Pepper Lunch, I think Not.

If you want trouble, you will get trouble, that much is certain. Then, there's good trouble, and there's bad trouble, and I much prefer the former where the difference is that you get away with it. That is, waking up on Monday not 100% fucked and in the slammer about to be butt-fucked. And oh... If how you wake up on Mondays is a good gauge for how much good trouble you've been up to, mine have been pretty sweet.

The weekends hanging out with Joris started weird, ended up weirder, and has stayed here at an all time low. Every Friday I think, "Gee, it's going to be hard to beat last weekend." but by Sunday night I'm convinced of how wrong I was.

Sunday morning I woke up in a cab in Geylang to find myself heading to a Dim Sum place with Mistress H., Danielle, and the Ultimate Hobo Rob. Joris was there of course and there were a couple of other people who I absolutely can not recall.  The all time low was when Joris took out the vodka, Danielle spilled the pepper and someone suggested snorting it. No, wait, the all time low was when they actually started snorting it.

It was supposed to be a 'quiet one' originally, when we started out from the point of me about to fall asleep on my bed (as opposed to some random hovel) to meeting up with my little sister and her friends, to utter randomness. But random is good, the only plan we had for Sunday was to head to the beach. 

So we were at the Supper Club, which on this night was playing remixed radio hits, and making up for it by giving free Martinis to women. At some point one of her friends passed out, my sister had to go home, and Bastiaan arrived. I guess we would have gone home if he hadn't (yeah right), but he did, and he just had a pretty lame night, so I suppose I felt slightly obliged to carry on the party. There was also the other problem of having consumed so much vodka red-bull that the end was no where in sight.

I was about to give up and give in to a tame night just sitting around drinking when I bumped into Danielle, who was fairly drunk, had blisters on her feet and needed to be carried down the stairs. She immediately invited us to a party in Sentosa, so we went, after faffing around trying to purchase liquor from the 7-11 (not sold between 2 - 6 a.m.). There was also some faffing around on her part on whether or not she wanted to go to this thing, and I had to make sure plans did not change by staying in the same cab with her and her bro while the Dutchies took another cab (unlike the rest of SEA, standard international taxi carrying rules apply here, no Vietnamese family on the back of a scooter, sorry).

Yes, I was desperate of some excitement. I mean, how else do I find content to put in this blog? Very soon it will start taking over my life again...great excuse for living fast and not dying young. I mean, you can't maintain a blog from beyond the grave now can you, unless you're Woody Allen.

"We fulfilled our goal for Sunday." I said to Joris when we got out of the cabs. "We're at the beach... Sort of... Really damn near it anyway... Fuck it. It's not a real beach in the first place."

There was the strangest collection of random people in this hotel room. The best was Rob. Oh my god, he's an inspiration. I asked him what he was doing in Singapore, and he told me he was here on a VISA run. He is actually a professional hobo. He teaches English in China, but it's the same thing. He showed me all the money in the world, which was $29.90. D'oh. I heard him mention something about living behind a refrigerator in Toa Payoh. He also had neon pink paint on his face from a girl it was rumored later he wanted to get it on with. No, that's not fair... he fancied her.

I asked Bastiaan about his lame night with his colleague and he told me it started with him passing out in the Jacuzzi from drinks since brunch and waking up finding out that this guy and taken all his clothes and his money, along with the key to his apartment. I suppose you could give the guy the benefit of the doubt and say he was taking care of his stuff for him, but it's another thing when you get your wallet back and find out all the money is missing. It's a bit stupid isn't it, stealing from a colleague. Most peculiar.

Sunday just petered out after the pepper snorting. Joris, Mistress H. and Danielle came back to my place and passed out. Danielle sat on the couch and didn't manage to get out of it till 1 p.m. Joris sat on a deck chair by the pool and slowly migrated to the pavement by the grass path to avoid the sun (that was weird) and Mistress H. and I dozed under the blazing, cancer causing, tropical sunlight. For 5 hours.

The Re-emergence of the Wormhole in the Space-Time continuum!

The SMS tone on my phone goes "ding-dong' and it gets everyone 90% of the time and me on mornings while I'm snoozing, and only then, which is a pretty good payback I guess for everyone else I've annoyed with it. The best (worst) time was when I was still asleep in Joris's apartment and he'd already long gone to work (I'm not lazy, it was 9 a.m) and it rang and I thought it was the maids. So I jumped out of bed in a panic, looked for something to put on and went to open the door. Nothing. It took me a few seconds to realized I'd just fucked myself.

Still, funny things like that always put me in a weird but good mood for the rest of the morning, a little reminder of how retarded life can be sometimes, and how despite the fact that I have not heard a door bell that actually sounds like a door bell in a long time (they all go buzz these days), my concept of what it should sound like is still there for ancient times before key cards and such.

Phillip has also now managed to lose a bunch of his cards, or rather he has forgot their hiding place. Everyone has that. You know, a certain article X that are always lying around until one time you think, fuck that, I'm going to keep it in a safe place. And then you do, and then you damn hell can't remember what that place is, or whether the maid has mistook it for rubbish and tossed it away (Joyce Supermaid never does actually, you think she has, but she's actually just kept it in a really safe place. In fact, she's so good at her job she can find un-used condoms (i.e. still packaged) from the previous tenant the morning some of her children complain they're out of condoms. She does this while airing the room and chastising them on what dirty little boys and girls they are).

Back to the lost cards.

While I was in Budapest, Trina came to visit me, arriving at some ungodly hour like 6:30 in the middle of February. Where it's fucking god-ass cold in Central Europe  (And damn you Central Europe deniers, the CE does exist, it consist of the Eastern part of Austria and the Western part of the former Soviet Bloc. Uh... Duh. There's even a university called the CEU, but uh... yeah it's in Hungary, and they really want to differentiate themselves from neighboring Romania, I guess. Only when they get back Transylvania will they begin reconsidering this geographical labeling)

Trina arrived and I was about to start shouting at her because she hadn't picked up her phone since last night, so I was starting to get worried... and then she told me a really weird story.

Trina: "Oh my god, my phone battery is gone."
Isabella: "You mean you've gone flat."
Tri: "No my battery is missing. The battery is not in my phone."
Isa: "Huh? Maybe you took it out?"
Tri: "Why would I do that? I was on the train. The last message I sent you was just after I set my bags down. I had a sleeper carriage with another girl."
Isa: "Someone must have taken it then. Maybe they really needed a battery. Man it's weird."
Tri: "I was sleeping on my bag. Like a bolster."
Isa: "You're a heavy sleeper...."
Tri: "Yeah but still!!! My phone is still here, only the battery is gone! Fuck, it must be supernatural man. Spirits or something."
Isa: "There's always a rational explanation for everything that does not require the presence of phantoms."
Tri: "Fuck how you gonna explain this then?"
Isa: "Someone played a prank on you?"
Trina: "No way, I was sleeping with my bag!"
Isa: "Okay, okay, but I still don't think it's ghosts. I prefer some other explanation other than ghosts."
Trina: "What else? Ugh, I don't believe in ghosts either. Man I'm still freaked out."
Isa: "You know sometimes wormholes might appear in the space-time continuum when uh... parallel universes brush against each other. One just happened to occur right at the point when your train was travelling at 150km/hr from Prague central station to Keleti station at the point X in xyz space, devouring your phone battery and nothing else."
Trina: "What the fuck. It might as well have been a spirit."
Isa: "I think you were just fucked off your head to be honest sometimes there's convincing holes in our memory that has nothing to do with parallel universes, especially if you started binge drinking and becoming a vegetarian at an early age... "

The rest of her stay in Budapest was peppered with me offering this ridiculous SF explanation everytime she brought up the topic of the lost handy battery and of Richard siding the strangeness of the whole damn thing (he believed in the homeopathic machine with the silver balls)* and Ruiter swearing to god there was a reasonable explanation for it all.

*This machine had 2 parts. The silver balls and the machine the silver balls were connected to. The machine was a box with electrical mumbo-jumbo in it. You could put in something you were allergic to into the machine, connect it to the mains, and fire it up, while holding the electric balls. If you were allergic to say.. dust, you could put dust into this machine, hold the fucking balls, and you would be cured of your dust allergy. Yeah right.

Cake, Death or a Holiday on Brighton Beach?

Because I got bored telling my own stories, I will now tell the stories of others.

I used to say to Mark that there were two types of people in the world (actually I tell everyone that there are always two types from a subset of a subset of a certain type of person in the world). In this particular black and white view of life the universe and everything, there are people that are helpful to have as friends, and people that are content. That is, they don't have their shit together, but you still hang out with them because they're interesting, and one day, you just might write that best selling novel about your stupid life and all the stupid people in it. But of course it isn't really like that.

If you know Mark at all, you'll understand what it means to feel a certain type of English. I.e. Life is shit, the weather sucks, The food tastes of arse, everyone thinks you're a cunt, but somehow, we muddle through.

Do you know Richard Billingham ? He has a collection of photographs, Ray's a Laugh, that exactly encapsulates this certain type of Englishness I'm talking about. You can see his alcoholic father throwing the family cat here.

