of times past

I’ve been looking through hundreds of old photographs recently and I’ve come across some really funny and interesting ones. I came away with a few insights, opinions and plain old facts from looking at times I have no memory of:

It seems I was a big fan of fancy dress parties which I suppose for some childhood trauma reason explains my utter dislike for them now. I went as Spiderman and Superman (for which mother and father dearest got suits specifically made for me), a pirate and a vampire. By my judgment, I think I look awesomely cute (and thin) as Spiderman and Superman. As a pirate, I was just beginning to look like a fat, annoying ten year old kid and as a vampire I was a fat, annoying 12 year old with toothpaste smeared all over my face and with fake fangs lodged into my mouth. I also had lipstick all over my mouth. This does not bring back good memories because I thought I looked awesome but my cousin who was dressed as an air stewardess (of course she was authentically marked with a tray of toffees) got short listed and I didn’t. Thankfully she didn’t win.

The Mirpuri household was no stranger to parties of any kind. All the kids got elaborate celebrations for their birthdays. They were characterized by lots of yummy food (think fish cutlets, marshmallows, cute sandwiches, fabulous Indian sweets, ribbon cake!!!!!!!), lots of kids we liked and disliked (but liked mostly because they came bearing presents) and lots and lots of adults trying to hone their skills in appearing interested in their kids while totally indulging themselves in gossip (among the aunties) and a little smattering of booze (among uncles). The best part of birthdays- and this I do remember- was when the cake was cut. This was a sacred moment for the Mirpuri’s because just before the birthday celebration, all of us used to get together and cut up crepe paper (in ALL the colours) and spread them out on the fan just above where the cake would be cut. So when the birthday boy/girl cut the cake and blew out the candle, the fan would be turned on and every single person, young, middle-aged and old would delight in the beautiful sensation of seeing a mini New Year’s celebration erupt in a crepe paper blizzard.

Ok wait a minute. Am I romanticizing? I am, I am. Fuck off.

On the subject of birthdays and birthday cakes, I’ve had several that might shock, impress or disgust. Through these photographs I realized that the Strawberry Shortcake Girl birthday cake I always thought was my sister’s was actually mine! What were my parents thinking? Perhaps I really liked her? Dear God. Thankfully it was not a Strawberry Shortcake Girl theme party. On the infinitely more macho side, my 8th was the best birthday ever. It was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme party and around 120 people were invited. Only about 95-100 turned up and you should have seen the bed which was designated the receptacle for all the presents. Pure treasure! The cake was one of the Turtles (if this was MTV’s My Super Sixteen, I would have insisted on having 4 separate turtle cakes but seeing I was only 8, and not on the show, that request would surely have been met with an awkward silence and then a thundering slap). The decorations were all TMNT themed and made by my talented sister. I even had a piñata filled with all manner of sweets, rubber insects (which were the RAGE in 1992) and whistles bought wholesale from the then exciting and non-terrorized Pettah. Other cakes immortalized on fading hard copy photography (and now saved by the glory of the smart fix button) are a toy train and lots of cakes with peaches and/or strawberries on them.

There are two, strangely unembarrassing photographs of me being bathed naked at possibly age 1 or so. You can see everything. I must say, I was a very well endowed baby. Well among babies anyway. Not that I know anything about such standards. Such baths were usually carried out by our dearest granny a.k.a Bigmama a.k.a Bigma in a pink basin (bought from Phoenix where everyone who was anyone bought their plastic buckets from) with a cleaned out coconut shell. Ah the life.

That’s it for now but there are some memories I wish had been captured on camera. I wish there were some photos of me gargling after lunch while still being enthralled by the hindi movie on television, so much so, that instead of spitting into the bowl, I spit on my sister. I also wish there were pictures of my cry-baby face when sister dearest flung a glass of Sprite into my face for not giving her the correct message left by her friend. Oh, and I wish there were pictures of my mum’s reaction when, in a moment of utter brilliance, I unscrew the grills on the windows in the room she has locked me in coz I was being a pain in the arse and sneak out through the balcony into the shrine where she is praying and going…BOO and scaring the bejesus out of her.

I am so fucking glad that, as time goes by, I am left with nothing but good memories.

magical thinking?

Sunday night. Whether you are working or as free as a bird (like me), Sunday nights always have their own little touch of melancholy attached to it. I don’t have work to do tomorrow but somehow I’m just filled with a little bit of foreboding about the week ahead. Maybe I’m afraid that my holiday is rushing by too fast. It’s already a week since I’ve been home and it’s scary that soon enough, I will have only one day in Singapore to get my life in gear for a completely new job. Ah well. It’s still 3 weeks away. :)

Recent happenings:

Friend’s birthday celebration. It was quite refreshing to attend a dear friend’s 24th birthday celebration and not be tempted by the 3-4 different types of alcohol making the rounds. This does not mean that I resisted the temptation to drink the said liquids and that it was a victory my conscience was proud of but because the abstinence was caused by extraneous factors such as the said liquids being conspicuous in their absence. However, I had a brilliant time socializing with people I barely knew and bitching and perving about them with people I did know. My friend’s mother had cooked a delicious Sinhalese meal and we stuffed ourselves to the point of not being able to take much of the equally delicious chocolate mousse and strawberry jelly. Many pictures were taken (with people screaming incessantly at me to show my teeth) after which a few of us retired to one of the more happening (!!) places in Colombo (read: Coffee Stop @ Cinnamon Grand) to smoke, drink coffee and eat cake.

Was invited to be seen by my sister’s boyfriend’s family at their house on Sunday evening. I was a bit nervous about this encounter but it turned out perfectly well and I am sure they loved me. Ha ha. My sister always scolds me for looking and being really unfriendly but I think I proved her wrong this time. Again, it was all about the food with both my sister and I being stuffed with chicken kebabs, dhai vada and fried chicken. After making a killing on that we were served with vanilla ice cream with lychees. Simple stuff like this always makes me feel soooo good. How can one choose tiramisu’s and crème brulee’s when there is always the option of eating plain ol’ strawberry or vanilla ice cream with some fruit??

Was gifted a new phone by sister and mother. Early birthday present apparently. Seriously, I don’t deserve them. It’s a beautiful ultra thin Samsung phone and I hope we are going to be really happy together.

Finished The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. The author constructs and reconstructs her feelings of grief following her husband’s sudden death while her daughter is lying in a coma due to septic shock. She uses the words magical thinking to describe her feelings of insantiy and denial that led her to believe that her husband would come back even after she was told he was dead. B+

silent disappearance

There’s a line in the book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini that I keep thinking about every few hours. It occurs on Page 329 on the Bloomsbury edition:

...Then I realized something. That last thought had brought no sting with it.....I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

I will this to be true. I want to wake up one day in the near future and not feel that life is a chore. I want to not feel that the only the reason I am waking up is because if I don’t, I will go hungry. I want to not feel that my family will be let down because I am trying to pursue a life that cannot be shared with them. But most of all, I just want the pain to pack up and leave, unannounced in the middle of the night.

the motherland

Back in Colombo after ten whole months! The last two days has been such a blur. Friday night was a friend’s birthday. Turned out not to be a drunken mess. Had a decent time because some old school friends were in town for a few days and it was brilliant to catch up drunkenly in those few hours. Saturday only picked up in the evening when I met up with a few friends for some shopping (bought The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri!!), dinner and eventually Russell Peters. The show was good shit and although I was not rolling down the aisles, it was some good entertainment. Went bowling after and won both games! Haha. Not particularly something to be crazy-happy about but impending dread was washing over me at that time, so winning was, admittedly, a mood raiser. Would I miss being in Singapore? Would I miss my friends? I hope I won’t cry etc. etc. Hope home is alright, hope sister and mother are getting along, hope everyone’s health is good, hope the dynamic with school friends is not fucked up… Ugh.

Anyway, being back has been pretty decent, so far. I got a grand welcome from my sister who somehow managed to keep the whole thing a surprise for my mum. Cake, flowers and a welcome home banner, the whole works! I am such a spoilt, ungrateful brat. I really do not deserve a family like this. Grandmother and grand aunt were completely bewildered to see me and kept saying, ‘why in hell did you want to surprise us?’

So far I’ve met up with a few friends (actually all of whom I planned to meet), eaten two Chinese take out dinners, two bona-fide Sindhi meals, had two cups of tea, had two B&H smokes (heaven!), had one mocha classic (resignedly accepted by me when original order of latte classic was messed up) and had one fight each with both mum and sister.

