at 2.52pm new york time a most ironic thing happened. a wall message that just popped up said
(name withheld)! I'm back!! and I must tell you a secret!! and I bought you alcohol!
privacy. you has it.
14.7.09
10.7.09
Balcony Scene
Denny Crane: "You know, they can never tell whether I know what I'm doing or not."
Alan Shore: "Yes. Do you?
Denny Crane: "Well, not really." (pause) "But every once in a while, just to keep them guessing, I stick a cigar in my ear."
Alan Shore: "Yes. Do you?
Denny Crane: "Well, not really." (pause) "But every once in a while, just to keep them guessing, I stick a cigar in my ear."
9.7.09
the not-so-news
So every now and again there are things that i want to keep in this mini journal that don't exactly fit into the general scheme of things. Yeah, I'm one of those people who likes to email people random but could-be interesting news tidbits.
like LIFE-SIZE GUNDAM for instance. Call me slow, but I had read about this weeks, maybe months ago, and it really only hit me now how awesome this lifesize gundam is. there's really nothing more amazing than a life-size gundam, imho. I still have the plastic assemble-it-yourself gundams that debby and denise bought me a few years back. One more reason to visit Japan. >.<
if there was one person to bring along with me for this one, it would be GEKSHAN! lol She was the one who lent me the whole few seasons of Gundam anime in sec four, resulting in a many sleepless nights and days of annoying Adeline by sleeping in class. Oh god the days of being a anime and manga nut. I still have the entire series of Fruits Basket and Cardcaptor Sakura at home. I am such a girl.
and how Blur completely rocked Hyde Park, even though again, I'm in the wrong city. I've always had a thing for Blur, since way back when my uncle used to subscribe to cable (MTV) and I would spend my mornings and early afternoons watching music videos in primary school. (It was during this time that I fell in love with Suede as well.)
speaking of cities, Paris: Christian Lacroix's latest and maybe even last show. It was stunning, and heartwarming to think how the community came together to lend money, shoes etc to pull the whole thing together. The New York Times has a good coverage of this, and the general Parisian trend of paring down fancy looks.
also, back home: would like to highlight this local writer Low Kay Hwa, who's been challenging the odds and writing and publishing his own books, written mainly for a young audience, teens, maybe young adults. I haven't read any of the books, but I think what this guy is doing is very admirable.
This is a buzz-period for me, those times when every lightbulb in your brain just lights up with ideas, images, songs, and different things. It's exciting, energizing, refreshing and liberating, and I begin to feel like myself again. :)
like LIFE-SIZE GUNDAM for instance. Call me slow, but I had read about this weeks, maybe months ago, and it really only hit me now how awesome this lifesize gundam is. there's really nothing more amazing than a life-size gundam, imho. I still have the plastic assemble-it-yourself gundams that debby and denise bought me a few years back. One more reason to visit Japan. >.<
if there was one person to bring along with me for this one, it would be GEKSHAN! lol She was the one who lent me the whole few seasons of Gundam anime in sec four, resulting in a many sleepless nights and days of annoying Adeline by sleeping in class. Oh god the days of being a anime and manga nut. I still have the entire series of Fruits Basket and Cardcaptor Sakura at home. I am such a girl.
and how Blur completely rocked Hyde Park, even though again, I'm in the wrong city. I've always had a thing for Blur, since way back when my uncle used to subscribe to cable (MTV) and I would spend my mornings and early afternoons watching music videos in primary school. (It was during this time that I fell in love with Suede as well.)
speaking of cities, Paris: Christian Lacroix's latest and maybe even last show. It was stunning, and heartwarming to think how the community came together to lend money, shoes etc to pull the whole thing together. The New York Times has a good coverage of this, and the general Parisian trend of paring down fancy looks.
also, back home: would like to highlight this local writer Low Kay Hwa, who's been challenging the odds and writing and publishing his own books, written mainly for a young audience, teens, maybe young adults. I haven't read any of the books, but I think what this guy is doing is very admirable.
This is a buzz-period for me, those times when every lightbulb in your brain just lights up with ideas, images, songs, and different things. It's exciting, energizing, refreshing and liberating, and I begin to feel like myself again. :)
8.7.09
happy woes, The Waves
Now searching for the perfect deep red or deep purple pants. that are not skinny jeans. Thank you, Lanvin, for yet another thing that I just want to need. am also looking for purple lipstick/gloss a la Beth Ditto (I'm still a little obsessed) in LOVE.
Had mentioned earlier that I had just finished reading The Waves. Want to make a memo of it in here. Have always toyed with the idea of making an index of books i've read, or just a general collection, only because I'm bored and I like making lists, but.
