the crowd of me

2012-01-27T02:13:00.005+11:00

A ladybird bicycle bell I painted for my friend, using leftover acrylic paint from ten years ago in LaSalle!

The 'can't go wrong' pot o' succulents I re-potted as a giftie.

With more time on my hands this Christmas, I have noticed a lot more of my pressies to friends have become handmade. Not because I'm crafty, no, but hopefully because it shows more lurve has been put into it. And because it's got that simplicity and honesty that many mass-manufactured products sold in most stores seem not to have.

Less pretense, more suspense (when you don't know if the present is going to fall apart before or after giving your friend!).

2012-01-14T18:20:00.000+11:00

Wish I could say that I got this, but no.
But why is it I couldn't take my eyes off their muttering, despite not having the foggiest?
It scared me, and made me want to look. At the same time.

Could it be, because it's Ssssssnape?

:) hee.

2012-01-10T02:05:00.007+11:00

Whoa. When was November? I think this blog is functioning very well without me. So much determination goes into perpetuating things! No wonder it's easier to let things fall into decay and disarray. Mind you, I meant the blog. And, just, stuff in general. And also, a very important part of our landscape: the kopitiam. Into disarray.

This kopitiam is meaningful to me: significant, life-changing decisions were made here. Now, it is no longer. The nice couple running it have decided to call it a day, after 50 years of doing this for their livelihood. Should I be happy for them; yes. Should I be wistful this physical remnant of my life has been destroyed; yes. Should I be disappointed there is to be no one to take over this mom-and-pops kopitiam; yes. What gave the older folk the guts to stick their neck out, establish a small coffee shop, start to scrape together a living whilst providing a memory their customers cherish? And why is it so easy to hesitate, to stop in my tracks, to not want to test the water and try to stand on shaky legs?

Perhaps, at the end of it all, it is easier to do nothing. To sit. To wait for something to happen. For anything. For despair. For Godot. For nothing.

2011-11-06T19:16:00.002+11:00

Since quitting full-time work, I've found myself cooking more meals at home for my family. It's a nice process on retrospect; in the midst of doing, though, the nice dreaminess behind making often gets lost in the repetitive chopping, stirring, bursts of steam from under the lid. So it was good to read this entry by my daily toast, a reminder of the love that goes into the most humble of dishes served up: soup.

Panic! At The Disco: I Write Sins Not Tragedies [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

2011-10-09T03:58:00.002+11:00

Major earworm and eye candy.
Why do I love men with eye-liner?
Love the wedding and the mockery they make out of weddings!

2011-09-25T13:41:00.003+10:00

So mesmerising. More graceful than ballet, almost.

2011-08-08T00:50:00.004+10:00

I am so impressed with the work of Dana Tanamachi! The idea of using chalk conjures ideas of imprecision and temporal-ness. But she has gone to create so much perfect-ness and invested so much love into each piece of work that makes one worried about accidentally rubbing it off!

I think the art that most makes us aware of transience are the kind that will get destroyed after a certain [short] amount of time, like the Indian intricate powder-art Rangoli that's made on the floor, and will last maybe 1-2 days. Makes us think about why things need to be so precious sometimes, when all there is to life is its beauty and its fleetingness.

2011-07-01T02:42:00.003+10:00

Letters of note: Tchaikovsky was an awesome composer

"In January of 2011, chief music critic at the The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini, concluded a two week project in which he discussed the world's finest composers by unveiling a list he had personally compiled: Top 10 classical music composers in history. (For reference, his top 10 went like this: 1. Bach; 2. Beethoven; 3. Mozart; 4. Schubert; 5. Debussy; 6. Stravinsky; 7. Brahms; 8. Verdi; 9. Wagner; and 10. Bartok.) As can be expected, much discussion was generated by his list, but it was the following written response from 8-year-old Lucas Amory — son of noted violists Misha Amory and Hsin-Yun Huang — that really stood out.

Eloquent, informed, and adorable."

[via kills me dead]

What was I at 8? Oh. A prat. Damn.

2011-02-21T15:21:00.002+11:00

Secret Stash from yiting cheng on Vimeo.

Oh my. I am so enamoured with this idea.
Half wish I had this impetus for my thesis.

yiting cheng's da bomb!

2011-02-10T23:43:00.000+11:00

Have been laughing and crying over this Thai film - watched it twice! A Little Thing Called Love. Brings back all the silly awkward prickly crush-related euphoria of my teenaged years. Don't think I acted on them, though. The protagonist, Nam, is a lot braver than I was. Do other people have similar experiences in their Secondary school days too? No wonder we turn into cynical bitches when we grow up! Or... maybe that's just me. Hur.

2011-02-06T01:55:00.003+11:00

This is really making me want to go to Iceland.
I want to throw my hands up in the air, leave my cad-monkey job, and go travel the world.
Go see Greece, Sri Lanka, FInland, Canada, Spain, Russia, Turkey, Morocco, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Hawai'i.

When I grow up, I wanna be Matt Harding. Yeah!

2011-02-05T21:25:00.002+11:00

It's been quite a bird-themed year so far. In my household, rabbit has been outdone by the bird, not the tortoise. By a mile. What's the moral of this story? Does it matter that it's not a hare but a rabbit?

Of late, Squallie has developed the habit of climbing into clothes. The cooler weather has created a very resourceful bird. What do wild tropical birds do when the weather gets a bit chilly?

2011-01-09T19:32:00.002+11:00

[both images by bferry, who is a fantastic photographer. So evocative.]

Reminds me of another quote by Bertrand Russell:
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

Don't ask me why my brain made that connection, but it did.

Yay looks like we all made it a week into 2011 without too many mishaps. :) I can feel it getting busy here, and can't wait for the Chinese New Year holidays at the start of February. Is time flying by a little too fast?

2010-12-25T22:14:00.005+11:00

Some serious love going around these days - the internet has really made getting inspired SO much more convenient. It's not a bad thing: sometimes I feel like I lose track of simple beauty, and these quick pops of inspiration through blogs are always a great reminder! So nice to see how others see beauty in the world around them!

Today I got extremely inspired (and very happy-fied) when I read about 2 really rad girls and their super cool parents from Brissy.

Happy things, happy things. :)

Pobke Photography from hailey bartholomew on Vimeo.

'My Funny Family' from hailey bartholomew on Vimeo.

With so much happiness going around, it can't be a bad way to end 2010.

2010-12-21T21:34:00.003+11:00

Here's my favourite Grimm Brothers tale ever.

The Elves and the Shoemaker.

There was once a shoemaker, who worked very hard and was very honest: but still he could not earn enough to live upon; and at last all he had in the world was gone, save just leather enough to make one pair of shoes.

Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day, meaning to rise early in the morning to his work. His conscience was clear and his heart light amidst all his troubles; so he went peaceably to bed, left all his cares to Heaven, and soon fell asleep. In the morning after he had said his prayers, he sat himself down to his work; when, to his great wonder, there stood the shoes all ready made, upon the table. The good man knew not what to say or think at such an odd thing happening. He looked at the workmanship; there was not one false stitch in the whole job; all was so neat and true, that it was quite a masterpiece.

The same day a customer came in, and the shoes suited him so well that he willingly paid a price higher than usual for them; and the poor shoemaker, with the money, bought leather enough to make two pairs more. In the evening he cut out the work, and went to bed early, that he might get up and begin betimes next day; but he was saved all the trouble, for when he got up in the morning the work was done ready to his hand. Soon in came buyers, who paid him handsomely for his goods, so that he bought leather enough for four pair more. He cut out the work again overnight and found it done in the morning, as before; and so it went on for some time: what was got ready in the evening was always done by daybreak, and the good man soon became thriving and well off again.

One evening, about Christmas-time, as he and his wife were sitting over the fire chatting together, he said to her, ’I should like to sit up and watch tonight, that we may see who it is that comes and does my work for me.’ The wife liked the thought; so they left a light burning, and hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind a curtain that was hung up there, and watched what would happen.

As soon as it was midnight, there came in two little naked dwarfs; and they sat themselves upon the shoemaker’s bench, took up all the work that was cut out, and began to ply with their little fingers, stitching and rapping and tapping away at such a rate, that the shoemaker was all wonder, and could not take his eyes off them. And on they went, till the job was quite done, and the shoes stood ready for use upon the table. This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick as lightning.

The next day the wife said to the shoemaker. ’These little wights have made us rich, and we ought to be thankful to them, and do them a good turn if we can. I am quite sorry to see them run about as they do; and indeed it is not very decent, for they have nothing upon their backs to keep off the cold. I’ll tell you what, I will make each of them a shirt, and a coat and waistcoat, and a pair of pantaloons into the bargain; and do you make each of them a little pair of shoes.’

The thought pleased the good cobbler very much; and one evening, when all the things were ready, they laid them on the table, instead of the work that they used to cut out, and then went and hid themselves, to watch what the little elves would do.

About midnight in they came, dancing and skipping, hopped round the room, and then went to sit down to their work as usual; but when they saw the clothes lying for them, they laughed and chuckled, and seemed mightily delighted.

Then they dressed themselves in the twinkling of an eye, and danced and capered and sprang about, as merry as could be; till at last they danced out at the door, and away over the green.

The good couple saw them no more; but everything went well with them from that time forward, as long as they lived.

The end.

Plus, I love the artwork. Looks like Quentin Blake, but I can't be certain.
I love Quentin Blake too. :)
So many things in the world to love, now that I think of it.

Had a great Christmas. Hope everyone else's rocked too.

2010-12-12T14:35:00.002+11:00

So nice to see pretty stuff, and be reminded of the immense beauty the world holds. Work-related ugliness notwithstanding, I think handmade things are the best kind of remedy to a life too steeped in mad people-related problems. I mean, handing someone a stack of tender drawings versus handing them those drawings with a cupcake balanced prettily atop? How difficult is it to include that human touch back into things?

It made my hardened heart soar to see Dawn's handmadelove. Even softened my heart a little too. And made me have a little more faith in people. Why can't I also make more, rather than just churn out lovelessly, impersonal spaces? I shall, too, craft. Thanks, Ms D, for being an inspiration today. :)

2010-12-04T21:05:00.002+11:00

I've been working til past midnight all week at the office. And working saturdays to boot. In a bid to cheer me up, my sweet mummers bought me a little surprise. It was for a good cause, too - there was a small craft market going on outside, and she wanted to support the independent designers.

It's nice to have long hair sometimes. So many cute accessories, and there's no need to worry about sticky hair wax. And if there's a bad hair day, just bunch it up in a ponytail - done!

2010-11-28T14:17:00.006+11:00

Oh. My. I am so in love with this little guy.

Litany
By Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

And here's Billy Collins himself.

2010-11-22T03:35:00.003+11:00

Persepolis is the next graphic novel I want to read.

My Books to read list is ever growing. Right now, sitting in a teetering stack at the edge of my bedside table are:

1. The Gay Provider
The MYER story
Alan Marshall

2. Wisdom from the Earth
The Living Legacy of the Aboriginal Dreamtime
Anna Voigt & Neville Drury

3. The Bird
A natural history of who birds are, where they came from, and how they live
Colin Tudge

4. Modern Patterns of Japan
Paper, Kimono and Clothing
Yonagadou

5. Robbing the Bees
A Biography of honey
Hollet Bishop

6. A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
Fung Yu-Lan

When will I ever have the time to just sit and read 'em all?

2010-11-17T23:12:00.007+11:00

Meet Lotte. Nothing like a potted houseplant to provide instant charm to a room. It's taken me too long to discover you, Belle fleur de lis, but I shall visit often because you provide the much needed calm in my manic existence. [via make it easy]. Blog crush indeed.

And hell yeah hello sandwich is reminding me of that time when I was in Beppu. But I'm late to the party. Japanese suburbs and the endless visual surprises they hold (and hide!) keep me intrigued all the time. Japanese design goodness is the awesomes!

2010-08-30T00:30:00.003+10:00

Has this feeling of suddenly falling head over heels in love with someone hit anyone else recently?
It has missed me by several long shots (and then some) lately, but here I am again...
Revelling, in a very very indulgent manner, in ideas, images and design - feasting my senses and not getting enough of it and being insatiated still.

"I will say only this: I have no desire to create something I’ve seen before, and I do not troll books for images to trigger ideas. I already have more ideas than I can handle.
- MB
Swoons.
How late am I to the party!?
When I grow up (ahem. some more) I want to be somebody like Marian Bantjes.

2010-03-21T00:42:00.002+11:00

I realise I haven't blogged in the longest time. Perhaps it has lost its allure, perhaps this is merely a short recess. As with most things, who bloody knows?

Anyhoos, Emma Watson looks plenty hawt in that dress. The Half-Blood Prince premiere seems a lifetime ago.

2009-12-26T19:16:00.003+11:00

How do people get to that stage in life, and still live it with so much zest and love for life and their partners?
A puzzle and an inspiration, that surely is.

It's Boxing Day - Saturday. The air outside my window, the one facing my churchie-youth-group neighbours' house is thick with BBQ-induced smoke. Half the Youth Group must've been invited to the after-camp get-together at their place today. It's a bit odd peering out my window and catching sight of some of those kids we used to take care of at children's camp all grown up now. Sometimes, I miss me summa' those days: of laughs, friends, acquaintances and small talk, and just bein' and chillin' at someone else's parents' house.

2009-12-22T03:38:00.002+11:00

When you're at the end of the road,
And you've lost all sense of control,
And your thoughts have taken their toll,
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul.

Your faith walks on broken glass,
And the hangover doesn't pass,
Nothing's ever built to last,
You're in ruins.

We go our separate ways in the same direction.

Thanks, green day and sara bareilles.

2009-12-20T03:30:00.002+11:00

"Being alert is something important. Alert in the sense of letting our senses have a strong presence in our lives. When we go too fast we miss a lot because we don't let our senses absorb what's happening around us and within us. If we learn how to keep an alert mind then we become more sensitive to those little things that could build up in some areas of our lives and hurt us later."
- Elsa Mora

My work desktop's an unholy mess, but I somehow am able to recall where everything is kept.
Organised chaos is a metaphor for my life, and for the inside of my mind.

Thanks for those words, Elsita.
I shall always strive to notice things, my surroundings and others' reactions, and to be alert.

