Counting the Electro Beats to bed.

Sven Våth was a spiritual experience. He went on till 5:30 and kept on going. Well past Zouk's closing time indeed. I had an epiphany while on the dance floor. I was spacing out (a combination of sleepiness, awesome and really loud Trance- minimal ish beats) thinking about my move to Holland when the little voice in my head said, "Fuck it you know. You should just go. It's a free country there, people do whatever they want there and fuck it all. The only thing being a citizen of a country entitles you to is the license to live as a useless bum in said country. So don't carry on staying here if what you wanna do is go. The only difference about you there is that you don't have an EU pass. So what." Epiphany man.

The other time I had one like that was outside the Budapest war museum (very depressing place indeed). It was 8 in the morning, I felt surprisingly good, the winter weather was crisp and the sun was shining, and I thought, "You know, the only reason why people do evil things is because theya re ignorant, afraid and insecure. Or perhaps just insane. But evil in an of itself doesn't really exist as an entire entity in itself."

We Heart OkCupid!

My favorite dating site ever is okCupid. It's got a sophisticated matching algorithm, has one of the best personality tests (The Dating Persona Test. It's not always 100% correct, and people can swing between different archetypes, but it's good enough for me to swear by it), and the people that run the site are dating nerds. They're totally into finding out what makes people tick (in the online dating world, that is), and they go to great lengths to present their findings too, on their okTrends blog.

In this months post, they talk about profile pictures, and what types of photos gets the most results. I.e. getting a message from another member you might be interested in, and having that message followed up. The bit I found most interesting was about profile photos not showing any face. I think this would not normally work on regular dating sites, but okCupid is different. They actively match interests and send you emails about new and exciting matches, and (in my case) if someone has an interesting photo and reads the same books and likes mayonnaise, I'd send them a message.

I think I will experiment with this photo (although my SM days are over... NOT):

Most of the time I don't actually meet anyone off the site. But when I do, it's a pretty good chance that if the algorithm says they're a good match online, they will generally be quite a lot of fun when you meet them. Okay, they might not be the type of person I'd go for in terms of body hotness (which is very important to me, but apparently not as important as geek-ness) but at least you're guranteed to have a really fun time with them.

I've used it twice while traveling to meet guys that lived in the city I was going to. The one I remember with 98% positive feelings was this American guy I met in Berlin at a bar 'round the corner from my hostel. It was by Rosa Luxemberg Strasse opposite the Volksbühne (theater for homeless people) with a huge sign on it that said "AMERICA FUCK OFF" (the next day it said "DARWIN WIN!") In 20 minutes, I found myself accepting an invite to Fusion Festival. It was completely ridiculous, I had just said yes to sharing a 1 man tent for 5 fucking days with a guy I'd just met online at my very first rave in a country I'd never been to before.

We had a shared interest in electro minimal and certain types of non-fiction.

The experience of being at Fusion could have been better I felt if I had been less childish then. It was a time when I mostly saw men as sex objects and couldn't really understand myself in relation to them in a non-sexual way. Tragic. But he was very kind; took care of me, fed me etc. Yeah right. Fed was a bag of peanuts and a sack of pretzels in 5 fucking days. Pretty sweet for an online match, don't you think?

Funnily enough, this summer after I'd just got back from Finland, this Finn contacted me on the site and invited me to this year's Fusion. If I could make it, which I sure as hell plan to. Apparently this year the tickets can only be gotten though pre-sale, and it was all sold out before New Years!

Movie Appearences

Now is a few years behind schedule to collect all my public information. But I will attempt to do this over the course of the next few weeks. This includes columns in magazines, films, etc.

Pleasure Factory: I appear at 0:46

Directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham. I played a supporting role to Yang-Kuei Mei, from Ang Lee's Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, and Ananda Everingham  of "Shutter" fame.

The film gain was screened at the Cairns Film Festival in 2007.



Lucky 7 : I appear at 0:14
Directed by Sun Koh.

The film was screened at the Rotterdam film festival in 2008.



Contact me if you need a girl of legal age that can play the horny adolescent role in your art-porn film.

Detonator

Directed by Micheal Tay.

Locked in a Capital "I".

I can not remember where I last heard it. But there's a song about being locked in a Capital "I", the best explanation for this I take from David Foster Wallace's Oblivion:

...of course they were unique and superior in certain crucial ways, how else could they explain the fact that they themselves have been at the exact centre of the entirety of their concious lives? 

 

I normally do not take photographs. I get photos taken of me. If it weren't for picture tagging on Facebook, I would have so little photographic memories of my existence. I almost never post personal photos online because not everyone would like their image on a public blog, but sometimes I just feel compelled to, you know. Just like how I feel compelled to write about pretty intimate details of my life here. I can't help it, although sometimes I wonder if this may actually do more harm then good.

I'm uncomfortable posting the likenesses of people I know anyway, unless I know them very well, and they already have a web presence anyway (like Phil). But even then...

These are photos from the morning of the "Pepper Lunch" that Danielle took. I thought they were pretty cool, and wanted to post them, but couldn't without blanking out the identity of the other people involved, so I started blanking them out.

