deep intellectual philosophical ramblings

God save the Queen('s vagina)

2007-03-01T23:53:00.000Z

see, i started writing this post a few days ago. i was going to tell you all about how i went to see the Vagina Monologues (hence the title) last Wednesday. how i'd initially planned to see it 5 years ago when it was scheduled to play in KL, until the lovely folks at City Hall put an end to that. how joyful i was to find that it would play in Liverpool - one night only! - and how ecstatic i was to manage to get a ticket to see the show. and about how it was one of the best nights i have had so far, this year.

i also wanted to tell you all about how i went to see Babel. i wanted to say "You MUST see this film!" i wanted to say that this film has made me reaffirm my position on the whole "no more TV" stance i am taking (oh by the way did i mention that as of November 2006 i've voluntarily stopped watching TV for no real reason other than that there is too much shit on TV these days - shit i don't want to be paying £130 a year for).

but here's the thing: there is nothing else on my mind these days except my whole visa situation. it is really stressing me out, though i try not to think about it too much. i look around my room and wonder how to go about packing up and then shipping everything i've accumulated over the past 3 years of my life here. i've complained before about moving from one apartment to another on the other side of town, and now i have to move all the way to the other side of the world. the side of the world that bans things like the Vagina Monologues because it contains "controversial content", no matter how real or relevant it is. i will have to attend a hearing (!!) 2 weeks from now. it scares the shit out of me.

cos goddamn i hate packing.

sewer monsters would be appalled

2007-02-17T22:13:00.000Z

Oops i guess there is something that needs explaining... i still have my old job, that is, my current job - Shop Assisting, in a Shop. Thing is, this is meant to be a transitionary job, something that feeds the rent and bills whilst i look for a real job - Architecting, in a Firm.

Well, now that that's cleared up, this is how my job interview went: good. did not trip, did not rip pants, etc. Met with the Director of the firm, and the office manager. Went through my portfolio, which they appeared to like, and i got good feedback from them about my work. After all that though, and a massive 2-day high, they called back and told me that i didn't get the job; said they needed someone with more work experience. Which really gripes my ass, because how am i supposed to gain work experience when no one will give me work?

Also, i sent in an application late last year to have my student visa extended, got my passport back a couple of weeks ago, but the extension was denied. So i met with a solicitor this week to work on an appeal against the decision. Sent all the forms off, and all i have to do now is wait til they set a court date for a hearing... fucking court yo!

So i don't know, i've had a sucky couple of weeks... actually, a pretty fucky couple of years now. i'm guessing one day, maybe a long way from now, i'll look back at this time and laugh. or reflect on how experiences like this helped me grow and all that shit. or maybe not.

I suppose good things have happened too... it's just taking me a little bit longer to think what.

Oh, my kitchen floor is finally here! it actually arrived almost a month ago, i just haven't had the time to fit it in yet. it's a marbley-looking light tan colour linoleum, and it shouldn't be all that hard to fit in. i'm just wondering how i'll get a 4-m long roll of floor up a flight of stairs and into the narrow corridor of my hallway...

Speaking of my kitchen, it is currently in a dreadful state. tea-stained rings on the counter top, 2-week old dishes in the sink, week old coffee in the coffee maker. i think i have milk in the fridge that can't be called milk anymore.

shoulders hunched, collars up

2007-02-02T01:03:00.000Z

i have spent most of January thinking about most of 2006. the worst event of last year was my grandmother's death, and also the fact that i couldn't be home with her when she was dying, or for her funeral. i sometimes find myself thinking about her as if she were still alive - and then catching myself when i remember that she's gone.

the best part of 2006, i think, was me getting a job (albeit being disgustingly underpaid) and finally being able to cut myself off of my dad's bank account. of course, if i really needed the money, i know that it would only take a phone call - but i really hope i won't have to anymore.

i had a good day today... i spent most of the later half of 2006 moaning about not being able to get a job yet not doing anything much about it - well, a few days ago i finally picked up the phone and called up a recruitment agency a friend of mine recommended. i met with a consultant this afternoon, and she's already got me an interview lined up for Monday. after speaking to her on the phone the other day i had a feeling things would be okay... we share the same birthday, and she has the same name as my cat (although i didn't tell her about that... i wasn't sure how she would feel about sharing a name with a cat). i am already nervous about the interview... it will be my first proper interview ever! what if the directors don't like what i wear? what if it rains that morning and my hair ends up all ratty and messy? what if i can't think of any way i can be of use to the company? what if i trip over something and rip my pants?

tomorrow (also another first) i'm seeing the dentist... first time in 2 years. well, actually, second time: i had a check-up last Thursday. turns out i have one cavity, one potential cavity and a mouth full of wonky wisdom teeth that don't seem to be growing in the right direction. also, caffeine and nicotine have left my teeth stained yellowy so i will also need a scale and polish. i don't mind dentists... in fact i find them soothing. i might take a nap while she's polishing away.

you know what i miss? jungle trekking. i miss walking through the jungles and moaning about the heat and mosquito bites. i don't know why, but i just watched The Bridge On the River Kwai tonight and i wished i were in a rainforest somewhere swashbuckling away at unruly bamboo with a parang.

so sorry!

2007-01-30T23:32:00.000Z

i know it seems like i only post when i get a "where have you been" message and i know i haven't posted in a long long long long while but i will will will post something soon! most likely after Thursday. or maybe even tomorrow night! so sorry to those of you who have been checking back and still finding that old early Jan post! no excuses except laziness i'm afraid!

diddle me this

2007-01-04T22:39:00.000Z

i have just had the most pleasantly relaxing day. i have spent almost the entire day in bed - wrapped up in two duvets, a spread-out sarong and two fleece throws. hot water bottles under the covers and the gas fire on. warm, toasty, a hot cup of mocha by the bed. bless my blissful self!

it was my day off today; i have tomorrow off as well. i was just looking through my diary last night and realised that i haven't had a proper, rest-filled day in about 6 weeks! sure, i haven't been working everyday for 6 straight weeks, but when i do get a day off (i've been working 6-day weeks, thanks to the pre- and post-Christmas rush), it has been spent running around getting errands done - trips to the bank, post office, people to call/see... so today, today was wonderful.

i'm off tomorrow too; but in contrast to today i will instead be running around town like a headless chicken.

happy December

2006-12-24T19:16:00.000Z

just a quick one to wish everyone who comes by a Happy Hanukkah/Merry Christmas/Selamat Hari Raya Haji/Happy Holidays and a blessed/wonderful New Year (delete where necessary). will update soon... my next day off's on Wednesday!

let the sky rain potatoes

2006-12-12T22:11:00.000Z

i wish i were six; when my biggest worry was whether Cornelia the teacher's daughter would throw my shoes up in the tree again. or whether i'd be able to get the chair with the arm-rests before she beat me to it. today my biggest worry is... oh where do i begin? i absolutely dread receiving mail... where my six-year-old self would be so excited to see grown-up looking envelopes with her grown-up looking name printed on them greeting her at the door every day, my twenty five-year-old self wishes she could throw them into the fire and forget about them forever and ever because each one says the same: payment now due. i wish i could shove anxiety under the bed and let tomorrow worry about itself but how can i when tomorrow threatens suspension and court action and hot needles dipped in wax pushed slowly into the soles of my feet? okay maybe not so much the last one. God i hate being an adult.

work

2006-11-27T22:55:00.000Z

just a quickie before i go to bed. i have been doing nothing but work this past week... working 6 days a week now, from 9:00 to 5.30; and 9:00 to 9:00 on Thursdays. i've settled into something of a routine lately - wake up, go to work, come home, have dinner, take a bath, sleep - oh how mundane life has now become! i'm not complaining, though. it pays the bills, and it's so reassuring to not have my bank balance in the reds anymore. speaking of my bank, i'm meeting with my bank manager this week, to discuss upgrading my account. i'm crossing my fingers and praying to the divine powers that that'll mean a big overdraft, and a credit card! cos i have tasted the plastic, and know that it is good. amen.

mickle

2006-11-19T21:19:00.000Z

the word of the day from The Free Dictionary is mickle (n.) a large number... as in, on Saturday, i threw out a mickle of trash from my flat, after i spent the entire morning spring-cleaning. on Saturday afternoon i hosted a baby shower for my friend Sharon, who is due at the end of the month. here is a tip, from me to you... when hosting a party, don't leave cleaning and clearing to the morning of the event. because guests will probably start arriving just as you are setting the food table.

i recently started work at a clothes shop in town. i shop-assist, as shop assistants do. the job is a bore but the money pays the rent. this week i prepared stock for display, which meant i placed alarm and price tags on the clothes for the shop floor. after about three dozen pairs of jeans and tops i started wondering about the 10-year old Bangladeshi children sewing the very clothes i was about to put out. sometime last week a lady, i'm guessing in her early 70's, came in. she didn't have the right glasses with her and needed help reading the sizes on the clothes tags, so i assisted her around the store, as shop assistants do. we came to a rail of T-shirts, which she thought were pretty. she couldn't make out what the detail on the front of the shirts were, so i had to tell her: "it is a pile of skulls with silver glitter around it, and the words 'rebel punk' above and below."

it was my birthday a week ago tomorrow. i bought myself a new camera, which i am very pleased with. only thing is, i don't really know how to use it. it's chock-full of functions. good thing it's digital, so experimenting with different settings and such won't cost me a cent.

i met up with Heather on Wednesday for dinner and a movie - we saw Zach Braff's latest, The Last Kiss. which, i guess, wasn't that bad. but it wasn't great either. bit of a drag, actually. and quite predictable. but if you just like to admire Zach Braff and his pretty lips, i say go see it anyway.

my internet hasn't been working at its best this week, but let's hope the connection works enough to let me publish this!

deep indeed

2006-10-31T23:50:00.000Z

erh. i was in the midst of typing out a pretty long post earlier today, when my laptop ran out of battery and died on me. i really should get into the habit of composing posts in Notepad and saving them frequently.

i discovered something truly wonderful today... the beauty of the open D tuning. why no one told me about it much sooner i do not know. on other guitar-related news, i hurt my finger playing a couple of weeks ago... have some kind of laceration right below the cuticle of my right index finger and it still hurts! so everytime i want to play now i have to wrap masking tape around it. wonder why it's taking so long to heal. grr. plus, much guitar playing results in tattered finger-nails. so left hand: nice short neatly manicured nails... right hand: ooky scratched nails.

worked Anfield tonight. was good, not too busy, except i kept dropping money on the floor. and i burned my arm on the oven. grr.

is cold night. brr. am snuggled in bed with a hot water bottle. yum.

i lust muchly over a new camera. i miss taking photos.

i lost all my favourite pens recently, which sucks hairy monkey balls. i sketch, write, draw with coloured Pilot pens... the kinds that come in the cylindrical cases... i don't know what the model name is but the refills are called G2 somethingorother. i started off with a yellow one, which broke. replaced it with another yellow one, which disappeared mysteriously. then i bought myself a white one, which i lost on Friday. think i dropped it somewhere. cursed be my shallow trouser pockets!

Marie Antoinette, in several words

2006-10-27T00:05:00.000+01:00

isolation naiveté asphyxiation growth uncomfortable but very pretty clothes noise visual weight loud high maintenance hair

Edward Nigma's

2006-10-18T22:07:00.000+01:00

art baffles me. sometimes it's overturned boats arranged in the shell of an old church. sometimes it's the preserved carcass of a lamb in an aquarium. sometimes it's canned soup. should i find meaning behind paintings and forms because somebody has decided that it is worthy of the space it has been awarded, the public attention it attracts? or should i search deeper within my uncultured intellect, examine art history, study technique, analyse social context and political climate, before i am able to appreciate? how much do i have to know before i am allowed to step forward, arms crossed, chin in hand, and nod that secret coded ahh... nod?

labels annoy me. animal, mineral, vegetable? man, woman? gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender? Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, athiest, infidel? this, that, the other? why is it social nature to collate and categorise everything? not just in fact everything, but everyone? man is English is Christian is married is father is middle classed is average. lives in the suburbs wears a tie to work drives a sedan with a baby chair in the back seat la de da.

jazz awes me. chaos, abandon, randomness, cloud order.

to all who have checked in, sorry it's been a while, i know. updates more frequent to come. soon, a post with less funk.

was there a memo?

2006-09-13T23:36:00.000+01:00

i'm not usually one to condone one-night stands and casual sex, but sometimes "get some, get gone" doesn't sound like such a bad idea. today i brought an end to a 2-month long "whatever". it turned out that he wanted to get on the expressway to Relationship Land, while i was still happily browsing around Hang-Out-And-See-What-Happens Town.

"when did boys turn into girls?" i moaned afterwards.
"i know. when are they going to learn that we just want to be treated like shit?"

exactly. wait, what? no, that wasn't really what i meant. i don't want to be treated like shit. see, it's either whambamwhat'sforbreakfast or let's dangle our feet before jumping in. a little bit of lag time between "Hello how are you" and "Let's have babies". can't have both, can't jump in without knowing how cold the water is. which is why sometimes whambam is easiest. no strings, no invested emotions, no hurt feelings.

of course, i'm in my 20's. might still be able to get away with short trysts and test-runs. bet i'll be regretting this when kismet bites back 50 years later and i'm lying in a pool of my own blood and excrement, flesh being eaten off my dead body by my pet Alsatians.

fluffy-eyed

2006-08-31T03:35:00.000+01:00

it seems that i only write in this thing when i'm deadly bored, or unable to sleep, or when i get an "are you still alive?" e-mail. it's way past three in the morning, so i'll leave you to guess which one of those has driven me to the keyboard this time.

you know when you lay tummy-down with your knees bent, feet in the air, with heavy shoes on and your legs go all falling this-way-and-that because of the weight? that's nice.

also, the sight of furry kittens playing with string, or a dead lizard. very cute.

i also like it when the skies are dark grey, and the wind is blowing so hard it makes the trees sway and the windows whistle, and it looks like it's going to pour, but there's just a teensy bit of sun.

Tuesday evening i was walking back from Blockbuster and on my way home i passed a block of flats. it had been a sunny day - this was around 6/7-ish, about half an hour before the sun set. there was a ray of sun that look filtered and isolated somehow, the way rays of sun sometimes look, shining down an angle in between the block of flats and some trees, onto a parking lot. and there were specks of dust dancing away in it. it was a pretty sight, and at that moment i wished i had my camera with me. and also, good enough photography skills to capture it the way i saw it.

my Norton anti-virus program has expired and every 15 minutes or so i get a prompt from my computer reminding me of the fact. it rather annoys me.

my eyes are getting fluffy, which means that i may be getting sleepy. here's hoping i don't oversleep again.

wah-ah-ah-ah-ahndering

2006-08-16T20:59:00.000+01:00

i've been thinking, these past few hours, about English words that are made up entirely of consonants. like tryst. i can't think of any more, but it's slowly driving me insane.

i've been bored, these past few days. it's not so much not having anything to do; in fact, there are lots. i've just gotten so good at letting tomorrow take care of itself that i forget that tomorrows turn into todays, and then yesterdays, and then last weeks and months. i'm a self-sabotaging masochist. wait. is that redundant?

i've started doing yoga/pilates. in fact i'll call it yoglates. last night i was getting into position for downward-facing dog when my hands brushed against the carpet and then withdrew from it a clump of hair. i then spent the next 15 minutes plucking hair out of the carpet. when i was done, there were lots of hair in my wastepaper basket. so much that it is an almost-miracle that i am not bald. so i wonder, apart from walking around with a shower cap on, how do i keep my carpet hair-free? because vacuuming doesn't seem to work as effectively as getting on hands and knees and manually plucking hair out, which i don't particularly enjoy doing.

it's August. why is it already getting colder? the temperature's going down, the days are getting gloomier. summer just can't be over yet!

i have decided that my next camera purchase will be a polaroid: cheap, point-and-shoot, instant camera. besides it does have a raw almost Lomo-ish quality that i'm currently in like with. and also my less-than-stellar camera "skills" would be a waste on a bells-and-whistles model. plus, the way to develop photographic skills is to learn about and truly understand the qualities of light and exposure. and honestly, digital just spoils you as far as editing goes. because you can take a really shit photograph, then run it through Photoshop or some other photo-editing software and make it look like it was taken by Man Ray. oh who am i kidding - truth is i can't afford the Pentax istDL that i'm lusting for.

currently (v)

2006-08-08T14:28:00.000+01:00

listening to a random radio station, now playing some song i think by Hoobastank.
playing air drums to (what i think is) the Hoobastank song.
reading the Constitution of Malaysia.
thankful for my new (old) TV.
not understanding cricket.
missing driving my car aimlessly around KL.
loving Ani DiFranco. also, the sun.
feeling slightly hungry. and also, a little bit guilty for over-sleeping today.
looking forward to tomorrow, working at Anfield, at the start of a new season.
smelling the head of Sixty, my stuffed dog with the lanky long legs and the bulbous body. he smells of blanket.
liking the words nudnik; cusp; lilt; esoteric.

life has a funny way...