Oh yes, Colombo looks like and feels war torn at night. We cannot park our cars on the sides of roads anymore (even in previously designated parking spaces) because of random claymore bombs being planted in unmanned vehicles and thereby representing a threat to the public. The cops are swarming everywhere. During a short 40 minute drive with a friend, got copped a total of 4 times. The Galle Face Green has been fenced in so that no one can enter (apparently it’s a danger for the army camp situated right opposite Galle Face). Depressing alright but there’s something about Colombo that still refreshes me and I am glad for that.

Fuck world peace! As long as my country gets the peace it deserves, I will be happy.

Apologies for such a harried, what-is-the-point kind of post.

hoping

My last day at work was on October 2nd and since then I have just been suffering the abominable boredom one feels when one is suddenly jobless after 8 months. It doesn’t help that noisy construction work wakes me up from the numbness of sleep. It also doesn’t help that all I want to do is sleep. Midmorning sleep only comes in fitful bursts and leaves me entirely dissatisfied and restless.

Anyway, I have been shopping in fits and bursts (parallels!!!!) with a long lost (and now found) friend and retail therapy has been good. I go back in less than 4 days but it seems so far away. Lots of socialization to be done unfortunately (cannot be avoided and I think for my sake, has to be done). My life is full of hope and I’m hoping it’s not all in vain.

I also went for the most satisfying meal of my life. Brazilian. It was a non-date date kind of thing. It was also the most fun I've had in a long time post tummy-ache nonwithstanding. Thank you saf. My turn next time.

Anyway, I go back Oct 8th and come back to a Research Analyst job on Nov 5th. Woot.

making myself happy

hogwash. absolute hogwash.

Anyway…….I’m baccccccccccccck! Not for long though! I am at my soon-to-be-ex office and typing this out during lunch break. Lots and lots has happened since the last time I blogged but I am going to refrain from launching into the vast stretch of barren emotional wasteland that the last two months (almost) has been. Ahhh, nothing like a dramatic (and morose) sentence like that to set the tone of this post. Woot woot! Unnecessary, over compensated verbosity was always my thing don’t you know?

Anyhow, I am going back home to dearest Colombo, Sri Lanka. The pretentious bitches back home better be prepared for my arrival! Actually they won’t! Ha ha. It is, after all, a surprise visit. Well not so much, if you read this. But I ain’t gonna reveal the dates biyatch. I must, however, insert a disclaimer that since the surprise is mostly for my mother she is not a pretentious bitch. I mean, all mothers are biyatches once in a while, but are we not biyatch-y children once in a while too? I will not appreciate anyone coming up to me and saying they have never thought of their mother as a biyatch at least once in their lives. I need to know I am human. Ok so mothers out there, you guys ruleeeeeez.

I love my mother btw, fyi.

I have a new job that will start immediately when I get back. It is a market research job and it’s something I am looking forward to dabble in. This is something I can see myself making a career out of but I will NOT romanticize about the job. Woot woot! I am just happy that it’s something I am interested in. I could say I am passionate about it, and I very well could be, but who knows with these things. I am a disillusioned man these days.

Movies I have watched recently:

The Squid and the Whale A-
The Family Stone B
Keeping Mum B
Friends with Money B+
Devil wears Prada B
The Break Up A-
Hard Candy B+
Thank you for Smoking A-

I’m sure there are more; y’know, so many movies, so little time to blog about them. Anyway, any of the above will give you reasonably good entertainment so do, really do, go fantastically, fantabulously wild with them.

Random things that I have thought about recently:

The value of virginity.

Of course if you are 12 or something, keeping your virginity is the only way to go. But I say, fuck it if you are above 18. The first time, although planned gloriously in your head is always a ruinous experience. So yeah, just fuck it and have sex and be protected at all times. Hump like rabbits and keep the doctor away. I personally do not have a glamorous sex life by any standards but I am glad that the big V was lost when I was only just a ‘wee’ one. FOUR YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But if you’ve held out because you share a strong belief in the power of celibacy, then more power to you my friend. Also do not fall in love with your first sexual partner!!!!! Never never!!!! It is dangerous and disastrous to your physical and mental state. Also, do not fall in love with lots of other people.

Religious beliefs.

Certain recent events have forced me to think about what kind of religious beliefs I have. I don’t believe I have any actually. Oh I’m Hindu and pray the Hndu prayers and all that but I’ve been preached a very general kind of Hinduism over the course of my 22 years and I don’t believe I’ve grown particularly attached to it. I’m not not fond of it but I’ve just taken it for granted that yep God exists and I just don’t think about it anymore. I’m a very irreverent person but I do have a respectful side lurking inside of me. Lurking just below the desire to make funny jokes of course. Laughing, my friends, is the new religion. Cue: chuckle.

Grey’s Anatomy.

This show, my dearest friends is awesome. Many a day I have woken up in panic because I think I’ve missed my first surgery of the day. Many a day I have sat in front of my computer and held up my hands just like a surgeon would- partially outstretched, ready for action- and wished I was in that show. As a screen writer of course. Psshhh. Many a day I have pretended that all my friends were interns and I was the Dr. McDreamy. I tell myself I cannot have everything in life and I must, really must, be satisfied with being just McDreamy and stop complaining that I am not a surgeon or an intern. It’s a sad life. Beauty is a curse for your information.

Oh, unfortunately, I must stop now.

Life beckons.

relations, chaperones and foood!

I resigned from my job last week (Friday). It wasn’t nearly as traumatizing as I thought it would be, but I did get a very bad case of the pre-jitters. It was almost like a pre-exam experience from hell. Fortunately, everything went well and if things continue to do so (go well), I should be out of my first job on the 2nd of October 2006. I never expected this to happen to me and it’s disillusioning as fuck but… like everything in life, I need to deal with it and try to move forward. Well at least that is the right thing to say to oneself anyway.

Anyway, the weekend was an interesting one. Not much in the way of actual, old-fashioned, lie-down rest but still quite relaxing. After work on Friday, met up for dinner with a few friends at Clark Quay and had a drink afterwards (notice that the all important word is being used in the singular). The classic humid, balmy, sticky Singapore heat sucked all our remaining energy out and sent us packing home. I did venture out after that for a bit, but again, the heat brought me back to my air conditioned haven.

Saturday, I got to relax till late afternoon after which I met up with my cousin (BBA freshman at NUS; woo hoo!) and another relative of mine from Bangalore. We gravitated again towards Clark Quay where we ended up having dinner at Tapas Tree. The food was bloody good. The portions were small but if you are willing to spend about 30-35 dollars on dinner, then you will enjoy the spicy and sometimes decadent food. After dinner I rushed off to a friends’ housewarming/belated birthday party. This was FUN! For a while I mingled around and spoke about working life with people I didn’t really know too well. Sigh. The Life of an Adult. All this was shot to hell because we started playing a board game called Taboo! Two hours of absolute chaos went by in a flash and the only reason we wrapped up was because the security guard wanted us out of there.

Unfortunately, my night did not end there. Hit the clubs baby! I didn’t have a very good time but a part of me did not want to go home (which has become an air-conditioned land of brooding and resentment) so I ended up partying till 4am. However, not much alcohol consumption so it wasn’t all that bad.

I wrote all this stuff above on Sunday but fell asleep before I could write about it!! So here I am, on a Monday afternoon, at work, typing out the remaining details about my weekend.

Pavs’ mother is in Singapore again for her dearest daughter’s graduation from Art School (it’s Confidential babay) and she invited us over for lunch. My lovely, acerbic flatmate, Anirudh ‘all about the innocuous hate’ Natarajan and I dragged our asses to Potong Pasir (hereinafter referred to as PP) where we were served an amazing, spicy, Indian FEAST!!!!!!! Mother’s are awesome man. So, yeah, Nishi, Pavs, Shradha, Anirudh, Shiny, Aunty Oranya (Shiny’s mater), Aunty Elder-Pavs and I had a good ‘ol spend the day at PP. After lunch, we pottered around with our full stomachs until we finally settled on Nishi’s bed where we had coffee and bitched about everything in life and one person… tee hee.

