My Perth Pix

Check 'em out here.

My favourite Aussie food:

It's a very pretty city when you're not freezing your tits off:


Of course, prehistoric creatures sometimes invade the libraries:


And you have to be very careful where you park your panda:


But not to worry, for at the end of every rainbow, there's a:


Here's our publisher Fong Hoe Fang and poets Alvin Pang and Donna Ward:


Here's Lee Suan Hiang in disguise as a plastic cone:


And here's Lee Suan Hiang sexually harrassing Edwin Thumboo:

G'nite!

I'm in love with intertextuality.

Therefore I love this Weezer video, which plays on Internet memes.  (Okay, so they're not classics, but someday they will be.)

UPDATE: Actually, I'll take it back. They are fuckin' classics. Here's the originals in case you don't recognise the references.

The Singapore Discovery Centre sucks.

Reason #1: I lost my wallet there.  :(

It's like the 6th time I've lost my IC.  The police are starting to believe I'm selling them (seriously, I have to be questioned by the police before I get a new one).  Today I went to Bugis Market and got a new one for $11 though:

I made the trip there yesterday with my niece Kimberlyn.  This is a shot of us with her little sister Kerrilyn, taken when her parents came to pick us up.

 

Anyway, Reasons #2 thru #Aleph-null: PATRIOTISCH KITSCH.

There's actually a computer game about how Singapore colonises other planets in the year 3000, but officers have to be despatched to these colonies to ensure that the inhabitants continue practising good Singapore values of meritocracy and working your butt off.

Oh, and isn't this a great thing to teach yer kids:

You can't change the world, kid.  YER TOO ****IN' SMALL.  (I can't use profanities because I'm going to e-mail Kimberlyn and link to this site.)

There's a play area where you have to try and cope with Singapore's small size by building upwards.  I tried to do a Westin Stamford:

But a security lady eminent-domained my land and tore it down before it could become Hotel New World.

There's lots of other photos I'd like to add, but my computer's on the fritz.  Incidentally, Kimberlyn loved the place.  Kids have no taste.

I can't do accents.

But this chick can:

Social Darwinism

Hey!  It's the end of the WordStorm Festival in Darwin, and I think everyone's agreed it was EXCELLENT.  Big kudos to organiser Sandra Thibodeaux (and yeah, I'm doing this partly 'cos I think props should be googlable).

From my meagre experience of lit festivals in Singapore/Hong Kong/Darwin, I'm now starting to understand that each one - being almost by definition international - each one entails a new perspective on multiculturalism (and of course, often once you're settled with one multiculturalism you tend to get kinda smarmy and showoffy and confident in your own cosmopolitanism, when in fact there are global multiculturalisms to be digested, each contingent on regional history and geography and context).

What we've got, here on the tip of the Northern Territory, is a assembly of writers in various genres (including drama, lotsa poetry, and journalism - literary, sports and gonzo).  We're mostly women (someone explained that in Australia women are more literate), and I've a suspicion that aside from me, no-one's under the age of 30 (except the volunteers, and maybe they should count - a number of them are writers themselves).

And we're all equatorial or Southern - whitefella and blackfella Australian, Indonesian, East Timorese, Papuan.  Of the Singapore contingent, only Shu Hoong and I are native; Shamini Flint (who's enormous fun), is a Malaysian expat with a big political identity crisis (grew up wanting to be banned from Singapore, ends up loving it here but also wary of the dangers of keeping to the expat community) and Deepika Shetty is India-born (says she can get way more journalism done in Singapore, as long as she's pushy).

I've met all these remarkable people - gaaaaah, Indonesian intellectual idol Goenawan Mohammad likes my poetry!!!  I'm all jiggly inside!!!!  And so does mega-lesbo-crime-novelist-in-verse Dorothy Porter, who gave me a signed copy of Crete, which she says contains her best poetry (unfortunately I'd just bought a copy myself, but she signed both).  And Sandra Tillman - damn, she's this sweet and gentle high school teacher and mother of two who transforms into a voice of anger for breakfast when she performs Timor Lesterian social injustice in Tetum or Bahasa Indonesia.

