Some friends have pointed out that I have been blogging less and this is turning out to be more of a travel blog, which is true I suppose! I hardly have time to blog these days (note: I do productive things like watch Gossip Girl in my free time.)

Anyway, this is another travel post. Went to Macau and Hong Kong over the long weekend - was tagging along my parents on one of their gambling trips to Macau. Went to the casino with them and lost S$45 at the slot machines so I gave up, deciding I would rather spend money on shoes instead. I had been to Macau once when I was very young but it has changed and developed so much since then - now it looks really like Vegas, with all the bright neon lights and massive casinos like MGM Grand and Venetian. We stayed at the Venetian and when we checked in they handed us a map of the hotel because it is so huge!

We explored Macau for a bit but there wasn't much to do there unless you want to gamble or eat Portugese egg tarts (yum). We went to the Fort and also up the Macau Tower which was 60 storeys high, overlooking the city.

Then I took the ferry over the Hong Kong to meet up with Trish, who has just moved to Hong Kong from New Zealand with her boyfriend Si. I arrived at their place to find Trish's animals with their party hats to welcome me - so cute:


I haven't seen Trish in 6 years so it was very nice to catch up. I forgot how much she can eat. Do not be deceived by her lithe frame; she can eat more than most guys I know. Before I went over, I told her I wanted to eat my favourite mango dessert from Hui Lau Shan and dim sum and she literally planned my itinerary around these foods and her favourite snacks. It went something like 'ok we have lunch now, but two hours later, we will eat mango dessert, and two hours later we will have dinner, and an hour after we will have egg waffles'. I was blown away by her eating/snacking capabilities but it was all good because I managed to try out more food this time round. This is us eating various food over a span of ...less than two days:




We had mango dessert everyday, which was great. Hui Lau Shan takes their mango dessert seriously, and even has mango motifs everywhere, including their slippery floor sign:


We found this lovely vegetarian dim sum place in the middle of Hong Kong Park, that serves great tea like this flower tea:


Of course Trish and I had to walk off all the food so we did a lot of walking and shopping at H&M (oh how I miss ye), this spec shop that sells vintage frames, and lots of little shops around Causeway Bay and Mongkok:

My best buy is the Indiana Jones dvd box set (original and Japanese import!) which I bought for S$8! Amazing! I am going to watch all of them before the new movie starts showing here.

Also caught up with Danielle and her ever adorable daughter Scarlett:

What a rock star - she can do the pointing pose at such a young age.

This has been a completely indulgent holiday but it was definitely a very good break:)

M introduced me to MGMT last week, and I haven't stopped listening to this song since. So catchy!

It's come to that point in my life where I realise that bands I listen to, which I'm accustomed to being older or around the same age as me, may now be much younger than me. This makes me wonder if I will ever grow out of the music I listen to, since I'm going to keep growing older and the bands are going to keep getting younger. My ex-manager, who is 'several generations older than me' (I wrote that in a previous post and offended him, hehe. He's only one generation older. ONE.) listens to Hot Chip and Arcade Fire and embraces new bands all the time; I hope that I will be the same and not start to find the music of Enya appealing when I am 40.

I haven't listened to much new music of late, but am quite excited about Kitsune, Steve Aoki, Ed Banger Crew playing at Zouk over the next few weeks. Should be fun!

After Hue, we made our way to Hoi-ann by bus.


Hoi-ann turned out to be a charming and quaint little town, and my favourite place to visit for the whole trip. The old quarter had a wet market which we walked through everyday, next to the river that sparkled at night.



Summer rolls (with mango!) at Mango Rooms. Almost every item on the menu had mango in it, from the drinks to the mains:


Tourists tend to go to Hoi-ann to custom make suits, and you know what they say about being in Rome...Mark made 3 suits, including a tan coloured linen one which I told him I couldn't foresee him wearing on any occasion except on a cruise ship in Florida. I made 2 power suits for work. Now I wear them in the office and befuddle my colleagues who keep asking me why I am dressed so formally and if I have some important meeting to attend.


We also attended in a cooking class in Hoi-ann. First, they took us on a walking tour of the wet market and introduced us to all the ingredients commonly found in Vietnamese cuisine; then we went on an half hour boat ride to the cooking school.


