Quotable Quotes Update It is a tragedy, that I know more Latin than Mandarin. – Dean Tan Quotable Quotes Update Me: I love the idea of eskimo song duels… S: Don’t you think song duels are just ancient trash talking sessions? Me: Like rapping? S: Yes Me: So, our conclusion for the CLT essay is that rap artists are modern eskimoes? S: With bling Note: CLT - Comparative Legal Traditions Standard Chartered Marathon I will be going for the 10km category (should be quite manageable), along with Irene and other potentials. If you are interested in joining us, register on your own, and tell me, because we will be printing custom Sayoni t-shirts or tanktops for ourselves as well. Limited edition, hor. I’m Done I am absolutely done taking your crap and putting up with your bullshit. Don’t bother pressing the point. Don’t bother ever talking to me again either. We’re 100% done. An Indian Among Indians Originally published on Sayoni Speak I wish I could write this in the nature of some undercover spy report, or even a fascinating account of some rare new species by a researcher. While it feels like I am doing something of the sort, the subjects of my article are far from treason-committing criminals or an animal species. They are a bunch of queer women of Indian origin, a group of girls in an educational institution unnamed, brought together through to a weird gravitational force yet unaccounted for by the laws of physics. How did I get to know these girls? Quite honestly, mainly through an ex-partner. For one and a half years, I have been hearing reports of these women and their exploits from more than one source, and met a couple of members on occasion. But last week was the first time I met them en masse, a mass of black-and-brown skinned girls (to be quite politically correct, boys too, but we shall get to that later), representing maybe half this unique sub-culture. Sitting down with them at a coffeeshop was an experience in itself. In my life, hanging out with more than two other Indian people at a time can only happen when I am visiting my best friend’s family (a pleasant experience) or forced to visit Planet India by my parents, namely their family friends (a not-so-pleasant one). It is an odd thing for someone who originally came from India, but I can offer no explanation for this phenomenon. I am by no means unappreciative of Indian culture and life, but it is a private matter unto myself and generally unexpressed in terms of my social circle or activities. Most of them are Tamil-speaking, though there is a token Punjabi (or as I called her, Funjabi) and my ex-partner, of mixed ethnicity. Due to my interesting childhood, I have the gift of understanding three Indian languages, so I am able to laugh at their banter in bastardised Tamil while my ex-partner glowers at them and demands they speak English or translate for her. The second defining moment about the experience was that it was a substratum of people my parents would decidedly be horrified by, should they ever learn my association with them. It was definitely a substratum that I would be horrified by too, 2 years ago, but age has taught me tolerance by a small measure. Those who live in Singapore would be familiar with the phrase ah beng - these girls would certainly be classified by most as the Indian equivalent - anjadi. Not so much gangsterish as being decidedly laisse faire about life, smoking like chimneys and drinking like fish (they demolished 2 beer bottles per half an hour). Karan* exhorts me to stay longer around 6pm, and I wonder whether I should visit a doctor to have my lungs cleansed after further hours of exposure to passive smoke from 8 people. A few of them had decided to skip school for the afternoon, after having started drinking at midnoon. In the more sober moments, I hear snatches of conversation about what university they are going to go to in Australia, and the courses they might take. They are a culture unto themselves, not so much lawless as law-indifferent (I highly doubt they have done anything illegal or questionable). I have it on the best authority that a week would not go by without them hitting at least one club or bar, and hardly gay clubs at that - nah, those are too tame for them. They pick up women at straight bars and clubs, almost effortlessly, it would seem, without a need to communicate or think about their sexual orientation. Never chinese women, but women of all other ethnicities - Malay, Indian, Eurasian, mixed, lie before them as a field of possibility. They are unashamedly lesbian, that’s one thing I noticed. Hardly any of them present here have had prior heterosexual encounters (though I know it to be different for the entire group of them, for the girls who are not there), a fact that came spilling out when playing the infamous “I’ve Never” game, and I blushed under their reproving glances after I had to drink to “I’ve never had sex with a man”. They must have thought I was a swinging straight girl, though the truth could not be farther away from that. You see, I have not yet revealed my unacceptable activist leanings to any of them, wisely choosing not to other myself even more than I already was, being a shade lighter-skinned, femme, from-an-elite-school, tertiary-educated (or rather, in the process of being so) upper middle-class girl. I share the same ethnicity and sexual orientation as these girls, but I might as well have been a green-skinned martian for all the belonging I felt there. Not that they weren’t nice to me, a relative stranger to the group by far. They don’t know it, but I know a lot about their histories within the group - all it took was a few people to loosen their tongues, and a fun afternoon spent carefully drawing up a simile of the L Word chart for these girls, with a couple of group-members I had met 7 months ago. I still preserve that chart (which happens to rival the L Word Chart in its complexity and incestuousness) and treat it with more confidentiality than I would a future client’s file. It was scary how complicated that Chart was, and even scarier to see my name buried in the web, strategically connected to my ex-partner. Most importantly, it was the number of Indian queer women implicated, within that small group - many many more than the number of women I was hanging out with at the coffeeshop, mostly from that particular education institution. We had not even started on documenting the Chinese or Malay queer women, who surely existed and were intertwined within that web somewhere. They are surely fond of each other, I can tell. Today was a slightly special occasion, it seemed, because it was one of the girls’ birthday. (Though I am not sure the drinking