2009-12-10T02:47:00.003+11:00

Oh no someone help me please I am so hooked on Poker Face.
There's a danger in loving somebody too much.
And it's sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust.

2009-12-05T22:31:00.004+11:00

I'd previously only heard of Ira Glass, his name rang a bell, only sorta. Watching this video for the first time not only comforted me - it was a wake up call to Not! Give! Up! . To some extent, it also felt like my mediocrity was validated, justified, almost. But then again, now I know who Ira Glass is. Nosso bad.

After months of thinking about abandoning Interior Design, or Design in general, and after a long chat with M, I've come to realise it's not about not doing Design. In fact, Design will most probably be the passion of choice - that was a really odd mix of words, passion of choice. Hmm. Rather, it is, perhaps, about not being stuck or sucked into an office environment and allowing yourself to get too comfortable there.

So. Always a nod to discomfort. To not wanting to be here, but there. To casting around. To saudade.

Have been entertaining thoughts of becoming a butcher in my next job. Have been very drawn to the idea of machismo, the sensitivity and the delicateness of wielding a cleaver and providing choice cuts and a general sense of well-being to customers.

2009-08-04T07:29:00.000+10:00

It's been an overworked year and 4 days. There's been learning, joy, laughter, pain, tears and suffering involved. Growing up's hard work; I want the simple life: living off and giving back to the magically regenerating abundance of Nature, appreciating sunrises and sunsets, marking time by the seasons, knowing weather patterns by looking at clouds. The rural dweller in me is yearning to get out of a design- sweatshop job with over-long hours devoted to the blinding computer screen and an over-reliance on technology. I need to plan my route out. To work with my hands. To make, to create with love, to go for walks, to breathe the fresh air and smile. Yes, by George, I will do that indeed.

The 2010 ikea cataloge is out. Much happiness from cheap furniture porn.

2009-07-15T03:29:00.000+10:00

So freaking good it blows.
Every time.
Can't listen to it on loop.
I can't breathe after each replay.

2009-07-14T02:22:00.001+10:00

Randomness: a lucky seven

1. Though Gertrude Stein's work tends to give me a slight humming throb someplace above my eyebrows, I found this really hilarious.

2. New favourite word to describe someone cool (thanks, Sri): enigmatic (sadly Sri wasn't describing me)

3. The black cat in my life is feeling a little emo today; might've lost a fight sometime last night. Again.

4. 2 days til Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens! So excited! R's got me tickets!! The countdown is getting quite intense (from about 10 months ago - thanks so much, R!).

5. Wishes you make when you see shooting stars may not always come true immediately.

6. The moment I *think* I've lost a friend's expensive Japanese magazine and decide to buy one back for him, it will mysteriously turn up right under my nose on a bookshelf I check very often.

7. Have been hopelessly addicted to this song for about the past fortnight now. Have have have to play it on loop at least 4 times daily. Gah. Along with a Sascha Funke remix of a Gui Boratto song, some Elliot Smith, and definitely, still, the Killers, and lately, Ladyhawke. (Thanks, S!)

2009-05-18T00:54:00.002+10:00

After a third failed attempt at Circuit Assessment (no more third time lucky - the cycle of threes has been broken!), the allure of motorbike-riding begged itself to be relooked. No, I don't feel liberated with the wind on my face and air around my knees and elbows; riding at 90kmph with impatient asshole drivers on the Central Expressway scares the shite out of me; watching motorcyclists become prime victims of traffic accidents gives me the worst kinds of premonitions; crashing my bike with a pillion rider behind me isn't particularly exciting, either.

But now, at Lesson 5 out of 7 (most lessons with innumerable repeats), the show must go on. When I have a bike license, the luxury will be in the choice I make: whether I ride, or not. Whether I choose to take public transport; or have no choice but to take public transport. Being given the opportunity to make that choice - therein lies the luxury.

2009-05-11T23:31:00.001+10:00

By the ever witty and Neil Gaiman:

I Google you
late at night when I don’t know what to do
I find photos
you’ve forgotten
you were in
put up by your friends

I Google you
when the day is done and everything is through
I read your journal
that you kept
that month in France
I’ve watched you dance

And I’m pleased your name is practically unique
it’s only you and
a would-be PhD in Chesapeake
who writes papers on
the structure of the sun
I’ve read each one

I know that I
should let you fade
but there’s that box
and there’s your name
somehow it never makes the pain
grow less or fade or disappear
I think that I should save my soul and
I should crawl back in my hole
But it’s too easy just to fold
and type your name again
I fear
I google you
Whenever I’m alone and feeling blue
And each scrap of information
That I gather
says you’ve got somebody new
And it really shouldn’t matter
ought to blow up my computer
but instead….
I google you

And here it is, sung by the ever lovely half of the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer:

I like having Gaiman-inspired ideas floating and flitting about in my head all day. Very agreeable.

2009-05-02T00:46:00.002+10:00

In a time when it was I was lost without oversized t-shirts, when I was unsure of what I'd do if I didn't belong, when staying back in school was something the popular girls did, when petty personal friendships were all that mattered (besides schoolwork, of course), when matte silver spectacle rims and braces were what I had, when Pretty Woman was risque (to me at least), this song brings back much memories. Love love love Roxette.

2009-04-26T01:15:00.002+10:00

Have not much love for these sugar-coated marshmallow Peeps, but seeing these photos from here has rekindled my dream of working, someday, in a candy factory. Or a candy store. Or as a sweet-maker.

Freshly pressed Peeps are seen before they are coated with yellow sugar as they move along the production line.

Peeps have their eyes imprinted.

Jimmy Case, an employee at Just Born picks out badly formed Peeps from the production line.

Marshmallow Peeps are dropped into boxes from the production line for packaging.

I know Easter was some weekends ago, but! Better late than never, I always say.

2009-04-22T02:18:00.003+10:00

There's something about the French language that just kills me. In a good way.
Why, oh why am I lousy with languages?
I need to watch this film. Stat.

2009-04-12T00:59:00.003+10:00

I am still alive.

But of late, I have allowed work to get me negative and morose.
To counter the bad chi, I've decided to list stuff that make me happy, and not just limit it to five items.

^ popping M&M's, one after the other, and chewing on them the moment they're in my mouth
^ honey glazed chicken wings
^ being home in the afternoons while it rains (as opposed to being stuck in the office)
^ polka dots and grids
^ the smell of freshly printed books
^ the rough texture of wood-free paper
^ the idea of home-made bread (though I've not made any yet)
^ buttered salty popcorn-in-a-bag, freshly out of the microwave
^ crafty craft blogs
^ a mug of steaming hot coflo (coffee + milo)
^ the smell of freshly cut grass
^ an occasional meal from McDonalds
^ grapefruit juice
^ listening to a cello well-played
^ currently, most songs by Vampire Weekend
^ insect-and-rain-free picnics
^ freshly sharpened pencils
^ a full and neatly arranged bookshelf
^ intelligence and humour
^ receiving nice catch-up emails (or better, snailmail)
^ a nice hot shower
^ watching a movie in the daytime
^ lovely pristine beaches
^ sleeping undisturbed for a stretch of 12 hours once in awhile
^ the Internet

Also, this is my attempt at waging a battle against embitterment.

2009-02-23T01:43:00.000+11:00

[Via A Cup of Jo]

This guy is funny. I'm going to do a copycat series, inspired by his Lego works when I find my own set (that's been too carefully stashed away in my room that I forget where they are).

Before Nintendo, life was all about Legos. All. About. LEGO. But I want to ask: have Lego blocks always been available in gray and brown? Or is that a recent addition, like blue M&Ms?

2009-02-11T00:13:00.002+11:00

When I saw this video, I thought, vaguely, that I could feel a bit of that 50ºC inferno blazing through Victoria.

After an afternoon of shopping and squeezing through sticky, noisy, literally pushy teenybopper crowds at Bugis Village some weeks ago, we finally dropped, and had to find someplace to sit, order a drink and recuperate. Pronto. And it was no wonder: no place is safe two days before reunion dinner.

While me, Q and K were sipping our drinks and waiting for the ache in our tired feet to go away, who should decide to appear but N! So. There was dinner. And then there were drinks. And then this photographer, who was looking rather stoned for 10pm, appeared. "Would you like your picture taken? It's going to appear on this website." Or he might've said "My grandmother's baked you girls some oatmeal-raisin cookies. I'd really love to have a photo of you lot with those cookies." For the viewing pleasure of all and sundry.

'Why not? We're photogenic people,' we thought, and grinned gleefully at our photogenic selves. As we waited for those cookies. And. By golly, did we look smashed. "The angle of the wineglass says it all," N texted me, all knowledgeable, some days later.

I concur.

And I don't even like oatmeal-raisin cookies.

2009-02-03T03:49:00.003+11:00

I did this card 2 days after coming back from Beppu, so I like to think that it is inspired by Japanese-ness. Come to think of it, it is looking a lot like fugu. Which reminds me of Y - little miss fugu herself. The one who slurped two bowls of ramen in a single sitting.

Over two consecutive days of Chinese New Year visiting, I came across, on two separate ocassions: men referring to their partners, or wives, as maids. Disgusting. One referred to his wife as 'the maid I sleep with'; the other - who, referring to himself as the alpha male and the one his lovely Golden Retriever listens to - to his girlfriend as 'the maid who cleans and feeds the dog'. And they wonder why girls are not falling head over heels in love with the local boys. Tsk.

In other news, these typography-inspired videos are keeping me happy. Especially the one from V for Vendetta. I have a sudden urge to watch that again.

2009-01-30T04:19:00.013+11:00

Southwest of Tokyo, is a city in the Oita Prefecture called Beppu. And in Beppu, one finds the onsen capital of Japan. Devilishly hot springs - some smelling egg-like with their sulphuric steam - where bathers, after 5 minutes of soaking, emerge looking raw. But healthily so; for in Beppu, you would be considered a prude - an indecent prude - for not yielding and getting jiggy wit' it with the rest of the bathers at an onsen. Perhaps this is where Devilled Eggs originated.

"Before even submerging themselves in the 42ºC water, men let out a grunt as they step in, knee-deep, even before proceeding to ease themselves into the onsen," T intoned casually after several sessions there. After some ascertaining myself, I offered, "T, the women don't make a sound as they enter the water at all."

"And that's why they're women, and we're men," it is possible that at this point, T sniffed his appreciation at the apparent brutishness of his gender. I merely smiled. Demurely.

Inside our ryokan, it was cold. Perpetually. And when it was warm, it was because of the air conditioning, which then made it dry. Lip-crackingly dry. And inside our 8-tatami room, I was mindful to keep it not-too-warm, lest E, my Tokyo-ite roommate wilted or melted into a puddle from the heat. Me? All things considered, anywhere that is not musty, humid sweltering Singaporean heat is cold. Cold is the absence of heat, no?

And in Beppu? The coldness not only manifested itself in windchill, but there was also, for the first time in my life, flurries of minute snowflakes. Powdery snow on our shoulders, and with a 14-hour hand-warmer in hand, we head out to walk the streets.

Mikan season made for citrus-peel-scented rooms. We stuffed our faces with lovely honey-oranges. In general, that refers only to me; the Japanese hardly ever stuff their faces, if at all. Oh, besides Y, of course. This girl will finish up any unfinished food within a 2 metre radius at mealtimes. But me, my face was stuffed, alternately, with mikan and onigiri.

There was this old house - actually, there were these many old houses - down in Beppu. Many well-loved old houses, and many unloved plots of frozen, dying grass. And in these well-loved old houses, its inhabitants are in the habit of removing their footwear upon entry. And they enter a house backwards, so their shoes are facing the correct direction when they leave. Well, I never. Colour me amazed.

Converse high-tops didn't stand a chance; I became well-practiced in lacing up (and down) real quick. Meanwhile, the group waited patiently outside if 'real quick' turned out to be 'not quick enough'.

"Told you so," I'm certain R would've loved to crow smugly to my face while my fingers, numb with cold, clumsily did up the shoelaces.

One morning, I sat, just me with my styrofoam tray of fresh sushi, there, along the edge of the water, watching the sailing club make their way out to sea. It was a clear day, with blue skies that stretched out to forever. The kind that made the samurais believe in Justice, Benevolence and Honour. That kind of blue.

I stretched out, after my 9th sushi, under the endless sky, and took deep breaths, and grinned, and felt at peace with the world.

2008-12-05T00:11:00.001+11:00

That's the doggie at the go-karting range (if a winding stretch of asphalt can be considered a range): bored. Not even the sight of overgrown idiots fitting themselves into lawnmower-sized motorised vehicles travelling at eardrum-splitting frequency can rouse him. He has reached his state of Nirvana and there he is content to stay (til mealtime). I was the party pooper who did not deign to shuttle around a little circuit at an inch(!) off the ground. I mean, go-karting when you can drive around in air-conditioned comfort and wag your middle finger at the twat who's just cut your lane without signalling? Why bother?

The other night, after a downpour at dusk, I saw a g i a n t snail making its slow way up someone's boundary wall. The snail was so enormous and its shell - commensurately large - was weighed down so greatly by gravity that its mid-section was sagging to the point of distortion. Still, it made its way diagonally upwards. I can't make up my mind whether it's lovely to have an instantly accessible porta-home, or if it's a god-given / self-inflicted hassle.

As a kid I'd been fascinated with the idea of snails and their little take-away dwellings. I dreamed of travelling in caravans, and having all my worldly possessions with me as I went along. Now I no longer think that way. Where once I craved change; I value stability now.

Dilly, the monster of insatiable appetite, has recently developed a sweet tooth. Spot the odd one out: Cadbury Fruit & Nut chocolate, lemon barley drink, kitten kibble, and cranberry vodka. Which? Ah yes!, of course, it's the chocolate; it's got milk in it! Or, yes!, it's the cranberry vodka, for its 42% alcoholic content. Oh, it can't be the kibble, 'cos why? 'Cos that's just boring ol' cat food! "Why settle for less when there's chocolate and vodka readily available", the little kitten thinks, before drifting off into a state of chocolate-induced bliss.

What happened after the cranberry vodka? That's a story for another time.