2006-08-07T01:49:00.000+01:00

so i realise (again) that it has been a while (again) since my last post (again). all of this week i've been thinking of what to write about... the war in the Middle East? the Women's British Open? all huge topics, worthy of inches and yards of online space. but yet, neither of which have anything at all to do with me, personally. and really, my knowledge of the history behind the conflict in the Middle East is just about as deep as President Bush's, so i'd rather not go there lest i suggest a ridiculous solution to stop this "shit".

the reality is that nothing is going on these days that i haven't already moaned about: i have no money and i'm looking for a job. with the pace at which my life is moving, a bird landing on my windowsill is worth large-print headlines and a three-day forum.

this weekend though, something crashboombang-like did happen. well, relatively crashboombangish. my TV died last night. my widescreen 21-inch TV. it wasn't totally the end of the world, because a spare TV in the store-room that i dug up came to the rescue. but turning it on and finishing The Anniversary Party on a dinky little 15-inch screen was just depressing. and of course, of course, this is nothing compared to living with the fear of having a rocket land on your head at any given moment, or in a land where food is a luxury and TV is just another ambiguous acronym like UN or HIV. but in my land, the scarcity of food and the arbitrariness of mortality is a lot less real than me losing the ability to watch my West Wing DVDs on a screen larger than a stamp. cue my landlord. i have no money. (so in truth, the scarcity of food is starting to get a little more real for me these days) but my landlord, who is probably the greatest landlord i have ever had, has been leaving me roast duck and mangoes at my door throughout the week so my fridge is overflowing with food, and today, some dim sum. when i called to thank him this afternoon, i mentioned the death of my TV and he offered me his set - not widescreen, but much, much larger than a stamp. he'd bought himself a ginormous LCD TV recently and so had an extra set. and so now, i have two TVs sitting in my living room... the dinky one i've kept to watch terrestrial on, because the large one doesn't receive stations all that well.

oh, and today i saw a long, green, grasshopper-like insect crawling on a roll of duct-tape.

and also, a large fly buzzed around in my room for 14 whole minutes!

2:something in the a.m.

2006-07-29T02:30:00.000+01:00

2:26am. i can't sleep, it seems. at 7:15 this evening i took two sleeping pills, which were supposed to send me into deep slumber by 9:00. obviously, as i'm sitting here, they have yet to take effect. i've watched The West Wing. watched the Big Brother eviction. watched Newsnight, then Newsnight Review (reading John Updike's latest novel, apparently, is akin to being "sexually assaulted... then made to drink drain water"). then Boys Don't Cry. then lay in bed and thought about Boys Don't Cry and hate crimes. got out of bed to IMDB Boys Don't Cry. found out that a lot of the movie was factually inaccurate. cared a little bit, but not really. checked my e-mails, message boards, latest headlines. hoping that the glare of the computer screen will make me sleepy.

i have a breakfast meeting in the morning. how much do i want to bet that i'll fall asleep in a plate of mushroom omelette?

so much and nothing to say

2006-07-22T01:57:00.000+01:00

the night is breezy but warm at the same time. cool, but slightly humid. reminds me of home, a little. and as much as i look forward to the cooler months ahead, i wish the summer heat would last just a little bit longer. the sun, i've come to grow quite attached to her.

i have been having some odd dreams lately. one in which a coconut tree falls on Melanie. i run off to get help, and when i come back, she's gone. i continue down the dirt path we were walking and eventually come to a spiral staircase. i have to repel up on the outside of the spiral because the stairway is narrow and i'm carrying a large backpack. up the stairs is the office of a Nazi general, who points out the way to the hospital. when i get there she's in a bed, wires and tubes and all, but just a small gash on her forehead. then i bump into Belinda, who's in the opposite bed, with a broken arm. there are women sitting cross-legged on the floor holding their babies in sarong baby carriers. i leave the hospital and make my way back, passing through a row of army barracks and a village full of violent natives who intend to kill and boil me. i play human tic-tac-toe with them and when i win, they allow me to pass through a set of gates. when i get to the other side i turn back and say "this isn't better!" but i can't see why.

when i was younger, before the family home was set up with burglar alarms, i used to sleep with the windows open and the ceiling fan on low. night-time is the best time. it's cool, windy. my bed was next to the window and i used to dangle my feet out as i fell asleep. the air back home smells heavy. thick. tonight, sitting at my desk with the windows open, the air smells heavy. slightly smoky. it's easy to imagine that the hint of smoke in the air is caused by what's left of a fire Gene and i started that evening in the backyard - dried weeds and newspaper. it's easy to picture my bed by the window, feet dangling out.

i'm on to you...

2006-07-10T23:58:00.000+01:00

yes, you. the man who watches football because you claim it is a man's sport, and scoffs and smirks and sneers when i gush about Grey's Anatomy or Sex and the City, or Callie Khouri movies... i know what you're really all about. 'cos i've been watching bits and pieces of the World Cup and from what i've seen, all that sweating and running and testosterone-driven spats just cleverly cover the underlying dramatics that go on in and after a match. allow me to present to you, England v Portugal. the match in which Wayne Rooney loses his temper and stomps Carvalho (in the crotch, no less), resulting in a red card and send-off. after the game there was an in-depth "analysis" of the incident (which occured in all of 15 seconds), starting with Rooney's tackle, the stomp, then oh my gosh Christiano Ronaldo comes running up to the referee from the other side of the pitch to complain about what's happened, then after the red card is shown to Rooney, Ronaldo walks away, and is seen to wink!! and oh my gosh what did that wink mean? but that's not it... there's coverage in the papers too... follow-up articles on what next season in Old Trafford is going to be like what with what will surely be upcoming tension between Ronaldo and Rooney in Manchester United, then statements from both players saying no, all is fine, we exchanged texts and everything's okay. not only that, but all the falling and the diving and the clutching-of-the-leg/foot/thigh and the grimaces of pain and the "oh referee i'm injured so bad i can't get up and... oh, you're not looking? okay i'll just try to get up and, oh, look, seems like i can stand up, i'm just going to try to... oh, i'm okay! but hey keep an eye on that guy, he tripped me, could've broken my foot there..." please!! any of these scenarios would fit just fine in a Falcon Crest story arc, so come on you're not fooling anyone. now that's all i have to say on the matter because my current favourite teen lesbian soap is coming on in 2 minutes.

love you (from afar)

2006-07-09T17:33:00.000+01:00

a few weeks ago a close friend of mine came over from Nottingham. when i went to pick him up at the bus station on Tuesday he said "i have an open ticket, and i can stay til whenever." and i thought that was great because he is such a doll and i love having him around. so off we went - had dinner in town, when we got home we spent the rest of the night talking, gossipping, bitching about people we know. everything was lah-de-da! but by the evening of day two i was wishing that "til whenever" actually meant "two nights, tops". we'd had an argument, i lost my cool, but thanks to four little pill-sized wonders, all was back to fine and dandy by 10 o'clock that night.

throughout the rest of his stay i found out more about him, and him a little about me, and the lives we want to live, and the people we'd like to meet, and the boys we'd like to do, and among all this i found that we have very contrasting opinions about some things - women, for example. i found myself shocked when he said that he expected all mothers to automatically become full-time home-makers, and although i wanted to keep quiet in order to avoid another argument, i could not shut it for this one. long story short, we agreed to disagree. he ended up staying til Sunday afternoon, and now that he's back where he is and i am where i am, i kinda miss him a little bit. except i think that this is just how i like it... a long-distance friendship, with occasional hour-and-a-half phonecalls, and the rare weekend visits.

it's funny; we both love Will & Grace, and Jules has always fancied himself the Will to my Grace. except, unlike Will, he could never pass for straight and, unlike Will and Grace, we don't live together, and if i have my say, we hopefully never will. anyway, there's a reason why it's a sitcom... Grace can't stand Will's overbearing smothering and his incessant urge to put everything right, and Will can't stand her eating habits and laziness, and sometimes they fight, and lots of times they yell at each other, but by the end of the half-hour everyone's hugging and laughing again, and i am just not convinced that happens in real life, without the help of either very strong pharmaceuticals, or a patience that knows no bounds.

or maybe i've lived alone for too long, and am almost devoid of relationship skills.

this blog has gone to poo

2006-07-04T14:56:00.000+01:00

yesterday someone found my page by Googling "chinese poo tea capsules". if that person is still reading this, or has come back for a second look, i suggest you change the structure of your phrase to "Chinese tea poo capsules", because i'm sure you wouldn't want Chinese poo in your tea capsules. why you'd want any kind of poo in your tea i don't know but hey, whatever floats your boat. i don't judge.

the World Cup

2006-07-02T15:37:00.000+01:00

Italy vs. SomeTeam
me: that was a great fall! hahahaha
him: oh please. he is so over-reacting. total actor.
me: why is he just lying there? why doesn't he get up?
him: ...
me: maybe, he's waiting for the referee to come check the scene out... so he can decide whether to book that guy or not.
him: oi. this is footballlah. not CSI.
me: new franchise... CSI: World Cup. here comes Grissom with his brushes.

England vs Portugal
me: i love Ashley Cole's spiffy red shoes!
him: eww.
me: mmm those Portugal boys sure fill their shirts up well.
him: i wish i had his butt.
me: eat more. and do your butt-clenches.
him: no. i wish i had his butt... in my hands.

god i love the futbol.

about today

2006-06-25T18:57:00.000+01:00

after months of illness, my grandmother finally passed away at 8.42pm today (Malaysian time). i don't know all the details yet, but she apparently went into a coma and died in her sleep. i'm glad she wasn't in any pain. when my mum called from my aunt's house, she was in tears and i could hear my aunts and cousins crying in the background. and then my dad called, and he was crying too. and that made me sad, the fact that my dad has just lost someone he must feel very deeply for. i was close to my grandmother when i was little - she used to visit with us when i was little, and sometimes stayed for months. so i'm attributing the lack of effect that her death has so far had on me to the fact that throughout her illness i've been somewhat detached from the roller-coaster of emotions that the rest of my family have been feeling because i'm far away from home. or maybe Prozac. anyway, God should be so lucky to have my grandmother in heaven... she makes kick-ass tuak*!

*tuak rice wine

the joy of layzing

2006-06-16T13:54:00.000+01:00

yesterday morning, i got up at 7:45am. i had to pee, and so i did. i looked at the clock on my cellphone and patted myself on the back for getting up so early. then, i went back to bed.

at 8:25am, Jules called to wake me up. the night before, we had planned on watching the re-run of Big Brother together. i switched on the TV, arranged my pillows just so, and we commented on Lea's big boobs. Jules was annoyed that Pete wears eyeliner because he thought that he (Jules) was the only man who did that, apart from maybe drag queens. i told him to wake up and get his head out of his behind (in a much politer way, of course). after the show we hung up. i had a bowl of cereal (all-bran mixed with Crunchy Nut) and watched a very old episode of Frasier. then, a show called Don't Get Done, Get Dom came on BBC1, and i watched that too. it was all about a loud, bald man named Dom, fighting injustice against the common (wo)man like your average-looking modern-day superhero. he helped a middle-aged woman haggle for a large MPV, and he harassed a land-lord and made them return the deposit of a geeky young couple. after the show was over, i went back to bed.

i woke up from my nap at 2:30pm. i switched on my computer and watched a few episodes of Will & Grace. then, i had some orange juice, and some Cadbury with turkish delight. i looked around the room, and admired my model.

at 6:00pm, i watched The Simpsons. it was a double-bill; one episode on Channel 4, followed by another one right after on S4C. after The Simpsons, i read a chapter out of a book called The Life You've Always Wanted.

my dad called, and told me that the US PGA Tour was on TV. i told him that maybe it is back home, but here in England where everyone is crazy about ze fussball, nothing is on TV except bloody football matches.

i took another nap and woke up at 8:30pm. then, i had a bath. i watched Sugar Rush on TV, and after that, My Best Friend's Wedding. while it was playing in the background, i returned Jules' call - he called while i was in the bath - and we spoke for about an hour and a half. he told me about a dream he'd had where he made out with his tutor and woke up feeling disgusted (i think he secretly meant excited). i told him that the night before i dreamt i was riding a horse at a funfair. he said that he'd probably come to Liverpool on Sunday, if i promised to buy a shower adapter for my bath. i said okay, maybe.

then it was 1:00am and he went to bed so i attempted playing Shadow of the Colossus again. this time, i felt the pad vibrate when it detected the colossus, and so i headed towards the area that made my pad vibrate (hehe). i ended up in some kind of valley with ruins and had to work my way around to get to the top of a cliff. there was nothing around the cliff, and so i threw myself off of it and landed in a shallow pool. i called for my horse, Agro, and we trotted around but i still couldn't find the colossus. i got sleepy and decided to save my game. but instead of saving it, i accidentally quit without saving. i think i'll go back to games that don't require much thinking. this is too hard.

i went to bed at 2:15am, but didn't fall asleep until it was almost 4:00am... partly because it was kind of cold last night and instead of closing the windows i just threw another blanket on the bed, and partly because (maybe) i had been sleeping all day and not doing very much else.

this morning i woke up at 10:43am.

unfinished business

2006-06-14T13:59:00.000+01:00

half-read books that have been sitting on my shelf for the past year:
Mythologies, Roland Barthes
The Bear and The Dragon, Tom Clancy
War and Peace, Tolstoy
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas
Emma, Jane Austen
Early Socratic Dialogues, Plato
Backlash, Susan Faludi
Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory, various people writing various articles
The City of Tomorrow, Le Corbusier

what can i say, i'm a total sucker for second-hand bookstores. on the other hand, yesterday evening i finished the last book from the Tales of the City series... most satisfying!

this n' that

2006-06-12T15:42:00.000+01:00

i broke my digital camera at the beach last week. there's sand in it so the lens doesn't come out anymore, and according to the guy at the shop the cost of repairing it wouldn't be worth it since it's such an old camera. i am really bummed about that. on the plus side though, i guess it is an excuse to get a new one, although i'm lacking the funds to do so. so it's back to good ol' manual for me. and i do have a good manual camera - it's an M-gen Pentax SLR... only thing is i don't have the skills to use it well.

i found out recently that my old friend Davina has moved to London from wherever it was that she was at before... Melbourne, i think. so, i guess i'll be meeting up with her soon-ish - as soon as time and money allow!

man it is so annoying moaning about money...

i love that it's summer. it's not stifflingly hot... well, not all the time anyway, and because it isn't freezing cold, it makes me drink more water, which is good. except, it also makes me pee a lot.

i had a scary dream the other night. because it's now warm, i sleep with the windows open (brings a nice breeze into the room) and i dreamt that a man took this really long ladder and used it to climb into my room. he climbed right in, crawled under my table, then walked across the room and stole my TV and Playstation, and a bunch of my DVDs! it seemed really real, and it was as if i could almost sense a presence in the room with me, which was the scary part.

i miss driving. my dad has this old Austin Vanden Plas Princess in the garage, and when i was a kid he used to take me out in it sometimes, just to run the engine. parts of the floorboard is rusty, and the floor on the passenger's side has a little hole in it, which i thought was pretty cool because i could see the road whizzing by underneath the car. anyway, i dreamt i was driving it one night, but i couldn't get it to brake, so i had to kick my way through the floor and stop it Flintstone-style.

my grandmother is really sick. late one night i got a call from my mum, telling me that my grandma wanted to talk to me before she "went". so we had a little chat, said our goodbyes and before i went to bed that night i prayed that she would have a nice peaceful death. next morning i called home and it turned out that she didn't die after all. well that was almost a month ago and she's still hanging on, which i suppose is a good thing? the thing is that she's so ill that it's just a matter of time and if i were her, i guess i'd rather get it over with than lie around in discomfort waiting to die.

anyway. i watched The Da Vinci Code during the weekend and i have to say that i enjoyed the movie more than i did the book. mostly, perhaps, because i went to see it expecting it to suck like the critics said it would. which is kind of how the book really disappointed me... there was so much hype about how great it was that i read it expecting to be blown away. i think one thing i really liked about the movie was that it didn't start with a disclaimer from Dan Brown about how all the facts in it were true. plus there were some really nice shots of the glass pyramid in the Louvre and, unlike the book, nobody claimed that the glass pyramid was made out of 666 panes of glass.

these days i'm busy with job applications and updating/spoofing up my portfolio, which i've recently realised, kind of sucks. also, trying to clear up all the mess that has accumulated in my room.

Mean Moms

2006-06-08T17:50:00.000+01:00

it wasn't until a recent comment that i realised how long it had been since i last posted. i checked my e-mail today (which is something else i haven't done in a while) and saw this mail that my mum sent to me for Mother's Day (which i forgot... Queen of Passive-Aggressive Land, my mum is). anyway this one's for Eatmisery... through her journal, i have come to realise that it isn't easy being a mother and well, appreciate my mum a bit more. (although i did still forget Mother's Day)...

Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a parent, I will tell them, as my Mean Mom told me:

I loved you enough . . . to ask where you were going, with whom, and what time you would be home.
I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover that your new best friend was a creep.
I loved you enough to make you go pay for the bubble gum you had taken and tell the clerk, "I stole this yesterday and want to pay for it."
I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your room, a job that should have taken 15 minutes.
I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, and tears in my eyes. Children must learn that their parents aren't perfect.
I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your actions even when the penalties were so harsh they almost broke my heart.
But most of all, I loved you enough . . . to say NO when I knew you would hate me for it.

Those were the most difficult battles of all. I'm glad I won them, because in the end you won, too. And someday when your children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates parents, you will tell them.

Was your Mom mean? I know mine was. We had the meanest mother in the whole world! While other kids ate candy for breakfast, we had to have cereal, eggs, and toast. When others had a Pepsi and a Twinkie for lunch, we had
to eat sandwiches.
And you can guess our mother fixed us a dinner that was different from what other kids had, too.

Mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times. You'd think we were convicts in a prison. She had to know who our friends were, and what we were doing with them. She insisted that if we said we would be gone for an hour, we would be gone for an hour or less.

We were ashamed to admit it, but she had the nerve to break the Child Labor Laws by making us work. We had to wash the dishes, make the beds, learn to cook, vacuum the floor, do laundry, empty the trash and all sorts of cruel jobs. I think she would lie awake at night thinking of more things for us to do.

She always insisted on us telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. By the time we were teenagers, she could read our minds and had eyes in the back of her head. Then, life was really tough!

Mother wouldn't let our friends just honk the horn when they drove up. They had to come up to the door so she could meet them. While everyone else could date when they were 12 or 13, we had to wait until we were 16.

Because of our mother we missed out on lots of things other kids experienced. None of us have ever been caught shoplifting, vandalizing other's property or ever arrested for any crime. It was all her fault.

Now that we have left home, we are all educated, honest adults. We are doing our best to be mean parents just like Mom was.