had anything to do with that, because they already had a huge celebration planned on Saturday, they assured me) They hug each other without reserve, the “brothers” of the group extremely comfortable displays of affection with each other. Friendly flirting was rampant and unremarkable. At least two members of the group are visibly butch/FTM. One of them, Hari*, I know to be a pre or post-FTM, from the gossip prior to this meeting, the other, Jaya*, I had just met, and took a slight umbrage when I accidentally referred to him as a her. He was nice enough to correct me gently later though, instead of scolding me. There are a thousand questions I am dying to ask, but hold back for the fear of scaring them away. I wonder how their families have reacted to their visible transformation, to their obvious masculinity. I wonder whether Jaya are really going for the operation or staying in the grey area of masculine identification with a female body, given I knew he used the Ladies Toilet earlier, but Hari used the Men’s one. Giri is an another one, with an androgynous body and mannerism - violating my stoutly-held belief that Indian girls could not “do” andro to save their lives. They are remarkably at ease with their gender identity, despite, I am sure, having read none of the literature or debates, and Jaya even remarking that “gender didn’t mean anything”. A sub-culture unto themselves, a sub-community held together by the fragile or strong - I can’t tell - bonds of ethnic and sexual difference. I am sure none of them really care about rights or the community as a whole, about feminism, about the struggles faced by us and our gay brothers in the face of discriminatory legislation. But they are happy, free from any legal blight, self-contained, if not a little dysfunctional when it comes to relationships (this judgment I make knowing all the things I can’t reveal here), not having a role model or an ideal to look towards. I do not know what their career aspirations are, whether they are going to do the best they can, or settle for mediocrity. I was an Indian among Indians, and I walked away with a renewed appreciation of not my Indianness, but my own group of friends, mostly concentrated within Sayoni. I could not have found a group more different, even compared to the Indian girls I know of. Perhaps it is a result of class and economic differentiation, enmeshed by the strict streaming in the education system. Perhaps I will spend time with them again. When my lungs finally recover. *All names have been changed to protect privacy Music Rediscovery: Ode to A.R. Rahman No specific track this time to recommend, actually. I was cleaning out the CDs at home, and found a bunch of Tamil and Hindi music CDs I hadn’t yet imported into my library… I had forgotten they existed, honestly, and when I finally did import them, I re-discovered some of my favourite tracks. Most of them were A.R. Rahman creations, which explains why I absolutely love them. A.R. Rahman, for those unaware, is one of the greatest Indian music directors/composers ever, and probably one of the best in the world. I am not exaggerating. I have yet to discover something that parallels his musical genius. He is the Father of modern Indian music, the visionary to first combine the Western with the Indian, and not only that, but to invoke Indian sounds through western instruments. His debutante effort in Roja was the first time western percussion was introduced into Indian songs - a courageous move by any standard. [Click here to listen to one of his songs in that film] His subsequent award-winning creations have mesmerised millions of people, and have led to an entirely original genre of music, and subsequently, a dance genre of its own. It wouldn’t matter if the film was an absolute flop - if Rahman was the director, you could expect high sales on the albums. Many have copied his style thereafter, but none really come that close.  Many disintegrate into a certain sort of bastardly hybrid genre that gives homage to neither musical tradition. Rahman achieves the perfect balance between the Western and Indian, and even in a song that would not be inappropriate at a club, he manages to keep it classy. [Click here for a sample of his later works] This is not to say he doesn’t do pure Indian - he does it, and he does it really well. [Click here for a sample from Lagaan that is authentic North Indian folk music]. His passion shines through every track, his dedication to detail in every note. His experiments are also what pushed the digitised mastering of music in India, hence the higher-quality tracks heard today. Truly, a visionary. It is only my luck that I haven’t met him yet, because if I did, I’d surely get over-excited and die of a heart-attack. And this, is my much-delayed Ode to Rahman. Yes, KT, I still love you. Indignation 2008! Singapore’s 4th annual Pride Season is coming again - in August 2008 There are talks and forums, art and literature, and of course, fun social and outdoor events - for learning, celebrating and building bridges with those outside our communities. So please keep your evenings free in August and come to as many as you can. All events are free of charge unless otherwise stated. Sayoni will also be hosting our own events during Indignation. Please check out the full list of events HERE. Music Discovery: Edge of the Ocean Title: Edge of the Ocean Artist: Ivy Album: Long Distance I fell in love with this song the very first time I heard it on Grey’s Anatomy Season 1, but never looked it up until recently. And I was much rewarded by one of the most beautiful songs I possess. Edge of the Ocean is a soulful, dreamy, melancholy Lo-Fi treat. Though I first heard it on Grey’s Anatomy, I kept thinking that it surely should have been used as a song in an episode of Lost, in one of the montages, as the lyrics fit it perfectly. I can listen to it again and again, and not get tired of it. There’s a place I dream about Where the sun never goes out. And the sky is deep and blue. Won’t you take me there with you. Ohhh, we can begin again. Shed our skin, let the sun shine in. At the edge of the ocean We can start over again. There’s a world I’ve always known Somewhere far away from home. When I close my eyes I see All the space and mystery. Ohhh, we can begin again. Shed our skin, let the sun shine in. At the edge of the ocean We can start over again. I’m A Believer Originally posted on Sayoni Speak Love. Amour. Pyaar. Ai. No matter what language, what culture, the L word dominates our thinking, our lives, the media. Finding (and keeping) love, is the universal theme that connects humankind. It might be partly the fault of