Three Dollars and his books

'Three Dollars' is the title of another book of Elliot Perlman's which I have been reading, or more accurately, have just finished reading.

There have been certain observations which I have made of his style of prose and his way of story-telling from reading 2 of his books in such short succession. They might not be accurate since it is an unspoken but universal rule that '3', not '2', is the magic number when it comes to making conclusive conclusions about anything. You need at least 3 points for a graph but we were often required to have double the mininum in order to minimise any error which, even if present, would not impact us in any visible or life-shattering way other than a bad grade. Though, it is not unreasonable to suggest that a bad grade was essentially life-shattering to us then, preoccupied as we were with grades and little of anything less.

In Perlman's stories, there is always (again the claim is weak when you only have 2 stories for comparison) a protagonist who has a heart that is larger than the rest of us. When everyone else is just trying to live his own damn life, there is always someone, in his stories, who has the time and good-humour, though not necessary the resources, to spare the less fortunate, the downcast and the outcast a slice of hope and a tinge of warmth. In 'Seven Types of Ambiguity', it was Simon who was constantly reminded of the world and its imperfections and inequalities and who refused to judge prostitutes the way society judged them. In 'Three Dollars', the protagonist took the form of Eddie who proffered his hand to a man who could not see his children because a restraining order against him and who had more dogs than he could care for. This was the same Eddie who ran in the rain to get aspirin for a stranger he met in the cafe, whose chair gave way.

And he is always a literature buff, constantly quoting from authors who are sometimes too obscure for our acquaintance. He is melancholy but it is debatable whether it is a result of a genetic predisposition to melancholiness or whether it is a melancholiness adopted for the litterateur persona. Or it could be his readings which lend him the air of melancholy, one which lingers with the persistence of cigarette smoke. He dates women who have an equal passion for literature as he has, if neither surpassing nor paling in comparison to his. He is a gentle lover and a humourous man. He often makes smart-ass comments about things even when the sombreness of the situation does not call for them. And he is almost always romantically involved with 2 women, though not always at the same time.

As I have speculated in my previous entry, I think the author has projected a large part of himself onto his novels or rather, more precisely, onto his protagonists. Even if the part about 2 women is less than true, one can safely deduce that he is a litterateur, with more than a passing interest in other subjects ranging from economics, philosophy, psychiatry, sociology, geography, history to the more scientific ones like physics, chemistry and mathematics. An aspiring Da Vinci no doubt, though how ironic it is that with information so much more accessible to us now as compared to Da Vinci's time, no one is truly simultaneously proficient in both the arts and the sciences as the great master was.

Nevertheless, I think Perlman has enticed me with enough of Kant, von Hayek, Voltaire and Hobbes, among others, to make me want to read more about them in my free time, or until I am stumped by the complexity of the ideas and theories of these great men before him and certainly way before me.

Actually there is a very fine distinction between trying to educate your readers and showing off your knowledge. In fact, the distinction is so indistinct that even the author is probably not able to recall his original intentions without bias. It might be the subconsciousness talking. He could genuinely have wanted to edify us on anomie - the ultimate self-imposed exile from the society. And he must have truly believed that a return to Keynesian economics would help balance the imbalances that so characterize the modern economies. In fact, from what I gather, he is a strong opponent of what we call the laissez-faire economy. Or he could have littered Hobbes, Empson and Voltaire like gold flakes on a pretentious dessert, you know, like those $1000 sundaes that are really no more than ice cream with non-toxic heavy metal. Either way, I am glad he did because I have an insatiable hunger for knowledge. But, unfortunately, I have a limited ability to digest and absorb.

What really strikes me about Perlman is the way he plays with semantics. After all, I am more easily impressed with the style of prose than the prose itself. Then again, it is not just about putting together of words in the smart-ass kind of way, which he does but also the keen observation and the literary aptitude required to translate into words feelings that the more mediocre amongst us can only catch a fleeting, vague sense of.

As a sucker for categorizing things, I have attempted to categorize the various techniques he has employed in his writing. Examples are taken from 'Three Dollars'.

Cat A: Play with the words in the smart-ass sort of way

"This might not be so bad under certain circumstances. I cannot imagine what they might be but I was not under them."

"He smelled of beer so much that thereafter beer would always smell a little of him."

“… a series of unsuccessful relationships, unsuccessful in that they had ended”

“On hot days the car begged to be put out of its misery and on cold days it behaved as if it had been.”

"... past the farms and pastoral properties to the nothingness between the pastoral properties and other pastoral properties."

"... people who once had not known whether it was good or bad to live on a train line and now had no choice but to know..."

Cat B: Twist on the cliches

"I had no choice but to breathe in as much of his grief as I could stand and to store the rest for a rainy day."

"We were all like peas in a pod in those days except that Paul was only trying it out, just visiting. He did not have to stay in the pod. We stayed thee and ripened only to be thrown into an industrial-sized cauldron and turned into pea soup for a chain restaurant. His parents owned the franchise."

"Although neither of us are getting any younger, your father seems to have stopped getting younger with a new and unparallel vigour."

"Not content with hitting any rock bottom, Tanya had kept going past the sediments of the Palaeozoic era all the way down to the Archaen rocks she had never known before."

Cat C: Connecting 2 completely different things

"The woman serving in the wheatgerm queue had grown impatient, perhaps with me, perhaps with the vegetative nature of her professional life." (wheatgerm <-> vegetative nature of her job)

"I was always suspicious of the bush balladeering sentimentality of, say, the Jindyworobaks and its more recent socio-political manifestation, that type of often unyielding, unscientific, dogmatic, and bombastic environmentalism that does for society’s habitat what the followers of Foucault and Derrida did for the promotion of literature as a source of sustainable enjoyment." (environmentalism <-> sustainable enjoyment)

"Childhood summers are always better than adult summers. I have heard a variety of explanations for this: memory improves the past by natural selection, it is the origin of the specious" (origin of the 'species')

"Gerard was one of the first people I knew to deify cardiovascular fitness and make regular sacrifices at the alter end of the bench press." (idol worship and working out)

Cat D: Personification (Is it what these are called?)

"It was a malice but it was dressed up hastily, awkwardly, coming undone at the back, and enough of it was exposed to shatter any illusions."

"The next day, fresh and unshamed in the white light of childhood summers, seemed to possess an innocence so pristine as to make a lie of the previous day."

Cat E: The things we might have thought about, which he has described better than the version in our subconscious

"‘Are you alright?’ I asked in the manner we ask people who clearly are not."

"It is with inadequate understanding of Tanya’s capacity to enthuse other people and to enlighten them in ways they would never forget, and with disregard for the consequences to her financial and emotional well-being, that the university regrets it is unable to extend her contract of employment. They would like to take this opportunity to offer her grave self-doubts and to employ a meaningful cliche towards the bottom of the letter, without fond sincerity, without gratitude for past service, so that the printed words on the page, when viewed in the middle distance through unfocused eyes, generate the image of an upside-down Christmas tree. " (more or less the way I felt, reading the rejection letter from NUS)

"… of the relief she always has when Rachel leaves. And Rachel, not yet fully down the drive would know this is what the aunt was feeling because when they have lived a couple of decades and people are relieved each time you leave a place, you cannot miss it every time."

