Fast food, bad wine and mad women
Just to complete the record, here are the first few blog-likes (the earliest ones were really mass emails) from my first weeks back in Singapore. The title derives from my mantra from the last couple of months before I left London - that I was returning to seek Fast Cars, Old Wine and Bad Women. What I have found (so far) has been fast food and bad wine while still trying to avoid the mad women. Some of you may have noticed that I have left out the long quotation from Kill Bill Vol. 2 sent some time at the beginning of September.
I didn't really think that counted as a blog (or even a blog-like) - some may disagree but then you could only compare that with a sword not made by Hattori Hanzo.
===================================================================
Sun 26 September
hey all, the first bit of this week's blog practically wrote itself - there were so many and so many varied responses to last week's blog (including one hysterical email, one poem by Neruda, a couple of "this is happening to me as well", not to mention many more kindly and concerned enquiries about my general state of mental health). I'm ok, really (and I'm grateful for your concern).
One of the interesting tangential discussion threads that spun off last week's blog was an exchange over the the finer points of the film of the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being - my view of which is that it was cool when you were a teenager but a bit like admitting you still like The Cure when you are in your mid to late 30's. Pre-Wall, memories of Prague 1954 (but don't they make good Pilsner) and all that but for my money, you're better off watching Goodbye Lenin for a good dose of oestalgia.
You can tell I am in a far better mood since I've had my dose of mahjong yesterday - the first since my return. So I will not be repeating my usual whinges on the eternal themes of wine, women and song. Well, maybe a few words on the last item in that list.
So, some thoughts on advertising instead. Remember how you always remember the really dumb ads even the ones which you thought were a truly stupid way to advertise a particular product? Well, at least you remembered the ad and consequently the product - if ads are always (and possibly only) about awareness then it must have worked.
At a very basic level, you have to be aware that there is an alternative, say dandruff shampoo to Head and Shoulders. Beyond that, it's a question of whether it is better and cheaper but at some level, probably with luxury goods - it is a reflection of who you think you are (or in the words of HRH Charles of Wales, the Prince - "should one think one is told what one is told because of who one is?").
So Prada not Versace for me, Armani maybe and wouldn't be seen dead in Dolce e Gabbana. Jury's still out on Issey Miyake (so-oo Flamboyant cf. lyrics from the Pet Shop Boys song) but to return to my original hypothesis, maybe it does not matter and you create the image which then becomes you rather than the other way around. Now (he says with much mischief) what if I were to create this myth and market myself as the Most Eligible Bachelor in Singapore (editors, kindly note initial caps, not italicised and always set in 18-point Helvetica only - which this is not but we will gloss over that). Reflections and comments on a postcard, please.
Finally, a few words on the song of the week. Eva Cassidy's live and acoustic rendition of Sting's Fields of Gold at the Blues Alley. Forget the quality of the voice and delivery, it's all good, nay better than the slurry mock "busker in a Notting Hill Tube station" style of the original. It's not even the lightness of the pre-phrasing (argh! that word again, lightness) and the fine transformation into dotted crotchets. It's the inflection in the diction introducing the curiously twinned elements of regret and reproach that never existed in the original. It's like she was slightly pissed off about all the good things the song is about. The years, the sun and even the goddamned fields of barley.
Go forth and listen, tell me what's in a voice but most of all, believe ...
************************************************************************************
Sun 19 September
hey all,
wasn't sure if I was gonna be able to summon up enough energy to write this - too many beers to the soundtrack of other people's post/mid-life crisis last night. Those of you who were there will know what I am talking about.
Which brings me to the main topic of this week's bitter and twisted rant (I am going resolutely avoid (which way makes it a split infinitive?) discussing wine this week as I have been disappointed by pretty everything I have consumed - my fault as I think I chose everything this last week and apologies to the folks who have been subjected to my choices). Verily, my cup runneth over (many times over).