I think that is what's wrong with the world today. It just doesn't have enough mean moms!

well, although 75% of what i talk about at therapy are "Mother Issues", i guess sometimes i am glad my mum was mean. heh.

nostalgia

2006-05-07T04:36:00.000+01:00

i stumbled upon my old schoolmate's online journal today. the last time i saw Davina was years ago when i was back home for a holiday - we met up for mocha and chocolate-banana cake in a cafe called Memories, which was appropriate since all we talked about was school and old school friends and what they had been up to. half an hour of "what so-and-so's doing now" later all we could talk about was "remember when...?" and since then, we haven't been in touch forever. which is sad because in school we were almost inseperably close. we spent sleep-overs at each other's houses, and shared lunches together (she let me have half of her Indomee and sometimes i let her have half my bak chang). some Saturdays my mum would drive me to her house and we'd play Sonic the Hedgehog on her Sega. that was a real treat because my parents were really selective over my friends (and today my mum calls me a snob becuase i'm so picky over who i hang out with... all her undoing) and my mum liked Davina because she was polite and well-mannered. we were competitive when it came to grades - i hated that she could draw so well and be so good at English. and i got somewhat suspicious when she was excused from two kira-kira congak tests because an ant crawled into her ear (both times). having said that though, i soon developed a paranoia about bugs crawling into my ears and spent many nights sleeping with tape over my ears. Davina's now a pharmacologist somewhere in Australia, which is probably the last thing i imagined she would be... she's a fiesty debater - i always thought she'd be in law, or at least politics.

anyway i don't really know what my point was. i think something about how we change as we grow up; and no matter how many secrets we shared when we were kids, or how many times we've seen each other cry, or how many sticky situations we've gotten ourselves out of together, fast-forward 15 years and reunions become awkwardly silent. and "remember when's" don't count because friends grow up together and shouldn't have to dig up the past for conversation topics.

today i also decided that i like marmaduke. not the dog, just the word. so from now on, instead of saying "that is so cool", i will instead say "that is so marmaduke". or, "i am screwed to the marmaduke" instead of "i am screwed to the bone".

so, i have so much work left to do and a deadline that is getting closer and closer that i am so marmaduked.

fuck.

the week from hell

2006-04-28T17:39:00.000+01:00

monetary anarchy, fiscal debacle. i spent this past entire week living on a measly 66p in my purse. i credited my paycheck into my account last Wednesday, and it just only cleared today! so for the past seven days, i've had a negative balance in my bank, meaning i could not withdraw any money or charge anything. i SO hated my bank this week. my morning routine for the past week has been: wake up, then call the bank to see if my check had cleared. why oh why does it take eight working days to clear a small tiny check when it only takes a day and a half for my dad to wire thousands of pounds from thousands of miles away?! the logic astounds and amazes me.

anyway now with my money in, the first thing i did was head down into town to buy more boards for my model, because i ran out of boards on Tuesday and had no money to buy any more. see, having no money at all was good in a way because it kept me home instead of roaming town distracting myself from work... but i couldn't do any work because i ran out of material! talk about timing.

i think Jerome is still around. in bed last night i heard a little "tk" coming from the radiator. so it could be something crackling in the radiator... like maybe one of the heat tubes expanding or contracting or something, but then again i haven't used the radiator in weeks so i'm thinking that it's Jerome, somewhere... maybe he's living in the radiator now. i suppose i don't really mind having him around... he hasn't shit on anything yet, or chewed anything (that i know of) and he more or less leaves me alone. so maybe he can be sort of like a happenstance pet. i had a happenstance lizard once, named George. he lived on the ceiling of my room in KL. i had another happenstance lizard once back home, who used to live in my little red Mini. he'd sit at the base of the windshield and accompany me on my drive to work. he was named George the Second, cos George is a good lizard name. then my dad found him and killed him, because my dad hates lizards. hates them with a passion.

i have another check waiting to be cleared... so a little bit more money should be in my account by the middle of next week. this weekend, lots of catching up to be done with my model & drawings. plus i'm working at Anfield the whole day tomorrow, and then begging for money for charity at night.

goddamnmotherbitcherwhorifyingasskickingdogfacedshitlicker i just want to go to bed and not wake up til winter, when the weather's as miserable as i am.

Jerome etc.

2006-04-18T23:35:00.000+01:00

i haven't seen or heard from Jerome in a while now, so i assume that he's gone, which is good.

i'm watching Prison Break on TV now, it's the last episode of the season and although lots of things are doing on i don't really know what's happening cos i haven't actually seen the other episodes. the Michael guy has a nicely shaped head though, and that bald look works well on him. i do wonder, if they make it out of the prison, then where does that leave them with Season 2? or will there be no Season 2? or maybe this episode ends with a cliffhanger and they get to try again next season? or maybe they make it out this time, but next season will show another set of prisoners trying to break out of another prison.

oh the new Tomb Raider game is out now! being broke as i am though i'll have to wait months until the price comes down, or until i can get some cheap pre-owned copy in town.

i ate so much today food is coming out my nose. plates of rice, pieces of chicken, bowl of profiteroles, i have been such a pig today.

tomorrow, along with cashing my paycheck (yaay!!), i'm off to catch Inside Man (Denzel... yum).

oh hey, Prison Break just finished and turns out that wasn't the final episode. it ended with a cliffhanger though, so i'm definitely catching next week's episode! good lord i do need to get myself a life!

variations en Rongeur

2006-04-03T00:14:00.000+01:00

i watched Amadeus on Friday evening. was quite disappointed with it... Mozart was annoying, and i wanted to kill him just as much as Salieri did. in fact the best scene, i think, was when he was on his death bed writing the Requiem. anyway, i didn't really want to talk about Amadeus. i wanted to talk about the little rat i saw scurrying across my bedroom floor while i was watching Amadeus. he was a tiny rat, about two-thirds the size of my iPod, and had tiny black eyes and a tiny tail. i thought he looked cute, about a second before another thought hit me hard: rats are disgusting, and they shit, and chew stuff up. also they have scary feet. so i switched off the TV and ran downstairs to get the vacuum cleaner. i spent the rest of the night tidying - really tidying - my room... threw away all the papers i don't need, organized my bookshelf , and got everything off the floor and back where they belong - in the closet. i opened my windows and called out to Jerome (which is what i decided to call the rat) and asked him very politely to get out. i made a little staircase out of some books and left the windows open while i vacuumed and cleaned and spritzed and cleared. by the end of the night i'd seen no further sight of Jerome so i assume he's gone. anyway it could be that the house i'm living in is something like almost 100 years old and Jerome's family were probably living here long before i moved in, but i'm still glad i cleaned up good cos my the place looks much better now... there's actually floorspace!

tomorrow (or rather, later today) i'm off to Nottingham to spend a few days with Mouse. it was his birthday on Friday and i was supposed to be there for the weekend but had to work early Saturday morning and so postponed my trip. i'm looking forward to a good few days away and some alternative input on my design. he's organised some picnic outing in some deer park for us on Tuesday, where we will be sipping wine, eating sandwiches and critting each other's work. on Thursday and all through the weekend i'll be working from 7am to 6pm (eek!) which is a drag but oh well, watchagonnado.

my submission is 5 weeks away! so the next few weeks will be plenty stressful. i e-mailed my tutor a programme of work for the next few weeks, but thinking about it now, it does seem a bit too ambitious. i spoke to Rose about it (which is, really, all i talk about with Rose) and i've decided to just get this over with, screw portfolio-worthiness, cos if i have to stay here another year i'm leaving ala the King of Mice.

soon it will be summertime! with easy livin'.

this shit is B-A-N-A-N-A-S

2006-03-23T01:59:00.000Z

last Wednesday i had a review that was both good and bad. it was good because i found that everyone else is more or less as behind in progress as i am, and no one has a proper scheme yet. it was bad because with only one more review and seven weeks to go before the final review, being behind isn't such a good thing.

on Saturday i got pretty drunk and ended up rambling about poverty levels, the value of the Ringgit vs. the British Pound, and Malaysian history (which my high school History teacher, Miss Tan, would have been very proud of). the last time i was that drunk i was lucky enough to bump into an architect and ended up talking about Tschumi and Koolhaas (which is at least, a way cooler topic than history and economics). the time before that, it was a Poli Sci student, and i can't remember our conversation in much detail except that the IRA, Truman and Hitler were mentioned. so after this weekend i thought that the only thing i can do to stay away from such dry subjects when i'm unable to control what i'm talking about is to immerse myself in popular culture and i don't know, learn Guns n' Roses lyrics and Kylie dance steps, so the next time i'm drunk i can ramble about David Hasselhoff and the different stages involved in ceramic straightening.

this afternoon i stopped for lunch at the Tea House. the place was full and because i was sitting at a table with an extra chair, a nice man who looked like Christopher Lloyd joined me for lunch. turned out his name was Gary and after he'd eaten we started talking, and somehow the conversation veered from acupuncture and Chinese herbs to Darwinism and mind tricks. he left me with advice that he said i should remember for life: 1. omega-3 oil is good for you - eat a capsule every day; and 2. build your child's f-o-u-n-d-a-t-i-o-n right and they won't grow up wrong.

walking back home, i thought about what i'd want to be if i could be anything in the world, and i decided that i'd want to be a beatnik. i'd spend my time sitting in my local cafè (not Starbucks, cos corporation: BAD) sipping hot chocolate topped with schlagobers, smoking (self-grown) "tea" and reading dog-eared copies of Kerouac with my fellow beatnik friends. we'd discuss our inner selves and the evolutionary phases of Miles Davis. i don't know what i'd live on, though. maybe i'll start growing tomatoes and brocolli.

an update

2006-03-12T23:02:00.000Z

all i talk about in this journal, it seems, are my upcoming reviews, and the lack of material that i prepare for them. so, to keep with tradition, i have a tutorial on Tuesday, a big scary review on Wednesday, and i haven't done much work over the weekend. so tonight and tomorrow, i have a montage, a few models, plans and sections to do, a brief to "firm up", and photographs to compile and present.

also, this weekend it snowed and today there was at least 4" of melting snow to slip on. also, it is pretty cold. brrr.

sixty-nine questions

2006-03-02T21:40:00.000Z

hey so this posting once a day thing is going pretty well, so far! for today, here is a meme that i stole from somewhere online. i'd source it, but i forgot the website... so if it's yours, many apologies, a thousand thanks, and can i steal this from you please?

1. How old do you feel?
exactly the age i am - 24.

2. Where were you on September 11th, 2001?
in the studio, working on (i think) the Museum of Culture? Sarah's mum called, then we turned on the radio to listen to the news. the reality of what had happened didn't really hit until i watched it on TV when i got home the next day.

3. What do you believe is the meaning of life?
to make the most of however long you have to live.

4. Why is the sky blue?
i think it's something about how blue has the shortest length and gets dispersed most? i don't know...

5. What is your favorite thing to cook?
salmon steaks, cos it's so easy and tastes so good!

6. You have only a dollar to your name... what do you buy?
i would use that dollar to open a bank account, then withdraw an overdraft and live off of that until i find a job. can you open a bank account with a dollar by the way?

7. What would your last meal be?
i think i would choose my most favourite meal of all... fried noodles with my mum's curry. plus, i figure, if i knew it was going to be my last meal, it would probably be because i'm being put to death, maybe against my wishes... like, maybe i was sentenced to death or something. so, i'd want the person whose job it is to clean up after my dead body to have a really hard time. and i don't think curry would be very pleasant to clean up, right? i'd have fried noodles with extra oodles of curry.

8. What is the youngest age you have memories of?
i don't know... i guess maybe 2 or 3? when i used to stand at the steps in the morning and cry as my mum and dad went off to work.

9. What is your favorite thing in the world?
my computer (connected to the internet of course!)

10. What is your most missed memory?
working in the studio.

11. Have you ever punched someone on purpose?
not punched... hit, probably. or slapped. hehe.

12. Do you know what color chartreuse is close to?
it sounds purplish, or reddish.

13. Did you like garbage pail kids?
i don't know what they are. are they kids who live by the garbage dump? maybe i would have played with them, but i guess they would be smelly so maybe my mum wouldn't like that so much. plus, they might have lice or something. then i would get it. and my mum wouldn't like that at all.

14. Why do we have daylight savings time?
to confuse people like me who can never remember to turn the clocks when they're supposed to and end up either being very late or very early for class.

15. What living person would you want to meet?
i would like to one day meet Ani DiFranco because i think she's really cool.

16. What dead person?
my dad's father, whom i never got to know because he passed away before i was born, becuase my mum claims that he's really cool.

17. Where in the world would you live if you could?
in Primary 3 i did this project where i had to design my dream house. mine was on a deserted island (a small one) with a helipad. and no one would know where it was except my family and really really close friends. and a vet, so he could come by and treat my horses and dogs.

18. Who is your favorite artist?
currently, i quite like Jack Vettriano.

19. Who has had the most influence on you (good or bad)?
i don't know... i think TV? heheh...

20. What is your favorite dessert?
currently it is toffee and banana sponge pudding with cream. yummm!

21. What age is your favorite so far in your life?
maybe 4? before my sister was born and i was the center of everyone's attention.

22. Can you make cookies from scratch?
of course i can! can't be too hard right? just mix a bunch of stuff, divide it into small globs and put it in the oven. easy-peasy.

23. Was the chicken first or the egg?
bah. i don't really care. they both taste pretty good.

24. Hershey or Nestle?
i don't know. i think Hershey's just sounds posher. but i like Cadbury chocolate. is that by Nestle? my fav is fruit & nut, and also Turkish delight. i also like Nestle Nestum. i like eating it out of the can, or in a sandwich with Nutella.

25. Night out or night in?
i like both. depends on my mood i guess. these days i like nights in because i am lazy.

27. Single forever with a great family or no family and your soulmate?
i think i would choose no family and a soulmate. my sister can have the family and i can babysit her kids once in a while, but give them back at the end of the day.

28. What is your favorite scented candle?
i like vanilla.

29. Would you ever wear a wife beater?
i haven't yet. but i probably would. they look pretty comfy. and perfect for lounging around!

30. If you could live in a store which one would it be?
one that sells food too... like Isetan. or maybe a bookstore, like Borders... the kind with the built-in Starbucks.

31. Can you eat a dozen donuts in one sitting?
i bet i could... as long as i have coffee too.

32. What is your favorite curse word?
i don't curse. it's fucking rude.

33. Your favorite regular word?
i don't know... i think it would be "i don't know"?

34. Have you ever read/tried to read the bible?
yes. but i haven't read the whole Bible, just bits and pieces of it... i keep meaning to, but haven't really got around to doing it yet. soon, soon...

35. Who do you dislike most in the world?
people who dislike other people just because they have different opinions or backgrounds or beliefs.

36. What is your ideal date?
November 13th 1981, because it was the day that i was born. joy to the world!

37. Would you rather marry a deaf or blind person?
deaf. then i could learn sign language. also, i would be able to listen to whatever music i wanted to. and i could pretend to play the piano really well, with all the emotion and everything, and really impress my husband, when actually i would just sound pretty bad. hehe. also, i could pretend to write a song for him and be all romantic but actually i would just be playing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (with emotion)

38. What is your favorite shape?
the profile of a human head.

39. Can you eat just one chip?
no! that's why they make bagS of chipS, because you're not meant to eat just one.

40. Where is the farthest you've ever been from home?
up up in Glasgow!

41. What is your desktop background?
the same one that i've had for quite some time now... (see picture up there)

42. What song do you identify with most?
gee i don't know. but my current favourite song is "David" by Nellie McKay

43. Which movie do you wish was your life?
The Incredibles! i'd want to be Violet.

44. Has someone ever intentionally put food on you?
yes. someone once threw flour on me. hehe.

45. What color is your favorite?
my current favourite colour is i think, white. or apple green.

46. What color do you feel represents you?
i think i am white: the combination of all the colours, like Richard Meier says.

47. Do you believe in God?
yes.

48. Have you ever broken a bone?
no, but i've sprained my ankle lots of times.

49. Have you ever shut someone's fingers in a door?
yes, i once slammed my sister's fingers with a very heavy car door.

50. What is the weirdest thing you have ever eaten and hated?
liver. i hate hate hate liver. unless it is very fine paté.

51. What is the weirdest thing you have ever eaten and liked?
i don't think this is weird but everyone who sees me eat it thinks it is: i like to put fries dipped in curry in my burger.

52. What is your ideal ice cream creation?
this survey has many questions about food. i would love a vanilla ice cream, with little chunks of chocolate, and little bits of turkish delight, and little chunks of chocolate-coated peanut butter. with little bits of marshmallows too.

53. If you could marry someone from a movie or TV show (the character not actor) then who would it be?
i would want to marry Josh Lyman from The West Wing. cos i like his curly hair. and also cos he's really smart and cute. plus he's really arrogant, which is kind of hot.

54. What is your favorite thing to do?
eat, while watching a movie.

55. What is your favorite junk food?
i like Doritos. also, pancakes with ice cream.

56. What is the longest you've gone without talking to anyone?
i think i can go quite long without talking to anyone (except myself... does talking to myself count?) there was a time when i didn't leave the house for three days. that was when i was sick. but then again i did call my mum up everyday to moan at her, so i guess maybe just several hours went by without me talking to anyone.

57. What is your favorite board game?
Scrabble. and Trivial Pursuit.

58. Your favorite book?
hmm... there are many things i enjoy reading. but i guess my favourite would have to be Calvin & Hobbes comics.

59. What movie could you watch over and over again?
Grease. and Chicago.

60. Do you know how to change a tire?
yes. i've never done it before, but if i had to, i'm sure i could.

61. Have you ever eaten paste?
yes. i have eaten toothpaste. and once i ate some Play-do. and once i ate plastescine. that didn't taste as nice as Play-do.

62. What is your ideal halloween costume?
the mother from Munsters... i can't remember her name. but i love her hair, and her long dress.

