Month: September 2008

My birthdays have become a lot weirder ever since I got to know the Banana.

We had to work on our shared birthday this year, and desperate to make something out of a ruined occasion we did something rather silly.

The Banana describes the event on her SuperBand blog, so I won’t. For those who would rather a million locusts visit them than click on a mediacorp link, we ended up asking strangers to sign on our hastily-self-bought birthday cards.

People were very nice, and I must say my flagging faith in humanity has been restored somewhat.

Thanks to the Banana’s newfound fame (though no one whom we asked for signatures recognized her), I am now featured on the SuperBand website looking like a crazed squirrel.

The Banana demands that we do something even more outrageous next year. The way things are going, I fear that on our sixtieth we’ll have to skydive.

I am the kind of person who owns a laminating machine.

Recently, as I was dusting a shelf (I am also the kind of person who dusts shelves), I noticed the instructions on the box of my laminating machine, giving suggestions on what I could use it for.

Recipes and other important documents!

Ah yes, recipes–some of the most important documents in my life.

The recent months of my life seem to have slipped me by, slowly and without notice. Waking life feels a little unreal, as if I were walking around buffered by cotton wool and only allowed a dim peripheral view of the worldaround me. The hours and minutes merge into a dull, monotonous filmreel set on an endless repeating sequence, splashing shades of overexposed greynesss on a dull and dirty canvas. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I can hear the sound of my life ticking its way past its prime and into middle-aged-staleness, and it fills me with fear and loathing for the corporate slave I have become (and also the pressing desire to get a new, less noisy clock).

So, in an effort to escape the monotony, I have decided to take up an exciting new activity–Chinese Calligraphy.

Today was lesson one for me and lesson god-knows-how-many for the rest. It turns out in a class there are students of (extremely) differing levels.

Today my teacher taught me that there are 2 types of paper used in chinese calligraphy, which side to write on and how to fold the paper so that I can get neat little squares to guide me in writing. Then I was instructed to write “?” several times, as you can see below.

My first character

The guy sitting beside me was churning out letters with dozens of strokes at an impressive rate. Whilst I had to refer to a dinky little photocopied instruction manual indicating how I was to write the two strokes I had learnt, he was transcribing poetry.

He took his work home, possibly to get framed and put up onn one of his walls.

Mine would be more useful in a recycling bin.

Sigh. Chinese calligraphy looks so easy when someone else is doing it.