I just don't get it...

No matter how hard I try, and never mind that I'm older and more patient and have mellowed down from the fire-brand I used to be, there are still some things for which I JUST DON'T GET IT!

Case-in-point One
Why do people call my mobile, and ask to speak to me? I mean who else would it be?! I can understand if they're trying to clarify that they're speaking to the correct person. In that case, they should ask "Is this Miss So-and-So?" instead of asking "May I speak to Miss So-and-So?". One of these days, one of these days, I'm going to say "You may not!"

Case-in-point Two
Visiting my friend's private apartments the other day, we stopped at the Visitor's Entrance and asked to be let in, the Security Guard (whom I wouldn't trust a bit!) asked whether we were visiting. I had to bit on my lip to stop myself from blurting out the first thing that came to mind, "May I know what my other options are? What is the option for 'I came to rob the place?'."

But I was a good girl. I said nothing, and just quietly laughed to myself until my face turned red.

Case-in-point Three
Heathrow's much-heralded long-awaited (For 19 long years in face, sheesh, I've grown old by now!) Terminal 5 opened on March 27 to total bedlam and chaos. (I wonder why they even bother opening it in the first place. They might as well have just kept it close.)

And we're talking about a first world developed country, fellow big-gun, super power, super duper ally of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Note the CAPITAL LETTERS! And who is currently leadership-less now by the way.)

Some of the problems are so small, it's ludicrious to be even surfacing - broken-down escalators (I mean, how can anybody miss a non-moving escalator?!), gates not working at the Underground station, malfunctioned hand dryers.

And then there were the BIGGIES which boggles the mind really; how can anybody miss it? Non-working luggage conveyor belts? DUH? And to top it all up, British Airways was the sole occupant of the cavernous terminal. I'm seriously wondering whether any other airline would even want to occupy Terminal 5 at all.

The only other funnier thing is what the Chief Executive said in his public apology,"I am very sorry that the problems have meant that some of our customers did not experience the true potential of this amazing new building." If it was not so funny, I think I would have been attempted to smack his face.

Great Britian, the Apologetic Nation. That's what they do best.

(If my British friends see this, I am so going to get it from them. But I DON'T CARE! It's just too funny for words! Bite me! Haha)


And if we can't even do the simple things properly, what serious chance do we have of World Peace and eradicating poverty and hunger and sickness and all that sort of thing, I ask you?

Words of Wee'sdom

Wee is a very wise person.

She's young and she's wise. Unlike me, I'm old and I'm, erm, un-wise? I should warn her that it will make her age faster and give her wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. (Do not fear! There's always SKII! And at staff price some more!)

I love her classic words of weesdom.

On dealing with irritating friends...
"Don't scold or confront them. Just ignore them."

On managing one's expectations...
"Just stop expecting anything, so that everything else is a bonus."

On the male species who have this very rude habit of not calling back like they're suppose to...
"It's a guy's thing, the 'call u back later' syndrome, so don't bother to find out why. It's just their way of saying 'I'm not free to entertain you now'. And no they don't do it when it comes to work. It just applies to female friends, girlfriends, and wives."

And I'll add to that my classic words of Ooo'sdom...
"Don't get mad. They're just not 'worth it'. (Unless Jennifer Anniston who's quite 'worth it'!)"

Old shoes still fit the best

You know what they say about old friends don't you?

That they're like old shoes. They still fit the best and are the most comfortable.

And I can't help being reminded of that when Ce came over for dinner tonight.

Despite not having seen each other for a long long while, it's like as if we saw each other just yesterday, and just extending and continuing our conversation from the last where we left off.

It helps that she doesn't look like she's grown a day older of course.

I was reminded about how we met and how far we've come. We used to work late into the night together; that is, she worked while I accompanied her and told her stories. Funnily, I was able to relate to her in a way I was never able to relate to friends before that. It's like she showed me a whole new dimension and paradigm of friendship altogther.

