Happy Birthday!!

BC-DE. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

[backdated]

A few observations

Tempting Fate

is, apparently, a startlingly viable and hazardous pastime. I opened the newspaper on the train last Friday and chanced upon an article detailing the many delays of public transport due to numerous passenger ailments. Another one told tales of violent and aggressive passengers being manhandled by even more trigger-nerved tram drivers and the like.

“Pah!” I said loudly, causing another passenger to edge away warily. Excuses! I thought, and then the fateful sentence slipped, like wet unnoticed glass, through my mind:

“If I haven’t seen it, it can’t be that common lah.”

*cue thunder and ominous-sounding noises, like a non-verbal “Mum and Dad want to see you. Now.”*

At the station on arrival, I noticed, absently, a nondescript youth surrounded by black-coated Figures Of Authority, raised voices and hackles obvious even across two sets of train tracks.

On the way home, in the tram, a girl fainted due to an asthma attack, and a row of halted trams quickly formed behind our necessarily stationary one, awaiting the arrival of an ambulance.

On Sunday, Boyfriend, his friends, and I watched with a keen and slightly horrified interest as our tram driver stopped the tram, marched up to a passenger and dragged him off said vehicle. They proceeded to have a lengthy and abusive argument, degenerating into a dreadfully one-sided bout of fisticuffs (our driver was built like a footy player, and the passenger like a third of one), ending only when the Driver (as he shall henceforth be known) flung a small, indeterminate object, presumably the Passenger’s (ditto), as far away as he could into a road of oncoming traffic.

What was just slightly worrying was that on returning, he turned to another passenger and said, “That was him, yeah?”. The answer was, if the word can be used, fortunately in the affirmative, but it does seem, to me at least, that perhaps this is the sort of question that should be asked before undertaking such action.

Anyway. At the onset of the last incident, I rolled my eyes heavenward and said “FINE! I BELIEVE YOU!”, and fervently hope that the message has gotten through.

The next and only time I exclaim about something in the newspaper, it will be about a lottery winner, and will be something along the lines of “Pah! This never happens to *emphasis* ME…”

Teenage dramas

Countless episodes of The O.C. and One Tree Hill, both dearly beloveds of the dearly beloved Boyfriend, have led me to the conclusion that to the makers of these shows, the absolute height, nay, the pinnacle of character development rests in the gradual evolution of vile villains and bitchy airheads into simply misunderstood good people with previously undiscovered hearts of gold. Sworn enemies become united by a common goal, and the revelation of insecurities and secret traumas (childhood or otherwise) become the ultimate in “surprising twists”, resulting in “unlikely bonds” of love and friendship.

The only truly bad people who stay bad despite all reasonableness usually turn out to be psychotic and are therefore not really, you know, normal.

There is one in every class

Like, really. The obnoxious one who asks tons of questions, most of which are irrelevant and the rest about matters that were covered just two seconds before.

I went for MYOB (an accounting-type software) training today and was heartily amused (my colleague was heartily annoyed, so I felt the need to right the karmic balance) by a girl in the front row who came in late, proceeded to ask the trainer about other training programs available (before, mind you, he could even begin with this one), and interjected almost every lesson chapter with the following statement: “Yeah, I’ve done that, I taught myself how”.

She is not the first. For some reason, in 90% of the classes I have been in, there is always the one person who manages to annoy everyone else with irrelevant questions and painfully inane comments.

I would go on, except for the remaining 10% of classes in which I found no one annoying at all, and the niggling thought repeating itself in the back of my head – “There is always one…”

[I do realize that high school classmates occasionally read this, so stop rolling your eyes, you.]

A conversation

While watching television one day:

Boyfriend: You’re tiny.

Me: No I’m not.

Boyfriend: Yes you are! I can fit your fist in mine. Look!

Me: (struggling unsuccessfully to open hand) STOPPIT!! I AM NOT TINY!

Boyfriend: *laughs patronizingly*

Me: I AM NOT ALL TINY!!! I HAVE BIGGER BRAINS!!

Boyfriend: *continues laughing and pats head condescendingly*

Me: WELL I HAVE BOOBS!! Oh hang on. *looks thoughtful* So do you.

Boyfriend: *stops abruptly*

Me: *laughs maniacally and falls off sofa*

For Mum

Whose birthday is today, yet never seems to age.

Whom I always thought the most beautiful person in the world - and still do.

Who always thought me beautiful too, especially when I felt ugliest.

Who tried so hard to hold on to me, when I tried to pull away.

Who lets me hold on hard now, never letting go.

Who laughs three times at every joke, haha.

Who cannot cook, but tries her best for us.

Who cannot sing, yet sang to me.

