Casa De Shao

Category: General

  • Thirty

    Thirty

    A cousin’s wedding – May ’25. Friends of the couple, dancing to Dancing Queen. Capella Ballroom.

    I’d imagined my thirtieth to be some kind of grand affair; after listening to weeks upon weeks of Harmontown, I thought that at some point I’d have the chutzpah to host a faux talk show.

    I’d invite my friends on stage and do bits where I tease them, celebrate me, celebrate them and clap them offstage.

    We’d do it in that Fort Canning event space, and I’d hire a sound team? And I could spend like 6,000 dollars for the food and location and the equipment, and that would be a fancy night, and I would group up my friends in their cliques and everyone would be beaming at me, tux and shit, onstage. 

    My friends would do lighting effects using flashlights, and I would make the multimedia, and at some point we could rehearse and sync up my theatrical shit with the onscreen shit and it would wow everyone. 

    Everyone would clap my back as they left, in gowns and tuxes, and people would say “haha, wasn’t that such a wonderful evening, Shao’s birthday?” “Yeah, what a great guy” 

    Perhaps I would gain some kind of renown, enough to be an NCMP, enough to be a marriage officiant guy, and people would recommend me to other couples, saying “I recommend this guy, Shao, he made us cry during our ROM, and the aunties love him”. 

    Maybe I’d show up at all the arts events, and whisper the same thing to every artist to not give up on their dreams. 

    And perhaps at my funeral, all the people I’ve crushed on would circle up around my coffin, like the seven dwarves, and they would share about their favourite parts about me and their regrets and how foolish they were to not date/continue dating me, and how that since I’m going to die, the world would be a worse place, and they’d do a North Korean wail and the audience would wail and-

    Pause.

    I would open one mischievous, twinklin’ eye at my actual wife (which I eloped with at 31) and wink, and she would hit a lever, and the coffin would stand up and fall apart and I’d have a hat and cane and look a lot like the monopoly-man and do a surprise jig, and the In Remembrance banner behind me would fall apart and say

    “I Remember-DANCE cum Celebrating an Orgasmic 130th”

    and I’d rehash my 30th with modern references, like how everyone tried to modernise “We Didn’t Start The Fire”.

    We can’t modernise “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, though, because there’s not enough content since that song to make a new one, we can’t retread what Billy Joel already sang about and anything else would just feel satirical and pointless.

    You can’t just repeat the line with the pope, that’s just derivative.

    30 was the deadline for me to start being a mature adult. Like the talk show idea, it was a blurry, ill-defined image of what should be to make my life better from then on.

    I thought I’d have my shit together naturally, as an effect of time and maturity. You know. Get a relationship without needing to try. They say relationships should happen naturally. 

    Han Cheng and I hung out once at some Soka event he invited me to. This was fresh off of uni. Five years later, I went to his wedding and knew only Ray Yan and Weibo, and sat at a table of HCI people.

    Han Cheng was still Han Cheng, and I watched him on-stage making cutesy corny jokes with his new wife, through green-tinted stained glass (metaphorically) from the table furthest from the front (geographically). That’s the same guy, I thought, and he’s wedded now, so logically, there must be something wrong with me. 

    I guess I haven’t really been trying as hard as I think I have, and some aspects of being in a relationship scare me enough into self sabotage.

    I haven’t especially been trying to connect with people on dating apps, I haven’t been trying to take better care of myself, I haven’t been trying very much in that regard at all.

    It’s funny that in spite of everything in the past year, this relationship shit is the thing that’s making me write a post at last. I guess it’s also the fact that this flight home from Yogyakarta follows the 4D3N trip I was on with Yunus.

    The 4D3N trip followed after the girl saying “I don’t want to waste your time on not being available for you, you know?” 

    I don’t know. Went out with this girl, thrice. Polar opposites. 

    Her? Cute, studious, clumsy. Methodical, family-oriented, serious. Experience-chasing. Interested. Incredible. She started the conversations.

