the2ndrule Issue 01
The 2ndRule
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Jan 2000 email edition
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Contents
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1. Editorial
2. What makes a yuppie tick? [Shannon Low]
3. The first morning [Koh Bengliang]
4. Answers [Shannon Low]
5. Fashion Statement [Shannon Low]
6. Girl - 1 [Koh Bengliang]
7. Girl - 2 [Koh Bengliang]
8. Funky Town [Shannon Low]
9. Jack in a box [Shannon Low]
Editorial
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Ever wondered why things don't make sense? Suffer from deja vu? Spent too much money on furniture? Keep hearing the same loop from some pop song over and over in your head? Rack up huge bills on your mobile phone?
We can't claim to solve your problems, but we hope to help you reclaim some of the sanity that's been covered by urban sprawl. We want you to read and start thinking and maybe some day take action to gain control of your life again.
In this issue (and in subsequent ones) we'll have articles, essays and poems that explore modern life. They're a little ironic, and a little personal, and we hope you'd enjoy them like you'd enjoy a meal we cooked for you.
This is a new magazine and being the first issue, you'd have received it because we have your email since you're a friend of ours. If you don't want it, go ahead and delete it and send us a note to remove you from the list. If you know of others who should get an issue, forward this to them, or give us their email and we'll send them an issue. Our email is the2ndrule@hotmail.com. Please help us spread the word.
We're looking for writings from you too - comments, suggestions and articles. Get in touch with us at the same address.
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2ndRule team : Koh Bengliang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh
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What makes a yuppie tick?
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(tick tock) ten-hour job
buying my futon and my
(tick tock) ikea clock
Meet Jack. Jack is a yuppie. He gets up at 7.30 in the morning, to the morning show playlist of a ubiquitous radio station with a 6-tone jingle, or the alarm clock in his Ericsson mobile phone, set to sleep for 10 minutes. Jack is a civil servant, or investment banker, or strategy consultant, or marketing manager, or other young professional in a shirt and tie and neatly- pressed trousers. With pleats. It's hard to tell because everyone looks the same in the morning. But the pleats cut a sharp, unmistakable profile in the blur, coarse-grained morning.
Watch Jack run. To Jack, time is digital. It doesn't sweep, it jumps from digit to digit. Jack jumps out of bed and into the shower. Into his pleats, and then just enough time to grab a Starbuck's on the way to the office. His espresso machine sits in his kitchen, dry and neglected. Down the subway, up the subway, onto the bus, into the train, say "hi!" to the pretty girl who stops by the same news stand, "maybe one day I'll stop and ask her name." His espresso machine never made it out of the box. Run, Jack's watch. Jack runs to catch up with his watch.
Run Jack run. Jack doesn't mind his job too much. Or he forgot that he did. He just wishes he didn't have to get up so early in the morning, or work so late at night. He mentioned once to a friend that he wished he didn't have to run all the time, but "let's be practical," both agreed. Jack makes money - a respectable sum, enough for him not to worry too much about it. He no longer has to buy from the economy section in the supermarket, like he did when he was in college. But it's not all about money. Money is a means to an end for Jack. He can now make a healthy donation to the WHO, the WWF and Greenpeace every month. But the money doesn't make him believe in what they do. "They do good work, don't they?" Most of all, he's financially and psychologically independent. It came with the job, like it said in the ad.
Run run run. Fortunately, Jack has friends who he can run with. Ikea, Honda, Hugo Boss, BMW, Charles Schwab, Apple (think different) - a multinational host of buddies who pledge support to him and his lifestyle in fine, matte-finished catalogues and translucent iMac colours. Before we jump to conclusions, Jack hasn't sold out - he just has taste. "Selling out" is an 80's phrase. Today, it's "buying in". He's buying into a whole new lifestyle. Like buying into the dot.com company his firm is helping the investment house down the road to cut a deal with. It's hard to accuse Jack of abandoning his ideals. They might have just changed. Jack genuinely enjoys the work he does, the friends he has, the things he buys. He has new responsibilities, new aims and new relationships. And he knows that if he doesn't spend the money, it'll get spent anyway.
