jon's blog

i could go on for 40 days and 40 nights about my blog title and bore you to bits and pieces with 10,000 different ideas i actually had for the name of this blog but because of the 500 characters limit that is imposed upon this mechanism which, by the way, is supposed to promote free speech, i shall shorten it to just two words basically describing what the hell this is all about and who this hell belongs to.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007

project 355: my final fantasy

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for a gay guy, i think i play too much of video games. but i have an excuse! i started off as a nerdy one. i was the king (or queen) of word processing. i used to help my paired partner during computer class. everyone had to type out boring passages of various compositions we wrote by hand and then get them printed. which kinda defeats the purpose of writing it out in the first place right? but i was really nice to my partner (a sweet girl of demure nature, by the way) and i would help out type out both mine and hers. maybe i just enjoyed hogging the computer. which adds to the credibility of my nerdy nature. that was during my primary school days. then i started progressing on to become phallic-oriented during secondary school. Ah!!! the sweet innocence of youth. i accidentally discovered the thrill of cruising in the shopping mall toilets near my home. i was taking a crap and there were glory holes someone burned into the cubical walls. needless to say, i started out gay the wrong way. normally people would realize that they were not interested in girls and stuff like that. but i discovered the joys of gay sex then proceeded on to discover my sexuality. eventually abandoning the grottoes of the female privates toward the end of secondary 2. eventually i attained full-fledged gay status during secondary three. that was the period of online dating through gay personals and meeting up with other people of similar nature through chatrooms and more toilet fun. and now, i follow the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy at work. though outside of work, it's more like 'Even If You Don't Ask, You'll Still Be Able to Tell'.

so you see, my history of gayhood is really warped. but still, my roots are with the nerdy ones. i enjoy going on for hours with fellow video gamers about topics such as HP, MP, secret levels and how to go about getting the strongest weapon early in the game. it's getting hard to pull off the nerd thing though. given that i have practically no knowledge of Java, any know-how of the Adobe range of products, or even the difference between XP and Vista, i ought to be condemned to just being gay. ok lah, give myself a discount. a preppy gay dude.

this is why i so enjoy playing the latest installment of Squaresoft's Final Fantasy series. i've been an ardent fan of Final Fantasy since i discovered it on my big bulky gameboy during primary school. i remember Final Fantasy Three where the characters were cute little things with spiky hair. and the enemies appeared in block formation during the turn-based battles. and the music came out in beeps and bops and slashes and bangs. and the storyline was oh-so-innocent with the clear lines drawn between who the good and bad guys were. evil looked evil. and the good looked really dashing. though i can assure you it's hard to tell good-looking from the fugly in less than 50 pixels on a gameboy screen.

look at how far Final Fantasy has come now. the characters are so life-like that you can even see everything from their japanese manga-styled hiar, the colour of their unnatural eyes (yellow irises) or even their crotches. as much as i wish i could believe the theory that the bigger their crotches, the more likely they are the good guys, it's not true. Final Fantasy XII is the gayest in the series. half of the men in the game are in various forms of undress. maybe it's the climate where the game exists in (tropical forest to scorching deserts), but there's not much excuse for a character to go around in a sleeveless top which has the abdomen area opened permanently, all 6 glorious abs exposed for the gay world to see. and curiously, most guys in the world of FFXII wear a g-string for some reason. and not inside, but OUTSIDE their pants.

not that i'm complaining. yum.


Tuesday, February 27, 2007

project 355: boyfriend art

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the pay for my nursing job really sucks. true, we will be having that increment of 3-7% (depending on your job rank) starting this month. but really... what sorta job requires you to work shifts, save lives, handle faecal matter, juggle lots of paperwork and do all of the above with good-manners and customer-oriented service complete with just a pathetic starting pay of $1,500 (not counting CPF)? ok lah, let's loosen up and not be so stringent. there's ward allowance and shift allowances as well. that adds up to another $200-$400 depending on shifts. afternoon shifts get you $2. night shifts should be more (i think 6). morning shifts earn you nothing extra. men who have served their National Service get a 10% increment. i hit about $1,800 every month. but believe me, every single nurse out there would be on strike if not for the fact that they care for the patients, plus it's Singapore. strike? the only strike they would know is prolly soccer bets

this is why, once i finish my 3 years bond with the current hospital, i am so gonna fuck off from healthcare for a while and maybe invest my creativity and customer service skills in something else more profitable like t-shirt design. it has always been my dream to design my own clothes. especially tees. the typical tee in Singapore is boring beyond words. most of them don't even have words printed! general stripy things with big splashes of paints or graffiti or some hip-hop shit that passes off for what the young people these days call 'street style'. i have nothing against street style or whatever fashion trend that the young adore, it's just that local t-shirt companies really need to try and put in some effort to come up with something more original.

it's difficult to find anything witty, punny and cheeky to wear in Singapore. true, we have New Urban Male and their thinly-veiled gay puns. but you realize that it's becoming more and more mainstream when even the straight people start wearing them (without understand the true meaning of some of these tees). nowadays i seldom see the gay people wearing NUM slogan-ed tees. it's the straight and the ignorant girls, it seems. what do the gay people wear? something tight. something without sleeves. something foreign. never local. maybe this is why i'm such a big fan of Threadless tees. it's cheap, it's foreign, it's snug-fitting and most importantly, people put brains and creativity into designing these tees. not that NUM doesn't. but it's mainstream, like i said.

so what's a gay guy to do when he can't have his own tee? just like life giving you lemons and making lemon-AID, you can MAKE your own tees too. i asked the boyfriend to doodle something on my trusty ol' notebook today. it's full of nursing notes and rubbishy sketches of cartoon men. and some personal thoughts on ex-crushes. the boyfriend looked through it and i was quite pai seh. cos they were very personal (eg. i checked up the starsign of this particular crush i had to see if libra and sagittarius were compaitable; they weren't). so for compensation, the boyfriend drew. and i think it looks pretty awesome. it really looks like stuff you can print on a t-shirt and yet look arty at the same time. plus it's gay, what with the hugest dick that a stick man could possibly have. i being the linguistic freak had to add in my salt and pepper's worth of words. NUM written at the corner is if New Urban Male decides to use the design for their own printing purposes. i have plenty of punny ideas in mind. but i can't draw that well. that's where the boyfriend comes in handy.

of course, that all comes later in the future. for now, i focus on avoiding the never-ending temptation to own a pair of cheap Giordano jeans. or a NUM tee.


Monday, February 26, 2007

updates

i've just posted two posts for project 355 that i 'o-tang-ed' you guys. here's the hyperlink, you lazy GEMS-expectant buggers:

Sunday February 18 : hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah, praise ye the loooooord!

Friday February 23 : arty flicks can build your relationship

have fun. leave comments. and i love you if you love me back.



project 355: sembayang, show and tell

in case some of you don't know yet, i have a paternal cousin who's named after me. his name is John Chua. now, with all due respect to my third aunt (she's the mother) and myself, i think it's a really bad choice to name your son after a gay dude (the paternal family somehow suspects). you know what they say about names and how people's characters soon grow to fit the names. apparently, some of the biggest traits associated with MY name (or at least a derivative of my name) seems to have rubbed off my dear cousin, who just started primary schooling this year. the BIGGEST trait in question could have been my big gregarious nature, my big generous pockets, my big heart of gold or my even bigger nether regions. but noooooo! the cousin had to inherit the gayhood behind my name. yeah. you read that right. i think my primary 1 cousin is starting to effete a feminine quality to himself. of course, you could claim that i say this in the same light as i proclaim the brother's query gay status (he's as straight as an arrow; and a vagina-seeking arrow at that).

the cousin hides himself behind books all the time. he wears glasses. he has the occasional limp wrist. and the one thing that i can't stand about him: he cries when he can't solve any problem by himself. be it mathematics, the schoolyard bully or wetting his pants in school. he even cries when he cannot defeat his much much older cousins in Worms or Tekken. and all his milk teeth are dropping off now. so he's practically toothless except for several of the front teeth. when he smiles, he looks ridiculous. a bit like a way younger version of an old man. still, he bawls till he gets attention. and the parents give a mix of sometimes ignorance and sometimes full-blown attention. apparently, the parents are armed with degrees in Childhood Guidance (or something along those lines).

anyways, the story goes that John Chua had to bring something related to Chinese New Year for a show-and-tell session in school. so he came back home all toothless and happy, asking his mother to help him find something he could bring to school. and search, she did. she reached for the first CNY-related item that she saw, a giant pineapple look-alike display. the pineapple had little 'seeds' that stuck out from the side. these 'seeds' were actually filled with jelly and definitely edible. and to top (or more like bottom) it off, there's a quaint little red plate for the pineapple to sit on. it's all so chinese-y and it screams chinese cymbals and gongs without making a single sound. just look at the picture.