    Somehow we had an astounding amount of differences. She didn’t like being asked about her days. She didn’t like people telling her to take a break. I liked both of those things.

    We had one misunderstanding a day. She loves canto pop and R&B, I don’t. She’s not a coward. She has a sparse desk, mine is filled with cat reporter figurines.

    The one day on her work trip she didn’t reply, it tore me to pieces. 

    We met when she got back. After suggesting that we had a picnic, she didn’t reply till the morning of (not a great texter, I reassured myself),

    She apologised for not preparing anything (I washed and brought grapes and hummus and crackers and made cucumber mint lime water, because she said she ate healthy). 

    After a game of Splendor (she won by one point), we looked that the lame Botanic Gardens pond, and I asked if she wanted to continue. She seemed conflicted and apologised and said that right now, she couldn’t work through us because she only had space in her life for her incoming tea-based startup. 

    “Nothing you did wrong or could’ve done different,” She reassured. 

    I don’t know. I felt a real good future between us between our taunts between rounds of purchasing properties using gems. 

    I asked if, in a few months, when her startup had settled, we could give it a shot again, and she said yes, but in that tone. 

    (Yunus called bullshit. He says that she’s just making an excuse because she doesn’t like me enough. 

    It annoys me. I tell him that I believe her. Because, if he was right, then I could’ve done something different, and that would kill me.)

    Then Yunus and I went to Jakarta the next day, and I put Capricorn on loop. 

    Who was I supposed to send my hotel room tour to now? How much should I have cared? Did I care too much about something that barely began? Am I the only person doing this? Who can I care about now?

    This feels empty, my envelopes have no addresses any more. 

    We had a six hour train ride this trip. The weather was disgusting, the views weren’t exceptional, but six hours without being expected to do fuck about shit? 

    I think that’s what I need. To shut off any expectations. I didn’t contact my family, I barely texted my friends, and I could finish Alita: Battle Angel. 

    I don’t know. At some point, I felt myself unfold, the crease lines disappearing. None of these problems mean anything when you are hurtling towards East Java at 113kph.

    Farmers in the field at 113kph, rice paddies at 113kph,

    I don’t know. I have a fuckload of notifications on my phone and I can’t care less about 

    – if Blastoise is ready to have a good night’s sleep

    – if bdr invited me to a mushroom rally

    – anything on the Straits Times, really

    – what tasks I have to do for improv

    – story notifications on IG

    – Facebook birthdays

    – shopee/laz sales

    Maybe it’s my Eat Pray Love era. 

    We’re landing soon. Indonesia this whole time was me coming to terms with our drivers hurtling on the wrong side of the road towards tens of motorcyclists. If a rogue airplane wing sliced through my neck, I hope I can say something cool before it got to my vocal chords.

    p.s. I mean, I got over most of this, it’s like 3 weeks old, 4 weeks old.

    P. S. S. 6/7 weeks.

    But I still gotta post it. I guess. I don’t really give myself time to write this much any more. But it’s like outdated. I hope this other date is gonna work out.

    I’m doing better. Maybe drinking a bit much. Apprenticeship’s gonna end soon. I’ve gotten a recommendation to the fifth floor. Things get better.

    Apprenticeship ended. I’m down with COVID. There’s a new girl I’m talking to. I’ve got a good feeling about it. As usual. But this is different. As usual!

  • A Post Written On Bus 53 While Opposite The Buff Chinese Guy With A Zangief Beard

    A Post Written On Bus 53 While Opposite The Buff Chinese Guy With A Zangief Beard

    Tokyo Skytree, Floor 450, Mar 23

    That’s right, fuck the 6 year streak of post titles that lengthen by one every year.

    Scoot over a bit. I’m cramped in my seat. I know. It’s one of those seat arrangements where 2 benches face each other, there should be enough space.

    That point would be rendered moot if you were to look up to witness the Buff Chinese Guy With A Zangief Beard. He’s seated opposite me.

    Don’t look NOW, you fucking idiot. He knows we’re talking about him. You used the words “Buff Chinese Guy” with “A Zangief Beard”. Fine. WE used the words, “Buff Chinese Guy” with “A Zangief Beard”.