I am incredibly, incredibly... fuck, inspired sounds so trite, and it's not the right word.  But thrilled, just remembering them.  More joyous at the plenitude of the world.

Oh look, it's sunrise.  :)

I'm going to WordStorm in Darwin!

FRIDAY 16 MAY

POETRY SLAM @ Vodka Bar
Hear featured artists Munkimuk, Ng Yi-Sheng, Cristavão Pereira, Scribe Sisters Speaking & Kelly-Lee Hickey before getting up to slam!
8:30-11pm $10/$5
Duck’s Nuts, 76 Mitchell St, Darwin


SATURDAY 17 MAY

LUNCHTIME READINGS:
OVER THERE – A TIGER CONNECTION Dorothy Porter, Yong Shu Hoong, Ng Yi-Sheng and Peter Minter all contributed to the first anthology of Singaporean and Australian poetry – Over There.
1:15-2:15pm Speaking Tree FREE

ADUH! A PEOPLE’S THEATRE
Theatre practitioners John Waromi, Mary Anne Butler, Tom E Lewis and Ng Yi-Sheng challenge ‘the fourth wall’ in community-driven performance projects that matter. Facilitator: Sandra Thibodeaux
2:30-4pm MAGNT Theatrette


SUNDAY 18 MAY

THE PRACTICE OF SUBVERSION
Subversives Charles Firth, Jennifer Mills, Gayle Kennedy and Ng Yi-Sheng recount their challenges to the status quo, the nation state and the States.
Facilitator: Mark Bowling
2:30-4pm Arafura Tent

PASSION @ ABSOLUTELY
Rendezvous with Ng Yi-Sheng, Dorothy Porter & Shellie Morris in a toast to passion and the muse. Drinks & finger food
4:30-6:30pm $10
Absolutely Books, Cullen Bay

Perth Day 1

Truth is, it hasn't been terribly interesting. Partly because I spent the day hanging out in Fremantle, Perth's neighbouring historical town by the sea. Shades of Townsville - that doldrum of a seaside town over in Northern Queensland where we had World Interplay last year. Chilly, rainy and dominated by generic shopping malls, touristic kitsch and colonial ruins.

Fremantle used to be incredibly important as a port, though - saw a rather good exhibition on the history of colossal post-war immigration from Europe into Australia, which mostly went through Fremantle. Whole families were encouraged to move over, ten pounds an Englishman/woman and the kids sailed for free, just to boost Australia's population from 7 million to 20 million in case the Cold War rolled south. World War Two had been risky for the Aussies, but it hit Europe worse: English, Germans, Dutch, Hungarians, Latvians, Italians and Greeks moved over, with the state-controlled press focussing on shots of the "beautiful Balts", the blonde Eastern Euro girls, to allay fears of racial/cultural dilution. There was a big white Australia policy being pushed, though - multiculturalism only became state policy from '77, with phone and hospital interpreters introduced and all us Asians being allowed to move in. (Including a Japanese guy called Sanshi who was trying to teach me how to play the didgeridoo in his store. Cool fella. They do recitals on Thursday nights.)

The real big news for me, though, is that my Couchsurfing connection worked - I'm being hosted for a couple nights by a pretty cool commune of three siblings and a husband, named Eliesha, Lara, Gabe and Ben respectively. I've talked to Ben mostly: he's a pianist and music teacher who works in jazz and rock; he just cooked me some rather nice briyani (of course he's done gigs with his band in Delhi before), and he says the cashew sugee I got him from Bengawan Solo tastes like shortbread. Eliesha and Lara are both social services workers. Gabe's in college, but gets up at 4:30 in the morning to work as a garbage collector so he can earn money to go visit his girlfriend who's somewhere in Europe or North America, can't remember where. He's also a psychology student (the whole lot are in college, really, they just skipped years here and there) and though I haven't seen him - and probably won't have time to - he looks hella adorable in the photos.

