I know, I suck, I just put them up NOW. I was reminded when Grace put up her THIS YEAR'S photos. Well. Have fun. |
11 21, 2239
Writing down the date and time helps me get started. Otherwise watch me take ten thousand years to put in an entry. Yes, I do realize that putting this kind of effort into an adolescent online journal is quite silly but it is all I have, if you know what I mean. (So if you ever so happen to take it and morph it into your own I will say nothing but guarantee me tainting your image to other people.) Sometimes I also talk about the weather. Like now. November is supposed to welcome chilly nights and mornings too cold to permit contact with unheated water... London skies and generally cool wind throughout the day. But November 2006? Hardly. Nights make you develop a hate relationship with your comforter, humid mornings drive you out of bed to splash water on your face... by 7:30 in the morning the sun is out in all its radiant and horrendously warm glory, following you everywhere, and the wind that slaps you in the face is hot (and dusty in the case of our wonderful Metro Manila) - otherwise completely still with the same heat completely enveloping you. Despite my pathetic self losing the Christmas spirit, I love Christmas songs. Except "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", I ever stand on my verdict last year that it was It's probably because they're the oldest songs I know. I would like Christmas if it weren't so depressing. It would probably be better if there weren't so many parties to go to. That is when you feel it the most, when everyone is singing and happy and giving out presents and thinking What a Great Family I Have! and they have their friends and their boyfriends and their girlfriends and husbands and wives and chocolate and wine to boost their serotonin. When you're sitting in one corner amidst this Joy to the World mood, and you look at your cellphone, as if it would miraculously make a heartbreakingly sweet message come in, and nothing does, and you want to listen to music (that will further dampen your mood but you want to listen to it anyway) but you cannot and the night passes and it's eleven thirty in the night when you leave and you get into the car look out the window see all the peaceful looking houses with quiet bright lights of white yellow red and everything becomes a speedy painter's pallete of color when the melancholia-triggered liquid blurs your vision. Your chest hurts, the heart is supposed to be Just a muscle so why does have such a reaction to this situation? Your arms ache for god knows what reason. That is when It is right in your face screaming and dancing and laughing and annoying you to death. Do you people need a commenter? Would you fill it if I put one up? You see, email is not always the best source for quality human communication and you would know how desperate I am for it if you see me counducting/performing godknowswhat-driven conversations with myself/family members/nobody/anybody within earshot. The new quote that comes with The Airplane is undoubtedly, obviously from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am horribly predictable like that. My most loved fictional character whom I wish were real would be Clementine Kruczynski. Or maybe I don't want her to be real, because then if I met her I will most definitely fall in love with her and that will suck a bajillion times more than the fact that I still do not own the Collector's Edition of said movie; because with evidence of that quote, and because I completely agree with her, things will never work out. Anyone who strongly objects is welcome to a debate. (Not to brag and besides I barely do - I kicked quite some ass in my class' Single Life vs. Married Life debate, one guess which side I was on.) My grandmother, in a fit of melodramatic self-pitying rage, once said: "Choose your man well." She let out a defeated sigh. I sat there, watching her, back jerking up and down as tears choked her. Surrounded by crumpled tissue, she felt so alone, calling for her parents, my father was consoling to not much avail. He was at that moment her shoulder to cry on but anyone would know that she wanted something more. He was her son, and let's face it, someone almost half your age will not be able to give you as much comfort as someone at par with you, your so-called soulmate, which in my grandmother's case was right then absent, filling her with self-doubt. She was alone on her side of the bed, listening to an album full of Ave Maria classical covers, vulnerable and doubting her existence at an age she really should not have been. What is true is constantly changing. It is unclear to me if all of that was just a phase of living so many years together, and if in the end that thing called love was still there. It is hard to tell, they could be performing in a play (like they met) that has been going on for years, what with the settled married retired life. (It is past midnight and I will regret this at 5:33 in the morning later when I have to start the routine of dragging myself to school) Last Thursday we had a field