the-lines-of-beauty

2009

2009-12-06T21:48:00.002+08:00

So it's been a year since I last updated this blog. I blame facebook.

Key high - and low - lights of the year:

January 2009: fantastic birthday bash, trip to bali which was fucking fantastic coz it included bungee jumping (scariest thing I've ever done and has resulted in 'falling off a cliff/building' dreams to go through the roof), water sports (parasailing (pretty scary, but not really)), drinking with the bestest group of friends one could have, clubbing, eating great food and shopping!! only sore point was when I accidentally deleted 400 pictures from my camera one day we were supposed to leave Bali
Oscar movie season: Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, The Reader, The Wrestler, Doubt, Rachel Getting Married, Changeling, Gran Torino, Revolutionary Road - all wonderful movies - spoilt the market for the rest of the shit that came out from March to August 2009
Kate Winslet - winning the Oscar (and the golden globe (two), screen actor's guild award, BAFTA and every other blooming acting award)
Other great movies of the year: Hangover, District 9, The Informant!, 500 Days of Summer, Inglourious Basterds, Departures, Brick Lane
Best first date ever: Holi celebrations! We meet again next Holi!
Befriended the Frenchies!!
Entered into a national short story competition with high hopes. Hopes were dashed..
Travelled to Hong Kong and Thailand all by my lonesome on work. Woot!
Long time flatmate and FGF (fucking good friend) Anirudh left for the US to pursue his PhD
Acquired a new flatmate and great friend (recruited from office!!)
Got promoted without a raise
Housewarming Bash - tip top party of the year but got too drunk
Starbucks delivery. Belgian waffles (but nothing beats the Banana muffin). Millions of Lattes.
Acquired a significant other. But turns out I wasn't as significant
And of course, spent loads and loads of time with the More Than Significant Others - the besties.

The year is not done yet. I am hopeful for better things to come: people, movies (Avatar!!!), better working conditions. And great love. Fingers crossed.

chalk it up to experience

2008-12-26T03:46:00.002+08:00

My disgustingly devious friends under the pretense of taking me to a bar at the beach within the city, kidnapped me to a place which is about 120km out of Colombo. I freaked out at first considering I had told my mum that I would be back early but then the trashy techno and copious amounts of tobacco did their magic on me and half-way there I felt myself relax.

So, this place, Hikkaduwa has come to be known as the party capital of Sri Lanka. Its supposed to be full of dodgy beach bars filled with your usual assortment of beach boys, Caucasians, gays (both beach boy and Caucasian) and murderers, thieves and scoundrels. Ok, the last part I only imagined. But the link that draws them all together are pot and burning libidinous desires. I imagine both pot and these desires are very closely related. Anyway, just past Christmas Eve, no activity of significant proportions was seen when we arrived, so, with the result of us driving even further out, we drove to Unawatune which is fast becoming the sister-capital of Hikka.

The place was called, Riddim – a name, I presume heavily influenced by the major Rastafarians known to the populace today – Bob Marley & Sean Paul. In true South-Asian fashion, one of said devious friends paid cover and went inside to source out the owner who is apparently very well acquainted with them. Eventually, the right strings were pulled and the ‘vintage’ purple ink was stamped onto our arms and so began the second phase of my unexpected adventure – the first being the emotional rollercoaster of a drive to the damn place (stages of emotion: panic, fear, panic, anger, an emotion centering on internal monologues such as: don’t be a loser, go with the flow, chalk it up to experience, and finally, acceptance and relaxation).

The people inside were crazy and obviously doped up with the various substances making the rounds inside the club. Part of the club was sheltered – the dance floor, the DJ podium with the sides of club facing out to the sea. And the bar was located outside on the beach with the prices of alcohol being so temptingly cheap but I did restrain myself considering I had a mother to return to (also attempting to save the motherly forgiveness quota for inevitable NYE drunken splash-out). A lot of illicit activity was going on – drug taking, and quite a lot of homo-activity. Considering the alpha male culture of Sri Lanka – this was quite a revelation to me. My theory to explain the overcompensated nonchalance towards this activity is built on three pillars:

--> A lot of people are potted up

--> People are well-versed in the Rastafarian concept of living in the moment and going with the flow and therefore know that man on man activity is a symptom of this and are therefore too scared to reveal themselves as non-Rastafarian by voicing out their splendidly bigoted views.

--> People share a common understanding that this location is an oasis out of Colombo where gossip comes to a halt (obviously they have never met me) and secret desires and needs are indulged in without fear of judgment. Perhaps this is a bond that can overcome any personal prejudices one might have.

Anyway, the substances made their way to us and although I continued to restrain myself, I let up a few notches so I could properly start enjoying myself. True enough, after a couple of drags over 2 hours, 3-4 arracks, a beer and some vodka, I felt really, truly great (and more than a little dehydrated).

We danced everywhere but the most enjoyable part was when we danced at a point on the beach where the waves were only strong enough to lap at your feet. There was this really doped up fire-dancer beach boy who took to playing with his fire toys very close to us and I think if someone took a picture of that scene, we would have looked like some Satan worshipping toy boys. I really hope I get to visit this place again before I leave the motherland.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

where the heart is

2008-12-24T23:23:00.001+08:00

After exactly 12 months, I am on a proper vacation. By proper vacation I mean that I can do as I please, whenever I please. That may not be true in the strictest sense considering that I am part of a Sindhi family – the amount of errands to run, the people to fetch – but so far, I have been able to sleep about 12 hours every day that I have been on holiday. It is brilliant I tell you.

The above may suggest that I haven’t really been productive at all in the last 3 days I’ve been in good ol’ depressing, economically run-down Colombo, but I’ve gone for a Christmas dinner, hung out with cousins, caught up with friends over the phone, made plans, almost finished Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and watched half of Crash. Oh yes, I have also worked on a questionnaire and a fieldwork brief – the clients never really leave you alone do they?

In the true spirit of Christmas and for the love of lists, I am going to jot down all the pros and cons of being in Sri Lanka on holiday:

Pros are being able to:
Be with family and the fabulous niece
Catch up and gossip with old friends
Smoke up
Not work (somewhat)
Catch up on sleep
Catch up on some much-needed reading and watching movies
Not spend your own money
Eat all the wonderful food; also cheap-ass alcohol
Reap the benefits of a third-world country existence i.e. high interest rates on fixed deposits, chauffeur (or as we fondly say, Driver!!), domestic helpers (maids!), and briberrrrryyyy. Wooo hooo!

Cons:
Not being able to smoke whenever I please (long term health benefit)
Low water pressure – specific to my house I think
Being away from Singapore when all the good movies are coming out
Slow Internet speeds

Since nobody apart from my not-so Internet savvy mum stays in the house when I am away, the Internet connection has lapsed (not that it was awesomely helpful before considering it was a dial-up). So now, I have to do without it. However, as it happened, while I was on the laptop and whiling it away organizing my files (technologically therapeutic), my wireless internet connection suddenly came to life! Woot. Basically some building in the area had switched on their wireless and the magic Internet waves filtered into my humble abode.

However, today, it does not seem to work. The magic appears to have disappeared. Sigh.

a vague ambitious notion

2008-10-04T17:59:00.002+08:00

Recently, more than ever, I have been thinking of myself during my pre-university days and perhaps during that time of tertiary education. I believe I might actually have been quite ambitious! I was ready to go out into the workforce as a bright spark who would change organizations and be and I quote 'an exemplary colleague, peer, friend, subordinate and manager'. God Almighty! Was I naive or what?

Since then, its been a complete blur of utter despair and panic over deadlines, delirious anticipation for the weekend and fitful slumber which usually does not ever surpass 5 hours every night. And what about living up to that magnificently constructed sentence that promises ever so much? I think, its probably been more about attempting to be an exemplary subordinate only to be shot down by a stupid client or a stupid boss who takes your exemplary performance not as a sign to praise or reward you but rather to punish you with more work. And I think I've become a better actor too! Imagine the amount of effort it takes to speak nicely or even civilly to a boss or a client who has just handed you an extra 5 hours a day of work for the next month!! An exemplary actor that is what I am.

I remember starting out at my first client-servicing agency and being completely accepting of all the deadlines handed down to me even though I fully knew that I could not keep to them. Reason: Fear. Now, that fear still exists to an extent but I speak out if requests are unreasonable or worse, impossible. But what, conceivably, can you say to a bitch of a client who controls about 2 million USD in research budget a year? You say, and I interpret: Yes, Yes, Yes. Please take that hot poker and rape me and my entire team in the arse while you sit back and enjoy.

Strangely enough, most of the time I enjoy the contentious nature of the relationship between the client and agency because it really does help to have a client who is totally into being part of the research design but then when it borders on the interfering.... that is what disillusions me. And sometimes its the opposite: an apathetic client, ignorant of all things research related but only focused on answering questions which the research can't really answer.

Anyway, before I digress too much, I would just like to say that this disillusion I feel with myself and my industry does not fully encompass me. I say this because through this disillusionment has come a worldview which is slightly wider (panaromic even); more focused on healthying myself up (although a lot more improvement is needed and possible) and also to try other things which I can do (more reading, more writing) and also to think of a way to make more money!!!

I am feeling this vague notion that I need to write, and taking pleasure in withdrawing myself from the world and thinking about stories I could write, plots I could develop and characters whom I could flesh out (god forbid, two dimensionally). I haven't felt this way in years and I'm liking it and really, really, really hoping that this vague notion will actually morph into reality.

Here's wishing me luck!

P.S. I haven't really explored the possibility that my writing may actually be bad. But again, I am really, really, really hoping it IS bad...ass.

of questionably new horizons and different vantage points.

2008-07-21T01:07:00.003+08:00

Finally made the move over to the new company. Starting my 3rd week there in a couple of hours and already been handed down a couple of deadlines which has been quite stressful but find myself perfectly able to handle them.

Only thing I dislike at the moment is that I am not too familiar with the SOP's that make up the everyday life of the company, for e.g. the process methodologies of starting a new project, the delegation procedure, the paperwork. There really is a lot of paperwork to be filled out at this company but the good thing is that the people to whom the work is delegated to actually do a good job at it because they have been hired to do exactly that! So, so far, so good.

The colleagues are also perfectly nice too! Making friends with some of them already and it feels good that I am settling in well and am able to be my usual filthy-mouthed self! yay! I really must cut down on the usage of swear words! One day, its going to get me into trouble (or more trouble that it already has in the past couple of years). An ex-colleague also works there and it really is such a pleasure to be able to work together again because our stint together at the previous company was cut abominably short.

Anyway, I am writing this at the tail-end of what has been a very relaxing, very non-alcoholic weekend. Watched The Dark Knight on Friday (my grade: B+, but thinking of upgrading to A-) and then chilled out at a friend's place till the wee hours of the morning. Since the said friend and company went to Malaysia the next day, I just sat on my ass and did up a set of charts the whole day. Finally, after sending off the report at 11pm on Saturday, met up with another friend for coffee at 12! super stuff!

On Sunday, met up for lunch with a couple of friends (I really have no idea why I am not using any names in here) and again chilled out at Starbucks for the longest time rating our friends on looks and personality (terrible, I know and can get sinister sometimes). After that, got a hair cut and signed a gym membership!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope this can be sustained and I really hope I can lose the 18 kilos I am ideally supposed to lose. ugh. Does not sound too good. Should have seen the trainer's eyes when I pulled out the pack of Marlboro's from my pocket. After that came back home, collected the food my dearest flatmate had bought for me and went to the now-returned from Malaysia friend's house and chilled there till 10.30pm! And now it's 1.20am and I realize I am writing mind numbing stuff.

Perfectly good weekend and still ending it with a sinking feeling in my heart that I cannot for the life of me understand. Why does my mind stress over the most natural of feelings? Why does my heart stress over the little petty things of life like a freaking website? Rhetoric is my friend because I will answer the question myself - because those feelings are not directed at me.

It fucking sucks. But hey, the job's good right?

tainted texts

2008-06-23T13:48:00.002+08:00

Two hilarious texts received when under the influence from similarly influenced friends at MOS:

Friend #1: Where are you?
Me: At MOS! Come!
Friend #1: Message me the address man!!!!

and..

Friend #2: Where you?
Me: Which room are you in?
Friend #2: Touch my body!

okkkk! cracking up.

a little strange

2008-06-22T19:20:00.000+08:00

A post I wrote when drunk ages ago (about 2 years). Only just discovered the draft. I have no idea what brought this on. I really am quite the drama queen.

Alliances forms, cliques materialize and then you feel completely left out. Then you engage in the same behaviour. Your lifestyle with them becomes a vicious cycle of furtive behaviours, non-existent eye contact, fake smiles and forced laughter.

The fuck up that is rationalization. The fuck up that is hypocrisy. The fuck up that are opinions not felt but manufactured. The fuck up that is condescension. The fuck up of half-measures. The fuck up of always asking someone to be honest. The fuck up that are excuses conveniently made to justify a friendship breakdown.

Unrequited love is agony they say, but only natural. Unrequited friendship, is inexcusable.

So why does anybody bother? Because sometimes it's worth saving and sometimes it's not. I think I have realized what's not.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

2008-06-22T19:06:00.003+08:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was reading Lionel Shriver's 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'. At that stage I had just started the book and was totally gripped by it.

Now that I have finally finished it, I can definitely say it's one of the most interesting books I have ever read. Please put it in your Must Read list.

Clever, clever book. Wonder why it was not awarded any other prizes apart from the Orange Prize. Too popcornish?
A short synopsis taken from Amazon:

In a series of brutally introspective missives to her husband, Franklin, from whom she is separated, Eva tries to come to grips with the fact that their 17-year-old son, Kevin, has killed seven students and two adults with his crossbow. Guiltily she recalls how, as a successful writer, she was terrified of having a child. Was it for revenge, then, that from the moment of his birth Kevin was the archetypal difficult child, screaming for hours, refusing to nurse, driving away countless nannies, and intuitively learning to "divide and conquer" his parents? When their daughter, loving and patient Celia, is born, Eva feels vindicated; but as the gap between her view of Kevin as a "Machiavellian miscreant" and Franklin's efforts to explain away their son's aberrant behavior grows wider, they find themselves facing divorce. In crisply crafted sentences that cut to the bone of her feelings about motherhood, career, family, and what it is about American culture that produces child killers, Shriver yanks the reader back and forth between blame and empathy, retribution and forgiveness. Never letting up on the tension, Shriver ensures that, like Eva, the reader grapples with unhealed wounds.

7 Random Things

2008-06-22T18:25:00.004+08:00

Confab's gone and tagged me on this so I guess I have to do my duty... In fact this kind of thing is right my alley. I have never denied that I am a geek-loser who is fascinated by top 10 lists, movie/book ratings and award shows. So i am actually kinda excited about this. ha ha.

Ok the rules:
~ Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog
~ Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
~ Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
~ Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Point to note: I am a very open guy. Too open. Therefore most of the stuff that I list here is probably not random at all.

1. I spit a lot when I smoke. I can't help it. There's this unnatural urge in me to spit whenever I exhale after a puff. I think it's some irrational hormone telling me that if I spit, the nicotine which I have just ingested will not really lace my lungs. A lot of people really find it disgusting and I have learnt to control it most of the time but I will still steal a quick spit when no one is looking.

2. It is to my understanding that everyone knows that I keep a list of movies I have watched and my corresponding grade for it. What most don't know is that I will revisit this list every once in a while to see whether I still have the same opinions. So I hide the column of grades and go through a process I call re-grading. Then I have some fun comparing the two set of grades I have given. I think my re-grading % is close to 90%. It is a relief that I am not as fickle as I thought. For all managers out there who have listened to my excuses of not meeting deadlines... this is the real reason.

3. I keep 5-6 bottles of water at my desk all the time. I try to drink lots to keep my body cool and comfortable. ha ha. I do it to prevent acne from spreading to my face. Sadly, my back has been ravaged by this awful disease and water, if not harming me in any way, is actually not doing much to help either.

4. I have a fascination with the occult. I will browse through hundreds of pages containing information on witchcraft, dark magic, the wiccan religion etc. and more often than not harbor some fantasy about being a warlock. However, for some random reason, whenever I have this fantasy, a suave ruthless image is sadly not conjured. What is conjured is always an image of me looking like Mr. Weatherbee from Riverdale High.

5. Speaking about fantasies.... My real ambition in life is to be a writer. But whenever I think of myself in a position that I might be remembered for, a researcher or a writer will never crop up. I always, always imagine being remembered as a teacher. Think Dead Poet's Society.

6. I talk to myself. And it's usually tied to random fact no.5. Always catch myself telling myself something but with the tone of a teacher. Like 'now, now, you must always try to come to work on time'. Ugh. Too personal. Also creepy.

7. I have a fear that I have Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Reasons: Random fact no.6, tendency to imagine a third non-existent person sitting next to us at McDonalds at 6am after a night of festivities, tendency to be a completely different person when drunk etc.

Alright. That's done.

I'm gonna tag my friend YC!

life chore

2008-06-11T23:25:00.002+08:00

Today, I resigned from the market research company I have been working at for the last year and a half.

Thought I would feel a sense of exhilaration; a sense of relief. Unfortunately it did not come. Instead, this tiresome mood took me over and never let me go until I came home and decided to do some chores instead. But I understand that life is a chore too. So which is the bigger chore to live through?

I think part of me wants to feel like a failure; wants to feel miserable. Maybe I am one of those sadomasochists who like to inflict all sorts of horrible pain onto themselves. These actions result, under different circumstances and different stages of intoxication, in two separate, yet intertwined kinds of state: anger and sadness.

Anger because I feel I don’t deserve it and sadness because I feel that I do.

I guess I need a therapist. Like right now. Or is that too self-indulgent? It would be nice to talk freely and not be afraid of being judged…. And maybe, just maybe, all this talk and judgment is not really a big deal because the therapist will reveal that my ‘problems’ are just like the rest of the world’s problems.

And… for that instant, I will feel great waves of relief wash over me but in one fascinating, flabbergasting-ly, sickeningly horrid moment I will realize that I already know this and I am still the same person, going through the same shite which coincidentally everyone is going through but so what? Does that make the problem better? I hardly think so.

of breakdowns and deadlines

2008-06-06T04:51:00.002+08:00

It's 4.45am on a Friday and I am trying to meet a 12noon deadline. I don't think I will make it. Feels quite horrible to be up at this hour really, especially since I crashed into my short-lived stupor only at midnight.

To make things worse, the air-conditioner in my room has broken down. I am using a fan! I haven't used one in years. How does it even work? Do I have to aim it at me? ha ha. Alright, I am not that bad but seriously, fans are so 1984.

Here I am worrying more about having an air-conditioned room than trying to meet my noon deadline. Pat on back for being the most considerate, competent, selfless and efficient employee of the year.

(Drunken) Nights & Days

2008-05-25T21:35:00.001+08:00

Some of the other highlights of the past couple of months:

Singapore Flyer

A few of us – 23 to be exact – went on the Singapore Flyer at the same time. The views were gorgeous but not something, I would suppose, that we would have enjoyed had it been a much smaller group. Anyway, we sneaked in a bottle of JWBL inside and had a gala time doing ‘moodi’ shots. Ha ha.

Sri Lankan Dinner and Dance

Every year the Singapore Sinhalese Association organizes a Dinner & Dance for all Sri Lankans living in Singapore and this year, a record number from our group of friends decided to attend.

Therefore we arrived in all our finery – sarees, dresses, sarongs, kurtas, jeans – and proceeded to disgrace ourselves thoroughly. Since we were so delighted to see each other (after, oh, I don’t know like 2 days) we stood around and caused a real big racket which prompted the emcee to shout at us to sit down and shut up several times over. Again, we sneaked about 5 bottles of booze. Maybe that explains the racket we caused.

Our tables won 2 bottles of wine, a Samsung MP3 player and a Rice Cooker and I got pulled up on stage in Idol like fashion to be one of the three people who were in the running for the 1st prize of the Lucky Draw – a 2 way ticket to Sri Lanka! Anyway I got booted off… ha ha. Sad.

Also ended up dancing on chairs like real hooligans with fellow hooligans Shavanka and Aftab!! And also when the alcohol had run out, ran around tables finishing off other people’s unfinished drinks only to find out that fellow hooligan Aftab had done the same thing too.

KL Trip

The Lanka Lions (a Singaporean cricket team consisting of some of our friends – Ram, Kevin, Aftab) went to Kuala Lampur, Malaysia for a cricket tour and through some major planning and inevitable logistical nightmares (most of us being Sri Lankans, what would you expect?) a lot of us accompanied the team.

While there, we did what we do best – procrastinated, made fools of ourselves and clubbed like fiends. We did a bit of shopping too. Bought a lot of chewing gum and cigarettes, smoked a lot in public places like IN CLUBS (yay!) and generally had a good time rushing about trying to do a million things at once.

Our first clubbing stop was Rum Jungle in Bukit Bintang. I would suppose it’s one of your usual-looking clubs but with the combination of awesome company, really good live music, indoor smoking and cheap as fuck drinks, the place basically outdid any other clubbing experience I have had in Singapore in the last couple of months. We also made a trip down to Zouk but ended up only entering Loft (the RnB equivalent to Phuture in Zouk Singapore). Basically the place plays the same kind of music but there’s more than ample space to do dance and have a good time. Super super. Everything’s rather super no?

Also visited this really horrible club Raven (the only place open at 4am on a Saturday morning). It looks, feels and sounds like a total druggie place. The music is deafeningly loud, the lighting almost pitch black and the bouncers and staff looking like a combination of Ellen Burstyn in final stages of Requiem for a Dream and a dacoit movie made in Bollywood during the 80’s. Amidst shouts of how our testicles were vibrating we left the club in a jiffy.

