Yu-Mei Balasingamchow's Blog, page 3

Iowa

I drove four hours straight from Chicago to get to Iowa City yesterday, and I swear I got a tan on my arms because the sun was out in full glory and the temperature was almost as hot as it gets in Singapore. This last gasp of summer that I've caught in Chicago and Iowa City has been quite splendid indeed. While reading in an al fresco area of a cafe today, I kept getting distracted by the insects that were flitting in and out of the planter box beside me.

That said, there was a massive th...

I flunked the written

The past six months haven't been very productive for me in terms of fiction writing, but there are three non-fiction pieces I've written that I'm pretty pleased with.

It started in March when Juria Toramae asked if I would write a short foreword for the catalogue for her art exhibition, "Points of Departure" at the National Library. The foreword's not available online, but you can borrow the catalogue from the library.

After that, my friend Ernest Goh was staging a solo art photography exhibit...

A good weekend

I just bought an annual multi-trip travel insurance plan for the first time ever, which is pretty much a commitment to what I want to do in the next 12 months. The insurance kicks in next month when I leave for the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa, and sets me up for some other travel plans I'm hatching for November and part of 2016.

Now all I have to do, theoretically, is find the money and willpower to make those plans happen.

I blame all this firmly on Adri, by the way. We had drinks on Tuesday night and while she didn't say anything directly, something about hanging out with her must've nudged my brain cells in a certain direction, which is how I ended up saying out loud, "Maybe I should go to Cuba."

Buying the travel insurance, mundane as it sounds, caps off a pretty unexpectedly top-notch holiday weekend. Nothing earth-shatteringly special, but the simple pleasures of spending time with family, friends and an indulgent amount of Lana cake.


Other achievements unlocked during this weekend:
Went for a morning run for the first time in over a decade --- admittedly, only because I was already awake to got visit Sungei Buloh, and then the friends who'd organised the outing had to bail because one of them was sick. But hey: I went for a 2.6 km run anyway.Spoke for about an hour about the social history of Capitol Theatre to an almost full-house audience, who'd turned up for my talk at the right place and the right time (the Urban Redev...

Checking in

I'm nowhere as hardworking as the esteemed Mr Wallace, but here's what I've been doing for the last four and a half months since I posted a blog entry:
Written a foreword and two exhibition essays for three photography exhibitions: "Points of Departure" by Juria Toramae in collaboration with Jerome Lim; "Breakfast at 8 Jungle at 9" by Ernest Goh; and another one happening later this year that I'll mention in due course.Written, edited, rewritten and re-edited a mountain of text for the revampe...

Fiddling

I was going to blog properly tonight while waiting for my hair to dry, but then I got distracted by emails for some of the things I'm juggling in addition to the day job:
Follow-up queries on my co-edited volume Women and the Politics of Representation in Southeast Asia .Revisions and edits for my co-edited literary anthology work-in-progress In Transit: An Anthology of Writing from Singapore about Airports and Air Travel (yes, we need a pithier subtitle).Revisions and edits for a commissioned...

Things you learn from watching reruns

I've been idly, irregularly watching reruns of the first season of The X-Files, after I happened by chance to tune in last week just as the first episode was airing on cable. I've never watched any of the seasons fully, and certainly never the pilot --- so it was something of a novelty to see Mulder and Scully right at the start of their grand adventure, back when Mulder seemed like nothing but a one-dimensional obstinate fanatic and the show hadn't quite nailed down how to portray Scully's i...

Educating my iPhone

A phenomenon otherwise known as "damn you autocorrect". From today's recorrected autocorrects:
onsen, not Ibsenjaunting, not hauntingprata, not pestsfyi, not duoI can't believe the iPhone autocorrect doesn't know "fyi".

Recalibrating

Three times today I had to tear parking coupons, and three times I caught myself just as I was about to pop out the tab for January, in time to switch to the correct tab for February. At a work meeting, I also started to tell someone, "We'll send you the document in late January ... er, I mean in the next couple of weeks."

By tonight, though, I got it right when I told ampulets that my birthday is next month. He said, "February?" and I got to retort, "No lah, today is February already."

Switching on the light again

I've never been very good at New Year's Resolutions, so now that it's the last day of January, it seems to be as good a time as any to dust off the blog and acknowledge a few baby steps I've taken towards a few things I would like to get done this year:

1. Exercise more
I've signed up for a Pilates class with my old instructor (this will be the third time that I've taken a basic class with him) and at some point in February, I shall endeavour to acquire a pair of shoes that are suitable for mor...

Say Anything

On Friday night, to unwind for a bit, I started to watch Say Anything, which I've never seen before. It's a teen romance classic, many websites and best-of lists have assured me, plus I've always thought John Cusack was cute, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I only watched the first 45 minutes before sleep got the better of me and I went to bed, but this is the impression that still lingers with me today: not the dated, cringeworthy pseudo-teen fashion of 1989, not how lanky and limber John Cusa...