A month or so back Phillip and I were at the wine connection, and we tried to get Mark to join us, but he told us he had just arrived in Essex on family matters after having disembarked from an SQ flight completely drunk off a bottle of vodka (all of it) and having just lugged 20 or so kilos of photographic equipment from the railway station (he believed in doing everything the hard way).

The message was kind of unclear, and I think I sent something like, "Are you finally listening to your parents wishes and opening a photo-shop in Brentwood... finally?" Which was not a very nice thing to say really, and I probably did not say such a thing, but something like it. When he replied, it was pretty... unpleasant. Something about a close family member being diagnosed with a terminal illness.

That wasn't very nice, I felt quite sorry. I even remember having met her in Essex the first year we were dating. It was a real treat you know, being in Essex. Really. Most fascinating. It helped me put all the British comedy I love to watch in context.

Philip sent him a message saying he was sorry; I mean what else can you say. Mark replied, "Life goes on. I'll be back, and she'll be dead."

We laughed. It kind of funny.

Mark did give me a few things to take away from that relationship, the most valuable one was his sense of (romantic?) irony. I don't think I could have quite gotten it from anywhere else. Also how when you think things are shit, they can get worse still. But it doesn't matter, you'll live.

It reminded me of the period when my grandmother was dying (the one I liked, not the one I don't know). My parents and little sister were going back to Kuching every month to visit her,  and reporting back on her unstable condition which was always "getting better" but actually, not really. In January, they returned and I asked them how she was, and my sister said, "Oh my god, Uncle Dave died." Now that was bizarre. So here they were, visiting Grandma, waiting for her to get better or die, and then while they were there Dave died quite suddenly (he was not an old chap) and they had his funeral instead.

You know in Fooled by Randomness, N.N. Taleb has a term for how things tend to happen in clumps? ...Now what is that term...?

Oh on on the subject of Englishness and Essex: Check out the New Yorker article on Phyllis Diller. Hilliarious! Women should aspire to this.

Transfer of Babelogic Blog.

My life revolves around a few basic things that are central to my personality. 1.Sex 2.Working out 3.Keeping multiple blogs 4.Drawing porn 5.Graphic design 6.Trying to learn how to code but never quite succeeding (sigh... I'm attempting to take a new approach to this problem) 7.Stuffing my head with random information so I can pick up nerds.


With relationg to (3), I am now planning to move my Babelogic.net blog to a new domain,

WWW.BABELOGICA.COM

. This blog will be solely for personal matters (i.e. the skanky stuff) the other one will be for more kosher things that I'm interested in. Mostly art, design and science.

I've really started to get back into the routine of blogging regularly, and it's a really good way for me to take stock of my life and the things I'm exposed to, so I get to actually think about them as opposed to simply having the notion that at some point someone told me this or that.

Also, since I would like to make some adSense money from my blogging some day, and this site is totally not kosher to Google (fuck it!!!) I will have to keep another site. It would also be helpful when applying for jobs and such if I could show them samples of my writing without forcing them to dish up the dirt, unless they want to of course.

Signs and Omens.

Google ads does not like my site. Phillip alerted me to this rant on Mango Sauce about why Google is hypocritical and evil and we should all beware of its monopoly on our asses. It doesn't make sense to me, but never mind, someone will come up with something better... eventually. In the meantime I will just have to figure out alternative ways of making a few bucks while living a life of utter degeneracy. Just remind yourself every morning that the job you never think you'd lower yourself to is the job someone else hopes and prays for.

To be honest I'm starting to feel a sense of panic welling up in me. I know I have to leave Singapore soon before I suffocate and die of utter boredom. Certain bits and pieces from various dimensions in my life have sort-of come together to alert me to an option out of this hole, and yes I know I could be doing the fail-able human thing and seeing signs and omens where there are none; But I am convinced that this spring, I should purchase a one-way ticket to the Netherlands and attempt to find work there.

The string of logic is as follows (although it is true that my logic can be quite suspect at times). 1. I don't want to stay in Singapore anymore. 2. I love Europe. 3. Dutch people are cool. 4. There is a damn good design and art scene there. 5. I have a few friends that may be able to help get my feet wet. 6. I would sooner do a badly paid design job in Holland then in Singapore.

To be honest I'm just scared as shit about fucking things up. About being stuck here. The only way to make sure I do not stay stuck here to to get out of here. If you let fear overwhelm you, then you won't get anywhere. Living is hazardous, but you can't hide under a rock now, can you?

So back to these 'Signs and Omens' that I believe are cosmic directions that are pointing me in this direction... I don't imagine they are fool proof and totally clear, but just like tossing 12 heads in a row, a few things have happened recently to convince me I should do this. It was kind of the same the other times when I had to make such big decisions.

Joris is Dutch, if you haven't guessed already, so this is helpful. But he's got his own life there I would prefer not to interfere with. That said, he can still help me out a little by introducing me to some people in my specialization (which is? -_-") That's one thing. There's also Ruiter from Budapest days who I attended a few classes with and probably has a good network of random art/design types I could get to know. But even more importantly, while I was talking to AJ during this mad party with the Japanese girls and the trees, he told me he had a flat in The Hague I could go and live in till June while he was working here in Singapore. He said I could get the keys from him before I left and hang there while trying to find a job. Funnily enough, Ruiter lives in The Hague.

Anyway, we'll see how things roll. But I'm almost certain that there's not very much point in me staying here any longer. As soon as the weather lets up in late February, I'm gone. Now... I just need to find some way to make a little bit of cash before I go. Hmm.. *suppress anxiety attack*

Fold your Ears and Make Love to a Tree.

We had a little 'Garden Warming' party at MGM's, on the account of Joris who had this crazy idea that happened to coincide nicely with the delivery of robust Frangipani trees to the Spirit Roof (christened thus until the owner complains that I give everyone and everything crap aliases on my blog :P ) It's the Spirit Roof because MGM said after the Frnagipani trees were delivered, that all it would take to complete the garden now was a Spirit House. A Thai one is what he has in mind for it, I think.

The Spirit Roof takes a bit of organization to get it fully functioning and one of the things needed was lamp oil. Joris and I attemped to get it at the Carrefour, because if there was somewhere that would have any random thing you might want on a weekend, Carrefour was the most likely place to stock it. Tom and I did manage to find a paddle pool on a hot Sunday morning while we were wondering what other nonsense we could get up to while nursing a mild hang-over. Unfortunately they didn't have the lamp oil (although they had an excess of paddle pools) so we had to look for substitutes.

Apparently olive oil is the best substitute for lamp oil, but it would clog up your lamps if not washed thoroughly after. Also there seems to be a trend with olive oil and MGM's place for all sorts of bizarre reasons that have nothing to do with the preparation of food.

When J and I turned up at MGM's flat, he was in a flurry making sure his new plants were being delivered properly to their final destination. Standing around were a few pissed off Bangladeshi workers cursing when they realized they had to lug the plants up two flights of narrow spiral staircases.

The party kicked off at a reasonable time (around 10) after the lamps were lit, the plants were nicely arranged, and a couple of other people had arrived. One of them was AJ and this crazy Japanese girl, Yuko. She was completely mental, all over the place and all over MGM and Joris (and if there had been any other men she found attractive that night would have been all over them too), and she gave a vibe that she was up for anything.

Bastiaan turned up after them and we greeted each other. That afternoon while hanging out at his place watching the Dutch equivalent of Little Britain , I had been staring at his ears with a strange fascination thinking "Man! Those are ears I'd like fold. Oh my god I am going to fold his ears... Must resist..." Anyway, while greeting him,  I folded his ears (since he's European and they all do that kissing thing, it was possible to get close enough to do this) They were very soft indeed and I announced this to every body. This caused a fair amount of confusion and henceforth every other guest that arrived had their ears folded. Mostly by Yuko.

MGM came back onto the roof and she greeted him in this manner and started to refer to the plants as conscious sexual beings. MGM and Joris were both assigned one as their girlfriend, and I was assigned one as my boyfriend. Later on I discovered that the trees actually represented the people at the party and it was a cover up from having to go straight out at the men. It was really weird. I.e. the guys were supposed to get it that when she said she wanted to get it on with the tree what she actually meant was something slightly different... At first I think everyone thought it was a joke, and I think she must have meant it to be a joke too, but the night wore on, and it got annoying when she asked me if I liked my 'boyfriend', referring to one of MGM's new Frangipani trees but actually meaning Joris (which was what I assumed because by this time I had forgotten all about her tree world) and then telling me that she meant the tree -_-"

The Value of Nothing.

I ❤ Tom for many reasons, but one of them is cuz he's got some pretty awesome friends. Check Raj Patel out on the Stephen Colbert report flogging his new book "The Value of Nothing". For the uninitiated, it's THE Oscar Wilde quote (i.e. people who do not know Oscar Wilde know this quote: "The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing").

Cool... I'm 2 degrees of separation away from comic genius. "America is built on cheap prices! Why do you think all our public holiday falls during sales?" Watch the whole damn thing on The Colbert Nation with Raj Patel.