63. What toy have you always wanted and never gotten?
so many!! i wanted a toy gun and i never got that. i wanted a football jersey and never got one. i wanted Micro Genius or Sega and i never got it. boohooohoooo

64. What item could you not go without during the day?
coffee.

65. Do you consider yourself a smart person?
a bit lah. just a bit. hehe

66. Do you close your eyes when you listen to music?
sure, when i'm sleeping while listening to music...

67. Do you eat the burnt chips?
yes those are my favourite cos they are crispy.

68. Is there anything you HAVE to do everyday?
i have to pee a few times a day. also i have to eat every now and then.

69. 3 wishes... go (no world peace. things that are possible):
i wish that (i) my thesis would finish itself, (ii) there could be more than 24 hours in a day, and (iii) i could function without sleep or food. wait... those are all pretty much IMpossible, right? oh well. at least i didn't say "world peace".

well because i'm not going to get my 3 wishes, and because my thesis won't finish itself, there aren't more than 24 hours in a day and i can't function without sleep or food, i'll need to get back to work pretty soon because in 14 hours i have a meeting to attend, and nothing much to show so far! hang in there folks tomorrow's Friday!

let's do this!

2006-03-01T14:25:00.000Z

daily post - a post everyday. i hereby pledge, starting today, the 1st of March, to put up one post every day, even when i have nothing interesting to write about, which shouldn't be too hard to do, right?

this morning, my radio alarm clock came on at 7.15. i lay in bed and listened to the weather - high of 5°C, possible snow or maybe some rain expected today. so far i've seen no evidence of either - the clouds in the sky are the white fluffy ones, and not the gray ominous ones. my second alarm clock (the one in my cell-phone) came on at 7.30. i turned it off. then, at 8.30, my third alarm clock (the CD player) came on. i lay in bed and listened to an hour of Herbie Hancock's Empyrean Isles. which was nice. it's nice to wake up to jazz in the morning. i eventually got out of bed at 11.22am, some 4 hours after the first alarm clock rang. which is not good at all, because what good is having three alarm clocks when none of them get me out of bed? anyway, i made breakfast (or lunch): a fried egg sandwich with Bovril (yum) and a cup of coffee, and 2cm of a Mars bar. i ate all of that while watching The West Wing, the one where CJ tries to stand an egg on its end on the Vernal Equinox.

i then called Zoey to confirm that i would be working this evening. then i sat down here and began my daily ritual of e-mail checking, e-mail replying, setting up appointments for tutorials, meetings, etc., blog-reading, and now, blog-writing. Counting Crows is playing in the background; it's a song called "Daylight Fading". it's not bad.

once i hit "publish post", i will then sit at my other desk and work on my presentation posters, because my next tutorial is this Friday at noon and i'll need to have some things to show Nick. so. that is my day so far. i hope the rest of it goes well, and i hope that i won't have to serve any beer tonight so that i won't break my nails opening beer cans. i hope the rest of your day goes well too! also, today is Ash Wednesday. i don't really know what that is, but i remember that back in school, on Ash Wednesday we would go to the Catholic Cathedral, where, at the end of the mass, the priest would draw a cross on your forehead with some wet ash. i think it's also the beginning of Lent. maybe this Lent i will give up DVD-watching. except for those DVDs that i just borrowed from Blockbuster last week. because i haven't seen Citizen Kane yet and it would be such a waste not watching a DVD that i'll be paying for, right? and, when i return the DVDs this Sunday, it would only make sense to pick up more for next week, since i will be there anyway, and it would be a waste of a trip if i were to just go there to drop off this week's movies. so maybe i will give up excessive DVD-watching. i'll just watch the regular amount. maybe just one in two days.

is it still winter?

2006-02-28T11:50:00.000Z

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

2006-02-11T18:18:00.000Z

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

2006-02-07T11:31:00.000Z

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

2006-02-06T13:58:00.000Z

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?

2006-02-03T16:08:00.000Z

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

hey, monkey

2006-01-08T23:44:00.000Z

i went to see King Kong Saturday afternoon. the movie started at 4:15, the cinema attendant told me it'd be over by 7:40 - "it's over three hours long, including credits." i walked out of the show at 6:35; the film was that bad.

okay, that was a lie. i walked out of the show at 6:35 because i had tickets for Handel's Messiah at 7:30 and had to be at the Philharmonic by 7:00.

well, it was half a lie. because the film really was that bad. without giving much away, i'll just say that a lot of things that don't make any sense happen. "it's a movie of miracles," i'd remarked to Christina on the way to the concert.

today i woke up past noon again. spent the rest of the day being a little bit productive (i did my laundry, the dishes, and cooked dinner) and a lot unproductive (watched The West Wing DVDs and got started on Resident Evil: Outbreak, which sucks a little). tomorrow university starts up again. i have a string of things to do starting 9am, which includes getting a Council Tax exemption certificate from the university to show to the Council's Office, because i received a court summons on Friday for January the 23rd - apparently i owe the Council £225+ in council taxes, except the thing is that i'm exempt from council tax because i'm a student. so hopefully showing them my tax exemption certificate means that i won't have to go to court, which means that i won't have to hire a lawyer, which will save me a lot of money.

plus, work. i'm way behind on that.

resolutions begin today!

2006-01-06T09:36:00.000Z

today i woke up at 8am, and was out of bed by the wee hours of 9. this is the first time i've been out of bed well before noon in the last month or so, and i just wanted to let the internet know that, and also have it as documented evidence on this here web-space.

today i plan to head down to the city and pay off some dreaded bills, walk around and inhale a bit of fresh air cos i've been breathing recycled air for the past week now and my lungs are starting to get a little stale.

have a great day, everyone!

another day, another dollar (less)

2006-01-03T03:03:00.000Z

so it's yet another year gone by. it still seems like only just last night that i was sitting in the KLCC gardens with a handful of my closest friends, having Twisties and Diet Coke, waiting for the New Year countdown - when actually it was three years ago and those friends are now scattered around other parts of the world, thousands of miles away. this year's New Year's Eve was quiet. i had dinner with some friends, and later we watched the countdown on BBC. the first day of 2006 was spent in the same way that most of my Christmas break has been spent - ass on couch, eyes on TV. see, i meant to get some work done, what with it being the first day of the new year, and resolutions and promises made to self and all that - but then Gone With The Wind was showing on BBC2 and when a gem like that comes on you shut up and devote the next four hours to enjoying it. after that came The Lost Prince, and then one show led to another and before i knew it it was January 2nd, 2006.

speaking of January 2nd, 2006... something not-really-haha-funny happened today. if you've been a regular reader of this journal, you'll know that i often have rather odd dreams. for the past few months, i've had rather odd dreams every night - most of them quite vivid and realistic. today the strangest thing happened. you know that déjà vu feeling, when something happens that you're sure has happened before... well today i had a did that really happen or not feeling, when an event played in my mind and i wasn't sure whether i had dreamt it, or if it had really happened - as in in real life - before. then, later on in the evening, i was having my bath and squeezed a glop of shampoo on my bath sponge instead of my hair. so instead of smelling like pure silk courtesy of Dove, i ended up smelling of brilliant brunette courtesy of John Freida. which leads me to deduce that i am maybe possibly perhaps slowly losing my mind. because when one starts getting dream scenarios mixed up with real-life scenarios, and shampoo mixed up with bath gel, it may be time to start ringing some warning bells, or starting the search for some misplaced marbles.

the beginning of the month is also right about the time when i start complaining about money woes. my bank balance is dwindling - slowly but surely. but although more money is just a phonecall to Dad away, i'll hold off a little while more this time, and depend on some good ol' sensible responsible budgeting.

having neglected the internet for so long, i now have cyber piles of e-mails to reply, long lists of reading to catch up on, and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, this will be the day that i start getting some work done. hopefully.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-27T15:19:00.000Z

i hope you've all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to an even better New Year. i've been having a pretty bad cold for the past week, so i spent most of the days before Christmas in bed, and plan to spend most of the days after Christmas in bed too. i got up Christmas day though - for a day of food, food and more food with Becky's family. i had a lovely Christmas lunch followed by lovely pudding, although my cold meant that i could only taste about 70% of it. and yesterday, instead of fighting off crowds at the Boxing Day sale, i had to drag my sniffly self off to work. so today, it's going to be me and the couch and microwaved food, with my best therapeutic friend, the TV.

because this is what i do at 5:30 in the morning

2005-12-24T04:48:00.000Z

i got tagged with this meme by Suki, and since i like memes, here you go:

the rules
Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom spot.

1. Welcome to the Monkeyhouse
2. a little bliss
3. moonbatty
4. 23 Seconds to Circulate
5. deep intellectual philosophical ramblings

Then you select five people to pass the love on to.
Nadz
surwira
Kaki Cucuk Langit
and whoever else wants to play... the more the merrier!

Now, on to the questions!

What were you doing ten years ago?
ten years ago i had just turned 14, probably on end-of-year holidays before starting Form 3 (year three of Secondary School). ten years ago today it would've been Christmas Eve, so i'm guessing that i was probably at church, falling asleep during midnight mass.

What were you doing one year ago?
a year ago i was with my parents and my sister in Prague, having Christmas Eve dinner at a Czech restaurant near Betramka, a house where Mozart stayed during his visits to Prague.

Five snacks you enjoy
cheese Doritos
Lucky Bin Bin rice crackers
Snickers
a banana-Nutella-peanut butter-cheese sandwich
green apples (after all that junk-food you bet i'm adding fruit to this list)

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics
off my head right now:
the national anthem (yeah-huh!)
Caravan, Van Morrison (actually i don't know the lyrics as much as yell out the "na na na na na na na" bits)
that Counting Crows song that starts with "Mary-Ann, you're better than the world"
Breathe, Anna Nalick
my state anthem (okay, not totally... but i know the tune by heart)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire
skip! skip with extreme joy
moan at all the bills that i'd still have to pay
complain about tax deductions
sew me a skirt made entirely of £5 notes
take sewing classes

Five bad habits
i am the queen of procrastination
and time-wasting
and impulse-shopping
and frivolous spending
and bull-crapping
i reign over much.

Five things you like doing
playing along with memes
photographing
lying on the couch watching DVDs
wrapping presents
writing novelistically-long e-mails to people who appreciate them

Five things you would never wear, buy, or get new again
like Suki, i too have a pair of shoes that i bought although they were too big for me, thinking i would grow into them
school uniform. hated them.
i once made the mistake of wearing an LFC shirt to Old Trafford. won't be doing that again. although i have to say, Manchester people were nice about it... no one threw rotten fruit at me or anything; just lots of dirty looks.
i'd like to add my pink sandals on this list, because when i did wear them that one time they left laceration marks on my feet that stayed on for months, but i think they're too pretty to be dissed.
i can't think of a fifth.

Five favorite toys
George, my guitar
Shelly, my iPod
my (nameless) camera
my computer
and of course, my PS2

too lazy to even think up a title

2005-12-20T16:53:00.000Z

the average rate of posting at this site has dwindled to one a week - if the internet should be so lucky. i'd love to say that the lack of posting has been because i have found myself so deeply immersed in the tonne of work sitting on my desks (yes, i need more than one desk to contain them all); or, even, Christmas shopping - buying gifts nice and early and well before the Christmas Eve rush; or, finishing up my quarter-done painting - it's sat on the easel, all dried up and there's a thick cake of hardened, dried-up paint on my make-shift palette. He whose legs poke the sky would call it a writer's block. sadly, it isn't even that.

the past week or so of my life, if you could call it that, has been spent either lying, or sitting (mostly lying) on the couch, watching DVDs and making full use of the PS2. in fact, the only reason i'm sitting here at my desk instead of being horizontal is that i got stuck on a GTA mission and wanted to look it up on one of those internet guides. i've also been watching The West Wing DVDs - this year's Christmas present, which, because i live alone and bought my own present i decide that it's okay to open and use it well before Christmas day. (that last sentence sounded less pathetic in my head) anyway. John Spencer - i am crushed. Leo McGarry is my favourite character (next to Josh Lyman) and the thing i can be kind of relieved about is the fact that i'm well behind of everyone else... because i stopped watching The West Wing a few years ago (you know how it is, you miss one episode, you lose the entire trail) i'm still playing catch-up on Season 3, so i still have... what... 4 more seasons to go?

so, unless it's news about the Simpsons episode that was on last night, or what i thought about today's DVD (Summer School, starring a very young Mark Harmon and skinnier Kirstie Alley & Patrick Labyorteaux) there's nothing very much to say. but just in case you were curious, Summer School - what can i say. they just don't make teen movies like they used to.

oh, and also, my gym is closing down this week. by this Friday, actually. no more gym, cold weather, staying horizontal all day with Doritos... it's looking like a lazy Christmas, folks.

tempus fugit indeed

2005-12-14T23:49:00.000Z

it's that time of the year again - Christmas. also known as the end of the year. also known as the time to sit down, review the past 12 months that have gone by, look over the resolutions that were made this time last year, wonder at how time has flown - as i do, every year.

i can safely say that where i am right now is nowhere near where i had, this time last year, planned to be. if you understood that last sentence, down a shot of Absolut now. oh, did i mention that this reviewing of the past year would include vodka? it just makes things more fun.

this time last year, according to my journal / notebook / sketchbook / scrapbook, i had a list of goals that i'd wanted to achieve by now. now, all those goals mean just about as much as the paper they were hastily scribbled on. which is rather disappointing. it has been, in some aspects, an awful year. but also, a year in which i have come to learn quite a bit of things about myself. some things, i had always known; and some, i had no idea of. if you also own a journal / notebook / sketchbook / scrapbook, down a shot of Absolut now.

despite all the shit i have gone through this year, i am thankful for some things; namely:
1. the wonders of anti-depressants
2. the comfort of therapy
3. the magical buzz that i get from caffeine
4. my dad, my perpetual life-saver
5. my friends; as few as they come, each one of them is worth much more than their weight in gold
6. novellistically long e-mails, and Ben who humours me in them
7. Ikea
8. retail therapy; it will be the death of me, yet i can't live without
down a shot of Absolut for each thing on my list of thankfulness that coincides with something on your list of thankfulness.

if you don't have a list of thankfulness, down two shots of Absolut now.

i haven't come up with a list of goals and resolutions for 2006 yet. if you have, down two shots of Absolut now.

if your fingers are as cold as mine, down a shot of Absolut now.

if it is taking you 3 minutes to type out each sentence because your fingers are frozen, down a shot of Absolut now.

if you are living in a part of the world where the temperature is almost always above 30°C, and you spend most of the time complaining about the heat, down two shots of Absolut now.

if you have naturally red hair, down a shot of Absolut now.

if you find a typo in this post, down another shot of Absolut now.

if you think you found a typo in this post, but actually haven't, because instead of seeing the letters as they should be, you are seeing blurry black horizontal lines across your screen, down another shot of Absolut now.

if, because of religion or dietary reasons, you haven't been downing vodka when i tell you to, i say to you: i won't tell if you don't.

all that jazz

2005-12-04T22:23:00.000Z

mmm... don't you just love that warm post-bath buzz?

i'm so broke it's not even funny. and i didn't even realise it until about five hours ago. suspecting my broke-ness, i've been avoiding checking my bank balance for weeks now. and this evening, i thought it's about time i find out how fucked i am, logged on to my bank website and saw that i have £93.18 in my current account. wait - scratch that. my only account. i wrote a cheque to the university for my fees last week - £104. and it hasn't been cashed in yet. and my bank balance is £93.18 - not even taking into account yet what i spent over the weekend. i saw this coming, so i made the "help me!" call to Dad last week. my pride told him that i would be okay for the next few weeks though, so my lifeline money won't be in for a while. i get paid this Friday, but it's an amount so meagre it won't even cover, well, anything.

i'm looking around my room now, picking out things to sell. skimming my bookshelves for novels i don't like enough to hold on to. my two printers - one i keep because i like the way it looks, the other because i need it. my extra PS2 memory card. maybe i'll finish my painting and try selling that. hah. when i moved in here i found a 17" Apple monitor and a microphone stand in the store room. time i find out what i can get for those.

tonight, though, i'm keeping all this at the back of my mind. i bought Chicago yesterday - along with Garden State, which i watched, and loved; it's like Catcher in the Rye (which i read, and loved, thanks to Nadz!), movie-style. so tonight i'm watching Chicago, with a big mug of coffee and a bowl of strawberry trifle.

tomorrow morning after unloading a whole load of shit at therapy i'll traipse through town with my resumé (which is basically a sign that says "Will work for anything resembling money"). somebody's bound to hire me eventually.

it's getting harder to keep passing the open windows

2005-12-04T21:43:00.000Z

she walks.
it's the same road, but everything is different.
it's dark.
the leaves on the ground are so wet they look like mulch.
it's still raining though.
if her life were a movie, this would be the scene where the lead character stands alone in the rain - the rain representing the tumult going on in his / her life.
or some other metaphorical shit like that.

she walks.
quicker now.
"it's today's cardio." she laughs.
but not quite.
the quicker her steps, the farther she moves from it all.
but not quite.
because it's all inside - she takes it with her.

she walks.
quicker still.
her breath quickens.
her heart beats harder.
her breath quickens.
and quickens.
until she's gasping.
no - sobbing.

please bleed - so i know that you are real.
tonight, it seems, she's bleeding all over the place.

it's still raining.
the water streams down her face.
she knows it isn't all rain.

she walks.
her steps slow - her legs are aching.
from the strain, from the wind, from the cold.
the wind blows her face dry.
when she's home, it's as if the walk never was.

plain drivel

2005-12-02T13:06:00.000Z

the trees in the front yard are bare. and it's cold. today it is sunny. sunny but cloudy. so it won't be sunny for much longer.

