End of the line. I rode Singapore's new MRT line out to the bitter end, Punggol, today, just for grins. I wasn't the only explorer on the train. For one old Chinese woman it was her first time in a subway, apparently. When the train started moving she pointed at the concrete walls sliding by the window and grinned hugely, revealing rows of neglected teeth. It was really sweet, actually.

On the way out, I happened to read in Bill Bryson's "Made In America" how they used to build amusement parks at the ends of the railway lines to encourage people to use them. Well, when the train reached the end and we all got out, staring around blankly like we just got dropped off the mother ship, I realized that this wasn't so much an amusement park so much as a WHOLE LOTTA NOTHIN'. Just a treeless waste with a whole lot of featureless HDB housing highrises. It looked like Communism with a splash of orange. Why would people live out here? I walked around a bit, then headed back.

Yet another photo of me at Disney, with my mother and sibs this time. Love those glasses on my mom. My brother and sister don't look all that happy to be there.

Name-dropping. I just learned that one of the stars of C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation, Jorja Fox, went to my high school. While I was there, too. Earlier, she was even in the excellent Memento. Were this a proper name drop, I would right now be hinting that we used to date. As it is, I don't remember her at all.

Writing wrongs. I've been doing some proofreading of a proposal by someone whose writing skills are, shall we say, lacking. Incoherent ideas, run-on sentences, and rampantly misplaced punctuation feature prominently. I much enjoy proofreading, probably because I get to point out other people's errors. I'm generally considered a top-notch technical writer (my college professor on the subject even asked if I was looking for work). Outside of tech writing, though, I feel totally hot and cold. And lately, just cold.

When I'm writing well, the whole idea is there in my head beforehand, and the words just spill out, like I'm taking dictation. At other times, though, I just have some random collection of thoughts, and start writing anyway, hoping a common thread will pop up. Like I'm doing now.

I used to dabble in the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre, which is essentially a creative writing forum frequented by some extremely bright people (and plenty of dummards, to be sure). Despite the anonymous nature of the internet, participating there was often nerve-wracking (especially since many there could deliver absolutely withering put-downs). But I learned more about writing there than the sum total of my schooling ever provided.

The constant pressure to be "on", while self-imposed, is likely why I stopped visiting there. Now I'm worried that I've plateaued. Exactly in line with my guitar-playing ability, I just don't feel my writing has improved at all in the last ten years.

As a kick in the pants, I was considering entering the National Novel Writing Month this year (like this Dean character did last year). But I don't think I'll find the time. I think deep down I don't want to write a novel, I want to have written a novel.

So I guess I'm stuck where I'm at, for now. And you, my suffering readers, will have to endure.

Dish fairies. I've been known to do the dishes, as the photo I posted in the last blog will show you. However, I usually leave it to the dish fairies to put the dishes away after they dry. They seem to have been on strike lately, though, starting at around the time Marjorie went back home. Now dishes are piling up in the drying rack. What did I do to get them angry? How do you lure them back?

Awwww... My blog about Disney prompted my parents to scan in this photo of me doing the dishes when we stayed at Fort Wilderness. All that beautiful hair, *sniff*. Strange how I remember all the little details in the picture; the bowls, the dishrag, the dining canopy -- like I can still smell them.

Things that I've learned, decided, or figured out lately. The historical facts are from Bill Bryson's Made In America:

Sam Adams, of beer fame, was actually responsible for propagandizing the Boston Massacre, inciting a popular uprising, blowing the facts of the case totally out of proportion.

Starlings, those pesky little speckled black birds, were introduced to the US by a well-meaning but utterly misguided professor who was trying to populate the new world with all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare.

If I ever write a newspaper column, it'll be called Mark My Words.

When I put out my best-of album, it'll be called A Fat Lot of Good.

Listening to old Built To Spill albums makes me happy.

Curry is actually not a plant. Not per se -- there is a curry plant used for its leaves, but curry like you find in most dishes is actually a mix of spices, including but not limited to pepper, ginger, garlic, coriander seed, tumeric, and cumin.

My dad is the best. Happy Father's Day, Dad...

LA Story: There's some story/legend about one's experience with L.A. based on one's first celebrity sighting here. My first LA celebrity sighting happened at dinner this evening, Jerry Springer, don't know what that means about my future with this town. He (Jerry) was in da house at Border Grill in Santa Monica (which I highly recommend by the way).
LA's a fun town. I've seen as much of the town as my hosts could pack into two and a half days. And, so far, I'm dealing with my jet lag pretty well.
Gossip for the kids: J-Lo and Ben may be married now. You heard it here first, from a potentially reliable source (could be crap though).
Also, I was privy to a phone conversation between my very good friend and Elayne Boozler (the Elayne that Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character was based on) at the Getty Center today. Pretty cool yo.
Being back in the States these past couple of days just makes me want to be here (semi-permanently) again so much more.

There are lots of foot reflexology centers in town, usually featuring a wacky sign like this showing the link between places on your feet and your various vital organs. I of course put no stock in it as a science, but I did visit one of these places on Friday night for a foot massage. They do like the rough stuff here. It was pinchy and hurty when they worked my toes, but I got more into it as the session wore on.

Learned a new term: "slurp shop". This is what they call those small food outlets specializing in noodles, where you see lines of customers crammed onto tiny tables and chairs, bent over their bowls of soup. I had a good meal last night at one of them; then, after a failed attempt at (geek alert) finding a geocache, I checked out some live music at the Singapore Street Festival, then went to watch the skateboarders for a while at the nearby public skate park. I miss that stuff. If it didn't hurt so darn much I'd still be riding...