Oh yes, we also watched some of the cricket played by our friends on the Lanka Lions team and attended an official dinner hosted by them in the night during which we were regaled by Sri Lankan uncles singing about their ‘bum-bum badero’s’ and Aftab and Ram singing censored Baila since there we so many kids there. Hilarious.

Our last few hours in KL, Harsha, Swapnil and I (since we were taking a separate bus out) hung out at KLCC where we fulfilled Harsha’s obsession of eating some Dunkin’ Donuts and from where I bought cheap-ass ipod headphones and 2 books – We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. Currently reading the book by Shriver now and it’s turning out to be an awesome read.

Anyway, got back to Singapore by 8pm Sunday and that was that! Monday was a complete horror story at work. Arrived at work at 7.45am on Monday and left at 4am on Tuesday. Life sucks! Haha.

Birth of Niece

My niece was finally born. I had known it was to be a girl-baby some months previously but my sister had forced secrecy upon me because her husband didn’t want to know and she didn’t want him to know that I knew. The whole, how can father not know but brother in law can know potential controversy. You know what I mean right? Happens so often…

Anyway, she is the cutest little thing ever and she was named Sara. She also gets cock-eyed when there’s a camera in front of her….. Now I know she’s my niece. Apparently my eyes go about in all directions too when I am drunk.
Pictures of her are up on facebook. If you know me, you probably have the address of my profile already. If you don’t, you probably don’t want to see my niece anyway.

December 07/January 08 - Trip to Sri Lanka and India

2008-05-25T18:00:00.002+08:00

Was away from Singapore for 3 weeks in December and January during which I went to Colombo to chill with family. What with my grand-aunt having passed away a couple of months previously (God rest her soul in peace) and my sister having married and eventually moved out of the house, it was a bit strange to only live with my mother in the house. But I think it was really great that she and I got to hang out and bond (I use this word loosely because if I were to tell her anything about my personal life, she would lock me up).

Hung out with heavily pregnant sister too and visited her house once or twice.. very nice. Very young-urban-professional kind of place; although neither of them are all that young, urban or professional (ha ha…ooh mean!). If they were, they would not have got married and even if they did, they would not talk to each other or have time to meet up with each other, much less have the time for a baby.

She also hosted a dinner at her place where close family were invited…. Food was brilliant and quite fun to be around cousins after such a long time. So Christmas was spent in Colombo too and I can’t really remember what we did…. Maybe nothing? Surely not? Clubbing I am sure..!Spent time with Ashan, Nishanthi, Inoshi, Hasira, Ashanie, Harshi, Shavanka, Shawn, Afshan, Israth.... a lot of fun. Oh yes, also met Shiny and Kevin in Colombo who were there for Shiny's best friend's wedding. So while Shiny was at the salon at Galle Face Hotel getting her hair, nails done, Kevin and I drank beers by the beach. Was a really good day!

So yes, flew to Chennai for a few days and met Pavs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So good to meet her and gossip and shop and do best-friend stuffz. We had a really fun lunch at Zara where she, being a smart-ass, ordered the foulest long island iced tea. It was terrible and had she had the stomach to finish it, some serious room-spinning may have happened.

I stayed with Dad’s sister which as usual was the most relaxing experience ever. Her house, although situated right in the middle of the city is actually located in a relatively peaceful lane with 2 massive trees in the garden. Therefore this lends the house a very peaceful and cool quality in which you can totally chill out. The only thing I can’t stand about that house, in fact, Chennai in general is that there are so many fucking mosquitoes buzzing about. You only have to bend down when you are watching TV and blindly thwack the area around your legs, and I guarantee you there will be 4-5 blood splatters on your palms. Disgusting? Tell me about it! I experienced that about 20-30 times the 4 days I was in Chennai.

I also had the time to color my hair a brown that turned out to be quite black color at Pavs’ family salon – Bounce! Go check it out. The service is brilliant. Ask for a guy called Murli. He may not be all that cool or glamorous (i.e. gay) looking but he is very good at what he does. Anyway, the brown-black color was super as it hid all my grey! Plus he also gave my hair a bit of a twist and although it only lasted one day, I lived that whole day with a confidence in looking like a trendy fucking bugger.

Cousin also took me out to this place called Casa Picola (correct me if I am wrong) and Mocha which is supposed to be India’s latest coffee-house sensation (see Barista – India’s latest coffee-house sensation circa 1998). Mocha’s built very well; it’s got an indoor and outdoor area with the latter being shaded with a few trees and the furniture being a mix of the traditional table-chair thingi, and swings and big comfortable couches. The menu selection is great with loads of great desserts and really complicated and exotic sounding coffee. But what really impressed me was the selection of shisha they offered. I can’t remember most of them but I tried out something called Nirvana which totally lived up to the rants of how totally superbly awesome it was. Try it!!!!

Went to some clubs – No. 10 Downing, Rhapsody and some restaurants which I don’t really remember and in each of them I just had a really good time. It was so refreshing to be away from work and the pressures imposed on you by the managers and assistants of the world.

Flew to Bangalore on the morning of the 31st of December. Was totally excited about the night since it was the first time in about 10 years that I had spent NYE in India with cousins. And even though some of my cousins did not make it to the Bangalore Club for the festivities, I had a really great time. The highlights of the night: Bacardi Cokes selling for about S$0.80 and a band that pulled off live performances of World Hold On and Gasolina and without any hint of hesitation played all the latest Hindi stuff from Om Shanti Om etc. Brilliant. Needless to say, I got wasted and don’t remember anything after perhaps 2am. But all the same, super super times.

The rest of the Bangalore trip was spent hanging out with cousins – special mention to Manoj, Vanita and Ritika for making it a great one. Places I visited were Couch (latest addition to my family’s portfolio of business ventures). It’s a pub/lounge/restaurant that is situated on M.G Road and serves great food. Again, ate at some awesome Chinese restaurants but I never remember their names…

Flew back to Colombo on the 4th of Jan and back to Singapore on the 5th. That really sucked balls!

Only bad thing about the trip: during the first 168 hours I was in Colombo, 44 of them were spent on work-stuff. Disgusting. It’ll take me some time to get over that experience.

sound familiar?

2008-05-25T17:49:00.001+08:00

What is it about sadness that makes me feel like blogging again? I think it is only when I am sad that I feel that talking to my friends may not be good enough, may not make me feel any better. When I do pen things down, while I am typing, I feel infinitely worse, because the most pathetic self-pity will manifest itself but afterwards when I am finally uploading the damn post onto the damn blog, lightness takes over, and I think that is the lightness that will make me sleep at night.

So talking about self-pity, let me talk about the reasons for my sadness. One word: Rejection. I do not think I will ever be at a certain age or level of maturity to take rejection without it causing my mind to spin out of control. It gives rise to a spectrum of unbearable, self-loathing emotions that make me really really bad company to have around.

And to make it all the more sweeter, what if this rejection is accompanied by a declaration of love for another? What if this ‘another’ is one of your closest friends? What if there’s some history between yourself and this close friend? What do you do then? I believe calling this the mother lode of irony would not be too much of a stretch.

Love triangles happen all the time and I have seen my fair share of them but in this case, there is an undeniable link that exists, however, most pathetically, these links that form are reluctant, hesitant, stuck in a world where reciprocity does not exist. Perhaps it’s easier when reciprocity does not exist, because, then, jealousy becomes baseless with no one to blame, and rationality has an easier time kicking into place.

break time

2007-11-24T17:56:00.000+08:00

phew. back to blogging. not for long though. in fact, i predict the post following this will probably be 2 months later. anyway, its been quite hectic at work these past few months but to some extent, no, to a great extent, i have enjoyed it. it feels good to be held responsible for the success and failure points of the project one is managing. so long as..... you don't fuck up too many times.

momentous moments in my life the past few months (since my last post):

boss left. however, have kept in touch with her coz she is suddenly funny! i always knew she was fun to talk to.. but funny? that's a curve ball i could not predict. come to think of it, what is a curve ball exactly. i presume my usage of it is a manifestation of my archie comic days. sonofagun.

filed my income tax returns!!! woooot. 6 months late. luckily, no penalties were levied. maybe coz no income tax to pay? ahhh the benefits of too low an income. ha ha.

applied for leave and got my ticket. i am leaving singapore on 19th December and going to colombo after which i will travel to madras and then new year's will be spent in bangalore.. am sooo excited. also to get away from work for a while might be a good idea.

went as sole-presenter for my first project on shoes. quite fun but as pointed out repeatedly by superiors, no challenge. pfft. talk abt wet blankets. but then had my chance to present again on prepaid card, which was awesomely fun (i have conveniently forgetten that i spent the entire night doing up my presentation charts).

did up my very own set of qualitative charts for this presentation on environmental issues. so not fun. was grappling with the material. anyway, that's done... relief. must move on.

also received my first every credit card. too scared to use. am sure the fear will slip away soon.

was given a performance bonus and a raise. super stuff. expenditure rose obviously.

anyway, the usual...

movies watched:

December Boys B+
Stardust B
Lions for Lambs B+
Scoop B
Hairspray B
Halloween C
300 B+
Fracture B-
Ratatouille B+
1408 B-
Sicko A-
No Reservations B
Death at a Funeral A
The Nanny Diaries B
Savage Grace B
Laage Chunari Mein Daag A-

*might have forgotten some. please if you're reading this now and you feel I might have missed out some titles, do let me know. this is my version of imdb.

Anyhoooo, books read:

Chart Throb - Ben Elton C+
The Polysyllabic Spree - Nick Hornby B
Witness For The Prosecution - Agatha Christie B
Bridget Jones Diary - Helen Fielding A+ (reading again)
Almost Moon - Alice Sebold (reading now)

awww right. am so not in the mood to correct my grammar.

see ya never!

Intermission

2007-08-12T02:56:00.001+08:00

It’s been fucking ages since I blogged! What with work, the preciousness of the weekend or rather, any free time that can be squeezed out during the weekend amidst all the work that needs to get done, and of course general inertia, the blog has evidently taken a back seat.

I do sometimes think about the blog as a living thing which I must feel sorry for if I haven’t posted anything in ages. Imagine little blog personalities running around? So cool! Technically, the blogger’s personality should shine through in all the blog posts (but only if your writing is of a seminal nature, i.e. like mine – especially this particular post). Maybe someone will see this blog post and actually come up with a really cool innovation with regard to blog personalities and make tons of money. I foresee myself hiring a lawyer then and trying to sue the bitch who stole my idea.

Anyway, I have decided not to do my work today and instead postpone it to Sunday. I foresee again that tomorrow I will be in full scale panic but that can wait until later. Life cannot be overtaken by work. I refuse to let that happen all the time. It has been much too long since I have thought about anything other than work and I will have relaxation time. Did I mention I like to have pointless discourses like this with myself all the time?

I had the most fabulous time yesterday. Work was less stressful than usual (could be because my boss has resigned and is leaving in a few days time – sob) and I didn’t stay late. I went to meet up with a couple of friends at Tent, a Mongolian restaurant in Clark Quay for dinner. Awesome food. A must try! I went home after dinner and showered at my own cool pace and left for Clark Quay again. To kick things off, proceeded to meet up with the same group of friends at Café Iguana where the intended substance abuse started. After downing a few shots of some disgusting tasting alcohol (not entirely masked by the blueberry) proceeded to, where else but, Attica! Even though the DJ was having a bit of a identity crisis, i.e. being really sucky, it turned out an excellent evening. After Attica closed at 5am (not too sure about this as this was where the memory started getting fuzzy), went with Mr. Jacob Thomas (funnyman extraordinaire), to Living Room! I wish I could describe my experience better but unfortunately I do not remember it. I only know that I woke up at 11.30pm safely in my bed with the remnants of a McDonalds breakfast on my desk.

For record-keeping purposes, I will list down all the movies and books I have had the privilege of experiencing lately:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – B+
Rush Hour 3 – B
The Simpsons Movie – B
Knocked Up – B
The History Boys – A-
Surf’s Up – A-
Die Hard 4.0 – B
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 – B-
Hannibal Rising – C+
Zodiac – A-
The Namesake – A
The Reaping – D
Vacancy – B
Paris je t’aime - B+

Priceless - B
Ocean’s Thirteen – B

And the books:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K Rowling – A-
The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami – A-
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger – B+
Monsoons and Potholes – Manuka Wijesinghe – B+
Colpetty People – Ashok Farrey – B

Currently I am reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Interesting to say the least. I think I will use the word ‘fascinating’ when I am done. My next on the list is The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. I have been a bit hesitant to read this book because most of the people I know who’ve read it, have said it’s not particularly great. But I have to judge for myself.

Alright, this was quite therapeutic, I am off to shower and dinner at Newton Circus! Woot.

(untitled)

2007-02-25T16:54:00.000+08:00

I've been wanting to blog over the past few weeks but hadn't gotten around to it mainly coz I'm quite the lazy shit sometimes. But anyway, here I go attempting to recap some of the events of my very illustrious, very exciting life.

Let me start by yesterday. I decided to take Ms. Pavitra Mohan for the Oscar Movie Marathon yesterday (which was a competition entered into and won by my geeky self). Movies started at 9am and went on all the way to 9pm. Meals were provided so obviously, it was an extremely good deal, i.e. 5 movies, lunch and dinner all for FREE!!!!!! Woot!!!! Also nice posters and a nice fuzzy feeling to be around so many kindred spirits.

Anyway, I crawled out of bed at 6.45am and met pavs at the place. We grabbed a ridiculously expensive Starbucks breakfast (thankfully, this extravagant godsend was open at this time). First up was Babel which I thought was quite fantastic. The storylines were brilliant and each plot did not seem to have a direct bearing on the others but they did intersect at points. I liked the fact that the movie had these independent story lines and that the points they meet do not make the movie. My grade for it: A-.

Next was The Queen. I actually watched the Queen before and I liked it. Second time around, I liked it more. Helen Mirren's performance MAKES the movie and Michael Sheen's role as Tony Blair is awesome too. It isn't a brilliant movie but the performances and the little bits of humour in it make it worth watching and is probably why I would grade it an A- this time around.

Letters from Iwo Jima was next. The movie is in Japanese and tells the story of the Japanese defense of the little island of Iwo Jima against the Americans during World War II. It's an all out war movie which means there's lots of noise, violence, blood, gore and decapitation..... all in Japanese!!!! I did not like the movie but I have a feeling that had I watched it on another day, i.e. not during a marathon; basically like a person with some semblance of sanity, I would have liked it quite a lot. However, the film's gloomy cinematography, depressing context made it quite hard for me to concentrate and after a while the noise of gun shots gave me a bad headache. My grade for it: B.

After patting ourselves on our backs for making it this far and more so for getting through Letters from Iwo Jima, pavs and I settled down to watch 2 amazing performances in Notes on a Scandal. Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are utterly amazing in this film. Judi Dench is a creepy lesbian who finds a liking to a new, younger teacher Cate Blanchett. But after she finds out that Cate Blanchett is having an affair with her 15 year old student, Judi Dench goes nuts and starts emotionally blackmailing her. Superbe acting. My grade for it: A.

The last film was Dreamgirls and unlike Notes on a Scandal where the performances AND the fim were good, Dreamgirls had good performances but the overall film was rather underwhelming. I think EVERYONE sings awesomely well in the film but I didn't particularly like the film. My grade for it: B.

Jeez. I read the above and I really am a loser.

Anyway, apart from trying to OD on movies, what are the other things that have happened since I last posted something on this darned thing?

Oh yes, the big big project I was working on from December onwards FINALLY closed. I am soooo relieved. The presentation went alright but the MD did not particularly approve but then again I hear he doesn't approve of much so as long as it was not a big mess up, I'm cool with it!

The Chinese New Year holidays came and went. 4 days of glorious, stress-free, work-less days. Amazing? Abso-fucking-lutely. Watched Hannibal Rising (B-), Epic Movie (D), Lone Star State of Mind (F), deleted scenes from Love Actually and Amelie. The last three were watched in one night with JJ, Shiny and Pavs. Fun times.

I managed to catch Pan's Labyrinth sometime over the last two months and I thought it was pretty good. I would grade it a B+. Watched Half Nelson too which I thought was pretty draggy but I kinda liked it. My grade for it: B+.

Oh yes, on the eve of the new year, went for a Anime costume party at Elin's place. I wore a green wig that stained my entire forehead a sickly greenish-yellow. It was fun though and hilarious being around a ton a Norwegians. A good friend of mine passed out and refused to move for 2 hours so after fretting for all that time, I took a glass of water and splashed it across my friend's face. After being called a fucking arsehole by my good friend we went to Attica (at 2.45am) and my good friend was normal again!!! Another night of fun times!!

Oh yes, American Idol 6 has started and is as fun as ever. Another conversation topic! Woot!! Also, Grey's Anatomy is airing some of its most fabulous stuff these days and its all very heart wrenching but brilliant all the same.

Yep, that's what I have been up to. Lots more stuff to tell but sooooo tired.

Plus its Monday in less than 6 hours... Ugh!!

How cannnn?

picture virgin

2007-01-02T21:52:00.000+08:00

My dearest flatmate Kimberley in a somewhat pensive mood on the day I got back to Singapore after my month long, heavenly holiday in Colombo where I did absolutely nothing exciting but still had the time of my life.

Location of photograph: Haveli, on Kampong Bahru road. Check it out. Good food at reasonable prices.

Me!!! Right opposite Kimberley at Haveli. No gel in my hair! Shock! Horror! Faint! Dreading the prospect of starting work at my new job the next day!

Hershey's and I at The Clinic! Didn't like it but really don't want to be the one to spread negative WOM so do go check it out. I wonder whether this photograph will meet Her Royal Hershey's formidable standards?

In honor of Shiny's birthday celebration at Cafe Iguana we all stuck our tongues out. Perhaps I shall start a poll about who looks the cutest. My choice is Pavs, with me coming in a close second. he he.

update on movies

2007-01-02T01:20:00.000+08:00

Some movies I have watched recently:

The Holiday B-
The Last Kiss B-
The Queen B+
Happy Feet B
Casino Royale A-
Little Children A-
Night at the Museum B

The real surpise of the season was that Casino Royale was such a good movie. The action's just awesome and Daniel Craig does the James Bond franchise proud. I mean we all thought Pierce Brosnan totally looked the part of Bond, but now when I think of him, I think of stuffy old bachelor trying to look cool. Kate Winslet was out with two movies this season, i.e. a visual and cinematic treat but The Holiday was quite the disappointment (although she was brilliant) but Little Children kind of made up for it. A must watch. Helen Mirren in The Queen is absolutely awesome. Every bit of praise that has been showered on her for this performance is well deserved and 100% justified.

Movies I am dying to watch:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Notes on a Scandal
The Departed (was in state of 3rd world cinematic deprivation when movie opened)
Pan's Labyrinth (getting some of the best reviews of the year)
Half Nelson

I am so looking forward to the award season!! However, sadly, I cannot miss work to watch the awards live. Poor me. I live such a hard life!!!

2007

2007-01-02T01:15:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year!!! I cannot believe 2006 is over. Such a turbulent year it was…. Anyway, out with the old, in with the new! So without any further ado, these are my New Year resolutions:

Read more.

Watch more movies.

Drink more water.

To have lower expectations about everything. Relationships, friendships, work etc.

To be more efficient at work. This HAS to happen or I WILL be fired. I expect this is not something I can control but I guess it will just come from experience. I love working as a research analyst but it’s a constant challenge to do things on time. The standards seem impossible but yet I see everyone else being able to do it. So I will cross my fingers, work hard and hope for the best!

To save more. Living from cheque to cheque is tiring, scary and makes life hell for the accountant at the firm I work in. It isn’t easy for anyone to listen to a 22 year old whining about being paid late.

It’s all about more, more, more. Other nasty habits I have that should make it on my resolution list are conspicuously absent because I don’t have any faith in myself.

It’s 2007. Wooooooot!

of times past

2006-10-31T05:41:00.000+08:00

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?

2006-10-16T04:31:00.000+08:00

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

2006-10-11T04:34:00.000+08:00

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

2006-10-11T04:28:00.000+08:00

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

2006-10-11T04:21:00.000+08:00

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

2006-09-22T18:05:00.000+08:00

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!

2006-08-07T14:35:00.000+08:00

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

2006-08-01T23:48:00.000+08:00

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

2006-07-24T23:16:00.000+08:00

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

2006-07-18T00:38:00.000+08:00

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

2006-07-16T22:56:00.000+08:00

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

2006-05-20T18:29:00.000+08:00

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

2006-05-20T18:09:00.000+08:00

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

2006-05-15T22:57:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-30T21:54:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-30T21:50:00.000+08:00

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?

2006-04-30T21:19:00.000+08:00

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

2006-04-01T18:57:00.000+08:00

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....

2006-03-22T23:22:00.000+08:00

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

2006-03-19T19:21:00.000+08:00

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

2006-03-05T19:21:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-26T21:44:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-23T23:25:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-23T22:51:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-23T00:03:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-23T00:01:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-14T00:01:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-11T18:13:00.000+08:00

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

2006-02-08T07:18:00.000+08:00

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

2006-01-28T04:00:00.000+08:00

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.

2006-01-14T17:23:00.000+08:00

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

2006-01-14T17:17:00.000+08:00

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.

notions of university

2006-01-14T17:11:00.000+08:00

I have officially graduated from the National University of Singapore people! I got my final grades on the 21^st of December and was quite thrilled with them. My results were as follows (I need to gloat a bit even though I feel terribly guilty about it):

Marketing Research A
Business Policy & Strategy A-
Southeast Asia: A Changing Region A
Global Environmental Issues A+

My Semester Average Point is 4.875 on 5.00 and my overall Cumulative Average Point stands at 4.23 on 5. I am very happy about these grades. I have nothing to complain about and I guess there is a God in this world. A God who helps me apply myself, helps me to work hard and to be in control (most of the time). Religion in my life never becomes more apparent than during exam time.

