In the Style of Mint

Don’t like the word “passion” — it’s overused, abused, and fused into every single unimaginative tagline out there.

Don’t like the word “clinch” — as in “they clinched the gold medal” — it gives me the feeling of reaching into someone’s pocket and “clinching” my fingers onto a wallet or cellphone or flashlight.

And by all that is good, one does not call anything an “induction session” unless it involves some form of hypnosis or brainwashing followed by the recitation of communist ideals.

Thursday nights are the bastard child of the nightlife week — just after Ladies’ Night on Wednesday, just before friday night when everyone gets to party till morning. Nightlife being as a social event, by which we mean standing at the corner of the club ogling creepily at members of the opposite (or same) sex and socializing by bouncing on your knees waving your hands in the air within your 15cm × 15cm space on the dance floor while bumping into everyone else around you, the satisfaction of dressing up in as few clothes as you can possibly get away with and howling like an escaped orang-utan after getting rat-faced on three sips of Bacardi is directly dependent on how many people are there to see how “daring” you are, a wonderful term which means “I’d laugh at you if I weren’t dressed/doing exactly the same.” In other words, Thursday nights suck. That’s why all the Bashes get Thursday night.

Finally I feel my holidays starting to kick in. With Chingay, Cheerobics, and Dance Uncensored over and my exams concluded, for the first time since I started university last year have I actually had time to wake up at 8am without an alarm, read all morning, play PC games all afternoon, and laze about at night before retiring comfortably at midnight. As they say, this is the life.

But then of course I just need to open my door and walk out to be accosted by the other Raggers in hall and be reminded why I’m reading and playing and lounging about in hall rather than reading and playing and lounging about at home. It’s the calm before the storm, that’s to be sure, and without revealing too much, let’s just say you can already hear the rumbles. Which is another way to say that my holidays are going bye-bye even as they’ve just started. Such is the life of a Rag Choreographer.

Someone said my life is damn sad the other day; another said I’d sold my soul to hall. And the truth is that I’m not going to deny these accusations. But I can’t agree either. For the past three years I’ve most vehemously spat that Singapore is the only place in the world where you see kids in uniform every single day of the year no matter how holy or unholy the day is. Today I’m still going to declare that Singapore is still the only place in the world where you see kids in uniform every single day of the year no matter how holy or unholy the day is — only with a little less vehemence. And spitting.

I know myself. Holidays are great — but another two months of this and I’ll go mad. I sure as hell nearly did in the eight month hiatus between A-levels and university. Only post-workout exhaustion from my almost daily trips to the gym kept me from wandering too far into that plain of despair. Let’s not do that ever again.

So because no one will accept first year Economics students for internships and I want to try my hand at Rag before I leave hall (which may or may not be soon depending how fast I burn out), Discover Our Passion, Witness Our Spirit.

Onward.

This captures the moment quite nicely:

Best Sunshine Award, for smiles and enthusiasm. Best Team Spirit Award. And best of all, first runners-up for Cheerobics National Cheerleading Competition 2007 Open Category.

We came without any expectations, save that we would just give a good show and let the other more experienced teams wow the crowd. We came tired and unrested, having spent the previous night rushing our flags out after our tailor screwed us over. We came really just hoping to get it over with so we could get our lives back after four months of training.

Then the four months of training decided to give a little extra back.

All the blood, sweat, and tears (and believe me, there was blood). All the injuries, physical and not. All the midterms thrown to Hell.

It Was All Worth It.

I am perfectly aware that it’s been dead silent here the last few weeks and I apologize nothing for it. I blame Chingay, and the run-up to Chingay — and thank goodness it’s over.

I could talk about the madness of being a Chingay choreographer - endlessly and incessantly. I could vent about the nightmare of teaching and managing 46 performers, each with their own very unique and sometimes bizarre definitions of attendance and commitment. I could weep over the drama that is Chingay — from the float contractors not installing a sound system into our float until I noticed hours before rehearsals to lights flaring into flames on our float ours before performance time. And I could regale you with the tale of how I nearly died several times when the float driver forgot to use the handbrake and the float almost steamrolled me over.

But I shan’t.

Instead, let us bask in the warm glow of a job well done and fond memories of performing on Orchard Road. I was watching the Prestige again last night and I smirked at the scene where Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) bathes in the worship of his audience from under the stage after he unveils his New Transported Man trick. You see the guy in the white shirt running close to the driver? The guy who then kneels in front of the float to minimize his presence?

That’s me under the stage, taking my bows.

