Everyone knows diaries are just full of crap.

Singapore shopping madness

Originally uploaded by MaryLynn

Since shopping is the Singaporean national pasttime, I figured I should give it a go. I am a good shopper. I thought I was a master shopper.

I was wrong. So, so very wrong.

It was going okay for a while. You walk along Orchard Road, where its 100F and then, every block or so you head into a mall. Mostly for the relief the air conditioning provides. But also because they’re there. Every block. Both sides. Insanity.

I shopped for more than five hours. I couldn’t even tell you how many shopping mails I made it into and out of. I didn’t even want to buy anything but I did, of course. Nothing really major - I think the biggest purchase was from HMV (more below) and an ill-advised overly pricey Chanel mascara (not worth it). The sales are on now so besides the slight advantage of the exchange rate (1 USD = ~1.20 Singdollars) most everything else is 20% off.

Ultimately, I was defeated by Takashimaya and Ngee Ann Center. The photo is from there. That’s, like, a blip. A tiny, tiny blip in the consumerism madness. It wasn’t even the crowds that were overwhelming (it is usually crowds that do me in). No, it was the sheer amount of STUFF TO BUY. You want it? You can buy it (except, it seems for Sanex deodorant). It’s like… okay for the locals: take a person from 1982 Communist Russia and drop them into Valley Fair/Santana Row. At Christmas. Times 20. That’s how far my mind boggled. I literally couldn’t think of anything I wanted to buy.

Uncle. I call Uncle. No more shopping!

BBQ Sambal Stingray

Originally uploaded by MaryLynn

Ok, look, here’s the thing: this stingray? Its the only thing I want to eat. I loved it so much when Shane and I had it on Friday night that I went back last night to have it again. And yeah, I tried chicken rice. Whatever chicken rice, what.ever. You are no bbq stingray!

Things in Singapore have been going well. Once again, we are working out of a wine bar, so how badly could they go anyway? Truthfully, I will be working out of a regular office tomorrow so don’t get too upset about the laxity of workstyle I’ve got going right now (though I am also working as I write this and I’ve just run downtairs to the food court for a bracingly spicy bowl of pretty authentic green curry and some pineapple juice and have returned to continue working… and watching sumo on TV so let me tell the truth).

As the rest of the pictures in that photostream show, I met up with Shane on Friday at Water & Wine (in Biopolis, Neuros building… /endadvert) and after we finished off the bottle of cab I’d already started we went to the appropriately named Glutton’s Bay hawker stand for dinner. Besides the stingray, we had some kind of unidentified vegetable (pretty tasty) and mixed satay. The satay was recommended by our cab driver (aka “Uncle”) who wasn’t outright wrong but whose vehemence at the awesomeness of it might have been misplaced.

Afterwards, we went to a bar to meet up with two of Shane’s local friends who were really great and friendly but I fear I was too tired to really make proper acquaintances. I collapsed into bed and finally fell asleep sometime around 2am.

IMG_0116

Originally uploaded by MaryLynn

Two empty seats next to you on a 10 hours cross-Pacific flight. I’ve arrived in Japan and, for once, feel almost human after that particular flight thanks to my empty row. Turns out I can sleep with a big armrest bump in my back afterall.

The Tokyo airport is massively under-air conditioned which is probably just practice for my next destination. I am not kidding when I say that as I type this I’m actually sitting on an A/C vent.

I’m having to recharge my iPhone here - 2.0 is MURDER on your battery life it seems. Also, major fail for most apps - they kill your iPod functions when you turn them on. So my previous time-killer - MahJong + fave playlist is inoperable. As soon as you open the app, the ipod sound powers down. Look, I don’t want to listen to shitty midi while I move tiles around (I’m looking at you, too, Scrabble), I want to listen to 80s hair metal. GOD.

Oh look, Americans have spotted Starbucks on the restaurant map and have practically taken off in a dead run. I’ll give them credit for not heading for the McDonalds. I guess…

Ok, see ya later, from Singapore. If nothing else I’ll come back from this trip with completely unclogged pores, right?