trip to the Manila Times School of Journalism. I sat there like a sponge, absorbing every single thing the lecturer said, although her diction was outrageously irritating. Usually in college you still have to take typical subjects during the first two years (The horror!!!!!!!! I thought I would be bidding a very happy farewell to Math and Science in March 2008!!!!) but in this journalism school you are thrown into the hectic schedule of regular journalists although a college freshman. Four articles in less than eight hours a day. Twelve paragraphs in each article. I need to start conquering procrastination now. We also went to a theatre for the arts but the real deal came during the bus ride home. I had the window seat, ten thousand different faces separated from me by a couple of inches of glass, and a two-hour bus ride. What else could I do? This reasearcher's findings: Nine out of ten men on trucks with windows down will stare and wink at you if they catch your gaze (Not a difficult feat because a giant school bus with red-and-white-uniformed students inhabiting it is quite prominent in average-day dull Manila traffic). Ten out of ten will hold your gaze, and follow it until they can no more, with their heads craned out the window. Two out of ten will nudge their truck buddy. Ten out of ten of those truck buddies will stare and wave frantically at you. Ten out of ten women (if they actually catch you staring in the first place) will quickly look away, obviously self-conscious; checking if they have bird faeces drying up on their head of hair, or taking out a compact mirror. One out of ten women will raise one eyebrow at you before moving on with the regular self-consciousness decorum. Bless her mind, that sent the message to the eyebrow muscle. |
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I was reading my archives again. I am now going to redo the entry where I mentioned Quidam, because I seriously did not
give it enough justice before. (Reference) Really,
Adrienne, you could have done better than "QUIDAM WAS OUTRAGEOUSLY BRILLIANT" centered in font size
four!
Traffic was building up around the Bugis area so we had to go around. Seeing the demandingly huge yet cozy-looking, yellow and blue, dramatically-lit Grand Chapiteau... it was something. It's like being five years old and being in the car that is parking inside Disney Land for the first time. Right then, in that dingy old Philippine government owned white car, I was that five-year-old child, face pressed to the window, hands excitedly but quietly drumming the car door. We drove around the corner to an alley of shophouse bars, couldn't find a parking space. I remember looking at the people who were on their own in the bar, drinking in silence. I wondered what they were thinking. I still am, actually. Drove across the street to Bugis Junction, parked, and walked to the Big Top. My father asked Don't you feel hot in that long-sleeved shirt? The first thing you experience after you step through the gate and into the circus grounds - besides the black asphalt - is the souveneir tent. Cirque du Soleil plays on the televisions suspended from the top of the tent, its one-of-a-kind music play loud enough Not to sound like a drunk party. The little (compared to the main circus tent) tent is buzzing with excitement, its circular wall lined with merchandise. Clothes, in pop art and grunge and minimalist designs. Cirque du Soleil diabolos (my father instinctively picked these up after the show and said he would like them so he could use them to perform at birthday parties) and jump ropes. Intricately-designed couture masks, some going for as high as SGD1500. One of them is the famous Sun. Exquisite rocks with some sort of string that resembled jewelry, laying on elevated black felt. On poles are jovial circus hats (one of them much like the one Ruth brought to AAD 2004), more accessories. The cashier counter, which is in the middle of the tent, has mini-racks that proudly display fifteen-dollar bookmarks and keychains. DVDs of existing shows, and the beautiful Programme. Cashiers and staff walk around sporting different merchandise, wearing a shirt or donning a hat or hiding behind a mask. Out the souvenier tent and to the entrance of the Grand Chapiteau. From the outside you hear more music, but visually it is not that intimidating. A west and east entrance. It is but a small opening in the tent, you walk up the few steps and feel the rush of cool air from the air-conditioning as you step through. The music is louder. The tent now looks gargantuan, enough for the whole cast to parade around, have pieces of furniture suspended some fifty feet (my estimation is horrible, I will gladly correct this if you tell me otherwise) into the air, have human beings suspended some fifty feet in the air, have people selling ice-cream and popcorn and drinks at a price high enough to spoil your appetite (I believe that the sixty-cent Milo cost around five whole dollars?), and seat a seven hundred-strong audience. And yet, everything looks so intimate and close together. I think it was the way the audience were