Best Press We've Had In A While

"Manila is a cool city."
- Quentin Tarantino in Manila for his new movie Dead Proof premiere

The Life of A Temp

I used to temp in the greatest city of all - the big Apple. It was the summer of 1991 - and all I had was one pair of hush puppies that I wore everday, to every job. I had one suit - a navy Auggie Cordero and one pair of black slacks. In the span of two and a half month, I worked at three different buildings. My first temp job was for a division at HBO in the HBO building, right by Bryant Park on 6th Avenue. That was just three days. Then I worked for a whole week at Saks on Fifth Avenue, in the marketing department. The last stint was something I was very thankful for because the personnel agency said they wanted someone for the rest of the summer, which meant that I wouldn't have to go traipsing around the city for anymore jobs. It was an assistant job for the Japanese company, ANA Hotels, which was on the third floor of one of the towers of the fabulous Rockerfeller Center. There were only four of us in the office, and I was in charge of taking reservations for the different hotels in Asia. It was a nice easy job, and in between, I wrote stories for the second year of my fiction program in Bowling Green. It was a glorious summer, and apart from the delights of the city, the best part was walking into an office - doing a job - and just like that... walking out again.

Here I am 18 years later - and it's time to temp again. Today I worked at one of the other publishing companies located in a building in Singapore I had never been in before. It was nice, but it wasn't the Rockerfeller Centre. The best thing?

Being able to walk in...and just like that, walking out.

My new favourites... H's....

...
City Hong Kong
It's big and bustling and busy and yet still so visitor-friendly. It's a great city for walking and exploring, shopping and (need I say it?)eating.
Restaurant Hu Tong, One Peking Road, Kowloon
Yum yum yum. First of all there's the view of the Hong Kong island skyline. And just as first of all - the food itself - work of culinary art. The crispy lamb - words fail me. And the way the sauce adds new dimension, further enhanced by finely minced garlic. The mere memory makes my mouth water. Fearing we would go overboard, we restricted ourselves to veggie dishes - the string beans in minced pork - always a hit. But the big surprise was the asparagus with salted fish, mainly because the salted fishes were not just tiny flakes but whole fish laid on a bed of bright green perfectly cooked asparagus. And then there was dessert - coconut ice cream with toasted coconut plus pear and white fungi...the a fitting end to a meal that can only be described as perfection.
Store H&M
It is a wonderful place to rummage through and not only do you find something you want every other minute - you find it in your size and at worth-it prices, too. PLUS - there's a cool kiddie section. I'm still a fan of Giordano Ladies - but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for H&M and am so glad it's in Hong Kong.

When do we go back to Hong Kong, that's my question...

Take 4

It's funny how my life seems to be cyclical. Circumstances have presented themselves in ample amounts so as to be enough to persuade me that the freelance life is once again the way to go. It feels different though this time. This time feels more right than it has before. Time will tell.

Brothers and Sisters

It's always interesting to watch a new TV drama series. L and M gave me Brothers & Sisters awhile back and I just started it. Unfortunately, Calista Flockhart still irritates me no end. I can't believe that a decade ago I was quite infatuated by her. Not only that, the plot - outwardly normal happy family besieged by dysfunction - is not especially unexpected. In fact,it's rather banal.But but but - two episodes in, I continue to watch. If only for Sally Field who plays the mother and who has lovely scenes. If only the writing improves and the plots become more inventive. We shall see.

The decision

She is made.

Plan

We are approaching that time when a decision has to be made. Only when you know what you want can you make it happen. So first things first. What do you want?

In another HDB flat in Toa Payoh

...you can spend a pleasant day with colleagues doing a shoot - that is, when you work at a magazine. As someone who began working in the industry at the text stage as opposed to the ground level - sourcing, styling, products, photography stage - I find this completely new and somewhat therapeutic. Don't get me wrong. I was always aware that shoots took place in theory, but was very rarely involved in them. It is funny to be starting now. Here such questions are posed as - "how should we shoot this little vial of lip balm?" Or "How can we make this cheesy packaging look somewhat better?". Of course, there is a photographer who will hopefully be as cheery, good-natured and companionable as the one we are working with today. Hopefully, you will be spending the time with colleagues whose company you enjoy or even who you genuinely like as individuals. And the goal is that you get as many of the pictures you need done and done well. It is interesting in that it's a break from the humdrum atmosphere of the office, you get to dress down and be relaxed yet still in "work mode" and with any luck, there will be good gossip and pizza. There are a lot worse ways to spend a working day.