"Small dread is grey. Anxiety is brighter. Grey dread seeps. Anxiety is chauffeur-driven to the centre of your consciousness."

Cat F: The humorous

"We talked about the possibility of introducing a ‘wheel’ segment into her lectures, ‘Tanya’s Wheel’, in which she might give away our car or a weekend for two staying with my parents at the home they dreamt of on the Gold Coast."

“God! I thought it was you”
“I’m not God. You’ve mistaken me for someone else”

“I’m going to have to do something big to solidify my position within the department.”
“We could have a child and donate it to the library”

Oh for those of you who like (or dislike) globalisation and 'that kinda thing', there is a length discussion about it somewhere in book. Just as surveys of the twentieth century will not do without mentioning science and technology, the books published at the beginning of the twenty-first century must pay tribute to the phenomenon known as globalisation.

Wild sex!

Literally wild sex. In the bushes, up in the trees, in the water or even in the air.

What were you thinking of? I was talking about animal sex, read sex BETWEEN animals, not that version you have in your perverted mind. Tsk tsk...

But in order to make it relevant to you and me, we will do a comparison between animal sex and human sex.

You think only humans do Brokeback Mountain? Ha! Dolphins do too! Quite unexpected yeah considering they are such docile creatures. The story goes that male bottlenose dolphins (not sure about the others though) will have fully developed sex organs by age 10 but they will not become fathers till age 25. So what do they to pass off those 15 lonely years? They 'rub' and 'stroke' other male dolphins with their penises! And they don't just limit such homosexual behaviour towards their own species, not even their own kind. Their other targets include eels, turtles, sharks and even you - humans! So beware the next time a dolphin becomes too friendly - he might have other things in mind. *wink

Oh did I also mention that the favourite pastime of some male dolphins, especially the bottlenose dolphins (again!), is to toss the newborn calves like rag dolls and subsequently kill them so that the females can be in heat again to mate with them? They do the same thing to their smaller cousins, the harbour porpoises, though it is more for fun than anything else. Don't get so worked up. This kind of infanticide is very common in the animal kingdom. Lions do it, cheetahs do it, even gorillas do it.

The sea lions also share the bottlenose's brutality. Let's imagine a beach full of sea lions, large and small. Some male sea lions are strong so they have their own wives and kids. Some other younger, less established males don't. What do they do? They would try to steal other sea lions' wives. But they also realise they might not be able to take on the dominant males single-handedly, so the smart way would be to gang up. Even that doesn't guarantee a sure success. However, if they lose, they are not going to go away quietly or wallow in self pity or indulge in a bit of hand job. They take it out on the young pups. Like the dolphins, they toss them into the air with a vengence. Some more perverted ones would even try to mount the little ones as a result of their unsatisfied sexual urges.

Onto something more cheerful. Fruit bats. We would probably not agree with their choice of mates - loud and foul smelling lovers but their art of love making is really something. For one, the penises of males can swell up to 1/4 the length of their bodies, that's roughly the length of your forearm, maybe plus the hand too. Woah! Imagine that guys! LOL! The males mount the females from behind, while hanging upside down. And they are probably the only non-human mammals that enjoy oral sex. Maybe the other primates do too. I won't know that though.

Before I continue, I must answer this question of yours which you might not at the moment have even thought about asking. I pre-empted you! Why did I watch this documentary? Well, yes the title 'Wild Sex' might have been enticing but truth be told, I am not really a fan of animal sex. It was actually the narration which I found amusingly vulgar. For instance there was this one about ostrichs. It's said that male ostrichs are rather sex crazed animals and they can do up to 5 females at one go. So there was this ostrich that, after copulating with the first female, was still not satisfied and went after another one nearby. To this, the narrator said "it seems that this male ostrich is set on stuffing more than one bird". LOL!

Another scene shows a young male baboon giving himself a hand job after unrequited sex and there's the voice of the narrator saying "a soft end to a hard lesson".

There are some educational bits though. Like why do males have orgasms? It is so to encourage them to copulate and procreate because orgasms make them happy. Then why do females have orgasms? It is found that during orgasms, the pressure of the uterus changes such that the sperms are sucked in or something like that. And the ultimate question: Why do we have sex? For procreation, for pleasure and because we desire it. Those three are the fundamental reasons why we have sex. I am sure you have a different one. Keep it to yourself though. I don't want to know.

One last bit before I conclude, do you know how males keep other males away? Fighting is one. But the more effective one, it seems in the case of razor bills (some kind of bird), is to mount the trouble makers. The weaker ones are the ones keep getting mounted so in the end, it will just give up trying to mount anything. If you can homofy them, why just thrash them?

Hope that turns you on, sexy!

Seven Types of Ambiguity

"Change is the only constant, except for the changes that change the constant."

Someone must have said it, at least the first part, because I could never come up with something that awe-inspiring.

You must excuse me for talking that way because I have just finished reading 'Seven Types of Ambiguity' by Elliot Perlman. The book, in short, was an interfusion of psychiatry, law, literature, troubled marriages, infidelity, prostitution, and the children that are sandwiched in between, absorbing all the unspoken violence of matrimonial agony. I kinda like the sound of 'unspoken violence'. Original but definitely inspired by what I have been reading these past few days.

I never used to like this kind of what I referred to as 'flowery language'. I often found them pretentious but now I am starting to appreciate the peotry in them, not that I am a huge fan of peotry. The only poet whom I have taken a vague liking to is Robert Frost though I can hardly recollect any of his works. Something about nothing gold can stay or last.

The book is divided into 7 parts, each narrated by a different character in the story. The main character is a melancholy man, in his late twenties or early thirties, by the name of Simon. He wasn’t always a melancholy man. He might have been, considering the strained relationship between his parents which cast a shadow on his childhood. But he certain became one when his college girlfriend, Anna, broke up with him, rather suddenly.

And that was ten years ago. Ten years later, he is still not over her. He is an alcoholic with a dog he affectionately named Empson after his most revered poet, William Empson, who wrote the book ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’, a study of the meanings of poetry. He is also involved with a prostitute, Angela, who is obsessed with him the same way he is obsessed with Anna, his ex-girlfriend a decade ago, who is now trapped in an unhappy marriage to a stockbroker, Joe.

Simon’s father, worried about his son’s state of complete abandonment, hires him a psychiatrist, Alex Klima. It seems that the therapy, if there is any, takes place both ways. In fact, the psychiatrist and the patient eventually become more than just that. There is nothing sexual, of course. But there is also no denying that the psychiatrist is intensely fond of Simon, in whom he sees a large part of himself.

The story becomes complicated when Simon kidnaps Anna and Joe’s son, Simon. Things start to unravel and skeletons in the closet start tumbling out. Through their individual narrations, the reader, in this case me, begins to get an understanding of the background, fears, suspicions and secrets of each character.