No choice lah, after that, had to go home wan. Got work tomolo wah.

new

Empathy can mess with your head. The act of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes-despite the presumption behind the thought-can open you to a world of frightening revelations. How can anyone feel the way I do? How can anyone be that dumb?

I know I am behaving in a way that is so typical of me but quite uncommon in its extremity. I can no longer have fun. In short, I am becoming or have already become a bore. I’m also paranoid. The reasons for paranoia are by implication something that is unfounded but let’s just say they aren’t (unfounded)….. what then? What if my friends really think of this as a problem I have invented and have heard enough of it? What if I feel the need to talk about it?

Everyone has a threshold but apparently every time I feel I have reached a new low, and that I will soon bounce back, I slide down to something that feels infinitely worse.

I’m not a pessimist but when you feel drained, exhausted, and completely beaten down, you tend to expect more and consequently expect to feel worse. Everything feels new, even though it isn’t and new isn’t necessarily good. Sometimes new means you feel the novelty of the situation again as if you have never been through it before and never learnt a lesson.

dark chocolate

Having my mum and sister visit me in Singapore was one hell of an experience. Their arrival really did bring back some much needed colour into my life but by the time they left, although exhausted and kinda relieved I would be getting back into routine, I felt a rather deep sadness settle over me. But anyway, some of the highlights of the trip were:

The graduation ceremony itself. There is something quite gratifying about seeing your family so proud of you.

Graduation night dinner. Although quite tired out from the day’s proceedings, we had a good meal at a restaurant in Holland Village. The starters were bloody yum. Go check out Michelangelo’s! After some simple dessert from good ol’ Haägen Dazs, mum and sister were ready to retire. So I met up with a friend for drinks. To be dramatic, confronted the pain that had been crippling me the last few days. It felt good but only momentarily. I am glad I did it though coz in my delusional mind I felt I could replace love (infatuation) with appreciation. Boy, I sound creepy when I post stuff like this.

Shopping! I got the privilege of buying myself a wallet, a pair of jeans, tons of new boxers, socks, a pair of trousers, two ties, two shirts, a book shelf, three bottles of perfumes, new curtains, and an iron. All three of us were extremely materialistic over the few days they were here and it was brilliant! Singapore is quite the joyous place when you have the cash. Or maxed out credit cards.

Ordering room service and chilling in the room with them. It was all very comfortable. Almost like being at home, except that our bedrooms and bathrooms at home are not quite as sophisticated. And the people serving you are not annoying women clamouring for the TV remote to watch their favourite Tamil programs.

Going for a movie with my mother and Shashin and Shiny. We watched the Mistress of Spices which was a terrible movie but it was kinda nice to have a low profile night. I did get mistaken for Shashin’s DAD, but that’s something I do not want to dwell over. Anyway, mother dearest was tired after the movie, so we dropped her off and promptly went to Zouk Wine Bar. Had 4 jugs of raspberry vodka with 7-up and staggered back to hotel room quite hammered. Luckily mother dearest was asleep and I used all my skills in stealth to steal into the room unnoticed.

Yep, that’s it! Both of them are back home now and we’ve gone back into our respective routines but the first chance I get to go back home, I will be on that flight!

Oh! I almost forgot! I shifted out to another apartment. It’s located in a nice part of the Central Business District and my new flat mates are Anirudh and Kimberley. It was quite the nightmare to move but I think we have all settled in now. Bathrooms are particularly horrendous though. Ah well, can’t get everything though. Even though nicer bathrooms in a slightly further off location would have been great but who am I to argue? The be all and end all of moving into a new place is that you must have nice bathrooms. That’s a lesson worth learning and mistake not to be repeated.

Anyway about mum sister being here in Singapore….woo hoo!

blogging in peace

Feeling angst has become a way of life these days. I think it has directly contributed to why I have not posted anything on this blog for so long. Hopefully, now, since everything is settling down and/or becoming a necessity for me to come to terms with, I can start blogging again in peace.

Lots of stuff has been happening lately but if I don’t first talk about the movies I have watched (and not made a record of) I would feel as if I was betraying someone or something. Myself, perhaps.

Broken Flowers A-
And the Band Played On B+
The Da Vinci Code B-
X-Men: The Last Stand B+ (for special effects)
The Truman Show B+
The Producers B+
V for Vendetta B
Cars A- (for animation)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest B-
Inside Man C+ (chaiya chaiya my arse)
Take the Lead B- (but only for the dancing)
Mission Impossible III B+
Poseidon D
The Omen C

Now I am too lazy to write anything more. Cheers!

swirls

Sometimes you take a break from all the chaos and think how on earth you’ve reached a place in your life that is completely devoid of anything of substance. I remind myself (because I am at heart a logical person) that I have family and friends that love me but I always fall back on feeling that I need more. I am guessing this is completely normal and I am not in a special position and should under no circumstance feel like a victim but I do, unfortunately. I wallow in a kind of self-pity that envelopes me, buries me when I am consuming alcohol and fills me with impending dread when I am not.

In situations that do not involve any form of toxic substance, this particular bit of rogue, all encompassing emotion takes hold of me in the strangest of places: at work when I am typing out the nth email of the day, sitting with my mother and friends at Subway, going up to receive my certificate at my Commencement ceremony etc. I don’t know why it always feels like I’ve been hit by an anvil (luminary of comic iconography) because I would rather not feel like breaking out into tears wherever I go. I think if I was really meant to be unhappy, then a constant sense of unhappiness would be sufficient and quite welcome, thank you very much.

What is the point of crying out for help when you know that you can’t be helped/saved? We need to cry out once in a while because it wipes you a clean slate but then again, it all gets dirty again pretty quickly.

the money-mindedness of it all

My ideal (and somewhat realistic) salary at this stage of life is SG$3800. Here’s how I would split it:

CPF: $190
Rent: $600
Electricity/Water: $50
Internet: $25
Home Phone: $30
Mobile Phone: $100
Loan Payment: $300
For Mum/Sister: $500
Leisure: $1200
Savings: $500
Emergencies: $300

Oh the wishful thinking in all of this. First of all, I’m not getting paid anywhere close to $3.8k which tires me out. Secondly, saving $800? Ridiculous. Thirdly, my definition of emergency is probably withdrawing money from this fund so that I can replace it with whatever I spent the previous night on alcohol.

Oh no! I am an Alcoholic. Talking about it makes me want to have a drink. A dear friend has put this thought of drinking cold Grey Goose in my head.

Disgraceful talk.

Did I say realistic?

half-measures

Sometimes it’s really hard to take back the things you have said in the past. When you have said things with conviction, actually believed those words with every fibre of your being, it is hard to admit that you have might been wrong. So I’m not going to. I am not that strong a person.

I do believe in the power of actions, however. I believe that if I act in a certain way, behave normally, be as things were (but never quite), these actions will absolve me of the terrible power of words inflicted in the past. It’s unrealistic for me to assume that my actions themselves will ever get me anywhere (because, in life, it has to be whole package) but I can take solace in the fact that maybe, just maybe, a certain forgiveness will be bestowed on me.

And who wants things exactly as they were anyway?

consciously, furtively

Incidentally, as I was ironing my clothes today, I heard this blaring off my play list:

“But if you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again”

Now, guess what song that is? Come on!!! It’s a competition! There is no prize except the glorious feeling of thinking you’re a smart ass because you used Google and found it in like 0.15 seconds. Guess what, mofo? Someone probably got it without Google. Not like that makes you oh so cool. Do you know why? It’s Last Christmas by Wham! Do you get it now?

Thinking that line is profound is not perhaps the best way to start establishing my credibility but it did make me think for a second or two before I started thinking about the blogging implications of such a thought.

Do we really get over the people we have loved in the past? I’m not sure if we ever do. Little things, forgotten things we consciously, furtively keep around just to provide a link- a physical manifestation- to a memory that you wished existed.

How fucking tragic.

a summary of my present

Mental State: Sleepy. Content. Bored. Tempted to go out.
Physical State: Unbathed. Since 26 hours.
Stomach contents: Grapes, plums, iced coffee and homemade chicken burgers.
Song that is stuck in head: Hips Don't Lie- Shakira and Wyclef Jean
Person I'm Missing the Most: Pavs
Need: A Quickie (not with Pavs)
Financial state: Precarious.
Want to be: in Koh Samui sipping cocktails in the day and dancing feverishly in the night
Want to watch: Goya's Ghosts (not released yet)
Want to read: Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai (on my bedside but still reading A Million Little Pieces)
Going to: Watch Prison Break now.

grousings

Any country that holds legitimate elections between several political parties is labelled a democracy. At least that is my (layman’s) view.

