Birthday Boy

Nature boy, Taroko Gorge, summer 2007

Most ardent fan of Top Gun and Meet Joe Black, of growing out matinee-idol hair until it curls, of commenting on blogs (yay!), aren’t my sister and I lucky to have such a cool Dad! =D

(And Mom!)

Our Dad never gave up on running behind us until we’d learned how to cycle properly, a good couple of months’ exertion. Also during our rigorous childhood, he swam the 1km, 3km and 5km trials with us – twice. When we were in Beijing and missed food from Singapore, he’d regularly bring home the acrid soya bean milk popular there that we’d all try very hard to like. Hahaha. These days, every time he’s home (being quite the nomad in recent years), our Dad assiduously re-transforms the jungle into a garden. Considering the soil that magically disappears in pockets under a deceptively smooth surface in the front and the forest of pandan that propagates ferociously in the back, it’s quite a feat.

Learning to be cool from the best. Check out the sister’s winsome grin: fail.

Ah, Pa! What would we do without you. All those red-eye mornings when he woke, force-fed and drove us sleepy grumps to school.. I always appreciated it, even if I only communicated that early back then by snarling. And if he and Mowmy weren’t moving themselves, so many of his recent vacations [from the gruelling corporate world that he’s selflessly navigated since 23, my age this year augh] have been spent helping his progeny move. They brought my sister home from the States, me from Singapore to Besançon, from Besançon to Paris, and probably back from Paris too. All the incidental road trips we took as a family along the way became the priceless highlights singing marathons, quarrels and all, soul-food for throughout the ages.

A variation of the photo that lives in my Dad’s wallet : Paternal grandparents, parents, oblivious Little Duck Head and grumpy Big Little Big-Sister (?! Lost in translation.)

My father used to herald his arrival home from work by whistling his signature 15-note composition. Let loose by our mother, we’d run crazily to the gate and he’d scoop us up: “Hello 大小姐! Hello 小丫头!” Somehow, the avian whistling crystallized my notion that I was a waterbird’s little cranium. I think it was a good decade or so before I realised that my Dad was calling me Small Girl (“ya tou”, a homonym). Such enlightenment did wonders for my identity issues indeed.

=] Now that we’re all grown up and temporarily apart, we get treated to hilarious long-distance calls (invaluable advice notwithstanding) and annotated Op-Ed articles that appear in our inboxes – mostly educational, sometimes baffling, always diverting.

Aww. We’d be nothing without you, good ol’ Daddy. Health and happiness to you and Mama always, Papa! Happy birthday! Chioum!

Monkey helps Dad/steals Dad’s drink.

Bravissimo

In Italy, they call me “The Champion”.

The news yesterday was not good. Sigh.. I really, really messed up this time. At least it’ll give me something more to write about, when I have the heart to..

Meanwhile, so many and so much to be grateful for already. THANK YOU, EVERYBODY! Especially:

My rescuers. The kind man who saw me fly, hiked off the ski route and propped up my head while he called for help; the heroic Monte Bondone policeman who plucked me off the ground and snowmobiled me to safety; the ambulance paramedics, who took ages to get up there not because they were slow but because it was so inaccessible –

The fantastic four: Chin Yuan, Gabriele, Jevon and Rebecca, for hurrying to the hospital, keeping me alive and buoying my spirits that whole week. Renzo and Adriana for going miles out of their way to keep the most troublesome guest they must’ve ever hosted comfortable and entertained: il superuomo e la superdonna! –

My Paris team, friends in need, friends indeed – REBECCA, Terence, Jevon, Chin Yuan, Davina, and my wonderful visitors, who’ve kept me from wallowing (too much) –

All my family and friends, whose well-wishes and messages of comfort have shot this passing darkness with lasting silver. You are my heart’s friends –

The doctors, nurses, girl in the waiting room, man on the other mountain, man who sold us the crutches, Claudio, Maurizio, RyanAir, people in the street who stopped to offer sympathy –

And of course, with my deepest regret for causing you such worry: Mowmy, Daddo and Jie, whose love and wise words throughout kept me from spiralling..

And Hongwan, for being there, and here soon.

If things are hard now, they would’ve been impossible without these blessings.

Up in the mountains, you never forget how small you are. This was the last shot I took at the top of the slope..

..and this was the first one after.

Look at that extra glove waving an icy hello from my knee. Haha.

Ah well. Next post: less snow, more Carnevale!