In other news, my mother and father are in China but were not killed by the earthquakes (some of their staff lost relatives, though). My brother's whereabouts are unknown, but I somehow can't get worried for him - first, because I'm pretty sure he's still in America and is headed for the South of China anyway, and second, after being in viewing distance of 9/11, disaster feels very abstract.

I have photographs of my life, of course, but none are very spectacular. I leave you instead with a taste: Australian meat pie. Dig it.

Launch of Over There @ South Perth Poetry Park!

Basically, if you wanna come, it's on:

Thursday, 15 May

5:30pm

Neil McDougall Park, Como

Perth, WA

Australia

Oceania

The World

RSPV [sic] essential. Invitation & map attached.

Please email library@southperth.wa.gov.au or call 9474 0800.

From NAC:

A Poetry Park will be launched at the Neil McDougall Park in South Perth, Australia to celebrate the outstanding work and achievements of Western Australia’s poets. The opening also marks the launch of Over There: Poems from Singapore & Australia, an anthology of Singaporean and Australian poets, edited by Alvin Pang and John Kinsella.

The event to be held on Thursday, 15 May 2008 will be officiated by the Honourable Sheila McHale MLA, Australian Minister for Disability Services, Tourism, Culture & the Arts.

The Singapore contingent for the launch led by Lee Suan Hiang, Chief Executive Officer, National Arts Council, will comprise Meritorious Service Medal recipient, Professor Edwin Thumboo, distinguished poet and literary scholar, Professor Kirpal Singh, as well as acclaimed Singapore poets, Alvin Pang and Ng Yi-Sheng, and publisher Ethos Books for Over There, Fong Hoe Fang.

Whee!  I've got recognition from NAC!  (Now if they'd only start including me in their brochures of notable Singapore writers...)

And then after that, WordStorm in Darwin!  Seeya there!)

SCIENCE CENTRE!!!

Fulfilled my avuncular duties again this Sunday by taking Kimberlyn out to the Science Centre - she's been begging to go for ages, but her family felt the Sabbath would be better spent mugging for midyear exams.


I'd tried to tempt her with the fact that the Peranakan Museum was holding the last weekend of its Opening Festival, but 'twas not to be. The little scullion even told me that she wants to be a scientist when she grows up, and her newfound idol is Marie Curie. (I'm rather relieved; last time I asked, it was St. Catherine.)

Lookit how tech-savvy the post-millennials are.  This is Li'l Kim with her cameraphone:



And with her handheld electronic diary:

I was trying to describe this state of tech to my 83 year-old grandmother at lunch. "Did you have PDAs when you were 9 years old?" I asked her in shaky Mandarin.

Ooh, yes, and there were also exhibits.  I was shamefaced when I couldn't explain to Kim what a diode or transistor were.  I was, however, able to tell her that Alexander Graham Bell's mother was deaf, and that eggs only hatch into fluffy baby chicks if the hen had sex first.  We played with optical illusions and the Tower of Brahma and the Archimedean screw (oh god, everything sounds like an innuendo on this blog) and the vortex generator and the phenakistescope andthe 3-dimensional Mobius strip.

Here's Kim on a parasaurolophus.

And here's the Ecstasy of St Theresa.

She loves dinosaurs (so did I when I was nine!), but unlike me, she doesn't try and memorise the roots of their Baroquely Hellenophone names.  (She does, however, plot over how to steal dinosaur eggs when the surveillance cameras are off.)

Ooh, and these are the hissing cockroaches:


They were right next to the cute lickle gerbils! (Kim was grossed out, but was amusedly tolerant of my fascination with them.)

We went to see a rather cool Omnimax Theatre movie on Egyptian mummies (how do they get all those people to do those re-enactments? And those were some dead-ass mummies on the iMax screen.) And later we came out and saw this weird hermaphroditic toy at the Gift Shop.

