Museum Trip

"Free coffee and tea on the counter inside." the lady said cheerfully.

"Family?" she asked, looking from me to him, as she handed me the admission tickets and my change. The philatelic museum was empty of visitors this early in the morning. Tourists usually start coming in around during the afternoon.

I blinked, taken aback. "Uh, yeah."

He strode past me inside without a word.

There was a small table tucked in the corner, with electric kettle, paper cups and boxes labelled "Coffee" and "Tea". I pressed the steaming water into a cup and picked out a sachet.

He turned from a glass exhibit of a coffee grinder. "You are going to get indigestion."

The water swirled delicate light brown tendrils as I dipped the tea bag into my cup.

"It's a nice to be holding a hot drink in your hand again." I stirred the warm tea. The faint waft of aroma was familar, nostalgic, and comforting all at once. "You don't have to drink it."

I picked up another paper cup. "Coffee or tea?"

"1876 Postal Riot"

The second floor holds the gallery on the history of postage in Singapore.

We paused at the exhibit on chinese immigrants' role in postal services. They had developed a system of their own through which the chinese sent money and mail through self-organised "letter shops".

I snapped a shot of the framed letter and envelope with their elegant calligraphy.

A middle panel showed the chinese sub-post office riots when the chinese rebelled against the new postal system imposed by the british colonial government. There was mayhem in the streets and the shopkeepers went on a strike.

"We smashed into the post office and wrecked their furniture in the streets." he said abruptly.

I turned to him in surprise, finger on camera.

"We attacked the police at New Market Street and again at Rochor. The police opened fire. They shot me in the chest."

There was dead silence, except for the background murmur of the multimedia slideshows. I didn't know what to say.

He stalked off to the next exhibit. I closed my mouth and hurried after him.

Gift Of A Letter

In the digital age of convenience and speed, is there a place for letters anymore?

"Excuses for not writing letters" invited the wall. The wall panel was criss-crossed with doodles, funny faces and sprawling handwriting. A giant guestbook of comments and counter replies and arguments in colourful graffiti.

"What for, when I can email??" I read.

"Takes too long to wait for a reply!" argued another in bold purple.

There was a marker in a plastic holder. I squatted down and scribbled my reply in a clean corner of the wall.

"Your handwriting is horrible." he remarked.

"Thanks." I said dryly.

"You can always send a postcard to me."

I thought it over.

"I'll pass it to you the next time you drop by my place then."

I raised my cup, tipped it back, swallowed and tossed it away into the trash bin. A moment later, I heard his following mine, dropping heavily in the plastic lined bin.

Eight Hours Later

I wobbled out of the toilet with the sound of the cistern flushing behind me. Flopped onto the bed feebly. Looked at the time. I was inside for over an hour. After a while, when the lurching in my stomach subsided, I fumbled for the mobile phone, flipped it open and dialed.

"What?" he croaked.

"Try not to have anything for the next day or so. It helps."

"Shut up."

*click*

I laughed - then broke off in mid-crackle to grope for the toilet again.

"Overcoming Loneliness In Everyday Life"

I woke up in the dark, suddenly aware of a presence in the room. The book slided and thudded heavily to the floor in a flurry of pages.

"Go out and hunt." he remarked, standing over me.

"If you think it's too troublesome for you to---" I managed stiffly before he laughed.

"No. What I meant was you need something to occupy your time."

I said nothing and leaned down to pick up my book.

When I looked up, he was gone.

It was 3 am in the morning. He had left it in the fridge, as usual.

"Loneliness seems to occur regularly when emotional life is unshared. Loneliness appears to be a quite normal signal of an emotionally unsatisfactory state, the state of being without emotional partnerships. Why humans should be so constituted is unclear, but it might be surmised that in the evolution of the human organism, loneliness ... acts to protect our bonds with larger social groups, connections ... important to human survival and development..."

I had picked up the book at the library sale at Suntec. Half of Singapore was there, it seemed. Bargains call to the blood of the ordinary Singaporean. The title was lying half covered by a 2001 edition of Java Programming. I waited for the girl beside me to turn away, before I slided it free from the heap to slip it under the stack of books I was holding.

The book was a study on the condition of loneliness by two psychiatrists. Society, they argued, has fostered individual independence to the point that people feel themselves obliged to nobody. They quote from As de Tocqueville in the nineteenth century:

"Such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody. They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their own destiny is in their hands... each man is forever thrown back on himself alone and there is the danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart."

Vampires are lone creatures out of necessity.

"Too many unexplained cases in an area," he once said, "and you run the risk of discovery. They can be your neighbours, your colleagues and your friends, but they can turn on you once they know you. Never forget that."

Vampires, I thought, are too busy in the struggle for survival to feel lonely.

Saturday Afternoon Screening

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (TBA) 22 Jan 05, Saturday, 3.00pm

Canada 2002, English, Dance Drama, Colour/ B&W, 75 min. Director: Guy Maddin Cast: Zhang Wei-Qiang, Tara Birtwhistle, David Moroni, Cindy-Marie Small

Director Guy Maddin's "mesmerizing and completely original approach to dance on film" is a film of a ballet based on Bram Stoker's novel and performed to portions of Mahler's first two symphonies. More a dramatic feature than a dance piece, this lushly gothic rendering combines sensuous dance with pantomimed scenes and intertitles, richly reminiscent of silent films. Passionately danced by international guest stars and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Dracula is shot in dramatic black and white with splashes of bold colour added throughout.

LOL. This is funny. I have to watch this.

Job Interview

The interview room was small and cramped, with stacks of cardboard carton boxes lining the walls. The muted rings of the office phones filtered through the thin partition wall in a subdued counterpoint to the soft murmur of the air-conditioner.

At the table, I worked at filling up the interview form in front of me.

Year of birth. 1978. Male. Singaporean? Yes.

Halfway through the page, my pen paused, hovering above the paper.

"Do you have any impairments, physical, mental or medical, which would interfere with reasonable job performances?"

Is vampirism an impairment?

---

My art portfolio consisted of a few life drawing pieces, a selection of the better artworks I've done up during the past year and a couple of freelance projects.

The interviewer lingered at the last page over the photographs.

"Do you do studio photography?"

I hesitated. I had inserted the photographs on a last minute impluse. "I'm an amateur."

"Hmmmm."

She glanced through the interview form, noticing the blank space. "So, no medical illnesses or anything I should know of?"

"I haven't seen a doctor since I was twenty." I said truthfully.

"You might need to go overseas for short assignments. Do you have any problems with that?"

My heart sank.

"For how long a period each time?"

"A week at most to oversee the work." Then noticing my look of dismay, she added reassuringly, "It's not so bad. I go up once a month. The company takes care of everything, including your food and hotel expenses."

Update. The company called to offer me the job. I took it. It was the first job offer in a long while. Even a vampire needs to earn a living to pay the bills.