The Trapeze Act @daggycatlover - Tumblr Blog

October - mid November 2022

I’ve moved into the BTO heartland! A real change of pace. Swapped the endless Green Corridor for Punggol’s waterways and the Johor Strait. I spent my last night in Ghim Moh/Buona Vista hanging out with the three cats who live in the area. Glad I got to say a little ‘thank you’ for the community they gave me this past year and a half. Life-saving.

Ashamed to show myself to be this kind of binch but no spin or yoga studios within 30mins of PT has actually required some adjustment. It’s predictably brought me more frequently to the Queer East (aka Greater Katong).

Zero (0) cats seen in Punggol thus far. Tbf it has been hectic and I haven’t spent all that much time here between the work trips (see below) and (eep) dating. But still, where are they?? Look, I’ll defend my new postcode in the SG culture wars to come but to have no cats prowling your streets or lounging in your void decks is absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable. Please. Where are they???

Just came back after a week road-tripping around the Peninsula. My leg of the tour covered JB, Kota Tinggi, Mersing, Gambang, Bentong/Bukit Tinggi, Batu, Bagan Datuk, Ipoh/Tambun, Pulau Pinang, and Permatang Pauh. Incredibly meaningful to be able to get glimpses into local-level concerns and to see how local candidates and their social media teams operate at that level, even if it meant being turned into TikTok campaign content.

This is what no seasoned field researcher will tell you, but as someone who shat themselves at the ripe age of 30 and had to hide in Dakota MRT until rescue arrived with fresh undies and shorts, I was terrified of needing to do an emergency poo in front of colleagues. No coffee and only the blandest foods for me (a hard thing to do in Malaysia). I also would get up 2 hours earlier than needed so I could do morning poos before hitting the road. A gruelling six days.

Recklessly speaking Indo in Malaysia and never knowing if I’ll be understood was a very chaotic way to be, for everyone involved. Very much enjoyed getting my pronunciation corrected into BM. My bad for reinforcing the abang-adik dynamic. Ma’af.

Many cats in Malaysia. Good.

Some real talk. After months of grief counselling, I often still feel nowhere near healed. My birthday and moving houses were especially confronting for that reason. I’m glad to be able to stay in one spot for a while and have some time to myself.

Oh yes, Saigon was nice.

#diary vom

catasters

Me, on my phone and snuggling in bed with someone new-ish after some adult things have happened: "OOOOHH! A conference Call for Papers!"

Her:

everythingfox

Sound on

August 2022

Fieldwork has been pushed to September, but it’s finally locked in!! It’s been frustrating coordinating different interview schedules, but I have very much enjoyed getting emails from people in senior positions who say things like ‘I b on leaves on the ##’. I love Southeast Asia.

The drought is finally over lol. Incidentally, it has also been pouring every single day this week. It’s good to be in sync with nature. The monsoon hast come early.

Attended a queer pre-wedding spin ride party recently, honoured to have been invited tbh. The girl on the bike next to me said it wasn’t her first, which just about sums up Katong. I really wish I could do a sociocultural mapping of queer women goings-on in the greater Katong area. It is equal parts wholesome (cottage economies of homemade kombucha, coffee, and pastries) and chaotic (celesbian sightings; someone, their ex, and their ex’s ex all in same gym class that each attends 3-5 times a week and gets stressed by). How and when did this happen? How did we know to congregate here?

Keep getting peer-pressured into moving to this village, but it’s the Build-to-Order (BTO) housing heartland for married straights for me. I am okay with being the only single and childless over-30 queer in the area, actually.

#please no one ever discover this dumb blog #i've also overspent by a lot this month and too ashamed to admit it on main

89cats

(by byelliottco)

leepace71

July was blah. But August hey?

A little different this time, a look forwards instead of back.

- Had a good talky session. It is rare in this setting to come away feeling like you were be able to express the exact particularity and emotional register of things and to know that it is understood. I'm grateful for that today and for the discussions that my therapist facilitated. Grief is so personal. Haphazardly making my way through this and knowing I have a professional to keep me in check helps.

- The awful rhetorics on family and marriage (and attempts to further gate-keep the policies that draw on this status) have been getting to me this week. But if anything it has pushed me to get involved. There are real connections between seemingly disparate groups impacted by these policies that need to be made stronger at the level of organising. And I can’t wait to have these discussions with folks in this space.

- First field trip to look forward to this month. Eep!

- Rings. I am rediscovering my love of them.

