paranoid android

Unicorns In Our Midst by Janice Tay

brouillards — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:12:33 GMT

WHAT is this life, asked a poet, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? So I've been staring at a beer can. Specifically, a can from Kirin, a major brewery in Japan.

I've been puzzling over its logo of a unicorn - the kirin - ever since a teacher told me that hidden inside is the word itself, written in the katakana script. This version of the kirin owes something to the Chinese unicorn, or the qilin (written with the same characters but pronounced differently). Accounts vary but the qilin is said to have the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, the head of a lion and the hooves of a horse. (Opinion is split over the hooves; some people think they're cloven.)

Covered with green scales, the qilin is nothing like the pearly unicorns of the West.

Its name is a combination of qi, the male unicorn, and lin, the female. It is said that the latter has no horn although this tells you less about the qilin than it does about the people writing about it - and how they feel about females with sharp objects.

That single horn is something the qilin has in common with its Western cousin, which looks more like a horse, albeit one with a goat's beard, lion's tail and split hooves.

The traditional way of catching a unicorn is to use a young woman. The idea is that unicorns are drawn to virgins and, on finding one, will lay their heads in her lap and go to sleep.

Though this manoeuvre is described in mediaeval lore, it tells you less about unicorns than it does about the people writing about them - and how they feel about sleeping in virgins' laps.

It is actually not that hard to catch a unicorn. Hunters will tell you different, of course, but they have reasons of their own for doing so, reasons that have mostly to do with their lack of a pension and medical benefits.

It is true that unicorns have horns (yes, yes, even the female ones) but they rarely use them for defence.

So why have so few unicorns been captured, so few that most doubt they even exist? It is simple: They are not caught because they are not seen. Not invisible, just unnoticed.

Not possible, you say? Not possible for a creature at least as big as a deer, with a horn sticking out of its head, which may or may not look like a lion's, to be ignored?

If you ask Joshua Bell, he may say otherwise. One weekday morning in 2007, the award-winning violinist busked for 43 minutes in a busy Washington subway station.

His performance was organised by The Washington Post as an experiment in perception, priorities and public taste: 'In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?'

For the seven commuters who stopped to watch for at least a minute, it did. But for the rest - more than a thousand people - Bell and his Stradivari violin were either invisible or a nuisance competing with their mobile phones and iPods.

He made US$32.17 (S$48.50), not counting the US$20 given by the one person who recognised him. A bit of a comedown for a performer who can command as much as US$1,000 a minute.

But when he watched the video of the experiment - it was taped secretly - just one thing puzzled him. Not the fact that he didn't draw a crowd because people were, after all, rushing to work.

What stumped him was 'the number of people who don't pay attention at all, as if I'm invisible. Because, you know what? I'm makin' a lot of noise!'

Any unicorns present would not have been surprised. They know the human capacity to turn blind and deaf; they depend on it.

This capacity is honed as we grow older - as children, we are wide open. The tape of Bell's performance shows that all the youngsters who went past tried to stop and watch. And that all of them were hurried away by their parents.

You could argue that this is just how children are and they would have done the same thing if it'd been a beginner on the bongo drums rather than a violin virtuoso.

Even so, there's something to be said about a worldview that has time for both.

This is the real reason why virgins came to be used as unicorn bait. All the hunters needed was somebody who could still see things as they were. This usually meant someone young enough to spot any passing unicorns and point them out to the hunters. Virginity was just incidental - more to do with virginal perception than sexual inexperience.

The difference between seeing as a child and as an adult is time: You know that you're growing up when you feel like you never have any. So from the world that has robbed you of leisure, you withhold vision, hoarding your attention.

This seems all the more necessary in cities, where sounds and pictures rush in like harpies that claw out your eyes and scream at you till you are deaf.

In self-defence, we blinker ourselves with tiny screens and stop up our ears with headphones.

But if we can teach ourselves not to see, we can teach ourselves to see.

I've been practising with a can of Kirin beer though you can start with something closer to hand.

You may, for instance, know someone who's a little distant, a little unworldly, a little odd. And if you learn to see what's there instead of seeing only what you expect to see, you may find that you've known a unicorn all along.

What happens next is up to you. But at least one expert suggests that it would not be tactful to mention virgins.

