Monday, January 29, 2007

Kate

Break-ups are ugly animals.

Despite fairytales I hear of exes who manage to remain the best of friends, I’ve always believed this to be true and last week I was witness to the aftermath of three unsavoury break-ups which more or less confirmed this for me. It’s funny how leaving a person is always so much more unpleasant than getting together with them considering that both events seem to be equal-and-opposite reactions.

Calling it quits means that the other becomes, at best, a distant figure where before they were close, special, different to you. At worst, it means a nasty, malicious aftertaste complete with taunts, threats and the burden of unfinished business.

From the sweet naivete of being “more than friends” we suddenly know, without being told that we have to avoid our mutual accquaintances, block said party from our messenger lists and find a Switzerland, or neutral ground where we can leave the items that once belonged to the partnership.

Then there are the phone calls, the neverending messages, the strained, tearful meetings begging for a reconciliation, another chance at making it work.

There are threats of being stalked, of being hated, of having one’s reputation smeared beyond all hope of redemption.

Worst of all, there is the possibility of one partner being so damaged from a messy break that they may never recover as the same person, ever again. A friend of mine wants to leave an unhappy relationship but is holding back for this precise reason. Another friend is so afraid of an ex that they can no longer meet in private places and when they do, nervous fights often ensue.

I remember the innocent days with these very friends, crushes on people we barely knew, squealing over the momentous occasion of holding a hand and I think: how did it ever get so complicated?

I guess it’s like just really like that old song.

Breaking up is hard to do.

Neil Sedaka knew it, and now I know it too.



“Here's an evening dark with shame
Throw it on the fire
Here's the time I took the blame
Throw it on the fire
Here's the view we didn't speak
It seemed for years and years
Here's a secret
No one will ever know the reasons for the tears
They are smoke…”
- Ben Folds Five

Monday, January 22, 2007

All in the Past

I have had to move.

I didn't want it, but sometimes, these things happen and you have to give up the things you love. I really loved my previous blog address. It was unique and wholly, completely and radiantly me. But sometimes, you don't know how precious something is to you until you have to lose it.

And sometimes, you think something is precious until you lose it.
And then you wonder why you ever thought you needed it in the first place.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Oh, Really?

“ ‘Have three- or more if you can afford it’ was meant to redress the problem of falling birthrates and forestall the impending problem of an ageing population in the 21st Century as forecasted by the government. That her body is not totally under her control is something the Singapore woman realises with overwhelming clarity.”
-- Lim Yi En, Women in Bondage: The Stories of Catherine Lim

Excuse me, what?!


M explained to me that from a biological viewpoint, this makes perfect sense, and after listening to her point of view, I have to say that I agree with her –the woman’s most obvious and powerful biological difference is her pregnancy.


But at the same time, I can’t help feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the notion that a woman’s strongest and most contentious asset is her ability to give birth. I mean, what about the other products that women lay claim to – their labour, their intelligence, their achievements, their art?

I, for one, refuse to believe that the only control I have over my “body”, physical or otherwise, is the choice to get pregnant. The opinion in question is possibly a highly offensive one and ironic in the sense that the supposedly liberated stance of telling a woman she is under control ignores and marginalises her other achievements in the first place. This is my quarrel with local authors – that their attempt at feminism still stems from a parochial idea of the woman and her worth.

Is it not potentially damaging to continually point to a stigmatised sort of liberation when the yardstick is past its use-by date anyway? That some Singaporean writers’ idea of a woman in power is still one who uses her sexuality to sleep her way to the top?

I suppose I believe that feminism is about modernising your own ideas before attempting to modernise your audience.

And in my world, telling me that I am controlled because my uterus is hostage to the government makes about as much sense as controlling a man’s “worth” by forcing him to wear a condom.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

So, Um... About That New Thing in The Sidebar...

It's like this … I have this hottie list.

And I don’t mean this like the time Syah tipsily admitted that men with white hair and cute butts turned her on, despite this being a difficult combination to find. I mean an actual, ranked hottie list.

It’s strange, but true. (Although I suppose it would be even weirder for me to admit that I have two hottie lists –one for women and one for men, not that you really want to know about that so, you know, moving on, lalalala.)

The whole thing started when my youngest brother started ranking his hotties and coming to me with updates on who was in and who was out. Soon (and I don’t mean conciously) I started ranking people myself… and then, the whole thing just blew out of proportion when we started comparing hottie lists on a weekly basis.

The thing is, while this is no doubt weird behaviour, it took me only a little while to realise that this is weird behaviour that can be shared! I mean, apart from Miea of the Shorts who has a long and lucious hottie list (albeit not ranked), I haven’t met anyone who has admitted outright to having one (even though a friend of mine used to keep an unofficial catalogue of all the guys she liked including what buses they took home and sometimes even where they lived – but that’s another tale for another time).

My point is: come on Minnasan! Tout le Monde! People of the world! Say it loud! Say it proud! Share the hotness with us all!

Show off your hottie lists because:

a) They are utterly useless
b) It is surprisingly therapeutic compiling them

The rules are that:

1) Anyone can be on the list so long as they are famous (it is no use telling us you like C. Govindasamy son of Pillai from the University of Pondicherry because we will have no clue who you are yakking about, even if he is a whizz with computers and holds his moustache up with wax).
2) The top five people on the list should (preferably) be ranked. The rest are just dripping with general hotness if you get my drift.
3) The list can be changed and rearranged at anytime.

Behold!

On my current line up I have, standing at number five, Mr Antonio Banderas.



I mean, the man is a macho-yet-graceful feline and a lithe dancer all in one tight-buttocked package. The fact that he made women round the world melt by lending his accent to a goddamn CGI cat is no mean feat either.


And currently holding fort at number four, is the timeless Gene Kelly who could sing, act and made tap-dancing look sexy. Unlike Fred Astaire, he ditched the coat tails (all the better to look at your arse, my dear) and when he began prancing about in these great sweater- tight jeans combinations, no one complained.



Number three is the ever present Rufus Wainwright, who despite driving his car on the wrong side of the road, continues to have a large female following, including yours truly and I believe one Ms Selvakumar whose first name I will leave to the imagination...

A new entry at number two is a certain Mr Matthew Modine, who started off cute in a geeky, wiry way and is now still cute in a more mature, Anthony Perkins vein. Three words, ladies, three words: Full. Metal. Jacket.



And finally, at number one, there is a tie between this man:



and this man:


For the life of me, I can’t seem to decide between a man who makes looking scruffy and wearing eyeliner (Eyeliner, for the love of Mike!) beautiful or a man who wrote a song in which half the chorus consisted of heavy breathing and still managed to make us like it. If you can figure out a way to break the tie, you’re welcome to let me know, but you know, take your time about it. I’m really in no hurry to whittle it down!

I do realise that there is a slight problem in that two of the guys are dead and one is gay. I hate to say it, but I continue to tend towards people in both categories… sad, but true. I am the original necrophiliac-fag-hag.

List alumni include Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Richardson, Ronan Keating, Hugh Jackman and during a rather short, dubious, possibly alcohol-induced period of time, Harrison Ford, for which I wash my hands of all responsibility.
Now, for the first time in my life, I am tagging everyone on my links list! Show us yours, folks!