On the Cover of New York Times Book review

( An excerpt from the essay The Naked and the Conflicted, by Katie Rophie)

- We denounce the great male novelists of the last century for their sexism. But something has been lost now that innocence is more fashionable than to virility, the cuddle preferable to sex. -

(End excerpt)

Well ain’t that just the feed to start me gallopin’ off about literature. Because men have always been stereotyped as the sexually dominant gender, biogically wired to fill up spread their seed for all and sundry. In contrast, women laud the virtue of innocence and find comfort in the protective, loving cuddles, finding much unhappiness with their being objectified and possessed at the expense of their independence. Hence, as can be seen, the rise of the feminist movement through the suffragates, women writers and such other advents.

I might for a moment wonder why generations of X chromosome homozygotes, who make up approximately half of the world’s population, allowed themselves to be oppressed and their authority usurped for a few millenia before coming to – perhaps cavewomen were more concerned about their kids and their attitudes hung over a for a few thousand more years.

Feminist literature was a revolution of sorts…and thank goodness for the likes of Angela Carter, Sonya Hartnett and Marilyn Robinson… and I willingly salute those who (finally) stepped forth (under male aliases) to express ‘the oft silenced view’.

Here goes the tangent from mildly analytical to completely rather; there are few things remotely interesting about the subject of muliebrity. A girl’s journey to womanhood, fraught with expectations, society, suitors and swooning, rape, subjugation and domination by men, ho hum. But I’ve realised that’s only the thorn of the rose, so to speak. In fact, I’ve enjoyed studying Women in Lit far more than I’ve honestly expected to. Carol Ann Duffy (whom we’re studying) and Angela Carter (whom we aren’t, to incredible dismay) are two serious geniuses for twisting a conventional story. Just a few examples :

Angela Carter : The transformation from a maiden of iron underwear (so to speak) to a beast (See The Tiger’s Bride ) is magnificent. Little Red Riding Hood sexually assaulting a hot and hairy werewolf - unexpected and very kinky. Puss in Boots matchmaking his master to a princess (rather than riches and land, as is the conventional) and then observing their physical tryst which much disdain – hilarious!

Duffy : Queen Kong picking up her man like chocolate from a box, and pining after him in her monthly cycles. A maid obsessing over her mistress’s pearls. A psychopath comparing Shakespeare to a fly and God to a goldfish (blasphemous!!) and my personal favourite, Pilate’s wife describing Jesus as a hunk!

There is no doubt that these talented women are very good at what they do, as good as the likes of Tolkien and George R.R. Martin, (though the stars forbid that they move on to feminist literature instead of their usual fortes). Still, I wish that literature themes were the more far-ranging, less ‘worldly’ and rather more…whimisical.

I mean; take maybe the theme of transformation. There is a wealth of material about metamorphosis or simply the process of learning, which might not be for the better. I’m not even talking about Bleach and Espada Bankai, because even Kuchiki Byakuya’s Senbonzakura needs The Crimson Tide by Nightwish to support the visuals. I’m talking about works like Charles Baudelaire and the translation for The Metamorphose du Vampire. The Tiger’s Bride could work for this too. Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde. All sorts of timeless, wonderful pieces that are lesser known because of their darker and more gothic themes. It’s rather wasted that literature is very often about the great and widely acknowledged issues of humanity, like racism, globalization, government, feminist rights, child exploitation, and less often about, say, the inherent angel and demon within each person, supernatural encounters, darkness and savagery, and the like.

Well, I guess that’s what H3 literature is for. Although I might have written myself into a corner because there are few books (known, that is) about dark and twisted relationships besides the two I already have. Damn!

Lucky person with no school tomorrow

Am I the only one who finds the concept of a “New Year” a very strange and unsettling one?