Memories are made of this

For the first time this term, our entire class of 50-odd was seated in the most uncomfortable of amphithéâtres yesterday ready for instruction by a particularly pompous professor, who likes to talk a lot without saying much at all. We spent half an hour listening to him explain how to form appropriate tutorial groups – it really could’ve been condensed into a one-second sentence, “Two groups, please” – after which he thanked us, stood, and said jovially, “A deux semaines plus tard, si l’université existe encore !”

WHO welcomes students back just to form tutorial groups and to say that he’ll see them two weeks later, if the university’s still standing?! Franchement, ça devient ridicule. I almost prefer last year’s strikes, when at least we weren’t fooled into expecting an education. Back then, if the crazy student union body wasn’t barricading the doors shut with their crazed bodies, it was because riot police in fully-articulated battle gear were standing guard around the Sorbonne’s entrances. Like ludicrous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles extras, they stopped people from entering, first kindly, shrugging and blowing raspberries in commiseration with the students, then threatening to throw cameras away if people took pictures of them.

Ah, nostalgia. Thinking about what seems like our very own dedicated CRS (Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité, a company in the police force – they were there so often in such great numbers, I felt quite flattered for my school) reminds me fondly of a friend. She was once overcome enough by their masculine presence to forget basic vocabulary. In as conspiratorially friendly a tone as possible, she asked one of them “Vous êtes chaud ?” All rigged out in protective plating as he was, she’d meant to ask if he felt hot, but had ended up asking him if he was horny instead. “Euh… Oui.. ? ” he ventured.

Heehee. Well, well. Even despite the many fruitless trips to and from school, it’s a great time to be here. An oriole just started singing outside because it’s past 6 pm and the sun’s still out! (Wow! …) Really though, on the way in, I spied tendrils of springtime green creeping bashfully across the courtyard pavement. How nice that the worst of winter – also the worst of winters in what, 30 years? – is finally over.

Kind of ironic, then, that once exams ended last semester, I hurriedly hied myself a continent away to the harshest period of an even colder winter. I’m hardly complaining though! Because in addition to spending precious time with people dearly missed (and besides learning what -4 degrees feels like in Fahrenheit – Centigrade’s for wimps!), I also learnt how to skiiii…

The quickest way to learn how to ski is when your alternative is to fall off the slopes and die. It’s also when you desperately want not to embarrass yourself in front of your instructor/slave-driver. With my spectacular (ie horrifying and pouffy) red ski suit and snow-spewing spills, I certainly didn’t succeed in not embarrassing myself. I also contrived to get my long-suffering host knocked over by the ski lift, winding him thoroughly just for good measure. Haha! I’m so sorry! That was Really Embarrassing. =[

To be fair to me though, none of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t duped me onto the ski lift in the first place. “You’re a natural! I want to bring you up to the top – it’s really beautiful. Don’t worry, you’re ready!”

Such a sweet-talker, my friends! I didn’t even understand the extent to which I had been suckered until one of his house-mates almost fell off her chair, learning at dinner that he’d brought me up to the intermediate slopes within our first two hours. He himself had only gone up the beginner slope on his third ski trip..

Hahahahaha. I’m only eternally grateful of course. So instructive, his instructions; so encouraging, his encouragement! =] It must’ve been quite a puzzling day; I had to concentrate on figuring out how to remain vertical so much of the time that I hardly said a word. It was great fun though to observe the seasoned skiiers zipping down the slopes almost lazily, or the racers making hairpin turns around markers in their time trials. I spent the first few hours tumbling off ski lifts and eating snow by the catapult-ful while the very young and the very old whizzed by, with my ever-patient instructor waiting ever-patiently. He even managed to somewhat answer his friend’s question about homework before reception gave out (“Actually, I’m skiing, call you back later?” HAHA) while I extracted myself from knee-deep in a snowbank that I’d skiied confidently into.

By the end of the afternoon though, I could adopt a semi-crouch approximating a proper skiing position, push off down a long slope, knuckles white and knees trembling, trying my darndest to concentrate on the figure elegantly gliding his leisurely way down just ahead while the wind whipped the hair in my terrified face. I reached the foot of the last two slopes not having fallen once: a jelly-soft mess, but an exhilarated, contented jelly-soft mess. The quickest way to learn how to ski after all is not to be afraid to try, and he certainly taught me that.

