monoceros blogsAfter much deliberation, I decided to spend the US$72 and buy the Master's graduation gown, hood, cap and tassel. I nearly decided against going for the commencement ceremony, but I figured, this is the last time I'll graduate from anything.
In the evening, I watched Miyazaki's Porco Rosso at last. Italy, the sea. Planes, flight sequences. A chanteuse singing in French. And an inspired scene taken from Roald Dahl's short story, "They Shall Not Grow Old." A strange and surreal moment in a pilot's life - watching the planes of dead comrades and enemies ascending and joining the long stretch of planes drifting across the sky.
I took my final nap in the office today, and I also turned in grades for my students. And then I cleared out my books. It was a little wrenching.
I cheered up in the evening when I attended my friend's saxophone recital. Tom is a writer, musician, and fluent in Italian. Also a fan of Astor Piazzolla, though he's taken his interest a step further by actually taking Argentinian tango lessons.
I'm not familiar with classical saxophone pieces, but what I heard was quite spectacular. Mostly contemporary work by composers like Paul Ben-Haim, Paul Hindemith, and Francis Poulenc. Alexandre, Glazounov, Debussy, and then two lovely arias by Puccini.
The recital just got better and better, and when Tom got to the two arias, I was ready to give a standing ovation. (I didn't though.) Tom was accompanied by Kathryn Goodson on piano for the arias. Both were beautiful duets, though my favorite was "Vissi d'Arte" (I Live For Art) from the opera, Tosca.
The food at the reception was terrific. Crabcakes, cheese, dips, and other great munchies. I hung out with Andrea, the lady who works in the Hopwood Room, the one who brought me to the dog show last year. Andrea, Tom, and I flock together because of our overlapping interests in Italian, Italy, music, and books. We're always huddling together at the teas. But well, not anymore, since Tom and I are both graduating.
It's snowing! Now! It's as if we're back in February. A time warp. A climate warp. After church, my mom and I walked through wind and snow to a Vietnamese restaurant for some hot pho. And then, we drove around and took pictures. I particularly liked my shot of snow-laced magnolia trees.
It was very surreal, like a scene out of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Yestesday evening, I went to a party to celebrate a friend's success in the literary world. One of my workshop mates from 2003 just got his book sold. The success rate of the 2004 cohort is impressively high. As for the 2005 cohort? Hmm. It may be a few years before any of us gets a book sold.
The final official MFA party for me. The farewell party was held at the interim director's house, but I'm not going to write much about it and get sappy. I did take many photos though. Still need to take time to figure out Flicker.
Got home and watched the animated short film, More. Another great recomendation from noob. Six minutes of wonder.
Today's MFA meeting - I learn that I could have deducted tax on lots of things because of my writing. Office space - the space of my desk and bookshelves in my home - paper, books, journals, magazines, postage, and even plays and movies (for inspiration, apparently). And it'll all be fine with IRS as long as you show that your writing makes some profit.
In any case, this information arrives too late.
So it was the last class today. A short one, and at the end of it, I made a silly sentimental speech, to which my students applauded. I'll miss them.
I was early for the Hopwood ceremony and lecture, which seemed pointless since I was the last to be called, and the announcer took it upon himself to stress the word "Singapore." The girl from Singapore. Yup, that'll be me.
Susan Orlean was this year's Hopwood lectuerer; the last I'll get to hear, and what a memorable lecture it was. She wrote The Orchid Thief which was made into the the film, Adaptation. She too, attended Michigan, and after graduation, she drove herself to Oregon. She was glad she didn't fly, didn't catapult herself to her destination, because driving prolonged the journey, let her see places, meet people, collect stories. The stuff of writing. Stories are often about journeys, which can be geographical, emotional, intellectual. The act of writing is a journey itself.
She quoted Burt Reynolds, perhaps the only Hopwood lecturer to do so in the history of Hopwood ceremonies. I can't remember it verbatim, so I'll have to purchase this summer's Michigan Quarterly Review, which will publish her lecture, before I can share the quote here.
