It’s odd that I only feel like writing here when it is past my planned bedtime. It’s odd that Monday rolls along before anyone misses it. It’s odd that I like to start entries by forming sentences that uses the same word. It’s odd that. Four sentences, and I’m out of odds. Odds and ends.

As it is, (is what, it is) 2010 is moving a tad too quickly for me. Too quickly for the me who too often decides that Sundays are best spent quarter-reading, quarter-watching the TV, quarter-eating and quarter-procrastinating. You could very well say that Sundays are 100% procrastination, but really, is anyone that mean?

Listening to relatively old songs on the PC. It’s odd that I keep my music in two different folders, and that my iTunes and Windows Media Player don’t share songs. Odd habits lead to odd bouts of nostalgia.

Listening to Consequence of Sounds by Ms. Spektor.

So, I’m off for a short(-ish) work-related trip in mid May, and for that, I’m very grateful and happy. Can’t wait to get out of this weather, to learn new things, to get out of the photography inertia, and to do some much-needed walking.

Don’t ask, but I’m not supposed to be in here writing, but somehow, I don’t really feel like doing anything much tonight. Itinerary? Bah. Reading? Bah. Thinking? Bah. Sleeping? In a bit. Started thinking about the trip and wondering how I would come back. I know it is clichéd to look at the trip this way, but it’s a little stupid to deny that I planned for this trip without having ever harboured any of those thoughts. Would I come back wiser, enlightened about matters that I can’t currently debate my way through, or will I return, (more) cynical and exasperated, and find myself in the same place, wondering about the exact same questions that sent me away in the first place? No point thinking about that now, but somehow the brain has been wired to disobey. Let’s take a leave of absence from thought.

Somehow, this makes me feel somewhat better. One of my favourites from Mayday – 候鳥.

Anyway, Japan. Hopefully, I will be posting regular updates here. Hopefully, hopefully.

Thinking, thinking. Last weekend, halfway through a rather long session of itinerary-planning, I realised that much as I love to visit every city, town, prefecture, and village in Japan, there is not a realistic chance in hell that I would be able to do that with my limited time (hello my-forgotten-return-date) and the very limited budget. And maybe, more importantly, a rushed lets-plant-flags trip would defeat the very purpose of going on a vacation. So, I’m trimming the itinerary, staring at more web pages that don’t make any sense, revisiting this entry, and wondering where on earth my good mood has gone.

Forget, regather, realise, farewell. Rain sounds like whatever it hits. The roof of a car, the wet uneven ground, pale yellow raincoats, upturned palms, and empty words.

Okay. It is 14 days. Two weeks. A fortnight. Half a month. This half-life-esque calculation is a little unnerving, seeing that nothing and nothing is completed. Nothing. Am I panicking yet? It’s a little unsettling but I kinda like this slight tinge of intense anxiety that goes “pingggggg” through me every time I think of what remains to be decided, planned etc etc etc. All in good time, part of me says; the other writes To-Buy lists in the phone and worries that she won’t find a nice toiletries bag, and counts hours, kilometres, and every single unit of measurement that can be relevant in this context (and this context, I assure you, has the tendency to expand with every thought).

The itinerary keeps threatening to balloon. I blame this. Am quite pleased that I’m reading this book before my trip and discovering new places that I might want to visit, but this also means that I need to find another book to bring along. Wondering if I should bring a thick one (heavy; I might decide to hate it), or just a couple of thinner ones (packing will not be fun; I ain’t no travelling library).