Anyway, my basic report is: the Science Centre is just as cool as it was when we were kids (and they're a lot closer to reaching  a million saga seeds in that big tube of theirs!), a bit shabby at times but slightly refurbished with most of the old stuff we loved still there or just shifted around.

Next time, she wants me to take her to the Singapore Discovery Centre.  Sigh.  The Peranakan Museum will have to wait.

Watching this was one of the nicer things that happened to me today.

Plus he's cute, isn't he?

LOLlion

...

Don't sue me for sedition!  I'm referencing a history of martyrdom!

(Believe it or not, I found this while I was trying to google whether Hellen Keller was lesbian.  She probably wasn't - she was engaged to be married at the age of 36, but her parents protested - but she did also have these very solid Boston marriages with other women, including her teacher Anne Sullivan.)

My first articles are up on The Online Citizen!

Homophobia Part 1: the MDA Censors the Family

Homophobia Part 2: Under Attack from the Police

Although one commenter's called me a faggot (well, duh), another commenter (who didn't seem completely pro-gay rights) put up a link to a pretty interesting essay of his in which he compares gay male sex to smoking. His conclusion is that it's harmful to health, but it should be legal, and better education should be available. (He seems to be very distrustful of the effectiveness of condoms, though.)

Keronchong for Keronchong for Pak Bakar

Hey, I figured I'd put up a link to my Flickr set of shots from Keronchong for Pak Bakar, a documentary directed by Abdul Nizam Hamid about the award-winning cinematographer of the P. Ramlee movies in the Golden Age of Singapore cinema, now working as a gardener and living in a tiny HDB flat.



I especially like how this shot contrasts the two styles of filmmaking. Clear classic aesthetics versus postmodern blur.

Bwahahahaha

From Rob and Elliot.

April 2008 texts

I've been doing a fair bit of Japanese cultural research, as you can see. But my tastes remain pretty eclectic.

*POETRY*
+Anna Akhmatova’s “Poems” (Everyman Library)
+Benjamin Zephaniah’s “Too Black, Too Strong”

*FICTION*
Isa Kamari’s “One Earth”
+Gail Jones’s “Dreams of Speaking”
+Neil Gaiman’s “Fragile Things”
+Haruki Murakami’s “Dance Dance Dance”

*DRAMA*
Kunio Shimizu’s “Tango at the End of Winter”
Elangovan’s “1915” and “Romusha”

*NON-FICTION*
Asiapac’s “Pioneers of Singapore: Builders of Our Land”
+George Williams’s ”Religions of the World: Shinto”
+Charles C. Mann’s “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus”
+Mamoru Shinozaki’s “Syonan – My Story”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative's "Porn For Women" and +"Porn For New Moms"
+Art Spiegelman’s “Maus II”
Paul D. Storrie amd Ron Randall’s “Amaterasu: Return of the Sun”

*PERFORMANCES*
+The Theatre Practice’s “The Soldier and His Virtuous Wife”
+Theatreworks’s “Dance Dance Dance”
NUS’s “The West Wing”
+Pentas Theatre Collaboration Project’s “Break-ing Ji Po Ka Si Pe Cah”
SimplyWorks’s “The Enchantment of Sangkuriang”
+Noor Effendy Ibrahim and Rizman Putra’s “Circus”

*EXHIBITIONS*
Steve Chua,Betty Susiarjo and Soh Ee Shaun’s “Lightz Out!”
Singapore Art Museum’s “Primary Colours: Feng Zhengjie”, “Xu Beihong in Nanyang” and “Re-Woven: Featuring the Works of Benny Ong”
+Seelan Palay and Kummi’s “Seelan & Kummi”

*FILM AND VIDEO*
+Sun Koh, K. Rajagopal, Boo Junfeng, Brian Gothong Tan, Chew Tze Chuan, Ho Tzu Nyen and Tania Sng’s “Lucky 7”
Yousry Mansour’s “Dirt Out”
+Todd Haynes’s “I’m Not There”
+Han Yew Kwang’s “18 Grams of Love”
+Boo Junfeng’s “Keluar Baris”, +Michael Tay’s “Wet Seasons”, +Fran Borgia’s “Para Asia”, Muhammad EySham Ali’s “My Home, My Heaven”, Lincoln Chia Zhicheng’s “Love Me, Love My Dogs” and Cheng Ding An’s “Kallang Roar”
Abdul Nizam Hamid’s “Keronchong for Pak Bakar”
Kelvin Tong’s “Rule #1”

