i will think on this some day, not now
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 |
MY AUNT HAS ADDED ME ON FACEBOOK. This is the end. I think everyone above the age of 40 should be banned from facebook. Or maybe just that people should not add as friends relatives who are from the generation after theirs.
A post-GEP survey came in the mail today. They want to track us. There is a box for you to list your awards from national and international competitions; another box for the books and scholarly articles you have published; and another for patents you have obtained. Clearly I am a failure in the system.
This may be due to the fact that I have played 479 games of Bogglific in, I think, the last month or so. This has taken up 1,437 minutes of my life, or 23.95 hours. No wonder I haven't accomplished anything.
Maybe I also spend too much time criticising people. It's just so much easier to be dismissive than to be nice. Or maybe it's been too long since I've met new people I like, and I've forgotten what it feels like to like someone at first sight.
Do I know what I'm doing? I think so. Can I justify it? Not really. Does that make it wrong? Perhaps.
I don't want to think too much, but I'm always accused of being escapist. Now I often get confused - should I think less, or would that make me a coward?
posted by zyn ::
11:19 PM ::
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Anonymous
There's someone going around leaving vulgar, vindictive comments on my blog and S's. I've always had comments moderation to filter out spam, but it turns out now I need to delete mud too.
I was upset at first, before I realised what this means about the anonymous commenter. How bitter and lonely that person must be, to feel only jealousy and malcontent when reading about other people's happiness! I can barely imagine him or her hunched over a computer typing out the venomous comment, resentment churning in his gut, spite twisting her lips. And I feel an overwhelming sense of pity - over all the things that must have gone wrong and are still going wrong in this person's life, over how it must be so difficult for someone as hateful as this to find friends, and most of all over the fact that this person has to live with the malice and meanness deeply embedded in his or her life.
Try to be happy for yourself. Then maybe being happy for others will come naturally too.
posted by zyn ::
9:44 AM ::
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stand up for yourselves, bitches
Thursday, October 18, 2007 |
My latest bugbear surfaced unexpectedly during conversation with XH last night over a hearty, if imperfect, meal at Au Petit Salut.
"Why is it that when girls are around their boyfriends, their IQs seem to drop by 50 points?" I demanded of her.
She couldn't answer because her mouth was stuffed with onion soup. Or, if she mumbled something, I don't remember it. (Happy birthday XH!!)
This IQ-drop is a phenomenon I have subconsciously observed over many years without ever really thinking about it. Now that I am (thinking about it), it strikes me that this may be why I've lost respect for a lot of my female friends over the years. Taken individually, they are all smart, witty, independent entities (I try not to make friends with dumb people). But once a boyfriend looms on the horizon, BANG, they are reduced to simpering, cutesy, whiny, clingy idiots. Instead of discussions and repartee they have babytalk and playful slapping. Instead of rejoinders and comebacks they resort to pouts and puppy-dog eyes. I have one or two friends that are spared this disease. All the others, however, have succumbed.
What are the possible reasons for this strange behaviour?
I thought, at first, it could be a Singaporean guy thing. Maybe Singaporean guys are insecure and egotistical and need their girlfriends to pander to their macho pretensions. I think this is the root problem for a lot of my friends. But even those with angmoh boyfriends suffer the same problem, so it can't just be a Singaporean guy thing.
Then, I thought, maybe it's a Singaporean girl thing. Maybe, for all their professed confidence and self-reliance, Singaporean girls are afraid of being alone and left to their own devices. So they put on a brave front around other people, but with their boyfriends they assume their true clingy forms. Or maybe it's the other way around - maybe they really have pluck and backbone, but have to put on a front around their boyfriends. I'm not sure which option is sadder.
Of course, it could just be that human males are a parasitic species that leeches off the brainwaves of human females. Or so I comfort myself by thinking.
posted by zyn ::
1:17 PM ::
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things that bug me
Thursday, October 11, 2007 |
I'm trying to compile a comprehensive list. Not in order of annoyingness.
1. Girls who giggle at everything they say
E.g. "How about this? Heeheehee. Or maybe it's this? Heeheeheehee. Heeheehee? Heehee."
2. People who pronounce 'about it' like 'abourrit'.
E.g. "We can't do anything abourrit. Maybe we should just not think abourrit. My favourite Mexican food is abourrit. O."