It's hard to describe how it feels to read The Waves. How do you capture the exhilaration of discovering that someone has found a way to describe the tiniest and most unnoticed of gestures and actions that you thought only you ever thought about? Sometimes I had to hold my breath. The feeling is not unlike sitting on a beach and letting waves submerge your body.
The entire book made out of the ramblings and ruminations of six friends, sometimes about its seventh character Percival, who does not speak. There is not really any sense of a story, not like the current one I'm reading (Americana by Don DeLillo), but the words immerse you in a kind of stupor. I particularly liked the things she wrote for Bernard, in his Byron phase, and Jinny, although by the end of the book I felt for all of them, especially Neville who was heartbroken at Percival's death.
Not my first attempt at Virginia Woolf, but definitely my most determined. The previous book I had read was a collection of non-committal short stories (in which there were some true gems). But the book is definitely worth the effort. It took me a while to get used to Woolf's writing style, but in the third chapter or so I realised it was a fantastic way to fully expose a character, leaving him/her and the reader exceptionally vulnerable. And if I'm being perfectly honest, vulnerability is an addictive feeling.
Will now move on to Mrs Dalloway, for many reasons the V Woolf book that I've been wanting to read for a long long time coming. Have read the first chapter at the Strand Bookstore at 12 st and Broadway, and am falling in love with it. Am falling in love with the bookstore too, which is more like a collection of all books ever written (for cheaper) than a shop selling books. I would buy the book from Strand (it's $6 for a brand new book, which is a really good deal) but right now I worry about the lack of space in my luggage. :/
Had mentioned earlier that I had just finished reading The Waves. Want to make a memo of it in here. Have always toyed with the idea of making an index of books i've read, or just a general collection, only because I'm bored and I like making lists, but.
It's hard to describe how it feels to read The Waves. How do you capture the exhilaration of discovering that someone has found a way to describe the tiniest and most unnoticed of gestures and actions that you thought only you ever thought about? Sometimes I had to hold my breath. The feeling is not unlike sitting on a beach and letting waves submerge your body.
The entire book made out of the ramblings and ruminations of six friends, sometimes about its seventh character Percival, who does not speak. There is not really any sense of a story, not like the current one I'm reading (Americana by Don DeLillo), but the words immerse you in a kind of stupor. I particularly liked the things she wrote for Bernard, in his Byron phase, and Jinny, although by the end of the book I felt for all of them, especially Neville who was heartbroken at Percival's death.
Not my first attempt at Virginia Woolf, but definitely my most determined. The previous book I had read was a collection of non-committal short stories (in which there were some true gems). But the book is definitely worth the effort. It took me a while to get used to Woolf's writing style, but in the third chapter or so I realised it was a fantastic way to fully expose a character, leaving him/her and the reader exceptionally vulnerable. And if I'm being perfectly honest, vulnerability is an addictive feeling.
"that would be a harrowing experience to call and for no one to come; that would make the midnight hollow, and explains the expressions of old men in clubs - they have given up calling for a self who does not come"
Will now move on to Mrs Dalloway, for many reasons the V Woolf book that I've been wanting to read for a long long time coming. Have read the first chapter at the Strand Bookstore at 12 st and Broadway, and am falling in love with it. Am falling in love with the bookstore too, which is more like a collection of all books ever written (for cheaper) than a shop selling books. I would buy the book from Strand (it's $6 for a brand new book, which is a really good deal) but right now I worry about the lack of space in my luggage. :/
7.7.09
Snow Cones on Coney Island
It is the fourth of July and all America is abuzz, electrified with an energy that may have come from the sun. Oh the sun, finally showing its beautiful rays after a week of hiding!
If you, like me, are heading to Coney Island on this beautiful day, on the fourth of July, there must be one thing on your mind, apart from the beach: Nathan's Famous International Hotdog Eating Competition. This bizarre competition, in which people from all over the world travel to this mini peninsular/island to chow down a table full of hotdogs in ten minutes. Some of us want to see the longest standing Champion from Japan upstage the newcoming American who has taken his spot for the past two year, but most people, like me just want to see manic consumption, be amused, disgusted, shocked and amazed.
The place reached fever pitch half an hour before its ten minute run, and the frenzy of the immense crowd was such a wonderful thing to feel. Joey Chestnut won again. And so did Nathan's Famous the hotdog shop, who had a more than a snaking queue at every cashier point that day.
Moving on to the boardwalk and the beach, I pass the famous cyclone and colourful ferris wheel of the Coney Island amusement park, which was threatened with closure a few months ago. This place, Surf Ave and the boardwalk are the perfect images of American FUN in the early 1900s, especially on a day like this. Men are running around half-naked, some with big boomboxes on their shoulders. Ladies have their shades, sometimes a tasteful swimsuit, and I think I've stepped into a different century.