(Did I also mention that my ex's dad almost fucked Helen Mirren back in the day? You know, back in the day when it was acceptable for men to ask women "I want to buy you a drink, but will you sleep with me?" and not get slapped in the face)

He makes a big claim on the cover, "How to reshape market society and redefine democracy". Market society definitely needs to designed. Europe will lead the way, oh yes... the land of sexy men with sexy accents and liberal attitudes. Check out: Krugman on Learning from Europe. Look to Norway when in doubt! And I am not just talking about GDP. 


Now, on another day I will tell you how I met Tom's other friend...

This is how I Love to Wake Up.

Indeed. Good Morning. Where ever you are.

Toys for Boys.

I have just discovered Tenga Tango.

They specialize in adult novelty toys for men that are well designed and (in my opinion) wouldn't make a guy look weird if he had one. I think they have patented some kind of special design and/or material that can be used as a kind of masturbating tool you cap n' stretch over your penis (if you have one).

It's true that most think of sex toys for men as being pretty lame (artificial vaginas and blow up dolls are pretty desperate if you ask me, unless you go so far the other way as to have a whole collection of artificial females and/or female body parts where you turn from lame to really fucking creepy. That said I did know this guy once who kept an entire collection of blow-ups with realistic skin and bones...) But these guys have some cool looking stuff that could be fun. Just you know, for the heck of it. I can imagine some pretty hilarious group experiences...

Turtles, Spiders and Other Assorted Religious Beliefs.

Under my religious views on my many dating profiles and facebook page, I have entered "Atheistic Pantheism". Ash, MGM, Joris and myself were sitting on the Roof waiting for something to happen and having a conversation about spirituality. (It was a warm tropical night so I was topless as usual, for the purpose of being able to receive more sensory stimulation, which J was more than willing to administer) MGM was giving me a bit of  a hard time as usual about my views on such matters as he has something against my appreciation for Richard Dawkins (whose books I find entertaining and fairly educational and enlightened me from the bonds of Born Again Christianity, which is not a bad thing really).

He also has something against Atheism in general, because, truth is (and what is that, really!)  we can't really know for sure what we do know. Look at Principa Mathematica. Not that I have ever even touched it with a 10 foot pole, but I am currently engaged in a very accessible graphic novel, Logicomix, about Bertrand Russel's life.

At the end, we are all of us standing on a tower of turtles upon which the foundations of reality rest upon. By the way, what is this reality we speak off? As long as we do not see any black pixels, then the illusion is maintained... be grateful.

Or maybe not. One has to ask... some arrive at their last turtle by years of determination and genius, other lesser beings (i.e. me) through other means that suit a personality used to immediate gratification... Actually in this case you don't care if there is any foundation, only that you know all is illusion.

Ash asked me what exactly this "Atheistic Pantheism" was. I said I didn't really consider myself an Atheist, more Pantheist, perhaps. But not many get the subtleties of the multitude of beliefs that do not include an anthropomorphic God, so Atheist was just more convenient.

TBH, I actually chose the word because it made it seem like I was really serious about my beliefs, which I am, but while laughing about it.  For now, I know what I like to believe, and it's good enough, until my next round of 'spiritual-discovery', perhaps after some exciting things have happened at the LHC. (At this point, I ask the question, Has the large Hadrom collider destroyed the world yet?)

Seriously though, the only reason why I have such a lame ass self-important tag for my spiritual views is because Phillip has already taken The Mild Manner Anti-Christ. Damn it! Gaiman's Lucifer comes to mind at this point...

We cannot know for sure when we ask questions like what is consciousness, or where did we come from, or where we (not the human race, but rather everything that at some point had the property of existence) are going. It's turtles all the way down young man! Said the old lady to Stephen Hawking after his first speech at the Royal Society. Supposedly the theory of evolution rests on a taller tower of turtles that have properties more consistent with empirical reality and are a different breed than the one that form the foundation of the religion of Green Ham and Eggs. But still who is to say what we experience is not some kind of conjuring trick by a higher being in the Nth dimension?

But I don't much like the analogy with the turtles to be honest. It's very cute, which for many things in life is a property that is good enough to instill a general sense of likability to its subject, but not here. I prefer to think of beliefs resting on a net of things we assume to be true. Some nets are bigger than others, which means you can walk around on them for a much longer time before you reach the edge. Who knows the fuck how the net is being held up, probably by hungry spiders resting on more hungry spiders, what the fuck. But personally, the more room for questions, and the deeper the rabbit hole, the more I like it.

We all know that it's Fairy Dust that answers everything though...

 

Nipple Garden.

One night stands are a slightly different kind of sex. They're more like short trips really, because the novelty of sleeping with someone new you know you will probably never see again changes the whole experience. I personally don't make this activity a habit, but sometimes I do end up in a situation where I think "What the heck. He's cute and cool, why not."

So...I met this guy from the Beautiful People dating site some time back while browsing through the list of available men in Stockholm; Coincidentally he was passing through Singapore while traveling around Asia, and as we had shared literary taste (There is a type of fiction out there that is appreciated specifically by a certain breed of nerd) and we both understood the pleasures of really long runs in cool weather, I thought, why not yeah.

I'm always up for meeting someone new, and he seemed like a pretty good time. So we met up, he bought me dinner, we hobo-ed on the Clarke Quay bridge and then attempted to look for another place to go drinking that was not Sluttica. Unfortunately on this particular day, such a place did not exist.

We ended up in his hotel room instead, and you know, once that happens at 4 in the morning, all involved parties know that some getting it on is inevitable. We had more whiskey, and he tried hitting on me a little bit. But I said I really didn't feel like it because I was in love with someone else...because I didn't do this one night thing...

Well no I did, because obviously it looks like I might be going to do it, but I don't usually... I mean what's in it for me... I don't just want a shag... no, not really...oh... on dear me...yeah touch me there that feels rather nice... are you sure you want to do this?...

No we shouldn't... well alright I think we both would like to, why don't we have another drink... we're silly creatures aren't we, the alcohol is really not necessary, if it wasn't just one night and if I wasn't in love with someone else this would not be a problem at all....Well, oh, fuck it.

He started removing my clothes, but didn't manage to get my bra off. (It was one of the few times I had decided to wear a bra). I rolled over to the edge of the bed and hugged my chest.

"No, no... I really have to tell you something first." I said. "What is it?"He asked, slightly bewildered at this shyness that had come out of nowhere. (I do play shy in bed sometimes, because I think it's cute. It's cute for me anyway, and I like being cute.) "Um... sigh.. I have really big areoles. Like, pretty big and... you know."

He shuffled towards me and touched me lightly on the shoulder. "Hey... it's okay. You know... for a guy I have pretty big areoles too." "Yeah?" I asked. "Yeah really." He said, starting to remove his shirt. They were not huge, but they were indeed pretty big for a man. And a really dark brown too. Not ugly or anything, just obviously different from what most women would be normally used to on a man. Actually, I really liked them. I'm getting turned on thinking about those nipples right now. Anyway.

"Oh my god!" I exclaimed. "Haha yeah they are pretty big." I giggled and removed my bra. "Damn." He exclaimed "Shit I knew you were kidding me right after I said it."

"Haha... shit I'm sorry. But that was really funny." I laughed. "I have really normal breasts. My sister has big nipples though..."

He laughed and pinned me on the bed. "Damnnn....."

"Haha! Hey it's cool though... it definitely was a 'Moment'. I really don't know where that came from :-P Weird as. "   

Conversations in Bed.

I was lying in bed trying to rest my eyes when Liz came into the room and sat beside me. "You're not wearing any clothes." She pointed out and lifted up the sheet. "You swear by having very little on, but I prefer wearing nothing." I said, and wrapped the sheet back around myself. Joris came into the room and sat down on the other side of me.

"Okay, okay we're going soon. I just need to close my eyes for 5 minutes. To charge up my mojo, then I'll be rockin'." I said. "Hey it's cool, whatever. It's still early." He said.  I could see Liz was fidgeting slightly because she was dying to get a move on when he side this. "Sorry man, time has become almost irrelevant to us right now... the entire weekend is transforming into one long ass day..."

Joris started petting my head at which point Liz suggested fucking. Her exact words were, "If you want to fuck just go ahead lah! I've seen my girlfriends fucking in front of me before. I love watching people fuck." But I declined because I didn't want to fuck. Not right now anyway. 

Bastiaan came in at this point and I asked him what he was doing outside, and he said he was downloading his drifting videos. "Cool, I'd love to see. Although all my knowledge of motor vehicles comes from BBC's Top Gear. Anyhow, how was the girl last night?" I asked (re. we were all at the four floors of whores). He smiled, "Good time."

"You know Jacob right." Joris asked me. "Yes, the guy from last night that was entertaining everyone with his Amex." I answered. "Liz..." He said. "Yeah what." She turned around and faced him (she was looking out the window or something. She has a habit of generally not paying anyone attention unless she's having an exclusive conversation).

"This guy has a special ability..." Joris continued. "Oh god."  I said, going under the sheets. "You know what he does when he takes a hooker and she sucks in bed?" He asked. "Argh! What the fuck. What constitutes suck in bed for this guy?" I asked. "I don't know. Maybe if she is just laying there or something. That's not the point of the story." He answered.

"What's his special ability?" Liz asked. "This guy can piss with a stiff penis." He told her (include hand gesture to indicate what a stiff penis is). I almost pissed myself laughing. "So when he is fucking a hooker that sucks in bed, he just pisses in her." "What! That's so bad..." Liz said. She really meant it and looked slightly upset.

