At the banquet my mother admitted within the hearing of just about anyone, she would be happier to be marrying me off. “Well, maybe when you are 80,” I would say to her, which she would then translate to her friends as, “She wants me to wait. She wants me to live longer.”
Well, although it was just her son’s wedding, she was on a high. Everyone was happy that evening. They loved her dress (so deluxe!) and her hair (so tall!). They loved the restaurant (so red, so retro, so festive!), the cooking (so ample!) and the live singing (so fun!). They were happier than they had ever been at other people’s banquets, surely. Her one and only regret was that when Fei got smashed at the end of that evening and kissed her between 22 and 852 times – we lost count – she was too shocked to kiss him back.
She was over the moon for two days; on day three she crashed back down to earth. I had spied in the fridge a carton of the soya milk we always bought for Fei’s breakfast and said matter-of-factly, “We needn’t buy this any more.” In an instant she was teary. The meaning of the wedding on a daily basis was suddenly clear; the innumerable small things she did for her son, which were equal to a chunk of her everyday existence, someone else would do henceforth; when he came back from his honeymoon he would go home to his apartment and not ours.
Before that week was over she had bumped both her knees accidentally, one time on the hill around the corner and another time right against the fridge. Her legs were swollen and swathed in bandages. She would bump into somebody in the neighbourhood some mornings, start to speak about the honeymooners and cry. She was having a breakdown of sorts, although she didn’t and couldn’t quite collapse. We needed her. We had to live on leftovers (from the buffet and the gorgeous, gorgeous roast pig). We needed her to do some delicious things with the scraps.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
AFTERWARDS | One
So it is done. Sometime one Sunday, a cloudless day which was a dozen Chinese New Years condensed into a day, within the couple of auspicious hours when the groom whisked the bride off to his house to serve tea to his elders, Fei married P.
What with all the last-minute things to attend to – here’s the red bucket to fill with rice for the coming-of-age combing ceremony; there’s the roast pig, somebody pay the man please; now, where’s the buffet and will you rinse the teacups and refill the teapot, you, yes, you – the day, to me, came and went in a haze of exhaustion, heat, excitement and something. A slow, slinking something which might have been…
One thing I felt, if I felt anything, was the goodwill: how much people love my parents and, by extension, my brothers and me. My father is not one to ask too much of anybody else (my mother excepted); happily, his old friends are the sort to show up unbidden, to invite themselves to the important occasions of his life. On the big day two of them, Auntie and Uncle J, were here at eight to help the first-time father-in-law and mother-in-law with everything – in particular, the arcane Chinese-wedding protocol – as if it were their own son marrying.
Auntie J, who married into a traditional Teochew family, was the most senior daughter-in-law and the longest-suffering before her mother-in-law passed away. She is a veteran of a very Chinese household who, in any domestic affair, knows when to stand by, when to step in and when to softly suggest something to someone. As she stood by me during the tea ceremony and helped me with the teacups, all five of which had to be rinsed and refilled over and over again, round after round, she felt like family - more so than a couple of blood relations who didn’t lift a finger. When she told me to do whatever I just did it, regardless of my misgivings. Whatever I might have felt about a symbolic assertion of authority, when she told me to hold my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P – “you have to be higher than her” – I just held my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P. (I would not understand until later it was a pre-emptive strike, until I received a ritual gift from P’s mother, a woven basket laden with beauty products and meaning. It said – please, allow my mother to translate – go get dolled up, go get hitched, don’t mess with my daughter. After all, the Chinese wedding customs are a relic from the age before the nuclear family, when to marry into a large family was, nine times out of 10, to march into a theatre of war. You faced not only your husband but also his mother, his aunts, his sisters, his sister-in-laws and other discontented women. Whomever your family could neutralise or get on your side they would.)
The other thing I felt…I might have imagined. Something, though unspoken, was understood as Fei got sloshed towards the end of the banquet. He was in high spirits, absolutely, and so were we. I was somehow certain though that on the one hand his would be a solid marriage and that on the other hand the solidness of the marriage would be weighty. Possibilities that had ceased to be possible. Doors that had been closed. I imagined them. I lamented them. Then we lugged our brother to the bridal suite, I helped his bride out of her dress and we left them with each other.