+Colin Goh's "Talking Cock: the Movie"

+Boo Junfeng’s “Tanjong Rhu”
+The Gay Christian Network’s “Straight to Heaven”

Multiculturalism today

April 30, 2008: Queen's Day in the Netherlands; Walpurgis Night in various European countries; Reunification Day in Vietnam.

Via Wikipedia.

A fruity interlude...

That little girl at 0:44 - whoo, she's as slutty as I am. (Yeah, I tried having a sex with a banana when I was in JC 2. Unfortunately, it was overripe, which was messy.)

They're arresting people at saunas again.

They haven't done this since kind of thing since 2001. Time to seriously consider migrating.

UPDATE: I'm compiling a list of accounts of the night. Some contradict each other. 

From 1-7 newsletter
http://leejean.livejournal.com/656628.html?mode=reply&style=mine

Dear members,

Our water supply was turned off at 10pm on the 25th April 2008, Saturday. (typo?) When we opened the back door to investigate amd turn it back on, a few plain-clothed officers from the CID rushed in. Sam immediately tried to stop them and demanded to know what was going on. They told him that they were conducting a 'spot-check'. When asked what they were checking for, they simply repeated 'spot-check'. the officers refused to specify what they were checking for despite repeated demands. Sam also asked if they had a warrant toc ehck the premises. Yhey refused to reply.

At this point in time, we turned on all the lights upstairs and downstairs to alert the members that a check was going on. None of the memebers were stopped from dressing or leaving, nor were they searched or any particulars taken.

When a female officer tried to enter, Sam repeatedly shouted that she was not allowed to enter as we are a private men's club and insisted taht she leave. Thereupon, the supervising officer threw sam to the ground and twisted his arms behind hsi back to handcuff him. Because of this, sam sustained cuts to his wrist and bruises on his left rib, for which he was later brought to the Singapore General Hospital for treatment.

The officers only removed several DVDs and Sam was arrested and spent the night in jail. He has been charged with assaulting (pushing) the officer that handcuffed him despite never having laid hands upon him. Sam is 74 years old. The officer was about 40.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and will give a free return visit to anyone who was here when the incident occured - just tell the front desk.

We are open for business as usual for our 8TH YEAR from 11:30am to 11:30pm on wekdays and from 11:30am till 7am the followign day on fridays and Saturdays.

Club One Seven.

From Trevvy.com Forums

1) Both as an eye witness of some of the events, as well as having snippets of informaton from a broad category of people who claimed to have been present at the scene, this is probably as accurate a sketch of the incident. At about 6 pm, one of the bar counter members thought the water from the taps at the counter was conspicuously drying up precariously towards just a trickle. Alarmed that the rush hour could then precipitate a crisis for water, he then informed Sam concerning the strange occurrence.

Sam then decided that the best temporary measure was to go outside towards the back of the premises at 17, and so opened up the back door. However, before it was completely opened, men in plain clothes, but with tags prominently displayed on their chests which were thrust towards Sam's attention, proclaimed that there was to be a CID raid. Thereupon, these men, about four or six of them, including one woman rushed into the premises.

