language ie singlish. work-permit holders and PR are also speaking singlish leh. how? wah maybe we have to re-think the '4 official races' thinghy.
so errm... i think not only singaporeans must learn to speak good english hor..
i walked past the buddha tooth relic temple one night and
the lanterns are offerings that a devotee can make with a donation of $50 per lantern. a lot hor.
ultimate kua zhang lah. omg.. how much money is that?
the tooth relic temple is very popular. jia, dj and i went into their souvenier shop, its see no touch- very the expensive lor. if u believe in the tooth relic temple, u must be very rich.
this last picture, i also took today. was at little india again..
its a huge tent set up for vesak day with a buddha statue in it. i'm not sure what they r doing there, maybe its for people to worship, maybe they are also giving out free stuff like food. and this tent is right next to a mosque.
i go there quite alot.. little india, i think i should start taking more picture of it. there are some things that u can only see there. like on sunday, its a sea of south asians, u can hardly walk in a straight line. actually u don't, u just have to keep dodging people. but as long as a sea of people are crossing the road at the same time, u don't really have to follow traffic light. so many indians and bengaldeshi u won't belive it. where do they hide to in the weekdays? at about 11pm u see these buses come to pick them up, have numbers on them some more. macham tour bus going to malaysia, then toilet break. so u better not get up on the wrong bus, otherwise u end up in wrong 'hotel'. oh but lucky got 'tour guide aunty' shouting your bus no.
when i take the mrt to dhoby gauht, little india and farrer park, i also think lucky the mrt got tamil words and announcements.
to help with my major project proposal i am reading this book- 'handbook of the arts in qualitative research'.
i guess it would be much easier if i just decide to write a major paper instead of a project, since i have already written almost everything i need for a major paper in previous essays. like my advisor said, i have the topic, i have the theory, i have the words, all i need is the last bit of development and putting a paper together would not be difficult. n then i can graduate and cha boh back to sg.
but after brooding over this thing for awhile, i think that if i am to really do a paper instead of a project, i will regret it for the rest of my life.
however i lack the most important part of a major project. the project itself. how do i turn my paper into a project?
hence am 'speed-reading' through this book..
in it i rediscover that art-based research can be used for
1. data
2. inquiry
3. interpretation or representation
now somehow i am obsessed with no. 3.
how can you present the results of your research in non-written language? it is possible it seems or as the book says. some knowledge cannot be written out and in history it is known that knowledge has also been transmitted in non-written forms, through embodied forms. for example through dance, storytelling, images, songs etc. with that said, poetry and lyrical proses are also used to express things that cannot be expressed with objective writing. not that it is dissing academic writing or anything but i think the book is trying to say that there are different ways of knowing and that people has depended too much on one way of knowing that we have neglected the other forms, the different senses that we can activate and express with which are equally important. one good example the book gave: how can you comprehend the world of an alzheimer patient or the lives of people whom it has affected outside of the patient? a socialogist took pictures of little bags of rubberbands, needles, etc that her mother hid around the house while she had alzheimer and which she had found after her death. i imagine what a person will feel and think when viewing these pictures in an exhibition.
the thing about art-based research is that it cannot give a definite answer to a posed question. instead it poses more questions. at the same time it is more easily accessible to people who may not acquire the skills to understand difficult academic journals.
as i was saying... i am obsessed with no. 3: art-based research as interpretation and representation.
i have kinda decided that i will interpret/represent my research in an art-based form(s). at the same time i would like to use art to inquire further developments in my topic. (ya its a bit hanging there)
as i am thinking of this, i suddenly realise that the little exercises that i have been working with prof honor and jiha were doing just that, inquiring.
the one we did last week: think about before and after you came to canada and draw 2 pictures that shows how you were before and after. of course, we talked about what we drew after that.
honor meant for the information in these exercises to be useful for me to look deeper into the identity issues that i am questioning for her course. as i read the book, i came to understand that. and all this time she has been asking me, 'was this helpful?' and while i knew what she meant, somehow it didn't register in my mind that informations from these drawings are to be used to think deeper into the problem. no. 2: art-based research as inquiry! haha! now i know.
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thoughts-
a writing practice: inquiring into the middle world.
sometimes i think that i have to make art my life in order to grasp for myself the channels of peace.
yet the research that i do, how is that connected to the peace that i am trying to find, and trying so hard to understand?
is the middle world of my theory a way for the people to balance power or to understand power or to empower themselves so that they will have a peace of mind? if we can comprehend the power structure and struggles that are working itself in the society, and if we interject that with our abilities, will we be happier? even if that provokes aggression, ignites anger.
maybe anger and agression will be present in the other party. maybe it will be present in ourselves because of that. however i think that the doer, the protagonist, the provoker, the interjector herself should remain calm, as calm as the particles in water and air. unabashed and unafraid by the waves and winds because they understood the fact that they are within and posessed the elements themselves.
if we remain calm as we ride the waves, will the others see?
simple may be beautiful but i think that things will always seem complicated the way we see it.
we are walking down this needlessly complicated road, i feel like i am walking down this friggin maze of a path.
the middle world is only plausible if the protagonist is able to balance the official and unofficial world with patience, understanding, repose, confidence and acceptance.
are there examples of that?