PS. Lest there be doubts as to whether I actually was part of this performance, watch out for my (full) name on the Artistic Directors list! Sorry. Performers got to photo-whore in their costumes, I only get to name-whore.

The trouble is that sometimes I really do wonder if much of what I do is a waste. Like dance and cheer. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never regretted for a single moment all the time I’ve spent in dance rooms and on gym mats. If anything, dance and cheer and through them all the friends I’ve met have kept me sane and functioning in the face of the damnation that is daily life. More than that, they’ve kept me happy. And they’ve kept me living.

But when this vacation from reality is over, when the scholarships run out and my grim march through education finally comes to its end, where will dance be in my life? Where will I find the time to cheer and stunt and throw myself into the trajectories of flying cheerleaders? Never mind my inexplicable obsession with sacrificing my life on the altar of investment banking — if I really do make it into professional economics, dance and cheer will be crowded out completely by the breakneck rush of the rat race. And as much as I love dance and cheer, I love economics and the good life even more; there’s little chance for a cheesy dance movie epiphany here.

So it’s hard when you know that what you love now you can only enjoy because you’re still on vacation, and that when you’ve checked out of your hotel and packed your bags, it’s time to go home away from the sunny beaches and charming towns you thought you would never leave. It’s hard to think that maybe, just maybe, someday you’ll be trudging back to the office shooting a double-shot grande vanilla latte for consecutive hour of work number 23, and suddenly chance upon kids with bright faces, flashing sleek choreography and glowing with sweat and smiles. And maybe you’ll stop and stare, and for the strangest moment feel something stirring deep inside, trying to surface and breathe again, to tell you something you’ve forgotten so long ago once upon a time.

But only for a moment. You’ll shake your head and watch, blank expression, blank impression, and twitch a smile for the idealism of youth. And continue on your way, beats fading into traffic, lyrics drowning in cellphone chatter and rush-hour footsteps, double-shot grande vanilla latte and the next hour of work the only things left on your mind now — and the rest of your life.

To most people, I am the Economics major studying in Singapore who’s also a dancer and cheerleader (and an irritatingly irregular blogger). That’s all right; to me, that’s partly what I am too and I am exactly what I want to be right now. But to quite a few individuals, I am a waste. An epitome of all that could have been but refused to live up to its potential due to its own maddening stubbornness. A corpse rotting in a ditch by a dirt road, dust settling on blank eyes staring at nothing. A waste.

I am studying Economics, which I find absolutely fascinating and, if you insist, a hell more valuable and relevant to society than any of the thousand doors on offer in the sciences. There is a woman who still insists that I would make an excellent doctor; I won’t disagree, but I prefer not to be ensnared back into that conversation anymore. My mother still thinks I am being stupid for choosing such an esoteric major and that I will absolutely flounder and die if I don’t pick up something more “marketable” like a second degree in Business Administration. And so on.

And then when I say I am a dancer, some people are simply taken aback, like I just announced that I have something nasty and infectious fermenting nicely in my crotch. I don’t even try to mention that I’m a cheerleader (or worse, was a cheerleading captain).These people remember me from the time before I picked up dance and cheer, when I was still a (possibly) hotshot debater. Debate is nice, and respectable, and “marketable.” Dance is just… a waste. And cheer! Don’t get them started! I tried explaining to my parents that I was extremely busy playing Chingay choreographer and they just went, “What are you doing? Who do you think you are? You think you’re going to graduate and become a full-time dancer?”

And so on.

The truth is that everyone thinks they know what’s best for you. They want to choose your career, arrange your marriage, genetically-engineer your kids. And some of them will in fact have very good ideas and it’s worth listening to them if only to understand your own choices better. A few may even be right.

But it’s still your life — to live, to soar, to fuck up. You’re living it. And no one else can take that away from you.

We are 2007, and with everyone reflecting over the ups and downs of the year past and boldly announcing their resolutions to make this one much better than the last, the only thing I can think of is: why bother? So the Earth is again where it was relative to the sun 365.242 days ago; should I break out the champagne? (apparently yes) While crossing out the last day of the calender and unwrapping a shiny new 2007 calender may make it seem so, we do not “cross out” a block of time and “unwrap” the next. Time flows regardless of our grasping attempts to make sense of it; New Year’s or not, tomorrow is just another day like today, no matter how many tonnes of fireworks you belch into the sky to pretend otherwise.

