Desyn Masiello spun one of the more spirited sets of late, the cutest DJ yet as well. Loads of fun meeting up with 3 different crews: the expat batch, the Berkeley/JC/friends of chums, and of course the Zouk-ites.

Sunday early afternoon was spent doing laundry, cleaning up the flat, feeling thankful I live in a small flat because I already have to clean up so much and so often. Headed over to Great World City to get my proper business outfit for my first CC meeting tomorrow (wish me luck!), and get a haircut and pedicure simultaneously.

Now, I have never been a salon kinda gal. I’ve recently gotten into pedicures only because my first pedicure in my life showed me how disgusting my un-pedicured toenails were. Cutting hair is a pain because I used to have a have a great (and cheap!) hairstylist in Berkeley and I don’t know who to go to in Singapore. My hair is maintained only with trying as much as possible not to do anything with it, i.e. try not to wash it too often, only using shampoo (conditioner makes it too limp), and nothing else, no products, no hairdrying, just a hairbrush in the morning. I know I should get my hair trimmed every 6 weeks, but being the cheap-ass I am, I try to let it go for 6 months. Therefore, for the past 2 months, I’ve had perpetual bad hair days. With my best friend’s wedding next weekend, I decided to treat myself to a haircut.

Randomly went into Jantzen on the 2nd floor of GWC, because their prices ($36 for wash and cut) were reasonable. And what a serendipous find, that Jantzen. For $36, I got an amazing 20 min head massage with my wash. They hardly do that these days. It’s always a disappointing shampoo and rinse as fast as they can get away with. As I had two girls blow-drying my hair, I had my pedicure ($13). The simultaneity, while probably common to the salon-trotting chick, blew me away! Hairstyling and pedicure at the same time?? I could really do stuff like that?? I felt so teased! So pampered! Like a princess!

I came home later that night, sashaying with my lovely hair and fresh pedicure, only to find that the bloody cat has pooped again where he wasn’t supposed to. If Ken wasn’t there to laugh at me while I squatted and cleaned up and squatted in front of the rubbish chute to dig up all the old kitty litter and change to a new set in hope that he’d poop where he’s fucking supposed to, I’d have lost it. At least Ken’s laughter made it almost funny. From glam princess to poop cleaner. *phht*. I had to chant "I love Pat I love Pat" over and over because I’m only doing this for him and him only. I’m starting to feel utterly foreign to the concept of having pets and having to clean up after them. Darwin would roll in his grave. I doubt evolution has ever seen a stage where one animal cleaned up the shit of the other. Why do we humans choose to do it now???

In between the transition from glam princess to poop cleaner though, was a lovely lovely movie, Sideways, with Ken. If you liked American Splendor, you’d love Sideways. Paul Giamatti is such an amazing actor. With so many sub-standard movies out these days, Sideways is such a breath of fresh air.

We thank you for your interest in the website and would like to inform you about a major change coming to STI in March: After 10 years of giving ST news reports out for free online, STI will begin charging readers to access it.

A subscription will cost S$72 for six months (S$12 a month), or S$120 for a year (S$10 a month). A one-month subscription will cost S$15.

Why are we doing this?

We believe that we have a good and valuable product that users will want to pay for. It’s also not a tenable business model to charge for the print edition of the newspaper and not for its online edition.

You will want to know whether you will get anything more, now that you have to pay.

The answer is yes.

You will notice that up till now, you get only three reports from Life! and Sunday Life through the week. If you subscribe, all the showbiz gossip and lifestyle features you see in the print edition of Life will be available online.

The weekly tech magazine Digital Life is available online now but a day after its print edition goes out with the newspaper. If you subscribe, Digital Life and the health magazine Mind Your Body — now not online — will become available from 6am on the same day they are distributed with the newspaper. The fashion magazine Urban will also go online, but later this year.

All news reports in the Money section will be available from 6am daily, instead of 6pm.

The last perk is that the archive will grow from the current three-days to seven-days. This means you can search back a week’s worth of STI editions.