It is not that the story is told seven times over from different perspectives, but rather it progresses
through their narrations. The first to start is the psychiatrist, Alex, followed by Joe, then Angela, then Mitch (Joe’s colleague and also a client of Angela’s), then Simon, then Anna and finally, Alex’s daughter. So each of them will continue where the previous has left off, while filling in a little of what transpired in the past.

Because each character is unique in his or her experiences, unbringing and circumstances, the author is able to explore different issues using each one. Through the characterisation of Alex, the psychiatrist, he questions the ability and extent to which strict professionalism can exist between the doctor and his patient. What happens when there is transference or even counter-transference? Through Joe, Anna's husband, the author exposes the insecurities that people, even seemingly successful people, experience. The need to be respected and admired is so great that in desperation, many mistakenly think that money and status are the key.

But the author's 'star character' would, no doubt, be the melancholy, obstinately devoted yet incredibly well-read, even tempered and immediately likeable Simon Heywood who is, however, burdened by a clarity with which he sees the world and all of its ugliness. I secretly suspect that Perlman has projected a large part of himself onto the character of Simon and along with it his anguish at the current state of affairs.

From what I gather, Perlman is a barrister (okay this is provided by the publisher) in Australia who is a literature fanatic and who also has more than a generic understanding of the stockmarket. He probably has some basic training in psychology/psychiatry or he just reads them for fun, in which case it would be a clear indication of an aberration of the mind, considering how ridiculously difficult psychology texts are. Trust me, I have one.

He takes an invested interest in social issues and is deeply bothered by what he sees as the brutality of the Invisible Hand driving today’s modern economies and possibly also the inherent flaws of the legal system. He is perhaps also some sort of a mathematician and to a lessser extent, a physicist and a social gambler. He knows how to count cards to win at Blackjack and he knows about Mach's principle (something about mass and inertia and gravity).

Why do people read books anyway, especially fictions? They want to get the story; they like the style of writing; there are certain themes explored in the book; because everyone else is reading them. As I have mentioned in my previous entries, I was not a great fan of fictions. I guess I was being unreasonable snobbish about reading purely for the story. Much as I hate to admit this, it is often the story which hooks me to a particular book. Sure, I would like to believe I read 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' because I love Oscar Wilde's style of writing and his humour. I do but I found out that that was not enough to sustain my interest beyond page 50. The story, pardon my lack of literary proficiency to better appreciate it, is boring, outdated and didactic. It might have a message, an important one at that, but story was simply not engaging enough for me to want to delve further.

But having an enchanting story is not enough. All mysteries and thrillers do but I would not want to read them. I find that an equally important criterion, for me that is, is whether you can learn something from the book. It doesn't matter what it is that you learn. In fact, I think a good book is conceptualized with the aim of educating the public on a particular subject matter. They should be like good kindergarten teachers - they must know how to package whatever they are trying to teach the children into stories which captivate them.

In the case of 'Seven Types of Ambiguity', the author has achieved just that. He throws his readers manageable morsels of information on various subjects that are enough to create the 'Wow! I din't know that' effect and yet not over the top such as to turn the book into another piece of academic writing masquerading as fiction.

However, making esoteric subject matters more accessible is not quite enough for a good fiction. The writer has to write with a flair that leaves his or her readers gasping "How on earth did he/she come up with that!" A good writer also has to be a keen observer and has to be able to put down in words ideas which the average person can only vaguely grasp. He or she has to demonstrate the elegance and beauty of the English language that have sadly been relegated to less importance in favour of conciseness and functionality. In this aspect, both Perlman and Eugenides, have done an incredible job.

Next up, I'll either be starting on Saul Bellow's 'Humboldt's Gift' or another book of Perlman's, 'Three Dollars'. I have no idea why I started on 'Seven Types of Ambiguity' but I know Saul Bellow was meant to be a replacement, not nearly a close one though, of Eugenides. Eugenides was said to have the "verbal energy and narrative range of Saul Bellow's early fiction". So naturally I was curious at the amount of energy and the width of the narrative range of the great Saul Bellow himself. From the few pages I have skimmed through, so far, I still prefer Eugenides.

And wonderful news: I'm off to Taiwan in a bit! Wow!

Brief tenure as a waitress at some Jap restaurant

When I said 'brief', I meant just that.

I only survived one day before saying sayonara to the boss.

Admittedly he and the rest of the staff, with the exception of the kitchen and counter staff though, were rather nice people. No cute waitress and that hastened my departure. Just kidding.

The push factor was actually the fact that everyone was speaking Japanese. Most of the clientele were native Japanese and ordered in Japanese. Naturally I told them I didn't understand a word of Jap and they would have to do it in English or no food for them! LOL! That, apparently, did not make things easier for anyone.

For instance, they couldn't seem to be able to tell the difference between a JUG of beer and a GLASS of beer. But of course, the customer is always right so I ended up taking the blame. Or there were times when they told you it's dish no. 94 that they wanted but it turned out that what they really wanted was no. 47. Their fault again but I'd just have to take it as mine.

The restaurant has 2 kitchens. One of them is actually the open kitchen or what some called the sushi counter. But they do more than just sushi there. In fact, they don't do sushi at all. They do sashimi but no sushi. There are also some other cold dishes like the all-time favourite: cold silken tofu in soy sauce.

The head chef at the counter was an ass. We, the waitresses, were supposed to say something in Jap (can't remember what the phrase was) when we informed them of new orders. So it's "(Japanese phrase), new order: blar blar" and you stick the order sheet to the rows of sticky tapes above the counter. The counter has 3 sections. One for barbecuing, one for making sashimis and other cold dishes and the last for making sobas or noodles. So if you get single orders for just soba, then you go stick it at the soba corner and say the necessary 'passwords'. But if you get a variety of orders with barbie (that's how Jamie Oliver likes to call his barbecues), sashimi and soba, then you would have to stick it at the cold dish corner because that's like where the head chef, a.k.a The Ass, would be and he can then pass the order along the production line.

Why was the chef an ass? I mean if you are a just a fucking chef, there is no need to get all haughty or downright condescending, especially if it is towards someone new on the job. He picked on my handwriting. And he was also pissed that I didn't respond immediately when he said the food was ready. Well, the fact is I didn't know that he said the food was ready because they all said it, again, in Japanese.

But the last straw was this: he asked me "Are you a waiter or waitress?" I was like "Fuck you!" (Nay I was too much of a wimp to say it to his face. I only gave him an irritated look.) That's how the ah peks and aunties are. They like to ask politcally incorrect questions. The younger generation is not necessary any more polite. They just think about it in their head and don't ask it out loud. That is acceptable because everyone is allowing to have shit in their head.

Back the counter, there is also this area for making drinks. They have quite a wide range of cocktails. We need to learn how to make them but it was quite easy and the recipes were all pasted there. The cocktails consist mainly of juice + Jap wine/Tiger beer. The Japanese all seem to be very taken with our local beer. No idea why. But one thing is for sure, the Japs are pretty heavy drinkers. Half of the staff were drunk before dinner started. And I could smell alcohol in the boss's breath. I wasn't even standing very close to him so you get the picture. Oh, when the boss was showing me how to make the various cocktails, he made 2 for me to try. They were pretty good. So I was also one of those who were drunk before dinner.