media, that we have been absorbed into the myth of “love”. It begins with fairytales as a kid, when the Prince falls in love with the beautiful princess, and they live happily ever after. Then the movies, songs, which all seem to speak of this. Love has a powerful grip on the human imagination and consciousness, to the point where we almost seem obsessed with it. Love has a special place in the queer culture, because it is the chief, if not  only justification for our existence. If procreation was the only object of human existence, then we can’t exist. But humans are built for more than procreation, we are built to find affection and happiness. Love is the shield we use against religious fundamentalists - how can anyone question two people in love, or deny them the right to? Love is the reason we decide to live against societal norms. But I, stand to question this “love”. I do not deny it exists, I do not deny that people feel it, or that it can be real or true. I do not question that we can be extremely happy spending time with the people we love. Love is, after all, no matter how much may be written about it, a chemical reaction, a firing of synapses, in our brains. Every emotion we feel is, for that matter. If our emotions are real, so is love. Then what am I questioning? I am questioning, here, the power of love. I am questioning the axiom that love can overcome anything, is more important than anything, is the ultimate ideal we need to strive for. I am taking the bold step of slaughtering the sacred cow of Love, if not for anyone but myself. As much as love makes people happy,  it makes fools of us all, even the best of us. Love leads to irrationality, self-deception and bad decisions - do not tell me that none of you have never made a bad decision when in love. Love makes people stay in abusive relationships, endure bad treatment, try to keep failing relationships afloat, hang on when there is no hope in sight. More importantly, I am questioning the assumption that love is necessary for a relationship, or to find your life-partner. It was an axiom I was questioning for a while, and my disbelief became complete, when ironically, I recently watched the season finale of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. Watching her make the same mistake twice, makes me realise that in the search for that perfect love, we overlook the search for our perfect mate. Not that I believe there is a “perfect mate” - there can be close approximations, but nothing more. Love and relationship CAN exist without each other. You can love someone, but not be in a relationship with them, and you can be in a relationship with someone, but not be in love with them (to add another dimension to the situation, you can be not in love with them, but maybe still love them). The mistake that most of us make is that we assume that when love happens, the natural consequence is a relationship, and should be, and should be what we work towards. Sometimes it is just not possible to have a relationship with the person you love, whether it be reciprocal or not. The woman you love deeply could be an unstable, cheating drug-addict. Or maybe she is commitment-phobic. Or maybe she is a married woman with kids. Or maybe she is simply needy and clingy and impossible to live with. Maybe you have a fundamental personality mismatch. You get the idea - just because you love someone, does not mean you need to be with them. But I hear the objections now: how is a relationship possible without love? The concept that love is absolutely necessary for a relationship is a rather modern, and somewhat western, concept - for thousands of years, our ancestors have been conducting marriage and relationships without the need for such a device.  In some of these luckier arrangements, the parties eventually learn and love each other. Do not get me wrong: I am hardly advocating a return back to those days where you let your parents choose a mate - that would be ridiculous. However, my point is this: in doing all the choosing for yourself, and taking the extensive time to get to know the person beforehand, in this process, is being in love an absolutely necessary step? You can be really fond of that person, or simply love them, but is being “in love”, necessary? Ideally, you want to have both. Ideally, a strong love and a strong relationship go together, and that would be utopia. But I am sure all of us know that this is difficult, if not impossible to find. Secondly, in my experience, stability and passion rarely go together. Oh sometimes it does, and I am most certainly jealous of those lucky ones. The mad crazy passionate love that we are all looking for, often does not come paired with a stable, loving relationship. Often, it is either/or, or somewhere along the spectrum. But of course, being human, we pick the passionate and crazy, not the stable and maybe-not-so-intense ones, because the first appeals more to our short-term sensory experience, hardly thinking of the long-term plan (like Tila did. Twice.). In the end, I don’t believe in love. I believe in relationships. I don’t believe in finding the one true love - I believe in finding the one good relationship. I believe in finding someone whom you can have a good dynamic with, someone who makes you happy, someone who treats you well. I believe in finding personality fits, someone whom you can talk with even when the looks fade, and the sex ends.  I believe in holding on to a good relationship, with or without “love” (as we understand it), and working to maintain it. Love CAN accompany such a find, but only sometimes. When years into the relationship, the love fades, only the strength of the relationship can keep itself afloat. Love is fickle, and like I’ve said before, a chemical reaction. A relationship is a lot more solid, a lot more real, and it is what will carry you through till “Death do us part”. And of course, I know that they can come together, being surrounded by real-life examples. But for every single one of those success stories, there are a lot more stories of heartbreak and pain. I do realise this is a stand which can be easily misinterpreted for bitterness. It is after all, not fashionable to not believe in the power of love, and the ones who do not are clearly the “bitter singles”. But  I do to an extent - I humbly recognise the power of love over our emotions and actions. I acknowledge that the next time I fall in love, I clearly will not be rational, just like any other person. But I hope to have learned from my past lessons and hold on to this single piece of clarifying belief. I’m a Believer. But not in Love. Ex-stories Second article on Trevvy, on Exes. Yay! Sayoni