Histrionics

My first encounter with theatre was the musical "Phantom Of The Opera". It was playing at the Kallang theatre and I actually had a circle seat all to myself. The experience was electrifying to say the least. Up close and personal, savouring the drama in multi-dimension, with booming vocals, songs and dance was one not easily replicated on a flat two-dimensional screen such as a cinema.

My other theatrical experience was with the Tang Quartet at the Victoria Concert Hall. They were young, vibrant and the gang of four played so marvellously well on their strings, each musical piece was classically rendered. Too bad I can't remember what composition these were.

I even watched a local drama entitled "Diary of A Mad Woman", a role fleshed out so successfully by M/s Loo, a dentist. She even parodied our then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew as he can only inimitably be. The woman wasn't really mad. She did stuff differently and just thought she was being watched.

I will pay through the nose if "Joseph the Techni-color DreamCoat" should ever hit town again. Regrettably I had missed out on this one chance to watch a bliblical musical.

I didn't know trolls were connected with Scandinavian folklore. This is like a little blight on a snowy white land of the Midnight sun. I was imagining that if my first crush was with Gabriel, a Eurasian, whom I was hypnotised by his matt of shiny golden hair, if that signals a return to my first love when I fly off to Scandinavia. Will this mean closing a final chapter in my love life, back to my roots kinda thingtummy.

I was fascinated and amused too when I first touched a copper-blond doll when I was a child. This was a hand-me-down, thanks to an aunt who I am positive, must have worked for some Nordic-European-American families as a live-in amah. There were no shortage of toys like Fisher-Price musical wind-up toys, Beano, DC , Marvel and Norse Gods comics at various times.

This week-end live-with-us aunt was to be the other woman in our family strife, leading to much anguish and enmity in and around the home especially with Mom.

The doll's hair was thick and silky to the touch. This was the first thing I reach out to feel, mind you, besides being mesmerized with its movable blue eyes. It was so much like the European boys I see in town or on the trains.

A little research reveals that Fisher Price is tied in with Mattel which makes the Barbie dolls. That explains the association with the doll. It is a 75 year old company, about as old as Walt Disney.

Our first color television set was an European model, Sierra ( a brand that I cannot find now and do not know which country it is from - Sweden or Switzerland). It is one of those elongated,wooden, sturdy sort of television with sliding doors, like Grundig, its German contemporary, which is still around even today. This is way before Japan technology revolutionised cars and home electronics with its steely looks.

Therefore I think our contact with the American-European world must have gone a long way even before now.

Before you go thinking that I am asking for the world, please stop. I never was, to date. But everyone around you wants to make you feel out-of-step. What can moi do but to retaliate? I mean I am not asking for plush furnishings at work but neither am I saying a dingy, grimy, Legionaired or windowless work environment is conducive. Any natural light cut off can only mean a non-diurnal critter, living its miserable existence in a hellhole.

If you don't allow me to operate an education service here , work for a credible one on the basis of a degree , deny me a roof over me head , an adopted child or a civil union, you don't expect me to sit and watch those who do provide an "education" gets fattened with wealth, live in opulence, flaunt a brood and engage in polygamy. If it is "education" they provide, then dung is chocolate, urine is Coca Cola and semen is milk. It is as simple a logic as that.

By the way if your dog barks and growls at strangers , it coud mean that it isn't a properly trained pet. Thought you might just want to know and keep the leash on it, just in case.

Merry Christmas all the same, whatever that means to you.