is it still winter?

i'm assuming that it still is, seeing that's it's only February, and it is still freezing cold. anyway, if it indeed is still winter, then today is a beautiful winter's day. the sky is blue... stark, pure blue, the kind of blue that makes the world look like a child's painting.

about a week and a half ago i was sick, and that was the reason that i posted nothing. i had a really bad cold, the kind that keeps you in bed for three days. so sick that i was only well enough to get out and buy medicine on the fourth day, and by then, i probably didn't really need it as much anymore. anyway i medicated myself with Night Nurse, which was once recommended to me by wise Nads. a miracle wonder-cure, it is. because once i took it i had the most peaceful sleep i'd had in a while.

last week my bestest Jules came over to stay. he made breakfast for me, and patted my back and said "aww you poor darling" when i coughed. we watched Team America and laughed at puppet sex. then we stayed up to watch Quizmania and tried to guess famous Davids. we "won" £8750, cos i guessed David Hyde Pierce and he guessed David Hasselhoff. i dragged him to the cinema and forced him to watch Good Night And Good Luck, thinking that he'd end up enjoying it. turned out he didn't, but he was willing to watch it anyway, even though i said we could do something else and i could see it once he'd left. i dragged him to Tabac because i'd been dying to have their toffee and banana sponge pudding, and he shared a bowl with me, but complained all the way that his face was getting fatter. walking him to the bus station on Friday, we made a bet on which one of us would be the first to sleep with a Jewish guy. we ended up cancelling it later, because how would you tell a Jewish guy from a non-Jewish guy unless you asked him and wouldn't that just be rude?

so i missed a week's worth of work because of my cold, and when i wanted to start working on Wednesday Jules came over and so work got postponed until he left, and then after that it was the weekend, and i didn't want to work over the weekend because god said to keep the Sabbath weekend holy and spend it lying on the couch watching DVDs, which brings us to this new week, when i will begin to work. although i didn't yesterday because. today is Pancake Day and i'm going over to Lauren's this evening to have proper pancakes (as opposed to British "pancakes" which are really just crépe-wannabe's). so this afternoon i will be working. working on storyboards which really should have been done last week.

so, Happy Pancake Day, everyone!

pining for apple crumble

i've just finished off an e-mail to my girlfriends down in the under-end of the world, rattling off about nonsensical things that don't matter, like a recipe for marshmallow corn-krispies and a description of another one of my twisted dreams (which involved a bald bulldog and a Angelina Jolie-is-a-lesbian suspiscion). thing is, i miss these girls. terribly. my medication is running out, and i forgot to get it refilled so i'm halving my dosage this weekend until i get a refill on Monday. so i don't know if it's the lack of Prozac that's made me feel more lately, or whether i just miss them that much.

it's funny how that cliché about distance and hearts turns out to be true, as it seems like we've drawn closer now that we're on opposite sides of the world; even more so than when we had spent three years sitting in the same studio less than 10 metres away from each other. we've been able to confide in each other more now that we're corresponding mostly through e-mail, more than when we had spent endless stressful sleepless nights churning out design ideas before crits. face-to-face, we tend to hide our vulnerabilities behind jokes, crazy dances, insane stunts, and whatever madness we used to come up with during our all-nighters. now, with this group e-mail, for the first time i'm seeing words like "i'm worried..." or "i'm afraid..." or "i'm sorry that..." Mel is worried that i may be getting addicted to Prozac. Jean is worried about whether she and her ex-boyfriend should still keep in touch and remain friends. Sarah is worried that i'm going to end up so numbed to everything that i'll end up laughing at funerals. Annie is starting to worry about the fact that Mel and i both recently had dreams about her boobs.

speaking of funerals, it turns out my grandmother is dying. she'd been coughing for a while recently, and when she had an x-ray done the doctors found that she has late-stage bronchial cancer. she's in her late 70's, and they don't want to put her through the pain of chemotheraphy, so for now it's just going to be about alleviating her discomfort until her time comes. my mum's quite concerned about how i'm taking the news, but i think she's getting all worked-up for nothing. i feel sorry for my grandma, but i'm not getting all depressed or anything. i mean, how is that going to help anyone anyway, right? i guess i'm more worried about my dad and how he's taking it. it's funny, in a way, how all the attention is not entirely on my grandma (who hardly looks sick at all, according to my mum) but on the people around her - my dad, whom i think has always felt a little bit guilty about not being with her as often as he could; and my aunt, whom my grandma's lived with all these years. i guess, in this case, distance helps too. the fact that i'm 6000 miles away from home makes me sort of detatched from everything that's going on back there. or maybe i really am getting over-numbed; when i e-mailed the girls about my grandmother, it was a short paragraph among other longer paragraphs about yet another weird dream about Jean getting pregnant and opening a birthing centre for upper-class Indonesian single mothers, and a recipe for milo-marshmallows and spaghetti tuna-mayo.

