the final night

it's 2:25am and i'm sitting here, at my desk, for the last time. tomorrow (well, actually, in less than 12 hours) i'll be moving out of the wonderful room i've had for the past one year, and moving into a new studio apartment, down at the fringe of town. i'm excited about the move; i've been looking forward to it for weeks now. i've shifted a large majority of my stuff over already, and even managed to unpack and put everything in its new place, so all that's left for me to do tomorrow is to check out of where i'm living now, and take the remainder of my stuff with me. i am going to miss this place tremendously, though. i can't help but think how lucky i was to be able to get this room - great location right in the middle of the city centre, great view overlooking the city and the docks, plus the room was brand-new when i moved in, meaning i was the first person to occupy it. and my wonderful flatmates - all lovely, simple, down-to-earth people, who made sharing a flat much, much more pleasant than i thought it would be.

i was just thinking tonight, how many times i've moved in the past 6-odd years. the longest time i've spent in the same apartment is two years. the shortest, 6 months. no, actually, one night. it was in a place called Pantai Puri, one of the less-popular-for-obvious-reasons student halls at uni. the room was horrendously horrible, a room that i could not imagine anyone living in. the place was filthy. there was moss(!!) growing on the bathroom walls, and the "wardrobe" was the size of a gym locker. there were 8 people to a room so small there was just barely enough room to move around the 4 bunk beds, with mattresses so thin i could feel the bedsprings. there was a communal study area, and everyone's desks faced the wall. there were more atrocities, i'm sure, but obviously my brain has blocked those memories out. self-preservation. i remember calling my mum in tears that first evening, crying that i couldn't live there, it was worse than any place i'd ever been in, there were cockroaches and rats all over the place (exaggerating just a wee bit there, always helps my case), please getmeout getmeout getmeout!! within the hour i was in the car of a real estate agent, on my way to view a 3-bedroom apartment in a rather pleasant neighbourhood not too far away from the uni, with beautiful parquet flooring and a large living / dining area. talk about two sides of a coin! the lady who owned it was looking to rent out 2 of the rooms; i signed the contract for one room the same night, and in 6 months i rented the other room too.

okay, so reading that, i realise i come off as sounding like a pretty spoilt kid who couldn't bear roughing it out. well, so maybe i am. i am spoilt. i like my little luxuries, like bathroom tiles that aren't furry. like flats shared with humans and not rats or cockroaches. i am also very lucky. lucky to have been blessed with parents who want to spoil me. parents who can't bear to think of me being miserable. and i do take that for granted sometimes. okay, maybe lots. but roughing it out, i sure can do that! as long as it's within proper context. as in, if i were out camping, i don't mind knowing that i'm sharing a bed with bugs and worms, shivering my teeth off, swatting mosquitoes. i might even enjoy it. because it's all part of the package. but living? give me a soft bed, fluffy pillows, scented candles and a warm bath, or give me death! well, maybe not.

anyway i've veered off on a tangent here so let's get back to what i originally wanted to talk about: permanence. i left home when i was 17 to go to college, and since then i've been moving from one place to another, which is just typical student life, i guess. i am getting just a little bit tired of it, though. i can't wait to be able to just sit and stay at one place. to grow roots somewhere. to have someplace i can call my very own. my home. what about home home - the home i grew up in, you wonder? well, there is that. but i actually find myself getting all restless when i'm home home, and sometimes, although i know i shouldn't, i feel like i don't quite belong. i don't know where my mum keeps stuff in the kitchen, there's always something different every time i go home, the dogs my parents have aren't the dogs i grew up with anymore, everyone has their own schedule, their own activities, and i'm just bumming around the house, not really doing anything much beyond existing. so, yeah. i'd really like my own place. plus, i really, really, really hate moving - packing, unpacking. not my favourite thing to do. especially when i finally realise how much stuff crap i own when i have to move everything from one end of the city to the other.

oh, the down-side of my oh-so-exciting new apartment is, there's no internet access, and i don't think i'll be getting it fixed because i may have to move (again!!) in a few months' time. so hopefully this means i'll be making more trips to the studio (where there's WiFi), and more time spent working at the studio too, and meeting up a little bit more regularly with my tutor.

anyways here's some of the stuff i have left to pack and bring over tomorrow in 9 hours' time.