Now I don't think I am a particularly perceptive person nor have I developed any reliable gut instinct (as opposed to a reliably well-developed gut) but if you have watched as many good as well as bad movies as I have on in-flight entertainment, plots get kinda pedictable and you can usually spot the train/plane/automobile crash a couple of scenes before it actually happens.
What I am trying to get to in a tortured and round about way is the plethora of predictable parables of my friends (close and not so) repeating the same mistakes that was the cause of so much teenaged angst so many years ago.
As I clock up the reunion hours with the university mafia, the diaper brigade and the former teenaged mutant ninja dirtbags, I could fill a book with stories about old acquaintances settling for and settling down with people about whom they were never sure of (and we never really liked them these other halves, did we?) then meeting someone they (erroneously) thought they should have got together with in the first place and the whole thing descends into the usual predictable mess.
I could fill a book, I guess but I wouldn't want to lose my long lost friends before I've found them again. Nor would I presume to judge them - kyrie eleison, last thing in the world and all that. Yep, truly there but for the grace of God go I (over and over again). I once knew (not in a biblical fashion) a girl called Grace but that, as they say, was in another country and besides ...
So as I sit here listening to yet another Eagles compilation CD (actually it was the first CD I bought, like ever) and counting up the half a dozen annulments, a few more divorces and many more barely but just still together stories, I am saddened at how life just seems to deal us a couple of aces in the hole which come to nothing while we get screwed by someone else's straight flush. More have died of heartbreak - go figure.
And so to this week's music choice - Heart of the matter by Don Henley. I know, I know - yet another aging ex-Eagles coming up with yet another angst-ridden mush-rock anthem but hey, pace Springsteen the word "forgiveness" works a darned sight better than "redemption" (cf. Thunder Road).
Keep the faith ...
************************************************************************************
Sun 12 September
hey all,
just got back from Manila Thursday night and the priority this obective-oriented weekend is to sort out a better way to do this blog (has to be some kind of web-based application) but until then I will be clogging up your inboxes.
Manila - snack capital of the world, we were there on an educational mission including a bizarre seminar in a Jesuit college - preaching the message of Mammon in the house of God (near enough). Ad majoram Dei Gloriam and all that. A couple of days earlier, we did a shortened version in our offices for valued clients - gave them 3 lectures and fed them 5 times. Each time the food arrived, concentration levels nosedived and I was so glad when my last talk crawled to an end and the scoffing at the troughing could begin.
Beef in coconut sauce, pork in palm sugar, deep fried bananas in sugar syrup and the piece de resistance, fruit cocktail in condensed milk. A heart surgeon could really make a killing in Manila.
Filipinos are really nice people even if they rejoice in the most unlikely of names - every other person seemed to want to be addressed as Bunny regardless of gender. Not incongrous if one is a twenty-something female, harder if one is a middle-aged male weighing twenty-something stone. Notable exception was the former taekwondo champion of the Philippines (turned banker) who was known to the entire industry as Boopsie - I assure you that you do not want to mess with Boopsie especially not in a dark alleyway on a moonless night in Makati.
I was chatting to a very nice young lady at the buffet table (not a Bunny) who resembled a young Imelda Marcos (before all the shoes) but sadly realised that after 10,000 snacks, she would end up the way of Imelda and snap the heels of the stilettoes out of sheer bulk.
Back in Singapore - last night was an opportunity to catch a live and acoustic performance by Tony and friends so I dragged Anth along as a belated birthday thing. Must be getting old as I quite enjoyed drinking beer, smoking cigars and listening to old timers sing songs from the Seventies. Wong would have enjoyed it.
I'm also very glad Elisabeth R has come to live and work here for a while - now I have a reason to go to the zoo, Sentosa and all the other touristy things (we went to Chinatown last weekend) that I really should do even though I have to be seen to be rubbishing. Just like getting someone else to order crispy aromatic duck in a Chinese restaurant in London.
