Sotong

Mood: Uplifting, like shots of fireworks.
Ambience: Bathing in warm and dull lights of my study room.

Love springs out from where you least expected.

Love can make anyone a better man...simply because...

Love exist.

At 29, I am embarrassed to admit, I am living testimony of these cliches.
Half a decade earlier, I laughed at the possibility of love.

Yet now, when I see him,
Half a year since I held his hand in mine
I still smile with eyes lit like a child who receives a bear for his first time.

I took this test...LOVE TEST

answered 'yes' after 'yes' to those 101 queries.

And as I prepare to bed, I miss him laying by my side in bed.

Miss his sturdy hug and loving gazes.

Never thought i would miss a sotong so...

Writer apologises for any cryptic phrases which readers would not understand. This blog entry, selfishly, was meant only for Sotong J to browse with understanding. The rest of the public can simply voyuer without inside knowledge. Hee...

Sex and the Best Friend

Sometimes the best barometer of who you have become is the friend who had stuck by your side. He or she, if not they, witness how you might have grown, regressed, deviated or simply remained in neutral gear since the age of growing up begun from your school days. They had seen you at your most innocent, and now, at your most recent and *in whispers* the mask you may or may not have put on in between.

Of course, you have to take what they speak of you sensibly. Friends themselves, too, would have changed over time.

I once, had such a close friend, a very pretty girl. We spoke about what boundaries we set for ourselves that we DO NOT cross when picking dates.

We attached reasons to these boundaries to make us feel legitimate to discriminate. For instance, both of us will move on to next better specimen if our date decides that slippers are alright for a first date: it is akin to the disrespect shown when turning up for a job interview in tee shirt and jeans.

One boundary which we never quite resolve was this: is it possible for long-time friends could become husbands and wives?

Unresolved because we cannot find a convincing reason why we cannot allow that to happen. After all, a relationship is about companionship isn’t it?

What more can you ask for in a companion who would endure the little idiosyncrasies and bad habits as opposed to hiding these from view for fear of getting dumped when it comes to the whole courtship of strangers starting to date?

Not to mention the likelihood of getting dump as a real risk when all those little bad habits and idiosyncrasies surface later in the relationship…Friends simply sees it all! *oh really...everyting...lustful grin*

Me and my pretty friend never quite got make sense why good friends who begun to date sounds repulsive to us. Not even when she broke up with a long time boyfriend, and she had been single for many a month without a date, and we had among our close friend one or two eligible bachelors, and STILL it did not become a shadow of an option.

You can imagine my elation for her when she called me up one day and told me she wished to introduce her recently acquired boyfriend to me. I asked her he better be cute enough for her. I heard some mumbling from behind and she cheerfully replied “My boyfriend thinks he is very cute.”

I returned with a challenge “Ask him out, I want to see how cute he is.”

She agreed and we arranged to meet for dinner at BUGIS.

On that day, I was hyper excited. I turned the corner round the shop houses and found my pretty friend standing there by herself. Coincidentally, one of our classmates from secondary school was there too! I get to see two friends in one meeting: how nice!

I asked “So where is your new cute boyfriend?”
The classmate of ours raised his hand and said “Me.”

*10 second silence on my part*

“Such a joke!” I was hardly making a punch with that remark.
“It’s real…” She asserted.

It took me one whole dinner to absorb the reality. It did help somewhat when my pretty friend showed me her hand phone. Her boyfriend, my classmate, has engraved her name on the mobile as a token of his affection. Sweet... I must admit friends would not flutter your heart in that manner: must be dating.

I wonder if he is as sweet to her when they kiss and…YES! I had a eureka-moment why good friends cannot be good lovers in our eyes. We can’t imagine good friends making love.

Eek!

Or does it have to be eek? Why should sex only make good sense between two unknown strangers falling in love? Why is it so unflattering to think of parents having sex?

If I had not known this friend for so long, I probably would not find the whole dating and sex between friends thingy a revelation as I do now. But because I am so familiar with the girl and the boy too, I am shocked.