seated in a circle around the stage, the way lights were dimmed and the brightest ones shone on the stage, giving a dramatic feel to its stars then - a door, two lonely, retro metal armchairs, a birdcage that held a red ball prisoner instead of a bird, a lamp, a circular carpet, a side table with a toaster-radio on it. The tent ceiling (if it could be called that) is illustrated with sky lights - literally. There were clouds and a full moon. John and Boum-Boum walk around randomly, helping people find their seats. John would take someone else's popcorn every once in a while. Boum-Boum would complain how long people took to settle down. This is all entertaining already, but you look at the quiet, inviting stage and wish the show would start already. Eventually, the lights fade completely. Look around the audience and you will see tiny rectangular lights, either camera or phone LCD screens. I was so consumed by the sight of the stage I jumped when my own phone, in my hand, vibrated. Sam had said something about the love that she could feel, by some sort of telepathy, from The Acrobat - whose act, the Aerial Straps, was on rotation; and most unfortunately that show I had caught on Tuesday night was one of those he wasn't in. Everything goes quiet. Then it happens. The stage is almost always incredibly busy. During acts on the stage, you'd have little frill acts in the air, or further behind the stage. My favorites: The Father is suspended in the air, moving forward from back stage. He has the newspaper he was reading at the beginning of the show on his head like a lion's mane. At the end, he tears the newspaper up and it all snows calmly to the stage floor. The Spinster, with its disturbingly beautiful movements of a somewhat morbid porcelain doll. She came out a few minutes before the intermission ended, spinning around the whole stage in a way that she looked like she was out of balance for ever, and instead of falling she just sustained momentum of Almost Falling. Think spinning hula hoop, except a billion times more artsy and open to over-analyzation. In the beginning, there is so much happening you wouldn't know where to look. People in different costumes come out from left, right, behind and even from under the stage. To summarize the description would be an oxymoron - it was all wonderful organized chaos, like the morning rush in a busy city, people are walking so quickly in all directions but no one is lost although the big picture looks like so. (I just restrained from making a huge digression from there. Some other time.) I wanted the intermission to last longer And be done quickly. That is the thing about watching a good show, you gobble up each and every delicious detail to get to the next, but at the same time you try to combat that feeling because you feel you will somehow speed up the show, and it will end earlier. where a song can lift you off your feet and where the dreams of a child can truly change the world. - Guy Laliberte OK, I am not going to continue. All the body contortion, the leaps, the dancing, the gravity-defying, the lights, the lack of lights, the giant curtain, the balloons, the car that only existed through mime and sound effects, the nameless passerby who was everyone and anyone and no one, all the art and music - it can not be described. Cirque du Soleil can not be recounted like this. Go see them, any fucking way you can. (Click) Today is November the 11th. A year ago today was Si Jing's birthday lunch at Country Manna. Ben and Jerry's. Piggy back rides at Paragon. Sitting at the high window at Shaw and tying my hair. And, a disturbing image of Mr Chan the less-desirable D&T teacher in shorts too short for his own good and, surprise surprise, the same plastic bag with newspaper and foldable umbrella held over his shoulder (Picture us laughing our asses off and following him out of HMV to take a photo. Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the photo). A year ago a year later, is now, I have meekly tried to describe Cirque du Soleil, I have tried to describe the season finale of Grey's Anatomy in an email which is not done, I have tried reading Jane Eyre, I have tried undestanding Chemical reactions (which reminds me of Anna Nalick) (whose song Catalyst I listen to about twenty times a day and counting), I have tried understanding trigonometry, I have not studied for my exams on Monday, I have not started on my research paper on adolescent depression, I have tied my hair up in pigtails, I have poured over Eternal Sunshine, Finding Neverland and Before Sunset quotes (again), and I have thought too much like I always do. |
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The List So Far
