indo'stine

twist of vate.

2010-09-06T15:20:00.012+08:00

So I know that we're anxiously awaiting the New Apartment post, but not all of our furniture has arrived yet, and so I'm holding off to make the experience more...authentic? Suffice it to say, for now, that we are moved in -- all three of us -- that's me, D & E for those playing the home game -- and that life is progressing apace. Classes start tomorrow, and so it's all down hill (and like into the volcano...) from here.

Since I can't give you a photo-tour just yet, I thought, well -- they like reading about my attempts at putting things together, and -- it just so happens! -- I put something together the other day, and so I thought I'd tell y'all about it. That way, there are kind of sneak-peak pictures of my new bedroom, but the rest remains as yet a mystery.

In any event, I put together a lamp.

An Ikea lamp (that song never gets old), of course, complete with stupid instructions that don't make any sense, and the Naked Guy there with his allen wrench -- and, of course, because I am unapologetically myself, I bought a weird lamp. Not just a lamp lamp. I have taken to calling it the Bubble Lamp, or the Holy Orb, or the Looks Like a Cocktail Onion Lamp (that last one needs work) -- so of course it's even more complicated than a regular old garden variety lamp would've been. And being from Ikea, it has a proper name: Vate. I suppose we should start at the beginning.

This is what the box said it should look like, more or less, and here is the dangerous electric-type piece and, of course, the eensy weensy allen wrench, adorable.

Here are the rest of the pieces.

Do they look like they make sense? No, I thought not. From here, of course, we move to the floor, because these things require a certain amount of acrobatics (I mean, they do for me, I dunno about the rest of you. But if I can't explode all over the floor with a box of Ikea parts, then nothing will ever get put together.), and the lamp is rather...not large, per se, but long, I suppose, and so here's a sneak peak of my pretty marble floor, along with Vate's first steps toward Lampdom.

Looks more or less like a keyhole. Or the shape of one. No idea what you would need a keyhole that big for, but you never know. The Key of Life. The Key TO Life? Nope, just a lamp.

So the next step was figuring out a way to get the circular bottom bit attached to the floor bit...before it falls over, which it does inevitably, being a circle bit, and physics and gravity and such. I resorted to pinning it upright with my legs, and so now y'all get a good shot of my luscious thighs...clenched to this stupid piece of Ikea art deco tomfoolery.

I would like to note that I would not have to go through this bullshit (over and over again) if Singapore did not have a bizarre fixation with fluorescent light. There is a perfectly usable light built into my ceiling, but it pours down the most horrific, white, awful light that you have ever seen, and frankly I am a creature meant to live in soft glows and pooling shadows. So I persevere.

At last, Vate was on its feet!

What you see beyond Vate's tentative first attempt at standing are the doors to the corridor beyond my bedroom (on the left) and to my bathroom (on the right), and of course my desk chair which follows me everywhere.

Next, I got the shade to look right, but I was too busy wrestling it into submission to take any pictures of the process. It happened very fast. Not without some cursing. A reenactment, perhaps?

"How does this fucking work?"

Shade says nothing.

"Fucking -- attach, you piece of--"

Shade says nothing, smugly.

"--Be orb-like! Dammit!"

Shade submits. Christine moves on to the more complicated part. Where the hell does the light bulb go?

Hm, no. Perhaps not edible.

HOW MANY 'STINES DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW IN A GODDAMNED LIGHT BULB!?

Just one!

I figured it out shortly after my brain started oozing out of my ear. Didn't take pictures of that either.

And behold! Vate glows!

More to come as our furniture arrives.

Light on, people.

around the world again.

2010-08-14T13:13:00.007+08:00

Yeah, don't get excited.

Classes start again in early September, and so expect me to rapidly vanish once more -- BUT -- I'm here for now. And so I thought I'd say a few things about the summer and the upcoming year (my LAST one) at Tisch Asia.

There is like no way to condense my whole summer into several pithy paragraphs and a few frightening pictures...but I'm gonna try. Because I don't believe in giving up until you've had like a limb torn off (sorry Jenny, I tried to be limb-unspecific, if that helps) or something. Like at that point, okay, throw the towel in, but before then? Never give up, never surrender!

(a cookie to whoever gets that reference first.)

So first of all, I have no idea what's up with this template. The picture on my original template has disappeared into the ether of the internet (where technoinfo goes to die...) and so I kind of scrambled to find something to replace it. This is...charming, kind of? I don't know. If anyone finds anything that appears to better suit this blog (and I don't mean like a template about getting caned people, seriously, I know you all too well), feel free to shoot it my way. Until then, I guess we're stuck with stars and vines and...that bird. I shall name him Flint. Flint's not Asian or anything, but maybe he wants to be.

Anyway, the summer. God. Okay, so I did an internship over the summer with World Film in New York City, but I was living at my parents' house in Philadelphia. So this meant that I was up at 5:30am three days a week to haul ass up to Manhattan. I know this makes me sound like a madwoman, but I was still paying for my apartment (+bunker) in Singapore, and the idea of paying for two apartments over the summer made me bleed out the eyes (and wallet). So I did the heinous commute described above, made slightly better by the Bolt Bus simply because it has free wifi, and sometimes they give you free rides. Commute aside, though, my internship was awesome and I got to read some really awful scripts, as well as some really good ones, have my opinions listened to, and keep my brain working in a dramatic-writing-kind-of-way over the summer, despite getting nothing done on my thesis idea or anything else, really, all summer long.

Speaking of theses...nope, no. I can't even think about it yet, I'm still jetlagged. Suffice it to say that I'm very scared of the upcoming semester. Lotstodo!

Back to the summer. When I wasn't shuttling back and forth between NYC and Philly, I was hanging out with as many friends as I could manage to -- which, before any of you say so, I already know was not enough of you, or frequent enough, and I'm sorry, I really am. Couldn't be helped. This is why, people, we need to get on cloning technology. Because if there had been two of me, it would've been a lot easier to hang out with everyone! I mean, as cloning technology currently stands, if I did clone myself then the clone would probably a) die really quickly and b) be kind of stupid (which is not unlike me, sometimes, but minus my impeccable charm, I'm just not sure it'd be worth it -- sound off?), but I guess for like a summer-long stint it wouldn't have been a bad idea to try it. Ah, well. Hindsight.

Anyhow, those of you I did manage to see -- it was lovely! And to those of you I missed -- uh, sorry! I'll be back in June!

So I'm back in Singapore now, and things are...calm. Which makes me nervous, after this summer, because calm = fuck, I've done something wrong. But I haven't! I've done everything right! D and I have theoretically found a new apartment for the year, so I'll post some pictures of that place once we're there. We're currently looking for a third roommate, whose initial will no doubt appear on this blog sparingly as well. Should be fun. In the meantime, I'm sort getting my head rearranged from work-friends-fun-summer to holy-crap-last-year-of-grad-school, which is happening with incredible speed, I might add. I've never been a grade grubber, honestly, but As are like heroin. You need another and another and another or the good feelings start to go away.

That's right, I just compared getting good grades to doing heroin.

So this coming semester I have to write a short film, a thesis, a screenplay, a half-hour comedy, lord knows how many comedy sketches, and I'm sure just a freaking tsunami of other stuff. So much comedy this semester! I feel profoundly unfunny.

One thing I will say (without going into, which ought to be maddening) is that I was incredibly successful this summer, and so I head into the school year with some confidence. Or at least not the heart-crushing terror of last year. I faced Jaws, bitches, and I walked away with my head held high (like not for real, though, I just had to watch the movie, remember?).