First of all, I don’t have to go into details, but the writing in this email sucks. This from a national newspaper? Second, the only reason how I think they would be able to justify charging for online subscription is that their circulation market (Singapore) is too small, hence the need to look for more sources of revenue. Otherwise how could better newspapers like the NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, etc be free, and a mediocre newspaper like the Straits Times be charging $120/yr? I certainly don’t believe that they "have a good and valuable product that users will want to pay for". Up to 7-days in archived articles??? Ooooo….And btw, ‘Urban’ is the worst piece of crap I’ve ever read…like a badly written Cosmo. It’s too painful to think about what Singapore has to offer in terms of news. That’s what you get when you censor. Thank god for the internet!

Latest cover from The Economist, tee hee. Classic. Only cos I could totally hear the Prez say it.

Location: Great World City; waiting for shuttle to MRT.
Boy*: Do you know if there’s a Jack’s Place here?
Me: Har? (takes headphones blaring Way Out West off) Errr…don’t know. Maybe you can check the directory.
Boy: Oh ok. (pause) I just move around this area so I’m not familiar with this place. Do you live around here?
Me: Err…yeah around here.
(pause. Me attempting to put headphones back. Shiftly looks around)
Boy: My name is XXX. What’s yours.
Me: Err…Kelly.
(Fumbles with bags and headphones in hand to shake his outstretched hand out of obligation. Me putting on headphones and try to casually walk to the other corner)
(1 min later)
Boy: Oh…well, I’m heading off now. (holds out handphone) Can we keep in touch?
Me: (taking headphones off) Har? No.
Boy: Why not?
Me: (incredulous that I even have to explain myself) I have a boyfriend.
-end-

Disclaimer: Writing about pick-up experiences runs the risk of sounding arrogant. My take is that it would be if one was genuinely flattered by those occurrences. However, as my theory goes, it’s human nature to try to get laid, and our society puts the onus (with exceptions of course) on the men to put the first foot forward. Therefore, girls gloating about the "many men" trying to pick them up, as if they are all that, are deceiving themselves, especially when it happens clubs with dim lights and beer goggles are strapped on and the girl is simply not butt-fuck ugly. And, he’s just as happy trying to get it on with the next girl standing right next to you. Point being, this post is in no way a form of indirect self-flattery (should I want to flatter myself, I’d be upfront and direct about it, don’t worry), simply a typical blog post about experiences and thoughts about them.

My pick up experiences range from fun(ny) to simply awkward to sad to just plain icky.

(1) The few ‘fun’ pick-ups I’ve experienced is where I feel a good-hearted oh well at least I tried vibe from the guy. Or it ends off with "aww. he was a sweetheart. oh well." Those do happen. Those mostly happen at bookshops and cafes. Cliche, but true. It’s a lot more interesting to hear the guy try to gain your favor by asking you about the book you are reading, and attempting to be interested (or perhaps they really are!) too. Not just the "Hey baby", or (as in Singapore) "Can I be your friend?" at clubs…

(2) …which leads to the next category. I never really understood the sad (read: persistent) ones. Those mostly happen in clubs. Cliche but true. Silly boys at Zouk attempt to pick-up first asking if I’m alone, and when I say no, my boyfriend’s here (I like playing the ‘I am with boyfriend’ card. Convenient and clean), the persistent ones would go "oh really? so where is he?" and persist further, as if I was lying. (Pat and I have a habit of disappearing from each other at a club as we bounce off in our own worlds, occassionally coming together to smile and yell WHOOHOO!!! I LOVE THIS SONG!!! before bouncing off again. Which makes the ‘I am with boyfriend’ card harder to play at times.) In the first place, even if I -was- lying, wouldn’t me saying that I have a boyfriend be an apparent hint that I’m not interested in the game anyway? Sometimes I wonder if I really had to show them evidence, no, no, I’m not lying! Please believe me! Then I can’t be bothered because he’s gonna go on to his next target standing next to me anyway.

(3) Today’s lie in the simply awkward category. Where boy just stood there, waiting for me to react, and I just kinda stand there guiltily looking around for some distraction. I can only imagine that Is There A Jack’s Place Here?…Can We Stay In Touch? line worked once for him in the past and he was waiting for it to happen again, because it’s pretty lame.

(4) The plain icky ones are just plain icky. For example, Sweaty French Man coming up to me at various points all night, even though I’ve proclaimed ‘I am with boyfriend’, finally telling me "It’s time for you to experience the French kiss", (collective EUW!), and me pointing up to the DJ booth where Pat was and telling him, no really, that’s my boyfriend, and Pat smiling and waving to say hi. The worst thing is that I have a boyfriend who is secure enough with my love and commitment (as he should be) to be terribly amused by these experiences, leaving me to fend for myself. Bugger!