I was saying they have 2 kitchens. The main kitchen or 'the one inside' is for all the hot dishes. The dishes to be prepared at the counter are circled while those prepared in the inner kitchen are not. Those which require efforts by both are put in brackets. So it is pretty easy to mix them up. And the chefs get really testy when they see the wrong symbols. Well...

Decidedly the chefs/cooks in the main kitchen were nicer in a way that they didn't bother me much. Some lame jokes here and there like "Soki soba or soki soki?". Don't get it? Yeah, just goes to show how lame it is.

There are 3 tatami rooms there so when you serve in them, you've got to take off your slippers (we had to wear slippers) and then kneel down to serve the customers or take their orders. Quite a novel experience but somehow, images of the Japanese Occupation kept flashing through my mind when I had to act all subservient (oh those Japs dig that). That never happen when I am using Sony Walkmans (okay I don't use Sony walkmans, used to, but not anymore. I use an iPod!) or eating sushis or buying any other Japanese goods (usually edible ones). So it's not really the anti-Jap sentiments at work there. Just the wounded pride speaking.

The tricky part was carrying 6 bowls of a soba at once. Man, they were heavy. And I was glad that I didn't spill any or worse, spill them on the customer. I would probably have to kneel and apologise to them alongside my boss if I did. Guess even my boss wouldn't have dared to offend these big bosses. You have no idea how much they can spend on a meal. I don't know about the room with the 12 people or so but the table which I brought the check to (and there were only 4 people) had a bill totalling $300. No wonder Japanese restaurants can afford higher pay - they have a higher profit margin.

I did, however, break several glasses and it happened right in front of the customers. Nice job there! The boss was visibly angry with me. That could also be why he wasn't very insistent when I told him I wanted to quit. He was probably thinking "good riddance!" He was more concerned about whether Sus was going to quit too which I assured him that she wouldn't even though I wasn't sure at all if she was going to stay. LOL! But I think she ought to stay since she's learning Jap and it was a ready-made Jap environment for her to work on her Jap. She said the kitchen staff were a little intimidating. Well, I think she should just ignore them.

Would like to go and try the food myself some time. Just to piss the counter chef off. The deserts looked really good!

Snippets of the 17th Golden Melody Award

1. Stefanie Sun's performance. Stunning is the word. My favourite song is 一路上有你, an oldie by Jackie Cheung.





2. Opening by 小S and 陶晶莹. God, it's hilarious!

Oops, just realised that it's been removed from YouTube because apparently whoever posted it in the first place violated the copyrights of Azio TV. Death to the tattler who reported the trangression.

Off to work in a bit. Feeling a little apprehensive now, after reports from Sus about the franticness of the place. Fingers crossed for cute waitresses lol!

"Gay" Twins

I suspect.

Okay the story starts out simple enough, 2 girls fall for the same guy. And they go through all the agony and angst that, I venture to guess, are usually associated with such entangled heterosexual relationships. Well, I wouldn't know, would I? Then the unexpected happens: the girls decide that they don't really care for the boy and are in fact in love with each other and run off, holding hands. Don't believe? Watch this:



Alright, I twisted the thing a bit. The girls are not gay. They just treasure friendship more than cute boys. Why? That surprises you? Yar it's a little cliche and not at all realistic.

Okay let's reach a compromise. I say there is a little gayness in each and every one of us. It is just that some are unconscious of their gayness (and leading perfect heterosexual lives on the surface) while others are openly flaunting their gayness (not very different from how heterosexual people flaunt their heterosexuality really).

Now, heterosexual people reading this blog are shaking their heads now (yeah you there, in front of the lousy PC). The more aggressive ones are probably shaking their fists and saying "I'm NOT gay, you (insert expletive)!" Alright, let's go down the memory lane. Girls, have you ever had a best friend who is with you 24/7 and whom you do everything with? Your menstrual cycles are probably synchronized too but I don't need to know this. Have you, answer this honestly, ever had these thoughts:

A) She understands me so well and it is so good to be with her.
B) I wish we would always be this close.
C) I wonder what she is wearing underneath that Tshirt.

If you've had C), then it is pretty clear that the closet is too small for you. For A) & B), oh you are such a lesbian!

You may argue "Hey that's not 'gayness'!" Let me ask you: what does it mean by being gay? "Gay people are those who are sexually attracted to people of the same gender as they are." And you don't swing that way.

So what brings about a 'sexual attraction' or even 'love'?

Looks, muscles/big boobs/nice ass/huge ****/any other obscenely large body parts, smell (get the right pheromones), personality (when you can't get the first 2), race, religion (hardcore Christians/Muslims/Jews), money, status... Or all of the above. Where does 'gender' comes in?

You say, it is understood that people should date other people who are of the opposite sex. That's how God made us, whether we call him/her Allah, HaShem, Jesus or some other names (for a complete list of synonyms for 'God', refer to a really really old thesarus).

Just like you said, most of the heterosexual people remain so (assuming we all started out being heterosexuals, like Adam and Eve) because that is how they are told they should be. That's how the society wants them to be. They never realise there is an 'alternative lifestyle' to theirs. Either that or they are too afraid to go against the flow.

Always easier to go with the flow. Though some fish never seem to learn that and insist on swiming upstream to spawn. Makes you wonder sometimes if the Omega 1, 2, 3, 4 are really going to make you smarter (since they come from such stupid fish) or is this just another elaborate ruse by the fisheries to get you to buy more fish, against all the danger of mercury or any other heavy mental poisoning. You've taken biology, haven't you? The top predators accumulate the poison of those lower down on the chain.

Got distracted there a bit, back to main topic now. I am not saying that all heterosexual people are gay, at least not 100% gay. Nothing is absolute so don't argue you are 100% straight. There are, however, among them (number is indeterminable due to reasons stated above) people who are 'predisposed' towards homosexuality. It is in their genes. I am not bluffing here because studies have shown that there is a strong biological basis for 'swinging the other way'. Besides the genes, there is also the hormones. Too much testosterone and you turn into an Ellen DeGeneres, too little of that and it's an Elton John for you.

Whatever it is, the bottom line is this: If you think you are not gay/don't know you are gay, then good, remain that way. At least, you get to marry legally in 99% of the countries. And your spouse gets to enjoy all the spousal benefits that your company might have, something which your colleague, Ricky's 'civil union partner' doesn't get to.

And you won't get onto Bush's Hate List, which can put you in a precarious situation considering how al-Zarqawi died. Guess his safe house wasn't safe enough for him. But it is a bit weird that he actually survived the blast of 2 500-pound precision-guided bombs and died only a while later when all those with him were killed instantly.

Shall continue the discussion on Sex And Sexuality some other time. Mightly tired now.