Nostalgia is a funny thing and for sure, the food was better, the streets cleaner in our (possibly collective) memory of how life used to be here. You can never go home again but I am enjoying it ...
***********************************************************************************
Tues 31 August
hi - just a quick little note to say thanks to everyone who has been in touch. Also wanted to dispel rumour that all I have been doing at work is sending emails to my friends. I have been working quite hard actually and am off to visit the far reaches of the empire - feeling very Roman and pro-consular. It has been gratifying that the hardest part about coming back has been the logistics - unpacking 30 boxes last weekend and finding a suitable place to store my wine etc. but I have broadband set up now and hope to sort out the car tomorrow. Then perhaps the social life can be kicked up a notch as they say on the Food Channel. Too much American TV here. Lots of people have also been in touch to say they will be visiting or, in some cases, thinking of relocating here - all good news. A small request before I go - if anyone can find some of the "blogs" I sent from Tokyo - please email them to me as I have not kept any of them.
See, speak to or read email from you soon.
************************************************************************************
Mon 16 August
hi - just a brief note to say hello and that it has been seventeen days since I've been back. As they say in Star Trek "It's life, Captain - but not as we know it". The scary thing is that unlike the prodigal son or even MacArthur who returned, there is a real sense that I have never really gone away. They can take the boy out of the village but they cannot take the village out of the village boy. I think I will run for Parliament in 2012. Life has also improved immeasurably since I got cable TV and broadband internet at the weekend.
Work is coming along well - I had an offer from the legendary Chip Goodrich to redraft some documents for me after a late conference call (in the derivatives world, it is the equivalent of Michael Schumacher offering you a lift in his car). On the other hand, my first tennis game was rained off, mahjong buddies are elusive as ever and my mother is looking to divine intervention to get me married off (she is not Catholic but has recently started the whole Novena thing to get the Virgin Mary and the assortment of various saints on the case).
In my few spare quiet moments, I worry that all of you are either not drinking enough or paying over the odds for it - so pop down to your local Oddbins and buy as many bottles of vintage Laurent Perrier 1995 (reduced to GBP 25.59) as you can carry. Nunc est bibendum.
I didn't really think that counted as a blog (or even a blog-like) - some may disagree but then you could only compare that with a sword not made by Hattori Hanzo.
===================================================================
Sun 26 September
hey all, the first bit of this week's blog practically wrote itself - there were so many and so many varied responses to last week's blog (including one hysterical email, one poem by Neruda, a couple of "this is happening to me as well", not to mention many more kindly and concerned enquiries about my general state of mental health). I'm ok, really (and I'm grateful for your concern).
One of the interesting tangential discussion threads that spun off last week's blog was an exchange over the the finer points of the film of the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being - my view of which is that it was cool when you were a teenager but a bit like admitting you still like The Cure when you are in your mid to late 30's. Pre-Wall, memories of Prague 1954 (but don't they make good Pilsner) and all that but for my money, you're better off watching Goodbye Lenin for a good dose of oestalgia.
You can tell I am in a far better mood since I've had my dose of mahjong yesterday - the first since my return. So I will not be repeating my usual whinges on the eternal themes of wine, women and song. Well, maybe a few words on the last item in that list.
So, some thoughts on advertising instead. Remember how you always remember the really dumb ads even the ones which you thought were a truly stupid way to advertise a particular product? Well, at least you remembered the ad and consequently the product - if ads are always (and possibly only) about awareness then it must have worked.
At a very basic level, you have to be aware that there is an alternative, say dandruff shampoo to Head and Shoulders. Beyond that, it's a question of whether it is better and cheaper but at some level, probably with luxury goods - it is a reflection of who you think you are (or in the words of HRH Charles of Wales, the Prince - "should one think one is told what one is told because of who one is?").
