I wonder if I’d feel differently about my life if there were different seasons in Singapore – more hopeful in Spring, perhaps, and more alert in Winter? At least there’d be some intimation of change to come.
Zadie Smith Saturday, Jul 19 2008
reading 1:00 pm
You can’t help but want to hate Zadie Smith – she was published at the age of 25, received a ton of accolades for her first novel, and is beautiful to boot. Oh yes, and she lives in Rome with her not-bad-looking writer of a husband.
I read White Teeth many years ago, back when I was at Duke, and don’t remember much of it. On Beauty, however, I just finished, and liked. Set in a college town and the world of academia, it brought back strangely vivid memories of Duke – getting a cheap snack from the machine during the 5-min break in my Politics of the Renaissance class at 6pm; scuffing about outside big brown doors in the beige hallway, waiting for judgment or enlightenment; sliding on black ice in Central Campus. And I loved Smith’s depiction of love between siblings.
The novel is mostly about intellectual honesty, emotional cheating, physical craving; it skims over beauty, which always feels skin-deep and is never quite fleshed out.
The Echo Maker Saturday, Jul 12 2008
reading 10:40 pm
I’m still not a big fan of Richard Powers. He’s got interesting ideas but his characters leave me cold. My favourite novel of his so far is still Plowing the Dark (horrible memories of being stuck in the Siem Reap airport for more than 24 hrs aside – that’s where I read the book). The Echo Maker read like a too-lengthy series of flat conspiracy theories and mildly interesting anecdotes.
Communities Friday, Jul 11 2008
work 9:36 pm
I went for an evening event at a neighbourhood school last Friday, and it hit me, just walking in through schoolgates, how much I do miss being back in school as a teacher. As a student, your school can be a claustrophobic world around which your life revolves – emotions run high and lifetime memories (and scars) are formed. As a teacher, you get a taste of this energy without over-committing yourself, even if you’ve to learn how not to do so. You can put your finger on this pulse that usually can’t be found in meeting rooms, vicariously join in the raucous, senseless fun, work yourself to the bone without feeling it until the end of the day.
And as a teacher, you see that the school comprises not just one community, but several. The constituency may hold their National Day celebrations at the school; alumni and parents splurge on artworks in order to support scholarship funds; and of course, the students work on their mandatory community involvement projects that hopefully bring them outside of themselves.
(I am probably going to be run-down, harried and with a constantly-furrowed brow when I go back, but for now I will hold on to some of these ideals.)
The Weekend, by Hours Sunday, Jul 6 2008
singapore 11:30 pm
Hours spent on each activity this weekend:-
- Phonecalls – 2 hrs
- Meeting with friends – 2 hrs
- Sleep, with naps – 12 hrs
- Exercise of some sort – 7 hrs
- Work of some sort – 16 hrs
I’m going to read a book and finally sleep at a decent time tonight!
I never understood why women minded laugh lines Sunday, Jul 6 2008
epiphany 10:46 am
One of today’s postsecrets:-
I want my face to be infallibly carved with laugh lines when I am old and gray, to reveal the happiness I have lived to know. At seventeen, this is my greatest drive. And I hope it never changes.