Be a Mistress not a Waitress

Went to look for waitressing jobs with Sus today.

The first was at a 'high-class Russian restaurant' in Tudor Court. It was quite a neat little place and there was even this -15 degree celsius bar in the restaurant where you can go and have your Russian vodka in thick winter coats provided courtesy of the restaurant. The pay, though, was bordering on exploitation - a mere $5 per hour. Following this argument, about every F&B establishment in town has deplorable employment practices, leading the pack is probably McDonald's at $3 per hour. Then again, the Banglas and ah peks wiping tables at food courts and hawker centres are possibly paid even less. That, however, is not a pressing concern of mine (or, I believe, yours) at the moment.

Honestly, I don't mind so much about the peanuts that Russia (as the restaurant shall be called henceforth) is paying. It is the learning experience that I find most important. Okay decidedly you can't learn much from juggling four or five plates but still, it is cool to be the 'servant' for once. Talking about servants, do you know how men used to greet each other in Dickens' time?

A: Sir, your humble servant. I am glad to see you.
B: Sir, I am yours. (Insert polite enquiry about weather/wife/children/horse)

So each claimed to the servant of the other when, in reality, the only servants were the niggers.

I have digressed. Yeah so the thing is I am very receptive of the idea of working in such a cool, exotic place except for this:



That's right. That is the uniform I am expected to wear. Well, I have nothing against the uniform per se and I think it will look rather sexy on her:



But on me? Hmm not such a good idea.

So onto Option Dos (Spanish for '2'): a Jap restaurant at Tanglin Shopping Centre.

It was not your usual run-of-the-mill Jap restaurants which serve stuff that bona fide Japanese have never even heard of. I am not going to name names here but you should know which ones I am talking about. Hint: the Green Frog.

Talking about the Green Frog, I actually faked some of the stuff I wrote in the job application form. I was not completely truthful about my past job experiences which were so meagre that I felt compelled to fake some. The Green Frog was one of them.

Anyway, I like the decor of the Jap restaurant. It had a rustic feel to it, as if it were some small, family-owned restaurant in a village in Okinawa. It was all very peasant-y and cozy. I can already imagine drunk, rowdy and red-nosed Japanese men drinking their sake and slurping their noodles and possibly also singing Japanese folk songs out of tune.

And it pays damn well too. At $7 per hour, it is possibly the most humane restaurant in town (or the only one which follows the guidelines and recommendations by the Manpower Ministry). But the boss (who looked 18 and whom we mistook for a waiter) seemed more interested in Sus. No surprise/as usual/it happens 99% of the time (the 1% gives me hope to live another day so let me have it). Lol! So there you go. A hundred bucks she is going to land the job.

As for me, I don't really care if I get a job. If I don't get the one at the Jap restaurant, I'll probably just continue what I have been doing for the past 4 months - slacking at home. I would read books, plenty of good ones out there. I am thinking of laying my hands on a Saul Bellow, possibly Herzog. David Sedaris' books look pretty promising too. Wish the NLB will hurry with the procurement of The Time Traveller's Wife though.

Or I could watch DVDs. Still got about 3 episodes of House left and plenty of Grey's Anatomy left untouched.

Or I could start on Sloman. Nay, I would rather get a job.

Or I could become someone's mistress.

Middlesex

Sounds like something you might want to read?

Well, believe it or not, I didn't at first.

The reason is simple: I don't read novels. Okay, I do read novels, but I don't read them for the story. I read them for the style, the personal voice that is unique to every author (and therefore 'personal') and also the humour that each exhibits.

So even though I could care less what happens to Oliver Twist, I still read Dickens. But truth be told, I have never managed to finish a single novel of Dickens'. Honestly, Dickens can be just a little too ambitious in his plots sometimes. Take Nicholas Nickleby for instance, he wasted chapters and chapters on Nicholas' 'adventures' with some theatre group which, in my opinion, was irrelevant to the main plot and therefore redundant. Alright, I did not get as far as the theatre group (I watched the movie before I read the book, or less than 1/4 of the book) but anyone could have guessed it.

I read Catch-22 for the humour and the circular logic which made it funny. The story itself made little sense to me. In fact, I thought the whole story was truly weird. Sometimes, the book was funny but hollow like it was being funny for the sake of being funny. The sequel, Closing Time, was plain bad and was left unfinished.

I read Orwell for his style mainly and sometimes also his views on politics and current affairs (most of which are no longer current now). Actually, I don't really care for his takes on communism among farm animals or the totalitarian society in 1984. The books I really enjoyed were his more autobiographical ones. I found his Down and Out in Paris and London a particularly satisfying read, as well as his essay piece titled 'Why I write' in which he detailed his childhood and time spent in a boarding school. As we all know (either from Dickens or from movies made about them), boarding schools were horrible places to be. The administrators didn't feed the kids enough and stole their weekly allowances sent by their parents. The school masters and their wives were formidable creatures to be feared and obeyed and they asserted their authority with canes so thick that you thought they would never break.

I read Hemingway because of his Farewell to Arms but it wasn't even remotely raunchy and I was majorly disappointed. The movie was way better and it had Sandra Bullock in it. I continued to read his books for a while before admitting to myself that I didn't really like them.

I read Frank McCourt because I truly liked reading his books (I still do). His are actually autobiographies detailing his miserable Irish Catholic childhood and in later sequels, his life in America and his job as a high school teacher. I like the detached manner in which he told his sad stories and the way he could be funny without intentionally trying to be so. It is like the way some people can tell jokes with a straight face. So even though he is not nearly as famous as the dead guys whose books I have also been reading (and often not understanding), I have always ranked him as my favourite author of all times.

And that is about to be challenged.

Because of Jeffrey Eugenides.

Most of you might not even heard of him (shame on you if you haven't). He has written only 2 books so far. Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.

I like his style, his humour and also his story. I don't usually come across books like that. McCourt's books don't count because of their autobiographical nature. Like I said, I don't usually read books for their stories. The only book that I have read purely for its story (it's the Da Vinci Code by the way), I found the style of writing infantile at best. The others which I picked because of the authors, I often found myself only distantly involved in the plot. Most of the time, I just wanted to get them over and done with. That is also why I have taken to borrowing books instead of buying them - less guilt if I don't finish reading.

It was different for Eugenides' books. I actually wanted to know where the story was going. In fact, I was anxious to know what was happening next.

And he doesn't just tell stories. He weaves in mythology, philosophy, genetics, history, sexuality and a whole bunch of other things. I usually hate descriptive stuff like how the sun stains the horizon with (insert colour) and how the mad passions of animals stir within someone blar blar but the way Eugenides does them, somehow those descriptive stuff don't seem as irritating anymore. In fact, I found them rather poetic and often with a touch of humour.

Here are the examples:

"Mr da Silva had been born in Brazil. This was hard to notice. He wasn't exactly the Carnival type. The Latin details ofhis childhood had been erased by a North American education and a love of the European novel."

"Father Mike was popular with church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike's perfect contentment at being only five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height."

