Today's Post: Why Does Everything Itch?

I survived Chingay. The odds were stacked - my knee had swelled up, making crouching horribly painful; it rained just before both performances making sure that there was a good chance we would slip and die; and it was hot.

Really, really hot. I was fucking dripping. My glasses kept fogging up.

I made a baby cry.

A couple of girls scream.

A guy leap couple feet in the air trying to run away.

I win.


So, back to work. Play Analysis assessment is on Wednesday - that means the mask prototypes and the portfolio has to be ready for submission, along with the Legend of The Curse presentation. Library books are overdue. Knee still tender.

I am so very taken with his illustrations.

And: Shutdown Day. Can you last 24 hours?

Today's Muse: Peneng

Chingay performance tomorrow and Saturday. Betting pool running on who keels over from heat exhaustion first. My money's on the Pimpin' Cat - Um. DandyLion. (Sorry, Travis and Dom, but the odds are stacked, man.)

Seriously, after running around in that bloody field, Orchard Road is going to be a piece of cake. There won't be any sneaky hidden potholes, for one.

I'll be the one making rude faces at small children. See if you can pick me out from the masks.


Again I wonder, will the rest of my career be like this? Mad rehearsals all day for various projects, and inbetween that mad rushes to complete portfolios and essay-things, and inbetween that mad mad mad rushes to find bloody hospital gurneys and floppy poodles for shows?

Holy crap, I'm not going to make it to forty, am I?

Today's Muse: This Gaping Hole in My Elbow

They love the baby girls in my family.

They're cooed at more. They get what they want all of the time. One of the first things they learn to say is "Pretty?" so they can ask the adults when showing off a new hair clip, a new dress...

They're also considered to be tiny luck bringers.

One year, one of my many nieces ran around repeating four numbers over and over. My older brother noted the numbers and used them to buy 4-D; he won a tidy sum.

My youngest niece was born on Friday the Thirteenth; her father seems to have had nothing but sucess since then.

There are other stories, some so vague that they can be dismissed as coincidence, others so weirdly accurate. It gets a bit mad, sometimes. Saturday night, while driving, the tot pointed out a "yellow taxi". Cue mad chase to try and catch the license plate number of said taxi for 4-D.

Now, it's not as though the boys are neglected. They get cooed at when they're tiny; it's just that no one asks them for lucky numbers.



Chinese New Year smells of salted pork and spring onions and fresh fish and tinned peaches. And layer cake. So much bloody cake. I'm shocked the oven hasn't exploded yet. It's been doing days like this for over ten bloody years, and every year I wait for it to explode but all it does is give a tiny shudder after the whole week-long ordeal and NOT EXPLODE.

I love this holiday.

I stopped attending Vox because it clashed with Young Co. - But when emails like this come in through the mailing list, I wish I was back -


"But just in case we can't remm what we did...the pieces we did are:
1. Dravidian TittyRump (all)
2. Maiden picking Flowers (stalked by Baritone Perv)(100%)
3. Horrashio (Part 1 + bits)
4. (the Lala Lalalalala song) (stop at page pg 2?)
5. (chinese drinking song) (??)
6. Hemant (100%)"


I have also managed to skin my elbow.
That is all.

Oh, one more: Last time I'm taking any falls for you, chump. Next time you own up to your own creepiness.

Now I'm tired and really grumpy.

Ach. At the very least I found a pinstripe vest and a pair of pink-and-black satiny sort of flats. But no bloody fuzzy wooly thing. Disappointed. Annoyed.

If you're one of the people who bought the dress, similar to the one pictured above, from Marks and Spencer while I was counting my bleeding pennies for it, the dress, the one I had been waiting for what seems like my entire life, you are horrible horrible people and I hate you very much.

I really do.

I think I shall go to bed. Perhaps I will awake feeling very silly for being so very annoyed, but I doubt it. I shall most probably cry sometime tonight, but I think that will be because of my nose, as it will not stop running.

Rivers of snot, gentlemen. Rivers of snot.

Today's Muse: Toaster Ticking

I'm very tired.

I'm typing this in the dark, eating olives from a jar (They're very old, and must be consumed), with one potato stuck in the toaster and no coffee.

I'm very, very tired.

