24 December 2005 8:48 a.m. my house looks like a war zone. there is dust everywhere and not a clean surface underfoot. i expect a worker to fall through my ceiling at any moment. they have been drilling at the walls and walking about the rafters all day. the water supply was disrupted this morning because the water department has picked this week to replace old water pipes. it was only supposed to be an extension of the front terrace and porch, how did it become "covering the airwell and the back yard and re-wiring work"? i don't know how much more i can take. the chocolate has helped my sore throat, but the dust makes me wheeze and my breath rattles in my chest. my hair is far from panthene-perfect. when i look outside, i am surprised that there aren't horse-drawn carriages on the road, but i did see another construction worker on the roof of someone else's house. is this a trend or something? we keep moving stuff further into the house, away from the construction/destruction. what happens when there isn't any more space? the contractor only calculated a quotation involving the basic remodelling costs. how can anyone forget tiles?! we don't need all this furniture. i am ready for the minimalist lifestyle.
life is beautifulwe haven't even done our christmas shopping yet.
chick on a stick
the little old Hong Kong lady who gave them to me said to never get it wet, or else something terrible would happen.
20 December 2005 9:24 p.m.a series of letters
1.
dear Peter Jackson,
if you were only going to give Adrien Brody all of 3 lines ("oh... Christ.", "Jesus Christ!", "we have to save Ann!") out of your $10 million movie, you could at least have made him blonde and given him a nude scene instead of one measly shot of him with a towel around his shoulders. if you were going to make him gratuitous, at least do it right.
p.s. - we know you recycled sets and music from LOTR. better luck next time.
2.
dear Adrien Brody,
why???
3.
dear general worker in our department,
we don't like you. in fact, we prefer Gollum to you.
that's because Gollum does his job, which is to walk through the department when it's near the end of office hours and check if the lights are off and that the labs have been locked up.
Gollum doesn't shirk his duties and leave Olivia to catch it from the clerk the next morning.
Gollum isn't creepy and grumpy like you.
Gollum isn't pretentious like you.
Gollum is conscientous, unlike you.
in fact, Gollum's only problem is that he's on medication (i've heard he has a tragic love story behind him, but who doesn't?), which makes people like you think you're normal.
4.
dear Gollum,
you're an alright person when you're not sniggering and talking to yourself in the corridor. i'm sorry you haven't received any of the pictures from Terry's wedding, but then again, neither have we.
5.
dear post-grad accounts department,
update my records already, you assholes. oh, and your counter service sucks. i'm filling out that feedback form tonight!
6.
dear VC,
no one else thinks those billboards are something to be proud of.
7.
dear mum,
please stop storing things in my room while the house is being remodelled. i think we can afford to give those chairs away - we didn't need them in the first place.
8.
dear bro22,
you should have bought a digicam when you had the chance, instead of the camera-phone you have now, haha!
16 December 2005 1:26 p.m.i'm not one to gripe
between one girl who has been driving for 7 years, and the other, 3; you'd think that the one with less experience would be the one who would answer a text message as she drives through a torrential rain at 100kph.
they say that your life flashes before your eyes in times of extreme danger, but i was too busy looking for my seat-belt buckle to notice.
public service announcement - hyundai atos don't appear to come with back seat-belt buckles, just the belts. maybe it's only the ones in malaysia, maybe i didn't look hard enough with my fear-blurred vision and sweaty hands, go figure.
anyway, the next time we need to go to Gopeng (like when Simone has a baby or something), I'M DRIVING. not Olivia.
i mean, how many times do you need to hear, "she's a nice girl, but... ." to get a clue?
(okay, that's what i muttered to myself most of the way back. it's the only thing thatstopped me from screaming. that, and cowering in the back seat.)
mr. spoonfork shared a link with me. this, in turn, led me to more links. fucking babushka dolls. never give links to a compulsive link clicker!!!
Myna Sonou
Lola
Esao
Brandi Milne
Ver Mar
feebee
James Riches
Scott G. Brooks
Michaël David André
Mark Ryden
Robert Yadreev
diversionmary.com
Natalia Fabia
Anne Bachelier
brendanmonroe.com
that's enough to kill a whole week's worth of work, i think.
the brothers are home. bro22 changed camera batteries within a day because the battery power level indicator light began flashing red. why he didn't call me to ask what it meant, i'll never know. is it a guy thing?
