eu sou um capoeirista!

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sa capoeira!

I've joined a capoeira class at the Substation!

And look how strange intersections happen in my life!

me: hey

dylanstillwood: hi

1:44 AMme: weirdest thing ever

after my capoeira class (the guys did some shirtless extra practice afterwards, slobber)

I went to the AIDS candlelight memorial

1:45 AM and though it's basically the closest thing to mardi gras we've got, it has the backing of the interreligious association

1:46 AM so we sit to hear prayers by a hindu swami, a theravada buddhist father, a methodist minister, a muslim imam, a jain priest, a zoroastrian whatever they call them, a bahai whatever similarly, etc

dylanstillwood: wow

1:47 AM me: oh and the taoist priest had the most fabulous costume ever. he did dancing

anyway, afterwards i'm talking to the rabbi

because singapore has a tiny but rich jewish community

1:48 AM he's this rather good-looking bearded grey-eyed young guy, full beard and black hat and everything

and it turns out he's from sao paolo

we start speaking spanish

and it turns out he's also a capoeirista. he's in a capoeira team in singapore

dylanstillwood: wow, small world

1:49 AM me: it's not the small world that really blows my mind - it seems a bunch of my friends have also done capoeira

but CAPOEIRISTA RABBI ISRAEL!!!

(that's really his name)

i mean minus the capoeirista bit

1:50 AM i can't help but imagine this mel brooks scene

of cartwheeling jinga-ing men with the tanakh in hand

dylanstillwood: lol

you have a fertile imagination, my friend

1:51 AM i have to go do some flyering now

me: peace out

dylanstillwood: peace

Texts I've read/watched mid-May-mid-June

I love looking back on the eclecticism of my viewing fare.

*Poetry*
Alvin Pang's "City of Rain"

*Fiction*
Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe"
READ Singapore’s "Looking In, Looking Out"
Andrea Levy's "Small Island"
H.A. Rey and Margret Rey’s “Curious George”

*Plays*
Noel Coward’s “Hay-Fever”
Jean Genet’s “The Maids” and “Deathwatch”

*Non-Fiction*
Mark Abley's "Spoken Here :Travels Among Threatened Languages"
Karen Armstrong's "Muhammad: A Life of the Prophet"
Jonathan Bass's "How to Get Laid"
“The Renaissance City Report”
Lim Tzay Chuen and Eugene Tan’s “Mike: Catalogue to the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2006”
The Commission for Africa’s “Our Common Interest”

*Performances*
"Camp Cabaret: Featuring Irene Ang, Broadway Beng, Kumar, Lounge-zilla and Rick Lau"
Matthew Lyon's "Shifting"
The Stage Club's "Canterbury Tales"
SITI Company's "Death and the Ploughman"
Al-Kasaba Theatre's “The Wall”
Farm.sg’s ”Rojak 05”
Theatreworks’s “Geisha”
Singapore Musical Theatre's "Victorian Days" and "Swingle"
Dramabox’s “A Stranger at Home”

*Films*
"Mission Impossible 3"
" X-Men: The Last Stand"
COM&COM’s "Mocmoc, das ungeliebte Denkmal"
Han Yew Kwang’s “Unarmed Combat”

Heheheh...

They also just condemned gay marriage again... ah well, what's new?

Help!

Trying to decide which of these covers I should use for my poetry book. Brian's, or Enoch's? Please do give input!

Pros of Brian's: concrete, visually arresting.
Cons: might scare off the poetry loving straights.

Pros of Enoch's: will cost less, puts it in visual thematic of the rest of his titles.
Cons: I'm not crazy about abstraction.

Do comment!

What the hell. Here's a meme.

Because Jabir did this for me, and it was cute...

from babyduo

Comment and:
1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours

Texts I Have Been Witness to This Month

Much fewer, 'cos I've been working full-time.