"He liked to quote that witty lady's opinion on the German language, which held that German wasn't good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn't interrupt."

"Dr Luce even analyzed my prose style to see if I wrote in a linear, masculine way, or in a circular, feminine one. All I know is this: despite my androgenized brain, there's an innate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell."

"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness" "Joy" or "regret". Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feelings."

"Our religion's adherence to the Julian calendar has once again left us out of sync with the neighbourhood. Two Sundays ago, my brother watched as the other kids on the block hunted multicolored eggs in nearby bushes. He saw his friends eating the heads off chocolate bunnies and tossing handfuls of jelly beans into cavity-rich mouths. (Standing at the window, my brother wanted more than anything to believe in an American God who got resurrected on that day)."

"A scene like this, a ransom scene, calls for a noirish mood: shadows, sinister silhouettes. But the sky wasn't cooperating. We were having one of our pink nights."

I like the way he plays with words. A bit of Catch-22, which is evident in the 'Father Mike' quote. A bit of Frank McCourt - the unpremeditated humour which is present everywhere. But mostly himself. The observant, philosophical, well-read and incredibly funny Jeffrey Eugenides.

Ah, onto Seven Types of Ambiguity now.

Wait, I haven't actually told you what Middlesex is all about right?

Our protagonist is a hermaphrodite with cryptorchidism or, in simple English, "a developmental defect marked by the failure of the testes to descend into the scrotum". He is genetically male because of his XY karyotype. He has a penis so small that it was thought to be a clitoris.

The mistake was only discovered when an accident brought him to the emergency room at age fourteen. Before that, he had lived his life as a girl named Caliope, of Greek descent. After finding out his true biological identity, he changed his name to Cal.

His parents were cousins. But to truly comprehend the complexity of their family tree, we will have to start with Callie/Cal's grandparents. His grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty, were siblings. Supposedly, consanguinity was rather common in their small village back in Asia Minor (A peninsula of western Asia between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea) and so was hermaphrodism. Their son, Milton (also Cal's father), married Tessie who was the daughter of Desdemona and Lefty's cousin, Sourmelina. A lot of intermarrying there.

Callie was very pretty as a baby girl but as she went into puberty, her features started to masculinize. She never developed any breasts, nor did she start menstruating like most of the other girls of her age. At the boarding school that she went to, she started forming a curious relationship with a girl whom he named the Obscure Object. The Object, for short, belonged to the Charm Bracelets who were the pretty, wealthy and haughty members of the school and in essence, the people who would never mix with girls like Callie.

However, one day, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a school play. Callie volunteered to go through the script with the Object and from there, they became really good friends. The Object invited Callie to her vacation home during the summer break. Sharing the same room, their friendship developed into something more. They had sex which, in my opinion, involved no more than a bit of fingering and dry humping. But it was sex nonetheless. So Callie was a lesbian before she became a 'he'. And that begs the question: was she a lesbian because of 'him' who resided clandestinely in her or was 'she' really into girls? There was no way of telling.

As luck would have it, their affair was discovered by the Object's evil and lecherous brother (who also had sex with Callie). He called his sister a 'carpet muncher' (read: lesbian who likes to lick the you-know-what) and she ran off crying. Callie punched him and he ran after her. She ran into a tractor and was sent to the emergency room.

After the discovery of her hermaphrodism, her parents brought her to a clinic in New York (they lived near Detroit) which was famous for treating people with sexual disorders. There an evaluation was done on Callie. It was decided that Callie would undergo a operation to remove the unwanted penis and be given female hormones to aid the development of breasts so that she could, at least on the surface, live as a normal girl. The recommendation was based on numerous factors, such as how the subject was brought up (Callie was brought up as a girl), the subject's mannerism and character (were they predominantly effeminate or masculine?), the subject's sexual orientation (which Callie lied about being exclusively attracted to boys) and the subject's family (were they the conservative kind or the more open kind?).

It was not revealed to Callie or her parents that she, or rather he, was of a XY karyotype and that made him genetically male. When Callie found out the truth, she ran away to become a he. He travelled across the country, hitchhiking. And after he had spent every single cent of his money, he ended up in a freak show. It was only after the show was busted by the police that he finally got into touch with his family. His father had died by then.

As a middle age adult, he worked for the Foreign Services. He never got into any serious relationship with women because of his condition until one day, he met a woman who could connect with him and more importantly, accepted him for who he was.

So yeah it was all a happy ending except that the story was told in retrospect (actually not entirely true also because the story wasn't told in the chronological order at all). Anyway, if you consider the fact that the story ended with Milton's death, then it wasn't exactly a 'happy' ending. And really, there wasn't an 'ending' at all. It is like the way the fairytales 'end' with the princes and Cinderellas living happily ever after. They don't. Nobody knows what happens after the wedding. Would they bicker over their parenting styles? Would the new princess get along with her mother-in-law, the Queen? Would they get tired of each other? Would the desperate princess engage in an illicit affair with the gardener? (Oh sorry that's another show)

Stories end when the real, often boring, lives begin. (I don't apologize for pretending to be deep.)

P.S. Spanish class was ultra fun!!!

Why is House interesting to watch?

1. Because it is a medical drama and everyone loves medical dramas.

2. It is a little more than your average medical drama.

It shifts away from supply-room sex or love triangles involving the intern, her boss and his wife (no, the wife and the intern are not sleeping with each other. Yeah I am disappointed too) but focuses more on the terminologies and the technical aspect of diagnosis and treatment. Though maybe to the trained eye, it is still more drama than reality.

3. It provides a lot of 'Do you know's.

For example, do you know how doctors recognise infections? They look for antibodies which will then tell them what kinds of infection the patient has got. And if a certain test comes back negative, it does not necessarily mean that the patient is free of that infection. In rare cases, it just means that the body is not able to produce antibodies to fight that particular infection.

Another example, do you know that herpes (a type of STD) actually kills cancer cells?

A last example before you get bored: a sudden drop in pain can cause euphoria. That explains why some people keep banging their heads against the wall, because it feels so good when they stop.

4. There are quite a bit of zen-ish and philosophical stuff. Examples:

Pain causes you to make bad decisions. The fear of pain is almost as big a motivator.

As long as you're here (Wilson stayed at House's after moving out of his apartment), it's just a fight. As soon as you get a place, then it's a divorce.

Right and wrong do exist. Just because you don't know what the right answer is — maybe there's even no way you could know what the right answer is — doesn't make your answer right or even okay. It's much simpler than that. It's just plain wrong.

You know what's worse than useless? Useless and oblivious.

If you talk to God you're religious. If God talks to you, you're psychotic.

5. And then there is the quips that everyone makes at everyone else. Though usually it is House at everyone else. Examples:

House: Tox screen was clean, he did however get hit by a bullet. Just mentioning.

Cameron: He was shot?

House: No, somebody threw it at him.

[At the morgue, House is going through the various freezers, checking on the bodies.]

Chase: What are you looking for?

House: I called my mom, she didn’t pick up.

Moments later...

