Bloody boys and their bloody ambiguity.

Apparently when my mum’s out in the street in front of our house, she can hear my raucousness coming from indoors. So yesterday when I was walking back home from the MRT station and I ran into our longtime neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. W., I felt the need to hedge. “Hello,” they said, “you’ve been back for a while.” And I thought, Wait, are they saying they’ve been hearing me for a while? And what have they heard? So I said, “Um, no, no, not so long, maybe, uh, just a few days. . .?” and then made my exit as quickly as I could. Somehow all that was forgotten this afternoon as I was helping Mowmy in the garden, slathered with mosquito repellant, belting out highlights from “Kiss Me Kate.”

I don’t know how I always seem to choose the trashiest nail polish color on the shelf. The current shade, applied a couple of days ago by a small, taciturn woman at Hollywood Secrets on Orchard Road, is called “Summer Storm,” but a more apt name for this shimmering Barbie pink might be “Malibu Divorcée” or “Toa Payoh Ah Lian.” At least it matches exactly the Rosal lip balm I got in Hvar this past summer, and that’s called “Pretty Girl.”

CC arrived today from Sydders, starting a loopy nattering that included:

“What is brown and sticky?”

“A stick.”

This evening, crossing Scotts Road, heading to Borders for a pre-midnight-movie coffee with Ren, it snowed. Sure, it was snowing tiny bits of plastic, or whatever it is fake snow is made of, and it was all spewing out of some wooden contraption set up at one corner of the junction, said wooden contraption being topped with three rotund plastic Santas, but there was something lovely about it nonetheless, the bits of plastic snow floating down the street, glinting in the traffic lights.

Till last night I hadn’t been to Zouk since the time I was a good convent girl in the early nineties, agog at the nighttime goings-on. Last night, we were, rather, unimpressed with the nighttime goings-on, even after a couple of rounds of tasty lychee martinis and vodka gimlets. And then after the vodka and Ribenas. And then after the champagne. And then after the Martell and green teas. Even after all that, the music was too bloody loud and trancey, the elbows of the size-zero girls were still sharp, the boys were still bengs. Still, we danced, we lounged, we laughed. And outside in the December night air it was nice.

Dial-up blows.

Christmas in Singapore. A morning walk in MacRitchie Reservoir Park, ochre clay underfoot, breeze rippling the surface of the green water. Lunch at Crystal Jade Kitchen in Junction 8—sliced fish porridge, roast duck and char siew, baby kai lan sauteed in garlic. Classic. Hobbit-esque second lunch at Andrea’s parents’ with pappadums and a variety of homemade curries, one tastier than the next. Then hanging out in the kitchen in Andrea’s Holland Village apartment, Norah Jones on the stereo, the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the air, watching the midafternoon rain come down outside the old-timey louvered windowpanes.

Up listening to Debbie Gibson instead of sleeping. It’s just like the good old days.

Spent the night in tonight, after a spate of three a.m. returns home. What’s the deal with Singapore nightlife, that everything keeps shutting down early on me, sending me packing to the godawful cappuccinos at the Shangri-La’s twenty-four-hour café? Midnight Sunday, after the wedding festivities, we were hanging out at the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel, having just ordered some madly overpriced drinks, when the house band got done playing “Hotel California” and “I’ve Never Been to Me,” the lights came on, and the servers came round with the bill. Then at a shameful eleven-thirty last night, we were alerted to last call at whatever Robertson Walk pub it was we were at. In response to Amit’s plaintive, “I thought you close at one,” our waiter cheerfully offered, “Not tonight!”

Hence: night in, leftover turkey, strawberry jellies, gossiping about relatives, laughing at Mowmy’s trying to decipher the accents in “Waking Ned Devine.” Also good.

Forearm sore from compulsive text messaging.

Bloody bloody bloody, but Hugh Grant is a damn fine looking chap. And that dancing scene in “Love Actually”—yah, sure, totally calculated by the marketing folk, whatever, he is still a damn fine looking chap.

