z.o.n.k.e.d.
been helping someone out with her assignments. 2 whole days and 3 long evenings in a row. and its not done yet. seems worse than when i was at University myself. good thing is i get some whiskey at the end of each night.
Buffy ruins the day!
the reason why no one
seems to care is because they too have their own sorrow and pain. this, i was reminded of, from an early episode of Buffy that i recently (unplanned-ly) saw. Angel was still in it, and in this episode, the silly manipulated gay-ish boy had not turned quasi-evil yet! he was full of despair and was going to kill himself in the clock-tower (?) when they thought he was going to kill everyone else. he is the accomplice of the guy that killed the witch's girlfriend. sorry - as you can tell, i'm as hopeless at Buffy as i am with Star Wars. (reference: Shereen's surprise birthday party, Star Wars Trivia Pursuit was played. read Terz's post. or for more confirmation that i am getting more and more lousy with names, ask T & YM about tonight at Beach Bar.)
anyway, i think i digressed. what bugs me really is whether Conrad was right - in the sense that "we live, as we dream, alone." (sorry - another over-used phrase, but its not me! it was that bloody Buffy episode that made me think this!)
yet another thing we can attribute to the "modern condition". (reference: NAB's recent post. sorry - too lazy to put in the links at this hour.)
the ethernet cable this morning
is this the reason why my internet connection was down last week? i had used the longest cable, so that i could use my laptop at the dining table. strange that i didn't even notice this until this morning! surely i would have noticed it if it happened last week?
which naughty doggy did it?! why would any dog want to chew cable?!
the sky last night
seems that these days, the only photos i take are from inside the apartment.
weird encounters
my internet connection has been down for the last 3 days. its funny. i thought that maybe i belong to the group of people who can't live without being connected for even one day, but boy, i was wrong. in fact, i think i managed quite well.
one of the weird things that happened since, was before Batman Begins, when i went to see my maternal grandparents.
my grandfather actually asked me to go to church with him. can you beat that?! i guess i was a bit naughty because i said - "oh, i go to the temple next to my house." and my most beloved only sister actually had the gall to give me a dirtier look than my dad did. in fact, my dad didn't give me any dirty looks at all!
i know one shouldn't be nasty to their grandparents. especially if you haven't seen them for a long time, and more so if your grandfather is the one who bought you your first guitar when you were 14 when you first really got into it, and even more so when he has never bought you
any presents before. (and how he knew you so wanted a guitar at that time,
god knows!)
but it really came as a shock to me. my maternal grandfather wanting me to go to church with him?! i mean - i have never been close to him. this being the fact that i am my mother's daughter, his very first grandchild,
but not his first-born son's son. (how more fucking chinese can this get?! and as my dad's daughter, i have always been very very loved/spoilt by my paternal grandfather.) then i so nearly said, "my
ah ma is taoist/buddhist, and i think i should be fair and not follow anyone." (which is my stand, really. and my dad's as well, until it was revealed to me that he too goes to church with them?!)
but i think all this came about because he is feeling old. and he really means well. as i grew up, i felt him "warming up" to me. i watched him and my grandmother get baptised, and how he just generally became a much nicer grandfather. and he also kept asking my sister and i to visit him whenever we have the time, which is probably another sign of someone feeling old.
...
and also probably because he really doesn't want me to burn in the depths of hell. on the 18th level.
in any case, i took a portrait of him, which my sister described as looking very much like the
Mao portrait. (i will probably put it up in my flick'r account later this week for friends who want to see it.)
the other (not-so-weird) thing that happened was that earlier tonight, when i was having my dinner at the LongHouse on Upp Thomson Rd, the woman at the drinks stall sold me a packet of cigs, and then asked me after i lit one up - "eh, why you so young start smoking already?"
"huh? how old do you think i am?"
"17"
i nearly laughed my guts out. 17?! which fucking planet does she think she is on?!
i wanted to say, "auntie, you think i look so young, below 18, why you still sell me cigarette?"
twas funny because when she said "17", B, whom i was having dinner with, said "27" in Mandarin and then she asked me, "you not chinese ah?"
"i don't look like chinese meh? i'm chinese lah. why you think i not chinese?'
(pointing to B) "he leh? he look like foreigner." (and she didn't use the word
ang moh! she said
wai(4) guo(2) ren(2).)
"you ask him lah!"