I am quite sure I will miss university life but I haven’t really felt those pangs as yet. Maybe I am in shock? I don’t want to spend time idealizing my notions of university life (especially not after spending gut-wrenching hours typing out assignments or preparing for presentations) but I do need to acknowledge one thing; my friends. These bunch of people have made and will continue to make my life worth living. It’s pretty sad that some friendships didn’t work out in the end but I can’t discount the times when we were friendly and I will cherish (what a fucking corny word) those times forever. So, university is finally over. Chapter closed.

PS. Too drama you think?

good cheer and gossip

2006-01-14T17:07:00.000+08:00

For one week there were festivities. A close family friend, who is somehow related to us, got married… His wife was beautiful in a kind of villainous way. She had the characteristic sharp hooked nose and piercing brown eyes and a tendency to flash only half-smiles. Her husband however, was the complete opposite. In true Sindhi fashion, he got tipsy (wasted? Sindhi men hold their liquor well) at every function (the Sindhi wedding spans a couple of days and plenty of booze) and bobbed about everywhere dancing with every aunty and all the other girls there, unmarried or married. You’d think the bride might have got worried or jealous, but she just sat there, serenely watching over her husband and I bet quite glad to have the annoying video cameras and lights away from her for a bit. Imagine the discomfort!!? On her face she literally has layers of make-up, in her hair about a bottle of hairspray all pinned up with about a million pins and on her body, her poor body, feet after feet of heavy, itchy garment wrapped around her. All this effort and expenditure to look good in front of the cameras and the unrelenting, unforgiving eyes of the Sindhi public!

I hate going to weddings unless they’re of a close family member or friend. Even then, I try to excuse myself by any means possible. I try to be out with my friends, I try to feign sickness and I try to tell my mom that I won’t even be noticed therefore pre-empting the lecture on showing up as a mark of respect and courtesy. This time around however, even though staying home seemed like the best prospect, I didn’t bitch too much about going. I don’t know why but I just went along with it. Perhaps I am going soft in the head…. Perhaps I’m growing into my genes… Perhaps I have taken a bit of liking towards my peers? Who knows? Anyway I went.

First of all was a beach party. It was supposed to be a youngster’s only party but inevitably, some adults showed up. Actually I think the adults were a good match for the ‘youngsters’. The booze flowed and the groom went positively mad. I have hung around this guy (I use the term ‘hung around’ loosely) for more than 15 years and I have never seen him so much as step on to the dance floor! He lifted his soon-to-be bride into the air and carried her all over the dance floor. His audience, i.e. us, stood around, smiles frozen into our faces mechanically clapping, hoping against hope he wouldn’t trip up all the while cringing in embarrassment inside. What did I say about unrelenting, unforgiving Sindhis? True to form, I sneaked off for a few cigarettes once or twice while nursing my perfectly made Bacardi Limon and coke with one of my sister’s friends but crept to the dance floor and performed a scary Sindhi dance, which even I didn’t know I had in me! My darling sister had one-half of a drink and became officially, the cheapest drunk alive but I averted disaster by pointing her to the direction of the crowded dance floor where she could shake the worst off. All in all, I made the most of it, hung about with my cousin P, my sister G and her friends and had a pretty good time.

There were other functions we had to attend too but I am quite lazy to recount them all. Suffice to say is that they were pretty much the same. Oh what the hell… I might as well summarize them (for my adoring, I-could-do-nothing-wrong readership)… The next occasion was the Mehendi and Sangeet- a 2-in-1 extravaganza, mainly held together to save shit loads of money. During this function, the bride to be gets especially dolled up with every possible form of make-up and jewellery she can get her hands on and for some symbolic reason I am unaware of, gets her palms and arms painted with Mehendi- a kind of plant paste that when washed away leaves a temporary tattoo on wherever it is applied. Some people even use it on their hair in much more copious quantities to cover up their gray hairs. It’s the organic way of doing things. Fuck L’Oreal! Apparently the Mehendi is supposed to be a girl’s only occasion but because the Mehendi has to seamlessly transition into the Sangeet (this time a musical and booze extravaganza) the guys are given special attendance. Of course the guys don’t mind coz its ogle, ogle and ogle all the way. The modern day hen party can be paralleled with what the traditional Mehendi is supposed to be, minus the strippers, condoms and penis cakes of course.

My sister and her friends- all friends of the groom- did a dance for the couple. It was quite fun to see all of them mess up one by one. It’s all very good fun…gorgeous people, fine clothes, brilliant company appropriately oiled by the cocktails which everyone accepts as their due but secretly thinks it’s the only way they will get through the evening. Fun times!

The next function was quite mellow by contrast. It was held at the groom’s house so it was only a select crowd. My sister, cousin and I went as the family representatives and we trudged up to the sixth floor since the fucking elevator was out of order- a state which was mysteriously fixed by the time we left and we had already come down the million steps. Such a pleasant surprise to see the elevator door open and pot-bellied uncles pop out, swimming in the sweet but dull effects of their evening’s consumption of their life’s manna. Anyway I have just realized I have spent valuable time recounting an inane story about an elevator that’s just menopausal.

The affair itself was quite religious since the priest had come and set up a small fire in which the groom had to throw stuff into at select timings during select prayers chanted by the Maharaj as we all call him. This didn’t stop the uncles from popping open the Johnny Walker mid-prayer while their wives ran about serving food and furtively taking sips out of their husband’s glasses all the while hoping the other wives wouldn’t see. Sigh. Is there any wonder why our parents don’t know much about us? We’ve learnt from the best. In effect, when we get married, we graduate from the School of Deception and go on to another journey of perpetual lies; little white lies or big black ones depending on how good (bad?) your parents were… There is always something to hide. I am probably also going to graduate from the School of Digression if I don’t stop soon… After the prayers were done, a little tradition, also something I was unaware of was enacted. Someone had to strip the groom! Don’t ask me why- it could be some homo-erotic cult group behaviour for all I care but it was fucking hilarious. Our dearest groom had been informed already about this little, sordid tradition and had attached a lock to his belt, thereby preventing any sort of rape that he would have been subjected to.

The wedding reception (I missed the wedding coz a) it was in the evening, just the time I like to chill and b) it was in a temple) was quite dull in my opinion. Apart from being sick of the same old faces by this time, I was also feeling the claustrophobia that sets in when one is around one’s family too long. I had to get out but had no such luck because my familial duties and instincts were too strong. Yes, contrary to popular belief, I do have a heart.

So it all came to an end! And I was still in one piece. I wonder if parents are aware of the fact that weddings are helpful to their agenda of making their children more…er.. Sindhi? I know it made me appreciate it a teeny-weeny bit more. I had made it out to be a superficial mess but while that still exists in a slightly moderate way, the new generation is quite fun, some of them even having the gall to whisper, ‘do you have a cig?’ in my ear! To which I replied, quite delightfully, ‘No! But shall we go look for one??’

veneers

2006-01-14T17:05:00.000+08:00

While I was brushing my teeth this morning, I had the most peculiar sensation wash over me. I felt completely alert. No groggy head, scrunched up eyes or slowly receding erection… And best (worst) of all, I could hear everything.

I could hear the inner workings of my system; the rolling of my stomach as I gagged while brushing my tongue; the foamy wishy-washiness in my mouth; my agonized coughs; the servant screaming at crows who were hopping into the kitchen in hope for some juicy morsel of Sindhi food; the men next-door trying to make themselves heard above the growl of their electricity generator; our very own district beggar chanting utter gibberish in very convincing rants; the scream of vehicles slowly gnarling themselves up in a filthy traffic jam and slowly but surely drowning everything out while my alertness drained out was the chanting rolling soothingly out of the neighbourhood mosque. It was surprising how these layers of sounds settled down on me until I could only hear the ritual afternoon prayer. Layers of sounds, layers of complexity, layers of every-day life.

Amidst such amazing and beautiful chaos my insignificance in this world wrapped itself around me and surprisingly, I was glad for it.

moving out=claustrophobia?

2006-01-14T17:03:00.000+08:00

Having no choice in the matter coupled with a decent enough set of circumstances results in pretty high levels of content. Iro, Nadeeka and I moved out into our own apartment a few days back and it’s pretty nice. It’s got a view to die for, almost-furnished, great bathrooms and fully air-conditioned. The only sore point is that we don’t have a microwave or a washing machine. It’s a fuck up but not big enough to destroy all the positive feelings associated with moving into a place that looks really great and has a swimming pool to match. You know you’re in a first world country when you can move into what would be called a luxurious apartment in Colombo with such modest finances.

Living with other people is a daunting prospect. Life in university, i.e. campus life, can get very claustrophobic. It’s very strange that it is your friends, the select few you should accept completely if not unconditionally, become the ones who will push you over the edge of tolerance. I think, like relationships, not all friendships work out. Why do people think that fighting for a friendship is so much more important that fighting for a relationship? Why can’t we just walk away? I think we should just accept that some friendships run out of steam and some don’t- just like any old relationship. Anyway, if living in close proximity with people on campus can be so constricting, it must be worse when there’s no canteen, library or class to run into when you want pure, unadulterated isolation (almost)… When you are in your allocated room on campus, some privacy is afforded to you because there is still some physical effort involved if someone wants to visit. In an apartment, even that’s not there; no respite, no escape from anything.

I think we all need some element of sensitivity to our flatmates’ moods; a sensitivity that alerts you to the need of not being overly-cheery when your flatmate is depressed or too nosy when they are extremely private. Considering my lack of experience in the matter of having flatmates I am hardly the person to talk about this but let’s see… hopefully things won’t be as bad as all those episodes of Sex and The City and I paint it out to be. Friendships, however much I’d like to think to the contrary, operate on very fragile ground and it’d be really nice and I would be extremely grateful if they stood intact even after I move out.

acid reflux

2006-01-14T16:54:00.000+08:00

My last few days at NUS were anything but ceremonious. These were days filled with severe acid reflux, palpitating hearts, over the top cigarette smoking and coffee intake that would make a New York lawyer who works 130 hours a week cringe with disgust. Preparation for exams was a bitch. I have never been so unprepared in my life.

Usually my exam preparation has two stages; the first stage is right after the mid-semester break where I plan out my schedule and carry out a half-hearted attempt to study and the second stage is about a month before exams where I go into full gear and short notes, all-nighters, coffee and missed morning classes take over my life. The NUS semester is only about 5 months long so based on my description above that means that the latter two and a half months of the semester has me looking for the best places to study, the most efficient sleep schedule, the places that make the best tea/coffee at 7am and pissing my friends off with my lack of interest in the normal and social things in life. I am going to miss that.

This time around unfortunately, the tried and tested method of studying didn’t work out. In fact, it got shot straight into hell or wherever study schedules go to die a long drawn out painful and withering death. I quite literally wasted away my semester with the clubbing, drinking, sleeping, hanging with friends…but….wait a minute!!! I’ve done all that in my past semesters and yet, I have studied as intensely as anyone; what the hell was different this time around? I have a strong feeling it might have been the lack of interest in the modules I enrolled for but it could also have been the feeling that washes over you when it is time to graduate; the feeling that you’ve done this a million times before and you can handle it, it is just no big fucking deal anymore.

Anyway, with whatever little I did as regards preparation, I still expect decent grades. That’s just the way I work. I think, at the very least, an education at NUS has taught me how to study intelligently and I do think, I hope, that my intelligence crept into all the papers I did this semester. Ha Ha. If only intelligence were this separate entity that senses when it is needed and like any self-respecting super-hero comes to the rescue by unconsciously directing your pen to create sentences that have a profound impact on the soon-to-be blown away professor.

Anyway I am finally a graduate. If I don't fail that is. It doesn't feel any different. As usual.

eyes the window to your soul? bullshit

2005-11-26T01:04:00.000+08:00

This is a belated post. I went to Bangkok 2 weeks back for 2 nights all by my lonesome. Needless to say, I had a gorgeous time. I met up with a friend there and had an awesome time clubbing, shopping, drinking, spending time with myself, beer, a bubble bath and MTV reality shows. Brilliant.

Some highlights:

1. Cheap shopping but everyone knows that about Bangkok. Chatuchak weekend market is the bomb! Go when it's raining like a bitch so that you really experience the leaky, primitive market in all it's glory! Being the tourist was just fun!
2. Marlboro Lights for 55 Baht.
3. Tiger Beer for 30 Baht.
4. Bourbon-cokes at high-end clubs for 100 Baht.
5. Sexual experiences galore. Don't worry. Durex was my best friend.
6. Massage with perks. ha ha.
7. Taxi's for about 1/20th the cost of Singapore's.
8. Friendly people. Fucking friendly. I loved it. Some random woman actually came with me on the train to see I got where I wanted to go safely and no she wasn't a whore.
9. An abundance of whores. This is not connected to point number 5 or 6. I'm an innocent boy. They add so much colour to Bangkok. Phrases such as "Boom-boom with Thai Girl ok?'' or "I suck your dick for 100 baht'' or even ''Take it out, let me see how big'' cracked me up. So cool.
10. Fast, fast internet. I had to check mail a few times and each time was such a pleasure because it was all so efficient on state of the art Dell computers. Also 1 minute= 1 baht.
11. The haphazard colourful landscape littered with opulence, beggars and pure fun. Perhaps it's a bit mean for me to say that the beggars added to the magic that was Bangkok but the more disconnects you see around you, the more you feel you are free to do whatever you want. In Singapore, you get anonymity (just barely) but nothing much more. And of course, 25 Baht to a dollar.
12. I believe what I experienced was just the tip of a very versatile iceberg and the fact that there is still soo much to do in Thailand and even Bangkok will bring me back. Definitely. Perhaps when I have a job and no obligation to take a drug test I will dapple some of what makes Thailand the party mecca of the Orient.

It's New York mixed with Amsterdam mixed with Sri Lanka. Absolutely wonderful. If it takes a normal person two-three years to get bored in Singapore, in Bangkok, I guarantee it, it will take much, much longer.

Plus, don't take any notice of the vacant looks you see on the Thai people. It's the perfect deception for the the friendly, kind people they are. You still need to have your wits about you (the same effortless friendly ease could very well pick your pockets when your not looking) but if you are, the good times will roll in.

back to square one

2005-11-26T00:33:00.000+08:00

Being needy is a problem I have. The person I'm being needy towards feels a sense of power over me (quite naturally) but I do admit, when I am at my peak I can and do get way too overbearing with the guilt trips and sarcasm laced with hopeful hurt. Curiously, other people I am generally close to or very good friends with (and have no problem with coz I really do love them) feel I am being insensitive towards them..... It might or might not be true but I certainly do feel for them, perhaps not to the extent of being absolutely sensitive because honestly, I am a self-centred person. It doesn't mean I don't care though. I do. Maybe not in the way they want to be cared for. And honestly, people who accuse me of being insensitive are no where close to being sensitive and I have tried very hard to get over the feelings of hurt that inevitably start to corrode a relationship. Some people call me a doormat but if that is a price I need to pay for not feeling continuous anger then so be it. Unfortunately, when this is pointed out to me by a third person I get angry with myself and become very embarrassed but it is only a brief moment of time before I recede into a cultivated sense of implacability.

That all got shot into hell yesterday. I experienced a crisis. My exam was in less that 12 hours and my preparation wasn't going well. I was having trouble concentrating and my usual remedy- a short chat with a friend or two, or atleast their comforting physical presence-couldn't be indulged in. Everyone was out. Everyone had gone to watch the latest Potter movie (a week after I had watched it I must add, ha ha) and it was terrible. I literally watched myself go to pieces. Perhaps that's a tad dramatic you think? I didn't think so. During exams, ironically, my cigarette consumption goes down and I feel a sense of jittery confidence that usually is well justified. Well, this time around, that confidence was nowhere in sight and I became a fucking chimney. I smoked 12 cigarettes in a little over 2 hours and I was getting the munchies for more. I was itching for company and inevitably, this itch dulled itself with me pouring out the self-pity. This was no fault of anyone's but mine and it drove me crazy. I knew I was being irrational but I couldn't help myself. Is this what one does when one is so insecure. Perhaps. I also felt a bit hurt because you never want to be the back-up friend. It coming at a time like this was just added fuel to the fire. I have grown over the past 3 years and I have been introduced to this concept of a ''back-up friend'' many times before, and I would never subject anyone to this feeling of inadequacy. It's like that now and it will always be like that because I am not a bastard.

Luckily a friend came over and we talked and it all seemed okay. In fact, it was miraculous. I am very grateful.

I overreacted, I know, but it's got me thinking. What IS the point of being sensitive? The buck should stop here.

intervi(ew)

2005-11-24T11:40:00.000+08:00

Taking into account the fact that my previous post was about melancholy tendencies about to be put right, it would stand to reason that this time around I would finally un-depressed, if not for happy, right? Well, wrong. Kind of.

It is kinda depressing and doom-impending when you have applied to 40 over places and you don't get a single call-back (the parallels of this post to my previous one are really reflections of my versatility lack thereof and possibly also a reason why I am not being called back) interview.

However, this morning it all changed! I got ONE call back! So Merlyn (I wouldn't be surprised if she had connections with the magical world coz she certainly did infuse some much needed...er.. magic into my life), casually calls me up and in her perky voice informs me that I need to get my ass down to Shenton Way for an interview! Now, since I had missed her orginal call and I called her back in semi-comatose state, I could only stare fixedly into the wall above my bed, with sleep-crust around my almost quivering lips as she told me this piece of extremely good news.

Well of course, it wasn't quite as romantic and disgusting as that silly! I mean have you ever heard of so much happening in a span of 180 seconds? I know, fucking Angelina Jolie and Nicholas Cage could have stolen 3 cars in that period but this is not a fucking movie is it? If it was, I would either be employed by the top-firm in the city and systematically being hunted down by the Chinese mafia for wishing to blow the whistle on the partners' deviant behaviour OR I would be living in Al Junied (or whatever-the-fuck) in a studio apartment with 3 other people and I would regularly go down to Orchard MRT so that I could stand on a box and and paint myself gold and pretend to be a still gold man (like some people I know).

Exams are here again, the 7th and final round of exams at NUS. It's been way too short.

Post-Application Depression

2005-11-02T21:22:00.000+08:00

A deep-seated sadness washed over me while I was waiting for my take out today. I sat on the couch that is usually relegated to those-who-like-to-be-losers-and-watch-the-apprentice-in-front-of-their-computers-and-therefore
-would-like-their-nourishment-to-be-packed-in-undegradable-styrofoam-takeout, when this incredible feeling of melancholy ambushed me. Maybe it was the pathetic Chinese love song that was playing over the radio, maybe it was the severe lack of people at the place, maybe it was the fact that the service staff knew what I was going to order before I said it but it still was superbly depressing. There is absoloutely no reason for this to happen because my life is not as tragic as I would like to think.

I had just finished applying for around 8 jobs in one go and since this was the first time I had actually spent quality time over my resume and cover letter I thought I would be full of joy and shit... but noooo... that didn't happen.

The bright side is that in about an hour, I get to go out with a group of friends to get awesomely wasted. Now I know to all you very intelligent people out there who make the connection between alcohol and sadness, this is probably not the wisest thing to do, but maybe this melancholy is related to the fact that I haven't partied in ten days.. Who the fuck knows! All I do know is that a lack of socialization in my life always weighs me down and all that is gonna be put right tonight!

Yay. Free flowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I am Him, I am Lucifer

2005-11-02T21:16:00.000+08:00

Emily Rose called out to me last night. Well not really, but the movie was pretty awesome in my opinion. I don’t know why the critics gave it a C+ on Yahoo! Movies which is usually a pretty reliable gauge for good movies, but the movie just excited me. Of course, they did give Life David Gale a pretty crap grade too, but seriously, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, at its worst could be called underwhelming. It’s definitely not C+ material though.

Funny thing though, both The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Life of David Gale star Laura Linney. I think as of this moment, she and Kate Winslet are my favourite actresses. Right now seems like the most appropriate timing for me to list my favourite actresses. Drum roll please………………….. There are some I love just for their acting and some I just love coz they look awesome on screen. So the first batch is up there coz of their acting (which also automatically qualifies them into the second group) and the second group is up there coz I just love looking at them. On screen, not porn. Of course, some of the stuff Kate Winslet has done, inclusive of the infamous scene in Jude and the urination scene in Holysmoke, can be classfied as porn.

Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jude, Iris, Heavenly Creatures)
Julianne Moore (Far from Heaven, The Hours)
Laura Linney (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Kinsey, Love Actually)
Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives, Path to War)
Meryl Streep (The Hours, Angels in America, Adaptation, Death Becomes Her)
Laura Dern (We Don’t Live Here Anymore)
Nicole Kidman (Dogville, the Hours, The Others)
Maggie Smith (Gosford Park, Death on the Nile)
Natalie Portman (Closer)
Judi Dench (Chocolat, Iris)

Uma Thurman
Julia Roberts
Renee Zellwegger
Catherine Zeta Jones
Angelina Jolie

I am obsessed with movies. I wish could make tons of money just for criticizing movies. But sadly that is not possible. It just doesn’t pay that well coz honestly, anyone can criticize movies.

Several things happened while I was typing this post. Firstly, I just had just finished watching Dark Water starring Jennifer Connelly when some stupid bat tried to fly through my window. I just lost it. This is exactly on par with my phone ringing right after I finished watching The Ring. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I knew who it was that was calling but somehow I missed the call and there was no number on my caller number display. Freaky. I mean I checked if it was an international call but my family specifically told me that they hadn’t called.

