Month: May 2004

Apparently there was an eclipse of the moon early this morning. I was informed by a helpful friend via sms. I feigned disinterest, then rushed outside to take a look. Couldn’t find it at first, then found it (the moon), then couldn’t be bothered to wait for the show to finish, then went back indoors and expressed disinterest once more.

Wanna be a writer? You’ve got to have The Clap.

Yessirree, feel like you’ve got the Rangoon Itch and need to show the rest of the world? Might as well get The Clap!

Singapore’s obsession with acronyms has really scraped the bottom of the barrel and come up with dirty fingernails now. (A friend once thought IDA (Infocomm (abbreviate some more lah) Development Authority) stood for ministry of Information & De Arts! )

Not only that. The blurb on The Clap’s website says:

“Welcome to CLAP – Centre for Literary Arts and Publishing. CLAP is the training arm of the National Book Development Council of Singapore, dedicated to upgrading professionals in publishing and the literary arts. CLAP aims to deliver quality programmes that are relevant to the industry. Our programmes are planned in consultation with key members of the industry.”

[Several National keywords unused: “Grassroots”, “Heartland”, “Community”, “Tripartism”, amongst others.]

The Clap leh! How like that? Must see doctor or not?

There are still some things I find difficult to write.

I am trying to now again, because again, I’m hearing the voices of those who were concerned about me richocheting about in my head.

It’s all in your mind. You just have to get over it. Medication doesn’t help. Take for what? There’s nothing wrong with you. Get over it!

[zero-niner to all stations zero niner, no-duff casualty…]

Nup. Still can’t do it, though I’ve managed to tell versions of it to so many friends over the years.

Get a grip. There’s nothing you can do about it, so don’t waste your time.

I just had a most fabulous business meeting at a primary school which is hiring my company. I found out in advance that the principal was formerly a teacher at ACS, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to mention that I, too, was from ACS.

Bingo. She made coffee, offered me biscuits and before she even formally agreed to a deal, was already trying to arrange the details of how we were to deliver our services.

Not everyday is an ex-ACS-teacher-auntie-make-coffee-and-sign-on-dotted-line-day. Especially not Mondays. Morning, some more.

Is good.

After suffering terminal boredom for most of the night, looking through my extensive MP3 collection and sending some songs to a similarly nocturnal net addict, I developed breakfast cravings. Dim sum. Yum Cha.

Somehow, with backside stuck firmly to antique chair, instead of going to the kitchen, I googled siew mai, Shw Mae, and xiumai.

Shw Mae (pronounced xiumai) is an informal greeting in Welsh!

I now have a new pet foreign language. Hopefully I’ll learn the rudimentary phrases better than when I attempted Korean and abandoned it after I realised I couldn’t fool everyone by ending every sentence with imnida or hamnida.

I’ll probably end up greeting my half-welsh cousins with ‘Har Gow’ instead of Shw Mae. But being half-chinese, they’d probably understand anyway.