Four Days

Heh Esplanade does not disappoint. After telling so many people to go down to the waterfront to check out the performances - and being ignored - finally I find a companion in Chern. And we were in luck, too, finding this sublime jazz band (Broken Orange Fence) performing on Friday night. Really good stuff...apparently they're full time performers, which is something positively bizarre in Singapore. But it sure makes for good music! Well, only the kids in the front row were actually dancing to the tunes, but you can just feel the vibes making you sway and tap the beat.

Yeah...for all its un-riskiness and placidity (not all art is celebrated there), Esplanade is still my favourite spot in Singapore. Especially at night. And on a weekend night too. Sea breeze, good music, people enjoying themselves. You just take your enjoyment wherever you find it. And on Friday, several Christmas tunes set against the backdrop of the Fullerton Hotel all lit up in red spotlights...something in the air makes you feel like you're in the right place, you know? That everything coincides, and the machinery of the world is working flawlessly, and you've found your place in the big order of things. Too bad it doesn't last too long.

Been writing Christmas cards mostly these few days. Fun stuff, sketching little pictures and sticking them together in true-blue arts and craft fashion. I surprised myself because I actually successfully combined colour pencils and my trusty black marker, something that I hadn't even thought of doing before. Colour pencils, it turns out, can do much more stuff than just colour. Heh, and it's with an irrational spurt of satisfaction that I walked into the Post Centre yesterday to buy the stamps and post away the cards for overseas people, and some of the local ones too. It feels special, that extra effort of going down to the post office. And nothing in email resembles the sensation of seeing your crafted letter disappearing into the slot of a post box.

Shengjie from CHS dropped by yestarday suddenly, because he was asking me to help him in his Stanford application. Hmm...US application essays are really quite fun to do, it seems. The impression I got was that you don't really need to be serious, since they don't check up on the truthfulness of the essays. It's like writing fiction, actually - it's all in the style. But then maybet's just because it's not my application I'm doing, so I have the luxury of standing back and taking the long view. And maybe it's just Stanford. Heh, but it was hilarious shifting styles from personal letter to academic essay to fairy tale and even a brief dip into the realms of poetry.

Mmm...he's a good kid, Shengjie. Suprising. I didn't know he was taking History...definitely a strange thing for a PRC scholar, and we made sure to make a point of it last night. He has ambition, he does. And lots of money, if his parents can pay his way through Stanford. I think, though, he has a bit too much faith in my abilities as a writer. It'd be great if that series of essays do get him into Stanford, but what are the odds of that? Hmph...no matter what he says, I am not the best writer on the block. ANd those writers are actually applying to the Ivy League. But at the point in time, call it vanity, call it arrogance, I just couldn't dispossess him of that impression, you know? And anyway it was 1am, and he was on tight deadline, and there was no time to find someone else, so perhaps it wouldn't have been wise to convince him that he found the wrong person...

Well, anyway, I'm still waiting for my big fish to report in. Was hoping to get it before Christmas, but it doesn't seem to be about to happen. Ah well, at least I have my backups. And I may actually be going to Paris after all. Dawn called just now to ask me a few questions for an article she's doing for Straits Times, about students going to non-traditional countries. Told her that France was because of practical reasons (since I've been there before and I can speak the language) and personal preference, and also because it would be a real new start. A toptal blank slate, in a different culture and language. Which it is. But when I said it I suddenly realised that I wasn't all that certain that I wanted to challenge that kind of tabula rasa. Do I really want that degree of dislocation? I like my present security.

Hmm, speaking of French...am reading Yvonne's lit text now, Albert Camus's La Peste (The Plague). Some parts, his descriptions mostly, I don't understand at all. But the plot I can catch roughly at least. Mmm..a true existentialist book that, a bit rambling (which is like The Outsider) without a clear direction. ut the approach of the book is a bit forceful I think, like Georeg Orwell's 1984. You get the impression that he's trying harder to get his message across than write a book. Like reading an abstraction in some parts. But maybe it's just my ramshackle grasp of French...

Oh, and now a new trip is confirmed! Going to Hong Kong for a short hop from the 26th to 29th, the true final fling of this era, I think. Heh, and it's quite a fluke that I'm actually going, I think. Suggested it to Mum on the way back from Fraser's Hill, but I didn't actually expect it to come true. Last few days was in a bit of a daze over it, thinking whether I should actually go through with it since it's so unexpected. But now that I've bought the tix and cleared accomodation it's much better =P I find myself at the brink of a new trip!

It's been a long time since the last visit...can't even rightly place when it happened. I only remember being rather pissed at the cold - it was the first cold place I went to, and it didn't go down well, but see where things have brought me! Will be staying with my grand-aunt and liaising with Pui Man, who'll be back there at the same time. Mmm...cold places, mountains, a new city to explore. A new adventure, perhaps.

pondered by phoenican @ 20.12.05