It did occur to me at one point that I might spend the rest of tonight pretending to think, but. But! There are no ‘but’s. I am thinking, albeit the discernible lack of activity in the brain hemispheres (both), I think. Anyway, because I’m a changed girl and I spent only four dollars today, I’m hereby making a more perdurable effort at thinking. Written words, regardless of their quality and therefore for better or worse, have a certain permanence about them. Sure, it is important to write about life-changing events, cholesterol test results and your discovery of the 112th element, but it is just as fulfilling to write as you think, regurgitating every single comma as they pop up in your little typewriter mind. Decades on, you will wonder what happened to you on a certain July Tuesday/Wednesday evening, and if that evening was a probable cause of your eventual rebellion against what are defined as acceptable societal parameters (though rebellion implies a degree of voluntary participation, and you aren’t quite sure if that applies in your case), and you might be a wee bit enlightened. Keep reading and you’ll be rewarded with the end of this inanity.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking about online travel planning tools, and though I haven’t really explored a lot of options (it sucks when Google doesn’t answer your question, especially if the question was so precise), it seems like there won’t be any up to my high but entirely reasonable standards. Am, for instance, very disappointed that none of these travel planning tools doesn’t include a currency converter or a calculator. I place calculators in very high regard. A perfect anything in my books should at some point feature a calculator. Like a perfect notebook should always have a calculator in its back pocket/flap. Like a good brain should always be good at mental arithmetics.

Yes. A currency converter, please. I was tempted to use Google docs, which I’ve been using recently, but there wasn’t an option to insert or embed widgets or any interactive apps. Imagine, if you have a list of possible accommodations that you’ve pulled and shortlisted from various sources (i.e. it is not a list of search results from tripadvisor), you type them up in a list, define dynamic fields (in this case, the accommodation rates), tag them to a fixed or dynamic value (your exchange rate) and they get converted automatically to your preferred currency (though I’d prefer the unconverted amounts to remain as well). Uh huh. I think it is pretty obvious that I’m extremely fussy about stuff like that.

Maps. Very important. Typically, I’ll have a list of places I’m interested in, and then pin their locations on what I call the overview map. This is useful because I can then gauge the general distance between one place and another, and then plan an appropriate route accordingly. Each destination then will have their individual writeup, complete with a summary of what it is (particularly helpful for museums), address or map, admission costs (tagged) and getting-there information. Ideally, getting-there directions should come with one recommended route and several alternatives. Another tick on the anal list, uh huh.

Transport. When Ms. J and I were in Japan two (two!) years back, we made a list of train departure times and transfer points for all the (long-distance) trains we planned to travel on. This might sound ridiculous, but it did help knowing, if you missed a train, what time the next one would arrive. We knew when to run, when to amble, when to be fussy over bento decisions, and when to just grab a drink and run. And I swear we milked every last drop of our rail passes. The key to travelling cheap is to travel informed (and it doesn’t equate to predictability)! And it left us more money to throw at the post office.

Off the Beaten Path. I feel like a Lonely Planet guidebook. This is my favourite part, though I’ve been pretty slack about this for the past few trips. For each place or city, I usually make a list (painstakingly made over endless Google searches, Google translations; sometimes I copy wholesale from Wikitravel) of places that are less known. Mostly, they will be places I’ve a personal interest in, like photo/art galleries, bookstores, or weird museums.

Of course, everything goes poof on the actual trip and I sometimes end up abandoning all plans in return for a satisfying getting-lost experience or a relaxing stroll across unknown fields and laughing at weird scarecrows. But I guess I just really do quite like making travel itineraries. Or planning to make travel itineraries.

And because this entry is so damn wordy, I’m inserting a photograph here.

Hooray for random entry titles. Hooray for it being a day closer to October, yet again. Time gets on my side, this way, for once. Yet, it is amazing how all of a sudden, there seems to be a ton of tasks to achieve, a possibly equal number of decisions to make, and a few more hundred calculations to make the budget fit. Maybe I don’t need a weekend bag. Maybe I don’t need a gorgeous coat. Or a new wallet (I do, actually). Or a new passport holder. What I need is to get my camera fixed and stop eating Japanese food (Ootoya is yums) for days on end. Focus, rewind, focus.