on Monday, on my way to therapy, it snowed. it snowed all Monday morning. very little, though. by the afternoon, the snow had melted and you wouldn't know that it had snowed unless you were out, like i was, at 9 in the morning. it was the first (and only) time i had been up so early this entire week, and right now, i wonder if i had woken up today at 7am would i have seen some snow too? on Monday, at therapy, i talked about expectations and relationships. and expectations; my expectations of myself. and today, reading a Cuttheshit post about Rent, the last line leaped out at me : "Just by living, you're doing more than is ever expected of you." and i thought that was pretty cool.

i bought a new phone on Monday too. and i got a bluetooth headset for free too. i am loving the handsfree-ness that comes with a bluetooth headset. yesterday i made calls to Vodafone, United Utilities, and the Council Tax place to settle stuff about my bills and why are you charging me £85.13 for water when i've already set up a monthly direct debit arrangement? and i made all these calls handsfree-less, with my headset tucked behind my ear, and "look Ma, no wires!" i carried on with my filing, and hole-punching, and organising, whilst talking on the phone, without having to hold the phone! i love technology.

the phone was an impulse purchase (although i didn't have to pay anything cos i get the phone free when i sign on to the contract with the phone company) and it is also the end of All The Things That I Want. the absolute end. now i have Everything I Want, i have no more need to spend any more money. also, because i am broke, i have no choice. now, i have my big-ass TV, broadband connected, PlayStation, plus a phone that i didn't really need, and a pretty pink iPod. so i'm all set. nothing more.

except, maybe, a new pair of boots. cos it's winter and my shins are feeling chilly.

currently pt. iv

2005-11-29T01:13:00.000Z

feeling hungry, eyes slightly bleary.
hearing crickets in my e-mail inbox.
waiting for replies to letters.
curious about spying & gossip.
wondering about the weekend.
listening to Angie Stone, Mahogany Soul.
avoiding dealing with my bloody model.
wishing i could go to bed and not feel guilty about it.
wishing i could play another hour of GTA and not feel guilty about it.
wishing i could have an ice-cream sandwich and not feel guilty about it.
wishing i could not feel guilty at all.

tra la la

2005-11-24T13:03:00.000Z

the radio on my alarm clock came on this morning at 6... and for the first time in ever before, i didn't slap it off and sleep in for the next four hours. i didn't jump out of bed immediately either... instead, i leisured in the warm, cushy softness of the covers for the next one hour, while Ricky Whatever-his-name-is and the rest of the radio morning crew went about with the news, latest celebrity gossip, Will Young's new single (which, by the way, sucks donkey balls), and a few more songs i've forgotten. by 7, my second alarm clock rang (i have three in total). i turned it off, and finally got out of bed. out of bed, wide awake (well, kind of) and it was still hours away from noon!

after sending off an e-mail to Ben boasting about my accomplishment (i'd make sure it was in today's papers, if i could) off i went to the gym. yes, the gym. remember that? i haven't been in close to five weeks; when i walked through the door, i expected balloons and confetti to drop from the ceiling - the prodigal gym member was back! nothing, of course, dropped from the ceiling. in fact it was really quiet today, probably because it was almost 9 and everyone else was at work.

you know what i enjoy the most about going to the gym? the shower after. the shower-head sprays down water in jets that pound on my neck, it's like getting poked by little elves... in a soothing way. and that salty taste of sweat mixed with water that i get for the first 3 seconds... it says "Yeah, that was a good workout." bliss in a 3x3 cubicle.

after the gym i headed over to Toni's to drop something off for some friends she's visiting in Belfast this weekend, and decided that, instead of taking the bus home like my lazy ass usually does, i'd take advantage of today's good weather and walk back instead. so off i went, walking down Smithdown Road on a pleasant day, feeling very proud of the fact that i got up early today, and had already had, in half a day, what would normally be an entire day. productivity, baby.

you know that feeling when you're on top of the world, and although everything else is going shitty, for just that short moment, or even, god forbid, the entire day, you feel certain that nothing, short of hell's fire raining down on you, could spoil it? well, that's been me since 7 this morning. i don't know why, but for some reason, i feel like today's a good day. walking back home just now, i was enjoying the bright sun and the pleasant wind, watching little tornadoes of autumn leaves twisting away on the sidewalk, when, true to English weather, where it can be shiny the whole day then all of a sudden you're standing in the middle of the sidewalk, drenched with rain because you didn't think you'd need an umbrella, shouting "What the fuck?!" at the sky, it started pouring. and the wind got stronger. and the rain got harder. good thing i had an umbrella. it was a tiny umbrella though, so for the next ten minutes the wind and i were having a good struggle for my umbrella. finally, when i reached my street, i let the wind win, and closed the umbrella, braving the rain for the final 50 metres. now my jeans are drying in front of the heater, my hair is still damp from the rain (there goes this morning's shower... there's simply no point blow-drying hair in this country), i'm about to have my lunch, and not feel guilty about it... this day can only get better.

i hope to God.

this may be the very last you'll see of me

2005-11-20T18:26:00.000Z

this is what i bought for myself as a birthday present : a Sony Playstation 2. i may just be the last person on the face of this earth to own a games console, but having grown up deprived of TV games of any sort, i have to say that my inner child is well pleased. so between my mofo model - cutting mofo thick boards to make my mofo slopes - drawing section after section after bloody section of this slopey city, doing research on shopping (entirely work-related, i promise), cultural activities, history and demographics, as well as running gangsta missions on the streets of Los Santos, i've been a busy little girl scout lately.

in other words, expect less updating.

on the other hand, though, it has been tradition for this journal that, after issusing a "less updates" notice, more entries are posted instead.

so i guess, stay tuned, and we'll see how the wind blows. aye?

tick-tock

2005-11-15T22:20:00.000Z

i hate kids.

it's a rule i've been sticking to for the past several years or so - a reaction by my non-conformist supposedly-feminist self - a rule that i followed because i refused to be likened to the population of stereotypical girly-girls who fawn over babies. i say supposed-feminist because isn't feminism about the freedom of a woman's ability to choose, i.e. if i want to fawn over babies then i most certainly can, and if i want to have 15 kids fathered by ten different guys and raise them on welfare in my one-bedroom flat with communal kitchen and wash facilities then it's my choice, aighity!!

that last word, by the way, was ay-aigh-tee.

and that last sentence, by the way, was a digression.

back to my point (and i do have one) - i hate kids.

well, let's say i used to hate kids.

or even, i never hated kids at all; i just pretended to.

or maybe, i've changed my mind about hating kids.

or maybe, some kids, i like.

not in a Michael Jackson way, mind you.

ever since Lauren had her baby, she's been bringing Faith to cell every week. Faith is three months old now (i think...) and it's been really exciting seeing her every week, because, i don't know if you've realised, but babies change a whole lot! (some babyologists call this growth and development) i've seen her evolve from a tiny little wrinkled pink rat, to one of the cutest creatures ever. plus, she makes this huffy, coughy sound when she breathes - which makes her sound not unlike my 96-year-old great-grandmother, but way cuter.

and i've also recently come to know a little two-something-year-old named Eden, who is the most pleasant toddler i've ever come across. either that, or all the other kids i've known must have been spawns of satan.

plus, i find myself checking some blogs frequently for cuteness such as this, and also this, which bring about a substantial amount of ooh-ing and aww-ing.

so. has my recent one-step advancement towards being a quarter-of-a-century-old also caused me to become aware of another biological countdown?

i think, though, that it's more likely that this recent affinity circles around the fact that i admire from a safe, non-owner distance.

i see Faith for two hours once a week, and the one time that i heard her scream (yes, scream) it made me leap out of my seat. i am not kidding you. it sounded like the wrath of hell had come upon us.

i've read and grimaced at Jack's teething stage, which caused his mother to force herself to get by her day with only five hours of sleep.

i've read about and actually, can hardly believe, the ferocity of Leta's tantrums. but if they are as bad as they sound, i'm glad that i'm at a safe reading distance.

Eden is still, in my mind, the world's most likeable toddler, but then again, she's probably the angelic exception to the rule.

i think my granduncle said it best - "The best thing about being a grandfather is that at the end of the day, you can give them back." he's very happy playing Silver to Daniel's Lone Ranger, but when Daniel or baby brother James kick up a fuss, it's back to mum and dad they go.

so.

what's my point?

it appears i don't have one after all.

the story so far

2005-11-12T17:07:00.000Z

when i was five, i wanted to be a doctor. i'd use my dad's old stethoscope, his white work shirt (my lab coat) and a clipboard, where i'd write down diagnoses for my willing patient (usually Gene, then neighbour and only playmate) with his make-believe illnesses. my meds of choice were berries - freshly picked from the garden - and, for not-so-serious diseases like, say, disjointed bowels, i'd prescribe cut-up leaves.

when i was seven, i wanted to be a footballer - inspired by the football greats i'd seen on TV, although i could never remember their names. in fact, i hadn't the slightest idea what the rules of the game were, besides the obvious "kick ball around field and try to get it into the net-thing". truth be told, i just wanted to wear the outfit. i begged my parents for a jersey (or, as i called it, "the shirt with the number behind") and footballer socks - those over-the-knee ones. i never got the jersey, but i did get the socks. they were white, with "Nike" in red on the side. they were my favourite pair, although for years i pronounced "Nike" as "nike" instead of "ni-kee".

when i was twelve, i remodelled my room. came up with a design, and set off sourcing "pieces" to fill it up with. the result was my teenage nirvana, and i decided then that i was born to be an interior designer.

a year later, i wrote and directed the school play. it was a modern interpretation of Snow White, which got such rave reviews that i was sure that what i really wanted to be was a director.

along the years, this resumé of ambitions would include psychologist, hotelier, neurosurgeon, investment banker, stock-broker and chef, among others.

so it may be surprising to my five-year-old self (or then again, maybe not) that i sit here, barely seven hours away from turning twenty-four, surrounded by site analysis boards stuck on the walls, and the beginnings of the most challenging model i have ever had to build on a make-shift table behind me.

it's funny how things turn out, isn't it?

slave to consumerism

2005-11-06T22:49:00.000Z

i have, in my flat, every excuse not to ever leave it again. my broadband is fixed - i've been surfing happily for two weeks now - and i have a new TV. complete and total impulse buy that i feel really guilty about. but you know, every minute of mindless pulp i watch on every inch of that widescreen sees the guilt ebbing away, bit by bit by tiny bit. of course, because my bank balance has been dwindling, and my visa extension application ate away quite a chunk of that already miserable balance, i was left with close to nothing to live on over the week. all i had in my fridge, from Tuesday on, was cheese, onions, a tray of strawberry-vodka shots, mayo and ketchup. so i paid, dearly, for that TV.

i am proud of my ability to restrain from going out shopping, although i was tempted to many times. but then again i didn't really have much choice anyway, cos my card would've been declined at the shops.

this week saw me discovering the joys of eBay. all the time i doubted it, insisted that it wasn't all that, convinced that every single item on sale on eBay was phony; this week i swallowed all of that and browsed through item after item on the hallowed website. of course, since i was broke, i did no bidding. well, actually, i entered bids for two Sony Playstation 2's, but then prayed and prayed that someone would outbid me and sure enough, 5 mintues before the auction was over, i was outbid on both.

tomorrow i'll be getting some much-needed cash into my account. it feels like i've been good all this week, not spending any money (well, except for that tiny TV), and tomorrow, to reward myself a teensy bit, i might do some shopping. just a little bit.

last night was Bonfire Night. it rained all evening, but thankfully stopped just in time for the fireworks display. i headed down to the Albert Dock for the show, which was pretty cool. read what the celebration's all about here, and take a look at some pictures from the night here.

the weekend was... educational

2005-11-01T15:20:00.000Z

it was Saturday evening, i'd just gotten off work, rushed back home to get ready for the night out. i was tired to the bone - it had been a looooong day and to be honest all i'd wanted to do was flop in bed and sleep 'til kingdom come. but the date had been set, so what was i to do? half an hour in the tub and an hour of outfit-picking later i received a text : "What time do you want me to pick you up?"

we'd agreed on 8 o'clock, but i was starving, so i texted back "Come get me in half an hour?"

it was my job to pick the restaurant, and i'd already decided that we'd go to this place on Falkner Street - his favourite is Italian, and i was in the mood for a salmon fettucini. when we got there though, the place was packed - to the brim. no parking spots either, not even after we'd done 4 turns around the block.

so we headed to the docks - wouldn't have any parking problems there - and sure enough, we found a spot almost right away. got to the Pan American, where we were told that there wouldn't be any tables available until 10:15. you see, i was clever enough to not have anticipated the Saturday night crowd, and we were, therefore, without reservations. brilliant.

not to worry, though, there are loads of restaurants at the docks. tried the next one : Est Est Est, where there were also no tables, but we were "welcome to have drinks at the bar."

by that time i was so hungry my toes were growling so when he suggested a Spanish place in Queens Square, i agreed. i'd already eaten through half my cheek, i was that hungry. when we got there, though, La Tasca was (you guessed it) full. there was an hour and a half wait for a table.

as we walked the three blocks back to the car, he joked "At this rate, we'll end up having dinner at McDonald's." i laughed, but secretly thought "Please, god, no." we were dressed to the nine's - well, at least, i was dressed to the nine's; him, more to the eight's - and showing up at McDonald's looking like that, everyone would've known our scouting-for-restaurants-in-vain plight.

anyway, restaurant #5 - a Greek place on the other side of town - was also full.

so i suggested Lark Lane - a road full of pubs and restaurants, there was bound to be one table somewhere. the first place we went to - Keith's - smoky, pub-like atmosphere (by this time i was desperate) was also full.

we finally ended up at no. 52 - where the baby Jesus finally decided that he had teased my hunger enough and bestowed upon us a table - the last one in the restaurant, in fact. so an hour and a half of driving around and getting turned away from restaurant after restaurant later, i had the most deeeelicious scallops with fried calamari, and then the tenderest most luscious lamb, followed by the most horrible cup of coffee ever. two out of three, not too shabby methinks.

anyway, the lesson: never, never, never leave the house on Saturday night without first making a reservation. never.

come see, come see!

2005-10-29T11:17:00.000+01:00

pictures of my flat, including newly-installed lemonade sauce, here.

would write more, but got to rush off to work now.

happy weekend, everyone!

conversing with Mum

2005-10-24T23:51:00.000+01:00

me : i fixed the laminate floor in my kitchen yesterday.
mum : what?
me : laminate flooring. the previous tenants left packs of it behind and i fixed it in yesterday.
mum : oh that's nice. what did you eat it with?
me : what?!
mum : the lemonade sauce. what did you eat it with?

i present to you, myself. in 30 years.

on another note... Becky if you're reading this, i just finished reading your book today (i guess you can guess how much work i've gotten done!). makes me want to fly to Japan and be a glam geisha girl. or fly to New York and be a glam geisha lady at the Waldorf. and man do i have high hopes for this movie!

can we fix it? well, sort of...

2005-10-23T23:13:00.000+01:00

guess what i did today. fixed laminate flooring in my kitchen, that's what! the previous tenants left behind a few packs of laminate flooring that they never got around to fixing, and i thought, well since it's free i might as well fit them in myself. so i went over to Rapid, bought a little saw, a hammer and some wood glue, and in my kitchen all that stuff sat for about a month until this afternoon, on a whim, i thought i'd get off my lazy ass and get DIY-ing. worked for 6 hours (!!) straight (!!) and fixed about a third of the flooring in. hey, give me a break - first DIY job i've ever done, ay! it doesn't look too bad... the uneven edges have been nicely placed to parts of the kitchen where other things will be covering it up, like a table, or a rug. i think there may be quite a few rugs in my kitchen soon...

anyway, here's where my story gets kind of funny.

i finished fitting in a whole pack of laminates, and when i went to the store room to get the next pack out, i realised that they were in another colour! so now a third of my kitchen floor has orange-ish brown laminates, and the rest will be brown-ish brown laminates.

and i was feeling so proud of what i'd accomplished this afternoon.

anyway, here's where my story gets kind of painful.

no, actually, really painful. because of the sawing / hammering involved in this the first DIY job i have ever done in my entire life, my arms, shoulders, fingers, are hurting like a sonofabitch.

so the first person who enters my kitchen and dares to comment on the not-sameness of the floor colour is going to get majorly ass-kicked.

"a stylish illegal immigrant"

2005-10-21T23:33:00.000+01:00

that's what Ben called me in his last e-mail, when i told him that i was tempted to screw my visa extension application to hell and spend the money on a new pair of boots or a bag. £250, people. that's how cruel the Home Office is. and with Christmas coming up too!

the longest e-mail he has ever sent also included some recipes, crazy hobos, pseudo porn, and a dollop of "what if's" and "remember when's". which got me kind of thinking about "what if's" and "remember when's" too.

you see, it's been a kind of miserable week for me here at Freezingmytitsoff Central. it all started with a sick Monday, Day 3 of my flu. i say flu, but it's actually just Flu : Stage 1. you know, the dry cough, sorethroat, perpetual tiredness stage... the one that comes before the running nose, sneezy, can't sleep because of my stuffed nose, wish-i-was-dead stage. i'm sitting here, on Day 7 of Flu : Stage 1, wishing that it would just progress and get worse already so i can blow my brains out of my nose and get it over with.