*he really was a boy. My guess was 18 or 19. Good looking kid too. Unfortunately, I don’t go for boyish boys. I like my men to be M-A-N.

And the title…ohh boy.

"I like having an all seeing eye! I’m like Sauron only 5% less evil.

Har?

Now, generate your own gobbledygook!

Plain English Campaign: The gobbledygook generator

No entry found for Googlesift.

Did you mean Google sift?

So I clicked and it gave me:

No entry found for Google sift.

Did you mean Cockloft?

Oh hahahaha…*snort*…hahahhaha!

That has got to be Kellog’s record for the longest parenthesis ever. This has to end.)

Where was I? Oh yes, social Balkanization. Oh wait, I meant Laces’ post. There is a point to this convolution. As I discussed with my brother the other day, I find it hard to sit down and watch TV anymore. I’m too impatient for it. It’s probably because (a) TV’s horrid these days (Desperate Housewives SUCK! I don’t know why all the hype! I couldn’t stand watching the entire thing); (b) the Internet has shortened my/our attention span so much that We Are All ADDs Now. That’s why Firefox has these great tabs tool (that I’m beginning to use), because it’s no longer enough having 5 different chat windows open, downloading 15 songs on soulseek, downloading and arranging your digital pictures simulteneously…we need 3 browers, each with 10 tabs open all at the same time.

But that was not my original point. This post is turning out to be the mother of all digressions. I blame the Internet! Blame! Blame!

I like this line that Laces wrote:

And that’s probably exactly why said educated people who like street music (i.e. me) find MIA’s music intensely divisive and problematic. Because it is inauthentic in the exact same way that we are. It’s knowledgeable, and steeped in the culture that it imitates, but it manifestly is NOT from that culture.

…because I empathize, although not in the context that he wrote in (he: music lover; me: individual with no individuality, only "steeped in the culture that (I) imitate"…see?)

But my original point was a reference to this link that Laces’ post led me to: Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld:

Manhattan’s downtown is now a Disney-like string of malls, riverside parks and pretty upper-middle-class villages. But there was something else. And as I looked across the throngs on the pavements, I began to see why.

There were little white wires hanging down from their ears, or tucked into pockets, purses or jackets. The eyes were a little vacant. Each was in his or her own musical world, walking to their soundtrack, stars in their own music video, almost oblivious to the world around them. These are the iPod people.

Even without the white wires you can tell who they are. They walk down the street in their own MP3 cocoon, bumping into others, deaf to small social cues, shutting out anyone not in their bubble.

Funny cos it’s true. Not so much in Singapore, but when I was in Berkeley, I started seeing these white wires everywhere. It was a subtle phenomenon. It’s striking because I spent an hour after work strolling towards the bus-stop, then deciding to just walk to the next stop, then the next, then through Chinatown, then decided to just walk all the way home instead…with my iPod blasting the entire time, and it was lovely.

I have since ditched the crabby iPod headphones for my awesome Seinnheiser ones with black wires (because white wires are sooooo two-thousand-and-three-slash-four). But as I walked home from work today through Chinatown, blocking out any traditional dong-dong-chiang music on the last day of the lunar new year for Sasha & Pete Tong’s Essential Mix, I’m fully guilty of "walk(ing) around the world like hermit crabs with (my) isolation surgically attached". But I don’t quite agree with Sullivan’s romanticism:

But what are we missing? That hilarious shard of an overheard conversation that stays with you all day; the child whose chatter on the pavement takes you back to your early memories; birdsong; weather; accents; the laughter of others."

Sometimes, sure, but somewhat mawkish, innit? I guess he’s not heard the annoying blasting roadshows on the streets of Singapore, the incessant yabber on the frigging TVs on the buses I wanna smash with the emergency hammer (why? why? whose dumb-ass idea was it to put TVs in buses?) the aunties’ loud complaints, etc.

With krazykramps that has numbed the lower half of my body and a re-visit of my stuffed-nosed (this bloody flu never flew…giggle…phht), I’ve retreated, world, into a rather peaceful fulfilment of KKSC Activity (5).

And those thoughts that come not by filling your head with selected diversion, but by allowing your mind to wander aimlessly through the regular background noise of human and mechanical life.

