Okay, so in full delayed reaction, JPL is coming back.
I'm reading Hwee Hwee Tan's Foreign Bodies now, for the sake of not behaving condescendingly towards local fiction. It's not too bad, for once not about the industralization and generation gaps. This lament about Singapore was laced with tried-and-tested-whining:
"... the banality of this country is due to the authoritie' desire to replace excitement with efficiency, passion and punctuality - their ability to turn everything into boredom."
Yet speech patterns, voiced, were quite eerily familiar:
'"Hey, you know what? Yesterday somebody in my building got murdered." I jumped and clapped my hands. "Excitement."'
We celebrated Gen and Jie Qi's birthday on Thursday, at Scotts' food court and Haagan Dazs. Eating Bailey's ice-cream, I spotted another table ordering a most fascinating dessert. Fondue, dessert-style - cubes of chocolate and strawberry ice-cream, with Brazilian liquid chocolate for dip, served in a pot over a flame to keep it delicately warm! Ingeniously upping the luxury quotient, it was one slick piece of packaging. With a pang I remembered sharing that four-scoop sundae with Mel, Han and Pamela, going to Mel's aunt's house after that and sitting on the floor surrounded by a mass of bags, beds and freezing my bum while listening to Han's trying to fit a long tale into 15 minutes.
Everybody, watch Big Fish. It's THE big one. Shall say no more. FLOURISH WITH FICTION!
I think my mum doesn't tell me a lot of things, because she thinks I won't understand them. Although, quite honestly, nothing seems to surprise me anymore. Issues are non-issues. When she was seven, and living in Hongkong at that time, she got it into her head to go to the market and buy groceries (mai cai). So her mum gives her some money and off she goes, and taking cai literally, really buys nothing but vegetables home. Now is that a cute story or what?
When I think about it my mum has had quite an exciting life. She was born in China, spent her childhood years in Hongkong, came to Singapore and got married while the rest of her family migrated to Vancouver. Her eldest brother was caught in the Cultural Revolution and couldn't leave without a lot of trouble. Today her daughter just rotates around the same spot thinking about it.
Han bought a gigantic LOTR poster picturing Frodo and a frame which cost twice as much. Elijah Wood now gazes wistfully, cupping the (not visible) Ring in his hand, indirectly at the first person who enters the room and turns on the light.