just another daikon lover

Herbsstag

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gieb ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Rainer Maria Rilke

*

It's time. The summer was so grand.
Lay your shadows on the sundial.
Release the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
Give them two more southerly days,
Press them to perfection and chase
the last sweetness into heavy wine.

Who has no house now will build no more.
Who is alone will remain so for long,
will stay up, read, write long letters
and will wander uneasily to and fro
through the avenues, when the leaves tremble.

I can't let go.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my arms till morning. But the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply.
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads who not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a sigh.

Thus in winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone.
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St Vincent Millay

*

I first read this about four years ago, I don't know how: perhaps some classmate brought it to class as a presentation project; perhaps I read it online in some poetry archive. It's one of the numerous sonnets I can recite from memory, and for some reason it's one of my favorites. I remember scribbling it over and over on bits of paper to pass the interminable hours of national service (they seemed interminable then: now I look back and realise that, like everything else, those hours were temporary).

Did love cool so quickly, and am I only left with the shards of a memory? I have in mind the flashes of light that dance off broken glass: I have snapshots of feeling absolute and complete bliss, thinking to myself: this can't end, this won't.

But the heart wants what it can't have: solidity, unshiftingness, permanence, eternity. I've tried so hard to tell myself that I must steel myself against the dire and inevitable consequence, but even now as I edge myself closer towards realising that possibility I feel as if I am dying: a secret pain that threatens to overflow (through my tear ducts, through my mucal glands) and overtake me (doesn't that sound like a Mariah Carey lyric?).

I don't want to be that lonely tree.

So Monday my mother rings me up and tells me:

"Son, can you buy gifts for all your cousins and your grandmother? And maybe your brother too."

Which totally freaked me out. I have thirteen cousins on my maternal side and four on my paternal. I do not know what to do with all of them.

So I have decided to buy all of them books. Not just any old book - books that have been important to me at some point or other in my life - so far I have Thom Gunn's collected poems and Maxine Hong-Kingston's The Woman Warrior.

Hm.

I am freaked out. I've never really felt like this before: it's like being on the edge of something new, standing on knife-edge: a false move could slice your feet off. I don't know if I'm making sense, but really none of the poets ever prepare you for falling (now I understand the metaphor, I always thought it a metaphor but it really is falling, I feel a physical sensation of tumbling downwards, being sucked into a gravitational spiral, controlled by forces outside of your control, the metaphor is so perfect and all triteness ring true) in love and now.

Only now do I realise that nothing in the past felt like this. And I fear that nothing in the future will be like this: can you ever fall in love twice? Do you ever fall in love with the right person?

Because it sure feels like a disease - now I know why being tuberculotic was often associated with being passionate. Your body feels taken over by several things that are not your own: you start feeling things you never felt before, pain that is not yours, joy that is not yours. You are forced out of your own bubble of existence, forced to live for someone else, forced to embrace feelings other than your own.

And yet how breathtaking: falling -

It never feels the same twice, every little tingle seems fresh. "I want to hug you softly," and all troubles melt into nothingness, every sadness that ever was disappears and every morning is a new begininng of possibilities. That's love, I'm sure of it, I can't be wrong, I spent so long trying to find it in novels, in sonnets, in films, and now when it's finally here it feels more fiction than fact, more art than life, more perfect that I could have ever imagined. (All triteness rings true.)

Looking through my old pictures I chance upon an album from ages ago: from when I visited Stanford, California, in 2004. It was really amazing - I'd never been on a university campus where everyone actually wants to be there. And the sky - it's always that crazy shade of bluer-than-blue. I really can't wait to go back and rock it.

Isn't my baby cousin cute? Well, he's not a baby any more. But he's the same old cutie I know from when I was a student in JC and he was just a little baby bundle. He's grown up into a really adorable toddler - he says the most intelligent things and asks the most intelligent questions, so I can only shudder to think how the world will destroy that wide-eyed innocence.

I found this foto in my Flickrstream and just had to add it - isn't it hilarious? Somehow Jane and I are excellent at taking photos of us and our mutual friends - we always manage to colour us wrongly, or catch us in between expressions, or add extra appendages (e.g. Crystal with the Bangla-worker hairclip). Here you see her with a hand for an eyelash. :p

So two weeks ago Amogh's mother, Malathi Aunty, calls me up at about 6.30 in the morning when I'm all snuggly-wuggly with the German.

"Hello Jirey," she says in her hoarse voice, in that amusing Indian accent. She hasn't gotten my name right in 6 years. "I am planning a special surprise birthday party for Amogh.

"Now, our friend," for indeed she frequently refers to Amogh as our mutual friend, "doesn't want a party. So I need your help. It's going to be a surprise. But I don't know any of his friends, so you have to help me to call them. No problem the number. Just let me know."