(First Edition, from May 25, 2006 - October 10, 2006) : 01. Writing useless lists like this 02. Ice-cream sandwiches - the real ones, with the soft cookie-ish.. cookie 03. Green eyes 04. When I try drawing and the end product actually looks okay 05. Making people laugh 06. Cycling really fast everything else is a blur 07. Being in a vehicle that is going really fast 08. Being able to feel the collar bone 09. Not actually having a title for this list 10. The fact that I'm going to be adding to this list all over my entries from now on 11. Alerts that I have new e-mail 12. Long e-mails 13. Finding mail addressed to you in a mailbox 14. When it rains so hard I can't hear anything except the rain 15. When people are nice enough to let you take their photo 16. And then it turns out good 17. Observing people 18. Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys 19. Chuck Palahniuk 20. Julie and her one hell of a joke book 21. Lightbulb jokes 22. Being able to stay outside late just walking around 23. Good company, obviously 24. Observing art up close 25. A good pencil. Think 0.7 2B lead, which is almost like a real drawing pencil 26. Watching the ink print onto paper and watching it dry while I write 27. The thack of a ball hitting perfectly into my glove 28. Quotes. I = complete sucker for them. 29. Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 30. Listening to music in the dark 31. "Now tell me everything about you, all over again." 32. 33. Fight Club 34. Edward Norton 35. Acoustic guitar 36. Staring at paintings 37. Getting a full score on spelling and having a (false) sense of intelligence 38. Champagne Supernova 39. Oasis in general, christ I love them so much. 40. Sunday (not the day, stupid.) 41. The ability to disconnect myself from the rest of the world just by thinking 42. Seeing screencaps of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 43. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (UNBELIEVABLE I didn't put this in the list earlier) 44. Grey's Anatomy 45. Thursday nights because of Grey's Anatomy 46. Cutting paper (Not to mention the sound of it. Listen. It's insane.) 47. Have I mentioned the beautiful crack of the bat when I make a good hit? 48. James Blunt's High. Acoustic and live, please. (Speaking of which, if anyone has the song in MP3 format... Please, please, please.) 49. Oskar Schell 50. Comparing original songs to their covers 51. The Dresden Dolls 52. The sound of the piano in general 53. Cirque du Soleil 54. Cirque du Soleil music 55. Gel pens 56. The sound of the French horn 57. Observing people. I know I've said this before but this just goes to show that I could do it in perpetuity. 58. Well-written blogs that take the mundane and transform it completely by the way they tell the story, their story. It is the next best thing after number 57. 59. Wit 60. Smiles that look real (refer to James Frey) 61. Regina Spektor (Oh. My. God.) 62. Alphabetizing (!!!!!) 63. The sound of airplanes flying above me 64. The sight of airplanes flying above me 65. Describing 66. The surge of adrenaline during a debate/discussion (Imagine me practically on the edge of my seat dying to speak up) 67. Singing with fingers |
I was telling Si Jing, It's weird. It used to be Brusssshhhh and now it's just, Brush. (And then she said "Mine's not even BRU!" which I thought was fucking funny!) |
0921
It was past midnight and I had turned off the laptop (for the first time in about a month), lifted it from my stomach, got up and lay it on the table. Jumped back into bed. I wanted to write out a diary entry that I had been writing in my head while waiting for The Amazing Regina Spektor to perform on the Jay Leno show, but I ended up reading past emails that I had saved (I save them because I reply them offline, and for some reason I cannot bring myself to delete the old ones, dating back to around July, although I know they are safe in the internet database.). I jumped into bed and was still writing in my head, so I pick up my phone and think of the difference between writing with a pen and writing with a word processor. I thought Screw it, I am not like amazing writers who thrive on cancelling their crappy sentences with a messy line and then proceed to write on top of the struck-out sentence. This is the side-effect of keeping this online journal. I finish the paragraph in my cellphone, about six messages long, instinctively hit Send and picked Izz's number just for fun, hit Send again. The pixels on my screen tell me that the sending has failed. Not surprised. I curse my current state as I do every night, throw phone on top of The Book Box and go to sleep. Nine (it bugs me that I have started the past three paragraphs with the letter "I") in the morning, which was a few minutes ago, and I am sitting up in my bed going "no fucking way!" reading Izz's message over and over and paying attention to the "the message got cut off" and "message from adrienne" each time. I spent the rest of the morning from the bathroom to the refrigerator to the television and back up here to the warmth of my laptop saying "No fucking way I just sent a message without any money in the SIM card!" Sucks, if I knew it was going to send I would have typed in something worth keeping and not a lame 0040-conceived diary entry. Anyway, here is the first edition of the said 0040-conceived diary entry: So I can't read again. I do not know why, maybe because of the way the story is told. Virginia Woolf goes: Clarissa pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of the pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion. New York in its racket and stern brown decrepitude, its bottomless decline, always produces a few summer mornings like this; mornings invaded everywhere by an assertion of new life so determined it is almost comic, like a cartoon character that endures endless, hideous punishments and always emerges unburnt, unscarred, ready for more. And no doubt it is fantastic wordplay, but I want to hear from Clarissa. I want her to talk instead of having some genius narrator describe her to me. In short, all I can read is one-sided conversation. Journals, email. A phase like this is not an unfamiliar one, it has plagued me before. The last time it ended was when I was able to read half of the abovementioned book, which surprised me. But I had to stop because of the exams. Now I cannot get back into it. Thank god for the brilliant individuals who write up the brilliant journal entries, the people who document their lives in an online archival, in a voice that speaks to an audience that may or may not be existing. Any particular life, eventful or not so, is fully transformed by human observation and emotion, and wordplay. The best thing about all of this is I (I do not know if I speak for other online life archivists as well, but anyway) can pretend that you are right there listening, we are in a cozy corner sitting on the floor and I am telling you about how I love following airplanes with my gaze and I sigh and lean on your shoulder and we both sigh and stare blankly at the floor for a while, wrapped in silence that isn't awkward, because it wraps us in a way that it keeps us together and does not strangle us. Well so much for vowing to finish three books this week. Moving on, watching Regina Spektor was so awesome, I watched her sitting at the piano, she was just sitting but she was moving so much, everything was in sync, the piano playing, the foot tapping, the taking hand away from piano in between beats, the singing... it was like eating breakfast for her. "Breakfast? Fantastic!" Spread butter on bread. Sink teeth into bread. Chew. Swallow. Read morning paper. Pick up coffee and drink. Simple. "Play music at the Jay Leno show? Fantastic!" Sit at Steinway & Sons piano. Play in front of audience and rest of world through satellite. Hit the right chords. Look into camera while singing and smile. Wow audience. Simple. Don't get me started on other pianists. Dr. Burke quoted his musical idol today - "What I lack for in natural ability I make up for in discipline." Which made a hell lot of sense, and since I have neither, I am doomed to the symphony of introductions (Evanescence, The Dresden Dolls, Augustana, Something Corporate, Ben Folds, George Gerswhin, et al) and unfinished pieces (Phantom of the Opera, Song for Anna, stupid Disney, random broadway) that the rest of the household very much openly dreads. My grandmother was five years old when she first did an opening performance for an orchestra at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. And there was my seven-year-old self thinking I was some sort of piano prodigy being able to play all major scales by ear. They were just scales, idiot. 1954 Anyway to hell with snakes on a plane, there was one in our bushes on Wednesday! (Click) The whole time I was trying to get a good photo one of the security guards were saying Ma'am aren't you frightened of it? Weird, as you can promptly observe the snake is well between the fingers of an experienced snake-catcher, and it was the camera lens that was a few centimetres away from the snake's face, not my own. Anyhow, I was disappointed I could muster one remotely good shot. It's already Friday and all I have done on my To Do list is 1) Grey's Anatomy, 2) Write, and 5) Get a haircut (pictures of which do not exist right now, I said shoulder length but it barely touches my collar fuck! If you would like to see and if I am feeling nice I will turn on The Webcam for you.) |
October 28, 2336:
One of the worst feelings (among other dramatic things I will not mention) is missing a photo opportunity. This week: On the way to the memorial park last Saturday, we passed an area that was poverty-striken (actually the whole country is poverty-stricken but this area it was just more ubiquitous than usual). Standing out from the mismatched wood, metal and cloth that served as little shelters for the squatter community, was a tiny building whose main attraction was the door (shows how small the building was). The building was beat-up and painted in orange. The door frame, white. Beside the door was a broken window pane. Sitting at the foot of the door was a child with a ragdoll. There were more children playing on the streets; all grinning (with a proper set of teeth or without, and now that I mention the lack of necessities - with clothes or without) and playing with a stray tyre, or a grimy dog, or taking turns pulling each other to the end of the road on an improvised wagon - some rope tied to a laundry pail. A couple of hours before school ended on Thursday, it poured rain and there was a rainbow afterwards. That same day