John Chua's mother being a devoted christian and schooled in english thought she did a pretty good job finding something within such a short time. it was some dirtcheap trinket she got at the NTUC Supermarket at the shopping mall beside her condominium. an impulse buy, if you must. now she had to get rid of it and it was perfect. she gave the son specific instructions: 'make sure you give all the jellies to your friends, i don't want you to come back with the pineapple!'.

thank goodness, though. John had obviously much better taste when it comes to show-and-tell (and i hope this trait comes from my name). he was mortified that he had to carry such a wierd-looking object to school. my grandmother who always sends him down to the school bus refused to carry it for him. so imagine a 7 year old schooling kid in uniform and a big schoolbag carrying a gigantic pineapple complete with the quaint red plate. bizarre, isn't it? it was prolly what the security guard at the condominium entrance thought too, while my grandmother and John passed him.

'Sembayang??' he shouted to my grandmother from afar.

my grandmother started laughing. John assumed that she was laughing at him. but in truth, she was laughing because the security guard thought that John was bringing the pineapple to school for some sort of offering. 'Sembayang' translated from Behasa Melayu translates into 'offerings'. the type that the chinese use for ancestral/idol-worship. it's actually perfect for an altar filled with joss sticks, honey cakes and an ancestral plate. but not in the arms of a 7 year old boy on his way to school. at least now we know what the red plate is for.

still, i don't blame the mother. she never saw it coming, given her christian background and all. and you know what's the biggest irony of this story? John Chua's teacher totally forgot about the show-and-tell and cancelled it. all the Sembayang hoo-hah over nothing.

i bet John Chua now is waving his effeminate wrist and throwing a tantrum. thanks to me, in a small part.


Sunday, February 25, 2007

project 355: closet boy


the boyfriend and i had dinner with one of his air stewarding course mates on the saturday that just passed. we've actually been out with this chap quite a few times already and we're thinking that he still doesn't know that we're together despite the fact that i'm always tagging along during outings with the boyfriend and this particular chap. he's pretty interesting to talk to and very sincere. but the big question that befuddles us to this day is whether he's cluelessly gay or just curiously straight. this guy tends to say things that sound suspiciously gay, but with a tone that transcends innocence. the boyfriend is quite certain that he's straight. i'm thinking he's clueless that he's gay. either way, here's a sample of a conversation we had while heading to the Heeren for a Billy Bomber's dinner:

Me: So you think you're quite an introverted or anti-social kinda person?

Clueless Gay (CG): Yes, I think so. I don't really like to visit town. In fact, i'm clueless about where we're head to for dinner now.

Me: Oh, we're going to the Heeren for Billy Bombers.

CG: Oh. Where's Heeren? I really don't know town very well. I really need to get out of the house more often. I always like to stay in. I'm like a closet boy.

Me: (surprised) Okay. Closet boy eh? Right....

CG: Yah. Every weekend i always stay at home or i go play soccer. i think i should get out lah. I need to start coming out. Like Aiman and you lah, always come out one.

Me: Honey, we've been out for a long time already...

and believe me. i'm not editing any of this. Clueless Gay really used the terms 'closet boy' and 'come out'. words that even the straight would never dare to mutter in their sleep. we told him to avoid using those words. though as to why he shouldn't, it's better to keep it a secret. straight boys just have that kind of appeal when they are clueless.


Saturday, February 24, 2007

project 355: obama, i love you!

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everytime i eat at All-American restaurants like Billy Bombers, i never fail to think about the great U.S. and A. and how passionate they are about their politics. the fact that they are empowered with the chance to make a difference to how their country turns out: it's all so patriotic and cool at the same time. Singapore elections? i haven't had a chance to vote yet. i was in Brunei last year even though i am of voting age, so i can't say much about it. but i'm sure you have the chance to change your country with just your itsy-bitsy little vote, no?

but i think the future looks bright with the upcoming 2008 Presidential elections. once the Bush administration is evicted, the senseless despatch of men to war, gun control, all things Shiite, women in hijabs, nuclear talks, etc., they will somehow seem to sort themselves out. that is if the Americans stop being the pro-active little things that they are and just leave the other countries and their ways of life alone.

the 2008 presidential elections will be one of the most exciting ones given that the incumbent is not staying. bye bye Bush and the war on terror. we've had enough of pop groups coming up with a million and one irritating songs dedicated to 'our men at war'. as Bush is not attempting to try running for president again, the current candidates have a relatively equal chance of winning. nobody has extra funding nor the support to outdo one another. which is good. it's been quite some time since the Americans have had an open election.

in fact, one of the more promising candidates up for election is definitely Barack Obama. currently the junior U.S. Senator in Illinois. a democrat. he's had a childhood of divorce. a multi-racial background (african dad, white mom, lots of interracial marriage within his other family members), a father who died at 21. i think that given the racial background, i daresay he understands how it feels like to be a victim of prejudice. being neither black, nor white, but a mix of both. it also means that he understands a little bit of the gay psyche and what it feels like to be outcasted. and he's a supporter of gay advocacy rights. he encourages everyone to take a HIV test. he's pro-abortion. he's proposed withdrawing the troops from Iraq. he wants health care for all Americans. i think i'm already in love with America.

you are wondering right? why suddenly Jon is writing about politics when he really is doing a horrid job out of it? you see, i don't see much point continuing with nursing in singapore. people treat nurses like shit here. and now with the service initiative thingee called GEMS, we're not only expected to wipe the patient's ass with tender, loving care, we're supposed to do it with a smile also. it's not that i mind working as a nurse in Singapore. i feel at home here. but at least your work gets recognized and appreciated overseas. plus the pay is better. and when you convert everything over from US dollars, you find that Singapore nurses are seriously overworked and underpaid.

so i hope to get my green card when my bond with the current organization finishes. either the green card or i sign up with some airline and become a flight steward. which is why all this Obama nonsense is really essential for me to understand. who knows? by 2012 i'll be sitting in a gaybar in New York with the boyfriend while sipping a martini. no need to dine in All-American restaurants anymore just to get that feeling.


Friday, February 23, 2007

project 355: arty flicks can build your relationship

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ask every single couple in the street what they do over a weekend in Singapore, and you'll expect to get the same few tired answers. clubbing, eating, drinking, hotel 81 if someone gets lucky, shopping, theatre performances or movies. movies being a relatively cheap option where you can eat, drink and do a hotel 81 in the cinema itself if somebody decides to get frisky. and that's what the boyfriend and i have been doing for the past few weekends (not the hotel 81, pervs). some subway for dinner, a little bit of walking around aimlessly, a caffeine craving satiated at starbucks and then settling for the movie of the night. it's all loving, albeit boring at times. but that's love actually, in Singapore.

we're not like them ang moh countries, blessed with the four seasons and a myriad of seasonal activities. we're not romantic like Paris and all their art (our art museums close at 6pm most days) and quaint little backstreets (got prostitutes and a lot of rubbish dumps) and charming architecture (see Esplanade). we're just.... well.... Singapore lor (focuses to panoramic view of the Merlion at Sentosa). uniquely singapore. uniquely boring.

but back to movies. i think for the past 2 months, we have been to the movies on a weekly basis. almost every saturday, we find ourselves, without fail, at the ticket concessions of the Grand Cathay, pondering upon the many choices of movies to watch. and somehow or other, we tend to pick the wrong film (as evidenced by the boyfriend falling asleep halfway through several different movies). i'm quite the big sucker for arty films. those slow-moving ones that take 15 minutes to show a boy tying his shoelaces (plus you're supposed to figure out the hidden metaphor of the boy tying his shoes laces in relation to the entire movie). whereas the boyfriend doesn't mind them arty flicks but prefers hilarious, fast-paced ones. he stayed awake through the whole of Epic Movie and Borat. it feels nice though, to have someone fall asleep on your shoulder. someone you know by the way, and not some random stranger in the MRT.

it's quite a coincidence really, but out of the last 10 movies that i've watched, 8 of them were arty flicks (not in chronological order):
- Epic Movie
- Borat
- Requiem
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Notes on a Scandal
- The History Boys
- The Fountain
- Paris Je T'aime
- Half Nelson
- Fur

there are no Chinese-lanaguage or Hongkie films within the list apparently. and i have my reasons. every single cheena-piang person i know has heaps of praises for the Hong Kong mafia movie, Protege. all the relatives over the chinese new year commented about how funny Jack Neo's Just Follow Law is. but you know, all these movies are the type that are simply waiting for the DVD or VCD launch. just wait for 2-3 months and you can go to the SAME cheena-piang people who told you about these movies and just borrow it from them. in fact, they should just skip the process of screening it at the cinemas and focus on the potential of a DVD launch party. they could tie in with Poh Kim and TS and perhaps Video EZY and have a cheena-piang themed party at Dragonfly in St. James. and this should be happening for every single asian blockbuster that ever hits Singapore.

that way, perhaps Singapore would be a much more entertaining place. at least not that uniquely boring.