Also, as I walked down to collect my McDonald’s Breakfast (that’s right folks, it’s 5.45am and McDonalds just delivered me my breakfast!!!), I decide to pop into the TV room in my block. In the darkness slept a strange man. I turned to rush out, he woke up, we both screamed and I ran out. I have only just calmed down to realize that this strange man is our security guard. What the fuck was he doing a). sleeping and b). in the freaking TV room? Blardy fools I swear.

And finally, a hell of a lot of garlic sauce just squirted onto my laptop. Disgusting! This is God’s way of reminding me that I hate Garlic Sauce and to stop trying to taste it from time to time. For those out there who know how much I care for my baby, AKA laptop, both baby and parent are fine with only superficial bruises. However I must stress that the wounds are only just superficial. A little more volume as regards Garlic Sauce and my baby would have suffered a devastating death. Devastating for me, not for it…My precious.

Watching movies, grading them, analyzing actors and actresses and just generally getting steeped in film trivia are just some things I do to get myself through the day. It’s a guilty pleasure. Actually, scratch that, I feel no guilt about it (faintly embarrassed?) and I have loads of fun doing it.

By the way, Dark Water is a mediocre film with good acting by Jennifer Connelly. I know she’s a pretty phenomenal actress but I have never liked her too much before. In this flick I like her better but I don’t think I will ever be bowled over by her. I am just not into her. She doesn’t rock my boat.

I must stop now. Never, ever presume you can sustain a high energy level with only 3.5 hours of restful sleep. I am just gonna take a short nap. Tata!

popping cherries

2005-11-01T15:12:00.000+08:00

Friend says to me: Oh my gawd, the cherry popped in my eye.
Me: ………. (Eye-popping silence)
Me: ………..Erm. What?

Apparently, the lit end of a cigarette, due to its reddish glow, is called the cherry. My friend was lying flat on his back and smoking when suddenly the cherry popped out and fell into his eye.

You learn something new everyday.

Fortunately he was not blinded and now is able to tell other people how a cherry popped in his eye. Considering the alternative, one must wonder whether that is even possible.

Anyway, I am bereft of friends. Pavitra and Shiny packed their Art-School asses off to their respective third-world countries. Never realized how much of a cohesive force Shiny was. I mean, she is the one who introduced me to the Parvation and that in my eyes will always be the best thing she did for me. Except perhaps, one certain New Years Eve party that happened a long time ago. And also obviously the friendship we share.

Shiny had a dinner thing at her house and that girl can pack a pretty good punch with her cuisine skills. I was impressed and ate a laaaaat of food. Also the wine was flowing and we didn’t fear it running out coz, being the resourceful persons we are, there were a few bottles of vodka and Black Cat whiskey solemnly standing about like they knew they had the serious responsibility of being our safety net.

We all merrily lurch into Attica where we proceed to get even more plastered. Eventually, after dancing about in witch-hats and getting felt up by a very suspicious looking character, I get pissed off at my lack of willpower and total failure in being able to keep to a study schedule that would start the next day at 10am, if and only if I left the club at 2.30am. When I finally realize that I am too plastered to even hope I will wake up at 1pm much less at 10.30, I start panicking, consult my watch which inexplicably , in some conspiracy like manner, tells me its 4.20am. I angrily walk out of club and take a taxi home. There have been some wild nights in the past where I would readily admit my inability to remember things but this was one night where I thought I got home with no ‘incidents’ because in my opinion, the fabric of my memory was in tip-top and unstained (obviously by numerous types of alcohol) condition.

But, two things contradict this condition.

1. I met some of Pavs’ friends outside Attica. This is one part I do remember. However, what I don’t remember is talking to this friend about her potentially explosive, when-I-come-back-I-will-attack, love life. I found this out around 2 days later.

2. I woke up to find a large mineral water bottle on my desk. I never buy big bottles and this one had no water in it and neither did it look new. My only explanation is that I probably met someone who gave it to me. I am not a violent person (except perhaps violent verbally) by nature so I doubt it was a fight-thing. I might have, however, got the bottle in return for a sexual favour but that would imply that I saw some value in that bottle and no drunken state is gonna make that dumpy looking bottle look like an Oscar or anything I might have wanted. This does not mean that if I did see some value in an item that was not mine I would offer sexual favours to get it. That is definitely not the case coz if it was, I would be kinda having sex all the time wouldn’t it?

I am never going to know what exactly happened unless some random weirdo taped the whole thing. Sigh.

mezzanine

2005-10-12T18:49:00.000+08:00

i figure i might as well share some interesting things with you:

a few weeks back, the marketing department at the business school i study at had a party most specifically for the marketing majors. it was held at Club Momo, Singapore's newest club. and it was super fun. yay. i was mostly hanging with my friend Lindy and my marketing research project group made up of Maurice, Juli and Valerie. there were free beers, but it was Guiness and i don't like it too much, but i still drank it of course! also 5 dollar bacardi's, one for one. woo! anyway, i participated in a game which i thought would be a drinking competiton but it seems i jumped the gun and volunteered to arm-wrestle with a lecturer from our department. now, he had a sleevless vest on with a bandana tied around his head and being the weakling i am, get extremely intimidated. it doesn't help that there are around 250 of my fellow marketing majors standing around. but i am also extremely adept at smiling when i am fucking nervous, so while my arm was wrestled into a pile of whipped cream, i kept a beautiful smile on my face and acted all gracious until i got absorbed back into a crowd that congratulated me by atleast volunteering.. aww. anyway, i won 6th prize on the lucky draw! the prize was two tickets to Bangkok. yay. i still haven't redeemed it but i shall soon. my project mate, Valerie, who likes white men and said i was cute, won 1st prize. it was a fricking Lenovo Computer. yux i hate her. but i also love her coz shes very sweet and blur. anyhow, had a few more drinks with Lindy, Maurice and Juli until Maurice started drunkenly lurching around with a beatific smile on his face and talking about the beauty of God. then went for supper and got back home. fun fun and i didn't know that Lindy could dance so sexily.

also, i love teriyaki chicken. i have tried it at countless places. and recently, i found out that Genki Sushi which is located around 50 metres from where i stay has some pretty decent teriyaki chicken.. not the best, but guess what? i don't have to go foraging for food anymore. yay.

also people, try out KFC's coconut pie. it is to die for!!!! it's only a dollar and i bet u guys will hate it, but when i'm with coconut pie, ahm nor worriez abott nobodiez.

the guy next to me at the study room, suddenly realizes he is wearing his t-shirt the wrong way round and decides to, in sub-zero temperature, to change his t-shirt right then and there. i could, with some difficulty, accept that but when he decides to stay bare-chested for about 50 unnecessary seconds baring his flesh and armpit hair... i get a bit queasy. anyway, the bloody fellow thinks its the most normal thing to do and continues to study after getting dressed.

i have started applying for jobs, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citibank, DBS, Lenovo and Shell are some of the companies I have applied for. now the only thing to do is to fucking get settled into accommodation but i'm so sure that's gonna be a fucking bitch. Ashanie and Anirudh and I are moving out but its not proving out to be anywhere as idealistic as i thought it would be. ideal scenario would mean we are all graduated and all willing to move out with each other. not so ideal scenario is the willingness remains but I am the only one graduating at the end of this year. Ashanie has agreed to move out with me in December, but Anirudh will only join six months later. that poses a problem. we can't get a two room apartment. and it's gonna be difficult to get a third party involved. oh its a mess which either will get sorted out quickly enough.. or it won't.. and then that will be a fuck up.

moving on, famous amos cookies can never compete with Oreos on taste... oreos are just infinitely better tasting.

lots of tv series premiered recently. lost, desperate housewives, nip/tuck and the o.c. all bring joy to my life. especially desperate housewives and nip/tuck. joely richardson is obviously the best actress alive.

bye for now.

libidinous fool

2005-10-12T01:14:00.000+08:00

I really need to apologize for not updating for so long.
There is this compulsion to update my blog… it is almost pathological… an extension of my body which is just diseased… coz really there is nothing to update even in this drunken state…

Of course there is… ha ha.

First of all, I don’t appreciate my experiences being made a joke of. I really don’t. It fucking irritates me to hell and back. There is a difference between my making a joke of it and someone else making me feel ridiculous. I tell only very select people my personal stuff but unfortunately it is something that is amusing and a piece of information that is added to some entertainment database. I really do not appreciate it. I mean, people who know me, really do KNOW me and that is something I don’t want to be seen abused.

Of course this was written when I drunk as a bitch, and I really think I overreacted to all this. A thousand apologies for any offence caused. I just don’t want to erase something, coz then I will want to stop blogging altogether. To my credit the post is almost grammatically correct and that’s a sure sign I was drunk coz when I am, I painstakingly edit my writing so as to prevent people from catching on to what an addict I am. Sob.

Anyway, I have had some interesting experiences recently. I did get some sexual action. And it was fun as hell. It was safe so don’t worry. I feel satiated. It was a one night stand. Judge me, I don’t fucking care. Sometimes it must be done. I decided to go clubbing by myself and it paid off richly. I really do think a new comfort zone must be created that is separate from the one you have with your friends. Isolated. Independent. Mutually exclusive. No one ever understand what the other is going through, so why bother?

So I get bought drinks for me all night. Jim Beam baby! Even after I leave the scene of the crime at around 3am and go to Devil’s Bar, I still get people buying drinks for me. I think I was in heat that day and everyone who was horny could just smell the cum. Tee hee. Sometimes you just get lucky. That night however, I didn’t get any more action (apart from a little making out) and I went home quite drunk around 5.45am.

Saturday was Byron’s birthday and we had a blast at Boat Quay, Indochine and Gotham’s Penthouse. We all did sexual things to each other on the dance floor. There was a certain someone who kissed everyone in her vicinity. A certain someone proclaimed love for someone other than her lover. Haha. Well not really, but it is funny to write it. Someone had fantasies about fucking a bad dancer. Someone touched someone’s inner thigh, dangerously close to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Someone and someone had a dancing competition with another two someone’s who incidentally are related. Anyhow, had to take a friend back home coz she was drunk!! It was kind of good to get out of the haze and out of the alcohol coz it was utter chaos in there.

The next day went to another friends birthday. This time around, it was a dinner party and he had really outdone himself. There was a huge selection of food available. Salad, cold cuts, salmon, fish fillet, lamb-chop, satay’s, sausage kebabs, corn on the cob, sautéed potatoes, king prawns, fried rice, tiramisu, melon, watermelon, mango, grapes, chocolate biscuit pudding, caramel pudding and a hugeee chocolate cake. Awesome, awesome meal. Chandana was the birthday boy and he really fucking out did himself. A huge thanks to him!

After that, went with Sujan, Shashin, Ashanie and Rakhil to Brix. Finished off the remainder of the Scotch that had been bought some fine day a week or two ago. Proceeded to buy a bottle of Jim Beam at the Living Room at the Marriot! The music’s very loungy and it isn’t very nice but it got nicer as the night went along. We played I Never and we found out some very interesting things. For example, some of us had eaten our own cum, two of us had fantasized about raping a person, one of us had a fantasy about screwing an animal, some bondage had been carried out and none of us had been blown on the plane…. How sad!

Do you realize that I got drunk three times last week? Oh My God! It’s never happened like this before. I had fun though.

Highlight of Drunken Night One: The sex of course. Well not really the sex, but definitely the oral action.

Highlight of Drunken Night Two: The company of Shiny, Pavs, Ashanie and Rakhil put together!

Highlight of Drunken Night Three: The food but that came much before the alcohol. I would say, the game of I Never. Made me horny as hell. Ha ha

Anyhow, I must sign out. And I feel the need to type up something creative, as opposed to something just purely informational on this blog. Maybe next time. Whenever that might be.

and i just want to thank you

2005-09-19T03:55:00.000+08:00

i am so immensely thankful to my friends. i really feel an absolute devotion to them. part of yesterday and today was so much fun. surely a great start to our mid term break from all things educational.

i had a pretty average exam saturday morning and because of my sleep deprived state i wasn't too thrilled to go collect our black eyed peas concert tickets with Shashin in Orchard but it turned out quite good actually. after picking up the tickets, we did a bit of shopping and i picked up a shirt from Top Man. kinda preppy shirt but i really liked it so what the hell ah? had dinner at swenson's and then came back to campus.

within 45 minutes, got dressed for drinks. drank some vodka and bacardi with byron, malinda, shavanka, nadeeka, harjote, shashin, buhary, mizran and mustafa. then left for Gotham Penthouse around 12.30am. met up with ash, fazil, shines, sujan and rakhil there. there was a bottle of black label so the alcohol was flowing quite smoothly and it was interspersed with at least 4 shots of tequila. i don't quite remember everything. then left for Attica which was quite good since cousin was there, but don't remember much of anything there either. ooops. left at around 4.45am to go have supper at Newton. the mee-goreng was really spicy and i'm really happy i can remember that. waited till 6am so that cab fares would be cheaper and shashin left back to campus whereas i cabbed it to fazil's cousin's apartment where sujan, shines, fazil and ash were chillin. had a bit more alcohol there and shot the shit for a bit. all obscene things and all things connected to masturbation, penis length and girth and god knows what else. i said god and penis length in the same sentence; going to hell for sure.

so me and shines came back to her apartment around 8am. crashed out on the bed. woke up around 1pm with a roaring headache. called a few million people but ended up talking to only pavs and ani. took some panadol and just conked out until 5.30pm. pavs came over, i showered and we left for parkway parade. had dinner at swenson's (again!) and walked around a bit. just fun to chill. then went to east coast park, sat outside coffee bean and had.... guess what... coffee. such interesting talk we had lah. all about scandalous break-ups between friends, about cute kids and i honestly don't know what else. then we took a walk to the beach where we sat down again and admired the beyootiful views of the ocean, the sky, the moon and the streaks of smoke made by taking off- and arriving airplanes. the whole package was quite mesmerizing. well, we talked about revirginisation, turtle eggs, cute turtle babies, dirty sex/almost-sex secrets, potential fun plans of hanging out for a solid 2 hours at least. then took a cab and came back home. 24-fricking hours later after i left my room. shock!

anyhow, SUCH a good day. hanging with shines and pavs today made the hangover, the excessive hair on my face, dirty boxers and acidic stomach seem totally insignificant and not much a problem. u gotta love it (them).

starburst

2005-09-15T01:46:00.000+08:00

I have a photo frame right beside my laptop on my desk. The frame is translucent blue with a starburst of silver glitter and stars around where the photo should go. Of course, right now, it wouldn't look that great coz of all the dust but that's because I got it right before coming to university... which was three, yes, three years back.

It was given to me by mum's friend as a going away and good luck present. It came with loads of yummy lebanese desserts but the frame is what I really appreciated. I knew exactly what photograph would go in it, one of my sister and myself at our house on the day of my going-away party. That photo was there for an entire two years. Only then did I discover one with both my parents in it on what was their pseudo-honeymoon.

They are both lying down in a hammock somewhere in either Kashmir or Ooty and my mum looks shy. She has this peculiar upside-down smile which looks beautifully naughty. It was a time when she was free of all burdens in life with a man she was slowly beginning to love. My dad, a man I am afraid and regret I never knew is sitting beside her not looking particularly happy or sad but with a blank look of shock as if he doesn't know why or who is taking the photograph.

I wish I knew what was going through his mind. We can never know what another is thinking but we all pretend to because we've known them long enough to understand how they think, and what that facial-twitch or frown or smile means. We've got mental signposts based on years of experience. But I never had it. Don't get me wrong here, I don't miss him, I don't feel any particular love for him but I would have liked to know how a father would have changed my life. I want to miss him and I want to love him over and above that self-imposed obligatory love one must have for family members but it's just not possible. I just think it's unfair that so many people knew him and his own son never did. It's so ironic or surreal or whatever word that can be used in this kind of situation.

So there the photoframe sits, with its simple, natural, naïve photograph meticulously pasted in it. I take no notice of it at all most of the time but it sits there patient and bursting with love. A growing, young love for each other, for their respective families, for gulab-jamun, for goat brain, for paneer tikka, for the child that is growing inside my ma and all the love they showered on me when I was born.

I'm so lucky and I don't even fucking know it.

you know how i feel.... and i know how i feel

2005-09-12T12:37:00.000+08:00

so tell me? do you regret anything from your past? coz surely, everyone has a past.

who gives a fuck whether it's in an 'interesting' past or not? it's still your past; no one else's.

really, no, tell me, any regrets? no regrets at the moment, but things come back... to haunt you, to taunt you, to bite you in the ass.

that bites. oh boy does it suck. listen to some oasis. it will make you feel better.

maximise your potential today. exploit your every opportunity. cannot be done dude, we live abstract lives shrouded in everything but rationality. we cannot touch our sadness, we cannot feel our feelings, we cannot stoke our irrationality.

it's a fine balance. sorry. a lifetime of regrets spread before you and no idea of what they are, only knowing, that they will be there, littering the ordinary, beautiful landscapes of routine.

blue balls

2005-09-06T01:27:00.000+08:00

everybody I have been in contact with since I came back to Singapore has noticed at one auspicious time or another that I have been cranky and have been lapsing into periods of very awkward silences. Well that has passed! I feel cheerful these days; there seems to be no need for me to be unsociable. You know why? Because, when I do feel unsociable, I am perfectly happy sitting in my room watching a movie, chatting, studying, drinking coffee and smoking. I feel no obligation to go out and hang with friends if I don't want to. I think my problem before was that I always went out and immersed myself in company even when I knew perfectly well I would end up having a miserable time. I know exactly how it works. First, I feel tired, then some sort of resentment towards present company (however unjustified), then periods of zoning out, then periods of making an effort, then a headache and then full-blown anger towards the people I am with. And most of the time, the anger just stays in but when it comes out, I am snappish, mean, rude, below-the-belt. Oh I know this will sound sexist, but its exactly how sooo many of girlfriends are when they have their period.

It's never good to treat a friend like some kind of sounding board, but it helps time to time. I would hate people treating me like a punching bag, but there are degrees to which I can be pushed to accept and this is perfectly fine if I can have this privilege too. Ha Ha.

On a side-note, I just finished watching the eighth episode of the final season of Six Feet Under. Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkk. It's sad. I cried. I went to the HBO site and read the synopses of the rest of the episodes too and I cried more. I feel like I've lost a family because this series is the best show I've ever watched (withSATCbitch) and has taken me through some good times while I've been in NUS. It's also been a conversation topic with a few of my bestest friends. I want to sob again. I am bereaved. I need help. Psychiatric help.

On another side-note, my roommate always knocks on the door whenever I start masturbating. I haven't had any relief in dayyssss! I'm horny as fuck. I'm hoping I get some tomorrow. Some real, unadulterated fun!!!!!! woo hoo!!!

balls of light

2005-09-04T17:26:00.000+08:00

Friday was a good day. It started off quite underwhelmingly even though I should have been feeling a bit more nervous. You see, I had a test on Marketing Research and my mind was very badly muddled with the differences between concepts, constructs, extraneous variables, intervening variables and other such shite. But, I wasn't feeling it, it being the usual nervousness I feel when this confusion has the potential to confuse me, fail me. Instead, I flipped through the book with ease, which might be taken as a sign of great confidence but really the only way I could be ignorant of what I had not studied..... Anyhow, the class was pretty good and the test was... confusing but I think I did pretty well.

I met up with Nadeeka and Shashin for lunch after that. It was a very minimalistic lunch. I mean the food was alright, the conversation pretty sparse but I think we all left quite content. I think it's that time of the semester when you realize that leisurely lunches are not all that much of a necessity and lunch is not something you plan other events, more mundane events around but rather something you fit into a schedule. squeeze it in because you don't want to grab a curry puff, chocolate bar or some other unhealthy thing for something as sacred and so motherly-infused as lunch.

Came back, slept for a measely one and a half hours and then went for a meeting. I have joined a marketing plan competition for a brand of sanitary napkins called Kotex Dri-Comfort. We need to plan a year's marketing communications campaign for the brand with a budget of SG$500,000. It's very interesting work but I can totally forsee these meetings taking their toll on me and my haphazard schedule where I like to keep entire periods of time free so that I can possibly chill, zone out or meet up with friends. Hell, I shouldn't be complaining since this is what I hope to do in the long term. The meeting went for a very short time, after which I went home and slept for another 1 hour to keep my spirits up for........ Pavs' Dinner Party.

This girl and her flatmates put on one hell of a party. First and foremost, the apartment was in impeccable condition. The apartment is beautiful and these girls have nicely done it up. What struck me most and still does, is Pavs' room. It's very understated. The only thing remotely ostentatious about the room is the purple/pink balls of light she's hung on her wall. It's beautiful and it totally brings out everything else in the room. The pictures of her and her family, her bed, her curtains take on a completely different tone and colour because of these balls of light and it makes me feel like a child again. I am fascinated by light, especially lights of different colours in the dark. I am reminded of days in Colombo during Vesak when my uncle takes us out to see the pandols and the lanterns adorning the city. Every conceivable colour in every possibile receptacle of light splashed everywhere. I love it. In my garden back home, in the old house (now, it's been converted to concrete to accommodate our fucking vehicles), we had a custard apple tree and a frangipani tree. On these trees we used to hang small paper lanterns with a candle in each of them. My heart used to burn, when the lanterns caught fire because the wind was too strong. I used to love coming out in the night to just stare at these blurs of light (if you scrunch up your eyes) the same way I used to crawl under our Christmas tree at night to take in the aroma of the pine and bathe in the iridescent light.