After the lecture, we all trudged upstairs for the reception. The fourth floor of Rackham Auditorium has lovely views, and I broke away from the crowd to stand by myself at one hidden corner of the balcony. A piercing blue sky, students walking below, trees in the distance. I was glad to be alone.
I turned in my thesis this afternoon. It was very anti-climactic because I had to go home and write comments for 19 poems.
In the evening, we had our final fiction-workshop gathering at our workshop leader's house. Laura had catered Mexican food, bute before dinner, the fellows in our class wrestled and fenced with her 9 year-old son. We paid a visit to the shack-cabin (or shackbin) behind Laura's house and spied a wasp's nest. I admired the raccoon skull just outside the cabin. It was cool to the touch, and there were spider-webs in where I presume the brain had been. Laura's son is really lucky to grow up in the country. All that space, trees, and clean air. It's a nice county just outside of Ann Arbor. The highlight of the evening was the remote-control whoopee cushion that Laura's son stashed below the dinner table. Times have really changed; I only knew of the pink rubber ones. One of the guys managed to sneak the control away from him later in the evening, and we had our own fun watching him guess who had it. I'm pleased to say I was one of the top suspects.
Later we hung out on the porch of one of our classmates and drank tequila, tea, water, Coronas. We talked about drugs and our desolate futures. I was trying to grade when a young fellow rollerbladed over and asked for water. We refilled his bottle and then offered him a tequila shot. He sucked the lime, licked the salt, and downed the tequlia with gusto.
When I got home, I found my mom on the futon in tears. Her favorite uncle, the one she called "Father" in Malay, had passed away suddenly. He was the last of the Wee sibilngs. My grandmother was the eldest. Her third youngest brother died in 1987. Then she died a year later. And two others passed on within the next 12 years. It's good to know they're with each other again. But it's been hard - my mom and I so far away from home, not being able to help with the wake and the funeral, not being able to say good-bye.
"We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than even with lover or friend
And once we're within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain."
~from Four Poems in One by Anne Porter
Sunday morning, Lim Jia, my mom, and I set off for St. Charles, where Jake's dad lives. Jake is in Miami, Florida this weekend. Sunbathing and girl-watching. Well, actually just playing tuba for several performances and meeting up with his uncle. He actually had several negative things to say about the girls there, and I won't repeat them. Basically, Lim Jia's the girl for him.
We missed our exit and went to Birch Run, the outlet mall instead. Maybe later, we decided, and turned round. We got to see some nice Michigan country lanes and plains before reaching the clinic. They've got some peculiar system for speed limits. Within two minutes of driving, there were three different speed- limit signs - 25, 35, 45.
Milou didn't realize she was on her first road trip. She didn't care; she had her carrot, her green bean, lots of water, and fresh litter to bury her nose in. My mom sat beside her and had her cage strapped under the safety belt.
Erwin's Animal Clinic (Erwin was the name of their first dog) is pretty large, literally built by Jake and his dad. We met Jake's dad and mom, Mr. Mahoney (a white cat), and Charlie, a sixteen or seventeen year-old crippled pug. It was heartbreaking to watch him - his hind legs are useless so he drags himself forward with his front ones. Jake once told me he's pretty frustrated with himself and whinges a lot. He sat underneath the examining table while we were fawning over Milou, and I reached down every now and then to make sure he didn't feel too ignored. He's really quite a sweetie (pictures when I figure out this Flicker business). Jake's mom usually carries him around and he adores her, with good reason.
Jake's dad said we had to drug Milou to examine her properly. Getting the dosage right so it wouldn't kill her was probably the most important thing. He weighed her (30 grams), then measured out the littlest amount of Ketamine, which can be used on hamsters and elephants and just about any other animal in between. I may have remembered wrongly but it's about 1 cc for every 10 kg - I think.
After that, we had to wait for her to plop down. In the mean time, we got a tour round the clinic, a most splendid place (if I were living in St. Charles, I'd want to work there.) All the drugs are locked in an old bank safe from the 19th century, which Jake had to help his dad haul into the clinic after they bought it from an auction. It has tiny drawers and even tinier keys. Plenty of addicts break into clinics - human and animal - to steal drugs, so Jake's dad doesn't have much choice. I got to examine a microscopic creature that was making a cat's ear itch; stones from a dog's bladder; a manual autoclave (to sterilize instruments); the surgery; equipment to gas a dog; and X-rays of various animals.
