Archive for May, 2008

The Tale of the Portable Defibrillator

in between searching for my visa application documents, i was searching for the meaning of life. what does it mean to be happy? what does it mean to feel this numbing pain so distinctly in my heart? every single cell of my heart is throbbing and murmuring, and i am forced to be so keenly aware of every single. beat. and. pump. and. whirl. but why? what causes that first pump of the heart that is the jump start to our entire lives? my breath hitches; i finally locate my passport. it was underneath the tissue box. that goddamn thing.

do you ever feel like you want something someone else has? that clenching dissatisfied green greed. i feel like that all the time. the other night, tamtim (as opposed to timtam, because we are cool like that) and i were discussing what we were made for, and i said that i was made for competition. i was made for winning. and i am the biggest sore loser you will ever meet. i hate losing, i really do. lately i’ve been feeling a lot like i’m losing, that the grass is greener on the other side. nevermind what it is that i’m losing; the point is that i am not winning. but the sad thing is, i am actually the winner. i just dont know it because i am so fixated on wanting what other people have. but i am actually the winner. fuck. i feel like i’m that relative shaking the comatose person, screaming, wake up! wake up!, but in some weird dissociative identity kinda way, i am also that comatose person who is ignorant and blind and deaf and senseless to the world, being shaken by myself, ultimately still comatose.

this text that i got today. it read – ’su ann. you have something that the others dont. all u have to do is read the comments in ur latest blog post and u will see it too. dont cry.’ thank you. i really needed that. and thank you to all the people who left me those comments. to many of you, i am just this blogger who blogs; a total stranger who does nothing but put random words together. yet you take this time to leave me encouraging comments. why. why this kindness?

tamtim left for cebu today. byebye tamtim. i will miss you. i wanted to write this long post about you, and how we met, and village grocer, and starbucks, and max brenner, and the observatory, and banana leaf rice, and island creamery, and all that other stuff in between, but then i was lazy. so nevermind lah. please dont forget to name the cutest goat in cebu after me. i will try my very best to last these 3 weeks without your evil mockery. slash stare.

yesterday night i hung out with tocklet and christine. best gossip session ever. tocklet, will you help me with my archeevs? trivia of the day: when tocklet and i grow up, we wanna be just like christine, cos she be pimpin’ with all the bmws and free houses, plus she gets to boss big celebrity bloggers around.

and i cut my hair. i cut my hair!!! i havent had short hair since forever. behold the lousy mobile phone snapshot :

did you know that the white tube i’m wearing is actually a white miniskirt with ruffles? it’s so short, it’s obscene. there this kevin lah, that’s what he gave me for my birthday two years ago. you should ask him what he gave me for christmas last year. go on. ask him.

and this weekend, i get to fulfil a dream that’s been pending for the past 6 years. i so cannot wait.

81 comments May 29th, 2008

About This Blogger who Blogs

i first started blogging 7 years ago. in 2001, when i was a fiery little bookworm in Form 1 who had too many opinions and too little time to let everything out, i started my first ever blog at Geocities.com, using Blogger, the blogging tool that would later spawn the almighty Blogspot.com. i had all of 10 readers then, and it was great because these were my best and closest friends at the time. geocities.com/pinkpau.. haha. good times.

i remember changing URLs a few times because i was so paranoid that other people were reading my blog. i had a lot of rants on my blog, you see, and these rants could be read by any of the people i wrote about. this was a time when i was 100% honest about my feelings in my blog because it was being read only by my closest friends anyway, who would give the best advice and already knew me inside out. i eventually settled on pinkskyes.tripod.com and decided to never move again, but i still wasn’t completely open to the idea of a public blog. in a way, i dont think i ever really decided to go public; somewhere along the line i just slipped into the acceptance that we can never really hide ourselves on the internet.

in pinkskyes, i blogged with absolutely no refrain. i had something like 400 readers a day then, and i just blogged whatever i wanted to. if i was happy, i’d talk at length about exactly what was making me happy. if i was angry, you could expect a long and detailed rant about the specific people and incidents that were involved. i had a few short posts every day; whenever i felt like saying something on my blog, i’d blog, even if it was just 2 sentences long.

then in January 2006, i got my domain and moved here to quaintly.net, using Wordpress, entirely set up by Booha and Alvin the Puppy because i am technologically impaired like that. this was when i made the first step into the public blogging arena, and i started to be really careful with what i had to say because i was getting linked everywhere and hearing from lots of acquaintances and totally unexpected people about how they ’stumbled upon my blog’. haih that can be very scary, as i’m sure most bloggers would realize.