On Saturday, I watched the most horrible movie (’Obsessed’, not worthy of a link) ever. I’ve griped aplenty to different people already, but I’m not rid of my irritation yet. So, here I am again, despite having run out of adjectives to describe the show. Miss J. and I were desperate to see a movie, and that was the only one available without us having to aimlessly wait two hours. (I must say, however, that the Filmgarde cinemas are pretty decent and the tickets are cheaper, too.) Now, I’ve watched a decent number of movies and I’ve watched a decent amount of crap, but none so far has made me entertain the thought of walking out of the cinema halfway so badly. I didn’t in the end, but it was probably because I still had a lot of popcorn left (they forgot we wanted mixed, so it was all terribly sweet). The movie has no redeeming feature. Typical enough plot, with boring lackluster bland characters and acting, cheesy dialogue, and a ridiculous ending. Arghs. Thoughts that went through my head during the movie were: I really want to toss popcorn at the screen | Wtf, she is knn irritating. | I wish she died in her suicide attempt. | Wtf, wtf. | Kill her, kill her | Why isn’t it over yet? Rinse and repeat every 15 minutes for 2 hours. It made ‘Ice Age 3′ look like a serious Oscar contender.

Why do we have so many cinemas showing the same stuff at the same time?

But anyway.

So! I’m heading to Japan! No itinerary and no concrete plans to conquer the land yet, but Japan is where I shall be come October and where I shall dream about from now till then. My friend (Abula the Great V) and I are also taking part in Design Festa, where we will hawk our currently-still-nonexistent wares, eat plenty of sashimi, shiver in the cold autumn winds, and perhaps finally get to see the snow-capped mountain. To motivate ourselves, we set up a blog here where we shall blog about our progress and travel plans. Yeah! Exclamations are plentiful here!

Photos are here!

Back from Siem Reap. The weather killed me. So did a lot of other things. Like the weather, the weather, the dust and the fact that Coke (the beverage) was more expensive than beer. The trip was a much appreciated break, but at the risk of sounding like a spoilt and pampered tourist, I am sorry to say that I was a little underwhelmed. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for the place (you brat! Well, it was my holiday). And call me shallow, unappreciative, and/or unspiritual, but I was all temple-d out by my fifth one. Angkor Wat and the Bayon temples were amazing though. I was frankly quite floored when I saw Angkor Wat for the first time; its scale and majesty were/are quite unparalleled. Watching the sunset there was decent enough. The sunrise was uneventful. Sorry for not gushing. Perhaps I was just in a bad state. Somehow the architectural and historical significance of the place failed to register.

Good things that happened on the trip: I solved the math puzzle on the first night (then promptly reprimanded myself for not bringing the book along). I finished this book that I got at the airport. Ice cream and sorbet were/are godsends on a hot day. Our hotel had a 24-hr and reliable hot water supply. I walked around the city, got lost but eventually found my way without consulting a map. The Angkor National Museum was great and very informative, though a tad expensive at 12 USD per entry. We found a neat bubble tea cafe. The tea was great, and they played cool music and sold vintage dresses.

Not-that-great things on the trip: Getting unnecessarily spooked by young monks at the museum. Weather. Pushy driver who thinks that he was anything but. Personally, I think he was a little disgusted at the pace we ‘went through’ the temples. At Ta Phrom, he hinted that most tourists would take 2-3 hours there and that we should take our own time exploring the temple. Sorry mate, but a good part of the temple was undergoing restoration so it wasn’t accessible to tourists at all. In the end, we had a little picnic so we could clock enough minutes. Even then, we were in there for just over an hour. I was really looking forward to seeing Ta Phrom so I was rather surprised that I wasn’t as blown away as I thought I would be. Same for Srah Srang.

Swine flu. The last time I went on holiday, it was the Mumbai attacks and the Bangkok demonstration. Seems like every time I go on a trip, somewhere in the world takes a beating. And, I realise I watch the most tv when I am overseas, for some reason.