Chh. I digress. The entire apartment was set in darkness with only a few spots of light, graciously provided by candles set around the place. The liquor flowed, the music loud as shit, the food slowly but steadily getting over and the crowd absolutely raucous and disgraceful in their behaviour. I don't understand how my friends... FRIENDS.. and I can just touch each other, grind with each other and still be as platonic as we are. It just feels comfortable and natural and quite hilarious. We have no boundaries and it might or might not come back to haunt us in the future but right now, I put my friends up there on a well-deserved pedestal.

So we slowly got drunk on wine, vodka and Bacardi and countless repetitions of the elephunk theme, striptease and galang. Also, we drank everyone else’s alcohol. After getting done with that, we bought another bottle and selfishly kept it hidden from everyone so only we had access to it. In that inebriated state, we entertained someone not usually in our group and some accusations were made against me. I don’t want to go into it right now, but if you think I spread rumours, then think again, because even though I gossip like an old Sindhi lady, my gossip is purely directed towards people I know, love and trust implicitly. My offended sensibilities slowly took in more alcohol and before I knew it, I was having fun again.

I shudder to think of what we did to Pavs’ room. We spilt alcohol, coke, cigarette ash and sugary syrup all over. I would never have been able to take it but the beautiful owner of the beautiful room was too busy looking for a phone that was believed to be stolen but was actually lying a foot away from her. Quite hilarious but how can I possibly afford to talk? I once, went up to random people in a club and asked them to look for my room key which I thought I had lost. Eventually, after asking about a thousand people about it, I realized I had given it to my friend for safekeeping. Some of these random people turned out to be Sri Lankans and after that, I have forever been branded as the useless fucker who’s a cheap drunk. Anyway, that is not the point. We were too fucked to care about anything else at that point and we happily set off to Club Momo.

For once, the guys, Anirudh and Myself, got in free while the girls had to pay. Sexism is back in fashion. Yay. Club was disappointing, so after a while we just sat outside, talking about a certain someone and referring in that context to one particular commandment set out in that all-consuming, all-empowering book called the Bible. We also ate some of the oiliest fried chicken which turned out to be fucking tasty. After that, we parted and came home. Ashanie was drunk, Anirudh coming out of some haze hanging around him (call it the happiness, totally not underwhelmed haze) and myself, angry with God knows whatever reason. Went back to room and did mundane things like check email, brush teeth, listen to some non-party music and then I slept like a fucking baby.

So all in all, minus the accusation, this party was a roaring, disgustingly drunk success. And now since, I was interrupted while typing this post and am now typing this 4 hours after I started it, I have totally forgotten the tone I wanted to end this post with.

So, bye.

striptease for me baby

2005-08-27T16:47:00.000+08:00

how nice would it be if one could just do anything one wanted, without feeling that one would offend or piss off anyone else, or just that you didn't care even if you did?

I would love to tell the taxi driver to stuff it if he started talking to me and I didn't feel like reciprocating, which is most of the time. I would really relish the opportunity to slap all those people who try to get on to the bus without waiting for people to get out. With campus bursting at its seams these days, this is something that occurs on a daily basis. I really don't know how to deal with my anger when people at the bus stop push themselves up even though they know that people are still pushing their way out of the damn bus. The other day I called a girl an asshole when she did it and even though she was a fucking bitch to do what she did, the look on her face-one of pure terror-is something I am quite ashamed of. It's like my head just implodes when something like this happens. It's pretty scary when you come to think of it because I really do think I might be regressing into a childhood characterized by a very bad temper.

I normally get annoyed with over-zealous taxi drivers and the bus people, but the anger is never concentrated enough to verbalize itself. That my dears, is fucking scary.

The queue's in Singapore are something I have never had the patience for but over time I have come to deal with them (mostly by calling a cab, walking to a smaller one, or smoking excessively to while away the time). Of recent times, however, I just become rude, crotchety and downright mean when it comes to standing in queues. I am ashamed to tell you that even though the people at the PGP canteen have been nothing but nice to me, I just snap out my order and wait in silence for my food to come, even though they look at me and try to start a conversation. My behavior is shockingly disgraceful but what does one do when one feels so alienated and unsociable? I wish I didn't have to venture out into the open but I can't be expected to cook my own food, manufacture my own medicine or wash my clothes in my room.

Anyway, let us all hold each other's hands and hope that all of this is just a phase. However, make sure you wash your hands thoroughly before and after all the touching.

sensation

2005-08-20T06:21:00.000+08:00

It went down my throat. It felt fucking good. The fumes finally took effect. Their necessary effect. Why do I stick to the sticks? It only complements, it satisfies, completely, wholly when there is a glass in my hand, full of that bourbon and Bacardi. Yet the cigarettes take over my life. The drink encroaches on my life but the smoke asphyxiates me. And guess what? I like it. Hell, I love it.

The concept of being an undergraduate has been exploited. Terribly.

I struggle to understand why I am not yet in love, why no one is in love with me. I tell myself that maybe I am sinking but that is such a fucking cliché. It’s really a lack of opportunity. Or so I tell myself. I don’t believe in a soul mate, which means I believe I can fall in love with anyone, anywhere as long as the circumstances are correct but where is that temporary soul mate of mine? Ah, if only I could answer that. Ah, if only it were that easy.

I speak to random people and sometimes I find them easier to handle than old friends. Old friends mean the best (sometimes) but they can bring you down. Subconsciously, or intentionally, their words can hurt you. It’s all so immature. Every comment, every counter attack is just useless. We must deal with and move on. If there’s anything I have learnt in this world is that things change and so does love. It only evolves into hate.

Even though we don’t know it.

done to death

2005-08-15T18:13:00.000+08:00

I am curious about something. If I was called upon, maybe in a hot-shot advertising agency to formulate a marketing campaign on chocolate how would I go about doing it?

I know the 'sinfulness' of chocolate is a concept that has been done to death. I am tempted to assume that there might be an execution that is still out there which could be quite mind-blowing but honestly I don't think I have the goods to come up with one. I must say however, that brands by the name of Sin, Original Sin and Tempt don't do anything for me. There is so much competition out there these days it terrifies me. It tells me that unique concepts are running out and in the future, whoever has the best technology, best execution (colours, situational difference) will come out tops. Maybe there will be an award titled ''Best Sinful Chocolate Ad".

How about going back to the original consumers of chocolate? Children. Why not come up with something so delicious, so candy-flossish, so Willy-Wonka-ish that children and adults who enter a store will be transported to an old world atmosphere riddled with an array of chocolate so diverse and colourful it would make Absolut's global campaign executives cast their heads down in shame? Strip off the slick, sexual innuendo and introduce a quiet, suburbia, heady kind of feel to the stores and I am sure it will stand out from the intolerable modernity of cities such as Singapore. Harry Potter worked didn't it?

Oh I know, I know, you probably can come up with a million criticisms to my half-measures but I think I would be willing to try it out. To replicate that ol'worlde shoppe atmosphere could be a very big challenge, but I would love for chocolate marketing to return to its roots and forget about trying to get horny by it, give it as a gift on Valentines but buy it just coz it's purely awesome chocolate and visiting the store itself becomes a trip down to those base childhood memories. However, the marketing for this kind of campaign would have to be relatively small-scale coz we would be playing on the atmosphere on the store to a large extent (the taste of course being priority, but there are soo many delicious chocolates out there) and of course, in the day and age of mass marketing, an idea such as this would possibly only appeal to the everyday entrepreneur and not some hoity-toity conglomerate.

But, niche products have done fantastically well in the past so why reject this idea? Of course the idea is far from original but I think it's a good place to start from. Actually, ripping off the idea from Willy Wonka, don't you think that by creating a personality like him, it would do wonders for sales? I mean WHY NOT place golden tickets in your chocolates and instead of offering Samsung phones or iPods, offer a magical tour of some place you have created.

That's the big picture. And in case you wondered and you were really, really dumb, I'm a big fan of Roald Dahl's book, the old movie and the new movie. I do think however, that Johnny Depp although brilliant in his role, doesn't hold a candle to Gene Wilder's Wonka from the original movie.

I don't know whether to take my idea seriously or not. I mean if I took it seriously, then seriously, there would be nothing serious I could do with the satisfaction of taking it seriously cuz seriously, I have no resources.

thread of continuity? absent

2005-08-15T17:49:00.000+08:00

I fall in love with nice people. And that bites.

I must look for better prospects. I have not consciously looked into the bitchy camp, obviously, since i'm not a masochist but hey, maybe one fucking day I will find someone suitable for me.

Also, I've always wondered how people who get offended by words such as fuck etc read stuff like my blog which is bursting with it. I mean seriously how? Do they say it in their heads and feel a certain kind of remorse for even thinking of the word or do they just make an effort not to take it in? I mean do they actually preempt the onslaught of obscenities by replacing them with innocuous words such as making love, music, zodiac signs yadayada? Or, do they mutter some disapproval for the person writing it and move on?

Well anyway it's a thought! If you guys do say it in your heads, then obviously you shouldn't have a problem with saying it aloud right? Especially if it is used to add emphasis to your sentences (it's a short-cut to laying emphasis, it takes a literary mastermind to continually, untiringly place emphasis in a non-obscene manner) and not a malicious way. Of course, my blog has a rather generous helping of both.

Tsk. Tsk. Very indulgent. But don't be too quick to get that distaste for blogs for their self-indulgence. Think of it as just another way of expressing oneself, much like, buying your favorite band's CD, expressing some rather strong/controversial opinion in a conversation which you think borders on intellectualism or even drinking coffee to stay awake and study harder and therefore get good grades which, because of the bell curve, is a statement that your better than most others.

Every criticism has elements of hypocrisy. And.. and.. I have run out of things to blabber about.

little capsules of life

2005-08-15T17:34:00.000+08:00

Back in Singapore! I’m happy to be back. Some tiny bit of me misses Colombo but not all that much. I feel a kind of apathy which I felt all through my holidays. I thought getting away from home and family would put me into a better mood but it hasn’t happened. Which means what? My home and family were not to blame in the first place.

It’s just me.

I feel very out of place, like Singapore doesn’t give me the sanctuary I was craving for. Well hopefully this feeling will pass and I shall be happy again. There is nothing in particular that depresses me at the moment but neither is there anything that excites me. I don’t feel like going clubbing (I did for a bit but that desire wore off pretty soon), no mood to watch loads of movies or TV (watching Lost and Six Feet Under, but not getting addicted to it), smoking too much (a legacy of hanging with perpetual smokers back home, not blaming them, coz I lurve them) and sleep always seems like the best option these days. So yeah, fuck it, it will pass. I know it will.

Optimism at its best, wouldn’t you say?

I have a roommate! It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, its NOT bad at all. He’s a very quiet guy very much into his rock music and who keeps to himself. Being a verbose kind of guy I have to pull him into mundane bits of conversation which include asking him which kid he thinks is sweetest in the photograph of baby cousins and then tricking him into believing that one of them is mine. Haha. I swear the look he had on his face was pure hilarity. I make all this up coz except for a moment of confusion it was very unlikely that he believed me. See, what boring topics I have to talk about? Anyway, he is Indian but has been staying in Mauritius for some time. Oh yeah and his name is Ram. He’s out quite a lot of the time and I alternate between feeling relief coz then I get the required amounts of ‘alone time’ (hmm) and jealousy coz he has more of a life than me. It always is a fucking competition for me sometimes. Maybe that’s why I feel apathetic coz I’ve slowed down the pace of my life and tried to be indifferent. Indifference kills by the way.

Chatting quite a bit to Pavs these days. Its really quite funny you know? The moment I have to leave the chat or she does, we say our byes and whatevers and then all of a sudden we feel compelled to leave a by the way or PS and the next thing you know, its 7am and we’re doing the oh-fuck-its-fucking-morning-ok-bye! It is kinda lovely to be able to talk like that. A toast to the silver lining in my not-so-fucked-up life!

I am very removed from what is happening in Colombo. I mean why would I give a fuck? I obviously mean the political killings and sky-rocketing crime rates. What can I feel or think that will be just drastically alter what is going on anyway? Absolutely nothing. So I am not gonna feel anything for something just because it is the right thing to do. I can’t be bothered anymore. But I do feel as if Minister’s sons should be straitjacketed as soon as humanly possible. Drugs should be banned, except weed of course. Alcohol should be served to people above the age of 18. And people should get into the Blue Elephant on a first come, first served basis. There is a possibility that all of these might come true except for that ridiculous comment I made about the Blue Elephant. How can that ever be the case? The Blue will always serve customers based on the amount of alcohol they will buy and those who can will always feel that their popularity with the girls is only because of their fantastic good looks/personality and absolutely nothing to do with the stuffing in their pants. The stuffing’s obviously money. Just thought I would clarify.

I’m being unnecessarily bitter, but we all need to fucking grow up. Being 24, still getting drunk three times a week, marginally employed at poppa’s office, screwing around and being a complete dick to those around you is not a fucking life. Get a clue.

Ok, so if this happens to me, please shut up about it.

soundtrack of life

2005-08-08T18:47:00.000+08:00

Opening Credits: Silence- Sarah Mclachlan & Delerium (OST Brokedown Palace)

Waking up: Hayling- FC Kahuna/The Lonely Shepherd- Zamfir (OST Kill Bill)

Average Day: Independence Day- Martina McBride

First Date: Like the deserts miss the rain- Everything but the girl

Falling in Love: Happy Together- K Young/Tere Mere Pyar Sanam- Bombay Vikings

Love Scene: That's All- Michael Buble/Bheegey Honth- OST Murder

Breaking up: Natural Blues- Moby/Unchained Melody- The Righteous Brothers

Getting Back Together: Woh Lamhe- Zeher (?)

Secret Love: They- Jem

Everything's Okay: Hanging By A Moment- Lifehouse

Mental Breakdown: Just Another Day- Jon Secada/911- Wyclef Jean feat. Mary J. Blige

Self- Discovery Journey: When Sussanah Cries- Espen Lind

Learning a Lesson: Vindicated- Dashboard Confessionals

Angry: Clouds in my coffee- Carly Simon

Deep Thought: Babylon- David Gray

Flashback: Careless Whisper/Last Christmas- George Michael

Sad: The Blower's Daugher- Damien Rice/Wonderwall- Ryan Adams

High School Scene: If you leave me now- Chicago

Best Friends: Get Busy- Sean Paul/Galvanize- The Chemical Brothers/Turn me on- Kevin Little

Partying: Candy Shop-50 Cent/Hey Mr.Dj- Rihanna

Happy Dance: For my people- Missy Elliot

Sexy Scene: You- Lucy Pearl

One Night Stand: Burn- Usher

Long Night Alone: You are my everything- Mary J.Blige/Angels- Wax Poetic feat. Norah Jones

Closing Credits: Summertime- Fantasia

end of days

2005-08-01T02:31:00.000+08:00

Work ended on Friday and it was a pretty good day. I actually finished off whatever was pending and handed it in to the relevant parties. I was working on Procter & Gamble’s Rejoice shampoo which although is an enormously successful international brand (1000 bottles sold per minute), is kind of a dead product in the local market. What I had to do was just do some consumer and trade research to shed some light on what P&G can do to revive the brand in Sri Lanka. Well I had been sitting on the research I had done for over a week so I just had to get it all out and properly put it together in a short, coherent report type of thing. Apart from that, I just hung about taking smoking breaks intermittently with some of my usual smoking buddies, Shehara and Petrina.

During lunch hour, I met up with some of my non-work friends at Commons. I had the teriyaki chicken rice with some trepidation (because, you know, in Singapore, you get some kick-ass teriyaki chicken) but quite wonderfully (?), it tasted great. Now I know, this piece of information is totally boring and interesting to YOU, but for me it was an amazing stroke of luck. How very refreshing. I also went to the mall to get a gift for a friend and weirdly, I bumped into an old friend who gave me a bit of shocking news about himself but let us not get into that here.

After lunch, I came back to the office and went with Shehara to my house to pick up the cream buns and éclairs I had bought to distribute it around the office. It being my last day, I thought, why not treat the people who have figured very deeply in the reason why I enjoyed the internship so much. Anyhow, that went alright since I got a piece of the treat too!

Came back home around 6.30pm and relaxed for a while until Ashanie calls and tells me to come for a drink to the Library. Since I hadn’t seen her for aeons, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to chill with her and get us both updated on the happenings in our life. Anyway, I get ready around 10 45pm and meet her at the Library and her generous boyfriend just keeps the drinks coming. It was SO nice to sip screwdrivers for once, especially after having drunk hundreds of litres of arrack & coke over the past 3 months. Needless to say, the party didn’t end there. We continued onto R’n’B which is a pub-club type thing very close to where I live. Ash’s boyfriend’s good friend was there too and he entertained us with stories about hostile cervixes, sperm motility, umbilical cords and bleeding vaginas. In case you didn’t guess already, he is a gynaecologist! Very fun!

Met up with Shavanka at R’n’B and had a jolly good time getting absolutely wasted. By the time the festivities ended, it was around 3am. Shavanka and I dropped Ash home and then drove around for a while because I was sooo not in a state to go home!! Anyway, it was 4am by the time I reached home and thank the lord, mum was pretty much comatose so didn’t get into any trouble. I woke up the next morning in a bit of a panic because I couldn’t remember where I had hidden my cigarettes but luckily for me, I opened up the book cupboard and there they were, in plain sight! So trouble was fully averted.

The rest of the morning, afternoon and evening were spent in zombie-like state as I slowly got over my hangover and prepared myself for another night of partying ahead of me. Some of the guys at LB and a few friends thought they would throw me a farewell party/get-together type thing and I of course didn’t complain. Anyway, it was held at Arun’s flat which is right opposite the prison but ironically so, his flat looked anything but sinister. Arun’s a guy who works in the creative department at LB and until yesterday I didn’t realize he’s a very cool guy.

You would think that interning for two months at a place chock full of party-animals would have prepared me for the amount of high-inducing materials floating around at this party, but you would have thought wrong. There was at the very least, lots of booze. Old Reserve arrack is the only way to go! Then there were smokes, as usual. Lots of weed, yay! Jelly shots! Liquor chocolates! The Complete Works! Even Shakespeare would have stared in shock and disbelief with naughty thoughts running through his head. By 2.30 we were all pretty much gone and we decided that it was a good time to go home. I had so much fun!

Anyhow, I’m pretty bored with this post so I shall end now.

Oh fuck… no work tomorrow. What the fuck am I going to do?

Sleep? Sounds good lah.
Must stop having conversations with myself. Resolution #1.

pain.

2005-08-01T02:24:00.000+08:00

I see all. I see the discreet looks of affection. I see the masks of indifference. I see the subtle allocation of space; of seats; of moments. I see the signs. Smoke, toxic smoke.

Yet I don’t see the flames. I introspect in retrospect but hope never wavers until I am caught up in a tangle of thoughts, fears and scars.

gushing

2005-07-27T14:12:00.000+08:00

Oh man. My last day at work is coming up this Friday. If I had thought about this day all the way back in the first week of work my face would have lit up like a damn Vesak pandol. However, now I don’t know what the hell to think! I know all this is possibly the usual idealization process one goes through when something comes to an end (a topic I have dealt with both implicitly and explicitly in previous posts) but I do feel intensely sad.

It’s the people I will miss. Definitely. It’s quite unbelievable that almost all the people in this firm are friendly and willing to really let their hair down (or hair up with some gel) and have a complete blast. Oh god. I think if there was ever a person to gush about Leo Burnett Solutions Sri Lanka it would be me. The brainwashing certainly worked!! If this is the effect firms like LB intend to have on their interns, then it completely worked on me. Right now, I feel like I am the biggest advocate for the firm.

It does seem appropriate to mention that I am not in the ideal position to actually comment on how good/bad LB is as a firm. It seems nice, but I’m only a lowly intern so how can I make a fully informed evaluation? Anyway, who said I needed to be objective to have an opinion? Yes, your right, NO ONE! I think it would be a lovely place to work or at the very least, hang with the people in the office!! There’s a quote in this book I was reading that says, advertising is the rock n’roll of the business world! I know I messed up the quote someway but u betta have got the point!

I think the reason why I feel an intense sadness is coz my need for affiliation is not being fulfilled. There’s a huge history behind the lives and relationships of the people working at LB and life’s just gonna continue as per normal after I leave, so where do I stand? Have I made an impact on ANYONE’S life? I feel as I have made good friends in the 2 months I’ve worked here but is it reciprocated? Does it matter? Do I have to know? I know ignorance is bliss but…but.. I mean should all this analysis even happen as long as I have enjoyed myself? A friend told me sometime back that I should stop trying to please everyone coz I am the only one who will end up hurt and disappointed but I am not trying to please EVERYONE. It’s just the people I care about that matter, i.e. my friends. Oh man, in other words, I just want to be loved. Yeah, yeah, I’ve said it again and to some extent I’m not ashamed to say it!

You see what a pointless argument this is? It’s downright annoying. I don’t want to feel like this. I want to be secure. I want to know that I have enhanced someone’s life in some little way. Maybe that’s egotistic (egoistic?) of me but flattery gets you everywhere don’t you think? Ha ha. Trivializing things helps. But if you trivialize things (things you have built up before) that others deem trivial anyway, does that redeem yourself in their eyes? This is all convoluted! My questions never have any sure-shot answers do you realize?

I end this post as confused as ever.

choice dependency

2005-07-26T16:57:00.000+08:00

Last night I got locked in my room. I had just changed into my house clothes after coming back from work when I tried the door and it refused to open. We have had similar problems like this before so I thought with a little pushing the door would just fly open. That was not to be unfortunately because it was only after 50 minutes of frustration that the key-cutter, Yusuf, came over and mutilated our lock so much that the door just popped open. Never have I been so relieved to see the rest of my house!