(taken from the straits times jan 24 2009)

An unexpectedly sweet, snarky twist on the ageless call to smell the roses. I love the imagery, the cross-cultural references. And I think I've found a favourite local columnist.

cheryl posts at tumblr yo!

brouillards — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:46:30 GMT

Hello! I check LJ now and then, but I post mostly at http://aubergines.tumblr.com.

Huggles.

singaporeans call it PEEAHHNO

brouillards — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:45:46 GMT

DEAR LORD.

I loved that last exam piece. Which I envisioned as ending with something Pompous and Grand and Awesomely Impressive. so i went through all the motions very nicely, and was just about unknotting all my nerves for the grand finale--only to play it one semitone off.

i was crushed! but my examiner SNIGGERED! i wheeled around as best as one could on a piano seat to face her. THE CHEEK. i was suffering.

Probably trying to reassure me, she told me she would only have sniggered if I'd played ok leading up to the ERREUR ENORME, told me to redo the last line, and then gave me the simplest sight reading piece known to man: in 2/2 time and in c major. SOME MORE AH. had no killer sharps/flat combos and a boring melodic range and straightforward dynamics.

LIDDAT WHERE GOT GRADE 8 STANDARD, YOU ASK? SURELY SOME SYNCOPATION? PEDALLING? FANCY ARTICULATION? SOMETHING?

but no! no complicated counting or foot-tapping was required! I nearly keeled over in relief!

NOW I CAN LISTEN TO RAP! MUSIC! WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY WHEEEE.

---

Reading french wikipedia so that I don't drown in jargon tomorrow in french. My brain feels more shrivelled than ever before ):

mindfucked!

brouillards — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:16:17 GMT

I can't believe that this subculture has always existed in RGS!

(OHHH my innocence at the ways of the world. But really that's just a nice way of saying that I've been completely utterly unashamedly oblivious to so much subtlety over four years.....)

Well thank you RJ. My eyes are now wide open.

PIANO EXAM TMR. Coincidentally, I've magically lost the last dregs of any sight-reading ability I might have possessed. I checked about 4 minutes ago. I am so dead.

woah: supermodels and sports stars

brouillards — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:33:20 GMT

zomg wow

brouillards — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:41:43 GMT

i have just slept for 12 hours, and now feel exceedingly smug and refreshed.

RCLF was a BLAST. It could've just been something really sian and frustrating if my facilitation skiilzz and/or laptop broke down, and if the participants belonged to the caste of Dead Fishes as a primary school teacher used to say. But there was my fellow sig leader, the totally random but sorely needed subcomm person who turned out to be a rad facilitator, and last but not least the participants themselves were more or less forthcoming with ideas and solutions.

I think i hit a slump halfway through, just felt so EXHAUSTED and UNREDEEMED and ECLIPSED and LIFE HAS NO MEANINGed. but thanks to a bunch of factors and people, i hauled myself out of the whole UGHHHHH TAKE ME OUT mood. (the vast quantities of water and cream puffs were also highly helpful.)

on a less perky side, I HAVE SO MUCH HOMEWORK LEFT TO DO after basically signing away the first half of my march hols.

there's going to be an *~informal gathering~* of sorts later today with people from comadv, and it appears that i am to be one of the highlights of the programme. we'll see how it goes.

feeling sour and itchy (or love me hate me KILL ME NOW)

brouillards — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:54:00 GMT

it's 11:45PM now, and i've just had my first bath in SEVENTEEN hours, after spending the entire day in school. not that it wasn't fun, i binged on fried things and water, took very many unflattering photos of other people (three of my favourite things in life), and the discussions were actually productive.

just that the long hours spent desiccating in air conditioning take a terrible toll on my skin, which decides that the best course of action to cope is to SPROUT, in a volcanic fashion, PIMPLES AND MORE PIMPLES. not just the odd isolated pimple either, this lethal combination of STRESS and LACK OF SLEEP and TOO MUCH AIR CON produce veritable ASTEROID BELTS of pimples spanning entire strips of my face.

today alone i refilled my 500ml oolong tea bottle more than 12 times.

tomorrow is the culmination of four days' of discussion on the participants' part; and several weeks of frantic planning on our part. there will be an although-five-minute-long-but-harrowing-sounding presentation to bigwigs of all sorts in LT1. yes, lt1. that ginormous cavern-like MONSTER of a lecture theatre.

