Looking at all that 1980′s pixel goodness just made me realize how much of an impact this one toy had on my life.

I had a tablet in my hands when I was 5 and I didn’t even know it. And hey ho, now I never travel without my wacom. In fact, the last time I left my Intuos at home I ended up picking up a bamboo touch/pen. Such a addict. Tsk tsk.

There’s just something about holding a pen, but looking at a screen. Such a small gesture, but such transformative one in terms of interfacing.

Anyone out there with a My First Sony Electronic Sketchpad, I will purchase it for SGD$200. (It’s sale price in the 1980′s was USD$99.)

Images taken from Ebay seller rickerabc, who sold this off for USD$10.49.

Bigelow snatching the Oscar from the quintessential balding white male director.

So here’s a little test. Name the directors you know and love. Now, name the female ones. Kinda hard eh? With international women’s day just wrapping up, one has to wonder what a day like that means.

I was just listening to the local radio, and I overheard a DJ and a listener conversing about Women’s Day. It went something like this.

DJ: What does Women’s Day mean for you?

Listener: (spangly singaporean nasalness ensues) Oh, weeelll… It means I think I am an independent woman. That women are strong! Happy Women’s Day Singapore.

Earth to ignorant Singaporean woman, International Women’s Day is a day where women in the past rallied, protested and truly fought for their rights. Demonstrations marking International Women’s Day in Russia proved to be the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It isn’t just some day where you profess empty words on how you think you’re independent like some mind numbing Destiny’s Child song.

Alright, I’m sorry for raging on your screen. Let’s get back on point here. We wanted a post to celebrate some of the female directors we have adored in the past and Miss Bigelow herself. To all the non-filmmaking related people out there, this applies too. There are still many male dominated fields that could you know, use a little elbow nudge from a lady. And here are the ladies who have made a nudge in mine.

Kathryn Bigelow

When I told Pat Kathryn won, Pat said, “it’s about time”. Unapologetically female, Bigelow once modelled and isn’t ashamed to say so. People question whether it really is a triumph for women that Bigelow won because of the fact that her film was so male oriented. My opinion: Does it matter? To me it doesn’t. She directed well, the performances were strong, it doesn’t matter.

Sofia Coppola

One of my favourite directors ever, and the most well known in this list. I don’t know whether it was seeing her calm and collected presence in the midst of directing a crazy prom scene in the Virgin Suicides DVD extras or the fact that when discussing the topic of her movie, Marie Antoinette, Coppola said, “You’re considered superficial and silly if you are interested in fashion, but I think you can be substantial and still be interested in frivolity.” That and I love her films of course.

Not all great films have to be about deep set social and political change or adversity to be great.

The underrated Adrienne Shelley

I watched Waitress, I loved it. I checked out who made it so I could watch her future work. And I discovered shortly before being picked up for Sundance, someone robbed and murdered her in her apartment. Thanks murderer, there aren’t many female directors around in Hollywood and you axed one for a flat screen tv!

Miranda July

Miranda July comes up in my film classes, my drama classes, writing classes. Perhaps too emotional for New Yorkers claim the Pat, more for Californians claim the Pat. All things considered, NEEDS TO BE KNOWN to Singaporeans, claim the Manda. Lets explore outside the realms of Jack Neo’s cross eyed skanky scandal to the better things in life, shall we?

In the end, it’s a beautiful thing to see change happening and it is. I often struggle through the penis power play going on in the film industry. But being a minority has its perks. I know how it’s like to be on the outside looking in, and I know not to take things for granted. So I leave you with this link and this…

I started out making an oscar lady but it somehow turned into a HOT! TRANNY! MESS! It’s horribleness with a Lost In Translation wig. Booyah, shitbits.

But first, some miscellany!

Morbid comics from ManEggs!

And… Some Gremlin goodness from Designkins (via DesignYouTrust). I’m aware of the fact that I don’t wear caps. But hey, I also own a Hello Kitty Toaster. SO! FUCKYEAHUSELESSSHITBITS.