*Poetry*
Yong Shu Hoong's "Frottage"
Felix Cheong's "Broken by the Rain"
Edna St Vincent Millay's "Evanescence and Other Poems"

*Fiction*
Colin Cheong's "The Stolen Child”
Michael Hollinghurst's "The Swimming Pool Library"
Rita Mae Brown's "Rubyfruit Jungle"
Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”

*Drama*
Terry Johnson's "Hysteria"
Paul Rae and Kaylene Tan’s “Duets1”

*Non-Fiction*
Ng King Kang’s “The Rainbow Connection”

*Graphic Texts*
"The Offnung Symphony Orchestra"
Michael Lee Hong Hwee's "When A Body Meets A Building"

*Performances*
The Substation’s “Future of the Imagination”
Tokidoki-Jido's "Lightology"
W!ld Rice's "The Magic Fundoshi"
The Finger Players' "Furthest South, Deepest North"
Spell #7's "Duets 2"
Indian Ink's "The Candlestickmaker"
Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Aspects of Love"
"Burn the Floor"
Cake Theatre's "Queen Ping"
Ramesh Meyyappan and Lars Otterstedt's "The Art of War"

*Films*
"If You Were Me” (A Korean animation anthology)
"50 Ways of Saying Fabulous"
Lars von Trier's "Manderlay"
Amir Muhammad's "The Last Communist"
“The Book of the Dead"
Simon Chung's "Innocent"
Kelvin Tong's "Love Story"
"Formula 17"

It's Election Day!!!

And my god; it's like New Year's Eve of some kind. It feels like another era is about to start. Something electric is in the air.

For the first time, everyone I know my age has been talking - heatedly! - about local politics. And the overwhelming consensus is that the MIWs have had it too easy, and that Sylvia Lim roxxxx. And James Gomez... praise be for the Persistently Non-Political Blog! I only hope the PAP doesn't clamp down on all of us freedom-speakers after this. Gay rights, maids' rights, the rights of the poor, the right to freedom of speech. But after all these years of having been told we're a politically apathetic generation, it turns out that if people are given a choice, people want to choose.

And I never saw it coming. Where did all our opposition parties get those candidates to contest the GRCs? It's like the ground is moving; the rules have all changed and the elders have no idea how to moor the ropes. We're blogging and podcasting and SMSing and just plain talking and turning up at rallies. We're communicating in a way I never thought I'd see in Singapore.

I know, I'm being silly. But that's the point of being young. That's the point of my writing: to posit the ideal before confronting the grit of reality. I explained to my mother, the PAP's always positioned itself as the fathers of the country. But we young people, suddenly we're given voting slips. And we're the rebellious ones. We want to shout back at our fathers.

It's not like I'm a clear-eyed idealist. I don't actually think the WP and SDA are proposing constructive enough alternatives to the issues they complain about, and good will and charisma don't solve all problems. The opposition's nowhere near good enough to form a government. I'm hoping and pit-falling-out-of-my-stomach fearing for a crazy victory on behalf of the opposition parties, shares and investments collapsing before we pick up the pieces and go back to what we were doing all along, because things don't change that fast. But really, it's been only 5 years since the last elections, and as I've said, everything has changed.

It feels magic, suddenly. The very idea, to think the words 'I live in a democracy'.

And by tomorrow... no, already today. What beast of an age is coming. To know that. What strange moment approaches, of victories on redrawn maps. What brave new world.

G'nite for now!

and Burn the Floor is tacky!

Innocent sucks.

The following is also extremely descriptive of my position at work

Perpetual conceptual

Considering I'm working in Visual Arts now, and the Substation's just held it's crazy Future of the Imagination festival, the following Brewster Rockit cartoon is particularly tickling.

