Moonshine

It's been quite a long time since I last wrote, becuse I find that real life has suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. Now don't get me wrong - it wasn't boring before this. But the thing is that things have happened so fast over the weekend that it's been back-to-back for the most part, and that has overridden the need to record it all down, until now. Monday evening, in the wake of an awesome weekend. The kind of weekend that comes together by itself, then springs itself on you fully formed, so all you have to contribute to it is your enjoyment.

The least awesome thing, I find, is that I've gotten a new computer. It's a really nice piece of bling, and I'm really more than happy with my new machine. In fact, I've been looking forward to coming home all day long so that I can use it to write this entry! It's an Acer machine, one of the new Gemstone Blue models. It has a sixteen-inch screen (widescreen, so when you watch movies the picture fills up the whole screen) and an excellent sound system (2.1 speakers - yep, this baby has a built-in subwoofer). It has a cool touch panel by the side that controls the media outputs. It can connect wirelessly to the Internet, and it comes with enough ports that I can connect with every peripheral I own and still have some slots left over. And when I do connect everything I own, the processor's powerful enough to run everythin simultaneously at a speed that's faster than my old desktop compuer (just goes to show the age of my home computer systems, eh?). And to top it all off, it is sleek and glows in all th right places. It's a really pretty machine! I think I will have many years of productive work and play with this baby.

Also quite proud of the price I managed to get for the whole package. At $2000, it's the most expensive discretionary purchase that I've ever made. But it's already discounted by $400 (due to the PC Show), and it came with Microsoft Office thrown in. Instead of braving the crowds to buy this machine, though, I popped down to the Challenger outlet opposite my house, and picked it up there instead. The salesperson was really helpful and knowledgeable, and went out of his way (at least by Singaporean standards) to make sure that I knew all I could about the machine before I made up my mind. And for choosing to buy it from their store, they threw in Chinese Star 2006 and a mouse for free. The latter comes in useful, and the former - well, I'm not expecting to write in Chinese for four years, but since it's free, I'll just take it!

So this happened on Saturday afternoon. But like I said, this as the least remarkable thing to happen this weekend; it was a pleasant thing to buy this laptop, but after all, this was something pre-planned, and at the heart of it it's an administrative purchase in preparation for August. The unexpected thingsthat happened over the weekend are the things that, in my estimation, really mattered, both in how they were surprisingly fulfilling, and how they fit together with one another and with the wider pattern that has run through 2008 so far.

*

On Friday night, my mentor took me out for drinks with the folks from URA. This really shows the nature of work at URA, I think: the people are eminently pleasant and warm-hearted, but the work they do is really stressful, and they have too much of it, so when Friday comes around, all stops are off, and they take advantage of URA's strategic location next to Ann Siang Hill to hit the bars there. In this line of work, as in many things in life, you take your enjoyment when you can get it, and for URA, part of that comes from being at the centre of the gourmet's paradise made up of Maxwell Food Centre, the newly reopened Chinatown Point food centre, Amoy Street and Ann Siang Hill.

We went to a French outfit, a really classy place stuffed with spindly café chairs and squashy cushioned armchairs and sofas. The whole place was wood-panelled, with a handsome bar and a small, intimate liquor wall. It's a place that I wouldn't normally go to, especially on my shoestring budget now, but it is a really chic place that I enjoyed quite a lot, mainly because I didn't need to worry about the tab. But I did start to think that maybe I shouldn't take advantage of my mentor's hospitality so much - especially when, after a while, it seemed as if all the planners in URA were in the bar, clustered on stools, chairs and sofas around one tiny coffee table, each with a champagne flute, and the bubbly flowing as easily as the (French? Maybe from one of the old colonies...) waitress as she made sure no one's cup ran dry.

Everyone was either commiserating with me or congratulating me for signing the bond (and not necessarily in that particular order, too). Heh, perhaps that reaction was borne out of equal parts pity and jealously, because they all know what's in store for me when I come back to work in 2012, and more than a few of them also know what's in store for me when I go in August. They kept pointing out the age gap between me and them, and it is a tad disconcerting to hear twentysomethings pining for their "younger days". But I guess it really is unavoidable, this yearning for times that have passed. It's happened to me before, after all, only that I've so far had the very good fortune of having something to look forward to before long, which thus saves me from perpetual nostalgia. It certainly shows the awesomeness of what is to come, and also underscores its preciousness. The time we have is so limited, and what we have to do in the face of this is to spend it as wisely as possible. There is a special kind of pain associated with wasting time, and I fully intend not to fall into that trap in the next few years.

