Cars On The Highway, Planes In The Air

Everyone else is going somewhere
But I'm going nowhere, getting there soon
I might as well go under with you

(I was a 13-year-old Fountains of Wayne fan, circa 1997.)

My best friend is in Tokyo at the moment - just a few weeks after her Spanish vacation - while my brother and mother are headed there in about a month's time. My cousin is going to Perth (for work, poor thing) while an old friend who dropped by last night just returned from Turkey. Everybody's travelling.

Even I am going to Bangkok for a short break in May (not my first choice of destination, but what can you do with a four-day leave). Still, I'm not really going anywhere. None of us are.

These days - or nights, rather - I prefer to take long solitary walks with the dog, up a 2km-long new road that leads to a rarely used MRT station. That will soon change, of course, once the land surrounding it is developed and the old buildings are replaced by infuriating condominiums and newly-painted flats. But for now there is nothing but a long blank stretch of road on my right, and the cricket-filled forested darkness on my left. The dog tries to scamper off into it at times, drawn by the scent of a stray snoozing somewhere in the thicket of trees in the distance. I keep a tight hold on his leash. I don't blame him for wanting to go - I often want to run off into it myself - but I'm realistic about my inability to handle things like frogs or mud.

We like walking to the MRT station, which has the appearance of a manmade lunar structure, lit by medical fluorescent tubes and constructed from smooth grey granite and metal panelling. The escalators hum continuously, but perhaps only one or two people at most rise up from them every hour. (The dog is terrified of the escalator stairs, the way they keep coming towards him without actually moving any closer.) Round the sides of the MRT exit you can hear the generators occasionally shift into a different mode, an efficient rumble that means business. There's no one at the well-lit bus stop across the dead-end road, and the single bus service never seems to arrive. Behind the building, the forest stretches on, damp and fresh-smelling, like the alien landscape that it really happens to be.

We pause in front of the escalators, straining to catch a flutter of air-conditioning - it's hot work, walking all the way here - and then descend the grey steps and back onto the centipede-filled pavement. They crawl out of the leaf litter that edges the path, fat black wriggling things that stain the pavement when their front or back ends get crushed by lone commuters, who don't notice the squish (there has to be a squish, they're that big) because their earbuds are surgically attached.

I like that feeling of being somewhere different, so close to home. Here you can be alone in time and space. An hour before midnight, I'm standing at the black edge of the forest, scanning the shadows for signs of canine life - I've brought a baggie of dog kibbles for the stray, but it's nowhere to be found - and I pause and imagine my dog and myself, in matching space suits, gently leapfrogging the cratered surface of the moon in absolute silence. We don't need to talk, partly because we have a mutual understanding, and partly because he's a dog. I imagine the scarred barren landscape, the rhythmic hiss of oxygen in our helmets, the deep darkness illuminated by burning gases, stretching on for infinity above and around us. I imagine that this time, we're really going somewhere.

Maybe We Don't Have To Be Like The Rest Of Them

I think a good pop song should make you feel like a hormonal, eager teenager again. A really good pop song should make your heart lurch and swoop with excitement, make you feel the same way you felt when your crush walked by your table in the canteen, shining out from within the crowd like a religious vision partially obscured, back in 1997 or whenever. For three minutes and forty two seconds, you're back there, not in your head or in your senile reminiscences, but in where it matters - your heart and your gut.

The sweetness of that sucker punch will stay with you long after the song's ended, and it will make you want to listen to it on repeat. Not that you want her, that long-forgotten crush - though she's probably divorced by now - but you want that old sensation, that crashing tsunami wave of desire for something bigger than just a person, which is the undying wonder and possibility contained in each of us, once within that long-ago skinny teenage girl with bangs who doesn't exist anymore. She's gone, and you're not the same, but a good pop song will make you believe that the old magic is still somewhere, anywhere. It makes you want to get out more often and taste the world.

Probably, some scientist will conduct a study to prove that the mathematical catchiness of an old No 1 hit has a consistent feel-good effect on the human brain, lighting up parts of it in predictable pleasure like a rigged jackpot machine. You know, it doesn't matter. Also, I don't care if the song rhymes "car" with "bar". It's not great literature, it's a fucking pop song, and it reaches for a completely different part of you, the slightly embarrassing part that's the same whether you're 14 or 44.

(Anyway, I only thought of all this because - again with the narcissism - I've been listening to Butch Walker's Pretty Melody on repeat. I actually didn't like it the first time I heard it, but holy shit, has it grown on me since. And who would have thought Butch Walker would age so well?)