14 December 2005 7:01 p.m.home office, my ass
it wasn't as fun as i thought it'd be. not when the workers turned off the water mains in the course of their work, and most certainly not when the article i e-mailed to my supervisor opened up a floodgate of e-mail and phone calls in response. good thing we don't IM each other.
in other news, i nearly ate a staple because i didn't look closely enough at the vegetables i'd chucked into the pot.
and now for diversion of the grotesque phantasmagoria sort -
Naoto Hattori (what a clever url! he sells t-shirts too!)
Vladimir Kush
i'd recommend setting anything by Hattori as a wallpaper, heheheh.
my only accomplishment today is reading all the archives of Outpost 9. i will outdo myself if i have a shower after this, no kidding.
13 December 2005 11:37 a.m.there is a deep sense of loss like something has been taken from me and it has left me feeling hollow on the inside of me
bro17 is in melaka for a "church camp", bro22 has borrowed my digicam and gone to pangkor island, and i'm left here alone at home with no company but three construction workers currently tearing up the garden, even though i'm sure they're actually supposed to build a wall around it.
in this day and age, am i supposed to believe that out of 6 people going on a trip, not a single one of them owns a digicam?
08 December 2005 12:36 p.m.his waistcoat rocks my boat
that, my faithful peoples, is what an NBA star looks like these days. i'm not complaining. GQ picked him as their Baller (hehehehe!) of the Year -
Why would the guy who beat out Shaquille O'Neal, Dirk Nowitzki, and Tim Duncan for last season's MVP be playing pickup on an outdoor court with a bunch of yokels? It's like A-Rod showing up for your office softball game or Eddie Van Halen asking, 'Hey, you guys need a guitarist for the Battle of the Bands?'04 December 2005 9:53 a.m.
i think i was supposed to be somewhere else...
we went to the Popular clearance sale yesterday - there was more non-fiction and less fiction than the last one, and i bumped into the head of my department there.
i think it was the best thing ever that i saw the lone copy of Anansi Boys. trade paperback books intimidate me with their size, but this one was packaged like a dvd - "deleted scenes! writing group discussion! excerpts from the author's notebook! free poster while stocks last!"
ok, the last bit wasn't true, but it'd be nice.
international cd-s were selling with discounts of 70%, and that's how i now possess Robbie Williams' Escapology. i also wanted something chirpy and happy like the Beat Kids, but i must have had my eyes closed, because i wound up with a cd by... Dir en grey ("Formed in 1997, with the sole purpose to spread the feeling of hurt and sorrow caused by weakness, shallowness and egoism of humanity.").
welcome to Christmas season!
after a late lunch, we chanced upon the closing down sale held by Fajar supermarket (they're moving to the boondocks, okay, Banting, but it might as well be the boondocks). imagine bedclothes selling at RM100 when the original price was RM500. i think it's still going on at Summit USJ.
so, having loaded up a whole shopping cart with the things, mum then decided she wanted to "have a look" further inside the supermarket, leaving me holding the cart. there is absolutely no fucking way she can't not buy something wherever she goes.
"i need new seat covers for my car!"
as i waited, i watched families who had their maids running around after pudgy toddlers (they're always pudgy! you never see skinny babies! never! unless they're in the news!), feeding them, cleaning them, getting vomitted on (no kidding). maids are like minders to rock stars, okay, but here they're dressed like imbeciles and given haircuts that make them look like asylum inmates. it makes me wonder what my online friends/acquaintances from the philippines and indonesia think when/if they see it. it'd be like us going to UAE or dubai and seeing a malaysian maid, i expect.
do you think childbirth rates in the middle/upper working class will increase now that more families are able to afford live-in babysitters?
04 December 2005 9:43 a.m.a filler post the likes of which never have been seen
scratch and sniff.
as Warren Ellis would say, you can't unsee it. i hadn't reckoned on the stench when i wound down the window, but it's a good and timely reminder that the world doesn't just smell of Cheap & Chic.
