Not One, Not Two, But...

Hey! I've come to the realization that there are actually more than just a couple of readers here. Like, people actually come here (for some perverse reason) and so now, I'm completely inspired to blog (a little more often than usual). Although it's kinda like SPM trials now but yeah, soon (that sounds like a reliable promise).

Kudzu Vines

This is my bunny.

Wooooooooowwww.
Has it been a long time or has it been an extended nonspatial continuum?

A lot has happened in the last 4 months, the same way a lot of things happen in 172 800 minutes.

Excluding the obvious - SPM, end of schooling life, standing at the threshold of one's formative years once out of the regimented schooling life, and other insignificant details like food, hair and clothes (eeeyeahhh..) - these past few months (and these past few years) have been fun-filled. Although not necessarily with fun.

Let's cut the foreplay.

3 days ago, (Saturday, stupid) while flippantly flipping through Malaysia's very own Seventeen magazine (I dunno.. June or July issue) alongside Lib Yin, our sensory organs picked up what could only be the ugly blue shade of decaying organic matter. And so she said, "oooh check if you got NS! I think the list is out". So I did. It also happens that it wasn't out yet and she said, "oooh my friend did that once and she got picked".

Oops I'm a realist.

So legend has it that if you check to see if you got selected for National Service before they even have the list.. BAM - you're on that list baby. Viva la vida.

Now, I'm not one of those legend type people. Legends don't exist. The same way Winnie the Pooh and freedom of speech are all lies that grownups tell their kids so that they'll shut their traphole for at least the next few seconds before you feed them with the next generous helping of.. oh I don't know, burritos and beans. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But as history has taught us, what doesn't kill us, only makes it truer.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that (I thought we already cut the foreplay but here it is again), well I'm not gunbound.. just NS-bound. Yeah we're going to Hollywood!!

THIS is the stuff of legends, man.

Sigh. Whatever it is, I think I pretty much got myself covered and I know what to do, when and how. So let's put that behind us.

So this is the part where you say, okayy I knew THAT, but what about the good stuff? You know, the 411. What's been cooking.

Well for one I've started the annoying habit of giving the thumbs up to EVERYTHING. I'm annoying myself so much. Whatever people say - thumbs up. Whatever I say - you guessed it, thumbs freaking up.

It all started when Daniel Meade from Ugly Betty did it when he lied to her and I thought "hey that looks very vogue! maybe I should do it some time". And I did.

Must.Kick.Habit.

Apart from the fact that the thumbs up officially became unfashionable in the late 1990s, the thumbs up also gives people the impression that well frankly, you don't give a damn. You're brushing them off while also trying to remain aloof in your execution. You're saying "the things you have just said or implied mean absolutely nothing to me and don't change a thing about the status quo so here comes my non-verbal rejection of your very existence.. hey, is that a beetle on your shoulder? very new-age, girlfriend".

Oh and of course, IU Day which, went down on the 12th of July 2008 and it was pretty great, if I do say so myself. And I am my own worst critic. We made loads of moolah and due appreciation must go to every single Interactor! And BOD. As can be seen in the tribute on the President's blog. Though the bands were pretty overkill, you can't have your cake and eat it too. So that's that.

And this is where we are. And this is where we end.

I Got Mail

I got mail today.

From my Japanese foster mother.

And then it came flooding back.

All my sweet sweet memories of Japan.

And how much I love that place.

Japan as I know it.

After my homestay there, I came back and completely lost the will to live here any longer. I still had half of December left to study and I didn't.

Not one bit. I couldn't bring myself to do it. Every single waking moment was spent thinking about Japan. The people, the life there, how I never felt homesick one bit, the group of 120 odd people I went with...

And how I may never see any of that again.

Whenever I wanted to tell my mum how much I missed Japan, I swear, the tears just welled up. Sounds ridiculous, I know.

Then school started and eventually I forgot about all that stuff.

But then they showed this series on Discovery Travel and Living, "Kelly Osbourne Turning Japanese". And holy crap, I sank into that same depressed state.