So I know I said there would be pictures, but it turns out I managed to hide from the camera all summer long. So...

Good morning, Singapore!

And that's all you get. For now.

the condensed version.

2010-02-10T23:48:00.007+08:00

Oh, blogger.

I know, I know. I am dead to you.

That's all right, I'm dead to almost everybody else, too.

Oh man, let me see, how do I summarize the past...three months? Well. I survived my first semester in Graduate School and actually managed to rock a 4.0, much to everyone's eternal amazement. My mother taped my grades to the refrigerator...I am 28 years old.

I am 28 years old! My birthday happened! Some of you were there. :) That happened in Philadelphia, while I was home over the holidays -- I hit Philly and New York in rapid succession, which left me dizzy with booze and well-wishing, and I saw an ass-ton of family and friends in a very short period of time. I do not yet have pictures from most of these events, but...

Oh wait! A New Years photo!

I was very festive this year.

Christmas happened, as well, and my Uncle Mike was on-hand with his camera, and managed to post only the WORST pictures of me on Facebook. Here's one:

Yeah, I look like I'm about ready to burst, and Sean looks like she's about to say something dirty. But Dana looks nice! These were the Ellis guests at Christmas Dinner at my grandparents' house. It was all very exciting. I don't look excited -- but trust me, it was. See this? This is me -- unafraid -- fearless, posting horrible pictures in the face of ridicule. Judge me not.

So, right -- in chronological order (which I do not adhere to here, because as I am learning this semester -- linear is for PUSSIES!) we had Christmas, New Years, and my birthday. Eventually, I'll have pictures from that last adventure -- I think my mother has a few, at least one of the morning after, which is...well...probably better than the ones of the actual Night itself. There was much debauchery...and I did some dirty things, too.

Anyway, since returning to Singapore, there's been a LOT going on. Which is why I have been shirking my blog-related duties. My classes are like twice as much work suddenly, and I'm taking a free workshop on writing for children's animation (which could be a disaster, you know...ME...writing for kids?), which is really cool but just MORE work.

On top of all of this, we had the Next Reel Film Festival here which lasted a week, and disrupted everyone's zen. It was neat to have a bunch of international filmmakers running around, plus several Deans from NYU Tisch in New York who gave lectures, and Oliver Stone was kind of bopping around the campus glaring at people -- don't get me wrong, he's awesome, but he does sort of have a perpetual glare on his face. That's what happens when you think a lot in life. I may be doomed.

With ALL of these things going on, my homework has just piled and piled. But I'm still working on my science fiction screenplay, and my graverobbing full-length play, and I wrote a short piece about a woman dying of cancer who traps Death in a big cage, and that was fun. I'm busy busy, but it's all very interesting stuff and I couldn't be...okay, if I was sleeping more I'd be happier, but otherwise, everything is quite groovy.

And I'm in Singapore, which I know is what most of you care about, and as soon as I manage to spend some time IN Singapore, instead of in my apartment or on campus, I promise you will hear all about it. Oh wait -- I DID go to a concert last week, featuring XX and Florence + the Machine, which are both incredibly cool bands and I highly recommend everyone check them out. Apparently, it is rare for Singaporeans to rush the stage at a concert event, but they did! And we rejoiced.

This coming week! It is Chinese New Year. Fuck Valentine's Day. Year of the TIGER! It's kind of GOT to be my year, people. I'm so ready for it. Pictures of the upcoming pandemonium in Singapore on-coming.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

I am not dead.

2009-11-21T01:00:00.005+08:00

I have been promising my mother for over a month now that I would write a new blog entry -- she tells me that nobody is going to read this thing anymore because it's been so long since I wrote. I think she's probably right, but I decided -- damn the torpedoes -- I will write a blog entry instead of homework, and so here we go.

It's Friday night here in Singapore, and I went to a restaurant called Bar Bar Blacksheep for dinner, where I devoured what must be one of the tastiest burgers in the world. It's in this part of Singapore called Holland Village which is largely populated by ex-patriots, so it's unsurprising that here is where the Burger would be found. It wasn't technically a restaurant, actually, it was more like a Hawker Center for white folk, which is kind of a conundrum in and of itself, but it worked somehow. And nestled between the beer bar and the Indian food -- lo, the Burger. True to Singaporean fashion, you don't get much choice where the Burger is involved, nor do they care to tell you anything about it before they serve it to you except that it is beef and you may have cheese on it. Actually, they didn't say you could have cheese on it, I just told them to put cheese on it, after asking with big puppy dog eyes whether or not it was possible. So they put this monster down in front of me and I quickly realize that they've put not only cheese and mayonnaise on the burger, but also caramelized onions. I'm not a big fan of onions on the whole, but I figured: what the hell. Try something new. So I took a big ol' bite, and -- holy crap -- there are onions ALL UP in this burger. Cooked right into the patty itself. And I have to tell y'all -- it was delicious. So, thank you, Singapore. Your onion-mayonnaise-cheesy-burger of goodness is one for the books.

In other news, I've been working on a full-length play about grave-robbing in London in 1826, and a feature length movie about space pirates and an intergalactic civil war -- so, needless to say, that's why I've been too busy to blog of late. I also got incredibly sick a few weeks ago, after I spent my Asian Halloween drinking and dancing in the rain on Arab Street, which I hesitate to say I regret doing, despite the subsequent week of plague. There's something magical about getting drunk and dancing in the street in your bare feet while locals pound trashcans and drums on the curb, cheering you on. Might be worth the fever. But I'm not really in a hurry for a repeat performance, so don't worry.

Richard Wesley, the head of the Tisch Dramatic Writing Department, was here visiting last weekend -- we of the writing department convened at a restaurant here in S'pore that specializes in Peranakan food. I ate a dish called ayam buah keluak, which involves the poisonous nut from a tree in Indonesia, the fruit of which is called a "football fruit". The nut is poisonous until detoxified in very specific ways, and at least one of them involves burying it in ash for like two weeks or something. Complicated stuff. So they cook it and take it out of the shell, mash it down into a paste, and then stuff it back into the shell, and later on you come along with your little nut-spoon and scoop it out and eat it. I can compare it to the mole sauce of Mexican cuisine, except...it is very, very weird. But I ate it and did not die, so I'll take it. I've resolved never to eat blowfish unless I'm in Japan.

Look, a picture!

We're writers, look at us...eat...

I've also been working on a script with my new friend Lizz, called King Con, which she will set about filming in the months to come -- it's about anime and cosplay, and so you can all imagine how tickled I am.

Look, another picture!

There's me and Lizz at the Halloween party -- before the drunk, and the dancing, and the rain. She went as Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, and that's my drunken, artistic attempt at drawing Starbuck's tattoo on her arm with eyeliner. Trust me, it looked better before the rain.

At any rate, now you can all see that I am not dead. And that I have not forgotten you. And that I am busy, but I'm still managing to have fun as the occasion arises.

Tune in next time, sports fans, when SEAN makes her debut in Singapore, and on the rampant adventures of the Intrepid Non-traveler. Right here, at indostine.blogspot.com.

Cheers!

2009-11-20T01:00:00.002+08:00

My plant is still alive, which is more than can be said for certain sections of my brain.

More to come.

2009-10-05T18:49:00.001+08:00

Just wanna send a quick shout-out to Mama Ellis -- it's her birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Have a glass of wine and relax on this, your ::garblegarble::th birthday!