Thursday, February 22, 2007

project 355: (cue horror-themed music)

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it's very seldom that i get to dream. and even if i get to dream, most of the time it's either a crap dream (which i will always forget 3-5 minutes after waking up) or a nightmare (which i ironically remember very well). it's seldom a happy dream about me doing glamorous things like receiving an Oscar for my performance as a queen with lesbian tendencies trying to blackmail a husband who's trying very hard to rescue his accidentally-assassinated fashionista wife while on a trip to Paris for fashion week. or the day when i become the first male nurse to take over the reins of the Director of Nursing in my current hospital of employment. or this dream will defintely put the rest to shame: me opening the St Jon's Power Hospital right beside the St James Power House (i'll buy over the old Prima flour factory).

but like they always say, Dream On.

anyways, it's been a very long time since i last had a any mental activity during sleep (and it's not like i have any during the waking hours even!). in fact, the latest dream i had was i think about a month back and frankly speaking, i can't remember what it was about. it involved something gay though. no wet dream coming from that, alas. well, last night, i just had the freakiest of nightmares. i actually woke up feeling breathless and horribly dramatic in my method of waking up. it's like one of those channel 8 dramas where the lead wakes up from a dream about death, all sweaty and panting and crying.

at least my nightmare got a bit of class. it was grainy and very brown. maybe it's the rust that practically enveloped the whole environment that i was in. kinda like Silent Hill, but an Asian remake. it's your typical storyline about teenagers stuck in a shopping mall. and one by one, they get killed by a murderer on the loose. as to why they were stuck inside... does it even matter? i just knew that from the point that i 'joined' the dream, 2 friends had already been killed. the remaining 4 friends were still clueless about what happened to them. i thought that they must have ran off to have sex in the nearest Seiyu.

this is very unglam, but i was the third person to die. the murderer would leave cryptic clues whenever he's about to kill the next victim. and i remember vividly what was written on the wall in blood: 'I kill boys who think they so modern'. yah, my killer got bad english. before i could even ponder upon what the entire sentence meant, someone slashed my calves with a chopper. blood spurted everywhere even though there were no major arteries around the calves. i couldn't walk. i could only turn around to look my killer in the face. awww... and given it was the last face i would see before i die, i think i'm damn unlucky. it really adds a new dimension to ugly.

he had really bad acne scarring. many pocked-marks all over the face. oily hair. and a face that resembles those men hanging out at your downstairs coffee shop, drinking beer and watching Channel 8 drama re-runs. plus bad fashion! it's prolly the definition of what i always make fun of, the gay guy who wears Giordano like it never went out of style, can't get good sex with other men and still lives with his mother. he grabbed my face and pulled me close, saying: 'I hate boys that think they so more-len'. and it scary, but he sounded like David Gan apparently. i woke up just as he proceeded to slash my face.

(cue horror-themed music)

the rest of the night was resolved with a cigarette break.


Wednesday, February 21, 2007

project 355: pasta at the boyfriend's

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in relation to yesterday's post about the mother's culinary skills, let's talk about mine today. i have never been a good cook. and i don't think i ever will be. like most of the modern day yuppies of 2007, i hold a proficiency in indomee and scrambled eggs. plus i specialize in anything food-related that involves the words 'instant' and 'microwave'. it's no wonder that i end up eating out most of the time, knowing how much of chemical X they use in the food these days. i'm just waiting for someone to throw in the sugar and spice and everything nice. that would make a powerpuff boy out of me.

the mother has tried umpteen times too hand down her knowledge in cookery to both the brother and me. she knows that the family line will prolly discontinue at my side. and the brother may be dashingly good-looking, but he's rather socially-inept. so what's a knowledgeable woman to do? hand it all down to the sons (no more daughter coming, given that the father has 'oh-so-proudly' proclaimed that he has already been 'streilized'). well, so far the brother has mastered the art of cooking rice in the rice cooker. i have had more luck so far and i think i owe this to gayhood. if any of my colleagues ask me what food i can prepare for a potluck, my instantaneous answer would be PASTA (said with gusto and plenty of pride). thanks to the mother, i can prepare creamy pastas from scratch. i need milk, butter, some oregano and ham and you're set for a gastronomical experience that you'll never forget (it comes with a free gastric workout).

so it was with the same gusto and pride that i replied the boyfriend when he asked if i could prepare something for a new year's gathering with some of his air stewarding colleagues. PASTA! i can do it! the pride deflated though when he said that he wanted the tomato-based kind. i've never liked red pastas because they are mostly sour and well... they taste horrid IMHO. plus, red-stains are tougher to remove compared to white stains. and okay, the main reason was because i didn't know how to prepare red pasta from scratch lah!

we spent most of the afternoon shopping for pasta sauces and then preparing them and i have to say that it was quite a challenge. given that it was the chinese new year and the supposedly enterprising chinese wet markets don't open during those few days, one was hard-pressed to find decent pasta ingredients in the boyfriend's fridge. still, cooking is all about throwing in random fresh produce at different times and being surprised at the results. and boy, surprised were we. it was as tasty as an empty egg carton. and this was despite the fact that we practically emptied two bottle of pasta sauce into the pan. the solution? black pepper. we sprinkled and sprinkled and sprinkled and sprinkled. actually it was more like EMPTIED the black pepper. judging from the response later at the air stewarding gathering, it's not that bad lah. at least no one died on the spot.

there was still some pasta left over. so the boyfriend suggested cooking some pasta for the family. and this time, i was adamant about doing a creamy dish. alas, ingredients was the main problem once again. i ransacked the entire kitchen and basically these are the things i threw into the mix:

- half a block of butter
- 2 cups of 'low lactose' Anlene milk
- lemongrass
- broccoli
- button mushrooms
- what's left of the black pepper
- enough garlic to scare a community of vampires
- a pinch of salt

i'm quite proud of it actually. the lemongrass really gave it that 'sawadee' scent. plus, it's low in lactose. and i scored points with the mother-in-law. though whether the points will drop or not, post-digestion, leaves much to be desired.


Tuesday, February 20, 2007

project 355: my mother, the kitchen goddess

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my relationship with the mother is one of love-hate. i hate it when she probes into my smoking habits. i absolutely dislike it when she has nothing but her incessant nagging when it comes to my late nights. i resent the fact that she rarely touches me in the way that mother's do when they want to comfort their sons. in fact, the last time she touched me physically was just when i came back from the 13 month stint in Brunei. absence makes the heart grow fonder. you could also counteract that with 'out of sight, out of mind' though.

there are only two things i like about the mother. her somewhat adventurous dress sense and her culinary skills. the mother is very understanding when it comes to fashion. some mothers that my friends have always complain that their sons dress 'too gay' for their liking, the same way other mothers nag their daughters when they wear something that reveals too much flesh. i'm awfully thankful that the mother never says anything when i wear a tight singlet, a New Urban Male t-shirt that scream 'gay!' or even carry a bowler bag that prolly sets off more pink alarms than a rainbow flag could. she herself dresses well and i respect her for that. sometimes when i'm pissed with the mother, i just open her wardrobe and let all her matching colors tell me that she's a good woman. and indeed, she is.

another requisite of a good woman would have to be her skills in the kitchen. all the men in the family know never to mess around with her when she's in the kitchen. she knows her spices and nutrition facts well enough to prevent us from a premature death of heart disease, diabetes, cancer or hyperlipidema. her fridge is always stocked with the essentials like fruits and meats and all the basic vegetables. there's always milk in the fridge. there will always be cornflakes in the kitchen. which is why, i crown the mother as the kitchen goddess.

if there's one meal that the mother is extremely good at preparing, it's gotta be breakfast. i'm not saying that her lunch and dinner sucks. she's good at food. and when armed with some dough, raisins and a microwave oven, the mother is a formidable opponent against the other housewives living in blk 288 of chua chu kang ave 3.

so it was effortless when she was called upon to deliver breakfast for the relatives today. the paternal relatives were so sick of having reunion lunches and dinner at their various other relatives, that they decided to gather at my home for a reunion breakfast instead. and boy was it good. the mother did almost everything herself. she baked scones and what my relatives called 'ang moh carrot cake' (it's carrot cake, literally; she baked littles cakes stuffed with bits of carrots and cinnamon in it). the brother was in charge of pancakes. there were scrambled eggs, cocktails, prata wrapped with sausages, bread.

as for me, i was in charge of washing and wiping the dishes after the cooking. i figured i was horrible at all the frying and mixing and battering that i ought to stick to something non-food related. i did try my best to partake of the mother's goodness though. but really, i wasn't in the mood to do any cooking. after last night's little adventure at St James, my body was too clogged with cigarette smoke and alcohol to think properly, let alone knead dough.

i did try to slice some tomatoes though. it was meant for garnishing purposes. but it looked as though as it survived a plane crash. ugh. the only thing i can cook is pasta. but more on that tomorrow.