The view from up there – worth every toe, thigh, back and upper-arm muscle ache. It was such a brilliant day too; we got pleasantly sunburnt. Okay this photo doesn’t do it justice at all, but I didn’t dare get any closer to the brow of this black slope. Snow’s slippery!

So that was how I spent my first weekend in Ithaca, going up and tumbling down and around the mountainsides. Actually, getting to and back from Geek Greek Peak was an adventure in itself, but that’s one of the things I’ll save for my other, top-secret diary.

(It doesn’t exist.)

(At least not online.)

Ah well, good times, good times. =] And so beneficial too! I’m off to Venice and the Italian Alps this Saturday, well-prepared for a week’s skiing only by his infinite patience and indulgence.

Dangle, dangle. Muffled by the bountiful snow, everything’s so quiet way up there, you could hear a heart sing..

My Funny Valentine

I concede the point: c’est toi qui fais de ma Saint-Valentin joyeuse. =]

Alors que te puis-je dire, sinon qu’oui ?

While the iron is hot

I’m back from outre-mer! Outer-sea! Overseas!

Another vacation, another sentimental voyage. It was painful to leave – oh my New Yorkers, oh my Ithacan – but stumbling back into my lovely little apartment (with the luggage that REALLY packed a punch), at least I was coming home to Paris. Parting, such sweet sorrow! Finger → throat.

This was by far a trip worth reviving a dead blog for. =D Chinese New Year with cousins dearly missed, leap-frogging Manhattan behind delightful native-New Yorkers, lounging in Yuan’s room transposed from Singapore to Union Square, shuttle flights on propeller planes, SKIING, walking across arctic Ithaca then thawing out beside the fire of desire… (Kidding. The rhyme was too bad to pass up.)

It’ll take me a while to figure out what to leave in about these past two delirious weeks, but with any luck, the university strikes will last longer. And all this with another vacation in another fortnight! Ahhh. I revel in the righteous indignation that my passionate contemporaries feel compelled to demonstrate. =]

Ithaca’s gorges.

Gorge-crossing. The dear old violin’s been going places.

A bientôt, and let’s hope the strikers don’t stop till they get what they want! La solidarité !!

Once upon a country mouse

Well this is healthy.. Swaddled sniffling in blankets in bed for late-late-night chatting, abortive blogging and CNN’s Election Night broadcast. Please let Barack Obama win!!! Some 86% of the French would vote for him. France Info explains it (facetiously I hope): “Il est français,” this because Obama’s maternal ancestry descends from Alsace some 6 generations ago. It’s probably the most tenuous of claims any country has yet laid on him… And Alsace might not even have been French then! C’est de l’obamanie, ça. Just please let him win.

This past week was marked by non-vacation for us sad sacks while the rest of France went on jolly Toussaint break. So off we went for a weekend in Normandy, courtesy of the cutest, most exotic couple in the recent history of the Chinese diaspora..

Meet the backs of Davina and Thiam Min. She’s Mauritian, he’s Tahitian, both are Hakka, live and breathe French and worked in Singapore for a while. It’s a long story (and unlike some, well worth telling), but the upshot is that they’re engaged and living in Paris. Every so often they pop by to Cabourg, a rich seaside second-home town, to tend the huge (but enormous!) garden/farm at his overseas brother’s country estate.

Paris is beautiful, but the country is literally a breath of fresh air. Everything was so crisp and uncontaminated, it was like a mini-pilgrimage to a better place. We arrived late on Friday night and after a tremendously reinvigorating cold shower because the heater hadn’t warmed up yet, tumbled into bed to watch (of all things) Spirited Away, probably the most pastoral movie I have.

Fluffy Crocs enhanced the cosy alternate-universe atmosphere.

The next day was a riot of domestic activity: when we weren’t eating, we were cooking our meals; when we weren’t doing that, we were picking produce and transforming it into delectable, garden-fresh fare. Heehee.

A garden patch.

Picking them was such fun. Actually, it was more like shaking the tree and dodging big, red raindrops by clumping around as quickly as our heavy boots allowed in the rich earth. These are the crunchiest, tangiest.. apple-est things I’ve ever sunk my teeth into.

La raclette : a divine combination of molten cheese and cured meats, the comfort of a long winter’s night.

And when we tired of that, we went for a walk :

She sells seashells.

Such bliss, to be surrounded by the wide expanse of sand and the calm English Channel with three of the dearest people I know here.

There’s a boy in the carriage that the first horse is pulling. Very noble treads.