Cuddy: I can’t even imagine the backwards logic you used to rationalize shooting a corpse.

House: Well if I shot a live person, there’s a lot more paperwork.

What does it take to be House?

House is not only good at diagnosing tricky cases.

He also knows Spanish, Hindi, Chinese and probably some other languages that you thought the hectic schedule of a doctor would not have allowed.

He plays the piano. In fact, he plays it quite well. I am especially thrilled by his rendition of 'Hymn to Freedom' even though it sounds suspiciously like the version by Oscar Peterson.

He has a magical ability to know when people are lying, either that or he just assumes that everyone is, even chemicals. But unfortunately for the latter, when they try to lie through their little chemical teeth, all you need is to put them in a beaker and apply heat.

He is cynical and sarcastic and that makes him interesting, as long as you are not at the receiving end of his whimsicality.

He is well-versed in subjects other than those medically-related. For example, he knows that 'blue barrel' is a variety of cactus and that enabled him to trace the origin of the disease-carrier and subsequently reach a diagnosis.

He obviously knows quite a bit of psychology and uses it well when dealing with patients whom he cannot put in a beaker and apply heat to.

And he appears to be miserable all the time, being a Vicodin addict with a bum leg. Chicks dig that though.

Not of the above are relevant to you or me. Just pick those that are, for instance the point about getting acquainted with stuff that are not within your specialty.

For myself, even if I am going to read Economics in university, I figure that it probably won't hurt if I simultaneously start home-schooling myself on Biology too.

The only problem is that, as with all resolutions, they tend to fizz out when the inital novelty wears off. Already, I am seeing the impracticality of the idea. With no impending tests and no pressure to outdo your peers, it is almost impossible for someone as unmotivated as yours truly to persevere despite the good intention. I mean, let's face it, it is been 2 weeks since I 'made up my mind' to do some reading on Economics but so far, I have only done it once, and that is while intoxicated with the prospect of awing the professor with my incisive takes on the world economy, among other things.

No one can be House. That is why I put him on a pedestal and worship him with my DVD player.

Finally WYSIWYG

After months of frustration resulting from not being able to use italics or change my fontcolour, I have finally found a way to. The answer is so simple that it took me 2 months to figure out - my browser does not support the WYSIWYG function on Blogger.

So the logical step is to change a browser. Against my better judgement, I tried it on an old piece of junk known as the Internet Explorer which, much to my delight, was not compatible either.

I said I was delighted because if it worked, then I would be compelled (morally and practically) to use that piece of junk and it would have taken away whatever little fun there is in blogging and made my miserable life even more miserable. It is weird in a sense because I vaguely remember the Internet Explorer being quite a nifty piece of browser software back in my earlier Windows days.

Onto something less depressing now.

Things that we know Paris Hilton can do:

1. Make videos of herself schupting some ex-boyband member with the initials N.C.
2. Being engaged and disengaged to another Paris.
3. Lead a Simple Life with her-best-friend-turned-enemies-but-is-really-just-her-sidekick Nicole Richie.

Things that we didn't know and still don't believe Paris Hilton can do

1. Sing! And interestingly enough, I actually thought it was Ashley Simpson or Lindsay Lohan crooning away to the words "I am screwed... screwed..." Man, they all sounded alike.
2. Make lasagne and actually, rather tasty lasagne. This is, however, not something you or I can verify.

And now to something even more cheerful.

House Time!

Today I am going to show you how prevalent discrimination is at workplaces such that female employees or those from minority races (chances increase proportionally with skin colour i.e the blacker you are, the more likely that you will be discriminated against) cannot even gain access to whiteboards.

In Ep 2x1, when Cameron tried to write on the whiteboard during a differential diagnosis, House would not let her, claiming that - I quote him - "Only I get to write on the board".

In Ep 2x17 and I figure for this one it is more interesting to give you a transcript of the exchange that took place between Foreman and House.

Foreman: [he snatches the whiteboard marker from House and starts writing] Heart failure could be either infection, coronary disease, or rejection.

House: [snatches the marker back] Sorry, there's a reason they call it the WHITEboard. It's not my rule. What ties both of these conditions together?

[Silence from the Ducklings]

Foreman: Ok, we can all stare at each other or we can investigate what caused the heart failure. Just the heart failure. You wanna give me that BLACK marker?

8 more episodes to go.

The Ultimate Woman is... a MAN

And men, your testes are really just 'descended ovaries', that's all.

See, according to House, all babies/fetuses/pre-fetuses (I am not sure what to call them because I have no idea when the reproductive organs start, you know, developing) start out being girls (evolutionary advantage I assume) and then we’re differentiated based on our genes. For boys, the ovaries develop into testes and drop.

However, there is a not-so-rare chance (about 1 in 150 000) that a fetus, a boy, will develop into something else - a pseudohermaphrodite. Pseudohermaphrodism is essentially a condition in which 'an individual is genetically and gonadally of one sex but has significant secondary sex characters of the opposite sex, often with ambiguous external genitalia.' So a male with pseudohermaphrodism will have testes (often undescended) and significant typically female secondary sex characters, like big boobs/'love apples' and a cute ass. Oh and clear skins too, as our patient in Ep 2x11 obviously did.

He-slash-she was a model - young, pretty and knew how to use them to his-slash-her advantage very well. 'Manipulative', I think, is the word. And he/she (it's tiring to type 'he-slash-her') made her father 'do him/her' in his alcohol-induced stupor. It was all to ensure that her (it's tiring to type 'his/her') dad would accede to all of her requests out of guilt in that way. And she also slept with her manager (oops, her dad was her manager), photographer, financial manager, and tutor for the same reason. She thought nothing of that because as she told Cameron matter-of-factly, 'we all do it' to which Cameron replied 'No, we don’t'. I was not sure if I should believe Cameron because she just 'did' Chase. Anyway, that is not 'medically relevant'.

So everything that she (Alex a.k.a the model who turned out to be a 'he') was ever proud of - her looks, her voluptuousness and basically her womanliness were really a joke. And more significantly, her dad was not just incestuous but also homosexual. So were her photographer, financial manager, tutor and about everybody else who had fantasized about her with his hand on his pecker.

While I am at it, I have to point out that pseudohermaphroditism should not be confused with hermaphroditism (they put the word 'pseudo' there for a reason). In individuals with hermaphroditism, both male and female gonadal tissue are present. In other words, they have both the testes and the ovaries (best of both worlds!) while, as I have established earlier, pseudohermaphroditic individuals only have one set. So the narrator in Jeffrey Eugenides's 'Middlesex' could either be a pseduohermaphrodite or a fona fide one, neither of which ought to bring us much joy.

Care to know about what watching 12 episodes of 'House M.D.' in marathon fashion can do to you besides feeling obliged to reveal the answer in a late night blog entry? Hmm, it can make you regret not applying to medical school, which subsequently makes you regret not taking biology in junior college. It can also make your head swim in a list of words like 'brucellosis', 'epinephrine', 'cataplexy', 'subarachnoid' and 'metachromatic leukodystrophy' which makes you regret not applying to med school all over again.

