for posterity, when she's gone
A: What's your personal email address?
N: N****21@hotmail.com
Me: What's 21?
N: My lucky number. Why, you thought it was age, is it?
A: No leh, I thought it was IQ.
N: ...That was a bit too fast for me. I only had 7 hours sleep last night. *whine*
posted by zyn ::
11:34 AM ::
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mercury is in retrograde
So much to say I don't know where to start.
Maybe with this: when is it okay to reject a friend request on Facebook, or - worse - to block someone? Is it ever okay? I must say that when I add someone as a friend, it never occurs to me that they might not want to be my friend. And I would be absolutely insulted if someone rejected my friend request. But lately I've been thinking - why should I acknowledge someone as a friend on Facebook whom I seldom even speak to in real life?
It may not seem like a big deal to add friends, and indeed some people collect friends like my hunter collects light leather. But with something like Facebook, where you log in to see what your friends are doing... I really don't care about, and don't particularly want to see, the blow-by-blow updates on the lives of all these people I would barely call acquaintances.
Still, I don't think I would ever block someone. Or reject a friend request. Probably good to know for someone like I., who spent days being paranoid that someone had blocked him on Facebook ("Why on earth would anyone do that?" I asked. "How I know?" he whined. "Maybe you too fat," I said. Haha).
Except Z. If Z ever added me I would not only reject, I would block her, hack into her computer and delete her Facebook account.
* * * * * *
While I'm adding friends on one hand, I'm also losing them. Okay, that might be a tad melodramatic, seeing as they haven't died. Or, with the exception of one possibility, moved out of the country (yet). But it does feel that way, even though it hasn't quite sunk in. I suspect it will tomorrow or next week, and then perhaps again in a month's time.
And it just gets worse and worse. It's been pretty much one person a week for the last few weeks, but today's person - it's truly the end of an era. And it doesn't look like the next era is going to be an improvement, judging by the losses we're sustaining.
I feel a maudlin entry coming up soon but I'll save that for another time.
* * * * * *
Speaking of losses, I think I left my iPod on the plane. This is calamitous for several reasons. Not only am I extremely attached to my iPod, it also has a whole bunch of songs that Sports Boy put in which I don't have anywhere else. (Like the revelatory Disco 2000 - I'll never forget that night at Clarke Quay when the three of us were downing beers and trading favourite songs and the other two suddenly burst out into "De-bo-rah, De-bo-rah" and I was like, "Wtf?".) Now I will have to go buy all the CDs, damnit.
Also, without iPod, I cannot go gym. I will get fatter and fatter until one day I actually become fat. Then I cannot laugh at fat people anymore. :(
On the bright side - now I have a real reason to get a bigger iPod. My tiny little 1GB nano really wasn't enough. Should I get a 8GB nano or a real iPod? Hmmmm.
* * * * * *
All in all, it hasn't been a very good week. I lost money at mahjong again yesterday somemore. The reason is obvious: Mercury is in retrograde. Clearly I must stop playing mahjong until it comes out of retrograde (whatever that means).
I posited this theory to B., who immediately shut it down with ten thousand reasons why astrology is complete crap and people who believe in it are worse than crap. This soon escalated into a debate about whether it's even possible or meaningful to categorise personality types given human nature and its mutability, and then became too cheem for me to follow. Which often happens when I suspect I'm going to lose an argument. Of course I argued anyway, for the sake of arguing (B. tends to bring that out in me) and then went off to google scientific evidence to back myself up. So far I haven't found anything, except that I do like to daydream. Somehow I don't think that will be enough proof for B.
posted by zyn ::
12:12 AM ::
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i forgot to bring my camera
Am happily ensconced in a hotel room in KL, having had a marvellously surreal day. I basically landed in KL this morning to "check out the property scene", as per my extremely brief briefing - except that I'd never been to KL before, didn't know anyone here, and had absolutely no idea how I was going to go about checking things out. I was so stressed last night I couldn't sleep until 5am and then got up at 7am to go to the airport.
Fortunately I'd had the foresight to set up a few interviews, and my 3pm interview with KF's executive director Sarky went so well that he spent the whole afternoon driving me around KL, giving me a running commentary of the property market. Actually, I think he felt sorry for me. I told him I was planning to take a taxi around the suburbs and his jaw dropped. "Are you sure?" he said. "You girl, you know. Not safe." So he volunteered to take me around instead, partly because he didn't want to go back to the office and partly because he's a "sucker for the damsels in distress lah". He even brought me to the Royal Selangor Club for a drink while we were waiting out the city traffic jams. That was amusing - it's like the Singapore Cricket Club, dark and stuffy and totally an old boys' hangout. Everyone stared at me in my big fluffy skirt. It was hilarious.