going home there was a burst of orange and yellow tinges that was fast conquering the murky gray sky, showing that it was under convalescence from the rain earlier on. Every cloud around the sun, which was tiptoed on the horizon, had a silver lining. There were also countless puddles that were perfectly still and thus reflected this sunset brilliantly. All this makes you want to be able to freeze time at will, a la Piper of Charmed, to capture every single moment, in all its pungent and beautiful glory; despite its mundane-ness, to the extent of Drop-things-in-the-toilet-bowl Mundane (more so if your sink is right next to the throne, unluckily for me) ; But then again if that could be done photography would lose its meaning altogether. Techincal perks aside, that's what it's all about. Being at the right place at the right time. With a camera of course. I could give a chocolate bar a homeless child a bar who's never seen let alone tasted a bar of chocolate before, watch him examine it and watch his eyes grow wide when his tastebuds come into contact with the smooth sweet brown surface, but if I didn't have a camera ready it would all go to waste. So today ends with me sitting at my desk, feeling an unnerving sense of companionship coming from the light of the screen of my laptop and the sound of the keys that are in sync with my thoughts. It slows down when I need to process a sentence but is endless otherwise. On the back of my right hand is the remnants of an ugly stamp-purple (you know how stamps have their own shade of disgusting purple, yes?) stamp that I got from the airport. I planned to spend as long as it took to scrub it off in the shower but decided against it, I had better things to do. Yes, I actually went to the airport. NAIA, which stands for Ninoy Aquino (Ah-KEY-noh, some dead old president I think) International Airport. You do not know how mindblowing it feels to be that close to vehicles that can fly you miles and miles and miles away to somewhere you feel at home, and not actually be able to. I was saying, Oh my god it's an airport... to No one, actually, anyone within earshot I suppose. Probably I was talking to myself. I think my dad chuckled. At least he gave acknowledgement. I love the roaring engine sound of planes tearing past the air above me. Every time I see this brilliant flying piece of metal in the sky I stop to let my gaze follow it until it disappears from view. Every time I watch it I imagine myself in it, flying back to somewhere I've been before, my hands would probably be cold the way they are when I'm excited and full of anticipation. I would like to write while I'm on that plane back, if I ever get the chance. I would write about the nostalgia already overwhelming even though I am only fifteen minutes into the three-hour plane ride. I would write about the people around me, what they are doing, wearing, I would write down bits and pieces of conversations that I am not in, I would write down the food I ate, what I was wearing, take photos of the overhead light, the seat in front of me, the arm rest, the people beside me (with permission of course), the name of the stewardess and the pilot. This would be to keep the memory as alive and kicking and possible. For that paragraph I had to edit all the tenses. Fuck time and impossibility. When I was getting out of the car and walking across the carpark I pretended that I was actually leaving the country. I pretended to hear that my father was rolling a carry-all bag behind me, its little wheels making the gravel go crack crack crack; my mother fretting about the passports and I pretended that my tiny USPA duffel bag was four times bigger and twice as heavy. It felt real for a divine twenty seconds. And well thanks a lot God for putting that poster of the Singapore Tourism Board ("Must Try LAH! Win a trip to Singapore" A contest that made you collect receipts from Fish & Co., BreadTalk, Rasa [Singaporean cuisine at Araneta Coliseum!], and that place with a Chinese name that I can never remember and sells that red barbecued rectangles of pork and have red and yellow paper bags) at the top of the elevator. And having KopiRoti (a more refined and less calorie-bearing bun of RotiBoy, anyone?) at the waiting hall (which we had to fucking PAY for to get into, geez.) If I were still there I would be blogging to find someone to go see Notre Dame de Paris with me. The woman we received at the airport is one of my mom's aunts who lives in Australia. I think she's great. She has an unusual voice - not exactly deep but big all the same, and she sounds either drunk or deliriously happy all the time. I could listen to it all day. Plus she's hilarious. Actually now that I think of it she resembles Ellen Degeneres, somewhat. A shame I've never met her earlier. A bigger shame that I take interest in older people who will never bother to really communicate with me as if I were as old as them. Why does the adolescent community I have just been thrown into just Have to have stunned maturity? (Another) Plus she has a fucking Canon Powershot S1 IS - which is nothing of the commercial slip-into-your-pocket sort - that I fell in love with right there at the parking lot. Is almost as good as a DSLR, christ plus (again!) the zoom was on the lens (!!). 