But don’t you think that if all the parties involved practiced legitimate politics and enacted better policies and then held legitimate, genuine elections that would be a better definition of democracy?

Too much to ask of human nature I guess.

This somewhat lucid argument materialized in my dream. It came about in the midst of the most wonderful black-forest cake dream. I don’t know how and I don’t know why.

I’m too tired to take this post into anything more than what it actually is: an ode to my superior ability to churn out utter rubbish.

The above was written in early April and it’s already the 30^th. Time flies I tell you.

I will now proceed to trying to redeem this post and drag it to the vicinity of something that might, hopefully, be considered remotely interesting.

It never ceases to amaze me how inane Singaporean published news is. Everywhere I look there are headlines screaming out something profound like ‘8 in 10 people in Singapore have acne’ and ‘Five Dead Pigeons Found Lying at bottom of HDB.’

Even though I cringe every time I read something like this, I completely understand it. Any small country with a stable economy and a stable government will have a problem keeping a publication alive if they only published something that was actually worth reading or had some impact on people’s lives.

As usual I don’t have a point with regards to this but I just wanted to whine about Singaporean media. My real grouse is that I’m not usually a reader of the news; it has never interested me all that much so when I actually do pick up the paper I am expectant. I expect to read something that will educate me and inform me of the world out there. I also expect to see well written stories that will help me add to my vocabulary arsenal. It doesn’t happen and that is why I get so annoyed because in my personal opinion, I hate the writing style of the national newspaper. You might think I’m talking out of my ass (refrain from getting mental images, oops, too late) but this is just how I feel.

Another problem I have is that some stories are intentionally written in a way so as to wreak the public with a sense of fear. For example, if someone gets murdered in Singapore, after all the objective details are reported in the news, inevitably, a life lesson/warning will be monotonously doled out.

If a maid kills her employer, everything goes mad in Singapore. The tabloids squeeze the life out of it, Channel 5 or 8 makes a television special on it, television news executives heave a sigh of relief because now they have something to say and the government asks for some air time so that they can warn their peoples of danger invading their homes. And what’s more, all this will be said in an overly objective manner so as to showcase its remarkable ability to be fair but unfortunately for them and us, it becomes an exercise in handing down damnation and judgments on the overall and largely harmless and hardworking population of foreign maids (with explicit and specific focus on the word foreign).

What the Singapore government needs to realize is that people are quite intelligent to take away a lesson or two from something that is objectively reported in the papers. Wouldn’t it be common sense to be wary of anyone other than your family if they were living in your house? There needs to be a balance in between wanting to come across as a caring government and one that comes across as being too preachy and controlling.

Nobody wants to live in a society that is pervaded by fear. What Singapore lacks (gains) with a low rate of crime it more than makes up with the fear of being attacked, robbed, raped and murdered. In small doses, the preachy tones of the media and the government are good but if there’s too much of it, some of the joy that we get from casually walking down the street is lost.

am I in uni again?

Note: This post was written about two weeks back.

Today I woke up feeling nasty. I felt sluggish, hung over and completely out of sorts. I didn’t drink last night but I still felt like I had sandpaper stuffed down my throat and little, leaky pustules of hydrochloric acid lining my stomach. Yep, I felt nasty.

I suppose I deserve it. The body is quite remarkable when it comes to rolling with the punches but one fine day, it rebels. I’ve actually made this observation a number of times and I have notice that when the body does rebel it does so only mildly. This I think is just a warning to stop fucking around. If you choose to ignore the bodily equivalent of one of those infernal NUS friendly reminder emails you will get bitch-slapped big time.

Anyway, the past few days have been terrible. I’ve been drinking too much as usual and feeling like shit the next day. It’s not really the hangover that gets me down but it’s the depression that follows after all that illicit substance consumption. I get broody, moody and superbly needy.

The good news is that I’ve met a bunch of nice people who are absolutely wild, hence the over indulgence in my life. The crème a la crème of this bunch is a chick who goes by the name of Mihiri. My friend Shiny and I came across this specimen at Attica a few weeks back and after a rather infamous comment concerning African Americans, large endowments and graphic usage of the word vagina the ice was broken and we were getting along like a house on fire. She’s a firecracker this one. With a Jessica Alba body and a Halle Berry hairdo she really can’t help it.

Other interesting people I’ve met are two guys from India by the names of Dhruv and Pierre. I don’t know for sure, they are definitely somehow affiliated with the fashion designing industry in Delhi. Pierre’s a soft-spoken guy who is hard to understand at times but has the funniest dance moves (think female Opera singer having a coronary) and can cook amazingly well. Dhruv is a bit complicated. He’s very sweet and can make you feel at ease almost immediately but doesn’t give away too much about himself. Sometimes that kind of quality makes one come across as less than genuine but who knows and more importantly who cares anyway? Both Dhruv and Pierre are safely back in India now and I hope we will meet again one day.

And then there was Tara. She’s quite fabulous and is also from Delhi. She’s doing her Bachelor’s in Political Science and South Asian studies at the National University of Singapore. My friend Nadeeka did the same degree and hates clubbing with a passion (sorry Nads, but its true) but the situation is completely the opposite with this girl. She takes the term ‘partying till the wee hours’ quite literally I tell you! But I have a big problem: I can’t decide whether I like or love her bum. I will decide and let you know soon.

OMG. That comment was infested with innuendo but I’m all about talking figuratively.

of pregnancy and life

A friend of mine is pregnant. She is unmarried but the father is the long-term boyfriend. All of a sudden, she can’t be a kid anymore. She needs to grow up and prepare for motherhood and marriage. She can’t enjoy the new condominium her parents bought recently and life just goes on, no break, no breathing space, and no respite.

Sometimes life deals with you blows that are only ‘blows’ when they happen. Sometimes, when you really think about it, you see a whole new world opening up for you. We all hold on to the constant so persistently but yet we take it for granted. So much so that we don’t realize that the vice-like grip we had on our existing life was completely justified. Do you understand what I mean?

Anyway, when stuff like this happens to my friends, I become cautious. I try to be as boring as possible and not take risks. I procrastinate and I make two-sided lists on almost everything I do or must do. It becomes a paranoid lifestyle when it comes to a point where you think taking a swim is a fight between health and vanity.

I do think, however I have the ‘remarkable’ ability to adjust and become used to something. I am after all the king of justification. For example: my work. I go into work every morning completely energized and motivated but by mid-day I hate it. When we’re closing shop, I’m looking forward to working the next day. I know I am not getting paid as much as I should be but it’s ok, I’m an optimist and I will deal. I know my friends are probably going to go out and get better jobs when they graduate and I know that will irk me no end, but I will try to keep my feelings insulated against such pointless comparison because, in fact, I like what I do. See what I mean? Rationalization galore.

I feel for my friend because this will call for such a big upheaval of her life but I am also intensely proud and respectful of her. It is such a great thing to make such a big decision when you are only so young. I think things will really work out for her and I believe she deserves it. I pat myself on the back for being able to see the good in everything but will I really during crunch time? Am I just a spoilt brat who hasn’t really gone through anything? Who knows, but when you have a friend like this, it’s an opportunity to learn and live with your self.

holding open the door for thee....

I’m actually at my place of work now. Had to eat lunch at desk because everyone else had plans with their friends! Poor me. I need my friends to start working near to me so we can go for furtively long lunches and relieve ourselves of this tedium. One fine day, when I am not anymore green into this world of adulthood, I will go for lunch with a friend, have excellent guacamole and some other random Mexican dish (they all taste the same) and get drunk on Margaritas. Then I will go home and sleep it off and pretend at work the next day that I had to take my friend to the hospital and I am soooo sorry I missed that boring meeting with that boring client who has a boring product. Of course I will be working in an advertising firm somewhere down the line.

Anyway, I have (and want) to write about my quirks. I have been tagged. That’s another piece of blog jargon I was not aware of or understood until today. I feel old. Actually I don’t but I am supposed to right? Fuck it right?? OMG I said the word fuck in office. Blasphemy.

I am totally suffering from a blockage of quirkiness. Hmmm. Apparently I have shitloads but I can’t remember anyway. Alright then, I will keep adding onto this when as I keep remembering.

