Life Note 2: Fish Noodles and Portals
Husband asked if I was attending this thing called Portals (i'm not going to type out the name, it's too long). Now... I am kind of off Fever events because I've been for a couple of them now and I felt they were too similar - in subject matter and how they executed their vision. But this one wasn't too expensive (about $20 per ticket) so decided that there wouldn't be any harm in checking it out.
We headed to Orchard Road and walked around Far East Plaza for lunch. We were tempted by the Hainanese Delicacy on Level 5, but the queue was insane! Ended up having fish noodles at Cross Straits Eating House - no-frills, simple food. We sat at the counter, and ate side-by-side. We listened to the people around us... It's not really a place to have DnMs. Just eat and go. And that's fine by me.
Portals was okayyy. It struck me as an overview of sci-fi and fiction from its alleged inception up till today... There were a lot of books on display, and I will say that I went away with some book recommendations that I will look into. But the books themselves were just regular editions, haha.
The exhibition flow was rather confusing to me... but I guess I wasn't paying that much attention to it. Just taking in what I enjoyed and walking by what I didn't fancy. Some of the book covers/illustrations from the 70s-80s were too out there for me... they aren't necessarily horrific in nature, but there are a lot of disembodied heads or cyborgs with no eyes. As a child/teen, I was really quite repulsed by such images, so much so that I refused to pick up such books and only really discovered sci-fi as an older person. I know that it's of a certain time, and I can appreciate that intellectually. But I still feel weirded out by the uncanny nature of such images. Thank God for ebooks. Or for re-designs. Haha.
The highlight for me was seeing the full versions of the various artworks that make up book covers, illustrations and playing cards. I never knew that each Magic card has a commissioned art work on it. There were some really beautiful book covers as well, truly amazing stuff.
I don't regret attending, but it felt like something was missing for me. Maybe it's thread to gather everything together and to understand why these authors, books, and ideas are still relevant today as a whole...
Anyway, some authors/books I learnt about that I want to check out:
- Greg Egan
- Anne Mccaffrey
- The Terry Pratchett story about Father Christmas
- Ursula K Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness
- High Deryni - Katherine Kurtz
Also, I bought a print of someone's rendering of Eowyn. And then I got excited and now I want to re-watch LOTR.
Ok, that's it for now. N
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