But time runs by and Jack is wondering where it's all going. Did he wake up this morning?
- Shannon Low
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Gandhi. Mahatma. Non-violent protest. Civil disobedience. Shameless repackaging
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The first morning
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I don't remember when exactly I passed out last night,
but I have a tiny Polaroid of myself, my face a huge silly grin.
I remember how 5 minutes before midnight the TV's
reception gave up and we all thought, yes,
things are starting to break (and I hoped that my
watch would not be y2k compliant) and on the screen
all we could see was a fuzzy figure, which I found out later
was our dear prime minister getting all excited about
the new millenium like a child holding a karaoke mike.
By the time somebody turned a radio on we had missed the moment.
It wasn't a big deal, we all hugged and cheered anyway.
Well, I've survived 1999 and it's been such an anti-climax,
such a let down. Yet I could not help but open the papers
to the obituaries and laugh at those who didn't make it.
1 Jan 2000
- Koh Bengliang
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Soap. It's good for you.
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Answers
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1. B
2. 3
4. pain
5. play
Jack is looking for answers to questions he doesn't know. Without the questions, the answers still make sense to him because he knows he can make them up. But he won't know if they're right. The questions, not the answers. The answers are what is there, what he sees plainly. The questions are what get him there. To Jack, we know all the answers, even if the answer is "wait and see." What he needs are the questions. Like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Obsessively. Jack knows some people whose relentless pursuit of ? have driven them to inexpressibility. He thinks, no knows, he isn't like that. He just wonders why the pieces fit so neatly together.
Jack sometimes thinks he's deluding himself. But he knows that he isn't. If he didn't have the questions or the answers, ... Jack is mute, he cannot think. Did anyone know that knowledge was so precarious? Why didn't anyone tell him? Jack is looking for an answer again, or is it a question?
Two years later, Jack has no answers. But he has found his thoughts again. When I asked him how he did it, he mumbled, ";." Punctuation, the space between words, questions and answers, is where our thoughts lie. Where we think quietly. We both knew what he meant. To communicate, to ask, to pause, and to answer. Without answers and only questions, we all need space to feel.
1. "
2. ?
3. ,
4. .
- Shannon Low
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Fashion Statement : What's in store for the start of the new year?
(men)
The popularity of skate and street wear and the rise in alternative career cultures in media, startups and freelance work have paved the way for greater variety in menswear and the intersection of streetwear and workwear.
Starting with the top of the head, haircuts span from mid-length, disconnected, wispy cuts to the short and spiky snowboarder cuts, while colouring, whole head or highlights, have finally taken hold. We'll see combat trousers making a comeback. Not just cargo pants - those are too clean-cut, not rough around the edges enough for the millennium man - combats, plain and camouflage-printed. Smarter looking single-tone cargoes with narrower cuts and closer pockets will move up to workwear, matched with fitted single-breasted high-collar jackets for the high-profile do or short sleeved one-colour skate shirts for the young digital professional. And for the even less conventional, plastic snowboarder pants or baggy skate trousers will fit right into the design or startup office.
Shoes have probably seen the greatest variety in the last four hundred years. Gentlemen's leather loafers are bound to stay, but colourful trainers and even funkier casual shoes with trainer souls have staked their claim on men's feet. Accessories are a personal choice - surf-inspired or chunky metal necklaces, velcro bracelets, the omni-present Casio G-shock, or no accessories. Finally, diversity will be the colour of the year. Greys, greens, blues and blacks may remain the staples of a man's fashion diet, but splashes of orange, yellow and red, appearing as a single just-audible whisper down the trouser seam or a shout across the chest, are more than welcome teasers.
(No women's fashion statement in your issue? Then you should get out more!)
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Girl - 1
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When the sun breaks out, her oily face would smudge
the make-up, but her friends love al fresco.