    How am I supposed to know if he’s looking at us? I’m not looking at him.

    No duh that’s why I wrote this post. I stopped wasting my time playing Tsum Tsum because 1) there was no more visible progress in that game, which I had been playing all day, 2) playing Tsum Tsum looks like I’m sneakily filming the Buff Chinese Guy with a Zangief Beard and 3) he looks like he could suplex me into the wheelchair bay if I were to do 2).

    You aren’t saying shit, but I know you are agreeing with me that the Zangief Beard is certainly interesting. And that look is asking several questions.

    Why talk about his race? Chinese guys can’t grow beards beyond a Fu Manchu.

    Why buff? To emphasise how if I were to film his Zangief beard, he’d reach over, grab my shirt and suplex me into the wheelchair bay.

    I’ve NEVER seen ANYONE with a beard this three-pronged and shoulder-resting as he. The cherry on top is that he’s Chinese.

    I just want to watch his beard. I want to witness how it brambles and trails from his undefined chin, and how the roads and avenues of facial hair cruise down his neck to his shoulders and chest, under the canopy of an army singlet, exiting the freeway of his shorts onto his furred knees, pointing toward mine, a causeway of ape to man, hairy limbed to bald legged.

    I wonder if he is thinking of me, my person shuffling in the seat uncomfortably as I avoid his eyes. I wonder what a beard feels like – I wonder if he washes it after brushing his teeth.

    I wonder if his parents abhor it, I wonder if his girlfriend loves him for it, and pulls on it in during frenzied climaxes. I wonder if his identity is the beard, if the beard is a depressive defeat from time, or if it stems from genetic abnormality, or if it’s just cool.

    I wonder if my high distinction was a fluke, back in Sec 3, when I took the UNSW Creative Writing exam. I wonder why it has followed me, a speck of glitter on my shoe that reminds me that I AM someone who can write, but chose not to.

    I know it was a choice to hold onto this tiny label, as an I am better than you, but I wonder if it is time to let go of the High Distinction. I wonder how many more labels I have foisted upon myself, glittering when I meet my potential and blinding my eyes whenever I don’t. How do you let go of all of them? They are a mass, an ugly mass of shoulds and potentials, only discoverable when you put your face really really close and discover in blinding, seething realisations that you are not an actor, great improviser, fast coder, etc. Etc. Etc.

    —

    Oh my god I was going to alight the bus and he grabbed me.

    Instead of suplexing me into the wheelchair bay into a 76 combo finisher, he passed me my wallet, which had slipped out my pocket, because I was squirming, because his hairy Zangief thighs (/positive) were right in front of mine, so actually it was his fault, so I guess I don’t need to thank him for what was essentially his responsibility.

    And that’s how you start a new hiatus.

  • I’m Back, I’m Back, I’m Back (Twenty-Eight)

    I’m Back, I’m Back, I’m Back (Twenty-Eight)

    Written 23rd Sept 2022

    This is kind of alarming, because there have been multiple times when I told myself that I would write something on this here blog, and suddenly it’s a year since my last birthday post.

    If you’re a fan of thematic repetition, I’m currently transferring files to my hard drive. (I was zipping files last year. You can literally just click the previous post button. I can’t be bothered.)

    28 feels like a fuck closer to 30. Like those giant buckets at a water park that fill up so slowly.

    Once these buckets of age tip over, BLAM! You’re youngish again at 30.

    I’m slated to be part of this event called [REDACTED because it’s quite a unique name that is easily searchable] , held on the VRChat platform.

    Basically, 10 Singaporean and 10 Korean artists were given 6 months to create world-based art / art-based worlds on the platform, and us at JUDE Studios are like the technological advisors or something?

    Earlier in Jan, I even led a workshop for them to learn how to make worlds in VRChat, as well as how to use Unity.

    Naturally, they all waited till this week to finish their projects, because they’re artists. And-

    What? Oh.

    Yes. I haven’t quit yet.