3. Anyone above the age of 18 wielding a pencil with a pom-pom on the end
4. Visible pantylines
My prescription is this
5. Visible panties
From the back OR front. Sexy thongs are no exception. Unless you're dressing for a stripshow later.
6. Visible buttcracks
Only Brian Kinney can get away with this.
7. People who refer to themselves in the third person
Girls, especially, if only because I've only ever encountered girls doing this. I suspect they think it's cute. I think it's attention-seeking at a level so low it's moronic. Every time I see a blog on which the author refers to herself in the third person and then puts up a (usually ugly, because that's the type of girl that does this) photo, I have to physically restrain myself from leaving a comment to the effect of "You are so ugly and stupid that putting up photos of yourself should be considered a public hazard". So far I have desisted.
8. "Food blogs"
In quotation marks, because the concept has become so diluted that everyone and their 70-year-old aunty has "food blogs" these days. I have no respect for "food blogs" which are really just photos of restaurant food cooked by other people and one or two lines gushing about the "texture" or the "display". This is brainless blogging. They are personal blogs. They do not deserve a separate category.
Of course I realise this sentiment may not be shared by many. But to me, if you are just going to order a normal portion of food and take pictures of it, that's not a review and not worth a blog. If, of course, you place more orders than necessary for a dinner just so you can give some semblance of a overall restaurant review, that's a different matter.
The other type of food blogs I would grant the moniker are those where people cook their own food and put up pictures of the process and the result. That is real food blogging. I love good cooking blogs.
posted by zyn ::
2:55 PM ::
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conversations with my civil servant friend
Saturday, October 06, 2007 |
Civil Servant Friend (CSF): Look at my wombat!
Later at my house...
CSF: Oh you have a wombat too! Your wombat has down's syndrome!
Me: Do you have rollerblades?
CSF: No.
Me: But you have an SLR right?
CSF: ...
Civil servants are dumb. And mean to wombats.
posted by zyn ::
12:29 AM ::
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a huge thank you
to everyone for their kind words and kind chocolates and kind flowers and kind wine!
You can't see them, but I also have a huge chocolate hamper and a whole box of Canele sweets and chocs.
It's funny - people always say you know who your friends are when bad things happen, but I think you also realise who's most important to you when good things happen and you immediately want to share it with those specific people.
Anyway all I want to say is that I am immensely fortunate and very happy. :)
posted by zyn ::
6:16 PM ::
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i need to take life easy
Thursday, October 04, 2007 |
Okay this is getting ridiculous. Someone has added me on Facebook whom I just met for the first time two days ago through work. As in, someone who's not even a colleague, just a hi-bye-can you help me with this information-type person. I'm like, come on!
And today I was covering a court thing when one of the lawyers came up to me and said, hey, I hear you're so-and-so's friend. So-and-so is my colleague! I went to look you up on Facebook yesterday and saw your profile photo with sunglasses at the beach!
That is wrong in so many ways. Firstly, who does that??? Secondly, I changed that particular profile photo about a month ago. Which means this person looked me up a month ago and for some reason wanted to seem like it was just yesterday because it was ONLY ON MONDAY that we were ever in the same circumstance (i.e. in court) for the first time. How did this person even know to look me up a month ago? A month ago I had no idea of this person's existence!
This is way beyond creepy.
Anyway I haven't been blogging for ages because over the last two weeks or so I have been obsessed with finding evening dresses and earrings and shoes and stuff like that. When I say obsessed, I mean like every lunchtime is spent shopping and every night I worry about how what will go with what and what exactly I'm looking for and what am I trying to prove anyway with these new dresses. They're actually for specific events, btw, it's not like I'm buying dresses to make my wardrobe look prettier. This has seriously stressed me out. I have eyebags.
But today I finally found the perfect dress for tomorrow night and it's CK. It makes my hips look big though. This is the conversation I had with I., who actually picked out the dress for me:
Me, examining myself in the mirror: Makes my hips look fat leh.
I.: No lah! It's perfect! Buy it!
Me, happily: Okay!
Later, walking to the carpark:
I.: Actually, I know what you mean about the dress making you look fat
Me: NOW THEN YOU TELL ME!!
Anyway it's done. And, thank goodness, S. is coming with me for the dinner tomorrow so I'll have someone to talk to and won't obsess about how my hips look fat.
posted by zyn ::
12:03 AM ::
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