Rain is coming

It's past midnight and I lie here in bed, not sleeping yet,
drowsily drinking in the sounds of this city that never sleeps, only rests.
There's a faint purring of a generator somewhere near, but far away enough.
Cars go by in the night, their wild hoots echoing emptily around the construction site,
deserted and forlorn in the darkness.
The wooden blinds rattle suddenly against the open window frame as a gust of wind slips through, surprisingly chilly on my bare, humid-sticky skin.

Rain is coming.
I can smell it, scentless, the welcome moisture driving away a week's worth
of dust and dreariness.
I can feel it, formless, the saltiness of cool viscid air spilling through the openings into this undisturbed space.

I lie on my side, shoulder and hip sinking into the firm yielding of the mattress beneath, limbs draped around a bunched-up duvet like a bolster, a lover.

Around my face, tendrils of hair stir faintly in the milky darkness. I start
as the blinds clatter again, insistently this time, and
for a brief moment in the splintered silence it sounds like someone trying to climb in.

And then she comes, stealthily at first like a car sweeping past in the distance, and then
steadily, steadily, melding with the humming of the generator,
drowning out the sounds of the world outside.

I slip into a dreamless, watery sleep.

Fugue

I'm sitting here lazily surfing the web, when suddenly a new window pops up, and it's you. It's been such a long time, but now when we talk, it's like all those years and all that water under the bridge has melted away.

How are you? What have you been doing? We skip those formalities, launching right in as if resuming a conversation from years ago without a break.

Over the past months, I looked at your photos on Facebook. You in your creamy, satiny wedding dress, serene next to the proud hubby, and I start dreaming of my own. Your unmarked skin slowly stretching under the expanding belly, and I remember those carefree weekends playing in the sunlight garden, when you used to wear those cut-off tees and low-slung jeans, baring your taut tawny midriff when I was still graduating from my uncool, awkward pre-teen years. I always wished I could be like you, inimitably sexy in your calculated insouciance, the embodiment of teenage rebellion to this impressionable bookworm desperately seeking her own niche.

You tell me of a concert you went to the other day, the orchestra from our old school. I start reminiscing about the old days, the old people, and then I remember. Of course, I'd forgotten you were never in the orchestra. Funny how our memories of a place and time merge into each other. But those two years, they were so full, and rarely a day passed where did we not see each other, talk to each other, that it really doesn't matter whether or not you were in the orchestra.

We gossip a little about old friends. They still use the ancient photos from our times on the school website and brochures, those fading moments of our extreme youth frozen for the world to see. I remember you were on one of those glossy leaves, caught unawares and pensive, a surprisingly content look on your face that we didn't use to see too often back then. I saw you in that beautiful photo even before I saw you in real life. I'm glad to see you with that same peaceful expression in all your photos now.

We talk a little about your little boy, the pregnancy. I'm so curious, wanting to know everything, wanting it to be like that time long ago when our lives were so closely intertwined that we knew so many things about what happened during our day, our week. You seem happy enough to tell me, offer up information, but really, how much am I allowed to ask before it's considered over-inquisitive? I'm so glad for you, that you've finally found something to anchor you down in life, that gives you the joy and stability you've wandered so far and long in search for. I look at the photos of the life you've given birth to, that sweet sleepy smile, and I start hankering for one of my own.

You ask me when I'll be coming to visit. I wonder how much of me you have remembered, how much of me you will recognise. In the photos, you look like a slightly older, contented, mellowed version, but otherwise the same you from the old days. I bloomed years after you did, ditched the glasses, grew out the hair, gained the curves and confidence of today. Perhaps you were early, perhaps I am late. Would you recognise me now, if we passed each other on a busy street?

If we could've known, those handful of years ago, the dramatic turns our lives would take away from each other, would we still have done anything differently?

And then it's the end of our conversation. Your laptop's running out of battery, you're sleepy, and you say, long day.. years ahead.

And I suddenly realise... yes, you're absolutely right. Indeed, only a short span of time has passed since we parted ways, and we still have long years ahead of us to catch up with each other.