So Prada not Versace for me, Armani maybe and wouldn't be seen dead in Dolce e Gabbana. Jury's still out on Issey Miyake (so-oo Flamboyant cf. lyrics from the Pet Shop Boys song) but to return to my original hypothesis, maybe it does not matter and you create the image which then becomes you rather than the other way around. Now (he says with much mischief) what if I were to create this myth and market myself as the Most Eligible Bachelor in Singapore (editors, kindly note initial caps, not italicised and always set in 18-point Helvetica only - which this is not but we will gloss over that). Reflections and comments on a postcard, please.
Finally, a few words on the song of the week. Eva Cassidy's live and acoustic rendition of Sting's Fields of Gold at the Blues Alley. Forget the quality of the voice and delivery, it's all good, nay better than the slurry mock "busker in a Notting Hill Tube station" style of the original. It's not even the lightness of the pre-phrasing (argh! that word again, lightness) and the fine transformation into dotted crotchets. It's the inflection in the diction introducing the curiously twinned elements of regret and reproach that never existed in the original. It's like she was slightly pissed off about all the good things the song is about. The years, the sun and even the goddamned fields of barley.
Go forth and listen, tell me what's in a voice but most of all, believe ...
************************************************************************************
Sun 19 September
hey all,
wasn't sure if I was gonna be able to summon up enough energy to write this - too many beers to the soundtrack of other people's post/mid-life crisis last night. Those of you who were there will know what I am talking about.
Which brings me to the main topic of this week's bitter and twisted rant (I am going resolutely avoid (which way makes it a split infinitive?) discussing wine this week as I have been disappointed by pretty everything I have consumed - my fault as I think I chose everything this last week and apologies to the folks who have been subjected to my choices). Verily, my cup runneth over (many times over).
Now I don't think I am a particularly perceptive person nor have I developed any reliable gut instinct (as opposed to a reliably well-developed gut) but if you have watched as many good as well as bad movies as I have on in-flight entertainment, plots get kinda pedictable and you can usually spot the train/plane/automobile crash a couple of scenes before it actually happens.
What I am trying to get to in a tortured and round about way is the plethora of predictable parables of my friends (close and not so) repeating the same mistakes that was the cause of so much teenaged angst so many years ago.
As I clock up the reunion hours with the university mafia, the diaper brigade and the former teenaged mutant ninja dirtbags, I could fill a book with stories about old acquaintances settling for and settling down with people about whom they were never sure of (and we never really liked them these other halves, did we?) then meeting someone they (erroneously) thought they should have got together with in the first place and the whole thing descends into the usual predictable mess.
I could fill a book, I guess but I wouldn't want to lose my long lost friends before I've found them again. Nor would I presume to judge them - kyrie eleison, last thing in the world and all that. Yep, truly there but for the grace of God go I (over and over again). I once knew (not in a biblical fashion) a girl called Grace but that, as they say, was in another country and besides ...
So as I sit here listening to yet another Eagles compilation CD (actually it was the first CD I bought, like ever) and counting up the half a dozen annulments, a few more divorces and many more barely but just still together stories, I am saddened at how life just seems to deal us a couple of aces in the hole which come to nothing while we get screwed by someone else's straight flush. More have died of heartbreak - go figure.
And so to this week's music choice - Heart of the matter by Don Henley. I know, I know - yet another aging ex-Eagles coming up with yet another angst-ridden mush-rock anthem but hey, pace Springsteen the word "forgiveness" works a darned sight better than "redemption" (cf. Thunder Road).
Keep the faith ...
************************************************************************************
Sun 12 September
hey all,
just got back from Manila Thursday night and the priority this obective-oriented weekend is to sort out a better way to do this blog (has to be some kind of web-based application) but until then I will be clogging up your inboxes.