Love you. :)

2009-10-01T15:13:00.005+08:00

Just a quick update for all you worriers out there (hello, Parents!), as news of the gigantic earthquake yesterday in Indonesia siphoned at last to the States, I have been getting a buttload of emails from y'all wondering if I'm okay.

Never you fear -- I slept straight through it, and didn't feel a tremor.

That being said, please keep the Indonesians in your prayers in the coming weeks, because the 'quake and subsequent tsunami has been totally devastating to Sumatra.

pauer.

2009-09-28T19:46:00.005+08:00

For those more curious about the previously mentioned pau, here you go:

The Malaysian pau comes in varying shapes and sizes, though this is the traditional look of this little treat. Sometimes they're little and sometimes they're big.

While she was here, Jenny embarked on a mission to try new things, and so upon seeing this delight served at breakfast one day, she picked it up. Perhaps unwisely, she cut into it with a fork and forth from said pau oozed an...ooze. Not particularly appetizing in color or consistency. Courageously, Jenny ate it anyway. And discovered that it was delicious!

Now we know you're supposed to just shove it all in your mouth at once and do your best, though some of them (specifically the ones at the 7-11) are freaking gigantic, and even Andre the Giant would have problems fitting a whole one into his maw.

They are traditionally filled with either pork or sweetened red bean curd (the bean came to be Jenny's favorite), and can taste more like a dessert than part of a meal, but that's not uncommon in Malaysian food, I'm coming to find. They like sweet and spicy and not a whole lot in between.

Anyway, that's the pau. And this concludes our lesson on Malaysian cuisine. :)

a happy journey starts like that.

2009-09-27T01:45:00.005+08:00

My mother tells me I don't talk enough here about the minutiae of Singapore life.

That's because, by and large, it's all minutiae. But I will endeavor now to give you more observations from the 'Stine station, and we'll see where we end up.

Let me see.

My walk to school is only about 12 minutes long, when you incorporate the bus. The bus here in Singapore costs anywhere from 70 cents to 80 cents, Sing, and the buses are pretty high-class. That's because the MRT system, awesome though it is, doesn't really cover as much ground as one might like. It isn't like the NYC subway system, using which you can basically get to anywhere in the city. The Singapore MRT will take you certain places, but a 15 minute walk from the MRT stop to your destination is not uncommon (vis a vis: school, for me). So we take the bus.

The bus maps make no sense, and the schedules are entirely arbitrary. You just kind of go sit there, and pray. The buses are by numbers, but I can't see that there's much correlation. By my apartment stops the 132, 32, 45, 145, 33...and who knows what else. I take the 132 one stop to school, and then march my fine ass up a steep hill. So don't worry, I still get the workout in after I pay my 70 cents. There are TVs on all the buses, and they play alternately Japanese cartoons or Singaporean soap opera. I can't tell you yet which I prefer.

People in Singapore have perfected the art of the mosey. I've already said that walking behind a group of locals is like trudging through sand; nobody has anywhere to be. It hasn't gotten any better. Though today I got stuck behind a white couple (obviously tourists) and felt much like I did trying to get from the NWR at 34th to Penn Station, trapped behind people in Hawaiin shirts with big cameras. These people weren't looking up at the buildings though, they were just zigging when they should've zagged, and blond.

There is a lemming mentality in Singapore the likes of which I have never encountered before. There are literally diagrams on the subway floors to show you how to let people get OFF the train first, and there are countless signs and videos that say things like: Don't play, play -- let me come out first! Be courteous, and allow me to alight instead of trampling me!

I'm serious. Photographic evidence.

I swear, I did not photoshop that picture.

I dunno who that guy is, but he's in all the videos too, doing awful rap songs about "a happy journey starts like that" and whatnot. If I could find the video for y'all, I would.

...Hm.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why youtube exists. You can see the most preposterous public transit rap video of all time, and revel in it.

Can you imagine if they showed things like this on the NYC subway? People would like...purposefully piss on subway cars in full view of the public just to let everyone know that they COULD. In Singapore, people barely notice. And this kind of cheesy tripe is everywhere. On the buses, the windows of stores, there are flags and shit. But it's just their way. Nobody in America would buy into that kind of propaganda, but it totally works here.

I mean, they still try to run you over when you're getting off the MRT, but otherwise it works.

In other news, I'm kind of a baby and do my grocery shopping at the extremely Western supermarket by school. Well I did today. I'm going to try doing some rice and beans and that kind of stuff because it's easy and doesn't involve an oven (one of which I do not have). The food at school is pretty wretched, and I've been surviving on omelet sandwiches and things like that, because I don't really have the time/energy for full-on cooking. And there is no pizza place.

God, I miss pizza.

Of the food chains available here in Singapore, we have McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, and...Long John Silver's -- which I haven't seen in the States for like a decade, but is apparently thriving in Asia. Who knew. None of these places hold much interest for me (except for the occasional Bic Mac craving -- BMF, I know you're with me here), and you'd be surprised how absolutely impossible it is to just find a SANDWICH of some kind. Here be the land of no hoagies, subs, or gyros. Fried chicken and french fries, though, is universal.

Alcohol is an atrocity and so expensive it makes me want to quit drinking. Almost.

There are 7-11s on every corner and of course Mr. Bean, which I haven't said much about but I've linked to the website, and that really should be enough. It needs be noted that when Jenny was here she discovered the power of the Pau, which is a dumpling-kind of food that they serve EVERYWHERE to one degree or another, even in 7-11, and if nothing else that I say is true, know this: there is pauer in the Pau.

That being said, I think that's about as much minutiae as I can manage on this day, after writing a one-act, a screenplay and a 10-page scene in the style of Sophocles. I'll take more careful notes in the days approaching.

Over and out, blogger.

all aboard.

2009-09-25T21:14:00.003+08:00

And the weeks roll by.

I finished my one-act play today for Playwriting -- well, I suppose I should say, I wrote the first draft of a one-act play that I will likely be rewriting for the rest of my life.

Bill has said -- and even he admits that it could just be heresay -- that Tennessee Williams, on his deathbed, was still trying to rewrite Glass Menagerie. So I guess that says a thing or two about the lifestyle that I have chosen. Well, and the degree of what remains of my sanity.

At any rate, Charlie and the Express Train have left the station.

Now I'm left with a screenplay that I hate, a presentation on Aristophanes, and a 10-page scene in the style of Sophocles, Aeschylus or Euripides, and a butt-ton of reading due throughout the week. It might seem like I have a head-start, given that it's Friday, but all these things are relative in Graduate School, I assure you. No matter where in the world you might be.

In other news: Happy Birthday, Dad! My father is Fifty...::garblegarble::...today! Everyone take a moment and wish him the best. I'm sure he's got one or two last good games of golf left in him. ;)

I'm sorry that I have very little to report, but I'm really not kidding when I say that I've been so busy lately that I've barely had time to sleep. I do crunches when I can't think anymore, because they hurt. I do yoga to make myself sweat because they say that's good for you. And I eat yogurt because it's fast. If these things sound terrible, I promise they're not. AND I've lost a jean size!

For those of you in Philly, my screenwriting teacher has a play going up at People's Light in Malvern, October 14-17. If you're interested in going to see it, let me know, and I'll find out what the times are. I know my parents are going, and y'all know how they love company.

Anyway, back to the grind. Time to make a man's life miserable.

See? Grad school ain't that bad.

you cook, white knight work.

2009-09-19T01:29:00.001+08:00

Hands down, I had the strangest morning in Singapore today.