Wow! I didn’t know I carry more moral judgment/restrictions with my best of friends more so than strangers. On the account that our friendship has come a long way, we sometimes forget to go back to the premise of what make one another happy as the judging criterion. Some of us have the habit of stereotyping our friends in a very stubborn way.

And sometimes, it takes the romance to blossom between two unlikely characters in our lives to nudge us back to the wonderful uncertainty of life.

Blue Bug

Mood: Like screaming from the depths of a well but no one is walking by to notice

When a person finds fault with himself
Almost always
The source comes from affection for someone

An uninterested hot date
A fault-finding parent
A defected colleague

People who need people
Like I am
Helplessly so now

My mind repeats a string of thoughts
like fish hooks pulling my heart apart
What would I say if someone asked me to describe my weakness:

Embarrassingly Slim
Plain Ugly
Intellectually Impatient

3 out of 3 of those weakness
I know I can alleviate with my own version
of the Extreme Makeover program

But for now
Like a poet inspired
I shall wallow in my self misery with the life span of a flu bug

Blue bug

It is evident that pain is conditional in this poem. The condition is: if your feelings are disrespected by someone, you feel the pain of self esteem. Likewise, the joy of self esteem may very well be conditional.

See: A Non Sexual Needs

Sensible Spaces

I had a 4 hour session of intellectual masturbation with a new acquaintance some weeks ago. Unlike physical masturbation, there can be multiple intellectual orgasms without going soft mentally.

We had both visited London. This was but one of the many ignition to another good discussion.

He mentioned he liked the scale of architectural planning in London: the shopping district was composed of short buildings. . As opposed to the intimidation of skyscrapers, it gives an intimate atmosphere, a more delightful shopping experience. I mentioned how the architecture of a city can affect the character of its people.

We discussed the difference during the Chinese New Year in bustling cities: Hong Kong and Singapore.

Homes in HK are so claustrophobically small; hardly anyone looks forward to packing themselves inside for festive occasions. The streets are brewing with people activities. Singapore homes, in contrast, are blessed, spaciously comfortable, and the art of interior design is a national pastime. Festive occasions are best suited to home environment.

If folks in Singapore bear a grudge against a quiet night life, I suggest he could bring a mass orgy home. You won’t get that space to organize one if you fly to Hong Kong without paying for at hotel rate. And if folks in Hong Kong yearn for a quiet evening home, think of all the bustling supper lifestyle you are going to leave behind if you travel down to Singapore to celebrate Chinese New Year for only 2 days instead of a week!

Of Hoffman and Ledger

Someone asked me if Philip Seymour Hoffman deserved the Oscars after I watched Capote. I do not have sufficient grounds to concur or differ. The only other nomination I had watched was Ledger in Broke Back Mountain.

[By nominations, I refer to those five on the Oscars List among many other powerful performances which had been eliminated from the honor’s roll. If I rummage through the names the judges has discarded, who perhaps would I find among those discarded?]

Between the two, I can say this. Ledger’s performance was not so much a studied homework. Lee Ang seem to have brought out the emotional dimension within Ledger, which mirrored the emotional demon the character was so consumed by. Ledger’s performance was an emotional tour de force, and I had always found emotional tour de force performance, romantic.

Hoffman’s was that of a flawless piece of method-acting with the character. He was mesmerizing to watch, right down to the movement of the pupils of his eyes.

The fleshiest theme in Capote was where do truth ends and lies begin, of which, Hoffman portrayed to such convincing tone, I would think that future impressions of who Capote was may be taking reference from this performance.

Thank god Hoffman once spoke about having a sense of responsibility about the persons you play: the struggle between his morals for the murderers and his manipulative passion for his novel keeps you mesmerized to the end more than the truth behind the murders.

Yet, I had always preferred to think of an actor’s craft as a showcase of the depth of their emotional connection. The more emotional charged his performance, the more emotional investment one could see would exhaust the actor in his portrayal, the more I would tip my vote as a better actor towards his ballot box. Yes I know; I don’t think with my head.

If it is your time to win, it is best to win it without controversy by any segment of the audience, if not, it is best, and not, your time to win: a paraphrase of, Lee Ang’s response to the challenge if he would win Oscars prior to the award ceremony.

