Alaska King Crab

A few days ago, the usual dinner turned out to be a spontaneous splurging on an Alaska King Crab dinner! My dinner, shown above. I don't know how people can look at this and think of eating it. I know if I were the first fisherman to catch one, I'd probably scream and dump it back in the sea, or jump in to avoid it. Also, I don't know why it isn't called the Alaskan King Crab, since if it's from Alaska, it must most certainly be Alaskan. But anyway, my dinner! I thought that my first taste of the Alaksa King Crab was worthy of some documentation, since it's also most likely my last.















My dinner had a neighbour! I don't know what it's called, but it's fat, ugly and HUGE! I put my hand in front of the tank to help you gauge it's size. My dinner's neighbour lies about 30 cm behind my hand. Perspective, perspective.


















My dinner's other neighbour. A lobster, I think. Again, I don't know how the first people could have looked at crustacean and thought "mmm-mm, dinner!"
















So, here's my dinner dancing. I almost couldn't eat it. I mean, LOOK AT IT! Even if it were sitting cross-legged nicely with a nice book, I just - well, just look at it! I have a problem with eating animals that still look like animals. (On second thought, maybe it really is supposed to be ALASKAN. The menu may not be grammatically sound.)

















But I forgot all my apprehensions when THIS was served! My dinner, looking hot, and lot more like dinner.
















The crab was steamed, with nothing else except a tinge of ginger and egg white. That was how fresh it was. It was unlike any crab I'd ever eaten, and I eat a lot of them: the meat was sweet and succulent and had a very... clean taste. No bits of flesh pulp stuck in the shell. Oh yes, the shell was so soft we cut through it with a pair of small, blunt scissors.

















Strangely enough (or maybe not strangely enough, since dancers' legs are usually the largest and meatiest parts of them), most of the meat in the crab, was in the leg. Here's a finger (mine) to leg (crab's) ratio.

















Half a crab shell sitting on a dinner plate.



I really do like the Alaska King Crab. Eating it, I mean. It wouldn't make a very pretty pet.

As my parent-funding approaches termination, I realize that I may not be able to afford the kind of lifestyle I'm living now when I actually have to earn my own bread. Sigh. I actually like being kinda wealthy.

Charmaine went back to her secondary school for a little AEP gathering. The crew they managed to assembly was motley, long-lost, but not unexpected. The teachers were delighted. Seeing them again renewed her conviction in several things.

Firstly, the teachers were really something special: remembering every single thing about them short of their identification numbers. From height, to bustline, to waistline, to hair, to skin colour, to interests, to abilities, to idiosyncracies, to things they (individually) did right, wrong and didn't do.

The conversations were light, and of the past, present and future, leaving participants a little confused about which point in time they were at. But the way things went, time might just as well have been a saturated, unmoving medium, as the teachers set them Homework, discussed our old and new projects, and transferred their juvenile artworks back into their possession as if they left them there only yesterday. The teachers didn't treat them any different, raising eyebrows of disbelief when they counted the years together and realized that the students were now 18, now adult and legal. The man teacher laughed at them, took out his camera and snapped photos for the present. Just as if the photographs could be pulled out the next day to be analyzed for colour, lighting and composition. Pictures, not memories. Pictures that become memories without ever intending to.

Second, it took that many years (four!) for Charmaine to realize that underneath the caustic jokes that the woman teacher sometimes made, perhaps undercurrents of true disparage did exist. That made it difficult, or even more difficult (she already knew it was) for Charmaine to like her. Because like everybody else, her willingness to enjoy someone's company heavily depended on how much the person truly liked her.

Charmaine begins to wonder what "warmth" and "nostalgia" really means, and if they mean merely a feeling that the past is fits that certain hole in you, even if out of habit rather that fit.

Afterlife

Whenever I get my mind into a knot trying to understand the big question marks in epistemology, I think to myself: someday, when we're done with life, we'll look back and realize how juvenile and limited our theories are, and how remarkable, remarkable the truth.

Then I realize - why on earth do I think that the afterlife comprises an over-arching view from Nowhere, that it sits in the throne of infinitesimal knowledge? (Why do we refer to the after-death as afterlife? Hah! Death, our blindspot.)

I have no idea. But it's a comforting thought. I am not sure if there's such a word as "infinitesimal" - I picked it off a Elizabeth McCraken's two-lined attempt at rhyming with Dewey Decimal. Maybe when I'm dead and gone, I'll find out if there really is one.

Some things happen more often than all the time

Pulse Room, one hundred incandescent light bulbs controlled by the heartbeat of the public. Dimensions variable, 2006.
by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

(the words titling this post are his, too)

Do the hearts of everyone beat in sync?

