strangely reconnected
I finally have internet at home again, after not having it for… well, I suppose it’s been nearly two months in total, since I only had it for one solid week while in York since coming back to this country in mid-September. It’s a really weird feeling. I’ve grown so adept at entertaining myself without internet, and have come so much to treasure this post-work evening period of me-time where I’m gloriously solitary and unaccountable to anyone, that being online again is just… really weird. I can’t say I’m not thrilled (I was counting down, even), but it is a strangely unexpected and sudden lifestyle shift. There’s something to be said for spending my evenings curled up in bed with library books and tea, after all.
I have so much to say about life in London so far that I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to break it into two posts - but work always leaves me exhausted and it will have to come this weekend instead. ♥
out of the shire
the reactions of others (notable exception pepper), when i tell them i am in fact incredibly nervous about moving to london, are so unequivocally “why???” that i really start to wonder if the problem is with me. it is an exciting city, it is vibrant, the job is interesting - i have everything to gain and nothing to lose, it seems; and yet i am nervous as hell, and when i say this i am almost without exception greeted with blank incomprehension bordering on disbelief.
i don’t want to be whiny and all “nobody understands meeeeee” because that’s ridiculous and childish and i know it. but is it really honestly so strange to be this nervous about something, even if it’s a path i chose and forged out for myself? of course i wouldn’t be nervous, were i moving back to singapore to take a comfortable paid job there, but this is a whole different ballpark and yes i am terrified. i can’t explain it, i know i’ve nothing to fear, and yet - i fear.
i can feel myself all on edge and irritable and frustrated, mostly with myself for being like that; i am so, so tense right now i could snap. and it is probably all my fault - as everyone keeps telling me, i’m just overthinking it all and it will be fine once i get there. but for now, for now, on this last night in york, let me be afraid without feeling bad for it.
please stay for a while
Hey where did we go,
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow,
Playin’ a new game,
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin’ and you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.
Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing,
Hiding behind a rainbow’s wall,
Slipping and sliding
All along the water fall, with you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.
Do you remember when we used to sing,
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da
So hard to find my way,
Now that I’m all on my own.
I saw you just the other day,
My how you have grown,
Cast my memory back there, Lord
Sometime I’m overcome thinking ’bout
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you
My brown eyed girl
You my brown eyed girl
- Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”
I had a whole long draft typed up, about everything I am feeling this last weekend before leaving York, with all my stuff in boxes and bags once again, but somehow it never reached a stage where I felt it could be published. All the words just seemed so useless; no matter how much I wrote and rewrote whole sentences, paragraphs, I simply couldn’t - still can’t - really, really put across how I feel. So much has happened so quickly over the past two weeks.
And then “Brown-Eyed Girl” came on the radio and I thought, this is it. This is how I feel.
Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da.
Do you remember? I hope I never forget.
the bad beginning
…it would be so easy for me to lose heart and throw in the towel now. but i can’t, i can’t, i can’t, not now, not when i’m already halfway down the road, there’s no turning back - i have to keep on it, i have to keep going on. on with my rapidly draining bank account, on with my grasping straws of hope, on with my flimsy backup plans and cluelessness.
is it really so bad, not knowing what’s going to happen to you? part of me is scared out of my wits, and part of me is - well - excited. it’s the first time in my entire life i’m not following a plan that’s been set out for me. it’s the first time i’m choosing the hard, hard path. so i can’t tell you for certain where i’m going to be in a month’s, a fortnight’s time, so i haven’t anything concrete beyond getting through the next 24 hours… and is it really so bad?
i don’t know what to think. i’m just really small, right now, and the world seems very big.
the foreign question
This post isn’t what it probably sounds like. I’m not going into a lengthy, thoughtful, well-considered (ha) spiel about being foreign in England/being foreign in Australia/the evils of having foreign talent invade Singapore (which I don’t really believe in anyway). No, I intend to talk about pop music.
I’ve been listening to a great deal of Japanese music lately; in fact I’ve been listening almost exclusively to it, except when I think I should take a break and put on my entire library for a while. In particular, Jpop groups Kanjani8 and NEWS have been dominating my airtime. I think I’ve actually created a playlist that consists exclusively of the songs I have from them (plus one invading Arashi song). And I don’t really have a lot - maybe 30ish - so you can imagine how many bajillion times I’ve heard each individual song by now, but I’m still not tired of them.
It dawned on me yesterday, while watching a NEWS concert DVD with English subtitles (thus being the first time I’ve actually seen what the lyrics mean in English, I have no idea what I’m singing along to in Japanese most of the time), that actually, if these songs were written in English with exactly the same tune and arrangement, I would probably hate the large majority of them - or at least be indifferent towards. This is because most of the lyrics turned out to be pretty inane, and as far as English songs go… even if everything else about it is wonderful, I have a lot of difficulty really loving songs with bad lyrics. I’m talking lines like “show me your secret paradise, baby” and “let’s dance and throw off our clothes” - which admittedly sound better in Japanese, but still!
Yet - I still love my trashy Jpop songs. It’s totally inexplicable. I know the lyrics are ridiculous, but the tunes are brilliant. They absolutely define catchy and the singing is good (surprisingly, Japanese manufactured boybands can indeed sing). Which makes me wonder what it is that makes me like a song, and whether listening to foreign songs is actually a better barometer of what your tastes are in music, pure music, sans words and meaning and inflection. Or are lyrics and music inextricable from each other? Then why is it that I like these songs in Japanese but not if they were in English? I have no idea, honestly.
the shadow of the past
‘I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don’t feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.’
- Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring
Leave it to my comfort reading to know exactly how I feel. This, right here, is exactly what home is I think; Frodo’s not being sentimental and soppy but he isn’t being cruel either, it’s just plain and honest and absolutely utterly true.
Every time I come home is like going through an alternate reality time warp, when I’m suddenly four, five years younger and have nothing much more to worry about than getting my work done, eating and sleeping, because my parents are here to run the house, my siblings are here for company, and even though everyone’s older now and they interact with each other differently, I’m picking up where we left off long ago. It’s like nothing ever changes, except that my brother gets taller and my father gets more grey hairs.
Sometimes I want to shake my brother silly, sometimes it bugs me that my sister keeps missing her morning classes, sometimes I wish that my dad would let me drive and that my mom wouldn’t put my laundry in everyone else’s wardrobes. But ultimately, even if I occasionally think an invasion of dragons wouldn’t be unwelcome, they’re still home, and they’re always going to be here, and wherever I go or whatever I do, they aren’t going to care and they won’t stop being my firm foothold. And maybe that’s what home really is.
i said, babe, you’re not lost
Now and then a particular song among my thousands really jumps out and speaks to me, and today it is this deceptively simple one, which I never realised was so beautiful until I heard Michael Buble sing it with the lights dimmed, video off, and eyes closed in Manchester last year.
*
Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died
Give me, give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied, satisfied
Maybe I didn’t hold you
All those lonely, lonely times
And I guess I never told you
I’m so happy that you’re mine
If I make you feel second best
Girl, I’m sorry I was blind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died
Give me, give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied, satisfied
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind
You are always on my mind
You are always on my mind
Protected: onigiri
the Hellenic ideal
So this is the first released picture from the new film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray (called, pithily, Dorian Gray; why the filmmakers think it necessary to excise “The Picture of” I have no idea), due in fall 2009 and starring Ben Barnes as Dorian, Colin Firth as Lord Henry, and Rachel Hurd-Wood (Wendy in the 2003 Peter Pan) as Sybil Vane.
I don’t really know what to think of it. On the one hand, I do think Barnes is absolutely mouth-droppingly droolworthily gorgeous (easily out-prettying everyone else in Prince Caspian), and I don’t really have a problem with his acting. On the other hand… I simply can’t see him as Dorian. Dorian is blond-haired, blue-eyed, ivory-skinned, charming and beautiful; I will always, always remember him as having “rose-red youth and rose-white boyhood”, which is so suggestive of a delicacy and sensuality that I’m just not feeling from this picture or from Barnes in general.
It just baffles me how the perfect Dorian still hasn’t surfaced after multiple TV and film adaptations. I mean, Stuart Townsend? Really? And is it all that hard to find a blond actor to play him? I readily confess to being a bit of an overzealous stickler for book details when it comes to adaptations, where said details may not be not all that relevant (e.g. Dan Radcliffe having blue eyes rather than green), but I really think Dorian’s colouring is very important to the way his character comes across. I just can’t see brunettes doing the corrupted beautiful innocent thing so well.
Having expended 2 paragraphs ranting about Dorian, I should end by saying, in fairness to the filmmakers, that I think Colin Firth will do well as Lord Henry. Though I see him more as Basil, somehow - and this guy who’s playing Basil, Ben Chaplin? He could be Lord Henry, in my book. Go figure.
back where it’s cold
…or not, really. It isn’t that cold here in Sydney - an average of 12 to 14°C during the daytime, dipping down to maybe 9°C or so during the night; significantly colder than currently-summery York but nowhere near the frigid depths of northern English winters, and nothing I can’t take (wait a couple of weeks and I’ll be complaining about not being able to type my dissertation because my fingers are freezing off).
The last couple of weeks in York were whirlwind - drinks, pub quizzing and suffering random harrassment from a creepy American chap with Mander; Red Chilli with Susanna, where we had to order fish to share because she doesn’t take any other meat and I discovered for the first time that York sometimes does have very decent fish indeed; Eleena’s visit and the first proper cooked breakfast I’ve had in York all year, with scrambled eggs, baked potato and bacon; a frenzy of Railway Children activity at the Theatre Royal which involved the filing of a million press clippings and reviews and 1.5 hours of standing at the National Railway Museum giving out flyers; yummy Garden of India takeout and plenty of random chitchat with Kevin and Rokey, thinking this might be the last time for a long time that I see either of them boys; lots and lots and lots of packing and moving, and of course the dissertation final draft (here a misleading term which actually means only about half the thing has been written, and mostly crappily).
All of that, plus passing through Singapore and meeting up with my lovely, lovely friends there, and finally touching down here after two solid days of travelling has stirred up in me that old feeling of being pulled in a million different directions, that question of… how do I balance all this? How do I portion out my time and myself for all these different places and people when I love them all, when I don’t want to leave any of them, when I just wish foolishly that I could pack everything and everyone with me in a bottomless suitcase, have it all in one place? Just when I thought I had it sorted, I find again that I haven’t a clue, I don’t have any answers. I know something’s got to
Now that I’m finally here with my family after nearly 10 months of being away, all I really want to do is catch a breather, sleep in for a week and recover properly from jetlag… but I know I’ve not done anything for a week, dissertation-wise, and if I want to knock out another 10,000 words before September 22nd I have to hustle soon.
breathe, just breathe, I keep telling myself.