Points of order.

Hello,

I came back from Malaysia at the beginning of the week.

School is basically officially over, with my FYP poster presentation done, all the loose ends tied up, and having tried my commencement gown on yesterday. I’ve yet to indicate my attendance and place an order for my gown though, so I better get to it. The poster presentation went by fine. The graduation night dinner was okay too, and I suppose I managed to settle a few things that I didn’t think I would be able to.

I’ve been busy clearing up admin matters and getting the house in order. Have also been meeting many people and enjoying myself in doses. I am looking to get back to work very soon. There actually are deadlines I have to meet so I better get to it. I think my mood is swinging very gradually in the right direction so with some luck I’ll be back at it real soon.

I’ve been doing a lot of revisiting lately. I rewatched my favourite Audrey Hepburn movie, Charade, last night in the new Criterion edition. I reread Vila-Matas’s Bartleby & Co. and have been rereading Gao Xingjian’s 《灵山》. I’ve also been listening to some of my favourite music.

I got my place to do an MA in Literary Studies. I’ve yet to officially accept it.

My copy of Radiohead’s The King of Limbs arrived in the mail and I have to say that the packaging is quite lovely and thoughtful.

My to-do list is immense. I’ve not seen such a massive to-do list since I last had… well, lots of things to do. But seriously, I put it down on my whiteboard and even as I’m cancelling things, new things keep surfacing. I don’t think this summer break is going to get any easier.

I got a new keyboard and mouse. I love my new keyboard and mouse. And mousepad.

Okay, I think I’ll get back to work now with the promise that I’ll be back blogging again with more frequency.

Of course, these promises… they are guilt-generating machines.

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Who Killed Lemmy Caution?

Oh hello. Today I want to mention something about my new blog. [Link]

It’s called, as you can probably see, “Who Killed Lemmy Caution?”, taking its name of course from the great character played by Eddie Constantine. I love that film.

It’s about three weeks old right now. It’s going pretty okay, I suppose. It is an arts and culture blog in which I will be pointing out some of the things that interest me, ranging from literature and music to photography and philosophy. Of course, I reckon I won’t be able to help a Singaporean slant on things, which is great, I guess, because I don’t think I know too many Singaporean arts and culture blogs.

You will realise that it doesn’t look all that impressive now. No, this isn’t the final version of it. It’s basically a testbed where I try to figure how best things will work and also what I want or do not want to include in the future. It’s a nice way of starting off, I suppose. In the foreseeable future, I want to be doing more features and writing for the site (it is a bit bare now), and will work towards some sense of a unique identity. I’m thinking of having a featured item every month, whether it be a book, a play, a record, or a television series. Working that out (in my head for now) is going to be my main concern until March.

I kind of like where it’s going. I don’t know how successful it will be, or even how successful I will be at keeping up with it, but there it goes. I realise also that it is eating into my blogging time for this place, but I think of them as complementary, so I’m blogging as much as I used to be again, in a sense.

All right, that’s all I’ve got for now. Please support it. Here is the link again: [Link].

Currently, you can findsome mentions of the new Radiohead album, The King of Limbs, on the site, which also happens to be a great way to end any post, so here it is:

[via YouTube]

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Revision x Jukebox

It’s Not Working

Revision is going great. In fact, this is probably my best revision period ever. I’m studying more and further ahead of time than ever. And yet, paradoxically, it is also not working! I’m quite unable to explain this unusual phenomenon, but I will just chalk it down as something I’ll have to deal with quickly. I’m sure if I keep at it, it’ll sort itself out eventually.

My papers are on the 21st, 25th, then the 2nd and the 4th. Almost in increasing order of difficulty. Well, maybe you could swap the one on the 2nd and the one on the 4th around, but it’s pretty close.