古典音乐

和流行音乐比起来，我更喜欢西方古典音乐，为什么呢？

基本上，流行音乐太简单了 － 很多现代作曲家只需要作曲一些简单的旋律，加上流行的节奏，这就是算已经写完了一首四五分钟的流行歌。虽然每节的歌词不同，但基本上每节的旋律通常是一抹一样的。 结果呢，流行音乐首先一听了几遍就听腻了。第二，很多歌曲是相同的结构的，因此很多歌都听起来很相似。第三，大多数的流行音乐都是关于爱情的，比如说，迷上了一个人，或者跟男女朋友分手。一真天只听关于爱情的幸福和痛苦，不觉得枯燥吗？而且，许多流行歌很容易过时，这就是说，它们显然都不是作曲质量好的音乐。

很多人错误地认为古典音乐是阳春白雪的艺术。古典音乐显得很抽象和难懂，但是我觉得这是因为这些人被吓坏了，所以不敢试一试。说实话，我们在每天的生活中会遇到一些古典式的音乐，例如电影，电视剧，广告，宾馆大厅里的背景音乐通常是古典音乐。

古典音乐的旋律和其他的要素都比流行音乐的复杂得多，所以全部的音乐实在能更好地表达人们的思想和感情。我们的推动力和反应都是很复杂，因此深奥的古典音乐能真实深深地打动我们的心。我很少听一首流行歌感动得哭起来，但有很多次听古典音乐的时候不知不觉地流着眼泪。此外，我一生听过最刺激，恐怖，生动和希奇古怪的音乐都是古典音乐。

在另外一方面下，我自从七岁以来在不同的音乐学院学会音乐理解和理论，而且靠着我弹钢琴和拉大提琴的能力在各种音乐会中表演了很多年。这对我说是一些非常宝贵的经验和记忆。我永远不会忘记这些表演过的歌曲，而且肯定继续支持古典音乐。因为如果没有遇到古典音乐的话，我就没机会欣赏那么优美的音乐，而且不会认识那么多和气和热情的好朋友。

总而言之，我觉得古典音乐是个高雅和强烈激情的艺术。

Servicing Service

When I first moved into my flat, I got to know that the previous occupant was an American who went back to the US in December. I didn't enquire too much of landlady's dealings with him, as he had left the flat in a clean and tidy shape, even leaving some household cleaning items that I could use.

Within a few days, I started getting calls to my landline, asking for some Fast Global Supplier company. After a while, it became clear that not only were these people not getting the wrong number, or that the telephone lines had crossed, but my number was actually the published contact on the Fast Global Supplier website, for their China Shanghai branch. One of their prospective clients was actually kind enough to email them notifying them of the invalidity of the number, and on top of that, phoning back to tell me he had done so.

So I Googled my own number. And came across their website. Filled in a contact form, and wrote them a beautifully polite request:

Hello, I'm the current resident of the apartment that is listed as your China Shanghai Branch. I'd like to remind you that your previous manager here in Shanghai has already returned to the States in December. Please remove my address and telephone number from your website listings as I have been getting a lot of mail and telephone calls looking for your company. Many thanks.

It's two days before I get a reply, wonderfully concise and pithy:

This number is all over the website. It is hard to remove this number. You must cancel this number or change to a different number with your phone company.

Can't say they left me with much choice but to reply thus:

Your company obviously thinks it is harder to remove a number from a website than for a foreigner to request for a change of telephone numbers in China. Please be aware, then, that whenever any of your prospective clients telephone my number, it is within my complete power and discretion to say what I wish about your company. Imagine what kind of image and reputation you are projecting, if your clients found out that your company was so lax about providing up-do-date information on your website. Also, you will be interested to note that I have been getting on average one phone call a day. That adds up to a considerable amount of clients, current and prospective. Current clients can become ex-clients, and prospective clients may remain forever prospective. Remember, word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool. Have a nice day.

How would you have dealt with the matter?

Made in the big U.S. of A.

What is everywhere, on everybody's minds, instrumental in affecting the quality of of people all around the world, and Made in America?

Why, our current 经济危机 dung heap, of course.