It all started out pretty basic. I woke up, needed to go take out cash to pay the rent, so I got my shit together, and went down to the MRT where the citibank ATM lives. I'm something of an A/C baby, so I left the A/C on, and in general I keep my door closed while I'm home. Not because I'm afraid D will come in and filch my stuff or dance around naked, just because I have the A/C on and obviously that makes sense.

So I get back from the ATM -- I'm balancing my wallet, a hot cup of coffee, and a Mr. Bean, and I get to my door and shift the handle, give it some hip to get it open and -- ow, now there is a huge bruise on my hip and my hand is burnt by jostled coffee, because the door did not open.

I've never locked the door. I don't even know HOW to lock the door.

Flabbergasted, I unload my arms and go back to the door and try again. Stuck. Immobile. Obstinate door.

I try a few more times and then fetch D, and he gives it a try. Nada. Now we're both confused. Did I lock it? he asks. Nope, I reply. Well, shit. So, enterprising lad that he is, D calls a locksmith. Then he busts off to the bank, and minutes later the locksmith arrives.

The locksmith...is a character.

I'd guess in his fifties, though given the Singaporean standard of aging, I could be entirely wrong. I've seen people here who look like they're in their twenties, but are actually close to forty. It's remarkable. This guy, though, he had the right kind of slight stoop to his shoulders and bend in his knees, and there was gray in his hair. He hunkered down with his box o' tricks outside my door and set to work.

Apparently, it is not uncommon in this neighborhood for the locks to break -- and my lock DID break, right off into the door jam, and he had to drill the sucker open to get it out. Now I know. My waterproof sneaker is currently holding my door closed, because I was too paranoid to have him replace the lock. Some day. But not today.

Anyway, mid-drilling-into-my-door, the locksmith starts to get inquisitive.

Is that an office? he asks. No, that's my roommate's room.

The house is all women? he ponders. No, I live with a boy.

You should get married.

...what?

You find your white knight in Singapore, and you get married and have lots of babies who lock each other out of rooms. Mommy mommy! She hit me! I lock her in closet! Mommy Mommy! And you cook husband meals. You stay home and he work and you cook.

...great idea, Mr. Locksmith.

You cook, white knight work.

Sounds great.

Your kids -- mommy mommy!

Whoa there.

Mommy mommy -- waaaaaaah aaaaaaah grrrheeeaaahhh! Your door -- it is unlocked.

Thanks, guy.

I see you and husband when you have kids and lock them in basement.

O...kay. Here's your S$50. Have a good one.

After that, I needed a lot more coffee.

White knight, here I come.

pew pew laz0rs.

2009-09-16T21:01:00.008+08:00

So I thought I was tired LAST week, woo boy.

I guess just expect the posts on this blog to get weirder and weirder as my sanity and creative capability slowly merge into one and I become a babbling madwoman. Except I babble GREAT ideas. Sometimes ironic, sometimes tragic.

People keep having to remind me that it's only my second week of grad school. To be fair, I've been in Singapore for roughly a month now, and us writers didn't get much of an orientation, so technically I've been learning for three weeks. Regardless, I currently have to write a One-Act Play, a 10-Minute screenplay, more exercises for class, prepare a presentation on Aristophanes, cast some actors and write some scenes for them, write a 10-page scene in the style of a Greek playwright, and start work on a full-length play. And that's all in the next three weeks, so if I'm a little bit stunned, well. There you go.

On the other hand, I am like a freaking master with chopsticks by now.

And, frankly, I'd rather be doing almost all of these things, at the same time, than just about anything else, one at a time. So though I am overwhelmed and seem to be complaining -- take it all with a grain of salt. This shit is awesome. I've never done more work in my life -- work that I care about.

So at the moment, I'm working on the step-outline for my ten minute screenplay, in which a drunk lawyer crashes into a woman's car and, in a moment of desperation, kidnaps her in order to try and convince her that she should not call the cops and have him sent to jail. Admittedly, he's not the most awesome guy on the planet, but I think he's somewhat charming, all things considered.

My one-act play is about an old homeless man in New York who's trying to catch the Express Train to Hell even though an MTA security guard is, first, trying to kick him out of the station and, then, trying to save his life.

I've decided my full-length screenplay is going to be about Space Pirates, because I can't deal with this serious shit anymore if it doesn't involve laz0rs. Pewpew. I also, personally, love space pirates. And I'm perfectly capable of telling a truly moving, cinematic story using pirates.

If fucking Spielberg can use a mechanical shark and win oscars, I can use pirates.

Anyway, I don't want you guys to think I'm not having ANY fun here in Singapore, because that's just not true. You know me. I will find the fun. Below is the photographic evidence that I have been having fun (and that there IS wine in Singapore, Steph, don't you worry!) and making friends, and doing what you know I do so well.

Here we are at the Orientation party! Names have been changed to protect the innocent -- but none of their faces are innocent.

And again!

The fogginess you perceive in these pictures, by the way, has nothing at all to do with smoke. That's the MIST OF TIME, man. We get that here in the future. It's like humidity.

And here's from last weekend, God only knows what I'm doing. But everyone else looks great.

Yay grad school!

Anyway. That's about all the update I have left in me. More as I get crazier.

don't go in the water.

2009-09-08T23:23:00.003+08:00

I am so tired.

It's only Tuesday. To recap, I've had my first playwriting class, my first film story analysis class (in which we watched and analyzed My Darling Clementine which is, simply put, not as good as Tombstone, though worth a peek if you really like the story of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, because Henry Fonda is a pretty handsome Wyatt and Victor Mature rocks a malicious-looking Doc), my first screenwriting class, and my first drama lab (which, I have determined, is going to be the class that gives me the most anxiety attacks).

It's worth noting that before I had my interview for this program, I was going over all the things I should and should not say to the faculty during the interview with my mother. At one point, I blurted out: I've never been outside the US, I hate planes and boats and I'm afraid of sharks and open water, PLEASE let me into your program on an island in Southeast Asia!!!

...My mother, of course, burst out laughing at me and suggested I not tell them these things.

Fast forward a few months to my orientation playwriting class when Bill asked me, "What is your greatest fear?" A wiseass by nature, I answered, "Open water."

We have to watch Jaws for screenwriting next week. I wonder if I did this to myself. Probably.

And oh, drama lab. Where do I even begin.

The basic principle behind drama lab is that we get to see our work directed by actual directors, and performed by actual actors. Unfortunately, it seems Singapore rather has a derth of reliable actors, and so sometimes we have to perform in our classmates' pieces. My acting teachers, from when I was like 8-18, would be laughing their asses off, collectively. As are, no doubt, all my friends from college who know how the idea of getting on a stage gives me an instant panic attack.

So of COURSE in our first class we had no actors, and we had no scripts, so were given characters and instructed to improvise a scene. I was fortunate enough to be paired with D -- bless him, he put up with my bitchiness and so did our director-classmate. The panic typically comes across as extreme bitchiness, and though I recognize it enough to apologize for it later, in the moment I just seem difficult and angry. Because it's SCARY. There is, of course, this very ponderous and contradictory thrill that I still feel when I step on-stage to inhabit a character -- even a 64-year old Chinese mother, apparently, go figure.

In the end, our scene was a success. But I still dread having to do this again. And I know I will. But I guess there's no learning without fear, right? Or something about how a thing isn't worth doing if it doesn't scare us? I've said something like that on here before, so I can't take it back now. But goddamn if I don't hate that class already. I hate it just enough to defeat it.