Jukebox

I’ve been listening to:

• Kid A. Over the years, I’ve grown to like this more than OK Computer. I suppose it’s a change in sensibilities and aesthetic values. Kid A just feels more refined and immediate to me, though both are exceptional pieces of work.
• In Rainbows.
• Some Duane Allman. Random stuff from all around. Gone too soon, as they said, but every time I listen to his work I find myself quite astounded at the level to which he takes things. He has no brakes. He just jams the gas and creates things quite extraordinary. There are many reasons he’s my favourite guitarist, and sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of them.
• Selected bits of The White Album. I find myself liking songs that I didn’t used to like. Rocky Raccoon, for example. Also, yesterday, the visceral impact of Yer Blues punched me in the face. And here is where I throw in a superlative in the lame hope of impressing it upon you.
• Some Dylan and some Springsteen. The notable tracks are the extremely vicious Hurricane and the very cinematic Thunder Road.
• Cream. Lots of Cream. It had been a while since I last dived into the Cream catalogue, and this recent endeavour has left me quite surprised at the tremendous breadth and range of material covered by the band. I think when I was younger it was always easier to be impressed by the White Rooms and Sunshine Of Your Loves, to the point that I’d missed everything else.

Not being very good at staying awake, this playlist has been working so far for me in this revision period, though I imagine I’ll have to swap things around very soon and remove the stuff I’m more acquainted with so I can replace them with less comfortably familiar material.

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It’s a link rojak day.

Words Live

Radiohead play These Are My Twisted Words live for the first time.

Croquettes

How to make your own Domo croquettes. [via AnnaTheRed's bento factory]

Tetris

It appears that Tetris is good for your brain. [via PhysOrg] It makes parts of your brain grow anyway.

New Leicas

New Leicas are coming, with an announcement on 09.09.09.

Probably the M9? (09.09.09?)

Being exceptionally poverty-stricken, I imagine that it’ll be nothing I can afford. However, it’s fair to say that we all need to dream a little now and then.

Test

Off to grab dinner, then to do a little revision for my test. Brr. It appears that I will be some folks with some Physics on Thursday; I’d better go prepared in case I embarrass myself. Hopefully everything will sort itself out along the weekend because there’s really a lot of stuff to be worrying about this week.

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These Are My Twisted Words

New Music

Radiohead have yet another new song, this one called These Are My Twisted Words. [via dead air space] They have put it up for free here.

Shopping

Yesterday, I made a couple of small purchases, including Distant Star by Bolaño.I now have three Bolaño books in my book queue (Distant Star, Last Evenings On Earth and The Romantic Dogs).

Long Weekend Too Short

So my weekend starts here on this Friday morning, but I have plenty of things to sort out over the weekend, so I’ve a feeling it’ll all go by too quickly. Primarily, I want to figure out the Thermodynamics assignment, start on my lab report, and sort out the things for a surgeon consultation. It’s not actually a lot of work, but they’re tricky and potentially take a lot of time. Besides, there are other commitments that I’ve got to attend to as well.

The NLB Sale

The NLB is having a book sale over the weekend. The details are:

Date: Saturday, 22 Aug 2009 to Sunday, 23 Aug 2009
Time: 9.30am – 8pm
Venue: Singapore Expo Hall 6A
Free Admission

Price of books:
Books in all four official languages will be on sale.

* English and Chinese books will cost $2 per copy;
* Malay and Tamil books will cost $1 per copy;
* English and Chinese magazines will cost $5 for a pack of 10 issues; and
* Malay and Tamil magazines will cost $5 for a pack of 20 issues.

Limit of purchase:
Each customer can buy up to a maximum of 60 items (a pack of 10 or 20 issues of magazines is considered as one item).

[via National Library Board Singapore] (Thanks, Jolie!)

I want to go, but I have things to do and it’s so far away.

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Shelf Space

It’s Crowded In Here

I got my new bookshelf about a year ago, as I remember. It was after the bulk of the renovations as I recall, and that places it just after the Japan trip, so I think a year is just about right. I actually have two bigger bookshelves downstairs, filled generously and indiscriminately with all manner of books. When the new shelf came, I thought, I’m going to be more careful this time and select the ones that I want in my personal library for this one. It was this neat little ambition, you see, to have this nice and cosy shelf, tidily arranged, richly filled and carefully personalised, as the library I would call my own. The one I would depend on, dive into, feel proud of. I can’t say for certain, but I suppose it’s the sort of feeling that people get when they collect, uh, taxidermy, or guitars, or shoes.

