I have been presumptuous. This is what it feels like to be a fool.

The One

(I should be fast asleep!)

Happiness really is experiential as evidenced by my current gaping void of a brain. No deep thoughts, no illuminating insights, no emotional depths to plunge today. Just a vacant blissfulness.

I've actually been lying on my bed for quite a while staring absently at my laptop listening to the hum of the air-conditioner in the background and barely audible traffic in the distance. This as opposed to the occasional curling up in a ball, staring at the ceiling flooded with agonizing thoughts fueled by an inferno of emotion. Polar opposites, split personality? Dr. Jekyll and Hyde syndrome? Your guess is as good as mine.

I think you prophesied it. In the few months leading up to it, you constantly explored the subject. You even went so far as to foretell exactly how it would happen. And you used phrases I was to mirror exactly later on.

Of course the less romantic explanation would be that I have attached significance to unrelated incidents and found patterns where there are none. That it was all randomness.

The practical explanation could also be that you had primed yourself into the state of mind (and action) that was necessary to realize your desires. That when opportunity presented itself, you were ready.

But I'll leave logic, randomness and practicality to rest for once and believe the magical. Now isn't that something?

Rummaging through the past

Did some personal spring cleaning today, opened a few boxes left sealed and abandoned since the move about 4 months ago. This is what I found, categorized by the things I’m holding on to and the things I’m letting go off:

Keeping:

1. My books! Everything ranging from my beloved Richmal Crompton’s William books, to P.G. Wodehouse, to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence which I read in attempt to derive more meaning than what the movie let on (an ultimately unsuccessful endeavor, so I shall remain forever caught up in their unfulfilled passions, questioning why? Why? Why?!)

2. Dog-eared letters yellowed with age. Kept for many a sentimental value; faded ink bearing hopes, wishes and dreams exchanged between childhood friends. I treasure them and yes, re-read them occasionally when I’m feeling melancholy and wistful for a simpler time.

Sadly there are no love letters from pubescent boys among them. I guess I never attracted the type that poured out their hearts in a letter, their exclamations of love were all very vague and I was very distant, plus they couldn’t spell to save their souls. Though I did once receive a letter from a girl…haha! :p

3. Skipping rope. I seriously have no idea when or why they came into my possession, not one but two! But I vaguely remember skipping, though I spent most of that time tripping myself up. Coordination is not my strongest point except when dancing.

4. Presents I bought from Bangkok for two of my friends. Considering that I went to Bangkok more than 2 years ago, that’s a long time to be holding on to them. One of them I haven’t seen since we graduated though we keep in touch by other means, and the other though I met rarely, I never seem to have her present with me when we do.

5. My final year thesis. I’ve been meaning to have this hard-cover bound and titled with gold-lettering but years after the fact have yet to get round to doing it. I’ve forgotten most of the details, so it was refreshing talking bran through it as we flipped the loose sheets. I remember the back-breaking tedium of hard long hours in the laboratory, the frustration of failed experiments and finally the complete gratification of being rewarded with an A.

Out with the trash!:

1. Old magazines. Don’t know why I was hoarding them. Maybe at the back of my mind I though that in the future I would possibly be in dire need of the June 2001 issue of Her World magazine. Err…???!!

2. Gifts from friends and relatives that I have absolutely no discernible use for. Guilt makes us keep them around for years and then there comes a time when you feel safe enough to discard them without fear that you have wronged them in someway. Today I am guilt and fancy free! (with one less trinket-store photo frame :).

It’s a metaphor for my hopes of a change I guess, a flushing out of old habits, but at the same time remembering to keep the important things close

It's been a fantastic week

You know it’s a good week when you wake up in the morning during a weekday thinking it’s a Saturday. I’ve hardly even kept track what date it is. For a person driven by deadlines, obviously this means I have not been in the office :)

Been away for training (yet another one) and as luck would have it, the training centre is practically in a shopping mall….oh, boy! Oh boy! Oh boy! This coupled with the fact that I only agreed to attend the training so long as I was relieved of work duties for the entire duration, meant that it turned out to be a holiday for me.