Perhaps only those who walk together, laugh together, talk together do. Maybe your heart trips up its own rhythm to match another's when your eyes lock - maybe that's why hearts flutter. If your heart beat between mine, if everyone's heart beat to a different time, would the lights never turn off? If only two people stood in this room and had an argument, fell in love, had a fight, made love, would the lights flicker on and off and on and off with different speeds? If a pregnant person stood under the lights, gave birth and died while the child lived, would the lights register a change? Do the lights only pick up the strongest heartbeats, or the loudest? Is there one light bulb for every heart, or one flock that responds the to the breathing herd?

***
Two Art teachers now have independently decided that Art is not "my thing". And I've been thinking, although I pretty much agree with them, when they tell me Art isn't my thing, a little part of my heart feels like it's crying.

It was one of the pleasantest car-rides I ever had, in Mr Lee's small, green car just a few hours ago (with Ms Kee and Zhengyou). For about half an hour, we talked about our dreams, our interesting ideas, our muses, futures and pasts. And there was something oddly comforting about the two gentle and kindly voices from the front seats sharing their ideals in a way that was neither imposing or didactic. And for that moment, it seemed like life was simple - one simply had to do what one liked. A quiet affair: one man and his heart (my universals shall be masculine! I bah feminism!) in a private little waltz in a tiny, surreal chamber. For half an hour, I felt like I too, could almost do the same. Almost.

Art really isn't my thing.

<p>

What is?

on my mind

1) culture
2) history
3) future
4) function
5) economy
6) buses
7) space
8) narratives
9) electrical appliances

Siobhan, Gaby and me, respectively.

Dance Night 07.

I generally don't post lyrics, but...

"Wasted Time"

Eagles

Well baby, there you stand

With your little head, down in your hand

Oh, my God, you can't believe it's happening again

Your baby's gone, and you're all alone

and it looks like the end.

And you're back out on the street.

And you're tryin' to remember.

How will you start it over?

You don't know what became.

You don't care much for a stranger's touch,

But you can't hold your man.

You never thought you'd be alone

this far down the line

And I know what's been on your mind

You're afraid it's all been wasted time

The autumn leaves have got you thinking

about the first time that you fell

You didn't love the boy too much, no, no

you just loved the boy too well, Farewell

So you live from day to day, and you dream about tomorrow, oh.

And the hours go by like minutes

and the shadows come to stay

So you take a little something to make them go away

And I could have done so many things, baby

If I could only stop my mind from wondrin' what

I left behind and from worrying 'bout this wasted time

Ooh, another love has come and gone

Ooh, and the years keep rushing on

I remember what you told me before you went out on your own:

"Sometimes to keep it together, we got to leave it alone."

So you can get on with your search, baby, and I can get on with mine

And maybe someday we will find,

that it wasn't really wasted time

Songs from the Eagles always have this effect on me. I only wish I were IT savvy enough to put the actual song up. Songs are but assemblages of words without music. But this is one heck of an assemblage.

The Germination

Upon what do we base our values?

That's got to be the one age-old question flogged to death by epistemologists, intellectuals, hippies, everybody. But it appears that at times, perhaps flogging the dead horse can bring about resurrection.

Conversations too big for their boots reveal how false some of our moral opinions can be - based upon memory of someone else's revelation, or an impression of Virtues, whose origins we know nothing of. I try very hard to own an autodidactic system of principles, but it has come to my attention lately that I have been flabby in certain aspects. Why, for instance, do I value transparency? Or integrity - which I hold paramount?

So I will begin, as with all beginnings, from nothing. And each day, I will acquire one more moral proposition that I can be proud to allow to guide my life.

Akan Datang.

My art teacher back in Nanyang used to tape "Akan Datang" in a humungously boring font (rescued by the fact that unfamiliarity always arouses interest) all over the gallery between exhibitions. And I mean REAL exhibitions. With viewer-worthy works, sometimes even his own 'real works'. The first time he placed up his Akan-Datang sign, the gallery was in for a major overhaul. I remember, because my aep classmates and I spent a whole day moving, chronicling, and most satisfyingly- destroying artworks that couldn't be distinguished from each other because everything looked like dust. ( My Nanyang AEP days always made me feel invincible - strong enough to move anything in the world, resourceful enough to make anything happen, and garang enough to tackle any dirt/dust/muck/pest infestations.)

But anyway, my point is: this blog is going to be overhauled.

A blog should be pretty, exciting, crazy. But on top of all, pretty. Not filled with words words wordswordswords left unread.