The things we use to do...
I told her silly analogies of life and she taught me to see things in a different way.
I made her cry, and she made me think hard about things I didn't like thinking hard about.
We were very bad for each other because we used to argue all the time. But we were very good for each other because we challenged each other in the way we thought and worked and lived our lives.

That was the way it was about four years ago. And that's still the way it is now.

Nevr mind that we're older and wiser and smarter now.
Never mind that we've gone on to bigger better things now.
Never mind that we only see each other once a year at best now.
Never mind that our lives have gone in different directions now.
Some things are still the same.

We still care about each other.
I still try to give her advice that she tries not to take.
She still wows me her perspective of life and things.
I'm still amazed at how different we are and yet how we are the same, in our dreams and desires to do the right thing and not follow the crowd.

Sometimes I wish I was more like her. And I suspect she sometimes wish she was more like me. (She is so going to disagree on this, but secretly she knows it's true! Haha)

And that's the great thing about a great friendship I guess. On our own, we're not that wonderful. But together, we become a better bi-person. We help each other balance out our lopsidedness.

Funnily, we don't appreciate our weaknesses. But really, it's in this our lopsidedness that we are able to find the best friendships.

Here's to old shoes! The smellier they are, the better!

It's one of those days

This is one of those days...

Where you ask yourself "Who am I, and what did I do to deserve to be here?". And then you realise that your life's destiny is to feed your dog and give it water everyday.

Where you wish you were anywhere else but here. And then you check out the airfares and realised it's too expensive to go anywhere else but here.

When you hide from everybody and anybody because you didn't want anybody near you or you'll scream. And you realise you can only stay in the toilet for so long before someone starts banging on the door and begging you to let them in.

When you wish you were marooned on a deserted island somewhere. And then you realise you don't know how to get there.

When you didn't think you can quite make it through the day; and at the end of the day you thought you couldn't make it through, you celebrate with a cup of coffee in your favourite armchair.

When life really sucks and everything that can go wrong is going wrong, but you know that having hit bottom, the only way to go is up.

When you really start to doubt your abilities and your capabilities and you wonder whether you can get into any more trouble than you already are in. And then you open the papers to the funnies page, and after a good laugh, feel better again.

When you thumb your nose at all the crap that is piled up at your doorstep, and you wonder whether it will just combust spontaneously the way natural fuel does.

When you think nobody loves you, everybody hates you and you're going to go eat some worms. And then you receive an email which someone spent time and energy and brain cells writing, and you feel loved and treasured beyond measure.

It's just one of those days. Tomorrow is going to be a better day.

The New Birthday Rule

I've got a new rule which I'm going to implement starting this year.

I think it's not fair that my birthday this year fall on a truly busy day. I'm so busy I didn't have time to wish myself a happy birthday, much less have a birthday party with a birthday cake and balloons and party hats and all that fun thing that other children, I mean, people have when they throw a birthday party.

(By the way, it's always been a childhood wish to have my birthday party thrown at MacDonalds. Will anybody like to help make my dream come true? We could get together and eat fries dunked in ice-cream, my favourite!)

So the new rule is this, I don't have to celebrate my birthday on the actual day just because I so happen to be born on that particular day. We all know how having a specific day for a birthday can be so darn inconvenient. It could be a rainy, or your friends could be out-of-town in Salt Lake City (You know who you are, and I hope you are feeling guilty!), or you could be having your period, or it could just be one of those days your boss decides that you can't take leave because of some very important meeting that is really a very stupid meeting.

So, in order to be fair, and to ensure that birthdays are as happy as the proverbial "Happy Birthday", I'm going to get to choose when I get to celebrate my birthday. (It's my birthday today, so I make the rules!)

So here are my conditions for the ideal day and date:-

• It must be a sunny day.
• Everybody must be in town.
• It must not be too-sunny a day; there must be some breeze.
• It must not clash with any elections within Asia.
• They must be showing Grey's Anatomy on TV that night.
• It must not be in a middle of any stoopid training project that I'm planning.
• Everybody must remember it!