What with all the last-minute things to attend to – here’s the red bucket to fill with rice for the coming-of-age combing ceremony; there’s the roast pig, somebody pay the man please; now, where’s the buffet and will you rinse the teacups and refill the teapot, you, yes, you – the day, to me, came and went in a haze of exhaustion, heat, excitement and something. A slow, slinking something which might have been…
One thing I felt, if I felt anything, was the goodwill: how much people love my parents and, by extension, my brothers and me. My father is not one to ask too much of anybody else (my mother excepted); happily, his old friends are the sort to show up unbidden, to invite themselves to the important occasions of his life. On the big day two of them, Auntie and Uncle J, were here at eight to help the first-time father-in-law and mother-in-law with everything – in particular, the arcane Chinese-wedding protocol – as if it were their own son marrying.
Auntie J, who married into a traditional Teochew family, was the most senior daughter-in-law and the longest-suffering before her mother-in-law passed away. She is a veteran of a very Chinese household who, in any domestic affair, knows when to stand by, when to step in and when to softly suggest something to someone. As she stood by me during the tea ceremony and helped me with the teacups, all five of which had to be rinsed and refilled over and over again, round after round, she felt like family - more so than a couple of blood relations who didn’t lift a finger. When she told me to do whatever I just did it, regardless of my misgivings. Whatever I might have felt about a symbolic assertion of authority, when she told me to hold my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P – “you have to be higher than her” – I just held my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P. (I would not understand until later it was a pre-emptive strike, until I received a ritual gift from P’s mother, a woven basket laden with beauty products and meaning. It said – please, allow my mother to translate – go get dolled up, go get hitched, don’t mess with my daughter. After all, the Chinese wedding customs are a relic from the age before the nuclear family, when to marry into a large family was, nine times out of 10, to march into a theatre of war. You faced not only your husband but also his mother, his aunts, his sisters, his sister-in-laws and other discontented women. Whomever your family could neutralise or get on your side they would.)
The other thing I felt…I might have imagined. Something, though unspoken, was understood as Fei got sloshed towards the end of the banquet. He was in high spirits, absolutely, and so were we. I was somehow certain though that on the one hand his would be a solid marriage and that on the other hand the solidness of the marriage would be weighty. Possibilities that had ceased to be possible. Doors that had been closed. I imagined them. I lamented them. Then we lugged our brother to the bridal suite, I helped his bride out of her dress and we left them with each other.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The sister hen diaries
Bak is back from America and with him the spontaneous singing, the epic eating and the spectre of swine flu. “You sure you don’t have swine flu and mine isn’t swine cough?” I say for the umpteenth time, all sputtering and sniffing. “Don’t have.”
“You snorting like a pig?” Dr Fei checks. “No.” “Do you have fever?” “Don’t have.” “It isn’t swine flu.” Oh, so I am not dying? Okay, doc.
My mother is relieved. She has been holding herself back for months. Now she can go back to cooking for an army, secure in the knowledge that Bak will clean us out. “I have forgotten how much he eats,” she says with what can only be called a mother’s pride.
We are a full house once more, a happier one. Here are the sounds of mostly affectionate abuse – nothing unites us more than a baby, our 22-year-old baby boy – and there, in the lift lobby within spitting distance of our door, is the sound of our American Idol courageously attempting Chinese pop. (The notion that neighbours and other innocent individuals might hear him has never stopped him before. Why now, when he is mastering a Crowd Lu? Shui lai jiu wo-aaa-eeeee… Well…maybe mastering is not quite the word for what he does to the song.)
The party boy is back, as is the party. But it is just for a few days more. Fei is marrying P and moving out; change is afoot. It creeps up on me one night, amidst the pitch blackness of sleep, when I hear someone shuffle into my room. “Gor, wrong room…?” I mumble. (How did I know it was Fei? I just knew. When you have lived long enough with someone – since you were one year old – you just have a sixth sense.)