We learnt how to make paper rolls, sweet and sour aubergine, seafood salad, etc. It was pretty fun and we had to eat whatever food we cooked ourselves but thankfully that didn't turn out too disastrous.

This was my attempt at making a tomato-rose garnish (the cucumber-leaf garnish failed miserably) and how it is meant to look like:

One thing's for sure, the Vietnamese are really into their garnishes. Every dish I had in Vietnam came adorned with beautiful garnishes.

After Hoi-ann, we flew back to Hanoi and finally back to Singapore.

We went on a 2-day trip to Halong Bay on a Chinese junk boat. Unfortunately the weather was bit crap and it was drizzling for most of the time so we were unable to sunbath and read on the deck. On the upside, the heavy fog probably helped to enhance the mystical quality of the grottos.


Being a UNESCO World Heritage site, it was heavily populated with luxury cruise ships filled with tourists and you would get local women rowing their boats for long distances to be near the ships and wave boxes of Oreo cookies at you to try to make a sale. It was quite surreal and sad to see, and made me feel responsible for being part of the problem by going there. The guide had told us that the locals who live on the floating villages used to make a living off fishing but the frequent traffic of all the tourist ships have driven off the fishes. Consequently the villagers have to turn to other ways of earning a living.


We also took a little trek in this cave which was full of beautiful limestone formations.



After getting back to Hanoi, we took a train down to Hue. It was a 14 hour epic journey which was er, an interesting experience. Firstly, the train station was a madhouse with the huge volume of crowds and lack of directional signs. Our initial attempts at asking for directions failed till finally a uniformed man looked at our tickets and started gesturing us in a worried manner to follow him. He led us to a door which opened up to a series of train tracks in front of us. We asked if we were supposed to get on the train that was moving along one of the tracks and he nodded, so we started panicking and running across train tracks with our heavy backpacks. This was also the point when I wondered if I had to jump onto the moving train in order to catch it, like some old Western cowboy film. I think I even articulated it and Mark replied to the effect of "Yeah, we are going to do it!" with confidence. Thankfully, it never came to that - when we finally made it to the other side, we realised to our relief that the train was pulling into the station, and not out of the station.

It was an overnight train so we got a sleeper bunk bed each and were told when we bought the tickets that there would be 4 people (including us) in the cabin. In reality, we shared the cabin with 2 Vietnamese families, which spanned across 3 generations.

In the morning, one of our cabin mates gestured towards a small plastic chair which I could use to sit by the window, so that was what I did instead of lying in bed.

After 14 long hours, we finally arrived at Hue and visited the Citadel, another UNESCO heritage site.

No updates in a while but I'm still here. Been chugging along at work and doing a bit of travelling on the side:


Bali was ok, kind of indulgent and more chaotic than I expected. For some reason I used to picture tranquil long stretches of beaches when I thought of Bali but it was actually packed and the beaches weren't that clean. Or maybe it was just that particular beach I went to. Didn't do much in Bali except go for cheap massages and eat a lot, but I did get attacked by a monkey in a monkey sanctuary which was mildly traumatising/amusing.

Vietnam was a much longer, interesting trip so I will describe it in parts. It was a 10.5 day trip travelling from the north to central Vietnam, passing through Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hue and Hoi-ann.

The Old Quarter in Hanoi was quite nice to navigate around.


The first night we were there, we were sitting along the roadside having cheap drinks when two white guys sidled up to Mark. One of them lowered his head towards Mark and asked conspiratorily, "Hey, we just got to town. Do you know where can we meet some Vietnamese 'girls'?" To this I piped, "I'm not Vietnamese!" He was rather taken aback as he did not expect me to speak/understand English; it was obvious he was asking where he could get some prostitutes and thought I was one. So he pretended to act as though he was asking an innocent question and asked Mark again, "So do you know where I can meet some girls?" This time I fumed, "He doesn't know, ok!" Before the trip, we had read on Wikitravel that Asian girls travelling with white guys will usually get the dubious honour of being mistaken for prostitutes in Vietnam by locals, but what I didn't expect is to be mistaken for a prostitute by other tourists. What was amusing was that we bumped into the guy the next day and he looked pretty sheepish.


The army museum was really interesting. They collected almost every artifact from the war, from the airplane that was shot down to the bowls the solders ate out of.


