Saya sebuah kereta Proton. Saya dilahir …

my undying cynicism of people’s intentions will one day be the death of me. it is a sort of cautious suspicion that appears to be rather useful artillery in this dog-eat-dog world that spins on an axis of the survival of the fittest… but as my own history will tell me — and i’m sure the history of many others out there — such artillery is only useful if it comes with some sort of a compass. it is an ongoing theme in my life: i am constantly trusting all the worst friends (people), and subjecting the ones who love me most to an increasingly harrowing gauntlet of tests. it’s not that i don’t love them too. in most cases i think i love them more than they love me. but it’s almost like i can’t quite understand why they love me, and why they are here in my life. it’s sort of why girls love asking their perplexed (and often frustrated) boyfriends why he loves her. ‘i just do’ doesn’t quite cut it. it’s not that we’re vain, or stirring shit – we just want to know if you really know who we are. ‘because you’re cute, pretty, smart, kind’ doesn’t cut it either. every 5th girl on the street probably has that combination and there’s nothing at all amazing about it, as well as nothing thoughtful about such an analysis. someone once told me that he knew he loved her when she yelled at him for not registering to vote. i thought that was all kinds of wonderful, even if she made him sleep on the couch for a night.

i knew i loved him when:

1 – he canceled a date with me at the last possible minute to help his mother with grocery shopping

2 – we were looking at shooting stars outside my house, in the restless night, and he ‘gave’ me two shooting stars because i was sad that i’d spotted two less shooting stars than he had

3 – the 7th or so time that he came home to get me for lunch, and it occurred to me that this was going to happen every day for as long as we both wanted

4 – as we were breaking up, in the yellow cab, i moved to kiss him on the cheek and he turned away and said, please don’t do that

does one do on days like these?

thanks everyone, for all the lovely comments about Kafka :) i gave him Kafka on the Shore by Murakami the other day, as an insight into his new moniker. but really, once upon a time, in our first gchat conversation, he referred to giant cockroaches as ‘Kafkaesque’ and it made me laugh.

i have a midterm on monday so i’m in my usual reading room at the wonderful Butler Library (recently placed on CampusGrotto’s Most Beautiful College Libraries of the U.S. list — see #4. though i am sure we deceptively earned our spot). i’m wearily crunching numbers and squeezing as many optimal bundles as possible out of the Lagrangian, and by crunching numbers, i mean procrastinating. i actually haven’t gotten very much done at all, and already i’m contemplating ditching the stacks for dinner and drinks. it is friday night after all……. but then there’s a guy behind me who is hard at work creating the most comprehensive set of notes you’ll ever see. it looks award-winning and quite intimidating. so i guess i’m staying in…

but not without sharing some funnies!

first, for all Little Mermaid fans, especially those who know all the words to the movie by heart:

and a cute conversation with my dad, after an average of two emails a week for the past month asking me to buy him an iPad (and i DID):

dad: your papa wants this… http://www.apple.com/iphone/design/#design-video
me: hehe i am getting mine in 2 weeks!
dad: buy one for me
me: no money ah… very broke lately
dad: dun be so bad… get me one. I really want it.
me: WOW YOU WHAT ALSO WANT! SUPER GREEDY LOR. u think money grow on trees is it???
dad: How can you say your father GREEDY. I am SAD !
me: so fierce for what…
me: hellooooo
(no reply)

and today i went to the bank only to find out that my malaysian credit cards no longer work. WTF. lesson of the day: parents are expensive and very sulky, so don’t buy any.

also, kakicucuklangit recently told me that Istana Budaya is staging Tun Mahathir the Musical. i froze, processed it, and then dissolved into uncontrollable giggles for about 5 minutes before going on twitter, plurk and facebook to announce it to my friends. i’m SO EXCITED but incredibly bummed that i won’t be in KL to watch it when it opens in September. like i keep saying – it has such creative potential! bound to be the hiroshima of humour if the right people were allowed to develop the script. but alas, we all know none of that is happening. so we cracked our own jokes in anticipation. some samples:

me: THEY’RE MAKING TUN MAHATHIR THE MUSICAL????? HAHAHAHAHA
response 1: it’s titled RENT(seeking)
response 2: now the question is .. will ur tickets be subsidized?
response 3: the tickets won’t be subsidized. in fact they will raise prices for it and offer protection by slapping ridiculous taxes on foreign musicals
response 4 : i can see it now – there will be a song titled: (If They Can Make Avatar) They Can Do Anything
response 5: I’d go just to hear the so-do-mi chorus.
response 6: it will be sellout shows by phantom watchers
response 7: dilemma: protagonist says he owns the land the stage was built on
response 8: dont forget the crooked stage
response 9: “mahathir mahathir… he reminds me of a look-east story!”