then i actually started attending blog meets, something i’d always avoided because i never really wanted to get involved with – and was almost scared of – the Malaysian ‘blogosphere’ as they put it then, and still put it now. my first bloggers meet ever was in early 2006 – a very small one put together by the cast of The Homecoming which i’d watched and loved. that was where i met Zona and TV Smith, and i remember Fireangel with her screwdrivers and Kimberlycun and Shaolin Tiger not showing up because they forgot about the meet.

that was my first ever real encounter with bloggers, and i guess being amongst them helped me come out of my private-blogging shell a little bit. in my pinkskyes days, i watched how bloggers attacked each other openly over the smallest things, i watched the whole Xiaxue vs Malaysia drama, i heard of this PPS thing and how it was the ‘who’s who’ of the blogosphere, and many more things like that. the ‘blogosphere’ just seemed like such a vicious place to be, and the whole idea of a huge blogging community was just very foreign to me. after 5 years of blogging privately, i felt like a country girl being thrown into the city – a little bit dazed, a little bit scared, a little bit self-conscious.

i’ve grown to become extremely comfortable in the blogosphere now, so comfortable that it’s strange when i think about how it’s only been 2.5 years since i was initiated into the scene. that’s only one third of my entire blogging life. i still write what i want to, albeit not as wholly as i’d like to.. and i’m a lot more censored and refrained than i used to be.

and you know, that is the biggest peeve that i have with myself – the fact that my blogging has become so vague and secretive over the years, and that i can’t always write what i want to, because my blog is now very very public. since quaintly.net, i dont think i have ever ranted or hinted at my displeasure at any one person without said person eventually reading about it. with a public blog, i’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to keep all the super personal stuff away because not doing so entails all sorts of problems like people getting their feelings hurt, blog wars, boycotting, snubbing, sabotage, gossip, and many more.

and that’s why all the stuff you read on my blog are these happy things that fall short of addressing the heart of what i REALLY want to talk about. the closest i can ever come to writing about these taboo things are my emo Musings and Unsent Letters posts, but even those i have to heavily cloak in confusing vagueness and lock the comments, so that people dont really understand or know the details of what i’m talking about.

there are really a lot of things i wish i could blog about, like in my pinkskyes days, because i want to just let it out and let my friends read it and at the same time get their feedback in my comments box. but of course such things come with repercussions, and so i can’t and don’t want to blog about these things anymore. sigh.

like yesterday, Martian and i had this big fight in Gardens. i thought he was being so unfair and unreasonable, and i wanted to blog both our sides of the story and ask everyone if it was wrong for me to have gotten angry. but then i can’t, because these are things better solved between the both of us instead of aired out in the open.

and i want to blog about this person whom i know, who is perhaps the most ungrateful and disgustingly two-faced person i’ve ever met. long story short, i’ve backed her up and supported her many a time when she needed it, but never a word of thanks. instead, what she does is totally backstab me. but i can’t blog about it because she’s a good friend’s girlfriend. and they both read my blog.

and i want to blog about this long feud i’ve had with someone. yeah i just want to blog about it and let everyone know what kind of a person she really is, and all the things she’s done to me and my friends. i want to clear the rumour that i apparently ‘hate her for no reason’, because there are a million and one skanky things she’s said and done that no one knows of, but that *I* know of and have firsthand experience of. but i can’t, because it’s someone’s reputation at stake, and of course no matter how angry i am this is something that i should not do.

and i want to blog about this blogger who made an attack on Kimberlycun and me on her blog, basically saying that we were spouting atrocities at this forum we were invited to speak at. i am confused because i have no idea which part of our speech troubled her, or why ANYONE would even have an issue with what we said, because it wasn’t like we were saying anything remotely controversial. so i emailed her about it, but she just brushed me off by saying it wasn’t personal, because one of her friends even shares the same opinion as us. (huh?) so i’d really like to blog about it and get everyone’s opinion on this supposedly ‘atrocious topic, but no.. i can’t blog about it because there are other parties involved who would probably hijack the subject and use it against us. long story.

and i want to blog about Bottega Girl. but i can’t. because i want to try to like her even if she doesnt like me. i NEED to try to like her.