8 megapixels. 35mm lens (equivalent of an SLR.) I could settle for that, it's second on the list right after the 350D. My father says the color isn't as good as the Panasonic though, which is surprising because the Panasonic's color quality can be pretty damn shitty unless you're basking in full-out shining sunlight. It's 0039. I'm going to regret this tomorrow at the eight o'clock mass homily when I'm trying my best not to fall alseep and make my head collide into the next pew. On the brighter side I have a lot of time to catch up on sleeping, the one week semester break (you really wouldn't rather this whole three-month-summer system, trust me) has started. I have decided to abandon everything related to school and 1) Get lost in Seattle Grace Hospital (if I can figure out how to watch the fucked episodes 13-16. Ah, the consequence of piracy) 2) Write 3) Work on the things that have been piling up at the side of my desk ("I am so putting that up on my wall!") 4) Read. I have Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Cunningham, and Charles Frazier - dates with whom I have all rainchecked for months. This week I vow to finish at least three books because there is just too much brilliant writing to read, and a fucking fantastic bargain store down at Casa Susana and Mall of Asia (which gave me hardbound Michael Cunningham in great condition for P345, which is around SGD11; and has Douglas Coupland and Bill Bryson waiting for me). What more can you ask for to feed a literary fix? Everyone knows where my allowance is going. I also have at least a dozen editorial articles I saved from NYTimes Online to read. 5) Get a haircut. It's getting too long. Tell me, bangs or no? Consequence of the former is looking like every 3 out of 5 girls in the country. Well, okay, in my school. And the possibility of pimples, which I am terrified of and have successfully avoided (save for an occasional one that I get rid of in a heartbeat anyway) for four years of adolescence. |
Evidently I got sick of the wall pattern.
So today is Ramadan or something and I finally caught up with my dark green covered bed and Jonathan Safran Foer. Also eight episodes of Grey's Anatomy, and counting. My marathon would not have ended if my sister didn't start to complain of a headache, and, like my mother, she did not tolerate wasting electricity so I was forced to stop. Hello, don't get all excited about TV marathons if your eyes can't take it? I stopped at the Christmas episode. Well thank god I saw that before the actual Christmas season or else I'd have completely lost it and probably would have strangled myself with Christmas lights, Or try to find the highest possible place so I could be nearer passing airplanes (after stealing wine from the family collection). I will only start liking Christmas again when I get my stupid cheesy ideal White Christmas Night(s) in a picturesque city, which consists of snow (obviously), streets lit with lamps and decorative lights, beautifully familiar faces with pink cheeks and puffs of condensation in their face every time they breathe, under thick winter clothing. A camera that takes good night shots (read: Not my Panasonic). Long conversations. Singing and red wine. Poetry. Photographs. Not spending it with family. Getting away to somewhere. Staying up all night. For the picturesque-ism, think the Christmas scene in Alfie (version Jude Law). For everything else, think Dr. Shepherd's line in that Christmas episode, "Christmas makes you want to be with people you love." If my dead cremated body ever, god forbid, gets stuck in a funeral wake in its honor, I'm telling you now that I want you to bring photographs or art (writing included) to put up on the walls. Don't have either of them, chances are it isn't sincere, so don't bother. To fucking hell with flowers on bamboo easels and ribbons that say "DEEPEST CONDOLENCES", all they do is stand there and demand that both air-conditioners be at twenty degrees ergo (lo and behold the side effects of Jane Eyre slash Charlotte Bronte!) have my dead cremated body's guests freeze their asses off. And my dead cremated body would not give a crap if they cost you a bomb. As I watched people come and go, I could not understand how they could walk up to the coffin, stand there and look at the dead body, and Not cry. Or clap their hand over their mouth, or any kind of significantly shocked, bewildered action that this person has died. It is lying in a fancy box. It is wearing a fancy suit. It has about an inch-thick layer of make-up on. It is immobile. It is not breathing. It is dead. These loved ones could stand there, take in that someone they love had died, look at the whole package of thick make-up and claustrophobic coffin, and not shed a tear. I also thought it was rather weird that the wife could illustrate her husband's death to whoever sat beside her, and say it in such a naive and animated way, like she were gushing about a movie she had seen. But