We went back to check on Milou. Still mucking around her food bowl. So we prepared a second dose. I watched Jake's dad really stretch her out. With a hamster, you can pick her up by the scruff of her neck them pull her tail, and she doesn't feel a thing. The needle went into one of her muscles and she was out like a light. Jake's dad brought the stethoscope and I got to listen to Milou's heartbeat. So fast!
He went straight for the leg. It could be either a tumor or a scab. It came off pretty easily with a cotton bud - a scab! She'd hurt her leg and taken off a lot of soft tissue, so the scab grew round her entire leg and looked very much like a tumor, but we couldn't have known this until she was out. Jake's dad then got out a curved needle with black silk thread and a long pair of scissors meant to grasp the tiny needle. He deftly stitched up the wound while Milou slept on. It was amazing to watch. Such skill - he pulled and knotted so calmly, and without microscopic glasses too. Milou is a dwarf hamster, so her little foot is as small as an orange seed.
After Jake's dad cut off the leftover thread, I made a pocket out of my shirt and kept Milou warm while she came out of her daze. He said it was important she be warm while the drugs wore off, otherwise she could die easily. We decided to go for coffee and I brought her into the Rustic cafe and bar. Every wall was lined with taxidermied animals from Alaska - racoons, deer, elk, and a big bear.
Milou was nosing her way out of my shirt so it was time to put her back into her cage. We were planning to leave the Rustic anyway, since it didn't have any corn-beef hash. We went across the street to another cafe in hopes of some good corn-beef hash. The cafe seemed to be plucked from a movie. A real small-town place with simple, homey decor. Everyone knows everyone. So when the town's vet and his wife take three little Chinese ladies out to lunch, it's something to talk about. Maybe.
Jake's parents live just outside of downtown. Their house is next to a cemetery, and they have 20 acres of land hidden from the road. Really beautiful. Jake's dad has a huge motorcycle collection, and Jake's mom, a pathologist and a linguist on the side (she's read Lord of the Rings in Dutch) has more books than I do. So many that the floor beneath the shelves was sinking, and the guys had to reinforce it with nails and planks.
After we said our goodbyes, we did a very Asian thing. We went back to Birch Run, the factory outlet, and did some shopping. I found a discontinued Gap perfume I love and bought three bottles. I also bought some rich, sinful fudge. A whole bar of it, which I ate on the drive home to keep myself awake. The highways weren't as fun to drive on as the country lanes. Maybe I'll go back another day with the White Rabbit. Maybe.
It's just a thesis. The work continues but I won't be doing it under the watchful eyes of committed professors and readers. And I'll be doing it elsewhere. Far away. No more winters. No more UPS deliveries. No more solitary drives in the country.
I printed 182 pages (x 3) on Friday afternoon and left the front matter for later. I thought it would be the easiest part to write but I know now that the acknowledgements page is vaguely similar to an Oscar acceptance speech (except I'm not winning any prize) - I wanted to thank every person I knew, but probably forgot a few. What was supposed to be a page turned out to be two pages; so I had to trim it down and thank just the people who've helped me, stayed close, written me (even when I didn't write back), loved me (even when I was grumpy, ugly, and impossible to bear) in the past two years that I've been here.
I've excerpted that page here, seeing as how a few of you might like to know that somewhere in the vaults of the English department at Michigan, there's a thesis bearing your name.
"For their friendship and support, I express my deepest gratitude to Liesel Litzenburger, Boon Hwang Lim, Peiming Lee, Jake Kline, Jia Lim, Noella Yan, Leslie Yeo, Frank Chiou, Kay Zavislak, Simon Lee, Jenny Knowles, Chris and Amy Horvath, Karen Yeo, Barney Pelter, Desiree Lim, Joan Ho, Van Tan, and Heng-Ru May Tan.