hahahahaha. oh. /dabs at tears of joy

lastly, i’ve been catching up on Glee episodes, and really loved that episode called Bad Reputation! the show’s been getting a little redundant but this episode blew it all out of the water for me. it featured all these gloriously tacky songs like Physical by ONJ, Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer, Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice and Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler!!!! excitedly, i plurked about it, and Alvin then showed me the funniest/weirdest ever cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart that you will ever watch, performed by Hurra Torpedo, a Norwegian band that plays using kitchen appliances. my favourite dude, by far, is the headbanging percussionist:

okay, great. library admin just walked in to say that the library closes in 20 minutes. blasted summer school schedule- i’ve barely gotten any work done! so much for studying all night so i can guiltlessly watch US vs England tomorrow. boo, bring back the 24-hour library schedules :( but then again it is friday night…

new york: i once heard in a song that these streets will make you feel brand new. i often stumble onto the cobblestone looking for nothing in particular (many times bleary with sleep or indifference) — but sometimes, just sometimes, i emerge holding something rare. as always, i was late that afternoon. i think i made up a silly excuse about a problem set i had yet to finish, when i’d actually finished it the night before. see, there are times when you know that you’re about to encounter something curiously interesting- and i had a feeling this was going to be one of those times, so i really needed the extra time to look extra cute. i ended up being an hour late. granted, it made for a rather lousy first impression, but he was already taboo guy and i was already bee gees girl from that one time so long ago. though i must say those accolades from our past lives didn’t make an immediate difference — because i didn’t remember his name then and he didn’t think twice about me. he was just the guy who played taboo with style, and i was just some girl who liked the bee gees. brunch afternoon feels like just yesterday. games night, on the other hand, feels like a lifetime ago. i keep telling him now how awful he is for being 1.5 years late. at least i was only an hour late for brunch. well, i’m not sure what exactly he’s late for, but it seems to me that he was late for everything.

i have also heard that in the streets of new york, there is a space in between indignation and anticipation, where one can be doomed to wait in the name of fate. that’s where i’m trapped right now, as he sleeps in the next room, completely drained from a long night out with friends and too many bottles of sake. i wish he would wake up because i miss him. but he’s reached some kind of oblivious world and i have a sinking feeling i’m not going to be able to talk to him until the afternoon.

so, while he sleeps, and i have this rare pocket of time to myself, i’d like to introduce you to Kafka. he’s tall, lean, deliberate, intelligent, tender, kind, and eternally conscious. occasionally judgmental but in an affable way. he loves music, movies, inappropriate jokes that no one else gets, narrow alleys, plaid shirts and bright colours. when he smiles, mischief springs into his eyes, and his lips will dart into that lopsided smile– and i can’t help but wonder if i’ve ever met anyone this irresistible. whenever i forget my keys and he comes to the door to get me, with open arms, those eyes and that smile, i realize with something like a painful slice how nearly we almost missed each other. and how fragile everything i hold in my hands is. one insensitive utterance, one day too late, one email not sent out, one train not taken, and i’d be somewhere else. on that brunch afternoon, we chanced upon a den of lamps, and the manager amicably suggested to Kafka that he buy a lamp for his ‘girlfriend’, i.e. me. we played along with the stranger but Kafka would later ask for my thoughts on what had happened- what do you think it is about us that made him think we were a couple? i think i said, aiyah i dont think it was anything, probably accompanied with an eye roll – but it was quite actually everything. 1.5 years late, but still, everything.

this introduction is unraveling itself quite differently from how i’ve been envisioning it, but for once i’d like to just do away with the veils and nebulous ideas – and simply tell everyone that i’m in love.