By then, however, the rather tumultous commotion at the back of the premises at 17 was already heard throughout the whole gay spa. The emergency lights were immediately switched on to "Full"

No one but a complete, and indeed congenital, overweening idiot would have hesistated for two moments subsequently, upon receiving that message; the upshot of that signal was unambiguous as it was immediately obvious that a police raid was upon 17. Seldom was a scene of pandemonium could be re -enacted, as that afternoon at 17 ; a mad scramble by virtually all spa members then ensued in a blitzkreig manner to the extent that fist fights, and assaults occurred at the locker area as members hurriedly gathered thueir belonginings in haste to dress up and make a strategic retreat from the premises of 17

MEANWHILE, the CID raid was already fully in operation. As entry from the back without a warrant seemed improper, Sam resisted their approaches as being wrong. However, the members of the CID appeared not to be out done. In fact, a sort of shuffle then occurred at the back entrance beween Sam and one of the CID officers. As this minor altercation continued apace, police squad cars also arrived on the scene, totally about four of such vehicles, this time in front of the Circular Road entrance.

With such a massive police presence however, the whole building was soon swarming about with the "men in blue" almost universally about the building. As to what was the source or cause for such a sudden and inexplicable gratituous intrusion seems most odd No apparent reason could be vouchsafed except that all that was being required was for the spa members, of those who had been rather inexpediently caught as they were left behind on the premises, despite the other swifter members, who then made a remarkable and convenient dispora from the area of No 17. To those who were present however, photographs as well as their personal confidential particulars were taken down. No sooner than the efficient CID officers were roaming about 17, than that the officers also scooped about looking about the premises, presumably for something that was also amiss.

Reports keep filtering in that Sam's altercation with an officer of the law could have resulted in some form of misdemeanour being committed by Sam It could have been that although he may have been perfectly and unassailably correct in his legal right that the officers did not have a warrant, the encounter with the CID at the back entrance which involved an element of pugilistic demonstration on Sam's part was viewed rather dimly by the CID officers

THIS SEEMS TO BE THE CHRONICLE THUS FAR


2)OneSeven, the currently popular (open to discussion) sauna in singapore, was raided by the (vice? CID?) tonite 25apr@2145hrs.

I was one of the patrons who was busy in the cubicle room when the all the lights suddenly turned on. Beginning, there was a slight confusion as to what was happening, but whispers around the crowds was that it is a police raid. guys was all rushing, luckily no stampede in the hallway areas..

naked guys from the darkroom areas (lighted now!), exiting the plastic partition curtains, grabbing their towels from the shower area, going down the stairs in a hurry. mass exodus from 2nd floor to the ground floor.

standing by the door on top of the stairs i can hear the caucasian owner, yelling to the police officer. what is he doing here? checking on wat? no search warrant! you never showed me any warrant!
listening and hearing his shouting, i wish one of his employee would calm him down.

later, me and my friend while waiting at the locker area, watching all the happenings. he (the owner) was still being loud and complaining about the officers. plus they have 2 female police officers in the locker area now. as he was shooing out the female officer, saying this is a men's sauna, women are not allowed. i guess he must had touched/pushed one of the female officer. he was handcuffed then, and sat facing the water fountain.

a japanese guy identity was checked. passport sighted and photocopied also. the police seems to be very much interested in him. i wonder why?

a caucasian tourist was also asked for identification, but he couldn't or wouldn't show any identification. wonder what happened to him too..

eventhough handcuffed, the owner was still making lots of noise shouting. i guess things got a bit hot for the senior officer (i guess so), he instructed his men to have all identities recorded and screened. he also instructed video recording of everything/everyone. due to the owners loud and kwailan attitude.

i thinks there was about 20 of us still in the locker areas, all dressed and waiting to leave.
u should see the mess left behind by all the towels strewn on the floor of the locker areas. plus a few bottles of poppers too....(is poppers really illegal in singapore? anyone care to comment..)

this is my personal view regards to the situation.
first of all, the owners should not be too aggressive to the police.
i know i will get brickbats for this remark but things are kinda handled very differently here.

the police officers actually wasn't harassing us (patrons) in any ways. they were just walking/looking around, searching and not exactly looking at us directly. one of the officers who was holding the video cam, was even pointing the video-cam to the floor when he passed by me on the 2nd floor. in my mind maybe there was a tip-off regards to illegal drugs etc...

to be a very loud westerner, screaming of equal rights and proper official procedures, doesn't apply here. an actual fact is that the police, can enter any premises without any warrant (letter). their warrant card is the warrant letter and it also backs them up legally. if an illegal item is openly displayed/seen, then the officer can action an arrest.
to search any individual lockers or open up any drawers, for items not within view, THEN they would need a search warrant. plus the search warrant would have to be clearly stated as to what is the illegal items they are searching for and to seize.

i understand that the owners is pissed that his weekend business is disrupted and in-order to show his displeasure, he shouts and rants to the officer. but could he had handled it differently?