and i want to blog about so many more things, but i can’t, because at the end of the day, given all the reasons and circumstances, i dont want to. it’s a good tradeoff, but one that has resulted in a blog that is a mere shadow of the honest blog i used to have. some days i dont mind it, because after all it’s just a lot of rants that i’m leaving out… but other days i think that these rants are such an important part of me. and it makes me sad that i have to hide these things.

haih. but that’s why i have friends to rant to :) good, concerned, awesome friends who are the best listeners and who can prolly name all the above ‘can’t-blog-about’ people a few paragraphs up there in a heartbeat. i love you guys. you people are my rebirthed pinkskyes.

to the people who have been reading me since day one, or a few years ago, or last year, or somewhere in between.. thank you for reading me, even if i’m not as drahmah and rant-y as i used to be. yeah yeah i know you guys like to read all the angry rants about specific people, gossip and blogger drama, but i hope you understand that i can’t always write about such things :P because there will always be hurt feelings and ruined friendships and unnecessary animosity. and that’s really just not my cup of tea.

but i really want to try to become more like my honest pinkskyes self again. i want to go back to being able to blog about anything at all, to not calculate every single move and repercussion.. because i think i owe it to myself to worry less and to be more honest. so.. when i do start becoming rant-y again, please dont judge me ok? :) i can be angry. i can be upset. i can be sad. i hope that when i choose to display all these emotions and open them up for public commentary, you guys will be kind in your responses and know that you are dealing with a person who has feelings too.

i was telling someone that when i leave for the US and become detached from the local blogosphere, i know that my blogging will change because that’s when i will start writing for myself again. you can ask any top blogger we have.. do you write for yourself or for an audience? you’ll never get a straight answer but the truth is, they probably havent written purely for themselves ever since they became famous. in our blogosphere, it’s all about the traffic and the money and the throngs of fans and the popularity competition. it’s a sad sad sad thing, but that’s what the culture is like. there are days that i look forward to leaving for the US, because that’s when i’ll be out of this blogger rat race, and i can focus on what is truly important – myself, my writing, and the people who will still be standing by me and sticking around to read what i have to say :)

i know that there are people out there who love the traffic and the money that traffic begets, people who want to be top bloggers and all that. but i’m not one of them. getting where i am was so accidental and lucky. haha i still remember the first ever plug that Kenny Sia gave me. i didnt know him then, and when i woke up and saw the huge traffic jump, i got so scared and wrote him a really long email begging him to remove the post. haha. so funny. in fact, i just looked up the email and i’m laughing now as i’m reading it. sigh the irony. maybe one day i’ll put up the email and we can all laugh at it together :)

haih this post is so long. definitely a lot longer than i intended for it to be. but it is the most cathartic thing that i have written in a long, long, long time.

129 comments May 26th, 2008

Tonight I Am Here At Home

sigh.

May 25th, 2008

Things To Do With Instant Messengers

you know how we have that status update bar thingy on our MSN, and it’s always a variation of an angsty declaration of sorts, some truly inspiring quote/lyric we just found, a mood update or an American Idol / football related message? and people just cant stop themselves from replying your status update? :P

a long time ago i had this idea of saving the messages from people replying my status updates. i did it for a couple of weeks, but then totally forgot about it because maklumlah, hangat-hangat tahi ayam :D anyway i was digging around my files looking for a suitable picture for Stewie’s new business idea (you can read about it here, and Stewie you should patent your idea QUICK!!), when i came across the Notepad file in which i had saved all of the responses. haha reading them again made me giggle! here are some of them :

STATUS: what’s up with boys?

70 comments May 22nd, 2008

Over The Long Weekend

things i did over the weekend:

1. killed my laptop. somehow the AC adapter doesnt work anymore and i can no longer turn on my laptop because it ran out of battery too. how now brown cow? can i just buy adaptors from the shops or do i have to place an order with the brand and wait X number of working days? or should i muster up my best hissy fit skillz and scream at the shop about how they sold me a faulty compter and demand a full refund? ok maybe not. now i’m hoping that my mom’s laptop, by some fluke of heavenly luck, uses the same adapter as mine. /prays

2. ate half of an entire chocolate cake by myself, and this is admitted with much unabashedness. because Awfully Chocolate makes the best cakes in the world. the WORLD!!! the other cake-halve is sitting beside me on the floor and i know not what to do with it. no, TamTim, i am not leaving the cake for you because i know you are never going to collect it. waste money only.