It rained for most of the fourth day of the trip so my friend and I basically nuah-ed. We had an overpriced and unsatisfying lunch at the FCC, then nearly bankrupted ourselves shopping for souvenirs at the Old Market. With less than 20 dollars to last for the rest of the day and the next, we parked ourselves at the bubble tea cafe. The ‘bubbles’ (pearls) were sold out – damn you two other tourists who got the last two servings – but the music made up for it. Friend read, while I scribbled in my notebook, half-heartedly trying to solve a puzzle in this month’s Wired (this issue is excellent) and the other-half-heartedly doodling. A fly drowned in a slow suicide in my drink, and we found enough in our impossible budget to get ourselves a second drink.

More pages from the notebook following the cut. » Continue reading “pages from siem reap”

On Monday, I played hooky and went a couple of places, did a few things, and bought nothing! The last, especially, is an accomplishment. Woke up as per normal, as I was still deciding whether to head into work. Fickle was me so I hopped off the train at the JE station and caught a train on the north line, and that meant I couldn’t have made it to work on time anyway. And that was settled.

There aren’t that many MRT stations in Singapore, but when you don’t have a set destination and each station presents itself as one, it gets a little trickier to decide on just one. I thought about heading to the zoo, but decided to just alight at Sembawang because I had never been there. Well, well. There was nothing much around the station area, and the shopping mall felt a little sad (and gloomy), so I went out into the HDB estate and out into the unforgiving sun. Mornings are weird times to be around HDB estates; barely anyone is around (only a handful of grandparents and their grandchildren) and the void decks smell like their absent inhabitants. Yet, there was the feeling that there was always someone peering from his/her window and wondering why the hell I was taking a photo of wall corners, public telephones and expired parking coupons.

After a while, I got this brilliant idea of walking to the next station, which was Yishun. So I did. I have walked from station from station before, and those walks were manageable (10-15 mins for a station, maybe). Of course, this time, it took longer. Much longer. I walked along with the tracks so there weren’t any detours or stopping-to-play-with cats moments, and still it took 40-45 minutes. I did stop a few times to take a few pictures, but it was at least half an hour, my dear. How that happened, I still have no idea. “Welcome to Yishun”. Well, after you’ve passed that, you know you still have a few kilometres to go. And, then, yes, the shopping mall (aka aircon aircon aircon) had to be under renovation.

I also had a related brilliant idea when having the first brilliant idea that I would walk to Ang Mo Kio, but the brilliance of that was downgraded infinitely after walking to Yishun. I took a look at the train route map afterwards, and a train ride to Yishun takes 4 minutes. A ride to AMK from Yishun will take 10 minutes. Me legs grateful. Me likes trains.

After heading to AMK, I took a bus that took me somewhere in Lorong Chuan/Toa Payoh where I had the worst bak ku teh ever. Pepper + soup != bak ku teh. On a not entirely unrelated note, add potatoes to your bak ku teh; they taste great. So by one in the afternoon, I was more tired than I would be if I were working, so I decided that some relaxing was in order. And therefore, I watched a movie.

The Shinjuku Incident was/is a very decent movie. If you blank out Jackie Chan’s face and replace it with Daniel Wu’s face, you get Daniel Wu’s doppelgangers and a better-looking film. I don’t know why the former gets all the young girls. Why. Why. Anyone in their right mind would choose him over Jackie Chan. I didn’t think I would like it much and I did find it a tad (tad) demoralising and depressing and extremely joyless. Nevertheless, it stayed with me after it ended, and that is usually a good indication. I stayed in Kabuki-cho during my first trip to Japan, and the first evening my friend and I arrived (after a long train ride from Hiroshima), we got lost and it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. Imagine huge black guys bellowing at you for acting like foreigners (erm, we are foreigners and no, we didn’t want to enjoy ourselves). Our hotel was situated at the far end, so every day, we would pass by numerous love hotels and scores of male hosts loitering outside their workplaces. Hmm, it was quite an interesting experience, I guess, and I thought I wouldn’t mind staying there again (hotels there are cheap!). After watching the movie, I’ve changed my mind. Har.

Damnit. This is turning out to be a long entry. Shall continue the rest of the day another day.