So I set off on the elusive quest of finding Amogh's friends on his behalf, which was relatively amusing. I pinned them down to a few main groups: ex-classmates, RJC councillors, army guys, law faculty people and Indians. So on Tuesday evening we all assembled in the Pan Pacific and awaited eagerly his arrival.

Poor boy didn't even have a clue, not even when he saw so many of us. It was not until someone whacked him on the head with the truth that he realised that it was a cunning plan.

BTW that is his birthday cake. It's a weird Indian dessert made out of carrot and shaped into a heart. Sometimes Malathi Aunty has the most twisted sense of humour (I am reminded of the Hindu god of dance in their house, placed between two disco balls). I couldn't stop laughing for a good five minutes, which was probably the reason why people were staring.

Anyway, HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY AMOGH! You can now drive and vote. Oh wait this is Singapore. Oh well, you can drive!

I brought David to meet my friends in Geylang, where we wanted to eat durians and beef hor fun. The durians cost us 65 bucks. Can you believe that?

Walking from the fruit stall to the beef hor fun place we discovered this amazing clothing store that sells the most amazing hooker couture you've ever seen in your entire life. Just FYI, I totally want that US flag sequinned dress. It's so fucking HAWT.

Today David and I went to Ivy Singh-Lim's farm, Bollywood Veggies. The food was excellent - I highly recommend the lemongrass chicken, if it's on the menu, as well as the stir-fried veggies. They are really to die for. :)

Ivy herself recommended that we walk out to the main road. She said it would take 20 minutes but it really takes about a half hour. Anyway, on your right as you walk out is a scene of devastation: the greenery is being cleared to store granite and sand, because the government is scared that we won't have granite and sand anymore. Boo hoo. It's a tiny vision of what I think apocalypse would resemble.

On Tuesday the evil German tried successfully to dissuade me from going for my yoga class (Tuesday evening class = one of the more challenging ones, and I haven't been to one in ages) and so I ditched and went to Vivocity with the German boy instead.

We had Carls Junior (ULTIMATE YUMNESS) for dinner, and sat on the rooftop of Vivocity looking at the sunset. The weather was good. It was so nice and perfect. :p So I stuck out my tongue at the camera.

Mangosteens are in season (like our love).
With two balled fists I mulch shells open,
A squishy prayer answered by the trove
Of fleshy pearls that luminesce within.

I feed them to you, placing them in
Your hands or forcing them into your willing mouth.
You lick my dripping fingers clean, a grin
Inspired by sweetness gleaming off your teeth.

Two kgs of unspoiled fruit wiped out in a few
Episodes of your favorite show. (I don't enjoy
The watching as much, but I don't demur.)
Evening sneaks up on unsuspecting day.
What's left: a mushed up pile of pith and juicy goo,
While sticky smiles and fingers crave for more.

Here I am in Baby's room. We've cuddled all that we can possibly cuddle, and now it's time to say bye - he has to go to office to clear out some stuff for his new colleague, and I have to meet some future colleagues for lunch. It's so fucking difficult even to do this, so i really have no idea how I'm going to say goodbye in September. When I'm just about to board that plane, looking back on my life in Singapore, wondering to myself: why do all the good things have to happen at the last minute, when you've got no time to enjoy them? I want to savour these moments, but they're so fleeting.

This was the last cafe that Lydia and I had time for. Apparently this cafe serves great drinks for small prices. We weren't disappointed. We ordered four drinks between us - a cold coffee with chocolate, a cold strawberry tea, a sour plum drink and a cafe sua nong. All of this cost us about SGD2.40.

All of the drinks were excellent, with the exception of the sour plum - that was a bit too shocking for our palate, which by then was used to the ridiculous smoothness of coffees, hot chocolates, shakes and smoothies. The chocolate coffee, in particular, rocked my world, even though I don't enjoy coffee so much. It was chocolate and coffee and equal quantities, and the sweetness of the chocolate set off the bitterness of the strong coffee perfectly.

Add to that the lovely concrete interiors and the short chairs and there you have it - a perfect Vietnamese hideout. Yum.

After imbibing what must be the equivalent of seven bars of chocolate at the Deco Cafe, Lydia and I headed down to the Diva Art Cafe (57 Ly Than To) , which has a tree in the middle of it. It was cute, the tree, but a bit underwhelming. (You can see it in my Flickrstream.) They use it as a shelf display for their alcohol, so it's quite cool to see the Gallianos and the Tequilas and the Vodkas pop out against the tree trunk.

Other than that, the drinks were rather mildly unspectacular. Lydia had a cafe sua nong (hot coffee with condensed milk), which was extremely strong (she had to ask for a lot more condensed milk), while I had a thick avocado shake. After the hot chocs at Deco, however, this was all a bit much. We had to sit down for awhile and chill. Which we did, as you can see from this photo of me looking blissed out. It's the only good one that Lydia took! She's an abject photographer, but she sometimes came up with shots that were rather brilliant.

