Monthly Archives: August 2004

one of the interesting things about being in a chinese speaking (though almost everyone speaks english) city is having people read my leg on their own and then ask me if it’s my boyfriend’s name. uh, no, i reply. i did not brand myself with my boyfriend’s name. what kind of girl do you think i am? a lame one? it’s my dad’s name. at which point they look at me funny. thinking to themselves, you are no asian. you are not even half-asian. the extreme amount of sarees and that henna tattoo on your hand notwithstanding, you’re still whiter than the dickens. whatevs yo, my look replies to them as i run away from strangers who like to approach me.

i come home today! well, in the vaguest sense. i get on a plane at 5:30pm and will show up in the states after like 15 hours at 7:30pm. but now it is only 9:30am and i’ve got a deal of last-minute things to do so i am off.

singapore, today is your day. for today, you turn thirty-nine years old. today i wear red and white for you as befits a patriotic mentality. and today i will join thousands upon thousands more in a huge grandstand to watch fireworks and people in kilts. perhaps even cheerleaders. because that’s what you get on your birthday, singapore. multinational celebratory antics.

singapore, i am realizing, is not very asian of a city. it’s got such a diverse population and they try so hard to be westernized that the whole sense of a different culture’s traditions have fallen away. like flak from curry.

on the other hand, as asian cities go, singapore has a serious leg up on the border town of johor in malaysia. shit that place was shitty. so dirty and smelly and full of leering men after the cleanliness of singapore. singapore used to be dirty, mind you. but then ministers make little off-hand comments like, ‘let’s hire an otter to be our litter mascot and create huge advertising campaigns about keeping our city clean,’ or ‘maybe in 10 years we could have a river which is the proper river color instead of this putrid yellow color.’ and the thing is, see, that these things work here. when they decide to make improvements, oh boy howdy do they make them. i’m pretty damn sure that you couldn’t get the majority of americans to participate in a keep our country litter free movement. dirty hippies.

which is not to say that i like singapore better than america. because i don’t. singapore, in my mind, is not the kind of place that i would want to live. it’s too…hmmm. well maybe just because it’s a big city and i don’t like big cities.

um, happy birthday singapore!

p.s. crap. singapore’s birthday is actually monday, august 9th. which is the day i am currently in here in singapore. it’s noon in fact. well. heh. stupid time west coast zone. whatever.

i just accidentally deleted a whole 256 card of pictures. it wasn’t all the way full, but still, like 110 pictures or something. of sentosa island (butterflies, pink dolphins, the magic light fountain show, the merlion, the cable car ride 36 stories in the air pictures, the singapore zoo including monkeys, more butterflies, otters, penguins, bears, leopards, marina, etc. and some from the night safari including a serval jumping for things and marina petting a bitarong. crap! and the picture of a sign which said ‘door cock’ for jason. shit shit shit.

SHIT SHIT SHIT

fuck, i hate digital cameras.

Today at the Sultan Mosque by Arab Street in Singapore, we were allowed inside by the reception guy after he proclaimed us “too sexy, too sexy ladies, must cover up the sexy sexy,” and gave us these long button-up shirts/nightgowns to wear. mine was brown and annette’s (marina’s mom) was green. i so wish i had taken a picture of us in these now, but sadly i am not on top of my picture taking game. i blame it on the heat. or possibly on my phobia of being labeled a tourist, even a too too sexy one.

there was a black and white cat wandering the entry grounds with his enormous balls hanging all out and meowing chainsaw loud. so unhappy this cat. was it the distended balls? i am not sure. too too sexy, i said to him as i tried to take his photograph. but him and his wriggling balls moved too fast for me.

i did wander around taking pictures of the mosque. inside outside. cute muslim boy admonished me that this was the ablution area. i wasn’t sure if it was a keep out, no girls warning or a gentle remark to a photo-crazed tourist. but i think his friendly smile lends credence to the latter (and he couldn’t even see the too sexy sexy!)

i bought six saris in Little India. this is a confession. would anyone like a sari? name a color(s). they’re between $12-17 US. fucking gorgeous. it’s not so much a sari, admittedly, as the 6 yards or whatever of sari fabric. you’ll need to find a detailed guide on how to wrap it around yourself into sari high fashion.

kristen: signs for ‘car parks’ are everywhere. everywhere, i tell you.