For example, all this fuss over ”New Year Resolutions” that rarely make it past June. Daily resolutions or new-week resolutions seem more sensible; short of indulging oneself, there is little sense in letting a bad habit get out of hand for the better part of 365 days before deciding to work up enough guts to do something about it. Just like how grains of sand make a mountain, small and consistent steps are more manageable and sustainable in breaking a bad habit and forming a good one as compared to a once-a-year-renewal basis. Furthermore, New Year Resolutions are jazzed up with all the hype and hope of a “fresh start” and a “new beginning”, carrying with it’s shiny apple-d freshness all the implications that resolutions formed anytime between New Years are worth less and more prone to failure. What frequently follows is a cycle of resignation, a sort of mental complacency which prevents our changing even when we realize a need to. Besides whicn, it is a conundrum to the urges of all sages wise to ”leave the past behind and enjoy the each new day / the present to the fullest”. No effort is required to start each day with a clean slate, only a realization that we should treat each day like the First of January.

Doctor Shin

I suppose my dashboard is ’snowing’, although it really looks like those little white balls from inside a beanbag that are floating across my screen.

This morning I walked in and good morninged a grumpy faced bleary eyed Shin. It’s strikingly odd to know his formal title is “Doctor Shin”, because he wears the same pair of shoes and pants, the same shirt and sweater, everyday.

“I’m sick”, he complains, by way of greeting. “My daugter passed her cold to me.” His daughter is 16 months old this year. “I want to go home and I can’t concentrate.”

“Me too,” I say sympathetically, and pat him in the shoulder. We laze around until lunch time, because we don’t have flies and without the flies we can’t do anything. Shin accidentally forgot about his flies and heatshocked them overnight, so this morning we found four bottles chockfull of dead maggots.

After lunch we lazed around somemore, and I then Shin said “I want to sleep” and I said, “I want to go home.”

Shin glances around the lab; everyone is busy with their own stuff.

“Ok! Let’s go!” I am shocked, but he jumps up and slaps his pockets, in which he carries everything, from waterbottle to thumbdrive. “Quickly, come!” I grab my stuff and sneak out of the lab behind him.

And that is how I ponn work! Dragged along by Doctor Shin!

I wish tonight

Thank goodness it’s the weekend, and I can hardly believe it’s Christmas again. I remember experiencing, last year and the year before, this same increduility at the sneaky, unnoticed passage of old Father Time. I have vague thoughts about how I’m going to jump stary my vacation with a week of nothingness, I think fondly of all the ‘good bye and see you next years’ I should be saying – then I realized I have missed out entirely on the last day of school, and my first week of holiday will be taken up by Christmas and family, and I’m holding a full time job till then. It’s the first dose of reality I’ve gotten. Not studying for exams or such – those are the 18 long years of deplorable studying and preparation which suddenly, seem painfully ephemeral and inadequate.

I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to have to hold a 9 to 6 (or later) job and metamorphorsize into those powder-faced marionettes trudging back and forth in the MRT stations daily. I don’t want to have to worry about electricity bills, insurance, finding a spouse, or being pressured about finding one.

I’m allergic to responsibility. But I definitely want the freedom that comes with independence.

To wheeze or not to wheeze?

My most memorable Christmas was in New Haven, Conneticut, the United States of America. We made a wreathe out of fir branches, and my mom screamed when she discovered worms in them. We had snow, we had woollen caps and gloves, we made a sort of snow mound and stuck twigs in for arms, we had giant Tigger and Piglet stockings filled to the brim with snacks and goodies. We drove a couple of hours to Michigan, lunched in the Bavarian Inn, which was woody, antique, with giant gingerbread house and other festive decorations.

At our American relatives’ house, we had eggnog, apple cider, spiced breads and pies, trick candles, golden wrapped present, we had an uncle chopping pine wood outside and bringing it in, we had the freshly chopped pine wood chucked into the fireplace. We had popcorn popped and marshmellows marshmellowed and Post’s Blueberry morning cereal with Haagen Daaz’s strawberry icecream. We sprawled in the yard and made snow angels, and my hardy grand-aunt who went outdoors without a coat, stomping through calf high snow in pants and a vest, to my parents’ wonder. The house was entirely carpeted, their blankets were electric, and little bundles of evergreen scented potpourri hung from every doorknob. This far into winter, there were no more geese and deer, even squirrels were hibernating away. No birds, but we had us. We had the brick fireplace, the dark, bare, endless forests surrounding the house.