Tuesday was the start of my back-ache. the past 4 days i've been moving around like a heavily pregnant lady (no offence, pregnant ladies) - keeping my back straight, squatting instead of bending. it has not been fun at Camp Iciclesareformingonmyceiling.

oh, and it's getting colder too. summer is most definitely OVER.

so. can i blame me for getting all sentimental and wistful?

because if things worked out differently, if i had learned to for once in my life swallow my damn pride, maybe i'd have someone to tuck me into bed with a back massage, a hot watter bottle and a bowl of his comfort food (chicken with oyster sauce). i would then say "Don't fuck about." and he would go back to the kitchen to fix me my comfort food - waffles with ice cream, maple syrup and strawberries. and a big steaming mug of strong black coffee.

but things didn't work out differently. and who am i to deny me my pride? so i wrote an even longer e-mail back - an 18-paragraph ramble about shopping, Paris, new cars, non-stick pans, cranberry juice and snuff films (among others).

because no one does avoidance better than me.

which also explains why i will die alone, my body lying undiscovered until the smell becomes unbearable, and even when i am found, it's with half a face because my cat got hungry.

oh to have a paper bag with which to cover my face up

2005-10-14T15:33:00.000+01:00

so i'm sitting here, in the computer lab of the university library, nicely typing away a really long e-mail to a bunch of my friends Down Under, whilst, with my multi-tasking abilities, catching up on my blog-reading, and also checking out the goings-on around the world, when i overhear a conversation from across the aisle:

guy : ...so why don't you come join us, we'll go out, have some drinks, some alcoholic beverages, would that be okay for you?
girl : yeah, can do.

so the busy-body in me is curious, mostly because of the way the guy says alcoholic beverages - like it's sinful - and why would he have to say it like that unless the girl he's trying to convince to come out on what kind of sounds like a cool night out, is a prude? also, the girl spoke in accented English, in an accent that sounded very familiar, with a voice that sounded very familiar. so i turned over to look, and turns out it's my friend (we'll call her Emily, to protect my safety, should she ever Google her name and find this post, and then decide to hunt me down and murder me in my sleep). so i see Emily, sitting in the middle of the row just across the aisle from me. this fills me with dread and fear and quakes in my panties (and not in a good way) because i just know that if she realises that i am in the same room as she, she will come right over and ask me to go for this thing at church this evening, which i am so not keen in going for. at this point you may ask, "What's so wrong with saying 'no'?" to which i would respond "Nothing." because hey i should have the right to not attend something that i don't want to attend but well, she (the prude) would then ask me "Why not?" and i would then have to make something up like "Oh, because i have something on. I'm busy. Haha" because i'm too chicken-shit to say "I'm just not interested." because i know that that would be followed by whisperings and discussions behind my back about 'how i am', or whether or not i need 'encouragement' and 'support', which totally pisses me off because why won't they just leave. me. alone. or at least have the balls to ask me to my face if i need 'encouragement' and 'support', when i will then say to them "No." and ask them politely to get lost.

it's not that i have anything against God, or church, or religion. in fact, i have no problems with God. not right now, anyway. it's just this group of people who create labels and distinctions and judgement about how people should live their lives, and god forbid if you spend an entire night out drinking and fornicating, you heathen, you are most definitely destined for the fiery bowels of hell. except they never say it to my face. all i'd hear would be a gasp or two, and a "Oh, haha, you're crazy." *chuckle* or "Oh, haha, you are such an alcoholic." *chuckle* which totally pisses me off because it makes me feel like a heathen who is most definitely destined for the fiery bowels of hell. and it makes me mould myself into this person who frowns on things that i'd normally be doing, because i'd like to avoid those gasps and uneasy chuckles. and i don't like that me one bit, because it feels completely fake and hypocritical. which is a quality i totally despise.

so that is why, instead of walking over and saying "Hi, how are you doing? Haven't seen you in a long while." like what i normally would do when i see a friend that i haven't seen in a while, i am, sliding down as far as i can go, shielding my face with the computer screen, turning away from the aisle so that i'm almost entirely facing the wall, and the guy next to me thinks i'm trying to check out what site he's surfing on to, and hoping, praying, wishing to God that she wouldn't see me. and stuffing my earbuds into my ears, although my iPod isn't even on, so if she does see me, i can pretend to be immersed in my music and pretend that i didn't hear her, and act really surprised to see her.

oh, and also, typing this post just to kill time until she leaves, which is when i will leave. not before.

which is sad, cos i'd like to not have to hide from my friends, because, apart from the Bible-pushing, Emily does have some nice qualities. like... well... she's always jolly and laughing. and... yeah. well i'm sure there are other things too.

well she seems to be immersed in her work now, and speaking to some guy, who's blocking her view of me, so if i just... move really really quick, i may just be able to get away. cos i've been sitting here like this for an hour and a half, and i think my butt is now paralyzed.

an explosion, sand dunes and church camps. or, my week, in summary.

2005-10-13T14:50:00.000+01:00

on Friday, my friend Becky came over and i tried out my brand-new chocolate fondue set. i was supposed to melt the chocolate in the microwave first - remember the microwave in my kitchen, the one i wasn't sure was a microwave and didn't dare to try out in case it exploded? well, turns out it was a microwave, and turns out it did explode. well, kind of. while melting the chocolate there were sparks in the microwave, and smoke came out, and a funny smell. and the chocolate was burnt. so we continued melting the (burnt) chocolate in the fondue pot and continued dipping our strawberries into the (burnt) semi-melted chocolate.

on Saturday, i tried warming up my roast chicken and gravy in the oven. i'd never used the oven before, and wasn't sure how it worked. so i just popped the chicken in, and (i thought) turned the oven on. i smelled gas coming out. i heard gas coming out. so i assumed everything was working fine and left. 15 minutes later i went back to the kitchen, and found the whole place smelling of gas. i opened the oven door and discovered that the oven wasn't even hot. my chicken was still cold. and smelling of gas. so cold, gas-smelling chicken i had for lunch (beggars, we can't be choosers, aye?). and it took me the entire day to air the apartment out so the gas smell could disappear. later that evening Becky came over again, and took a look at the oven, and pointed out that i was supposed to use my lighter, and light some metal thing at the back of the oven, where the gas comes out from. so it works kind of like a hob. that is one old-fashioned oven, you guys. right out of the Flintstones.

on Sunday, i met up with a guy who's a friend of a friend of my mum's. my mum, she who match-makes from 4000 miles away, passed me his number, and gave strict orders to call him up. because he also studied architecture, and has been studying / working / living here for the past dozen years or so, and may be able to give me some insider job-hunting tips. turns out he's left architecture, having worked at a firm for a while and finding the profession "frustrating and a complete waste of time". way to spend 6 years at university and finding that out, mister. anyway we hung out for a bit and found out that we've been going to the same church for the past year and never bumped into each other. small world, this is. so we went to church together that evening (my first time in months!), and had tea and muffins after.

on Monday, i had therapy in the morning and found out more stuff about me that i didn't know about.

on Tuesday, i had a meeting with my tutors about my project. i didn't have time to prepare much, cos i wasn't around last week, and just could not get out of ben the entire day on Monday so i just printed some site photos, and crapped a lot. and it seems, my crap still gets me places, cos it went okay.

Tuesday night, i had the wierdest dream that i've had in a long time. i dreamt of my friend Marc. he was in the jungles in Borneo (where both him and i hail from), with an old, emaciated man with stringy grey hair who happened to be some kind of village elder. they climbed over stones covered with thick moss, and the old man pointed out an old railway track to him, "Remnants of our colonised past," he said. there was an old, abandoned railcar, and, underneath it, were a pile of corpse-looking bodies with pale, creamy-blue skin.
"Druggies," the old man said, pointing at them.
they watched, as a small girl with chubby pink cheeks and curly black hair crawled among the bodies. and then a baby, less than a year old, emerged too. the old man started getting excited, and angry.
"How can they allow their children to be exposed to this?" he exclaimed. he rushed forward, grabbed the baby, and started running back through the forest, Marc right behind him.
(seriously, you guys. i'm not making this up.)
so they ran over moss-covered stones, and they slid down sand-dunes. cos, you know, there are (apparently) sand-dunes in the rain-forest. two of the druggies from underneath the railcar were chasing after them, cos they realised what the old man and Marc had done. they had on bike-racer suits, one red, the other yellow, and got on their racing bikes, and were hot on Marc's and the old man's trails.
so then Marc and the old man (who, by the way, was dressed only in a soiled-looking loincloth) reached what appeared to be a city, and got in a Humvee. they sped along the streets, the two bikes still behind them. then they reached an army camp. got through the heavily-guarded gates with the baby, where the druggies were unable to follow.
they took the baby to some kind of hospital-looking place, with bed lining the walls. seemed to be some kind of drug-rehab place for kids. the people who worked there were my ex-studio mates, except this time they were doctors. and dressed in army cammies.

on Wednesday, i ran around trying to get together documents for my visa extension application. went to the bank to print out my account statements, then went to the Senate House to get my status letter, where i found that, although the library has a record of me having extended my studies til June next year, the rest of the university only has records of me being a student til the end of September this year! after all that, i met up with an old ex-studio mate of mine, who's in town for 2 days (2 days!!) and took time off his "busy schedule" to see me. it was really cool to see him again, and talk about goings-on back home. we went to see a movie in FACT, becuase i met him in the afternoon and i don't know how to spend time without involving a cup of coffee or food (he's a Muslim, and fasting), except a movie.

Wednesday night, i had another dream. this time, with less detail, cos i can't remember it as much. all i can remember is being on some kind of tour bus, with my sister and her friends, on our way to a series of church camps. i made out with a liquorice man in the back of the bus, and we had to stay at some kind of motel with cold, damp sheets. then, i lost my bags, and to get to them i had to go to the other side of the motel. the motel was in some kind of camp grounds, where to get to the other side, i had to cross a river. there was a drawbridge, that could only be released from the other side. and to get the people on the other side to let down the bridge, i had to answer a series of questions. then i got yelled at when i got to where my luggage was, for leaving my bags in the bus and expecting other people to get them for me, "like i was some sort of princess".

which brings us to today, where i have, so far, been to the bank, found out that they can't stamp and endorse my statements and i have to instead order them and wait another 4 working days for them to get sent to me. seen Mary at the department office, and very nearly gave her the wrong information that would have meant that i would have to pay for this extra semester when it's actually just a submission that i'm extending, and not attendance-based (*phew* that was close!). on the way to the library, i bumped into a Mormon named Elder David, and when he asked me if i knew who Joseph Smith was i replied "yeah, i watched an episode of South Park all about him." and now, telling you all about it, as a sort of "hey guys, sorry i haven't been writing as frequently but here, to make up for it, is a long-assed post, with wierd dreams included!"

did you notice i was gone?

2005-10-08T14:42:00.000+01:00

whether you did or not, i'm back! does slightly more than a week count as an absence? i don't know. i guess it does. before anything, hop over to Kaki Cucuk Langit's and check this out. it's too cute for words! trust me.

so i was away for a week-ish. my aunt came over from Singapore last week for a conference, and since she was in the neighbourhood she decided to pop by Liverpool and pay me a visit. and then she begged (begged!!) me to follow her on her trip around the UK so i could play tour-guide. she'd made plans to go to Yorkshire, and then to London, where my grand-aunt lives (a large extended family, i have). nevermind that i'd never even been to Yorkshire in my entire life, nor heard of the tiny little village she was supposed to go to, her rationale was that at least she'd have company to get lost with. so off i went, with my missionary aunt on her mission trips. oh did i mention that my aunt's a missionary? she left a cushy job which paid cushy sums of money to work for God for not so much money. something that i think i would never be able to do. cos i just love cushiness too much. so we went, with no trouble at all (cos i'm such a great tour-guide, or really good at faking confidence) to Yorkshire, where we spent a weekend with my aunt's missionary friends. they took us to a little village church, with a congregation of about 30, 95% of whom were elderly ladies. it was a nice atmosphere - the church, being as small as it was, treated one another like family. very intimate-like. the old ladies were very nice and friendly, and all looked like they could whip up a lovely hot batch of butterscotch cookies, but man i was glad to be back in civilisation after. we went to London next, where i at least knew how to get around, and didn't have to fake it so much. the weather was good, except for the last day, when it was really foggy. but then that's true blue London weather so at least she got to experience it, no?

all in all i enjoyed my impromptu break, but i have to admit, the second day into it i couldn't wait for my aunt to leave already! she's cool, but she nags like an aunt. so. i'm glad to be back in my "space". and shop as much as i want. and leave my clothes where i want. and not make my bed. although i do. and eat lots of sweets. and take cabs. and spend money sans guilt.

so what have i missed?

a letter to the Velcro Federation (part ii)

2005-09-27T12:42:00.000+01:00

you guys!

i just want to say... that i am happy today. happy like i haven't been in a long long time. i just had some meetings with my various tutors throughout the morning and i showed them my scheme. and they gave really helpful comments, and didn't shove stuff in my face and tell me that i was shit. so i'm pleased and glad and happy and excited and i just might go off and do some shopping today!

or maybe the drugs have just kicked in.

hah.

anyways... yesterday i did some shopping and guess what... i've decided to take up oil painting! i bought an easel, and some canvas, and paints, and brushes, and a water-mixable-fast-drying mixer thingy, and even a palette knife! (although i don't know what it's for and the only reason i bought it was cos i saw someone using it on TV and it looked quite cool. artsy-like) i forgot to buy a palette, though, so i need to get that today.

also, i bought some stuff for the apartment... a throw for the couch, new duvet cover and pillowcases to match the horrible green carpet, and cushions for the couch too! photos soon, promise!

my aunt's coming from Singapore to see me. actually she's in England for some kind of conference but she's coming to Liverpool on Thursday and i'm going with her to see some of her friends in Yorkshire, then we're heading to London to visit my grand-aunt. so it'll be a nice break and a look-see travel thing.

i'm high, you guys... high on lots of early-morning caffeine from my bitterly strong 7am cup of coffee, and last night's Prozac, and yesterday's therapy session, and this morning's encouraging comments.

and hey i might be going to Paris soon! there's a contemporary music centre that i want to check out there called IRCAM. it was designed by Renzo Piano, maybe some of you know it? i don't know what it looks like so i can't describe it to you. i hope i'll have enough money to go, i think i'll forgo my trip back home over Christmas and go to France instead. cos... Paris, baby! yeah! or... oui!

today i need to buy : slippers to patter around the kitchen with, cos the floor is this disgusting linoleum that looks greasy. it doesn't feel greasy, but it looks it, and my feet are just doubting the ungreasiness of it. plus i need to get plates and stuff, cos i only own one bowl at the moment - this microwavable Pyrex dish - and when my aunt comes to visit there'll be more than one person in the house and we shall therefore need more than one bowl unless we want to share said bowl, which we do not want to do. plus i need to get more forks and knives because i only own one fork and a teaspoon and a butterknife. plus i need to get a frying pan because how does one fry an egg without a pan to fry it in? and also a ... that plastic egg-flipper thingy. you know... what do you call it? spatula? i don't know. and i need to get a toaster. because i like toasted bread. and toasted pancakes. and toasted bagels. the only appliance i have right now is a kettle. and there's a square thing in the kitchen that looks like a microwave, but i'm not sure if it is a microwave, and i'm afraid to try it out and see. you know, in case it explodes.

bouncing off the walls, but not literally, but just word-ly, as in a rambly way,
n.

a rant about a movie

2005-09-27T10:52:00.000+01:00

okay before running off for my 11 o'clock meeting...

how disappointed was i with Howl's Moving Castle? oh so very.

i've seen Hayao Miyazaki's other works, some of them - Spirited Away, which i loved, and that one about the war where there was this little girl who was brought up by her brother but they didn't have enough food to eat and he died of starvation in the end... i think... that was good too. sad, but good. so i can imagine why he'd be doing the adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' book but, as much as i liked the way he made the castle look, i was terribly disappointed with Howl. and Michael. and Sophie... is she an old lady? isn't she? who knows? and Calcifer! Billy Crystal Calcifer is not! Billy Crystal : round green one-eyed monster - good. Billy Crystal : cynical sarcastic but with a heart of gold (coal... hehe) fire demon - not!! and Howl... i really wish he didn't look so Japanese-boy-band-member-y. plus Hayao missed out some crucial bits of the book that i think would have brought a lot more colour to Howl's character.

i'd like to rant some more but i have to run!

if you've read the book (and loved it) then don't watch the film. or watch it, but ignore the flutter in your tummy when the film starts up because it'll soon turn into a cramp.

a post about why i haven't been posting

2005-09-26T11:24:00.000+01:00

for the most part, i've been busy. moved house (again!) to a one-bedroom apartment which is twice the size of the studio i was living in, and almost half the price! and in a building with such character and potential... could i resist? no! i'm really happy i found this place. i'm really happy that fate/theuniverse/destiny/God found it in its/Her heart to arrange the world/universe/sequenceofevents that led to me finding this place. mostly because it's so little to pay for so much space. did i mention the space? twice the size! for half the price! (almost) i'm happy. i like it. a lot. a lot a lot. except the bathroom. which is awful putrid green. the puking kind. so i'll be doing some painting soon. and while i'm at it i might paint the bedroom too. but not for a while, because i can't be bothered moving all my stuff around again.

for the most part, i've had blogger's block. like writer's block but blog-wise. because, i guess, vent-wise, there are a lot of things i'd like very much to vent about. but mostly i'm not really knowing how to go about that. maybe because it's mostly petty.

but it was mostly the move. and the lack of regular internet access. but since circumstances have changed i'll be looking into getting broadband fixed in my apartment! depends on how much it costs, and how un-broke i feel. so we'll see. cross your toes & fingers for me though!

oh and Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is out! i read the book, by Diana Wynne Jones, a few years ago, and i totally loved it. and its sequel too, the Magic Carpet, or something like that. and her other books too. kiddie books. but i loved them. and i love Hayao Miyazaki. so that's what i'm doing today. watching a movie. and doing some shopping, because i'm out of food (again!).

a post about the weather, and food.