In Fei’s house, his room is on his right when he has to half-sleep-half-walk to it after a late-night tinkle. In the twilight zone between the ROM and the Chinese marriage ceremony, he has been staying there only once a week, enough for his muscles to have memorised it, however: for him to be making the wrong turn here. On some subconscious level, unbeknownst to me before, he doesn’t live here any more. Might it be why, hours later, I dream of an earthquake? I am in M’s house in Tokyo when the tremors start. (She is alive again, yes, and it is a sweet surprise.) We are shaking with the little house and watching skyscrapers crumble one after another like tall cakes. Still, the house stays in one piece and so do we.
Bak is back but Fei is leaving but we’re going to stay in one piece. Aren’t we?
“You snorting like a pig?” Dr Fei checks. “No.” “Do you have fever?” “Don’t have.” “It isn’t swine flu.” Oh, so I am not dying? Okay, doc.
My mother is relieved. She has been holding herself back for months. Now she can go back to cooking for an army, secure in the knowledge that Bak will clean us out. “I have forgotten how much he eats,” she says with what can only be called a mother’s pride.
We are a full house once more, a happier one. Here are the sounds of mostly affectionate abuse – nothing unites us more than a baby, our 22-year-old baby boy – and there, in the lift lobby within spitting distance of our door, is the sound of our American Idol courageously attempting Chinese pop. (The notion that neighbours and other innocent individuals might hear him has never stopped him before. Why now, when he is mastering a Crowd Lu? Shui lai jiu wo-aaa-eeeee… Well…maybe mastering is not quite the word for what he does to the song.)
The party boy is back, as is the party. But it is just for a few days more. Fei is marrying P and moving out; change is afoot. It creeps up on me one night, amidst the pitch blackness of sleep, when I hear someone shuffle into my room. “Gor, wrong room…?” I mumble. (How did I know it was Fei? I just knew. When you have lived long enough with someone – since you were one year old – you just have a sixth sense.)
In Fei’s house, his room is on his right when he has to half-sleep-half-walk to it after a late-night tinkle. In the twilight zone between the ROM and the Chinese marriage ceremony, he has been staying there only once a week, enough for his muscles to have memorised it, however: for him to be making the wrong turn here. On some subconscious level, unbeknownst to me before, he doesn’t live here any more. Might it be why, hours later, I dream of an earthquake? I am in M’s house in Tokyo when the tremors start. (She is alive again, yes, and it is a sweet surprise.) We are shaking with the little house and watching skyscrapers crumble one after another like tall cakes. Still, the house stays in one piece and so do we.
Bak is back but Fei is leaving but we’re going to stay in one piece. Aren’t we?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Hong Kong and I
People with only a passing acquaintance with me know I love Taipei. Mention Taipei to me and I say, “Taipei? I love Taipei!” (Or, “Taipei? Jay Chou! I love Jay Chou!”) I am as animated and unsurprising as a wind-up toy about the city I have loved like a boy with a new toy.
Hong Kong and I, we are quieter. I go to Hong Kong as, I imagine, a man goes home to his wife. There is more than a touch of inevitability; it has been years since anyone said anything about love; she is too tired to even look at him today. She is old and ordinary – and he sees it – and yet she is somehow lovely.
So it is with Hong Kong and me. As a very Cantonese girl going there for the very first time in the 1990s I was a little like a visitor at a club realising I had membership after all. (I had done my homework. When classmates busied themselves with foreign languages I filled my timetable with Cantonese, from the TVB shows on TV3 to the Leslie Cheung concert on LD.) I have gone there a zillion times since. Only on the trip before last, however, did I see for the first time in years how gorgeous Hong Kong was. A city of peaks and harbours, thrills and spills, alive with buildings and billboards and bamboo scaffolding coming at you at all angles such that when you and your tram go around them intact it feels as spectacular as a Jackie Chan stunt and as exquisite as a taiji exercise; a city of accidental Daoist aesthetics. On the last trip I was floored by how posh Hong Kong was. To go to ifc mall is to grasp once and for all that we don’t know how to do posh; they do. On this trip I saw Hong Kong’s trees. I was with S, who was visiting for the first time, and whenever she stopped to photograph trees I saw them too, pushing their way out of walls along sloping, winding streets. I saw the banyans on Nathan Road. I had never noticed them. Am I as bad as men who don’t notice their wives’ hairdos or what?
