All Of These Things In One Breath

it’s good to be back. i slept away my entire sunday, and today was just a day of catching up with some friends. i’m looking forward to this week - lots of meetups and dinners and drinks do’s and movie dates. i havent even watched Transformers yet, geez.

College
i met up with some collegemates today. i havent seen them in three months because i took the summer semester off, and they were like WOW we havent seen you in ages. yea i know. i even called one of them by the wrong name; it was most embarassing, because he has been nothing but sweet to me the whole time i’ve been in Taylors. and then there were these girls at the pool whom i thought were freshmen, but they’ve actually been around college for a few semesters now. it just goes to show how small a part of my life college is - that for a whole year i’ve been thinking Vicky’s name is Raihan, and that i dont even recognize the people i go to school with. it’s terrible of me. i feel like shit. i didnt even know Sarv was leaving malaysia until, like, yesterday.

Martian and Hong Kong
i went to watch Invisible Target with Beaver last night; it’s that new Benny Chan flick starring my Nic Tse, my Shawn Yue and Jaycee Chan (who did a really good job). when Martian was here in KL last week, i kept telling him how we absolutely have to watch this show together because it’s filmed in Hong Kong. if there is anything i love to do with Martian, it is watching new HK movies together; it’s always so fun to recognize the familiar places together, and point out things that are just so quintessentially Hong Kong.

and i love it when he tells me something about himself and HK that i dont know yet, like that time when we’d only gotten together for about a month and he left a message on my Multiply. he’d left the comment on a picture that i’d taken in Central on a previous trip to HK with my parents, and he said, ‘baby my default breakfast place is just up the corner on the left’. that place is Kosmo, and that time when i went to HK and took that picture, Kosmo was just another health cafe that i didnt give a second glance to. now, it’s like a landmark because of what it is to Martian, and it’s where i go when i’m waiting to meet him after he gets off work. i usually get the Nirvana Soy drink, the one with muesli in it.

anyway i never got to watch Invisible Target with Martian, because i went into one of my sulks the night we were supposed to go. haha. while watching it last night, there were just all these HK scenes that were so familiar to me. i mean, the movie bloody opened on Queens Rd Central! i could just hear Martian going, ‘eh baby that’s my office!’. i could see the big pink Sasa sign and the overhead pedestrian bridge where i have stood many a time to take photos of people swarming across the busy road. and at one scene in the movie, you could very clearly hear the most ubiquitous sound in HK in the background. i felt like i was going to burst with regret just hearing that. i miss HK so much.

there was one part where Jaycee, a cop, radioed for backup and he said he was at Star Street. i was like, ‘SING GAI !!! that’s our dan-dan noodles place !!!’. but the most shocking was when Nic and Shawn were strapped to a bomb and had to go to a carnival to retrieve something, and the carnival they went to was none other than this one. i was pulling Beaver’s sleeves and pointing desperately at the screen going, ‘OMG OMG that’s the ferris wheel Martian and i were on!!!! OMG OMG Martian and i played that ring game at that booth!!!!’. it all just felt so surreal. a little hard to articulate. summore that carnival was only there for a few months.

Martian is in Singapore already. he starts work tomorrow. i’m looking forward to creating new Singapore memories together. then i can overreact to Jack Neo films or something.

On Demand
while Beaver and i were having supper at Steven’s the other day, this DVD seller came up to us to pimp his collection of bootleg movies. we yelled “tai jor lah!” at him, but he didnt get it. but we laughed like crazy anyway. hehehehe.

