Archive for August, 2011
First week.
First week of school has been great so far. Like the two classes I’ve attended (there’s one more that starts on Monday), and made new friends, and all that. I suppose it has all been very normal and all very according-to-plan, which isn’t what I’m usually fond of, but this has worked out in a nice way. I am however slightly intimidated by the semester ahead. Looks like a lot of work. Looks like a lot, a lot of work. Well, better get started then.
I’ve been at work on my short story. It has a deadline because it’s for some competition that I’m submitting to. I don’t know how it’s going because I haven’t written a story like this before. I just hope to finish up with it soon, not that I’m in control, but I imagine it would be nice to get something out of the way. I’m undecided on the title. I’ve got two titles. I’ll probably ask a few kind readers to choose.
I’ve been updating the birthday post [here], and will do so over the weekend as well, I think.
Back to work. Back to work.
d
Merlions!
Happy Merlion Day, all you Singaporeans.
Before Gloomsday 2011
We’re about a month away from this year’s Gloomsday! [Update, 19 Aug: Not anymore!] Here are a few thoughts on it as we march into this most miserable of occasions with our feet heavy and our sighs even heavier. Another Gloomsday, another year older, after all. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
I’ll probably update this post as the days go along. [Update: And I did!]
[Update, 19 Aug] Plenty of minor updates today, including a new note to introduce the presents section (regarding what you can do with it now that we all agree it’s quite useless), a list of stuff I’ve been planning/doing, the posters series, and some other stuff.
Scheming Celebrations
I think I will celebrate this year. I didn’t last year (technically, though my great friends did try to do something out of concern over something else). I don’t think I did the year before. But this year, I shall plonk down some ducats (yes, yes, I’ve been studying) for… something. I’m not sure quite what yet. There’s always The Lion King, if I can find really good company. I could of course just catch any other show, but the truth is there aren’t that many shows on Gloomsday plus-minus one. The company’s also an issue, but I suspect that it will be for all of the celebration possibilities.
There’s also the prospect of really good food. I’m in the mood for something European or something Chinese. Of course, all of this, being a month away, isn’t likely to stay quite as constant come the day itself, but it’s probably as safe a bet as we’ll get as far as plans can go.
Another possibility is that of an activity of some sort. Like going to a museum and having a picnic! However, no one would take me seriously if I invited them to a museum for Gloomsday, and very few people here are interested in picnics. In that case, nothing quite strikes me as being great celebratory (or gloomy) material, so this won’t do until I get a better idea.
But whatever it is, I think having a bit of spending power will be good in preparation for this. I haven’t actually deliberately celebrated in some two, three, maybe four or five years. And if I’m going to do it, I’d better do it proper. Importantly, it’s never about what’s being spent and what’s being given. I just want it to be about people.
The Birthday Present Paradox
[Update, 19 Aug] Actually, now that I’ve shown how paradoxical it is to try to fetch me a present in this sort of knowing manner, this section is useless. Let’s turn it into a section for present suggestions for other people. [/Update]
I generally don’t ask for presents. The truth is, I don’t really worry or care about the idea of getting presents. The best policy for most people, actually, is not to give me anything at all. I find that most of the time, it just leads to awkward situations. But people sometimes insist (very violently), and people often ask questions (what should I get for you and all that), and just in case you feel extremely charitable, here are some considerations that will save us both embarrassment. They will probably show you why presents are a bad idea and help you figure out some form of recourse. My most common advice to anyone who asks is to donate. There are a few causes I’m partial to, so you should donate to Child’s Play, UNICEF, or the WWF if you are thus inclined. It’s really just the way I like my presents.
See, the first thing I’ll tell you is: Don’t get me books unless you are very sure what you’re doing. My room contains some 400 books and I’m not that keen on adding to it carelessly. Also, my queue is tremendous. I still have books from two Gloomsdays ago. That’s not a good sign at all.
