last words

And I'm off, finally, hopefully not for good.

It's been a crazy past few weeks, what with the research that makes me feel like things haven't changed since last June, except that this time I'm taking a 12 hour flight to London instead of a 5 hour one to Hong Kong.

The last two nights of Tango made me really want to get a break from my cello, to let it rest, to get my bow rehaired (eventually). I don't know how long I'll last without the cello so I might visit random music shops in London and try their cellos there.

Hopefully I'll be able to resist the temptation to get something freakishly expensive.

Terminal three is nice and quiet in the morning. Only 3 out of the 16 computer terminals are occupied. Most people are shopping (so early!). They play cheesy elevator music, as usual. The carpet is still darkly grey, and not faint from being often-trod.

See you when I see you next.

Bumming Part 2: the places and spaces

Coffee Showcase along East Coast Road is great, more for the ambience and the service than the food. The second level has such a nicely high ceiling, suitable for the claustrophobes.

The day I was there I finally walked down Joo Chiat Road, not having done so since I was 14, and now I am slowly connecting roads and bus routes in my mind, because the East is virgin territory, and slightly intimidating, with the old shophouses and the old private houses and new shopping centres and old shopping centres. There is much activity, and riotous invasion of the senses, from the smell of durians in backalleys to exhaust intruding on the smell of baking, or the splash of colours in signs screaming bold letters. Middle aged grey faced men bodies blanketed in tattoos standing in a cloud of their own smoke, enclosed within the imaginary circle an orange cat traced as it padded around their space.

The weird road names: Duku, Onan, Pennefather.

Discovery of HOT buses that venture into East Territory - 16, and the most surprising 33 that comes from Kent Ridge. 48 is the all rounder.

Where to now?

(But there is no longer time, work creeps up, insidiously, just when you think you have all the time in the world, because there is a huge expanse of time to fill when you are living alone, so full of possibility, so liberating, ending tomorrow when my mother comes back.)

It is difficult to feel lonely when you are alone, because there is no expectation for you to feel anything other, that's why the feeling doesn't set in. It is around people whom you have known for ages, and thus expect the level of companionship to be of a certain quality, the conversation to touch on a bit more than what you have been doing for the day/week/month, that you can stumble on that elusive feeling, and wonder what happened along the way.

Bumming Part I: the literature

Books Bought: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rilke.
I haven't read anything of Rilke, although I have heard much and read some quotes of his, so this is general education.


Graphic Novels: Persepolis, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Y the Last Man Book 10. Persepolis! Been wanting to read it but have been lagging as usual, until I bummed into MPH at Novena and bought it on a whim because they had 20% off all graphic novels. Buffy is my staple - it helps with the grieving over the ended television series. I don't know what I'm going to buy next after Y the Last Man. Am considering Fables, given all the hype, but there is trepidation over the projected costs.


Books Read: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson was gorgeous. It's the kind of book that you feel like only reading one page a day just to bask in the moment. In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami was quite the quickie. I suffered cold extremities while reading; he has this way of describing murder scenes that might turn people into anorexics of the purging kind. The accidental by Ali Smith was "Hah?...". I don't understand the brilliant reviews. I get the gist of the book but I don't get the point. And there were too many thoughts stuck together like spaghetti gone cold. The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson was surprisingly unlike her previous books. The futuristic setting places the book sort of in line with A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, only less dystopian. Environmental gospel meets Groundhog Day meets A.I the movie sums this book up.

Books currently reading: A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham. His writing is exquisite, the kind that can form an impenetrable bubble around you when you read in a bus packed with plastic-bag-laden aunties raucous adolescents and bawling babies.

Still waiting to be read: Middlemarch by George Eliot, David Copperfield, The Kite Runner and Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (re read).