I realised something about my life in education.

If there were only 3 things I remember from poly it's this:

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Teachers are merciless
Friends are important

If there are 3 things from uni, it's this:
Bullshitting is mandatory 
Self-indulgence is ok
Friends are important

My last post was last year.
Yes, it's been a long time made longer by the fact that it's my final semester in ADM. Also, blogger has made resizing photos really difficult so I have to blah blah blah and tumblr is sucking all my waking hours blah blah excuses excuses.
Bottomline, you'd probably see me more on tumblr than anywhere else. And if you do read any future blogger post, it'll probably have crap photos or none at all (like this one).

After working for a spell at IE S'pore, I got my money and blew it all on books.
I suddenly have a great obession with books.
Big fat beautiful hardcover books that smell like heaven and read like a dream.
Picture books too. Big floppy picture books that stain your fingers with the colour bleeding from its pages. And poetry books. When the hell did I ever start liking poetry books anyway? I used to hate them with a vengence - now I'm collecting them like a deranged squirrel hoarding her literary walnuts.
Nevermind that I probably won't have the cabinet space to fit in all these books. Who needs a cabinet for books anyway? I pile them up reverently on the floor, at the foot of my bed so I have instant access to them anytime any day and in any lazy sleeping position. Books are democratic. I shouldn't have to walk up to some prissy cabinet and and fumble a book out only to have to ease it into its tight corner back again. Communist cabinet!!

Yeah, and this is how I end my first post of this new year.

In general, Western RPGs are different from JRPGs in several areas. They are less shiny, have less robots & are more.... hairy.
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is no different - AND it is awesome! I'm no connoisseur of Western RPGs (having only played top-down stuff like Baldur's Gate & Champions of Norrath) but Skyrim is really addicting & I'm playing it to the neglect of homework & FYP research. It's a good thing I only get to play it for short 2 hour sessions before my motion sickness kicks in and I crawl to the bathroom to dry retch. I cannot for the life of me endure a 1st-person screen. But I loath to switch my game to 3rd-person view because archery & combat becomes more difficult this way.

Oh~ 1st world problems.

I've never suffered so much while playing a game. Resi 4 was the last game that gave me a throbbing headache - Skyrim is worse. I believe this is how drug addicts feel; taking enormous pleasure from their own misery.

But here are some shots from the game.

Beautiful right? I don't think I've ever seen more realistic foliage in any other RPG. Too bad I don't experience this pixel perfect eye-candy, because I'm playing on a macbook with an ancient XP installed on it; so even with the texture setting cranked all the way to nothing, my frame rate still barely coughs along. Ho hum.

Well, I'm off to harvesting everything in sight.

I love Hasisi Park's photography.

Crazy, mundane, solemn, vulgar yet curiously heart-warming & visually arresting in all its strange simplicity.

Here

This is Punggol, the last frontier of Singapore.

I remember 4 years ago when I went there for a photoshoot, the land was a barren nothingness punctuated with construction cranes. Now, POOF! It’s all rows & rows of carefully grown buildings angled to catch the sun.

Taking bus 84 will bring you down a lonesome road of jungles galore until you reach the end of it & a gleaming new Punggol Promenade.

Obligatory shot of the jetty & Malaysia, if you squint a bit.

 

Why am I here? To look at rocks, obviously.

 

Actually, remember some years ago when fishermen in Punggol accidentally dug up skeletons in the beach? Yes, Punggol beach, in all its isolated romanticism, is the site of brutal executions by the Japanese in World War II.

Below is a photo of Punggol beach from the Singapore Paranormal Investigator’s site. (Estimated from 2004)

It is said that these very carefully laid out, schematic tiers of boulders along the far western side of the beach is a shrewdly calculated move from the government to prevent anymore pesky fishermen digging up bones from the past.

Alright, so I was walking forever & ever trying to find this exact stone tiers. I basically walked the entire length from jetty to the boating house at the western end almost 2km away! (You must be thinking, 2 clicks? Pffft~ that’s nothing) But I was walking in my extremely uncomfortable rain boots, clipboard in one hand, camera in another – looking like a complete fool who’d lost her way – which is exactly what it is. And then I had to walk BACK!

I found the rocks eventually. They were way back in the beginning, just at the bend before the trek went off to the Land of Oz. And they looked very different.

Can you see the stone tiers below the grass & tree? Yes, they’ve built a jogging track over it, well done!

Here ends my little adventure to Punggol Promenade.

Hong Kong is Singapore on steroids.

Perhaps it is unfair to do such a comparison – each is unique in its own quirky way although the crushing humidity, human squeeze and love for shopping & eating are evident in both.

Except in HK, everything goes into overdrive. The buildings are built from entire mountains with gigantic neon signs in case you are blind. All available surfaces are caked with advertisements in a riot of colours & blinking LEDs that your brain periodically shuts down from sensory overload.

But that’s good. That’s Hong Kong.

Plus they make some of the best tasting Swiss chicken this side of Asia.

The best Swiss chicken wings I’ve ever had. This dish, incidentally, has absolutely nothing to do with the European country famed for watches & a font called Helvetica.

Also, a soufflé the size of Russia.

This is Tim Ho Wan, the cheapest one-star Michelin restaurant IN THE WORLD. But the privilege of queuing 3 hours was something to be experienced for another time. We went to their 2^nd outlet in a mall (much less crowded) & tried their legendary Char siew bao.

These are the most precious baos you’ll ever eat. Although I’m certain queuing forever for the originals sure adds to the flavour.

HKers queue for their early morning newspapers.

The line snakes around the building & off the ends of the earth.

A live chicken market just like the old days in Singapore!

An exhibition for the Chinese eye society in a mall. There is a whole plantation of these little eye dolls that stretches as far as the eye can see.

Millions of them! An invasion of the eye monsters!

We visited our relatives’ tomb on a Monday.

The columbarium is breathtakingly lavish. And spacious. Like some Qing dynasty mansion. Spacious, you say!? Yes, here we are, squashed like sardines in a room no bigger than a flowerpot and we look enviously at the residence of the dead. (I shall post my trip to Bukit Brown cemetery when I have the time. Or maybe not, we shall see).

Okay, Macau now.

I don’t have pictures from Macau because I only stayed there for 6 hours, thanks to some admirable planning on my father’s part who was certain of our capability to magically teleport across land.

But here is a blurry photo of the Venetian for your enjoyment. Taken when we were dashing from one hotel to the next in bid to run through as many hotels as humanly possible.

I used to have severely conflicted feelings about what it means to be Singaporean. Here we are, a tiny island in a curious situation. We have a majority Chinese population within a marginally Confucius society (& if Wikipedia is to be believed – part of the Sino sphere) but have adopted many Western systems (even though we’re still constantly vilified in their media for being draconian) but is geographically & historically part of Nusantara (even though we’re constantly trying to be the ‘regional other’). Certainly, such a fragmented cultural identity will give anyone a bad bout of schizophrenia – yet it is also what makes Singapore unique in its odd way. The ambiguity of our identity is our identity.

Or so I think.

I’m reading this book by Lily Rahim about Singapore in the Malay world & it brings up a very important point: The reason why it’s so hard to create a solid Singapore identity is because we have, as a nation, rejected our regional identity.

I haven’t finished reading it, but one thing Rahim states that I remember Sabapathy also mentioned was that Singapore is one of the few abnormal countries that celebrate our colonial history & has relegated our pre-colonial history to the status of myth.

Now that is very very tragic.