This worked very well. I set up sections in my shelf, with the top tier being all the prose, poetry and plays, followed by academic literary texts, then science books, then comic books. In the lower compartments, I had a photography section, a children’s literature section, humour, popular culture and random other stuff. Along the way, I added a small postcard section, plenty of personal memorabilia, bookmarks, notebooks, origami and some other little things.

For a year, I lived happily with my library. It’s great to have it right beside where I work, and it’s a wonderful feeling to just randomly open the doors and dive in. But this isn’t about the library, no. This is about the shelf.

You see, I’m a little short of space. I didn’t imagine that it would happen so soon, but it’s all getting a little tight, and I actually have some books on loan to others already. Apart from that, one or two books are so long that they actually can’t sit inside normally, and some are so tiny that they’re hard to find. But the main problem still is that I’m a little short of space. Didn’t think it would happen so soon. I suppose this means I need a second shelf, which can be arranged for, but I definitely have no space for a third, so I guess I’m going to have to start thinking about what happens then right after we settle a second one.

Oh New Album

The lovely and talented Alison Sudol/A Fine Frenzy has a new album coming up. It’s called Bomb In A Birdcage. [via Wikipedia] I very much enjoyed her first album, so I’ll be sure to check this out.

Harry Patch + Radiohead

“Recently the last remaining UK veteran of the 1st world war Harry Patch died at the age of 111.”

If you don’t know already, Radiohead released a song in memory of Harry Patch called Harry Patch (In Memory Of). [via DEAD AIR SPACE] It’s available for download here, for a pound.

Summertime

J.M. Coetzee reads for 26 minutes from his new book Summertime in this podcast. [BOOK SA, via The Elegant Variation]

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The Boney King Of Nowhere

Impatience

As you know I’ve been busy doing nothing. Well, almost nothing. I’ve caught up on some television programmes and finished up my first round of Valkyria Chronicles. But otherwise, I’ve mostly been resisting the urges to write some short piece that I’ll throw away soon enough, edit Bukit Merah, make any commitments on the next project, and think about more submissions (the last of which I admit are more superstitious than anything).

That’s not to say that I’ve not had any new ideas. Plenty, in fact. An embarrassment of riches, I think is the fancy sort of term they use for a situation like this. It’s remarkably difficult to tell myself to wait and see, because when they start appearing, they just seem to be leaping around, gesticulating frantically, trying to get you to dive into that new project. My experience with my ideas is that most of them turn out to be bad, so I’m not supposed to believe them initially. The ones that survive a gruesome natural selection-type process tend to be the better ones, so the only thing I can do, really, is wait.

But it’s difficult.

Still, it’s not that I have anything even whole to work with. A couple of days ago, I said something about everything failing to come together. It’s still not any closer to that, so I’m pretty sure that if I dive in now it’ll be a total mess. I think the only thing I can do in the meantime is to keep jotting away on my notebook and hope that it sorts itself out eventually. It always does.

Postcard Books

These books look very interesting. [via The Book Bench] I’ll probably keep them on some shopping list somewhere.

There There

I went to watch the video of Radiohead’s There There. (The Boney King Of Nowhere.) yesterday for some reason. [via YouTube]

One of my favourite Radiohead songs, so it’s a little surprising (to me, at least) that I’d never seen the video before. Strangely, it’s quite similar to how I’ve always pictured it, except, instead of an animated Thom Yorke, it’s always been a little girl in a pretty frock running around in a forest full of shadows and living trees and the like. Kind of Alice-like I suppose, but with something of a twist. The big Wicked Witch of the West-type figure, of course, being the Boney King of Nowhere.