The amount of motorbikes and bicycles on the road in Hanoi is really phenomenal. There are very few green lights around so the trick is to cross the road in a slow and confident manner and they will navigate themselves around you. It is quite amazing actually, crossing the road with heavy traffic heading towards you but knowing you will somehow get to the other side safe and sound.

I recently have this curious experience of paying for fishes to eat dead skin on my feet, and the result of this fish therapy turned out better than I expected. My feet have never felt smoother or softer! Honestly, I am amazed...but it is really quite weird sitting there being fish food.



Christmas was nice; we had a potluck dinner, overate, played Taboo. We were separated into 'Team Awesome' (the boys) and 'Team Girl' (the girls - note that we did not get to pick our name). Team Girl prevailed in the end, but it was a close fight. TEAM GIRL! I think we grew to like the name that was bestowed on us.





More pictures here.

Happy holidays, everyone!

My song of the moment is one by Phoenix and is in Erland Oye's DJ Kicks album. I love, even though it is a bit cheese:



The new Hot Chip album is coming out next month and video for the first single is pretty cool. Wasn't sure about the song at first, but it is definitely growing on me:



Today I was reading this article on predicted business trends of 2008 and was quite amused to learn of this website called Netnanny, which is "a collective comprised of 15 cheerful-looking grannies who knit socks on demand and sell them online. Customers can choose their favourite granny by picture, pick the colour of their socks, or opt for a granny "surprise" design." So interesting, selling traditional craft via an online channel. I have already made my choice in the event I ever need to have socks hand-knitted by a congenial Swiss granny.

Winding down, it is less than two weeks till the end of the year. I am looking forward to 2008 - onwards and upwards.

Next month I would have been back in Singapore for a year. Time flies. To be honest, it hasn't been as bad as I feared and a lot of it has to do with me finding a job I like and enjoying it. Besides I really think it is quite an exciting time to be in Singapore - everything is in a state of flux, lots of changes happening, interesting places and events popping up here and there. Having family and friends around also makes life rather comfortable and easy.

But there are still things that make me mad and sad about this place because I feel that it has the potential to do so much better. For example, I don't understand why marital rape is not outlawed, why our press freedom is still rated so lowly (just above Afghanistan), why the class divide is widening so rapidly, or why the dichotomy between the foreign/local (as Mollymeek puts it), is continually perpetuated as an explanation to our problems.

Still I appreciate things are changing, slowly but surely. Although I am disappointed by the outcome of the Repeal 377A campaign (and disturbed by how our NMP could pass off such hogwash as truisms), I also appreciate the fact that a dialogue had taken place which made people more aware of the issues involved (a colleague said it was all that his relatives talked about during Hari Raya visitations). 5 years ago, I wouldn't have imagined this would be possible but at least now contentious issues are being brought out in the open for debate, which is good. Baby steps, I suppose. And it is quite interesting to be here to observe all the bubbling of activity and changes as they happen.

Styra's accounts (with more pictures) of our experiences at BEAT! Halloween and at Global Gathering in Malacca


She likes to call me Pumpkinhead.

I bought the new Jens Lekman album yesterday, and it is such a pleasant listen on a lazy Sunday..



I was reading his blog and thought what he wrote about his trip to Malaysia and Singapore earlier this year is sweet:

(Malaysia)
"I went to Malaysia to meet someone special. Someone I met a long time ago. It's a long way to travel for something so uncertain but it beats living with uncertainty. I still don't make any money playing shows but with a little help from the internet and word of mouth I am now able to trade a performance for a travelguide and accomodation.

...The venue in Kuala Lumpur is a cuban restaurant, owned by a french guy, with a norwegian cook. I have invited two brass players to play a few songs with me. They have a couple of shows that night, weddings I think... When they come back I have already started and they join in for an improvised version of You can call me Al. It's a moment of magic and I start laughing from the bottom of my belly.

(Singapore)
"After the show me and my special someone are playing records for the few remaining enthusiasts. She's never DJ:ed before and I don't know if she's even seen a DJ before. She puts on a song and then she's off to the dancefloor to dance like crazy. When the song has ended she comes up and starts slowly going through her records, the crowd waiting in silence, then after a minute or so she says "Aha!" and puts on something new. The crowd goes wild. You'd expect them to lose patience but instead she built up anticipation. Mixing is for losers... like me."

