Phew!!!

Gawd... it's been a while since I updated. I've been busy with SQ21, which you guys can find out more about on http://sq21.blogspot.com, which I've also been maintaining.

Basically, the book's selling obscenely well. Borders and Kino put about 30 copies on their shelves and watched them disappear within nanoseconds.

There are many things I'd love to report on. Including:

1) My lunch at Al Dente with Cyn, the 19 year-old Kenyan Yale student who during a 2-month attachment in Singapore has had affairs with every almost every girl in Singapore . ("They just come up to me and want to touch my skin to see if I'm black all over. They ask, can you dance like Beyonce? And I say, if you want me to!") She was able to give me a breakdown by race of the relative merits of Singapore teenage lesbians (Malay girls are way hot, but they have issues). I'm rather flummoxed - I snap at muthafuckas who call me Jackie Chan, but she just takes objectification in her stride and laps up the cream.

2) My life in capoeira. I've paid $400 for a batizado (a baptism - seriously, it's like a cult, only it'll mostly involve eating Brazilian barbecue and learning how to kick things). In the meantime, I've already received a capoeira name: pata de gato, or cat's paw. It's lovely, but I'm terribly worried that that's somehow a reflection of the fact that I still suck at the game, big-time. Anyhoo, I spent last night as part of the Argola de Ouro capoeira presentation at WOMAD, clapping and singing onstage as my more talented brethren and sistren whooped ass.

3) My quitting NAC. I am now a full-time freelance writer. Except that I've also gone and volunteered with Singapore Biennale for a nominal fee as a tour-guide, performance artist and furry. Seriously. I'll be dressing up as a giant merlion mascot named Mermer with a phallic tail. People, please give me employment!

4) My discovery that, if you run out of conversation while visiting your Hokkien-and-Teochew-speaking grandma in hospital, then telling her garbled Western fairy tales will amuse her, but will also disturb you profoundly. For instance, it will become clear that the entire legend of Snow White is upside-down. It is the old woman who is chased out of her house by the young princess to live in a hovel of dwarves and dosed on poisoned apples. And talking about resurrection from crystal coffins in the arms of handsome princes is just perverse in front of 83-year-olds.

I exhaust myself. Another day, my dears. Buy my book.