3. slept properly. oh, so glorious. but this was only because i was forced to sleep and wake up at certain times and was also fed this really icky sleep enhancement tea. gross. but now that the weekend is over, i am guessing i will go back to my nocturnal normalcy within the next few days. remember, if you see me online or out and about anytime after 1am (that’s my new self-imposed bedtime, haih), it’s a bad thing and you must scold me :\

4. played Monopoly with an investment banker and a soon-to-be trader who has serious aspirations of taking over the world. needless to say, i was badly thrashed. no houses, no hotels, not even a full set of unicolor property. the game ended when i had to pay some 9,000 bucks for a hotel stay. ridiculity!!!!! i will never again play Monopoly with finance banker-type people because they’re all out to take away my money and actually know how to do it. so we ended up playing this version of Charades called Pink Elephant. that was fun! some funny cards we got – Bob Dylan (guessed within 3 seconds), stairway to heaven, Marilyn Monroe (the impersonation looked like someone who badly needed the toilet), cactus (this took forever to guess).

5. discovered this new species of bird called the Dudu Bird and an amazing Australian landscape artist called Edgar Valentino. oh yes.

6. ate olive rice for the first time. very nice!!! only i was half-crying into my rice and ignoring the person sitting at a northeast direction from me. the person sitting in between us was in a rather awkward position because he was the mediator of the day but i was too upset and angry to save him from the awkwardness. plus he’s a big boy, surely he can handle himself in difficult social situations!

7. began plans for the next big party i am helping to organize! ooh the excitement! we have the BEST and most APPROPRIATE theme, courtesy of my brain. *curtsies

8. found out my blood type! yes yes.. in addition to not having a bank account, not having a driver’s license and not knowing what my chinese name is (omg why am i exposing all my memalukan stories here), i also dont know my blood type. but i finally know it! because Martian is on this blood type diet thingy where he eats food that’s good for his bloodtype and avoids those that aren’t, and he’s so excited about it that he made me go find out my bloodtype so i could join him in his dietary pursuits. he’s an O-type, and that is a damn complicated diet because he can’t eat so many things. hehe he can’t eat wheat, which means no FLOUR, which means no ANYTHING. hahahaha! anyways my bloodtype is A positive. i got a great lifedeal cos there arent very many things that are bad for me. and all my favourite food is good for me! yay. but wait… i’m not supposed to care about this diet. i dont care about bloodtypes. i dont care about bloodtypes. i dont care about bloodtypes. derek is with rose.

9. watched Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. OH MY GOD SO HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!! i am going to hunt down the DVD and give it out as birthday presents for all my guy friends. the poem featured in it titled ‘The Square Root of Three’ is the most fantabulous work of art i’ve ever beheld, haha! then i also watched Made of Honor and that was good because it has McDreamy in it *wistful sigh* sometimes i have this sneaking suspicion that i am a little bit obsessed with him.

10. fell in love

———————–

i actually have lots of nice pictures to share, but because my laptop died and this one doesnt have an SD card reader, i cant upload my pictures. haih emoe. take nice pictures also no point, cannot show people anyway.

the other day i had a meeting with a client for an advertorial on my blog. it’s for a really famous brand that we all know, and it’s all about warmth and love and care. this brand also has some of the most heart-warming commercials, though they arent shown here in malaysia. so i met with the client, and she was telling me about some of her products, as well as some really touching stories about her customers. and then she started crying cos the stories she had to tell were so emotional. i couldnt help but feel emo too. it was a great meeting. i wish more blog clients were like her :) i’m really looking forward to writing the advertorial, and i really hope i can write it well.

it’s SUMMER!!!!!!! so that means everyone is home!!!!!!!! i cant wait i cant wait i cant wait i cant wait. let’s hang out, people :) movies, dinners, kite-flying, go-karting, ice cream, swimming, roadtirps, PENANG!, scuba diving, subang rojak, camwhoring in carparks, Dota, baking cakes – here we come! 3 full months of glorious fun and friends. yum yum.

62 comments May 20th, 2008

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Su Ann

cam!
    Su Ann is a 20 year old Malaysian jabberwocky currently studying in New York. Still an optimist with a penchant for pessimism and shoe shopping.
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    Contact at : quitequaintly[at]gmail[dot]com

Quaintly.net

    Quaintly is how I'd like to live my life, which would be quite like a movie, or a mellow book. This blog eschews capitalization because it is irrelevant unless used for proper nouns; but sometimes even when used for proper nouns, it is irrelevant as well.
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