AND ONWARD!

Which word in the dictionary is most tainted with adolescent shame? Hand’s down, no-doubt, it’s goth.

Anyone outside of the cult of moody knows the goth look is designed to fug everyone. Statistically, chances that any given person looks good with pale face paint, greasy blue hair and a pin-cushion face is next to none. But don’t be harsh, it’s surprisingly hard to resist when you’re an angry tween. I wallow in shame every time I recall all the (now destroyed) evidence of my time as a confused clubbing gothchild.

But strangely, things like Tamagotchi and pokémon die, but Goth RAGES ON! Look, Disney’s finally declaring the moody-moody-slash-wrist market mainstream. Wall Street Journal declares: “Walt Disney Co.’s consumer-products division is aiming its marketing firepower at young women and teenage girls, particularly those who gravitate to darkly romantic entertainment like the Twilight series.”

” [Disney's] zeroing in on Hot Topic with jewelry, shirts, and other baubles while a Los Angeles location is becoming a miniature Wonderland. There will be a mingle-with-the-stars event for fans, and “goth-pop” bands from the soundtrack will provide the tuneage.” (via Cinematical.)

Sure, Disney’s investment in black lipstick isn’t anything new. They’ve always has Burton in their stable, but now, with the King of dark-cute leading the march with Alice in Wonderland, Mickey’s household’s gonna see some changes.

Just a couple of weeks ago, a cute chinese teen girl with a little Avenge Sevenfold backpack showed up at my home (family friends visiting from Sydney) and asked me if I knew where to buy Slipknot tees in Singapore. Man. After much ethical debate on my part, we skipped to Far East Plaza to complete the mission. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt as I let her purchase those horrid, unflattering black t-shirts. How did I ever wear these baggy shirts with tacky band logos emblazoned across both the front and back for maximum fug? But ah, well, she was full of glee and I wasn’t about to rain on her little black parade.

If I could tell her one thing, it’d be that the worst of skank is more forgiving than a goth FAIL, plus you get laid more.

EX-CITIZEN’S REGRET

Missing Singapore

The article made me shudder. Could I end up like this woman, who returns to Singapore 30 years after surrendering citizenship, only to be full of criticism about the country she left Singapore for in the first place? Words like “nostalgia”, “loneliness” and “colossal mistake” jump at me from the page.

The prospect of prancing off to New York in the near future looks pretty good to me. And it is certain that there will be even more prancing, more timezones, more visa-induced-anger, more accent-confusion, more more more in the great beyond. This article stares at me and ask the question I fear to ask myself:

[singlish] “Eh later you regret then how?” [/singlish]

Then, I slapped me to my senses, “Fuck la cheebye anyhow emo”.

The article laments (albeit indirectly) the unreliable public transport, dirty city streets and even work culture of the “foreign land”. Indeed, I won’t even have to name the country because 99 flights out of 100 will land you in a place less clean, less organized, less efficient, less blinged up with shiny infrastructure than Singapore anyway.

99 flights out of 100 will land you in a place less clean, less organized, less efficient, less blinged up with infrastructure than Singapore anyway.

It takes a certain degree of determination to see the only the particular shade of green that is missing from beneath the feet. Sure, learning to appreciate what one has is frequently a process that extends well beyond the fact of having. But leaving, then getting melodramatic over something you forgot to love in the first place, is a different thing.

I’m sure the lady who wrote the article did not mean to take jabs at her current host country deliberately. She did, in the end, declare her “allegiance and loyalty” to her new home. But why then, is she so clearly unhappy?

Let me make my point before the lao sai really pours: There is nothing more pitiful than having the privilege to expand one’s horizons, only to lament it’s burden.

If you wish, change is always knowledge gained. Just as certain as new experiences brings new knowledge, new knowledge in turn, brings new burdens, new fears, new joy and new responsibility. The key decision isn’t about making the right plans, it is about choosing how to be in the present. Make the right choice, and never have to “regret” in grave, bold Garamond.