#1
Imaginary conversations with my soul. What the fuck you say? Well I stand in front of the mirror and pretend that my soul is talking to my body. Soul II Body issues y’know. This is a sample (yet, highly trivialized) version of how the conversation goes:

Body: motherfucker, you will leave me one day and I will have to survive alone

Soul: don’t be such a jock. I have to live with you until you die. But I’ll leave if you keep drinking and smoking the way you do.

I am serious. It’s never played out and dramatized like the above but yeah, I pretend my body is an entity separate from my soul when essentially, my soul is the one that splits into two different voices just to humor this side of me. Hmm. I also crack up each time this happens rendering me useless for about five to ten minutes.

#2
Being anal-retentive with regards to domestic issues. My mother is anal-retentively clean. Which is why, I am the same way. If I wasn’t brought up in an environment where my bathroom rivaled Singapore’s finest Operation Theatre, I am sure I would stew in the filth my friends seem to enjoy stewing in. Ha Ha. Well they don’t stew in their own filth all the time okaaayyy.

My point is that until I got exposed to other people’s living environments and inevitably comparing it to my own, I had no idea that the way I wanted to keep my things clean was a little bit different. Although most people would say fucked up.

I think though, that too has been exaggerated (as you’ll see from #3) and I am a perfectly decent person to live with and I won’t judge you on your failings at keeping house. Oops.

#3
As long as there is no dirt or incredibly unhygienic thing in my line of sight I am perfectly ok with it. This is the reason why I sweep dirt under my bed (so that I don’t see the dirt) and the reason why I spray deodorant all the time (so that I smother my unhygienic state with carcinogenic fragrances).

I do however bust a blood vessel when it comes to cleaning sometimes. If I am in the mood, I can go after that one spot of dirt, that one fraction of a dust speck in that corner and you better believe that babay. That happens perhaps once in three months and I have it on my calendar… here, let me show you….

#4
Most of the time, there is a commentary running through my head. Usually it’s the kind of commentary you hear when there is a 200 meter race going on. Like when I am getting off the train, something like, ‘and as he goes round the bend and goes past the turnstiles, and takes over the man in the red t-shirt, he reaches the escalator first and in a moment of joyous victory blocks off a poor old man trying to get ahead in the race and life’, is not quite uncommon.

#5
My face has to feel like the surface of a baby’s butt after shaving which is why I don’t mind enduring really painful shaving cuts and excessive (well, excessive as it can get) bleeding to achieve that result. Most people don’t understand this but to me but if you read #6, you will empathize.

#6
I am paranoid as hell about acne. As a teenager, my face turned ugly… very ugly. Pimples took it over and transformed it into a Kill Bill extravaganza. That is when I started drinking water. Lots of water. Daily recommended intake? 8 glasses. Gautam’s intake? 24 glasses. I drink less now, but every so often when I binge on stuff like chocolate, mango, pineapple and any other heaty stuff, I drink as much as I can ……y’know… to neutralize the pimple-causing bastards of heat. I’ve just eaten a chocolate chip cookie, which means that in about 15 minutes, I will go for a piss which will last about 2 minutes.

Still don’t understand #5? Well…. Hair allows dirt to stagnate, causing pimples. Get it? Get it? Get it? Well perhaps it doesn’t allow it to stagnate but I really don’t feel like going back to my teenage years. The libido I might want back… but not the looks.

#7
I suck a lot. Let me clarify….. I bite into cloth napkins and pull out threads from them with my teeth. Then I suck on them until I can spit out big fat balls of thread. I always do this and when I was young, my mom actually replaced a few napkins monthly because, obviously, a napkin soaked in spit wouldn’t really serve its function admirably would it? I think this is why I got hooked onto smoking; it fits perfectly doesn’t it? And now since I’m trying to cut down, I find myself doing the napkin thing more often.

#8
I get obsessed way too often. If I started an obsession museum you would find, about 300 articles on the Titanic (movie), 2 books on the actual Titanic, 2 books on the movie, a fictional book on the sinking, a million photographs of Kate Winslet, 1 special edition Titanic video-cassette with 8 super postcards of the movie and a special edition negative of the reel of the movie, 10 imaginary ‘GSM’ awards given to Titanic, 1 imaginary lifetime achievement award given to Kate Winslet and shared by the remarkable Raveena Tandon for their respective ravishing performances in Titanic and Mohra. You would also find about 500 articles on Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, 1 book on Diana, the Time and Newsweek Diana Editions, 12 scrapbooks filled with articles on them. I also have 4 large exercise books dedicated to music and filled with the GSM Top 25 Countdown for every week from Year 1997 to 2000. I could go on, but you might think I’ve grown a teenage vagina. Ew.

Recent obsessions were with Closer, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and American Idol. And of course, Sex and the City but none of them ever reached the heights of its pathetic predecessors. No regrets lah.

#9
When I am blogging, I twist my nipple hard for inspiration.

#10
When I smoke, I try not to drink water because I feel that if I do, the smoke residue will go into my kidneys and my kidneys will get lung cancer. Hmmm.

Okay the last two, although completely true, are sell-outs. But I hope you enjoyed these!!!

I want to tag some people but very few people read my blog and those who do are either already tagged or people who don’t really blog that often. Oh what the heck, Kurien and Mat, I tag you both.

And those who just stumble across this blog, I tag you too. Just leave me a comment so I can read about your quirks.

Who knows, we might even become lovers.

sweet and sour

If there is one thing that I have learnt in the past four years in Singapore, it is that I cannot assume that a friendship, however strong it may seem, will last forever. I have spoken about this time and time again and perhaps people who know me will roll their eyes at this post, but I want to speak about another aspect of friendships: fights.

Everyone has fights and we have all had our share of unpleasant brawls. Somehow using verbal obscenities is a big no-no but no good fight for me is complete without the use of the word fuck. For example if I say ‘what the fuck did you say man?’ it actually means, ‘fuck you’. I try not to make it personal. Yeah right. Digression.

But yeah, fights between friends can be devastating. All the negative things we know about each other floods out and because everything is usually kept repressed (and supposedly, understood without judgment), it becomes a roiling mess when things come to a head.

And I just don’t understand why….

When the fight is analyzed in retrospect, everything seems exaggerated. If you are at fault, you feel an exaggerated sense of panic. If you are the ‘victim’, you feel an indignation that is only perhaps, mildly justified and completely played off the panic you can sense pouring out of the other party. It is so much easier to have an argument and get it over with.

A few weeks back, I had a pretty serious fight with a friend. The reason why we fought was trivial but the words we exchanged, were indication of something much worse. Who wants to go through that kind of emotional rollercoaster and spend precious cents on pointless (but attractively mean) text messages? Good question. Anyway, we made up in a heartbeat and it was a fucking relief. That is what scared me…this sense of relief I felt. No one wants to lose an awesome friend but did I really think I could lose this friend just because of this fight? Jesus.

I think we all need to keep in mind that it is with our friends we most experience life with and it’s never worth losing someone you feel such a deep connection with. I’ve stated before that like a relationship, a friendship once it’s over can, over time, be forgotten but I must make a qualification.

We all know that when you are in a relationship, the dynamic is always changing. This is because the expectation factor is high; there is a sense of obligation that must be fulfilled either because it’s financial, emotional or any number of reasons. In a relationship, everything is being shared so it can be quite easy to want to get out of it and compromise will only work to an extent because if compromise were a way of daily life, it would get too damn tedious.

With a friendship, on the other hand, only a small part of your essence is shared and for us to be wary of any compromise that comes with that little bit of time we get to spend with them is just bullshit. Compromises have to be made and a friendship turning sour is only because that compromise was never made. What am I trying to say here is that when I say a friendship can be forgotten, I am giving the impression that the friendship is of the same status as a relationship but that is not so. I do think that although friendships do turn sour every day, it is less to do with natural progression like it may be with relationships but more to do with the fact that the friends in question are just not compromising and being utterly selfish.

What a mouthful.

I’ve mourned the loss of a great friendship over the last year but today I put it to rest because the regrets are finally gone. I’m not a saint and am not completely blameless but it’s tiring to wait for a glimmer of compromise. I sound bitter but it’s an almost obligatory vestige of bitterness I show because I don’t care and every day, I try harder not to care.