I am indebted to the following individuals; their faith has kept me writing. My parents, Jeff and Irene, who passed down to me their love of books, journeys, and dreams. Ke, my brother. My grandparents, Daisy and Richard. Gina Ymasa. Lin Kiat's parents. My sister-in-law, Christine. And Lin Kiat, my best friend, my fellow geek, my husband, who believed my writing was worth losing two years of our married life."
*Today, the 16th of April, is also the death anniversary of my grandmother, who died 17 years ago. My undergraduate thesis (also in the vaults of the English department) was dedicated to her, and its cover shows a studio picture of her as a young girl and her father, my great-grandfather.
Lin Kiat helped me proofread and send that thesis for binding years ago. This was when we were just dating, when I was a nicer person, and when Lin Kiat was driving a beat-up Honda that cost $1000. I have no idea why I'm mentioning these facts, but it's really fun to recall them. After all, it wasn't as fun this time without him to witness me in manic mode.
Update on Lara Croft: there's actually a new game - Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend - on the horizon! And they've recruited the original creator, Toby Gard, as the character designer. I hope they take their time with the product and release it only when it's perfect. They rushed out the last one and disappointed many fans. From the screenshots, it looks as if the new team hired by Eidos, Crystal Dynamics (Core Design lost Lara after the last game), will keep Lara's new spiffy look but also restore her to her treasure-seeking, tomb-raiding days. I can't wait!
Go here for more details.
Funny how I recently complained about the quality of the last game, fearful that it was the demise of Tomb Raider, and then I find out about the new game. Life is good, good, good.
Milou is the sweetest creature and an occasional vicitum of my forgetfulness. I was cleaning her cage and shifted her waterbottle aside so that it hung above the food bowl. Later, I came back and saw that I'd left the bottle above the tray; Milou was in the bowl of nuts and veggies, lying on her back, four legs sticking in the air, and guzzling water from the bottle's feeder. I wish I'd taken a picture of her - she looked like she was on a summer vacation.
I'm a bit of a snob where several of my hobbies/interests are concerned (LK will enthusiastically attest to this). I once met a girl who claimed to be a fan of Lara Croft. I assumed she was referring to the computer version, the original and true Lara Croft. She meant the Angelina-Jolie-movie version. She'd never even played the computer game. Perhaps it was because she seemed all too ready to make known her martial arts knowledge and her penchant for dressing as Lara, that I rolled my eyes to heaven. Poser.
Geeks tend to be protective and perhaps a little territorial about their book or game heroes. You aren't considered a real fan unless you start from the very beginning. You can love the LOTR movies but you should also read the books, know the source. I'm a geek through and through. And the only Lara is the one from the game. Movie Lara - okay, fun to watch, but that's about it. If that girl really wants to emulate Lara Croft, she should play the game - off several baddies, find the treasure, know an Uzi from a Desert Eagle, and kill a tiger in five seconds. Now that's the way to really know and idolize Lara.
But then again, the latest Lara Croft installment isn't the best of games out there. I wish we had old-school Tomb Raider back on the radar.
On Tuesday, I watched, for the first time, House, M.D. on Fox, after American Idol, which my mom is addicted to. Consider it ER meets CSI, though I think it's better than ER. Not sure about CSI since I've never watched it. So Greg House, the lead character is played by Brit Renaissance (a writer, musician, and comedian) man, Hugh Laurie. The character has an illness which makes him limp and gives him reason to pop plenty of painkillers. He's irritable, irritating to those around him, brutally honest, and unable to warm up to anyone. He actually reminds me - a little - of someone. I mean the personality in general, though I'm not sure about the heart, which Laurie's character actually has quite a bit of.
Everyone else is crazy about Desperate Housewives or Lost but strangely enough, I'm not hooked.
I think I'll keep watching House, M.D. though.
Jake - tuba player extraordinaire, mangosteen enthusiast, and friend of all animals - told me to called his dad, a vet with a motorbike collection and who sounds exactly like Jake. He spoke to me over the phone as I held little Milou and felt her leg. The swelling was firm and it didn't seem to hurt her much, and Jake's dad said it's probably a tumor. He offered to take a look at her so I'm driving over to his office this Saturday after I send my thesis for binding.