I don't want to be a teenager again. I doubt any right-minded adult would want that. But I think all of us - as we ride the train to work in the morning and walk home at night carrying groceries and lean back in creaky office swivel chairs throughout the day - want that universal heart-thump of joy, that all-natural rush of pure pleasure that becomes harder and harder to summon with every passing year of adulthood. It's out there, somewhere, and - despite what we pretend to believe - so are we really.

The Funny Thing Is, I'm Actually Rather Cheerful Today

All of us are floating in darkness.

Perhaps it's a warm organic darkness, a closed-loop tank of pulsating amniotic fluid. Or it's the air-conditioned sterility of outer space, a universe drifting further and further from its own centre. Either way, it's dark, and we are in the darkness, and of it.

We are blind and our ears are stoppered by nothingness. We are fetuses lacking umbilical cords, moving where the currents take us, gently bumping into each other and floating away in the opposite direction. Sometimes someone reaches out with an unseen hand and makes contact, and we try to reciprocate, holding on to their fingers or wrist, until we get tired, or they get tired, and then we let each other go, back into the unending darkness. 

We always let each other go.

When we die, we disintegrate slowly, atoms taking years to descend to the absolute black of lower regions. And then they are resurrected in other people, new people, people no different from those they were made from. They rise up full-formed and join the vast continents adrift above. Masses of matter, in the dark.

The Dog Dmitri

We have a dog, a mongrel to be precise.

To me at least he is the Platonic ideal of Dog: medium-sized (neither freakishly large nor rattily small), a toasty golden-brown colour with black points and a wide paint-stroke of sable running down his back, pointy ears and upright tail, and a terribly expressive set of eyebrows. A millennia of selective breeding remade the wolf or fox or whatever his ancestors were into this short, wagging creature who just so happens to be completely dependent upon the human race for survival. 

Appearances can be deceiving. Apart from his middling size, he looks like the kind of dog that springs out from behind a tree to chase your bicycle down a dirt path, snarling. His great-great-great-grandmother was probably a common village stray and all his granddaddies must have been deadbeat police German Shepherds, knocking up wild bitches every generation or so. There used to be feral dogs like him living in the field next to our school when I was a little girl. We used to inch closer and closer to taunt them, and then run back to the safety of the canteen, until one day my classmate Josephine got her shoe and sock pulled off by an especially fast mutt. The next day pest control came and shot them all.

Anyway. All we know of our dog is that he appeared out of nowhere in an industrial part of Tuas, where there was already a pack of strays ruling the factories. He was an undersized, flea-ridden puppy, and someone who fed the dogs from time to time noticed that the other dogs were attacking him and preventing him from eating. Close to death, he was picked up by a local animal activist group and taken to a shelter in Pasir Ris, where he was cleaned up and readied for adoption. Because of his small build, he was deemed suitable for HDB dwellers like myself. 

We called him Dmitri because it suited his initial melancholy demeanor, and because I had just finished watching Project Runway's season finale, which a Belarussian immigrant named Dmitri won. I liked that idea, the outsider steadily working his way to the top, winning critical acclaim despite being a stranger in a strange land. Our Dmitri clearly hadn't found favour with his own kind, but humans would love him and care for him for the rest of his life.

He put on weight steadily and apart from a few mishaps - like eating Christmas ornaments right off the tree - has behaved himself admirably. He still doesn't love other dogs, apart from our neighbour Ember, a former forest stray who looks exactly like a black fox. When we run into other dogs at night as their owners gather at the estate's pavilion area, Dmitri usually sniffs round a few times and then decides he's had enough. He's a solitary dog, happy with his humans and his toys.

We tend to humanise our pets beyond reason, I know. But his nonchalance, his standoffish behaviour makes him especially endearing to me. He is affectionate towards people - placing a paw on your knee, headbutting your hip, sniffing your face and slumping against you on the sofa - but not to other dogs whom he alternately ignores or attempts to dominate (ie. humping). He's a much happier dog since he arrived, but his indifference towards other dogs hasn't changed in the least. 

Naturally my not-so-inner narcissist believes the dog is just like me. I don't like most people, either. Ever since I was a kid, I've had trouble liking other people. My best friend Amanda often says that someone is "so nice". I rarely agree, and anyway, since when did "nice" become enough? I like reading, and I'd be lying if I said I never had the urge to discuss a really good book with a like-minded person, but then I've never met any literary types whom I felt a connection with. Mostly I think they're assholes, and I wouldn't be surprised if they feel the same way about me. 