i'm simply hoping that

i don't speak too quickly
the invited guests don't keel over from the sheer proximity of my awesomely pernicious pimples

i'm so tired. i hope i haven't let down people too badly. i always tend to do that when i'm too tired. i don't mean it but the consequences always tend, equally, to be damaging and far-reaching. it is depressing. i want cocaine. or red bull.

god help me i've got to wake up at 6 tomorrow! ):

ETA: apparently some dude in acs (i) committed suicide on valentine's day. old news but whatever. his name was tan wenyi. and then in time magazine or newsweek or whatever, got a rash of youth suicides in wales too, apparently all by internet acquaintances. damn scary.

i'm going to bed, i have lots to think about.

yesterday i dreamed about drowning. in a flood. absently. peacefully. absurdly. and woke up feeling confused.

post-disastrous-french-contrôle emoness

brouillards — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:40:59 GMT

i feel so displaced

im extra everywhere: old class new class sec 1/2 classmates sec 3/4 classmates france singapore malaysia crashing ogs crashing ccas crashing tutorials crashing lectures but never actually belonging anywhere

secretly a knotted up ball of insecurity but i try not to let it show

i wonder if i come across as needy? :-X

mosaic music festival!

brouillards — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:24:55 GMT

aaaaaah aaaah ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh omg omg omg!

THE ROOTS ARE COMING TO SINGAPORE!

how awesome is that?

from wikipedia: The Roots, also known as The Legendary Roots Crew, The Fifth Dynasty, The Square Roots and The Foundation, are an influential, Grammy winning hip hop group based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, famed for a heavily jazzy sound and live instrumentation. Inspired by the "hip-hop band" concept pioneered by Stetsasonic, the Roots themselves have garnered critical acclaim and influenced later hip-hop and R&B acts.

JUST THINK, I'LL BE ATTENDING MY FIRST EVA RAP CONCERT!!!!

oh i am such a shameless fangirl.

2008 in 15 mins' time!

brouillards — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:50:44 GMT

New Year's Resolutions

join (a) cca(s) i actually like (and ignore my dad's opinions on the matter)

practise more piano!
get a distinction

learn to ride a bicycle without swerving or screaming too often

spend less time on msn/gaming/watching movies
spend more time sleeping

be more organized
live not amongst haphazard piles of worksheets and post-its on your desk

be less antisocial:
help out
do things!
but waste not precious time trying to *~communicate~* with reticent and hostile family members
ignore my slob of a sister

learn well from 2007!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

kanye: a dope ass beat

brouillards — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:40:01 GMT

Kanye West on 60 Minutes demonstrating how to make your basic Dope Ass Beat, with bemused old interviewer bopping head and requesting clarification of the utterance "dope ass beat".

HAHAHA I crashed Farewell Alma Mater! For only 45 mins or so though, I got bored because all the interesting people must've been in hiding or something, i couldn't find them ):

and HOHOHO, I be leavin' for LA FRANCE in FOUR DAYS! :D

damn you, body clock

brouillards — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:15:00 GMT

I got up at around four twenty today!
Wandered for a bit, tried to get back to sleep but unsuccessful.
A spot of lime juice chugging, then the call of youtube proved irresistible.

Have learned how to play Candy Shop (50 Cent), Many Men (50 Cent), Hey Jude (Beatles), Stronger (Kanye West), Tokyo Drift (Teriyaki Boyz), Heard 'Em Say (Kanye West), and Cupid's Chokehold (Gym Class Heroes) on the piano and cannot help but feel extremely silly.

Nevertheless, now attempting to transcribe Ayo Technology by ear. It is HARD. Youtube provides no answers. )':

Seven clues that 'Potter's' Dumbledore was gay

brouillards — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:46:16 GMT

"Albus Dumbledore" is an anagram of "Male bods rule, bud!"
By Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 23, 2007

The Potter-verse was thrown for a loop when author J.K. Rowling announced she had always imagined one of the main characters in the "Harry Potter" series -- Albus Dumbledore -- to be gay.

Even the most diligent "Harry Potter" scholars found themselves caught unaware. But could anyone have seen this coming? Did Rowling leave any clues in the book?