We were joined by two non-URA folks, too. One of them was a former scholar who broke his bond with URA to go work for an investment bank. I found the short conversation I had with him quite reassuring, actually, contrary to what one would normally expect. He said that he left URA because the money was better at the bank, which I took to mean that there was nothing inherently wrong with the job at URA, and that it was just a matter of pay. As such, it was, I guess, nothing personal. It means that there is nothing to dread in the job itself. That is the crux, I feel. Now that I've signed the bond, I really don't want to be forced to second-guess myself. I don't want to start dreading my eventual return. I want to look forward to it, just as I am able to look forward to August now. And if the most convincing reason to leave is just about the money, then I think I can handle that temptation.

The other dude was the husband of one of my colleagues, and apparently, he's studied Sociology before. Said that it would be really fun, but to beware of the academic nomenclature and the temptation to cloister oneself in an ivory tower built out of instrutable theory. And I quite agree - the whole point of sociology is to explain real people and real societies and how they behave, and it would be totally pointless to attempt to learn real sociology purely out of books. To get oneself entangled in the intricate linkages and relationships of real societies, to get down into the thick of things and not only observe, but participate - that is what I am anticipating with bated breath.

*

On Saturday evening, went out with Dad to Timbre2, the branch of the original Timbre, that's housed in the old governor's residence behind Victoria Concert Hall and right next to the white Stamford Raffles statue. There was a blues festival going on, and decided to get in on a bit of the action for this year's Arts Festival. For $50, we got a New-Orleans-themed buffet spread, a free drink and unlimited access to eight solid hours of blues music.

It really does make a huge difference to listen to the blues live. On audio recordings, you have no choice but to pay attention to the lyrics, which are sometimes uninspired and seem to be just there to fuctionally fill up the silence, and the melody, which can turn disorientingly from despondent to demented at the drop of a hat. When you're watching a live performance, however, you can watch the expressions of the musicians; you can read their postures, their bodies, and suddenly, the music is put into context, and it really means something. Now I think you can't just listen to the blues; the visual element is a vital dimension of the performance.

And how they performed. Bodies writhed around their respective instruments, sweat flowed freely under the floodlights, and - how can I put this? - their faces told the stories that they couldn't fit into their words or their riffs. They made their strings cry, and their keyboards howl, and their harmonicas wail. They weren't only playing a song; this was a performance, as real and as complete as any script-to-stage affair.

And it was good to just be out with my father. Until now, I find that he can still surprise me by demonstrating some ability that I never suspected he would have. If I enjoyed the performance, he would have been totally entranced, because he was enjoying it from an insider's perspective, just as I may enjoy a play from the insider's perspective I got from actually having been on stage. I was enjoying the magnificence of the performance; but he knows the ins and outs of making blues music, and I daresay he was enjoying it at a more detailed, intimate level.

And so the blues sounded out, through the goldburst and that magical moment at seven-oh-seven when twilight truly sets in, a moment that was so beautiful that it had me staring over my shoulder half the time, so I am sure some of the other audience members must have wondered why I paid good money to come to a blues concert so I could stare at the sky. It sounded through dinner, forcing me to stop eating so I could listen properly to the reverberating beats, and so I could look properly at the performers. It sounded all the way till 1am, when the performers came together for that mainstay of blues concerts, the end-of-the-times jamming session, and it was beautiful how the players from different bands and countries could simply come in and speak the same language flawlessly, and yet say totally different things to each other. It was a musical performance with the tightness and deep, precise inflections of poetry.

Partly, also, I think, my appreciation of the night was heightened by the knowledge that it is already the middle of June, and that with my visa documents in the mail and the bond signed, this is really the beginning of the end of the long wait. The things I do on a daily basis nowadays have taken on the tinge of finality, the urgency of non-repeatability. Moments are more precious because each moment could be the last time I am experiencing this for four years. And so, partly because I did not know whe I and my father would get the chance to do something like this again, there was a real desire to make this time count as much as I could.

But no matter what the motive, this was a good night, a worthwhile night. Beyond why I enjoyed it, there lies the fact that I enjoyed it. And sometimes, the ability to appreciate the fact of the matter is enough, and one lets the sleeping reasons lie.

And I haven't even started on Sunday, and what happened ths morning yet! But another time. There is work tomorrow, after all.