And at the end of it - you see lovely pictures - which are of course, the heart and soul of this business. Worth a thousand words.

Oh where oh where

has this weekend gone? A lot of naps - thank goodness. A return to choir. Friday night dinner, ice cream and a bookstore browse. Ferrying kiddies to birthday parties. Lunch by the river. Household weeding and an early evening bite at the mall where T and I successfully resisted a Calvin Klein sale - and went for Japgelato instead. Today, it was all about sticking together in gray and rainy weather (Sorry Sash...but if it's any consolation, it's not like I would have bought anything either). What lies ahead? Decisions. That, and some good old fashioned exercise....

In a 3rd floor flat of an HDB complex in Serangoon

...at the hands of a Chinese woman who spoke as much English as I speak Mandarin, I had a manual lyphatic drainage massage, ear candling with Chinese herbs combined with a facial massage and naval candling combined with more tummy toxin drainage massage. Basically, I had to research post-treatment to even be able to list down what I had.

It was awesome.

First day

K and C have started school and they're happy as campers. Despite a very long day that began at 7am end had them reaching home by 5:30 (that's longer than some people's working day and they didn't even get the two hour lunch!) they were highly upbeat.

K said, with judicious equanimity, that it was "more fun" than her old school. C said it was..."the best day of my life."

Our hope is that this new environment with its diverse student body and its equally diverse teaching body combined with its significantly lower class-to-teacher ratios will only be good them, helping them to learn all they can learn, discover their full potentials and start the process of becoming the best versions of themselves.

While it was a tough decision to make, what with the various implications, not the least of which is financial - it feels today, the very first day, that we made the right one.

Not at all surprising

Just skimmed through a news item on Yahoo. There's apparently scientific proof that two species of human beings existed on this earth at the same time - one being more evolved and the other much less so.

Now why on earth should this surprise anyone, may I ask? I'm almost positive this continues to this day. It would account for quite a lot, I think.

Rediscovering Jean Webster

What is it about me these days that I am constantly seeking solace, comfort and pleasure in the books of my youth. Using K as a willing pretext, I've been rekindling the flame I had with Lucy Maud Montgomery and her Anne that too few young girls are reading these days, perhaps because we all live in such complicated times. Anne is too quaint and Green Gables is too old fashioned and Montgomery's prose will likely prove too flowery at for the modern day gal. Get to the point, I imagine them saying. Strangely, K is surprisingly compliant and even receptive - I guess reading aloud helps - I'll warrant I have winning diction.

My rally to modern women today is to acquaint themselves with the pleasures of LM Montgomery and discover the Anne books and the copious joys within. Even if it were just for the first three - Gables, Avonlea and Island.

But I digress. We were talking about Jean Webster.

Browsing in a Bangkok Kinokuniya, I chanced upon a new edition of Webster's Daddy Long Legs which is accompanied by another epistolary novel I was not even aware she had written: a much lesser known tome called Dear Enemy which spins off a Daddy Long Legs character in much the same way Frazier was spun off from Cheers or Lou Grant was spun off from Mary Tyler Moore Show. And it is another epistolary romance. Since my own aborted novel was partially epistolary - I take great interest in the re-reading of this and the first reading of the new. I felt like I had landed a goldmine, some buried treasure that I had not even known existed. Think for awhile what it would be like to see Starwars and go away never knowing that the sequels were even made.

The sheer pleasure of the fact alone is enough to make a girl giddy.

These novels were written in 1912 and 1914. Webster has wonderful turns of phrase and there is a richness and a texture in her language that is inextricably tied to the story she relates. It's brilliant. Brilliant and enviable.

Sometimes, out of nowhere...

...in the middle of my day... I get a call from my daughter K...and we talk for three to five minutes. Just a little chat. "Whatcha doing?" she will ask. Or sometimes, "Where are you?" And I tell her. And I ask her how her day is going and tell her how mine is. Then she says, "OK, bye bye, Mom... love ya!"