The ella ella I bought when last in Hong Kong has been serving me well. It's only the second ella-ella I've owned that was solely mine. And I nearly lost it, when carelessly it was left in a rather fetching umbrella stand at some fancypants lifestyle goods shop in HK, after just four days. Typhoons can be such happy occasions sometimes: wellies (with fancy print), happy umbrellas, or being all cosied up at home and feeling safe. From being merely tolerable, stormy weather has become accepted and even embraced and looked forward to. By me.

Thanks to a vertically-unchallenged colleague, it's so pretty to see the ella-ella hanging out to dry in the pantry. Just wish, sometimes, that I was at home rather than at the office when the storms come. It'd be so nice, once in a while, to have a random holiday declared due to inclement weather in Singas.

So wrong, but so good: I can't stop staring at Shane, and not Beyonce.

2008-11-16T16:03:00.003+11:00

And November's here. Just like that. There was a picnic - amidst birthdays, a massive deadline, accidentally discovering a new exitless, signless expressway (which was later revealed to be the new KPE or some other acronym); things have been falling higgledy piggledy out of each day, like apples from a tipped-over basket. Always nice in retrospect to feel like we've been productive and efficient, but hardly ever peachy while we're stuck in it. So.

There was a birthday picnic complete with strawberries and bubbly. Thanks, A and J, for arranging this lovely respite. We've not been in the Botanic Gardens in the last five years that I was all amazed by the lovely plants there now. Who looks at plants anymore, these days, I ask, who? Sometimes I amuse and console myself by imagining how life would be like, as a gardener, or a florist. Something botany-related. Would be good for the nerves, methinks, not to mention the environment.

A coupl'a weeks back, when we brought Dilly to the vet's for his booster shot, I started talking to this girl who had her very sick cat in its travelling basket. While Dilly was meowing gustily, as if the life of an innocent prisoner depended on it, the other cat's breathing was slow and shallow. "Nothing a jab and some pills can't fix," I'd intoned optimistically to the girl, as if it was some form of encouragement. Her cat was just under 2 years old. After an hour's wait, though amongst ourselves we muttered about this girl and her cat cutting our queue, we learned it had passed on, on the vet's table. The shock and the guilt? I never want to bear that again.

It was a sobering experience. I may have tried to pat the girl's shoulder and maybe given it a sympathetic squeeze, but nothing could've brought back her cat. I wonder how she is doing now: it's funny how you strike up a conversation in waiting lines, especially one with shared interests like the vet's, for instance, and go on and on about stories, habits and experiences. And not really get to know the person behind the pet. It is perhaps deemed appropriate to speak about a being that is not yourself in those times.

After spending the last weekend in Johor Bahru with my colleagues, there has been a bit of a dengue scare over at my side the past few days. Or Chikungunya. Have been to the doctor's and he's ascertained that it's a viral infection - untreatable by antibiotics. So there's a bug. Inside of me. I've got a new (albeit unwanted) pet. And my insides have become the unsuspecting venue for a battlefield.

Being bedridden for the past 4 days has been great. Not. I have experienced the greatest number of hours of sleep I've ever had in my life. Awake for about 3-4 hours each day, it's what my dad calls "payback sleep". I have been pottering about the house and not doing much at all; and I wonder: is this what the life of an invalid is like? Having been a great fan of Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did series in my childhood, I've always held a rather romanticised view of invalids, of being bed-bound, yet patient, gracious and dignified. I've been nothing more than a grouch in the past 4 days, whilst worrying about the [ever growing] pile of undone work sitting on my desk at the office. I've never been this sick in my life, so this is yet another sobering experience.

Seems to be an onslaught of sobering experiences recently, in spite of brimming work schedules. I really can't wait for December to come; October and November have proved to be such monsters.

Monster taking a keen interest in water flowing from a faucet

2008-09-29T02:08:00.003+10:00

Though, on principle, I don't give a rat's arse about speed or car racing, I was suitably proud of Singapore for hosting the world's! first! night! race!. Typical, typical; but still, I wouldn't expect any less: c'mon, it's Singapore we're discussing here. One-upping the Joneses as always. With a smile. Hell, with five million smiles amidst a commensurately large amount of greenhouse gas emissions and electricity usage; I was blinded on the way to Suntec the other night. And did I mention, a lot, a lot of noise pollution.

My interest in sports - especially noisy ones that involve speed and high levels of testosterone - can be described, at best, as lukewarm. R was, on the other hand, glued to the screen the whole time I was nursing my high pitched engine-induced headache.

The kitten worked itself into a yarnball-chasing frenzy fuelled (un)helpfully by the incessant screeching of engines. The kitten - Mine! - has been the bright spark in our lives for the past week now. Dill is the softest and mostly pliant little thing, and I owe last week's worth of dinners at home to him.

We do stuff together, me and Dill. This is going to be the start of a beautiful relationship, I hope, I think, I know. He's going to be so spoilt yet so lovable.

2008-09-20T03:35:00.003+10:00

This arvo, I did something I have no recent recollection of doing: I ordered a bowl of fishball mee-pok on my own. Yes, that means I also ate the whole damned bowl of noodles for lunch - which was, surprisingly, satisfying despite being less so than my usual rice with 3 sides. No, a noodle girl I most certainly am not. Wasn't aware there were noodle options to go with the fishballs; didn't occur to me that soupy noodles would not already be served laced with chilli: the noodle uncle glared with suspicion.

Have been loving bicycles lately. This one, from Allan, The Gallant is so. to. die. for. And that dreamy orange one? On ebay, here, for which I may never be the top bidder. Auctions are scary that way - also, I am a wuss that way too.

2008-09-17T01:27:00.002+10:00

Sony DIME 'Foam City' Making Of from James Lowrey on Vimeo.

Foam and bubbles have always captured my attention. In my childhood I once was absentminded enough to suck and ingest detergent through the straw I was supposed to blow bubbles out of. Watching the making of this ad had me enthralled for a good five minutes.

There has been an incidence of one overnighter, and one near-overnighter in the space of the past 2 nights at the office. I swear designers can be such masochists sometimes: slaves to their ideals to the point of forgoing their health. And sleep. We trooped back home zombiefied, this afternoon at 4pm, after the boss sent our competition entry to its stipulated submission point. Up to five years ago, I would've weathered these things a lot better. Now I'm just worse for wear. In the last two days, it's been brought to my attention, twice, that my eyes betray the jadedness of my age. How depressing.

One consequence of staying up all night: the discovery of Songza (thanks, G), which led to this bloody song getting stuck in my head. Contagious, now I've got S humming it also.

2008-09-10T02:54:00.003+10:00

The UNIQLOCK music'd been getting on my nerves lately, so it's finally off. Vamooshed. Annihilated. But I really miss knowing what time it is back in Melbs somehow. Odd, coming to think of it; perhaps I've really left a fragment of my heart back there. Might look for some other web application to show me Melbs' time - it's so tiring having to figure out whether daylight savings has ended, or what's two hours after my current time all in my head. It's sad, because I *think* I used to be quite the nimble mental summer.

Speaking of mental sums, I was one of those detestable little girls who would guard her answers fiendishly, with a non-math-related exercise book of course, obscuring the answers to the previously given sum. Rather Hermione-ishly, I'd make a concerted effort to lift my head and look attentively at the teacher as soon as my answer was carefully written out. Just so she could be sure that I was ready and confident my answer was indisputably correct. Tsk.

Over dinner, E handed over, somewhat unceremoniously, a nondescript-looking package in a white, square MJ Multimedia plastic bag. I reached in, and to my delight, Paprika! We watched it back in Melbs and I loooovvved the procession scene. The soundtrack + the parade = mesmerising.

Perhaps this is alluding to something. A thing. A thought I've been nursing for awhile: that I should go back for a visit.

2008-09-07T02:12:00.003+10:00

My first encounter with the works of Louise Bourgeois was in Second Year, while I was doing research for Herzog and de Meuron's take on Tate Modern. They were deliciously low-key then, which I liked. So. Maman, the 9.1m tall spider, where I'd imagine visitors only ever seeing its underbelly and its spider sacs - sound spidery, whatever they are. This video has put a voice to the remarkable sculptor, whose name's spelling I had been determined to memorise in Junior College.

Serendipitiously, I'd found a link (not that I'd been looking hard for it, really) to good ol' Gropius' Manifesto for the Bauhaus movement. Only these days, whenever I think of the word Bauhaus, my mind automatically intones Bela Lugosi's dead. It's funny how, for those poseurs from Archi or Design schools, we start referring to influential (read: widely publicised) Designers as someone we actually know, whether by reference to first names or casual name-dropping. Oh, Rem said such and such. Oh, Mies was blahblahblah. Corbu this and Eames that.

2008-08-31T23:13:00.004+10:00

The last few days, I have spent my energy designing wardrobes. My virgin attempt at Interior Design has - though I'd never known there'd be such a science to it - taught me some things about heights, width, sliding or hinged doors, and general construction details, etc. While it's nice to be part of a team for realising someone's dwelling - I wonder why they'd entrust such intimate decisions to strangers. Residential interiors should best be made of by its inhabitants in time, rather than to be made by someone else against time.

Last Friday, Tan Pin Pin's box set of 3 DVDs was launched at Books Actually. Singapore Gaga, Invisible City and Moving House. I went, and immediately purchased the set because I had been so desperate to watch Singapore Gaga. It was launched while I was away in Melbs. My research, at that time, concerned sights and sounds of the street in Taiwan, Singapore and Melbourne. I had this whole gamut of sound recordings: vendors' street cries, the sound of passing traffic, disembodied voices, blind buskers, alongside hours' worth of video footage of street-related encounters. An incoherent jumble that I have still maintained, until now, as that. Perhaps one day it will come in useful as a soundscape project. Or otherwise. Or perhaps not.

My paper has been published. Yay! But at such a price. I don't reckon I've got the makings of an academic researcher or writer. So tiring. How do some people actually enjoy this process of whittling and editing draft after draft? Actually, it may not be such a perverse activity after all, especially when it's self-inflicted. But it may be another age before I actually decide to attend these conferences, the draw of legendary arts festivals notwithstanding.

2008-08-25T23:49:00.002+10:00

Whoever did this, I want to send you flowers.
*wipes tears of happiness*

The permutations! Sheer possibilities! The work! Oh!
But you MUST feel the guilt for every magazine you chuck away.
The designer's Blood! Sweat! Tears! Bile!

2008-08-25T02:10:00.004+10:00

3 weeks of all-nighters. That's all it takes to formulate the revamp of a bi-monthly publication with 40 plus years of existence. My temperature, scratchy throat, pounding headaches and a stuffed nose occuring at random times all point to: heatiness. No, I'm not fussed about the onset of auntiedom; desperate times call for heap-til-overflowing amounts of desperate measures.

In the past 3 weeks, the world has passed by around me. The Olympics has come and gone; National Day was but a blink of a bloodshot eye; I'd missed the National Day Rally on the telly; I'd only met up once with A who'd returned from Hong Kong for a weekend; my poor old cat died - she'd been poorly for awhile now. And too many things besides.

I was looking for a job and then I found a job
And heaven knows I'm miserable now
In my life, why do I smile
At people whom I'd much rather kick in the eye
- Morrissey, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

Take me out tonight.
As I live and breathe, you have killed me.
Morrissey is so eloquent.

The rain over the weekend was so good. At least we managed to share a bit of that typhoon - I've always wanted to be told to stay indoors because of a blizzard or typhoon. Sadly, it hasn't happened yet. Not in boring ol' 25-32ºC Singas.

2008-08-09T18:41:00.003+10:00

I saw 4 black cars in a row the other day, on my way to work. Before I could stop myself from drawing references to Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I thought, 'today's gonna be bad'. And it sort of was. Why do I let these signs affect my expectations psychologically?

Was chuffed to find a copy of the 2009 IKEA catalogue sitting on my staircase landing last night. Felt a deep furniture-based joy welling up inside.

I once ~~stole~~ picked up a yellow button from Spotlight, back in Melbourne. It was on the floor, and away from the usual buttons section. It looked vitage-y, and didn't belong in any of the button canisters. I considered kicking it through the door so I could rightfully morally pick it up outside, but we were too far from the doors. So I bent down, pretended to tie my shoelaces and held on tightly to my newfound treasure.

While watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games last night, I felt a glowing pride for my Chinese heritage, if not by sheer default appearances alone, then at least by trying to show an appreciation for my culture's innate elegance and history.

The screen of the iMac at my office is so huge I have to physically turn my head from left to right to take in all there is. It makes me appreciate Wilmot's lovely 17-inch screen. Cosy!

2008-07-31T01:52:00.004+10:00

OMGOMGOMGOMG!
Half-Blood Prince trailer's out!
This one's a keeper.
It's looking mighty fine.
Am all excited about it: in 113 days exactly.
SQUEEEE~! ♥
I 'ma gonna read me them books again.
Fangirl becomes me.
Oh, and here be some screencaps for closer scrutiny.
Good times!

2008-07-29T23:14:00.003+10:00

"If the oyster is opened carefully, the diner is eating an animal with a working brain, a stomach, intestines, liver, and a still-beating heart. As for the 'liquor', that watery essence of oyster flavour that all good food writers caution to save, it is mostly oyster blood."
- Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster. History on the Half Shell.

Urk.

I embark on a brand new journey tomorrow - a new job. Will probably not relish being the noob around - I blame this aversion to socialise on being an only child. But. The Gemini in me will supplement the necessary pleasantries. I want this to be an environment I will grow in, and to learn and to give a lot back to in due course. Am hoping for the best, obviously, but will prepare for the worst since I already know about that. pile. of. stuff. that's waiting to get sorted and worked through before the two-week deadline for the printer's. I placed it there myself last night.

There is a brand new iMac set up for me at the office, and I've got my key card. All awaiting their new beginning. Cue wondering / wanderings about old beginnings. An old beginning would definitely have to be this here kaka snack, if I'm to be asked. As a wee (spoilt rotten) kid, I loved me a pack of these usually lao hong goodies i.e. softened by humidity. (Thanks, Stellou for bringing this word back into my daily vocabulary!)

Found this while skulking around today [thanks, Tym], and it made me smile. My beloved Garamond was not featured - am considering whether I should be glad about this or not.

2008-07-18T03:37:00.006+10:00

So it was a lovely rainy grey day out some days ago - the kind that would've be perfect for curling in bed with a mug of hot chocolate and the latest good discovery from the Library. But there was editing to be done, and a conference paper to be submitted. It was really that grey. In full colour. Not in greyscale. Not Photoshopped. I loved its greyness so. much. It made me think of being as safe as houses. I like this expression, and I like it especially so on a grey day, when I'm safely ensconced at home.