I’m in my apartment. I’ve been here for three days, leaving for a few hours yesterday. I’m wallowing in my apartment this weekend because I won’t have a chance for a while. But it isn’t a complete waste of time because, for some reason, it’s about 90F in here so I’m sweating like mad. Getting rid of toxins AND practicing for Singapore. I’m trying to learn to “sweat cute”. Perhaps that isn’t actually possible though. Baz doesn’t think its hot enough so he’s found a sunbeam and engaging in some wallowing of his own.

While laying on the couch (on Friday, the cleaning man cleaned around me which was a little much probably) I’ve watched a lot of tennis. And I’ve come to this conclusion: Roger Federer is a stud. True, he actually lost today which was really sad for him. He’ll probably have to dry his tears with his millions in endorsement deals. But beyond that, he’s mostly a winner. Overwhelmingly a winner. And he doesn’t seem to sweat. Sure, he has that headband to hold back the flapping, wavy hair (that I might, if given the opportunity like to run my fingers through) and he wiped his gorgeous face with a towel between each point, but he seemed at all times incredibly cool. Nadal was a sopping, flopping mess, but Federer was just icy, Swiss alp cool out there. Amazing. If he did sweat, he’d definitely sweat cute.

Do you think if I used a headband I’d be cool, too? Can you believe how curly those bangs are?!

Also in his favour: he looks good in a suit; he wore a sweater to accept the runner-up trophy plate (a sweater! So 40’s, so classy!) and while he does have that unfortunate lop-sidedness of all tennis players it isn’t so outrageous in his case. Nadal has it too and if he doesn’t watch out he might be in danger of keeling port-side. Though in his case I guess the championship is on that side today.

But mostly, I mean, its the hair isn’t it?

Its always the hair.

I mentioned that I left the house yesterday and that was to go to Denise and Alf’s house to visit the ‘taters and get my fill of vegetables for the next month. I don’t know why but when I cook veggies they taste like crap and I can barely stand to eat them, but when Denise does it I’ll eat three helpings! I was stuffed full of veggie goodness yesterday and didn’t for one second wish I were eating anything else.

As you can see, the potato plants are doing well. Alf took this photo of Denise and I with the plants. You can see that I’m wearing my farmer’s hat (ignore the puka shells, this is as farmer as I get) and you can’t see it but I’m also wearing my hippie Birks. However, I tried to temper this with some preppie madras shorts.

The availability of movies on demand via iTunes and Comcast (nevermind my Netflix, which I am actually using for a change) is a blessing and a curse. On Friday I decided to get Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

I’d tell you all about it but my god that was the most boring movie. Even Clive Owen couldn’t save it. He looked ridiculously great with that one-shouldered cape, of course. And he was manly and heroic and charming. He also had way, way too white teeth for that time period. But whatever, they probably also didn’t have hair mousse and clearly he’d also been taking advantage of some of that while his Crest Whitestrips worked.

And I say all of that because, again, THAT MOVIE WAS SO BORING. And no, not just because I knew what was going to happen. It was just endless shots of costuming and not much else.

I might spend the evening reading a book but why go and ruin a beautiful weekend at this point?

Oh Canada, how I miss and love you. Except in winter.

I’m going to continue the theme by finishing The Film Club tonight. (Shhh, I’ve had a crush on David Gilmour for years and this book isn’t helping!).

When I came home from work yesterday I found this lying on my doorstep:

I looks like the tree of undetermined origin that sits outside my front window broke:

I pretty much walk under that branch every day when I get the mail. So I’m kind of taking that like an attempt on my life.¹ This morning there was a tree crew of strangely mixed ethnicities chainsawing away at it. I hope they don’t have to take the whole thing out as it was a nice tree, you know if you like trees, and provided some good shade for my living room. And of course, it had birds who lived in it that Baz like to watch and pretend he could kill if I’d just let him outside already (poor impotent indoor cat, a killer in his own mind). They were looking awfully competent around the wood chipper though so I don’t hold out that much hope. Unfortunately, I think in the course of taking out much of the tree they also were destroying my hanging plant, pot of lavender and box of thyme that I’d just put outside a couple of weeks ago.