Hidden within the laidback tone of Lee Ang’s answer, is a challenge: One which would be thrown to the critics who cast the winning votes. How does one find the uncontested measurement to award a nominee? But of course, Oscars is nothing without contest in the choice of measurement employed to award winners.

The performances used for nomination in the Oscars are limited to a single year. In contrast, one of the surest measurements of an actor’s skill is what film language calls oeuvre. In English, it refers to a collection of work from which we could cite as examples of excellent performances.

If a actor is only brilliant in a single performance, I often wonder if it was the good script, good directing, and good co-actors that carried the excellence for the actor in question. Unless he has consistency in a varied number of previous roles, I wouldn’t be so quick to name an actor a best actor.

Immediately, if oeuvre is the measure of a good actor, then the limitation of a single year turns the Best Actor category in awards ceremonies immaterial. The greatness of an actor is beyond a single Oscars. If oeuvre is the measure of a good actor, therefore to qualify one actor as the better of another, we must study the oeuvre of the other actor too….

You see, being a good critic requires homework done, also. Actors like Hoffman understands the responsibility of actors playing the characters they play; playing critic should carry the responsibility of knowing the works of your actors.

Playing critic requires a humbling heart: only then will you have the thirst to find out thoroughly, and not on your smart-aleck presumptions and assumptions.

*So spank me if u think i am flawed*

Below is a link to a list of works for both Hoffman and Ledger. Do take some time to see how far both have come as actors in their own right.

Ledger
Hoffman

Many blogs are guilty as charged for being fragmentary. The sentence made against blogs are that it is composed whimsically, a reflection of the mood of that particular day.

I will attempt to bring some cohesiveness to my collection of blogs, linking blogs of similar nature so u have breadth ans well as depth browsing.

Paying it Forward

I Stand Corrected

In the article, TWINS I spoke briefly about the genetic code of a pair of twins being partially different. I stand corrected: identical twins have the same genetic origins, but fraternal ones have difference...genetically speaking. Please read the link on that blog for the appropriate explanation. I had been not careful enough with the accuracy of the topic. Thank you Weiliang!

Skinny Side Up

Mood: Emancipated

I adore the invention of the term METRO SEXUAL from the core of my skinny bones.

The world has been getting sexier [for some men and most women] since the arrival of the metro-sexual attitude many moons ago. Looking good infected men and good looking men on cover magazine sells.

Men can now sulk over their less than ideal weight and wouldn’t get struck by lightning of masculine protocol for opening the emotional closet for an undaunted vanity to look good.

Finally:

I can now officially hate myself for being too lightweight and could get nods of *I have been there* approval from hunky friends who had graduated from the under 19 BMI community. Also, to try and bring Jason, who brought me to gym, a sense of pride by irritating him the steps necessary to turn me into three quarters of a hunk by the end of 2006.

Here is the emotional demon haunting what I think of my weight:

I am a bottomless pit for junk food. But I am also an ectomorph! *smirk*.

For every calorie I eat, probably only 0.1 of it gets deposited into good use in the body. The mystery of my life is explaining the other 0.9-mulitply by-28 years of my life-mulitply by-all the meals I ate in one year calories. For those who are nodding in empathy, writer *waves excitedly* and shouts out “Hi! I want to hear from you…”

This is a snapshot of my ectomorphic torso.

Whoever says that being an ectomorph is fun has to be those with BMI more than 19 like forever! Imagine if my body was a bank, and calories represent client’s money, I would have been liable to be sued for unaccountability for most of the caloric-funds. But even if the management embezzles funds in a bank, you at least know that the money has been put to hedonist end! But mine… NO!

I am like a high maintenance refrigerator that talks back to you….

I think slim and skinny people are far more likely to be neglected than people on the opposite end of the weighing scale. If I am obese and I declare a weight loss program, I will receive *thank god u see the light!* nods of approval and can rally my friends to discipline me into shape. Of course, it can help if they tease about your size to anger you into inspiration.

