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.

One by one they go

Yesterday....

Chuck: R.I.P

Today...

Beetlejuice: R.I.P

.
.
.
....it's an epidemic!

Fish aren't cuddly (and other interesting facts)

It was a busy weekend ‘furnishing’ the house with some unusual suspects. And so without further ado, please welcome the new additions to the family.

The solitary plant: Angus (presumably he’s Scottish)

Residents of the fishbowl:

The guppies:

Fredrika (R.I.P.) : Tragically passed away before her prime

Winona : The flamboyant leopard spotted guppy

Olga : Apparently Russian

Cornelia : A rather nondescript guppy

Chuck : the somewhat spastic guppy with an inferiority complex and budding suicidal tendencies

The Quintuplet Cardinal Tetra’s, very imaginatively named:

Random Fish No.1

Random Fish No.2

Random Fish No.3

Random Fish No.4

Random Fish No.5

The Ghost Cat Fish: Casper and Beetlejuice (names self explanatory)

The fighting fish: Bruce (Lee) – he’s a lover not a fighter :p

***

They really have brought the place to life, not that I was aware of it being dead before this, but in truth, they have ‘livened’ it up. Always a good thing, and that’s a wrap for the week!

Thou Shalt Not Work In The City Centre

I've been attending training for the past 3 days in the heart of KL, and I'm exhausted. Waking up at an ungodly hour everyday just to beat traffic and then getting stuck in a jam on the way home, certainly takes its toll on you. I don't know how hun does it, but he says he's ok and my tiredness is due to lack of sleep. Boy oh boy, aren't I grateful I work just 5-10 minutes from here; practically in my backyard!.

The training was all right, and coming from a person with a very healthy level of scepticism and cynicism, this could be very high praise indeed. I'm certainly not one for the motivational or self-help spiel, but there was enough meat there to spark an interest. However whether this translates to action is at danger of being sacrificed at the altar of the Gods of Procrastination. Hur, hur! Same old, same old it seems.

Days of their lives

It’s only when others tell you how unfortunate their lives are that you realize how fortunate you are. And while you complain and moan and sulk at miniscule real (or imagined) hurts, there are others for whom a life like yours would be a luxury they can only dream of. This is what I mean when I say I’m grateful, though unfortunately it slips my unreliable mind quite often.

I wasn’t prepared when my colleague suddenly began telling me of her marriage problems. There I was thinking we were just going to have a pleasant lunch together when I end up with a bleeding ear. It’s a tale of years of jealousy, possessiveness, lack of appreciation and much drama culminating in threats of divorce. And she’s a year younger than I am! Their problems began because of the (geographic) distance between them but according to her, even when they lived together the problems didn’t end there. She even revealed that she felt rushed into marriage amidst all this because her family had convinced her that her problems would be solved once they were married. This is how much damage meddling people who blindly uphold traditions but have very little insight into a person’s needs, can cause to the gullible and lost.

And to my horror, she continues to tells me in fatalistic tones that they are now discussing having children. It was an effort to bite my tongue from telling her what a bad idea that would be; dragging children into the mess without sorting themselves out first. It’s amazing though how she can function normally at work with all this happening in the background.

I’m not particularly close to these people, both this colleague of mine and the other mother of three who told me about the lost forbidden love of her life. And yet I tend to be at the receiving end of such woeful tales, things you would hesitate to tell someone who hasn’t been your best friend for at least 10 years. I say ‘receiving end’ because I never probe, I assume people are as private as I am when it comes to their personal lives, and yet. I’m beginning to think I must have ‘Mother Confessor’ branded on my forehead.

But I lap it up, all of this, and keep my mouth shut, everywhere except here that is.

Lucky you :)

M.I.A.

I know. I missed two days. Some days the act of opening the laptop, switching it on, connecting to the net, composing a post then waiting for Blogger to load in order to upload just seems too arduous a task to undertake.

Babysat the parents today, doing all the things I have very little patience for, namely visiting the relatives. Them with the same old questions and false smiles and gestures of affection. I always wonder, with all the history of animosity and bad blood between some of them, how they are able to come together and pretend everything is fine. I find it hypocritical and unhealthy, all this feigning goodwill and making a show of stifling irreconcilable differences. Where are the brush off’s and the refusing to speak to each other and cursing each other to hell? Where’s that familial spirit?

Anyway, ended up with an eye ache for good measure. I used to think that my frequent eye aches were brought on by heat or as the doctors like to say, staring at the PC for too long. So how do you explain it away when it’s been raining the whole day and I haven’t even glanced in the general direction of a PC until now?

I’m listening obsessively to My Chemical Romance these days. My colleague calls it ‘emo-rock’, apparently a sub-genre of rock that I hadn’t heard of before. I’m either so out of it or he’s pulling my leg. Like all music I take a shine to, I’ll be listening to them till I get sick, but in the meantime, it’s pretty good stuff.

PS: I surprise myself by actually having a lot of things to say. I’ve stored them up carefully in my brain and maybe (hopefully) will have the time and inclination to write them down one of these days.

Till then.

We’ve just collected our new curtains and they’re so glam! As hun said, now we just need to add stand lamps to showcase their brilliance.

Not much in the mood today (can you tell?). Last night indulged in negativity and contemplated the feeling of being on the verge of a downward spiral. I think it won’t happen though, not this time. I foretell that tomorrow I’ll perk right up again and will be fit to rain torture on 5 moles of one right ear (in joke, sorry).