On the beach people are splayed like beached walruses. But they're having fun so they don't care. Many read. Some sleep. Some get buried in the sand by their naughty children. On the pier others fish for crabs with bits of chicken, sometimes unrecognisable meats. (If you fish for fish and whale for whales, do you crab for crabs?) There is scarcely any room on the pier for rodless and lineless voyeurs like me, who just wants to catch everything with my camera.
If you, like me, are heading to Coney Island on this beautiful day, on the fourth of July, there must be one thing on your mind, apart from the beach: Nathan's Famous International Hotdog Eating Competition. This bizarre competition, in which people from all over the world travel to this mini peninsular/island to chow down a table full of hotdogs in ten minutes. Some of us want to see the longest standing Champion from Japan upstage the newcoming American who has taken his spot for the past two year, but most people, like me just want to see manic consumption, be amused, disgusted, shocked and amazed.
The place reached fever pitch half an hour before its ten minute run, and the frenzy of the immense crowd was such a wonderful thing to feel. Joey Chestnut won again. And so did Nathan's Famous the hotdog shop, who had a more than a snaking queue at every cashier point that day.
Moving on to the boardwalk and the beach, I pass the famous cyclone and colourful ferris wheel of the Coney Island amusement park, which was threatened with closure a few months ago. This place, Surf Ave and the boardwalk are the perfect images of American FUN in the early 1900s, especially on a day like this. Men are running around half-naked, some with big boomboxes on their shoulders. Ladies have their shades, sometimes a tasteful swimsuit, and I think I've stepped into a different century.
On the beach people are splayed like beached walruses. But they're having fun so they don't care. Many read. Some sleep. Some get buried in the sand by their naughty children. On the pier others fish for crabs with bits of chicken, sometimes unrecognisable meats. (If you fish for fish and whale for whales, do you crab for crabs?) There is scarcely any room on the pier for rodless and lineless voyeurs like me, who just wants to catch everything with my camera.
People In The Park
At Central Park I moved on finally from Virginia Woolf's The Waves to New York's literary bad boy Don DeLillo's Americana, which is proving to be an incredible read. (DD is my new hero). What's not to love with writing like this:
So I spent the entire Sunday at Central Park, picnicking with people in a line. We were queueing for free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park's production of Twelfth Night. I waited in line till about 7 in the evening.
Ask anyone about this Public Theatre thing, and they'll tell you to head EARLY. The first person in the queue arrived at 11pm the previous night, a bunch of six girls who must have had a blast sleeping over in the park. I only joined them at 8 in the morning, and as you can imagine I was right at the back of the queue that would not stop growing. When they finished handing out tickets at about 1 in the afternoon, there were just three people in front of me, and the ushers told us we had a high chance of getting standby tickets in the evening. I knew I had brought three books out for a good reason!
The morning, afternoon and early-evening was spent thus in pleasant company of a thai man from LA, architect-to-be from Seattle, his Danish girlfriend, and her friend Dawn, who has an amazing voice (I quickly become smitten: she is absolutely lovely). They sang songs, shared their mixed berries and nuts, and towels and pillows and stories. And to top it all off the play was absolutely excellent, and finally at 11 in the evening I leave the park happy, with sunburn on my shoulders.
"You can tell something about a woman by listening to her footsteps on a flight of stairs. As she climbs toward your landing and takes the level walk past your door and then begins to climb again, you can say with some assurance whether she is shapely, impulsive, churlish, simpering, tired, witty or unloved. It is interesting to speculate on the curve of her ankles, how her apartment is furnished, whether or not she believes in a supreme being."
So I spent the entire Sunday at Central Park, picnicking with people in a line. We were queueing for free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park's production of Twelfth Night. I waited in line till about 7 in the evening.
Ask anyone about this Public Theatre thing, and they'll tell you to head EARLY. The first person in the queue arrived at 11pm the previous night, a bunch of six girls who must have had a blast sleeping over in the park. I only joined them at 8 in the morning, and as you can imagine I was right at the back of the queue that would not stop growing. When they finished handing out tickets at about 1 in the afternoon, there were just three people in front of me, and the ushers told us we had a high chance of getting standby tickets in the evening. I knew I had brought three books out for a good reason!
The morning, afternoon and early-evening was spent thus in pleasant company of a thai man from LA, architect-to-be from Seattle, his Danish girlfriend, and her friend Dawn, who has an amazing voice (I quickly become smitten: she is absolutely lovely). They sang songs, shared their mixed berries and nuts, and towels and pillows and stories. And to top it all off the play was absolutely excellent, and finally at 11 in the evening I leave the park happy, with sunburn on my shoulders.
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