Dee-Rob

Last day in Singapore for this stretch. We’re taking an “almost as good as the first class” bus to Kuala Lumpur. So tonight, we dine with the KL relations.

Pretty much, this trip will consist of eating with various factions of the family involving various factions of cuisine. I think last night M. was indulging me. We went to the one restaurant on Orchard Road in Singapore’s hard core shopping district (and pretty much all of Singapore is about the shopping. In one word, Singapore = Mall) where white people were sitting. In fact, pretty much the whole clientele were of the pasty variety.

Earlier, we had a Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel (also a wholy Caucasion holding), where they were invented.

My coin-paid internet access is down to five minutes.

Rather enjoyed four days away from toil. Here’s some pictures to show the festivities:

Weekend of Thanksgiving.

Only other thing I forgot to write about is the ugliness I overheard sort of saw whilst loitering in the Macy’s fragrance department. Shouting voices brought a few curiousity seekers (or nosy parkers) such as myself to crane our necks across purses and cosmetics.

What I ended up seeing was a young woman in a backpack, plaid jacket and pigtails absolutely melting down screaming at a dude with short dreads, whose buddies seemed to be trying to pull him away from her direction. He kept wiggling away and had some retorts of his own before the guys around him gathered him up and away again.

I’m pretty sure the chick was Asian and the dude was African American. Any way you slice it though, you hear one person screaming “nigger” this and that over and fucking over again, punctuated with a “Shut up, bitch,” and it ain’t pretty. Nope, it’s damn ugly.

So last weekend, I was on suicide watch. We spent a day at the mall, where I was ostensibly searching for something appropriate to wear to the fancy holiday part of M.’s employer. Last year found us all dressed up and completely trapped in traffic.

I thought it might portend a better omen to start with a new outfit. But at the mall the clothes neatly divided into two categories — complete whore of Babylon for the 25 and younger set or “Jesus, why bother?” frumpiness for those of us still living post here’s my cooch, I just checked out of the clinic and the chlamydia is clear. Seriously, I’m in my 40s, I’m not dead. I don’t want to dress like either an ex-nun or an extra from the finest in San Fernando Valley’s other film industry.

I actually tried on silk separates, a top and a skirt, in a festive holiday, satin sheen, looked in the mirror and thought, “Fucking Christ, a satin sack.” It may as well have been burlap. By the end of the weekend, I had given up all hope of not looking like the mother of the bride in whatever evening where I could find.

M. offered I could where something with black dress pants, like maybe a fashion-y, stylish tuxedo jacket or velvet jacket. I was equating that look to Ellen and Portia at the Oscars.

I embrace the friends of Sappho, but, yeah, not really my thing.

At work, though, I bitched about my dilemma, and was reminded by the chick from Paris that San Francisco is not a city without hope, or fashion. Although, SF fashion tends towards scarves and layers, because it’s fucking cold and/or unpredictable in that there city with its fog and bay and all, and a certain kind of casual that I can’t describe but you know when you see it. (Check out “Smug Alert” from South Park. About five minutes in an beyond, they capture the essence of SF and the Bay Area.)

So the French chick, who clocks in about the same number of years I do on the planet, made a few solid recommendations. Strolls around Hayes Valley and Haight-Ashbury, I was boutiqued out and poorer. I also discovered labels like Cop Copine and Lauren Vidal. For a couple of hundred bucks and surviving the withering stares of a snobbish sales chick, who I fucking swear was judging me and my pasty, chubby whiteness from her place of adorably and petite-ly and beautifully Asian superiority, I think I’ll look alright at the fiesta. An asymmetric hemline with an under layer of kind of raggedy silk sets off the basic black cotton dress above.

I won’t look French, but I also won’t look 80. (Not that there’s anything wrong with octogenarians.)