Yeah. I guess that's about all my conditions. All very reasonable and fair isn't it. It's only fair that one of my bestest friends is NOT away in Salt Lake City on my birthday isn't it.

Well I guess the only way she can make up for being away is to bring back some salt from the lake of the city.

Fair enough?!

Thank you for your lovely birthday wishes everybody!

I am truly grateful to all my friends, even the one at Salt Lake City for celebrating my coming-of-old-age with me. I'm so grateful I'm giving the first 10 people who wished me "Happy Birthday" a kiss.

Wee will get two big kisses because she was the first one to wish me, on account of her clock being a few minutes too fast. The problem with the clock has since been rectified.

Happy 31st Birthday to me! (Gosh! I feel old!)

Wonderland

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense." Alice in Wonderland

My name's not Alice, but I would like a world of my own where everything would be nonsense.

It would be fun wouldn't it, if we lived in such a world....

Where zebras will display a flagrant disregard for fashionable colours and are arrayed in pink and purple polka-dots instead.
Where marshmallows and chocolates and ice-cream are considered essential nutrition for the body and beetroot and carrots rightly and justly relegated to the hogs!
Where people can have actual conversations with their cats about lasagne and their dogs can write novels on a type-writer.
Where speech balloons spout out of our mouths when we speak.
Where men and women walk around in their full uncovered glory, just as God intended from the beginning. (No, not even fig leaves allowed!)
Where "world peace" is more than the catchphrase for beauty paegents and is a reality.
Where "perfect competition" exists, abolishing politics and other petty differences and childish international name-calling.
Where skin colour is merely skin-deep.
Where cellulite will be beautiful.
Where the capabilities of abnormal children will be considered normal instead of euphemistically called "special".
Where you could bite back the big red army ants that bit you.
Where spiders spin hammocks for your slumbers.
Where plastic people don't contaminate the ecosystem with their plastic ashes when they die.

Interesting how the perfectly reasonable and logical and common-sensical can be deemed nonsensical in this perfectly real world we live in.

Visiting the Queen

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?
"I've been to London to look at the queen."
Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?"
I frightened a little mouse under the chair."

Mother Goose

I've been having complaints that my recent blogs have been too depressing. So fine, I shall abandon my muse and all that very inspired writing and talk about something a little cheerier instead.

I shall describe in boring details my recent visit to the UK. (I shall not even talk about Marrakech, because seriously, I saw nothing of Marrakech!)

My original plan, and the plan remained original throughout was to go to London since I was passing by on the way back from my work trip, to visit friends whom I haven't seen for ages, just to talk rubbish and see how they were.

Windsor
First stop Windsor, if you're wondering why that sounds familiar, it's because it's a royal name. (Duh!) Prince Harry and Prince William actually have a family name you know. So a quaint town has pretty much developed around one of the official residences of the Queen, Windsor Castle. And of course I had to visit Windsor Castle. The Queen actually stays in there, in a private wing while the rest were opened to the voyeuristic eyes of us mere commoners.

What can I say about it? Well, it's a lovely place, grand, luxurious, breath-taking etc etc. I tried to absorb as much history and beauty and grandeur as I possibly could of course, but I must confess it was too much for my puny brain. After a while, all I could think about is, where is the Queen staying, and won't she feel quite, well, what (I can't think of a better word.), when she wakes up in the morning, looking directly at a crimson red brocade curtain that looks like it's threatening to smother her, or a giant chandalier which can be quite a breathtakingly scary thing to see first thing in the morning.

Another piece of useless information that I derieved from the castle visit is, they actually have people staying within the castle and in the grounds! By golly! I am already having grandiose visions of an address that reads "Windsor Castle". How awfully grand!

It sure is a long walk to the different parts of the castle though. I do wonder how the people used to live in them.

It was so well heated within the castle I had to take out all the outer layers, and it made me awfully sleepy. And before I know it, I had to go outside to visit another part of the castle. So I spent a lot of time taking off and putting on my coat. Such a hassle.