Sunday morning we all slept in, except for the intrepid Thiam Min who woke up at dawn to see if the alleged rabbits hopped around the garden as the friendly gardener claimed they did. This local chap, quite a talker, also hunts ducks from a WW II bunker near the beach with his buddies, makes a mean apple cider and churns out preserves from various fruits I didn’t even know existed. No bunnies that morning.

Morning jog!

Davina’s Pot au Feu.

Lots of peeling, slicing, dicing, stirring and pounding later, Rebecca’s Tarte Tatin and Thiam Min’s Compôte de Pommes.. Yummm.

The weekend over, we piled into the car for the ride back. Just before we left, the setting sun lit up the bush at the bottom of the garden to show the fine filigree embrace of perfect gossamer webs.

Whizzing back to Paris as bucolic France poured past the windows and the three others lolled comfortably asleep in their seats, I reflected on what a journey it’s been these 3 years or so. I know it smacks of the maudlin and the mawkish but if there’s anything I’m proud of of my sojourn in this wintrier clime so far, it’s the relationships with all the people that I’ve gotten to know better over these years. (That means with you, too.) The time with these particular three was a blessed one, and the best thing is that it felt like a prelude of more to come.

[Yes they can! .. What a speech, what a campaign. The world looks set to be a better place. (=]

Danish delight

I finally overcame my inertia to visit a small part of Scandinavia, all thanks to my ultra-hospitable relatives in Copenhagen. This short trip wildly surpassed even the anticipation built up from three years here lusting after Scandinavia. The beauty, the rarefied air of refinement and above all the glorious incongruity of a cosy, kind-to-a-fault Singaporean family plopped comfortably in the middle of downtown Copenhagen – it couldn’t have come at a better time. My grand-aunt, grand-uncle and their progeny brought me around, (over)fed, cosseted and all but adopted me.. I’m still bathed in the afterglow hahaha.

So the trip began with a whole adventure of its own because the RER B to CDG was down, yet again. This is the train that I attempt to take to school every day. Going to school is such a calculated gamble – train, metro or bus: which is the least likely to have broken down or be on strike? I love the variety that public transportation in Paris adds to my days! Not. But anyway, the plane to Copenhagen was delayed, merci Air France, so I was safe.

Except that I had to run to the exit at Kastrup because I knew my grand-aunt was waiting (she’d arrived there early too just in case, augh), and it’s such a nice, shiny, HUGE airport! =/ Once there and de-flustered though, Copenhagen was brilliant.

The Little Mermaid has been decapitated twice and has lost her arm once to sick vandals. She’s actually in the middle of cold, windy nowhere in Copenhagen, so it’s not as surprising as it sounds. HC Andersen’s plot is also quite chilling, as children’s stories go..

‘

Nyhavn is a gorgeous waterfront canal wine-and-dine area. Canals in Singapore mean such different things than in Europe.

When I arrived, my grand-aunt asked me what I knew about Denmark. Food being one of my primary interests, I mentioned smørrebrød, literally butter and bread, actually towering open-face sandwiches. The next morning, I woke up to four. Meatballs, beef steak, salmon and egg on dense rye bread: they were very delicious and very very filling. I relearnt the value of understatement that morning.

Denmark, indeed Scandinavia, is synonymous with design. My cousin-aunt speaks of hygge, the Danish culture of “cosiness” that values all that is pleasing, soothing and .. nice, I guess. Nice is not overrated, contrary to certain assertions.

Looks like art. It all looks like art.. The apartments I saw into from the streets were straight out of interior design magazines. The high-class kind.

The epitome of being easy on the eyes, the cones in this lamp follow the Fibonnaci sequence.

The Kuutio (Finnish for cube) futon is a thick cotton mattress that can be folded up and zipped along only one line to produce a bench, a stool, a bag, a storage cube, an easy chair.. It works on the Eulerian path principle.

Heaven in an urban home. How pleasant! I’m thinking of you, Sister.

If you were to bump into somebody while wearing this jacket, he’d stick with you. Literally – it’s lined with Velcro. Dear reader, I was sorely tempted.

Pumpkin season at Tivoli Gardens.

The waist-high straw maze that this tree is planted in the middle of actually only had one entry. There were a lot of frustrated kids that night, too short to see anything and accompanied by their equally bemused parents.

No expenses spared.

Meet Jack Straw. His head may be full of mush, but he’s bright all right.

It was Kulturnatten too so there were exhibits in the streets of Copenhagen that whole night. This was on agriculture; that huge red machine is a potato harvester. I had no idea that so many varieties of Danish potatoes existed.

