Sunday, July 17, 2005

Blog Conference?

Let’s see. I wake up yesterday with unnatural quantities of alcohol in my blood, cervical injury and no clothes to wear (my dress was wrecked from an entire night of naughtiness), and just as I board the train home, the ST reporter in charge of all the blog stories calls me up to tell me that there’s a blog conference going on.

I’m so out of touch really, but without meaning to. I met some Bloggers with a really weird attitudes towards the whole thing. You know the sort of. ‘I can’t believe Singapore has just hosted a Blog conference! It’s so lame, I mean, what’s the big deal about blogs?’

You know what? There’s nothing the big deal about blogs, and there’s all there is to be big about in blogs. It’s just like how there are shit films and films that are so mind-blowing-ly fantastic. Blogs are another form of entertainment, period. Blogging is the reality TV for the 21st century, and it’s even more real then real. Because most of us aren’t paid to blog. We may make some money out of it, but that’s not why we write. At least, that’s not why I do it anyway. Reality TV has started making what the producers think the audience wants, worse still what they think is the SAFETEST way to make the most money. I don’t know about other bloggers, but being the wannabe John Grey here, I tell my story like it is, so people can find something valuable for their life in it. I really do think I have a pretty damn good life, and I don’t really do much actively to make it good; It’s Sunday, so I have the prerogative to inject some of my spirituality into this post, and well, like they say. Blessings count for very much! (And to the twat who sent me that weird email that went something like, ‘Please publicly deny your faith because you’re brining shame to the rest of the people that believe in Christ’ You have no idea how horrifying that statement was. I never thought anyone my whole life would ask me to deny Christ, not in Singapore anyway. Good heavens.)

The entire conference was kinda weird in a way. I turned up way late, so I missed most of the more.. cerebral bits (i.e. the seminars), but nonetheless, I still got a pretty good impression of the whole thing. And here is what it is: The Blog Conference was largely something that bloggers went to, to pat each other on the back. But hey, get this, who the fuck doesn’t blog.

The concept, to all you who make fun and criticize it, is no different from things like the Golden Globes. Although it isn’t that much advanced or refined yet. And it would probably be stupid to try and actually give out serious awards, because that’s not what people want out of blogging. Blogging is cool because it’s authentic. Because we make our own stars in the blog-sphere, and it’s charming in a rather underground, fuck the people that run the print, TV media.

We’re broke, but fuck you, we’re better. And we’re gonna do whatever the hell we want. Because we can. For once, you don’t need money to have a voice. You don’t need the approval of someone else before you get to publish something that you think might help people out there connect and discover more about themselves and local culture.

I went to it because I thought it was so weird, and an interesting cultural thing to do on a Saturday night, and because at the end of the day. Hey, what the hell am I? I’m a blogger.

It’s a pretty big part of my life, this blog, although the social aspects of it aren’t that extensive –I barely know the other people that blog in SEA- They know me, and I was curious as to how other contempory, intelligent people (most of them were, anyway) would react to me, in real life. But at the end of the day, it was a gathering, with drinks. Essentially, a party. And it’s just fun getting to meet people you know all these little weird details about.

Like Kenny Sia for example. This was too funny. (For those of you who don’t have any idea who he is, he’s the dude that took a picture of himself in a pair of boxer shorts, in imitation of that one photo of mine that got all that media attention- Aiyah, in other words, he posted a naked photo of himself so that he can get more hits la.)

So we were in the little room on the second level of DXO, and I went, ‘Oh My God, Kenny Sia! Guess what, I’m from where you’re from’

Get this baby, he was FLOWN down to Singapore and put up in the Westin Stamford for the conference. But hey, I don’t say he doesn’t deserve it. Nobody ever never deserves anything. As long as you’re not cheating people of the best possible healthcare, given the funds you have.

‘You know what? I know exactly how you look like under those clothes!’ I say to him.

‘Yeah? So do I!’ He shouted back.

And that was what was supposed to be fun about the conference. That we knew all these weird things about the other bloggers, and here we were meeting them face to face. As children, haven’t we always wanted to meet the characters in Enid Blyton books or Marvel comics? Wouldn’t it be kinda fun to say hi to Anais Nin or Oscar Wilde or the Marquis de Sade. Of course we aren’t those people, but the general public did not hold any esteem for them until they were dead.

ST said the conference was a YAWN. My impression from the article was basically that Blogger are geeks, and we’re… just a bunch of geeks that are only able to operate with flamboyance behind our computer screens. Hell, I won’t deny it was kinda boring. I mean, firstly, none of the girls did anything outrageous –Okay, I’m a girl, and I did, but we would have gotten arrested if I had kept it on for more then the 2 minutes I did- If you really have to know (and of course you do) I pulled a Kenny Sia in the cigar-room-, and secondly, the house-pours sucked. They should have only offered alcohol straight up, because people were drinking too much tonic with no gin.

Parties are all about booze and girls. The best parties have bar-top dancers and Japanese school girl whipping parlors (take a number and wait in line, Arigato gozaimasu!)

