We leave early tomorrow morning for five days of ocean, marvelous creatures and the wonders of nature. Fingers crossed it’s going to be a blast. I can’t wait to smell the sea. Look out into the horizon. Scuba dive.
Posts from ‘January, 2009’
Happy Chinese New Year!
Whether you celebrate the occasion, are in it just for the public holiday or don’t really give a crap either way, I hope you have a good couple of days all the same. If nothing else, eat and sleep more. That’s the way many of us do it these days.
Related posts:
My holiday checklist
It’s the first afternoon of my 10-day break from work and I keep going through my mental checklist for something I haven’t done. There isn’t. Either that or I can’t find the correct checklist. It’s Chinese New Year on Monday and Tuesday and I’m taking the subsequent three days off because the boys and I are running away from the city. Thanks to that and a couple of well-placed public holidays, I have 10 days ahead of me – and not a whole lot to do in them.
It feels great.
I take a third glance around my living room (yep, everything’s in order), check outside again to see that the laundry is done (it actually has been since yesterday) and decide to make a new checklist, one with only three things on it:
1) Allow myself to do nothing. If that means hours in front of the telly with no particular purpose, so be it. I believe there’s good therapy to be found in a bumming session, where you simply relax and allow yourself to do and think about nothing at all. Note: Should be practiced no more than once a week.
2) Read as much as I can. Watch as much tennis as I can. Catch up on as many movies as I can. Play tennis. I need exercise.
3) Relish every minute because 10 days will be over before I know it. Oh yes, do I know it. And who knows when such a break will come my way again, if at all for the rest of the year.
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Inauguration Thoughts
If we were American, would Y and I be among the hundreds of thousands streaming onto National Mall? Yes, we would.
I am not an American and I did not vote for you. But I have embraced your message of hope and change and believe that you will make the world a better place. Dear President Barack Obama, please don’t screw up.
Y says he wants to be an American. I think I do not need to be American for Barack Obama to be my president and wonder if Malaysia will ever get her breakthrough.
The excitement, coverage and hype surrounding this inauguration is freaking amazing.
It crosses my mind that if I stay up till the end of the inauguration ceremony, I’m not going to get enough sleep for tomorrow.
I have never watched an inauguration before but I’m not deluded. I know this isn’t the kind of welcome they give every head of state.
People are braving the crowds because they want to say they witnessed history happen. So that’s why I’ve been glued to the television since 6pm.
I see hope in the eyes of all the people. Is it wishful thinking or do I recognise it because I feel it?
CNN announces that “President Obama and V.P. Biden will attend lunch…” following the inauguration ceremony. President Obama. Wow. It really happened.
***
It is 1.02am; 12.02pm in Washington. Obama is officially President even though he hasn’t been sworn in yet. If I were him, I’d rather the clock tick over to the glorious strains of Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill playing John Williams’ ‘Air and Simple Gifts’ anyway.
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Will I ever write a book?
When people find out that I’m a writer, the question that invariably comes after ten minutes is: “So are you going to write a book?”
Almost as if writing a book is what makes a writer a real writer.
I usually reply with:
a) No. I’m not long-winded enough.
b) No. I haven’t found a subject I’m passionate enough about or have enough to say about.
c) No. I don’t know.
Even Y asks me this from time to time and I tell him the same thing. I’ve never been able to see myself writing a book, even if I did complete Nanowrimo in 2005, but that has started to change recently.
The only (or most likely) way I can see myself writing a book these days is if I write a biography. Not an autobiography, but a biography. It would allow me to combine my love for meeting interesting people and hearing their presumably interesting stories, and solve my dilemma of never having enough to say. Because it’s not my story, it’s theirs. And if there’s going to be a biography of them, they better have a lot to say.
I wonder if I’ll ever write a biography. And who it would be of.
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Durians!
Would you believe that until yesterday, I’d never seen a durian tree before?
Y and I went on a lil’ road trip with his family this past weekend. My dad-in-law’s high school classmate has a small durian orchard out in Mantin and he’d invited his friends (and their families) out to feast. I wonder if I’ll have high school reunions when I’m 55.
Spot the durians hanging from the branches.
It’s been a long time since I ate this much durian.
And I love mangosteen. Love.
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34. Learn to drive a manual car confidently.
For a while now, I’ve been taking the occasional manual drive, usually when Y takes my car out or his car is blocking mine and I’m too lazy to move them around. Since that very first adventure, I’ve taken maybe half a dozen trips and following my two latest episodes, am happy to declare that I am now a confident manual car driver.
I said I was confident, I didn’t say I was perfect.
I have a phobia with stopping on slopes. It’s called balancing, if memory serves me well, and I suck at it. Actually, I think it’s more like a mental block. Like everyone else, I learnt how to do it when I was taking my driver’s license. Unlike most people, I didn’t have to do it during my on-the-road test because the traffic light on the slope stayed green and I went right through without having to stop and balance.
At the time I thought I was the luckiest test-taker in the world, not having to do the one thing I was least confident about. Then karma came back to wipe the smug smile off my face because I’ve been terrified of balancing ever since.
Until now. My two latest episodes have seen me getting caught on slopes a bunch of times and although I confess to embarrassing revs once or twice, I didn’t panic and I didn’t get into an accident. I didn’t even get honked at. Clap clap. I think I may have actually achieved number 34 on my 100 things list. In fact, I even enjoy driving manual. Most of the time, anyway.
Edit 20/1/09: I drove the manual to work for the first time ever today!
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This year I will… get out more
That’s one of the challenges I’ve set for myself this year: to be more sociable, meet more people, do more things and see what comes out of it all. I generally like meeting new people; actually, that’s not entirely accurate, I only like meeting interesting people.
But I’m going to make an effort across the board. I’m going to make the most of my 20s when I’m still pretty much commitment-free. And I’m going to start with this event we’ve got on tonight at Zouk. Even though I don’t think attending a party so I can hang out and spend time with my colleagues counts as “socialising”.
I’ve got to start somewhere. You won’t believe how hard people try to make me dress up and go out.
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Office funnies
Continuing in the vein of yesterday’s post, this is an example of why I love my fellow Potatoes.
The following email exchange takes place between 6.01pm and 6.33pm on 8 January 2009. R has just received a list of interview times for a bunch of up and coming Mandopop artistes and because I’m the only one who can conduct an interview in semi-decent Mandarin, I’m getting the assignment(s) – all three of them!
***
hi hi
The below are new artistes that Uni is promoting. I think we should do them. The first three speak Mandarin. You want Soph to do?
R
***
eh, soph can :) please *Runs for cover*
thank you!
MA
***
*Takes torchlight and starts rummaging in the bushes to see if MA is hiding in them*
Soph
***
*Puts on invisibility cloak and thinks about hiding in trees*
MA
***
I am a mind reader hahaha.
Soph
***
*I put on aluminium hat like the one in The Signs*
MA
***
*Concentrating hard……* TOING! *Hits aluminium* Shit.
Soph
***
R: What are you all talking about?