2005-09-13T12:09:00.000+01:00

the weather is odd today, as it is, every day. earlier this morning it was grey and breezy, but comfortably warm. and the air was damp, just so. it was nice. now the sun is out, way out. it's really bright. not so nice. makes me regret bringing my denim jacket out. don't you just hate carrying around a jacket that you brought out for nothing? i hope the sun goes back in before i leave. "back! back!" i prod, with my telepathic sun-prodder.

the contents of my fridge are as follows :
1. vanilla ice cream that tastes really weird because it's been melted and frozen, melted and frozen, over and over again. time to throw it out.
2. a bottle of Actimel, mixed fruits flavour, that expired a month ago but still kind of tastes kind of okay.
3. a pack of vanilla vodka shooters that i bought 2 months ago but haven't found the occasion to drink yet. wait, who am i kidding? does one need an occasion to down vanilla vodka shooters? one thinks not.
4. a tub of raspberry-wholegrain Onken yoghurt. oh by the way, have i told you yet that Onken is the best yoghurt ever made? well. Onken is the best yoghurt ever made. my tub of Onken expired 2 weeks ago, but it's still unopened, so i think it might still taste okay.
5. a packet of soya milk that expires in a year (yay!)
6. assorted sauces.
7. a head of broccoli, frozen.
8. a packet of green, yellow and red peppers, frozen.
9. a packet of okra, frozen.

my fridge, meat-eating carnivore that it is, detests vegetables and is hell-bent on turning me into the meat-lover that it too is, by freezing all my vegetables, leaving me unable to consume them.

and i need to do some serious grocery shopping soon.

a letter to the Velcro Federation

2005-09-12T10:55:00.000+01:00

Mel... i'm so sorry to hear about you and M. i understand how you may be feeling right now and it just makes me so angry at him. makes me want to pull his balls right off! the bastard. for causing you such pain. i hope things turn out for the best, whatever they may be. just as long as, at the end of the day, you're happy, then i'm happy. i agree with Sarah. he's totally taking for granted the awesome girlfriend that you are, and once he realises that he'll come crawling back, not you to him. but make sure he knows that. anyway if i were a guy, or even a lesbian, and if i weren't already in a heated, passion-filled relationship with your son, i would totally make out with you. totally. and i know you'd have the hots for me too. right? don't lie. you totally dig me in my torn shorts, eating Sara Lee on the bed with ants crawling all over me.

just take care of yourself, ok? i agree too with not telling Ben. he can be pretty smothering sometimes, with his man-breasts. you need some sisterly love now. and love of the chocolate / ice-cream kind. make sure you get lots of that. and if you ever need to talk, give me a call, anytime. i'll take my phone off silent mode, just for you.

well you guys... are probably wondering how my submission went. or not. anyway i don't really care because i'm going to tell you anyway. the thing is, it didn't. i didn't submit.

the thing is, i had nothing to submit. and when i say nothing, i mean nothing. not a drawing, not a model, no-thing. i don't know what's going on, seriously. everytime i try to start work i find myself coming up with reasons or excuses not to work. like maybe i'd go out. or watch a movie. or eat. and it's procrastination, but i don't know why i do it. it's not so much that i'm lazy, or maybe i am, but anyhow i'm trying to find out now. i've just started seeing a therapist, since the week before my project was due. and i'm on anti-depressents. you know that drug Prozac? i'm taking it daily now, it's supposed to make me feel better. i've only just started, so it hasn't exactly started working yet. maybe soon. anyway, i guess the thing is, i'm getting therapy to find out what ails me. and find out how to fix it. cos there's feeling down, and then there's feeling down. and despite all evidence to the contrary i've been feeling pretty down for several months now.

so. yeah. that's what's up.

as for how my course is going, i went to see my tutor with a note from my therapist, and he's agreed to give me a conditional extension, the condition being that i come in to see him every two weeks. i'm glad that he's so supportive, and as much as i dread the idea, i'm glad that he cares enough to want to make sure that i'm really doing the best i can. so i guess the upside to this drama is that i get to stay here for a little bit longer.

oh, and i'm moving again. the place that i'm living in now is pretty expensive, so i'm going to live within (or below) my means, and move to a cheaper place. i found a one-bedroom apartment, which is quite big, and priced cheaply, to my wonderful surprise. the landlord is a somewhat daft-looking old Chinese man named Tony, who seems quite nice. only thing is it seems quite run-down, but i guess a good spring-clean will make it all good again. anyway beggars can't be choosers, right?

well okay then. hope the rest of you are doing well. Mel, again, if you need to talk, i'm here. sorry for stealing your thunder with my shit. but i just came from a session and i guess i feel all self-baring. kind of. anyhow, take care of yourself, okay? you're always in my thoughts & prayers. that is, when i do pray. which, sad to say, isn't all that often now. but i think alot. so i'll be thinking alot about you.

love you guys,
n.

so...

2005-09-09T10:52:00.000+01:00

so i've been away for a week. you know, not having regular internet access and all that. plus that thing about having nothing much to say. or, having so much to say but not being able to say it for reasons that probably make less sense than i think they do. last week was momentous. mo-men-tous. things happening right, left and centre. or not happening at all, depending on how one looks at it. someday i'll tell you all about it. need to get my thoughts together first (or whatever's left of them).

but guess what had the honour of putting the first genuine smile of the week on my face! i just want to say Congratulations to Miss (or Mrs) eatmisery on the soon-to-come new addition to the family!

anyway, for lack of anything to tell, i'll spend today's post writing about radish. yes, radish. the root-vegetable thing. i don't know if it's a vegetable, but i think it's like a potato... grows underground, like a whatdyacallit... tuber? i don't know, i'm not exactly a vegetable expert. i like radish in soup. chicken soup.

so that lasted about 5 sentences.

i'll tell you something else. i am, currently, craving greatly for mee goreng mamak. i'd translate that for you non-Malay speaking readers, but i'm afraid it'll just end up being "mamak fried noodles". and what is mamak, you may ask? well that, i can't really tell you. because i don't know. so, Malay readers who are more proficient at the Malay-slang-to-English translating than i am, what is mamak in English? i'd describe what mee goreng mamak is, but being the non-chef that i am, the best i can come up with is "thick yellow noodles fried with egg, chicken, that starchy yellow thing that looks like fried tofu but isn't, and lots of mamak spices, and, i guess, soya sauce". best eaten with popadum, which again, i'm unable to translate. and neslo ais, which i can translate - iced mocha... mamak style. or teh o ais limau - iced lemon tea... mamak style. cos there's no other. and dining al fresco is a must. not that you'd have a choice, actually. seriously. i wish i could cook. cos i'd cook me some mee goreng mamak. but no, i'll just have to settle for toasted garlic naan with hummous. it's East meets Middle East meets Western technology (the toaster).

fusion, baby.

currently part 3 (i think)

2005-09-02T13:07:00.000+01:00

feeling pain. head. ache. my eyes hair nose hurt. caused either by too much sleep, or the fact that i have had no caffeine in over 24 hours. bad?
waiting for a reply from Netgear online tech support. my wireless card mysteriously stopped working early this month. i've sent two e-mails out to Netgear, tried everything they told me to do but still it does not work.
feeling like a big load has been lifted. but also aware that although it's not sitting on my shoulders anymore it now dangles precariously above my head.
wanting to go see another movie. but there's nothing to see.
feeling hungry. but way too unbothered to cook. and slightly too broke to buy.
wishing for more interesting TV programs. since the end of Big Brother, Nip/Tuck and Six Feet Under, there's nothing left to watch.
feeling sad that my entertainment and time-wasting revolves so much around TV. a life seriously needs to be get.
waiting for the sun to go hide behind some clouds and not come out for a while so that i can go out and not have to squint or have my eyes hurt any more than they do.
thinking that the glare of the computer monitor isn't helping my eyes any either.
tasting a really funny taste in the back of my throat. funny in a not-so-good sort of way.
listening to the annoyingly loud whirrrr of the air-conditioning unit.
wishing that i could reach up and rip it out of the ceiling.
eyeing the blond-haired blue-eyed rippled-just-right lemon-yellow-Fred Perry-polo-T-wearing surfer-dude-lookalike in front of me. yum.

will leave now.

the sense of touch

2005-09-01T14:17:00.000+01:00

remember how i said that Crash was probably over-hyped and not as great as everyone critically acclaims? or something to that tone.

well, i take it back. 'cos i just went to see it yesterday, and it's made my Best Movies I've Seen This Year list, right along with Sin City, and not much else. that i can remember, anyway. my memory's been failing me this past few days.

i won't say that it's fresh, because it isn't, or that it's an eye-opener, because it isn't, or even that it's honest, because i think that it may be slightly exaggerated sometimes? or maybe i'm just a naïve idealist.

but i did think that Sandra Bullock should spend more of her time on films of this quality rather than that disaster that was Miss Congeniality 2, the memory of which still makes me squirm. and it was really good seeing Ryan Phillippe on the screen again, he has such a perfect angel-face. although he ends up doing something un-angellic towards the end.

anyway i suck at movie-reviewing, so i guess all i'll say is "go see it".

about today...

2005-08-31T12:34:00.000+01:00

it went better than i thought it would. fingers crossed for the next two days.
more details, maybe, in the near future.
maybe.

waiting for Wednesday

2005-08-30T11:33:00.000+01:00

first of all, i'm sleepy. just a little bit.

tomorrow i'm going for an interview. that's what the 11am is. it's an interview, or shall i say, session, that i've been meaning to go for, for a long time, but kept putting off. so tomorrow. things sound hazy, i know, as intended, simply because i'm not sure how much i want to reveal about it just yet. somehow i'm not as excited about it right now as i was a week ago. so we'll see how that goes, shall we?

also, i can feel breakfast making a slight comeback in the back of my throat. must be all the coffee i've been breathing. oh, and the no sleep. that might have something to do with it.

oh, and i just heard about the hurricane over in the States. i've never been to New Orleans, but it's always been on my list of American Cities I Have To See, right there along with New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago (for the Mies) and Washington, D.C. and New Orleans for the jazz, in case you were wondering. so here's some warm wishes for all the New Orleans-ers, if there ever are any who happen to happen upon this site.

how is it possible, that i've only just discovered the gem that is Six Feet Under? Channel 4 have been showing it over the past few weeks, sometimes twice in one night. i think it's the season before the final season that just wrapped up in the States (we're slow here, in the UK of GB. with television programs, among other things.) anyway i was just starting to really get into it, but the last ep was last night! and they're showing the next season on cable, which i don't have. hell, i don't even have a TV license, which means i'm watching all my non-cable channels for free. but don't tell the TV license people!

and lastly, but definitely not leastly, Happy Birthday Malaysia!

in the few minutes left - more random thoughts

2005-08-25T17:45:00.000+01:00

nothing much to say, actually. it's been a grey, grey day. i got my "thunderstorm" at around 5 this morning. well, there was no thunder, and no lightning, but there was a teeny tiny storm. or, at least, it rained hard enough to pound on my window (the raindrops, not me) and make me open my curtains and go "well, okay, that's not too bad." and it's been drizzly and slightly windy and grey ever since, with very little hint of sun. perfectissimo. haven't had a proper rainy day here in ages, and today really was nice. the word "galoshy" comes to mind. y'know, from galoshes. 'cept, i've more than outgrown those puddle jumping days. but it sure would've been fun. mine were red, by the way.

i'm running out of food. today, for breakfast / lunch i cooked (yes, cooked. with a pan and everything) everything i had left. shell-shaped pasta (can't remember proper Italian term), with a brocolli-french beans-mushroom omelette. let it never be said that i'm a fussy eater. oh, but it tasted horrible. i ate it anyway, cos i was hungry, but if there ever needed to be proof that i cannot cook, let this morning's horror be testament.

been looking for Boys On The Side on DVD for a while now. checked amazon and they're only selling Region 1, i.e. the US version, i.e. unplayable with my non-multi-region DVD player.

that's it for today. my laptop battery's running out soon and any minute now the screen will go blank. have great weekends, everyone. i hate that time flies. fuck you, time! (said in Spanish, or with Spanish accent, of course)

randomly speaking

2005-08-24T14:48:00.000+01:00

firstly, i'm hungry. but... must. supress. hunger.
food. bad.
pain. good.

secondly, ants crawling into my ears. no, not right now, but what if? list of biggest fears? that's right on it. my primary school classmate Davina had ants crawl into her ears a few times when we were kids. it happened twice when we were having a Math test. it looked really painful, and she was crying, but all the while i was thinking "well at least she doesn't have to take the test."

autumn is finally here. i think. almost, anyway. it's getting chillier. it rained heavily this morning. well, as heavy as it can get here, anyway. i'm still crossing my fingers for a good ol' proper thunderstorm. just some nice light & sound display, nothing spectacular. nothing like, say, the twister that hit Birmingham and damaged hundreds of houses. that's too much.

i went to see a baby 2 weekends ago. my friend Lauren finally had hers, a baby girl named Faith. she's very teeny tiny, and well, she scares me. a little. i held her, for 5 seconds, before freaking out and giving her back to her dad. she just looked really... judgemental. if babies can look like that. like, "why so tense?" like she FELT my fear. like, "ohh YOU. what DO you think you're doing. you think we like that? idiot." except when she said "idiot" it was with a Spanish accent, cos insulting comments always sound so good with a Spanish twist on it.

pain. good.

movies i really want to see but am finding trouble finding time to (and i'm too lazy to source and link them so google them if you will):
1. Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. because a tween on the radio gave it a 11 out of 10!
2. The Island. Ewan MacGregor. say no more.
3. Crash. it's this summer's [insert last summer's over-hyped movie]. well, i say over-hyped, but for all i know, since i havent actually seen it yet, it might be deserving of all the hype. so i won't judge before i see.
4. can't remember the name, but it's by Hayao Miyazaki (of Castle in the Sky and That Other One that I Can't Remember The Name Of fame) and it's showing tomorrow afternoon at 1! and apparently that's the only time they're going to show it so if there ever was an excuse to take 2 hours off to see a movie i don't know what is.

here's a really good mechanism to avoid talking (or, in this case, writing) about what's really troubling you, or what's really causing life to be so shitty. talk (or, write) about random non-important things! cos, you know, shitty life? oh so cliché. screwed and hopeless? been there, done that. so have a million other people. turn the page. start over.

pain. good.
and it ain't the hunger.

step one

2005-08-22T14:18:00.000+01:00

i did it!
one of you will know what i'm talking about soon.
a week from Wednesday, 11am.
watch this space.

i am...

2005-08-20T12:10:00.000+01:00

...busy busy busy. so busy that i had someone else write my entry today. yes i tricked him into doing it. no, i really didn't. anyway i'd elaborate but i gots to run. here it is:

1. nu is the source for the latest Microsoft news, technology, and downloads.
2. nu is something to talk about at dating scene.
3. nu is the address of the website used by the National Agency for Higher Education to provide information about the system of higher education in Sweden.
4. nu is very excited about the possibility of making space available for boarders during the fall.
5. nu is situated in south of Trans-Baikal area around Kyachta.

here's how you can play: type in "[your name] is" into Google (with quotation marks), and pick the 5 results that you like the most. then post it.

thanks for playing the game for me, Kaki Cucuk Langit.

i don't get...

2005-08-15T15:31:00.000+01:00

what is the deal with:

1. cricket? and why do they call it the Test Series? is it some kind of qualifying round? preliminaries? and why would people queue up from 2am to get tickets to it? and why is it taking up air-time on my TV when i want to watch good ol' daytime chat shows?

2. Blog-shares? what is it? what does it mean when i'm given shares to something else? what do i do with them? why do i have a link on my sidebar to something that i don't even know what to do with?

enlighten me.

sanctified footwear

2005-08-09T15:16:00.000+01:00

someone found my site yesterday by searching for "strappy jesus sandals". all i'd like to say to ~~Mr. Jackson~~ him / her is, if you find what you're looking for, come by again and let me know what they are.

oh and someone searched for "girls going commando". whatever it is you're looking for, i hope you didn't find it here.

guess what's sitting nicely on my shelf above the heater now? so gorjius, it is!

kill me. now.

2005-08-08T13:41:00.000+01:00

you know that feeling when your chest squeezes and tightens and you need to tell yourself to take a breath and your head feels like it's being pushed inwards from both sides and the skin on your face feels tingly but not in a good way and your tummy doesn't just flutter but does amazing acrobatic feats and it makes you feel nauseous and more than uneasy and also makes you type long sentences?

there are very few things that calm me down when i feel like that, one of them is walking through the city, going through all the shops and buying unnecessary items just because they catch my fancy. so screw my rapidly depleting bank balance, i have an anxiety attack to cure.

s.u.l.k.