I am not burning out. I am not succumbing to any pressure. I am working well despite the many commitments; The To-Do for The Word Womb has been compiled and has items being steadily ticked off, the presentation on Lecoq is ready for tomorrow, a room's been booked for rehearsal for the chorus assessment piece. I like being busy. I love doing what I do.

I'm just tired, and a little grumpy.

Pardon me, my potato appears to be whistling.

I'm very tired.

Today's Muse: Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me

New toy - A first gen Creative Zen Neeon. A steal, too - 6GB for just $149. Finally, the transition from disc player to mp3 has been made. Even the bundled earphones that came with the player are miles above my old ones.

This video makes me happy. Trying to get me filthy mitts on the Ergo Proxy OST.

More work pouring in. There's the Chingay parade, which promises to be great fun. Assessment projects are taking shape, and expectations are definitely a notch higher than last year. Dance; presentation on Jacques Lecoq for Movement; Legend of The Curse piece for Play Analysis; duologue for Acting... And the Youth Company schedule! Woo.

Everything's going pretty smoothly, methinks. Legend of The Curse, for example, is a self-directed presentation for mid-semester assessment. It's a chorus piece from Berkoff's Agamemnon, and we've got the largest group. But it's surprising how much we've choreographed already, despite our size. In fact, rehearsal processes are a dream - everyone's giving ideas AND listening and considering. We all seem to be on the same wave-length, with movements coming very naturally.

Oh, oh!

Hungry.

We presented about half-an-hour's worth in Scene Prep, and we pulled it off. We had shown various scenes here and there in class this semester, but this was the first time we were running it through for an audience; complete with transitions, something we had been wrestling with since the beginning. And it went well. That's the truth. It is amazing what even a small audience will do - besides our classmates, the Tech Theatre Level 1's sat in. We do have to clean up some of the transitions; get rid of dead time, which I think ate into our half-hour limit.

Teach Matt commented how the surreal nature of the script allowed us to explore; more breathing space around performances - and I think that sums up why Hungry was chosen for this project. Something different, something new, something to play with. And it paid off, playing with character choices and movement - despite the quirky and sometimes extreme performances, they were all balanced.

A shout-out to Jac, our baby-in-a-jar - she's been working really hard on this, despite the difficulty and weird positions the character entails - but during that presentation it really paid off. "Excellent performance developing", were the exact words, and I know those mean a lot to you. I grin at you.

I think we should slow down now, before the final presentation, before we burn out. Just tweaking bits here and there. Hell, yesterday while watching Smoking Incense at the Substation, Laura came up with a brill idea to circumvent the lighting and transition problem.

I get to work with the terrific-est people. Eee hee hee.


First Young Company meet today. It was a working session, involving rolling around and much hopping. Eight weeks of body conditioning for the May extravaganza at Fort Canning. And mooooore shows! On stage! With them bright lights and ev'rything!


I'm so hyped up on how this year is shaping up. And I hope yours is, too. Sweet Amy-girl's all the way in Canada-land, and from her letters and pictures is very happy. Hullo, Amy-girl. I wave at you, here in technologically-primitive Singapore.

And so, I leave you with this:
Bruce Osborn's Oyako Photo Exhibit

Today's Muse: TIT-tania. Eeeee hee hee. Tit.

I had planned on going to TTRP's open house today, but my back had different ideas. Twat.

I'm attempting some mockery of sitting right now, with this laptop balanced on I think the niece's teddy bear. Or the baby's. Whatever. I need to do laundry! And finding food!

Urgh. Back to lying on the floor. I'll see you lot when my spine decides to right itself.

Today's Muse: The Fairy and The Labyrinth (El Hada Y El Laberintino)

Pretty fwoomped right now, so no spew. Just showing off my new feet armour. No more squishing about town now!

I also have a lovely pair of boots that laces up the back, that I procured almost entirely by luck earlier this year. No picture, but they're lovely. You will believe this.

I desire toast.

Today's Muse: Of Whoredom and Falconry

A couple of posts back I mentioned a concept phone by BenQ Siemens. Now, with Apple set to release the iPhone in June, it's very difficult not to gush.

Exceedingly difficult.

So, I'll just point you to the Wired, which sums up what I'm thinking quite nicely.



So.

First week into the new school year, and already the work begins to pile.

Glee and pie.

There's so much to look forward to this year. The new classes this semester - and the lecturers in charge of them - intrigue me. I'm especially excited by Art, Culture and Society - it promises to be less of a note-taking class and more along the lines of an ongoing debate session. The lecturer in charge of that also seems to be able to stand her ground - I don't see last year's fiasco repeating itself.