Hot 20 List 2008! Go Vote!! I worked long and hard on it, so you all better vote. And, this is completely my personal bias because I don’t like her, please don’t let Rebecca Tan win. I might have to kill myself if she does. Review: Ironman *Blows the dust off the blog and starts to cough* Okay, sorry. I’ve been rather occupied. I don’t even go online all that much anymore. But to breathe life back in here, let me start with a review of Ironman, which I watched with M last Saturday because Made of Honor, featuring Disney heart-throb Patrick Dempsey, only had tickets left in the front row. Rating: But it turned out to be serendipity (not the movie), because Ironman was actually quite enjoyable. I had heard good reviews on See What Show by mrbrown, but I had to see it for myself. The central character in this movie is that of a genius billionaire Tony Stark, the brains behind Stark Industries, which mostly manufactures weapons for the US military. Of course, the minute you go off on that path, you know the hero will have a change of heart and repent - and my pacifist heart thanks the movie for that. Tony Stark is captured by Afghan rogue bands while on a testing mission of new rockets missiles, and to get out of the prison, he makes a suit of metal that can fire weapons, torch everything in sight, and even fly. After escaping, he goes back to his home country and has a change of heart about what his weapons are doing, because he sees them in the hands of the rogue bands killing thousands of innocents. He also starts to perfect his Ironman suit, and eventually confronts his enemy within the fraternity, almost gets the girl yada yada. What I found slightly original about this is that the hero was not someone who was dropped in a tub of toxic waste, and more interestingly, can be perceived as more of an anti-hero. He is the epitome of what we are supposed to hate: rich Lothario who makes his money by (indirectly) killing people. Tony is a rather snarky character, and his “power” comes from his own brilliance, in crafting Ironman. He is believable in that sense, and strangely likeable without having to admire him like you would Superman. Now, I’ve had an admittedly deprived childhood, and I’ve never most of the Marvel comics that people have grown up with, so before I watched the movie, I knew nothing about the world of Ironman. Which, as it turns out, did slightly impede my understanding of the movie plot, as certain elements were not explained fully. Like how in the world Tony had the plan for the ironman suit with him when he was captured, and the whole deal about the palladium-core that was keeping him alive. It must have been how people felt when watching some of the Harry Potter movies and the plot whizzed them by. But aside from that, the CGI in this movie is superb, perhaps surpassing Transformers. Which, by the way, is what the people in Ironman suits reminded me of, especially when they were fighting. The technology shown in the movie was jealousy-inspiring…. holographic screens and workspaces, voice-recognising computers and robots, etc etc… and the CGI for all that was done wonderfully as well. With Transformers, I eventually got tired of all the action and fighting and the robots, but that did not happen with Ironman. Definitely a very watchable movie, probably better than that male version of My Best Friend’s Wedding, also known as Made of Honor, anyway. A New Home You are probably wondering why I have not been posting as much recently. Well, blame post-exam euphoria, for one, I am rather busy levelling my WoW toons before I start work. And most of my blogging efforts have been exclusively channelled to Sayoni. If you are wondering where my Tila and Grey’s Anatomy updates are, they are here. And then I started a new blog with Rachel - Confessions of Two Law Geek Fashionistas, where we talk about the three topics close to our heart: Law, Fashion & Beauty, and Geeky stuff of all kinds. A very eclectic mix, but that’s an accurate reflection of the two of us. If you thought I was geeky or have too much make-up, wait till you listen to her talking about Star Trek, or spot her make-up collection. This blog will still go ahead, no worries. I will not be cross-posting the entries from Confessions unless appropriate. As for the content, well that will continue to be off the top of my head, queer stuff, entertainment reviews, random thoughts and observations, and though it will kill Jean that I am talking about it, sometimes political stuff too. Not much difference really. Random Announcements 1. If you are an indian gay/bisexual/whatever-but-not-straight male, and you are reading my blog, please drop me an email at pleinelune@sayoni.com. It is for some research I am doing on the indian gay community - your anonymity will be protected, not to worry about that. 2. Please remember to take the Sayoni Queer Women Survey 2008 if you meet the criteria. Freedom at Mid-noon Okay, it wasn’t quite mid-noon, it was 11.33 am, as we were told to stop writing. Criminal law exam might actually have been the most enjoyable one of them all, not in the least because it is the last. Prof Hor sure knows how to have a laugh - his entire paper was an inside joke, just looking at the names and the situations. Three months of freedom, baby! Okay, not really. I still have a thousand things to do over the hols. This is what I NEED to do. Sayoni Survey Repor Website revamp + possible construction Work! If anyone has a job available that does not entail standing on my feet for hours on end, please tell me. Preferably comfortable admin job Writing Research + report into… well, stuff Indignation prep Assorted sayoni stuff This is what I WANT to do, on top of all this Learn sign language (specifically, SEE. I already know self-taught rudimentary ASL) 6 seasons of Sopranos 3 seasons of South of Nowhere All the seasons of the Office 5 seasons of Queer as Folk Donny Darko World of Warcraft - I want to get another character to level 70. Polanna has transferred to Rivendare to join The Budgie Smugglers. Thaurissan is now dead-town because they offered free transfers to Dreadmaul, and pretty much 95% of the server Alliance population left (For more than a year, the Alliance of Thaurissan have been suffering under the huge imbalance of Alliance to Horde) Once I get my lock to level 70, or hopefully before (depending on my budget), I’ll need to transfer my lock as well. Quite a list, I know. And I’ve been contemplating taking up contemporary dance. For about ten years I’ve been telling myself it is too late to take lessons and become good at it, and tried every other thing, like classical music (back in India, no interest), piano (disaster, I have no musical talent), Tae Kwon-Do (it was okay, but I had to stop because of exams and injury, and there wasn’t enough personal interest). But it might be too much, with my sign language lessons as well, and lord help me if I get attached over the summer. I am so going to kill myself with the to-do list of this summer. Holiday, what holiday? And I know 90% of the people on my blog don’t get the title of this post - Freedom at Midnight is a book about Indian fight for freedom from colonial rule. i cant findz ma weddingz reeng! moar funny pictures See more of my lolcats here! Freedom (from) Contract I am freed from contract, the bane of my life! Whee!! Once criminal law is done on Thursday, I’ll be free for 3 months. So, my friends, if there are any bombs you want to drop on me, anything particular onerous, or if any one wants to declare their undying love for me (yeah right), do it AFTER May 8th, okay? Gay’s Anatomy? Originally published on Sayoni Speak Season 4 of Grey’s Anatomy returned with Episode 12 right before Lost did. I thought they ended the season with episode 11 due to the writer’s strike, but turns out they are just carrying on. Season 3 precipitated the downhill-slide of Grey’s Anatomy, and broke viewers’ hearts by spinning off Addison into Private Practice, which meant she left the show. Season 4 completed the degeneration with the campiness, bad bad writing, stretched cliches and metaphors, and most of all, puzzling romances (think O’Mizzie, aka George and Izzie). So, the return meant there was some fair amount of salvaging to be done, and even from my critical point of view, Episode 12 was a good baby-step in the right direction. Meredith FINALLY got a therapist (which should have happened 2 seasons go), Meredith and Derek are staying broken, and she is being an adult about it for a change. Izzie and George are also staying broken (thank god) but Izzie is being a McMoron. Cristina is being… Cristina. I would not have blogged about it, except for a small inkling that I picked up, between Hahn and Callie, who are doing a “we are great friends and hanging out every single night”. But what else am I supposed to take them lounging around in Callie’s apartment (or rather the one Cristina and her share), dressed in their little black dresses and sipping wine, and having a really good time? I was hoping for four seasons that there would be a queer romance on the show between two main characters (besides Joe and Walter, fringe characters), and I hope this is where it is going. In case you think I am dreaming things up, a popular Grey’s Anatomy podcast, the McPodcast said exactly the same thing when I listened to them later with this idea in mind. Part of it was accentuated by the fact that Brooke Smith, the actress who plays Dr. Erika Hahn has said that she is open to the idea if her character is queer. No comment from Sara Remirez, who plays Dr. Callie Torres so far. If that’s where it is headed, I hope they do a good job of it, and not pull a fly-by lesbian romance for the sake of ratings. Like that other show, The OC. Or Ally McBeal. Or One Tree Hill. I have a little more faith in Shonda in this respect of this, though, because of the way gay characters have been handled so far on Grey’s Anatomy, with respect and tolerance. In fact, they won a GLAAD award for S3E07 “Where The Boys Are”, for a simultaneous portrayal of Joe and Walter as a stable loving gay couple (compared to all the straight couples in shambles), and a lesbian MTF with her wife, who was coping with the fact that her husband was going to turn into a girl. Not to mention the way they took a clear stance against Isaiah Washington’s “faggot” slur. There have been other gay and lesbian couples portrayed positively/neutrally as well, and this combined with the fact that Grey’s has had the most racially diverse cast (they cast people by talent, not physical characteristics or race), raises my respect level for them quite a bit. If this goes where I think it is going, watch out for updates! Review: A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila 2 Season Premiere Originally posted on Sayoni Speak Guess who’s back? That’s right, bisexual bachelorette MySpace queen Tila Tequila is back for another shot at love, this time, with 15 guys and girls each. Tila and Bobby broke up barely months after the end of the first season, Bobby not being able to handle her job and its pressures, so a broken-hearted Tila is back for another season, looking for love. Still picky, still princessy, still as gorgeous as ever. Whatever she is taking, I want it too! Warning: Mild spoilers ahead! Do not read further if you don’t want to know what happened at all. Rating: The quality of contestants, looks-wise, is definitely lower this season, for both boys and girls. Interestingly, there a lot more butch/andro women among the set. Or rather, were. Most of them got eliminated in the first round, which was unfortunate because some of them were actually cute. Not as cute as Dani Campbell, though - no butch/andro can ever replace Dani. So there. Funny thing was, when 6 of the girls were eliminated, the entire cast of girls as a whole started looking a lot better. The femme girls are fairly hot, but I still miss Brandi, whom I really was wishing would come back for a second season. The boys were here-and-there, with a weird mohawk guy thrown in for good measure. The boys also included a pair of twin brothers, one of whom got eliminated at the end of the episode. I already spotted who is likely to be this season’s Bobby - Kyle. Okay, not a spoiler, this is purely conjecture on my part, especially because I think Kyle is drop-dead-gorgeous. Of course, true Tila style, there was already dyke drama in the first episode. In a stunt that was suspiciously similar to what happened in the first season with Rebecca, the girl who had the most emotional connection with her, the girl who understood her the most, betrayed her and made out with another girl. Both of them got eliminated. Doh. Pity, because they were kinda cute, especially Lili with her black leather jacket and laid-back-not-so-much-goth-as-cool personality. The thing that Tila kept bringing up again and again was that she had her heart broken by Bobby, but she is giving it another shot. Now, I know the rumours out there, that she dumped Bobby in time for the second season of A Shot at Love. But anyone who has had their heart broken will know when someone else says it. And I could tell from the tone of her voice that she indeed was hurt by Bobby, and their break-up was not a commercial decision. To all the critics who say that, I say you are not looking at the bigger