Eeyore-ation

Left Biopolis at 6pm in high spirits, good weather, good work done, good schedule tomorrow, most of all, a good mentor. 

Spirits crashed during the commute back home, as they are wont to do, which prompted my restrospection – who what where why how come, I can go from the glow of satisfaction and experience well gained to the sly, sullen gleam of malice in the short span of a few minutes?

It only starts when I go on the MRT, and it happens only when the MRT (or the bus or house or whatever) is crowded  – meaning passengers standing back to front in each carriage – and it don’t take no rocket scientist to figure out what’s happening. 

I don’t know how to explain it, but -

Wherefore, whyfor, inasmuchaswhich, neither reason nor rationale for these long, drained expressions, these white painted faces with their rouge coloured cheeks? Down is a thicket of clay columns sculpted into stilletos, a timberland of cashmere, cotton or silk; up and around is even worse, lips short and slack on the face, brows a loose furrow, eyes weathered to a lacklustre dull. Some lucky faces are engaged by the phone or another face.

You there, and so many in others in your optimus prime, why so sad? This is your life and your job, know you not what you want, why you want it? - Mayhap forgotten the why to live? Or is it that the public trinity of Raffles Place, Cityhall, Dhoby Gaut, so uniquely Singaporean, these names, such the pragmatic Singaporean - Cityhall interchange. If you are travelling to Bugis, Pasir Ris or Changi Airport, please alight at the next station. Cityhall interchange. - have no place for childish grins?

It is 6pm, it is during the year end holiday, and after a full day at Biopolis, 17 year old Ang Wei boards the train at Buena Vista, saying : I need to go back to school.

It is 7pm,  it is during the year end holiday, students board the train at Orchard, on their way home. These 13 or 14 year olds would remember singing, a few years back :

- We shall try to do our best; Never stopping for a rest…We are girls from RGPS, always striving to be the best.-

That sick rollicking tune and the high childish voices of the brainwashed girls, most of which will grow, after a decade or so of doing their best without rest, to become the faces of the bathetic, mawkish beings training from office to home.

It’s just draining. No wonder my instincts scream against adults.

King Kong with Chopsticks

“Hoohoohoohoo! Good morning, Emma-ya-ya! Come come, many flies to dissect! Lalalala!”

Today, I befriended my needle point forceps, made a pact with the microscope, bribed my eyes into staying a-socket with loads of massage. 10am to 5pm has been a practial of ovary extractions. It’s pretty fun when you get a perfect pair of tiny white globules floating around in PBS solution – up the magnification and you can see the rows of egg chambers in long strings…it’s much like pulling transparent intestines from a breathing corpse and seeing the boli of food moving under peristalsis, because that’s how the egg chambers are pushed around in their ovaria. 

I am King Kong trying to pick up individual rice grains with chopsticks. No empire states building, and no pretty blond haired virgin lass, either. Only lots of buzzing ex-virgin fruitflies bloated with lymph and ovary.

And that’s about all I did today, actually. My mentor’s name isn’t Shin, but it’s close, and for privacy’s sake will be named so.

Me : (Looking up from the microscope, uncrossing my eyes, and pipetting the extracted ovaries into a tube and capping them) Done!

Shin : Really? (looks) OO-aa, perfect! Now you can do these. (Hands me a tube containing about 20 flies) Hoohoohoohoo!

That is how he laughs, like Tigger. Mad as a hatter. Waltzed into the lab in the morning boasting of his baby daughter’s nonstop wailing that morning, spent the next twenty minutes or so dissecting flies and emitting baby noises at random.

“Hoohoohoohoo! Enough, will continue later. Let’s go eat, I’m hungry! Lunch! Don’t forget the lights, Emma-ya-ya. Lunchlunchlunch!”

- At Shin’s workstation, signing off.

Continuing from before.

3pm - My contact lenses slide off my eyes from their continuous cross-eyed position and I groan. Microscopes suck. I am pulling apart unctuous oil drops smaller than a pin with my bare hands. Drop my forceps and rub my eyes, pushing my contacts around till I can see properly. I curse some.

Shin sticks his head in. “Tired? Go outside walk around take a break.”