I like being in Hong Kong all the same. When I have been away for too many moons – distracted by Taiwan, Turkey and other destinations – I always gravitate towards it.
Hong Kong and I, we are quieter. I go to Hong Kong as, I imagine, a man goes home to his wife. There is more than a touch of inevitability; it has been years since anyone said anything about love; she is too tired to even look at him today. She is old and ordinary – and he sees it – and yet she is somehow lovely.
So it is with Hong Kong and me. As a very Cantonese girl going there for the very first time in the 1990s I was a little like a visitor at a club realising I had membership after all. (I had done my homework. When classmates busied themselves with foreign languages I filled my timetable with Cantonese, from the TVB shows on TV3 to the Leslie Cheung concert on LD.) I have gone there a zillion times since. Only on the trip before last, however, did I see for the first time in years how gorgeous Hong Kong was. A city of peaks and harbours, thrills and spills, alive with buildings and billboards and bamboo scaffolding coming at you at all angles such that when you and your tram go around them intact it feels as spectacular as a Jackie Chan stunt and as exquisite as a taiji exercise; a city of accidental Daoist aesthetics. On the last trip I was floored by how posh Hong Kong was. To go to ifc mall is to grasp once and for all that we don’t know how to do posh; they do. On this trip I saw Hong Kong’s trees. I was with S, who was visiting for the first time, and whenever she stopped to photograph trees I saw them too, pushing their way out of walls along sloping, winding streets. I saw the banyans on Nathan Road. I had never noticed them. Am I as bad as men who don’t notice their wives’ hairdos or what?
I like being in Hong Kong all the same. When I have been away for too many moons – distracted by Taiwan, Turkey and other destinations – I always gravitate towards it.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
The sister hen diaries
Out of the blue Fei calls, “Eh be my MC leh.” I was brought up to believe in magic, particularly in my mother’s magic: When you truly want to do something impossible for somebody you love you can – you just can. So if Fei wants me to be his MC, the magical doctor’s document that frees him from work, I have to be it somehow – how? “Your MC?”
“My MC, my wedding MC.” Right, sitting in an eatery with my mother, whose days and nights have for a year revolved round trying on dresses, jewels, heels and hairdos for that day and that night, I should have known. “’Kay, let’s talk when we get home,” I say and in the same breath I update my mother, “Your son wants Bak and me to be the MCs.” “Bak and you? Well, why not Bak and A?” Well, why not me? I can. I am the master of making all the right noises, I have the dress for it…two dresses, actually…and I could sing…I shouldn’t, actually, but…
As it transpires, Fei is telepathic. Over breakfast the next morning he is updating me on how he phoned Bak’s girl, A, and asked them to be the MCs and she unhesitatingly said yes. Which was when he asked her to call Bak in Atlanta and tell him it had been decided he would be her co-MC. Which she did. Which was when Bak – he who is careful with his money and never ever calls home except on Skype – picked up the phone and called Fei in a fluster, “Cannot lah cannot lah – I’m getting on a Panama cruise ship now, getting on – cannot lah cannot lah –”
But we know, and Bak knows, he isn’t getting out of it. He who says no to his kin does not say no to his girl, as Feicius says. A cunning man my brother is.
My parents are all for it certainly. My father, a fan of A’s polite Mandarin and perfect Taiwan manners, says she would be a good MC; my mother says she is a better choice; and I can’t say I am not disappointed, although I do admire the beauty of Fei’s strategy. I would have been okay, if less world-class than A. Isn’t it better to keep it in the family? “You are the older sister,” they say. Yes I am and isn’t Bak the younger brother? “The older sister shouldn’t be on stage.”
Right, the old spinster shouldn’t be on show. She should be protected. I hear them. I have an ear for the things they don’t say. Do they hear the things I don’t say though? A isn’t family yet. She might not be. Who is protecting her from memories she might not want one day…?