"Bastiaan! Have you had group sex?" I asked. "No. There was once we took 5 girls back, but it was us 3 guys and they got freaked out at the suggestion and 3 of them ran away, so we just told the other 2 to leave."

"Oh. Okay." I said. "Oh sorry! Haha, Jacob was the job hopping guy." I said. "What's job hopping?" Liz asked. "It's something to do with the same guy that can piss with his stiff penis." Joris told her. "There was the time he took back 5 girls and laid them down on the bed like sausages and fucked each one consecutively." "He's really disgusting." I said. "He looked like such a nice guy too." "He is! Just as long as you're not a hooker." He answered.

"Let's go an watch the drifting videos." I said.

A Trip through Interzone.

You know it's all downhill for the weekend the moment you step into Orchard Towers on a Friday night. Joris was there with some colleagues, and they were partying carte blanche on someone's Amex; food, booze and women all. Ipanema is not my favorite place to party but it was alright for a change. I texted MGM, but he was home and refusing to come out but mentioned something about OT not being worthwhile until the "indecisive sex tourists went away and the hardcore drunks turn up".

By the way he was giving me a bit of a hard time about being given a 'lame acronym' like MGM, but it stands for Magnum. It really does. I didn't make that up after the fact. So there.

We went to the Living Room on the suggestion of a couple of friends, and was there till closing, when MGM decided to show up. But not to worry, there was still one more place open for people on a mission on a Friday night in Singapore, and that's Naughty Girl, again, at OT. To date, it's the only place you can head to if you want to stay trashed till the sun rises on a normal weekday night in Singers.

With the exception of Interzone, of course.

We headed back to The Roof, but not before I made a stop at the GHQ to pick up a bottle of hard liquor. MGM served us some tea, and we hanged and chilled and talked about the war. Well he talked about the war, Joris listened and I flipped through a book on strange sex fetishes in Japan. 

Things get more absurd. MGM then brought out the Burqa he had from his days in the Middle East. There was some unnecessary suggestion for me to put it on, which I did, followed by the removal of my shorts and underpants. Link: Then the camera came out.

J and I finally headed back to the GHQ at 3 in the afternoon, had the kind of sex you have when you're feeling like What-The-Fuck-Whee!!!, and the weekend continued on. We were on a mission...

This was supposed to make sense. Really. Link: This is your brain on Kafka.

Made in the Tora Bora cave complex.

Situated in the White Mountains (Safed Koh) of eastern Afghanistan...

Happy first weekend 2010 :-D

And yes it's me. Burkha courtesy of MGM ;-)

Blue is a Colour you can Wear

Has one week already come and gone in the new decade? For that matter, is this the new decade, or does that happen in 2011? I suppose it depends from where you start counting. Since the millennium party was celebrated in 1999 when I was 12, too young to have sex and had blue hair, and it has been 10 years since, then it must be the new decade. That aside, I’ve almost gotten used to counting from zero.

The weekend after Christmas and the afternoon on the day we did the dirty on the alter, Joris suggested that we should introduce psychedelic trance to the rest of Singapore by walking around with a boom box with our bodies painted in psychedelic colours. Apparently it was one of those half-jokes, but when he mentioned it, I looked into his eyes and thought, “oh no… he’s serious…” Of course I had to go along with it, I don’t say no to a stunt, even if I’m anxious about the outcome.

We were planning to do it at some point in the near future, and definitely before he left the country (not enough time!It would seem I have a way of falling in love with men that tend to be leaving in a matter of months) but not on New Year’s Eve. Although it became obvious to me the night before that NYE was exactly when we should be doing it. So I went to get a boom box, some body paint, and called my sister for help MGM over for fun. They came by, I stripped to my panties, put a sheet on the floor, and started slathering blue body paint all over. Unfortunately they did not have cyan, (which is my favourite colour 4eva and if you touch me on the insides of my thighs, sometimes I see views of this pure colour underneath my eyelids). They did have shocking pink though, which I also love (although in general I do not like pink on principle). On retrospect we should have painted ourselves in brighter colours, but no matter, MGM has told me I could realize my body painting fantasies on an island in Thailand, the name of which I have now forgotten…

I wore a bikini top, a tiny pair of lime green shorts and sunglasses (lime green pants always remind me of the cleaning lady that slept with everyone in Catch-22. Who doesn’t love lime green panties. Ooh lala) and aforementioned partner in crime was wearing some board shorts and sunglasses. We walked to Newton Station with the boom box (which was not loud enough) entered the barrier with no problems despite the policemen and the guy that normally checks your baggage if you look like you might be carrying a bomb or other biological weapons in it. We got a great deal of attentio

n, which is just awesome, because I love attention when I planned for it.

ION was the starting point, and we jumped around all the way to emerald hill, where the damn box stopped working because I kept on shaking it around (ugh, cheap AKIRA shit). Quite unfortunate. People loved it, in general, despite the fact that the body paint started flaking off at some point because I was balancing the box against my hip, and the paint decided to transfer itself onto the box So, not looking so good 3/4 of the way down, but… fuck it.

The policemen on the street were pretty cool with it. They smiled at us, so it was good. Singaporeans apparently do love weird shit. In fact, I think we are really open to weird shit and would like very much to go crazy. As evidence, you should check out THE ULTIMATE START-UP SPACE to see some of the crazy ideas locals have for utterly random businesses that might just work.

We went to the shack to party later (after we’d gotten the paint off and eaten a huge pot of spaghetti with sauce from a tin and slices of Christmas ham at 1 kilo for $22, bargain really…). MGM was there and told me not to touch his sprocket several times, but I tried anyway but never quite succeeded… Then I met this girl I knew and she asked me if I knew Alexander.

“You mean Alex?” I said.
“No, I mean Alexander X” She replied.
“Ah yeah. What about him?” I asked.
“I slept with him.” She told me.
“Ahaha the horn dog. Me too. Whatever. It was not bad, nice body, a bit boring for my tastes. The face is alright. Not weird enough for me.” I said.
“He’s weird.” She told me.

“Okay. I don’t know him well at all. I guess you are right, he did sleep with the both of us after all. I don’t know what’s up with him.”
“He still has problems with his ex I think.” She told me.
“Okay… … Who cares?”

Joris comes by and I introduced her to him. She then yells over the music, “Hi! We slept with the same guy before.” I start laughing harder than I was before, and he tells her, “It’s not the first time she (as in me) has bumped into a random girl-friend and been introduced in this way.”

Hey, it’s all about friends of friends in this “web 2.0″ world after all.

That weekend doesn’t quite end there, but to be continued. Yeah.

We Apologize for any Technical Difficulties.

They were experiencing some technical problems at the theater. The audience To Be but now Are Not, were not amused and demanded refunds and vouchers. There was a lot of shoving and elbowing, and people were speaking in really angry voices. I spoke in an angry voice, I didn’t know why I did it, because I wasn’t angry. I just wanted my money back and a voucher. But maybe I thought I had to sound angry, to get what I wanted, so I did. Actually it is unnecessary. One can smile and demand one’s rights in this town, this I know. (yeah right)

“What a disappointment” I told my partner. “Technical difficulties… Pah! It’s like being about to fuck your girlfriend and then saying ‘Sorry luv, I’m just experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment, now, hold on’ turning around, grabbing your limp dick and trying to coax it to life with durex Tingling Sensation lubricant but realizing you forgot to wash your hands properly after you helped chop up the ingredients for Tom Yum soup.”

We went to another cinema and got tickets for a later show. He asked the girl at the counter if she was absolutely sure there would not be any technical difficulties. “If they do have it” I said, “you’re going to have to take your pants off this time and start making a point that you are also experiencing technical problems with your dick at this moment and start swinging it around.”

Thankfully, there were no technical problems.

It reminded me of the time the ex took off his pants on MAS in the 40 min before departure (actually it was Heathrow so it is likely this waiting time was significantly longer). He wanted to make a point about what lousy cunts they were, not turning on the air-conditioning before take-off because they were being cheap arse.

“Please put your pants back on sir.” Said the stewardess, trying not to laugh. “It’s hot. It’s unhealthy for the certain anatomical details that males are fortunately or unfortunately endowed with. You miss, do not have such a problem. It is easy for you to say.”

He finally did put his pants back on, when they fired up the air-conditioner. Surprisingly, other passengers found it most amusing.

I did visit him on Sunday. It was quite nice to see the old dog again. We talked about a couple of things we never did talk about since we broke up because most of the time our drinking sessions were filled with stories of new found depravity, like the Celing Penis and other adventures. I won’t say I was the best girlfriend ever, but he did realize there were a lot of things he gave me a hard time for that he shouldn’t have. At least I didn’t compel him to start wearing latex gloves everytime he cooked, or to use chopsticks to hold his cigs when he wanted a fag. And I never demanded or will ever demand that any man I date should be something straight out of Sex and the City because life would be quite boring them. I think even if I were to meet such a man, the story would turn out different anyway. If I have fantasies, it’s tuned more towards Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, not cocktails and multi-speed vibrators in New York. I mean, that’s nice, but just a bit ordinary to be a fantasy. Fantasies should ideally be dangerous.