There have been sleepless nights - 39 hours of wakeful writing interspersed between bursts of hair-tearing, inspired, and teeth-gnashing moments. There have been dramas with this paper, there have. There have been submissions made conveniently from my desk, to some server (thank you, Internet), to the lovely K in Edinburgh. There have been declarations made: no more writing of academic papers for conferences. And while I was editing and doing more editing, 4 hours before my already-extended deadline was up, what else popped into mind but this here song. Just had to listen. Just. I didn't know who KT Tunstall was before this. I swear. I'm not from this planet. What is wrong with me? The last time I had a craaaavvving for any song was, umm, oh. From The Killers. Yeah. Not too long ago. Really. And The Cat Empire. Yeah. Oh, and Trent Reznor the Great. Umm, and also, Garbage. The Cure. Roxette. Death Cab for Cutie. Oasis. Jay Chou. Geez. Just about all the time, really. Feed me a song and watch me go berserk with that repeat button.

this was a hoot! [via swissmiss]

2008-07-15T21:19:00.006+10:00

It was, apparently, Gummy Worm Day in the USA on the 15th of July - today! [via here] What a shame, because I'd nearly bought myself two packs of gummy bears today while at the polyclinic, but thought to myself, ' Nah, I won't give in to temptation. For once.' Would've been so. stoked. to be munching on a gummy bear while I discovered what day it was today. I prefer gummy worms mostly, if you ask me, but a pack of HARIBO Gold Bears will win hands down any day.

Don't I just lurve the way that worm leaves a sickly sweet smell literally in my nostril? I don't like the orange ones - bears and worms alike. I figured that's a safer way to stick a gummy worm in my nose - at both ends, so we don't accidentally snort and inhale the whole damn thing down our windpipes. One day, sometime, when I grow up, I'm gonna do me some serious stuff.

And, now that I'm aware of it, I shall definitely be celebrating S'mores Day on 10th August. So nice to have days like these to look forward to. I'm imagining a dreary office scene that gets zinged! by a tray of candy, according to whatever it is on the candy calendar.

2008-07-09T03:01:00.005+10:00

The firstfruits of those rambutans from the neighbour's tree have ripened, and are now sitting pretty, the bunch of them, in our kitchen. I like the idea of neighbourliness: this whole sharing the produce of your garden shebang, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Most of the times, my family shares only with our neighbour to the left, because on the other side? There are awkward nods, exchanges of waves and hellos amidst furtive glances towards the doors before we beat a hasty retreat back behind our walls - we've been that way for a long time, and have grown accustomed, even comfortable with this.

Guess what? IKEA has an entire system worked out for themselves on how to name their furniture. More stuff I never knew. I mean, I did a very short Industry-based learning attachment there about a decade ago, and I don't recall my immediate manager bringing up these points to me. My favourite IVAR bookshelves are named after some kind of profession in Swedish? How cool is that!

Apparently, Ivar comes from an old Norse word for archer-soldier. So, kinda like a non-pretty version of Legolas, I'd imagine? Yay to my shelves.

Also, I sucked big time at this game. Based almost completely on guesswork, I got an embarrassing 2 out of 10. I wonder how many IKEA employees score above the 70% mark. I used to think IKEA was pretty cool. Now? It's just a moniker for affordable and functional, though hardly long-lasting. A sobering thought.

I worked there, at the Alexandra branch, over the end of year vacation. Good times. One of my happiest work experiences. Before the store opened everyday at 10am, there were trolleys and trolleys of misplaced items we had to re-shelve - this being the peak of all peak furnishing and lifestyle retail periods: when Christmas and Hari Raya coincide. And I liked very much that the activity of re-shelving was undertaken by everyone - not just the floor staff in yellow shirts. I was in the Design Department, so I never had to be on my feet for hours. But this shared experience of re-shelving, together with the common pantry area, were great levellers. Many friends were made, and readily too, then. Some days, like today, I wish for those times.

Half an hour ago, I cleared 7.46GB worth of old work from Wilmot's Trash. They have finally been saved, and archived (sort of) in my external hard disk drive. Wish I could say proudly that I've also toasted DVDs out of them - sadly, no. But still, 3 years worth of work and grime and junk: purged. The cleansing feels good. I feel ready to move on.

The rambutans? More of them are slowly ripening on the tree.

2008-06-27T02:39:00.004+10:00

I'm not supposed to use the pictures from our Hong Kong trip before A receives them in a CD I'm to burn and snailmail to her, but seriously, who's bothered, right? I mean, it could be another millenia before the CD actually gets removed from its stack and even loaded into my computer. I kidding, A, really. Like, really really. The wicked-ass vacation photos aren't ready to leave my desk, though, for a simple reason. You'll find that out soon.

Anyhoos, that was my excuse - and a valid one at that - for not (yet) blogging about the HK trip. Must not spoil it for A. I am lame but loyal. And proud of it. Shing!

Tonight, I was caught up on the fascinating topic of Homing pigeons while traipsing around Internet-Land. Pigeons have, of late, been on my mind's radar. First, in the guise of pretending to be one, i.e. a pigeon, in order to appear inconspicuous. (There are also very funny actions that accompany this act of inconspicuousness.) Then, encountered in Hong Kong: roasted, as an alternative to chicken wings to be had with beer. This is a very versatile little bird-creature, I must say.

And just yesterday, I came across the subject of pigeons in M. F. K. Fisher's How To Cook A Wolf, published together with the rest of her excellent writing in the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Art of Eating. She muses,

"It is not easy to find pigeons, these days. Most of the ones you know about in the city are working for the government. [...] By far the easiest way to make a pigeon cry "Come, eat me!" is to buy it, all clean and trussed, from a merchant."

For me, there is a high possibility the romantic ideal of owning a homing pigeon stems from Hedwig and the notion of Owl Post, courtesy of J K Rowling's Potterverse. Wouldn't it be nice (cue humming) to send short, important messages scripted onto thin, lightweight paper tied to a bird's leg?

I now know how homing pigeons find their way about from point A to B. Thank you, Internet. You have been a veritable vault of information I may not immediately know what I'd have use for. But now I want to know: how I can send that bird back to the sender - will this be possible, communicating both ways via pigeon?

To A: before you cry foul about my use of the HK images, may I offer you this. Read the parts about the pigeons again. See? Not a word about Stanley!

And so, last night after knocking back a few drinks, as part of bird-mania, our topic turned to bats. M and me, we were wondering, if bats, as mammals, copulated upside-down, hanging off the rock ceiling of their cave or tree? And would their wings, two pairs, enfolded, offer the privacy of a four-poster bed of sorts?

Or were bats essentially birds; if they were, how did they lay eggs upside-down? "Oh," intoned R airily, "they excrete a kind of gel-like substance to stick the eggs onto the cave's ceiling." We were impressed. This was after a few drinks. "Then umm," I wondered aloud, "do the bat-babies fall to the ground upon hatching, according to the workings of gravity?" Poor bat-babies! Slightly smashed: us after a few drinks as well as the bat-babies.

2008-06-25T00:58:00.003+10:00

Mr C has been coming over to sit in my room often in the past week. I read somewhere, just a few weeks back, that,

"in a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats."

"How very true," I said thoughtfully to nobody in particular, as I copied this line into my sketchbook. And conveniently forgot to note the reference.

4 days ago, we returned from Hong Kong - we've got the wickedest vacation photos from this trip! Too much noodles and not enough money, I say! Who knows the bad weather we'd brung with us, where, upon our arrival, rain was encountered beating sideways against our brollies; our last day was sunshiney and humid. Like I said, who knows these things, right?

The day before we left, I'd hurriedly morphed into my crafty self and hand-sewed, yes, hand-sewed an apron for A, who, in her bid to be an independent big girl, landed herself a very cool job in Hong Kong. Her expatriate status had me green with envy for a bit, but brought back the bitter-sweet-sour memories of being alone and feeling lonely in Melbourne, even though I loved the place to bits. Can feelings about my surroundings can run counter to the feelings inside of me, I wonder? Digressing.

So.

Being a working girl alone over in Hong Kong, A gets to cook at home a lot. That explains how we came to have every one of our meals out while we were there. Kind of. Unless we count suppers, where we had cake. Pandan chiffon! From Bengawan Solo at Terminal Three! Nothing, I suppose, beats a taste of home for the homesick, even if it has to come in a 30x30x10 cm cardboard box.

The apron was made from a brand new Good Morning Towel we'd bought in Singapore, brought over to Melbourne, and then air-freighted back to Singapore. They - a grand total of 3 out of 4 - remain unused, but rather well-travelled. I thought it was a rather clever idea, to use a clean white towel as the main material for an apron, because I'm guilty of hastily wiping my hands on my T-shirt or pants when I cook. Grubbiness does not a lady make. And white happens to be A's favourite colour too, so: 2 birds, 1 crafty stone. Yay.

2008-06-04T21:18:00.006+10:00

"There's something about owning your own one-person business that over the years has manifested itself more than once. It's the strange solitude that accompanies the big moments. I don't know if solitude is the right word. It's probably, actually, "aloneness," or something closer to that. I remember when I worked in offices, as part of various "teams," going through crunch times, doing major pushes to finish a book we were working on by deadline, or get a catalog out before a sales fair. ...

... and thought about my old friends at work, and how there was a irrepressible camaraderie in sharing the stress and tight deadlines and impossible tasks that seem about to overwhelm. Even though everyone has their own job to do, there is something comforting in the collective suffering -- a shared context that doesn't need explaining. But when you own your own business and do almost everything yourself, you sometimes miss that context (not to mention, of course, the physical help, but that's something else completely). You have to tell complete strangers how busy you are -- you tell the mailman who's bringing you more mail-order yarn, "Oh man, I am so busy! I'm freaking out!" and he's like, "So what, who cares?" Because there's no one else in your "office," no one who is really a part of the hard times, when things get messed up or aren't going right, when balls that have been dropped need to be picked up, and, often, to be launched back into the air. It's just you -- little, overwhelmed you, in sweatpants and glasses with no time to eat lunch -- who bears the responsibility and the challenge. You don't want to crash and burn. At the same time, neither is there anyone who has had a significant hand in the work around to celebrate when something really great happens -- a big order, a little publicity, a pursued opportunity granted. You walk around the studio grinning like a fool, and calling your friends who are in other offices, doing other jobs, on teams of their own. Bearing the brunt of stebacks and successes, is, for the most part, your task alone, and finding the ability to keep in all in perspective -- well, it can be lonely sometimes."

This just about sums up what I've been feeling recently. I couldn't re-write all that, especially not when Alicia Paulson has already written so eloquently about it. I couldn't help but nod and nod, and feel my eyes prickle a little at the exasperation of working alone.

Now I have learnt the importance of having colleagues. Maybe not those who stab you in the back, but colleagues nonetheless. I will find that shared context in my next job.

Being in-between jobs currently is a little uncomfortable, to say the least, when there's a certain member of the family who expects a twenty-nine year old to already have an established career. And this someone is torturing everyone else by making his unsolicited views and selfish advice known. Makes mealtimes or being downstairs such a chore, I'm just saying. Yet again, the space of one's own room offers much-needed solace. At the risk of sounding better than thou, I feel sad for people who do not have their own space to retreat to. I really do.

2008-05-22T13:49:00.002+10:00

Chanced upon, on last week's issue of I-S, a horoscope that, though cryptic, described my week to a T.

Gemini (May 21 - Jun 20): "Pain is weakness leaving the body," says fitness trainer Mark Duval. It that's true, you have gotten a lot stronger in recent weeks. [...] you've shed a few months' worth of emotional distress, you've purged a few years' worth of frustration, and you've exorcised a couple of lifetimes' worth of confused dreams."

Being free entails the time to think, to reflect, and to find that calling. Why is that so elusive? I like and I hate, simultaneously, being free.

2008-05-20T02:36:00.003+10:00

1 wedding
1 funeral
1 birthday

All in the space of a week.
These flowers from the funeral have sprouted roots inside this plastic bottle of mineral water (also from the funeral). Life from death. Funerals are meant not only to remember the dead; they are more to remind the living. I relate better to funerals than to weddings. I like the finality - it reminds me of the capriciousness life holds.

2008-05-09T03:03:00.002+10:00

(Mis)Heard, hopefully, on The Most Annoying Implement otherwise known as TV Mobile installed on most buses now:

Who is the what,
Where is the mooning

This is accompanied by Mark Lee rapping something indistinguishable - I know because I stopped looking outside the window for long enough to glance at the screen, and saw him being credited for 'Vocals'. In Very Ugly Font.

It was at precisely 7.58pm. What show is that - with Mark Lee as the head of some over-dramatised household?

Last night on the journey back, I caught some other police-related drama with less crime and more petty politicking between fellow officers. The plot was a fraction better, methinks. Phew. That was a toughie.

Could Singlish just be less jarring on the ears? I'm full of gripes lately, I have noticed.

2008-05-06T02:00:00.003+10:00

Thought this was a timely entry when I came across it, with H's imminent wedding in less than a week. I mean, I don't hate weddings, per se. There. Said it. But what really grates is the assumption - and this is rampant: individuals from all generations can be found guilty of this - that a married couple is automatically stable and independent.

So it's the legal connotations, and social acceptance unquestioningly garnered from this heterosexual union that really gets to me.

Same goes for organised religion: that Big Brother is out keeping tabs and rewarding you for good behaviour. And don't even get me started on religious touting, otherwise known as street evangelism. Please.

< /End gripe >

That said, I'm really happy for H. Really, really happy. That's about the only thing that's keeping me from ignoring her phone calls and coming up with excuses at all costs not to attend her (otherwise bloody cringeworthy) reunion/wedding dinner. I wouldn't do it for anyone else. And being the pianist for the church service. That, and because I've never been to The Legends (warning: annoying midi auto-play file upon entering website!) and thought it'd be nice to go look-see.

I am such a bloody hypocrite, I know. But yes, there are exceptions to be made. That's what friends are for.