I think my mind has wandered aimlessly enough in this post. I blame the flu medication. Blame! Blame!

Even the shape of this post is all Balkanized and shit.

Most people’s feelings about America are complicated. “America”, after all, is shorthand for many other terms: the Bush administration, a Republican-dominated Congress, Hollywood, a source of investment, a place to go to study, a land of economic opportunity, a big regional power, the big world power, a particular policy, the memory of something once done by the United States, a set of political values based on freedom, democracy and economic liberalism, and so on. It is easy to be for some of these and against others, and some may wax or wane in importance according to time, circumstance, propaganda or wishful thinking. So it should be no surprise that some people can hold two apparently contradictory views of America at once. The incandescent third-world demonstrator, shrieking “Down with America!” in one breath and “Can you get me a green card?” in the next, has become a commonplace.

Nice article, with a good summary of different nations’ views on America. It ended off more disparaging than it appears:

Whereas much of the rest of the world once looked to the United States as a beacon, it is argued, non-Americans are now turning away. Democrats in Europe and elsewhere who once thought religiosity, a belief in capital punishment and rank hostility to the United Nations were intermittent or diminishing features of the United States now see them as rising and perhaps permanent. Such feelings have been fortified by Mr Bush’s doctrine of preventive war, Guantánamo, opposition to the world criminal court and a host of other international agreements. One way or another, it is said, people are turning off America, not so much to hate it as to look for other examples to follow—even Europe’s. If true, that could be even more insulting to Americans than the rise in the familiar anti-Americanism of yesteryear.

On Saturday afternoon, I thoroughly enjoyed looking at Botero’s paintings. His paintings have got to be experienced in real life. I had fun standing reeeal close to the paintings and have them loom above me. Pear was one of my favorites, because of that cute teeny li’ll worm…he even put two eyes and a smiley on the worm too (you can see it better in real life)! It was so cute. I giggled more than once just looking at the minute details of his drawings. He’s definitely a fav with me now. Was going to attend Kishore Mahbubani’s lecture with Karen, but had to bail because the heat and fatigue from the night before got to me. I couldn’t see myself sitting through a 2 hour lecture, and didn’t wanna be rude by falling alseep halfway (which I would have) so I left before it even started. Boo.

Watched Million Dollar Baby with my mummy in the evening. Good show all around, great performances by Hillary Swank and Clint Eastwood (who is -beautiful-), but a little draggy and a tad too Hollywood for me. All the formulas were installed perfectly and it will be all that you expect for an Oscar-nominated movie.

Thereafter, we were led like sheeps into the world of gay clubbing with shepard Ken. It was thoroughly fun. Was quite a test for Alec and Michelle’s sexuality, as Ken and Alec were mistaken more than once as a couple, and Michelle spent all night telling us she was in love with this girl they saw performing at a concert. Ken took some great shots, one of me with every men wanting nothing to do with me:

…and one of pole dancing Krazy Karen making gay boys jealous of her pole (she owned it).

As the night progressed, and alcohol metabolized, conversation flowed from Ayn Rand’s philosophy to the concepts of ‘boob phobia’ and ’shoe sizes’ elucidated. Gay clubbbing night ended with Mich, Alec, Karen and I all having a strange craving for bao…so we walked around in the search for bao…chanting like zombies bao bao bao…Karen making the most painful joke, ‘just call us bao-wer rangers’…and then finally, Mich, Alec, and I each got a char siew bao…and Karen bloody gets a lo mai kai!! Granted, they didn’t have the lian-yong bao she wanted but still?? Friggin’ bao deserter.;p

Sunday afternoon was spent discussing Noeline’s wedding. Oh boy…it’s scary all the preparations going into a wedding! My Noeline’s gonna be married…boy oh boy! My baby’s all grown up! Menotti with the RJ classmates and Mr Purvis (the darlings of my otherwise painful RJ experience) was excellent with good food but sloppy service.

I tend not to like to write ‘I did this and this and that’ blog posts that merely lists what I did…but that was pretty much my weekend, and I’m too lazy to think of a more intelligent way to lay it out…apologies. I gotta say tho’, I’m not living out KKSC Activity (5) enough…with all the social activity, I envision burning out and hermitizing myself. In the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying being a solo social being once more.