That said, there are books that you can consider, including:
- The Sylph Editions Cahiers
- The new Julio Cortázar
- The letters of Sammy Beckett
- [Update] And if you’re super rich: this.
- [Double update] And if not, this should do too.
And if you love me very, very much (how likely is that?) and want to express it through books, your task will be to locate a book I read very long ago but have since failed to locate again. I want to add it to my library, and also re-read it several times. That book is Julio Cortázar’s The Winners.
But there’s a problem here, see?
Here lies the birthday paradox. I like for people to think up something on their own and let their thoughtfulness and the surprise win me over. That’s the point of a present. But it’s nearly impossible because in the things I love, I would be picky, and in the things I don’t love, well, you know. And now that I’ve told you what books I could possibly want, I don’t want you to give them to me any longer. Isn’t it all just very clever?
Furthermore, don’t buy me soft toys unless you happen to be the girl I am interested in (and you’re probably not), at which point you can probably buy me anything as long as it doesn’t kill me. Don’t buy me anything music-related because I probably already have it if I wanted it. Don’t bother with the things on my other post because those things are expensive and in general I would feel bad to receive them. I also want to buy them for myself to feel like I fulfilled some kind of wish. There are generic possibilities. Tickets to a show are good because it means spending time with people, provided you can find a good one. I like theatre, dance, and music. Food is also good because we can share. I like things like cakes and pies and tarts. With fruit or chocolate. Or both. Generic gifts are easy on you, easy for me, and actually have the potential to offer more than what they tend to stand for literally. (I.e. going to a show provides the opportunity to spend time together; food is one of the most social of activities.) That would be wonderful. You can of course surprise me with a really thoughtful gift, and that would be great, but I should say that surprises don’t always work out the way you and I want to imagine that they would.
But really, the best immediate present you can give me is company. Like I said, I’m not big on the idea of receiving presents. It’s just too rare that I receive something I will remember and love for the rest of my life, and in general too much trouble for others, I think. Well, if you’re confident, please take the plunge.
[Update, 19 Aug] Meanwhile, apart from those books, another great suggestion as a present you can get for someone you love is a print from The Working Proof, which contributes 15% off of every sale to organisations such as Doctors Without Borders. [/Update]
Reading Habits
Generally, when it comes to this time of the year, my most basic indulgence is to read a book I really want to read. You know, the book that you’ve put aside all year because you want to save it for a special day. (Okay, I may be the only person who does that.) I don’t know what to read this year! I do have plenty of excellent books that I am eager to complete, but let’s just call it an embarrassment of riches. I have a Saramago, a Peixoto, some Camus, an Abe, and a Vila-Matas among a crowd of other literature, for example, and it’s hard enough choosing from these few as it is: I’m not about to take my actual full queue into consideration. Right now, the Vila-Matas (Never Any End to Paris) seems most likely. But things could change in three weeks! Hard to tell, these things.
Pre-Thoughts
Last year, I was ready for adventure. It did turn out to be a year of some adventure, for which I’m very happy. Many things changed. This year, like it or not, adventure has come looking for me. A new and very different school term begins, people are “moving onto the next phase of life” (oh come on, it really is only one phase and that is life with all of its constant change), so I’m not actually in search of adventure. I do feel a little old and a little strange. I think I used to think–being quite the fatal sort of bloke, as you might know–that 25 would be a great age to live to. Now I think 40 is a good age to live to. We’ll see. More thoughts to come.