    During ICT in Feb, everyone asked me the same thing.

    “Eh I thought you were gonna quit last year?”

    😡

    I kept saying that I would, but…

    30 minutes left. What a way to start 28.

    1st Oct

    It’s

    21st Oct, Tiong Bahru MRT towards Clementi

    It’s? What the fuck did I even want to write on the 1st?

    I had gastric twice, once on Sept 22nd and once two weeks after.

    I thought it was a stomach cramp, like a muscle spasm found its way into my daily routine.

    This is a legit remedy: Potato Juice.

    If you feel like someone decked you in the stomach, but the world froze at the decking part and the concave bean part of your stomach was wrapped around this flaming fist of pain, Potato Juice.

    Not potato soup. Juice.

    It works like this.

    Potato Juice (1 pax)

    Get at least 4 small potatoes or 2 large ones.

    If in extreme pain, don’t worry about peeling them. Wash them and scrub them a little at least.

    Now, dice them into manageable chunks, or strips, about a quarter thick of a chunky fry.

    Throw these into a blender and blend them till you get a mush. That’s right. Raw Potato Juice.

    Now, pour the slush into a sieve and strain this into a bowl or plate. Keep doing this, and pressing the slush into the sieve for more Juice, until the slush becomes dryish.

    Here’s the hard part. Wait till the Juice settles. The level of cloudiness is up to you, but I don’t know what. The hard part is waiting while your stomach tries to contort itself into a fleshknot. Listen to my mother and don’t call the ambulance.

    Done? Good. Now drink the clearer bit of the Potato Juice. You could drink the starch at the bottom if you want, but I don’t know what that does to or for you.

    If everything is good, you should be at ease enough to stop leaking snot and tears into your family sofa, and be able to fetal position yourself to sleep in cold sweat.

    Repeat the next day, first thing in the morning. Avoid sour or spicy food and coffee.

    Anyway, the [REDACTED] event went well.

    I was pretty annoyed when they anxiously came up to me, virtually, to do last minute (like literally, 15 mins before the event) changes.

    I realised my mom’s own anxieties have inculcated this feeling of “I don’t want to be bothered by YOUR emotions” from me, because it’s become my main source of annoyance in other people.

    28th of October, walking along National Gallery

    One of the first few Fridays which I didn’t need to go for an event so I’m taking a walk in the city.

    In hopes that I’ll finish this by today I have elected to use text to speech, wait no comma speech to text. There are issues of course, like having to correct myself in the middle of speaking to texting, but all in all it’s a lot more ellipsis… stream of consciousness?

    I recently installed MyFitnessPal, which I saw up and down to not use because I told my mom that it was obsessive. However it turns out is easier to use and if I’m going to track my expenses I might as well track how much shit I’m putting in my body? Right?

    Now this is going to sound a little, desperate, but hear me out. A lot of this desperation, comes from the idealism, of having a partner to be the one who has a bareback dress while you’re walking along the city streets. And by you I mean i.Then the question is, why am I trying to walk along the street to create situations where I get to walk into – – – – -? And framing the question like that really opens a whole can of worms because you know the answer is that you want an opportunity to tell her that you would like to go on a date with her.

    The other answer is because the more you walk the more stupid shit you can put in your body . That’s what MyFitnessPal tells you anyway. You were so close to a deficit every single day and all it takes is to eat less shit. Who’d a thunk it?

    30 Oct

    Reading Either/Or by Elif Batuman.

    Decided that if I wanted to write something interesting, I’d have to put this ancient draft down.

    My opportunity to tell “her” that I want to go on a date is coming up. The idea is to not let it fall onto your lap, but to climb there in the first place.

    See you guys in my next post!

    P. S. I had gastric again yesterday; the solution is to buy Blackmores Stomach Settlers (1 pack of 15 for 15 dollars, but 2 packs for 20 at 7-11 now) and drink Teh Halia. Saved.

