I'm growing up around President Yusof Ishak's face

Buying tickets always seem to involve some kind of power politics. Let's forget about Phantom and talk about King Lear. King Lear is to be performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, a theatre organisation world-renowned for -- duh -- their Shakespeare productions. The Royal Shakespeare Company, in short, is coming to singapore. The RSC never comes to Singapore. And when they do at last, they bring Ian MacKellen with them.

The tickets quite naturally cost some serious dough. $160 for the seats that I'm gunning for, the most expensive are $300.

15% off if you get twenty people to order in a body, says the website. Alas for us that it was not to be. Even an inter-school search for 20 interested people with relatively deep pockets failed.

Now that my mum has heard about it she wants a ticket for my brother, which I'm getting, but she's getting leery about the price and wants me to solicit my father for some money. After having frantically imploring my class, my CCA and even various teachers (to buy Lear tickets) to utter failure I am frankly in no mood to beg things from my father, particularly because my father is of the staunch belief that even books and movies are a waste of monny -- I'd sit on a defenceless rabbit pie first. I'm perfectly capable of paying for my ticket on my own, but my brother has no stockpile to speak of, and in the future I think I need to be more wary of my mother when she declares proudly that 'money is of no object'. It's more complicated than anyone knows. But I had thought my soliciting troubles were over with that allowance increase.