Archive for May, 2007
god bless 7-11s and their bright white fluorescent lights that are such a welcome delight in the dead of night when one takes flight to fight the hunger plight. it is always comforting and somewhat exciting to see a familiar sight when you’re far from home, even if it is just an orange, green and red neon signboard. nevertheless, it is a signboard that bears the promise of round-the-clock coffee, diet coke, chocolate and instant noodles whenever the need for such provisions arises; and the knowledge of that is like the awareness that you have a plan B, a best friend, the feeling of kicking off your shoes as you throw yourself down on the couch after a long, long, long day.
i was just falling asleep on my books last night, so i thought i’d run down to the 7-11 to get some coffee and Pocky sticks. because i was too sleepy and grumpy to look for my bra, i pulled on one of Martian’s shirts instead. it smelt so good and so much like him that i wondered why i dont wear his shirts more often. then i wore his Bloomberg flip-flops, and off i went to get me some coffee. the security guard at the entrance, not my favourite one but she’s cutesy as well, asked me if i was going to go get siew yeh. i was going to say, siew yeh and kopi, but i caught myself and said, yes, siew yeh and kah feh.
this late in the night, only stray cats, sleepless taxi drivers and the occasional Pocky-craving insomniac prowl the streets. as i flip-flopped my way down to Robinson Road, i remembered that one night some months ago when we fought and i cried and i went down to Lan Kwai Fong alone. it was a strange night, that one, a strange perplexing night of Mr Wimbledons, ulterior motives facaded by easy drinking games, and conversations about which of the two is the more heartbreaking sex. later that night when i got home, Martian enveloped me in hugs and kisses, and i felt like such an idiot for thinking i would feel better being away from him. sad things and sulkiness just melt away when the person you love is holding you.
the 7-11s here dont make that irritating electronic dingdong! sound every time someone enters or exits. when i walked in, there was a night-shift policeman (ah sir!) reading the newspaper on a stack of somethings, and his gaze immediately landed on my chest sans bra. the young guy by the drinks display did the same, and so i glared at them. a post-party dyed-blonde girl walked in then, and she once-overed me, and then flicked her eyes away boredly as if to say, they’re just tits.
there is one department of Hong Kong’s gastronomical delights that, despite all my time here, i have yet to sample : the infamous 7-11 microwaveable ricebowls! i allowed myself some time to linger upon the tableau of different frozen rice dishes, to give each and every one due deliberation before i made my big momentous decision of What To Eat. finally, i decided on Rice with Pork and Salted Fish, principally because it is a flavour of my childhood, and it brings me back to precious lunchtimes with my mother and brothers on cloudy schoolday afternoons.
cheerful boxes of cookies and snacks were behind me, and i dove into the shelves with my eyes. some experiences are best shared, though, and i was quickly disenchanted. i picked out a box of Pocky and Hello Panda biscuits.
pleased with my 7-11 treasures, i made my way home. back to my SAT textbooks and my sleeping boyfriend, who would be quite pissed off to know that i went out of the house without a bra.
the rice bowl was actually quite nice!
SAT Question of the Day : 1B5A - 6BC = ABC. A, B and C all stand for different numbers from 1 to 9. What is the value of C?
May 31st, 2007
tonight, i am a clown performing an elaborate balancing act - i have : a SAT textbook in my lap, a bowl of risotto on my knee, a mug of lovely hot chocolate topped with strawberries n cream in my left hand, whilst my right hand twirls a pencil around, and at the same time i am tilting a big Yes/No decision in my head. not to mention struggling to remember how to solve geometric progressions : a filthy mathematical concept to find the number of fish left in a lake on the 18th of April if the 1000 fish in the lake on the 4th of April keeps reducing by half every 5 days, and other ridiculously weird situations like that.
i finished prepping for my SAT Critical Reading and Writing section yesterday. not even halfway through it all, i was already despondent, woebegone, miserable, dismal, crestfallen and just downright depressed. apparently, i have absolutely no grasp on English grammar whatsoever. all those A’s in English mean nothing now that i am made aware of the fact that i do not know when to correctly use ‘who’ and ‘whom’.
and i never knew it was wrong to use the phrases ‘between you and i’ or ‘i am well’, or that it was this difficult to see eye-to-eye with subject-verb agreements. and now i’d rather be commatose than have to deal with punctuation. sigh sigh sigh. with every word that i blog, i am reminded of how pathetic my english language faculties are, and that i will most probably flunk my SAT if i dont learn to navigate the swamps of prepositions and pronoun-antecedent marriages within the next 3 days. as of now, i am most certainly not well good.
i am in Mars right now, because i thought egg tarts and Martian would help me study. WRONG. i have not had an egg tart since i got here, and Martian keeps lording his vocabulary superiority over me when it comes to those annoying SAT words. i read out to him the words i didnt know - penury, adroit, vituperation, truculent, platitude, neologism and chicanery - and he smugly started to rattle off all the definitions!!! and then he went “ask me some more!!!!” wtf wtf wtf dear god why is my boyfriend such a show off. i’m feeling very indignantly competitive right now. must remember from now on never again to date boys with vocabularies bigger than mine. inferiority complex to the power of ten.
and yes we got back together *twiddles thumbs* everybody shaddup ah. dont say anything.
this morning, i shut Martian’s wardrobe a little bit too hard and the entire shelf came tumbling down, clothes and cologne and scarves and all. fark. and then i couldnt put the shelf back, double fark. i thought Martian wouldnt love me anymore when he comes back and sees what i’ve done, but not only did he still love me, he also brought me back a salad. awwww, baby. <3
stress, panic, a lack of egg tarts and an impending cloud of doom suspended above my head aside, i am actually a very happy person this week :)
May 28th, 2007
once again, i am sitting in my balcony leeching wifi off my unsuspecting neighbours. there is a cool breeze out, Michael Buble’s Everything is playing, and i can see Genting from here. it would otherwise be a nice simple night; but the sharp caustic glare of my laptop screen cutting through the nighttime blackness is painful. i love my laptop so much but sometimes it just does all these things to hurt me.