picture. A relationship resulting from the show, if it fails, looks bad on the show and the network, and casts doubt on the possibility of its success as a dating show. From a commercial POV, it looks even worse if the bachelorette returns for another season. And it is not like it is hard to find another bisexual bachelorette to replace Tila, even if she be not so famous. So, all these factors combined, I really do not think their break-up was engineered for the sake of bringing Tila back. So, Season of Tila Tequila 2 - let’s hope, for her sake, that this is the last time Tila has to do this. The Return of Lost O.M.G. I haven’t been saying much about season 4 of Lost after the season premiere, but it is not because it is bad, because I don’t have the time to review each episode if I am going to be saying something about it. Yes, I am OCD that way. So far, it has been absolutely awesome and mindblowing. The new twists and turns, the conflicts, the curve-balls have been extremely gripping, to say the least. The season took a break for four weeks, and returned on Thursday with Episode 409 - “Shape of Things to Come”. And boy, was it absolutely worth the wait… the episode literally kept me on the edge of my seat, gasping at all the right moments. And trust me, I am usually a dispassionate viewer when it comes to action (I don’t even like action flicks), having grown up with Indian movies - the only thing that usually has any effect on me is sentimental stuff. 409 reminded me precisely why I am obsessed with this show, and if this is the shape of things to come… lemme at it! The only other series which I was obsessed enough to go on fan websites and read theories was Harry Potter. As I was telling Pirate, Lost is to TV what Harry Potter was to books. 1. Both are incredibly complex worlds set within our world. 2. They have very well-written complicated storylines/plots which have been planned from the beginning and captures the the attention of anyone who loves a good mystery 3. Both have huge followings, a loyal fanbase which takes times to document the plot, characters and clues in detail like this. 4. Both have several layers of meaning to it that the casual audience/reader would not usually pick up, references to mythology and culture - a name is never just a name on Lost, nor on Harry Potter. To give just one example, the connection of Lost to Wizard of Oz, and the heavy allegory in Harry Potter to the King Arthur legend. 5. Both are ground-breaking in their concept and presentation - the world has not really seen anything like that before in their respective genres. For people who are not hooked on Lost yet, I say, what are you waiting for? Don’t be turned off just because it is “popular” - popular does not always mean bad. And don’t let season 2 deter you - it might have dropped a little, but it sets the stage for season 3 and all the things that happens afterwards. And the awesomeness of season 4. It is actually rare for a show to get better as the seasons progress - most of them suffer from sequelitis after a while, but trust me, it does get waaay better, way more amazing. I shall stop fan-girling now, and come back with a season review in a few weeks. Till then…. get Lost! Hanging it Up I was in Raffles City basement buying food when I spotted these babies. I think I’ve said before that I use a special earring hanger in the shape of a woman. That kinda broke, it being ceramic. Actually it broke the day I  bought it, but I patched it back up with super-glue. It kept breaking if someone so much as sneezed, though, and I’ve patched it back about 10 times. It was just too tall and imbalanced - I guess I should have thought about centre of gravity when I bought that thing for 40 bucks. The last time it broke, I gave up - it won’t even hold superglue anymore. So my earrings have been in a colossal mess the past few months. These beauties are 10 bucks each, about 6 inches high, and it is not ceramic, so there is no chance of it breaking, especially since it is so small. The frame is metal and plastic, and the head is detachable, so it is also easily portable. After I hung all my earrings on the tiny frames. Homelez Kitteh moar funny pictures Check out more of my lolcats here. Artbortion Shvarts in her Studio Or when abortion becomes art. Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process. [Read the full article] Shocked? Disgusted? Fascinated? Whatever your reaction is, you are probably not alone - thousands of people in Yale and in the bloggosphere have been actively voicing their views on Shvarts’ “artwork”. I put those in quotation marks, because like the (badly written) “artwork” Jodie chooses to display at the end of Season 5 of The L Word, this didn’t really make all that sense to me. But then, I was never a fan of abstract art. The creator explains her artwork further in another news article. It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading. ….. As an intervention into our normative understanding of “the real” and its accompanying politics of convention, this performance piece has numerous conceptual goals. The first is to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are “meant” to do from their physical capability. The myth that a certain set of functions are “natural” (while all the other potential functions are “unnatural”) undermines that sense of capability, confining lifestyle choices to the bounds of normatively defined narratives. Just as it is a myth that women are “meant” to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are “meant” for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not “meant” for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child. When considering my own bodily form, I recognize its potential as extending beyond its ability to participate in a normative function. While my organs are capable of engaging with the narrative of reproduction — the time-based linkage of discrete events from conception to birth — the realm of capability extends beyond the bounds of that specific narrative chain. These organs can do other things, can have other purposes, and it is the prerogative of every individual to acknowledge and explore this wide realm of capability. [Read the full article] After reading her explanation, I kinda-maybe-perhaps got it. She is seeking to challenge the ideas societies have of the body, and what they are meant to do. People react to this art-piece not in the way she hopes them to, though. They focus more on the “abortions” themselves, and the way she chooses to put her point across. Curiously, both sides of the abortion debate seems more or less united in the condemnation of her methods. The pro-life