my anomaly

today i spent the entire day at Alton Towers, which, to those of you unfamiliar with UK theme parks, is a theme park in the UK. it was a great day out, with Becky and her brother Ben, and a bunch of her co-workers. the sun was out the whole day, but it was still breezy enough to not be stifflingly hot. i think i may have even gotten a bit of a tan! being a Sunday, and a Sunday during summer, when school's out, college is out, and everyone is off from work, the park was full full full of people! we only managed to get in about 7 rides today, because the lines were quite long. remember that episode of South Park where Cartman buys a theme park with the inheritance his dead grandmother left him only to close it up so that no one else could ride the rides because he couldn't stand those "lines, lines, lines!!"? well that was how i felt, queueing up for each ride. everytime we were in a queue i felt like we were wasting so much time because half the day was spent queueing up, when we could've gotten on more rides!

in other slightly related highlights, let me tell you a funny story. not funny "ha-ha", but more funny "oh my gosh, fancy that!". because of today's trip, i wanted to get me a pair of contact lenses, so that i wouldn't have to worry about having to take my glasses on and off everytime i got on a ride. so sometime during the week i went to the optician's. the optometrist, Tim, who looked very much like a hotter version of Sting, did a rather thorough eye check-up, to see if my eyes were lens-compatible. he spent a rather long time looking in my eyes, which would've been quite romantic, had he not been shining a really bright pen-light into my eyes and asking me every now and then to "look left" or "look right" or "now up" or "now down". "perfect". he looked in my eyes with an eye-microscope, and again i did the "left, right, up, down, and again, now blink. again, please" routine.

then he went "hmm..."

and i went "hmm...?"

then he said that i had a lot of scarring on my cornea, and he asked me if i had previously injured my eye, or had any eye diseases in the past, to which i replied that i hadn't, and began freaking out just a little bit. scars? in my eye? is that why my vision is so blurred?

so he went "hmm..." then he reached into this drawer and said "i'm going to put a dye on your eye" and oh my if that wasn't the wierdest sensation in my eye ever! he dipped a cotton bud in something (i'm assuming it was the dye), and swiped it across my eye. not too pleasant.

after a few more rounds of "left, right, up, etc." he rubbed his chin and asked again, if i had had any eye diseases before. again, i told him no.

then he went "ahh, let me try another test" and he reached for my eyelids, and folded each one inside out! i used to do this to myself a lot when i was a kid to freak my mum out, but having someone else do it to me... unreal! and also, really, really wierd, and not at all pleasant!

then he said, with this funny smile on his face, "ahh... you have a rather odd anomaly."
"what? what?"
"your eyelid grows inward, which means..."
"what?"
"which means that your eyelashes brush against your cornea..."
"oh my God, what?"
"and everytime you blink, at least 3 or 4 eyelashes come in contact with your eye."

*silence*

"what?"
"haven't you ever felt it? any discomfort? dryness? gritty feeling in your eye"
"what? you mean my eyes are being scratched everytime i blink?"
"something like that, yes."
"by my eyelashes?"

i've always complained that i had no eyelashes, that my eyelashes were so short you could only see them with a microscope, or miraculous mascara. and because of all those years of eyelash-dissing, they've gone and attacked my eyeball! unleashed their vengeance and insecurities on my cornea! "make fun of us, will you? well how'd you like that?!" *scrape, scrape* "that's right, blink! blink away! unbeknownst to you, we're scraping away little bits of your eyeball every time!"

so that's that. i have some odd condition that means i scar my eyeballs everytime i blink. or, like, 35 times every minute (i'm guessing). so i didn't get my lens for this weekend; the optometrist said that before i get a lens prescription i should get my eyes checked by a specialist, to see whether it'd be okay for me to wear contacts. it could end up either being rather beneficial for me (in that the lens could actually protect my cornea from being scratched by my eyelashes), or not-so-beneficial (in that there might be a higher chance of the lens getting dirty, and my eyes getting infected). he gave me a letter to take to my GP, which probably says something like "this girl has freaky eyelids and vindictive eyelashes. refer to specialist immediately!!"

funny thing is, i've lived with this "condition" all my life. fancy that a trip to a theme park would be the reason behind me finally finding out about it.