  • 10 Years and a Snapshot

    10 Years and a Snapshot

    Brunswick Pool Hall (defunct), The Cathay

    Dear Time Traveller,

    This blog was started on 10 April 2011. Happy decade years old! I will dust you off and write more often.

    Welcome to Checkpoint May 2021. We’ve just reentered our second Circuit-Breakerish… Thing. We cannot dine-in, group sizes are 2 pax and you can’t visit Ping’s House.

    (more…)
  • “I Wouldn’t Die For You”

    “I Wouldn’t Die For You”

    Beachside Training Ground, Woodlands

    It came as banter in a group chat.

    “I wouldn’t jump in front of a train for you”

    When I read it it felt factual, stoic, cold, too cold.

    I felt, in those double grey ticks, everyone’s judgement and pity.

    This week’s been… Exhausting.

    Work’s been difficult. Love’s been difficult. I feel like a shit employee. The flavour of the month is “unlovable”.

    I go to work late. When my boss manages me, I get frustrated easily and defensively. When I go home, I fear my boss firing me because I am not a good employee.

    The Courage to Be Happy means that I have to give up what isn’t working… To reach the next stage of happiness.

    I laid on the couch, grimacing at my phone. I wanted to cry at the injustice of having someone not want to die for me.

    Fucker! I’d die for you, I thought. What’s this imbalance? What’s this humiliation?

    What does that then make me? A die-r for someone who was a wouldn’t-die-r for me?

    Did this version of you in my head, one that was incredibly tight with me, metaphorically die?

    Didn’t I tell you yesterday that I was despondent and extremely lonely? How’s a message like “I wouldn’t die for you” gonna fit into that narrative? Am I just a little less safe at the MRT from now on?

    What if I told you all this? Would it guilt you into being more likely to die for me? Should I take out insurance for the both of us? What if I died in front of you? Would that make you regret not dying for me? Would a train slow to a nonlethal speed after hitting my body?

    Was it ever about dying for me? Because nobody else occupies that spot other than your brother and mother. You wouldn’t die for anybody else, right? You promise?

    Do I then, likewise, move you down the ladder of importance? As an act of revenge?

    Or as an act of realising that I am putting you on too high a pedestal, and maybe, just maybe, we could love each others’ companies without having to consider jumping onto MRT tracks?

    It’s time to reassess the rungs of the ladder. What would someone at rung 2 look like? Or is everyone either in rung 1 or 10? What happened to my boundaries?

    Are you at the top only because I’m afraid that your joy and support will be gone once I focus on other things?

    But you already are focusing on your own life too, while I’m making my entire one about you…

    Am I afraid that once I lower you to non-dying-for levels, or more reason levels, you would plummet to rung 10 because I am so bad at drawing boundaries?

    Later on you’d say in the chat, as a reply to another message I’d wrote, “where did you go? how come I don’t know”

    And I would see pieces of myself, and pieces of the website about “enmeshment” and “co-dependency”, and I would have bubbling thoughts in my hopeful little brain about how I could somehow use your fear of being abandoned by me to make you assuage my own fear of being abandoned by you-

    “I wouldn’t die for you. ” it rang true and true.

    The ouroburos spins. Life goes on. You live, you die, but not for me.

    Jesus fucking Christ, my friends. I am 27 years old. This stupid friendship and abandonment shit is what adults fear too?

    Maturity is a lie, everyone just doesn’t admit they’re afraid.

    Fuck, time to pay my taxes. Literally. I have no idea how to ask for my pay slip.

  • Be Excited For Me

    Be Excited For Me

    NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, 2 Days Before Lockdown

    (disclaimer, written on 13 Sept, published on 24 Oct)

    Ariane’s workout class last Saturday killed the front of my thighs, but I’m still going to go running with Tracy now.

    Okay, I’ve been running from thoughts easily and somehow it is becoming increasingly sexy to just watch Adventure Time and or listen to a song, so I’m gonna like, write this down.

    Have you ever had that feeling of not wanting to start a new TV series because it’s just so daunting to begin watching something with upwards of 100 fuck you episodes?

    Ping’s got some sort of BTO…?