It's a solid pick-me-up that glistens like a seashell does on a sandy shore of humdrum, banal moments. It also makes me profoundly grateful for the person she is, and doubly glad that I live in this age of mobile phones.

A conversation between a mother and her eight-year-old son

Mother: Do you think you want Mom to stay at home and take care of the two of you?
Son: What do you want?
Mother: That's it. I don't know.
Son: Think about what you want. That's what's important.

Life strategies we tend to forget

• SPELL IT OUT. Regarding what you want or expect from other people - be specific. No one is going to read your mind, after all.
• TALK ABOUT IT. I tend to go a little overboard on this, perhaps because I feel very strongly about it. But talking helps. Pretty much anything can be resolved with a 30 minute conversation.
• WRITE IT DOWN. If it's clear on paper, it will be clear in your mind.
• FIND OUT WHAT THE OTHER PERSON FEELS. We can get very caught up in our own feelings, never once thinking what it's like in another person's shoes
• GIVE IT AWAY. If it's occupied the same place for over a year - you haven't touched it, you don't use it, and you don't need it. Give it to someone who does.
• SAY NO. There's no point in doing something that you don't want to do. If you can't figure out why you're doing it or what good will come of it, then do yourself a favour and just say no.
• MAKE TIME FOR HAPPY. Take time off and do things that will make both you and the people you love happy. Life is short, after all.
• EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS. People don't do this enough - especially when they're feeling good. Tell someone you love, you love them.
• READ. Don't ever stop using those muscles. They were meant to be used and often.
• GET PHYSICAL. Whether it's exercise or lovemaking or doing something really basic like walking from one place to another. Use your body.
  

I saw Gandalf play King Lear

I must give credit where credit is due. The above was a T-shirt line from our friend TS - unfortunately, there was no actual T-shirt with this line. If there were, am pretty sure our little theatre-afficionado troupe last night would have stood in line to buy it. As for the show itself, it was quite absorbing. One of a number of the Bard's works I knew only very loosely - not having read it nor studied it nor seen it, until last night. As the firstborn in a family of three daughters, I had always meant to read it. But the closest I got was Jane Smiley's Thousand Acres which is actually a very different thing indeed, what with the incest and all.

It was surprising though. Always though that Shakespeare explained as well as portrayed human nature - and yet, King Lear does not do that at all. It is actually like a gun that never goes off - in the line, "What force of nature makes such harsh hearts?" Lear asks. And there is no ready answer for it it seems.

And after all that, it is a rather frightening thought - as it is also a frightening story. Positively Greek is perhaps another way to describe it, but also...mythic.

Some neat things about the performance: seeing Ian McKellen of course. But it strikes me that we paid for the wrong play. That we should have seen him doing Chekhov in The Seagull as opposed to Lear. Lear seems to me, too simple a role in its broadstrokes - in the way that Chekhov is not. Not that he wasn't a great King Lear. He was. But of course, my point is, he would be.

The other neat thing was the sets - the production itself.

And how, when Lear's fool was hung just before intermission - his dead body was taken down by the props people, just as members of the audience were standing up to get their refreshments and stretch their legs.

Coolness.

It's amazing

...what one can do just out of sheer will.

The funny thing about writing

The more you do it, the easier it gets. Today sped by like quicksilver, and yet, I managed to finish all my work and leave promptly as well as guiltlessly at six. For this new post I'm at, it's all about volume apparently. Over the past two weeks, I've written six full-length articles as well as a rather challenging six page section on new products for the body. Apart from this, I reworked three pieces from the inhouse staff and three pieces from outside freelancers. I have discharged my editorial duties and now, the special project assignments are about to begin. It's hard not to feel smug and satisfied. But the question remains - how long will it be possible to do this? Unfortunately, only I can answer that...and the answer seems to change with every day that passes.

It was a pleasure to go home early and have nothing hanging over my head though. Instead, I changed and headed to the track for six rounds. It seems running is just like writing - and I know I'm not the first to discover this either. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

The Return of Badminton

I've been missing it so much. And despite my requests on various lists, there were no takers for forming a new group. And every group I do know of is completely full up. So I stuck my neck out and looked, as it were, in my own back yard. The office.

It was easier than I expected. Send an email. Get the numbers. Book the courts and voila! We played for an hour last Friday - and this evening, we played for two hours.

If you build it, they will come.