Sunday, February 18, 2007

project 355: hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah, praise ye the loooooord!

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i've always thought that my kindergarten years were awfully horrid ones. true, i've had plenty of fun living with the paternal grandmother in 2 HDB apartments with one entire wall knocked down to link both together. there would always be food on the table (the grandmother is an average cook though). and she would always be the one to send me off to the school bus. after school, i would be engrossed my with Sega Megadrive, playing Gunstar Heroes and Rocket Knight Adventures all day long. but all this doesn't beat the fact that the family church that the parents attend (and force me to attend too) is just BESIDE the kindergarten. add 5 schooling weekdays and 1 church weekend, i practically visited both kindergarten and church 6 times a week. 20 years down the road, i'm smoking outside my old school and thinking back of the first time i was introduced to phonics and vocabulary. Dr Suess wasn't that popular back then. and Montessori was presumed to be French cuisine for the gastronomically adventurous. the kids really have it going for them these days, i must say.

but so much has changed at Galilee Kindergarten. you can really see the amount of construction that they have done to the interiors. a new porch with actual tiling (back then it was just cold concrete flooring), some balconies, classrooms with quaint little chairs, nicely decorated school boards. i haven't seen the uniforms though. during my time, the uniforms were a really chequered affair. yellow squares of various shades complemented with electric blue shorts and white school shoes. my primary to secondary school days at Fairfield were equally plagued with colorful memories of lemon chiffon paired with navy shorts (we only got to wear a single year of long pants during secondary 4/grade 10). it's no wonder that till today, i still have a thing going on for all things yellow and blue.

Galilee is a christian kindergarten. so most of the kids there have some basic knowledge about bible stories. things like the wise man building his house upon the rock, the bible and its all encompassing knowledge, and how much Jesus loves us little children regardless skin color. we sang children's christian songs everyday during assembly. in fact, kids who attended christian schools will prolly remember one very fun song that involves a lot of sitting and standing. i hated it because it involved sitting and standing. it was a rather silly song given that it had only 5 words in it. Hallelujah. Praise. Ye. The. Lord. the song comes in two parts and thus there would be two teams sitting and standing at alternate intervals (when one sits, the other stands, depending on which part of the song their group has been assigned to):

hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah (one group will belong to this batch of lyrics)

Praise Ye the Looooord! (another group will belong to this batch of lyrics)

it's an awfully irritating song given that it lasts no more than 1 minute. and because of this one minute, nobody ever sings this song once. it always has to repeat itself. on horrible days when the kids are hyperactive after a sugar treat from the teachers (eg. Children's Day), the song leader can actually pull it off THRICE. by then, i would have wanted to throw a tantrum to show my 'praise' for the lord.

my kindergarten days were pretty gay too. i dabbled in a bit of drama during one of the kindergarten's concerts. i can't remember what the concert was for, but they were plenty of kids acting out Noah and the great big ark. now in case you don't know, Noah was the guy who built the first ever imaginative design of a gay cruise. God and Noah were on pretty chummy terms. so God one day decided to wash out all the evil of the world (literally), by sending endless rain and a great big flood. and that's the good thing about having God as a pal, he preps you for the bad times. he ordered Noah to build a great ark according to his blueprints and measurements. big enough so that it could contain Noah, his family ( he had several sons and their wives) and get this.... two of every creature that's found in the earth. meaning one male and one female of every creepy-crawly, birdy-wordy, beastie-beastie and fishy-fishy. ok lah, throws one off the track of the gay cruise. but it's still somewhat a cruise right?

and thus for 40 days and 40 nights. it rain and it rained and everybody was dead (except Noah and a bunch of animals that any zoo in the world would kill for). Noah sent out a dove to see if there was any land. the dove came back with nothing. another few more days Noah sent out ANOTHER dove and this time it came back with some form of vegetation (can't remember what). but basically that's how you get the international symbol for peace: the dove with the little bit of veggie in the beak. it's God's promise to the world that he will never ever kill it by flooding ever again.

i played the lead role of Noah. the props were entirely made out of styrofoam. styrofoam being the 'it' material for props back then. the teachers painted a ginormous ark with a door that could open and close, and they stitched lots of animal costumes and brought along plenty of really bad make-up. my favourite kindergarten teacher (an indian lady), helped me to draw on a beard using an eye-liner pencil. i think that's where i got my goatee fanaticism from. i thought i looked so cool in the goatee back then that i was pretty adamant about not wiping it off after the concert. right now i already have one. no need to wipe it off anymore.

i finished my outside Galilee kindergarten feeling a tad nostalgic. but still, nowhere closer or chummier with God. i'm think i'm destined for the eternal gay cruise to hell. but definitely not on God's cruise to heaven.


Saturday, February 17, 2007

project 355: the infestation of red wine

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ok it's that time of the year whereby all those chinese drums and cymbals and instruments that make those 'tik tik tok tok' sounds you here at wayangs, rear their ugly slit-eyed faces once again. yah, chinese new year. that fucked up festive season that makes you feel like christmas. visiting all your relatives and getting bombarded with questions about you abilities to look for a girlfriend in your 20s. i imagine 10 years down the road, they'll be questioning my sexuality. and 20 years from now, they'll be wondering about my gender, whether i'm a guy with a dick who's interested in dick, or a girl with a vagina who's interested in dick (or a girl with a dick who's interested in vagina).

still i've just had the first new year's feast today. it's the eve of the Chinese New Year and it's a customary thing to go over to the relatives and have a meal together. it's always at these times that the father would start ranting on about how lucky we kids are these days. he tries and scare the cousins and his own sons with the fact that his family only had chicken during special occasions like marriages, funerals, new births, etc. and the fact that they were so poor back then that they had to scrap by several days with just plain porridge and pickled vegetables. recounting tales of poverty like these just don't seem to work on our modern day kids who have ready access to McDonald's and chicken of every cooking and serving method. chicken has become a commodity today. i mean, there are even restaurants who experiment and play with their chicken just to give their customers a gastronomical adventure.

and as if having steamboat, a cold dish, some shark's fin soup and a metal frying plate for a reunion dinner wasn't enough, there is now the introduction of red wine into these gatherings. and oh how i hate the red wine. it never seems to go down well with any of these supermarket foods that i'm taking. the pokka green tea and peach tea and some gassy drinks are still pretty okay. but throwing wine into a heartland meal is like throwing your Tiffany diamond into the heartland cogwheels. it'll prolly jam-brake the whole system, cause some serious inertia and lead to terrible messes of vomitus.

well, one of those paternal cousins brought some white wine that he bought at the airport on a previous trip to Bangkok. and as much as i appreciate the effort to up the class of this reunion dinner, i think it just didn't do justice to the wine. another auntie from the mother's side offered everyone some cabernet shiraz before the steamboat meal. ok lah, this one have to give effort for trying and acting a little bit like a heartlander sommelier. she brought her own wine glasses so that 'you can bring out the full aroma and the various notes in the wine'. the parents were wowed off their pants. the grandmother was prolly like 'si mi lan' (she refused to partake of the wine).

as for me? i don't eat that much anyways. i just drink. don't you just love the chinese new year (NB: i'm drunk).


Friday, February 16, 2007

project 355: my yuppies

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from left: cindy, terrence, dominic, sheena, victor, yours truly

every gay guy needs a posse of dramatic friends. a group of people who can't just do everyday things the way everyday people do. if opening a satchet of ketchup could be done with pirouettes, some props, plenty of fanfare and brilliant lighting, these people would be the first to jump to it. even the act of jumping to it needs to be accompanied with dramatic breakbeats in the background.

well i'm thankful that i have literally, a group of dramatic friends who used to be actively involved with drama and dance. all this leads back to the polytechnic days when i took the first ever courageous step in my entire gay life. i decided to join the local drama club simply because i've always wanted to be involved with theater. plus back then, i felt that i could shamelessly tell jokes (albeit lame ones) on stage without faltering between my lines (i would be reading from a script). the drama club was actively involved in stage productions of big and small scales. they did dance. they did props. stage management. anything that involved a stage, they would prolly be doing it.

thus was it aptly named StageARTs. just as the way that the hospital that has all the general medical disciplines in Singapore has to be named the Singapore General Hospital. the party which takes action for the people titled as the People's Action Party. and the resort which integrates all facilities and luxuries in one called (no prizes for guessing this one) The Integrated Resort. Goddamit!! we are such a f-ing boring country.

the entire bunch of us in the picture are born between the years of 1982-1984. All of us are studying part-time degrees (i'm intending to take one soon). 1 of them has purple hair. 2 of them are straight girls. 3 of us have homosexual tendencies. 4 of them can dance on a competitive-level (though they got booed out of The Dance Floor during the preliminaries). 5 of us are attached. and everybody (except me) always arrives a full 30 minutes past the designated time to meet. so you see, we have actually quite a lot in common. plus the fact that everytime we meet, there's sure to be plenty of laughter, lame jokes (on my part) and catching up with the latest of gay gossip in the cheena-piang world.

i guess i'm at the crossroads of life now, trying to look at the bigger picture. and these people who are fast becoming yuppies like me, are really people who have problems that i can relate to. cheating boyfriends (i used to be one of them), study loans, unsure futures. i just realized that being a young adult sucks so much. the increase in responsibilities and having to be a man when you're still a boy trying his best to transition into a working adult. love, life, money, sex, work and plenty of cigarettes and clubbing. what's it all about, alfie?