The Man Among Many Men

While travelling down the old roads of Balestier, I met a band of men, too many men for the back of a tiny pick-up truck. Three had the olive skins and thin noses and eyes of the Nepalese, or Vietnamese, or Chinese. The rest were Indian.

They were unmoving. And behind the silence of my car window, they were quiet too. The wind never so much as ruffled their thick, black hair. All of them had thick, black hair. But there was one man sat on a little crate, his back straight like a king - he wore a crown of fresh white towel. He wore a crown of unearthly cleanliness beside their muck-filled, sand-blown canvas clothes.Perhaps it was a gift from his young, new wife as he left the village, to wipe his beads of perspiration when her hand wasn't there. It was the first thing he bought after he exchanged his worn leather shoes for boots on this foreign land; he needed comfort, but he needed conviction of his new life here too. It was carefully chosen from his plywood cupboard at home where everything was free from dust, sniffed deeply first the smell of the washboard before it was rolled up and packed. It was a present from his new employer, a fair-skinned, fat local who wanted to clear the perfunctory hurdle so he could bring forward the brown, brown sand.

Perhaps it was a crown, as the man stared at his kingdom in the spaces between buildings, between cars, between grains of sand.

Walking Company

We were walking down that path that seemed really, to be a narrow white extension along the length of a dense, emerald hedge. He walked between me and the hedge at first, then decided that it was more gentlemanly to put himself on my right - to add buffer to the thin lace of shrubbery that divided the other side of the path and the thick, roaring road.

We walked slowly, or rather, he walked slowly, pausing ever so slightly with each step so we would be abreast. The sunset was filtering through the walls of leaves, deftly nicking our cheeks, our foreheads, our noses. It was a path, it seemed, that was exclusively ours, leading to the bus stop that only we used - an emerald passage tucked away from the rest of the world.

"When I'm walking down this path, you know what's my worst fear?" I laughed in a low voice.

His eyes twinkled with gentle curiosity.

I looked through the lace of shrubs and small trees, "that my bus rolls past me!We're so near, yet so far from the bus stop."

"Oh." He fell silent.

"I thought you were you going to say that you were afraid something might grab and drag you into the hedge."

Amusing.

Sometimes, I find myself doing things I can't explain. For the record, the aesthetically licensed took great care in telling me that I ruined Tobias' face.

There is only One World.

There was a time when I remembered the exact number of countries in the world, the number of continents, number of flags. But I don't anymore, because I'll never be able to ask "How many countries are there in your world?"
When I was thinking about history one day, turning over like a precious gem the big facts of humanity, I found myself thinking, "My world has seen two world wars. Is that too many? How do we measure up to-" I knew, before I even finished my thought-sentence that it was ludicrous. A year later, as I sat in the sitting room of a nice Ipswich home, a little eight year old girl with blonde hair, blue-grey eyes who said "chit-tens" instead of "chickens" snuggled in my Asian lap and asked sleepily, "Charmaine, what's it like in your world? Is your world nice?" I cried.

Saturday

I feel a day like yesterday is worthy of some mention.

For one, I think I made quite a name for myself in the SATs examination hall, with my persistent inquries on protocol (largely due to my severe inability to follow written instructions, although I must say, the invigilator was terribly incoherent, which resulted in my having to ask each question thrice, creatively rephrased) and my even more persistent nose-blowing. (if you've got a SAT pun, I think I've already heard/used them all)

A short disclaimer here - if I don't do well on my SATs, this post never mentioned I took it, okay?

Two hours into the paper, my table was FILLED with used tissue paper, which was beginning to gross me out, and I suspect, the guy next to me as well, because he killed his enthusiasm in me after I started blowing my brains out vehemently. If pulling out a sheet of tissue paper, putting it to my nose and subsequently emptying the contents of my nose takes approximately 13 seconds, and I depleted 2 packets of tissue paper (x 2 (20) sheets), then the total amount of time I spent nursing my flu during the test = 520 seconds = 8. 3333 minutes. Perhaps if I knew how many calories one burns when blowing her nose, the information might be more useful. I don't know.

I met Karen and Eleen later, my two gorgeous longtime buddies. It was so nice to see them both again, Karen and her eccentric closet (if you think I dress creatively, you need to look at her), and Eleen with her miniscule denims that put the short in 'shorts'. So I began the day, looking like the most dressed up person among nearly 400 wannabe Ivy League candidates with my favourite pair of glam gold and green heels, an exciting camisole, denim miniskirt, lovely cardigan and ended the day looking like a plain Jane in a cardigan from the fifties, a camisole, a skirt and shoes. Bespectacled too. (Did I mention they are GORGEOUS and PETITE?)