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so sometimes i go there to take a breather and take some pictures at the same time. because i've now got my new flashy digi cam bought in sg last summer.
i was quite surprise that the campus 'authorities' let nature claim the land surrounding the pond. there was no land mowed grass with its funny stripe patterns. there were instead very very tall wild plants/grass. i kinda like it.. actually was like some kind of natural fence.
begining of sept- mr stong was not in very good shape. the pond was drained out of all its water and some construction was happening. i thought that they were going to close and reclaim stong forever!!
it was later that i learned that stong was actually being 'revamp' into a larger and more efficient water control area. in fact stong pond was suppose to help control the water that is to flow into mr black creek which is an underground river. reason that stong was being enlarged is because it hadn't been doing a very good job and i believe there were other reasons also that black creek had over-flowed, flooded and distroyed some roads a couple of years back. so i guess stong pond can't be eradicated because of its importance to black creek. on the other hand, i felt a bit dissappointed that the pond is man made. or issit?
late fall...
the pond is back with its mowed grass and got water liao!
leaves were falling off the trees. it was a beautiful day that day. tried to read a little but that didn't work out because i was too engross with the leaves, the setting sun (although it wasn't evening yet), the sky, the breeze and the rustling leaves. so my camera when clicking non stop. decided i should just lie down and take a break. beats reading and falling asleep in the library.
canadian geese! a flock of them landed nearby! by that time i thought i should leave liao. i think canadian geese make the most unpleasant sounds.. like a broken trumpet. and they shit everywhere. but they are quite adorable lah especially when they try to siam u when u r chasing them n taking pictures. heheheh
Winter...
its january and snowy. u must b thinking, xiao ah? so cold still go to the pond. just finished one of my essays and needed a de-stress before i start the second one. i mean it wasn't that that cold so i decided to spend some time out doors. again it looked like evening, but really, it waasn't even 4 o'clock yet. but then these are the times when the sky looks the best. so i have to say it was actually quite a beautiful day.
the pond. it was frozen and snow fell on top of the ice.. it actually looked like everywhere else. could have missed it if u didn't know a pond was there.
this made my day. (^_^) someone drew a heart on the pond using her footsteps.
the end of the chronicals of mr stong pond... for now.
so last christmas i suddenly had a craving for my grandma's yong tau foo. the one that is pan fried with yummy gravy, not what we commonly see in the hawker center -boiled with soup and noodle kind.
anyway, called my parents to ask for the recipe. a month later mama reported that my recipe costs them 11SGD in phone bills. she said 'that one very expensive recipe! it better be good!'
i think i must have been possessed by my nai nai's fiery spirit or something. i was damn determine to make it from scratch the way she made it. JX ask why don't i just buy some fish paste and mixed that with mince pork after all the fish paste is already all mixed and flavoured. Nooo.. i have to buy 2 makerals, de-bone them, mince them, mix them with mince pork and corriander and shallots and green onions and a whole bunch of stuff that i can't even remember now. and i was mad that i had forgotten the slated fish. for that 3 plates of yong tau foo, yong brinjal and yong la jiao, i think i cooked the whole day.
and this was the result of my inexperience and exhausting attempt. looks good, taste ok. something wrong with the flavouring or texture of the meat i should say. can't figure that out. but on the whole, i was happy because it at least looked really really really like real thing!
stuffed tofu, brinjal and chilli before they go into the wok.
and now when they are cooked and served!
fwah!
and then after that yong tau foo experience, i suddenly very on about making food. Jx ask me again, 'why u so da zi zuo these days?' ehhh.. i dunno why i think its the yong tau foo syndrome didn't wear off.
anyway after that i decided to make oreo cheese cake for valentine's day. it was really meant to finish up the ridiculously big package of oreo cookies i bought on a wimp because it was cheap. and the cake was also really meant to be nicki's bday cake but i couldn't make it in time. so it turned out to be a valentine's day cake for us girls to ravish.
it was a little over baked. and the color of slightly burnt cheese sorta looked like the top cheese coating of some baked pasta. some said it tasted a bit salty, some said that it was too rich. but then again i don't expect to get it perfect on my first time.
wait .... i think this might possibly BE the first time i baked a cake! and all by myself. ....
!!! i think it is!!! wahhh! lucky people got a taste of my virgin cake. (why do i feel so cheesy today (-_-;) )
aihh.. if i could i would want auntie and jia to try it. afterall i think auntie must be the best cheesecake baker and the one who made so many for me that i had to fall in love with cheesecake.
on my list for the next tea party in singapore... axia's oreo cheese cake. heheheheh..
