I BOUGHT A NEW CAMERA LENS!!!!!!!
Okay, so much for my attempt to always be suave, collected, charming young man. These days I'm closer to sloppy, hair-pulling old ah pek.
Think I might go for a night shoot along Orchard with the new lens :) India here I come!
My stomach grumbles; I drink the tap water to quell it. The walkie-talkie on table, earpiece stuck in my ear. That thing has been in my ear so much these last few days it might as well grow onto me. I still wait, as a couple next to me leaves the restaurant.
I wait for my soba with tempura. Somehow, it does not appeal to me the way it should, especially for the price I'm paying. Oh, it arrives with a nice aroma;my digestive juices start churning.
I look across my table to an empty chair. I'm waiting, as I have been waiting for some time. I turn my attention too my mobilephone. It tells me I have received a message; something its been telling me quite abit these last few days, and I'm the happier for it.
After the flurry of messages on the phone, it suddenly goes dead. Flat-lined. It is unnerving that it does that. I finish my soba; I am full but not satisfied. How long more must I wait? Am I waiting wrongly? I still look across the table to an empty chair.
The phone still stays silent. When should we stop expecting? Is it not that fine, fine line between being wisely prudent and foolishly undetermined? When do you quit waiting?
The boy says wait, the man says screw it and quit. The boy gets hurt more, the man probably doesn't at all. Which am I more? Who may help me make that call?
'Screw it', says the man, 'I'll wait a little more.'
I do recall there was a reason for Uncle T when I decided it. I honestly can't remember why 'T' but I know why uncle. A bunch of friends often call me uncle because I liked walking about town in shorts, polo-t and loaffers, newspaper tucked under arm and my trusty umbrella in hand. And I like to sit and watch the world go by drinking kopi. So apparently all this makes me uncle. But spruce up the dressing, change the country and I would have been Parisian. But nonetheless, I've been deemed uncle.
Yet, then, I was often mistaken for at least 3 years younger than I was; I tried keeping a moustache and beard that never grows. All my efforts were futile then; I was once thought to be 16 when I was 21.
Im not sure if its the specs, the voice, the hair, the intellect (I wish) or just the tired perspectives (do I?), but now, it seems I'm mistaken for being older than I am. Someone over the weekend thought I was 28. Gasp. I honestly am unsure how to react; to be happy, sad or amused. Or perhaps nonchalance is best.
But anyhow, just something random about age. This is filling up all the gaps. These days, that's what writing does for me. Perhaps I need more than just words; I don't know. Would you know?
Yes, it was the smell of tailors, of saloons and of oily kitchens in an air-conditioned environment. Perhaps on their own these scents are far from pleasant. But together, this amalgamation formed memories. And there, right there, were the unfamilliar schoolgirls in familiar pinnafores. Yes, this was the scene I was used to in my schooldays some 6 years ago. Without knowing, I have become the young adults I used to laugh at for being 'old'; I am the young adult I used to desire to be as a teen. Somehow now, I miss the novelty of having a 'teen' on my age.
The shops that time seemed to have forgotten, that seem to have perpetual christmas lights the whole year round in the hope to attract customers. These remind me of the teenage desires. Back then, many of these shops represented a desire I couldn't attain; the over-priced Nikes, over-sized baggy jeans, over-hyped printed T-shirts...And it was no different for the schoolgirls in pinnafores, a desire I couldn't attain. Such was the fate of teenhood: what you had you didn't cherish, what you didn't you desired. And very often the former was more important to life than the latter.
'Over-rated pleasures and under-rated treasures...,' Jaime Cullum laments.
And finally when I can buy a few of those jeans and Nikes, I dont want them. Now, these desires have been replaced with other wants; house, car, DSLR lenses...It seems we, I, will forever have unfulfilled wants. Its seems like a persistent human condition. And you realise that your desires lose their gloss when you mature; the colour of a schoolgirl's pinnafore does not definitively make their character. Wow, amazing discovery dude!' I can almost hear myself say, dripping with sarcasm.
This was the place when I was once someone's boyfriend we spent good laughs (and sighs) shopping for lady shoes, where I first rode the bubble-tea wave, where I encountered my first dusty bookstore that inspired me to read non-fiction more, where I had my first taste of Turkish ice-cream, where my mum's fav departmental store used to be, where we schoolboys went to stare our first skirts down (or up). And now, I smile as I catch other teens do the same; but not quite the same.
I turn back my leather-soles and grey tie and office body lumbered back into the working class.
I catch that yellowish squarish icon and the final glimpse of Far East Square before my walkie-talkie crackles to life once more and dark clouds start to gather...
I wonder what does it mean to them, to my fellow Singaporeans, to be having the world's powerful leaders arrive in Singapore next week for the APEC meetings. I look down at the list in my folder; Hu Jintao, Bill Clinton, Barack. And I do wonder.
From where I am in public service, peoples are mobilised for APEC, sleep lost, efficiencies tested, personal lives sacrificed. Such is the scale that it makes you wonder if its such a big deal to the rest of the island. Cynics would likely have a quick answer to that.
From a very heavy topline point of view, these meetings means building Singapore's reputation as a global city worthy of the most valuable investments round the world. The man on the street must have heard this over and over again, yet the cabbies, bastion of society's cynics, would scoff at this topline view. Whilst I really believe the truth behind this topline, I do empathise at the cynicism at the street level. The oft-quoted mechanism in which how such topline benefits the masses is 'trickle-down'. Whilst I may be conservative on such an explanation, I am quite clear, in my view, that if Singapore doesn't put itself through such fuss for such meetings, she will lose her place in this cruel world economy.
It is simple mercantilistic economics; if you don't take it, your neighbour will. In a world economy so interconnected, the entire globe is your neighbourhood with both capable and blood-thristy neighbours. So in my view its not so much an issue of 'how much' trickle down APEC creates, but rather if we don't do this there won't be any trickle-down to even talk about.
Even with this explanation, cynics may still shake their heads; the amount of money the government spent on APEC could have been better spent through handouts to the masses. In the end, 'better' can be subjective and we can go on in circles. Yet I stick with my view, until convinced otherwise, simply because of the kind of competition I see Singapore faces in the global economy; if we don't keep up, we will be eating the dirt of our competitors that are today behind us.
I heard a bunch of friends chat about Obama's private Airforce One jet at the kopitiam the other day. To them, that was what APEC was largely about. But I'm hoping that there are also others who know how crucial these meetings are for Asia, for Obama's administration and US-Asean ties.
Whilst all those lofty ideas are interesting to me, right now, APEC means still sitting here at 10pm on a Sunday and still working. So for all the grand ideas, APEC means sweating in a business shirt and cufflinks on a Sunday night. Great.