Likewise, I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions either. Seriously, if the only way you’ll get up and change your life is if a Muse of the New Year wanders by to whisper inspiration into your ears, forget it, just give up already. The aftermath of January 1st is always a boneyard of gym memberships untouched, Get Rich Instantly And Never Have To Work Again books unread, and condoms unused. We like making resolutions because we always think it’s easier than it actually is. It’s proven: our brains are simply neurologically bad at recalling the true unpleasantness of certain experiences. We tell ourselves it’s not that bad, not that difficult. Coupled with the heady madness of New Year’s Day, it’s a veritable bonanza for the self-improvement industry.

You don’t need to wait for a New Year to change your life. If you’re serious, today and now is all that counts. But hey, who am I to judge? After all, 1 out of 10, or even a 100, is still pretty good odds to “invest” in a wild New Year’s resolution, oui? By all means, get fit, get rich, get laid. Don’t worry, I don’t do “I told you so” looks. I just prefer to roll my eyes.

It’s the first sunny day since the monsoon surge hit Singapore with 2 weeks of hellish weather and it’s a glad change to feel the sun warming my skin again. I swear I’ve become slightly cadaverish from being caged indoors almost all the time and fleeing under veiled and pouring skies the rest, forced to survive on instant noodles and canned fish as I had not the luxury of time, much less an umbrella, to venture out for food in between back-to-back cheerleading, dance, and Chingay sessions. But perhaps, for all my lack and scorn of superstition, I can relax my biases just for today and entreat the uplift in the skies as an omen of good things to come.

The month of December has been pretty much everything I expected of my term break — that it would be anything but a break. I shan’t fill this post with repetitive drivel of the injuries and frustrations I have suffered this past month nor of the endless training sessions and camps and technique classes, but suffice to say I actually cannot wait for classes to start again, for at least they would bar the Powers That Be from devouring the daylight hours of my week — as they have been wont to do without hesitation nor mercy*!

The only relief I have earned for all this has been my very comfortable examination results, of which I am already being terribly rude to mention. We shall speak no further of such impoliteness, lest my ego take full reign of my words.

If you have sensed a shift in my writing, I blame completely Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, of which I have finished the first three of eight books and am still thousands of pages away from completion. I have fallen in love with this series and I declare the Baroque Cycle — comprising the books Quicksilver, King of the Vagabonds, Odalisque, Bonanza, Juncto, Solomon’s Gold, Currency, and The System of the World — my all-time favorite books ever (for now). If you trust my well-honed literary tastes, the bloated immodesty that is my intellectual sophistication, as well as the growing library in my room and its accompanying dwindling bank account that is proof of both the former, then you will read the Baroque Cycle without another moment’s delay.

Dammit, I wish I could write like Neal Stephenson. Fuck. I’m actually jealous. I will now cry myself to sleep, and continue reading the Baroque Cycle while offering my tears as worship to Stephenson’s divine wordcraft.

* Forgive the jest, if you would be offended; you know well enough that as Chingay choreographer, I would not hesitate myself to hold endless Chingay practices and whip my Performers into shape.**

** And you should also know that this callous remark is also a jest not to be taken seriously, Performers, for as you probably know by now, I have nothing but love for all of you and would never think to inflict such grievous torments upon you, yet as I have said again and again, our day of reckoning draws close and our preparations are still much in lack, so sacrifices must be made and… (9 paragraphs deleted)

Why do we choose the names we do? Like our email addresses — my contact lists are filled with some of the most curious (as well as the most inane) email addresses. A handful are, without imagination but quite arguably with more sense, obviously people’s names or obvious nicknames; a larger bunch obviously attempts at being cool but usually failing miserably; and a whole smorgasbord of emails so exotic and colorful you could write a blog post about them.

I know I chose “salmonfire” as my email address (and subsequent, occasional pseudonym) as a play on the then-popular webhosting service Angelfire. Toss in the icthyoid influences of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and you have “salmonfire.”

“Byran” is a story anyone in the Malaysean family can tell you with amazing variations and deviations, so I shan’t bother here. “In the Style of Mint” was, embarassingly, a mistranslation. When Ocean’s 12 came out, I just fell in love so much with the uber-cool laser dance scene that I had to find the accompanying music to that scene (which is admittedly still quite tame — I know someone who took up capoeira after watching that scene). The track was called “The A La Menthe” by Nikkfurie of La Caution. I thought the “The” was the English “the.” So I translated “A La Menthe” to “In the Style of Mint.” Thinking this was a pretty slick name, I quickly took it up.

Only later did I discover that the actual name of the song, with accents, is “thé à la menthe.” Which translates to “mint tea.” And has a damn cool music video by La Caution. But I am still in love with the Style of Mint.

So why do you choose the names you do?

“Thé A La Menthe” by La Caution