Just imagine what fun you will have if you have gone to med school. You would be able to say things like 'Oh, that's not what REAL doctors do. These TV PEOPLE are not checking their facts' or 'There is a problem with his IgM, not IgG, you idiot!'. How cool would that - and you - be? Then House would cease to become cool. But then again, if you are an intern (the logically path after med school), how the hell would you have time to watch TV?

Went to the PC Show today. Yeah, the one that is like held 2-3 times every year. Just imagine Great Singapore Sale with just computer-related stuff.

Wanted to buy an external hard drive and bought one at a price of $211. It claimed to have a capacity of 100GB but the last I checked, it only had around 94 GB. Technically speaking, it was yet an 'external hard drive' when I bought it. It used to be an 'enclosure' ('casing' for the rest of us) plus a Samsung hard drive. After I bought them, they were fused together to become 'it'. So when the guy handed me the empty enclosure and told me it was $49, I asked him how many gigs there were in it, thinking 'what a steal!'. I swore he just sort of stared at me incredulously for 1 1/2 secs before apologizing for not making it clearer in the first place. Okay point taken, I was being stupid.

In the end I still bought from that guy because 1) I felt guilty about, erm, asking him so many questions 2) no one else would format for me in Mac 3) it was one of the cheapest around 4) it only cost 200 bucks, no point spending 3 hours trying to get the best deal (and worse, not end up getting one at the end of it).

Lunch was at Surf N Turf which sucked. The portion of their starter (we ordered nachos) was humongous. And that was just wrong because starters are called 'starters' for a reason. They are not there to end your meal before you even get to the main course. The mussels were overcooked and tasted like pockets of sand. We cancelled our Surf N Turf combo because there was no way the two of us could have fnished it. Despite our efforts, we only managed to clean off half of the starter.

Oh I also bought the 'The Virgin Suicides' DVD. That sucked too. Now I remembered why I hated the movie 'Lost in Translation' which was also directed by Sofia C. The tempo was just oh so painfully slow. And too little screentime for Kirsten Dunst. The monotonous narration made it seem like a documentary. The movie, in my opinion, did not do justice to the novel. So much for the $24 I forked out for the disc. No wonder people download illegally. That is what people do when crazy punks sell pieces of plastic for 10-20 times their true cost.

The Virgin Suicides

I have just finished reading a very 'powerful' novel. The word 'powerful' being used here only for the lack of a more intelligent-sounding adjective. I am a poor literary critic and will make no attempt to disguise that (not that it is POSSIBLE to disguise that anyway).

The novel is, of course, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides. A very interesting surname considering that his second novel is titled 'Middlesex' which is about a bisexual (here referring to someone with both male and female reproductive organs) and therefore somewhat related to eugenics, in an ironic sort of way because eugenics is really about the production of better/improved offsprings and bisexuality (born or learnt) hardly counts as an improvement. The point, which I believe was not well-delivered, is that 'eugenides' sounds like 'eugenics' and so on...

Okay let's just forget that.

'The Virgin Suicides' has been made into a movie, directed by Sofia Coppola. It was released in 1999 and starred Kirsten Dunst as the very sexually active (or promiscuous if you would like) Lux Lisbon, the Lisbon girl who was fleshed out the most in the novel. Her displays of promiscuity, as suggested by the narrator and his group of friends, could be her desperate attempt to feel loved and in the process, mistaking physical pleasure with love. Her behaviour got out of hand later in the novel after her youngest sister, Cecilia, committed suicide, leading to her numerous trysts with nameless boys/men on the roof. Despite that, the narrator noted that Lux Lisbon often appeared distracted and bored even at times during sex. That led him to conclude that her sexual acts were performed less out of carnal desires than of 'other plans' which he or the other boys never managed to find out about. It was also suggested that Lux Lisbon might have had a self-destructive streak because she continued having sex on the roof into the coldest of the winter, as if wanting to catch a cold and die of it.

No one could say for sure what drove Cecilia Lisbon to kill herself in the first place. Many saw her as a weirdo, unlike her other sisters. The narrator suggested that it could be their strict upbringing which drove the girls to suicide. Right from the beginning, we were introduced to the mother as a strict Christian who played and forced the whole family to listen to the type of gospel music that even priests found incredulous. She allowed no unsupervised outings with boys and forbade clothes that were too revealing. Cosmetics were forbidden and TV programmes were carefully considered for their suitability before the girls were allowed to watch any.

All in all, the girls probably led a stifling existence under the watchful eyes of the matriarch. On the anniversary of Cecilia Lisbon's first suicide attempt (she only managed to kill herself in her second attempt by jumping onto the pointed fence), the remaining girls committed suicides as well. Lux Lisbon died of carbon monoxide poisoning; Therese Lisbon died of an overdose of sleeping pills; Bonnie Lisbon hanged herself; Mary Lisbon tried unsuccessfully to, literally, cook herself in the oven but eventually succeeded in her second attempt by ingesting more sleeping pills than she should after returning from the hospital.

It was a 'heavy' novel, made more so by the dark humour which it oozed. It was also a very disturbing novel, not least because the readers are left questioning and searching for the real reasons behind the suicides. Various people, including psychiatrists, doctors who tried successfully at certain times and unsuccessfully at others to resuscitate the girls, journalists, teachers and neighbours, all tried to provide explanations for their suicides. Some blamed them on the problems America faced in general those days; some credited the girls for foreseeing the unavoidable aging and misery that those who lived had to endure; others claimed that it was all an 'adolescent problem'. Maybe it was a combination of all those factors. No one knew for sure. Not even the author himself perhaps.

Must lay my hands on a copy of the movie. I love Kirsten Dunst when she is not with SpiderBoy. And being a loyal 'House M.D.' fan, I have to say that Kirsten bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Morrison, who plays Dr Cameron in 'House'. Both of whom, in my opinion, are smokin' hot! LOL!

While I am at it, Kirsten's new movie titled 'Marie-Antoinette' would be 'coming to a cinema near you' some time in October. Marie Antoinette, for the unitiated, was the Queen of France who was executed during the French Revolution. Originally an Austrian royalty, she was married at the tender age of 14 to King Louis XVI (the latter was not yet a king when the marriage took place but was named the heir by his grandfather Louis XV). A politically-motivated marriage it was. So unhappy were her initial years at the French royal court that she indulged in gambling and other money-consuming activities. She later reportedly changed for the better though she remained unpopular with the people of France. She gave birth to 4 children in her lifetime and lost 2 to diseases. She was executed shortly after her husband by the revolutionists.

The movie, however, would focus on her earlier years as an aimless young royalty lost in the politics of the French court, who only found solace in meaningless but often extravagant activities. I can totally see Kirsten playing the seemingly indulgent but really lonesome Queen who was not exactly loved by her husband and had to constantly endure the malignant rumours that were circulating about which ranged from her having secret lovers to her inability to produce heirs to the throne (records suggested that she and her King did not consummate their marriage until many years after they were married).

Can hardly wait.