Well, we will just have to hope for the best. That, and roast pig that rocks our socks off.
“My MC, my wedding MC.” Right, sitting in an eatery with my mother, whose days and nights have for a year revolved round trying on dresses, jewels, heels and hairdos for that day and that night, I should have known. “’Kay, let’s talk when we get home,” I say and in the same breath I update my mother, “Your son wants Bak and me to be the MCs.” “Bak and you? Well, why not Bak and A?” Well, why not me? I can. I am the master of making all the right noises, I have the dress for it…two dresses, actually…and I could sing…I shouldn’t, actually, but…
As it transpires, Fei is telepathic. Over breakfast the next morning he is updating me on how he phoned Bak’s girl, A, and asked them to be the MCs and she unhesitatingly said yes. Which was when he asked her to call Bak in Atlanta and tell him it had been decided he would be her co-MC. Which she did. Which was when Bak – he who is careful with his money and never ever calls home except on Skype – picked up the phone and called Fei in a fluster, “Cannot lah cannot lah – I’m getting on a Panama cruise ship now, getting on – cannot lah cannot lah –”
But we know, and Bak knows, he isn’t getting out of it. He who says no to his kin does not say no to his girl, as Feicius says. A cunning man my brother is.
My parents are all for it certainly. My father, a fan of A’s polite Mandarin and perfect Taiwan manners, says she would be a good MC; my mother says she is a better choice; and I can’t say I am not disappointed, although I do admire the beauty of Fei’s strategy. I would have been okay, if less world-class than A. Isn’t it better to keep it in the family? “You are the older sister,” they say. Yes I am and isn’t Bak the younger brother? “The older sister shouldn’t be on stage.”
Right, the old spinster shouldn’t be on show. She should be protected. I hear them. I have an ear for the things they don’t say. Do they hear the things I don’t say though? A isn’t family yet. She might not be. Who is protecting her from memories she might not want one day…?
Well, we will just have to hope for the best. That, and roast pig that rocks our socks off.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Love is all in the footnotes
“Did I ever tell you…? Did we ever tell you…?” K asked one night when we were all in 2am, the dessert bar I describe to people as my boyfriend. They are talented and young; their sweets are subtle and thoughtful, though none has been as orgasmic as anything by Pierre Herme, the George Clooney of pastry masters; they remember my favourite foods, or rather, the things I have capriciously professed a preference for. If I love them they love me back.
“No,” I said, “tell me.” Nestling against a couch, I hadn’t been taking much note of K and C’s talk about old Melbourne times. Down under is a closed chapter of my life, after all.
“That day when we were in Crown Casino…we stalked you.” “You what? Crown Casino?” “We stalked you.” They were to have chaperoned me on my first offline date that day, ten years ago, with some man I had met online. A tallish, thin man with haunted eyes and a hunted, jumpy walk. And somehow or other, soon after everyone was introduced to everyone else, in the instant of a heartbeat, I pretty much made off with him – what was I thinking? I wasn’t – and gave K a heart attack.
OMG! She let her idiot friend leave with a man who looks like a South Asian terrorist! What if something happens? Should she call the idiot’s mum? What if nothing happens and she shouldn’t have called the idiot’s mum? So they had to stalk me. They went all the way to the man’s house – what was I thinking? I wasn’t – and stood outside, trying not to look like stalkers.
“You were outside?” “We were. We were saying there were no bushes to hide behind…” “There were bushes!” “Nearer the window. Not outside…” C said as she showed me some stoop-and-hide moves and re-enacted how he nearly saw her at the window. “I was like, shit.” K remembered how she gave C a hard time about wearing a yellow parka. “Yellow! When we were on a mission! I gave you such shite about that…”
And I realised, 10 years later, not too late, what great girl friends I have. They love you back; they love you more than you know.
“No,” I said, “tell me.” Nestling against a couch, I hadn’t been taking much note of K and C’s talk about old Melbourne times. Down under is a closed chapter of my life, after all.