He told me that there was a certain kind of girl called a checklist girl. A checklist girl is a type of girl that has a list in her head for what she would like a man to be, and reads Twilight… without barfing. I know many of those girls. It’s not that awesome men that are intelligent, good-looking, rich and have a big dick and know how to use it do not exist. They do, and in significant quantities. Like Pokemon, you’ve gotta catch ‘em all. But everyone has some stupid shit that makes them not 100% perfect. If you know how to accept it and deal with it, you can have a lot of fun because the road of the beaten track is the fun bit when you’re driving.

Shake of the glitter and climb out of th epyre of broken glass and religious monuments.

Merry fucking Christmas. I hope y’all had a good time. because I know I did. There was not a moment of sobriety to be had from Thursday till Monday morning, and it was just the way I liked it.

My Christmas prep was absolutely haphazard. But whatever, all I had to do was get some books for Tom and a couple of other nerdy friends after my own heart. I was talking with a friend about vibrators and presents for his girl, and I told him that he absolutely had to get her one because sex without a vibrator is like coffee without caffeine. Or like mash potatoes without celeriac. Mince pies without brandy butter. Apple pie without ice-cream. A g-spot without fingers. Etc.

Tom kicked off the lunch at around 1. I missed the popping of the first champagne, which is a pity. Apparently the cork flew out, knocked the red lantern above the dining table off it’s hook, causing it to fall quite spectacularly on Mark W’s head(while he was accusing people of being racist…he’s Welsh… apparently this fact is important) before launching itself onto an empty champagne glass in front of him and breaking it. This made his fairly pissed off and did nothing for his headache, and he accused C (who popped all the champagne that afternoon. 15 bottles of Piper and M & C) of flashing her left nork at some point while she was hogging one of the bottles.

C: I did not flash it.
M: Yes you did. I saw it.
C: There’s a tattoo there, what is it?
M: A nipple.

The turkey was awesome, the mash had loads of celeriac, the stuffing had everything that was called for in it, and…uh… the brussel sprouts were buttered. Then it was time to exchange presents and I went under the tree and got something that felt like a DVD. “Gee… I wonder what are the chances of this being a porn movie I’ve been in?” It was the Hangover. Whatever, I changed it for a box of Macaroons, which then got exchanged for a pair of M and S striped nighties, which are just cute but unfortunately came with L sized men underpants which just won’t go away now. The idea was that if I somehow managed to get all my clothes off again as I did last Christmas, I would have spare pants lying around so someone could put me back into clothes without problems.

B called me to wish me a Merry Christmas, which was really nice.

Me: How’s the woman situation? You know I always want to know this about you.
B: It’s good man. I have a lover in Vienna now. A Chinese girl.
Me: Haha yeah I know you like them.
B: Also one in Budapest. It’s just good.
Me: Sounds awesome. I didn’t think you could have only just one anyway…

He’s a dog but I love him. Although I still sometimes feel pissed that he told Ash I wasn’t his girlfriend when I was there this summer and she was hanging out with us. But I probably have a more liberal definition of what it means to be someone’s girl/boy. Anyway it’s just really nice to know I’m kind of special to him in some way. Friends are harder to find and make then lovers, and a relationship that is both is even harder to come by. The best thing you can find is a kindred spirit….

On Boxing day I went to catch Infected Mushroom with Joris. Elizabeth was supposed to be there, but she sent me a text later saying “Thank Goodness you didn’t come, some rock trance band was playing and too many people”. I went huh? Damn girl… I spazzed out, foamed at the mouth and had a religious experience. How can you not love Isreali hard house. Man! It was awesomeness.

J and I stumbled out drunk after the club closed and I bumped into LR who introduced herself to J and explained how we both knew each other (basically, “We slept with the same guy”). We were both completely off our tits on the music and soaking in our own sweat and wandering around the area talking shit and laughing and shouting at random things and cabs that wouldn’t pick us up. We did this for a bit… then we passed a little chapel with the nativity in cheap plastic in front of it. The gates were open and I thought… “Oh no… do we dare…?”

“Let’s go in.” I suggested. J said okay so we went past the gates and poked around in the manger with the plastic mannequins of the holy family, wise men, sheep and other assorted hobos.

We then went on into the chapel. The doors were not locked. There were a few benches and a small alter on a podium, and a cross that filled up the entire wall behind it.

“I’ve always wanted to fuck in a church.” I said.

“Yeah?” He looked at me with the kind of look that said I’m up for that and serious about it.

I laughed with just a llllittle bit of nervousness… “Should we?” I asked.

Me: Oh no… this is sooo bad…
Him: Why is it bad? Be rational. You don’t believe in God.
Me: No you’re right. Anyway religion is evil.
Him: That has nothing to do with it.
Me: Do you want to?
Him: Why not.
Me: Oh man. Nah, no… Oh… I don’t know. Oh

It was kind of weird. I don’t know why I was hesitating. Probably because we were trespassing… Because I don’t normally have an issue with fucking in public places. We ended up going back out to get a beer. He asked me if I wanted to go back, and I said yes, and so we went. He put me on the alter and we fucked. It was ridiculously good. I was also very drunk and could not come properly, and seriously the thought “shit, God is punishing me for this… I will never be able to have an orgasm ever again…” actually crossed my mind. But soon left (and was soon disproved anyway). It was really exhilarating just to do something so so naughty. It’s just one of those damn things I’ve always wanted to do… possibly to get back at all the painful, deluded moments I had when I was growing up Christian and in fear of so many imaginary things.

The light in the chapel was lovely. Really dark, with some shafts of silver through the roof… I was really thrilled, and at first I was anxious about getting caught, but after awhile a switch turned itself off, and I just got into it.

Boo yeah.

I will carry on in another post….

Meddling Chicks

How come come chicks who have no clue as how to handle their own love lives attempt to interfere with everyone else's. Tsk. Mine is running very well, thank you very much. A little left of center perhaps, but just the way I like it.

I met M last night after dinner with my mom and sis (oh lord, it's been awhile since I saw my family. Guilt, guilt, guilt). I was seriously pissed before that because I was feeling kind of ill and I just didn't the situation going anywhere or being any fun anymore. But ugh. I don't know what's it with him, but he said hi as I walked past him at the bar and I just went in my head, "Oh lord." I introduced him to MJ as my "pet" and okay, he's not really my pet, that's just a bit ridiculous, but he's got that way of looking and behaving towards me that just makes me feel like it's not an unreasonable description. Besides I can't stay mad at someone I'm meeting, otherwise it'll just be negative utility for everybody's time, and we don't want that, do we.

The thing I was hugely pissed off at was that he actually cared what his girl-friends thought of me. I mean, who gives a shit? They'll complain when their with you, but when they're not, they ain't thinking about it. The one who's gotta live with the shit is you and the other person involved. They have their own lives to deal with, and the more they interfere in other people's biz, the bigger the problems in their own lives. So you know, fuck it.

We're back to just hanging and chillin and having fun... he's great in controlled doses. All men are. You can't spend all your time with one person, then there'll be nothing new to talk about and you kind of... stagnate. Okay, maybe not after a few days, but it's scary how easily you can start to melt into people and how easily they can melt in to you.

Two and a halfsome.

The Christmas season arriving always brings about strange and most entertaining nights and days out. Nic had just gotten back to Sing after a trip around the UK and wanted to meet for a chat about some film stuff on Friday night. I was just back from 2 hours at the gym and coming down Concerta (which is like Ritalin, but better) and wasn’t feeling in top shape to head out straight away, so we hung around for a couple of hours talking shit and chilling out. By the time we got to Clarke Quay at 2 a.m. there wasn’t very much left by way of entertainment … most of the expat population seemed to have left town to spend Christmas with their families and to enjoy a coked out New Years’. We went into Sluttica (always guaranteed amusement) for drinks and I ended up dancing on the electronic floor at 5 in the morning, trying to avoid drunks that looked terrible to start of with and looked even worse while drunk, desperate and dancing. The only thing I was doing was dancing. Nic however was intercepted by a Japanese girl at the bar, and refused to come and dance. Which was possibly a good thing. I wouldn’t know.

The club shut, we left, and there was some talk of where to head down to. The girl asked if we were a couple several times, and no amount of fervent denial would keep her from asking. She stayed with us though, with no intention to leave, that much was obvious. Nobody could suggest anywhere to go, and after a failed attempts to find anywhere sufficiently amusing, we headed back to my place. So we were all having a drink and talking about random things when we came to the topic of the girl’s love life. It turned out to be quite a bad idea, but I guess she wanted to talk about it, and kind of guided the conversation to that direction. I don’t know why most women don’t just go straight to the point. If they want to talk about their love lives, they should just do it.

I watched Fight Club last night, and there was this bit where Marla Singer finishes Edward Norton’s sentence after he says “When people think you’re dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just.. Marla Singer ” instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.” Conversation with friends and strangers is just personal therapy, and important part of life, and it’s a pity when people can’t speak their minds to the ones they love the most. In fact, it is almost certain that a majority of people never do that, which is why love is a word that doesn’t agree with me.