I look back and all I see is immaturity and if the price of not having that friend anymore is that I’ve become more of an adult, then I think it’s been completely worth it. So from today, I will keep in mind that a fight is just an argument and if I want I can take it seriously and make myself miserable but I’d rather compromise and preserve a friendship.

sandman blues

I have this unbelievable desire to sleep at odd times of the day. The problem is that it was never odd while I was in university. I mean, who cares if I don't make it to class for just one day? Now, I have to make sure I get my 5-6 hours of sleep before work which will never happen if I take a nap at 6pm. It's fucking annoying man!!

Consider today for example. It's Sunday and it's pouring outside. I'm in my room, smoking a cigarette and feeling extremely sleepy. I know how heavenly it would feel to turn up the air conditioning and snuggle up in my sheets and just drift off but I know I can't because I don't need my sleep cycle to go out of whack. Neither can I drink a cup of hot coffee (because that would be heaven right about now) because that will contribute quite significantly to making my sleep cycle go to hell. How boring is my life?

Therefore I am blogging and basically immortalizing my boredom in cyberspace. I am listening to some phoenix, faith hill and mimi. I really need to write. I feel inspired. I feel the beginnings of a story growing in my mind. I know it will never work out because I am lazy and very afraid. I am afraid to delve deeper into these seedlings of inspiration because if I can't proceed, if I can't go through with it, then I know I'm not really a writer, will never be a writer. It's false logic and viciously cyclic but I guess I feel if I don't write anything, then I will never fail.

That's why this blog is such a good thing. It keeps my desire to write something substantial at bay. It satisfies that strong need to write but keeps the pressure off. Oh dear God, I have issues.

crying for tv

Watching television shows is one of my favourite pastimes. I have this incurable urge to see new shows as soon as they come up. It’s through this ‘curiosity’ that I have discovered stuff like Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex and the City, Nip/Tuck, Will & Grace, Arrested Development and 24. It is just so awesome to find a show that you can trust to entertain you through the doldrums of any normal day. When Grey’s Anatomy came out last year, I felt I had to watch it (coz Sandra Oh is brilliant), but I couldn’t get my hands on it. Oh well, I still plan to get the DVD’s and go on a first-class romp with them.

Anyway, the point of all this (apart from sounding like a loser, who cares right?), is that inevitably, a big part of my life is spent watching television or talking about it. Yes, that’s right, I live a sedentary lifestyle. And because of this sedentary lifestyle, I tend to live vicariously through the characters I see on these shows. I don’t see where I am going with this post other than digging my own hole in what has been a very well-meaning attempt in being cool, but I do know I feel unnecessary flushes of emotion when something remotely sad or incredibly joyous happens on the shows. Joyous? Who uses that word these days?

I’ve cried for lot of shows. These are some of them:

Sex and the City

I think there is always at least one episode in each season I can’t stop blubbering over, but the one that stands out the most is the last episode of the sixth and final season. Carrie and Big finding each other, Miranda looking after her mom-in-law, Charlotte finding a Chinese baby to adopt and Samantha realizing she can fuck anyone she want but she’d rather fuck Smith. Too perfect? I don’t think so.

Lost

Perhaps not too blubber-worthy as Sex and the City but still made me tear like a fucking leaky faucet (I didn’t sob; three cheers to me). Episode 212 where Eko baptizes Aaron and his mother is so well done. The soundtrack in the background is perfectly synchronized and very touching. You have to see how beautiful it is.

Friends

I re-discovered Friends today. I can’t believe how fast we’ve forgotten them! The show was awesome and taken in context, really paved the way not only other sitcoms similar to Friends but also inspired new ways of projecting comedy. Friends was funny, silly, somewhat realistic, touching, had the feel-good factor and always accessible. The episode I cried buckets over and can still make tear is the one where Chandler and Monica get engaged. Isn’t it just out of this world? That scene was just a testament to how well the early seasons of Friends fused comedy and emotion into the picture.

Nip/Tuck

Nip/Tuck is not for everyone. It is extremely graphic, has outrageous storylines (more often than not feeling very real) and deals with stuff that not many shows want to deal with. It usually doesn’t sugar coat anything. It tells it like it is, deadpan, matter of fact but ironically, quite sensationalistic. It’s like while you’re watching it you go, ‘Oh please that is sooo far-fetched,’ but somehow it draws you in toward the end and makes you believe! However, last season (the one where they unveil the Carver), Julia and Sean go to the abortionist to do the needful. The scene is heart-breaking because you know both of them ache so bad and feel so battered but somehow they realize they can’t do it. All the while, the most incredible rendition of Holy Night is playing in the background. Beautiful.

That’s it for now folks. Don’t judge me. Look at your self in the mirror and you will see your soul talking to you, emotionless, expressionless and genderless. Let that feeling embrace you so that you can realize that none of us is different.

trash

I hate presumption. I hate hypocrisy, but who the hell doesn't?
Put them together and you get a person you really love and really, really hate.
We fall in love so easily; beauty in every sense of the word is skin deep.
Past the scars, the blemishes that we so magnanimously undertake, we hit rock bottom;
And all we want to do is get away.
All of us. Each and everyone of us. Trash.

imaginary lovers

I have this freaky habit of falling asleep with my eyes open. I know it's freaky coz I've seen other people dozing off like that, and it's nothing short of disturbing. And you know what else? When you 'wake up' your eyes suddenly shoot up like those junkies who've just shot up a pint (or whatever) of heroin into their veins with their sticky needles.

Well that happened to me today. I was standing up in the train, holding onto one or two hand grips, slouched over, probably trying to pretend the air in front of me was my bed at home, listening to my latest obsession Mariah Carey (go Mimi!)... and then blank... I wake up and my iPod is silent, my eyes wide open in suspicion that someone has noticed this dramatic scene in Gautam's life, but no one has obviously. And then, I remember the dream I had. In that span of what was probably 4-5 minutes, I actually had a dream...about a baby.

Baby: Why do you keep staring at my mother when I cry? You're supposed to look at me.
Me (apparently in exasperation): I look at you because you are the one making a ruckus and your mum is just in my field of vision.
Baby: Well, she feels like your accusing her or something. She's not a failure you know!
Me: I look at you and her like a sheep looks at grass or the occasional gay cowboy....
Baby: Benign. You mean benign.
Mrs. Sheriff: Very good vocabulary is the key to a good romance.

That's when I snapped out of it. The baby morphed into my Grade school English Teacher, Mrs. Sheriff. Possibly the best teacher alive. She introduced Reader's Digest to my life and she taught me flowing handwriting. She gave me so much encouragement. And I thought giving her a Parker pen when I passed out of her class was SUCH a big thing. What a fucker I was.

Anyway, that was such a inane dream. I know mothers feel guilty every time I look at their crying babies on the train but really, the crying never bothers me so why the hell would I judge them? And if it were (bothering me), I know how damagingly insidious babies can be, so I would almost always empathize with the parent (unless the parent was spitting at them or caning them).

And I used the words, "gay cowboy" to a baby....living right on the edge baby. These young impressionable minds.....good on them.

One good thing though: Imaginary conversations are so much better than imaginary lovers.
Why? Coz one sets u up for disappointment and the other doesn't. I mean it's not as if I am gonna expect random babies to talk to me on the street. Which by the way, if they could, would be just an extension to what imbeciles they really are.

I really do love babies though.

stepping into the periphery

The time’s 8.55am. I’m 5 train stops away from my work-destination. And to my utter disbelief and pounding heart (what with me imagining empowering angry conversations with my boss who’s scolding me for being tardy), the driver mutters something about being stalled for the next twenty minutes. I hurry off a message to a friend grumbling about how this is a sign that at its core, Singapore is just a first world country with poor, miserable people. That’s a bit harsh. Obviously I love Singapore but when this happens and let me borrow/embellish, hell hath no fury when a late person scored? Hell hath no fury when a person is late-ed? Oh whatever.

Anyway, a conversation strikes up with this guy who’s standing next to me.

He looks at his watch, “Oh Jesus!”
“I feel the same way,” I find myself saying.

He looks at me a bit surprised that someone’s caught his apparent outrage and frustration, “How can this happen?”

“I know! But I come from Sri Lanka so I am a bit more used to this kind of thing.”