To find out we called Andrew Slack, head of the Harry Potter Alliance, an organization that uses online organizing to mobilize more than 100,000 Harry Potter fans around social justice issues, drawing on parallels from the book. Slack is incredibly fluent in "Potter" textual analysis, and we knew that if anyone could predict Rowling's curveball, it would be him.

Speaking from his home in Boston, Slack said he hadn't guessed that Dumbledore was gay, but in hindsight, he was able to point to specific character traits of the Hogwarts headmaster that might have indicated his sexual orientation.

Below he tells us seven textual clues that Dumbledore was gay.

1. His pet. "Fawkes, the many-colored phoenix, is 'flaming.'"

2. His name. "While the anagram to 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' is 'I am Lord Voldemort,' as my good friend pointed out, 'Albus Dumbledore' becomes 'Male bods rule, bud!'"

3. His fashion sense. "Whether it's his 'purple cloak and high-heeled boots,' a 'flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet,' a flowered bonnet at Christmas or his fascination with knitting patterns, Dumbledore defies the fashion standards of normative masculinity and, of course, this gives him a flair like no other. It's no wonder that even the uppity portrait of former headmaster Phineas Nigellus announced, 'You cannot deny he's got style.'"

4. His sensitivity. "Leaders like Cornelius Fudge, Rufus Scrimgeour and Dolores Umbridge (yes, even a woman) who are limited by the standards of normative masculinity could not fully embrace where Voldemort was weakest: in his capacity to love. Dumbledore understood that it's tougher to be vulnerable, to express one's feelings, and that one's undying love for friends and for life itself is a more powerful weapon than fear. Even his most selfish moments in pursuing the Deathly Hallows were motivated either by his feelings for Grindelwald or his wish to apologize to his late sister."

5. His openness. "After she outed Dumbledore, Rowling said that she viewed the whole series as a prolonged treatise on tolerance. Dumbledore is the personification of this. Like the LGBT community that has time and again used its own oppression to fight for the equality of others, Dumbledore was a champion for the rights of werewolves, giants, house elves, muggle-borns, centaurs, merpeople -- even alternative marriage. When it came time to decide whether the marriage between Lupin the werewolf and Tonks the full-blooded witch could be considered natural, Professor Minerva McGonagall said, 'Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world.'"

6. His historical parallel. "If Dumbledore were like any one in history, it would have to be Leonardo DaVinci. They both were considered eccentric geniuses ('He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes'); both added a great deal to our body of knowledge (after all, Dumbledore did discover the 12 uses of dragon's blood!); both were solitary, both were considered warm, loving and incredibly calm; both dwelt in mysterious mystical realms; both spent a lot of time with their journals (Leonardo wrote his backwards while Dumbledore was constantly diving into his pensieve); both even had long hair! And, of course, a popular thought among many scholars is that the maestro Leonardo was gay."

7. The fact that so few of us realized he was gay. "No matter how many 'clues' I can put down that Dumbledore was gay, no matter how many millions of people have read these books again and again, Rowling surprised even the most die-hard fans with the announcement that Dumbledore was gay. And in the end, the fact that we never would have guessed is what makes Dumbledore being gay so real. So many times I have encountered friends who are gay that I never would have predicted. It has shown me that one's sexual orientation is not some obvious 'lifestyle choice,' it's a precious facet of our multi-faceted personalities. And in the end whatever the differences between our personalities are, it is time that our world heeds Dumbledore's advice: 'Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.' Today as I write this, I believe that it's time for our aims to be loyal to what the greatest wizard in the world would have wanted them to be: love."

tralala

MORE DISTURBINGLY, why are so many of my obsessions (e.g. Royston Tan, Harry Potter, random actors/direcors/bloggers) turning out to have gay-related tangents???????

while i'm not a homophobe, i'm not exactly a gay activist or anything...but now i look like one specializing in entertainment and media forms.... -_______-

s’pore cinema's wonderboy royston tan to make gay film

brouillards — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:25:22 GMT

or: in which I expose myself to be a shameless royston tan fangirl.

æ: Do you have a lot female and gay fans?