Maybe I have unreasonably high standards when it comes to other people, and to life in general. And again, in this I see a parallel with Dmitri the dog, who right from the start was on the lookout for the finer things: a softer surface, a tastier kibble, a fuzzier teddy bear to rip open. We tried to get him to stop jumping up on the sofa, but it was impossible - he knew it was more comfortable than his dog bed, so why the hell shouldn't he get to sleep on the sofa? We gave in and bought a throw to soak up the inevitable dog hair. In contrast, his friend Ember - who sleeps on the floor, on a towel - never tried once to climb our sofa, despite ample opportunity when we dog-sat her.

Our sofa is covered in fabric, which may account for Dmitri's love affair with it. He is a connoisseur of fabrics: the carpet, the sofa, the assorted floorcloths and rugs - he has rubbed his face ecstatically into each of them, grunting in a disturbingly sexual manner. The strength of his affection for anything soft and made of cloth is unusual, even among dogs. Then there are his table manners: for a bullied stray, he has zero sense of urgency when he eats. He picks daintily at a morsel of chicken breast or a dry kibble, takes his time to nose around for the nicest bits, pauses to take a long drink of water. You can see why he was malnourished during his stint as a stray: the other dogs would have gulped everything else down by the time princess Dmitri figured out exactly which rotting chicken giblet he was going to nibble on first. 

I love that about him, his refusal - even in the face of possible starvation - to give in and change his eating habits. He is too much himself to compromise and be a survivor. So it's probably a good thing he got picked up by animal rescuers, because he would be a rotting pile of carrion by now if they had left him in Tuas. Sometimes when I think about his likely fate, I have to get up and hug him, even though I know dogs don't understand how close they were to dying unknown and unloved. 

We are so much better off than dogs, who are helpless in the hands of a higher power when it comes to finding homes that suit their temperaments. If Dmitri had arrived in any other household - one that was intolerant of his anxiety-ridden diarrhea, one that wanted him to be less of a coward, more of an extrovert, less picky with his food - he would not have been as comfortable, or even as happy. That's the truth. But we humans have the ability to seek out others like us, to come together and form our own packs of like-minded animals. Maybe one day I'll meet more people whom I like, but then again, I'm perfectly happy hanging out on the sofa with Dmitri, scratching his kibble-filled belly.

How to Travel Like An Asshole

Something about the last entry's maudlin drippiness really annoys me, so I'm reviving this blog in order to push it further down into the past. (I stand by the sentiments expressed - just not like, all the time.)

I recently came across a published article I wrote about my trip to the UK and Paris last year, and was embarrassed to find out how bitchy and privileged it sounded. I wrote it at 2 a.m., fact-checked it right afterwards and sent it in to my editor. I didn't really get a chance to think about things like "tone" and "not coming off like a pretentious asshole". (Obviously, I've never learnt my lesson about not doing things at the last minute.)

But the truth of the matter is that although I live in public housing and don't have a car, I really, really like travelling in style. When I'm researching a trip online, nothing makes my eyes light up like "100% organic Egyptian cotton bedlinen", "Michelin-starred", "private plunge pool"... you get the drift. I still can't afford to fly first class or even business class, but I'm always ready to spend on things like hotels and fine dining. Whether it's Edinburgh or Bangkok, I want curated in-room playlists and designer toiletries (no hotel-branded shampoo, please).

It's not something I reveal to people around me, unless I'm close to them. At work I dress modestly and remind my students to write on both sides of the paper, in order to save the environment and the cost of purchasing yet more foolscap. I keep an eye out for store specials when shopping for groceries. I try not to take cabs unless necessary. You wouldn't imagine that I was the same airhead who picked The Zetter based on its mood lighting, borehole water and vintage Penguin paperbacks (the shallow part of me was very taken by the coolness of it all).

In the spirit of total honesty, I also pack like an asshole. I plan every day's outfits right down to accessories, and I write everything out in a list to bring with me. I take a great deal of comfort and pleasure knowing that I'm dressed appropriately - Antik Batik tunic for Bali, Aubin & Wills cardigan for London, Equipment shirt-dress for Paris. I travel light compared to most people, but my suitcase is never short on eye-rolling pretension.

The inevitable question: why do I do it? I can only take vacations rarely, partly because my way of travelling is obviously not cheap, and I don't believe in going into debt. Sometimes the things I choose to do on vacation turn out to be a heartbreaking waste of time and money (I remember a certain restaurant in San Francisco that served radishes three ways on edible 'soil' and resembled a hipster livestock barn - definitely not worth scuttling through the Tenderloin for).

What I love about transforming temporarily while abroad is the transformation itself. I love that I can inhabit a different side of myself - embrace my inner asshole, if you prefer. And then I can go home and be my everyday self again. It's the fluidity of the change that reassures me. If a simple tuition teacher in a suburban community centre can savour Heston Blumenthal's meat fruit at the 9th best restaurant in the world, then I can tell my students with a mostly clear conscience that life can be good to them, that they will succeed and see the world. All they have to do is work for it, and believe in it. The dream is real.