Now the bath is running - and I'm watching Federer steamroller an unexpectedly cute Gabashvili (who is younger than me!! Damn. I really feel sorry for him though) on what looks like a 50-inch screen - in my very comfortable room with an amazing city view. And I must say A. is right about this hotel; it's really quite cool when you pick up the phone and the TV automatically mutes itself.
Haha.
Don't want to go home liao.
posted by zyn ::
10:53 PM ::
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midnight at the void deck
K: So have you just come out and told her that you don't like him?
A: But she does like him!
Cue hysterical laughter and three hours (!!) of psychoanalysing.
Conversations like these don't come by that often anymore. I'm really going to miss you guys.
* * * * * *
On a side note, another gem from Darren. I swear, half of everything I know, I learned from Darren.
* * * * * *
I don't think I've ever really thought much about friendship. In the past it's always happened naturally - if I like someone, we're friends; if not, we're not. Now things have gotten more complicated. I might like someone, but not the things that they do. I might like someone else, but they may be too weak, and I despise weakness.
This doesn't happen very often, but friendship is now, slowly, occasionally becoming a conscious choice, and therefore a gift I'm beginning to realise I can decide to withhold - but only for my own sake. I cannot be friends with someone if that friendship makes me dislike myself.
I recently heard something about someone I considered a good friend. If the implications of what I heard are true, I have to stop being friends with that person. This is troubling me.
Then again, with Facebook and MSN and Friendster, these days the friend-dropping process is cut-and-dried; a ritual that soothes almost as much as it rips asunder. Delete, and immediately you can start anew.
"You still have so many friends to spare what," one of these aforementioned friends said to me.
That's not the point, though. Every friend is my friend for a reason; every friend is special. It's just that some of them, I'm coming to discover, may be bad for my health.
What should I do?
posted by zyn ::
3:24 AM ::
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on poetry
"The koi are calling," R. msged me today. "Come hither! They say."
"Aren't I, like, a great poet?" he gushed about himself when I came hither.
"Not really," I said. "The best poems must rhyme one."
Of course there are many good poems that don't rhyme. But if you take two very similar ones, the one that rhymes is better.
Case in point: That 70s Show vs. Wow Insider.
Bob, on That 70s Show:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Fudge is sweet
Here's some fudge
Guildwatch, on Wow Insider today:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I /gquit
And f#($ you
See?
posted by zyn ::
3:36 PM ::
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bonko and ah boy
After a fathers' day dinner tonight, my siblings and I sat around and had tea at Corduroy Cafe. It's the first time in years that all three of us will be in the same country for more than 3 months at a stretch, until next year, when my brother heads off to Cambridge.
At this stage I have more degrees than the other two combined. But they're both en route to PhDs, so in a decade or so I will be the least qualified. It's an amusing thought.
Sometimes I wonder if we're all really related. Then I look in the mirror. But the differences are truly vast - their idea of a good time, thanks largely to my mother, is to sit in a dusky tearoom, complete with chintz armchairs and low chandeliered ceilings, and have flower-flavored tea from delicate cups. My idea of a good time - well, the less said the safer.
And yet we're seldom not on the same page. With them I never have to dumb down, or try too hard, or struggle for things to say during awkward pauses. That's why it's always kinda nice whenever we get the chance to hang out, all three of us, without our parents to roll our eyes at.
As I watch them grow up, making the same mistakes I did, skipping some but stumbling into new ones, I can't help being glad that there are at least two people in the world I really do like rather a lot, who are smarter than me in almost every way but who let me pretend to be superior all the time.
I think they like me too.
posted by zyn ::
2:05 AM ::
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damn fuck.
Damn fucking pissed off with these fucking idiots.
"We need a new photo."
"I not in office leh how I give you new photo?"
You not in the fucking office on Sunday then why bother sending out a fucking press release, you fucking moron?!?! Fuck you.
posted by zyn ::
4:01 PM ::
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knut party!
Okay that was a crap entry. I can do better.
Since Philip is in Berlin doing the whole "I'm a struggling writer even though I'm going to spend 450 euros on a bag to impress a girl" thing, I thought I should blog about him and give him something to read as he whiles his days away in an internet cafe.