Still in Singapore, although there’d been some talk of a little jaunt to Delhi for the nuptials of my dad’s friend’s son. (The arm-twisting involved an e-mail from Mowmy saying, “Don’t you want to revisit Monsoon Wedding?”) It’s just as well; having gotten off a plane what seems like just four days ago—wait, it wasjust four days ago—I’m in no mood to pack everything back up and head back to the airport, Monsoon Wedding or no. The deciding factor was the six hundred dollars in “emergency” visa fees it was going to cost us. Yes, that’s right, we were trying to get visas the day before we had to leave. And the adventure came to the end, somehow—after rushing about all morning yesterday, downloading forms and getting sullen passport photos; showing up at the high comm after visa-processing hours; wrangling an audience with the head consular officer dude, a stocky man with an impressive mustache and an all-business attitude—with me standing in the sun in the high comm carpark lying to the First Secretary of the Indian High Commission. How do I do it?

Meanwhile, how is it possible I only touched down on Friday? It’s been mad activity since I got here, super fun all around. Which is way better than sticky crowds all around, which is what Singapore is at Christmastime. Wait, when isn’t it sticky crowds all around in Singapore? Happily, there’s always a seat at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, so I can slowly but surely make my way through all the sweet, sweet varieties of Ice Blendeds. Sometimes all it takes is a pal and a latte, and you’re good for the day.

Sunday morning, woke up something like half an hour before I was meant to be at the church for Gen’s wedding. Just as well I wasn’t the bride, I tells ya. Made it just in time, the girl was gorgeous, tears were shed, mass was had. It’s a funny thing about ten years of Catholic school: those hymns, unsung for years, came right back up to the surface of my consciousness and out of my mouth—words, tunes, all of it.

Post-wedding, the reception included pandan chicken (yum, pandan chicken!), otak (otak!!), egg tofu in brown sauce (egg tofu!!), log cake (log cake!!), and very pink fruit punch (fruit punch!!). Brilliant.

If you remeet a boy you hardly knew once upon a time, and this time around the two of you are all, Ohmygod, me too I love this band, and No way, totally that is also my favorite song, and Get out, me too this and that and the other, (and, oh ya, if he also looks great in a suit). . . is that something, or is that nothing?

Went to a party at some fancy so-and-so’s, the friend of a friend. Apparently there were gonna be lots of elig Yale boys there. What was there was the host, just turned thirty, a square-headed young man with thick lips and slim hips; various versions of his portrait, having undergone some sort of Warholian Photoshopped process, projected on a large, blank wall all Powerpoint-like; photographs of his father shaking hands with assorted political figures; four kinds of cake, none of them chocolate from Lana Cake House; lots of rum; Ribena; and a cute girl in a parrot-print tank top. So that’s what the young upperclass of Singapore get up to on a Saturday night.

After the rain, the frogs.

Mowmy gave me the “Louis Vuitton” bag she got me from the Kuala Lumpur Chinatown. On the inside, there is a “leather” patch that says: “Louis Vuitton. Paris. Made in France.” Ah ha ha ha. Who doesn’t like Chinese people?

Here is why else my mum is a funny one:

After dinner she said: “Would you like some fruit?”

So I said: “If by fruit you mean cake. . .”

So she said: “Cake? No, fruit. I’m not having cake tonight.”

So I said: “Is there cake other nights?”

And she thought about it and then said: “Erm. No.”

. . .or is it Thursday? Or is it. . .? Urgh. Flying around the world sure messes with your head.

Happily, lunch at the Takashimaya Crystal Jade cures any kinds of head-messing. That’ll be a bowl of chili oil beef la mian, a plate of xiao long baos, maybe some yang chow siew mai, and some of that unusual bean curd skin–soy bean–preserved vegetable combo, please. And a glass of sweet, sweet watermelon juice, thanks very much. Mm-mm-good.

The damp tropical air’s already making the pages of my magazines limp and curly, and the large white tiles of my bedroom floor are, just as I remembered, still pleasantly cold to the touch. Late this afternoon we had a great thundering rainstorm. From an upstairs window I watched the raindrops splatter on the red clay tiles on our roof, and beat against the rattan blinds. It’s good to be home again.