Chopin in the morning

the Second Movement from Chopin's Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor is what i woke up to this morning. here's the thing about Chopin: his pieces are, i've found, infuriatingly difficult to play, especially when you're a 10-year old me being forced to practice at least an hour every day because "I'm not spending all that money on piano lessons for nothing!" my point is, you can't play Chopin unless you really want to; unless you really feel it. i don't know; maybe the same applies to pieces by Beethoven, or Bach. but then again, most of Beethoven is about angst - strong, powerful, forceful, excrutiating. and when you're forced to sit at the piano for at least an hour, Beethoven's the one to let out all frustration on. all you need to play Bach properly is for your fingers to have perfect memory and a mind of its own - Bach is about repetition and running patterns. an animated bunch of bananas could play Bach on the piano. but Chopin - he's all about the feeling. if you don't feel Chopin, all you'll sound like is a piece of wood clacketing across the piano keys. this morning's Second Movement, titled Romance and played legato, is a piece i'd require to be on the repertoire of every piano virtuoso-wannabe (if, that is, i was in any position to determine virtuoso eligibility), plainly because it is sublimely beautiful. listen to it, and you'll see what i mean. if you don't get to, then imagine this: fingers skimming across the keys like butterflies' wings - touching down just enough, pressing ever so gently - producing this lilting, lulling, almost hypnotic melody that suspends you, raises you about two feet off the ground and keeps you there, building up slowly, tantalisingly, towards a climax that never comes. suspension. makes your heart soar right up to a height with no ends. that's what he's all about: the feeling. see, if romance were like that - an infinite suspension of reality - i'd want to be in Lovey Land forevermore.

so this morning, when i woke up with this tightening in my chest and a bitter taste in the back of my throat, Chopin floated the anxiety away. the man's all about the feeling, so i knew he'd understand. i turned to the CD player and asked ol' Frederic, "What do I do, Chopin?" and in between the sounds of the ebony and ivory, and the sheep gut and metal, an idea - which i deem to have been divine intervention from beyond the grave - came upon me: postpone the meeting. and another one: storyboard idea. and then another storyboard idea. and then another. see, Chopin's an artist. but even more than that: he's a designer of pieces. writing for orchestras? no easy feat, i bet. co-ordinating which sections get what parts, what the circulation of the piece will be, it's defining structures, foundation key, intervals, chord changes, articulations - kind of like the design of space, no?

Chopin: soundtrack of the day.

on the day after the morning after the night before

wondering, mulling, thinking, of things said, done, to come. and wishing it wasn't distracting from progress towards tomorrow's highly important meeting.

third time's a charm?

i started writing this post a few days ago, put my computer into "hibernate" and when i tried starting it up again today it wouldn't start, or at least it started to start, but was taking too long and i got impatient and pressed the "restart" button instead and when the computer finally started up i found that i had lost the post, because i didn't save it as draft. so, then i started writing it again, but then the computer cable got accidentally yanked out when i pulled the computer onto my lap, and i lost the post again, because i didn't save it as draft, which i will do now, in case i lose this one too. anyhow, this is the third time i'm composing this post and i sure hope i won't lose this one too.

i have been away for a bit. quite a bit, in fact. a month a bit. which is a pretty long time, but then again that depends on what you'd consider long. i think a month is a pretty long time. i started this journal about a year ago next week, and to be honest, with the way my hobbies have very short lives, i'm surprised this one has lasted a year. but then again i did stop posting for about a month there so who knows maybe it won't last another year? well it's not so much that i've been away away. as in, i haven't packed up and moved to Siberia or anything (and if i did, or were planning to, i'd let you know). in fact i've been right here, in this very same room, for some time now (not continuously of course; i do get out some). and it hasn't been that there hasn't been much happening either, in fact the past month has been quite eventful. maybe i'll blame it on the weather. because it has been cold lately; too cold to type because my fingers are frozen and the only reason i'm posting right now is because i left the heater on for the whole night last night and my room feels very much like Bali. so i'll just say "I'm back!" and leave it at that. okay? okay.

so i met Naz online the other day when i accidentally logged on to MSN Messenger (and by accidentally i mean my computer signed me on without me knowing it) and he mentioned that he had left me a meme to do on his site. well, not so much mentioned as ordered me to buat*! so, although this is the hardest meme i've done so far, (why didn't you ask me to list my 10 favourite movies instead?!) buat i shall. so the rules are pretty much straightforward: list 8 criteria i would like to see in my perfect partner. and here they are...

1. has good table manners
2. shares my dislike of Jim Carrey and grotesque humour
3. has jolly grandparents (or parents) who love hosting barbecues
4. doesn't have an obsession with football, badminton, cricket, rugby, soccer or basketball
5. doesn't have cold feet
6. or no teeth
7. or a horrible body odour
8. or really bad breath

hmm... that wasn't as hard as i thought. i'm not tagging anyone, but if you'd like to play, leave me a comment. till then, have a great weekend, everyone!

*do