the most ungrateful daughter in the history of the world

guess who didn't call her dad up this weekend to wish him a Happy Father's Day? and guess who wished him a Happy Birthday 3 days before his actual birthdate, when he called, just so that she wouldn't have to on the day itself? yes, me, the lousiest kid ever. my dad and i are alike in so many ways you wouldn't believe. i'm a carbon copy of him, and not just in looks. we're both introverts. we're both stubborn as hell, arrogant as anything, and nobody impulse shops better than me or my dad. unfortunately for him, when i impulse shop, it's normally at the expense of his bank account. well anyway, i think that because we're so alike, especially in our hard-headedness, we disagree and argue a lot. so sometimes, i feel like pulling whatever's left of his hair out. and i'm sure that at the same time he's trying to figure out what he did to offend God so much as to end up with a kid like me. but sometimes, he makes me laugh, like today, when he sent me this e-mail:

"Dad has just turned 35 (smiley face) and how is this so?
"A long time ago when I was a young lad in Form 1, there were a number of classmates who were rather funny, or at least that was what I thought of them in those times. These classmates of mine read their books rather differently - opening the back pages and reading them from the back and finally to the front. This was particularly glaring when they read the papers in the school library. Later on, I discovered that these lads were from transition classes. This was rather a cultural shock for a kampong boy such as I, where at those times I was only exposed to my humble village mission primary school where classmates were monoethnic in composition. And it was perhaps in the later school that I must have been exposed to Mandarin learning lads!
"So a naughty friend of mine, for some reason was in a public bus with me one day, and that bus must have been what we called in those days as the STC bus. [a.n.: they're still called STC busses, but my dad, who hasn't ridden a bus in 35 years, doesn't know that, apparently...] Anyway this friend did try to read the papers from the back to the front and to make matters worse read it upside down... this to impress upon some of his classmates that he was just as literate when it came to the Mandarin papers.
"And so in my daze of recalling what a casual acquaintance remarked to me yesterday morning that I don't actually look like my age, after she discovered that it was my birthday and had wanted to know the secret of looking youthful... I was just made more embarassed. Thus, this combined with my earlier experience as a young lad in school, who can blame me if I read the number from the front to the back; I may as well bask in the compliment, for after all it was my birthday!"

times like this, he makes me want to fly back home and give him a hug. the story? one, to gloat that his friend complimented him on his "youthful looks" (which i hope to Buddha that i've inherited), and two, to cheer me up because he sensed that things weren't going too well here. because dads have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, no matter how hard you try to hide it from them. i love you too, Daddy. and Happy 53rd Birthday!

judge me, you know you want to

it's 7.10 in the evening and i'm just about to go off and brush my teeth. for the first time today. after i had "breakfast" at 2pm. and a nap at 5.
days like this, when my fridge is empty and my nose is aching for some fresh air, i thank God for the fact that i live right next to the train station, where Marks is open til 10pm, and WH Smith is open til 8.
oh, and also, the summer sun that keeps shining until 10pm, messing up my mind and making me think that it's still 10 past 11 in the morning.

about an exceptional person, on a not-so-exceptional night.

what attracted you to her?
it was a normal night, she was a normal person, standing on a normal street.
what singled her out? the bags she was struggling with? the tiredness in her eyes? the way she minded her own business? lived her own life?
or were you just out looking for fun?
well i'll tell you this. she didn't see it coming, not at all. and when it happened she was caught by surprise. too shocked to cry out, even. and when she'd realised what you did, she might have cried, just a tear or two.
but i'll tell you something else. you didn't win, not at all.
you didn't even touch her, not even a bit.
because if you know her as well as i do, you'd know that she'll come out of this as strong as ever, guns blazing and head held high.
she'll go back to her life, she'll move on, she'll live.
she might even do more than that.
because if you know her as well as i do, you'd know that she is, and will always be, a phenomenal woman.