‘Nah, I’m fine, just my eyes…’

“Yesyes, go around walk about awhile…coffee! Coffee break downstairs, come up later. No use doing work tired.”

Looking around at my other labmates, each under their respective mentors, I thank my lucky star for this prancing Taiwanese jackanapes who brings life and laughter to this otherwise workaholic environment.

An all new world awaits – Avatar

I look forward to living a lone bachelor’s life – no cleaning up, no ironing clothes, whatever, I’d earn enough money to hire an obsessively fastidious housekeeper, and I’d do the cooking, she could see to the sanitation of the rest of the house. 

Oddly enough, I never thought I’d need help to keep my laptop clean. Let me explain :  

Up until half an hour ago there lingered a very happy delusion that my laptop, while not pristine, was passably, acceptably, clean. My screen was rather dusty, but a screen is a screen and as long as dirt specks are discernable from punctuation, I had no reason to be unhappy about my laptop’s state of hygiene.

Well, belabouring through online publications of The Bloody Chamber, Surrender and The Yellow Wallpaper, I suddenly decided that the smidgens of dust on the screen had to go, and go they did, with some encouragment from Hexo-Dane Antiseptic Hand-Rub with 70% alchohol; reasonably heartened with the result, decided the keyboard could use a wipe too.

Fingerprints drastically more visible, with a few accidental dashes of marker ink, which clung with a mettlesome tenacity to the silver slates. These I could accept, but the eraser dust underneath the keys, I could not. Eraser dust, and the occassional bit of stapler bullet, bits of skin and nails, and some strands of hair that I draw out, long and endless, like an Mr Fantastic’s umbilical cord shrivelled to the proportion of a centipede’s feelers. It’s a bloody Uruk-Hai crawled and died under my labelled keys, leaving veins like oodles of congealed grey worms, a film of dust like the dried remains of uruk-amniotic membrane.  

Something just popped up in my MSN window - it says sniff_achoo@hotmail.com.

blinkblinkwinkwinknudgenudgepolepoke?

If my ineffectual attempts to excavate these decomposed remains signify anything, I suppose I shall have to thank Elbereth that I’m not allergic to uruk-dirt. 

A world away, A-Star research attachment has started. We sat through a two hour safety briefing, during which I did not fall asleep because I was relieving the near-death experience I had in the morning while trying to cross the road (I missed the overhead bridge and was too lazy to walk back.)

My professor-mentor is tall, skinny, baggy clothed and boisterous - he has the gamboling, swinging gait of Jar Jar Binks, and I kinda liken him to a giant, flexible hoola hoop trawling the ups and downs of the Biopolis facility. Bit scary and suicidal, rolling down the hill with his feral grin, but he’s cool and I’m happy with that.

As for what we do, the full blast of it comes tomorrow; as far as I know it involves gleaning virgin drosophila (female, not male) from a test tube and dissecting their ovaries. Our lab studies the singular or collective migration of cells in a certain orientation towards a certain stimuli, and the factors involved; while experiments are too small to be seen with the naked eye, at least the flies we handle are visible and there aren’t many dangers in our lab. I won’t go into detail about actin filaments, VEGF and TKR, but just search  

At the other end of the spectrum, Literature Research is in full swing, I’ve secured all my texts:

I’m the King of the Castle, Surrender, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Bloody Chamber, The Tiger’s Bride, The Yellow Wallpaper and Desiree’s Child.

In the course of choosing my texts I’ve actually cast aside many for their length and yet I want to read them all the same – book surfing is a great way of learning about awesome reads.

What I want to read :

1. The Master and the Margarita

2. Skellig

3. Breakfast at Tiffany’s

4. Middlesex

5. Wrath of a Mad God

There are loads more but putting them here would just depress me for sheer lack of time. I mean, this is on top of all my h2 Literature texts, Shakespeare, poetry, not to mention erotic fanfiction, and such.

It’s way past my bedtime, and I’m rebounding on my attempts to wean myself off caffeine.

Cans of coke today : 2.

Cups of coffee today : None

Status : stalemate.

Puff!