I've been reading frantically on the net about swells, red legs, hamster illnesses and have made myself more anxious than ever. I calmed down after talking to Jake's dad, knowing that we can at least figure out soon what's wrong with Milou.
These days, I've been thinking of just going home now. LK and I have a list of things we'd like to do when we start married life together (at long last):
1. Cycling at Pulau Ubin
2. Walking to the beach
3. Tennis - playing and buying the gear
4. Test-driving the new Golf GTI
5. Late suppers in Geylang (something I've not had enough of, if at all!)
6. Concerts at Esplanade, Victoria Concert Hall
7. Household-items-shopping
8. Rollerblading
9. Midnight movies
10. Getting a membership card at Kinokuniya
Once we have our new place ready:
1. Putting together our DVD library
2. Cooking for each other (recipe experiments!)
3. Late-night drinks on our roof
4. Marrying our libraries of CDs and books
5. Taking turns to take out the garbage
6. Watering the grass (going to try my hand at bonsai! Dad will be instructor.)
7. Washing the car (and waxing it too)
8. Reading together
9. Watching DVD after DVD till we fall asleep on the sofa
10. Playing computer games (Sims 2! Have put it off long enough.)
I turned in my pages for travel writing, something made possible by waking up at four this morning.
I survived the long, wretched day at school. Then came home to find that my dear small Milou has hurt her leg. It's swollen and there's a clot forming round her leg. I'm not sure what's happened; maybe she sprained her ankle and then it got infected. She must be in some pain; she's stopped running on her wheel and sleeps fitfully. I wish I could do something to make her feel better. Only thing is to bring her to the vet tomorrow.
Decided to turn in my thesis early - will print it out this Friday. Hope I succeed and get it out of the way, and then I can continue writing without worrying about deadlines.
Monoceros' mummy is in town. Good, healthy food at last.
So this is how the wishlist works - someone buys something and Amazon doesn't inform you, the item just disappears off the list. I have so many books on my list that I couldn't figure out which titles LK had purchased. Not a good thing - having so many books on the list!
I've been churning out pages for my travel writing class. One of my essays let me research (and indulge in) my favorite illustrated hero - Tintin. I wrote about the Chateau de Cheverny, a castle in France's Loire Valley, which inspired Herge so much he wrote to the owners, asking if he could use its facade for Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock's home. (It's Moulinsart in French).
Facts:
- Tintin is an investigative reporter, but is seen submitting a story to the newspaper only once in the entire series.
- Current count of Captain Haddock's curses/insults: 220
- Tintin's "uniform": blue sweater, white shirt, plus fours (golfing pants)
I'm interested to discover why Tintin isn't popular in the US when folks everywhere else in the world - Congo, India, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, Italy - know and/or love Tintin. Perhaps the case is similar to Enid Blyton's books, which feature golliwogs (in only a few titles). One of the earlier issues of Tintin, Tintin in Congo, stereotyped the natives in Congo, so that must have been the offending factor. Herge himself confessed that he was ashamed of his early work. The rest of the titles certainly made up for it - Tintin grew and smartened up in books like The Blue Lotus and King Ottokar's Sceptre. The US censors were unforgiving though. Enid Blyton was never published here, but at least you can find Tintin books if you know about them in the first place. When I used the line "Billions of blistering barnacles" in a poetry exercise years ago, only my professor knew its source. He asked if anyone else was familiar with it. Silence, of course. Turns out he'd lived in Switzerland for a time, and he'd bought the books for his children. Maybe someone ought to set up a Tintin club here.
I'll be working on my thesis for the rest of the week. Rest won't come till the weekend. Oh, and grading too. And the usual prep work for teaching. More thoughts later.
Today's poem from The Writer's Alamanac is by David Budbill. I first read David Budbill's poetry six years ago when I was at a New Hampshire camp. (Several of you who know me will have heard me waxing rhapsodic about my time at the New England Literature Program, where I slept in a sleeping bag for 7 weeks, didn't bathe very much, climbed up and down Mount Washington, and did some daring feats in a lake.)