Other highlights of Windsor

• Eton College which is in Eton, just next to Windsor, actually has a souvenir shop! What souvenirs do people actually buy from the shop. Fridge magnets or car stickers that read "Hey! I've visited Eton, so I'm officially not as stupid"?
• They have special "duck food" to feed the ducks along the Eton River? (I'm guessing here!) Do ducks eat special food then? I quite suspected I was ripped off for 50p. Luckily it was not my money.
• They have a crooked house in Windsor, with a sort of crooked stairs. Unfortunately there was no crooked man or crooked woman who lived in the house with their crooked dog and crooked brood of children sleeping in crooked beds.
• Oh, apparently Shakespeare wrote his "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in Windsor. (Oh isn't it obvious!) I can just imagine the slogan, "Want a merry wife? Get her from Windsor! Dial 1800-xxx.
• Near Windsor is a town called Slough. (Tell me what kind of a name is Slough? Makes me think of sludge.) Slough Train Station has a really interesting custom where girls wait with their heavy suitcase in front of a flight of steps for a bloke to help them with it. If a bloke walks by and fancies knowing you, he'll help you carry your suitcase to the train for you. If the girl fancies the bloke, she then engages him in conversation and then offers to buy him a drink. It's quite a good scheme don't you think? That's how half the population from Windsor/Slough met. Try it the next time you're at the Station. To make the scheme work, they have a extra steep and extra long flight of steps as an obstacle race for the men! Try it, it's good fun!

London

Oh well, everybody's been to London, so I shan't tell you about the wonderful places like Leicester Square and Oxford Street and Bond Street and Picadilly Circus and Baker Street and the London Eye and the Tower Bridge. So there's really not much to talk about London.

What's fun about London is that it's fun to get thoroughly lost in London in the middle of winter and when it's cold and you snuggle into your warm jacket. In that weather, it actually becomes unbearable entering a well-heated restaurant or shop or whatever. Because of the immediate transition from cold to warm, it makes me really sleepy, like just instantaneously. Yes, that's a fun activity to try when you're there. Wait until you're freezing cold and then dash into the nearest M&Ss and you instantly become somnolent. Try it if you don't believe me!

Near the London Eye is a bridge that brings you to some train station which I can't remember at this point. Well, when I was walking on this bridge, the bridge literally quivered. Yes, the bridge had a frisson of sorts which I'm guessing is the aftermath of the London earthquake earlier that week. Very exciting. I was quite tempted to re-walk that route just to try it again. (I've never been in an earthquake you see!)

And the trees on the path near the London Eye was lit up with blue lights, it looked really pretty, and the London Eye was looming like some spaceship, I felt like shouting "The aliens have landed"!

The Old Vic Theatre, where I found and lost Kevin Spacey within the matter of a day (It's a long story that), is a white building with pink lights or a pink building with white lights or something. Anyway, I just disctinctively remembered it being pink and Barbie Doll-ish and really really, well, sweet looking. It looked almost like a dollhouse and it's just so pink and bubble-gummy in the middle of a dark gloomy London intersection. How funny.

And at some intersection near Leicester Square, there was an accident. It was terribly exciting to see ambulances flashing their annoyingly loud sirens (why can't they make it less shrill?) and with loads of people gathering around trying to catch a glimpse. Well, I caught a glimpse of a guy in a stretcher. He had black hair and looked Italian I remembered.

At a bar near Paddington Station, they served very nice mineral water.

It was fun getting lost within the tube station as well, trying to figure where to go, especially with someone who didn't seem to have a very good sense of direction.

Oh, and I had Fish and Chips with mushy peas and Bangers and Mash someplace in London, but I can't remember where. Oh, and chicken with rice thingey at some restaurant somewhere which had really red seats and made me feel like I was sitting within somebody's internal organs.

And at some point, you must try to freeze your fingers, because by doing so, you can see lo and behold your hands turning blue, as in actually turning blue! How fun!

