slowmo

Have you ever watched a stranger do something so leisurely and painfully slow that you wished you could just shove him away and do it yourself? Actions like untangling the balled-up wire of his earphones, opening a sealed package, assembling some gadgets... I have. All the time.

Just an hour ago, while I was on the train home, one fella did that exact thing to me. He got me really peeved and exasperated. He plonked himself down right opposite me and started removing a pack of something from his waistpouch. "Hmm.. I wonder what's in that plastic bag." I thought to myself. So it was a brand new Nokia headset, all fresh and white. My agony then began.

Gently, he removed the pack from the plastic bag.
"Open it! Open it!" My fingers were screaming.
Instead of listening to my fingers, he turned to the back of the pack and browsed through some wordings or whatever. I can't even tell if there were instructions on it. Nevermind nevermind, I told myself. Maybe it's a gift for someone and he's going to wrap it up nicely at home. Wrong. He turned it right back and started peeling at the plastic cover.
"Go! Go! Go!" My fingers screamed again.
He tugged delicately at the plastic cover, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief when he finally managed to separate the top part of the plastic cover from the cardboard backing. Now it's time to take the headset out and catch a whiff of the new plastic-ky smell.

He continued detaching the plastic cover until three-quarter of it is out. Why?! !!You really can pull the damn thing out from the top you know!! Apparently he doesn't understand that fact. Maybe his fingers are too fat. Maybe he had a bad experience with things coming out from the top. Maybe.

Finally, he took the white headset out. Phew!
What is to come next? What? What?!

I swear it took him the time of 2 stations to undo the metal fasteners on the wires, then disentangle the wire which he had unknowingly entangled. Sigh.
"I will not look at him anymore. C'mon! Close your eyes and go to sleep." I told myself. As hard as I tried, my eyelids refused to co-operate. They started fluttering. And before I know it, I was staring at him again.

It took him another few stops to finally get the headset plugged nicely into the handphone. By then I was almost out of breath because I had unconsciously held it while he pushed the plug thingy in. Plus my head was tilted to the left because I was trying to mentally stimulate the plug to align to the handphone. It's a Jedi thing I guess.

After forever, he got everything done, tuned to whatever station he likes, fitted the handphone snugly back into the liitle compartment of his waistpouch and started bobbing his head to the tune. The time the whole process took spanned from Orchard Station to Yishun Station.

I have an interesting little life.

rainbow connection

I wonder if he knows that the gold is already in his pockets.

guy problem

It's getting so damn warm these few days. Somebody must be making Mother Nature really upset. And instead of making use of Retail Therapy, she decides to screw the weather.

It must be a guy. Only guys can piss a woman off this bad.

p.s./ i hate AK.

essays

There's something I wanna show. Read this in a mail and it's too funny. Really.


Reasons why English teachers die young:
Actual(!) Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays
---------------------------------------------------------------

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.


I'm going to sleep now because I'm really sleepy and my eyelids are getting heavier by the minute, just like how a person will feel when he eats 5 huge meals a day for 2 years and discovers that he has gained a hefty 50kg.
Goodnight.

pink

As you can see, I've decided that I'm going all pink. Notice the obscene amount of pink I've used and you'll know that I'm about to go mad.

It's not like I'm really free, going around altering the looks of everything I own. I just want to make use of this insignificantly limited free time that I have on hand to deal with something that's very... computer. Seems like by doing this, I can be allowed to forget my issues with acrylic paint/ET's habitat temporarily. Don't ask me where I get this idea from. Maybe it all links to the alcoholic in me who thinks that one can drown his/her sorrows in beer. The lack in consumption of beer, reasoned by both time constraints and barren wallet, has driven me to search for another vent. My nifty little fingers had intended to sew some functional objects, but it was too late in the night to go rummaging in my mother's chest of cloth.

So here we are, fingers having the time of their lives tip-tapping on the keyboard!!

Liberation

For the first time after so many days, we were freed early. Freed from that shithole. Cesspool. Not even total liberation, just leaving earlier than usual for the day. Imagine how dreadful and repulsive it has to be if a simple early retreat is able to send us into elation. Sze went home for the much missed dinner and TV. I went to the kiosk to atone for my absence. Everyone is happy. Ok. Maybe except poor Mr. Zuko who has to go into the forest.

pipe

I'm totally exhausted. All the energy that the bread and nasi goreng had provided me with today has almost been depleted. I'm using whatever infinitesimal amount that is left to work my fingers into producing an entry.
Here are my random thoughts.

Some people are lucky. That's all.
Everybody else slogs like dogs, but they are lucky.
This guy who was reading his Straits Times beside me on the train has an oily, glossy ear(I couldn't really see the other one, though my guess is that it is equally oily). I couldn't help but stare at it, then stopped after I realised that there were people opposite us staring at me staring at his ear. It could be my frown that let the kitty out of the bag. Oopsy daisy!
Woman in purple velvety cheongsam-top had her seat snatched by woman with thick glasses and super dark rings under her eyes. Bad omen, because she never got any seats right till the end. Even though there were many seats popping up. Somebody was always nearer to it than she was.
I named a snail today. Coach is it.
We named quite some fishes today too.
My friend has got her house in Swettenham Road stolen. The whole damn house went *poof!! I hope the thief don't steal my flat, because more than likely that missing chink in the block might cause the whole building to collapse. Now that would make HDB very angry.
I can't remember if I bought the 2 lights above my long dining table for $6,000 each or $16,000 each. What wretched memory.
My mother said "Whatever!" to me. My mother, the magical woman who predicted that the soccer match between Japan and Singapore for the World Cup Qualifiers would result in a 2-1 score.
Wondering how to tell an uncle to fuck off without actually saying it out loud. Or showing some parts of my hand. Or both.
Guy taking the lift decides to take off shirt instead.
Mosquitoes aren't afraid of the mosquito coil. They take delight in it.
The oily-eared man seemed to know I was taking peeps at his Life! section.
Time to sleep because I'm the hairperson tomorrow.

klimt II

One week has passed, and it's still about klimt and those watersnakes.
Top it off with a huge portion of starving mosquitoes resting eternally on the masking tape on the door hinge.