Time was when one acquired from a nameless flea-inhabited market three pairs of bermudas, Adidas imitations all -  different colours of the same thing. It was a long time ago and after a considerable buffet; o exalted stretchable waistbands of these new pants bestowed upon my bursting seams such magnanimous abundance of forgiveness that I was moved to a short-lived but well meaning repentence from gluttony. Days wore my brand spanking pantaloons into my roomy companions, in no time at all we were good and homely creatures of habit. I went nowhere without my cheeky chinos and went so far as to wear them under my skirt. Come boredom or plain juvenile ideas, my daredevil dungarees would save the day! Theses pocket brothers of mine were like furry balloons, and could smuggle anything from a can of Pringles to a pair of slippers, making them ideal accomplices in various petty and juvenile crimes. I also had the bad habit of snapping the rubber waistband against my pot-belly because I liked being the center of annoyance. Very trusty they were, the three musketeers and I. 

On a side note, this started out as a time to groan about how the rubber on the waistband wore so thin and loose that I eventually needed a clip to hold my pants up. It was supposed to be a gripe on how life just wears us all out so that we’re hanging together only by some external force. Unfortunately I find better solace in my books and so this comical recount shall have to stop here. Ta!

 

Happy Feet

A row of dirt-crusty sausage-like spades, twinned by colour and  shape

Canvas with ‘Converse’ and limp fabric crosses bridging paired up collars,

Constrained to your knots, tightened to your comfort. 

Thus thy humble fleshy stump esconced within a jealous clam

sheathing blistered sole and sweaty sock smell.

Now off with the puddle soaked rain doused shoe!  And see

The five pronged forks wriggling like stubby anemone

Beneath the chill, churlish smirk of light and wind.

In other news :

1. Mr NWY : A girl who bares her feet before men is one who will always be herself.

2. MJ : Hey! There’s cake in the canteen for you! (I gleefully traipse off in the direction of canteen) There’s also Kevin, though. (I make a resigned u-turn)

3. Ma’am : Student, why weren’t you at the subject rep briefing?

SH : Aw, nuts. Can we change subject rep? I don’t want to be lit subject rep. Anyway…I suppose it really is kinda sort of like a very long story.

Ma’am :  Change subject rep? You’re the only one in class taking this subject! And summarize it!

SH : Yeah, and I hate the subject! Well I got out of bed at 9.30 and spent 15 minutes being angry at myself. Then I came to school, by which time the briefing was over!

Ma’am : …The lit rep briefing just ended!

SH : What? No way, Wilnard and Kevin were done and over here ages ago!

Ma’am : Student, they were in a different subject rep briefing!

4. GP tutor : My son is 10! 10! And he talks about politics! He’s going to be a social recluse – how dare my husband walk around the house with that beatific expression of one extremely pleased himself -

I don’t want him to be a nerd! That’s a terrible thing!

 I always try to help by encouraging him to look at girls. When he goes to Sunday school, my husband will ask, “so what did you learn about God today?” and I will ask “so did you look at the pretty girls today?”

5. Dogtor : (bragging) I got 14 out of 15 for Chemistry MCQ!

LCK : Wow. How many hours did you spend praying to my portrait?

(As put by my friend : Scared time hug Buddha leg!)

Smothered, squashed, into a corner

My blood, it roils in my veins – I am quivering right now! Ah what a stupid kid…catch of the century. If you need it, just gimme a holler, love.

Ten life times would not be enough fuss.

You make me so happy.

When we’re ninety seven there’ll be rotund little kids running circles around us – why would they be comparing our Jc 1 grades? In any case, IF Black Junior does ask : “How many ‘A’s did you get for your Promos, yo?” I’ll photoshop your name into my grades and impress Black(s) Junior with your outstanding results.

I dedicate everything to you. My grades are your grades.

Nonsense. You love the limelight.

It’s a crucial part of my charm!

I know you love it. So I sent a request to the boss above, and he obliged.

Have I told you? You bring out the best. Always.

Yeah, so I can be wrong about people. But as long as I get the important ones correct, the others don’t matter.

 Looks like I can’t die young after all.

I’d teach the stars to write your name, even if it takes a life time. How I’d love to see that.

You make me so happy.