Random Ramblings: July 2011 Edition

Yesterday I realised as I was looking around the pharmacy that I was really really not prepared to be a mother. This thought occurred to me as I was in the condom/baby stuff/pregnancy test/eye wash (eye wash?!) aisle, and there was a cute teddy bear for sale that I was drawn to. If I'm still at an age where I am drawn to cute stuffed toys, I am not yet old enough to be a mother. This is because it dawned on me then, that I might fight with my baby for possession of the cutest stuffed toys to hug. Ergo, I am not old enough to be a mother.

I was originally going to call this entry Thosai, after celebrating the fact that I found out I was not carrying a little R Daniel Narang on my person (it'd be a 1/4 Indian baby come to think of it) by devouring a Thosai from a Komala Vilas branch at Tanglin Shopping Mall after pottery class. I don't think I've ever enjoyed eating with my hands so much before. I was originally going to eat my Thosai with utensils, and even took some from the counter. I ended up using my clay-powdery fingers to attack the Thosai. It was immensely satisfying. On another note: I do wonder how much clay I ingested as a result of my enthusiasm.

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I was going to also perhaps call this entry Postcard. I am sending postcards again, with the most beautiful non-touristy ones from Cat Socrates in Bras Bersah. As hipster as that place is, walking in really makes me feel happy and calm with happy-hipster-vibes. I was there on Monday, running errands and returning to costumes Ianthe and I borrowed for her birthday celebrations on Saturday. I ended up eating at KFC and having a tasty Zinger burger by myself. I noted that all the pictures and names used in the current KFC advertising/interior design campaign were all Caucasian.

And then there is this:


The postcards I went to send off to ones away from me.


And the middle one: an ode to Dr S-'s rhotacism, which I have fallen in love with. I would sit in lectures and listen to the lull of his voice, and smile to myself. Weally, weally, he'd say, instead of really, really. And then because he's German when he tried to say Jewelry he'd say Jewry and I'd think of those old-school Nazi era racist math questions, and giggle to myself (offense, totally not intended, I just posses a healthy sense of irony and inappropriateness). Bureaucracy'd turn into buwocwacy and the like. His speech reminded me of Elmer Fudd. Nonetheless, I fell for his speech impediment, which I found utterly adorable.

His postcard is of a person floating in a parachute.

Sigh

So just before I was about to go to bed, I decided to go into my brother's room and check in on him. As I raised the blanket to cover him, I noticed a strange panelling that looked oddly familiar, lying in a weird piece next to him. I went back to my room and checked my new trekking bag. Surprise! My brother decided to cut out the panelling at the back of the bag, which was meant both to give the bag structure and promote air circulation. I suppose it's because it stuck out and didn't lie flat against the bag, and somewhere this totally fried his brain, and thus he decided to cut it off.

I have no idea where he got the scissors from. We hid all the scissors after he decided to cut up all the photographs downstairs. Also I locked my damn door before I left the house to go out.

Upset, but still sticking to the plan, I went back to his room. I pulled the blanket off fully, and as I raised in in the air to tuck him in properly I saw them. Next to my brother, sleeping angelically on his side, was all the panelling cut into pieces. It was like a horror movie, when the scene is fully revealed and where the blood was previously hidden, it turns out to be everywhere.

I can do nothing but sigh. I want to sleep now, badly, but I'm not sure if I can anymore.

A person: a mirror

I often wonder if I have aged very much over the past 2 years. I am, as always, an experience collector. I collect experiences. And I find lately I emerge from them with new wrinkles. I feel as if on the inside, I am much more wizened than my outer appearance suggests (a fact mentioned many times by the teens I met on the cruise: they thought I looked 18).

10 years had passed since I first started watching Harry Potter. Today, I saw it with Liselle, Hui Min, Ianthe, Steph and JH. A true end of a decade. I wonder where I'll be in 19 years time indeed.

Alabama, Arkansas

Last week was spent being quite a social butterfly.