I'm not sure how it happened but I think Philip has become the person who knows me the best. Because of that, he knows exactly what buttons to push. And being Philip, he pushes them. Which makes him the only person at whom I get really really angry. Like exit-messenger-ignore-calls-switch-off-phone angry. But he always makes up for it. He's a good briber.
Philip is also the only person with whom I can conduct an entire conversation about whether or not buying a bag would make him look cool-but-sensitive (like his favourite person) or insecure-and-loser (like my least favourite person). Actually that's not true. I think I have these sorts of conversations a lot with a whole bunch of people. But Philip has more weird situations to converse about.
This has turned out to be quite a crap entry too. Hahaha. To be honest this is a very bad week for me. I have this massive project I'm beginning to wonder if I can really pull off. Fortunately I'm having beer at lunch tomorrow; a bunch of us are finally going to use our media passes at Zouk on Friday; hopefully I'll catch a movie on Saturday ^_^; and for some reason that becomes more elusive by the day, I'm going rockclimbing on Sunday.
In the meantime, anyone who isn't on Facebook, GO GET IT NOWWWWWW! And then add me so you can see all the cool books I'm reading!
I'm such a nerd.
posted by zyn ::
1:50 AM ::
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ni wei she me bu yao en bloc?
I just did an interview in Chinese and the 80-year-old Chinese chap praised my fluency.
Will wonders never cease?
posted by zyn ::
9:59 PM ::
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super cool
Video of a ball being thrown back at a speed of 100 km/h from a truck moving at 100 km/h. My science knowledge in general is like complete crap, so I had no idea what was theoretically supposed to happen. Now it is etched in my mind forever. Physics rules!
Damn I'm so bad at it.
Credit: Darren, as usual.
Also worth a watch is this major ouch video about Paris Hilton going to jail. Which is, of course, totally yesterday's news, since she's out now.
For those of you with better things to do than watch it (like, say, eat a cottonbud):
Sarah Silverman (who looks really fat in that dress): In a couple of days, Paris Hilton is going to jail.
Paris Hilton in the audience: *attempt at a brave smile*
Rest of the audience: *catcalls and applause*
Sarah Silverman: Wow. Thank you. The judge says that it's going to be a no-frills thing, and that is ridiculous. She is totally going to get special treatment. As a matter of fact, I heard that in order to make her feel like, more comfortable in prison, the guards are going to paint the bars to look like penises.
Audience: *shocked laughter*
Sarah Silverman: I think it's wrong too. I just worry that she's going to break her teeth on those things.
Paris Hilton: *abandons all pretense, gives death glare*
posted by zyn ::
1:59 AM ::
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scattered pictures
It's one thing to know that something's going to happen, and quite another to have it finally actually really happen. To be honest, I thought it would take a fair bit longer in the works.
I thought I wouldn't really care, but I'm rather more upset than expected. Maybe it's just coming on top of everything else. And this one I genuinely didn't see coming so soon.
It's the end of an era, like I kept saying today, without really knowing what it meant.
"So how?" I wailed to P. just now.
"Suck it up and move on," he said. "That's life."
* * * * * *
What's the point, now?
posted by zyn ::
9:55 PM ::
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treadmill torments
When my gym membership at Fitness First expired a few months ago, I decided to save money and downgrade to California Fitness, for about a third of the price I was paying at FF.
Now I am being punished for being cheapskate.
And perhaps also for my eyesight. Last week I was regaling A. and I. (haha AI, how apt) with tales of middle-aged monsters in the locker rooms with flab oozing out from under their flesh-coloured bras. This week it's gotten a bit worse - the flesh-coloured bras have been matched with flesh-coloured panties of the high-waisted variety, which are slowly but surely turning me blind.
I thought that was bad, but then yesterday morning I saw some of these unnaturally immodest monsters walking around - yes, you've guessed it - topless, jiggling in all the wrong places. At that point I snatched up my locker key and stabbed my eyes out.
My friend K likes the aunties at his gym. He thinks it's cute how they all dress up in their matching lycra and spandex outfits with a hairband and huff and puff on the step machines. But that's because he's never had to see them in the locker rooms.
I., of course, countered with: "Eh the male changing rooms are worse okay. At least you don't have to deal with sssssemen (said sibilantly and gleefully) on the women's floors."
I couldn't stab my mental eye out, so I settled for positioning myself in front of a big truck rumbling up the road.
The solution, I have decided, is to take up more outdoor sports. Anything will do, as long as it doesn't involve flesh coloured garments of any sort. Help.
posted by zyn ::
12:13 PM ::
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