2008-04-03T15:25:00.004+11:00

There it was; the two-week mark had come and passed. I'd meant to sit down and to type an entry about how time had zipped by, how being back felt good, and how the Easter break had gone by without my notice because I'd been totally distracted by the 300some kilos of stuff in cardboard boxes just sitting in my room. Getting started on each skyscraper of cardboard was so daunting I'd resolved not to buy more books and clothes (unless absolutely necessary) in the next year.

We - me and my books - made a pact the other day: they'd sit neatly on newly cleared shelf space if I'd take them out to read for around thirty minutes each day. Fulfilling my side of the pact made good sense, especially since I'd resolved, earlier this year, to read more non-fiction. If I failed to keep the pact - so we'd agreed - the books were allowed to walk around and settle, as they are wont to do, in haphazard piles on the floor. The books, varied as they were, grinned at each other because we both knew there was nothing they liked better than to make me have to tiptoe around and amongst them while navigating my room.

Logistical nightmare, though, the move back was, I'm glad for the experience (and accompanying bragging rights) under my belt. I'd come back for a variety of reasons, obviously; but mostly, I'd been dying - but afraid to jinx my chances if I spoke too much about it - to work with this company. Having been on tenterhooks since I applied from Melbourne, I was over the moon to finally heave a sigh of relief, grin and start busying myself with the kinds of lunches I'd bring to work.

Meals out recently have not exactly been kind on the pocket; a week ago I had a plate of rice with three sides (fish, greens and tofu) at a food court that cost an exorbitant SGD4.60. What WHAT?! Forgive me, I had no idea: I'd only just got back here. I'll learn; I'll show you. But I weigh my options: what's baby spinach, cheddar, quince paste and pancetta from the deli going to cost? Perhaps... perhaps I'll try it out for a week, compare costs and then evaluate my preferences.

Being back has been good (profuse perspiration notwithstanding). As a show of good faith, Mr. Grasshopper came to pay me a visit yesterday afternoon. "Are you lost, sir," I'd asked, concerned, "how did you hop up the roof? Can you fly?" for I was curious how he came to be so far removed from blades of grass. But Mr. Grasshopper was sunbathing. Apparently he had come here for a reason, and he was decidedly oblivious to unwelcome queries about his choice of transportation and destination.

2008-03-18T02:54:00.003+11:00

There have been some nights now that I've slept on the soft, carpetted floor of my apartment in my sleeping bag. In its own way, the weather's been merciful for sleeping camping-style. With 40 degree days, the nights are even more sultry than those in Singas, so no complaints there. But for the days? I have never experienced any hotter - even the wind was hot - and it made me think of walking inside a city-sized furnace where services ran as usual but every breath its inhabitants took were of dense wool.

13 hours before my flight. Despite a severe lack of sleep, I am feeling surprisingly wakeful at 3.24am. May not have trouble with jet-lag when I return after all!

I sit here in my studio, just as I have countless times in the years before. The yesterdays before this were filled with many last meals with friends I made both recently, and from a long time back. There was yumcha and a pub dinner with D and E, a dinner of noodles served by Caucasians with S, two good cafe meals with N, exotica fusion food with M, and too much java and alcohol. I don't know how, but I feel as if I know I'll be seeing them again soon.

To some extent, knowing I can return anytime takes the sadness and wistfulness out of leaving. It's just about knowing what you want from life sometimes, ain't it?

2008-03-08T19:01:00.004+11:00

Yay. International Women's Day - if you are the kind with 2 X chromosomes, I wish you contentment and fulfilment and joy. Yesterday, I sold my white goods (and 1 gray one) to a Saudi Arabian guy and his wife; the guy had a booming laugh and bushy beard. He reminded me of Sascha Baron Cohen. (You know you've made it BIG when there's a Wikipedia article devoted to you.) Today, Women's Day, was also productive for selling because now I am living minimally in my apartment; no Internet access, no washing machine, no tv, no fridge, no beanbags, no tables and chairs. Camping and roughing it out, with a domestic twist. It feels oddly liberating.

I bought a can of Campbell soup, a tiny 60ml pack of UHT milk and 2 apples from Coles today. And read The Amber Spyglass by the light of a candle - nah, I still have electricity, thankfully. But it felt good to not be sucked into the time warp that is part of having an Internet connection.

Last Sunday, on Elizabeth Street, I donated 5 Coles Go-Green bags' worth of stuff, depositing them gingerly into the Charity Bin. Hopefully new homes and owners will be found for these items. Packing up has been an exercise that has generated a great many thoughts about accumulating material goods. In future, I will buy only flowers, and spread a picnic blanket on the floor during meals. Clothes and shoes can be done away with. Without clothes, I will also dispense with the washing machine.

But there will be a fridge, to put all my beer, milk, juice and chocolate in.

And an Internet connection.

And shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves of books. And magazines.

2008-02-23T18:36:00.007+11:00

Am craving for a cuppa corn soup from MOS Burger. This bodes well for my imminent homecoming, or so I'd like to think. Packing and selling and throwing out stuff that's been part of my life for the last three years is the most dreaded part. But dreaded parts come, whether you want them or no; I am pitifully swamped with packing now.

This decision feels right, deep down, much as I'll miss Melbs.
But not VegeMite.
Independence has been fun; now, back home to close proximity with friends and family.

iTunes is shuffling me a healthy dosage of Nine Inch Nails this arvo: first, I Do Not Want This, then Piggy, then Somewhat Damaged all in the span of the last half hour. Wonder if iTunes is trying to make a point somewhere. Or if that point is tacitly existing. Oh, now I've got Franz Ferdinand. This proves it - the point is that there isn't one.

I'm just a cross hair
I'm just a shot away from you

Back in those days I'd fervently skip AutoCad classes, content to scrape through that module with a pass. This progressed into the next semester, where, if it was possible, I'd skip 3D Studio Max classes with even more fervour than with AutoCad before. So now, it all comes full circle to bite me in the ass. Concept-wise, it is moving along. But there is no way to communicate those ideas effectively when, sometimes, that ink-and-paper sketch just doesn't cut it.

Will be burying my nose in some CAD books right now, in self-imposed purgatory. Amidst all the packing.
Isn't life *just* peachy? I mean, what's not to love?

To sweeten the deal, I am currently enjoying stuff from the Treasure Trove at Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre.
Perfect for a shallow grave!
Indeed. I concur.

Here are some funny Japanese men torturing themselves on a game show involving a large rubber band and marshmallows. Just so they can have a laugh at themselves. Grotesque but oddly hilarious. I didn't know whether to look away, cringe or cackle til I was breathless, so I did all three.

They are helping with the packing. Really.

2008-02-16T18:40:00.002+11:00

After several trips to the supermarket to pick out several each time, and still not getting enough of the stone fruit, how does one quell a craving for white peaches? Why, trot to the market at closing time, and pick up an entire tray for $2, of course! And have about five a day to ensure they don't all go bad.

And so it was, how a girl came to stuff herself with white peaches all week. Never minding the juice running down her arms, or the peach-mush getting stuck between her teeth. Or placing her elbow on an armrest and accidentally discovering her elbows were still sticky an hour later.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly gave us no reprieve, N and I, last night. There we were, two girls, with our alcohol and pasta and more after-dinner drinks, thinking we'd indulge in a lovely french film to end the week. And it was heart-breaking. The whole bleeding time. It never let up. But then again, that's life (or a lack of) ain't it? You'd never guess from the movie poster the excruciating wrenchedness of the story.

But the colour - oh, it was lovely. I didn't want it to end, though my heart was already shattered ten minutes into the show. The torture! But the beauty, too. And the sheer torment of having the ability to see. Those were sombre moments. N, thoughtful as she took a bite of her Pear and Blueberry Cheese Tart, and me pensively staring at the patterned foam on my mocha latte.

It's cliche, but y'know, there's an awful lot to be thankful for. To be charmed by. To fall in love with. To breathe in. To hold in your arms til the passing of time is no longer a container of moments but becomes the moment itself.

From Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows, which I ~~bootlegged~~ borrowed from the Library,

... Where lies the key to this mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void.

2008-02-11T19:53:00.000+11:00

[via keri smith]

When I watch clips like these, I am very very very grateful my mom pushed me to attend my music lessons, and sat next to me while i practiced.

Someone in the same apartment block is currently watching Pulp Fiction. Or listening to its soundtrack, because neither can I hear the dialogue, nor are the songs in sequence. It's one of my favourite shows - wonder where that DVD went. My life is in limbo right now. I wait for job offers from potential employers (to which I might respond with another hearty cry), while on the other hand, I am making lists to assist me in packing up my life, and freighting, and selling my Lucifer, and being homeward bound in general.

'Keeping your fingers crossed they don't offer you a job?' with J, on Skype. Now, if only I could remind myself why I'm back here.

It's funny how G said the same thing too, the other day, over a homemade soup and Turkish bread.

And Dangnabbit but I am very very mesmerised by Uniqlock. Just can't stop looking at it, and marvelling at how much faster time seems to pass with this little application. I even have one on my sidebar. Addictivity is this.

I am killing myself with my portmanteaus, aiight?

2008-02-09T02:18:00.000+11:00

The pesky flies of summer are gone, back here in the lower Southern hemisphere, back here in Melbs. Here is where I put on a smile and greet the cashiers and waitstaff - who care to reciprocate - with a 'hello, and how are you?' Not so crowded here; the rumble of trams, especially the rickety old City Circle, bids me an odd welcome. 'I wouldn't want to be inside that,' declares N, 'not after a meal'. Aah. But you can't deny its quaintness. I am such the sucker for nostalgia and a slower pace, tram crashes and irate drivers aside.

Back to the city of mocha lattes in laneway cafes. Of bumping into a gazillion people from the Uni all in one afternoon. Of crowded Italian al fresco dining. Of sitting on the grass in the parks. Of sun scorching my cheek one moment and rain lashing the other the next. Of white peaches and more stone fruit. Of honking mad socceroo fans flying their flags and scarves and marching down the street.

Gone are the flies of summer, yes. But all I can think about is, waking up in my room back in Singas, beneath the refuge of the mosquito net, and listening to the birds outside go cu-ru-ROO and aaaAAGH. And the construction of what is to be a brand new neighbour's brand new house.

2008-01-07T15:29:00.001+11:00

It gradually swelled itself - like an itch demanding to be scratched - the urge to play my piano again. Not just any piano, though. Mine. Only.

I'd taken it as a sign of sorts that over the course of the last 5 days, on three separate incidents, three friends, of whom none read this blog, have asked if I'm still playing the piano. Sojourns into the realm of producing music have been woefully scant; the foreignness of the sound emanating from the keyboard made apparent the stiffness in my fingers.

In the kitchen, after an hour of embarrassing struggle, like a stroke patient painfully re-learning to walk, my mom casually, in a matter-of-fact manner, remarked 剛才彈得很糟糕, hor?

I might do it again tomorrow. Perhaps J S Bach's Italian Concerto might have been too ambitious a piece to start with, after being dry for two years. How horrible that this was a piece I'd performed well, too. Haven't yet dared to touch the Appassionata - with my current post-novice sensibilities, it'd be much too sacrilegious.

2007-12-27T05:31:00.000+11:00

Burst out cackling when hey-hey-you-you Girlfriend played on the radio while I was driving just now. Me and Rits acting stupid in the studio with this song on. Good times, while we were all losers with no lives. It's scary the kind of trash I get addicted to.

The Li'l Mama mix was the one, I think.

Don't pretend I think you know I'm damn precious
Right.
Most embarrassing this undoubtedly is.

2007-12-22T15:54:00.000+11:00

Not all of the things I'd set out to do this time I'm back have been done. Driving down Lornie Road late some night, there was time for reflection - there are, during some stretches of roads more than others, times for reflecting. Lornie Road's one; the Midland Highway leading from Hobart to Launceston in Tassie's another. But for now, Lornie Road is much more accessible.

I was reflecting, like I said, on being back home. 'Back' and 'home' connote the same thing, I suppose. Those are two words that are nice to string together. Had I set out to achieve what I'd ambitiously thought to be achievable on my "things to do back home" list, I wouldn't have had the chance to slow down. To sit at home both listening and watching the rain pouring its way down, indulge my cats and sniff at their slightly musty fur, have chicken wings and beer with my mom one night, and to have midnight dimsum with A and JD. The startling evidence of four girls' bingeing had to be concealed by surreptitiously distributing the emptied plates between the several tables around ours.

Meeting up with Little Miss Pantyliner has been unexpectedly good as well - apprehensive as I usually am about these encounters. And the Terrorist has been unusually compliant, which is always a good thing. It's probably very telling, how readily I have acclimatised this time. Though the piano remains untouched, like a lover who has been deserted for too long, I am unsure of how to approach the Muse I'd taken too much for granted before.

It's good to be back. Home.

Job hunting can wait, for now.

2007-11-26T00:20:00.000+11:00

Bits of work in progress - yes, I have beer while I'm crafting. It helps keep me sane, it does. There are other vices best indulged in hot weather too. Lemon sorbet topped with fig gelato in a cone. From Crema, over on Lygon Street, where every other shop is a gelato shop that is bursting at its seams with hot, sticky people desperate for a bit of something sweet or cold. Or very possibly, both.

Another really delicate flavour is Pear, from Tutto Benne just south of the Yarra.

More vices discovered in the last week: a lovely little cupcake shop down Degraves Street that bakes a really sublime red velvet cupcake. Tuesdays are mini-cupcake day. We nibble through each cupcake not because we are dainty, but to make each last longer. Four cupcakes later, with every remaining ounce of willpower, we [try to] stop drooling at the uneaten cupcakes, in rows behind the glass counter, and leave in a dignified manner. Alas, I had neglected to bring my camera. More reason to go back, I tell the flatmate.

It was chance, I say, that brought King Worm into existence. In a bid to draw one silly item for each successful crack at the crossword puzzle, King Worm came into being after a spell of wracking my brains for a five-letter word for 'elicit, bring forth': evoke, five-letter word for 'tomb, vault': crypt, and 'sanctuary': asylum. King Worm, it appears, has had a forked tongue long before his coronation.

One day, if feeling so inclined, I'm going to get King Worm tattooed someplace.