So otherwise, I have a LOT of writing to do. And a LOT of reading. And a LOT of film-viewing. Fortunately, we don't have anything due in playwriting tomorrow morning, so I think I will curl up here with Tombstone and let my poor brain take a rest.

I love how it's not even Wednesday. Wtf, grad school? At least my professors make no bones about how much money we're paying for this, and they intend to make it worth the tuition.

Anyway. Why Kate -- where is your bustle?

success!

2009-09-06T17:01:00.002+08:00

And she did curl her hair, and it was good.

I miss those penguin pajamas.

2009-09-05T21:46:00.004+08:00

Orientation week came to a close last night, heralding the death of both my social life and my sobriety, for a time. At least we went out with a bang, ladies and gentlemen. Or a blur, as the case may be.

I feel like I've already learned more than I expected to, and we haven't even really started classes yet. For those playing the MFA home game, we've had intense workshops all week in things like Character Dream of Heaven/Hell and Dramatic Conflict, the Dramatic Question and Socrates, and my professors have already filled my head with complicated, philosophical thoughts on the Dramatist as an artist and on what Drama is, and how we live through it. Even the acting workshop got me thinking. My roommate proclaimed that he could quit, go back to New York and get a refund from NYU and still feel as though he'd learned enough to call himself an MFA.

I can't imagine what we'll be like a year from now, other than unbearable know-it-alls. Heh.

Our homework for screenwriting on Tuesday is to produce three examples of Dramatic Conflict, any of which we would actually want to write. This is a lot harder than it sounds, but I won't go into the nuts and bolts of the process. Basically I have to come up with three viable script ideas -- subject to change, obviously, but still -- I'm sitting here wracking my brain. Mark said in class, "Just think of a task that must be done," but I'm kind of sitting here like -- how could I write a movie about taking out the garbage? I don't think that's the kind of task he meant.

Our first assignment in playwriting was to draft a scene consisting of at least 30 seconds of silence in which a character reveals an ugly, terrible secret about him or herself.

Naturally, my first thought was: this guy is making himself a sandwich, and he is a cannibal, and that sandwich is made of people-meat. I know, I know. My brain is a strange place sometimes. Needless to say, that's what I wrote, and while it tickles me in a dark kind of place, I did struggle a bit. There's a lot more to writing something like this than I ever anticipated. Good more, though, not the obnoxious details that drive a person crazy. I like details.

So when I was drunk last night, I'm pretty sure I cornered almost all of my professors and told them how awesome they are, and I meant it. It really is like suddenly being surrounded by people who speak the same bizarre, insane-person language that you do. Like long-lost family members reappearing after decades gone. They know us, because they were us.

Mark told us we were crazy, and to get a refund, immediately. He told us we write because we hear voices. He told us we write because we like going to work in our pajamas.

All these things are very true. It's actually kind of incredible to hear someone say them out loud, instead of just thinking them every day. Okay, maybe I don't think about working in my pajamas every day, but quite often, anyway. The penguin pajamas in particular.

Anyway, Selena sent me a card that I got today, which made me miss home and friends and family quite powerfully, but also made me giggle, and those things combined created a kind of safe, comfortable zen that burst through my hangover just when I needed it. I'd also like to thank Ian quite publicly for putting all these movies on my laptop, because they have kept me incredibly entertained all week when my brain could not hold any more knowledge, but I was too wired to sleep. Into the West took me like five days to get through! Perfect! That mini-series is seriously epic, if not incredibly silly at times. Jenny, do not watch it. It is not for you.

So that's about all the update my addled brain has energy for, but expect more in the week to come as classes begin to seriously kick my ass. Yay learning!

orientation.

2009-08-31T21:53:00.005+08:00

Today was our first day of Orientation. As expected, there were lots of talks about school services and protocols and things like that, but I also experienced my first three hours of playwriting with Bill, which were utterly enlightening on their own. We were greeted by Richard Wesley via Skype, who couldn't hear a damned thing we were saying, but our acting chair Mark Dickerman is seriously one of the coolest men I've ever met.

All the early morning stuff is kind of a blur, and so is the afternoon stuff, especially when we talked to the Singapore Police, who were extremely helpful, and extraordinarily patient, given some of the downright stupid questions some people asked them. If you want to know how to not be hanged or caned in Singapore, it's actually quite simple: stay away from drugs, don't kill anyone, don't carry any dangerous weapons, don't rape anyone, and don't steal the damned street signs or graffiti all over their immaculately clean transit system. Common sense, says I.

After the Singapore Police came playwriting, and I can safely say without doubt or bravado that I know nothing about Dramatic Writing. Okay, maybe not nothing. But having been educated almost exclusively in Fiction -- where a large majority of the principles are the same -- it's still somewhat amazing to find myself sitting there and listening with rapt attention to someone teaching me, which has not happened in such a long time. I don't question whether or not I should be here, or deserve to be, but find myself instead just dying to learn, which I'm not sure I've actually ever felt before.

While I recognize that this could be boring for some people, I want to share with you some of what I learned today. This way, when I'm jaded and bitter and wondering why I ever thought this was a good idea, I can look back and see -- that I was SO excited.

So today, Bill taught us the Seven Principles of Playwriting -- or, as he put it, the One Rule of Playwriting, and the Six Principles.

THE ONE RULE is: The audience owes you nothing. Which is to say: write with economy. Make every moment carry freight.

Principle One: Show us, don't tell us. This is pretty standard in all forms of writing. My class-note beneath this says: woot, lion-killing. Which is entertaining to no one but my classmates, but some sacrifices must be made.

Principle Two: To know is to love. Know your characters, let the audience know them too.

Principle Three: The past is never dead. What a character has lived through will effect everything.

Principle Four: God is in the details. Ie, what brand of cigarettes does the character smoke, and what does that say about them?

Principle Five: Give us a problem NOW. The major dramatic question. URGENT PROBLEM.

Principle Six: Remember the value of secrets.

All of this stuff may seem pretty obvious, but trust me it isn't. In the thick of writing, you don't think about these things the way you should -- at least, you don't until you're TOLD to. Until they are pointed out to you. It's a Homer Simpson D'OH kind of moment, when you realize after the fact that you could've done so many things, but you just didn't think to.

Goal Number One for this year: make these seven articles a part of every-day thought.

Okay, a few funny notes.

Bill cited the most prevalent disease in American Playwriting today as: The Passive Central Character. After an awesome long-winded tirade, he summed it up beautifully by leaning over the desk and saying, straight and unwavering to the lot of us, "It makes for lousy, suckass drama."

I believe him.

He informed us that we were not allowed to write stupid characters.
He informed us that we should not let our writing get bogged down in despair, and asked: how then do we live? What do we do about the world sucking?
And he told us, to quote someone else: Love is after all the gift of oneself.

And the Writer's best friends are:
Pain
Suffering
and Humiliation. Wendy said: Especially humiliation.

So basically, I can't wait. Let's write some shit.

snakes on my motherf*cking head.

2009-08-28T19:32:00.022+08:00

Let's talk about my new haircut.

So a month ago, my hair was long enough to basically touch the small of my back. Then about three weeks ago, I chopped it all off because I was moving to Singapore, which has an average daily humidity of 95%. My hair doesn't care about making me look good, in other words. I have determined that pre-styling gel (which smells like kiwi, mmmm) and some serious hairspray will make the situation atop my head look not-terrible, despite the heat, but of course sweat kind of undoes all that and we're left with the everyday mop. But!