Now I don’t know why I said that considering I have never travelled on a Sri Lankan train before but aside from the sickness of talking too much I am inflicted with, I was trying to make polite conversation. I was also bemused at how really irritated he was as opposed to me who’s all ‘outraged’ at the ridiculous delay only for the purpose of making some drama.

But you know coming from a third world country, your expectations are low and therefore your temper threshold is high. You expect breakdowns to happen and when they don’t, you claim it to be the result of your prayers to God/Goddess XXX (Jenna Jameson?). So when this happens in a place like Singapore where everything runs like clockwork, it is and can be claimed to be devastating to the human spirit.

“Oh? You’re from Sri Lanka? I would never know it”

Standard response from everyone, so no biggie. I actually roll my eyes inside. Accidental bad thoughts are not my fault obviously.

“Ha Ha Ha! I’m Indian actually.”

“Oh yeah, you do look kinda Indian. My servants are all Indian by the way.”

“Oh wow! You have servants? How cool.”

OMG. Is this the way I think? And the best part of it was that all this didn’t even register until I was sitting in my office sipping my cup of morning coffee. The racial innuendo….the slur against Indians… terrible, just terrible. But to be honest, he seemed like a nice enough person. Maybe he was just clueless, or he really was irritated? OR maybe I had really bad breath and that reminded him of his Indian servants. Or maybe I am the one who’s racist? Is it REALLY wrong to think of Indian servants having bad breath?

Anyway we swapped about two servant stories each (oh these rich kids these days; by the way, I am broke; Hence no toothpaste and hence bad breath) before we reached Raffles Place Interchange when I had to get off and rush to work.

And that my patiyas is how I made my first commute-friend. I met him again today which prompted me to recount all this but this time around he was less interesting by only commenting about how un-polished my shoes were. I wanted to say how badly crushed his shirt was but I don’t think we’ve established that kind of repartee yet.

I see a few select people every single day on my commute. There’s this one Sri Lankan lady who looks about 35-40 years old and I plan to talk to her one day and see what’s she all about. I need to develop the balls for that though. And pop a couple of mints before I leave.

alchemy

I’ve watched a bunch of really good films recently. It’s incredible how the crowd you go with to see a film can taint the experience.

Anyway, watched Walk the Line first. I liked it. Performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are definitely Oscar worthy. The music’s awesome too. B+

Brokeback Mountain, the star of this season’s line-up was the next movie we went to watch. This time around, the crowd was better, but not great. It’s alchemy I tell you, and if you’re remotely and persistently non-confrontational, it’s bound to blow up in your face. Oh well, nobody’s fault but one’s own. Oh, but why couldn’t people be nicer?

The movie was beautifully made; the cinematography was just out of this world. It was also languid but the story didn’t plod. Two gay cowboys…. Pretty graphic in some parts but definitely edited heavily by the Singapore censors. And the scenes revolving outside the spectacular views of Brokeback is always more interesting than the meetings themselves. What we see them become feeds into how tumultuous, fluid and fleeting those meetings actually are. And the ending……shit.... knocked it out of the park in terms of the heart-wrenching index. Heath Ledger gives an impeccable performance along with Jake Gyllenhaal who didn’t give as good a performance as his loveeerrrrrr but was also top-notch! Definitely an A grade.

If History of Violence was in the awards race, it would give Brokeback Mountain a good fight, but since it’s not-which is but a travesty- I think Brokeback Mountain should take Best Picture and Direction at the Oscars.

I also watched Constant Gardener. It’s supposed to be a very sad, sad, film but coming on the heels of Brokeback, this was a walk in the park for me. I still really loved the movie though. I though Ralph Fiennes was fucking good (and if he got overlooked by the Oscars, think how good the nominated performances are!!) and his wife in the movie, Rachel Weisz was pretty darn good as well. They showed her pregnant and wiping her bum after a shower by the way. The direction is typical of the director who also worked on City of Joy but the way he has filmed Africa and contrasted it so deeply and so subtly with Britain (or was it the US) is just impressive and admirable. For some reason the way this movie was made reminded me of Closer. I don’t know why. A- for sure.

And this time, we got it right.

breeding ground

I have decided that since I spend a significant amount of time on the MRT and that a lot of that time is spent observing (don't let the ear phones and the manic yawning fool you)the fantastic human condition (!!), a regular feature of this blog will be something about my commute. Perhaps it will be something funny, something sad or just random shit. Pretty much like all the previous entries but atleast this gives me some purpose and kinda forces me to do what I really enjoy....write.

Anyhow, small insight into commuting...The smells. Because of the morning rush hour, and the city-person's obsessive need to get to the office early even though they've left really late, we are all packed into the bloody train in a state where even the deadest sardine will be smirking. Ok that was lame. Therefore you are stuck to other people and your ipod becomes the only true thing in your life. The sun's performing foreplay for the hardcore action we are gonna get around noon and here I am standing amidst the Chinese, Malays, Indians and Others catching a wafts of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others breath. Morning breath. Ew. Got Colgate? Coming back is better because you have lesser amounts of people (and therefore no need to keep thinking about whether that brush on the ass was intended or by accident), BUT, the body odour is just terrible. I'm pretty sure I smell too. Anyway, who would've thought that the one thing that would preoccupy me on my commute would be smells? Silly stuff.

That's just a general insight. Profound don't you think? Here's what happened today.

I have just gotten into the carriage at Raffles Place and I slump against one of the poles looking absolutely devastated (because you know, to look overworked and extremely intelligent) when I see two cute baby girls playing with each other on the seats. They're around three years old and they are having a gala time pushing each other. Knowing that my friend would love to hear this story (and that she would love to push one out of her vagina one day)I take out my phone so I could call her....But, shock, horror, faint!!!!! The babies start kissing. Full on mouth to mouth action. Mouths are open, no sign of tongue but totally kissing, trying to swallow each other whole (which is probably some baby-game, who the fuck knows?)My eyes pop out and I wonder why no one else is freaking out about this, especially the mother. Lezzy babies. Nature vs. Nurture my ass. If you have a close baby friend of the same sex, you're just gonna be gay ok!!!

Sufficiently recovered from she-baby-love... I get out at my stop at Bukit Batok and boarded a bus at the terminal. I am sitting there quietly, longing to get home to my wonderful bed when I see this guy running toward the bus. Since he was a brown person I tool special notice (we browns must stick with each other). Well this guy was quite short and he had oily hair, thick black frames for his spectacles and white as a sheet. Quite typically a decent Indian boy as our parents would say. Oops but wait... I missed out one important thing. He was hurrying towards the bus with his umbrella open. Not funny yet? Well, the umbrella was huge (it could have protected about 4 of his under there) and the colour was a combination of red, white and green. It had a funny, little black wheel printed everywhere on it. Yes, dear friends, it was an Indian flag. Wonder how he will react if a crow shits on it?

penance

I am in awe of life even if faintly frustrated by it. I am not essentially a deep person, preferring instead to enjoying whatever comes my way and over-analyzing everything around me. Who can I blame for my over-analysis sickness? Technically I can't blame anyone because we are whoever we are but since everything is derivative of something.... there have to have been influences in my life that made me like this. Perhaps it was an education that grades everyone on a curve and rewards those who come up with something new in something old and tested which is why it's such a pleasure for me to look into every nuance of word, facial expression and gesture just to come up with a way of explaining the outcomes of conversations, actions and events. Or perhaps it was having a sister so intent on critical commentary about everything. Or maybe perhaps it's living in a generation where we can be irreverent about anything we want.

Who the fuck knows?

Anyway, like I said, I am not a deep person but these days I find myself thinking about... well.. life. I think it's to do with the amount of time I spend each day alone. The waking up, eating breakfast, coming home after work is such a deeply lonely time that I can barely function. I try to do what comes naturally to me.... which is to completely deny me the privilege of indulging in these feelings but it strikes out at you, like penance you never asked for, when it becomes a habit and nothing changes. I like the fact that when I worked in SL, I used to come back home to a loving family, servants and alone time if ever I wished it. I feel a great comfort (pretty much like the warm sheets I was talking about previously) when I'm alone and people are still around me; in the next room, watching tv or whatever. But feeling alone is so different from being alone. I hate the fact that I have time in my life to think about how wonderful the human body is because it's stocked up with the most amazing organs that can do brilliant stuff(s). I hate the fact that I have the time to float on my back in the swimming pool and examine the stars. I hate it when I get so depressed after watching Brokeback Mountain. I hate it that when the weekend comes, I miss work but still feel god-awful when I wake up on a Monday. I can do without this.