(i know i was totally pissed too!! i just only got into a cubicle with a cute chub/fleshy guy when the lights came on. if u are reading this, contact me please... hahahaha)

firstly, for his costumers sake, couldn't he had waited until all his customers left the building, before showing his displeasure to the police?
to the hundreds that had left earlier (yup, busy night!), they didn't have to show their identity cards to the police, to be noted and screened.
(perhaps it is worthwhile to be kiasi for a change.) only after he was handcuffed (arrested?), the senior officer got pissed and asked everyone to be recorded and screened.

i do appreciate his show of standing for persons individual rights but that moment it wasn't handled correctly at all. he did shouted to the police if he could call his lawyer, his shouts was ignored. to the police he is being a nuisance so communication lines between the owner and officer is closed. to me, if the owner wants to go by the rules, have his lawyer on speed-dial. once the police wants to enter the premises, let them in. if no warrant of intent is issued, slowly discreetly call the lawyer. get the lawyer there, to attend to the police. but then it is expensive to have a lawyer on retainer. police officers do have knowledge of the law, however, they will not dispute or argue with a court officer.

to the patrons tonite.... what are your views regard to this situations.
feedbacks are appreciated....

There was also apparently an earlier raid at Raw, another sauna:


3) I was at Raw when the 'raid' happened. I wont go as far as to call it a 'raid', more like a look-see look-see. It certainly didnt feel like a raid at all that Friday night at Raw. I was at the TV room engrossed in the programme (I think the telly was showing Crime Watch) when I realised that the area at the back (the barrack area when one have to pay extra for the room) was suddenly very bright. I thought the staff was being hardworking and was probably doing some area cleaning and so paid no heed to it. Soon more people trooped in and I couldnt ignore the urgent whispers and my ear pricked up when I heard the word 'ma tah' or police being tossed around. Apparently they were in the premises conducting some search. We waited for minutes for the police to appear but it seemed they were not the least interested in us all. So I went down to the reception area and saw a couple of male officers and a female officer as well (I later learned that there were two female officers) standing near the entrance looking towards the gym area. My immediate guess is that they were after the DVD guy. I stood there for a while and none of them turned and looked at me at all. I went down to the shower and waited out for a while before I went up again. The sense of unease didnt go away. By then, the officers were all gone and the DVD guy was calmly smoking his cigarette. When I went up to the tv room again I saw Max, the owner, giggling as he related to his 'friends' about the incident. There were few variations to the story. Some said they were after the massage guys after a tip-off. Some just said it's just a routine check. Whatever it is, I was glad I was at Raw that night rather than at the more-happening OS. It was certainly happening at OS but not in a good way.

I may never wear shoes again.

See You Walk Wrong at the New York Magazine.

My days with Jeff

This is Jeffrey Mishler.

I met him in Columbia. My history with him is complex. Those of you who know what I'm like will immediately know what I'm talking about.

Anyhow, he's quit his white-collar number-crunching job in New York so he can study to become an alternative fuels researcher, and in the interim he's studying Mandarin in Taiwan. (He was gonna do it in China, but I explained to him over chat why those plans were pissing off his Taiwanese boyfriend so much.)

Anyhoo, since he was in the Eastern Hemisphere, I extended an invitation for him to come and visit Singapore. Or perhaps he invited himself. In any case, I was definitely the one who urged him to stay in my house.

So I took him to Arab Street...

(This was his first mosque! Not that surprising, considering he's a Westchester Jew.)