Last weekend Ginette and I travelled to Malacca to catch Simian Mobile Disco and for her to play her dj set at a music festival. At the event there were these gigantic screens which kept showing this advert of people having super fun times at the same festival overseas and flashing the words 'A Night to Remember'. It was a night to remember alright, for the following reasons:

1) Poor organisation of event. We arrived there to find that...one of the stages was still being built even though the festival had started a few hours ago.
2) Mud everywhere (see pics below)...it was so wet that sometimes we were up to our ankles in mud. It took a good 15 minutes to wash/disinfect our feet when we returned to the hotel.

3) There were 6 portaloos for the whole festival. 6! 2 of which were for artistes and 4 for the thousands of festival goers to share. So I didn't drink much in the early part of the night, after deciding that dying of dehydration was more appealing than using one of those portaloos. Ginette's expression here sums up our portaloo experience:

4) There was a bus service that was supposed to go around Malacca and picked up festival goers from different spots in town to take them to the festival. This bus never showed up, so Pauline and Douglas were stranded in Malacca town and didn't get to go to the festival at all!
5) Sound was awful, which affected our enjoyment of Simian Mobile Disco.

On hindsight, it wasn't all bad. Mostly because Ginette played a good set, there was great company and got to hang out with Wan, Djo, Amran and gang. Everyone got a bit drunk because of the free flow from the artiste's tents so towards the end of the night, the dire conditions bothered us less and our conversations made a lot less sense.

We also managed to meet up with Pauline and Douglas for a yummy lunch in Malacca town the next day.

(More pictures here.)

Anyway, I am knackered. After the madness of Malacca, I attended a conference for three days and went back to the office on Thursday only to be swamped with e-mails and meetings. Am going to spend my Saturday off lying in bed, listening to music and catching up on some reading...before returning to the office again tomorrow :(

...so starts my favourite song from 'In Rainbows'. I remember liking this song when I heard it at their concert in Hammersmith Apollo last year and I have put it on repeat ever since the album was released last week. 'House of Cards' is about a (possibly sordid) extramarital affair, but it is written so beautifully that it is hard to fault - the protagonist pleading his lover to leave her husband and "forget about your house of cards, and I'll do mine", with house of cards being used as an analogy for affairs of the home as well as the heart. So apt to use it to describe the intricacies of emotions, how fragile the heart is...and marriage by extension. And then there are the parts where Thom repeatedly sings 'denial, denial...', so melancholy and haunting it sends shivers down my spine. I think this is probably the most romantic song Radiohead has written, apart from 'True Love Waits'. Have a listen here.

Styra says: ok. so when is superbad showing?
Styra says: i also wanna watch lust, caution
Styra says: but i think it will be very awkward to watch in the cinema
pumpkineyes says: i might hold your hand
Styra says: i might slip you the tongue
pumpkineyes says: i like
Styra says: HAHAHAHAH
pumpkineyes says: i might pretend to yawn and stretch and put my arm around you, as always
Styra says: incorrigible
Styra says: yeah, but you're shorter, so you have to stretch further, or squat on the seat
Styra says: cos when i'm nervous, i sit up straight
Styra says: HAHHAH imagine you squatting on the seat
pumpkineyes says: haha so unsexy
Styra says: we watch superbad lar!
pumpkineyes says: ok, then less temptation
Styra says: ahah yeah. dont rock the boat
pumpkineyes says: our friendship is more important than a movie about sex...or is it?
Styra says: i need one night to contemplate
Styra says: i will watch lost in translation to inspire an answer
pumpkineyes says: i will watch before sunrise AND before sunset to ruminate too
Styra says: then i will also watch debbie does dallas

* * *

Conclusion: Superbad it is.

This month's book club was a cookout at Pauline's place where she grouped us in pairs and assigned us secret ingredients to cook. Thankfully, the results were less disastrous than I had feared:

Of course, it inspired me to dig out the apron I bought in Bricklane a while ago but never got the chance to wear:

The whisk is for display purposes only.

Our surprise guest Stacey dropped in from China for her last book club meeting before becoming a virtual member.


Apart from discussing the book we read (which was 'The Kite Runner'), we gossiped, talked about every girly topic under the sky, ate chocolate, even watched some episodes of Sex and the City...it couldn't get more girly than that. Sometimes you look at your friends and feel your heart full of love for them - this was one of those times.