Thursday, February 15, 2007

project 355: forever 21 for men

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i have been an ardent supporter of Forever 21 ever since it opened its first branch in Wisma. now, just in case you're one of the sad, little creatures that i always describe as 'style-challenged', Forever 21 is like a more upscale version of This Fashion. the more serious cases of 'style-challenged' would prolly know that This Fashion sells plenty of cheap female (and now male) apparel (obviously they buy most of their tasteless clothes from there). they claim to be outsourced from Korea, Japan and Taiwan. but it's really dubious, looking more like the latest from the Malaysian Spring Collection 2007 (translated to actually mean the Singapore Spring Collection 2004). the irony? i bet them Malaysian fashion outlets in JB also claim that they pieces of fashion are from Korea, Japan and Taiwan too. but we all know what country supplies them cheap and plenty and good (clue: HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!)

still, as every guy (be it straight or homo) would know, stepping into a shop selling entirely female apparel ALONE, is just 'manhood suicide'. the guys passing by outside the shop will think you're a tranny. the girls passing you by outside the shop will think you're gay. the gay men making passes at you while passing the shop will just think you're some arts industry chap getting clothes for you next drag show. either way, nobody thinks a guy alone in a Mango shop looking at tube tops is anywhere near straight. don't even talk about being metrosexual. how are you gonna portray your sensitive side through cashmere sweaters and stilettos?

the same theory also applies when one man passes by the lingerie section in a department store. if you look for nary a moment too long, people will think you're a perv. if you don't look at all, the women will assume you're a prude. it's one of those 'damned if you do and damned if you don't' kinda situations. this is why whenever i pass by the Triumph section at Tangs, i tend to look BEYOND the bras and panties, focusing rather, my attention on the hot male sales staff of dubious orientation. if you look much closer, you can actually see me blushing. or is it the effect of my MAC make-up?

still, i really love Forever 21 because of the wide variety of styles that they stock. every single groupie in Singapore ranging from the classless ah lian to the classy SPG can prolly find something that she would like. everything there is colorful. everything there is cheap. they come in limited pieces to maintain that sense of uniqueness. compared to the average stuff you find at the men's department, it's so much more value for money to be a lady. alas i'm not a girl (and not yet a woman). i value my penis too much to give it up for women's fashion.

all i can do is just step into the nearest Forever 21 for now whenever i'm out with girls. or even girls with penises.


Wednesday, February 14, 2007

project 355: wit, love & valentine's

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the (it's more like MY) brain constantly churns out idiotic puns that can slice off people's legs without them even noticing. ok, that was lame (literally). but you get the point. the brain never ceases to put two totally random items together to produce jokes that rarely make people laugh. but rather, it makes them want to reach out for the nearest fatal object and just violently put another two totally random items together (one of them being me, i guess).

i thought up of 'glove' during one of the morning shifts while changing a wound dressing for one of my patients. rubber gloves are a mandatory accessory for the registered nurse. they protect. they look really professional on any nurse. plus you can make those intimidating 'piak piak' sounds when you snap them against your wrists. very useful when it comes to easing tension between the newly attached nursing students and you. somehow, the brain clicked when the boyfriend SMSed mushy stuff to me during the dressing. put 'i love you', some rubber gloves, and 'what to get him for valentine's' together and i was duly rewarded with the lame. and to test out the international laughing standard for this joke, i threw a pair of rubber gloves at my Indian National colleague and told her that i 'gloved' her. she was diluting some intravenous medications with a syringe at that point of time.

bad mistake. she gave me an incredulous look indicating that she wanted to put two totally random things together. she was holding a syringe.


Tuesday, February 13, 2007

project 355: sudoku? tak boleh lah, aku!

the japanese are such wonderful people given that they have introduced many interesting concepts of living to us boring Singaporeans. take for example, the Green Tea phenomenon. pokka green tea has been around for like eons. but it wasn't till like 2-3 years ago that it suddenly took off. pokka green tea attained street cred that could be compared to a bottle of Chivas. in fact, those poor unfortunate cheena souls started mixing their Chivas with pokka green tea (it tastes horrid). before you knew it, green tea was coaxed and forced into every single household and lifestyle product that you can imagine. green tea shampoos and body foam and bar soaps, green tea ice-cream, green tea therapeutic massages, green tea vitamins, green tea a-balling. i'm just waiting for Okamoto to produce them green tea condoms. the catechins prolly aid in the digestion of those proteins that you are so gonna milk out of it.

of course, along the lines of wonderful japanese lifestyle products comes SUDOKU. that irritating logic puzzle of trial-and-error-cum-elimination. i never liked Sudoku given that it involved numbers. anything above 1-9 gives me a numbers-induced form of vertigo accompanied with dizzy spells and a general sense of malaise. of course, that doesn't apply when it involves my ever-dwindling bank account. in this case, the amount of zeros behind the initial 1-9s are strongly encouraged. Sudoku brings back bad memories of the 'O' levels. i was never strong in mathematics.

Elementary Mathematics (or 'E' Maths as we Singaporeans call it; pronounced as 'E Max') was something that required plenty of practice. i remember having two tuition teachers. one of them was pretty famous in the group tuition circle. he was a part-time magician-cum-maths tutor, offering tuition in both subjects. it was actually fun because he constantly entertained us with card tricks and money-pulling from people's ears. he had endless supplies of coke and twisties that you paid for our of your own honesty. some of the fellow tuition mates i knew stole money from the cupboard where you were supposed to pay for them snacks. i was one of them too given that his tuition fees were extremely exorbitant. plus, he was really a bad tutor. teaching 18 students at one shot, split into three different groups and rooms. all fun, but i never really learned much.

the other tutor was balding, boring and yet, not that bad. his group tuitions were small. and he gave you focused attention. of course, he tried explaining algebra to me. but it's prolly as familiar as wearing an algae-filled bra. still, he forced me to practice constantly. doing endless sums and multiplications and finding out general square areas of unknown circular objects of varying distances. ten-year series and the like. i got a B4 in 'E' Maths thanks to this chap. plus i got to meet this very hot guy during the class who was a very quiet and shy librarian. we never got beyond making conversation in the LRT which we took back home together. till today, i wonder where he is now.

still, because of the boring foundation program lectures that i've been going through, i've resorted back to completing the daily Sudoku puzzles in the Today Newspaper. yes, as much as i hate to admit that i'm one of those 'grab-it-because-it's-free' newspaper readers, i still take it. only for the Sudoku and entertainment portions. and surprisingly i've actually completed my first ever Sudoku puzzle within the span of one hour. not that it involved any mathematics at all. just a lot of ruling out numbers within the 3x3 grids. i completed one yesterday. i completed another today. i'm looking forward to tomorrow's one which i bet is gonna be much more challenging. i'm kinda hooked actually.

don't be surprised if you see me outside 7-11 with a copy of Today, drinking my green tea and completing the day's Sudoku puzzle. if you need a more vivid image, i'm wearing a green tea condom beneath those smarty-and-yet-not-so-mathematically-inclined pants.