Fortunately/unfortunately, the Muslim bookstore next door was one of the cool enlightened ones that stocks handbooks explaining comparative religions rather than the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Also took him to the Esplanade...

...the National Museum...

... Clarke Quay...

... and the Night Safari.

Many of these photos are from his Picasa set rather than mine.  As you may have guessed, we share a similar sense of irony.

And no, we didn't sleep together.  Not that I didn't want to bonk him with every sinew of my body.

I've been a skank ho before and I'm a skank ho now, but a Millsian utilitarian calculus appraisal indicated that all I'd be getting would be momentary pleasure whereas he'd be wrecking a twenty-month relationship, so it'd have been extremely selfish of me to push him.

Besides, he really is a faithful boy.  He says things about his bf that make you go, damn, that kid's lucky (I use the word "kid" figuratively; his boyfriend's a few years older than him - Jeff's of a generation that simply hasn't heard about the ol' quasi-colonial gay SPG dynamic).

The amazing thing, though, is that we really do have great chemistry in eccentric conversation, and he says things that imply I'm not in fact unattractive to him, and I've realised that while there are some guys who are so attractive they make me feel unattractive just standing next to them, he's not one of them.

The long and short of it is that I believe, in a parallel universe, we could've been boyfriends.  Nice, stable boyfriends of the type that's purely theoretical to my consciousness.

And so in the darkness of the Night Safari, when I'm longing to wrestle him down into the heaps of giraffe dung and eat out his Discovery Channel, I realise that I'm somehow feeling utterly satisfied with the way things are.

He's a swell guy to have as a friend, and that's great.

I feel desire.  I feel contentment.

Isn't that what love is supposed to be like?

Anyway, the highlight of his visit was probably Jurong Bird Park.  

Don't we look cute together? He loves birds, absolutely loves them.  Who knew?  I sure didn't in Columbia.

So we got a gander at all the cliches:

(In case you can't see the sign properly, it says: "THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS CREATURE: Homo sapiens").

We also got some cheap thrills.

No, I don't know why they have a white rooster among the scarlet ibises.


But as we gay men know, cock attracts cock.


These little babies are called the Victoria Crowned Pigeons.  They're native to New Guinea, both Papua and Timor Leste, and they're utterly unafraid of mankind.

Doncha love the look of childlike wonder in his eyes?



I, on the other hand, transform every moment into farce.

Ooh, and these rainbow-coloured anomalies are called lories.

If you ask me, somewhere in Australasia, God kind of gave up on trying to make his creations look believable.

Naturally, I didn't just take Jeff places.  I force-fed him local delights, including D-24 durian, which he found unsmelly but way too rich:

And wasabi-flavoured Japanese soft serve.



I also took him to watch the Mandarin musical "The Soldier and His Virtuous Wife". Brought my niece Kimberlyn along, hoping that maybe it'll teach her not to be intimidated by angmoh men when she's older. During dinner at Bugis Market, she pressed him to try Katong laksa. He loved it. Even drank up all the gravy.

Saturday he was on his own. So he went with his friends to Pulau Ubin...

...Chinatown...

...and the Merlion.

In the meantime, I missed him horribly. I watched Lucky Seven and went to the Books Actually Re-Opening and Dance Dance Dance and consistently felt like shit.

He was home when I got back. I would be visiting graves for Qing Ming the next morning, so I wouldn't be able to see him off. I made him take a few more photos.





Just to provide myself with evidence that he was in my home.

I got up the next morning, and took one last photo of him before I left the house.

And this is the last photo he took in my house.

The odd thing is, I don't miss him anymore.  Sure, I still think he's gorgeous and I'd still love to schtup him and have rainbow babies with him someday, but right now he's quite comfortably... absent.  The utilitarian calculus was right. Better not to have slept with him. Yes, I believe it.

I've actually decided to visit New York in June/July, not to visit him but to visit someone quite different. I have unfinished business with the city.

Nothing Says I Love You Like Giving Head

See this article at Deep End Dining. The perfect leftovers dish for Ah Longs.