It just goes to show that when we do not have the choice to do anything else we immediately feel our present circumstances are crap. I mean the room itself is a perfect place to chill since it has everything I need in it (except food). My books, laptop, music, water, air-conditioner are all encapsulated in that tiny little room. But just because I was locked in there, I really, really needed to get out. It was strange. We are a bunch of malcontents because the grass is truly greener on the other side, but eventually it’s never green enough. I could have waited in that room for hours on end and not have had the slightest urge to get out but this craving, this addiction for the outside came over me and I got a bit freaked out. I think my claustrophobia was just a subset of some fundamental truth about who we are and we exist in this world. Having the choice to do something else is the key to my peace of mind but that doesn’t mean those choices are amazing or even remotely accessible.

I also got to thinking about how very dependent we are on the most mundane things in life. I mean the fricking lock fell apart and I couldn’t get out for 50 minutes. Oh sure, sure, not a big deal at all but what if no one had been at home to open the door for key-cutter? Serious shit lah. On similar lines, take the telephone. If your phone is out of order, you can’t call your grocery store for your daily order, you can’t connect to the internet, you can’t call the key-cutter when you want them. It’s all about being inconvenienced; we just can’t take it. Imagine, if we somehow apparated into the 14^th century and had to travel on horseback for 22 days to see a priest so he could see a medicine man? Or tell someone his wife was sleeping with someone else?

It’s so hot. I can’t take it.

impulsion/compulsion

2005-07-25T12:00:00.000+08:00

24^th July 2005
18:55 hours

I have just come back from a trip to Ginigathena in the hills of Sri Lanka. I am dog tired but I need to get this down before my memories fade and my emotions become diluted. I know I am going against an oath I gave at the moment we parted (which was never to repeat, re-enact or write anything to anyone other than our group about what happened on the trip), but I don’t really care since the only people who read my blog are either not connected with the people I went with or people I went with on the trip.

Well so anyway let me start. My work colleague calls me into her office on Friday morning and tells me that they are leaving on a trip right after work on that day and asks me whether I would like to come along. I thought about it and since I am leaving work in less than a week, I said okay, even though I knew my mother was very angry about me going. I go home after work, change and pack and come back to the office. I hang with my two ‘homies’ until we set off.

I was in a vehicle with a guy called Ranga who was driving, Mehnaz, Mat and Shyala. At that time I didn’t know, but I found out on the way that there were 13 of us altogether who were going. This seems like a good time to say the names. Karyll’s a person who works at LB and she is, I think, the funniest person alive. Her humour is very dead-pan and I just lap up every joke of hers with an awful-sounding laugh. She’s the one who organized the whole trip and every bit of the trip was enhanced by her presence. A clink-clink to her. She also realized that she knew my sister in primary school and her reaction went like this, ‘OMG FUCK A DUCK…. YOUR GINA’S LITTLE BROTHER????’ Petrina is also from LB and she is Karyll’s very good friend. She and her boyfriend Shohan are very nice people and great company. She is also very good looking. He he. Shohan’s supposed to be a complete sport; he apparently will fit in anywhere with anyone and I can believe that. Then there was Shehara, the pierced chick in previous posts and fellow cigarette-break taker. Sala (a.k.a Magic box), Brandon (a.k.a flamboyant one), Eshara (a.k.a Aussie-mate) were all there too. Sala and Brandon both work at J. Walter Thompson, a rival advertising agency. Eshara is Shehara’s (tongue twisted already?) cousin and is getting married in December. They are all very good company. Then there is Mehnaz who also works at LB and has been ever since its establishment in Sri Lanka 6 years ago. His friend Ranga, a quiet guy into producing music and a complete gadget freak. He has an Acer Ferrari laptop, a Nokia palmtop/phone and a gadget that emits a laser attached to his windscreen to detect a Police speed detector from a distance of almost 1km so that he can slow down and pass by without a hitch. Amazing. Very nice guy. There was also Nicolas, a French intern just recently joined for about six months. He just about showed his ass to everyone around 4 times during the trip and he had a good time even though he is very quiet. Then comes Shyala (a.k.a angel-eyes) who is very sweet and a genuinely nice person. She has this peculiar habit of arguing with you that starts off quite explosively. Fortunately for her, we enjoy these outbursts and I, for one will tease her about this till I go back which again, fortunately for her is only about a week away. Sob. Last but not least is my boss, Mat. Mat is also a peculiar creature. He is very outdoorsy which can be QUITE tiresome if you are a city-boy like me coz we have vastly differing opinions about EVERYTHING in life, but it is nice to have a little debate in your life. Being a very intense person he doesn’t talk much but he has an interesting views on life and when he does talk, you know it’s going to make you laugh or grind your teeth in frustration because when trees fall in the forest, irrespective of whether you were there or not, they MAKE A NOISE!!!!

Anyway when we arrived at our bungalow it was about 10pm. It was an awesome place. The house was situated on a small hill and it was surrounded on one side by a tea estate and on the other just a forest. In the backdrop there were hills with swirls of mist at their summits. The mist was just swirling about and coming down to our level at times and then retreating. Very peaceful and nice. We could even see the white-water rapids in the distance. There were papaw trees in which hornbills sat and pecked at the ripe fruit. In addition to papaw trees, there were rambutan, mangosteen and even jambu trees on the premises of the bungalow. The place had a natural water pool in which water from the wells get filtered into the pool. It was gorgeous. It was absolute heaven to sit on the porch, drinking tea in the morning and potent liquids at night and letting the feel of the place just wash over you.

The drinking started at around 11pm after a spot of dinner. The music played while all of us sat around drinking and shooting the shit around till around 4.30am. Brandon and Sala sang vulgar songs for us and Karyll provided the accompanying instruments (two plastic bottles of Pepsi and Sprite) with regular spurts of ‘Ah-Ah’. It was thoroughly entertaining. In my drunken state I made regular trips to the room where Shy and Mat were and had conversations with them insisting vigorously that I was not that drunk and I would be able to remember everything about the conversation the next morning. As you can see, I did. Smugness. :p

Later on in the morning, I was woken up by Mat at 7fuckingAM. Nicolas, Shyala, Mat, Shohan and I drove to the reservoir close by to take photographs and just chill. We had tea in a small joint built on a tree and since we were not satisfied by our adventures decided to drive around more to see what more we could do. Shohan then stops over at a place which has a board saying ‘this was the place where ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ was filmed’. Obviously we had to check it out. Like smart arses, however, we decided not to use the usual path, instead opting for a less-used path. We took a raft/ferry of sorts over the river to the other side and trekked a pretty long path down to a lake. You won’t believe this but even though the film was made here, there is no indication whatsoever to say that Hollywood has touched this place with its magic Oscar winning wand. You know why? Coz the Bridge was blown up in the movie. So the Bridge has to be there only in spirit for those who decide to come there to see it. Especially those who use the less-used path. So, we trek and trek and trek and finally we come to the river which can only be accessed if you walk around 15 metres down some rocks. I thought it looked like any normal thing until Nicolas tried to surf down these slippery rocks. He tried it but he immediately slipped down on his butt and on his butt he skidded down 10 metres at least. All of us just cracked up. That image is seared in my mind. They say what goes around, comes around and the next moment I fell down hard on my ass. I got up and fell again. Finally I slowly slid down to the sandy beach. I dreaded going back up again but my boss helped me up and even though I felt quite inadequate, I was very, very grateful. Still it was fun to come there and I have no regrets. Also one can’t forget the leeches. The area was infested with these blood-sucking bastards and each of us got at least one bite on our legs and elsewhere in much darker places. These creatures roll themselves into almost an invisible ball on the ground. When you step on them, they uncoil themselves and latch onto the furrows on your shoe. They make their way slow and steady up the shoe to your legs and then latch themselves on your flesh and just keep on sucking blood until (1). You discover it and pull it off by rubbing salt on it (2). You discover it and burn it off with a cigarette lighter (3). You discover it and decide to pull it out whereby which their teeth get left behind making you a primary target for infection (4) You do not discover it and it sucks up to its fill and falls off which leaves you a little bloody since it takes extra long for the wound to clot up and (5) You do not discover it and it sucks your blood until it explodes and you are left stained by the blood which has just been sucked out of your bloodstream. And very rarely, according to a newspaper report seen only by Karyll, the leech crawls up your vagina (if you have one) and lays its eggs there and you bleed profusely till you die of infection if you are not operated on immediately.

In the afternoon, this time all of us decide to venture out for another adventure. We pack a picnic and set out to see the Aberdeen waterfalls which are about an hour away. After we get to the place, we park our vehicles and start walking ourselves to the waterfall. This time, there were more people around and it was quite fun to walk down these paths with occasional hysterical screams from Petrina, Eshara and Brandon about attacking leeches. However, Karyll couldn’t do it coz her knees were just about to give way so myself, Petrina and Brandon decide to wait with her and not go to the waterfall. I was quite glad to get out of it coz I’m not a very confident person and I feel my lack of confidence just slows the group down and I’d rather let down myself than the group. So I stayed behind. It was quite fun to chat with these three and we walked back to the vehicles to wait for the rest of the group. We talked about blow jobs, sex in strange situations and how fucking annoying the leeches were until they came back 2 frickking hours later!!! Anyway, the drive back was VERY enjoyable as I placed by butt on the door of the car and hoisted myself outside and held on to the roof the car. It was really exhilarating to feel the wind blow through my hair and the sting of the cold on my cheeks. We bought more beer and cigarettes on the way back to our bungalow.

All of rested awhile before getting into some action again. Myself, Shyala, Karyll and Mat had a good talk before being called for drinks at 9pm. It was as usual a talk about sex, noisy sex, Burgher life and Harry Potter. Over rum and cokes we played ‘I Never’ and we found out some interesting things about various different people. Some of the stuff that ‘came out’ were related to bondage, sex with fruits, gay kisses, pissing in the pool and having fantasies about teachers. As you can see, the subject never strays too far from sex. Sex is the universal language as we soon found out in the next game which was ‘Truth, Dare or Kiss’. Again, without mentioning names, some of the stuff we did were as follows: miming masturbation and going down techniques, running naked, kissing nipples, licking ears and noses etc etc. Unbelievable. After a round of ghost stories, stalker stories and creepy stories we all retire to our beds at the very early hour of 1.30am.

Miraculously we all got to sleep till 9am hence explaining the lack of a hangover. We then shoot the shit a little longer over a cup of tea and a cigarette. Myself and Shehara decide to go for a walk to the natural pool and she dares me to get in. I strip down to my boxers and jump (well walk) in. It was freezing cold and quite enjoyable. The pool was 14 feet in the deep end and since it was un-chlorinated it felt strangely invigorating. I was one with nature. Ha Ha. A whole load of people get jealous of me and Shehara swimming and they too decide to get in. Turns out to be a hell of a lot of fun!

All of us then decide to have our breakfasted which consisted of a sausage-tomato-onion-sauce mix, coconut roti, baked beans and butter. Turns out to be an absolutely amazing breakfast. I don’t know whether this is all exaggeration but I did feel a sense of pleasure washing over me while I was eating. I distinctly remember it!!!

After breakfast, Karyll regaled Mat, Shy and I (and random people who walked in from time to time) with stories about her illustrious Burgher life and both of us were captivated. Unfortunately, we then had to pack and come home. Before leaving the place we took a whole load of group photographs and got into our cars and began our journey back. I sound like some foreigner but you know what, I am! I mean why won’t anyone believe I am a Caucasian white male?

Le Sígh. La Sób. Good memories. Few regrets. Just the way I like it. The trip was an entire package of good experiences and I am prepared to ignore the fact that I over-smoked, was a bit constipated and finally realized that I am capable of loving a person. Anyway, small price to pay to hang with such a classic bunch of people.

V.good.

PS. I have just realized how fucked up my tense usage is in this post. Oh shit, I just realized that the tense usage has been fucked up in the past few posts too. Please forgive the bad grammar.

digression?

2005-07-13T19:13:00.000+08:00

I have a feeling that BBC will continue airing special reports on the London Bombings until another bomb goes off in their (London’s, not the BBC’s) damn subways. Obviously it is a great disaster in which 50+ people died, but come on now, we all know this is an atrocious incident carried out by the most evil perpetrators of our time but this kind of thing happens all the time! All of a sudden, this is being compared to the 9/11 events, which I guess, in principle, is justified, but we have come too far since then, and all we could think of when Blair gave his speech in the House of Lords was, oh shit, here comes another war on ‘terror’.

It doesn’t seem worthwhile for people like us also to keep repeating the injustice of the London Bombings in the world media especially considering how little attention (and action) the bombings at the Bank of Ceylon got in January of 1996. We just have to accept that all politicians are hypocrites and if they’re not faced with the problem first-hand (and sometimes even then), they will never understand and empathise with what they’re so-called diplomatic partners and friends are facing on the other side of the globe. If we don’t play a vital role in their own economic development we will never capture the attention we seek in actively resolving a problem that was so pervasive in the 80’s and 90’s in Sri Lanka. Luckily for us, the terrorist problem, although always looming, is slightly less threatening to the lives of Sri Lankans these days but we don’t owe anything to the U.S or the U.K for this state of affairs.

Perhaps our thanks should go to both the LTTE and the government for inflicting upon the population of Sri Lanka chain after chain of terror that has corroded the mettle of both parties to such an extent that pursuing an uncompromising stance is just too inhuman and cruel. It’s true isn’t it? All these years, individuals all over the island have been rejecting the call for war and finally the realization is sinking in that who the fuck really wants to lose their parents, children, family and friends for something that is so useless fighting for? Idealistic as this might seem, why can’t we just live on equal terms? Perhaps I am too removed from the core of things to actually comment but it seems simple enough to me. You won’t have to give anything of yourself away just to make someone stand on the same platform (pedestal) as you. You really won’t. It just takes some humility and a hell of a lot less insecurity.

I am very laissez faire about these things and I certainly do not feel strongly about the above topic but I am truly an objective person and I see no trouble in giving all the people around us the same rights as anyone. I wouldn’t mind a Tamil getting his due; neither will I have any trouble seeing a woman getting hers. Oh I know how rubbish all this might sound but yeah, that is my viewpoint. It’s nothing more, nothing less than just my humble (??) viewpoint.

It’s just my call to the world out there to be a little more sensible. And don’t get me started certain factions of the clergy. Oh wait, let me get a little started on the topic. Our clergy is littered with people who extol the virtues of Buddhism but apart from the superficial labels of Buddhism, such as the orange robes and the sacred looks they give us, where are the truly Buddhist actions of non-violence and understanding? It’s just hideous, sacrilegious activity wrapped up in robes that are fast losing the respect and credibility that they used to give. Hopefully someone will understand that is just some ploy to fly over and above the radar. And DO something about it.

I feel entirely empty as I finish off this post. It’s terribly useless of me to talk because that is all people do. The apathy one feels when talking about a political issue is classic because one does not contribute anything to anything. Perhaps your sense of smugness increases but there is nothing to show for it at the end of the day. It’s so useless that I don’t even know how to complete this post with a decent ending. So this seems to be an appropriate place to just stop.

melting pot

2005-07-08T11:26:00.000+08:00

What is more frustrating than having a hangover at work, muscles hurting from doing weights for the first time, mum having a nervous and mental breakdown at home, no money and no work at work?

Nothing. Absolutely Nothing. I have got over it.

The cause of the hangover was going to Glow for a party that was ‘by invitation only’. I thought since there was an official party organized at Glow there would be something different happening. But no, it was the same thing. The same ol’ cliques and the same old affectations.

Don’t get me wrong here, I partake in all these affectations too but I do not derive fun from them. I think its some part of me that switches onto auto-pilot because these cliques and these affectations were what I used to look up to when I was in school living my life, quite happily (or rather, as it turns out, not so happily), as the class-geek.

I just about had a good time because I was soaking up the drinks as usual (explaining the head-torture the morning after) and my friend Ishani and I had about two good dances on the floor before strolling off into a world where politics engulfed her and left me… not really stranded but bereft of any faith I had in her. Things like this do not affect me but I hate hearing some bit of good sense about 3 minutes before an unpardonable lack of judgment. Especially when this bit of good sense comes out so easily and so well-oiled to make me think that.. ahh… yes.. I know exactly what goes in your life because you have told me all about it. It’s not that I am hurt because I don’t get told things about her personal affairs but it’s this mentality that my questions will go un-answered until she feels comfortable about telling me stuff. I understand and empathize with this all the way but the problem I have is that she only reaches this comfort zone when she is willing to rant out morsels of the problem, conveniently ignoring the fact that she has never told me what exactly the problem was.

Anyway, none of you will understand the above but I needed to get that out of my system and articulate mentally what I really thought about it.

Lifting weights has got to be the most liberating thing in the world. NOT. A friend once told me that when he did weights it felt awful but after you did them, you felt awesome because the blood rushed into your limbs and sometimes even made you horny. SO, I expected that kind of effect when I did weights but sadly that was not to be. If I could have managed an erection it would have only been through several doses of Viagra! I felt sick, tired and completely drained out. As soon as I stretched my arm, it cramped. As soon as I scratched my back, my hand would refuse to go beyond the small of my back. It was crazy. But it’s been 7 days since I started this post so the memories of the pain have faded remarkably and I am planning on going to the gym today.

Mum’s nervous and mental breakdown? It’s a long, sad story and I really don’t feel like going into on my blog for everyone to see.

No work at work? The end of last week was kind of slow because all my superiors got caught up with their own big projects and the interns were basically free to do anything they liked. This is not as fun as it sounds because if I am not doing anything at work, I’d rather be home in bed watching a movie, instead of chilling in the office (which is kind of fun but…but… u know… it’s a different kind of fun that is derived. Almost like fun burning at a lower-frequency… more or less like we’re trying our best with the situation at hand).

Anyway, like I said, that post was made seven days ago so different things have happened since then. Well not really, since work is still relatively boring, because myself and a French intern have been put in charge of some small projects and he has not turned up to work today. So the work I have done so far just has to be compiled with his (not possible today). Anyway, because I am going back home early today (coz of some bank/accommodation work) I am just chilling for the moment.

As you might have realized from the present tense I use in the above sentences, this blog post is materializing from the creative recesses of my mind which is currently inside of a body that has just to come to the office. That is right, I am blogging from work!!!!! Cool? Or not? Hmmm. I don’t know. I’d rather be doing work.

Ahh yes, the different things that have happened over the past week are:

#1. Movie night @ office. Kind of cool coz they screened Star Wars: The Attack of the Sith. There was popcorn, spicy mixture, savoury biscuits, orange-juice, Vodka and rum. FACT: Physical presence of intoxicating liquids does not equate to actual consumption. The movie was not good. I did not like any part of the movie except perhaps the special effects which were to some extent tainted by the stupidity of machines that only beeped (are WE supposed to understand that is something we should just not understand?) and god-awful dialogue.

#2. Food-Poisoning. Woke up on Sunday feeling quite bad. Felt the acid rolling about in my system. I felt like little ‘cute’ ulcers were popping up in my stomach and festering because the acid was just rolling onto them. Then I puked. And the puke just kept on coming. And then I purged.. and purged.. and purged… and… you get the picture. Not a very good day. By night I was wishing that work never existed but I did go to work…. Yay… how fucking disciplined I have become. No really, it is not such a great thing for me to show up to work when I was sick coz so many other people do it all the time in much sicker, more stressful situations. It’s just one of those things you got to accept and stop being a spoilt brat about.

I’m not at work any more. This blog post is taking ages to write. I am at home now, waiting till the water heats up enough to give me a soothing shower after a good work out at the gym. My version of a good work out is, I am sure, not even close to what other, much fitter people consider a reasonable work out but what the fuck, if I feel I got a good work out, then I did!

These internal battles have got to stop. But what the fuck, this is my blog and I can fight with anyone I feel I like! Ok? Ok? Bring it on bitch! Touché.

Hmmm.

Anyway, I just got to know that my appeal for on-campus accommodation was successful! Yay! I am so happy that I don’t have to move out to some lonely ol’single room somewhere a few bus stops out of campus. Seriously, the heartlands of Singapore depress me no end. Sure, if I have friends living with me, then I could stand it coz u know, there will be good company and alcohol etc. but if I have to live alone then I shall just brood myself into some pitiful catatonic state. I am a bit of a snob. I am a very material person and I really do want to live in some fancy-shmantzy place in Orchard or something… yeah yeah… wishful thinking but a guy’s got to dream right?

The bad news about me living on campus is that I have to live with somebody. Ergh. Yeah, I have to share a double room. SUXXXXXXXXXXX. FUXXXX. Seriously, shit! My porn habits are atrocious! And if I can’t masturbate when I feel like, I will die. I seriously will. I can’t go hiding my erections again!!!!! I can’t!!!!! argh!!!!!!!!!

Hopefully my roommate is some exchange student who will be out all the time and will give me privacy… yay! But he could be some pitiful nerdy boy (read: Chinese) who never leaves the room unless for coffee or a piss or to take out some library books. Oh god, these negative thoughts have got to stop. Hopefully, there is a silver lining in all this. I mean a silver lining beyond not living out of campus. Yeah, yeah, I’m an ungrateful arse. But what to do lah?

Anyway, I got to go shower. Dinner at 9pm at The Pavilion with some friends I have not met in some time. I think it will be very boring but it could just turn out to be quite fun. These things have a way of being so much fun when you have such low expectations. Don’t you think me having low expectations from FRIENDS is a bit screwed up? I mean I should like really depend on them and stuff right? But I think I’m better off this way coz then I don’t get disappointed too much when things don’t go my way. Anyway, high expectations never did anything good for anyone. I have spent the last 8 years having such high expectations and in that process living those 8 years in some state or version of hurt about something or someone. So I am learning not to be like that coz it just hurts everything around you. Some people perceive you as indifferent but like I said, life’s too short for you to be worried about what everyone thinks about.