So many opportunities for stage work and not enough time. Chances to crew for a variety of shows, and getting paid doesn't hurt either - but. All around the same time period. Bluppt.

Young Company sorted. Woo!



Performance Practice.

I did a monologue from Paula Vogel's And Baby Makes Seven with classmate Fazri's assistance. I didn't beat the hell out of a toilet bowl beforehand, but I did pace. And pace. And pace.

I had a bit of a scare beforehand, though. There had been a mix-up with the timetables, and while everyone else filed into 309 at 1:30pm, the foundation students muddied about, thinking it was at 2pm. Being late for Performance Prac is unthinkable, to say the very least. Being yelled at from across storeys to hurry is just plain scary.

In the rush I forgot to fill the mugs with something, so poor Fazri had to mine sipping, and I ended up flinging imaginary coffee everywhere. But I went through with it, and ended up wanting more; wishing I had prolonged my bit on stage.

The comments from the lecturers pointed out some things I had been aware of: Vocal technique (diction floundering, volume, modulation). Something though, caught at me: "The lack of a richly imaginative life". To underscore the speech, the relationships. And it's true. It's this inability to slip into the world of the play, the outlook, that's been nagging at me all of last semester. I'm aware of the performance, how to position myself, where to direct my voice, etc.

But, there was the upside. They liked how it had been kept simple. The sincerity. Good ear for rhythm. "Nice voice." That last one had me go "Eh?" Ach.

So, it went well, I think. I want to go up again; do something completely different. Maybe Lardo Weeping or summat.


I really don't know what I'll do for my BA. I am really more inclined toward the Theatre Arts research course. But Joyce pointed out - "You really seem more of a hands-on person. Will TA really be ideal?"

And I don't know. Hands-on, perhaps. In Hungry there are two different style of directing happening - The motivation/character-driven style approach, and the more lets-try-it-and-see-what-happens-if-we-do-this-without-words kind of method. I tend to favour the latter, while the others find somewhere in between. I'm not interested in working on kitchen-sink drama, as much as I enjoy watching a good piece. I want to work on absurdities, shows that push the envelope - especially design-wise. For example, instead of thinking through the logistics of a character's desires, I'm more interested in whether it would be a stronger visual cue to have her in an actual jar, or wrapping her up like a cocoon to show her being a fetus.

And that is a weakness, to some extent. I haven't much interest in building a character from emotional truth, to tell the truth. I prefer to work from the outside-in. Experimenting with movement, posture to define a character. Does this lead to shallow interpretations? I don't know. I don't know, but that is how I prefer working. In rehearsals, to coax performances, I keep suggesting different ways of doing a scene, like doing it in silence. Improvising. I find it difficult to be told what and why a character should do this and that. Tell me to try it leaping like monkey - Yes. Tell me to jump around because I'm agitated and I need to reinforce my presence and that I feel this because I'm threatened by... Not quite. Sorry. My brain won't compute it.

Physical theatre fascinates me. It is something I'd like to pursue, at one point or another.

Emotional truth eludes me. Wayang interests me. How liddat?

Today's Muse: Lessac, Violins, Violas, and Cellos

Almost done with computer surgery-jitsu. Switched from the IBM to a smaller version of the Acer Da had. Excellent. The best bit is that this one actually has a usable battery. No more sneaky unplugging vending machines when the library and M are both full.

I'm actually digging the Windows Media Player 11. Music, videos, photos all under one umbrella browser. Still fiddling with it. Beats fiddling with the feeds, which seem to have been knocked about during the transfer. I give up on feeds.

You know what I want? A single personal page where I can have the feeds in journal-like entries, with windows into my internet what-not - Comicspace, Flickr, Wists - a calender(Like Google's version), and the Blogger dashboard or something. And maybe be able to split up the feeds into cats - like, maybe a "blog" dedicated to feeds from design sites, and another to comic bits and bobs.

A desktop internet homebase. With a drag-and-drop feature. Mm-mm.


I have a slot for Performance Prac(like open-mic. You perform in front of the faculty, and get feedback from the lecturers and such.) this week. Feeling pretty good.