The other big news is that I’m headed to Asia again next month, this time going to Singapore. I expect it to be a quite radical departure from Bangkok on many levels but the promoted orderliness should appeal to me. I don’t mind an entirely plastic, slightly anal retentive, society, theoretically. With the amount of travel I’ve done this year, have planned for the remainder of of 2008 and am looking forward to in 2009 I really feel like I should at some point get better at it. Like, at some point doesn’t packing just become automatic and something you don’t have re-think from scratch each and every time? So far, that isn’t the case for me. Or maybe I should say that isn’t the suitcase for me.

Update: The tree is still standing but a mere shadow of its former, glorious, self. And my living room is going to get 5% hotter in the summer evenings now.

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¹ Speaking of, I’m taking the kid to see Wanted tomorrow night. I think its going to suck but James McAvoy is pretty yummy so there’s that.

This is… well, it is distressing…

I’ve had a subscription to Harper’s now for about a year. A lot of the time I skim through it because my mental capacity is nearly nil. And sometimes I read it, feel smart for about an hour, and then forget all about it. But the most current issue has an article that I think is really something so I wanted to point it out in case you wanted some fancy reading.

“Turning Away from Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church” by Garret Keizer, Harper’s Magazine, June 2008.

It starts out talking about the current situation the Episcopal/Anglican church finds itself in over gay rights. And it sort of is about that and it’s sort of about the changing nature of the church itself and how the influence is shifting from Europe/America to Africa/South America (”Global South”). And it rambles for a while, no doubt (if you’re used to reading Entertainment Weekly, I advise some stretching exercises first). And then he says this:

This all sounds compelling to me, though, as I tell Douglas, I remain an unreconstructed binary thinker, my view of the world being pretty much divided between people who have a pot to piss in and people who don’t. My tendency - perhaps my temptation - is to see the church crisis, at least in America, as I see most other political disputes between bourgeois conservatives and bourgeois liberals: as cosmetically differentiated versions of the same earnest quest for moral rectitude in the face of one’s collusion in an economic system of gross inequality. It goes without saying that by touting this stark binary, I, too, am seeking to establish my rectitude. Still the question remains: How does a Christian population implicated in militarism, usury, sweatshop labor, and environmental rape find a way to sleep at night? Apparently, by making a very big deal out of not sleeping with Gene Robinson. Or, on the flip side, by making approval of Gene Robinson the litmus test of progressive integrity, a stance that I have good reason to believe would impress no one so little as Gene Robinson himself. Says he:

“I don’t believe there is any topic addressed more often and more deeply in Scripture than our treatment of the poor, the distribution of wealth, of resources, and the danger of wealth to our souls. One third of all the parables and one sixth of all the words Jesus is recorded to have uttered have to do with this topic, and yet we don’t hear the biblical literalists making arguments about that.”

If this is sodomy, sign me up.

Well, Christ. That sort of nails it to the cross right on the head, doesn’t it?

I don’t get God. I don’t believe in a God, nor do I think I ever really did (even when I was going to all of those Presbyterian Church of Canada meetings as a teen representative - and if anything will turn you off a religious institution fast it’s sitting in a conference room listening to paid bureaucrats argue about whether the church should accept gays or just tolerate them). As such I have a really hard time understanding where people who do come from. But I try to be tolerant and just assume that they do, really and truly, believe what they believe for whatever reason. I respect faith because I don’t think it’s a choice in much the same way as my lack of faith is also not a choice.

So I was sort of surprised that he broke it down like that: that the Church is really talking about a high-class problem. It can afford to worry about this because it can afford it, literally.

The letters next month are going to be really interesting.

And here’s the best Harper’s Index entry:

Number of nations that do not legally guarantee women any paid maternity leave: 4
Average annual per-capita income in the three other than the United States: $1,226

Nice.

V sent me a tragic news item from the Canadian press:

What has long been known as Canada’s “second national anthem,” CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada theme song, will no longer be used.

Thursday night’s Stanley Cup final game six was the last time “dunt- da-dunt- da-dunt,” was played, according to the song’s composer. CBC has announced the corporation is moving in a “new direction.”

- Canada’s ‘Second National Anthem’ Silenced

This is a major problem and I hope some backbencher picks this up and makes a stink about it. That theme song isn’t just a song, it’s a cultural call to arms. It’s the siren song of our national obsession. It’s a lullaby.