May 24th, 2007
there is this mamak stall near my place that i frequent. though to call it a mamak stall is a misnomer, because it is most definitely not the usual roadside or tepi longkang (translation : next to a drain. free waste disposal channels are always a plus for mamak stall proprietors on a budget) mamak stall usually lit with nothing but starlight and one flourescent light tube. but at the same time, it falls short of being called a restaurant or a cafe, for a reason i cant quite pin down.
long-time patrons of this place would remember a time where customers could opt to sit outside the little corner lot that this mamak stall operated from, in the open air and at plastic tables and chairs set up in a roadside area that served as parking spaces by day. back then, the most outrageous thing on the menu was bubble tea, and their decision to serve crushed ice in their drinks instead of the usual ice cubes was the talk of the town. a handful of shy Indian men ran the place, and you really didnt want to know where they kept their ice.
these shy Indian men have since bought over the mechanic’s workshop next door, and while the refurbished ex-workshop saw a brief glory period of being a shady snooker hall, it’s now been renovated into an extension of the mamak stall. from a dingy little lot bought when real estate prices were low, this place has graduated to become a people’s favourite, a hangout for young and old alike, an aggrandized foodstall with an extensive array of victuals that go way beyond the usual mamak fare of teh tarik and roti kosong with curry. heck, they even have wifi to entice the growing percentage of Web-savvy population. now you can check your blog comments over your maggi goreng! but you still dont want to know where they keep their ice.
random memories i have of this place :
celebrating my high school history teacher’s birthday. yes in a mamak, because he is so indian that way. we bought him a cake even though he cowers like a baby at the sight of sugar
all the times in Form 3 that waimin and i would stay here talking nonsense till 5 in the morning
Kevlar teaching me how to play pool. i was getting damn good at it too, but then we broke up
SPM month when i came here at 4am every morning for coffee and last-minute cramming
discovering poori
discovering thai coconuts
the time someone tried to pick me up by sending a plate of fries over to our table. wtf?
watching in horror as the cashier girl got slapped and hit by the owner of the place. he later took a tray of forks and spoons and threw it in her face. she had the biggest bump on her forehead for weeks after that
mee rebus and maggi kon lou with Martian after one of our Mont Kiara nights
being stalked
testing the owner’s Cantonese
a guy named Michael
buying DVDs with Timtam that i never watched
lynn-nee falling down even though i didnt see it
shishaing boredom away while watching footie with the boys
never coming here with azlan
discovering kaya cheese naan!!!!!!!
giving a beggar money and then having a guy from the next table come over to tell me that i shouldnt support the soliciting of money
talking about sex with jinhang and sieutheng
kok wai puking all over our shoes after clubbing one night
accidentally walking into their Mr Potato stand and knocking over all the Mr Potato tubes and then laughing like a hyena and stacking them all back according to colour
racing here with my brothers and then racing back
the time my brother gave my phone number to a DVD peddler in return for free dvds
i’m actually sitting here in this mamak nursing a coffee and trying to study for my SATs which is in about 10 days. panic panic panic! and the reason i felt so compelled to blog my love for this mamak stall is because they recently started serving diet coke. how can i not love this place even more now?
May 23rd, 2007
if left uninterrupted, Martian has this astronomical ability to talk and talk and talk and not stop until he loses his train of thought. give him any topic - economics, healthcare, Wolfowitz, the latest Jay Leno, office politics, his cute girlfriend ahem ahem - and he can talk till kingdom come. he doesnt even need you to say anything in response! it’s like this big long monologue that never ends. sometimes when we’re on the phone and i sense one of his epic-sized soliloquies coming on, i just start sorting out my wardrobe or painting my nails or something. yet listening to him the whole time, but of course; and always remembering to throw in the occasional ‘mmhmm’ and ‘then what?’, naturally, like a good girlfriend would.
if anyone else did that to me, as in went on and on and on and on and on and ignored me at the same time, i would probably roll my eyes, tell him not to call me again, and hang up.
but because it’s Martian, i lovingly keep listening to every word, sitting back and giggling in my heart at how long-winded my boyfriend can be. damn cheong hei but so cute. like my mother liddat. sometimes i like to count in my head how many minutes it takes for him to realize that i’m not saying anything at the other end of the line, heeheehe. the record is 13 minutes 54 seconds.
(and i can say all this with bold abandon, because Martian has decided to boycott my blog. hence he’s never going to read this. haha!)
when you love someone, all their imperfections are perfection in your eyes. and there is nothing about Martian that i can bring myself to dislike. i love everything nice and unnice about him. to me, the sum of all those things just make him so Martian and so cute and so lovable and so mine. and i wouldnt have it any other way.
except for the fact that he wants to boycott my blog.
-_______-
damn Martians think they rule the whole solar system. boycott then boycott lah!
May 21st, 2007
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