She did not tell us much, but the basic thing was that her fiancee died. Then she started crying her eyes out. To be honest I don’t know what the fuck was going on. First she was talking about one of them cheating on the other, then she said he died. Whatever, it was weird. Nic said later that he thought it might have seemed a little creepy when we were handing her tissues and saying it was alright. Perhaps, but she started it. She calmed down and then asked if she could kiss Nic. I told her it was him she wanted to kiss, not me, they could do whatever the hell they wanted, I would encourage it. Then I went to the bathroom. When I came back she was on top of him and in her underwear. So they started making out and at some point all her clothes came off and I went into my bedroom to get condoms. I stuck them in Nic’s shirt pocket and gave him a yeah-go-for-it-baby, smile-smile, wink-wink. They started doing it on the couch and the girl asked me to take off my clothes, which I did. Unfortunately at the point I wasn’t particularly interested in getting it off with Nic, and she wasn’t particularly interested in getting off with me, so I went back to my room and decided it would be a good idea to take a photo.

It looks quite artistic when severely cropped and placed under Photoshop’s cut-out filter. Like the photo that was evidence of the time I got nuts and made Drake paint random shit from my tits to my crotch, the message was “MY EDEN” in psychedelic red , orange and yellow. with arrows and circles. It was like… Tasteful…man… In a way only contemporary, post-society, post-everything type of art can possibly be.

She left at 7, and we went to the sauna. It made me feel really good. Especially after dipping into the pool. I don’t get to see early mornings that often, so it was a treat.

To be continued in another post…..

I Tell You That I Love You Today

Your body is all angles and veins,
Face, Perfection, in Dual Tone.
Your Reason defined in discrete steps,
I feel I understand.

You ignore my subtle deviances,
And make love to me,
For the greater good.

My Precious Heart,
You shatter into little bits,
Sprinkle on a Dadaist collage,
As I make my stand on a cabaret stage.

Where liberal values devour a naked audience of voluptuous flesh,
Over-fed by the prices of prints,
That mock them and extol them.

Baby tell me that the demise of society,
Should be welcomed with the acceptance of over-abundance,
In this surreal fantasy of corn-fed violence.
That is our bedroom, our apartment,
Our phallic projectile of glass and steel and concrete,
Inserted deep into the bowels of Mother Earth,
(The adulterous bitch to bring forth life of such variety).

Let us drive across the continent of Europe,
That is so wide, mien Herr,
Which I promise you is not the case,
With the space between my legs,
My dear.

Hurtle down a highway,
Between politics and aesthetics,
Into a tunnel where at the end, there is no light,
And we fling ourselves into the singularity.

The Significance of Philip's goatee...

Phillip shaved his goatee off for November. His post here.

I had just shaved off my goatee but she didn’t say anything. That’s right. She looked at me for a second trying not to feel uncomfortable, then she looked away, and then I had to TELL her I had shaved and then she leaped into the air screaming in laughter, realizing what it was that was freaking her out…

I’m not very good at noticing details in everyday situations and things around me. I can get obsessed with them if it’s a particular thing or subject I’m interested in, but not without a conscious effort.

I was talking to Tom yesterday about this (everyone I know has problems with their hair… and you don’t want to know mine. Ugh. Wax on, wax off). I was reminded of this book I read years ago titled “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Pilots and inventor of handwriting recognition software (someone else was there first, but he made a better, cheaper one). The book was about the difference between computers and the human brain and the difference in how we perceived and responded to the external world.

Basically, robots take in visual information about the object and then compare it to its database of stored objects. After which they then they tell you if it’s a table, toy car, an reconstituted beef burger or your late buddy Bruce. You can help a robot better refine it’s comparing skills, and soon it will be able to tell the difference between a table and chair, a toy car and a toy truck, it might one day be able to tell a beef kebab from a mutton one and that your friend Bruce with a goatee and without a goatee, is still the same person. (I know there is sophisticated software in CCTVs that can measure eye span, face width, nose bridge etc up to a very accurate degree, despite arbitrary disguises like beards, mustaches and facial tattoos). But it will not think like a higher order mammal.

The thing is, human beings are obnoxious, and a lot of what we ’see’ as being ‘the external world’ is what we assume it to be from past experiences. We only ever register the differences. It makes things simpler. That way we don’t have to compare every point of a particular object with the memory of another object like it in order to determine what it is.

When I look at Phillip, I expect him to look a certain way and I simply assume that he does. I have already established in my head that this is the way he looks, and it is not necessary to re-evaluate how he looks every time in order to have a conversation about other people’s beliefs (economic, spiritual or otherwise). However when there is a mismatch between what is assumed and expected and the visual stimuli actually received, something in our brains go “… hang on a second…” Now if it was a huge tash he had grown, I would probably have noticed it, but no sensible man in the 21st century would find it fashionable to have his facial hair dominate his features…

I think the first reaction we have to most things that contradict our internalized model of the world is indignation. It’s “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you fit into my mental model?” From there, we then try and figure out what this difference is, and recalibrate this view of the world. Basically, we project our views on the world and then take in the external stimuli and compare the two if there is a mismatch. Robots take in the information, and then compare it with previous ‘experience’. We predict, they don’t.

Party at Home Club

Last night was fun. I kind of told myself I didn't really want to go to anymore of the parties for exchange students, but it was cheap, and the guy was selling the tickets at Raffles City, so there was no reason not to.

Liz came over for dinner (late as usual), and then I got a call from Thomas who is this Finn I met through a random add on facebook (his profile pic showed of a nice body... six pack, nice arms, yeah) asking if he could come over for a shower, because the shower at his gym in Cairnhill was out of service. This is quite a bit more random then it seems. I had only met him once before at Zouk, and he was there with some chick, and I had just come by from a somewhat frustrating, threesome with a Norwegian guy I sure as hell wasn't supposed to fuck. He was a weird one, anyway that was weeks and weeks back.

So Thomas calling me was pretty damn random, but anyway I was glad to have him over and I made them all tequila shots and the I got dressed and we went to Home Club. Everyone there was pretty young, the oldest kids were my age, the rest were younger. They kind of behaved really young too. But I love boys and some of them were really cute. There was this blonde Dane that was totally adorable! Like oh my god. With pink cheeks. Haha!

Sven was there (oh man). I swear to god, I still have this thing for him, but yeah he doesn't really like me and he's so young and German (I never understand Germans, unless they're from Bavaria). Anyway I got up this morning (finding a huge bruise on my knee, broken glass on the floor, and thinking, "Shit. I slapped Sven". I certainly remember hitting someone. I texted him and apparently I did hit him, but... whatever. He didn't take it personally. I find it quite funny actually, but what else is a spoilt little girl supposed to do in a situation like this? Haha, it was the second time I hit a guy I reckon, the first time was in Budapest when Barna and I stopped seeing each other for 10 days (because he made me angry) and he turned up at a random flat party, and I administed a roundhouse kick onto his hip. My friend had to break up the fight, but I wasn't really angry and I think he knew it. It was just my strange way of having fun.

Notes on the Personal User Manual.

From my other site: Babelogic.net which has other stuff.

There are a few sites I visit regularly for pure entertainment value. Apart from Facebook, which is kind of lame because no one except me ever posts really cool stuff on a regular basis, okCupid is another one. It’s got a good algorithm that matches people really well on the cerebral interests front, and it has got fun tests that you can learn absolutely random facts from, like which planet rotates clockwise (Venus). Sometimes you also come across really funny profiles. I have copied and pasted the profile of some random cute nerd that had decided to put his selling points and his warning signs all into one funny “User Manual”. I think it’s a good idea because it makes really mundane and tedious things light-hearted and fun. If he had put it in another way, it would have just made for a rather obnoxious profile (IMHO).

Also, it is interesting to me because I have been reading quite a lot of experimental fiction lately, and different ways to string a narrative is an obsession. Of course this is someone’s dating profile, so it is not art, but it is a good idea. The other 2 instances of experimental narrative I have been thinking about are the description of someone’s personal space over a length of time (which has been used before, but the only one I know of is a poem), and the index of someone’s biography (from Ballard’s Drowned World). I should start thinking harder and keep a collection of different types of ways to tell a story, it could make for an awesome novella. (I have pretty much decided that I don’t ever wish to write a full-length work of fiction because I lack verbosity -blogging is easy! Try writing 60 000 words, which is the lower limit of the average length of a novel… And I also lack sufficient working memory capacity).

Anyway, the pasted profile (he apparently also rides horses for a hobby, which I find quite charming.):

USER MANUAL read carefully!

Thank you for choosing this model of person. This version includes the advanced feature of Working Module (WM), which guarantees that this person is willing to work and make money for his future family, he enjoys both physical and cerebral works. Note that this person cannot be exposed to extreme emotions, the Empathy Training Module (ETM) is not included. Exposing to high level of emotions may cause malfunctions and stop the valuable feature, thinking algorithm. We are proud to introduce the new and improved Shopping Module, which is capable of spending money in book store, further tests required, but the recent tests show that this person cannot be used for shopping in clothing related stores. Version includes Entertainment Function, which works regularly on better days, also includes optimistic parameters. If the person looks frozen, wave your hands in front of his eyes, to catch his attention, most possibly he is only thinking. If he smiles during this time, that means he found out how to rule the world or maybe he is daydreaming about something. This person includes wide knowledge of random facts and high performance ability of learning. Also runs a well working tennis module.