It’s almost past his bedtime; he works the early shift, so I’m off to do some tucking in. And after, probably curl up and chuckle over a few episodes of Frasier until I reach a decent time to sleep.

Good night and sleep tight.

In a rush

Since I might not have time later (I'm finally off to my customer's site!), I'll blog now.

If all goes well I'll only be back in the office only next Friday. Whopee!, assuming the Customer behaves and doesn't drive me up the wall that is :)

On my mind: Is my hun ok?

I hear he says he is and will continue to say so no matter how many times I bug him like a broken record. And no matter how much he says he is I also know he'll be hard pressed to convince me. When I've hooked on to an intuition like a leech, I won't let go until I burst, oozing out my insides or I decided to ignore and let it rest. Why the stubborness? I have been right before. And while that doesn't mean my hunches will be right forever after, it gives cause for pause and caution anyway.

So, is my hun ok?

..you give me fever

Fever’s dissipated a little. Feeling drowsy after the banana leaf lunch I happily gobbled down in attempt to eradicate the bitter taste of medicine from my mouth.

It’s the lunch time still that descends in the office only experienced by the few that lunch outside the official lunch hour. Taking liberties? Well, if no one stops us and works get done anyway, there’s no cause for anyone to complain.

Work’s somewhat slow. I’m scheduled to help out for five days at a customer site, however I use the term ‘scheduled’ loosely here because if things had been on schedule, I’d already be working there now. As things go we have yet to start (their bureaucratic red tape keeping us at bay) and I probably will not be able to allocate five days of my time to them as I will be away for training next week.

So I’m left restless at the moment. Was actually looking forward to the unexpected repetitive, tedious work in store for me; anything that gets me out of the office and affords me the luxury of just ‘doing’ instead of ‘thinking’ and all the things I’m used to. I’ve always thought that I’d be content with that kind of job; working as a cashier or as a photocopy girl for example. Now if only it paid fantastically well, had great career prospects and commanded an enviable level of respect. Sigh.

So last night as I was idly surfing, feeling a little bored as usual, I decided that in order to kick start my blogging activities again, I should make a habit out of it. I should blog everyday regardless of whether I think I have anything to say or not. After this epiphany, I promptly went to sleep.

Well then, it’s the next day already and even though I didn’t follow my own advice yesterday, I figure this is as good a day as any to start. So here, this is me starting in case you didn’t notice.

I’m testing out a theory that the longer you stop doing something for whatever reason, the less you are inclined to take it up again even when the reason is no longer relevant.

Take for instance my lack of new shoes. I haven’t bought shoes in like forever, and it used to be because I could not find any that suited my taste. But recently I have come across pretty decent shoes multiple times but find myself strangely reluctant to change the status quo. I seem to find myself making other excuses why I shouldn’t make the purchase. How weird is that? So yes, shoes for me has everything to do with blogging.

I guess it’s also going to be an exercise in mundanity, but one has to start somewhere.

How not to spend your workday

I attended training at the parent company (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Mothership’) yesterday; a poorly executed endeavor to inculcate in us employees the ‘values’ of the company. In past dealings with the Mothership employees I can conclusively say that the trainer embodied all that is typical in the way their employees ‘work’. If anything the trainer taught us exactly what not to be; him. The lackadaisical attitude to sticking to the agenda, the frequent fixation with ‘makan’, dragging what might have effectively been conducted as a 2 hour talk into an entire day of loss productivity. As I told bran, I swear I came out dumber than when I went in.

Oh how he mangled the English language! I sat and cringed throughout. Even that would have been all right if he had a clue about what he was trying to teach us. But his examples were just as painful and revealed an uneasy mixture of biasness, discrimination and stupidity. I can’t imagine that they actually have an entire department dedicated to this foolishness. The intention may have been honourable but the execution is appalling.

I remember after my last project meeting at the Mothership, my colleagues said they were afraid that I might physically send some of their employees flying out the window. I apparently looked that scary. It’s true; I have very little patience with lazy, insipid people when it comes to work.

***

Anyway, am standing at the edge of a perfectly good weekend filled with torturing grown men (hur! hur!), good food, much drinking and the company of friends, escorted by the loveliest man ever. Yes, I have a wedding to attend. :)

The Accidental Stalker

Does it matter that the night air is stiflingly balmy and there isn’t even a sliver of wind to rustle the leaves? No, they are oblivious to trivialities like weather. They smile broad absent-minded, slightly nervous smiles at their general surroundings. As they languidly stroll, she looks shyly down at the pavement and he gently shifts her hand in his searching for the right grip and pressure to apply to convey his care and tenderness. They have yet to reach the stage where smiles are knowing and directed at each other, fingers interlock surely, firmly, and silences are not filled with the anxiety of what to say next but are pleasantly empty. So then they are new lovers, it is plain to see.

And surprise, surprise, he’s someone I keep bumping into. I came across this stranger’s blog not long ago, visit there occasionally then recently ran into him in my (our) office building. Now it seems the coy young lady he courts may live in the same condominium as I do. This does not make me a stalker, really!

***
It’s late Sunday night with a full week and weekend ahead. I am happy that the blues are kept easily at bay these days courtesy of loving arms to come home to at the end of each day.