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I think I just spotted a male olive-backed sunbird perched on my tek kor just now. I was just going about my business, having just finished my lunch of hokkien mee, when I heard a distinct bird call, twittering away outside the window of my kitchen. I looked up from the mess that was the rubbish bin - and voila! - a tiny bird was there, surveying the area. For about 3 minutes, I just stood at the sink, not paying attention to the cutlery I was washing, staring all the time at the tiny little relayer of Spring that was barely two or three metres away from where I was standing. From the secrecy of the darkened window panes, I think, the bird, though it could hear my clumsy human ways, could not really make out if there was anything/one there. And then, with a little hop to position himself sideways, he took off. I scurried to my window and saw him joined by another bird, probably his mate, at the tek kor-ed window of another kitchen adjacent to my block. Ah. It's so nice to have Nature visit you every once in a while.
Here's the link to a picture of the olive-backed sunbird, taken by Paul Huang:
http://www.naturestops.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=388
I really ought to be working on my term paper, but boredom set in and here I am, about to recount some weird thing I saw on the train some time last month - one of the side effects of living in an urban, claustrophobic country: so there I was, on my way home and minding about my own business like everybody does. But I was standing close to this couple, standing at the glass panels near the doors, and I couldn't help but indulge in my voyeuristic tendencies in the episode that ensued - they were practically inviting me to do so.
But it's not as if I was listening in right from the beginning, so when I started to tune in, the girl was already in the thick of a plot trying to do-in some person she didn't like staying together with her - a sister? A cousin? A roommate?
(in Mandarin, loosely translated from memory):
"Hey, help me think of something to frame her (I'm assuming it's a her, since Mandarin doesn't have a gender noun in the spoken form, ya) lei" (Spoken in a sweet voice belieing her apparant taste for schadenfreude, as it later turns out.)
(Her boyfriend keeps quiet, as far as I remember.)
" I know, I'll cut up all her clothes, and then make it seem as if somebody else did it!" (Boyfriend says some disparaging remark about her stupidity or something to that effect.)
"What, can what, she'll never think it's me lor. Who else can it be? Can only be her."
And I, realising that I have been quite quietly impolite, decide to tune out. But I only manage it for a while, because for some strange reason this girl started slapping her boyfriend, as if for the fun of it. That naturally pisses him off, and he utters the requisite swear word in Hokkien. So she changes tactics, and starts flicking him in the ear instead. Now he really loses his cool, and chee bye he said, this time with more menace, holding his fingers on the ready to flick her back - "Do you want me to do it to you? Huh?" The offending girlfriend finally desists and turns on her womanly wiles, acting all coy and demure... and before I knew it the two were back in lovey-dovey mode again.
At that point I was thinking: Gee, if they're like that in a public crowded cabin of a train, goodness what they do in the privacy of a bedroom. Bondage and whips? Seriously, that rates as one of the weirdest couples-I-am-unaquainted-with. Couples are always mysterious and uninterpretable entities in the first place, but this pair.... gosh.
The below is something I've just wrote - the only thing I've written in relevance to schoolwork, and this being a personal introduction, is a pretty sad state of being. Graduation-mode needs to be purged out of my system. Anyway. So, seeing as I haven't been writing, let me be lazy and post something that already will be "published" elsewhere:
Life in NUS, Sociology Department:
I'm a very ocular-centric person, so the media and its influence on popular culture (and vice versa) hold much fascination for me. Being someone who grew up glued to the goggle-box, the power of the media to me is an important and immediate dimension of human social life. Sociology helps me be more aware of how images and stories are manipulated to suit the aims of the press (and also to remind myself that a Xando pill does not a skinnier Julia make).
In general I'm more interested in the micro, qualitative aspect of social life. (But that is not to say the Marx and Weber are crap. They are not. They are to be highly revered, yessiree.) So gimme gendered constructions of sperms and eggs, and gimme the inner workings of the recording music industry. Social life as it is lived, no? Of course it would be very nice to be able to extrapolate from higher abstractions of society, but sadly it is something I still have to work at.
ISM Topic:
An ethnographical study of how social gambling may or may not mediate social relations (in terms of hierarchy within the family, for example) within the extended kin group. This is based on the idea that gambling, as an activity that involves some matter of chance, provides a form of equality between actors and might therefore act as a mitigating factor for social norms of respect for elders, distance between in-laws (especially those of the opposite sex) and such-like.
Life, Post-NUS:
Enough studying for now. I would like to see the world. So if I cannot secure a "proper" job that can allow me to do so, I might pack my bags, learn feeling management, commodify them, and fly the skies in a sarong kebaya. But that would presuppose my writing up a resume, and seeing how long it has taken me to get down to writing this, it’s obvious I’m very bad and highly reluctant at giving descriptions of myself. That would also reduce the possibility of me pursuing the more lofty ambition of research in conservation (nor the more self-indulgent ones like a career in singing). At the end of the day however I would like to do something media-related, perhaps in writing or production. (Goodbye, superstar dreams.)____________________________________________________________________
I had a dream the other night. I was at this farm, and for some reason it was having some kind of open house. So the whole place was did up like it was a fair, replete with ribbons and ponies and excited children zipping through your legs. It was really pretty too, the fields awash in golden light and the grass rippling in the breeze. So there I was, strolling along with a friend of mine (I can't quite remember who now, but maybe it was Daphne), and we came to the top of this small hill where a building stood, I know not for what purpose, but running alongside the building there was a nice long row of cages waiting to be explored. This is probably where my mind confuses between farm animals and pet shop, but let's be forgiving. My friend and I walked up to the first bunch of cages, admiring the pretty bunnies inside when, from nowhere, a meow rings out. Thus we take a few steps backwards, and sure enough, under the cages, was the prettiest little cat I'd ever beheld. It had a white band around its eyes, the neatest, cutest pair of ears, a long, thick, creamy orange coat that reached down to the ground like a nicely combed wig parted in the middle, all topped off with a set of quaint, stubby legs. I bent down to try and pick it up - this part is reminiscent of the time I went to SPCA and took a cat out of her cage and then she decided she'd like to hide under them and never come out again. It took me a long time to accept this, but in the end I ran to the staff with my tail between my legs pleading for help with the Cat Planning Her Escape Route Out of 0.5x0.5x0.5 Hell - and she just dashed out from under them, down the cobbled steps of the stairs next to the cages. And I gave chase, because she really was such a charming creature, and that was when I noticed that, tacked somehow on her behind, was a notice that read: Please Do Not Use As A Mop.