I am a hypocrite. I also love to write.

Hokay? :p

P.S Back in office again and ready to go. We did not go to The Pavilion last night. We went to La Rambla. It was cool. The esquillade was vveryyyy tasty. Had coffee, had cigarettes and came home. Peaceful night.

relak lah! formerly known as secret shag

2005-06-29T01:46:00.000+08:00

First things first…. If you are Singaporean and you have not noticed the uproar about Sarong Party Girl, you should crawl back into the cave you have been living in and feed on your ignorant soul. That is a bit harsh coz who really cares anyway?

Needless to say, I do care and I must give my two cents worth to this argument. Sarong Party Girl’s blog is one of the most interesting ones I have ever read. She is definitely out there doing her thing and basically living her life. Her blog personality at least is very, very direct and that in itself is commendable. I don’t agree with her philosophy in life and she is very offensive at times, but this is her blog and even if she has to some extent tailored her posts to catch the attention of her audience, who hasn’t? We should leave her to her own devices and move on.

Plus, she is also very, very young and tries to paint herself as a Carrie Bradshaw type of person. But if you have seen some of the posts she has put up in the last month, you get glimpses of how confused and directionless she is beneath the cock-sure veneer she tries to project through her writing. Give her a break. She’s not a super-human. What she is, is an opinionated, progressive kind of girl trying to make it in a world that embraces differences. Compromises have had to be made and if her ‘compromise’ has been to shed her conventions and be someone that causes people to turn their heads and look at her, it’s a compromise that has suited her well. Her recent fame is testament to that.

In my personal opinion, her blog has lost some of its lustre because now everyone reads it and no doubt, her expressions will be influenced by this new kind of attention she’s getting. It’s already happening. She has a comment section now.

***********************************************************************************
Enough about her, more about me, me, me. I don’t have leisure time anymore. Sure there are loads of hours in a day when I don’t have to do work but it’s never leisure time if u know what I mean. It’s like, ok, so there are 8 hours left before I sleep, so I should eat, relax, check mail, read a bit, go for a drive and maybe a cigarette and then come back and sleep. So basically what I am trying to say is that everything is planned. Even over the weekend, the mentality is such that we have to do as much as we can before work starts on Monday. It’s still fun, but it’s a bit exhausting at times and it will take some adjusting to.

However, if you go out of Colombo, everything changes and you can do as much you can and still feel content. Absolute bliss. A few of my newly found friends and I went down-south to the sun-smooched beaches this past weekend. Let me introduce them to you: Pierced chick, Flamboyant, Aussie-mate, Angel-eyes, Magic-box. We drank: arrack, wine and rum. We smoked: cigarettes and weeeeeed. We swam: pool and beach. We danced: room, club and synchronized in the pool. We ate: bbq, sri lankan food, continental breakfast and we slepttttt. It was by far the most fun trip I have ever taken. These guys, I hardly know them, were so understanding, non-judgmental and fun I was just blown away. Literally. Well not literally. Damn!!! Usually I feel glad when I get home but since the whole experience was just amazing I was kinda sad to get home.

Anyways, cheers to them for making my life just a bit better with their company and the endless supply of ze candiez.
Until next time, au revoir.

the worries

2005-06-20T02:56:00.000+08:00

I really wanted to post twice today. I don’t know why but I feel I am neglecting my blog these days.

The last week was quite fun actually. I like work. I hate getting up for it but once I am there I enjoy what I do, even if it means calling up people and coaxing them to give u a videotaped interview. A lot of people are averse to the idea of being filmed on camera which comes as sort of a pleasant surprise because one finds out that people are not as superficial and camera-hungry as we think they are. I find it’s such a pleasure to meet humble people because you can learn so much from them. I do not profess to have learnt a lot from humble people but I know it’s made me not complain about life’s circumstances as much as I used to.

Anyway, I do not find it surprising at all that people don’t want to be filmed because I know I would hate it. One never realizes how hideous one’s voice is unless it is taped and played over for one to hear. I heard my voice on one of the interviews and I cringed so badly that the audio-visual guy gave me a big smirk. I take solace in the fact that people are quite used to my voice and because I am not, I should be the only one to actually profess distaste for it.

Going back to the subject of liking what I do, I feel that I am quite suited to this position. I love research, I am reasonably creative and I find its quite fun to give presentations especially if it is well researched and thought-over. I believe I need some experience on how to handle the stress of the job but I am confident I will fit in quite soon. However, I am not too sure about whether this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. If you are a marketer, there is only a small promotional ladder. I mean the possibilities are pretty vast but if your natural environment is planning with the client and starting from scratch, then jobs at the top of the ladder are not likely to offer you this and you might get bored of a management job. The money’s a good substitute but still…you know what I mean.

When I examine this issue under even more harsh lighting, I feel that I will never be deliriously happy in a corporate job. My passion’s always been to write, this blog being a by-product of this passion. Unfortunately I have never indulged my passions because I come from a conservative Sindhi family and doing anything non-business related is frowned upon as impractical and disaster. Families exhibit toxic love in these instances where they sabotage your every move just to move you in the direction they want you to move in. Luckily for me, I liked business subjects and I have no regrets in doing my studies in them but that does not mean I shouldn’t be able to pursue what I really want. There’s nothing stopping me except my own fear of failing miserably at it but I think I can wait until I have established myself reasonably in a world where wearing formal clothes in the day are a maxim.

Another thing that’s worrying me all the time is that I worry all the time. My friend once told me that I need to make myself happy first and not to try to make life easier for others, in other words, not to be a doormat. I find myself stuck, really desperately stuck where I worry that I am not making people happy. I worry and I worry until I feel sick to the stomach that nobody’s going to have a good time, or I should throw myself in the middle of a fight between two people I care about so as to stop the fighting. It sucks. My happiness is irrevocably tied in with other people’s happiness. Other people’s lives impose on me in the sense that my life is probably made up of diverse set of other people lives and I can’t live my life happily if one of those lives I am made up of is unhappy!!!! And yet, I come across as a selfish prick. Sometimes decisions have to be made and I make them and some people are left happy and some are not but because everyone is so used to getting their own point of view considered, BECAUSE I PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYONE’S OPINION, once their opinion is overruled, who gets to feel the brunt of the hostility? Lucky guess anyone?

I must sleep now… good night fuckers.

The Politicization of the Sacred

2005-06-20T02:45:00.000+08:00

Song: Old Habits Die Hard- OST Alfie
Ambience: Harsh lighting
Emotional State: Seeking silver lining
Physical State: Groggy. Horny? Hmm…one and the same thing? Hmmm

We all know relationships suck. What we don’t know is how much they suck when you are trying to pursue one in Colombo. First of all, that’s all there is. Relationships that is. Dating does NOT exist. If a guy asks a girl out, then that means both the girl and the guy have known for quite sometime that mutual feelings exist and that once the first date is set up, they become each other’s special (without hyphen)friends. It is just so typical of how it works in Colombo. I am sure that this exists elsewhere in the world but I am just trying to observe a few things about the society I live in.

Let me analyze further coz it makes me feel really clever. I make a couple of very damning statements in the above paragraph. Let us take them one by one.

“the girl and the guy have known for quite sometime that mutual feeling exist”

We have to make a primary assumption here. One party, let us say the boy, develops feelings first. Then he divulges this piece of information to his best friend. The boy and his best friend will brainstorm on strategies on how to get to know this girl better and FIND OUT whether this girl COULD POSSIBLY like them back. Harking back to Grade 8? Wait… there’s more.

So eventually the girl finds out and, let us assume, that she does feel kinda positive towards this guy. The girl will deign to drop hints about her true feelings, not on the boy itself, but very possibly some third party affiliated with the boy’s friend contingent.

Why does this brainstorming session happen? Is it because the guy is too cowardly to ask the girl out directly or is it some kind of skill the guy has developed over the years? We are all afraid of rejection because it makes us feel so small and inconsequential. It is quite natural to find out more about how the other side feels before unlocking your emotional floodgates. It just makes more sense because NO ONE likes to be rejected. Cowardice in this case can be quite excusable.

But still, not every boy can be a coward right? I mean the laws of probability tell us that this is something not quite possible right? Sure there are only a few boys who go up to a girl and ask their hand in courtship without considering the consequences but this is something very, very, very rare. So what is the other explanation?

I am afraid that the answer finds itself in the form of a Colombo girl. If a guy does by chance ask her out, she will reject him outright regardless of whether she likes him or not. It’s this mental block they have that if they do agree to go out with this guy, she is just too easy. She must abstain, she must be pure, she must have a white sheet the morning after. It’s the art of persuasion which they like but so often verges on the ugly because both guy and girl play games to such an extent to end in a state of confusion and hurt. What other choice does the guy have but to find out more, more, more?

“Dating does NOT exist”

The above rant, does somehow explain this statement. I mean after investing sooo many resources on finding out what the other side thinks who would want something casual? It’s as if the whole time they were sneaking looks at each other, playing games, finding out about his/her life, gossiping about him/her they were actually dating.

It’s fucked up as they come. The games these people play do not exclude them from the laws of relationships. I mean that although a whole load of energy gets spent on useless speculation and information gathering, it does not mean the relationship will be any more successful than one which develops out of a casual dating experience.

In fact, speaking from personal, vicarious experience, the relationship equivalent of no-man’s land plays havoc on any chance there is for a relationship to even develop, much less last for a decent amount of time. Boy and girl go back and forth and someone always gets hurt. Whatever happened to romantic dates, all-night conversations, all-day smses and that flush in the cheeks? Something tells me that it all exists, but in Colombo, other things such as ego, pride and mutual distrust come in the way. The situation’s changing slowly but mental blocks this prevalent are difficult to do away with.

Sad.

everything's fantastic...in retrospect

2005-06-12T01:52:00.000+08:00

RESULTS!

It’s been a fucking experience the past 11 days. It really has. I’ve just about experienced every emotion in that period of time. Oh well, not really, but definitely a diverse range. Let’s start at the beginning. The 31st of May.

Results day dawned, like always, without a whimper, except perhaps the usual shout out going out to Allah from the Mosque that is close to our house. I woke up, had my lunch and decided I should meet Ash for coffee. Before meeting her I knew I would need some cigarettes considering my heart was starting to beat a bit faster with the thought of results coming out and the thought of drinking coffee AND smoking cigarettes. It really does feel good. I’m not some SATC sell-out. I am, I am. Sigh.

Well then, by the time I got to the place where she was lunching with a friend they had got fed up with the ambience so we decided to go somewhere else. We decided, minus the friend, to go Ash’s penthouse poolside. Ah…the luxury. We pseudo-sunned ourselves while having our beverages and talked about the various happenings in our life. It was kinda fun. Ashanie is one crude girl when she wants to be. Anyway the hilarity of it all wore off when at 5.15pm I realized that results had been out for FIFTEEN whole minutes. We rushed upstairs logged on and checked my results. Oh it was a bit nerve wracking. I got pretty decent-average grades so it was very anti-climatic. I mean if they had been very bad, I would have been pretty shocked and sad and very possibly I could have cried and if they had been excellent, I know I would have been jumping around. Good grades always give me a super high. So my results were:

Human Resource Management: A-
South Asia: People, Culture and Development: A
Asia the Modern World: B+
Service Marketing: B

I’m a bit disappointed with my grades but I know I shouldn’t be coz I really was pretty distracted last semester and to get these results is positively great but you know, the eternal hope always shines bright even in the dimmest of circumstances. So after much deliberation I pick the “content” emotion amongst many.

THE FUCKED-UPNESS OF SRI LANKAN BUSINESS

My workplace called me and told me that my first day of work would be the 2nd of June. So after spending a sleepless night I woke up at the un-godly hour of 7.30am and got dressed hyperactively in my official best. By the way, the sleeplessness of the previous night was not due to nervousness but coz I am sooo used to sleeping at 4am that the shock of sleeping at 11.45pm was just too much for my system to accept.

Anyway, I tiptoe in the office at exactly 9am and the receptionist tells me to sit down on the comfortable couches. Leo Burnett Solutions does not fit into the stereotypical hot shot firm very possibly located in one of those skyscraper buildings or takes up a monolithic building looking very modern etc. In fact, the office is built into an old Victorian-style house with a compound for parking cars at the front. The front of the building is made of glass which opens into the reception area. This area is not air conditioned. There are huge industrial fans blowing on either side of the reception and there are tiny chimes hanging from the ceiling which are forever tinkling. There are cool coppery ash trays located everywhere in the building. So all in all, the whole interior takes on a very rustic appearance.

Anyway, I formed a very, very positive impression of the place because not only did the place fit my bill for a cool place but the people walking in seemed very friendly and laid-back. My superior, Murtaza, a.k.a Matt, greets me and tells me that he is expecting me but his superior has not briefed him on what exactly I am going to do. He takes me to our superiors, so to speak and Mr. Michael Holsinger basically apologizes to me about how disorganized they are and tells me to come back on the 6th of June. He says this without the slightest indication of how very humiliating and embarrassing this going to be for ME so I tiptoe out again seething with anger. I know I need THEM more than they need ME but..but.. yeah.. it hurt my pride like hell. I have heard sooo many good things about Michael that I did not really want to thing bad about him but I am human after all.

I get home and my mother surprisingly does not laugh and is glad to have me back so she can fuss around me. I make a mental note that I will make use these next few days of holiday fully and with no guilt so I just jump into the sack and fall asleep for the next 4 hours. Ha ha.

But Sri Lankan business has a long way to go.

FIRST WEEK @ LEO BURNETT SOLUTIONS, SRI LANKA

So the much awaited Monday comes along and I make a conscious effort I shall be all relaxed and cool so as to make a favourable impression on everyone. Ha. I try my best never to kiss ass, but I didn’t know what to expect.

I didn’t have to kiss any ass because EVERYONE was very cool to me. I got my own desk in the Brand Planning and Client Servicing Department. This is the biggest department in the firm along with the Creative Department. Basically what this department does is that it meets up with the clients who want to launch an advertising campaign and then gets all the details from them. They then conduct the necessary research of the target consumers and use various resources to come up with a vague idea of what the campaign will look like.

For example, if GAP came to LBS and told them to launch a print campaign, LBS would then conduct research and find out that the 14-26 old age group would be the most viable and that magazines such as Cleo, Vogue, Playboy and GQ would be most effective. The department also has responsibility for coming with the creative idea before passing the job onto the Creative Department. What this means is that it tries to provide as much as relevant information to the creative department so as to inspire them. For example, if the brand planning department finds out that most men in the 14-26 age group are also avid PlayStation fans, and if they think that it’s a relevant characteristic of their personality, in the sense that it’s an indication of how competitive, childish they are and if they think it’s something that the creative department can use to come up with an ad, they inform them of this in what is called a creative brief or memo. The creative department can usually overrule what the brand planning department tells them to do but since they are so very busy they usually follow the train of thought that originates with our department.

This kind of thing excites me because I love doing research and finding out exactly who the consumer is and I also love being able to contribute creative ideas about interesting aspects of the consumer’s personality. My first job was based on launching a website for a Fashion Knitwear company branch in Sri Lanka but headquartered in Germany. I had to write a report on how they could communicate the existence of this website to the stakeholders as well as potential clients and employees as well as to attract repeated usage. It was quite a small thing to do but I managed to conduct some research and wrote a 3 page report on it. My superior, Matt liked it quite a bit and decided that it was good enough to send to the client directly with minimal correction. This bit of praise really helped me out because I was finding it very hard not to fall asleep because I have never been called on to be attentive for 8-9 hours straight.

My second project was to analyze a bit of research done by LBS for one of their clients who want to re-launch their product which is a brand of milk powder for mother’s and kids. I had to look at this research and conduct my own primary research to come up with new, innovative ideas of how to launch the milk powder. Since milk is such a routine and boring product and also that advertisements usually show the same thing (mum’s calling their kids in to drink milk) it was something of a challenge. We (another intern and I) had a very tight boundary to work within because we couldn’t go way out there coz the target audience is still relatively unsophisticated.

We collected our research by going out to a mall to ask mother-like figures questions. This was surprisingly quite a pleasant thing to do because mostly all the people we asked were very friendly and helpful. Anyway, our final product was not a report but what is called a ‘Concept Board’ in the advertising fraternity. A concept board is basically a collage of pictures which when collectively viewed give you a clear idea of who your target audience is. In the sense if you were to advertise, for example a Football match, a concept board would show pictures of something that would clearly explain who your target audience was; therefore pictures of beer, chips, a couch, a few porn magazines would tell you exactly what the alpha-male was interested in.

So at the end we collected pictures of tea parties, recipes, soap opera ads, romance novel covers, working mother stuff, telephones etc. It wasn’t anything too new or anything but I hope that my creative brief will impress them more than our concept board.

I come home everyday around 6pm totally shagged which is the only bitch in the whole experience (and getting up early) but I suppose I will get used to it. I hope so coz I need a social life.

THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL AND ADVERTISING?

My first week at this amazing firm came to an end last night when they had an office gathering/party. I didn’t know this but the Cannes Film Festival, in addition to screening films also screens the best television advertisements for that year. So what LBS usually does is that they acquire the entire reel of the 50 ads they show at Cannes and screens it for their employees and their biggest clients in order to inspire them and also just to meet up and mingle. These ads were amazing and really, they were fucking inspirational. The ‘Intelligent Shoe’ ad by Adidas was one of them and McDonalds came up with some great ones too. Basically they provided each of us with a form with the list of advertisements. We have to mark out what we think are the 20 best advertisements so that when the results are announced next week, the scores of each form are tallied up and the three highest scores get some prizes which include a holiday at some beach resort, a mobile phone, a bottle of liquor and some other shite. Fun!

There was a dress code for this party too. We all had to wear something red and they painted our faces with red and white paint to make us look like warriors. I don’t know exactly why but it was great fun. There was a bar too! Free drinks! The long island iced teas were gross and I got drunk on two of them but of course that didn’t stop me. I hung with Matt and this girl called Shehara in the creative department. She is very cool. Piercings everywhere! Rock on! And oh yes, Matt, is 24 years old and is an awesome, awesome guy. I am very happy to have him as my boss. And Michael, the guy I very briefly hated, is very funny and lets you smoke with him on his rounds around the office.

After that met up with friends at Clancy’s and got drunk on arrack, B&H and beer. Came home at 2.45am.

Early night. Yawn

Song playing: Wonderwall- Ryan Adams
Movie about to be played: Osama
Food about to be eaten: Apple

I’ve got a date tomorrow! Yay!

interpret this!

2005-05-30T01:08:00.000+08:00

Day: 29th May
Time: 10.25pm

I’ve been having really weird dreams lately. Most of my friends would know by now that I am very prone to having bizarre dreams but as of the past few days, my dreams have notched up to what even I would call extremely extraordinary.

I find that simple fact usually is proof enough to illustrate the above.

Dream #1: Dreamt I was a ‘Polka-Dot Managing Executive’ of Party-Party Entertainment Co. I was in charge of managing the distribution of Polka-Dots before the party and other technical details that included the size, colour and ‘vibrating frequency’ of each Polka-Dot.

Comment: I have no idea where the Polka-Dot thang came from but the vibrating frequency thing is definitely an O.C thing.

Dream #2: Dreamt I was Rama crossing over to Sri Lanka on the stone path built in the ocean. Was accompanied by Sita (!!!), Durga and Pooja. Also Hanuman was flying overhead and wiping the sweat on his head with this hairy tail.

Comment: Why in hell was I going to Sri Lanka when Sita was with me? Durga and Pooja are not Goddesses, but in fact, are two very hot sisters who live in Colombo. They are pretty popular and the elder sister, Durga, owns one of the finest waffle places in Colombo. Hanuman and his sweaty tail? Don’t ask me!

Dream #3: Dreamt I was amongst some really beautiful Russian men and women sitting in one of their castles in Moscow, you know one of those groovy ones with the minarets et al. I was drinking shot after shot of neat Vodka and it was burning down my throat but I was enjoying it all. Then the dream gets fuzzy and the next thing I remember is sitting outside the house eating snow and my tears freezing in my eyes and me going blind.

Comment: A very normal one for me. Although it wasn’t a dream really; no one likes going blind! Duh. But I do remember reading that this happens quite often in Russia.

Dream #4: Dreamt that I was on a carousel and I was thrown off and landed on the sets of the Oprah Winfrey show. She was interviewing Karan Johar and Simi Garewal and I was this fly on the wall, vowing to be on the show one day.

Comment: Sigh. A tell-tale sign of overdosing on Star World?

Dream #5: Dreamt I was popping acid at Zouk. Anonymous sex. Earth-shattering, ear-pounding, soul-shuddering, limb-shivering ejaculation.

No comment.

agatha wasn't lying.. and neither was star plus

2005-05-30T01:02:00.000+08:00

Real life is every bit as treacherous and sinister as all those movies and television programs make it out to be. Why do I say this, considering that I am relatively untouched by scandal, treachery, and betrayal? I have actually been caught up in one or two ‘scandals’ that were blown way out of proportion but they never really paralleled the mother or all inventions, pun intended, the television. Anyway, my life is so not the point here.