Now that their once free-flowing coffers are bust and they are effectively living on borrowed time and money, the greedy, grasping eyes of the West turn to China and its $2 trillion of foreign reserves, like Bilbo's beleaguered dwarves slinking towards the Lonely Mountain and the dragon Smaug with his stupendous treasure trove and jewel-encrusted hide. Of course, the supreme irony of the situation is that just like how the denizens of Middle-Earth shunned Lonely Mountain for its desolate landscape and fearsome inhabitant, the West once sneered at China's primitive, unwieldy financial systems. Even now many Westerners and Western-centric Asians still look contemptuously at anything Chinese, disparaging them for being nothing more than just... Chinese. Now it is this backwardness inherent in many fledgling nations that have protected them from cutting edge folly.

All this, because of Greed, and that wonderful cornerstone of Western civilisation called Individual Rights. With a constitution that places individual rights and individual freedom above all else, the USA sold to the rest of the world that paragon of Western capitalism, the American Dream. And because humans are by nature greedy and selfish, that evocative call of the American Dream, complete with hot apple pies sitting in picturesque houses with white picket fences, became too seductive for many people to ignore. With the droves of people settling down in America over the decades, so grew the public conviction that everything belongs to them by right, and if they haven't got something, well, they could just sue somebody for it. With the intense drive to own everything that your neighbour has and more, the American household became the main source of capital for the US economy.

Think Singaporeans are the ultimate kiasu people? Think again.

So all was hale and hearty until 1999, when the American household quietly upturned from being lenders to borrowers, and foreign capital became the only source of money for the USA. But even so, this was all rather hush-hush, and with the distraction of Sept. 11 and Iraq, nobody really paid attention to the fact that the whole of America was starting to survive solely on credit.

But even so, the greed and covetousness kept on escalating into the 21st century, and even though foreign investors were silently buying up low-risk investments and American debt, the influx of capital and borrowed affluence were not enough. Hotshot bankers and financiers who knew too much for their own good but not enough for everybody else's good started playing around with their magic numbers and spreadsheets so that everybody could get their American Dream for a dollar, minus the fine print of course. And because no sane foreign investor was willing to pick up the high-risk investments, they swapped dicey financial products amongst themselves like a game of high-stakes mahjong, where everybody picks up someone else's unwanted stuff until the whole system is interreliant and there's no more accountability.

And we all know what happened after that.

2008 has been the worst year to graduate in so far, and 2009 might turn out even worse. From a solid track record all the way until university, and a formerly bright future wherever I chose to go, I'm now saddled with no substantial work experience and unemployment rates soaring higher and faster than the Burj Dubai everywhere I go. This was supposed to be a year where a management graduate from one the world's top business schools could pick and choose and negotiate any job she wanted, and all I'm left with is mounting debt and new furrows on my forehead and that perpetual sinking feeling in my solar plexus that I'm sure most of you enjoy too. And statistics have shown time and again that people who graduate into a downturn do distinctively worse over their entire lifetime than their peers who graduate when the economy is stable.

Why such bitterness, you ask?

Well, when one really takes a step back and looks at the overall picture, there seems to be pointed lack of anger and blame in the world towards the USA for ruining everybody's lives for at least a few years. Indeed, the USA has indirectly caused people to die who otherwise wouldn't have, had this crisis never come about. Whereas when the rest of the world does something the US doesn't agree with, there's a massive outcry, a public upheaval, and the US will use all its financial leverage and political clout to get its way. The US has always appointed herself upholder of the world's ethics and morals precisely and only when it suits her, insisting that other nations apologise when they appear to slight the US or contravene with her so-called values. But now when the shit has hit the fan, and we all know where the shit came from, the culprit escapes blame once again.

Japan's humiliating defeat at the end of WWII left an indelible stain on the national psyche of the Japanese that has lasted until this day. Their contrition at having caused such a global catastrophe is etched forever within their society's subconsciousness and manifested in their taking extreme responsibility for mistakes large, small, and imagined, and a rigid unwillingness to inconvenience anybody.

Japan has her honour, and because of her greed for territory more than half a century ago, Japan and the Japanese are still apologising to this day.

America has no honour, and not a single American has apologised. Will it take half a century for America, once the golden land of opportunity, to say sorry?

Shanghai Crib

So, it's been just over a month since I moved into my Shanghainese home sweet home. It's in a sizeable gated community called "锦苑" ( Jin3 Yuan4 roughly translates into "Brocade Park"), which maintains a rather prestigious-sounding epithet of "文明小区" ie "Model Quarter", presumably awarded by the Shanghai municipal council for err.. being a model example of a housing community.