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Tracklist

Sing, Sing, Sing

Here is a list of stuff that’s been hogging my Songbird lately:

• Radiohead: Mostly Hail To The Thief. for some reason, although I’ve also returned to In Rainbows and the live album I Might Be Wrong.
• Doctor Who OSTs: I started with a few favourites, like the theme song and All The Strange, Strange Creatures. I then took a liking for Doomsday. But most recently it’s been about the songs with lyrics, especially Love Don’t Roam performed by Neil Hannon and The Stowaway performed by Yamit Mamo. I’ve also grown to really like Voyage Of The Damned Suite. I think it all somehow reminds me of when I was in the school band.
• The Decemberists: In anticipation of The Hazards Of Love, I’ve been listening to excerpts from The Crane Wife and Picaresque. Colin Meloy’s live album has also been a regular feature. We’re about a month away, and I really can’t wai.
• You Only Live Once: The song by the Strokes. Rather frequently, too. For some reason, it gets me going in the mornings.
• And…: Well, the rest has mostly been mood-dependent, though it’s included Southern All-Stars, Muse, The Flaming Lips, Gil Shaham, Thelonious Monk and Lykke Li.

Week Ahead

The week ahead is my recess week, though I suppose that gives the impression that it’s meant for my annual holiday. Well, it’s not. It’s the time when I’m meant to be catching up on work and worrying about tests. Well, it’s less than ten days so I suppose it will all pass very quickly.

Any Better?

Not really. Still not sleeping. Still rather incredibly sad every now and then. But I think the dust is settling and it’s not like anything else has been messed up because of this anyway. I’ll be back, I think, or maybe I already am, albeit somewhat changed. But you know that old saying about things changing and nothing perishing.

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Monday Blues

System Maintenance

It’s been a rough week, but it’s gradually clearing my system. Things are kind of falling back into place, though in the wake of events they all seem to be a little distorted, as if the world has changed just that tiny little bit.

Things are slowly getting back on track. Been working on papers and some writing. Been studying. Been watching TV. Been imagining things. Been dreaming. Been drinking ginseng tea. There are a few things that haven’t been going so great. Haven’t been sleeping, for instance. Haven’t been talking to many people. (Just about three in fact.)

Though at the same time, I’ve also been enjoying writing in a way I never quite have before. Although to say that it has to do with this is a little untrue, but to say that it has nothing to do with this is also rather naive. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. Doesn’t really matter.

But really, apart from the lack of sleep and the decision to avoid talking to most people, I don’t think there’s too drastic a symptom.

And Now A List Of Random Things

Last week before the reading week. Goodness, we’re already halfway through the semester.

I’m going through Waiting For Godot next.

No, still not querying, but slightly more optimistic on Bukit Merah.

Two Links

AmpLive is the producer of hip-hop group Zion-I, and he did remixes of songs from Radiohead’s In Rainbows (dubbed RainyDayz Remixes) some time back, but received a cease and desist. Ever since then, the project has received the approval of Radiohead, and you can find download it for free if you’re interested. [via Josh Spear, actual link] I’m not much of a hip-hop person, but I did quite like a few of the remixes, especially the version of 15 Step.

Doctor Who Valentine’s cards. [via io9, actual link via Enjoying Life's Journey]

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The Hazards Of Love

And Stolen Sweethearts

Well, so I suppose heart broken and plans gone awry, that’ll be the end of Valentine’s this year for me. The first real downer in a year so far without downers. In the fallout of that mess, which was less a mess than a bloodless stab in the chest, but I suppose it’ll all work out in the end, as all things do.

I’m writing this the night before, of course, so I should say that I won’t be getting any sleep tonight. It might not get easier tomorrow.

In the meantime, as is my usual habit, I expect to be stuffing myself full of work in the forthcoming days. It’ll also be a season of mood swings, a process of normalisation until I get back on track. It’s just like this.

So, on the itinerary, I’ve got Beckett lined up after the Raymond Carver I’m reading now. Some projects to do. Some writing to do. You know. All of this sort of stuff. You know. Whatever it takes to take your mind off of it.

In the end, heartbreaks aren’t bad things. They’re just uncomfortable. But you know, where would we all be without heartbreaks?

In their most recent news entry, the Decemberists describe their upcoming album in this way:

“The Hazards of Love and deals heavily with the potential pitfalls of romance”

I think that’s all rather appropriate now.

15 Step

Radiohead, or at least two members of Radiohead, performed 15 Step at the Grammys.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IMiiJRwhS0]

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