It’s aggravating that everyone and their dog is on their cell phones in the library and I can’t even get a bloody signal. But then it means that when I check my messages, I have such gems as the following 4:30 a.m. from Thusha:

“Hi, Meihui, it’s Thushala, I’m calling to tell you all about tonight’s adventures. . . . All these old uncle-uncle came and talked to me, okay. I tell you ah, I have this sign on my forehead that says, ‘Uncle come talk to me, come and check me out.’ Hm. But I was sitting with Andrea at the bar and this Aussie guy stepped on her foot, and I don’t know what made me say “OK, fine, buy us a drink, then!” He bought us two lychee martinis, so I think we’re in business. So I’m waiting for you to come back, and we can go and harrass people in Boat Quay and everywhere else and just harrass people. Yes? Yes? Yes? YES? I’m waiting for you to come back, come back, ’cause you’re insane and we can go do insane things, and so is Ren, and so is Andrea, so we’re all waiting to go pounce on the populace of Singapore and tekan them. So hurry up and come home! Come home! Good luck for your last exam—chill, you’ll be absolutely perfect. And, and, come home quickly! I’ve got chocolates and I’ve got alcohol. I went to buy three bottles of wine, okay? I’m chilling them. Quickly come back lah, we can drink and eat chocolates and go and tekan ah bengs. Come, come, come, OK? See you soon. Take care, bye.”

Who’s the Queen of Insania, then?

When you spend a week and some working on a final paper for class, where said week involves a last hurrah of consecutive days spent almost solely in the school library for hours on end, where said hours include all those between like, noon and two a.m., there sure isn’t a whole lot of time left over for blogging.

Still. It’s been a great week, but a great week. When I finally finished my paper and left the libes at 3:20 or so Monday morning, with Low Library lit up against the night, streets black and shiny from the rain just over, speeding down Broadway in a yellow cab, listening to the gorgeousness of Azure Ray—well, that’s a moment. And I got that feeling in my throat—y’know, when things are so goddamn good that you can’t stop smiling; so good that you keep thinking, How come I got lucky?—that feeling. Then when I got home I found that Papa had phoned, and Ren, and CC, and Mowmy, and, jeez, I just felt so bloody loved. Is this blog sinking in sentimentality yet? Sometimes you just gotta give in.

Neways, some highlights from the past week include:

• Recognizing fellow library late-owls after a couple of days, including the two guys who log in to Yahoo! chess every night around two a.m. and challenge each other to a game. I sat next to them one night checking my e-mail, and the guy next to me turned to me and said, “No one can beat me!!!”

• Ditching the libes Saturday night to go to Maud’s uptown. The regulars were in effect—Tom, Vio, George, Jill; the irregulars were in effect—this Korean/French dude Sam (“Call me Sam, it’s easier.”) who every now and again in conversation paused to reflect on his mightiness (“I am mighty!” “. . .but I must remain humble!”). Altogether lots of lolling about and coziness, and no thinking about schoolwork.

• This.

• The Mediterranean lamb soup at Dizzy’s, especially when accompanied by a portobello mushroom veggie wrap, especially after not having eaten anything all day up till then ’cause I was running on sleep-deprived euphoria.

• Buying a very lovely pair of pink shoes to celebrate the end of the semester—um, OK, not that I needed an excuse or anything. But, OK, so, these shoes: Pink, leather, cut-outs, two-and-a-half-inch heels, so passable for Marc Jacobs. And not only can I walk in them, I can also run in them.

Sometimes you just want to shake it like a Polaroid picture.

It’s nice when there’s a boy you can walk arm-in-arm with.

How come when it’s snowing it’s all light and fluffy and pretty and life-affirming and blah-dee-blah, and then four days later it’s all stupid and ass-y?

What is really full of surprises, is the massive Larousse French-English dictionary:

“Attention! Elle est mangeuse d’hommes.” = Watch out, she’s a man-eater, or, She eats men for breakfast.

What else is full of surprises, is my bookbag today, which (a) says: “girl reporter” in Japanese (in honor of the book I’m writing about, L’empire des signes, which is Barthes in Japan), and (b) at last check was holding a banana, two cranberry-walnut cookies, a clementine, a bag of Jacques Torres mendiants (these being little chocolate squares, each embedded with an almond, a small piece of strange candied fruit, and a pistachio), and two pudding-flavored marshmallows, these last two items being courtesy of my friend Kat.