Said more thoughts: Today (9 Aug going into 10 Aug) I updated this in bits, mostly pointing out the crucial paradox of the birthday present that struck me as the main reason I feel strange about birthday presents after a conversation. (Thanks, Chrissy!) I hope this saves a lot of money for a lot of people. I also realise that I feel really good about Gloomsday this year (thus the self-initiated celebrations) for reasons I can’t really pinpoint. I think it has a lot to do with the events of the past three years leading to a profound inability to celebrate things and to have fun. I also realise it may have to do with the feeling that I owe the people who have stuck with me in those same years a lot. Maybe I see it as a bit of “giving back”. Or, to continue this pretend-high brow psychoanalysis, it might also have to do with the removal of importance from one relationship and the reinvestment of importance into all of those that I’ve despite my best efforts overlooked these years. Whatever it is, I think there hasn’t been a Gloomsday like this for a long while, and I’m going to give every effort to make sure that these people are not under-rewarded (no, it’s not really the word I was looking for, but I was about to say “under-compensated”, which sounds worse) and overlooked anymore. It’s not a Gloomsday about me, despite all logic and sense. It’s a Gloomsday about all you brilliant people out there.
Doing Stuff
[Update, 19 Aug] Well, that’s a sort of unfair way of labelling it, since this section was started on 19 Aug. Since I last wrote, I’ve started to try to arrange meetings with about four or five different groups of people. I’ve also made a couple of contests for people to participate in. I have a mind to go out and get some gifts for my classmates because I’m having class on the night of my birthday. And, yeah, that’s how it’s been going. I’m not sure how successful this will be (we’re only a couple of weeks away!), but let’s keep our fingers crossed.
I also designed a set of posters for fun. They’re below. Exercises in amateur design.
d
Next week.
School begins next week. We battle anew.
It was a sobering feeling logging into IVLE again today. Those months sure went by quickly.
The prospect of returning to school is more than a little intimidating, mostly because it’s a whole new experience for me. I do sometimes imagine myself dying in a blaze of metaphorical fire, which is a more positive thought than it may at first seem. I mean, hey, better that than dying like a cigarette being stubbed out, right?
Brand new experience, brand new people, brand new subject matter (well, in a sense), brand new timings, brand new places, brand new brand new’s.
It doesn’t help that many of the uncertain things that I had to contend with at the start of the summer break are still uncertain. And more things have since cropped up, things that I’m not exactly at liberty to write about publicly, I think. (Well, it’s nothing serious, just slightly personal.)
I tried to take fewer classes so as to help with the adjustment to the new environment and all, but I do still get the feeling I’ll have a lot to do. Not to mention that I hope I manage all right.
Meanwhile, if you’re interested, there’s a Borders clearance sale at Expo this Friday through the weekend. I suppose it might be their very last one with the way things are going. I might drop by just to say farewell. I don’t have the money nor the space for too many new books.
(The library’s somewhere in the vicinity of 400 books, and my room’s not all that big.)
d
Groovy
Recently, I’ve become quite interested in the act of performance. I’ve been watching plenty of concert videos (some new and some old favourites) and a common thread running through them is that the performances allow me to understand the music better. When artists make a direct connection with their art and that connection manifests physically via performance, it also helps you to understand their work in a broader way. I often wonder if this has implications for writing. It’s certainly not a straightforward one, but I figure that the abstract something that I feel here will translate in some way to my own work.
I think I’m getting back into the groove of writing again as well. Sure, I don’t have much to show for it, but I do have a title and a title’s important. I’m working on a short story with a deadline. I only added three or four hundred words (to the existing two hundred) over the past couple of days, but I have that title and it makes me think that I have my direction as well. I know where I’m going with this and that’s been missing for the very lengthy amount of time that this story has been gestating. With some luck, it’ll show up over the next couple of weeks. I need to send it in soon.
My textbooks arrived earlier today. I’m going to get started. School begins next week and I better get to work. I’m going to begin with Hamlet.
I have a dental appointment tomorrow. I uhhh let’s just say I strongly dislike dental appointments. I don’t have an outright fear of them, but I really dislike them. I think almost half of it is what you always hear of: the sensation of almost-pain, the machinery, the sounds, the smell of the gloves, et cetera. The other almost-half is the fear of letting someone down, because anything that happens to your teeth is your fault. Guilt complex. I have that. There are other minor contributing factors as well.
Also, it is the end of one July and the beginning of another (Lunar). It’s also the beginning of August. Flip your calendars!
d