Who read to me when I couldn’t, and filled my world with the books that became my life.

There are many, many things I remember, but the first and clearest memory is this:

Of how, when I was very young, I used to wake up before she’d leave for work, just to watch her go, and then I’d roll myself up in her discarded clothes and breathe her in to stop from missing her so much.

This is the fourth year that I’m away from her on this day.

I’d give anything for a shirt.

Happy birthday mum, wishing I was there.

A stroll beyond infinity, and a postscript

Two nights ago I got up from my bed, opened my eyes, and saw stars. Pricking flashes like darting balls of mercury, slipping away from focus, dancing around the edges of my sight. Other times all else turns black, and for a few quick-long seconds I see nothing but bursts and twinkling points of silver-white, enveloping me in a dizzy starry spell.

It’s like floating, for those precious moments, in a galaxy of my very own.

……………………………………

In response to a question someone asked Sylvia, either in jest (haha, not), or in all seriousness (which is, actually, funnier):

a) I am not pregnant. *rolls eyes*; and

b) Apparently my uterus reads me - now how’s THAT for reader penetration?

:oP

Not For Cuppycakes

*msn: A worm is living inside me, I swear

A disclaimer (which is quite silly, since if I’m about to do something that requires a disclaimer, it can only mean I’m about to do something which will contradict, or seem to, said disclaimer, therefore possibly rendering said disclaimer false, but your opinion is entirely your own, as is my right to write a disclaimer so there):

1. I don’t cry. Well, not easily anyway.

2. I don’t like ranting in writing.

Because, you know, yelling at Boyfriend is so much more satisfying.

But all bets are off, when hormones are in the house.

(Oh, and:

3. I don’t like using clichés.)

It’s simply not normal to keep being affected by these insidious molecules. Hardened junkies are as titled, and I demand the same right. Chemicals are chemicals are things not to be quibbled about especially. Not. Now.

The problem is not in the actual “time” itself, but of the days before. Suddenly the mildest of stories pricks at my eyes and threatens to ruin my cool. (OH STOP SNIGGERING.) Suddenly the littlest of words, or looks, or acts become stone-carved reasons for a quiet self-inflicted death. Suddenly I want to eat everything in sight.

Yesterday I almost bawled over Little Men, by Louisa M. Alcott. And a beggar. And a busker. And a cat. And a magazine cover. It’s safe to say that had I spilled milk I would have cried. (Oh, the clichés! My lack of originality is painful. Tearfully so.)

Yesterday for lunch, my colleague watched, round-eyed and open-mouthed, as I proceeded to devour a cake of yee mee, plus a handful of tanghoon, plus nine meatballs and two eggs. Washed down with a glass of milk, followed by several handfuls of almonds, and a breakfast bar.

She, mind you, had one (ONE!!) cup of instant noodles.

I reached home that day trembling with hunger.

Today, I became quietly and deeply convinced that my eventual termination for utter incompetence was inevitable for the inarguable fault of simply being me.

No matter. All this, and the accompanying bloating, is perhaps to be endured with patience and chocolate as being reproductively necessary.

But this month, this month, THIS MONTH, the unavoidable is simply just not there.

And so the normal three-day limbo of teary paranoia has lasted a week (and counting).

This cannot go on. I may eat Boyfriend.

And so you see, this is not a rant, but a desperate plea.

Please. Bleed already.

Short-circuits

*msn: A friend of Pinky the Punk

I swear sometimes my body is totally independent of sense.

There is no other explanation for the way I trip over curbs I have already seen, or knock over glasses of water I put out of reach just moments before, or spill food (and this, more than anything really really annoys me) ONLY when I’m wearing something new. (What’s more, having ordered something boring and unspillable in anticipation of this very eventuality.)

But I think that I would be fully justified in saying that, of all the different parts of my body that get up to all sorts of hi-jinks when I’m not paying attention, my face really takes the cake. (Eats it too, come to think of it.)

It seems I am incapable of thinking, reading, or recalling anything without making the appropriate facial expression.

I am well aware that everyone laughs at books sometimes, or smile when thinking back on some happy, blue-skied times, this is perfectly normal. (So you can stop worrying now.)

But (and I am quite sure about this, because people-watching is now a hobby of mine), possibly no one else will recall, say, a certain waiter, or perhaps a particularly condescending Student Administration worker, and proceed to not only scowl most gloweringly, but also to mutter, peevishly, all the things that could have been said but were not, in an increasingly loud and vehement voice, ending with a little triumphant smirk at the imagined outcome – gloriously vengeful, and very, very satisfying.