2007-11-12T18:24:00.000+11:00

I have only been back from Tassie for a coupla days and some, and already it slips me - what I wanted to blog about while I was there. The weather back in Melbs is glorious meanwhile, azure cloudless skies, golden sunshine and a light breeze. What's a girl to do but to pick up a blanket, a bottle of juice and a book, and head out for the grassy slopes in the park? It is difficult, I assure you, to want to sit in front of a laptop while it is sunny and lovely outdoors.

These days, we traipse, happily, three blocks down to Mr Tulk's for the heavenliest coffee. "When I'm rich," the flatmate declares, "I'll hire Mr Tulk's barrista to make me my soy lattes in my penthouse." This girl, she has big dreams.

Then we head home for cheese and crackers, because we're just too lazy to tote them back out to the park - the picnic is in our living room. With marinated fetta, water biscuits, honeycomb, quince paste, some dried apricots, pastrami and salami, we have a wonderful spread before our eyes. "I want," I consider my words carefully, "a scoop of mango gelato, and one of roche from Il Dolce Freddo's later," like a girl whose tummy is never sated.

One of our favourite (newfound) indulgences is Crabapple Cupcakes. They've recently published a collection of recipes with really tantalising images to boot, but I'm eschewing the aromatic smell of baking permeating my apartment for instant gratification from their shopfront. Lined up, they are a winning combination of pretty and yum. We exercise some restraint so that we don't buy everything we see, but it is a difficult exercise, this one.

2007-10-30T00:40:00.000+11:00

It has come, October 22nd, 2pm, and gone. And the examiners, they have feasted intellectually, and they have left with a pleasant taste in their mouths, thankfully. I am grateful that my dues have been paid, and that, for now, there is time for a trip to Tassie.

Dinner with each supervisor has been a relaxed affair. I have never laughed so much with them in the hourly span of our fortnightly meetings - much less look them in the eye and feel, oddly, this agreeable sense of friendliness four hours straight. But the one nagging thought I had was, if I'd failed, would everything have changed? The world hasn't changed, this I know. But how was this new wisdom suddenly acquired?

Thanks, y'all, for the well-wishes. And thanks again, s, for the green tea pantyliners - they oozed happy thoughts and good karma even as they made their way over.

2007-10-16T01:57:00.000+10:00

Memes. The perfect pastime for de-stressing online. Offline, that would be squeezing pimples. Meh. I need a life, but it's being put on hold at the moment. But! What fun! Consider yourself tagged if you want to play.

[01] — Look up TEN of your favorite movies on IMDB.
[02] — Click the "trivia" link in the sidebar.
[03] — Post a fun and random bit of trivia from each film.
[04] — Tag ~~five people~~ everyone!

Little Miss Sunshine
Steve Carell, at the time he was cast for Little Miss Sunshine (2006), was a relative unknown in Hollywood. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, the producers of the film worried that he wasn't a big enough star and didn't have much acting experience. However, between the time the film was shot in the summer of 2005 and its release in the summer of 2006, Carell became a huge success as the star of the high-grossing film The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) in August 2005 and the leading character of the popular NBC Emmy-winning television series "The Office" (2005), which premiered in March 2005 and for which Carell won a Golden Globe in 2006 for best lead actor in a comedy television series. In the span of just one year, Carell had become such a star that the producers had gone from protesting his casting to tapping him to do prominent promotion for the film.

Abigail Breslin wore a fat suit for the part of Olive.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)
The Brecht poem that Wiesler reads is called "Erinnerung an die Marie A.".

(That bit of trivia was lovely, but rather removed from my usual notion of fun. So here's my favourite line in the show.
Buchverkäufer: 29.80. Would you like it gift wrapped?
Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler: No. It's for me. )

The Nightmare before Christmas
Tim Burton has said the original poem was inspired after seeing Halloween merchandise display in a store being taken down and replaced by a Christmas display. The juxtaposition of ghouls and goblins with Santa and his reindeer sparked his imagination.

Saving Face
Director Cameo: The woman eating an apple on the bus is Alice Wu.

Sin City
The signature white blood proved hard to achieve on screen. Regular movie blood couldn't provide the stark look. The crew had to use fluorescent red liquid and bathe it in black light. In post-production, the liquid was turned white.

Taxi Driver
Travis Bickle's famous "You talkin' to me?" scene may have been inspired by De Niro's training under Stella Adler, who (as an exercise) had her students practice different interpretations of a similar phrase. The legendary acting teacher was surprised to see one of her former students use "You talkin' to me?" as a psychotic mantra. Martin Scorsese was encouraging De Niro just below the camera while shooting the scene, which lead to the rest of the "dialogue" Bickle has with his mirror.

Spirited Away
The flexible light thing that jumps around and leads to the house is a reference to Pixar's mascot, Luxo Jr. Miyazaki is a big fan of Pixar and wanted to show his admiration.

MirrorMask
There were 70 masks within the film.
Total number of digital fish in the film: 42.

Kill Bill Vol. I & II
Uma Thurman was offered the script to Kill Bill, and her role as "The Bride", as a 30th Birthday present from Quentin Tarantino.

Dogville
Nicole Kidman is said to have communicated very little with the rest of the team, apart from practical issues. However, she did invite the team for champagne and caviar and flew in Mexican chefs to cook for everyone.

American History X
Seth wears a shirt during the basketball game featuring the number 88. This is a naziskin code for HH, or "Heil Hitler," H being the 8th letter of the alphabet. It also refers to a set of 88 precepts written by the neo-nazi leader David Lane. The 88 precepts are rules and concepts that all White Supremacists lived by.

This film uses the word "fuck" 205 times.

- -

[OK. That was ELEVEN favourites. But what the hell, right?]

2007-10-14T17:28:00.000+10:00

For the whole of the next week, I will be incarcerated.
By my own anal perfectionist tendencies.
A nervous wreck.
Setting up in the gallery and forcing the words to flow eloquently.

But in exactly a week and a day, I will be a free person.
Free of an alarm clock, allowed to breathe, to sleep in, and to eat food other than chocolate.
A worthwhile trade for stabbing myself in my own foot all the time?
I hope so.

Melbourne's stock of Cadbury's fruit and nut chocolate have been slowly and steadily diminishing.
Depleted. By me.
150g by 150g per day.
I can't find any in BigW's, Coles Central nor Safeway's.
All they've got are the plain milk chocolate, hazelnut and mint ones.

What'm i going to do with all that junk, all that junk inside my trunk?
I'ma wonder about that when all this is over.
Alanis Morissette's arrangement of this song is making me sad.
And this video is really bringing back memories it shouldn't.

2007-09-15T23:38:00.000+10:00

Robert V Smith describes, in his book Graduate Research: A Guide for Students in the Sciences, there are three general types of research advisers:

The "collaborator type" may be younger scholars who are "keen to have their students achieve quick results" (p.26). Because they are seeking promotion and tenure, they may be interested in joint publication.

The "hands-off type" advisers may be at mid-career and therefore somewhat less interested in quick results; on the other hand, they may allow a student more time than necessary to finish the dissertation. However, they may also provide good counsel.

"Senior scientist types" are well along in their careers and thus able to provide experienced advice. If the senior scientist is a gifted researcher, the young advisee may become part of a priceless master-student relationship. But there is the danger that if scholarship has outdistanced an older scholar, the student may acquire outdated research skills.

David, Madsen. Successful Dissertations and Theses. A Guide to Graduate Student Research from Proposal to Completion. Second Edition.

-

Even in the Arts, there exist incarnations that bear uncanny reseblance these three types. I know which type mine is.

The chocolates are happy things from the flatmate - they were a surprise, along with a packet of Kitkat, Twisties and Jack and Jill potato chips. Brain food.

The studio has been more of a home than ever before: perhaps the only item lacking is a mattress or sleeping bag; while my apartment feels un-lived in - like a hotel room. It feels good, to walk away from my desk as dawn breaks, knowing that some form of productivity has occurred while my skin grows more pallid from a lack of sunlight. I cannot wait to get back to the sunny island I call home.

2007-09-11T18:08:00.000+10:00

It's been weird, but over the last week, I was asked by several friends who I'd hardly consider techies if I was on Facebook. Don't hear from them for several months, and that's their first question. I've always prided myself as the webcrawler; but here I am, witnessing others' attempts at social networking in cyberspace while I am sitting in front of my computer, obstinately refusing to cave in. Friendster was as far as I'd go, I told myself. So Twitter was turned down, as well as MySpace and FB. And now, P tells me, over a Skype chat, that I can be part of several design/theory discussion groups if I'm on FB. Well, I never! Even (now) employed PhDs are pimping themselves online. What next?

2007-09-02T17:23:00.000+10:00

Just submitted the three examiner's copies of my 119-page document on Friday. After four months of intensive labour, I got a bit weepy putting 3 of my babies up for adoption. Another check against Reasons NOT to have babies. Not that I even like babies to begin with. Human babies are smelly and noisy. So I'm really over the moon with my paper-and-ink babies.

Am finally on 'Submitted' status. This thesis and the entire catalogue of works have aged me more than I would have been willing to exchange for - had I known what I was in for at the beginning. Who'd've thunk, eh, that youth was such a precious commodity. So now, there's just the 30-minute presentation/exam in front of the panel of examiners, and the exhibition to prepare for.

For now, it's all rainbows and butterflies. Flutter-bys. And clovers. So. Kiss me. I'm Irish. For the entire week. I'ma get me some Mulligan stew, soda bread, an' a pint o' stout.

Wake me up, when October 22nd ends.

2007-08-08T00:47:00.000+10:00

I've always been rather afraid of balloons, and now I know why.
much <3 to Don Hertzfeldt

It was my grandma's 9th death anniversary three days ago, and I spent it churning out a new abstract, introduction and conclusion to my thesis. She would've been proud to have known I'd done that, I think. After all, she was the one who brought me up with phrases like Eat while you eat, and play while you play. That's the way to be happy all day. Mealtimes were pretty long drawn out sessions while I'd read at the table and pick at my food. But my grandma was the patient kind, bringing her knitting along while she sat as the passenger of a train I'd drive out of an old bedframe. She'd amaze me by bouncing one of those plastic balls (I had a thing for coloured balls as a kid. My mom would leave me at the toy department while she went to try on her shoes, and when she came back, I'd still be mesmerised by the huge! array! of! coloured! balls!) for more than a hundred times at a go, while I could only manage three or four. But at least, I could count to a hundred.

My grandma told me nap-time stories each afternoon, each began with 一个婆婆，有一个乖孙... (There was once a grandma, who had a obedient granddaughter...). She'd fall asleep soon after, but I'd bounce around the bed and jump from the window grilles across to the bed. The spoilt selfish cretin I was, far from the sweet little girl the teachers encountered at school. Or the obedient girl in her stories, for that matter. It's amazing she never woke up to give me a good walloping, really. I would've deserved it. But when she did wake up, it would be late afternoon, and I'd accompany her to the garden to water the plants. She'd tend to 3 mango trees, hibiscus, a pomegranate plant, okra, roses, ixoras, plenty of leafy plants I never learnt the names of, and shitloads of orchids growing out of coconut husks she'd hung from a pergola in the garden.

A devout Christian, she'd head for prayer sessions over in church, and regularly volunteered her services transcribing sermons. I remember hearing the tapes, with some Chinese pastor's voice droning on and on about... well, religious stuff. She's rewind the tape, press play, stop, and repeat the process. She never used the pause button, for fear it might damage the tape somehow. Those were the days without mp3 recorders, or mini cassettes. Bless her - she'd lug the whole tape recorder, with extra C batteries with her for each sermon session. Looking back, I think those were times she was especially proud of her ability to read and write. An asian woman with a university degree in the 1940s was rare, or so I gather. She told me about recording sessions at Rediffusion, Singapore where she'd read stories in instalments, and I imagined countless kids and housewives tuning in weekly to find out how the story progressed. I was really proud of this particular achievement, though I'd be scared shitless if it was me who had to read and re-enact a story with all the voice-things going on on air. Ratings would plummet for sure, because I had inherited none of my grandmother's story-telling talent.

She was a regular crafter too, with ooodles of yarn (literal as well as figurative) and a lovely old Singer sewing machine that would whirr to life every now and then, usually some mornings just before lunch. My grandmother had a penchant for origami, saving old calendars that were printed on thicker stock to use for folding. While she waited outside for me to finish my piano lessons, she would occupy herself with step-by-step documentations for folding animals, or flowers. I wonder now where those records have gone. But I fear the worst.

Wish I'd learnt more from her when she was around. Her cooking was legendary - at a time when all I cared about were for hamburgers, I challenged my Chinese grandmother to make one, and by god, it was good! Homemade burgers are just different somehow. And homemade burgers made by loving grandmas are, well, just all the more heavenly.

It's creepy, but I still keep the cardigan she was wearing when she took her last breath at the hospital 9 years ago. It hangs from a plushed hanger in my cupboard at home. It was a sickening Wednesday morning I remember only too well. The 5am call from the hospital, the mad rush, the bad waves of nausea that hit me in the car, reaching the ward to find her freshly dead and my aunt crying. My grandfather's howl that followed was unbearable... And the car refusing to start in the hospital car park after that. The rest of the day went by in slow motion. How I managed to make it through the day, I don't know. And all the people who came to pay their respects that night, and the following night, and the next. And how I'd played the piano for the services, hating every minute of it and wishing those people would just go and leave us alone, just the immediate family to be with her. God I bloody hate how insensitively idiotic some people can get wake services.

That said, I have to concede, had I any other siblings, my relationship to my grandmother might have been a different one. It might have been much more diluted if any of those siblings had been male. My grandma was still a traditionalist at heart. She presided over my mom's childhood in a manner befitting of a bigoted tyrant. Age must've softened her. I was her favourite, at least, one of her favourites. If she's still alive today, I'd make sure I would be the favourite. Because I'm competitive that way.

The photo on the hearse, and on her tombstone was cropped from a photo that originally included me as a baby in her arms. It was the nicest photo they found, possibly because she was happiest when she was holding me. Perhaps they shouldn't have cropped me out of that photo. For a part of me surely died when she did.

2007-08-06T15:13:00.000+10:00

reading this post reminded me of one of my worst fears: losing my humpty dumpty. It's a stained gray security pillow shaped like a flattened capsule that, for those who know me, is infested with so much germs that it supports a whole new ecosystem on its own. I have, of course, staunchly refused to let anyone wash, or so much as lay a finger on him. It's my smell, and it makes me happy. A deep whiff and I feel secure again, like a six year old, where nothing else in the world matters.