Anyway, so but I really was surprised when I looked in my bag and found all these library-friendly snacks, which is funny ’cause it’s not like they just magicked themselves in there. . .or did they???

This afternoon, heading to a tasty bowl of dan dan mian at Ollie’s, I was about to cross Broadway—against the light, ’cause who waits for the light before crossing, really—but then I pulled back because I saw a laundry truck hurtling toward me, and I thought, Urg, run over by a laundry truck, what a way to go. A couple of hours later, I’m in the library going through a pile of books about Roland Barthes for my travail final, and find out that Barthes met his demise in 1980 when he was run over by a laundry truck.

I just don’t know what to make of these things when they happen. I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Also today, I wanted to e-mail my pal Tom to say Hey, but then I thought I should be disciplined and keep researching Barthes. So I’m searching the library catalogue, and I type in the keywords: “Barthes AND Empire AND sign,” and then the search engine offers me, for no reason, “The rooster trapped in the reptile room : a Barry Gifford reader / Barry Gifford. Edition: Seven Stories Press 1st ed,” which is a book Tom edited.

It. just. doesn’t. make. any. sense.

Oh, my.

The HI-larious word of the day is farthingale. No, it doesn’t mean what you think.

Chirp, chirp, poot.

Lychee tea on a winter afternoon.

Post-lunch, my fingers smell of toast, slightly burned; tomato; and garlic.

The deal is, if you sit down and read about Barthes and semiotics and structuralism for four hours, you can go out and partay after. Especially ’cause you’re meeting Schmio and her new red hat and Tom at Frank’s on Second Avenue, which you didn’t know till that evening was called Frank’s, but which you love because it’s small and always tasty and once upon a time you and T. stopped in for some wine and a mushroom. Then after some garlic-olive oil-anchovy spaghetti action, y’alls can somehow hop, skip, and jump over the still-growing barricades of snow piled up along the street and fall into Lit, where the U-Bolts are rocking, but I mean ROCKING, the house, and where a tall, skinny dude working a blond mohawk-mullet combi and a studded belt can’t stop shaking his, um, thang. Dance, dance, laugh, sit, laugh, dance, finally move from the thumping divey-ness of Lit to the oh-so-fabulous Soho House, which turns out, after you get past the guest-list lady, to not be so over-the-toply fabulous after all, and really quite chill and comfortable, with delish chocolate-brown interiors. When you see Daryl Hannah poking her head into the room, remember you really want to get “Splash” on DVD. Somehow, some hours later, find yourself pulling up to your apartment in a cab at five in the morning. It’s still snowing, quiet, silver flakes glinting in the streetlamps, trees outlined in white, your cheeks are rosy from that last Bellini, fall into bed, flannel, down, soft, warm, mmmyes.

Worked in Butler Library from like 10:00 a.m. till 10:30 p.m. today, writing my ten-pager. Yeah, that whole moderation gig’s not my bag. I got to campus at 7:30 and woulda worked longer in the gorgeous reference room except that they were testing the fire alarm system for three hours, and between the flashing lights and the insanely loud clanging making my eardrums vibrate noticeably and the one other guy in the room yelling out “Juh-hay-zus!” and “Come on!” and “Oh! My! God!” every time the bells started re-clanging and lights started re-flashing, I just had to find somewhere else to hole up for a bit.

Neways, I’ve now rediscovered, just in time for finals, how great it is to work at the school library—no distractions, lots of studious souls keeping you focused, that whole thing. The fact that my stupid Cingular cell phone service can’t get a signal in the building is good, too, I guess. And, ohmygod, but I love my iBook. It’s still making headlines with me, even though the boy who made it a present is old news.

And maybe it was a reward or something for having actually worked hard today, ’cause then the trains ran smoothly all the way home.

Stupid icy winter wind. But then Kevin said, “It’s shit-ass cold!” which made it so there was larfing and larfing, and then it seemed less shit-ass cold.

Oh. my. word. It’s snowing.

Woo hoo!!!!!