She has spent too much on cappuccino,
and worries if her clothes match her handphone.
She splurges on Calvin Klein, DKNY
and Esprit (to maintain her discount card).
She loves Calvin and Hobbes, Winnie the Pooh
and Hello Kitty. She remembers childhood
cycling up and down the same ninth floor
corridor, carrying an electric toy
lantern, asking for Disneyland
and daddy saying no, crying alone
into her wretched textbooks, the contents
of which she remembers nothing of.
Girl - 2
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She had complete faith in magazine
questionnaires. She recalls, going to school,
a boy at the bus stop with a little foreign
blood, all the exotic fantasies
she pasted on him, culled from romantic
novel stereotypes. She imagined the kids
and sitting in cafes speaking tongues immune
to eavesdropping. She fretted that her parents
did not endow her with a nice Christian name.
She learnt to balance on a wide variety
of heels, placed Grover plasters over her Nine West blisters,
matched straps with slits and Hard Candy,
and business suits with push-up bras that gave back pain.
She often wished she were her twin sister.
- Koh Bengliang
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Nokia customisable colour-changing human technology soap.
Change the colour of your skin with one wash. Yeah, right.
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Funky town
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A crowd of one, bodies swaying, bodies saying, "funky town." Scenes matching photos in a Magazine, clothes out of a Magazine, people out of a Magazine. You can taste the gloss coat on the printed matchbox. Neon lights shining from behind minimalist fittings designed by an art director with a good eye for irony. People dancing in front of lights haloed in orange and pink like psychedelic angels. This is funky town Singapore. We hope you enjoy your stay. And that you don't lose your way.
It came up like buzz, the prime minister wanted some of it, the papers wanted some of it, everyone there wants some of it, but it's not the same pie, is it? Consultants, i-bankers, media professionals and the like. All looking for a place to relax after a hard day of self-regulation. You can leave that at the door and the bouncers will look after it for you. And don't worry, it'll be safe. Just don't forget to pick it up on your way out. It's not just an escape for a few hours of the night. It's a lifestyle change. For a few hours of the night.
Two girls dance with each other on a bench, having more fun than the men trying to chat them up. Now, there's a funny game. Game. Is what most people are in a club. And game. Is what most of them are after. But few are relaxed enough to play. It's hard to erase twenty-something years of shelter and protection and erring on the safe side. What did you expect?
It's easy to be forgiving and say that things are changing. But is it really beneficial? Or just superficial. We may never let go of the things that limit the change - the same things that make our lives easier and make the toilets flush themselves.
The music stops, the lights come on. It's 3am and nobody minds, everybody smiles. 3 whole hours of mid-week, stress-busting, good, clean fun. Could anyone ask for more?
What the hell does Time Magazine know?
- Shannon Low
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Jack in a box
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Tank, I need an exit
Jack is trapped. In a very small place. Where his sentences can't. Be more than five words. Long. A short space to think. Even shorter to do. Jack can breathe, just barely. He walks out of the h... No, doesn't make it. Tries to pick up the ph... Didn't make it either. Did he ask for this? Did he put himself there? Jack doesn't know. He can't think that long. Ago.
He needs continuity. Or maybe just more syllables. Like communicative and expressiveness. And foreverandever. Jack knows he's deluding himself. Right now, he's only got. "Me" and "you". How about hyphens? He could do with hyphens. Like grabbing-at-straws and keep-your-fingers-crossed. Maybe he should just. Remove the punctuation marks. And talk like a train. Like everyone else. Maybe he just needs. To sleep.
But when he dreams, he dreams in technicolour and surround sound, with reel to reel footage of non-stop action, suspense, drama and romance. In it, he's the hero, or is rescued by his heroine, makes no difference, he doesn't mind, as long as he can put in more commas. Jack is free to think and to live and to love. Most of all, to express how he feels and to show it. Why can't he when he's. Awake.
- Shannon Low
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Who are you?
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