Today, I tried to curl my hair. I was nearly successful. In attempting to do this thing, I uncovered some pictures from when Jenny and I were drunk in our hotel room, and I feel they are worth sharing. So before we get to my curly hair, here's a few shots of my straight (albeit wine-o'ed) hair:

Let me tell you a story about two girls who discovered, after two bottles of wine, that their laptop could take pictures. At first, they were timid.

And then, the strangest things began to happen.

They found themselves soaring to new heights!

And one of them split in TWO!

They discovered Sepia, and took a Serious Sepia Shot.

Then had some more wine, and took a Silly Sepia Shot.

In the end though, the photobooth ATE THEM AND MERGED THEM INTO ONE BEING!

And that, ladies and gentlmen, is how BMF was born.

So that was fun. Moving on to my hair. The curly-hair thing is quite a process, I don't mind telling you. Upon a tme in New York, I had velcro rollers that made my hair straight but I never successfully found anything to make it curly. Until I found these:

Which look somewhat questionable, being...hot pink snakey things, but I decided to give it a try. The instructions tell you to put styling product into clean, semi-dry hair, which is what I did, naturally, after taking a shower. After a few less-than-successful attempts at getting these suckers onto my head, I figured out exactly how one is supposed to use them. Purely for comedy's sake, I will tell you another story.

Once upon a time, in a land ten thousand miles away, a girl looked into a not-so-magic mirror and saw:

SNAKES ON HER MOTHERFUCKING HEAD!!!

And she was frightened, but she continued through the mirror, until there was nothing but snakes on her motherfucking head.

Which, in the end, wasn't so bad. And made for some very amusing pictures.

In the end though, she couldn't stay in the mirror world forever. And she crawled back to the world whence she had come, but to her astonishment, the snakes came with her! At least, that's what she thought at first, and then she realized -- they had never been snakes at all! It was just her hair -- curly!

Or kind of curly.

I took them out too soon. A note for next time.

2009-08-28T00:36:00.003+08:00

I miss my dog.

That is all.

observation station.

2009-08-27T20:54:00.004+08:00

I felt my first pang of homesickness last night when leaving the Cathay cinema after seeing District 9. We had sushi for dinner, and all my chopstick practicing paid off.

I don't know what brought it on, maybe it was the familiar sensation of stretching after a two hour period of sitting in truly oppressive air conditioning -- the popcorn, which I hadn't had in weeks, and you know how I am about popcorn -- and then realizing that I was following a whole new group of people into the fluorescent light of the corridor. I do everyday things here and never feel a thing, but that in particular triggered a sense of longing for home for reasons that continue to elude me.

I also just finished reading Death of a Salesman, which is kind of depressing and talks a lot about home and coming and going, and so that may have had a latent effect. Regardless, it was not overwhelming, just unexpected. It was gone by the time I got back to my flat.

I feel I'm full of contradictions in this place. I have been somewhat unsocial this week, and I could blame it on D being gone and feeling the need to nest in my new space, or I could blame it on the fact that I'm here to work and not to play. I'm not sure which is accurate. I enjoy myself when I go to events and spend time with people, but I've also been enjoying the isolation, a new experience for me, and every time I'm tempted to go wild here, I remember that I want to write more than anything else. I think a lot more here than I did. I watch the city lights from my 17th storey flat, and I never did that in New York. Rain doesn't bother me here. All these things tell me that perhaps I have finally made the right decision for myself. Maybe that's what growing up is like. Go figure.

I slogged over to campus in the rain today. True story, it's really only about a fifteen minute walk. And I walk like a New Yorker still, not like a Singaporean. These people have nowhere to be! They amble everywhere. I'm somewhat jealous. Maybe I need to learn to relax and smell the...exotic flowers...as I pass them.

Since I haven't built any dressers or anything in the last few days, I guess I'll talk about some of the observations I've made about Singapore so far, because people are constantly asking me about things that I wouldn't think to write on.

For example, the laws here. It's very interesting. There are lots of laws. Don't piss in the lifts, don't spit on the street, don't litter, don't jaywalk, etc., but here's the thing -- they all spit, litter and jaywalk. I haven't encountered anyone pissing in any lifts yet, but I suspect there was an old Chinese man pissing into the foliage as I came into the lobby earlier. So he's abiding by the law, anyway. It's been said to me by a student far more familiar with Singapore that they all just do as they're told. It's also become more and more clear that there is no freedom of speech here. Singapore is categorized as a parliamentary republic, and a representative democracy instead of a direct democracy. But according to Wikipedia, the same political party has controlled parliament since independence. So maybe they break all the little laws and follow the big ones like lambs. I can't really tell yet.

The mixing of cultures here is interesting too. Originally, Singapore was a part of Malaysia, and broke away in the sixties, after Malaysia took its independence from Britain. Our tour guide in Malaysia cited the reason for the separation as a difference in ideology, which I took to mean that Malaysia is Muslim by law, and Singapore no longer wanted to be. Maybe this is as a result of the larger population of Chinese in Singapore than in Malaysia, but I don't really know for sure. I'm not sure how the Indians got here, but here they are, and they don't fit in either. According to government statistics, roughly 75% of the Singaporean population are Chinese, 13% are Malay, 8% are Indian, and 2% are other. And again, about 51% of the country practices Buddhism or Taoism, where Islam trails at 14%, behind even Christianity at 15%. Suffice it to say -- they got a shitload of temples up in this piece.

What's more -- Jehova's Witnesses are prohibited from distributing their pamphlets and knocking on your door at the ass-crack of dawn, and have even been jailed for being so crazy (or conscientiously objecting to joining the Singaporean military, same difference).

Another odd note -- the national language of Singapore is still Malay, even though English is the language of business and education, and Mandarin is the most commonly spoken language in the city.

They all crazy here, is what I'm trying to say.

I've noticed some pretty thick racial tensions here too, but I think the remarkable thing about it is that, for once, the racial problems have nothing to do with white folk. The biggest beef seems to be between the Chinese and the Indians, probably because the Chinese basically run the place and the Indians just can't earn an inch. I see more Malays behind government counters than anywhere else -- but that's totally just an observation, and I couldn't tell you what it means.

Also, weird but honest note: I see more platinum blond white people in this city than I have any other kind of white person. For some reason, Singapore draws the blond, the scandinavian, the aryan. It never occurs to me that I'm the only white girl in any given situation -- it occurs to me, when I see them, that I'm like the only damned brunette on the island.

Okay, that was an exaggeration, but that's how it feels sometimes. Can I get a woopwoop from all my dark-haired ladies out there? Sup.

So I guess the conclusion to be made here is that I still have a lot to learn and observe about this city. Good thing I have two years to get on that. Also, a word to those who called me adventurous for moving here -- I'm not really. If I'd moved to like Kuala Lampur or Kenya, then you could call me adventurous. Moving to Singapore? That's just plain crazy.

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post, but I haven't really seen anything lately worth whipping out the camera. Mostly because I've been at home reading plays, or in movie theatres, where they kind of dislike when you use flash photography for no reason. I suppose I could've taken pictures of campus, but they do have a nifty photo-tour here, which you are welcome to peruse, and which was shot by professionals, so is likely much cooler to look at than anything I could have compiled on my own. Granted, my photo-tour would have included cobras.

No, I haven't actually seen any cobras since I got here.

Oh trust me, I will be far too busy running away to take pictures if/when I encounter them. That sort of bravery I leave to my roommate, since he seems more hell-bent on finding cobras than I could ever be.