1) Went on a little expedition to the 'countryside' of Kranji last weekend, which is probably as rural as you can get in Singapore. Had a nice lunch at Bollywood Veggies, walked around the farm, went to another goat farm nearby and fed some goats...it was pretty fun. More pictures here.


2) James has just moved to Singapore to be closer to his girlfriend so we went out to Liang Seah Street and had ate mango sago for desert on Monday; it felt surreal to hang out with him here...in Bugis. He was one of my closest friends in London so it's like having a bit of London here with me. His lovely mum sent me a present, so sweet of her. It's cool that James is here; he says he will replace Stacey (my BFF who has left for Beijing) and talk about shoes and boys with me.

3) While we are on the topic on shoes, a few pairs of mine have been disintegrating but I have been in denial and stubbornly wearing them even though one of them had developed a hole in its sole. Anyway I finally chucked two pairs out and bought some new pairs this week:

One thing I appreciate about Singapore is the abundance of cheap and cute shoes.

4) Another thing I love - this badge from Neon Sleep:


5) This week has been pretty intense - worked 6 full days and been out every night so am feeling exhausted. Shall take a day off next week to catch up on some sleep and me-time. Argh, going to be late for my book club meeting now, have to run!

Radiohead is releasing their album next week and practically giving it away for free.

You can download the digital version and pay as little/much as you want for it (starting at 45 pence for the credit card handling fee) which is pretty amazing, but you can also buy the boxset which costs 40 pounds and has the new album on cd, 2 vinyls, 2nd enhanced cd plus photos and artwork.



Shipping is included in the price for the boxset, even for international shipping so I am very tempted. To be honest, I didn't like the last two albums as much (although Hail to the Thief was better live than on record), but Radiohead is Radiohead afterall...and I like this concept (wonder if the boxsets will be available in shops at all? Or do shops have to order their stock online from Radiohead? Hmm.) Anyway, I think I will put in an order later this week.

After Flight of the Conchords finished its first season, I was feeling a void in my life till salvation arrived in the form of a package in the post. It was 3 seasons of Gilmore Girls dvd boxsets from Nikki who I met in London and lives in South Africa now; the kind soul has finished watching them and decided to post them to me because I had missed out these 3 seasons (the UK doesn't air Gilmore Girls so we used to commiserate in misery and re-watch the first 3 seasons on dvd.)

So all I have been doing this week in between sleeping, working, and the occasional social interaction with other people is catch up on episodes of Gilmore Girls. Everyone laughs at me for this, but the other night I met a guy who is a secret Gilmore Girls fan and confessed to leaving parties early on Friday nights to go home to watch GG reruns, so now I feel a bit less sheepish about it...although it has reached that stage for me where I find myself falling asleep to them every other night and drifting in and out of consciousness with the GG theme song playing in the background...

Back in Singapore. It's 5am, I can't sleep so I have just uploaded pictures from my holiday here.



I think I have clocked close to 50 hours in air travel and transits in the past 2 and 1/2 weeks, spanning across 3 continents. At the moment I have swollen big ugly man feet from my last flight home, which is super meh. Next time I am going to be dedicated to moving around the plane every hour to avoid swollen feet.

One good thing about long flights was that I managed to watch many movies and tv shows, including The Science of Sleep (beautiful), Blades of Glory (funny), Borat (funny in parts), In The Land Of Women (so-so), Ocean Thirteen (for the second time), episodes of The Office and Little Britain, as well as music documentaries on Neil Diamond and The Clash.

Now I just want to listen to The Clash all day:

..and not have to think about starting work again (although I kind of miss work in a way and oddly enough, I ended up doing something for work in London by informally interviewing an English librarian who wanted a job in Singapore and my division happens to have a vacancy). Holidays are always over too soon.

When I left on this holiday, my friends asked, "How long are you going for? Are you sure that you are coming back?" I think it is because the last time I went on a similar holiday, I never really returned and it ended up lasting nearly 4 years. It was hard to leave London and my friends again; it felt good to be back in the city even though I knew I no longer belong there.