If I am slim and announce a weight gain program, there would be a temporary silence accompanied by *are u sure u need this?* stare, and u can bet on them to indulge me with “it’s ok if u fail to gain, for u r not obese or anything!” answers when I complain that the program is unfruitful….

I don’t want to be slim, my friends. The next time we meet up, surprise me with thoughts about how I can overcome my very lanky physique.

Uber sexual is as much a state of your mind as it is a state of my yearnings. Essentially, imagine a man who is in touch with his manly side, yet sensitive enough to connect emotions...put my face on it!

Cheers!

Paying It Forward

I trust in the powers of paying it forward. If I have been touched in my heart or received an act of kindness, I'll return it or pass it on. Broke Back Mountain has inspired so many voices to come forward to reach out to touch our hearts. I am but one among the sea of voices. Yet, like little Trevor McKinney in Paying It Forward: “sometimes, the simplest idea can make the biggest difference.”

***

Straits Times

The Straits Times is the matriarch of news in Singapore. For many years before the recent few, she is the only official storyteller Singapore has had. In contrast to cities with as many newspaper voices as there are musicians in an orchestra, news for Singaporeans is a single voice, strait-jacket tailored for benefit of the majority.

Broke Back was given cover page in the Straits Times lifestyle section: I felt a warm pat on my shoulders easing the weight of my sexuality I had carried silently for almost three decades now.

Warm because stories of me and my fellow brothers are now in the company of Hollywood mainstream film and Straits Times acknowledged that milestone in cinematic history.

Straits Times has set forth a chain reaction: out of the 3 million Singaporeans with access to the newspaper, how many will receive Broke Back with acceptance?

I have confidence it wouldn’t be hard. Regardless of the merits and de-merits of the film itself, I was inspired to dare think so, for a good straight crowd turned up at the preview last week.

Quote from LIFE!

“A straight guy like me wept buckets at this movie about the sweet romance…I haven’t cried at movies where boy breaks up with girl. Not even when boy breaks up with girl and the dog dies, the car is repossessed and the ship sinks…But this story, about two men who loved one another to pieces-it really moved me”

“The reason Broke Back Mountain has been hailed as such a breakthrough is precisely because the scriptwriters and Lee have depicted such a central gay experience in the language of straight romantic cinema.”

For more eulogies of Broke Back, click here. But do indulge sensibly; you won’t want to be carried away by unfounded sweet talk.

Yoga Editing

If you goggle Broke Back, there would be, at least ten pages of, resources to quench your thirst on the following topics: the sensitive yet sensible Jack Twist, your anguished sympathy for Alma and the romantic motif of the cowboy shirts.

I would like to be odd, and talk about yoga editing.
Yoga editing is not an offical cinematic term; i coined it out of frivolity. More precisely, Lee Ang used it on Broke Back, and I shamelssly named it for him.

The concept starts with this:

When you breathe in a meditative speed, slow and steady, as practiced in yoga, your mind opens up and calms down. If and when you are calm, you tend to receive sensitive/controversial news such as sexuality and love with open arms and less defensively.

How does Lee Ang make you breath meditatively in the movie?

First consider the following two sentences:
1. A short sentence is easy to read.
2. Unless there is an unfortunate opportunity for the writer to choose to pen a sentence as long as is found in the literature of Jane Austen to the laborious effect of making an otherwise brief idea ostentatiously adorned with protracted language.

When we read a book, we mentally breathe when we arrive at the end of a sentence. Sentence 2 requires the lungs of Mariah Carey to finish reading.

We take a mental breath, too, in the movie. Each time the movie cuts to a new scene, we take a mental breathe as if we read a full stop.

If each scene takes less than 5 seconds before cutting to the next, as you may experience in the final sequence of any Indiana Jones movie, your adrenalin pumps, and you are ready for rush hour.

On the contrary, if the editing is slow and steady as with Broke Back, you never need to feel rushed to do anything more than just meditate the visual scenes into your head.

I think too much about film techniques, though not apologetic if I make films too technical to your taste.

