so far:

i spent some night ago sprawled on the cool floor of a cozy, tepid-aired apartment playing charades. theme: movies. laughs were aplenty, especially when Friendly Persuasion, Gandhi, and The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down a Mountain were drawn. when Lolita was drawn, Uma, the zestful charadeer, started mimicking ‘laughing out loud’ in an attempt to extract the recognition of ‘LOL’(-ita) from his team, which had us all in stitches. and at another point, us young ones drew Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan — the tragedy was that we managed to get ‘Star Trek 2′, but all six of us did not know the rest of the title. for the first time in a long time, i felt young, amongst just as young people. it was a pleasant feeling, even if we had to bravely endure the taunting jeers from the Older Team, who could not quite believe we didn’t know the titles of the star trek films.

earlier that night, i’d felt so gravely old as one of the Older Team told us the story of how he was stranded in Alaska when his flight had to make an emergency landing en route to Chicago, due to the falling towers of September 11 2001. do you know how long ago that was? i was upstairs, on the internet, and for some reason my parents were both home that night. they shouted at me from the living room to come and see this! come and see! and we all watched in shock as repeated plays of the crashing, and then the crumbling, looped frantically on the television. terr-ror-ree-sm was a new word to me; my dad explained what it meant. by the next day, the War on Terror was the latest addition to my lexicon of Phrases I Learned From The Newspaper. my life did not stop. i remember wondering why they evacuated KLCC. does this mean everyone in KLCC doesn’t have to work that day? my life just went on, propelled forward on a fuel of confusion, ignorance and a marshland of Osama bin Laden jokes that seemed to have sprouted up overnight. i think it only hit me several days later that people died. online, i read the accounts from family members of victims, the frightful stories from survivors, reports of the heroic firefighters who died to save. i was just a little malaysian surfing the internet in a little house. these things all seemed so big and threatening, and would go away if i closed my eyes. i remember all these naive, panicked feelings each time i read an article about a failed plane hijacking, or see one of those ‘Please Notify Authorities If You See A Suspicious Package’ notices at the train stations anywhere in the world. why do these things happen? why do people get in the way of religion? and why does religion get in the way of people?

i ushered in the new year’s at eyeris’ place, where we played drunken jenga and drunken twister until the guards came to the door and said that they would stay there to make certain that every single one of us left the apartment asap. are these things the work of neighbours or do patrolling guards take affairs into their own hands? it was a good night where we listened to tales of marriage proposals, FA’s really happy laugh and Kim’s drunk giggle. hehehehee! some of us luckier ones also got to smell ST’s sifat during twister. oh and i got male genitalia drawn on my face by Kim (the budding penis artist!) because i lost at drunken Jenga. :’( but that was made up for when eyeris let me borrow his copy of tan twan eng’s debut novel. i would like to have a library card to eyeris’ bookshelves!

new year’s day was spent being grumpy, because i was allergic to Flappy, the cat that i had to cat-sit while his owner was away. Flappy is cat who lives a life of misfortune — he is starved for attention because his owner oppresses him and constantly scolds him for the littlest things. so he must have had a field day when i was the person in charge, because i fed him more kibble than i was supposed to, and played hide and seek with him. Flappy is short for Flapjack. this is Flappy:

movies watched in the theaters while here: Avatar, Did You Hear About The Morgans (funny malay subtitle: ‘aksi intim’ for foreplay), Muallaf, The Princess and the Frog (‘penyuram suasana’ for ‘killjoy’)

delicious food savoured: bak kut teh, banana leaf rice, prawn mee, pisang goreng, ikan bakar, prosperity burger hahaha, ikea meatballs, chili pan mee (three times), cupcakes from cupcake chic, vintry’s siew yoke (twice), frangipani’s tea-smoked salmon, tau foo far from the tau foo far man that trundles around my neighbourhood in that white truck, maggi goreng, wan tan mee, roti planta, MANY SPOONFULS OF KAYA.

not yet but must: hokkien mee, sang har meen, klang bak kut teh, marmite crab.

just this evening was the housewarming of my new place. it’s sort of the main reason why i’m back home only so briefly over this winter break. we’ve finally moved after almost 5 years of migratory delay, and my parents saw to it that a debaucherous bash be thrown to mess up the house a little bit, although my mother insists that the plastic wrapping on the new television remain intact for at least three more months. i had a good time doing the meet and greet thing with my parents’ friends, but the highlight of it all was meeting the 12 year old version of my 12 year old self. she was sitting on our couch looking unimpressed and very bored, all messy hair, big bright eyes and glasses, while her brothers played poker with my brothers. are you bored? i asked her. yes, she said, very much so. i knew she would be a reader, so i asked her if she would like to have a book. she frowned and said, yes i would like to read a book, but there are none here. i already looked. i felt faintly offended that she would think i lived in a bookless house, so i suggested we go upstairs to my room to unpack my boxes of books and find her one to read. we eventually did not unpack any, but we did become fast friends. she told me that she learns more watching tv than she does at school, “because the tv explains better than my teachers”, and that she worried that she could not be like her brother who seemed to be good at everything, whereas she was only “good at studies”. she then asked me so many questions about UPSR, PMR, SPM and then college- which subjects did i take, did i find UPSR easy, why did i choose to go to college instead of taking STPM? and then, do you study any calculus? she asked. i laughed and said yes, i unfortunately have to do a lot of it in college– to which she replied that her brother almost failed calculus recently. then: do i need to do calculus to be a doctor when i grow up? no. do you think i should continue writing my book? yes.

i told her parents and my parents that she was extremely intelligent for her age, and had such a precocious imagination. i’m not sure if they believed me, or if they were listening.

i got off the plane late at night on Christmas eve, and rushed to KY’s place, arriving ten minutes shy of midnight. KY’s christmas eve party has become somewhat of an institution, and i’ve been around in his life for about 3 or 4 of those, but is the first time that i’ve actually been able to attend. yay! the theme this year was green. from the crazy gift exchange, i won danish butter cookies!

but everything ended too quickly. and it was already christmas morning before i knew it. i spent christmas at ikea. now that i’ve seen christmas in new york and in london, i appreciate christmas in malaysia so much more. christmas is so stressful over there. in the days leading up to christmas, everyone is rushing to do panicked shopping, or fretting over the most crucial christmas dinner they will ever make. and on christmas day, everything is closed, and you’d have to start fighting in the supermarket at some point. here, The Curve was positively brimming with attention and sparkle and crowds. everyone was just chillin’ and doin’ their thing. there’s no snow here, and thus Christmas feels somewhat unchristmassy– but everything is lovely, loving and carefree. couples walk around in matching santa hats.

hotdogged somewhere in between the days (just learned this connector from a friend of my dad’s), was Kevin the Spartan’s birthday party. it was good to see him again. one day i really have to tell you guys the story of how we became friends. it’s just so funny. even his mother thinks so. but for now, i will leave you with this momentous photograph:

i recently found someone that i am happy with. i felt like my old self again, which startled me as she re-appeared. so, he makes me laugh. i become better when i am near him. he is so kind. i like the way he says my name. but that’s it.

wow the sun is rising. time to go home