Dont Play That Card With Me
i recently met someone. the circumstances of our first meeting was dodgy at best, desperate at worst. at first i thought she was okay lah, despite the fact that she took way too many liberties for someone i’ve only just met, asking me for favours and all when i barely knew her. anyway as time went on, i ended up not liking her at all. for the longest time i kept telling myself i should be nice, be fair, be patient, but i just couldnt. she irked the hell out of me and still does. coz if there is one thing i hate it is people who talk to you only when they want something from you.

i mean, seriously. i know it’s important to market yourself and everything lah but you dont step all over people in your quest to do it, right. and people arent stupid, they KNOW when you’re kissing ass and grovelling at their feet. even more obvious when it’s only the ‘important’ people’s posteriors that you choose to plant lips on. it’s just that i cannot stand people who think they have the right to objectify other people or shuffle them into a hierarchy, and that is precisely why i cant stand this girl.

and you know what she said to me one time. that it’s important for a girl to act dumb if she wants to get places. er yea well done lah. thank you for the tip. isnt her strategy of choice so impressive. maybe that’s why despite decades and decades of women’s rights battles, we women still always lose. maybe that’s why couch auditions and glass ceilings still exist. maybe that’s why some men still think it’s okay to think of women as lesser beings compared to their manly macho selves; because our own kind are still so keen on perpetrating these stereotypes, not realizing or not caring that to achieve their own gains they are destroying the progress of an entire group, and just pushing us back step by step in our efforts each time they do it.

i am just completely fuckingly disgusted that anyone can have the balls to say such a thing.

how dare you. you hypocritical whiny little thing. go ahead and act dumb all you want lah. ass-kiss all you want lah. just dont insult our intelligence by thinking we dont see how phony you are. and dont insult women by saying our place in society, any society, is to act dumb.

and to these so-called important people who blithely allow such people to kiss your asses, you’re not any better. ego feeders. have you no respect for yourself. is the recieved adulation all you can think about.

pah, the petulance of i. gimme good ol’ brains and wit any day.

And Finally, Sesame Cookies at Marmalade
are very nice.

33 comments July 31st, 2007

And This Is Vienna

Vienna is beautiful - all neat sidewalks, knives and forks scratching daintily on white plates, and magnificent baroque architecture. horse-drawn carriages sail smoothly down the streets of the city, and it’s easy to close your eyes and eclipse the thrilled tourists atop the carriage with your own imageries of the perfectly-coiffed ladies of 17th century Europe, dressed magnificently and fanning themselves, while tittering girlishly behind lace gloves as they make their way towards the week’s high-so ball.

one breathes the arts in Vienna. everywhere in the city, there are vestiges of Austria’s rich history in arts and culture, and just as many signs of contemporary uptakes. the former manifest themselves in the walls of old buildings and the many historical sites of the city; the latter in the form of flyers given out by wigged men all decked out in fancy costume complete with waistcoats and breeches. i dont envy them; it was really hot in Vienna when we were there.

i regret to inform that the Martian and i didnt see as much of Vienna as we would have liked, due to tight schedules (him) and sleeping in too late (me). of all the museums and galleries in the city, we only managed to see one! foodwise, we didnt cover much either save for the meats and cheeses and coffee. no apfelstrudel or the original sachertorte :( though we did see many churches.

i took some gorgeous photos at Naschmarkt and St Stephan’s that i was really eager to share, but as y’all know, them pics are forever gone. so here are pictures of our 2 days in Vienna, all as taken by Martian. he didnt take very many pictures, but i uploaded the pics from his camera to find that most of them had me in it. haha! baby you love me wan issit. okay lah i love you too. because you gave me all of your pictures.

#1 breakfast at the hotel on the first morning. best ever cold cuts and cheeses

#2 the Karlskirche cathedral with a work of Plop Art

#3 at the steps of the cathredal. we took some really nice selftimer pics here with my camera :(

#4 inside Karlskirche

#5 i didnt like Karlskirche much as you can see from the pic :P it had all these ugly beams in there to support an elevator system. Stephansdom was breathtaking however

#6 at some museum

#7 me and Martian. hahaha no lah no lah

#8 Bach’s star

#9 we stopped at this lovely kaffeehaus outside the Operahouse while waiting for the bus

#10 at the Hofburg Palace, the cool crib of many an important man in Austrian history. er that is not me squatting on the floor in a most unladylike manner. aiyah i just wanted to take a picture from the bottom of the statue! and i did! and it came out nice. but you will never know that, won’t you! so it’s actually not me squatting on the floor in a most unladylike manner.