To close, I would just like to assure my mother that Longwei the Singaporean Plant is still alive, and thank you for all the plant-keeping advice.

2009-08-25T00:36:00.004+08:00

My flat has been invaded!

Not by the Japanese, relax. This is not a transmission from the bunker.

I have been invaded by this little guy:

Who is very pretty and all, but I can't seem to get him to go back through the window.

Perhaps he has a message for Longwei? We shall see.

the dresser that 'stine built.

2009-08-24T17:43:00.016+08:00

So anyone out there that has known me for a significant amount of time will know this to be true: I am very, very bad at putting furniture together.

I'm not sure where this comes from. It could be genetic, though I've never actually watched my mother put furniture together, and my father strikes me as at least somewhat adept at that sort of thing. Nor do I know whether or not my brother fails as awesomely as I do, but he's told me recently that he's about to find out. To David I say: Good luck, sir. Here's hoping it's just some funky wiring gone wrong in my brain. And IKEA furniture? Okay, first of all, I'm fairly certain that all the Swedes got together and said: all right guys, how can we really fuck all the people in the world who need cheap furniture?

And thus, IKEA was born. The sneaky thing about IKEA furniture is that it looks so simple. It looks like: okay, frame, drawers, put them all together and voila: dresser. But then you open the instructions and the naked guy is there telling you not to light yourself on fire and you're like: what the hell have I gotten myself into? Never mind the fact that there are no WORDS in IKEA instructions. Just dumbass pictures that don't make sense until you turn the instructions upside down. I mean, seriously! Words like left and right, even, would be helpful!

So the last time I tried to put a piece of IKEA furniture together, I put it on upside down. You can imagine how unexcited I was to try and build my dresser when the time came. I have long-since made a habit of paying other people to build my furniture -- typically, with beer. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat on my own out here. I suppose perhaps it was time that I grew up, forged my own path, picked up the screwdriver and screamed and cursed my way through building the first piece of my own furniture ever.

I have documented the journey below. Many thanks to Emily for seeing me through the terrifying first leg (or legs, as the case may be).

Here she is, enjoying the show, from the comfort of my turquoise couch.

We begin with the instructions, which are quick to inform me not to try to walk up my dresser like it's a set of stairs. Thank you, IKEA. Disaster narrowly averted.

Of course I had my box of tools, because I try to be prepared for all fly-by-furniture-building.

And, naturally, the entirely daunting amount of pieces.

But eventually I got it to look like this!

A word about the heat here in Singapore. There is no A/C in the living room of my apartment, largely because there are so many damned windows, all of which open wide, and in general there's enough of a breeze going about the place that the A/C is not needed. However, any small amount of physical exertion quickly makes the atmosphere somewhat thicker, and the result is a truly preposterous amount of sweat.

So as I was climbing around inside the half-made dresser and hefting the pieces to fit into other pieces and screwing (oh, ha ha. screwdriving) with all the elbow grease I could muster, I was also getting positively disgusting. So that was fun. Good thing I had beer.

So I had the thing looking like those pictures up there by about 21:00, and that's when I called it quits last night because one ought not to hammer past 21:00 on a schoolnight, just to be polite.

I woke up around noon today, stumbled out into the living room and saw the disaster that was my attempt at this dresser, and resolved that I would not do anything else today until the damned thing was finished, and my clothes were in it.

Okay, so I got coffee first, but the sentiment was there.

Then I sat down with my tools and what was left of my dignity, and had at it. Music and willpower will actually take me a long way when it comes to this sort of thing. A few people suggested that I ask so-and-so or whatever-his-name-is for help, which only served to fuel my stubborn determination to actually build the thing on my own. I mean, what does it say about a girl who'll move 10,000 miles away from home, but can't build her own effing IKEA dresser? Nothing good, I tell you that.

So coffee and a chocolate Mr. Bean later, I set to. Several hours after that, sweaty and dirty and hungry and just generally in disarray, I am happy to say that Aneboda looked like this:

And I call that a success, ladies and gentelmen. The moral of this story? Necessity and desperation, combined with stubbornness and beer, equals success. Make of that little nugget of wisdom what you will.

2009-08-23T16:06:00.000+08:00

Update Spasm!

Just saw someone SPIT ON THE STREET!

ARE NO SINGAPOREAN LAWS SACRED!?

2 BDRM + Bunker

2009-08-23T14:45:00.000+08:00

At last, the long-awaited apartment post.

So we "moved in" on Friday but couldn't get to buying any bedding or anything until Saturday, which is why this post took a bit longer to get to. I spent my first night here last night and, I must confess, my bed is AWESOME. So for those of you who were once members of the Christine's Bed Club, and those of you who encountered my bed in Queens, know this: the standard has been upheld. My bed remains one of the comfiest places in the WORLD to sleep in. Anyway. I have not managed to put together all my furniture as yet, so please bear in mind that the apartment will become more populated as the week goes on, but for those of you who have been emailing and gchatting and begging for pictures, here we go: a photo tour of the S'pore Pad.

First, the approach.

So this is the corridor outside my apartment, and then the front gate. All the apartments in HDB housing are set up like this, I think, where you have a big wooden door behind a front gate. The idea is that you lock the gate and open the door to let the cross-breeze between living room and foyer sweep through. I feel like the gate needs a name -- you know, like The Awesome Gate, or the Iron Gate, or some kind of neat title because it is MY GATE. And that makes it...special? Something. So you get off the lift, come down the corridor, and here is my gate. Moving on to...

This is the view of the dining area and living room from just inside the door. Beyond that ENTIRE WALL of windows, we have an awesome view. There was a thunderstorm last night, and the lightning was breathtaking to behold.

Here's a closer shot of our punk-rock-retro-awesome leather turquoise living room furniture, which goes so well with the yellow wall behind it, and though you cannot see the purple lamp to the right here, trust me -- it's there. I'm not sure I would have expected yellow, turqoise and purple to go together, but...well, fuck yeah. The floors, as you can see, are all this kind of rocking faux-marble, and it has inspired us to adopt the asian habit of taking off our shoes and leaving them by the door. Anyway, suffice it to say the living room is the shining star of the apartment, being huge and beauitfully lit during the day. If you turn away from the living room, you will see...

The kitchen, which is not the most amazing aspect of the apartment, which I feel is self-evident. There are two fridges here out of frame -- I'm not sure why we need two, but D and I will figure it out. Maybe one is meant to just be full of beer at all times? Who knows. Anyway, there is no oven but there IS that stovetop who-what that I intend to learn how to use. We also have TWO -- count them, one two -- washing machines, but no dryer to speak of. Dryers seem to be extremely rare in Singapore, I guess because it's so effing hot. So we've really tried to embrace the culture and do the hanging-up-our-clothes-to-dry thing, as you can see. Hello, my laundry. There is a window to the right there, and a long-ass green pole that actually extends into my bedroom, where we imagine we are meant to hang our laundry. Out over the 17-floor drop. We're not that adventurous yet, but all in good time. The second bathroom is also there on your right, but we'll get to the bathrooms momentarily, because they are their own special kind of awesome.

Turning back around from the kitchen here, we see:

Well, that's the breakfast table and...wait, who's that? Let's get a close-up.