Monday, February 12, 2007

project 355: part of the working class


the hospital where i'm working at has finally decided to send me for the 'orientation program' where everything from work policies to union rights and nursing procedures are being taught for an entire month. and the irritating thing? all this is only happening 5 months after i've started work. their reason for the 5 month delay? the incoming nursing students only graduate in January. and having been through the orientation program once (that was long before i entered the previous organization of green camo prints and bad memories), there's nothing really left to orientate about. other than to guess the sexual orientation of the other male nurses in the program. not that there are any. sian.

but still, it sucks to be stuck in the office hours schedule of 8-4.30pm. you get caught in the middle of rush hour. you can't have free and easy access to quiet early morning gyms. the trains are so quiet that you can't fart without sounding like an atomic bomb. you start to sweat easily in the early morning sun. cigarettes just don't taste that good at 7.45am. i have no appetite for breakfast at 6am. and the worst sin that i have committed so far, i have become like the rest of the white-collared working class, queuing for free TODAY newspapers whenever they are available.

i've been very anti-Today ever since it was launched. they are all aimed at the office-cubical crowd. meaning that most of the news inside almost always has the words equity funds, investment banking, boutique banks, NASDAQ, stock exchange, etc. things you would expect to find in an issue of Forbes (i sound like Jeopardy, don't i?), and i so hate Forbes (other than the lifestyle section). i've had a stocky gay friend involved in the stocks-and-shares (i don't know the exact term) industry try to explain all that stuff about stocks and shares to me once. but the only thing that piqued my attention was the story of how he managed to hook up with another hunky gay trader at the stock market with the indiscreet use of phallic symbols as trading hand signals. the two stocky men had their fun exchanging bodily fluids with each other after work. so much for 'stock exchange'.

but back to the endless lectures about work policies. i have fallen asleep one time too many during these lectures. the theaters where these lectures are held have cramped and stiff wooden benches. it's cosy if you enjoy those wooden pews they have at the older churches. in fact, sitting through the lectures has the same lulling effect as listening to a sermon on sunday. and given that my current working schedule is the standard 8-4.30 mondays to fridays plus half-day weekends, it means that i have to go to church on sundays for the next month! i'm definitely not looking forward to that. i'll be preached by all the superiors in my life from monday to sunday.

still the only fun i derive from all this going to work with the rush hour crowd is the fact that i need not put on boring office wear to work. you can only look so glam in a slim-fit shirt and flat-front pants. i have the uniform, true. but i always head to the staff toilet and change into it once i reach the hospital. this is to avoid having to give up seats to young children and fat women disguised as pregnant ones. thus to commemorate my first day of being part of the working class, i donned the above t-shirt. i bought that in thailand. though i think i received plenty of murderous stares and imaginary poison needles all aimed at my back.


Friday, February 09, 2007

forgiveness

hello readers. first and foremost let me apologize for the fact that i owe so many posts. it's been hard to manage a boyfriend, work, blog and gym and outings all at one shot. for now, i'm trying my best to type out what i can when the boyfriend is away in some exotic locale. if you all want quality then you all cannot rush me right (not that anyone is and i really appreciate you guys for that). so be patient (or you could just come to the hospital and be MY PATIENT), and wait for the latest. and always remember to scroll beyond the latest post. because i might just happen to update missing posts that i haven't blogged.

thanks and keep reading people!


Thursday, February 08, 2007

project 355: goateed

the curse of being chinese is that chances are, you find it extremely difficult to grow facial hair. and it really defies all logic. why does the chinese hair so readily sprout at the head, legs, arms, armpits, groin and asscrack, but takes oh-so-long to even develop a hint of a goatee? and given that the goatee is almost a pre-requisite of being a hot macho mary, i'm quite the devastated hairless chink that i am now.

this particular goatee this i've been sporting took a grand total of 45 days to reach it's peak. and given that it's looking no more than a clump of freshly shaves pubes, i daresay we're looking at Mt. Faber. and i had to be the one with the itchy fingers to try something new. i've always wanted to do something african-american. think Craig David or John Legend. minus the smooth vocals, the bling and much much fairer in terms of skin tone. but you get the idea.

and being one with two right hands (i'm left-handed despite all that), i'm awfully inaccurate with a razor. my hands only shave two really inconvenient styles, namely: all or nothing. thus to keep to some form of accuracy, i tried the incredulous. sticking micropore to the designated design i had in mind (which was just a running strip of hair from lip-center to the chin-center. shave shave shave shave shave.

the results were pretty embarrassing. apparently, i've never noticed that the hair splits straight in the middle of my goatee. it's like someone managed to center-part my goatee without any help of hair-gel. and to think i spent the secondary school years trying to get a center-parting with dollops of hair product. so much so that the hair i have now is prolly heaping with ginormous amounts of hair chemicals still desperately going through many years of half-life. which explains the unruly hair.

i ended up doing to the goatee what the 2 right hands did really well.


Tuesday, February 06, 2007

project 355: 'art' is a letter short of a 'fart'

it's not everyday that one gets painted by your boyfriend, the painting gets to be sold, and it gets to be hung somewhere else other than your own home for your own viewing pleasure. in fact, the whole concept of it is really bizarre. a picture of yourself in someone else's home. and you don't even know who that someone else is. throw your boyfriend in the picture (literally), it simply adds another dimension to it.

of course, you can say that you have done that a million and one times over IRC with those 'trade pics?' replies that you get from them horny strangers online. but that fact that someone pays money to buy a picture of a total stranger that arouses strange feelings within himself... now that's my definition of... well, being aroused.

this is why art and paintings are always so foreign to me. the fact that you need to figure some sort of intangible message behind a picture rather than just immerse yourself in it and let the senses do the talking, is really just beyond me. of course i could literally do just that, immersing myself in every picture i see. only catch is that i would end up catching a lot of paint, looking as colorful an artist's palette, and having the curator hot on my heels for compensations. not that that would be a bad idea. i can actually then have the right to buy my own painting, albeit a little smudged at the cheekbones.

i used to believe that you could learn anything at all through reading. true, you can learn how to do proper bicep curls through Men's Health, keep up to date with the entertainment industry via The Rolling Stones magazine, or even learn a new language through some random book with audio CD (got audio CD, so it's kinda like cheating actually). but when it comes to art, nothing compares to the real thing. true, you get to see pictures of what modernism and expressionism are all about. and you learn impressive party phrases to say about art pieces. still, it doesn't beat being at the Louvre, looking at daffodils or a smiling (or is she not smiling) woman, enjoying the air-con and millions of tourist that make the art pilgrimage.

well, the boyfriend's art exhibition is tomorrow and i'm kinda worried. as an educated gay person, i don't really know how to behave at an art exhibition. plus the boyfriend and i have been painted in a picture. do i stand beside the picture so that it'll sell? do i avoid the picture so that it'll sell? do i occasionally stand beside the picture and avoid the picture so that it'll sell? actually on second thought, i should avoid the picture since the real deal is kinda disappointing at first sight. i'll prolly be exhibition art when i collapse on the floor after having one too many glasses of bubbly.

and given that i haven't really hung out with a bunch of artists before, i don't really know what to say. i've done dancers and musicians and installation artists and performance artists, but a set of people who create something out of smudges and brush strokes, plus they think that they are somewhat super elite for being able to do that. artists are practical people who think of the tangibles (i'm using this word a lot these days hor?) like lightings and props. installation art people focus on the shocking and things that you can touch and see and experience in a set place. musicians make music. dancers use their bodies to express themselves. but artists.... tsk. where do i begin? having watched Frida and Fur and many other movies about display artists, i'm beginning to think that artists are a bunch of eccentric people.

because of this, i've kinda devised a few relatively impressive one-liners to say about the art pieces i'm viewing tomorrow. of course, all this will be said after i've had quite a bit of champagne and my bulletproof vest on. you listen ah:
- 'it's a little bit rough on the edges, but i think it will fit well in the lavatory'
- 'is it waterproof?'
- 'i could have done it too, just that i lack the talent, creativity, skill, psycho-motor skills and emo factor'
- 'just add a little bit of lighting and it will make a good lampshade'
- 'can i fold it and keep it in my wallet as a memento?'
- (whips out camera phone)

i'm actually afraid i'll say something stupid like all of the above in tomorrow's art exhibition. and when i actually do, everyone will give me that kind of look. you know? the look reserved for people who just farted silently but it's so obvious because you can see the green gas emanating from behind him. yeah, contempt plus disgust. which is why, art is just one letter short of a fart.


Monday, February 05, 2007

project 355: putting the 'fun' back in funeral!

