Blank Doll

Somebody ought to revive Project Alabama.

The past week has been crazy, well not really, last saturday was crazy. Sister and I were eating crepes at the basement of Raffles City when I realised I had neither cash nor credit card on me. Special thanks go to XJ for saving the day! Haha, I love my friends.

I am now also a believer in the power of credit.

There is a pair of suede loafers that I crave from Zegna not to mention this calfskin pair with the most ingenious side eyelets from John Lobbs. I find aviators a bit of a tired idea. I mean, everyone's wearing them.

I am planning a beautiful surprise for my sister's birthday dinner. She will not know it until the very day itself. How sweet.

I am also in love with antique Japanese textiles and this method of embroidery called couching which makes for really magnificent pieces.

Jurlique sells rosewater so thanks Xuan, now I've got to find out if it's edible.

Christian Lauboutin makes some really hot black patent leather peeptoes. I really covet the impossibly expensive striped wool-silk jacket in light blue from Zegna.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll wails.

Every obliging, I am writing this post at the behest of Jessie who would fain be glad that what was writ upon my blog be erased.

R Project was not quite a failure althought it looked to be organised by people who loved fashion but who weren't people of fashion. Look darling, no bands before the defile and no intermission. No weird slides and for the last time, real human beauty reeks of the sort of unwitting irony that well-meaning people always end up with.

I did like the music though so kudos on that and the craftsmanship has improved by leaps and bounds which raises the suspicion that a professional was called in this time round.

Sarah, Val, XJ and me went off the Indochine afterwards where we had drinks and talk. It's fun to catch up with old friends especially after a hard day of work. It rained but heck, we were sheltered.

Afterwards, Sarah and I went down to Double O to join Mummy who very graciously got us in without queuing up thereby reinforcing the point that it is highly important to know people who can evade queues, say, the manager of bars and such. Mummy's friend treated us to drinks and I had a lot more rum than Mummy would allow otherwise. The crowd at Double O is alot older than MOS but it was also alot more fun. I know Sarah had fun watching the mad people dance and then that one angmoh that sort of wandered into the middle of the dancefloor.

Mummy after 12 also means I don't have to pay cab fare so yay.

Oh, and I can't wait for Candice to organise her class gathering.

Saturday was the pits though. Having slept at 4 am the night before, I had to get up at 7 am to go to work. The meeting went on and on and on but it was ok. Lunch with Mummy and sister afterwards at Spizza where I partook of comfort foods. Parmigiana is like, the, comfort food.

Met sister's fencing coach who struck me as kind of cool. Barely made it through French with my eyes open and thereafter, gave tuition at home.

Sunday has been kind. Bagels in the morning, salad in the afternoon. I made a honey cheesecake and that was another comfort food.

Let the week begin.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll sits down.

Sweet Jessie, leave anon be. There are certain people among us who are too frustrated in their impotent anger and can only do the irrational. You know the sort, that korean chap who gunned down those unfortunate people in Virginia.

My dear anon, it has come to my attention that you have probably been reading my blog for quite a while. In which case, I must thank you for your loyalty. Not a quality I usually inspire in people, that.

Nonetheless, just as you find my pretentious middle-class manners infuriating, I find your vulgarity, incoherence and repetitive malignant statements tiresome. You have neither the intelligence, the wit nor the courage to reveal yourself. If you are well-educated and wealthy then I may construe this as an attack on somebody you do not like. This is not, after all, the first time that I have incurred the ire of another. If you are on the other hand, poor, illiterate and of that particular class of people I detest, then your venom reeks too much of what I can only surmise to be envy, laughable as you may profess that to be.

Finally, if you happen to be somebody that I know then you have just validated my prejudice against the working class. All the people whom I have been acquainted with and have come to detest have either been poor, stupid or of that particularly petty character I find quite disgusting. Should you however be somebody I have not as yet have the fortune to make acquaintances with, then I believe you need a far more fulfilling hobby than foaming at the mouth night after night reading the transcript of a person's thoughts. Otherwise, we could always meet up over a proper luncheon (I have a fair mind to try Les Saisons if you please) and discuss your particular deficiencies since you seem to enjoy pointing mine out.

I'd really love to meet you, dear anon, if only to tell you that much as I love the idea, Hermes unfortunately does not make the sort of hemp required to fashion a noose.