    And suddenly it’s really easy to slide down the marmalade slippery slope, with all the ideas that being still single somehow means a great deal about who I am. Or rather, who I am unable to be.

    Suddenly, I feel like I should not be watching adventure time, I should not be bothering myself with writing about my feelings, I should not be…

    Wait… Whose judgement am I afraid of? My own?

    Who is going to shame me so badly that I am supposed to mail order a bride, “settle for someone” or kill myself before I hit 35? Society? Who?

    Sankar and I declared that this year is was the Mockey (friend gang, don’t think too much about it) Year of Bad Romance, because two of them have recently broken up at this ripe old age of 25 too.

    And sure, there are people I desire so badly, but I can handle a second of desire, a second of solitude, a second of self love, a second of hurt, a second without her.

    That’s right! I’ll do this second by second. I can handle it, second, by second. Not too far in the future, not too far back.

    Thanks for listening.

  • Am I Done Dying?

    When I started falling for people, it seemed to be the most romantic thing in the world.

    I’d never watched rom-coms on purpose, but my idea of romance was archetypal. Hugs, kisses and lots of fucking.

    (more…)
  • Toilet-Urgent Fever Dream

    Toilet-Urgent Fever Dream

    Landing in Texas

    Or: Shao on his inspiration behind the hilarious play Caller Unknown in the 2019 Internal Productions

    First Published on NUSSync, NUS Stage

    Reproduced here without permission because I’m the author

    I remember this idea’s conception very clearly.

    I was sitting in the middle middle-aisle seat, sleep-deprived, needing to pee but unwilling to disturb the gruff-looking Korean man to my left or the eager young man to my right for the third time that flight. He was halfway through one of the Bourne movies, one of those that was constantly on loop on AXN.

    Through this strange meeting of archetypes, my inability to leave my seat and a Bourne movie which I was very familiar with, I then explored the idea of metaphorical social immovability in order to distract myself from the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

    How would one imagine to get rich quick?
    What kind of illegitimate means could we explore to get rich quick?
    What if the scammer was Singaporean?
    Why aren’t Singaporean kidnapping scam artists a thing? and
    Is he at the last scene of the Bourne Ultimatum?

    In every piece of writing you engage in, there’s an element of yourself in every character, like it or not; you can say there’s always a bit of a monologue inside every play, a monologue from the playwright themselves. When writing the characters, I didn’t realise how much Ma in my play was like my own mother until I reread it again a few months back; she was a little guilt-trippish but ultimately caring. The stern Korean man became Mr Chan, while the eager young man became Jason. And everyone in the story got a piece of me.

    Jason, the indignant son of Ma, is spineless, easily persuaded and points out how everything is insane.
    Anthony became my outlet for pop culture quips and my frustration with too much Bourne.
    Nathaniel, who directed the play, made me play the paper-thin antagonist, Mr. Chan.

    In the heart of it all, playwriting is a mechanism for me to explore a shower-thought in a more excessive extent than through conversations in real life. It is a way to acknowledge my ability to tell a story in a format which others can enjoy. I plan to write a lot more, of course; Caller Unknown was written in a way more suited for TV and was quite hand-wavey in terms of logic, but I’m still immensely glad that it was directed and acted by Stage members who had so much fun bringing my red-eye-flight, toilet-urgent fever dream to life.

  • I Heard Your Footsteps

    I Heard Your Footsteps

    On a Tonner, Around Yishun
    (more…)
  • The Hero’s Journey (Twenty-Five)

    The Hero’s Journey (Twenty-Five)

    North Gorge Walk, North Stradbroke Island

    I was sitting at my computer, painting a comic when the numbers flipped to 00:00. I eagerly checked my phone for the next half an hour. Well, two wishes so far.

    I have to remind myself that humans are very good at making patterns out of repeated events and objects, like astrology. Those stars form a shield shape. These seasons are better for crop growth. Nobody likes me because nobody messaged me. Stuff like that-

    I’m joking! Some people like me. I just demand that everyone else did too.

    (more…)