it must've been the chicken, again

i had the most terrifying dream during my nap this morning. i dreamt that everything related to architecture was stolen from my room : my journals, books, and all my work - and most of my undergrad work were hand-drawn, and couldn't be reproduced. anyway, they were all gone. and the thieves (i think they were little gnomes - they must've been, otherwise i would've seen them) wrote a message for me on my wall in blue crayon, except i couldn't make out what they were trying to say, because it didn't seem to make any sense, and my dream vision was kind of blurry. they also pinned up a half-drawn floor plan of a house on my wall, and the floor area was shaded in orange and red. i was sad and panicking at the same time. i ran out of my room crying, and went down to see the security people, who told me to make a police report. so i left the apartment building, but i couldn't find the police station, so i came back. going back to my room, i went through some refuse / service area, which looked quite spooky and Half-Life-ish. the lifts up to my apartment were quite odd too, and looked very industrial. and once i got to this lobby level in my building, i had to take a train, which led to another lobby and another set of industrial-looking lifts with thick yellow doors. when i finally reached my room my stuff were still gone, and i found that my roommate had thrown white roses down the toilet. so i started cleaning the toilet out, but instead of taking the roses out, i tried flushing them down instead because they smelled of pee. eventually i woke up, and the first thing i did was to check if my portfolio bags were still under my desk, and they are! i blame this dream on the lack of stress that i've been feeling about my design thesis - i think my subconscious is trying to tell me to straighten up and fly right - and also, all the chicken i had for dinner last night. chicken, it seems, gives me rather vivid dreams.

she's seen all shapes, all sizes

sorry for lack of update. it's not that i've been dead, or overly busy, or just plain lazy, it's more like so many things are going on and happening that it's a little bit hard to put them into words, y'know?

if you recall, i was in Chester last Saturday. Chester's a quaint little town about 45 minutes away from Liverpool. i say quaint, but that's only because it's small-ish, and lined with Tudor-styled shops and cobble-stone streets. behind those wooden frames though, are the highest of high-street shops, more than, and bigger than, those in Liverpool! it seems that the only thing to do in Chester is to shop and also, to have tea. Melody raved about the tea in Chester, and we so wanted to try out one of those cutesy tea-houses, but by the time we had our fill of the shops it was already almost 6pm, i.e. way past tea-time, and all the tea-houses were closed. definitely am going back again, probably later in the summer, in time for those grand summer sales!

after some panicked searching, i finally found a new flat. the lease in the place i'm staying in now will be over in 2 weeks, and because they only have 10 or 12-month contracts, i needed to find a place with a more flexible contract. my new flat is a studio apartment, and it's a lot more expensive than i was initially prepared to pay, but it's lovely, and is right next to the bus stop, and comes fully furnished. and by fully furnished, i mean right down to plates and spoons and pots and pans. and also, a cleaner who comes in once a week. and also, a TV. i'll miss the great city view i have here in Grand Central, but i'm really looking forward to the bathtub, and the living on my own, and the big double bed, and the extra space. now all i have to do is find a way to pack all the junk that i've managed to accumulate in 9 months. oh, and also, i got a call from a lady who owns a duplex penthouse on the docks, only she called after i'd signed the contract for the studio. i'm still going to view the penthouse this evening, because she sounded so nice over the phone and mostly because the apartment sounds really nice (duplex penthouse, people), but the other contract's all signed and sealed, so i'm hoping that this penthouse has a major leak, or that it looks over the worst part of the docks ever, or that the landlady looks and belches like South Park's version of Sally Struthers.

a couple of weeks ago i went to watch Sin City, the movie i've been waiting for all year. i loved it so much that i went to see it again last week. i'm a big fan of Tarantino, although i'm not hardcore enough to memorise the entire script of Reservoir Dogs. and although i just found out that he only directed a teeny bit of the movie, there were little bits and pieces of Tarantinoism peppered here and there. i'm guessing that he directed the Hartigan bit. it seems, though, that the reaction to this movie is either to Love it, or Hate it. everyone i recommended it to found it "disturbing" and "so psycho". one of my friends who watched it yesterday even managed to fall alseep during the movie, although i highly suspect that his drowsiness had more to do with the pint of long island ice tea he had for lunch. as much as i loved it though, my one and only gripe was Rory Gilmore the hooker. in what book does it say that that face spells w-h-o-r-e? i can never watch Gilmore Girls the same way again. that aside, this was the best comic book adaptation i've seen, the next best being The Hulk, and the worst being Witchblade. so if you haven't already, go watch it, and don't blame me if you hate it.