“That day when we were in Crown Casino…we stalked you.” “You what? Crown Casino?” “We stalked you.” They were to have chaperoned me on my first offline date that day, ten years ago, with some man I had met online. A tallish, thin man with haunted eyes and a hunted, jumpy walk. And somehow or other, soon after everyone was introduced to everyone else, in the instant of a heartbeat, I pretty much made off with him – what was I thinking? I wasn’t – and gave K a heart attack.
OMG! She let her idiot friend leave with a man who looks like a South Asian terrorist! What if something happens? Should she call the idiot’s mum? What if nothing happens and she shouldn’t have called the idiot’s mum? So they had to stalk me. They went all the way to the man’s house – what was I thinking? I wasn’t – and stood outside, trying not to look like stalkers.
“You were outside?” “We were. We were saying there were no bushes to hide behind…” “There were bushes!” “Nearer the window. Not outside…” C said as she showed me some stoop-and-hide moves and re-enacted how he nearly saw her at the window. “I was like, shit.” K remembered how she gave C a hard time about wearing a yellow parka. “Yellow! When we were on a mission! I gave you such shite about that…”
And I realised, 10 years later, not too late, what great girl friends I have. They love you back; they love you more than you know.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
The sister hen diaries
It has been quiet in the house after the youngest and noisiest one flew the coop to America, where they don’t know what hit them. Bak is not just out-studying them – 21 study credits to their average of 12 – but also stupendously out-singing them, in Chinatown, Atlanta, at least.
“The Chinese here are awful singers, awful lor,” he updates us over Gmail video chat. In the midst of William Hungs he is Aretha Franklin: minus the bodacious range, plus puppyish eagerness, dogged attempts at high notes and the superpower to mean every of the earnest Wang Lee Hom love songs he sings. “Everybody says, ‘Do you take private lessons?’”
We are taking all the credit of course. Clearly he has improved since he started singing with me – I really should patent my matchless stand-up-and-sing-in-the-KTV method, which is genius in its very obviousness – and also in the hearing of the Cowells, Fei and Y. “Wah, American Idol ah? We taught him. We insulted him.”
We are about tough love, much as we miss him. We miss him primarily during major dinners. On Chinese New Year’s Eve we wake him up at 6am his time to show him, over video, the food we have to somehow finish without him. “See, Bak? Roast pig.” (Roast pig, not to be confused with roast pork, is a festive must in the family. It is rare in Singapore and can be bought only from cleaver-wielding fierce Cantonese old women in Kreta Ayer market.)
Hugging his pillow, he just grunts. We are fooling about; he is playing along, time zones away.
“The Chinese here are awful singers, awful lor,” he updates us over Gmail video chat. In the midst of William Hungs he is Aretha Franklin: minus the bodacious range, plus puppyish eagerness, dogged attempts at high notes and the superpower to mean every of the earnest Wang Lee Hom love songs he sings. “Everybody says, ‘Do you take private lessons?’”
We are taking all the credit of course. Clearly he has improved since he started singing with me – I really should patent my matchless stand-up-and-sing-in-the-KTV method, which is genius in its very obviousness – and also in the hearing of the Cowells, Fei and Y. “Wah, American Idol ah? We taught him. We insulted him.”
We are about tough love, much as we miss him. We miss him primarily during major dinners. On Chinese New Year’s Eve we wake him up at 6am his time to show him, over video, the food we have to somehow finish without him. “See, Bak? Roast pig.” (Roast pig, not to be confused with roast pork, is a festive must in the family. It is rare in Singapore and can be bought only from cleaver-wielding fierce Cantonese old women in Kreta Ayer market.)
Hugging his pillow, he just grunts. We are fooling about; he is playing along, time zones away.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Capricorn
So Jay says he isn’t that into astrology. So much for fantasies (mine, all mine) that we would be on the same page in our interview, he with his album titled after his sun sign, Capricorn, and I with my birth-chart craze. There we were in Taipei county, in the same studio, at the same table and so not on the same page.
When asked about the title he said, “Many people are fascinated by astrology, aren’t they?” (Translation: My album is for the masses and they are fascinated by astrology, aren’t they?)