2007-08-04T15:11:00.000+10:00

The other night, I had the misfortune to catch a glimpse of a guy wee-ing on the steps leading up to the doorway of one of the galleries near RMIT's Storey Hall. And the very next day, I saw this group of kids sitting on those same steps, talking and laughing and completely unaware of what they were sitting on. And it occurred to me how often we might unknowingly sit at a spot with dried-up pee or puke. Of course, this is where I prostrate myself before the heavens for washing powder and the modern conveniences of washing clothes, but I cannot shake the feeling of inadvertently, having sat on something I'd normally make a huge detour to avoid in its fresh state.

I value the cleanliness of my clothes. But that's just me being prudish, anal, and paranoid, I suppose.

2007-08-01T14:15:00.000+10:00

When I watched Ootp a few weeks back, I was pleased with the movable type (literally!) of the Daily Prophet. Might reward myself with a re-watch soon, seeing as I've finally been cleared for examination by the Almighty Panel yesterday. Who'd've thunk doing a Masters would be so goddamned hard? I'm in over my eyes, and I'm all eyes wide shut about it these days. Maybe I'm just r.e.a.l.l.y. slow in a moron kind of way.

Anyways, clearly, there are better things to be done. Movie, canon, fanon. All the important stuff. This runs a close second to Cuaron's POA. Who could let go of that scene with the choir's Something wicked this way comes? I need to remind myself how much I loved the scene where poor ol' Filch gets chocolates. And Fred&George's fireworks dragon. And that lovely fight sequence at the Department of Mysteries. And not enough of Snape on film. And McGonagall. Swoons. And that dastardly 'I must not tell lies' pinkness all over again.

This culled from grrliz. Yet again. Typography is suddenly hott stuff.

And, a random quote from the senior supervisor yesterday: First of August is the birthday of all horses - they all turn a year older, even if they were born the day before. Rrrright. That's how they've got it figured out at the races. She should know, the Saddle Club fan.

I'm kinda fonder of donkeys, if you ask me.

2007-07-31T23:13:00.000+10:00

Omg: is it actually verbalised as omigawd, or pronounced omm-guh?

I've always verbalised it, but realised I could've been doing it wrong all this while as I was randomly trawling the Net some nights ago.

so, omm-guh. that'll save 1 syllable.

2007-07-26T21:19:00.000+10:00

Reminds me of iodine patches used to treat a wound/scab - popular when I was a kid. Every kid and her sister had one sometime or other back in primary school.

Have been spending my time experimenting with Adobe After Effects 7.0. Inspired, thanks to Fredo Viola's Sad Song Video. [via dooce] Tinkering with new software is a great way to generate ideas for various means of presentation. And I love how an entire afternoon can be spent figuring stuff out. There's nothing sad about the song.

The free video tutorials over at Creative Cow have been totally helpful for that. It's amazing how little need there is to stick one's arse into one of those 10-session courses and pay for them these days, when everything's up online at one's convenience. I owe you many, Cows.

Still, nothing crowds out Snapeology. This was such a lovely character study it made me think of Literature class back in Secondary 4...

All right. Let's do the character study of Farmer Boldwood today. We'll start from the girl at the back corner, and work our way down the back row, all the way to the front. Chopchop! Run with me!

That was Ms C. I'm missing her, all of a sudden. Last I heard, she's the principal of some primary school in Singapore. Not one to go for class reunions, I am.

So. My mom excitedly informed me, over Skype, that while she and my dad were at Costco last Saturday, they saw this huge-ass stack of Harry Potter books (published by Scholastic), with nary a crowd around it. Nonchalantly, she picked one up and headed for the checkout counter. How strange is that? Potter-mania strikes in mysterious ways. She hasn't even touched any of the previous six, and here she is, devouring DH! Proud of ya, ma! :) And I hope the jargon and nuances don't get lost on you.

Perhaps, seeing as they are in Taiwan, there would have been more hype had it been the Chinese translation of DH.

2007-07-25T20:34:00.000+10:00

Is it possible to feel happy despite the chill outside and in?

Stared, mesmerised by this illustrative flash animation to Radiohead's Creep, one of my all-time favourite songs. [via dooce]

The part that always got me:

You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You're so fuckin' special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here
I don't belong here

Moving on.
I've started to use caps for my I's and first letters. Might it be easier to read? Might it be that I've grown out of entire entries of lowercases? Might it be signalling some form of transition somewhere else in my life? Can't shake the feeling of being all grown up with the proper spellings, and properly-cased words.

"Stand up for the crazy and stupid". -Walt Whitman
Check on kate spade's 'projects' for more gems.

And here.
Lovely LJ icons, making me almost want to cheat on blogger for awhile.
"Scorpius Malfoy is sorted into Hufflepuff".
.
.
.
.
"What in the name of Merlin's most baggy Y fronts was that about?"
Snorts.

2007-07-22T19:08:00.000+10:00

My Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom is:
Voldemort kills Ron in a scene written whilst Rowling was having an acid trip
Get your Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom

holed myself in yesterday crying and laughing (sometimes simultaneously) over Deathly Hallows. it was good, one of my favourites in the series - a close second to GoF, which might get bumped up to top spot after a re-read.

on the down side, i had to queue for an at hour borders, melbourne central for the book! wth! and my receipt read harry potter and the deathly kids for the version of the cover i wanted - which was rather freaky in a way, come to think of it. was so pissed when the flatmate called from singas and said she'd had the book in her hands already, and was heading home for a read. when i was still stuck somewhere outside the front of the shop 3 doors away from borders.
bloody. chain. bookstore. well, at least i have a free plush owl watching over me. to make up for hedwig.

thoughts:
1/ i thought there would be more to the veil - no?

2/ cried about hedwig. ;..(

3/ dudley made me cry too, at the start. and i thought he'd be the one who 'manages to do magic quite late in life'. but i was mistaken, eh?

4a/ OMG!! SNAPE!!! that's just the kind of misunderstood hero i always fall for. seriously always gets me. and when the flatmate asked earlier if he was dumbledore's or voldy's, i'd told her snape was his own man, too.

4b/ snape killed by nagini? wtf?! wonder if he knew harry was just around the corner too. snape seemed always to be able to sense him around, even under the cloak. cried uncontrollably when he willingly gave his memories (essense of snape!) to the boy-whose-mother-he'd-always-loved. go snarry!

5/ aberforth was a nice surprise.

6/ mcgonagall thanking harry for his gallantry - so charming. glad she didn't die. love her to bits.

7a/ bloody hated the epilogue. was looking for the word 'scar' at what i thought was the last paragraph. when lo and behold, i turned over and there it was. 19 years later. staring me in the face. what was THAT for?! it would've ended nicely without playing up to that bit of harry/ginny and ron/hermione fanfic. wonder whose idea it was to put that in, too.

7b/ draco with a receding hairline? lmao! and what's up with 'scorpius'? and 'albus severus'? they just sound bad. like how new trying-to-be-hip-parents come up with hybrid kids' names like - oh, i don't know, some bastardised form of 'normal' names like janachelle, or chalynn, or estella or something. how annoying.

8/ the 'snape running away from shampoo' line got me so bad i couldn't stop laughing. at about 11pm. alone in the apartment.

9/ cried over fred. how could she? and what will happen to their joke shop?

10/ oddly, i cried over ollivander and gregorovitch as well. don't ask me. i get a bit weepy when old folks get tortured, but they still hold staunchly to what they stand for.

11/ literally bawled bucketfuls over dobby - dobby, who annoyed the hell out of me in CoS - one and the same. harry's torment-to-calm when digging the grave had me in the waterworks too. reminded me of when i buried my dog.

12/ kreacher's bullfrog voice - ha! never liked him much, but that's since changed. could almost see kreacher in a crisp butler's uniform after he got to keep the locket. too bad sirius never saw it in him.

13a/ molly screamed BITCH at bellatrix! lmao!! that was a good one. she was really getting to me at the burrow, during the wedding preparations. didn't think she'd go and kill bella, too! go molly!

13b/ was kinda hoping it was neville who killed bella, though. or better still, neville's gran.

13c/ having said that, neville was totally the bee's knees. wonder if he ever found out how close he might've been to being the 'chosen one' instead.

14/ i think the harry/hermione search for horcruxes was a bit too long drawn. months' worth of camping! gosh. that's too long without a decent toilet, i think.

15/ potterwatch added a nice touch. jumbled signals, passwords and secure locations. very WW II.

16/ oddly, voldy seemed rather subdued towards the end. i'd've thought he'd be a lot more swaggering and impressive if he'd thought he was going to win, but he seemed small-time. to me, at least. and then his death...? was a bit too quiet. anticlimax. too much smart talk going on beforehand.

17/ hermione as bellatrix was just cringeworthy. returning greetings down at diagon alley? bothering to reply? no shit that the goblins smelt a rat up their long hooked noses.

18/ the ginny/harry kiss in her bedroom melted me away. saved, at the right time for once, by won-won. wouldn't have gone anywhere from there then.

19/ what was the 'scene in harry's head at king's cross' about? consulting the dumbledore-oracle was too matrix-like, or at least, that was what was in my head - which is to say, it could've happened that way. the flapping baby was a bit creepy though, so i supposed it balanced things out a bit.

20/ the 'best friends with grindelwald for 2 months' thing seemed out of place. yeah, but no. FOR THE GREATER GOOD? very religiously-political. i liked that we were presented with 1 facet of dumbledore for the first 6 books, and much later, that understanding crumbles and gets slowly rebuilt with another multifaceted one. through a glass darkly, yeah? loved the dumbledore backstory. and slash fic fodder.

21/ fleur was totally boring this time. stripped of veela charms after marriage? love their shell house by the sea, at the end of the world, though. when i grow up, i want me one of those.

22/ luna kicked ass. loved how she answered 'which came first, fire or phoenix' - that's just so her. but the gurdyroots, wrackspurts and crumple horned snorcacks (i am writing all this from memory here, in the studio, so details might get hazed over) of xeno lovegood were a bit of an overkill.

23a/ not too clear on the overall significance of tales of beedle the bard too. couldn't ron and xeno have told the story when they went to visit him? and i had imagined the eye-within-triangle to be in some reference to popular theory on the freemasons at the beginning. and when i'd put the book down for a toilet break, i saw the symbol on the spine. liked how explanations to little details revealed themselves later on in the plot.

24/ loved the protection charms at gringotts safes. now i know where to put my money, if i ever have enough to actually have an account with them.

25/ hermione altering the memories of her parents as different people to live in australia? too sweet and heart-breaking at the same time.

26a/ the taking-turns to wear the locket horcrux was a bit silly. i kept thinking why didn't they just place it in the beaded purse for safekeeping, and save all the trouble of frazzled nerves!

26b/ wearing the locket horcrux around the neck kinda reminded me of lotr. and having it quiver in fear when it sensed imminent destruction? one locket to rule them all, eh, RAB?

27/ mad-eye's death really got to me at the beginning. plus the fact they couldn't find the body afterwards. but i loved how harry buried mad-eye's eye at the tree. that was good closure.

28a/ remus lupin was such a spineless useless twat! remind me why walking out on your wife and kid is a good idea again? glad he's out of the way. but poor li'l teddy! but there's always the grandparents. jkr's up to date, yes?

28b/ haven't really been a huge tonks fan. but it blossomed with natalia tena as the screen version. so i guess i'm a bit sad she's gone now...

29/ that's a really cool way to get into the ravenclaw commonroom. i was most impressed. i'd get left outside all the time, for sure. but then again, i wouldn't have been sorted into ravenclaw to begin with. 'wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure'. reeeeeaaaally.

30/ the harry-as-horcrux thing was too bad to be true. even as an accidental horcrux. couldn't voldy have chosen something else? when i first read, i thought the ruins of the potters' house at godric's hollow had become the horcrux instead of the poor scarred baby. but then, the harry-as-horcrux theory would've been needed to fit in with explanations for parselmouth and flashes into a-day-in-voldy's-life bits, i suppose.

31/ anyone else got the creeps at bathilda bagshot's rotting house? and the encounter with batty herself? i did.

will be needing a break before the next re-read. it was pretty full-on yesterday: preparing to start reading was almost ritualistic. i wanted to savour rather than rush through the last book. and i actually managed to put it down twice to prepare meals - something i'd never done with the previous ones. i'd placed the book on the counter and read as i cooked, though. so, technically i was still reading. just at a slower pace.

watched rose troche's the safety of objects amd greg araki's mysterious skin after reading DH last night. great twisted end to a twisted day. loved spending it away from the studio. and at home. :)

2007-07-12T15:52:00.000+10:00

... Toklas' [culinary lanes] meandered back to the heyday deliciousness of pre-war France, her and Stein's adopted country, to a time when English cooking, declined from its Beeton peak, still languished as meat cooked to the consistency of old carpet and two veg whose identity dissolved into the water they were boiled in."

- foreword to the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, by Maureen Duffy

i had such a laugh over this.
i don't know - due, perhaps, to my dry english humour.
have no idea how that made its way into my nonsensical head.
no laughs, though, when i ploughed my way through two chapters of gertrude stein's narcissistic the autobiography of alice b. toklas
and. gave. up.
might give her alphabets and birthdays a swing, though.

finally found (and bought) the alice b toklas cookbook, as mentioned.
for a song to the tune of AUD10!
funny how, when i'm not actively looking for books, they seem to find me instead.
says a bit about life too, surely.

last saturday it was pouring all day - too bad i didn't find any stray kitties or pups, or i'd've taken them home for a good pampering and indefinite period of being mine.
but i digress.
it was pouring so bad, that if there darkened bits of splashes showing up on my shoes within 15 minutes, it was nothing compared to the soggy clumps they were by the end of my 4hour walk.
i felt relatively protected under my umba-rella-ella-ella eh eh eh.
heh. it's not my fault. i blame iTunes. and youtube.

there was nothing more that could dampen my mood after i chanced upon this cosy lovely secondhand bookstore/treasure trove on george street in brunswick.
gah!
and i was offered an orange dinosaur gummy by the nice lady too.
"sugars while you browse?" she smiled as she proffered a bowl of sweets.
you had me a 'sugars', honey. :)
or, you had me at the endless shelves of lovely books.
which is rather, y'know, the same.

and i went to see ann shelton's photographs of a collection of books.
to scale.
it blew my mind.
i'd much rather have the real thing, thanks.
but not on an art student's budget.
and even less - perish the thought of having to move 'the real thing' from one rental property to another.

but i'd like shelves and shelves of books from floor to ceiling.
in my house.
when i grow up (i'll be stable).

can you imagine the size of the stencil that was used to create that bit of art on the wall?
and almost half a can of spray paint, i reckon!
sheesh! but the beauty!

i think i buy lots of books about cookbooks for a girl who subsists mainly on junk food.
am currently reading
fish, flesh and good red herring by alice thomas ellis
the alice b. toklas cookbook by (who else but) alice b. toklas
and not starting on anything else in anticipation for deathly hallows.

oh! and can i stop gushing over the order of the phoenix already?
as a film which doesn't do justice to the book, i still put my money on re-watching this at the cinema.
perhaps next week?
or when my penultimate presentation is over end-july?
*hopeful
hate it when work/deadlines gets in the way of play.