Although this is a part where I can't quite remember if the show started before or after school began.

But whatever.

Even watching Crayon Shin Chan (the hilarious English version, not the Malay ones on TV here!) makes me reminisce.

Sigh.

Well, I'm going back.

Even if it's the last thing I do.

But if it is, I don't want to wait that long.

Please, twist of fate, bring me back there.

This Place In Time

What's up what's up friends, family, dogs!

Well I signed in and it said "Last post: 24th February".

Damn that's pathetic. Even by my standards.

And duh you all wanna know what I've been up to right?

But where the hell do I start?

Ok fine, I'll only go so far back as yesterday and basically my weekend (and you be happy with that, young man).

Which was spent in Singapore. I used to think Singapore sucks like hell coz there's nothing to do there. Well, this trip did nothing more than to cement my prior misconception. But then I realized, since when was KL that exciting anyway? Malls, check. Museums, check. Clubs, check. Uhhh, what else is new? Been there, done that, bought a t-shirt!

Anyways, I went there to watch...





We Will Rock You, the Queen musical.

And let me tell you this,


it was marvellous.


I don't usually say marvellous, in fact I never say it at the risk of sounding like a total rice queen but this calls for a gay word!

Holy shit, how about that Mig Ayesa, am I not right?


I couldn't decide which picture made him look less like a poofter so you be the judge.

The one, the only, the distinctive Mig Ayesa of Rockstar:INXS fame. 3rd place to Marty Casey (in case your memory fails you, it was that doughnut puncher that sang "Trees") and J.D. Fortune (winner extraordinaire but his 15 minutes are up. NEXT!)

I don't know about you (yeah, I really don't), but this musical had it all. Queen songs, localised humour (they mentioned PCK), plain old humour, great plot (ha ha) and Mig playing Galileo Figaro.

So that's about it. The other aspects of Singapore flashed past me all too quickly. It was an alternating current of shit food, too many malls, finding actual nice food, seeing how nicely done up Clarke Quay is and the works.

As for now, I've been trying to contact *random blowjob hobo's name here until I can actually tell you who* but I can't seem to get through to him... I'm giving him 24 more hours. And that's it. I'm taking my business somewhere else!

So, it's April and naturally, I'm swamped with things to do. School, after school, studying at night... the (dare I say it again) works.

But I'm looking forward to this year's concert. That's right, Dancesteps Studio's 8th Annual School Concert. Incidentally, my eighth time as well. Plus, we have a new venue this year: KLPac. After the monotony of Securities Commission.

As with all other posts, I'm left to wonder what made me start this one to begin with. Right this second, I have a huuuuuggeee pile of work to do. I gotta get my priorities right.

With Arms Outstretched

WTF?

Did you or did you NOT know that last year,


TWO.Other.Schools.Had.The.Same.IU.Day.Theme.As.Us?



What is this? See, this is what happens when you have an international understanding centred on something that has absolutely nothing to do with international understanding to begin with (like "Peace and Love" or something) !

The Mad Dash

On Saturday, the 2nd of February 2008, Kim, WJ, Paul and I went for VI's Treasure Hunt.

It was a badly organized shindig. Determining 2nd and 3rd place was such a dubious method.

But it was fun, nonetheless. Not to mention tiring.

It's great that they're committed to doing this every year. Tabik hormat to them.

We ran so hard and so much. And my muscles still ache till this day.






The three of us.






















The one of Paul.
















The first task: getting across the lake with that contraption. Paul and Kim were exhausted from that one. Imagine if it'd been me...


Some other tasks we did included doing a human wheelbarrow, singing a song (oh wow so creative), taking pictures of blonde tourists, kids, Enid Blyton's name and also a picture of us in front of a mirror (who's idea was this??!!). Also, some "mindbending" activities, untangling ourselves from string (Paul is my hero! Cheating never felt so good), solving a word search and looking for MUN MENG's NAMETAG!!