He said, when asked about astrology, he used to think it was true but doesn’t now. Jerry Yen is a Capricorn like him, isn’t he, but they aren’t alike. “Astrology is what other people say about you. You have to believe in the things you do.”
So he said and so I scrawled in my notes. It was a professional interview, not a personal conversation, and I didn’t feel free to stop him to say – I could have, I should have, said –
Lun-lun, you are so Capricorn lor. Your sun, Mercury and Mars are in Capricorn. You are a Capricorn talking the Capricorn talk and walking the Capricorn walk. Why do your albums sell by the million? Because you can’t bring yourself to release a record that doesn’t sell – that isn’t successful. You are a goat with your feet on the ground and your eyes on the prize. Some might call you cold and calculating – but not me. My moon is in Capricorn and I get you.
Jerry, poor Jerry, why isn’t he like you? Because his chart isn’t like yours. His planets aren’t aligned. He has a hard sun-Pluto aspect and isn’t good with transformation (he is “…prone to inner tension and negative, self-destructive behaviour…”). You know him, don’t you, and how negative he was when he shot to stardom? All the F4 fellows but him basked in it a bit. I had to write him and nag him to be less negative, the one and only time I wrote any star.
You, with your powerful sun-Mars conjunct, aren’t like him naturally. You have more willpower (“…you are enterprising and have powerful stores of energy that you can draw upon when needed…”). So although you and Jerry both began life as underachievers, as Capricorns do, you made the much smoother transit to overachieving.
You are such a superstar and it was written in your chart lor.
When asked about the title he said, “Many people are fascinated by astrology, aren’t they?” (Translation: My album is for the masses and they are fascinated by astrology, aren’t they?)
He said, when asked about astrology, he used to think it was true but doesn’t now. Jerry Yen is a Capricorn like him, isn’t he, but they aren’t alike. “Astrology is what other people say about you. You have to believe in the things you do.”
So he said and so I scrawled in my notes. It was a professional interview, not a personal conversation, and I didn’t feel free to stop him to say – I could have, I should have, said –
Lun-lun, you are so Capricorn lor. Your sun, Mercury and Mars are in Capricorn. You are a Capricorn talking the Capricorn talk and walking the Capricorn walk. Why do your albums sell by the million? Because you can’t bring yourself to release a record that doesn’t sell – that isn’t successful. You are a goat with your feet on the ground and your eyes on the prize. Some might call you cold and calculating – but not me. My moon is in Capricorn and I get you.
Jerry, poor Jerry, why isn’t he like you? Because his chart isn’t like yours. His planets aren’t aligned. He has a hard sun-Pluto aspect and isn’t good with transformation (he is “…prone to inner tension and negative, self-destructive behaviour…”). You know him, don’t you, and how negative he was when he shot to stardom? All the F4 fellows but him basked in it a bit. I had to write him and nag him to be less negative, the one and only time I wrote any star.
You, with your powerful sun-Mars conjunct, aren’t like him naturally. You have more willpower (“…you are enterprising and have powerful stores of energy that you can draw upon when needed…”). So although you and Jerry both began life as underachievers, as Capricorns do, you made the much smoother transit to overachieving.
You are such a superstar and it was written in your chart lor.
A little luxury
The news of M’s death broke in what was a bad week for me. I had to write a story about a Chinese painter’s gift of art to our Republic, which involved interviewing people who didn’t want to talk. As an interviewer as unwilling as my interviewees I didn’t want to talk to them too. So I had a weary week picking up the phone to call them while wishing they wouldn’t pick their phones up – while wishing I could get out of work, mourn for M and go live a little.
The irony of it wasn’t lost on me. There was M, snatched from life suddenly in her 50s, and here was the painter, deliberately delineating his legacy in his 80s. Life is random. Some people are lucky and have all the time to do all the things they want to do – to plan proper exits – others don’t. Time is a luxury.
So as soon as I was free from the story I went KTV-ing, twice in three days. I lined up meetings with as many friends as possible. I went to Kinokuniya and got Proust, all six books. I had a ceremonial lunch with a fellow friend of M’s – we had Asahi Super Dry in memory of her – to which I wore a new Prada-esque black lace sheath, price tag barely torn off. I had to be all dressed up, not only for M but also for me.