Funny and worrying: The class was asked how many wanted to audition in February for Acting and Musical Theatre. Quite a number, no surprise. Then the class was asked how many had already prepared audition pieces.

Hardly any hands went up.

Funny, and worrying.

Today's Muse: Under The Hat:

PAULINKA:

"You know the scene in the play (Faust) where the black poodle turns into the Devil and offers Faust the world? All that demurring, endless, always seemed so coy to me. Just...

But so one night I was walking home after a performance and a very strange thing happened. I found myself going down a narrow street, an alley, really, one I'd never been down before, and suddenly.

... There was this little black poodle, sitting on a doorstep. Waiting for me. Staring at me with those wet dark dog eyes. And I thought to myself: "It's Him! He's come to talk to me!" He's going to stand up on His little hind legs and say "Paulinka! Fame, films, and unsupassable genius as an actor in exchange for your immortal soul!"

And that's when I knew it, and my dears I wish I didn't know: I'd never resist. I couldn't. I am constitutionally incapable of resisting anything. A good actress, a good liar, but not in truth a very good person. Just give me Berlin, sixty years of sucess, and then haul me off to the Lake of Fire! Do business with the Devil.

[snip]

Probably just somebody's nasty black poodle. But I've always wondered... what if it really was Him, and He decided I wasn't worth it?"

A Bright Room Called Day

Tony Kushner

Today's Muse: Greasy - Singer Style

Finally moved the sewing machine downstairs to base. Spent the evening cleaning and oiling it proper. It's really quite remarkable; this Singer Sewing machine was purchased almost sixty years ago, but is still in fantastic working condition. Runs smooth as butter. My paternal grandmother used it, my mother made her famous dresses with it, and now I've laid claim to it.

It was sitting quietly with the rest of the boxes and books in storage. They said there wasn't any space for it? I made space. And I think it makes this place feel more like ours, instead of theirs.

Tomorrow, polishing.

EDIT: Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

The bobbin case is missing.

Today's Muse:
Now this, this is cool. Another step closer to the future. This concept phone - is phone really what one would call it? It's a phone, yes, but it's also a camera, game platform, PDA... Any of these things with just a touch. And check the "floating" interface - a better use of it than the floating text gag with the present models. One small step...

Of course, when I look at this, I remember the phone trait in Transmetropolitan -

"Grows an antenna over your skeleton. Runs off your own metabolism... Interface: Menu over your left eye, imaginary keypad right eye/right hand."

I hope I live long enough to see it.

I've always wanted to be able to take pictures with my eye. You know, blink and voila! Photo snapped, of whatever you were looking at. No more fiddling with cameras; which never quite seems to capture the scene the way you want it anyway. I remember trying to describe it for a "Your Invention!" primary school project thing - I remember been told to be more "creative".

But isn't necessity the mother of invention? Or desire the mother of necessity, if you want to go down that road. The point is, I wanted a camera I could manipulate easily, without trembling hands ruining the shot or lighting making everything look either too naked or too shadowed... I wanted to save pictures of the things I saw, with my own eye.

When you're working on a story, or a picture, or whatnot - Haven't you wished that what you were putting down on paper was what you had in your head? It's perfect in your mind. It's just the way you want it. But, somehow, along the way of transferring that thought from your brain and along your arm (Or foot, whatever) and onto paper, something gets lost. What's on that piece of paper isn't quite what was in your mind's eye. You can work on it until it's the closest approximation possible to what's in your head, but it will never be it. Sooner or later you have to teach yourself to be satisfied with this approximation.

The solution, my eleven year-old headmeats decided, was a device whereby one might bypass the writing and the endless scrawling, and immediately produce the finished work. In my head this glorious machine was a lot like your head plugged to a computer screen, upon which you could view your work and refine it as you saw fit, and then printed on the mother of all printers. (This was 1999, mind you. Eleven year-old headmeats are easily influenced. And gladly too, I might add.)

Of course, with such a machine, people would have to learn to isolate thoughts; instead of jumping from subject to subject like a monkey. To focus.

Neat.

Just one thing.

Stuff in your head is perfect, beacause of the vagueries. You know what you're trying to say, and the concept in your mind is linked to a dozen other sensations or thought processes. When you attempt to translate that onto paper, you don't have that instant connection, that... background story. You have to find a way to make the stuff on paper communicate what's in your head, without the benefit of all the links... And I'm going in circles.

Back to the first point: Science is neat.