They turned out a bit cynical, eventually, IMHO. But I like them. They bother me.

The Bit and the Fly Pornographer.

"It's a Tuesday, oh god." Tom said as he poured me another glass of whiskey. It was 3 a.m. and we'd already watched the title sequence of Shortbus and "The Circle of Shit" chapter in Salò, based on the 120 days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. The initial plan was to have a civilized evening of Andrew Bird, some Izakaya and perhaps a drink or two after, but the drink or two turned into several soon enough when we met up with Raa and YY at Harry's, who introduced us to the "Fly Pornographer".

I asked him to explain what exactly it was that he did, and he said he was doing research in the field of fly genitalia. There are data banks of this stuff, and the penises all look and function different (after you consider the function of sperm depositing), so it keeps the job interesting. Or something. But you know, once you get me started on talking about penises and sexual competition aka The Red Queen, the night can only get funnier.

Eventually the lightweights left (I personally felt there was something else going on there *hehehe* but not for me to say... I would have been a lot less subtle, but subtlety isn't my strongest suit anyway. Something like announcing "Would you like to take me home sir?" My friends usually pat me on the head when that happens and go, "Classy").

I suggested that we all went back to Tom's place because it wasn't that far, and it would beat trying to look for somewhere to get beers and then sitting on the steps of the Mandarin hotel behaving like hobos. I don't mind the hobo life, but fuck it, his place was much nicer (I knew Raa would like it) and anyway it was time to start on the hard liquor.


Someone sent me a message on okCupid recently and he said "I have this image in my head of you inviting everyone over for a crazy party, and then everyone sees your books and they all just start reading." These people arrived at Tom's flat drunk and starting jizzing in their pants at the graphic novel collection.

We tried to find his copy of "Naked Lunch" because while we were on our way in the cab, he had started to recite the entire monologue where Bill was talking about the Man who Taught his Asshole to Talk. So of course we had to show them bits of Naked Lunch, now that we've started on it. Unfortunately it could not be found, so he put on the title sequence of Shortbus instead (where a guy sucks his own dick and comes into his mouth and Mistress Severin is whacking a guy with a whip and saying "Come on pardner, I'm gonna miss my fucking train." and the guy jizzes on the fake Jackson Pollock on her wall).

Naked Lunch could still not be found, so we put on Salò instead, just to make the night a little more weird. Everyone has their own special arena when it comes to corrupting someone else, and Tom's is really disturbing art movies that even some of his friends can not handle. I don't understand this of course, I mean, it's just an art film, what's the big deal? I would watch Shortbus with my mother and she wouldn't have a problem with it. Heck, she's seen me give an on screen blow-job (it was done with a dildo), so fuck it. But my mother is a weird one anyway, my sister and I have had conversations about male vs. female strippers with her for her 70th birthday. She said female would be preferable, men have ugly packages down there. Ho ho ho. That's why Scottish men place their sporrans right over it, for decency. Not! Don't hit me Mr. Emerson, or start playing your bagpipes...

Salò was completely disgusting. We weren't watching it very seriously, so it wasn't too disturbing, and everyone present was obviously open to weird shit (I mean, Raa is Catholic and the Fly Pornographer spends his days cataloging penises); it was a good idea, basically. Nothing like hundreds of naked people running around, screaming and eating shit. I loved it. I don't get the shit eating thing, but you know... been to fetish parties where the shit can get pretty weird in real life, so of course I'd love it. But you already knew that.

At some point Joris rings me up and asks me where I was. I told him we were all still at Tom's place and I asked Tom if he could come. He said okay sure, and I asked him again, and he said yeah, yeah he can come. So Joris came over and it was alright really, there was maybe a tiny bit of weirdness, but I don't think anyone paid any attention to it. (As an aside, Tom just got me a copy of "The Ethical Slut") They got along fine, I thought. I totally suck at cheating and being deceitful and would prefer not to, so I think this is the way forward. I never have problems being introduced to the women of men I've dated before. The more the merrier I say, quite unfortunately many men and women have problems sharing. This option is not for everyone...

Aaaanyway, Tom eventually put on his kimono and finally made good on his word at kicking us all out at 5 a.m. and we thanked him for the lovely whiskey, and went our separate ways.

Meat Bun Baby

I am in a weird mood. I was overwhelmed with a desire to give my pussy a proper name when I was on the bus back from True Fitness. It was possibly a combination of missing about 24 hours of sleep the last 7 weeks, too much caffeine, and a general feeling the avoidance of melancholy and the anxiety of moving to the promised land. It was a good distraction. She used to be called Cream Puff, but that really wasn't very exciting. I mean, whatever right, too sweet. And I don't eat cream puffs anyway. So I've re-branded my pussy, because it's all about marketing these days. :-O (Oh c'mon luv, don't take it seriously... here have a salt lick). 

She's called Meat Bun Baby now. Isn't that just awesome? She even has a little avatar. You can press her belly and see what happens :DD

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.