Last thing to do, find a nice spot on a bridge somewhere. Pick a bridge, any bridge, there's London Bridge, there's the Millenium Bridge. Stand there and wait for a spot of wind, and puff when it comes, flap your wings, and fly. Yes, a strong enough gust could keep you airborne for all of 3 seconds. Enough to make you feel like a bird I think. It's a bird, it's a plane...

So, visit the Queen today!

Fear

Has anyone of us felt what real fear feels like?

The fear that grips your heart when you stare a tiger in the face, wondering when it was going to raise its powerful paw and smashed your head in and then eat your leaking brains and your mangled face flesh.

The fear that grips your heart in that milisecond as you veer towards the headlights of another oncoming vehicle coming at you with full speed, and you just know you're going to die.

The fear that grips your heart when you hear your doctor's soft voice pronouncing upon you a death sentence and your only thought is, "But I'm still young!".

The fear that grips your heart when somebody you cannot ever imagining living without decides to finally walk away from the sham, the crap, from you. Forever and ever.

I pray so hard that none of us will ever have to experience any one of the above.

Bird brain

I wrote this by keying it into my teeny weeny mobile phone while waiting for my plane to take off. It's largely crap writing I know, and I'm tempted to delete this whole thing. Yet there's some truth in it about it about me and about that strange feeling I have in my gut, so physical I nearly keeled over and vomitted it out that warrants it being jotted down in black and white. It's real though it's crap, so I'm leaving it as it is, bad analogy and choppy writing and all. Because I don't know how much better I can do at this point of time.

I hate that feeling I get everytime I'm in a foreign airport and about to head home. Because, by some strange twist of nature, the place that is supposedly home has become alien, and that which is supposedly alien, takes on the familiarity of the womb. It's heart-wrenching almost to leave.

I've never understood the concept of homesickness. I've always felt comfortable and happy and satiated, just wherever I was and am. Is it because everywhere's home and nowhere's home? Is it because I haven't left my heart and my soul and my mind in a specific spot, and so there's no specific spot that is home? Even the spot where I've claimed to be home all my life?

Or is it that I belong to that group of people who owes no man and no place any allegience, possessing the heart and the mind of a lonesome wanderer? These people do not seek an end to their journey because they do not need or want to arrive anywhere.

They don't seek because they haven't lost. They don't turn back because they don't hail from anywhere. There's no end to the journey because there never was a beginning.

Neither backwards, nor forwards; neither here, nor there; neither coming, nor going; It just is.

Whenever I leave wherever it is that I am, I get on the plane with the greatest of reluctance. Each heavy-laden footstep is an inexorable walking away from where I really want to be. The steps I wake to get where I am suppose to be is like the deliberate and definite walking of towards the end.

Ironically the flight of the big silver bird means the grounding of another as the it takes on feet of clay or lead or even silver, changing from bird to mantlepiece ornamentals.

The London Eye

Heathrow Terminal 1.
6 years of distance.
Windsor.
Peel Close.
Russian appendage.
The Castle.
The Barracks.
Alien.
Goodbye.
Relief.
Slough.
Xerox.
Wait.
Why?
Why not?
Damn it yes!
Kevin Spacey.
The Old Vic.
Walk.
Talk.
Books.
Movies.
Philosophy.
Rubbish.
Ferris Wheel.
Blue lights.
White lights.
Rain.
Windy wind.
Think.
Ouch.
Sigh.
Heathrow Terminal 3.

Retrospection

I was just reading some of the older entries, and I think quite a lot of my blogging's quite crap!

I'm tempted to delete them, but I think I shouldn't. I think I will need them to help me keep my perspective on myself and the things that surround me.

Because no matter how imperfect that writing was/is, they were written for a reason, whether for cathartic or therapeutic reasons. Or sometimes even just to help me keep my sanity and regain some kind of equilibrium.

I guess I just have to stop reading my own blog.