I’d gone years without hearing it on TV because I rarely made it home during hockey season (hockey season being the same as “cold and massive snow season”) and the few times I did there was always some family outing planned Saturday night. And the tundra doesn’t have Tivo. I never missed Don Cherry and while I did sometimes feel a sort of inexplicable loin-based longing for Ron MacLean it was really the theme song I missed the most.

Luckily, I was able to see it on my most recent trip home and I will unashamedly admit that I squealed and clapped like a Japanese schoolgirl when I heard the theme start up. It didn’t hurt that in both games I watched Detroit WIPED THE ICE WITH PITTSBURGH - and have now gone on to, rightly as it always should be, win the Stanley Cup. And with that win we come to the end of that glorious theme song. The only thing that sounds more like Canada is the sad call of the loon. I guess I’ll always have that. Until global warming kills them, too.

Listen here: Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song

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Update: 6/9 - CTV has purchased rights to the song.

These might have limited appeal, but I did a bit of videoblogging* of Thunder Bay. First, a sort of restaurant review/cultural introduction/place-marking:

And then I take you on a short trip (um, actually kind of long) around the ‘hood:

* Here’s what I’m finding: I really like the sound of my voice but man, that lisp! I’ve tried to get rid of it though the years - even through some speech therapy - but the fact is that my tongue is too big for my mouth. Which is kind of funny because my dentist says I might be grinding my teeth which I find impossible since I can’t close them around my giant mutant tongue.

A few months ago, I asked my mom for a big favour. I’d seen this website with a fantastic crocheted blanket and fell in love with it. After an aborted, reasonably disastrous attempt to teach myself to crochet I figured… well, that’s what moms are for isn’t it? It turns out that while technically the blanket isn’t that hard to make (I have had other blankets from her in this same pattern), the fact that I wanted something stripey and, well, GINORMOUS, was kind of an issue.

Still, moms are awesome and a couple of months ago I got the call that the blanket was ready. Truth be told that while I did, of course, want to go back to TBay to see my family and celebrate my dad’s 65th birthday I also really, really wanted to pick up my blanket.

So here it is and I love it. LOVE IT. The colours are a bit darker than the original but they fit me better, actually, and I can’t wait to sleep underneath it tonight. I kind of half want to get sick so I can stay in bed with it gathered up around me.

Baz agrees (all blankets of this kind are required to have a kitty on them at all times):

There’s something sort of awesome, possibly poetic, about this story (and the headline really tells it all):

Immigration Raid Reveals Meth Lab At Nation’s Largest Kosher Meat Plant

According to KCRG, officials discovered a methamphetamine lab within the AgriProcessors meat processing facility in Postville, Iowa during a large-scale immigration raid…

In a single story everything about America is explained.

You know how nature and I get along, right? (Hint: We don’t and it’s personal) Well, this year I had a hankering to grow some potatoes. I mean, I love potatoes and one of my favourite memories is digging up potatoes from my grandmother’s garden. I particularly love little new potatoes freshly dug and quickly boiled with a little butter, salt and dill. Yum!

Denise had a free spot in her garden and so she ordered up some potatoes and yesterday we planted them in an experiment I’m calling, simply, ‘Taters!.

Let’s hope it works. Denise has had gardening success before whereas I kill almost any green thing that comes near me. However, I gave it all I had: I wore a farmer hat and gardening gloves and even my hippie sandals. I looked the part at least and I’m sure the seed ‘taters appreciated it. We are looking forward to a day when we dig them all up and eat a giant bowl of wee ‘taters, with dill. Just like Grandma Josie would make.

(I took the video with my new Flip Ultra which is totally rad. You’ll notice that it’s on Vimeo and not my usual YouTube because when I uploaded it to YouTube the compression was horrible and ruined pretty much the whole thing. Vimeo seems to produce a much better output post-compression. And it’s freaking fast man)

Like it wasn’t already a sort of unexpectedly bonus day what with the getting up early, the eating of a normal breakfast, the walking to work, the getting here early and all of that. I also find myself reacting to this wonderful news with an unfamiliar desire to tongue-kiss Gavin Newsom.

Now, California, don’t fuck this up by allowing it to be overturned on a ballot initiative in November.