#11 still at Hofburg

#12 the cafe and shopping area nearby Stephansdom, with Hofburg Palace in the background

#13 at my favourite place in Vienna, the Naschmarkt. it’s a long market street housing knick knacks, clothes, fresh produce and foodstuff. ps i hate wasabi nuts, argh

#14 at Segafredo! haha of all places

#15 i really just had to do this pizza stall thing! pretty good stuff

#16 in the city. we later ran in this rain coz we were this close to missing our train to Budapest

#17 Votivkirche from afar. we never went in

#18 someone rustled behind this door and i got scared

#19 at the Sigmund Freud Museum. the girl in black on the left is actually a guy in black on the left

#20 Freud’s psychoanalyst sofa! love and work, work and love, that is all there is.

#21 outside the museum. no i dont know why my legs look like that

#22 /wistful

#23 the subway

———

that’s it, though there is so much more to Vienna that we saw. and also so much more that we didnt. anyhoo, Budapest pics up next :)

these peanut butter biscuits are most addictive.

43 comments July 29th, 2007

Nope

no pictures of Vienna coz i didnt upload any before i was pickpocketed. ya i lost my camera. with all my photos of Vienna and Budapest in it. i am a bit speechless, and i still keep absently touching my pockets in the vain hope that it was all a mistake and that i’ll find my camera nestled safely somewhere. right now i just wanna curl up in bed and growl. maybe go on a chicken rice fast if it means i will find my camera in my mailbox with an apologetic note from the thief. ’sorry for stealing your camera, pinkpau; here, you can have it back, with all your pictures still intact!’. i guess the silver lining to this is that at least Martian took some pictures and i can keep those. sigh. but i want my pictures. okay okay okay girl stop complaining. Budapest awaits.

45 comments July 26th, 2007

So This Is Your Maverick

‘it smells like cattle here,’ i said in wonderment the moment we were on the other side of the sliding doors, smeared with jetlag and dragging luggage. it was right off the plane and straight onto the cobblestone streets; but no complaints, really. there’s just something about cobblestones. as well as undisguised, languid, sunhatted coffee culture sheltered elegantly beneath big umbrellas on the sidewalk.

i learnt how to say Sugar (Zucker) by looking at the label of a jam jar, and the names of various fruits by eyeing intently their local aliases written in black marker cursive on little cardboard signs. Apfelsine is an orange. Wassermelone is none other than watermelon. we bought half a pound of cherries at the market this morning, but i was so excited i forgot to check how to say cherries.

if you’re lucky, sometimes you’ll get to see women who have beards. i’ve seen two. and i dont mean whiskers or a furry upper lip; i mean a full-fledged Merlin. it’s so weird, but so interesting, yet still really weird. a little bit like the train system here where you dont actually have to pay for tickets. a budget backpacker’s dream! the ticketing sytem, i mean, not the bearded women.

amidst many coffee breaks and poking around churches, we walked a lot. i was so tired that last night i fell asleep in my little orange dress. then i woke up to excellent sausages, cold cuts and cheese. have i said this yet? i absolutely love the cheese here. and our hotel makes the best croissants ever. i slathered mine with Nutella and it was even better. Nutella! Nutella! you make me so happy.

there is a lot of sky here. and the people here have very, very blue eyes. above all i’m just glad that i have someone to share all of this country’s beauty with me.

34 comments July 25th, 2007

Hiatus

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS IS HERE.

(this is my just-wake-up face. i’m actually wearing a Hogwarts t-shirt but cannot see but that’s not the point the point is that i am holding Book 7)

OH, THE TENSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i officially declare myself a hermit until i finish this book. but then again i dont ever want to finish it =((((

note : due to price wars, the bookstore chains MPH, Popular, Harris and Times have decided to boycott the book and ship all their stock back to Bloomsbury. but who cares, because it means we all get the book at RM69.90 now instead of RM109.90 :)

at Chapter 3 now. very kan cheong.

edit : okay turns out i didnt get to hermitize at all. as a result i’m only at Chapter 5. WTF! i want to finish the book! cannot wait!

35 comments July 21st, 2007