There has been a murder in the Sindhi community. My mother is acquainted with the lady who died. Apparently, the victim’s sister in law had been poisoning her with god-knows-what (arsenic, perhaps?) for a long time. She had been losing weight and people had finally noticed that she was practically wasting away. On the day of the victim’s daughter’s birthday, the sister in law had forced the poor lady to drink a cup of coffee (or tea; details get mixed up) so that she could attend the daughter’s birthday. At the party, the lady had fainted and by the time the ambulance came she was dead. An autopsy was done and there strong traces of some unpronounceable poison in her blood.

Well, this is slightly complicated. Apparently, the sister in law was sleeping with the victim’s husband. Let me make this relationship clearer to you.

Victim married Husband1 whose brother is Husband 2 who is married to Killer.

So according to the sources, which are almost always undeniably correct, the victim had seen her husband and the sister in law in action and she had been got rid off before she had told Husband2.

Exciting right? I find there are major loopholes in this particular bit of speculation/distorted fact.

*Why the slow death process then? Maybe it was just the rumour of the slow death and whoever tried to kill her wanted to do it one shot.
*Why was the sister in law arrested and not the husband? Maybe she is at fault because she made the cup of coffee but surely, the husband might have been involved? I find it difficult to believe that the sister in law was doing this alone. It is possible however.
*Couldn’t she have killed herself? I mean, if the victim had just seen her husband getting it on with the sister in law, then suicide surely can’t be ruled out of the equation?
*Why the stupidity of killing her through poison? I mean Husband2 would definitely know NOW that his wife was a slut and his brother was a bastard right? Maybe the administration of the dose was overshot by way too much.

There is only one thing to be sure of at this point of time, a lady died of an overdose of poison. It sounds so stupid when you say overdose because, why would you take poison recreationally? I mean even if it is 1millilitre or less, isn’t that an overdose to? Whatever, I must stop now because I am very aware of how bimbotic I sound. Aww shucks.

My mother told me this story with the requisite amounts of sympathy for the victim and the family (the non-killers at least) but she didn’t really emote fright or shock or anything what I felt. I asked her why.

Mum: Oh these things are so common.
Me: WHAT? On Star Plus maybe!
Mum: Please, where do you think Ekta (??!!) gets her ideas from? REAL LIFE! Don’t be dumb, open your eyes.
Me: Aiyo! What rubbish! Don’t talk lies
Mum: Don’t believe me!! How do you think Chandra died? Her aunt took her to the terrace and stabbed her
Me: omigod

I heard about this story. Chandra was this 14 year girl who got stabbed by her aunt because everyone thinks the aunt was mad or the girl had seen her doing something which she shouldn’t have been doing. Probably a man or three.

Can you believe it? We are in the Sindhi community and where I do realize this does not in any circumstance give us an exception over the rule, the rule being that crime exists everywhere, I did not expect at all for it to be so close to home. I do have a bit more respect for the now not-so-hysterical-and-overacted programs my mum watches every night.

I really am a prude to be shocked at what should be a very mundane and everyday thing. Disgrace befalls me.

I’m wondering if I can bring up this argument to fight an arranged marriage proposal that might come my way. I’ll be like, ‘ma, please, don’t want. Look at what happened to victim and killer sister in law!!’ I’d rather not you know considering that the killer-sister in law marriage might be one of the few Sindhi marriages that were NOT arranged. Then I would really be screwed but why am I even talking about arranged marriage? I’ve got bigger problems than that!!

But anyway, I hope by next week I won’t be talking about murders at the vicarage and little Belgian men walking about my street.

get out the champagne peoplez!!!

2005-05-27T05:07:00.000+08:00

I am at the moment very giddy over the results of American Idol. Call me a loser I don’t care but CARRIE won! Yay! Bo was completely awesome too. In fact, the entire group of finalists this year was absolutely fantastic. It was very evident in the medley these guys did with their supposed idols… Carrie sounded sooo good with that unknown group! And Constantine, Jessica Sierra and Nadia reminded me how very offended we were when they were kicked out!!! Constantine especially! Carrie and Constantine in the finals was such a good prospect but Bo really did step it up! And oh yeah, fuck off, I still think Anwar is great!!!!!

CARRIE WON!!! YAY!

Ok, forgive me for this post! I had to do it! I’m sure not many people will know what the fuck I am talking about anyway!

Kansas Cow Indeed!!!$#%$#%

Song playin: I believe- Fantasia (i swear i did not plan it this way)

provincialities

2005-05-26T04:40:00.000+08:00

Date: 26th May
Time: 12.54am

Song playing: Sober- Tool (omg)

GO CARRIE!

I know, I know, it’s been sooo long since I last updated. What to do, what to do, I am sooo busy. That’s pure cock! I’ve been doing nothing except being lulled into some sort of complacency that consists of HBO, Star Movies, AXN, Star World and even the damn Discovery channel! Since my sister is away having a ball of a time in Bangalore and Chennai, there is no need to vacate her room at 5.30pm which is about the time she comes home after work and tells me to fuck off.

Ah well, so I’ve just been doing nothing except watch TV. There is no truth in the age old saying ‘an idle mind is the devil’s workshop’ because cable TV has negated the need to be idle. Therefore idleness is just about effectively close to being obsolete. This means, that we are slowly becoming drones; machines that will perform only the most routine tasks such as cleaning oneself and making the obligatory trip to the repair shop, which since we are humans consists of making content our soul’s need for human contact and medicine. Speaking outside of the useless, convoluted world that I live in, that basically means, I wake up, clean myself and watch TV but from time to time venture outside with friends and make trips to the pharmacy on errands since I am still human and benevolent enough to keep my family well stocked with medicines and by implication, alive.

But let me touch on the highlights of the last few days. After Nadeeka’s birthday dinner, Sunday was a day in which we all recuperated and flushed out all the toxins that had, so miraculously, accumulated in our systems. I just laid about, like a beached whale on my couch, reading away to glory. I finished The Spell and started on Chetan Bhagat’s book on life at IIT, ‘Five Point Someone’. The story is about 3 students at IIT, who are the ‘best’ of friends and who come to pact that renounces studies in favour of enjoying the best days of their lives, which to them is being seriously screwed up by the brutal IIT system. The story’s amusing enough but people, come on, let us stop bitching about NUS. Compared to IIT, life at NUS is like being at a fucking spa. Of course, I have never been to a spa, but that is so not the point.

Monday was a national holiday because of Vesak. Now in Colombo, it was the day prior to Vesak so that means it is classified as a holiday. I love Vesak. It’s a time when all of Colombo comes out in their cars, trucks, bicycles and even on foot to witness the gorgeously and intricate lanterns that are put on display. I took some nice blurred photographs of lanterns in the dark and the effect is quite stunning even though it screams amateurish. I took my little cousin out to see the lanterns put on display by HSBC to raise money for children in need. HSBC is just opposite my house so we crossed the road and I got busy clicking away and completely forgot my cousin who was trying to get herself killed by the oncoming cars. Stupid me! My heart was in my throat when I bought her home. I honestly felt sick but you know me, I was all happy again in five minutes.

My 17 year old servant- please keep your judgments to yourself, like you look at age before employing a domestic!- decides she wants to view the spectacles of Vesak this year. She tells my mum that her mum is picking her up and taking her about the town to do this very thing. My mum’s heart melts, or much more likely, nods dumbly at her request while watching Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, and lets her go. Well by 3am she hadn’t turned up so she sighed and went back to sleep. The next day, the mum turns up the next day demanding to see her daughter. Sickening realization sets in and we, er, realize that the fucking imp has run away. I warn my mother about setting an appointment with the gynaecologist when and if she turns up. That didn’t bode very well unfortunately and I was told to screw off and not interfere in such matters but I know my mum was worried about how she was going to cope with a pregnant servant. I mean how would she wash the bathrooms? Ha Ha Ha. I suggested she might have to pay her extra since she was, you know, expecting. I added that she might have a grandchild on her hands and for moment, she looked very alarmed, as if in her distracted state I was implying that I had got someone preggers but then she saw I was referring to her beloved maid and she told me in so many words to get the fuck away from her.

Ah the reinvigorating powers of provincialities… I could get used to this (not).

Today, I went out with my cousins. Pooja is 18 years old and she is depressed because her Advanced Level examinations are going on and their destroying her social life. She regales me with stories about the politics that go on in her class- evil twin sisters, snitching, prefect election politics, ‘unfair’ punishments due to using nail polish and sporting short skirts etc. I am very intrigued. Dinesh, her 15 year old brother puts me to shame with his driving skills and thinks he is some macho man because he uses the words ‘dick’, ‘pussy’, ‘fuck’. I sagely nod and come up with beatific smiles to show I am above all this, but I do in fact, find real interest in them because I see myself in them. Of course, they are sooo much more posh and want iPods instead if Nokia 3310 phones. In fact, the punk already has an iPod! Envy never gets you anywhere if you don’t have the money. :
We went bowling. I won of course. Usage of beatific smile once more. I got a score of 123. Really, that has been my average for some time now. I must up it somehow. Ahh but my bowling partner and best friend, Shawn, is in fucking England now so the zest of the game has evaporated without his asinine antics and embarrassing shows on the alleys. After consuming an entire portion of fries, devilled sausages and Pepsi we decide we have ventured out enough for the day and it was time to head home to catch the American Idol finale. Sigh. I love Idol. Will miss it lor.

Right then, Buhary comes over to watch the finale and we just chill for awhile. After bitching about the contestants we go out for a drive so that I could finally smoke in peace. We park next to the railway tracks and I am fine with smoking under the road lights but he decides we need to be more adventurous. Therefore, we cross over the railway tracks and I smoke in an area which is entirely dark, breezy, and full of creepy men milling about. Amidst jokes about being raped, Buhary contemplates going bathing in the sea. I freak out, stub out my cigarette and run to my car! This is a guy who likes asking the ugliest prostitutes for their charges because he finds hilarity in such things. Another example is, shouting at men who are pissing on some random wall so they get scared and spray their stream all over the place. Great. Although I hesitate, I admit it was fucking hilarious. Then dropped off Buhary and went to pick up Nadeeka for coffee. Chatted, drank coffee, ate cheesecake and came home carefully so that mum wouldn’t pick up smoke smells.

Recommendation of the Day: watch Nip/Tuck. It… Is… Awesome!

heady times

2005-05-23T05:23:00.000+08:00

Date: 22nd May
Time: 1.47am

Song playing: You are my everything- Mary J. Blige

It seems that I have acquired a taste for the finer things in life. I realize that I have become one of the people I hate with a vengeance i.e. a snob. I think that the moralistic hate was a poor disguise for the true, unadulterated emotion underneath: envy. Thou shalt not covet. Oh but I do covet. Every fibre of my body reverberates with the bitter boredom of my life. Natural I think? Or not? Whatever.

The past few days have been incredibly social. I always knew myself to be a veritable social butterfly flitting from buttercup to buttercup sucking up the sweet nectar and heady fumes of any party but, I’ve never entered high society. This weekend I did, although it did not start off that way.

I was shopping with sister on Thursday when a Sindhi friend of ours invited us to a barbecue he was having at his house on Friday. I thought it might be fun as I would get to meet a few Sindhis (Sindhi youth are much cooler than I imagined, but I still feel a bit uneasy around my own kind) and get to know them better. Maybe I would take a great liking to them and would develop a Sindhi clique! My sister and mother would be sooo glad. They always complain that I am some English putthar. Anyways, I get there and there is free booze. Grrreeat. So I hung about a bit there, met some non-Sindhis who were very cool and got their numbers. Maybe, if my suspicions are right, something might work out there?

I had to leave early to meet some friends for drinks. Get to the place really, really late only in time for two tequilas, but I was already riding the crest of four really hard Bacardi cokes so I had no problem with having missed out on the golden opportunities that a bottle of tequila offers. After getting done there headed off to the club to meet a different set of friends. My dearest school friends. All TWO of them. Unfortunately, they were tired and they went back home at 1.30am. Shock! I was left intentionally stranded. God forbid I go home just as the night is starting. I call Shiny and she’s at Tantra! Yay! Tantra is a cool, open air place on the 4th floor and it’s cool because people just stand there talking with each other and slowly getting themselves drunk on a very functional kind of drivel. Snobberies, snobberies.

Hooked up with Ash and her boyfriend at Tantra and head off to the Library. This is where I just about pass through the doors of a very elite kind of society. The boyfriend is filthy rich. Mozzie. Big business, big networks, the works. The Library by the way is another club. It was empty but sitting around and nursing a drink was something I couldn’t complain about because you know, the drink was absolutely gorgeous and free. After getting through the ‘chore’ of what Ash said was an obligation to entertain a few guests, off we went to My Kind of Place, another club. The place was pumping with good music and it was a jolt to my system to see such good looking people milling around. Ang-Moh’s galore! French, Spanish etc. So the boyfriend orders, I think, everything on the damn wine list. Like some impoverished, old, Victorian aunt I mooch off this new found generosity. I was a bit uncomfortable at first, but Ash’s sweet coaxings and some 8 glasses of champagne & arrack have a way of devastating inhibitions. This is where everything got glittery and glamorous as I got progressively wasted. I actually also started some 5-6 conversations with people I didn’t know and was like I said, talking drivel but enjoying every moment of it. There was this girl, a look-alike of Annie from Sunset Beach (or Miranda from Bold and the Beautiful) who I imagined was checking me out which only added fuel to the fires of my risqué attachment to everything rich and prolific.

See what I mean, I don’t like myself right now. Actually I do. Like myself.

I get home, completely off my face and mum is awake. Shit. She obviously guesses that I’m pretty much drunk but she just scolds me to go to sleep after a cursory conversation:

Medusa: You’ve been drinking
Me: Yeah
Medusa: Why do you do this to me? *notice how she says ‘me’ as if the liquor that I consume makes her drunk
Me: Yeah. What to do.
Medusa: You are the cause of all my illnesses: wheeze, ‘flu, cough, sore throat, everything bloody your fault
Me: Goodnight. I’m going to piss.

I wake up and feel, inevitably, fucked up but mum seems to be cool so my fears of being sent to military school or even worse, getting my allowance revoked are allayed. She also plies me with grapes (claiming it is really good after ‘a night at the discotheque’), curd, aspirin and a solemn lecture about the evils of drinking. However, I am not fooled by this cool-ness, though I am grateful for it. My mom made faint threats which I shall ignore until the next time I am off my face and imagining the worst kind of reaction in my compromised, mountainous (as opposed to mole-hill, ha ha) state.

Speaking of social graces and impoverished aunts, while I was getting over the terrible after-effects I managed to watch Vanity Fair. Now this movie got very bad reviews but I actually liked it. A lot. I haven’t read the book so obviously I had nothing to compare against but as a movie it’s pretty decent though nowhere as near to Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding. A-.

Lazily dressed up for Nadeeka’s birthday dinner. Myself, Shavanka, Ishani, Iro, Afzal, Muffu and the birthday girl went to a place called Tulips owned by one of Sri Lanka’s premier gay man who doubles as a transvestite. He is huge, that is to say fat and he displays photographs of himself in drag all over the restaurant. All his waiters are gay too. Surprise Surprise! He is dating the owner of the firm I going to work for as an intern. Little titbits of information that one hears if one goes out reasonably frequently.

The food was good, the place very nicely decorated and the cake we got for the birthday girl was abso-fucking-lutely delicious. Some chocolate brandy thang. After dinner we go for coffee and come home. Coffee surprisingly turned out to be the most social part of the evening because we kept on bumping into people we knew and hugging and kissing and bitching with them. Nadeeka is 22! Go baby! She got Davidhoff’s Echo Women from Afzal, a mug from Ishani (the same one I have, only with an N inscribed on it) and aromatherapy incense and a chain from me.

And now here I am blogging about how much I like being a snob. You could call me a wannabe snob. Maybe this is the elusive downward spiral. Or maybe it was only this weekend. Maybe what I experienced was still in the lower rungs of the social ladder. I shall now relegate myself to doing very unexciting things, like going for drives and watching movies and talking on the phone.

Dahlings!

glitterati

2005-05-19T05:20:00.000+08:00

Date: 19th May
Time: 1.53am

I have just come back from a typically Sindhi wedding. I mentioned in a previous post of mine about a Mehendi- well this was the subsequent wedding.

It was held at the Holiday Inn and my sister and I walk in pretty late while the wedding ceremony is going on. The wedding ceremony is supposed to be conducted in a place that signifies something about the vows these two people are making for the rest of their lives, i.e. a temple etc but instead it is held in one of the most profane environments of all, a hotel ballroom. At least it wasn’t in a club or something. The ceremony was being conducted at the extreme right of the ballroom with its makeshift stage and inevitable rudimentary fireplace and a priest who sweats profusely but yet is able to monotone his praises to the Wedding Gods while smiling his grime sheathed teeth to the cameras clicking away photographs which will fill at least forty useless albums.

I was just thinking, if Wedding Gods do exist, then their mortal, or rather; immortal enemies would be the Divorce Devils. Their respective counterparts would probably be the Birth Goddesses and the Abortion Demons. And I suppose, the Miscarriage deity would probably side with the God or the Devil depending on the woman’s personality. If she was a good soul and she had a miscarriage, then God would have caused it to prevent future pain, like if the child turned out to be retarded or just dumbfuck jerk. If she was a plain bitch, the demon would have caused the miscarriage in the 8th month, to punish both the bitch and the child (after all it is a Demon). Hmmm…Interesting.

The ballroom was gorgeously decorated. While the ceremony was going on, we all had to enter the hall and take our seats graciously and with hushed respect for the he-who-sweats-profusely-attention-whore and of course the couple. At each table, there’s a sleek candle burning which throws off a very subdued glare that flickers sexily on the cutlery and on everybody’s glasses. We all also get a glass of juice served in a champagne glass as soon as we are seated. It is quite disappointingly only juice, but rightfully so considering the hall is filled with old ladies who might have all kinds of coronaries and aneurysms if they took a sip of the Devil’s liquid. Of course some of these cunning ladies might down quite a few alcoholic drinks before crying foul, you know, just for the sake of proprietary and for the plain fun of good ol’bitching.

Additionally, the ballroom had these beautiful chandeliers which are a trademark of the Holiday Inn. The twinkling, ostentatious chandeliers lent a lot of glamour to the whole thing. It was really nice sitting there, me in a pin-striped suit with a white shirt (no tie), my sister in a 25 year old vintage black, sequiny saree, at a table full of strangers but laden with a beautifully intricate lace table cloth with a gold border. You can’t help but notice these things sometimes.

Dinner was predictably Indian fare. After the obligatory Congratulations shout out by DJ Curzon, we took to the buffet table like, well, Sindhis. I felt like slapping an old man as he pretended to be lost and wedged in front of me in the line. I couldn’t of course you know, because too many people were watching. The food was, in this case, unpredictably quite good. At my cousin’s wedding two years back, at the Taj Samudra, a whole contingent of guests who travelled all the way from the Caribbean, fell sick after eating the buffet at the Mehendi. So embarrassing for us!! This girl’s tongue actually turned black after the incident. Luckily it passed within a day and she was all ready to soak up the free alcohol at the wedding a few days later.

Getting back to this wedding and of course the alcohol, the bar was unfortunately situated very near to a close group of relatives who were paying a lot of attention on my movements, like they knew I was going for the alcohol. In an imagined world I see all my uncles clapping high-five when they saw their son/nephews going towards the bar. They would say stuff like, ‘Oh thank god, I thought he was going to be, you know, chee, I don’t know how to say this, a non-drinking sissy’. That day will never come because Sindhi husbands are very much controlled by their ball-squeezing tough ass bitches that’ve been brought up on entire lectures on the dangers of drink. Sensible women. NOT.

But resourceful as I am I got a friend to sneak me a Bacardi Coke. It was sooo fucking strong. It was absolute bliss lah. Quickly gulped it down but I saw a few of my uncles give me disapproving looks. Tsk tsk. I still think they probably express disapproval because they’re so jealous since we have become so cocky and so secretly-public with our furtive drinking habits whereas they had to plan in advance some big day in which they could drink and be off their faces. Damn, I wasn’t even driving, I should have drunk more. In fact, at that fateful Mehendi mentioned above, I WAS driving but I still swigged away around eight Bacardi Cokes. It was only later that I was informed that I was supposed to take my mum, my sister, my aunt and my grandmother home. I handled it quite well but I’d rather not take the risk again. There is a certain something about having 70-80 bottles of wine, champagne, Bacardi, vodka, gin and whisky at your beck and call that makes you take risks!!

Anyway, let me comment on the people. As we all have heard a million times, Sindhi’s are very, very conscious about how they look in public. Therefore it was not surprising to see the glitterati out in full force. There were diamonds, amethysts, opals, emeralds and sapphires all glowing fiercely on the mostly wrinkled necks of middle to old aged women. The sarees were sometimes flawless, sometimes gaudy, sometimes elegant, sometimes looking like shit. The men were mostly dressed in expensive looking suits and it was sooo refreshing to see that a lot of my peers were being original and wearing uniquely coloured ties with nicely coloured shirts. My favourite combination was where the guy was wearing an orange shirt with a suede black tie. Very sleek.

The best part of all this is that even though the riches were quite obviously flowing effortlessly around the ballroom, it was NOT a high-profile wedding. The Joneses are always on the minds of wedding planners.

Seriously though, the wedding was faintly exciting as I got to see some people who I haven’t met in AGES. It was also quite scary to see the pretentiousness of it all but fuck it, it’s just up to us to have fun. I did have fun! I checked out people indiscriminately and imagined myself doing un-godly things on the stage when everyone had left. I also socialized and it was refreshing to have one or two intellectual conversations in the midst of the equally refreshing eight or nine bimbotic ones.

And then we left. We took our parting gifts of wedding cake and liquor chocolates and drove home. Absolutely sober. Damn.

Song of the moment: Try- Nelly Furtado