I wasn’t expecting to thoroughly enjoy Avenue Q last weekend, in part because it had been hyped to me as being extremely funny, and when your marketing is all about how you’re a naughty adults-only take on a children’s show, the likelihood of being genuinely, naturally funny is diminished. Fortunately, those expectations were lowered the night before when a friend said it was enjoyable, but not as funny as he’d been led to believe. In my opinion, that is how one should head into the show. Expect to have a smile on your face, but not to laugh (unless you find any mention of homosexuality to be funny, like some others at my seating).

My initial expectation was that the actors/puppeteers would be invisibly clad in black, like Kuroko stagehands in Japanese theatre, but they stood alongside their puppets and emoted in sync. If a puppet character was confused, it would show in the body language and on the face of his handler. This peripheral vision trick worked really well, and indirectly lent the felt and fabric actors an emotional presence.

In the end, I was impressed by the Filipino cast’s performances (excellent female lead Carla Guevara comes off two years as Miss Saigon in London), the familiar set design, novel stagecraft, and great songs. It didn’t really matter that most songs weren’t as funny as the famous ‘The Internet is for Porn’, but they were still clever enough and definitely memorable for being so casually dark. Closing number, ‘For Now’, only offers a half-hearted promise of hope where others might be inclined to wrap on a high. Everyone’s a little dissatisfied with life, it says, but swallow your pride for now. When things are going ok, enjoy them for now. George Bush too, it commiserates, is only for now.

Singapore’s Social Development Unit (SDU) is a sort of government-funded dating service to help those who have spent their lives putting academic achievements and other forms of personal enrichment before relations with the opposite sex. Or, as they say, people who just want to make more friends. It sounds a little weird that a country’s government would run an outfit like this, but I suppose part of it might be motivated by a sense of guilt.

Growing up as a teenager in the 90s, I clearly remember just about every authority figure, mainstream media outlet, Aunt Agony column, parent, and teacher sharing the view that so-called Boy-Girl Relationships (or BGR, as was the sickening but popular term) were only to be pursued once one had completed higher education. The most important thing, it was said, was to graduate and have oneself a safety net before allowing the opposite sex a chance to derail your life. The subtext was that this denial-of-self was only patriotic, as we were a fledgling nation always on the brink of being swallowed by the odds, and every last one of our degrees was needed to avert disaster. The fabled Lazy Grasshopper had become a Drop-Out Lothario.

Our government has always erred on the side of caution when it comes to assuming that most people know what’s best for them, and I sympathize completely, but intervention is historically marked by unforeseen consequences. Who knew that biological instincts could be dulled by neglect? In any case, I don’t know the SDU’s success rate, but I do know they have a quarterly publication called “Duet” filled with well-meaning articles like the one below.

PocketGuitar
$0.99
iTunes Store Link
Attractiveness to females when performed below a balcony: Zero
Essentiality: Absolute

I’ve just discovered that iPod touch/iPhone apps in the App Store (as displayed in iTunes) are tagged with incorrect release dates, which renders viewing apps by ‘Release Date’ criteria completely broken. I’m accustomed to checking for new apps each day by browsing the store in such a manner, but it seems I’ve missed a number of releases I was waiting for because the newly released apps were backdated and appeared out of order.

I think the so-called release dates shown might actually be the dates that the apps were submitted for approval and listing.

Evidence: Spore Origins, a highly awaited game that was released on Sept 8 following the Sept 7 worldwide release of its PC/Mac version, has a Sept 5 release date. At present, one must navigate back 25 pages of the Sort By Release Date view to locate it – a blockbuster game released yesterday. Ditto for Real Football 2009, which was just demoed at the Let’s Rock iPod music event.

I took an unserious vow yesterday never to talk about technology again, but I think now that it might be fun to see how long it can last. Apart from this brief mention that I am blogging from my iPhone to see how easy it might be to write something longer than a text. So far so good, but I wish I had smaller thumbs, or at least transparent ones.

Am currently reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and so far it has been an absorbing and marvelous 140 pages made up of Dickensian coincidences, foreshadowing, and the most stoic and infallible fictional hero since Jesus. I kid, I kid.

It’s easy to feel the machinery moving beneath the surface of the plot and its dramatically convenient developments, but that takes nothing away from the craft of Rand’s writing, which is frankly quite fucking good (‘fucking’ is a word I just had to type, so my iPhone can learn some proper English). One friend has described it as a sort of guilty pleasure at times, likening its passionate moments to a Danielle Steele novel. Of course, as a man I have no idea what that might involve, having never read anything naughtier than Penthouse Letters, D.H. Lawrence, and the Peanut Butter Kamasutra. I have this theory that women only read books for the sex, but had best keep it to myself.

The last two days have been quite pleasant for reading in the late afternoon, and I have been taking advantage of this at the nearby Starbucks. Back in my student days, there was quite a stigma attached to sitting in a cafe reading some voluminous tome all alone, but I am happy to report that society barely bats an eyelid at this once you have put on weight, grown a beard, and begun to bald. Regardless of what you hear, life does get better with age!

The downside to sitting in a coffeeshop all day is of course having to put up with coffeeshop talk. I think I may soon be reaching my limit for tolerating my fellow man. Yesterday I had to endure a young army recruit expounding the benefits of using 2 fingers to apply camouflage paint on the face over the prescribed 3 fingers to a friend who listened with complete awe and attention. It seems 2 fingers gives greater accuracy and a more pleasing appearance over the “bullshit” triple digit technique. Any day now I expect to overhear sewage workers discussing favorite colors of boots to wear to work.

Approximately 80% of the time, my Singtel iPhone is unable to connect to twitter.com or refresh my tweets view in Twitterific (which uses the Twitter API). This only happens when connected to the internet via 3G or GPRS. If I connect via my own WiFi network, Twitter works whenever the whale isn’t flying.

Either something is wrong with the DNS resolution over on their end, they’re blocking twitter (which makes no sense to me; it’s not the highest traffic application), or something much worse. Whatever it is, I am getting seriously pissed off.

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photo.jpg, originally uploaded by sangsara.

I got an iPhone last night after 5 hours of queuing at the launch event. Which was nothing really, considering that I’ve been waiting 592 days since the first iPhone was announced last January. It’s just not worth getting unsupported Apple products, so I never got one on the black market. And now at last! Carried home in the obnoxious little Singtel paper bag you see above, I have an iPhone and it’s really freakin’ sweet.

I’m very glad that Apple let me post a review like this on the local App Store.