Transatlantic travel does funny things to your concepts of space and time. Been spending my holiday trying to get over jetlag and falling asleep at random times in the afternoons. Also found it weird adjusting to the throngs of people in Central London after being in Canada, where it never quite gets crowded even in downtown Toronto on a weekend. I went to the supermarket along Holborn on a Monday afternoon after touching down in London (to stock up on my Innocent smoothies, soy milk and Dorset cereal of course) and I was shoulder to shoulder with people on the pavement, all jostling for space. So far, there had been a tube strike for a few days which meant horrific commuting chaos, and yesterday we were sitting in a Japanese restaurant in Soho quietly having dinner when a fight broke out and the waiter chased the customer off with a chair.

London is mad, and I am so happy to be back. So pleased to see everyone again. It is a strange feeling; every alley still feels familiar and I can navigate my way around easily enough, but at the same time, this feels like a former life I used to lead - and it is, of course.

Canada was great as well. People there are so nice, service levels are high, it's America without the attitude, as Ginette says. The landscape is beautiful and I had a brilliant time in Toronto and other parts of Ontario which Mark took me around. Went to a fun wedding in Waterloo where the bride and bridegroom did an amazing choreographed dance to the Final Countdown; also went to the Camera Obscura gig, Royal Ontario Museum, a zine library, a carnival, clubs, and generally spent the holiday eating and drinking lots...but I also managed to pack in a few professional library visits and met up with a few heads of divisions and talk about nerdy librarian things. What I like about Toronto is that the city is well laid out, there is a lot of space but also interesting pockets of activity.

I also took a train down to Montreal and hung out with Herb, who I haven't seen in years. Since we had both not been there before, we would sometimes get lost and I would then undermine his masculinity by asking for directions, which he hates as he believes men are only good for 3 things these days: 1) starting wars 2) finding directions 3) opening jars of pickles. Ha ha. Anyway, we meandered around old Montreal and Old Port, and climbed Mount Royal...Montreal is a pretty little city but it's strange because almost everyone speaks French there and you don't feel like you are in Canada.

What else do I like about Canada? That they care much about the environment - recycling bins are deposited everywhere and lights are always off in most rooms and public toilets so you switch them on only when you go in and turn them off when you leave. Also, the vegetarian options are more than in London - there is even a vegetarian food festival in Toronto this week.

Pictures to come later, when I get back to Singapore next week. I am wishing this holiday never ends. Home is where the heart is, they say, and it feels good to be back in London.

Have been so swamped lately with work, planning my holiday, the zine launch and book club meeting. These pictures were taken the weekend before last, when I went for a lovely picnic in Botanic Gardens with Evie, Cindy and her two kids, who continually shunned my love. In fact they seem to like running away from me:



One thing I don't understand about kids is how they like to run all the time. I took Lorreign to look at some flowers and she started dashing off, and I was like 'Is there really a need to run?', she said 'yes' so I had to chase after her. More pictures of the picnic here.

Life should be a long picnic in the park with the ones you love, I think.

My best friend, Stacey has decided to move to Beijing for a high-flying job; while happy and excited for her, I am also pretty sad. We have spent the past few years apart and have been happy to be reunited recently, and now we are parting again, and I don't know when we will live in the same country again, or if we ever will. We had dinner on Monday night and when she drove me home we passed by a getai in the neighbourhood, and we were both like "Your mum must be there!" So we got off the car, and sure enough, my mum was there with her friends...so we watched the getai for a bit with her till our ears couldn't take it.

Stacey and I have been through it all; we were reminiscing the other day about how broke we were when we first moved to London, how we lived in the same room, and packed our lunches to work. I remember being so shocked one day when she didn't pack her own lunch and bought kebabs from the shop - buying lunch instead of packing it! The extravagance! And how I would sometimes go get free lunch from the hare krishnas at Covent Garden during my lunch break..haha. Even though times were challenging then, we always had so much fun and (mis)adventures together. I will miss her and am sad I can't spend more time with her before she leaves.

I am flying off tonight for my long holiday to Canada and London. Finally cleared off most of my work after a mad few weeks - all I have to do today is finish off two reports, train new staff, put the auto-reply away message in my inbox and I am good to go. Am looking forward to having a break and lazing around...if I can survive the terribly long flights and transits, that is.