To my friends, I'm sorry you have to witness this sad spectacle. The tagboard remains where it is if only as a goad for such imbeciles.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll.

crudefug is quite right in describing me as insecure, miserable and pretentious (he is unbelievably stupid nonetheless for lumping me with all the assorted religionists and the poisoned sanctimonous christians of the world). This is because I am resolutedly, solidly and unabashedly bourgeois.

My grandfather owned capital and land in joint ownership with my grandmother, she a Straits Chinese whose family wedded their fortunes to colonial and then Japanese rule. My father once owned a factory, now owns two hair salons and a cafe (a third hair salon seems to be under wraps, the tentative location being somewhere in australia) while his wife is a paralegal. My mother is one of the best financial planners you can find around with 17 years of experience and more accolades then she can pin onto the walls of her office while her husband is a drummer-teacher. Parents are owners of capital and for my mother, liquidity she knows not where to put. We go on vacation at least once a year and always our compass points far away, Japan and Europe where we may assiduously efface our bourgeois nature and eventually climb higher up. No Vietnamese bargains unless it be a stay at the Angsana or Banyan although I am increasingly intrigued by the little boutique hotels of Cambodia. Not quite enough panache to be part of the industrialist/capitalist class but enough to edge our family into the haut-bourgeois.

Uncle studied at ACS, another at RI, myself repudiating the working class environs of my secondary school to go on to RJ, sister did the same and is now in RGS doing much better than the average of her school and decidedly far better than her primary school scums. Even my grandmother got an education from Nanyang. So you are absolutely right. I am a grasping bourgeois insecure in my social standing who seeks greener pasture- a dyed-in-the-wool quasi-arrivist who sticks himself right into the mainstream.

Even my tastes reflect my bourgeois streak. I like Old Masters, Degas, Vermeer, Durer, Michelangelo and Chinese three-colour sculptures. I despise the radical elements of art, be it dead Paris Hiltons or Pollock. I like the belle lettres of French literature, the diaries of Mme. de la Pin and Saint-Simons, blank verses and royalist histories. I hate with utter vehemence the avant-garde clothes of the Antwerp Five or for that matter, the Japanese Three, and covet Hermes, Kiton, Brioni, Zegna and Prada. Marc Jacobs appeals to me only because I harbour a love-hate relationship with Louis Vuitton (the monogram so declasse, the epi leather so seductive). I like nouvelle cuisine and solid French fare, hawker fare delights me occasionally but usually turns me off so yes, I am unpretentiously ostentatious. Hell, I even like Vacherons (Rolex trying too hard after all, there is a limit to my raging middle-classness). So yes, shallow and pretentious.

Let's move on to miserable and tortured. I am miserable because I do not have quite enough money to satisfy my material desires, because I am trapped by this parochial society, because I am not in Paris, because Urban is Singapore's sad sad answer to Page Six, because we have Aurum instead of El Bulli, because Prada's white cords were last season, because I am not in Paris and because my dreams remain far away as long as I am not in Paris. So spot on crudefug, I am unconsolably miserable although Canele offers me some form of consolation in the form of macaroons (even if they aren't from Laduree) and I can look forward to ice cream at Raffles Creamery (even if it isn't Berthemiers). Look, there's even Teuschers so it's not too bad after all. For now.

Oh don't be silly, I'm hardly going to lash out at crudefug for revealing his own jealousy and I am certainly not going to revel at having provoked another calm, minimum wage earner, barely white collared, averagely educated person who would probably be a great person to hang out with if I loved shopping at Far East, smoke and ate fast food into such a paroxysm of envious, toxic rage.

Anon, I love you for praying for me. Maybe one day I really will be able to walk into a church without the irresistable urge to throttle someone. Until then, I'll avail myself of the odd temple and continue to talk with GOD without the whinging squeal of the operator (a fifth of your daily wage thank you, God-thru-Us always at your service).

ANYWAY.

Lunch at Equinox was quite disappointing yesterday and I am certain Jessie will agree. I actually listened to crudefug and went to seek therapy yesterday. Didn't buy anything in the end which goes to show that I need repeated treatments but lecher des vitrines of Prada, Bally and Marc Jacobs was deeply comforting. Louis Vuitton had a queue so I continue my inner struggle over the Laguito. Talking with Jessie also happens to be very soothing not to mention amusing.