camp is clearly against it, and the pro-choice camp has taken the stand that abortion/miscarriage is a serious matter, and it is not to be trivialised this way, a view I share. Most women take months, years to recover from a single abortion/miscarriage, beyond the physical issues. The blood loss, the stress that the human body goes through in an abortion/miscarriage is tremendous. To experience that multiple times in a row is simply unimaginable, which is part of why I think Shvarts never got pregnant at all, though the rest of it might have been true, the insemination, the ingestion of the herbal abortifacent, etc. If she did, I seriously hope she gets a doctor and a shrink. But going back to her art - I get it when she says it, but not by reading about her actual artwork. Which, to me, suggests that she hasn’t done a very good job of conveying her central idea, because what is most visible to me is that she has put her body through a gruelling experience, and she is turning it into an artpiece. The central idea that there have been normative definitions assigned to body parts, and this artpiece challenges that, does not occur to me. And I really wish she could have found some other way to do this, without harming her body. And more importantly, other people, because what I am most afraid of is that some woman somewhere is going to emulate this, and die trying or hurt herself really badly. Which would really be completely untenable, if it turns out that this is a hoax, like Yale is claiming it is. A Newfound Hobby Okay, I’ll admit, I am a BIG fan of lolcats. How do you not love it with pics like this? see more crazy cat pics It turns out that you can actually create your own lolcats, by choosing a picture from their gallery or uploading your own, and putting in your own captions. No image-editing knowledge needed, you put in the caption and the website automatically generates it for you. How cool is that? Not just cats, but dogs and other animals, and I’ve even spotted a few Clinton pictures. You can then just save it, or you can submit it for publication. In between the time I am reading criminal law and eating and sleeping, I’ve created a few. So yes, a new segment on my blog - my lolcats, whether or not they get published on the main site. My recaptioning of the earlier picture. And the other ones I’ve created. moar funny pictures moar funny pictures moar funny pictures Lording it over the internet Zixian pointed me to this blog - www.lordsoftheblog.net. As she said, it is quite amusing how the 70-plus members of the House of Lords are more active in blogging and reaching out to the public than our beloved local MPs. P65-blog, wherefore art thou? An impersonator has taken your place, reclaim thy honour. There are so many things wrong with the p65 blog that I don’t even know where to start. Let’s just start with technical details. 1. A 13-year old can do a much better job at building a website than the train-wreck the p65 blog is. Hell, an average wordpress or blogspot blog feels and looks much better than it. 2. Are those cut-off heads of our MPs that vaguely trophy heads on a wall supposed to somehow appeal to the younger generation? It is so freaking juvenile, and unappealing. Not to mention our highly intelligent MPs look rather stupid. There is no need to treat us like idiots that are fascinated by cut-off heads, really. The average under-35 net-using singaporean appreciates a clean, simple interface, and not Nickelodeon-like graphics. 3. The slogan - “It’s where we talk”. Seriously? Seriously?! 4. No RSS feed. After I just told you how much I hate looking at the site, do you really want to not provide me with a RSS feed that allows me to read the entries without going there and getting turned off, and subsequently never coming back? 5. Updating of content - most of the time, it is Baey Yam Keng and Lam Pin Min who are posting entries. Some of the MPs have not posted for more than a year. 6. Quality of content - can anyone spell boring? Here’s where I personally volunteer to redesign the entire site - for free. Seriously. I’ll consider that my service to the nation (though this is not my nation). And of course, I won’t be getting paid for it, so you know, I don’t think I’ll be accused of being a PAP mole by the internet conspiracy theorists. But of course, the content will be up to our beloved MPs. Update: One of the commentors pointed out that there is indeed an RSS Feed, but you need to open the iframe in a new window. Talk about not being user-friendly. Who is allowed to speak? ‘LAWYERS, because of their training and education and their involvement, often tend to have views on civil liberties, politics and civil society.And I think they should take part in civil society in their individual capacities. But the law society, as an organisation, should not. Can it really express the will of all its members, which is what it would be purporting to do in politics, and throw its weight behind one or another organisation? We’ve always looked at politics and expression of those views as something that should be done within the framework of political parties. If you want to do that, join a political party. Don’t use a civil or civic or professional organisation as a cover for engaging in politics.’ On whether there is room for the law profession to play a more active role in civic society ‘I think our libel laws work very well. Under the American system, as long as you come into public life, you’re fair game and anyone can say anything about you, whether or not it’s true. I don’t believe that to be the right system because I feel that if you want to encourage good people to come into public service, then their reputation and integrity must also be protected. I did hold these views even then, when I represented IHT when it was sued. I was already a government MP. But I’ve taken an oath to defend my clients. The fact that they’ve published an article which proved to be defamatory doesn’t mean they’re not entitled to defence as best as the defence can be put up. On whether Singapore leaders resort too hastily to suing for libel. Mr Shanmugam had acted both for and against Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong in libel cases. In 1995, he represented the International Herald Tribune I am a nerd so I subscribe to legal news on the Singapore Law Watch… when this came in my reader, I really wasn’t sure what to think about it. This was a stub of a feature article ST did on Shanmugam when he got his “promotion”. I try, you know. I try very hard not to get riled up about local politics, because I know it ain’t good for my blood pressure, and I try not to blog about it. But certain