2007-07-07T01:32:00.000+10:00

this morning, i saw my first sunrise in a coupl'a years.
oddly, that makes me sound vampirish!
and gives me a craving to devour anne rice's armand again!
ok. i'm just cheap.
as evidenced from the cheap chocolates i consume.
no high-class claire tham books for me.
bring on harry potter and the deathly hallows!

am getting old. i can feel it.
my eyeballs are so dry they could be shrinking.
or wrinkled like raisins. eew. gross.

no sleep since thursday morning... that's coming to 40hrs now.
wow. back in lasalle, it used to be that i could pull around 3 or 4 all-nighters before collapsing.
and now, i'm a sorry heap by midday, before the fourth round of java rush hits me.

nicked this recipe for bittersweet choc-coated pretzels unabashedly from bowb.
it was freaking addictive, man!
choc, and the surprise of an occasional flake of salt - yummers, i tell ya!
will make me another batch really soon.
this weekend?

and the obligatory alien-looking one that somehow always happens to me.
this is going to be the first free weekend i have since the flatmate left about 2 months back.
and also, the first two days i'll actually give the studio a miss!
gosh, what if i have withdrawal symptoms?!
what'll i do?!
heh.
i'll just go stuff myself silly with junk and watch dvds to get over it!

or visit craft/design markets.
melbs is inundated with them this weekend.
go me!

2007-07-04T15:46:00.000+10:00

create your own simpsons avatar here.

this cracked me up big time.
it's hard to stifle laughter with all the other people around me in the studio.
i'm supposed to be working my ass off in here... not.

odd how the simpsons are HUGE here in australia.
i think the craze for them died down in singas at least a decade back now.
must be the whole self-deprecating humour and support for the underdog thingo going on.

was torn between creating a worlds-apart alter-ego, or showing off the daggy hair and clothes i really have.
except i'm neither that shapely, nor are my boobs that huge.
and besides not owning a pair of orange pants, this is pretty much go for me.
not much diffy between a decked-up night out and work-clothes, really.

it's funny how, if i were really to be on a weight-loss regime, this would not even look remotely appetising.
but, since i'm on the underweight side, this seems a yum brekkie to have.
the hommus dip is quite addictive - farts notwithstanding.
for a self-professed meatarian, it's surprisingly easy to start getting used to brekkies like these.

i read a few days ago that the more stressed you are about weight-gain, the more likely you'll be to actually gain it!
so, no worries there.
let the chocolates and krispy kreme doughnuts roll up, then!
my current chocs of choice are M&M's, Maltesers, and Cadbury Fruit&Nut.
call me common, but nothing beats the sugar-rush from these cheap eats.
brain food for thesis-writing - i might just add them to my ackowledgements when i'm done, too.

2007-07-01T21:23:00.000+10:00

forgive me, god of internet, for i have sinned.
three dry months.
while my other friends have either added-on twitter or switched to password-enabled versions of twitter.

the thesis shall keep me away no longer.
despite the fact that it's been begging for three complete re-writes.
and that i am working on major overhaul til 3am these nights.
it's embarrassing my first language happens to be english, really.

since the flatmate headed back for singas, i have been paranoid about
1. falling in the bathtub, and not being discovered til it's too late.
2. accidentally leaving the gas switched on.
3. eggs, fruit and veg going bad in the fridge (they still do; the rest haven't happened yet).

so i sit in my studio, blogging when i'm supposed to be writing an introduction.
with air-conditioning so warm i can afford to wear a tank-top in winter.
a luxury, really, besides that it lulls me to sleep.
and my batch of margaret river chocolate company chocs - a really thoughtful giftie from N turns into a gooey mush between my fingers.
this is not supposed to happen in the mid of a melburnian winter.

and neither are watermelons supposed to make an appearance in july, i think, but they have.
AUD6 was spent on 2kg of lovely watermelon, and consumed in a single sitting.
a paradox: watermelons cool you down, but vodka-watermelons warm you up.

it is, as the weather bureau says, a wintery day with fresh northwesterlies.

2007-04-04T14:03:00.000+10:00

have finally succumbed to my auntie-fied side and went for the annual flower and garden show last week. also, it is much more convenient this year because it is just up the street from where i stay. there were so many gardening fanatics over there, and i overheard retirees filled with a renewed resolve to beautify their gardens after being inspired by what they saw. there were flowers - all kinds (even bouganvilleas, that made me rather homesick for singas) and it is apparently 'bulb season' right now. not all bulbs - just daffodils, gladioli, tulips (somehow, i saw so many it was reminiscent of holland) and hyacinths. 2 packets of hyacinth bulbs were bought in happy anticipation of a lovely perfumed house come winter/spring. i hope there is such a thing as fools' luck, because i have incredibly un-green fingers, and have as a result killed just about as many plants as i've planted.

easter is coming, and the stores are crammed with chicks, bunnies, eggs and above all, chocolate. a documentary on confectionary and its history i watched last week informed me that easter - before religious connotations had been attached, had originally been a festival to celebrate Ishtar, the goddess of fertility. and it was celebrated in spring: a season for renewed life which spring brings. oddly enough, over in this hemisphere, while the plants are starting to die down, we seem to scramble for the last remnants of colour, chocolate and life. i suppose it is a timely reminder anyhow, for some pessimists in the crowd.

i have decided to jump on the bandwagon of easter festivities this year, and am eagerly looking forward to dyeing eggs and sending the reluctant flatmate on an egg-hunt come friday! i remember going on egg-hunts as a kid. it was on a sunday morning before the family headed out for church that my dad would - not artfully as much as scatter foil-wrapped chocolate eggs in the garden for me to happily chance upon. not much competition there, as i was an only child. so i got to keep 100% of the spoils, or rather loot unless i decided to share them around (which happened often because hey, i am a nice kid like that).

so. if all goes well with the egg-dyeing, there will be pictures to post in the near future. unless the procrastination-monster gets the better of me yet again. i am excited about the hyacinths too, and hope fervently they will grow to bloom like the ones in the picture above.

the flatmate's bored

2007-02-23T19:37:00.000+11:00

and i have requested her to draw me an elephant on my toe. and she complied.

i have slogged for close to 6 hours, and all i've come up with is 449 words that describes the organisation of my thesis in a satisfactory way.

where... is... the... justice??!!

why not

2007-02-21T01:06:00.000+11:00

that's the view outside, from where i am seated happily in the louis matheson library at monash uni. strange that i'd be happy to take a half-hour drive out of the city to be inside some old crumbly building, contented, and doing my work. this is even more odd because i have never spent more than an hour at a go within the old crumbly library of rmit, which also happens to be the university i'm currently enrolled at. which also happens to be 2 strollable blocks away.

it is not so much that the building and shelves that are falling apart, but what they contain within them that draws me to the library. i love the smell of old, stashed up books - and it has recently been pointed out to me that it reminds one of a prolonged musty whiff of leftover sour-ish fart, but that doesn't deter me at all. the books i want keep getting borrowed or put on hold by someone else at the rmit library, while the library at monash has got all the books i need. and with 5 storeys, there are endless cubicled desks i can hole myself up at and get stuff done. i feel smart and productive and efficient at the expense of a half-hour drive.

sitting at my desk, i notice and begin to feel comforted by the droning whirr of the air-conditioning duct. it intrigues me that there have been so many books published that surely not all have been borrowed and perused. if books had feelings, i wonder how they'd react to, literally, being left on the shelf.

and then i notice, as i slip my student card back into my wallet, that the friendship band a friend had once made for me is showing signs of fraying. that is an understatement, actually. the frayed portion is barely hanging by 2 threads. it's been there ten years now, which attests to the amount of time i have used this wallet, and have not removed the band that says 'god's baby'. i could never make it out, but the friend who made it insists it's there. it is a remnant of the bygone churchie days, and i'm sorry to tell you, H, that i need to remove it for safe(r)keeping now. thanks for making that constant reminder.

ugliness not

2007-02-19T00:53:00.000+11:00

while watching ugly betty on the telly tonight, me and the flatmate were commenting on how roles that seemed much more characterful had to be 'ugly'. it seemed the 'real' talent of an actress got clouded when she was too pretty. nicole kidman had to have a prosthetic nose to play virginia woolf in the hours. and hilary swank in million dollar baby, and boys don't cry? is plain-ness more acceptable, or familiar? somehow, a physical flaw needs to be made up by a powerful trait in personality before a character becomes credible.

and i wonder why that is, that i tend to identify with flawed characters much more readily.

purpose?

2007-02-15T21:21:00.000+11:00

i am in the midst of creating a horcrux. the durable visual record is splitting my soul, and a bit of it will be stored in the words and efforts of the artifact. if it is preserved, a part of me will live on. used for the safekeeping of a fragment of my soul, i will be severely weakened if the artifact were to be destroyed.

and there is a deadline for the torturous process to come to an end, and that's a grand ol' 6 weeks away. and oh, doesn't the clock tick so.

one of the supervisors have suggested creating a research blog. i've resisted this idea for many months now, partly because i didn't want everyone and anyone to see just how silly i really was. but now, it's up for all and sundry to see, and comment, and, perhaps, ridicule? here it is.

it is a bold step for a person often accused (they're right, i know) of being too secretive. or inarticulate. or both.

2007-01-17T22:50:00.000+11:00

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eloquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man - either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

magically, i've managed to neglect blogging yet again. for another 3-something months. and now i am back where my last post left off... in melbourne. again. other than the last 3 months passing by too quickly, and me zipping from melbourne back to singapore, and then to taiwan, back to singapore and then melbourne again, nothing much has happened. nothing very eventful, other than being able to catch up with friends back home, and sipping my ice-blended mocha back at beans. it baffles me that coffee-loving melbourne hasn't got good kick-ass ice-blended mocha! hello...? it's summer over here.

this last time back home has been a very welcome (though shortlived) change for me. away from work though it stole over with me somewhere in my backpack on the airplane. it's a sad vacation when you have to be bothered with work, so i learnt to ignore it. and it's now, again, poking its insistent head out and yelling to be tended to. like a baby, almost. ack. puts me off having any in the near or far future. which brings me to the startling reality that everyone, and i mean everyone seems to be trying for a baby, or merrily popping babies out into the world. friends, relatives, and even total strangers on the road are geared out in prams, baby blankets and milk bottles. frankly, i'm not a baby-loving person - never have been, and i doubt i will ever be one. i have no idea how to deal with blubbering, wide-eyed little versions of humans. perhaps i'm selfish, but at least there's honesty in the last claim. so. baby-toting people, my hearty congratulations to you and your happy additions, but i know, for a fact, that i'd be more enthusiastic if it were a puppy. or kitten. heh.

this new year, i think there was a conscious resolve toward not making resolutions. the wine and cheese and lovely fireworks that burst forth from taipei's 101 blew the thoughts of resolution-making too far away to be bothered with. but now, 17 days into '07, there seems to be a nagging need for something i should be reminded to do this coming year. i've confined it to one: to write more snailmail. it's a happy thing to send and to receive. :)

happy new year, all. better a late wish than never.

sproingy springy spring

2006-11-08T23:44:00.000+11:00

over at borders, i sat comfortably in an armchair, visually devouring magazines because i'm ~~too stingy to buy them~~ an artist suffering financially for my craft. i was suckered into making these marshmallow ghosties to surprise the flatmate for halloween last week, after i went all goo-goo-ga-ga over this image from martha stewart's october living magazine. yeah, i actually browse those auntiefied magazines, thanks very much. the boy next to me sat leafing through some motorcycle glossies, which added to the auntieness. the ghosties were yum, as all grilled marshmallows are - though their beady candy eyes begged us for mercy. felt quite bad eating them with such gusto, like the usual guilt that accompanies my greedy feasting on the bodies of easter bunnies. to nibble on the ears first, or start with the tail?

amidst the post-presentation activities, the rains came. much needed by the beleaguered aussie farmers. i heard it coming down hard on the roof above me, and snuggled deeper into my duvet. it was gray all day, and i stayed indoors snug and warm. it is a luxurious feeling to be safely indoors.

observing other postgrad candidates' examinations, i must admit to being a little green-eyed when they have gone well. is it so bad to wish that they don't use up all the good karma for exams, so that when it's my turn next year, i might have a small chance? i am happy for them, truly, i am. and i heartily tell them so afterwards, with hugs, flowers, smiles and a weight in my heart. jealous bastards don't get far in life, i'm sure, but is it just so bad to crave others' success?

the interior: the inside, safely being within. shelter and comfort and intimacy. sunning the winter blanket can only mean one thing (besides bed bugs, that is): it heralds the warm weather. when the outside is harsh or discomforting, the inside protects and tucks a person away, and hides her til she is again ready to face the outside. there used to be a game i played, creating a canopy of blankets over my grandmother's pillows and books. and while she busied herself writing on the bed, i believed she couldn't see me when i disappeared into my kingdom.

besides the change from hearty breakfast toasties, and stews and filling hot soups, warm weather brings about lighter foods like cereal and milk, and salads. what looked like a slug amongst our leafy greens turned out only to be an anchovy in disguise. smoked anchovies are quite the thing with our salads and pastas these days - i'm starting to try out, and actually like some stuff i'd normally never touch back in singapore. oh, but i am counting down the days til i reach the sunny, tropical, humid shores of home.