And perhaps I am harsh. I do, after all, come from a background of (im)migration, plus, I have never really had issues leaving a place behind despite being deeply in love with it. I do get sentimental about friends, family and the quirks of different places, but I never regret.

It’s not unusual to consider migration as an opportunity to achieve something, but perhaps because Migration is a huge kind of change, people often mistake it as a solution to all life’s problems. I’ve seen my parents relocate to different places, and I’ve seen them through disappointment, disconnection and loneliness, but I have also witnessed their ability to find affection for every place they have lived in*. They do, of course, love Singapore, where they chose to bring me up, but they don’t love Hong Kong any less, and never do they complain about being short-changed by whichever Island they’re on at the moment. In fact, back when my mother had the energy to, she flew between the islands every fortnight.

Really, it’s not the place, it’s the perspective.

*With the near exception of New York, where my dorky father spent half the 80′s wishing he had witty comebacks to racist jerks, and where my maternal uncle lost his life to work stress. But hey, my Dad just retired, and guess where he’s planning to start his American road trip?

Chinese people are not shopping. They are playing vast amounts of mahjong, getting confuzzled over family time, and eating copious amounts of pineapple in tart form. I see indian men putting on red polo shirts on balconies, neighbours playing chinese new year songs on the saxophone. Trufax. Every new year is the same for me, shwaste myself on wine and pork at reunion dinner to avoid falling asleep. And spend the next day chugging expressos while surrounded by 50 indonesian people whom I don’t really know, meeting cousins I didn’t know I had.

It entertained me slightly seeing little tweets chirp away at the intense amount of money and boredom being collectively collected. The giant Singaporean gathering of repeated activities and obligatory slimy face smooches. How every sentence ends with “huat”.

…gong xi fa cai! huat ah!
…happy new year, may you be prosperous, huathuathuat!
…how are you huat?!
…have you seen my earrings, HUAT AH!!?!?!?

Something new this year though: Prada angpaos. WTF? In the shape of their leather products no less. It’s like a wallet, but… with money inside cos it’s like… a red packet… you know!?!?

But as usual there was the array of pork and PORKFAT to keep my happy. I unwittingly spouted my love for cubed fat to a family member, only to be greeted with confusion and dismay. Come on! CUBED MEAT YO. The more Zimmern you watch, the more you’d understand the need to knaw on pig’s ears and fatty skin pieces.

And of course, I was greeted with a wonderful bout of what little Hello Kitty there has.

It’s also about (…) listening to that lady spout philosophical stuff about the drizzling of the plum sauce on the lo hei… TOGETHER!

As I try to encapsulate the new year with images of charred meat and red packets, I wonder, what is it that I’m blogging about in the first place. Right, a reminder that this is a sort of new year. We chinese people are lucky, if we fail at resolutions for the ang moh new year, we have another one to veil the failures and start over again, in the span of 2 months. And well, even with all the tried customs and intensely unintense celebrations, I have to admit to being a softy. I mean, it’s siansation stuff like this that gives Singapore an identity. It’s not only about chicken rice and chilli crab. It’s also about cubed meat fat and listening to that lady spout philosophical stuff about the drizzling of the plum sauce on the lo hei… TOGETHER!

Some days I wake up & I look like shit.

Some days I wake up & I look like shit on my school’s website.

Happy Chinese New Year.

AYAM BRAND CHAMPAGNE!
Our beloved group from 2007.

Fine, I take credit for that horridness as well. We were 18, broke and young. We liked bubbly but could only afford ayam brand, okay?

So this week, the two of them passed me iamastuffedanimal.com and the website that is accredited with being as if myspace barfed on geocities.

Charine’s wonderful find:

This picture is self-explanatory. Want to horrify your girlfriend with a fuzzy valentine’s day gift of a strange caricature stuffed animal version of herself? This is the way to go. V-day is only 4 days away! Place orders now.