she was the one all over the top of the coffin on the day of interment, so. I guess having her husband's dead body in the same room - which by the way almost felt like it was having a party, what with all the food and laughter and running kids - made it feel like he was actually alive. For her. In the language of pessimists it would be called Denial. Optimists would call it Spirituality. If that were me I would be fucking miserable and crying 24/7 and wouldn't be able to be anywhere within twenty metres radius of the coffin. Personally the death did not have any profound effect on me because I barely knew the person. What affected me was the screaming melancholia on the day of interment - during the final prayer, and transporting the coffin to the memorial park, et al. And I thought of what it would be like if someone I love died and okay let's not go there. |
Since Cbox is a motherfuck that doesn't work on my browser, (Or vice versa, whatever.) and the rest Don't have tagboards :
Izz: *bows* thank you <3 and yeah the kitten was adorable, that was what compelled me to photograph it. But it was SO fucking noisy geez. Bernette: HAI. Talk you out of what?!?! :( You didn't actually elaborate on that tag in your email! Si Jing: Can't keep the kitten. You know what a hassle it is. I was never a pet person, man. As much as I wanted to do something. So many people on Radiant said "send it to a shelter!" but omg I realized that I've never actually seen a shelter here. Weird. Why the fock aren't you online by the way. Sam: I fucking wish. I'm still half-hoping that my parents have sadistically planned not to tell me until the last minute that they have actually bought tickets though because I'm pathetic like that. Sweet, I had the same dream a few nights ago. What happened? It was nice hugging you, man. AND tell me if you're willing to either troop to the embassy or meet up with one of my acquaintances for the Paradise DVD (that's if you don't already have it of course). |
The trigonometry paper... I don't even know, I answered about a quarter of it. And the easy bit was confusing, who the fuck sets a paper with "matching type" tests and gives the same answer to several questions AND doesn't state that you are allowed to repeat the answers? Seriously. In short, I expect a... 65% on the paper. Which is like an F9. I am dyslexic when it comes to numbers. Concentration was Zero. So this is the end of the second quarter! Two down, six to go. Semestral break starts next weekend, the 28th. Semestral break lasts a week. And then Christmas break starts at the end of November, I think. When school reopens in January we say hello to more exams. Fourth quarter is full of school functions and activities and the last exam of the school year is completely MCQ. It's a weird system. But timeconsumer-wise, heck, I'm not complaining, I will be very pleased if next year passes as fast as this year. To entertain myself I have devised a plan to be my house's Halloween Decoration. Dragging along sister and cousins. Too bad Salmah isn't coming till November. Basically I am going to pretend to be "decoration" (a lot of houses have life-size vampires et al, on their front lawns) and will scare whoever passes by. Am contemplating the idea of whether to throw candy at them or not. If people passing by house grow thin, I will take my act to other streets. (Standing in the middle of the street throwing candy at passing cars? a la Weird Combusting Girl in Gothika.) The things I do to amuse myself. As soon as Halloween decorations are stuffed in the attic, Christmas cheer will start to spread. If you remember me mentioning a little more than a year ago, a lot of people here are genuinely snobby: After the typhoon, electricity was unstable and water was rationed. And some idiot down at Country Club Drive had put up Christmas lanterns and actually had a fountain turned on for display in his/her China-sized front window. But that's beside the point! So. Every year, the socialite residents of the village have Christmas-Decoration face-offs. Who has the tallest tree (fake or no, let's leave it to them). Who has the brightest lights. Who has the most color of lights. Who has the most number of SUVs parked outside their house (signifying posh parties). The whole works. It's not even a matter of "spreading Christmas cheer" because really if it were not for their financial peers, their Diamond-too-heavy-for-earlobe Wearing Make-up-thicker-than-coagulated-blood Donning "friends" (alongside their husbands who only look good because of the BMW they drive), they would have never in hell bothered to climb 92375012 feet to light a Nativity Star (that that high, by then, is as visible as a pearl earring). So humans are not the only ones who can be irresponsible mothers. This (1, 2, 3) was dug out from our roof gutter one morning. When I got back home, it was shaking from malnourishment (I don't know if that's the correct term because it was never nourished to begin with) wailing like crazy and its sibling was on the road, flat, insides sprawled around it. I'm not a big fan of cats but this looks so sad. |