I am so fucking homesick.

work

It's been a week since work started. A measely week. Being the spoilt over-grown kid I am, I wish I could sit at home and order in and count my masses of money. It's like wanting to become thin without exercise. At least with the goal of becoming thin, several alternatives would be available to you: starving yourself, gorging yourself and going pukey-puke later, hoping for a terminal disease, hanging out with typhoid patients.... but with the goal of being rich.... you have no choice but to work. You could rob a bank, marry someone rich or dabble in something exotic like prostitution but I think those choices would be frowned upon by society. Remember to keep in mind that this blog is a testament to my inability to articulate and in this post, the incoherency is particularly manifest.

I like work, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I just wish I had a bed in the office where I could just go for a short nap. I imagine my colleagues being these wonderful sleep-people who can induce sleep with a flick of their wands and me floating in my formal clothes, shedding them one by one until I am in bed in my boxers with the freezing air all around me, struggling to get into my wonderfully warm sheets. Ah well... I must get to work now.

gold digger

It's so easy to be a gold digger don't you think? I have my opinions and I have my morals but really, I feel precariously on the edge of each and every one of them. I think I could be a gold digger if only I had the opportunity to be one. The guilt would get to me but like someone said, it would be so easy to brush the crumbs of that emotion under the rug. Just a thought.

I am back in Singapore and I have been offered a job which I have accepted. It's a recruitment agency for health-care professionals in the U.S. My designation: Account Executive. So, technically, it's a marketing job in a HR firm. Fits in exactly with my majors which are marketing and management. Got the job on my birthday.

Yep, I turned 22 a few days back. Was kinda sick so didn't really enjoy the day as such but I do feel good I am turning older. I actually kind of look forward to the responsibility of making money, saving, buying stuff for family.... It makes me happy. This time in Colombo, I realized the beauty of being with family. Privacy issues are always going to be a big negative factor, but we must face it... we can never be alone without being lonely. Atleast in the long term. I miss my family and I miss being irritated with them. This time when I was down in Colombo, I revelled in the company of my mother and sister (and true, I did get fed up with them, but that's what friends are for) and the fact that someone was always looking out for me. True, your friends will do everything they can for you, but they are no replacement for family. Reassurances will never work with family. Self-analysis is tiring and it seems these days that all my MSN conversations are all about self-analyzing or listening to someone else self-analyze...so I shall spare you.

notice.

The previous six entries were written over the holidays but were never uploaded until now. Any intelligent person would have realized that but I just thought I might as well make the clarification for the amazing amounts of morons out there. Also, I am addicted to writing and I needed somethign to write.

cousins in conjunction with the holidays

To be utterly, brutally honest here, I wasn’t too happy when my cousins came down on Christmas day. I think it wasn’t a question of me being unhappy with them, but just irritated that they had taken so long to decide and to confirm their holiday in Colombo. I really wanted to organize our New Year’s Eve plans at this place where we knew where everybody would be going but I couldn’t obviously because they took so long to fucking decide. So eventually when they did decide to make that relatively short air-commute to good ol’ Colombo, all the tickets for this party were sold out... However, I am by nature prone to overreaction and everything just turned out fantastic. I was pretty bummed out that another cousin didn’t come but I play with whatever cards I am dealt.

First of all, an introduction… Rits.. She’s 18 and beautiful. So beautiful it scares me sometimes. Having a beautiful sister of my own, I am well aware of the lecherous looks any pretty girl gets, especially on the streets of India or Sri Lanka and by constant exposure to this frowned upon behaviour I have learnt to tune out a world where women are put through sick, sexual fantasies in some random person’s mind. However, Rits gets way too much attention and that is what terrifies me. I try to look as if I am her boyfriend (breaking all the rules for ‘appropriateness among relatives’ I am sure) but that never stops men from looking at her. Oh well, ego boost to her. She is also crazy!! She will laugh at anything for hours on end with her faithful partner in crime and fellow cousin and crazy loon- Mr.MC. I will come to him later. I appreciate Rits because she’s an intelligent bimbo and laughs at all my lame jokes. And even though one is obliged to love one’s family, with her, I don’t have to try hard at all. The bitch left on the 30^th but I forgive her coz she’s a bundle of fun.

Mr.MC. Like I said before, he’s Rits’s Yin to her Yang (although there isn’t much peace when they’re around). He’s extremely intelligent and ultra-competitive when it comes to anything… academic or otherwise. Even though Mr.MC and I don’t hang out that much, he has the knack for making just the right amount of small talk to help put you at ease!! He is the perfect social lubricant, second only to bloody alcohol. Ha ha. He loves to gamble and from what I have heard, is quite lucky at it!! Some people are just lucky, but Mr.MC is very hardworking and I believe, a celebrity of some sort in the making!! Perhaps a talk show host or a professional Master of Ceremonies…..? Who knows? He’s certainly entertained us in the past with his skills in being the perfect pageant host so here I am, immortalizing how good he is at his thing!

Teens. Come to think of it, all my cousins are beautiful. Now that doesn’t mean they are only beautiful in my eyes and they’re trolls to the outside world. Teens’s 25 (almost marriageable age much to her displeasure) and a complete sucker for anything philosophical! I admire her dedication to what she loves. I also admire her ability to be relatively unaffected by the things that goes around her (a skill I think she learnt from having such a, shall we say, ‘different’ extended-family). Water off a duck’s back. I’ve grown closer to Teens over time and in some way, that has enhanced my life.

Verbosity is my thing. Deal with it.

Also I realize, that if one of the above ever wanted me to write them a testimonial, I could just copy and paste. Verbosity has its advantages.

There were three highlights to their trip. One was going to H2O with them. Yay. H2O is the latest club in Colombo and predictably, the place to see and to be seen. It’s pretty huge, very nicely decorated, very good service, reasonable prices and a decent-enough DJ. We got through the ordeal of being interrogated by the damn adults relatively unscathed but only after pouring out a great deal of honey to placate their wet blanket selves. I realize I still refer to them as adults but that is only because we are still treated as children… I also realize that these are our parents and we will always be their children, but come on, they expect us to provide for and take care of them when they grow old but are not willing to give up their hold on us with regard to certain kinds of behaviour, such as, drinking, smoking (but this, I think their displeasure is justified), love-marriages and pre-marital sex which is of course, blasphemous to the entire Sindhi race and just about rapes the family name…. Oh dear, I have digressed. Anyhow, the night was fantastic. Rits and I rode the wave of a beautiful state of tipsiness and danced on the floor while the rest socialized and made up… Notice I used the phrase ‘made-up’ and not ‘made-out’ , so get your minds out of the gutter! Quite an ordeal to get the three cousins up to their room afterwards but we finally did it and with no problems from the adults! Super night!

The second highlight was when we went down-south. Sri Lanka’s beautiful beaches must be experienced only after dappling in gorgeously illicit substances, which we might or might not have done. Lunch was ravenously eaten and followed up with another taste (of dessert, silly) and we drove home, utterly satisfied. Grains of sand vibrated, one of us felt one with everyone, including the sea and the grain of sand that vibrated… On the way back, we ate some Kandos chocolate (which Rits pronounced as Kandoos) and got home utterly exhausted but in equal amounts content as ever.

The third and final highlight was New Year’s Eve. Myself, sister, Mr. Say-Nothing-Bad-Will-Happen, his sister, Teens and my friend from university went to Trans-Asia. We were put through another ordeal by the adults before going (this one being a little more serious as one of us actually started crying!) but thankfully got there before 12am.As usual we got thoroughly plastered and I have no recollection of anything after 4.30am!! Apparently on the way back, I thought the radio in the car was actually my sister talking to me!! Fortunately, we all had fun and nothing too bad happened except for me losing my blazer and Teens taking a fall which she made worse by dancing with me for…er…god knows how long!!

These were the highlights but hanging out with them was fun too. Lots of family lunches and dinners laced their trip and I am sure they had as much fun as I did!! How terribly inarticulate I sound huh?

Jamba-jungle fun times!!

P.S- Forgive me for the less than mature nicknames I have given my cousins. It's this damn new Blog Search I am afraid of. I know some of the ''adults'' have some rudimentary knowledge of the net and since I am by nature a risk-averse person (some people call it cowardice), I needed to do this.