Ok lah I gotta admit it wasn't too bad. I probably wouldn't be able to come up with a list of tasks to do so two thumbs up lah ok?




The one upside to having shirts the same colour as Pantai Seafood's staff is the fact that you're hard to miss. Haha I like our shirts.

This Is It

So is it too late to blog about everything that's happened in the past month?

Just to sum it all up, Japan was great but I don't ever want to go via the organization I went with. One week is nothing! I hope to go again. With the Rotary Club. After Form 5. Can't wait!

Well, I went to Nagoya armed with 67, 000 yen and in Tokyo, I had 70, 000 yen (the extra was our allowance for meals). Fooo!! So I hadn't bought anything yet and everyone else was giving me dirty looks (for not buying anything yet?). Once we got to Akihabara Electric Town (that's its full name ha ha why not Electric City right?), I... got me a new camera. And an iPod Touch!! Haha. I'm so happy with it. It's *&^($%^ awesome. A work of art. Totally genius. I'd even go so far as to call it cooltastic (now you KNOW I mean business; no fooling around here). By then I had already exhausted my funds but that's alright because I own a Touch! All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. The world is my oyster and I am it's supreme driving force.

I've also come to the conclusion that I don't like change very much. Not coin change, but change change. Can't handle it! No Sharida, Form 5, more work, less time, NO FUN!

Wrong Wrong In An Earlier Round

Right, today I went out with Whey Jinn to go shopping. She came over to my house first and took one look at the form from the Japanese family, yada-yada-yada, (hoho, tribute to Sharida there) that's the wrong family. They sent mine to some other girl with a weird name (it really is). So at this point, after buying all the gifts for my foster family, I find out it's NOT my foster family? Hiroshima Intl' Club - 1, Yi Wenn - 0. Nice going guys!

Anyways, WJ and I have been indirectly psychoanalysing the other people going with us (note that we are doing this based on their names and names do tend to NOT reflect the person - trust me, I'd know) and we're basically dividing them into "Nerds" and "Not Nerds". Until, of course, we realized we totally forgot another often sidelined category that is the (in my sincerest attempt to be "politically correct") LaLas. Notice how I type like them too? OMG high five!

WJ's foster family consists of a dynamic duo of husband and wife, plus a mother-in-law. Whose mother it is, I really don't care. She says the picture of the family shows them NOT SMILING. Yes you caught that? NOT SMILING. I mean, it's fine with me and all, I mean why should we smile, right? Things aren't exactly happyclappy with the world and stuffs. I mean, some people have never eaten doughnuts before! Doughnuts! Before! Eaten! But, if you're a foster family- to-be, I'm pretty sure it's mandatory to smile. Even if it is those fake ones the cabin crew gives you. I mean, the picture of that family is reminiscent of the caretaker from "The Others". Here's a friendly e-mail from them:

Dear Whey Jinn,

I'm Etsuko Shimada.
We live in Hamamatsu. Hamamatsu is from Nagoya in the New Tokaidou Line
to 1 hour.
We are all waiting for you.

The temperature in the daytime is 15C .
The temperature in the morning and evening is 6C .
We wear 3 , 4 clothes in the house. And we wear the overcoat out of
doors.

Points to be afraid of:
"We are all waiting for you". I don't know if I've ever heard of anything so... dahsyat.

"We wear 3,4 clothes in the house". Uh ok, let's not get explicit here.

Points to be excited about:
"The temperature in the morning and evening is 6C". BRRR! Ha, ha.

I had my first Modern class in a month, and a pretty huge bombshell was dropped. I won't say who or what or why, but let's just say class is dipshit annoying now. Man, it was only one class and Lib Yin and I have overflowed the barrel of patience (wow look at me, being all fancy). If anger was a human, I would embrace its genocide. Ha ha.

The Key To What?

Woohoo! Threadless sale!

And Japan is coming soon! I can't wait. But once it's over, what will I have left to look forward to? 5U?! Haha.