Ah HA! Those of you who remember Fred from the Holiday Inn, well, he had to stay at the hotel because he was strictly a hotel plant. I'd like everyone to meet Longwei -- he is a native Singaporean, as you can see by the flag he is waving in honor of National Day, which was a few weeks ago but he is adamantly patriotic and so has not taken down his flag as yet. Longwei means DRAGON GREATNESS in Chinese, and I'm looking to him for guidance in my new and strange surroundings. So far all he's done is sit in his pot and look good, but that's about all you can ask of a plant, I guess. Anyway. Longwei is standing guard across from this door, which we originally thought was a closet.

But then we opened it, and saw THIS:

That's right, people. Civil Defense Shelter. SHIT IS A BUNKER!

So if the Japanese attack, everyone can just stay calm. So long as they don't attack with fire, I will be perfectly fine, because we have an in-house bunker. Can't piss in the lifts here, but you get a bunker free with every apartment. I love Singapore.

At the moment, we're just using it for storage. But it's ALWAYS ready.

So if you travel back through the living room and around a corner to the left, you will encounter our bedrooms. As D is away, I have afforded him the privacy of NOT taking pictures of his room, but for your edification, here is where I sleep:

Oswald says hi! He's finding the monsters here in Singapore to his liking as well, though markedly less...one-eyed. So that room in the corner of my bedroom with the BRIGHT BLUE is my bathroom.

A word about the bathrooms here, before we continue. I'm not sure if this is an Asian thing, or a Southeast Asian thing, or what, but I imagine it has something to do with the large population of Muslims here in Singapore. In a moment, I will show you a picture of the bathroom floor, and you will notice that there is no separation between toilet and shower beyond that bright orange shower curtain. It is my assumption that the bathrooms are structure this way because Muslims wash their feet after using the restroom (you see these buckets of water a lot in public/less hoity toity restrooms, but even the hotel restrooms have drains in the floor beside the toilets), so they make the entire floor in a manner that makes washing one's feet much easier. This, of course, also means the whole damned bathroom floor gets wet when you shower, so we're looking into some plastic shelving that is lifted a few inches above the floor to store stuff.

Also, we need "shower brooms" to sweep the water down the drain after every shower. Ah, Asia.

So that's basically that. Some other time I'll take pictures of the positively labyrinthine lobby-business of the building. I have now gotten lost in my own apartment structure easily five times, because there are three-ish interconnecting buildings and a whole buttload of twists and turns and wind-tunnels and courtyards.

But as you can all see, I am not living in a shithole (at least, no shittier than the Sahara of 3-C back in Astoria). And, at least here, I have a BUNKER.

Now...'Stine tries to put together Ikea furniture. More on that, I'm sure, as it unfolds.

EDIT: I was told recently that there are not enough pictures of me on this blog, though that's largely because I'm generally the one taking all the other pictures. But to satisfy the curious, here you go:

I'm smiling because I finally figured out how to use the fucking chopsticks.

to malaysia and back again.

2009-08-20T16:14:00.000+08:00

Today we crossed the causeway into Malaysia, specifically Johor Bahru. To be honest, Malaysia is a little scary, but that's mostly because it's actually Asia and Singapore is really kind of like Asia Light -- the Diet Coke of Asia. It's extremely westernized, and then all of the sudden you cross into Malaysia and it's like -- right! This is a totally different place far away from everything you know! Certainly parts of Singapore are like that, like when you get lost in Chinatown and nobody will speak English to you except to offer you their very pretty jewelry for the very pretty lady -- but then you turn a corner and there are white dudes wearing collared shirts sipping Heinekens and it's like: huh? There were no white dudes in collared shirts in Malaysia, but I did see a billboard advertising the arrival of Ghostrider the movie in February of 2011. That was odd.

Malaysia is interesting, though. First of all, their currency is called the ringgit, which means "jagged" in Malay, and is totally fun to say. Malay is a very bizarre language, but then again, I'm kind of surrounded by bizarre languages over here. Though I suspect Mandarin would be more useful in the grand scheme of things, the nutjob in me would kind of love to learn Malay. Anyway.

Their government is also neat. They have a monarchy that has basically nothing at all to do with the government, but is instead the country's spiritual leader. By Malaysian law, all Malay are Muslim, but also by Malaysian law, all foreign Malaysians are allowed to practice whatever religion they like. The King of Malaysia is essentially the highest imam and governs the people's spirituality, and beneath him are nine sultans. The King is elected every five years from amongst the sultans, and the sultan...ance...ish...whatever, is hereditery and follows the male line. So the sultan of Johor Bahru (Mr. Harry, for short, because his name is nine million letters long) has his own zoo and his own army, and the biggest house in town, and I'd kind of like to shake his hand. Right on, Harry. Rock your zoo.

We visited the city's most famous mosque, which is gorgeous, but of course we were not allowed inside. Architectually it's kind of funky, because it's all Victorian and not Moorish, but the grounds are beautiful and you can look out across the Johor Straights and see...whatever is on the other side.

We also visited a Malaysian village where they have a garden that grows palm oil, pineapples, peppers, coconuts, mangoes, cocoa and all manner of other things, and that was very pretty, if not a little disconcerting to be touristing through.

So this was all finished by about 1:30. Just in time for the sun in Singapore to disappear behind a thick veil of gray clouds. I'm coming to understand that the weather here has a psychic, sentient sense of when all I want is to lie by the hotel pool, because that's when the clouds roll in. So long as I am fully dressed and walking around, the sun is out and bearing down upon me. The minute I get near a source of swimming water, it plays coy. That being said, I've still managed to cultivate the beginnings of a bitchin' tan (as Jenny would say), so all is not lost.

We woke up today at 6:00 for our Malaysian adventure, so I'm really really tired. Jenny is napping by the pool in the overcast, but I think I'm going to seek out the extremely uncomfortable hotel bed, and see if I can catch a few winks.

Tomorrow, I move into my new apartment! The building is PINK!

So that's a Thursday in Singapore, ladies and gentlemen. Over and out.

gustav.

2009-08-19T21:54:00.001+08:00

Meet Gustav. Jenny ate him...a bit unsuccessfully.

we went walking.

2009-08-19T07:57:00.000+08:00

So jetlag sent Jenny and I to bed at 21:30 last night, and promptly woke us up at 6:30 this morning. We're a little dicombobulated, but that will not stop us from going shopping at the famed Orchard Road of Singapore, where all the hoity toity haute coutur shops are. Singapore was recently described as being a giant interconnected shopping mall, and I'm beginning to see that.

Last night we met up with my soon-to-be roommate, you can read all about him and his adventures at draytoninsingapore.wordpress.com, and he is highly entertaining, as well as being a font of knowledge for the untraveled, like myself. Below is a picture of the view from my soon-to-be apartment.

17th Floor, bitches. How cool does that look?

We also went to two different Buddhist temples and wandered around Chinatown, and Drayton took us through some twisty Asian backroads that remind me more of nature hikes than actual shortcuts through a city -- saw a Siamese cat hanging on a bench, thought of Ezra. Hi, Steph. :)

So far I'm really loving the city. I can already see how and where and when I will get homesick, which is good -- good that I know it's coming, and that I can see it approaching, so I'll be more ready for it. Orientation begins August 31, and I'm all FZT with excitement.

More pictures!

Chinatown's Food Street

The Red Buddhist Temple

The View from Boat Quay

And, of course, more as the wacky adventures unfold. But for now, shopping!

This Cracker Tried To Eat me Back

2009-08-18T01:26:00.000+08:00

Foreign Beginnings

2009-08-18T01:22:00.001+08:00

Read about the girl who moved 10 million miles away here.