things really just rub me the wrong way. Well everyone should already know that the Law Society has been silenced on political matters since the 1980s. Old news. You don’t need to ask my views on it, you would already know. But it is the second part that really puzzles me - maybe Shanmugam has used the wrong words, and his message has come out all wrong. Let’s examine this sentence: We’ve always looked at politics and expression of those views as something that should be done within the framework of political parties. If you want to do that, join a political party. Don’t use a civil or civic or professional organisation as a cover for engaging in politics. We take away two lessons from this: 1. If you are not in a political party, you have no voice about the political issues that concern you 2. Engaging in politics is wrong, it is something to be avoided at all costs by Ordinary People So, okay, we Ordinary People with our jobs and GST rises and transport fare hikes can’t complain about any of it. If we want to do anything, we HAVE to join a political party, because, you know, everyone has the free time to join WP or SDP after we’ve worked 10 hours a day, fed the kids, cleaned the house and worry about how to make the ends meet this month. Okay, let’s say I do indeed roll up my sleeves and join a political party. What would I get? Disrespect. Not-so-randomly changing constituency boundaries. Police following my every move, or at least the feeling, the climate of fear, that nothing I do is private. License denied for every single thing I apply for, even innocent bike rides. Cornered at the Speaker’s Corner. Called a liar in the national newspaper and not being able to do anything about it. The only place where they might possibly be able to say anything without repercussions is the Parliament, if you ever get that far - which means the entirety of the dissident opinion in Singapore rests on 2 out of 84 people (not counting NMPs and NCMPs). Outside Parliament, there are regulations everywhere on what I can and cannot say, and especially during elections. Ordinary People, even if they have the time and commitment to join a political party, have already been intimidated by all the things done to opposition party members, and there is no way they are putting everything they’ve worked for at stake just to be able to say something about the ministerial pay hikes. Not that they even get to say anything about it. How often do newspapers report on opposition party members? So, is the only recourse to having a voice, joining PAP? Let me clarify I am not particularly anti-PAP, nowadays. I admire a lot of things they’ve done. But that does not mean I am able to condone the fact that there is no freedom of speech to speak of, outside the water-tight cocoon of PAP. (And you wonder why, the younger generation seems to have no interest in politics.) And here I come to my two key points that I want to make about this issue: Engagement in political discourse is not to be conflated with the practice of politics. Political discourse is not something reserved for the elite, for the select few that have the connections and opportunities to get into the practice of politics, but rather, it is a right given to the entire democracy. Everyone, from the housewives to the academics to the roadsweeper to the students have the full right to engage in political discourse, in voicing their opinions on what matters to them, and what they care about. There is absolutely no ground to declare that in order to obtain this right, they have to go into the practice of politics. The same right extends to not just individuals, but organisations - all it means is that the entire organisation, or maybe the ones running it, will have to bear the responsibility and deal with the consequences of the statements they make, just as individuals deal with theirs. What sense does it make for organisations to be barred the right to their views, when the ordinary citizen is not? Granted, the statement is stronger when made by an established group of people - I am rather more inclined to listen to a statement issued by the Singapore Medical Association that smoking is bad for me, rather than a single doctor. So, the only possible reason anyone can give to barring freedom of speech for organisations is that they do not want strong views that might influence the public. Which in itself is a morally reprehensible reason, because it suggests one knows they are wrong, and do not want people pointing it out too loudly. Can anyone spell censorship, at this point? Really, what’s new? Cursing Kelman to Eternal Damnation Legal theory is over. Yes, yes, I am indeed alive, and no brain has not turned into mush. Wrote complete and utter crap, waaaaay under the word limit, scattered footnotes here and there to make it all look prettier. I am quite happy with passing, really, and so are many people, given the number of people who’ve been joining the Facebook group “We got screwed over by legal theory”. Except, of course, for the few geniuses who are always speaking up in class about what Dworkin and Hart are really saying, whoever cares about you? Damn you, Kelman. Could you not at least mention Mill or his harm principle in passing, in your 84-page essay on what most people consider common sense? Would have made my life five times easier. Take your cue from MacKinnon, would ya? 3 hours is just too freaking short. I want my 24-hour take-home exam back. No prizes for guessing I am not going to take Advanced Jurisprudence. I Heart Hart. Not Not dead, just been doing legal theory for the past few days, for the glorious exam today. Hart and Fuller and Dworkin and Kelman and every other legal philosopher worth mentioning, wading through pages of unintelligible text, and finding out to my horror this morning that I’ve been wasting time with the wrong Dworkin text and that’s why it wasn’t making sense at all. I Heart Hart. Not. Back to Boring At last the drama is over. Hello, simple quiet boring life. I’ve missed you. And since the Anniversary Party is over, I can finally get distractions out of the way and start mugging for exams. In theory. Yes, the party was great fun, thanks for asking. And I’m going to take this time to congratulate Yong Meiling for winning the Sayoni Woman of the Year 2008 title, for her outstanding achievements to the community. I Can Has Cheezburger This site lights up my mornings, without fail. I have no idea where they manage to get these photos in the first place, and come up with these genius captions to match it. Some of my favourite ones: see more crazy cat pics see more crazy cat pics see more crazy cat pics see more crazy cat pics