- Visa run?? there is a small window for me to do a run in Oz later this year. I am very tempted. It would be the first proper holiday in 3 years and I miss my friends dearly. No voices of reason telling me to save instead, apart from my own.

OH.

This morning i looked up SSRI drug side effects, both from taking them and from STOPPING.

My body feeling extra tired the past 1.5 months makes a lot of sense.

#Fuck Lexapro

everythingfox

Toast loves fuzzies

(via)

release-the-sheep

thinking about fleetwood mac and how they actually sang songs about each other. and performed them. about how much they loved or hated each other like what the fuck how

I mean can you imagine. singing about how somebody broke your heart and they’re literally harmonizing. they’re right fucking there. they’re in touching distance. insanity! complete insanity! I would either break down crying or fully snap and break their neck

fucking. silver springs!!! ‘you’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you!’ no fucking kidding he won’t stevie he’s literally behind you playing the drums! absolute madlads

doritoprincess

This live performance feels like I’m watching my parents fighting in the kitchen

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dGykwC0fdJ4

hamletthedane

jaubaius

Found in a 120 year old time capsule.

Full VDO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDj4mXdqmc

justanotherweirdarchaeologist

Worth it.

whitebookposts

I’m sorry I might sound like a madwoman for going on a rant about this but man, it’s… I don’t know how to express it but just the thought of some person, 120 years ago, taking a photo of their cat, which back then wasn’t easy - they didn’t have phones with cameras, each photo required a lot of time and dedication, so not only the person “wasted” a whole photo on their cat, they also did their fricking best to save this photo and carefully put it into an envelope to preserve it so that people in the future will know that there was this cat and it looked like this and it’s owner thought the cat looked lovely that day so much that they decided to take a photo of it and then they loved the photo so much that they went out of their way to preserve it for future generations like “hello people from the future! this is what my cat loos like!” because they loved their cat so much they wanted people from the future to know about it is… crazy to me… and here we are, 120 years later, long after the cat and it’s owners passed away, looking at an old photo of a cat and gushing about it. The cat died so long ago and wouldn’t even know it existed if not for the owner that loved their cat so much that they decided this photo was worth preserving and put it into a time capsule. and seeing now how people dedicate whole blogs to their cats and take countless pictures of them just to show to other people really hits because you realize that in the end, people from today aren’t that much different from people that were 120 years ago. We all just love our cats and want people to look at them.

null-is-sparing-you

I bet this woman was imagining the photo may be seen by like… a family some day. But no. It survived till the age of the internet. It has now transcended the original media. It is now being seen by far more eyes in far more places than the media she chose would normally allow. I hope the taker of this 120 year old photo is PROUD.

if-i-was-a-wyrm

now i’m now expert on film and old cameras or anything, but isn’t this guy developing the picture? meaning that it wasn’t developed before? so the person who took the picture didn’t even know if it would come out right. they took a chance, and sure enough produced an absolutely stunning picture of their cat. how could they have known?

allofmystudentsrunaway

glass photographic plates were used to make multiples, thats what a ‘negative’ is for. this person probably had copies of this photo, but who ever they were loved their cat enough to keep the negative, so they would always have pictures of their cat.

Every single thing about June has been exhausting? Between a bad flu, new meds, and general knock-on fatigue, I spent most of it sweaty and horizontal.

Went to a shrink* and very confidently prefaced the sesh with 'I don't want meds. I don't need meds.' But by the end he's like, 'I think you should try meds.' Lol. Giving it a go, but it’s pretty wild that that the morning meds made me groggy and i had to do just put up with that for a week before being able to switch to nights -- this would have been out of the question if I had a different job.

I rarely get sick anymore but the flu hit me hard. Just bounced back from all of this but it’s still a struggle to get up in the mornings.

I have not worked out in 3 weeks and have lost 2.5 kilos. This is probably where the fatigue hit me hardest. I am no longer stronk and it’s going to take so much work to try to regain that.

Somewhere along the way a 23/24yo hit me up for a Pride after-party booty call but I was busy having a quiet over-30s dinner with friends where we each had one (1) drink and I was back in bed by 10:30. Was also almost peer-pressured into going for a speed-dating night that some friends organised. In what world is it a good idea to subject 59 women to my bullshit in one night? Am I glad Pride is over.

*I was extremely nervous about this visit even though it wasn't the talky part of the programme. That daunting task is still to come. I am relieved though that the pill doctor was very kind, respectful, and professional.