Other blogs of similar cinematic observations are:
0205
Movie of the Week
9 Reasons

A Man's Diary of Non Sexual Needs

What a man needs is health;
Well-paid, congenial employment;
A house; a modicum of wealth;
Some sunlight; coffee and the papers;
Artichoke hearts adorned with capers;
A Burberry trench coat; a Peugot;
And in the evening, some [Wagner]
Or [Elgar]; a home-cooked dinner;
A Stilton, and a little port;
And so to a duvet, In short,
In life's brief game to be a winner
A man must have...oh yes, above
All else, of course, someone to love

0205

You have 10 seconds to recall any passer-by that made a difference in your life.

If not, at least one person you forgot shall spontaneously combust within 10 seconds.
*Ha! Who cares!* Kidding!

Movie Empress
Like the short brilliance of fireworks, for a few of the passer-by in your life, you will not only remember them, but remember them with ‘ooh!’ and ‘ah!’ Some time ago, an older man marked his 205th film for the year by the time I chatted him up in person….

205 films translate to about 4 movies per week, and if any particular week has less than 4 films premiering, he would be doing at least 5 movies in 7 days!

205: that is the number of times I should be having sex every year. That is my national obligation for the year. Citizens of Singapore are accused of a low humping frequency, only once a week the official number cries! I plan to change that in 2006.

Enjoying sex is starts from listening with your heart to the needs your partner and execute the changes necessary to keep the humping from turning routine. But I digress….

Are You A Movie Lover?
For 2005, I am surely way behind schedule of hitting the 205th film. I visited the movie theatre only 30 times in 2005. Even if we begin counting from 2002, I would still have to round it off to the nearest 100. [Upper 100]

Yet, the number 205 is not insane. On the contrary, don’t you think that this man’s devotion for going to the movies is of the purest form? Even a little romantic!

If you think about it, watching at that frequency of 4 or more films a week, what would be the chances of sitting through a disappointing movie or a B grade film?

Many film goers can claim they are devoted to movies.

Art Film Connoisseur
Art film aficionados have devotion, for instance, but they would make an informed selection of what to watch and give B-grade movies a miss.

Not that art film lovers don’t watch B movies…perhaps on a day off, lazing at home, in their’s favorite armchair, a B grade popped on TV…they think ‘Why not!’

But art film aficionados get a kick out of carefully selected film screenings. To quote the Martell advertising campaign slogan: ‘Only few can tell’. Not many ‘commoners’ have an eye to distinguish films that are gems from those that are of entertainment value. If you prefer Eat Drink Man Woman to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon [both of which are Lee Ang’s works] you probably are on the right track as a film aficionado.

And then, there are the Mr. and Ms. Political Statement.

I refer to the person who chooses a film to make a statement about who he/she is and how he/she thinks, and they adhere to it like a political directive.

I have a friend who refuses any top grossing film. He brushes off Titanic the same way Madonna dismissed the music of Celine Dion many moons ago. He thinks that blockbusters are for the ‘common multitudes’ [to quote Shakespeare] or in English ‘because everyone else is going to watch it!’

Non-mainstream gems like Sin City and Taxi would be the best movies to quote if you want to date this intelligent Eurasian friend of mine.

Branded Stuff
Of course, there are many reasons why we watch the films we watch.

Some of us who are adamant that using your head in the movie defeats the fun that movie is supposed to be entertaining.

While some of us get in to the theatre for big brands names such as Brad Pitt and Maggie Cheung.

But the dude with 4 tickets stubs at the end of the week, every week…other than a sore butt, this person would need more than reasons to watch. To risk, week after week, the chances of dozing in boredom, or shrieking out of disgust, what would be the winning formula to make it through all those bad films?

*Drum roll!*, you need tolerance, and in heavy dosage.

Most of us will never adopt half the tolerance to hit 205th movie a year simply because, for most of us, we choose what we want to see and ignore those which do not fit into our comfort zone. Not to mention choosing friends who enjoy the films you enjoy!

If you seriously want to break out of your comfort zone in movies, go date that friend who has been watching all those films you had not ventured into. I had been pleasantly surprised, so would you.

The End.