The next day brought a day trip to Helsingør, or Elsinore.

A fairytale comes true.

The outer moat..

.. And the inner.

If the name rang a bell, this is probably why. Shakespeare set Hamlet in Elsinore, where a modern-day theatre now stands in hommage. The whole place is steeped in history and culture – quite amazing.

On the other end of the spectrum, Christiania.

Freetown Christiania is a self-governing area in Copenhagen set up by squatters in disused military barracks. Cameras aren’t allowed inside and for good reason, since cannabis is sold openly. I wandered around in there as sore a thumb as possible and tried not to gawk at the flourishing hippie lifestyle, or be gawked at myself.

The last night in Copenhagen was memorably spent first stumbling upon that Danish institution, Lego.

Miniature skyscrapers.

Our own paltry attempt, quickly abandoned in ignominious defeat.

We then moved on to a jazz concert, and then to China. It was really just a karaoke restaurant, but it might as well have been a portal to another dimension. The difference could not have been greater between a subdued, working crowd enjoying a jazz sextet in a genteel club, and the lusty, collective renditions of Chinese pop standards by young drunk Chinese students in an otherwise pitch-dark restaurant lit up by a spinning disco ball.

We also dropped by Sweden..

Reindeer!

Live music in the street.

Ah well. Nothing like a getaway to get the creative juices flowing, and this was the best I could have hoped for – I’d gladly zig-zag the globe for familial warmth. Only one and a half years late. (= Thanks for coming back, I’ve missed this!

Somewhere in East Asia

Hello! Away from home again, just two short weeks after getting back. Once again, with no more exaggerated tortured-soul angst to draw on (hah), I lost all impetus to blog within the happy confines of familiarity and love. But now the family’s finally together again in Kaohsiung for the first time, and there’ll be new stuff to write about once I’m home again.

Jie’s birthday on Saturday will be celebrated on the road as we drive ourselves around Taiwan Island (Friday to Tuesday), then it’s off to Hokkaido with a Taiwanese tour group (next Wednesday to Sunday – that should be interesting), Taipei on our own (Monday to Wednesday) and finally back to Singapore with Jie on the 23rd.

By which time an update will be long overdue. Happy belated birthday Pa!!! Owe you a post as well. Will hopefully start meeting people in earnest once I’m back too, before going back to France sometime in June.

Come visit my parents in Kaohsiung! This is their humongous flat screen, the diametric opposite of my little cathode-ray antique in France.

In another far cry from my hypnotic lolly seat, this is the high-tech toilet, caught here in the act of opening itself . It goes crazy lifting and lowering its lid if you’re moving around the bathroom, tsk. What a difference from quiet, rustic country living. (=

Everyone’s Waiting

I’ve been gorging on Six Feet Under every day for the past many days, and it’s only now that my evenings are empty again that I’ve fully apprehended how close the finals are. Oh no. But what a great way to make time pass! The entire series is thoroughly riveting, intelligent and tastefully done (if very, very uncensored – what an eye-opener that was, right Kit.) Hmm. Can’t never get enough noir comedy, anyway. Everyone with an internet connection and time to kill can watch it (legally, as far as I know) at allUC.org, so wait no longer. The last of the 63 hours will blow you far, far away.. Six feet under in fact. Harhar.

So that’s what I’ve been up to in between bouts of school, project panic and long-drawn-out cook-outs with friends. The real action’s to the east, where youthful legal eagles have descended on Vienna in the friendly spirit of picking each other to bits with detached fury to detail. Congratulations 姐 Jie and team on making it to the next round in the Vis Moot! (= Yay! Not that that was ever in doubt. Bonne chance et bon courage for the rest of the competition! Arbitrate yourselves to arbitration heaven, we know you can. (=

Speaking of pompoms, there was a marathon here on Sunday and the track along the river was lined with people cheering the determined runners on. Alas, I found out about it only when I went for a run, during which the marathon ran into me. I jogged along as unobtrusively as I could, which unhappily was not at all, since I was a slow-moving object covered from head to toe in sombre windbreaking material against a colourful blur of sports singlets and shorts whizzing past. How embarrassing! I was torn between slowing down and stopping altogether when suddenly there wasn’t a decision to be made anymore: the runners had all zoomed off ahead, leaving just me for the people lining the track to cheer on, if so inclined. Heh, such humorous people. It was more than just exertion that turned me red that day, and I was very glad to finally get off the marathon route.