1. The person can NOT read others’s minds. He won’t find out what is your problem. Voice or written conversation are required to send him a problem, and he will attempt to solve it.

2. The person can NOT reincarnate. Don’t kill him.

3. The person can NOT dance. This feature can be added to his repertoire by teaching him.

4. The person can NOT be fed by fast foods, raw meats, and most snacks.

5. The person requires loyalty, and gives loyalty.

6. The person can NOT watch Hollywood-made romantic movies.

7. The person needs at least 6 hours of sleeping each day.

8. The person won’t go to parties each weekend.

violating these points there is a risk of losing the long life warranty.

Mannerism and the Sex Drive of the Mistress.

From now on, I will be posting links to all my new blog posts here.

My new blog is found at www.babelogic.net

Less sex, more art and admittedly a lot of sex and art.

Mannerism and the Sex Drive of the Mistress.

Finnish Men

Finnish men are a taciturn lot. It's true, they are really fluent at keeping silent in two language. It used to be Finnish and Swedish, now it's Finnish and English. An outgoing Finnish man would be considered introverted anywhere else in the world. I have met talkative Finns, it's when they've had several cases of beer and I have gotten used to the general lack of conversation. Finns believe that silence is golden, and they will inform you of how much you talk when you talk too much. They love their personal space and are good at all sport that does not require other people to play with and is life endangering (with the exception of ice-hockey), these are such things as Formula 1 racing, Cross- country skiing, marathon running in the middle of winter, Motorcross racing etc.

They take everything seriously, even when really drunk, they seldom will say or do something they do not mean. When they get to that point, it is the point of passing out. When you ask them a question, they will think about it for a long time before answering (sometimes as long as 20 minutes in a running conversation) and the answer will be very detailed and accurate -try asking for directions in Finland, you'll see what I mean- or they will simply refuse to answer because they don't have the time to think of the right one.

Finns do not believe there is such a thing as an uncomfortable silence. It is a good thing to learn. It is better to have someone with nothing better to say to shut up and to babble on.

Potential Boyfriend names:

Ari
Aalto
Herkko
Janne
Jukka
Karri
Lasse
Lauri
Pekka
Eetu

Notice anything? They are all 2 syllables, usually with a repetition of one letter. I was joking with a Finnish friend that all the male names sound kind of the same... he smacked me on the head and pointed out that I was always getting the name of the fortress island (Suomilinna) with the name of this special shot (Salmari). Anyway, Finnish is an impossibly difficult language to learn but with very straight forward pronunciation. The syllables sound the way they look.

Four insights into Finnish Culture

Finnish Dogs

They are rather furry, generally well behaved, and do not bark. TBH, I didn't see that many around.

Finnish Driving

Finland has some of the best Formula One drivers in the world. Finnish men know how to drive, they all rode their first moped when they turned 8, and I have heard stories of little boys being made to drive little go carts or motorcycles on a track even when they have barely learnt to walk. If your riding with a Finn, you can trust your life with him. I was half asleep on Jukka's motorbike (the upper half), and I'm still alive. In all Scandinavia, the fines are according to your income, after tax, so the richer you are, the more you are taxed. But it doesn't really matter because no one speeds anyway. They drive at the speed limit because it's the speed limit. They won't cross the road even if there are no cars going by because the light hasn't turned green.

However, all rules go to shit when they are having a race. (I saw this on Top Gear, no shit) A group of Finns, including housewives, teenage girls, a retired old men and a little boy who has just grown tall enough to see over the dashboard take battered old cars from the 70's into the forest and have a race. The teenage girl beat one of the regular English drivers on Top Gear. 

Finnish Theft

HUH? You don't even have to be afraid of the homeless drug addict lurking around in the park (unless it's the rapist park... apparently one of them in Helsinki has been dubbed exactly that). In Finland, and actually the rest of Scandinavia, everyone believes in making their own way in life, through honest means. It's so pervasive you start worrying if you are being as equal and honest with them as they are with you. Anyway theft is not necessary, the government is rich enough to take care of everyone, and anyway, Finland is not a materialistic society. Everyone is either comfortable or moderately rich.

How to meet Him.

Good luck! I mean it. Finland, like most rich, atheistic, Western societies has a population with a high rate of casual partners, and you can guess how that happens despite the guys seemingly painful shyness for most of the week, with the exception of Fridays and Saturdays. All men are easy when they are drunk enough not to be self-conscious, and the Finns will drink till they are boderline comatose so they can approach a girl (I met two guys on the boat from Stockholm to Helsinki who told this to me as a reason why Finnish males drink so damn much). But don't worry, he'll buy his own drinks, you just have to wait till 4 a.m. before advancing.

There is also the slow and steady way. Finns really appreciate friendships that will last, and if you have the time, you should take your time to get to know some Finnish guys over an extended period. Just ask them out here and there for a case of beer, or two, and sooner rather than later, you'll get what you want. But you have to look very closely for the signs that show he is interested, because it's subtle. Really fucking subtle. And you will have to make the first move. Don't expect a Finnish guy to call you or ask you out, he won't, even if he really wants to. With the exception of the times when he is drunk, it is 4 in the morning, and you're asleep.

Tips for the date

All Scandinavia is an equal society and everyone pays their own way. The men will buy a drink or two for the girls, but at a dinner, everyone pays their fair share. The women wouldn't have it any other way.

Finns are punctual, a 2 minute delay to them is late, but they are also very patient and well-tempered. And unlike Germany (with the exception of Bavaria, as I have realized) some rules can be broken if it makes everyone happier, or if it makes sense. He will tell you to hurry up, and you should, but nobody will get angry as long as you inform in advance.

A Finn will not hit on you, even when he is really drunk, and even then he might not do so. So if at the end of the date, you would want something more, you have to make it obvious. You know how all French men assume you would sleep with them if you go out on a date? Finns are the exact opposite. The only time he will hit on you is when you are in his bedroom. And even then.

If however you do not make it to that stage, he will give you a detailed description of the most optimal route you should take to get home, along with details of the length of time you will take to walk it. On weekends, this would be a description of the night bus, and he will find out the time table for you on his blackberry.

What you should know about Finland

 Finns love their country and they know a lot of contemporary details about it (especially concerning Formula One racing), but not a great deal of historical stuff. The first thing I learnt about Finland after Nokia was what a fantastic guy Kimi Räikkönen was, this was accompanied by You Tube videos of the guy falling off the roof of his yacht drunk on champagne. The second thing is that the landscape is all lakes and that it is the country that is the world's top supplier of ice-breakers.

In all of Scandinavia, the sale of alcohol is controlled by the state and you can only purchase hard liquor outside bars at the Alko store, but beer and long drinks (a Finnish invention) are sold at supermarkets. No alcohol is sold after nine, and the Alko is closed on weekends.

Impressing his mother

 Finnish moms are cool. They ride motorbikes, cook good food and drink beer. It's an egalitarian society, an on top of that, most Scandinavians don't understand racism. People are people whatever the age, or colour, and you'll be treated like a friend and offered lots of beer.

Finnish girl competition

You're more likely to make friends with one than compete. All the girls will end up hanging around together complaining about how the men never talk, and how to get them to talk. Most likely, all the chicks will gang up to try and get the guys drunk faster. The girls are all feminized (Finland after all has the 2nd female president after New Zealand) and there is a genuine feeling of 'Hey sister' vibe when you hang out.

When you want him to go away.

Finns are practical, and they know it when something is not right. You don't have to do anything, in fact nothing needs to be said. The right solution will happen. Finns think everyone else is talking too much about how they feel and they feel this is unnecessary. Why say something or ask questions to something that is already apparent? In Finland, many things happen without a lot of words being said.

FUEL Party!

Come and play! We'll be partying till dawn!
Darren Emerson and Samantha Ronson at the F1 pit stop!

Xoxo

Where is Isabella?

In case you're looking for me, I'm now blogging at www.babelogic.net.

Yep, many things have changed. I lived with Mark for slightly over 2 years, discovered intellectual joys, traveled all over Asia-Pac, lived and backpacked in Europe (I even roughed it through the mountains in Transylvania!) Been on the West-coast a couple of times for this one particular conference (SIGGRAPH, if you're into computer graphics), pushed the limits of my reality and got further in my understanding of my own consciousness through reading and a variety of experiments.

My past exploits all seem so awfully trivial right now ;-) But still, no regrets. I wouldn't be where I was today without them.

xoxox

TV Whore

For the people not living in this weird claustrophobic SEAsian village, the local TV end of Media Crap Co. (which is NOT quite like the paper I write for, because although they are both owned by the same company, different people run the things. Which is about as close to a Free Press outside the internet we're as likely to come to for the next few months. Although nothing is fucking for sure anymore because the BBC was allowed to lambast the much to be desired Human Rights record we have at the moment concerning our Domestic help)

Anyway, the TV end have decided to make a talk show program where they get morally degenerate characters like myself to talk about stuff and then make us all sound and look truly like the devil's chambermaids. (You know, the little girls that clean out his royal pots. My God, what a fantasy, the little bucket girl getting fucked by the lord of evil.)