This is very bad. Not only because I will inevitably develop the reputation of being ‘that crazy lady on the train’, or that I may someday (soon, no doubt) be apprehended by gentle but firm men in white, or even that I may eventually lose control over my face entirely (at which point it will most probably proceed to eat nothing but cake, and a lot of it) but mainly because of the sad and sorry fact that I will never, ever, win $10,000,000 playing poker.

Morning (and evening) train(s)

It's my fourth day of work and I still don't know the train timetable, and so often find myself sitting on a bench in the station, scribbling.

[Side note: I love saying I ‘commute’ to work. The word somehow imbues me with a sense of all-purposefulness and dedication to my career (car-less and broke); casts the image of a busy young professional, briefcase-laden (large handbag), coffee (tea) in one hand and a rolled-up paper (Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent) in another.]

I am unimaginative and easily inspired, and therefore most of what I write about is trains. (Bet you didn't see that one coming.)

Like how heady it is in the morning, surrounded by and invisible to school-age children. The air is thick with unconscious potential, like swirly, oozy soup from which anything may spring.

Like how I want to follow every single person on board, as he or she is swallowed and then regurgitated. I want to walk their roads, live their lives, think their thoughts. It will, I am sure, be like watching a slowly spilling splash of liquid gems.

Like how sometimes, I feel like gently stepping off the platform as a train hurtles by, out of plain and simple curiosity – I wonder how it feels like to be a splat.

Like how once, while waiting, I saw a crescent moon, beaming, with a smallish star just above one horn; a tiny wink from one working traveler to another.

But most of all, like how the anti-social in me, brought out by the incessant human contact in an office, where work is a never-ending tepid pool, finds comfort in the alone-ness of it all. I crave the emptiness of the carriages, the comfortingly solid cranks and clanks, the slight yet soothing sways and jolts, the sight of the city’s many-windowed fingers reaching towards a sunset sky.

All this is all mine, mine, mine, with no one to spoil the wondrousness of solitude.

This is an under-appreciated Heaven.

I may be, but I wish I wasn't

Tonight I heard nothing new.

Laughter jarring in familiarity, same old same old tales.

I’d heard these jokes before, these thoughts, these words.

“Ah? Lost near those kind of people ah? Sure gone adi lah!”

“You know lah, they everything also steal lah! Bloody ******s!!”

Cue the broken bottled hilarity, the cracked and knowing smiles.

And once upon a time I might have laughed along, and, worst of all, I might again some day.

But tonight all I could think about was the times when people spoke to me in simple words (for simple minds, you see). When they were mean, and rude, and ignorant, and didn’t even care. When someone cursed and hated me for simply being what I am.

And I could barely keep from yelling, both at the raucous laughers and at myself.

New Orleans

I cannot remember when or how I first read about this place; hazy, sultry pictures in a dusty National Geographic, with glossy sticky-smooth pages of feelings made words, books upon books whose plots are long-forgotten, but not the rich impression of the world they lived in, jazzy catches of song, gently snatching my soul.

The magical foreign music of words like ‘bayou’ and ‘jambalaya’ and ‘cajun’ sunk hooks into me, leaving painful barbs of yearning. I craved crayfish long before I knew what they were. Even the hooded suffocating darkness of voodoo and whispered curses held me, bound and helpless, in their thrall.

But I have never been there (for fevered imaginations don’t count, I’m sure), and so the wreckage wreaked in Katrina’s wake is painful, as now there is much I will never see.

But, much much worse, is this:

That my vague dreams were someone’s reality.

That my regretful longing is someone’s anguished loss.

That what I have never seen, they will never see again.

What pain, what pangs, what slight and pricking aches I feel are nothing in the face of such gaping, naked, sorrow.

May their bleeding gashes crust and heal, their homes restored, their hopes fulfilled, may New Orleans live and thrive once more.

Her people need to dream again..and so do I.

Disgruntled-ness

*msn: Cabbage

Is there a word for a waiter who doesn’t smile back at customers who smile at him, to whom, apparently, “Thank you” is a phrase that requires absolutely no acknowledgement or response, whose idea of serving is to throw the plates at the table from as far away as possible, who treats customers as though they were wholly unreasonable for being there at all, who brings a bill of $47.50, promptly disappears with $50.50 and then proceeds to ignore the customer completely, who then, on inquiry, first informs the customer patronizingly that there was an unwritten $2 charge for the pot of very weak tea, and then proceeds to look highly affronted at the request for the remaining $1 change, saying haughtily that he thought it “was a tip” loudly enough for the entire restaurant to hear, and then throws a handful of coins on the table in apparent loud disgust at the customer’s lack of generosity?

Because, you know, ‘audacious’, or ‘rude’ or ‘appalling’, or even a combination of the three (italicized versions included) just doesn’t quite cut it.