The First Green of Spring
Out walking in the swamp picking cowslip, marsh marigold,
this sweet first green of spring. Now saut?ed in a pan melting
to a deeper green than ever they were alive, this green, this life,
harbinger of things to come. Now we sit at the table munching
on this message from the dawn which says we and the world
are alive again today, and this is the world's birthday. And
even though we know we are growing old, we are dying, we
will never be young again, we also know we're still right here
now, today, and, my oh my! don't these greens taste good.
~ by David Budbill
Remember that little movie The Time Machine starring Guy Pearce and Thandie Newton, directed by H.G. Wells' great-grandson, Simon Wells? Or perhaps it was so small and poorly-reviewed that almost everyone missed it. In the movie, the inventor played by Guy Pearce builds a time machine to return to the past so he can save his fiancee, Emma, from death. But every time he rescues her, she dies in some other manner. If she evades the knife of a robber, she gets run over by a carriage and so on. Alexander Hartdegen, the inventor, keeps going back in time only to see her die over and over again. He finally realizes that he can only change the manner of her death, but not the fate of her death. She just wasn't meant to live.
Well, I kind of feel like Alexander Hartdegen, or is it Emma? Year after year, you keep trying to obtain a result, but then you see at last that the result is beyond you.
It's time for Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy:
"How badly we react to frustration is critically determined by what we think of as normal. We may be frustrated that it is raining, but our familiarity with showers means we are unlikely ever to respond to one with anger. Our frustrations are tempered by what we understand we can expect from the world, by our experience of what it is normal to hope for. We aren't overwhelmed by anger whenever we are denied an object we desire, only when we believe ourselves entitled to obtain it. Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground rules of existence.
We should be more careful. Seneca tried to adjust the scale of our expectations so that we would not bellow so loudly when these were dashed.
We must reconcile ourselves to the necessary imperfectibility of existence.
We will cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful."
I apologize if I can't respond to comments at the moment. You see, I can't seem to access my own blog. When I type in the URL, I get transferred to someone else's blog without even seeing a word of what I've written! Will be back soon.
Two weeks ago, my friend Irene and I went to see Bride and Prejudice. I loved the costumes and watching Aishwarya Rai dance.
Today, I saw Monsoon Wedding, another visual feast of costumes, jewelry, and dancing. I thought the characterization was better in this film. The attraction between Alice, the house-maid, and Dubey, the up-and-coming wedding planner, was sweet, especially with the marigold motif.
The films reminded me of the Indian jewelry I received from my mother-in-law when I got married. She wanted me to choose my own necklace and earrings as a bridal gift, and I was grateful she was open to my selecting jewelry from Little India. They're so much more detailed and colorful than the spare and geometric designs from the larger jewelry chain stores around Singapore.
Even my mom bought a necklace-earring set when we were shopping in Little India two years ago. I'll probably dig them out for the slew of weddings I'll be attending later this year.
It seems fitting that I read Mary Lee Settle's Turkish Reflections 10 years after I made my first trip to Istanbul. Istanbul was also my first entry to Europe. I visited the strange, beautiful city in late November; minarets standing starkly against gray skies and shiny mosaic walls in a public bath did much to leave me feeling transported to another time altogether. Istanbul carries so much of its past alongside its present.
I've been feeling very rushed to complete this book for my presentation. But I wish very much that I could slow down and absorb all the history and legend surrouding Turkey's past. Facts that I didn't know before: Anatolia, a broad peninsula that lies between the Black and Mediterranean seas, refers to Asia Minor or the Asian part of modern Turkey; the origin of the Seljuk Turks is rather - though not completely - separate from that of the Ottomans; Turkey fought often with and retains much tension with Armenia.
The book refers to both Islam and Christianity in the different regions, and mentions the Crusades, another section of history I should learn more of. Seeing as how the blockbuster Kingdom of Heaven opens this summer, I ought to go to the theater knowing the history before being influenced by Hollywood story-weaving. As it is, controversy is already rising.
Less than 100 pages to go. It's a book powerful enough to remind me how much I want to return to Turkey.
I'm going home this August. Goodbye soon to Ann Arbor. It's a little heartbreaking but I knew it would come to this.
As Gandalf put it so wisely, "I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil." Not that I wept though.
And not all farewells are forever.