(she probably thought that B is my father, which is kind of a running-joke by now.)
blue-1a
this is my first ever
play-with-colours in Photoshop. not something that can be used for the purpose it was meant for, nor any sort of art work really, but still, i had fun doing this. (btw, REM's Man on the Moon is playing on the radio!) and also, i learnt a lot from tonight's impromptu lesson on how-to-use-Layers better in PS.
i just wish Finn wouldn't chew up all my medicines! (not that he swallows them, but he just ruins them!)
dark clouds
woke up this morning at 7ish, probably from hunger. went into the tv room and this was the view. ominous clouds. i took 4 shots. but this one, i liked best. didn't bother photoshop'g it because i am hungry and will now go and find some nice carrot cake in AMK!
its weird because it doesn't look like it rained. hard. guess i will soon find out.
in other news - went to Muddy Murphy's yesterday. some local band was playing. (guy who uses Taylor guitar from Barcelona some years back is in this band) some guy requested American Girls, but they played Accidentally in Love instead. twas ok, except that he got the lyrics wrong! kept repeating "come on, come on, move a little closer..." when it is actually in the song only
once. oh well...
this night and more
had a great dinner at doc's place. together with the
lians and the
bengs he invited. what a spread! he cooked for us black pepper crabs, mushrooms, tom yam soup (with the biggest fucking fishballs i have ever seen!), fish, fried
tang hoon, thai-style pineapple rice, some kind of rendang, and clams+mussels in a nice white wine sauce. and probably some more that i can't recall. (because honestly, i only had the fish, rice, and clams.)
and then a long chat about religion (again?! thought i had some of that last night already?!), and other things. boy, this guy is chatty! (he also has 2 cats, Tail and Socks who were both very very adorable.)
and then i had more of that leathery whiskey stuff. its "Bowmore". thought i was going to fall asleep from the wine and whiskey, but luckily, interesting recounts of army
daze woke me up. hence, blogging at this hour.
anyway, i'm off to bed soon. (just trying to spend some time with dogs before that.) i seem to remember i've got an appointment tomorrow, but i can't remember what. maybe this is from forgetting my appointment with R last night. but we had a great time at Blu, him talking about how he's dating these 2 ex-girlfriends of his, and how he might try to ask someone else out. we were sitting outside, and then when i went in to go to the loo, they had Mrs P playing. so i rushed back out, grabbed R, and said "Mrs Potters! we must go in!" and "we shout[ed] out these songs against the clang of electric guitars!" and then they played my MD. like they always do when i'm there. it is all cool.
duplicates
last week i bought a couple of DVD's.
today, whilst lying on the floor in the TV room, i saw a copy of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire on the shelf that i'd bought in the UK last year.
so, is anyone interested in swapping (um, that is if you are like me, buying double copies by mistake!) or buying it off me?
"leathery" whiskey
i had some last night. liked it until someone described it as "leathery". and then i couldn't decide. don't like the idea of cow in my drink. the last time i had some of this, it was described as "like oak", which made the drink much more delectable. odd how using different words can change our
sense of things, even something like taste.
Reading is fun - by Ampulets
read, read, read!
(if you liked this poster, go and visit Ampulets!
link on side toolbar)
swim related stuff
so i went to bed at about 3am last night, waking up in the middle of the night (ok. probably about 4 or 5am, so early morning) sweating like a dog in the heat of summer. and no, the air-conditioner was not spoilt. i think i must still have that fever or something.
anyway, i got woken up just before 7am again, this time, courtesy of my beloved dog, Finn. he wanted attention. and then Belle joined him (will not go into details), and i lost. 2 against one, no chance at all. woke with this fucking headache to match the weather outside. (thunder, thunder, thunder!)
to the
real point of this post - i was shopping for NAB's present and came across this watch. i guess it would be nice to have one to track my swimming progress. yesterday's 20 laps was slowish. must have been at least 28mins. but see,
if i have this watch, (ah-ha!) i can then
be certain of the time taken!
but hang on a minute, wouldn't
any watch be able to do that?! doh! but this one tracks total strokes and average stroke per lap. and it has a calorie counter. ok. i have not figured out how knowing the total number of strokes is going to be beneficial to me, but i guess its all about the efficiency (is there a better word??) of each stroke and minimising wasted movement, wasted energy of each stroke. getting the best out of your strokes. (hell, this is sounding less and less like swimming and more like ahem!
you know what lah. i wonder what happens if someone uses
this watch whilst ahem! - damn. some things should not be thought aloud.)