Been a lazy pig today. Woke up at 11 so didn't have time to go run the customary 6 km. Apparently, I was really tired and today's Mother's Day after all so Pa and I are whipping up a feast.

Pa: Pureed mushroom soup with cured back bacon and spring onions (no Campbell soup tins since about the only canned food we are allowed at home now are foie gras and anchovies), mixed fruit salad with smoked salmon (this time with ripe avocados after Xuan's mother's advice), grilled chicken chops (a ritual) and roast beef accompanied by roast pumpkins (another ritual).

Me: Caramelized oranges set in a terrine of orange juice, dark chocolate tart with a lemon shortbread crust and tiramisu.

Sister: A card of origami, cut-outs and paper stitched together. Her genius knows no bounds as usual.

Fetons ma vie, mes cheries. Un moment rare, ce jour-la, quand je suis, simplement, content.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll.

I had a friend who used to give the women she admired blue roses. I like the gentle irony the very act embodies. That most elusive of botanical specimen, a blue rose, is after all a symbol of wishfulness and artifice.

Borrowed a number of interesting books. There is a history of France during the Enlightenment, a history of the world during the nineteenth century and a historical fiction about a catamite in ancient Egypt. I do not read enough I think, it rather annoys me.

It occurred to be the other day that I cannot be successful without experiencing physical excess, moral ruin and spiritual collapse by the age of thirty. The skin deathly cold and pale, the senses seared by alcohol, the eyes grown too sensitive to sunlight, lips and nostrils frosted with cocaine and a general awareness of one's own mortality.

So you see, I do have a plan. I plan to live my life to the fullest, to take it to the brink of destruction and then to let myself be redeemed by the all-salvaging light of a benign deity unfettered by the deadly mortal chains of religion.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll sits tight.

hello hello, haven't been blogging for a few days now. Sometimes I get so tired wondering if I should bother writing down the actual thoughts in my head or cough up some vapid trash (never far behind at the back of my mind) about the latest thing I've fallen in love with that I just forget about blogging altogether. The whole internal struggle exceeding my own capacity for narcissism and existential crises.

I am slightly distressed by recent events in the office because I believe I am being Marginalized by My Superiors seeing as they have been patently unwilling to give me any task of significance even though I was attached to them with the explicit expectation that I be given tasks that require both skill and creativity. This besides, I am rather annoyed with the general culture of waste, inefficiency and an unwillingness to question the dictates of authority.

The army has thought me that should I be happy next time, I shall need a commitment in the future that will take up all my time. Setting up a design firm should suffice.

Also, while browsing through clothes and stuff on the Internet, I have come to a couple of conclusions. 1) Tom Ford aviators are gorgeous but dreadfully priced beyond my means. 2) The spirit of thrift that prevents me from shelling out 500 on a pair of Tom Fords does not prevent me from coveting either the Laguiole in black Epi Leather or the Poche Document Voyage in cannele Epi Leather from Louis Vuitton. This is a source of considerable embarrassment since I have always professed scorn for the marque although candour will have me admit that the Epi range of leathers is simply beautiful and far classier than the bloody monogram, not to mention far cheaper than an Hermes.

My fingers are numbed. I wonder why.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll.

I am officially on a high. I mean seriously, even the Internet can't stop me. I have managed to retrieve my blog against the annonymous forces of Web 2.0 and that is certainly a feat to be celebrated.

There were so many things I wanted to blog about none of which bears much relevance now. I was going to talk about the exasperating degree of bloody obtuseness that our Malaysian counterparts display on a routine basis with regards to comments made by our leaders. I was going to comment on how hopelessly blind the youth of today are to the achievements of our leaders and that they have a sad take on our President. He apparently is not as useless as we all think he is and to say that he is useless merely highlights our own ignorance. I was going to talk about my fatal attraction to power. I was going to comment on the fantastic allure, and the elusive nature of its physical manifestation, of white cords as well as the fact that I'm totally crazy over Tom Ford's aviators.

But most of all, I just want to thank the people who were by my side through this period of down. No need to name names and all. I'm so happy to be back.

C'est tout.