2005-08-06T12:18:00.000+01:00

is what i'm doing right now. i won't go into details why, because even as i sit here with my lower lip pursed out as far as it can go, a little voice in my head is saying that yet again i'm blowing things out of proportion, and these extra wrinkles that i'm helping my face to grow are so not worth it. but just for the heck of it may i just scream out into the web that i DIDN'T KNOW!! fucktard.

anyway. i'm getting sick. again. i just don't get what my body is trying to tell me. i usually am the picture of health and before this year the last time i was sick was years ago. now i've been sick almost every other month. it sucks like a lamprey.

up point, though, is that i managed to finish mapping out my site. progress is being made, folks. excruciatingly slow, but progress nonetheless.

and i've just started on the Journals of Sylvia Plath and Baudelaird's prosified poems. so don't blame me if i get quotatious on you because if Baudelaird's not the most quotable guy on the planet i don't know who is. that is if you're in as dark a mood as i am. dark. and gloomy. just waiting for an excuse to throw a tantrum. or creating one. a proper full-out tantrum. with tree-pulling, and vase-throwing, and table-over-turning, and pillow-pulling-aparting.

so go on. piss me off.

blah blah blah

2005-08-02T16:16:00.000+01:00

being the notoriously compulsive blog-stat-checker that i am, i found today that my archive pages have been accessed recently. so i thought i'd read some of my archived posts, just to see what them journal-readers are seeing. and gosh how i wish i could either erase, or re-edit them! funny thing, this journalling business. i spew out words at will and then forget that people. out there. can see them. and some of them are people whom i. know. and am still in constant. contact. with. the period after every word adds emphasis. to. the. seriousness. of. the. situation. well whatcha gonna do, eh? i reap what i sow, blah blah blah.

spent a good hour and a half on the phone with my beloved Babycakes last night. if any of you have read Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City you'll know what i'm talking about (except mine is a he and not Mona Ramsey). if you have never heard of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City i suggest you run to the nearest bookstore and buy it right. this. instant. i first came across this wonderful series in the depths of the library of the school-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. bless that librarian queen bitch (can't remember his name but by Buddha did he have a tree up his ass). anyway we (me and Jules, not the librarian) had a long conversation about martini, clothes and Choo's, dyed panties and laundry. t'was the best one and a half hours i've wasted.

this post is boring me. so i'll just stop here. but before that, isn't Google Earth just the most amazing thing on the face of this earth ever? only thing is the satellite images of Liverpool are so blurry i won't be able to use them for my project like i planned. whatcha you gonna do, eh? blah blah.

amazed, astounded, and slightly freaked

2005-08-02T15:19:00.000+01:00

if you haven't already, check this out.

annoyance upon annoyance

2005-08-01T16:33:00.000+01:00

the week looks like it's going to be a shitty one. yesterday was such a bad day on so many levels i just don't know where to begin. today, not looking so good either. so with this short post of "i just don't know what to say" i'm off to burn my frustrations (and some calories) off at the gym.

i'm all for charity but right now i sure wish i wasn't the one to give.

hope your week goes better than mine.

me, the psychic premonitress

2005-07-30T16:06:00.000+01:00

first, this is what i went for last night at the Lowry in Manchester. had a great laugh. the boys had such awesome bodies i felt incredibly ashamed to be a real lady who couldn't even look half as good as they do! but hey, at least i come fully equipped, eh? more pictures from the show here.

have you heard about the freak twister that hit Birmingham? i totally swear on my favourite pet's grave that this is true, but last week i actually had a dream about twisters! i was in my old Grand Central room with my sister (i'm totally not stalking her, honestly) and Lili Marleen. why i had a dream about a German war bride, ask my subconscious, because i have no idea. the Lili Marleen in my dream was a big lady, who looked like one of those stereotypical opera singers. she had her hair up in a bun, too much make-up, and was wearing a black dress. anyway, the three of us were in my room, watching twisters go by. the sky was really dark outside, and there was a big river next to the apartment building, with a billboard over it, although i can't remember what it was advertising. twister after twister skipped (yes, skipped) across the river, getting closer and closer to my window, but bypassing it everytime. they came from afar, destroying everything in their path, but everytime just missing us. i felt like we were in a really powerful forcefield. that was the coolest dream i've had in a while. then a few days later i heard about the twister in Birmingham! coincidence? or powers of the supernatural kind that have been magically bestowed on me?

three guesses as to where i am today. i'm seeing this today. really, getting internet access at a Picturehouse is not a good idea. all these movies are just horrible distractions!

have great weekends everyone!

rainy day post

2005-07-28T15:21:00.000+01:00

it's a rainy summer's day here and no better place to spend it than at the FACT's Rear Window Cafe. waiting for this show to start. if you click on the link you'll see what it's about, and i'll be watching it, claiming design research, as i'm designing a contemporary music centre for my design thesis, and this movie is about contemporary music. well, any excuse to lax is good enough for me.

meanwhile, i just read my sister's blog (yes, all three posts), and i really hope she keeps this blogging up! it's the most i've heard from her, and the deepest that i've heard off her, and it's really opening my eyes to the grown-up person that she's turning out to be. i guess at this point it would do well to point out that my sister and i aren't as close as some others. we hated each other when we were growing up, we'd find excuses to not only not be in the same room with each other, but not even be on the same floor. i say hate, but i mean hate in the loosest sense possible, because although she hated me for picking on her, and i hated her for irritating the guts out of me, there was a sisterly bond between us, as in, if i were crossing the road with her and a huge bus came out of nowhere racing in my direction and then smashed me to pieces, i'm sure she would have cried at my funeral. at least my mum would have made sure of that.

kidding aside, though, we've grown closer over the years, perhaps mostly because most of that time i was at least a 2-hour plane ride away. so maybe in our case, absence does indeed make us grow more fond of each other. we're still not as close as i'd like, for example i thought all this while that she and her boyfriend were just having a bit of fun, but she seems to really, really like him. and with all the non-relationships that i've been having of late, maybe it's time i took a bit of a lesson from her.

verging off on a tangent, though, i just looked up to people watch in between sentences, and i'm the only person in this cafe with a non-Apple laptop! guy on my right has a 14-inch iBook, guy on my left has 14-inch PowerBook, and i can see another 3 iBooks in front of me! i'm oozing with jealousy and scheming grand theft in my head.

actually with that i'm going to leave you here. not to commit larceny, but to buy my ticket and another cappuccino to take into the Box.

short one...

2005-07-27T17:13:00.000+01:00

typing as fast as i possibly can, because my laptop battery is going to give out any minute now. just a short one to say a little something about a new link i've put up under the "orang sekampung" category. it's my sister's! i had no idea that she had a blog, until i checked out my Friendster updates. she doesn't know about my little corner on the worldwideweb, so shh! although if she checks blogstats like i do, she may soon find out! i'd love to ramble on about my baby sister and the odd relationship that we share, but i'm afraid my screen will just go blank right in the middle and i'd lose the entire post, so we'll so that some other time, m'kay? oh, and a little shoutout to Miss Surwira to say that i just read your e-mail. thanks, and as you can see, i'm ay-okay.

have a great one, everybody!

wicked hangover weekend

2005-07-26T14:47:00.000+01:00

there was another round of attempted bombings in London on Thursday, a man who was suspected of being a bomber was shot and killed on Friday (he turned out to be someone who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time), and a bomb was found on a train on Saturday. so the universe had a great time messing with my nerves before the trip, and all throughout. having said that, though, i had a fabulous weekend anyway, and i'll let the photos speak for themselves. the atmosphere in London was great. granted, i didn't spend much time in the city centre itself, but the fact that the tubes were full of people, as were the busses, speaks volumes as to how Londoners are able to just pick themselves up and carry on with life.

anyway, now i'm back to reality, and back to the ton of work that i have. i haven't even checked my e-mail in days! (despite having time to upload and organise pictures, and update the blog!) wish that there were more hours in a day, but then again everyone does, right? watch this space, people. stress levels are rising, and posts may get more desperate and morbid.

bits and pieces of everything

2005-07-15T16:39:00.000+01:00

i'm sitting in The Bar at Fact, where i've been getting my "regular" WiFi access for the past 2 days. it's free, there are good drinks, and when i'm feeling bored i can just hop into the cinema for a movie. today, Batman Begins is playing, as is War of the Worlds, and some independent film from Spain about a man and his dog. oh, and Madagascar is showing too! have you seen that? it's really funny, and slightly disturbing, but good fun, overall. there's also an exhibition called the Agony and the Ecstasy on, which features horrific pieces, and explores how people react to them. i actually went to see this last week (i spend a lot of time here, and probably will be spending a lot more time here, since it has free WiFi) and made friends with the exhibition guide, who, since there weren't many people at the show, had a lot of free time on her hands. we chatted about the exhibition, and this week she passed me her notes on the artists, and the pieces. there is also a rather drunk man sitting at the next table, who has had one too many glasses of wine. he chuckles every now and then (well actually more often than that), rants quietly about something in English, then in French, probably because there's a French CD playing now.

it's great having internet at home, but this is way more interesting.

i'm going to London a week from today. Friday night i'll be attending a 70's / 80's themed party that a friend of a friend is throwing, and on Saturday we'll be going for a 10-hour gig at the park. i'm blurry on the details, because i've left all the buying of tickets / arrangements to her, and i'm just going along for the ride. Sunday i'm hoping to catch this exhibition at the Tate Modern. so this time next week i'll be on a London-bound train for what's looking to be a fabulous weekend! i haven't told my parents yet, partly because all plans were just finalised today, but mostly (well, all) because i know they'll just freak out about how unsafe it is. i don't plan to tell them. so, dear blog-readers, please pray that my secret excursion goes smoothly, and that no crazy terrorists decide to blow up any more tubes / busses / cabs / clubs, because i don't want to have my parents go "i told you so" at my funeral.

oh, and because i just overheard someone mentioning this, how stoked am i about the new Harry Potter book that's coming out tomorrow? ecstatic! i pre-ordered my copy at Waterstone's last month, so i'll be picking mine up tomorrow, and not queueing up with hundreds of others for the release at midnight tonight, because i'm not that much of a geek.

so this weekend's looking to be pretty great too. with my brand-new story book (which i have a feeling will distract me from the rest of life) and my friend Lauren's baby shower this Sunday! i'm especially excited for her, because i remember how badly she's wanted this baby. and if that little girl ever makes life hell for her mum (though i'm sure she won't, with a cool mum like Lauren's going to be) i'll tell her all about the tears shed, and the prayers prayed, all for her to come to be.

have great weekends everyone!

the second meme

2005-07-13T16:39:00.000+01:00

Nadz tagged me with this meme, which i shall try to answer as fast as i can, before the battery in my laptop gives out.

myself
i think about myself a lot. i'm obsessed with me. how do i look? what do i feel? what am i like? what do other people think of me? and yet, when asked to describe myself, i'm at a blank. what to say? some people have told me (or wrote in my Friendster testimonial) that i'm calm when faced with any situation and i never panic. i guess i could say that's true. i am unnaturally calm, even in the most dire situations, but i think that that's probably because i'm not a very expressive person either. i internalise a lot of my feelings, especially negative ones. that's probably self-detrimental but that's the only way i know how to get through things. my mum finds it incredibly frustrating to try to figure me out and usually concludes that i just go through life in an irritatingly blasé manner. oh well, when i start therapy, which i undoubtedly need, i'll let you know what my therapist thinks, m'kay? i do know this, though... i'm built with lots and lots of layers, and most of the time i assume that nobody "knows the real me", but then someone comes and says something and i go "well how did you know that i'd do/say/think that?" and i'm pleasantly surprised... most times.

wisdom
yesterday someone i know told me that i struck her as someone who "adapts well to change". which, i have to admit, is true. the only thing i hate about moving is the packing / unpacking. the settling has always been easy. whether that's because i am wise, or because of my "go with the flow" nature, i don't know. but hey, i'm in the mood for some self-praise so wise i am.

regrets
oh, so many. so very many. but mostly little things. some of them little things that accumulate to become a big thing that affect my life in a big way. like that packet of Doritos i had this morning watching Trisha, or going to bed early last night instead of working. or not getting up early enough. or those days that i missed gym. healthy regrets, but unhealthy, in that all i can do is reflect on them. reflect, promise to change, then don't.

family
small. just me, my baby sister, mum and dad. we never were big on family gatherings, so i don't know my cousins as well as i'd like (not) to. also my mum's half of the family lives all around the world, so i have cousins whom i've only seen once, or not at all. being just the four of us, you'd think that we're all close-knit and everything, and that sometimes is the case, but not always. they're, what, 6000 miles? away from me now, and i do miss them, but probably not as much as i should.

film
i love the movies. love love love them. to list all the movies i enjoy watching would take forever, and my "battery low" warnings are starting to flash so i'll leave that list for another day. one thing i do enjoy, though, is going to the movies, alone. some people think it's weird, but i like running off to the cinema whenever i feel like it, stopping on the way at Starbucks for an iced peppermint mocha (my must-have cinema snack), and enjoying the movie all on my own. and i especially love it when it's a weekday, and i have the entire cinema (almost) all to myself.

faith
i'll save the endless ramble i have on this for another day.

friends
sadly, they come and go. but i guess that's life. you just roll with the punches, go with the flow, take them as they come. and trust. no. one.

ideas
my profession requires me to have an "active imagination" and be "deadly creative", so i hope i have lots and lots and lots of ideas to come yet!

and now, because the library's closing in 25 minutes, and i have no idea how much longer my battery can last (but i'm guessing it's not long) i'll end this post by saying, CONGRATULATIONS to Miss Nadz on her up-coming engagement! i hope everything goes well, not only with the ceremony, but everything else too! i WILL be at your wedding, even if i have to sell all my clothes to buy me a plane ticket!!

oh, and i will now tag Everyone with this meme. don't be shy, now, you know how juicy these memes are! just leave your link in my box. my comment box.

caught!!

2005-07-12T12:06:00.000+01:00

remember how i said at first that i'd found the gem of all gems, the treasure seeked high and low, the cointreau in a liqueor chocolate, the Baileys-soaked sponge cake at the bottom of the tiramisu, i.e. the unsecured wireless internet connection that i tapped from? my deed has caught up with me and now i suffer again, with internet-less living. or, the guy who owns the wireless connection found out how to block internet-stealers from tapping his WiFi. damn the tech-savvy friends who taught him how to do it! damn the internet providers for teaching him how to secure his line! damn it, let me steal your internet you bastard!! i can't live like this! i can't live, not being able to check my e-mail every two hours, not being able to check for updates on the Big Brother website, not being able to blog whenever i want to!

if you don't hear from me within the week, it would be because i have died from boredom.

you will fail

2005-07-11T02:33:00.000+01:00

hear, hear.

London mayor Ken Livingstone's address to the fucktarded terrorists, posted by Monica.

that naked shet? so tempted right now...

2005-07-11T02:04:00.000+01:00

a warm bath, no matter how calm and relaxing, is a bad, bad idea on an exceptionally warm summer's night. the only thing stopping me from naked-blogging is the fact that the window is open, and i live on the ground floor, (almost) facing the main road. no need to flash Liverpool at 1:30am, i think.

i had a gluttonous weekend, which consisted of me eating lots and lots of food. Saturday night, Idzam & Lina came over for dinner. i cooked (yes, cooked - on and actual stove and everything!) chilli, Idzam brought a pie, and for dessert i made trifle (i was so Nigella Lawson this weekend), and Lina made some black rice pudding soup thing. after pigging out so much i spent most of today doing just about nothing, and this evening i went with Idzam & Lina (again) to see Madagascar, which i enjoyed. it was right funny, and after the few horrible days that have gone by, i sure needed a good laugh. after the movie, we had pizza for dinner. more eating. came back to my place, and ate left-over chilli while watching Big Brother.

yes, you read right - Big Brother. i am just a little bit embarassed to be so completely hooked on a reality show as silly as this, but i can't help it! it's a reality show, where the contestants don't have to do anything but just live with a group of people! it's basically what all the rest of us do everyday, and it's called co-existing with other human beings, and we don't get £100,000 if we manage not to kill everyone else (or ourselves) in the process. i do feel sorry for them, though, because i just can't imagine being in a place where everything i say and do is recorded, watched, analysed by and televised to the entire country. i was speaking to a German friend of mind a few weeks ago, who told me that this TV concept of Big Brother began in Germany, and apparently their Big Brother lasts for a year, instead of 20-odd weeks in the UK. a year. imagine being detached from family, friends, the world, for a Year. it'd be like Blast From The Past when they get out. speaking of which, the people in the Big Brother house currently don't even have a clue about what happened on Thursday. i don't know whether to be happy for them, or not.

anyway, to anyone who may be following the show, who do you reckon will win? my favourite housemate is Kemal, but i reckon Anthony stands a pretty high chance of winning.

oh, God, the shame, the shame. tomorrow, i'll write about serious stuff. like politics, and making poverty history. and stuff. 'cos i'm all into the intellectual. really. don't let the Big Brother thing fool ya. really.

on a day like today

2005-07-07T15:57:00.000+01:00

i woke up early this morning, quite an accomplishment. felt quite proud of myself as i arrived at the gym, right on time for my 10:30 appoinment with Matt. he was standing by the cycles, eyes fixed on the TV. explosions in central London. six tube stations bombed, one bus. going through my new (gruelling) program later, the gym was deadly silent. there were about five other people there this morning, and they were going through their workout quietly, listening intently to the news. everyone making sure not to slam their weights down. no one had their headphones on; everyone, for once, out of their iPod cocoons. when i got to my locker after, i checked my phone and there were a whole lot of missed calls and texts. calls from my mum, friends from home, a text from my dad, checking to see that i was okay. i, in turn, started calling friends in London, and friends who have family in London.

i usually end e-mails, or letters, or phone-calls, with "keep in touch!" or "hope to hear from you soon!" and by gosh i finally realise how important this keeping in touch really is. this morning i called up friends i haven't heard from in a long time. friends i haven't contacted in a long time, checking to see if they were okay. making sure they weren't hurt, or injured, or dead. and it was sad, how it takes something like a terrorist attack, to make you realise how (forgive the cliche) fragile life is.

i'd initially planned to head down to my site, around the LIPA area, after my gym session, but i just couldn't wait to get home, send out e-mails to friends i couldn't reach by phone. i've heard from all of them now, and thank God they're all okay. i've had BBC on since i got home, and London looks just eerie - quiet, deserted streets. no traffic, just ambulances, police cars. it's just too sad. London should be celebrating now, what with winning the 2012 Olympic bid, but instead, this.

clothes begone!

2005-07-02T11:51:00.000+01:00

remember how i said that the only complaint i had about my new studio apartment is that it didn't have internet access? well last night when i got back i set up my laptop to charge my iPod, and plugged in my WiFi card for the heck of it, and guess what? a wireless network it detected! and so now here i am, with everything i need - TV, DVDs, iPod, bed, computer, internet. and what more, the internet's free! except, well, i must be using someone else's wireless connection in this building, and whoever that person is is paying for it, so that does make me a titch guilty. just a little. not enough to pull the plug just yet.

so my new apartment? loving it! i wrote my mum yesterday about how excited i am about having my own kitchen, and my own living room, and how everything here is mine, and i don't have to share anything. and her reply was "why do you need your own kitchen? you don't even cook!" which is true. i don't cook. or, i do. sometimes. but somehow toasting bread is not really the same as making a roast, or baking a pie from scratch, is it? but anyway, the main point is, everything starting from the main door onwards is mine. which means i can watch TV naked if i wanted to. or cook naked. or do my laundry naked. and nobody would know, or see me, or care! i could even blog naked. not that i am, or would, but then again you wouldn't know, would you?

the final night

2005-06-30T02:51:00.000+01:00

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

2005-06-26T23:39:00.000+01:00

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

2005-06-22T22:01:00.000+01:00

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!