I'm at the 56th block which indicates I have to (yes, you guessed it) walk rather far from the entrance to actually reach the block. The good thing is it is relatively quiet in my corner, and less polluted. Less dusty = less housework to do! Anyway it's 6 flights of stairs for me everyday, resulting in some nice toned thighs and bum. After months of inactivity due to my foot surgery, my posterior looked more like a deflated water balloon than a grope-worthy ass, but with having to climb those stairs at least once a day, I am now the relieved owner of une derriere par excellence. Hehe.

So here are some photos of my flat, taken after some frantic cleaning up and surreptitious chucking of clothes into the cupboards. They'll have to do for now until I bother to actually take some better angle-adjusted ones.

The central dining room area, first thing you see when you step in through the front door. Basically there are 2 doors on either side. On the left, the nearest door is to the kitchen, the farthest one to the bathroom. On the right, the first door to the sitting room, the second to the bedroom.
Better angle of the furnishings and bathroom door.
From left: front door, kitchen, bathroom.
Small drawer and water dispenser on the left.
This one's taken standing in the bathroom. You can see the doors leading to the bedroom on the left and sitting room on the right.
Kitchen from the outside. Having a convention cooker at home, it's been simply years since I last used a gas stove.
And from within. Rather sparsely furnished thanks to my incredibly generous landlady, who couldn't even bother to provide a microwave oven. She said the microwave would be too heavy for her to carry. And obviously she thinks it wouldn't be a problem for me, heh.
Bathroom, with toilet, washing machine, shower and sink. According to TingTing, this is considered quite sizeable for Shanghainese standards.
Sitting room. I'm currently living entirely in here at the moment, with the sofabed opened up. When I first moved in it was still pretty cold and this was the room with the best heating.
From another angle. It can be a bit of a squeeze getting in between the bed and TV, but when you're my size, small is nothing.
Closed balcony, great light for studying by during daytime.
Bedroom, uninhabited at the moment. Note the spare mattress leaning against the wall.
You can't see it, but there's plenty of wardrobe space for clothes. =D

In short, this space is my home away from home until August. With most of my day spent at ACLS, most of my time in here is taken up with doing homework and sleep. Kinda seems a waste of space and rental when the flat could easily accommodate another person. In comparison with some of the cupboards I lived out of during boarding school, this is like a mansion! Heehee.. actually boarding school wasn't that bad. Anyway when the weather is a bit more accommodating I will take the camera out and get some photos of the main entrance, and the downright ugly housing buildings here in Shanghai.

On another note, now that Spring is creeping in, some residents here have taken to walking their little trophy dogs in the mornings. So far on the way to ACLS I've seen: a Pomeranian with a massive fluffy winter coat, a pair of grizzled Schnauzers looking very much like Tramp from Lady and the Tramp, another large brown dog, and cutest little terrier puppy with a pink ponytail! Oh man, how I miss Muffin. Mum, if you dare give her away before I get back to KL, I shall be eternally upset with you! And never cook for you again, ha!

Muffin says, see, I have my own crib too!
Says, because you see, she's much too refined and proper to actually bark that.

Shanghaied into Shanghai

I woke up this morning to a faint sound, something I must've heard dozens of times before, but rather bizarre and baffling in this setting of thousands of Shanghainese crammed into their sardine tin apartment blocks.

It was a cockerel, crowing lustily into the dazzling sunshine of a crisp Shanghainese morning.

I guess someone's having some rather good chicken soup for dinner this week.

So anyway I get out of bed, and it is the most gorgeous, brilliant spring day since I arrived in the midst of bleak and dreary post-CNY Shanghai. Birds everywhere are crooning the spring buds into waking, the city is rubbing its sleep-heavy eyelids, and that cockerel is loud enough to raise up anyone and anything still in hibernation, including my photography bug. Outside, the sudden proliferation of pink, white, and red blossoms infuse the lanes and paths and spaces with an invisible mist of exultation. The sunlight glistens off every surface as the city shrugs off its winter mantle, and the very air is evocative of magic and the promise of life.

After the initial weeks of settling-in stress, homesickness, loneliness, acclimatising, and cold, it is transcendent moments like this that make all that difficulty and discomfort so worthwhile.

La dolce vita, entirely in Chinese of course.