The irony of it wasn’t lost on me. There was M, snatched from life suddenly in her 50s, and here was the painter, deliberately delineating his legacy in his 80s. Life is random. Some people are lucky and have all the time to do all the things they want to do – to plan proper exits – others don’t. Time is a luxury.
So as soon as I was free from the story I went KTV-ing, twice in three days. I lined up meetings with as many friends as possible. I went to Kinokuniya and got Proust, all six books. I had a ceremonial lunch with a fellow friend of M’s – we had Asahi Super Dry in memory of her – to which I wore a new Prada-esque black lace sheath, price tag barely torn off. I had to be all dressed up, not only for M but also for me.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Stars
I have been publishing, unpublishing and republishing this post for a few nights now, which tells you one thing: I am obsessive. My birth chart, however, tells me another thing: There is a name for my obsessing and it is “Mars in Virgo”.
Astrology, if you ask me, is actually emotional physics. It is the study of celestial movements and positions and the effect that they have on emotional energy. It is not so much the horoscope that forecasts what will happen to you as the birth chart that maps where the sun, moon, planets and stars were when you were born – and shows how you happen to be who you are. You are too complex to be just one of the 12 sun signs in the simplified horoscope. You are also your moon sign (what you are like in your emotional life), your Venus sign (what you are like in love), your Mars sign (what you are like in lust, in action, in anger – when you are being a total animal), and so on. If you want one thing when you need another, if you say one thing when you mean another, if you love a man but can’t live with him, the push and pull may show in your birth chart.
The last time I was into birth charts, I was inspired by a Jeanette Winterson article on astrological truth. This time I am into them with S, my story-geek friend, so we can speak in astrological shorthand in discussions of stories and people (“Daoming Si, passionate, possessive, crazy jealous – Venus in Scorpio”). Along the way though I have found out quite a few things about myself, family, friends and Jay Chou – well, mostly about myself.
If I have ever been proud of how painstaking I can be about work, I am not now. Is a crab proud it can move sideways? Is a bird proud it can fly? Now I know I am a Mars in Virgo girl, I can’t be proud. When other people turn into total animals they are rams, bulls or Hulks. When I am a total animal I turn into a cranky old maid, fussing over spelling or rewriting an article yet again. I don’t do it because I am good at work. I do it because I do it. Now I know.
To get your birth chart drawn up, click here.
To read Jeanette Winterson on how she got her birth chart drawn up, click here.
Astrology, if you ask me, is actually emotional physics. It is the study of celestial movements and positions and the effect that they have on emotional energy. It is not so much the horoscope that forecasts what will happen to you as the birth chart that maps where the sun, moon, planets and stars were when you were born – and shows how you happen to be who you are. You are too complex to be just one of the 12 sun signs in the simplified horoscope. You are also your moon sign (what you are like in your emotional life), your Venus sign (what you are like in love), your Mars sign (what you are like in lust, in action, in anger – when you are being a total animal), and so on. If you want one thing when you need another, if you say one thing when you mean another, if you love a man but can’t live with him, the push and pull may show in your birth chart.
The last time I was into birth charts, I was inspired by a Jeanette Winterson article on astrological truth. This time I am into them with S, my story-geek friend, so we can speak in astrological shorthand in discussions of stories and people (“Daoming Si, passionate, possessive, crazy jealous – Venus in Scorpio”). Along the way though I have found out quite a few things about myself, family, friends and Jay Chou – well, mostly about myself.
If I have ever been proud of how painstaking I can be about work, I am not now. Is a crab proud it can move sideways? Is a bird proud it can fly? Now I know I am a Mars in Virgo girl, I can’t be proud. When other people turn into total animals they are rams, bulls or Hulks. When I am a total animal I turn into a cranky old maid, fussing over spelling or rewriting an article yet again. I don’t do it because I am good at work. I do it because I do it. Now I know.
To get your birth chart drawn up, click here.
To read Jeanette Winterson on how she got her birth chart drawn up, click here.
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