I must get this straight. That TV thing was a bomb, but I went anyway because it was just something I would do. Because I don’t give a fuck about how I look on TV (I feel pai seh of course lah! But all I have to do to not feel that is to not watch the show right. As long as people don’t recognize me on the streets, what the fuck do I care). It’s just like how I’d suck the cock of Sir Stamford Raffles the week before National Day and take of my pants in front of Buckingham Palace. It doesn’t matter, for God’s sake. It’s mad, to allow yourself to look like a whore on TV, but it’s so against everything this society is about I had to do it.

I’m sick with people telling me what’s the right move with this or that. If I listened to that nonsense, I wouldn’t have as much fun. If you haven’t already noticed, I don’t give a shit about the opinions of the general public. If they know why I’m doing what I do (and the reason is simple –I’m doing it because sex is just a thing we have to do as human beings, there’s no escaping it and there’s no need to be elitist about the fact that you’re having sex, or about the fact that you aren’t).

Just move on already. So I have sex with my boyfriend, and before that I had sex with about a dozen people, that’s normal. If you think we’re any better than animals, you can forget it. When it comes down to our biological behaviour, we’re no more bereft of self-control, and we are no more amenable or beatific. What differentiates us is our ability to create beyond any need for the satisfaction of biological instincts. The sooner we get over things that we can’t change, the sooner we can get to the things that bring true joy to the human spirit. If Michelangelo worried all damn day about how being gay wasn’t morally desirable, he wouldn’t have painted the Sistine Chapel in the dynamic glory (not to mention the sometime smug amusement) we now experience it with.

To the people that watched the show and thought the people that came up with the idea are a bunch of idiots, the sort that are no different from those that enjoy sodomy with little boys while basking in the manufactured holiness of the state/institution, amen to you.

As someone put it in an email to me, who are we kidding, do our men only lick postage stamps (and our girls only enjoy sex after they are wed? I don’t recall anyone telling me our genitals took on a different state of mind after a certificate is signed).

To the people that think I look like a whore, you should know that deep inside that’s what you are anyway. What kinda human being doesn’t like to fuck? Get over it already.(not including the people that have emailed me out of good intentions. I don't agree with your views on public opinion, but I know you mean no insult. And I actually knew I would look like a whore when I did the thing anyway)

xoxox

The Great Big Shite World

How strange it all is.

I woke up with a relatively grumpy disposition, slightly hungry, constipated, tired, and pissed off that I didn’t quite understand the Batch Automate function in Photoshop (I do now) and had wasted just about the whole of yesterday choosing and compressing photos from the new SG set individually. I felt bad for whining about why he couldn’t make my life easier and shoot with on a lower resolution. It doesn’t matter of course, but I think the next time I will come up with a proper storyboard, and we will shoot more precisely. Randomness is good, but too much of it doesn’t really help you improve. You’ll end up depending on chance, over what you can actually do.

His business partner told him that there was no future in nude photography, and I can’t stop disagreeing to myself whenever anything at all that can remind me of it flashes in my face. I need to get a little more involved with Suicidegirls, I think I really should. There’s so much going on there I don’t know what the hell I’m missing out on, and that’s bad. Apparently since the start of this year, the comic artist/publisher (or is it both) that gave us the Extra-ordinary league of gentlemen has been working on the first few issues of an SG comic that sounds vague reminiscent of Tank Girl. You know. The ultra anti-feminist heroine; Sexy, strong, and as feminine as they come, that kinda bullshit. Sounds promising.

Yesterday, the ex-ed paramour of one of my girlfriends texted me and asked me how I was doing. To provide a very brief history, he was one of those people that entered our lives in a time when we were both completely blue to fucking around town, and screwed my girlfriend over by doing a Paris Hilton back in the day before the Simple Life, with the bulk of her public exposure shot on a DV camera. It was quite nasty, I must say, but that was then, and it is not in my place to guess whether things have changed, or is he still as immature as he used to be.

Funny I’d be saying something like that, because he used to teach me in school. I don’t know what to say really. We exchanged a few weird text messages, where I basically attempted to extricate some gossip from him because all I was interested in was his predisposition to deceitful behaviour. It’s not nice I know, and I don’t mean it, but I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven him for doing what he did to her. Or for behaving the way he does.

I want to know why.

Why are some people so deceitful? Why must they cheat, why sleep around, is it SO hard to know what you want and NOT waste the lives of other people.

The more I think about it, the more I know what faithfulness matters so much to all of us, even me. Oh I will admit I enjoy the occasional ménage a trios, and I haven’t had one for ages (no matter anyway, because the only girl I’d like to have it with has left the country for greener pastures –literally) but when someone sleeps around your back and you find out, it’s not so much the act that matters but the absolute lack of consideration for the other person, who now feels lied to.

Actually, fuck it. What do I know. How do I know how people feel after they have been together for years and years. But if my parents are an example, you don’t get bored with each other if you’ve got the right person. You just don’t.

xoxox

Fame and Foolishness

What is the benchmark for success? What is the point of fame. Oh my God I know I’ve got terribly lofty ideals, but I can’t help it. Of course success should be measured by how much you change the lives of the people around you, for the better. Fame should be for the purpose of improving the existence of your fellow human beings. I can’t bear to think of the talents wasted into the pointless pursuit of things that do not matter anyway.

At a party a couple of nights ago, Richard and I got wind that an acquaintance of his had finally gotten a television program on ESPN. According to R, a friend of his (also in
The similar business of fame) was visibly shaken when he heard about it. But what was the point though? The television industry is even shittier than the publishing industry. As far as I know it, there are generally more good books on display than bad ones, in TV, the number of crap shows far supersedes the ones worth watching.

It’s a hell industry, if you think about it. At the top of the chain you have consumers that don’t know any better, below them are the companies that want to sell them things, below that are the ad agencies. After the ad agencies are the TV people that decide what shows and which personalities are profitable and which ones are not. Below that are the TV companies and the TV personalities. And worshiping the personalities are the consumers that don’t know any better.

My god.

Of course it isn’t as bad as that, and not all of us (consumers) are idiots, and shows made for consumers that aren’t idiots are better of course. And then it’s not so bad.

The problem with most people that want fame is that they all have humongous egos and don’t want to listen to other people around them. There is no shortage of bum-licking of course, but it is damn well possible to flatter someone while making it absolutely obvious to that someone she’s an idiot and that all your ideas are better. There’s an explicit difference between bum-licking and being receptive to the ideas of other people, and knowing exactly what it is they want.

Ah, I’ve had enough. Television has ruined too many good people, and I’m glad my little sister doesn’t quite give a fuck. These people must all be disillusioned. The only people they are impressing are the other disillusioned.

That aside, Richard and I finally did my next set for Suicidegirls! It’s fantastic. He lighted it up like a movie set, and it’s got me dressed like girl in 1920s Singapore fooling around in Mr. Trousers’s bedroom. Mr. Trousers is a pervert dummy he got made at some mannequin store, with a pair of hands that can hold a number of items from rope to cameras to industrial vibrators. He’s quite a useful thing to have.

The power supply in our apartment could scarcely handle the pressure we were putting on it, and the mega lights kept on going off ever so often until he found another way to connect them. It must have been quite odd for the people out on the street at 2 in the morning. We’d clawed on this really powerful light outside the window so it looked like the morning sun farther up in the northern hemisphere, and one outside the bathroom window.

Quite something really. I’ll remember to tell you when it gets up.

xoxox

The Awareness Rodeo of Life

I feel depressed. It is raining so very hard, Lynn is no longer in the country, I want to get out too. I feel sick of living here. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I’m so tired. I’m happy with my new life, but there’s too much past I’m so embarrassed with I will have to leave soon.

I have started writing my novel, and if there’s one thing I realize, I dislike the people I entered relationships with when I knew less about myself then the ones I did after I knew exactly what sort of person I was going to get involved with. And where it was all going. There is no reason for me to despise the first boy I ever dated more than the men that have (clearly) taken advantage of me. I didn’t mind of course, I learnt a great deal about human stupidity and how to avoid its pitfalls, but at the end of it all, we are our own greatest enemy. Our lot in life cannot be blamed on anyone else but ourselves, and no on affects us more than we do, ourselves.

The more sure of myself I became, the less I was likely to believe in stupid things that had no worth in believing in, in the first place. That was what I hate so much about my first relationship when I think back on it. It had to happen, but it was the more trying experience in the last few years. More trying than using my body and having it used, more trying than believing in relationships which wouldn’t work eventually.

Oh yes, nothing is more embarrassing than realizing that something you believed in wasn’t worth believing in the first place.

Actually… not quite. Realizing that something you believed in would have ruined a good life if you carried on believing in it is even crapper.

Not realizing it would be the worst of the lot.

I love Richard so much I don't know what more I can take to fill myself up. The more of him he gives and I take, the more it will never be enough. With the right person you don't get bored, with the right person, you can only want more. More and more and of no one else.

How so very strange.

xoxox

ps: (The other website at www.missizzy.org is crapping up for the time being. So. Sorry about that.)

Miss Izzy

Hullo there!

It's time for me to move. So.

www.missizzy.org

xo