Anyways, I'm so bummed out and full of regret that I'm not in Penang for DC right now. Do my parents actually think I'm dumb enough to get conned by people on the bus? Plus, I think I'm rather capable of taking care of myself.

While Kim, Julian, Vivian and Randy have fun, I think I'll go find something to amuse myself with.

Dear Sharida...

Yesterday marked the day I got a great cardigan from MNG. More than anything else, it marked the last day of Sharida's stint in Hartamas. Sharida has been my friend since Standard 4. She joined my tap class and back then, it was unbeknown me that she would one day be my sole provider of endless laughter and know how to make my day with the stupidest of jokes. I know Tania was mad at her one time when she took a deck of cards from Tania's bag and played with em. They were barely friends then!

It's sad to lose friends. Each friend brings something different to the table. Tania's gone and now Sharida.. and things might never be the same again. The thought of it reduced me to tears last night. Yes, I cried for you Sharida. It's hard not to be reminded of Sharida when everything around me has been a topic of our conversation at least once. Seeing the Astro commercial and the 3 Rs we have to remember, the clock in the canteen that still says 9.04 and 8 seconds, episodes of The Office and 30 Rock, public service commercials, Hari Raya greetings from some Bob guy, people who wouldn't hurt a fly, David Tutera and his wise words of wisdom like "lights, fabric, action!", songs from The Fratellis and Klaxons, Hugo Boss commercials, Anya Hindmarch bags and their Malay versions, some guy who whips his head around at you when you don't say hi to him and funny earrings like commas and mocha cheesecakes (or black forest or whatever).

Hard to believe she put up with my physical abuse --always whacking her arms when she says something funny. The way she makes me so annoyed when she refuses to go to school or accompany me to the toilet, talking about how to eat California rolls in Sushigroove without spilling everything are things that make her so... her. Yes, I'm a wordsmith, I know.

I can no longer go next door to look for someone to talk to about something totally pointless and stupid, yet funny in a way. I no longer have someone who'll wait for me before we go down for recess no matter how long I take to get out of class. I can't line up with her on Monday mornings, I can't walk out of school with her and I no longer have someone so eager to put the file in the office. No more talking about how much she likes Jim and thinks Dwight is so weird or about Whoopi Goldberg's meat machine.

She's the one person I can talk to about absolutely anything and everything and I know she won't judge me. Most of the times, she shares my sentiments anyways. She's the one person I know I can go talk to when everyone else is preoccupied with something and I know she'll never desert me. She'll tell me what funny thing Jerry Seinfeld said about personal space. She'll pay for all my food and I in turn will buy her a shirt from Threadless. She says the funniest things and I never forget what she says. Simply because I value her words and opinions. I know the name of her cousin and how he's a smart boy but refuses to get out of the pool. She in turn will remember the name of the book I said was a good read. Even when we go out and the others ditch us, I know we're bound to have fun and her opinion that some things cannot be bought when friends are around, although I quickly diminished the idea(although she'll tell me the next day that she wished she had gone out with her mum and sister instead because they went on a shopping frenzy).That was one too many 'althoughs'. Dowh. We'll never be able to write the script for a teacher's retirement play and you won't get to do better captions in the Gotcha page in the magazine.

Thanks for being my friend Sharida. Even if I treated you like crap sometimes. Hopefully you'll make time for me during the weekends (and whatever happened to the Pilates?) and I hope you'll find new best friends there in your new school (although deep down, I really hope you won't). Thanks for being my party planner. Thanks for accompanying me on all those occasions, thanks for starting all those funny things with me that we'd repeat all the time from "whoa, sensitive issue" to "Hoh! never say hi!", and even "selamat pagi cikgu" (said to students, not teachers, of course). Thanks for putting up with my odd behaviour and thanks so much for just being there and listening. More importantly, thanks for everything.

Goodbye, Sally Hanson. I hope you're happy you brought me to tears last night and this afternoon. Yeah I can't believe I'm getting so emotional and vulnerable and...--, and.. oh no, I'm doing it again...