But there wasn't much time to thoroughly feel my disadvantage in the Looks Department then (feelings of inadequacy flood only in retrospect), because we were immediately overcome with acute Spiderman 3 temptation. Which we would have gladly succumbed to, if not for the fact that we already made a([n] indefinite) spidey date with a fourth, Shum. But thankfully, given our strong principles, coming to a decision wasn't too hard - we queued for three Spiderman tickets. :D

But I suppose Fate is moral, because they were all sold out. We ended up watching a cheap Thai production: Letters to Death, which, despite being not very alarming, freaked me out (and continues to freak me out) horribly. But as Colin says, company - rather than what you do, makes for a good outing. It was a good outing.

The thirteen year old us would not have recognized the three girls who prowled the mall on Saturday. Chubby girls, canvas-shoed and topped with neat, schoolgirl haircuts never saw this evolution coming. But as we laughed at and with each other, tripped over our own feet, walked into things, and played popcorn games, I think inside, we never really changed. (:

The Elevator Man is Me.

What if we built a room large enough to put everything we need to live in it? Nobody would ever need to get out of their rooms. As our desires accumulate and our ambitions grow, rooms could become skyscrapers. And if you placed your baby things on the ground floor, and your coffin in the penthouse, by the time you worked your way up to the topmost floor, your life would be over, and you would be up in heaven.

And a child might begin on the 29th floor of his parent's skyscraper. He looks up awe at the scaffolds of his parent's plans for the future and marvel at the sky the view from the window affords him. But he would know no floors below. This floor becomes his ground floor, propped up by another's history, though when he looks, he sees only dark, pedestrian earth. He steps into his elevator that rises beyond the weak scaffolds, rooms clamour to be built at his feet. His vision traces his own cutting edge architecture; he looks down, and dismays at how scanty and dwarfed his parent's residence is. Memories of luxurious velvet furniture, chandeliers and generous penthouse views that were the shed below are shelved and kept close to the heart as blueprints of what should be. He passes the 27th floor, the 28th floor. But elevators do not rise or fall, the skyscrapers move up and down - thats why floors are called levels; they are brought to your level. And as the building slides downwards to bring the 29th level to meet the elevator's opening doors, a child enters wrapped nicely in his bright, mirrored elevator. A child, who will look up in admiration at the design he has etched in the sky, and look out his window and see earth where his life, his parent's life, his parent's parent's life stand. Once stood.

Looking for God in a Mini Cornetto

It never fails to amuse me how some people dislike mint flavoured ice cream because it reminds them of toothpaste. Isn't toothpaste made to taste like mint to remind you of more heavenly sources (like mint ice cream)? But I suppose I can easily imagine how unappetizing something would taste if it were the shadow of toothpaste. As would the idea of toothpaste in your mouth be tantalizing if it promised a hint of your favourite food.

So it appears that the order of events in a cause-effect relationship could change our opinions on a particular affair. And if opinions dictate our beliefs and guide our actions, then it seems important in certain cases (arguably, the attractiveness of mint ice-cream is not one of them) that we get the chronology right. That would be easy - if not for the fact that our points of view are accrued from our place in time. So I've been thinking, what if our persistent philosophical questioning of religious belief is a result of a wrong viewing point?

Today, thousands of years after the holy books were authored, we find ourselves unable to convince ourselves of its reliability because we stand in the present, trying to look back into the past which characteristically leaves no satiable evidence. But if we could somehow place ourselves at the other end, beginning with the time the Word of God was transcribed, then assuming the divine revelation was witnessed and that it is true, confidence in the bible (and subsequently religion) would effortlessly ensue.

We cannot, for obvious reasons, place ourselves at the other end to test the truth of our religious doctrines and chronicles. But neither can we find truthful answers from a system invariably tied to pyrrhonistic conclusions, can we?

Dusting the chalk ring around me

The sky was deep and the stars were of fairytale quality when my last event as a public figure ended with a nice, but fairly troubling touch - a prince, most recently usurped in the Faculty Prince/Princess pageant I hosted just an hour ago, offering to whisk me away on his rental bike. Not exactly Prince Charming on his glistening white steed, but middle-class modernity often doesn't allow for much more. While I didn't exactly fall in love with Mr Tall Dark Unfamiliar, I did fall into a quagmire of reflection.

That was Moment Number Three in just one day - a perfect stranger had made himself company earlier in the afternoon's sunshine, and Prince Charming had a predecessor who stopped me as I walked out, asking if I would be okay alone in the dark. Over the last two years, too many have leaned by, flashed winning smiles and called me by the name I never gave to them. But these moments always trouble me - nice and warm as they make me feel, why do I always involuntarily drop my eyelids and frantically find excuses to turn them away?