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"I hated going to weddings. All the grandmas would poke me saying "You're next". They stopped that when I started doing it to them at funerals."
- Anon. (found at some random message board)

there's a wake going on now at the foyer a few blocks away from mine. apparently, today's the cremation or burial (i want to be cremated! but more on that later). it's a really tragic affair apparently from the way the family members are wailing like banshees. which makes me wonder: why do funerals have to be such sad, depressing events where people cry buckets over someone's demise. true, it's about death and dying and bidding people goodbye. but if you look on the brighter side, there's insurance money to be claimed, CPF to be shared and plenty of tontine money to be collected. that's of course dependent on whether you want to have a lavish funeral complete with clowns, fire-walkers and a group of dancers carrying black umbrellas moving to the tune of Helena. other than that, there's actually plenty to be happy about, no? after taking care of you bed-ridden loved one for such a long time, i'm sure the least that he can do is to reward you with that trip to the Maldives that you so deserve. or at least that live performance of the dancers from Helena.

this is why i'm blogging this post. it's a description of what my funeral will be like. and already, if you read my blog, you are coordially invited to it too. just print out this post and keep it in your pocket or safe or whatever. 30 years down the road, bring the printout along and throw it into my coffin. you can invite your friends and all the other people you know from Friendster, Fridae or Trevvy. up to you. just tell them that it's going to be held at somewhere happening, though i haven't decided on the venue of my funeral, but it's definitely not at my house downstairs and neither at that funeral parlor residing in Lavender. bring plenty of money. and BYOB.

but really, i'm not so much as afraid of death. if i were to die young, then good lah, at least the morticians need not do any drastic cosmetic surgery to improve my features (though pec implants would be much appreciated). and if i were to die old, it doesn't matter still. life is like so over when you hit 21 anyways. to tell the truth, death doesn't scare me. it's the way death will come for me that scares me. the same way that i know ghosts are not scary. it's just the approach and 'foreplay' that the spirits somehow enjoy so much, that scares the shit out of me.

when i die, i want to be buried in a white coffin. the fabric on the inlay would be made up of stripy prints. preferable the authentic Paul Smith stripes. i don't care how you get it. you could shop for a bale of Paul Smith fabric or simply just buy several dress shirts and stitch all of them up together. as long as i can sleep in style, i'll be fine. if the funeral parlor cannot do stripes, a Paul Frank skull and crossbones motif on a black background will suffice. in the case of Paul Frank, my coffin would be black and preferable pirate-inspired (i dunno, bandanas, bracelets, neck charms, skulls, earrings, etc). and please don't put a layer of glass over my face. in the case that i do wake up and i bump into the glass, and everything shatters, and i get cuts and lacerations. then i might as well just go back and join the eternal slumber.

most importantly, someone needs to hire Jill Lowe to dress me up inside. preferably something one would wear to an exclusive club. hopefully i'll be going to heaven where there are literally more higher class clubs to party at. gothic make-up also. not those over-powdered faces that make every single dead person look like extras from Memoirs of a Geisha.

the venue would most likely have to be setup at a field. you know like those huge-white tentages they set up in the middle of the Takashimaya courtyard during the Singapore Fashion Festival (or was it the Singapore Fashion Week?). i would really like that. air-conditioning is a definite must. nobody likes to attend a funeral that's as steamy as a sauna. well, the whole venue has to be decorated in blacks and whites. the dress code is not boring ol' 'smart casual' or 'black tie' or 'disco' or 'retro'. nope. it's just simply 'Funeral black, Funeral White'. you are left open to interpret that for yourself. no flowers at my funeral please. but plenty of rented modernist furniture. the chairs will be arranged in a semi-circle, with my coffin in the center. and there's a podium beside the coffin where you can tell dirty jokes about me, say silly things, do a striptease, play win, lose or draw, preach a sermon, sing a love song, breakdance, play the harmonica, propose to a loved one, whatever you want to do beside my coffin. i will give you my spiritual blessings.

when all that talentime crap is over, 5 of my bestest friends and the brother will give their eulogies. like 'oh he was so talented but he was quite an ugly fuck, what you have here is all thanks to MAC'. stuff like that. if they have bad english or stage fright and can't do eulogies, they are allowed to select their favorite posts from my blog to read from. and please don't let them pick the short ones. i know eulogies are damn boring. so that's why it's BYOB. you can create your own mixers or even better, approach the experienced bartender that's somewhere at the funeral. the boyfriend can make drinks. you'll see him going round with the drinks trolley and a genial smile.

and remember! it's cremation, not burial! unlike our ang moh counterparts, our cemeteries are pretty much resemblant to our HDB apartments. packed, compacted and boring. and anyways, there's only so much fun you can have when you're stuck in a coffin awaiting biodegradation. i have as much fat as a prime japanese cow that you could just incinerate me and the fat would fry. put me in some salt shakers and sprinkle over food. that way, every time you're damn hungry you can say things like 'oh i'm so hungry that i could eat a cow!' and actually mean it.

but no, i'm joking about the salt shakers. after i get cremated, please put me into nice little boxes or vials or whatever. and distribute them to those 5 best friends and the brother. sort of like a way of saying thanks for the eulogies (despite the fact that they prolly had nothing much to good to say about me). it would be nice if they would take me on a trip to somewhere foreign. let me experience the sights and sounds of this transitional world before i finally fade into oblivion or get my entry pass into the party up there. and i know this is damn cliche, but the lucky bearers of my remnants should sprinkle my ashes into the sky just for the fun of it. if they don't want to and would rather let me sit on their mantelpiece, can also. i'll be there watching all your domestic quarrels and the bad sex though. in spirit.

but what are the chances that i will get to have such a lavish funeral when i'm dead? i definitely don't think the parents will help arrange something like that. they are practical people who are going to call a funeral parlor (like the one shown in the picture) and invite all the church people and the church reverend and preach some shit about death and dying and how Jesus will welcome me at the pearly gates together with St. Peter and his entire crew. i've attended enough boring funerals that i don't want to set a trap for another one. so please, if the parents decided to do something like that please kindly remind them that i'm not just their dead son.

i'm their dead GAY son.


Sunday, February 04, 2007

project 355: disabled drivers

how do disabled people drive? with an Xbox 360 controller ALA Need For Speed Carbon style? liddat i press reset all the time when i do parallel parking seah.


Saturday, February 03, 2007

project 355: guilty aural pleasures

DSC00621

on the behest of dearly beloved drama-related friend, Lian Jiayuan, i attended one of the current Singapore Fringe Festival's events: GUILTY PLEASURES. it's basically a really cosy listening party set in the glass porch at the Singapore Art Museum. the glass paneling at the porch was all coated with whitewash for that intimate sense of privacy. and everyone was free to inscribe their guiltiest confessions on these panels. the deal for those that RSVP-ed for the party was to bring a piece of music to describe their guiltiest pleasures. something that's oh-so-embarrassing and yet oh-so-good.

i didn't bring any music to share actually. simply because i don't have any embarrassing music that i listen to. or maybe it's because i'm so thick-skinned that everything i listen to seems to be damn cool or something. and besides, everything i listen to is just an aural orgy between left ear, right ear and the headphones. i make it a point to not intrude the intangible aural space of the public. back in the 70s or 80s or 90s (i have no idea), you always see those african-american breakdancers carrying their gigantic boomboxes around the streets of New York, playing i dunno.... Play That Funky Music White Boy? well, now we have the infestation of the secondary school mats who carry cheap Nokia handphones and play Smack That. and the song is really pushing the limit given that Akon is the highest-pitched rapper i've ever known (and a very irritating one at that, and his acting in the MTVs are really atrocious). i mean i don't go round irritating the world by blasting Britney and her attempt to go against the music, so you keep that Akon in your recycle bin where it rightfully belongs, and i'll keep Britney in mine.

still, if someone were to ask me 'what do you normally listen to if you think that everything you listen to is so damn cool?', the condensed version would be 'everything lor'. but since we've got time, here's the 500 word limit answer.

there's the gay staples like Madonna, Kylie, Scissor Sisters, Whitney, Mariah, etc. then throw in some Indie bands for a good measure of emo in oneself: Deathcab, Arctic Monkeys, Aqualung (can consider as indie or not?). and when there's Indie bands, you've got to balance it out with the 'oh-so-in-these-days' genre of punk/alternative/emo rock like My Chemical Romance, All-American Rejects, Snow Patrol, The Fray, Coldplay. a spoonful of pop treats so that i can relate what i read in the entertainment magazines (sprinkles lots of Pussycat Dolls, Gwen Stefani, Justin). and because i club, i need to train the ears with plenty of Hed Kandi, Cafe Del Mar, MOS compilations. plus the melancholic stuff that you can get depressed to like Portishead, Damien Rice, Kings of Convenience, Cat Power, Telepopmusic.

now that is the elaborate version. and i was actually looking through my entire music collection while typing the previous paragraph. and i think i've found the ultimate guilty pleasure. and if a certain someone is reading my blog, i apologize first and foremost. but this performance artiste in question is really trashy. she's married and divorced to and with useless men. plus she's already had babies and ballooning with her weight. and like litter around the garbage bin in a heartlander estate, you realize that all the trash gathers around more trash. yes, Britney (who used to hang around Paris, who is pretty much trash also), we're talking about you. but take away her hedonistic lifestyle and you've got a very talented dancer and singer (term used very loosely when i say 'singer'). the song in question? 'My Only Wish (This Year)'. apparently, i've put it on my general playlist in itunes. ok, i admit i have something for christmas songs with plenty of those ding-dong bells ringing in the background. plus it always makes me want to open up presents for some reason.

yeah, it's not even christmas and it's not like she has released any albums recently. and yet, i'm listening to her. i ought to be shot. or smacked by Akon.