But I had fun nonetheless. And I still feel kinda weird, having the Straits Times call me less sexy then Sandralicious. How sexy was I supposed to be anyway? Of late, I’ve been dating weird guys from the fringe of society that don’t seem to care if I turn up in a singlet and boxer shorts –it all comes off in a matter of seconds anyway-. May be I’m less sexy, but good heavens what does it matter. I’m not offended, honestly, I’m not as interested in being sexy as I am in being interesting and fun, so what the heck. I'll never be Liv Tyler, or Beyonce, or whatever, and that's that. What really sickens me is how people here are so obsessed with who’s more good-looking then who. It’s such a tiresome, shallow thing to be obsessing over with.

But whatever. I’m extremely satisfied with my life at this point.

My phone played out on me today, and I had to use my dad’s to get to Richard. And he (my dad) got a rather odd message right after lunch that went something along the lines of, ‘Tell your dad I love him. You’re juicy’. You don’t need to know who weird out my dad was.

Everyone’s been just lovely to me these days. My mom said a couple of funny things to me the other day. One, that she believed I was forever on the look out of someone better.

Now, this is the biggest bullshit anyone can believe in. There is never ‘someone better’. Richard would have been terrible for me the first time we met, I was too stupid then. But now it’s just Great. Things feel like they are going a little too fast, but it’s just always like that the first time you meet someone and the chemistry’s gone bang in your face, and you’re having fantastic sex (I feel like a drug addict actually). But I don’t think it really matters. Going too fast doesn’t really spoil anything, unless you mean going too fast and starting to say things like, ‘darling, let’s get a HDB flat together.’

I never believe there’s someone better, and the reason why I’ve been so fickle all my dating life is because I haven’t met anyone I feel the desire to stay faithful to. I know something like that has got to be a commitment, but it’s a commitment that has got to come naturally. There was always something wrong with everyone I’ve dated previously. For starters, I haven’t dated all that many people, and a bulk of them seem to be either 1) married 2)attached to some other woman financially or 3) Not living in Singapore. 4) Bad sex. All of them have been interesting characters, I would hardly have wasted time on them otherwise, but interesting isn’t enough. There needs to be chemistry, and after dating around a bit, I can tell when there’s chemistry and when there isn’t.

We were cuddling on the couch this morning, and he was smelling of cigarettes and I was smelling of sweat and sex and I thought how it’s been a pretty long time since someone that’s clearly admittedly crazy about me has my affection in it’s purest. It’s scary, but it’s almost like I stepped out of the steam-bath and realized what I was doing with Chris was completely fucked up and faked up. I like him as a person, and he is good in bed, but I never really wanted to sleep with him. But he was so nice, and could take me around the world, and playing myself along and convincing myself I really liked him wasn’t all that a difficult thing to do.

But still, it was fake.

That’s just one stupid example. But we all learn.

I know, it’s only been 5 days, 60 hours in total, but I really feel comfortable with him. It’s quite incredible that I can say anything I want to say around him. Something weird last night triggered me to ask him if I could live with him, because I’m going to have to move out in a couple of weeks and I need a place along the East-West MRT line. He said no of course, because it doing something like that after 5 days would kill the relationship. And it’s looking to be a very good one. Although I’m not hoping beyond next Sunday, but something in me actually wants to make it work. I’ve wanted to make things work before, but like I said, there’s telling yourself you should, because it’s good for you. And then there’s wanting to make it work from something that just comes out of you. And it’s a lovely feeling. And it’s only been 5 days, so of course I am clearly mad.

I told you man, I feel like a drug addict. Sex, Alcohol and too much excitement in the last week has probably got me off my rocker. And just before last weekend and before stripping in the park, I was thinking, man my life is going to get boring. Apparently not, and thank god. I think I’m a pretty naff excitement generator. People are just more fun when they’re around me, and it’s not because I’m the goddess of excitement. I think people mostly do not like being inhibited, but they are, because everyone else around them is more prim and proper then they are, and just like poverty and celibacy, prissy-ness is actually one of our society’s virtue. But when they see someone else behaving like a crack-pot, they think they can too, because they can’t possibly look more of the nut case then I can. And I don’t have any complaints whatsoever, because I like seeing people go crazy.

The other thing was the question of the existence of absolutes. Someone emailed me, Isn’t the phrase, ‘there are no absolutes’ and absolute in itself?

Here’s my theory. Absolutes definitely exist, but there is no absolute situation. In any situation, there are ways you can take to solve the problem and ways that will aggravate it. How you get out of a problem is an absolute action. And there are clearly some absolutes that exist. For example, behaving antagonistically towards someone else that’s already pissing you off will only make the other person want to fuck you up more. Is there an absolute way to solve the problem? Certainly not, there are tons of ways. But there certainly must be a best way. But depending on whether the person is your mother or boss of employee, it’s going to be different, but still, there is one particular way that is the best for that particular person.

I can’t be bothered to go on a moral discourse, because that question was raised pertaining to one of the post of Christianity. If you’re really interested, think about it, and you’ll get it.

;)

xoxox

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