Royston: I do have a group of female fans who cut out any article in the papers or magazines they find on me and post it on their websites. Once I was in a swimming pool and one of them snapped me in my swimming trunks using her handphone. The picture then got circulated on the Net. So paiseh (meaning embarrassing in Hokkien)! I don't know about gay men. If they like me, they never tell me.

æ: Actually, I know a few gay men who think you're cute. One of them says you have the face of a manga (Japanese comic) hero.

Royston: Really? Hmm...

æ: Yeah, really... Anyway, in your new film 4:30, the boy becomes so obsessed with the older man that he breaks into the latter's room and collects his stray pubic hair. What was the craziest thing you ever did for someone you were obsessed with?

Royston: In my Temasek Poly days, I was crazy about someone whom I'll call X. X had everything - face, body, popularity, clothes. X also had a favorite shirt that would be worn every week. So on our graduation day, I stole X's shirt when X was drunk. X went totally berserk, had a complete mental breakdown. For many years, I kept the shirt that had the smell of X. Then one day, my domestic helper accidentally washed it. I was so angry. The whole incident became the inspiration for my short film called Jesses, which is included in my collection of short films on DVD. (Called Royston's Shorts, the DVD is on sale at good music and bookstores.)

æ: Maybe I should shoplift in Prada on the pretext I'll make films about the brand. Are there things about you that the public misunderstands?

Royston: A lot of people seem to think that I'm arrogant. When I don't smile, I can look quite fierce because my eyebrows are so bushy. Whenever I go clubbing, no one really makes a pass at me because they think I'm proud. But really, when you get to know me, you'll realise that I'm very down-to-earth...

æ: People also think that you're a magnet for controversy...

Royston: I don't go out of my way to attract controversy, but when the censors insisted on so many cuts in 15, I had to fight back. They bit me, so I had to bite back. But I think I do it more out of self-defence. I really am a simple guy.

æ: How do you stay sane and grounded, considering that your life has changed so much since the debut of 15 in 2003?

Royston: Well, for one thing, I try to avoid the glamorous events that I normally get invited to. I prefer to spend my time at coffee shops talking to uncles and aunties. They have a lot to say about people and life.

I also give free crash courses in filmmaking at neighborhood schools. Usually, I ask the principal to assemble 20 of the naughtiest kids, and I'll teach them to appreciate mood and colors in images. At the end of the course, we'll shoot a film together.

æ: That's very inspirational. Has Hollywood or Hong Kong come a-knocking?

Royston: Brad Pitt's production company Plan B has approached me, and Andy Lau's company also approached me to make a film under its First Cuts showcase. We're in discussion over possibility of me collaborating with Karen Mok. But Karen, as you can imagine, is busy so we have to look into her schedule first.

æ: A few final questions: Who or what turns you on?

Royston: Someone who is comfortable in his own skin.

æ: What's the most important thing in a relationship?

Royston: The ability to forgive your partner's transgressions, even if he or she cheats on you. The ability to still believe in the relationship when it's going through a rough patch. We're only human.

æ: Your biggest fantasy?

Royston: That I was married into the Thai royal family, so that on my wedding day, I would ride on a white elephant accompanied by a thousand maidens and there'd be fireworks in the night sky.

æ: Your biggest guilty pleasure?

Royston: I love Hokkien mee (noodles) with lots of pork lard. When I'm very stressed out, I tell the uncle, "Uncle, extra pork lard, pleeeeaase!"

Well, Fridae certainly hopes you'll be eating Hokkien mee with extra pork lard and Karen Mok next to you someday.

4:30 is showing in the cinemas. Royston's Shorts DVD is on sale at HMV, Kinokuniya, Gramophone and other good book and music stores

<3!

~*~*~*~*~*~reflectionz~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Royston tan is so crafty.

To RI he brought Mindee and Yann Yann, the very alluring 881 sisters, and proceeded to snog Mindee a thousand swooning fanboys' delight/chagrin/fascination.

To RGS he toted a male chinesey singer-songwriter type to serenade the girls, as well as a cheeky self-proclaimed Ah Beng, more generally known as Eric Khoo, grand high producer of the amazing soundtrack. For maximum effect, royston tan ensured that he wore a saucy pair of underpants, which he took care to flash several times at the enraptured (or in the case of the teachers, more than a little scandalized) audience, under the pretext of gesturing wildly to illustrate his point.

I AM IMPRESSED!