Classes were leisurely affairs mostly ending by mid-afternoon or even at lunch time. This gave me lots of time to wander the mall doing a lot of browsing and a little purchasing. However one week in a mall is more than enough, all the bright lights, cacophony of sounds and bustling people, gets on my nerves after a while. But I am happy with the fruits of the week and the bright spark of an idea for someone’s upcoming birthday. It’s decided that on that day, a sushi chef will be born :p

And whaddya know, it’s Friday already. Can the week get any better?

Oh, Calvin!

"Girls are like slugs - they probably serve some purpose, but it's hard to imagine what."

-Calvin & Hobbes

Keep them buggers at bay! Their time is past and so are they.

What an ego-boost it is to find soliloquy's about you that an ex or someone who had a crush on you wrote.

It matters little that you only stumbled upon it years down the road and everyone's moved on to bigger and better things.

So if you've ever written something in the heat of passion about someone who was never meant to know, make sure they never find evidence of it. It'll save you a lot of embarrassment.

We all know how feelings change, but because of those damning words, something they only suspected in the past will be confirmed, and they'll have the sneaky satisfaction of forever thinking that you're hung up on them.

And worse still, in their every encounter with you from thereon, they will have that thought at the back of their minds. It won't matter what you say or who you're with, theirs will be the knowing smiles and private amusement at you're expense.

Protect your privacy.

Don't let anyone in except those who wouldn't hurt you willfully.

Or as the Chinese would say: "Save face-lah!"

PS: Yes, I'm very anal about this. I hate people prying and I hate people finding out things I don't want them to know. My last piece of advice: Always be paranoid. you never know who's watching.

Haiyah! Damn long haven't update, shy only...

You know what?

I want to be rich.

Make that filthy rich.

Let's all bow our heads in prayer.
Amen.

Wikipedia: My best friend

Look what I learnt today!

• Portmanteau

• Morpheme

• Nonce

• Neologism

• Hapax Legomenon

• Sniglet

Before today, if someone had come up to me and spouted those words, I’d have thought they were having a go at pulling my leg. But now I am enlightened!

Go on, you know you want to look ‘em up (Just don’t ask me what they mean :p)

Muddling through as always

Addition to the things I’m capable of: Ups and downs, and all in the same day! I never see them coming. That’s the thing about expectations, even when you think you have none they loom up out of nowhere and trip you up. Going with the flow my foot. I still have a long way to go.

Next weekend: day trip back home for big family reunion thingy. Not so big news except that hun’s making the trip with me for the very first time. *Gasp!* I did not expect it at all, he’s braver than I thought. Me and my assumptions. So now the chore that I was not at all enthusiastic about has become that much lighter. This will be interesting.

Well, except for the part where I have to feed him Ipoh taugeh chicken. Ew…gross! Ah, but for the sacrifices we make for love :p

P.S: Winona and her leopard spots have gone to the Great Fishbowl in the sky. R.I.P

Litany to Perfection

Perfect hair,
Perfect skin,
Perfect shape,
Perfect barely-there make-up,
Immaculately French manicured nails,
Perched atop elegantly long slim fingers,
Exquisitely tailored clothes fitted to a T,
And lean legs ending in black stiletto heels.

Sitting beside her, I couldn’t help but feel scruffy, comparatively inadequate, found distinctly lacking. I believe she spoke, quite a bit actually because she was presenting, but I doubt many listened. We were too busy checking her out. I wonder if it unnerves her that people stare while she’s trying to speak to them. She wasn’t a great beauty, but oh, how so very well turned out!

Later I scuttle off to tell a fellow ‘normally scruffy’ friend about her and we sigh in unison over our lack of ability to achieve such heights. We moan; who has the time, effort and discipline to pull off such impossible feats? And we finally agree that we can only aspire and inevitably time and time again, fail to deliver.

Nondescript-ness it seems will always be our forte.