Aaanyway, there is also this cool MP3 player that "uses bone conduction - the direct transfer of sound vibrations from the cheek bone to the inner ear - to provide the swimmer with exceptional sound clarity". Wonderful!!! except that it kinda looks stupid being attached to the back of the head like that.
and this
"treadmill" pool. nice idea, but i might possibly be as bored as using the treadmill or cycling machine at the gym. to make this really work, use the SwiMP3 whilst swimming in it!
just one thing:
Happy Birthday, N!
have a good one.
the fool that i am!
i should go to bed,
i should go to bed.
i'm having a fever, and a fucking bad nose.
i should really go to bed.
so why don't i fucking feel tired/ill enough?! earlier, i walked for more than an hour from Serene Centre, through the Botanic Gardens & back as well!
it dawned on me -
this morning, when i was at the doctor's, (not Gary, but some random - or not so random guy), i said, "yes, non-drowsy please" thinking i don't want to knock-out so i can read some.
what a fool! the caffeine in those tablets!
i have got a cold/fever!
sometimes you have so much stuff in your head, all at once, that it becomes very difficult to determine what to do with them. you may think things might be easier if you can put them into some kind of tangible form, like words (written or verbal), an image, or music. but some things can't be expressed accurately, or coherently.
maybe i'm just bad at expressing myself, as NAB has suggested once. maybe other people are also bad at expressing themselves. but is it enough to think that something exists just because you can
sense it, without it actually being said or confirmed through action? (because people do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, it is hard to determine what their actual intention is. hell, sometimes even they do not know. so then, do you allow yourself to believe in the reason you most want?)
and then sometimes, you can't tell the real from the imagined.
sometimes i can't even tell the real from what has been dreamed.
"too many choices" - DMB, "Typical Situation"
"i hate choices! - my friend R.
task: figure out the link between the title and the post!
from Antonio Tabucchi's "The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro"
lines from a poem by Louise Colet ("coded message" to Flaubert):
que faites-vous des anciennes amours? les chassez-vous comme des ombres vaines?
Ils ont été, ces fantômes glacés, coeur contre coeur, une part de vous même. (don't know where the actual line breaks are.)
translation:
"what in fact do you do with your past loves? Would you send them away like useless shadows? These gelid ghosts were, heart pressed to heart, a part of yourself."
just thought it weird for something like this to pop out of a murder mystery novel...
birthdays and all
i was out shopping with R earlier today, for NAB's birthday present. She was looking for something similar, a calorie-burning count/distance travelled sort of thing, but something not quite so hi-tech. saw the perfect present for NAB, which included a GPS. (oops, spoiler!)
when i got on the fucking crowded bus home (bus?! did i say bus?!), i remembered that i had forgotten to get a birthday card for B. only found out it was his birthday the night before. so i thought i should be nice, improvise and give him a birthday card.
so i made one. it has been so long since i've made someone a card. but still, he liked it and i guess, it's worth the effort.
arthritis
so earlier this morning i got that call from my doctor - and my blood test is normal, which means i do not have one of those nasty types of arthritis (rheumatoid, etc) as we feared. what i have is probably osteo-arthritis/degenerative arthritis. which is not so bad. but maybe a little young for that?
in any case, i hope NAB's fractured wrist/finger won't be too bad because i know how having a fracture is such a bugger.
bright sun + thunder?
what the fuck's going on?
the weekend (well, sorta)
Saturday - quiet night in, 3 glasses of wine.
Sunday @ Southbridge:
it was jam night. and it was great. Aya, Boon & Eddie played a great rendition of Mack the Knife, with like 10 key changes?? at one point i think A said "no key!" A is positively mad. this i confirmed the next night.
(oh - and the singer Amanda Jansen from the U.S. - she has got a great voice. and very friendly as well. go and listen before she goes back! soon! IMO definitely much better than their regular singer.)
Monday night out with A & B:
A wanted someone to teach her to play pool better. so B asked me along. i was a bit worried that i would be lousy again as i am playing with a sprained thumb. anyway, we went to this place on Prinsep St. and her friends joined us for doubles. there was a lot of laughter, screaming (mostly by A), and repetition of "1 inch! 1 inch!". there were some pretty good shots made as well, and throughout the night, she kept referring to me as "sensei" which made me quite
paiseh. but i must say she is a really grateful student. the kind we should have in all our schools.
A makes me laugh - she deliberately fell on the floor a couple of times, and that, i attribute to her amazing ability to have a bloody good time, and her sense of madness.
we proceeded to a gay pub on Amoy St. (A's favourite joint) owned by her friend after her friends left. (good boys lah - must work next day what.) this place is really cool - a nice place to chill out, and the cost of drinks really isn't too bad. ($6 for a housepour. happy hour all night long??) but just as you think you are having a nice quiet drink/chat, some crazy boys appear out of nowhere and one of them invited
me to spank his boyfriend/ex-boyfriend's butt?! gosh. and then 18 year old girls who act like they so desperately needed to be fucked. anyway, we had great fun, and A even rapped to some songs. i think her madness is a manifestation of her creative energy.
the long night ended with more pool playing and affirmation that my bad patch has left me for now. which is just fucking fantastic.