Friday, February 02, 2007

project 355: brunei and the outdoors

ian and lizard and me

i've never been one for the great outdoors. and i'm not referring to the moment when you unlock your front door only to see your next door neighbor watering her chilli plants. i'm talking about those big endless patches of green rolling plains, raintrees, treetop walks, swamp trails, golf courses, places where you can use words like 'Angsana' and 'Flame of the Forest' without sounding like a botanist or a spa fanatic. whatever shit that God intended natural to be. of course, you could always be technical and say that God intended for a few chosen chaps to be homosexuals and that going to a gay spa is bloody natural. but let's not head in that direction (and in that direction, i'm talking about a certain club in City Hall that involves towels; or the lack of it).

anything that involves plenty of sunlight with no shelter in sight, yeap, that's the great outdoors. and frankly speaking, there's nothing even great about the outdoors. the outdoors produces nightmarish visuals of sweaty people in camo prints, and several 'M's that i shun with great disdain. them being things like mud, mosquitoes, monkeys, marshes, military, etc. all of them things turn me off faster than you can say 'Malaysia'. doesn't apply to Mmmmmmmmmmmmen though. okay lah, Mmmmmmmost MMMMMMMMen.

so it was with some surprise that i found myself deciding to apply for an overseas posting during my stint with the previous organization. before i joined that organization, i swore that if i could fight for it, i would never get deployed to a unit where discipline and all the macho manly regimental crap is the rule of the day. no strict rules imposing critical standards on the way i live. no narrow-minded choices coming from the superiors. and definitely not too much of the outdoors. and no sunlight if it's possible. and air-conditioning 24/7 please. and a good pay to boot. and free lodging. and not forgetting somewhere with a good canteen. and a perk would be somewhere with plenty of eye candy. looking back, with each criteria that i imposed upon my choice of deployment, the chances of getting the ideal one slowly faded into oblivion. i sourced around for units that i could be posted to. and lo and behold, i've found what they call the 'overseas posting' with a possible opening for me as a medic.

now, i've heard horror stories about people getting these overseas postings, only to end up with plenty of guard duties with no shelter and outdoor deployments. i've personally known a friend who came back from a Thailand posting with what my organization buddies used to call 'Chakra Arms' (inspiration garnered from ninja anime, NARUTO). people with uber-tanned forearms and deltoids whiter than Michael Jackson's face. he looked like he was charging the chakra into the arms and intended to release it with a karate chop that had a red aura to it (he was so skinny that he prolly could only chop alfalfa with it). nearly 3 months post-overseas deployment, the chakra has dissipated entirely. either the tan has a very extended half-life or alfalfa season just isn't here yet.

thus, it was with such apprehension that i received my Brunei posting. the general advice i gathered from overseas veterans was to bring plenty of things to do. well, i think i came relatively prepared. i arrived in Brunei with A LOT of books, a laptop and a video ipod filled with 24GB of gay-porn (the screen cracked and then i eventually lost it in Brunei; trend to note: i'm always losing my gay-porn collection, i'm at my 6th collection currently). but i have to admit. 13 months there totally changed my perception of the outdoors. true enough, there were endless guard duties and outdoor deployments. but the beauty and irony of it was that i somehow ended up being the overall-in-charge of planning these duties and deployments for my department. i know some of my overseas colleagues from Brunei read my blog (and are still reading it), so here's a confession: i plan your monthly detailing around my gym schedule! yah i know, i'm a chee bye for doing this. but i let you pick your off days before i plan the gym schedule okay! plus you're free to swap with anybody else if you're not up to it! and i am always more than willing to swap. so there.

so, with a relatively flexible schedule to do whatever i wanted, i decided to do several silly things, one of them which was to attempt the climbing a particular mountain in Brunei (apparently the country's most famous one; can't remember why it's famous though). other organization units from Singapore who come to Brunei have to climb this mountain. i was attached to one of them as a medic and it lasted for 4 days and 3 nights, i think. most of it is still a blur. i remember a lot of rain. a lot of brown and green. a lot of 6/8/10/more than the number of digits i have-legged creepy crawlies. there were ants bigger than the average male nipple. centipedes. cockroaches. sandfly bites. rashes. constipation. protein bars. suicidal thoughts. enough said. i thought the peak would have been much more exciting given that everyone was always gushing about how breath-taking it was. little did i know that it was just some lame clearing where fellow organization mates inscribed and carved their mark on the tree trunks. well at least they were telling the truth when they said it was breath-taking. climbing up the endless slopes and steppes was like spending 9 hours on a stair-master at your local heartlander gym (there are no hot men in sight). aiyah, at least the clearing got no sunlight. so can't complain.

the picture above was taken towards the end of my posting. if you're wondering and really insist on knowing: NO, i didn't catch the badly strung-up monitor lizard. somebody else did. but they were still alive and apparently, the one who caught them lizards intended to serve them up with some western grill and sambal for dinner. yes, people at my organization are wierd and bizarre. but i guess this picture meant a lot to me. the other chap in the picture was someone i pretty much enjoyed hanging out with in a straight video-gamer kinda way. we took turns playing Role-Playing games. we enjoyed anime. he brought plenty of hentai back from Singapore. i reaped the benefits of it. plus we had plenty of instant noodle with pork cube meals slow-cooked over a bunsen burner. sentimental.

at the point of time when this picture was taken, i think i was at the peak of enjoying my stay in Brunei. it was canteen for breakfast and dinner. gym 5 days a week (not that it helped) and protein shakes for lunch. morning jogs and DVD movies every night back in our rooms. waking up every morning at 6am, it was all quiet and full of morning air. very minimal sounds of SUVs and traffic lights (there are no traffic lights at the island where i stayed) and buses. it was all good. and reflecting the exact sentiments of Nelly Furtado, all good things always have to come to an end. 13 months later, i was back in Singapore again. thrown back into the hustle and bustle of life. it was distressing, knowing that i would never have a similar experience to the laid-back and non-judgmental life unless i decide to migrate there for good.

which i know i'll never because there are no clubs with references to towels there. and too much sunlight still.


Thursday, February 01, 2007

project 355: dumbbells are dumb

from the bottom of my hypertrophied heart, i really hate going to the gym. i hate making the 30-minute trip of walking to the MRT station, taking the train all the way to Bukit Gombak, paying a $2.50 admission and spending an hour repeatedly carrying carefully weighted metals in the hope that my chest might swell to the size of my preference or even the preferred choice of the gay community (that was a very long sentence hor?). i know what you're thinking. 'you mean you can contribute to the gay community by doing more chest reps than usual?' yes, that's what i'm talking about, honey. and that's why also they call it the Community Chest.

but lame puns aside, the sole reason why i go to the gym is because it's almost a pre-requisite to being gay. nobody likes a flabby little gay person (the term here is Chub). not everybody likes a shrimp. and liking a tranny is definitely an acquired taste. i can guarantee you though, that just like Raymond, Everybody Loves A Macho Man. it's sad that the gay community is quite superficial. if you don't have the looks, you must have the body. if you don't have the body, you need the looks. if you don't have the body and the looks, you can be a queen. if you have none of the above mentioned, then you're prolly straight. please seek counseling at the nearest gay-bashing church available.

it's a sad truth and i wish that everyone could appreciate people for what they are, and not what they are without the clothes on. but back to the gym issue. going to the gym for now is about upkeeping. not that i have a fabulous body. but i have enough market value to prolly last me till i'm 25 (which is in like 3 years' time). by then, i'll be this boring has-been and ought to be shelved away like the perfect re-gifting present you can find everywhere at Daiso.

another reason why i hate going to the gym is the people. i hate most people by nature. and this fact is pretty much put into practice at the gym. everyone there is considered insane until further conversational contact. and given that i don't talk to anyone at the gym other than the attendants/instructors, everyone there is pretty much siao. Gombak gym has its fair share of wierdos. the fat indian man who sits in the toilet (topless) and stares at people changing. the elderly gentleman who carries 2.5kg weights with a face so sagging that you can't differentiate it's not only emotionless, but also motionless. and what about the ang moh who is noisier than an American steam engine from the 1930s with all his grunting and breath sounds (and he's only carry 7.5kg weights)?

it's either full of pretentious or crazy fucks. two good reasons to dislike the gym.



About Me


Name: the nurse
Home: Singapore
About Me: i'm a nurse, i'm gay, i smoke, i play the piano, i patronize the theatre, i flip through glossy magazines for no apparent reason, i love sex, i am a left-handed libran, i watch art-house films mostly, i love house music, and did i say i love sex?
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