Manila - snack capital of the world, we were there on an educational mission including a bizarre seminar in a Jesuit college - preaching the message of Mammon in the house of God (near enough). Ad majoram Dei Gloriam and all that. A couple of days earlier, we did a shortened version in our offices for valued clients - gave them 3 lectures and fed them 5 times. Each time the food arrived, concentration levels nosedived and I was so glad when my last talk crawled to an end and the scoffing at the troughing could begin.
Beef in coconut sauce, pork in palm sugar, deep fried bananas in sugar syrup and the piece de resistance, fruit cocktail in condensed milk. A heart surgeon could really make a killing in Manila.
Filipinos are really nice people even if they rejoice in the most unlikely of names - every other person seemed to want to be addressed as Bunny regardless of gender. Not incongrous if one is a twenty-something female, harder if one is a middle-aged male weighing twenty-something stone. Notable exception was the former taekwondo champion of the Philippines (turned banker) who was known to the entire industry as Boopsie - I assure you that you do not want to mess with Boopsie especially not in a dark alleyway on a moonless night in Makati.
I was chatting to a very nice young lady at the buffet table (not a Bunny) who resembled a young Imelda Marcos (before all the shoes) but sadly realised that after 10,000 snacks, she would end up the way of Imelda and snap the heels of the stilettoes out of sheer bulk.
Back in Singapore - last night was an opportunity to catch a live and acoustic performance by Tony and friends so I dragged Anth along as a belated birthday thing. Must be getting old as I quite enjoyed drinking beer, smoking cigars and listening to old timers sing songs from the Seventies. Wong would have enjoyed it.
I'm also very glad Elisabeth R has come to live and work here for a while - now I have a reason to go to the zoo, Sentosa and all the other touristy things (we went to Chinatown last weekend) that I really should do even though I have to be seen to be rubbishing. Just like getting someone else to order crispy aromatic duck in a Chinese restaurant in London.
Nostalgia is a funny thing and for sure, the food was better, the streets cleaner in our (possibly collective) memory of how life used to be here. You can never go home again but I am enjoying it ...
***********************************************************************************
Tues 31 August
hi - just a quick little note to say thanks to everyone who has been in touch. Also wanted to dispel rumour that all I have been doing at work is sending emails to my friends. I have been working quite hard actually and am off to visit the far reaches of the empire - feeling very Roman and pro-consular. It has been gratifying that the hardest part about coming back has been the logistics - unpacking 30 boxes last weekend and finding a suitable place to store my wine etc. but I have broadband set up now and hope to sort out the car tomorrow. Then perhaps the social life can be kicked up a notch as they say on the Food Channel. Too much American TV here. Lots of people have also been in touch to say they will be visiting or, in some cases, thinking of relocating here - all good news. A small request before I go - if anyone can find some of the "blogs" I sent from Tokyo - please email them to me as I have not kept any of them.
See, speak to or read email from you soon.
************************************************************************************
Mon 16 August
hi - just a brief note to say hello and that it has been seventeen days since I've been back. As they say in Star Trek "It's life, Captain - but not as we know it". The scary thing is that unlike the prodigal son or even MacArthur who returned, there is a real sense that I have never really gone away. They can take the boy out of the village but they cannot take the village out of the village boy. I think I will run for Parliament in 2012. Life has also improved immeasurably since I got cable TV and broadband internet at the weekend.
Work is coming along well - I had an offer from the legendary Chip Goodrich to redraft some documents for me after a late conference call (in the derivatives world, it is the equivalent of Michael Schumacher offering you a lift in his car). On the other hand, my first tennis game was rained off, mahjong buddies are elusive as ever and my mother is looking to divine intervention to get me married off (she is not Catholic but has recently started the whole Novena thing to get the Virgin Mary and the assortment of various saints on the case).
In my few spare quiet moments, I worry that all of you are either not drinking enough or paying over the odds for it - so pop down to your local Oddbins and buy as many bottles of vintage Laurent Perrier 1995 (reduced to GBP 25.59) as you can carry. Nunc est bibendum.
posted by porcorosso at 6:52 AM
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