The whole phone trait and eye-camera thing: Modifying one's body. Changing it into the image of perfection. That's what it is, isn't it? Plastic surgery, gender-reassignment procedures, lasik. The option to refine? improve? the human body. I know some people are disgusted by the idea of the phone trait - in the same way some are squicked by the idea of using a pig's heart in a transplant? Something foreign inside the "natural" body.

If it comes to pass, it will be accepted by some, rejected by others. Naturally. I keep thinking about the digital watch implanted underneath the skin, the numbers glowing through the skin, for some reason. I also keep thinking about how Roald Dahl kept his hipbone on his writing desk after the doctors replaced it with a metal one. I'd like a hipbone on my desk.

Today's Muse: 157

Work work work. Work work worky work. Work.

Lessee if we can pull anything else out of the brain-pan...

The screaming from outside my window tells me that it's a new year. Golly gee.

It's been a good year though, methinks.

Work work work.


Alexine and Tristan are visiting. Tristan is such a sombre little creature. So quiet for a two year-old. I don't think he has met Elizabeth properly yet, it will be interesting. Yes. Bit like fire and water, methinks.

Alexine talks nineteen to a dozen about everything and anything, in English and French, sometimes both languages at the same time. Five children, all together, until Chinese New Year. Brian, Tara, Alexine, Tristan, and Elizabeth.

They're so small.

It... kills me. Funnily enough. I keep looking at them and thinking they're going to get old. I watch them politicking - with Tara and Alexine not sure whether they like each other or not and Brian, all of eight years, try to distance himself because he says he's too old.

Too old.

I'm too old and I'm not allowed in the ballpen unless I'm dragging Elizabeth out. I'm too old and I packed up the dollhouse to give to the girls. I'm too old and I buy picture books, beautiful sorts, at Bras Basah. Yakult bottles don't last the afternoon any more. Soft toys decay quietly on the top shelf.

I'm going to read this when I hit thirty and think, Well fuck you, Vic. Wait til you hit thirty.

And then I'll read it when I'm forty, and...


Work work work. Back to it, then.

Follow-up to the last post:

Ah, much better now.

Pachelbel Rant

Today's Muse: Cities of Paper

Am slowly, but surely, putting the base into order.

It started Christmas morning, when I awoke with post-its stuck randomly all over the walls where they hadn't been before and fuzzy skin-thing gloves on. Later that crazy, children-and-bouncy-castle-filled day I remembered what transpired the night before, and what the hell I meant by "Irish Blue Beer".

Tell Thalia it's all very well and good to have them fabled bursts of creativity at god knows in the morn, but no use if you conk out immediately afterward at desk. Plus it huuurts.

So, days later, I type this from the floor, with about two dollars to my name. I have just learnt I cannot move any furniture to where I want to until February. I am heartily sick of tip-toeing about Feng Shui sensibilities, and I want soup.

I wrote earlier about being able to "finally keel over and die". HAH. More work has come in. Fine and dandy, I like work.

Which is why in addition to school and the workload planned for next year I have decided to do up the base. And possibly the rest of the house. Get rid of that filthy maternity-ward green her husband picked out. Well, he hasn't set foot in this place, has he, eh? And it doesn't look like he will, hm? And the rest of us have to tip-toe around your moods and live with you so you can fulfill your "all family under one roof" fantasy, eh? EH? WHILE YOU TREAT THE REST OF US LIKE TENANTS, YOU BITTER BITTER PERSON-THING.

And so concludes the annual post-holiday tirade. Thank you and see you next year.

Today's Muse: Rorschach: Fridge Ninja. Y'think he found any of Kyle Rayner's ex's in there?

I love the inter-slice.

And I get my smarts from trying to keep up with 52!

Today's Muse: It's Dry Inside, innit?

It's raining hard, and it doesn't look like it'll stop for the next couple of days. Good weather for tottering about indoors in oversized shirts and soft socks, reading smelly old books and occasionally bursting into melodramatic poetry. On days like this, even Baby will permit us hu-mans to share The Chair with him.

All very well, but I have to leave the house. If I don't purchase my bits and bobs today, I'll never get it done by this week. I'm already dressed for inclement weather, anyway.

But the rain is really heavy, and The Chair looks awfully warm.

I think I'll experiment with that fuzzy yarn today. Until, y'know, the rain lets up.