Lastly, thanks to those who made it down to the zine launch on Sunday - both movies were entertaining in their own ways and it was great fun singing along to the Ghosterbuster theme song, as commanded by Ginette :)

Around 3 months ago, I sent out a brief to contributors to write about cities, in whichever format they like. RLD #5 is the result - a compilation of prose, poetry and pictures about the city. If you have contributed to this issue, many thanks for your help! I hope you are pleased with the end result:



Content

1. Stories From the City #1 / Foreword – me
2. Cairo – Rachel Pybon
3. Amsterdam: Of Cycling and Recycling – Koh Sufen
4. On Little India – Tessa Wong
5. The Gunrunner Back In Addis – Jon Stone
6. 15 in 5 – Pauline Chong
7. London Is A Hedgehog Computer – James Pike
8. Promenade – Wong Mayee
9. A Taste of Two Cities – Pharaon Siraj
10. Stories From the City #2 / Remembering Rotherhithe – me
11. Chase – Kristy Irving
12. Unscenery – Daniel Foo
13. Post Job Interview - Rachel Pybon
14. I’m Destined To Rot Away In A City – Herb Mathisen
15. 10/03/2007 – Ken Tan
16. Stories From The City #3 / Sue – me
17. Rara Singapura – Stacey Choe
18. A Permanent Powdered Sugar Stain – Kevin Barrios
19. O, Oxford – Kristy Irving
20. How To Say Goodbye To A City – Brandon Lee
21. Gojirama : The Typing of the Rizard [game] – Shi Daniels

This issue is designed by Ginette Chittick.

Each copy costs S$4 and comes with a cd-r of a game designed specially for this issue.

Please email rldzineATgmail.com if you would like to get a copy or troop down to our launch party on Sunday!

It was a close fight, so we have decided to screen two films this Sun!

5pm: Manhattan Murder Mystery by Woody Allen


6.30pm: Ghostbusters (woohoo)


You can come for one or the other or BOTH if you like!

We get control of the iPod Deck in the cafe downstairs during the screenings, so bring your iPods and impose your music on our ears!

There is no extra charge for the movie, but you will just have to buy $5 worth of drinks/snacks to enter the screening room. Do come down earlier to order your drinks/snacks before the film starts! (highly recommended as they have a small kitchen.)

Red Letter Day zine will also be sold during the party.

See you on Sunday! :)

Red Letter Day zine: http://rldzine.wordpress.com/
Pitch Black: http://www.pitchblack.com.sg/

Every now and then, Gin, Pauly and I like to dress up to go for fancy dinners and have some quality girl time. Last Monday, we went to celebrate Pauly's first paycheck from her new job and she took us to Broth at Duxton Hill. Very nice ambience and food.



A few days later, she invited us to her place for drinks and canapes. This being on National Day, we were requested to wear red and/or white:

It was fun; we ate canapes and dessert prepared by Pauline, confessed our liking for that catchy Rihanna 'Umbrella' song (Gin even has a good mashup of it with a M83 song), and took silly pictures (Pauline will probably upload them later).

So ate and drank a lot this week, despite being ill and having an ulcer on the tongue that hurts like a mofo and is preventing me from eating or talking properly. I blame this on Stacey, who insisted on showing me a monstrous ulcer on her tongue last weekend, and which I must have somehow contracted via osmosis. I have taken to slathering Bonjela generously on it every 3 hours to numb the pain...and that kind of helps. If anyone has any better suggestions on getting rid of ulcers, do get in touch (and please don't suggest I rub salt on it!)

The latest issue of Red Letter Day zine will be out soon, and we are holding a film screening/zine launch with Bring Your Own Popcorn (BYOP) next Sunday at Pitch Black!

The theme is CITIES and the first city that has been chosen is NEW YORK. Nominations are open for which film to watch that night - please vote here. The film has to be predominantly set in New York to qualify. So far the contenders are Rear Window, Manhanttan Murder Mystery, Die Hard: With A Vengence, New York Minute (not sure if this is serious), Manhattan and Ghostbusters (yay)!

There is no extra charge for the movie, but you will just have to buy $5 worth of drinks/snacks to enter the screening room. So come on down for some movie and party fun! And feel free to bring your friends, lovers, etc!

Date: Sunday, August 19, 2007
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Pitch Black
Street: 63 Haji Lane

Red Letter Day zine http://rldzine.wordpress.com/