Melvin’s dismal introduction (from the king of smelvo crap himself comes this link):

Try to navigate it, it’s like, a wonderland where graphic design goes to die. Like a mystical mindmap. We’re ashamed we didn’t come up with it ourselves. Apparently, it also has two index pages, index.html and index.htm. Whut?!

And the last link is our own friend of a friend’s website. A lady who recently moved to Hougang and blogs about the many wtf things she find there. I concur about that place being a weird neighbourhood. After all, both Charine Miscellany Pie and Hanamite live there. She speaks of giant stubbed toes and bad engrish. Here’s an example post about the Singapore Science Centre from the pictureswithoutpermission blog.

Electric man homoerotic awesomeness at the Science Centre for kids. One wonders what the exhibitor was thinking when he came up with the above concoction. It doesn’t get more shitbitten than that. I mean, man, these 3 links do miscellany better than we do. Pat needs to stop blogging about design and start blogging about toilet signs STAT!

Every time I purchase an Apple product, complications ensue. A battery must be replaced, programs pull houdinis, a charger melts, etc. But this time… all seems well. (Except for that capslock LED that seems to be dead, but that’s trivial compared to finding out your notebook is a fire hazard.)

I don’t quite know what my game plan is, regarding the transportation of my new baby back to Singapore. I don’t quite know. But at least I got the 21.5″ not the 27″. The NYU student discount on Macs make any freight awkwardness worthwhile. In my opinion at least. Cheap is the nu-recession-chic.

Surprisingly, the Magic Mouse is nothing like it’s mildly stunted siblings. It actually does whatever needs to be done, like, well, click, and um, right-click. But, wait, as if to make up for years of mouse inadequacy, Apple pimps this newbie up extras (that finally work)… and the gestures are charm to use.

Merry Christmas!

Edit: And by the power of St. Jobs, my caplocks LED blinks to life… but a USB port wavers. Oh well.

I warned them that they were gonna get breathed on by pasty white dudes holding crossaints.

How glad am I to be home. This blog serves as an answer to spg blogs, you know which I am talking about. Let’s keep Pat out of this equation, her white boy can fry dumplings and is chinese at heart, despite being well… jewish. Moving along. What is it about being in an asian country that makes white guys think they’re the shit? And how do we fend them off if we just happen to feel like dropping by Attica for a bottle of free champagne!

There are many reasons they think they own your panties… and those reasons are dull (eg. better pizza, stronger currencies, absurd tailgate machinery). More interesting is how one can baygon the next white kid who tries to pick you up in fluent Ebonics.

How to Baygon pesky Ang Mohs (with effectiveness rating):

1. Offer them your misc-man-bits. — effectiveness level:
   But some Ang Mohs pay good money for chick with dicks.
2. Ask them if they want to know Allah better. — effectiveness level:
   Terrorism is not Allah. But some Ang Mohs don’t know any better.
3. Tell them you have Mono. – effectiveness level:
   If you live in Singapore, chances are, you’ve never heard of Mono (Mononucleosis). Actually, it’s not fun. Just be glad this common college virus it’s not too common on our island, because we have universities instead.
4. Tell them you’re a transgender muslim with mono. — effectiveness level: 
   Combined effectiveness = 2.5+5+4, however -10 considering they might not believe this.
5. Bring actual baygon. — not going to rate this because you might get arrested.

How not to Baygon pesky Ang Mohs:

1. Tell them to leave you alone. (They won’t.)
2. Move to another part of the dance floor. (They’ll trail.)
3. Ignore them. (They never get tired of their own voice, really.)
4. Be sarcastic. (Sarcasm is how insecure white people flirt.)
5. Tell them you want a giant steak dinner. (See no. 4:- I did this once and it ended in much regret.)

Honestly, it was awfully difficult to think of ways to baygon ang mohs. The effectiveness level on all the above is quite questionable. But if you wanna baygon off local men, just don’t have long straight black hair, and you’re set. I guess the one thing you can appreciate about a Singaporean man is that one rejection is enough for them to run away like a fly on fire. Thanks for that guys.

Disclaimer: This is a joke.