(Mother Teresa reasoning aside, it really is just a shitload of fun as well. Try it and see.)

I once interviewed a music teacher at a neighbourhood school. She had studied in London and travelled Europe, of course, visiting all the cities of classical composers - Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, etc. "I tell my students about those places," she said earnestly. "My students, especially, need to hear things like that." Then she blushed, no doubt realising how condescending she sounded.

But I understood exactly what she meant - perhaps a little too much so.

Celebrate You, Baby

Just before Christmas I hosted my annual holiday dinner for some friends from secondary school. This year has been a busy one for most of us and not everyone is in Singapore, but we made do and it was so good to see them again.

We had to call it a night early - last train, early morning wake-up calls, exhaustion - and the entire dinner was very intense and rushed. In all the hustle to get food on the table and everyone seated, I happened to look across and see a stark white intruder interrupting the smooth black of a friend's hair. It was a real jolt to the system, let me tell you that. I'd seen that dark hair bent over the Maths O-level ten year series, and all of a sudden mortality aims a kick at your teeth. I mean, I've found white hairs on myself too, but it's different when you see them on people you believe are permanently 16 years old. I felt a little bit sad watching the last two guests walk away down the empty road below my flat.

I remember when we were younger and had hours of free time to waste. My friends and I would stretch out across the living room sofa and watch two or three movies or TV shows back to back, often arguing over what to see. We watched everything from The Exorcist (Director's Cut) to Man on the Moon (the Andy Kaufman biopic) to Seinfeld to forgettable action thrillers. We'd sit there with our feet up on my parents' coffee table, calling out advice to the actors or freaking out at the scary scenes. Afterwards we'd order junk food and the guys would eat everything.

Every Halloween, Channel 5 used to do a Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror marathon and we'd call - or text, later on - to remind each other. (That's something from before the Internet: watching TV in your own living rooms, connected by the phone line. Long pauses and a faint buzz of static in between every time one of you says, "Holy shit, did you see that?" and the other replies, "Yeah.")

It's such a wonderful and terrible thing, having friends from school. They get older and you get older, and nobody realises how fast time is going, or how good things are while they last. I thought I'd be watching the Treehouse of Horror marathon every year, but it's long been cancelled and I have to work, anyway.

Now as I struggle through my daily routine I remember afternoons spent wandering aimlessly in town, shopping for nothing. Lunches at Thomson Plaza and walks around the terrace house estates. Even further back in time - lying uncomfortably on the cold concrete floor at 4 a.m. after the movie lets out, waiting for the trains to start back up. Hatching yet another half-assed scheme on the rusty swings at the park near where I used to live. Walking everyone to the bus stop and waving after the last one gets on the bus.

That's the joke life plays on you, isn't it? All the time in the world when you're young, broke and thoughtless. You get enough money, but no time or energy when you're older, more sentimental and battling to keep all these atoms together, linked. I still don't cry at movies, but these days all it takes is a newspaper article about something fucked up - tragedy, death, rape, animal abuse - and I'm tearing. You got to keep things together, otherwise there's nothing left and we're all adrift in the sea, nothing to hold onto. Until next year, then.

To Live Here

The following is a short excerpt from some writing I did months ago for a workshop and (as usual) never followed up on. Probably should get around to doing that... some day.

This is what it's like to live here.

The business district like a big grey ghost, swooping arcs of concrete set against the dim anonymous backdrop of offices and condominiums. On the newest roads, burning white streetlights interrogate passing cars. This is where the real money is made, in seventy-storey buildings with ceiling-to-floor glass panels that manage to reveal nothing: a jacket thrown over the back of a chair, the desktop computer in sleep mode. The thumbnail-sized figure of a lone cleaner, vacuuming miles of carpet at midnight.

At this hour the only people around are tourists stumbling back to their hotel rooms and foreign construction workers sitting on the pavement, tired out from working overtime, waiting for their rides back to the industrial dormitories where they sleep, eat, exist.

Where is everyone else? Asleep in the suburbs, slotted into thousand-unit public housing estates, side by side by side. Watching television alone in their living rooms. Drinking beer at the open-air coffee shops, one leg propped up on a chair. Filling in blanks, working out equations, memorising chemistry formulae for school tomorrow. Crying, fretting, arguing. Fucking. Fighting insomnia in the dark, listening to the neighbours rearrange their furniture upstairs. Driving home, speeding and swerving. Working on a presentation for the boss, typing up a resignation letter. But mostly, mostly asleep. Or watching TV.

Tomorrow, another day, same as the one before.