i don't know if this is caused by the disturbing movies that i've been watching, or if my subconscious is trying to tell me something, but i've been having some slightly disturbing dreams lately. a few nights ago i dreamt that i was writing out suicide notes to my family and friends. my mum, dad and sister all had one each, and my close friends too. i don't remember exactly what i wrote in all of them, but i do remember that the paper i wrote on was yellowing, old-looking paper. and i used my favourite yellow Pilot. in the letters i apologised to everyone for killing myself, and i said that i knew it wasn't the bravest thing to do, but it was all i felt i could do. i apologised to my parents for spending all their money, and all the indulgent shopping, and to my sister for making her childhood hell. and to my friends for being bitchy and moody. on Friday night i dreamt that i killed a poet for a presentation that i had to do for some class that i was taking. i was supposed to present something about that poet, and so i thought, for visual effect, that i would bring him in. so i went to his house, and killed him, and brought his body back to my house, where i made a mould of his body. then i cut his head off, and brought his severed head to class the next day for my presentation. in the end, though, i chickened out, because someone warned me that the police found out about his murder and were looking out for the killer. so i went through my presentation, with the dead poet's head in my gym locker. deduce away what you will.

well if this isn't the longest post i have ever written. hope it makes up for the absence, and i'd love to go on some more, but my dearest, bestest friend is coming over to stay tonight, and because he gave me the shortest notice ever, my room is nowhere near guest-worthy. so i need to clear up all my stuff (i.e. hide them under the bed) and start making friends with the vacuum. coo, i could do with this right about now.

the very first meme

okay i got tagged with this music meme by Kaki Cucuk Langit. so here goes...

total # of music files on my computer : currently, 883 songs, 2.5 days, 3.34GB. but i still have CDs that i haven't transferred yet, so expect those numbers to keep on groooowing...
the last CD i bought : i just bought Sinead O'Connor's So Far... The Best Of, and Counting Crows' Hard Candy on Wednesday.
song playing right now : Pretty Piece of Flesh by One Inch Punch, from the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack.
five songs that i listen to a lot, that mean a lot to me : ooh... have to think real hard for this one...
1. the prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, played on the cello by Yo-Yo Ma (Bach: Six Suites For Unaccompanied Cello). brings tears to my eyes almost everytime i listen to it, it's that good.
2. Caramel by Suzanne Vega (Retrospective). if you've watched this movie, you'll remember it as the song that was playing when Janeane Garofalo and Ben Chaplin were having phone sex. and no, that's not why i like the song.
3. Far End Of The Night by Grant-Lee Phillips (Virginia Creeper). just like how it sounds, and i love this line : "time hangs like a noose before me". how true it is, for the procrastinator extrodinaire that i am, the more time i'm given, the more rope i have to wrap around my neck.
4. Cooling by Tori Amos (To Venus And Back). i love Tori Amos, she sings and plays with such obvious passion, although i can't tell what she's singing unless i actually read the lyrics off the CD sleeve.
5. The Child Is Gone by Fiona Apple (Tidal). i fell in love with her voice the very moment i heard it, and i can still remember when and where : i was 16, TV2 was playing the Shadowboxer music video. didn't get the Tidal album until last year, although i bought When The Pawn... when it came out. love her lyrics too.
[a.n. since i'm having so much fun with this meme, and since this is my blog and i'll write whatever i want to, i'll ignore the question and just keep listing songs that i like, okay?]
6. Moonlight Kiss by Bap Kennedy (the Serendipity soundtrack). this song brings back memories of all-nighters at the studio, when Tang would play this album, and me and Mel would do our dance "routine". unfortunately, there's just no way to explain the routine, you just have to see it yourselves.
7. Ain't That Lovin' You Baby by Jimmy Reed (the Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood soundtrack). another one of those songs that make me want to get up and dance. Mel would love it.
8. Hotel California by The Eagles (Hell Freezes Over). wish i could play like Frey.
9. Light My Fire by Jose Feliciano (Encore). i actually have this on vinyl, so it's not in my laptop, and since i don't have a turntable here, i haven't heard this song in ages, but i absolutely LoveLoveLove Jose Feliciano's live version of this song.

i shall now pass this meme on to : Nadz tersayang, Suki, Salena, eatmisery, New Woman, and whoever else wants to play!

i'd love to ramble on, but i'm off for a day trip to Chester in 6 hours and i need my sleep! have good weekends, everyone!