“Everyone’s Waiting” for the end, sure, but if Six Feet Under’s about anything, it’s about not wasting your time while waiting. (That’s the title of the last spine-tingling episode.) I humbly submit to you, Mother, that watching excellent, instructive television online doesn’t count as wasting time. (Please argue in my favour, Jie!) My mother’s promised to start writing a blog “not yet”, but some time in the future. There, it’s in black and white now. =D To 爸妈 Pa+Ma in Taiwan, happy settling in!

Sleep’s becoming more fitful these days, but only 12 more nights till I head home. While that’s practically nothing, can’t wait. =[

Three Strikes

I was rushing to school for my 50%-of-the-final-grade presentation when I noticed mounted policemen heading the same way, all boots, helmets and glinting sunglasses – the uniform always gets to me. Well. What else could it be but a demonstration, the kind that chokes up the little street from the Préfecture that serves as a shortcut to school? And so it was that I arrived for class late and dishevelled after fighting my way from the stragglers smoking and drinking at the back of the crowd to the very spirited agitators thrusting banners and banging drums up front. These activists, I tell you..!

This strike was against educational reforms that will cut teaching posts and increase class sizes starting September this year. It’s nice to see youngsters so supportive of their teachers and passionate about their education I guess, but what’s really, really nice is to see freedom of speech in practice. I mean, I seriously doubt that this strike, replicated in towns across France, will go any further than raise discontent about the current administration. Concrete changes to the reforms are unlikely. There are exceptions, of course, when strike fever sweeps all levels of society for a significant period of time like it did for close to two months last Spring, and the government buckles before more than one promising political figure is cut down in the maelstrom of brutal public opinion. But demonstrations are common and legal reforms not so, the corollary of which is that most strikes do little other than exercise this “inalienable and God-given right”.

Which I wholeheartedly cursed, of course, when I was stuck up in the hills of the hill-top on-campus accommodation last year during transport strikes. All I could do was look out the windows at the grazing cows and wish they would herd me to school. I exaggerate of course; these cows were manifestly not herd-conscious. Heh. It’s just an excuse to insert this joke which I already forwarded to some people : Cowporations, on cows and stereotypes, a happy combination..

Traditional Capitalism
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

An American Corporation
You have two cows.
You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

A French Corporation
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.

A Japanese Corporation
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create clever cow cartoon images called ‘Cowkimon’ and market them worldwide.

A German Corporation
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A British Corporation
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

An Italian Corporation
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You break for lunch.

A Swiss Corporation
You have 5,000 cows, none of which belongs to you.
You charge others for storing their cows for them.

A Chinese Corporation
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment and high bovine productivity.
You have the newsman who reported on the numbers arrested.

An Indian Corporation
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A Malaysian Corporation
You have two cows.
You sign a 40-year contract to supply milk at RM0.06 per litre.
Midway through, you raise the price to RM0.60 and threaten to cut the supply.

When the buyer agrees to the new price, you change your mind again and now want RM1.20.
The buyer decides you can keep your milk and researches and develops milk that comes from recycled cows.

Your two cows retire together with the Prime Minister.

A Singaporean Corporation
You have two cows.
One cow-beh and one cow-bu.

Haha. (=

Back to the strikes though. The first one I saw in France was by firemen setting off smoke bombs in the streets in protest against goodness knows what, hounded all the while by whistle-blowing policemen. This was when I’d just arrived all green and wide-eyed and Singaporean; it was surreal to see different arms of the civil service have an opinion at all, not to mention opposing ones. Plenty of strikes followed during my time away from home, including one by interestingly-attired people in Barcelona.. One grows desensitised after a while, but the most memorable demonstration of all must’ve been in the vicinity of the UN headquarters in New York where the embassies are.

It was held by HIV-positive people to coincide with a UN General Assembly high level meeting on Aids in June last year. That’s a pretend coffin they’re holding, photo courtesy of Jie – rather affecting, on the whole.

In other news, snow’s been falling again. The new flowers that bloomed in the past weeks’ summery temperatures are covered in blankets of white and petrified in their pretty beds. Treacherous, treacherous.

3 weeks, 4 days and counting till I’m reunited with the highly-regulated atmosphere of home, such a sweet and distant memory now. Ah well.. So much for inalienable rights. Freedom, schmeedom.. (!!!) It’s the people whom I miss that count for so much more, anyway.