Books (and things) I have read this month

*Poetry*
Carol Ann Duffy's "Feminine Gospels"
David Bader's "One Hundred Great Books in Haiku"

*Fiction*
Connie Willis's "Remake"
Haruki Murakami's "Sputnik Sweetheart"
Sabariah's "Butch and Girl Talk" (Though that's based on true stories... I *think*)

*Plays*
Caryl Churchill's "Plays: One", including Owners, Traps, Vinegar Tom, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Cloud Nine
Kee Thuan Chye's "We Could **** You, Mr Birch"
Luigi Pirandello's "Three Plays", including Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV and It Is So! (If You Think So)

*Graphic Novels*
Garth Ennis's "Preacher: Gone to Texas"
Garth Ennis's "Preacher: Until the End of the World"
Guy Delisle's "Pyongyang"
Warren Ellis's "Orbiter"
Joe Kubert's "Fax From Sarajevo"

*Non-Fiction*
George Orwell's "Why I Write"
Karen Armstrong's "Buddha"
Margaret Smith's "Muslim Women Mystics: The Life and Work of Rabi'a and other Women Mystics in Islam"
Bonny Hicks's "Excuse Me, Are You a Model?"

*Movies *
Yasmin Ahmad's "Gubra"
"Capote"
"Crash"
“Transamerica”
"V For Vendetta"
"Mad Hot Ballroom"

*Plays*
Teater Ekamatra's "Projek Suitcase: Police+Thief"
Checkpoint Theatre's "A Language of Their Own"

Well, this is depressing.

http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/article.php?articleid=1654&viewarticle=1&searchtype=all

Well, the PAP's new candidates, for all thier post-1965 coolness, are really mostly a buncha dorks when it comes to homophobia, aren't they?

And I quote:

>Dr Lim Wee Kiak waved his medical credentials. "I'm a doctor and I do not think that >homosexuality is natural. If my son told me one day he is gay, I will honestly be upset. But I >won't condemn it. We need to study the deeper underlying issues involved."

I.e. it's a disease that we have to treat, using hypnotherapy, oestrogen and electrodes.

>Ms Ellen Lee's reply was, "I have a handful of gay friends. I do not think there is a special need >for me to represent them because many of them are already very articulate and can do it >themselves. But if they want to help me in my election campaign, I would not have objections. >Their private lives will not be an issue."

I.e. help me out boys, but once I'm in power I am gonna kick you to the curb. I hope they only give her the worst fashion tips from now on.

>Mr Seah Kian Peng revealed that he was a man of calculation, not conviction. "I do have >friends who are gay. But I will not go out of my way to lobby for them because there are >consequences to cover. I will focus on the bulk of the population first in order to best allocate >resources."

I.e. I'm open-minded! But I'm also a pragmatist! I have no airy-fairy ideals about how protecting the minority from the majority!

(In response to: is Singapore ready for a gay MP?)

>Dr Fatimah Lateef said, "It is up to the people to elect one. That way, we will know if >Singaporeans are ready."

Have I mentioned I think this woman is hot? She's an emergency rescue doctor, a mountain-climber, and single at the age of 40. She also has the cutest butch hairdo. Of course, that means she might be too busy fighting off critics of her ability to represent the Malay population to be able to say what she really thinks.

>Mr Alvin Yeo stuck the pose of a new age man: "The PAP looks for substance but is also >sensitive to the feelings of the people."

Er, yeah. Which hole are you blowing that air out of?

>Mr Liang Eng Hwa roared, "Definitely not. We still hold Asian values. I don't think >representing the younger generation is just about addressing the gay issue. Personally, I don't >think homosexuality is a right value."

...Asian values. And I thought the vermin had finally croaked. Interesting how he associatess queer rights with youth interests: in a way, they are linked, since young people's insistence on the right to decide their own lives is basically metonymised by the right to choose one's sexual preference. As far as I know, that independence was celebrated in Chinese literature (e.g. through rebel hero-figures like Sun Wukong, Ji Gong, Zhu Yingtai) who owed allegiance primarily to themselves, but it was only in Western philosophy in which this was codified as a right.

More on this another time.

Oh, did I mention that my brother ORDed about a month ago?

 

He's relief teaching at Outram secondary now. He has many female schoolgirl stalkers and one schoolboy stalker. Last week a kid pulled a knife on him. I luv my brother. 

Michelle's 26th birthday party!!! Woohoo!!!

There was dinner...

 

...and dancing...

 

...and stoning.