On our last day in Hanoi Lydia and I decided we would give up on attempting to do cultural stuff and just go on a cafe hunt instead. Inspired by the lovely reviews at Sticky Rice, we set off on a quest to drink the best coffees, teas and hot chocolates in the dusty city that is Hanoi.

First stop: the Deco Cafe (22 Duong Thanh, Old Quarter), which is purported to serve excellent hot chocolate. Lydia and I opted for a cold and a hot option respectively.

We weren't disappointed. The cold one arrived first, and was a welcome respite from the heat of the Hanoi morning. Then the hot one arrived, after a long wait, in the quaintest cup imaginable. The drink is so thick and rich that undissolved islands of cocoa float invitingly on its surface, while a thick chocolate sludge awaits fingerlicking when you reach the end of your drink. Thoroughly satisfying.

Click on the pic to view more!

Hanoi isn't so bad after all! Any place with LV has to be like, considered, like, civilisation. So we stumbled into the Sofitel Metropole shopping arcade and look what we found! Yayness. No more shitty dusty Hanoi for us baby, we're fa-ya-bulous now!

More to come from our (myself and Lydia) crazy cafe hunting trip across Hanoi's Old Quarter.

Halong Bay was unspeakably beautiful. Impossibly fresh air, wondrous water, lovely sun. The limestone cliffs rise out of the sea, craggy and ancient, their rock faces wrinkled by years of exposure to the elements.

But turn the boat back into the harbour and immediately the smell of pollution and the stink of humanity assaults your nose. The sense of freedom that you had disappears, oppressed by the klaxons of cars and the shouting of the businessmen. They want your money. They know the beauty of the Bay, its allure for silly tourists who'll buy anything: mineral water, sunblock, a stale dragonfruit.

Hanoi is, as any city well on its way to to Development, dusty, dirty and full of people who want money. This upsets me. Siem Reap and Phnom Penh already bear the ugly taint of money. When faced with issues of survival, what can anyone do but do anything to survive? Better him than me. Food first. Then comes ethics.

Vietnam is what Cambodia will be in five years, maybe ten. The people here no longer care about you other than what you can do for them. How much money can you be tricked into giving up? Or guilted into giving up? Because even when you've been cheated, what can you do but smile and shrug and say to yourself, "Well, he needed that money anyway, he needs to support his family." And so capitalism rewards its entrepreneurs.

I am in a rather shitty mood. After an excellent dinner at a lovely restaurant (which also trains locals to be self-sufficient), I went for a massage. Then I decided I would find a nice bar where I would seat myself and get myself soused. This, however, was not to be. I showed my taxi driver the name of the bar I wanted. He said that he knew where this was, and would take me there presently. When we arrived at the supposed destination, that is, around a lake, he circled and circled and insisted that this was the location of the bar. We couldn't find it, apparently, because it was closed. Yes, I don't know how these brilliant minds come up with lies, but at least try not to insult my intelligence. I let him circle until I was fairly sure that we were not going to the bar, then I told him to head back to the hotel. The meter read 152,000 VND (Vietnam Dong, or monopoly money as we know it). While fumbling for my cash, the meter turned to 153,000 VND. I gave him 152,000 VND and he actually had the cheek to ask for another 1,000 VND. I mean, seriously, after swindling me, wouldn't you want to give me a 1,000 VND discount? (That's 10 cents in SGD.) I can't believe this shithole of a place.

Back at the hotel, I went up to Lydia's room (well, her mom's room, since we're crashing two nights at the hotel). I knocked repeatedly on the door. No answer. I called Lydia's mom, to find out where they were. Lydia's mom was still downstairs, and Lydia was in the room. Sleeping, apparently. I was to knock harder until she woke up. She didn't. At first I thought she'd injured herself, because there was a high whiney voice moaning. It turned out to be a woman in the throes of sexual ecstasy. The couple opposite our room had decided to embark on a prolonged lovemaking session just as Lydia refused to wake up to open the door. Please, I prayed to whatever god that would have listened, let Lydia wake up. I didn't want to be stuck in the same hallway with Lydia's mom and the sounds of two people fucking. Well. Lydia never woke up. Her mother walked into the corridor. At this point in time I became extremely animated, bouncing up and down and rapping the door as loud as I could. "She's asleep!" I exclaimed. "What do we do?" More groaning from behind us. I redoubled my efforts on the door, and tried to smash it in. No success. Lydia's mom finally suggested that we call the room. She left me with the couple, who were then yelling in what I presumed to be orgasm. Two rings were enough to wake Lydia up. Thanks a lot shorty.