3/7/2011 - Sunday. Spent it at Ianthe's place hanging out with Steph and Jiahui playing Little Big Planet 2. Missy, the Siberian Husky, was scary. She licked me randomly, which was really creepy/disturbing, but licked Jiahui way more.
4/7/2011 - Monday. Spent it having dinner with Chang Hong and Tiffany, then I had supper with Mong, Hadi and Andrea to celebrate Mong's 21st birthday. Conversation topics were rather dodgy, but no one was around to really eavesdrop. Brought Ryan for a walk in the afternoon.
5/7/2011 - Tuesday. Hadi came over to wach My Blueberry Nights. He liked it, hooray!
6/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery class in the morning, and then pilates class at night. I am unfit. Both in moulding clay and physical fitness.
7/7/2011 - Thursday. Lunch with Jiayun in Holland Village, then another pottery class at night. While at Holland V Jia ran into an old family friend. His fly was open. I pointed it out and he zipped it up. I borrowed a trashy novel from the EMI bookstore.
8/7/2011 - Friday. Met Patrick and Nic Seow at Dempsey, came back mid-afternoon to watch a silly Japanese movie I had rented the previous day.
9/7/2011 - Saturday. Had lunch with my mother, went out at night for dinner with Mong to celebrate his birthday. Ended up wandering around the Zouk area at 1am in the morning, eating roti prata and seeing the mess the Zouk partiers left around.
10/7/2011 - Sunday. Had lunch at Putien with my guo mah, then had dinner with my grandma, grandpa and uncle's family. Made my cousin very hyper by playing with him.

This week was more sedate.

11/7/2011 - Monday. Got my wisdom tooth taken out. Complained a lot. Felt like dracula (sucking my own blood). Ate porridge for dinner, sigh.
12/7/2011 - Tuesday. Stayed at home, but took brother out in the afternoon for a walk. Cleaned out my cupboard. Watched Broadwalk Empire with my Dad at night.
13/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery and pilates again. Results came out in between, was OK. Neither particularly happy nor displeased with results. Felt resigned to being forever an underachiever. Friends did really well, which is awesome. Kinda. Watched 8 Femmes.
14/7/2011 - Thursday. Had lunch with Ianthe at Rail Mall. Gave Ianthe her birthday gift and she seemed rather happy with it. Ended up seeing Elliot and then another person from LSE. Went home and watched Helen and the Baby Fox. Wanted to watch Broadwalk Empire but mother hogged the TV to watch 8 Femmes.

TOMORROW: HARRY POTTER IN 3D!

Can't wait.

Prednisone

I've never really spoken much to my friends about my brother, except in jest or to relay some silly anecdote about something hilarious that happened involving him/he did. I always try to make light of the situation, painting him in a very silly light, laughing at times at him. Sometimes it's to the point that I suspect my friends think of him as a mere joke, because all I tell are the funniest stories. Fact is, making fun of things is the coping strategy my family decided to adopt when it was revealed that my younger brother suffered from severe autism. That and perhaps my Dad was always a joker, even before any of us were born.

Brought up in a large, supportive, extended family I had always been relatively sheltered from the day to day minutiae of bringing up my brother. I never had to take care of him, and as a result never really saw him as a real sibling. He was just an irritant when I was younger, destroying my toys, stealing my food, and taking my parents away from me. Just a creature that I shared a house and DNA with, but with no real affection. It was hard after all, for me to understand why my younger brother was the way he was, especially since as a child I was already questioning everything. It was hard to accept the answer "he just is like that", as an explanation for the millions of things he did that upset me. Then when it came to things he destroyed, because he wandered into my room, I would get scolded in turn because I should have "known better than to leave things lying around".

There was a time too I remember, when he got into a drawing and biting mode. I was, and still am an incredibly chaotic and messy person with my belongings. There were times where my textbooks would get chewed up to the extent that pages and covers would fall off. Then there was a flower drawing phrase, where every paper-like object would get flowers scrawled all over it, including my homework. One time, after my brother destroyed my math homework, I recopied it out without the working. My parents wrote a note to the teacher, who I was already terrified of. She took the note, accepted my new clean homework. When she gave them back however, she forgot completely about the note my parents had written and instead mocked me in front of the whole class for having such 'neat' homework that I didn't need to do any workings, implying heavily that I had copied all my work from someone. Strange how little things like that stay with you.

It wasn't till I was about 12 that my attitude towards my brother started to change slowly. I was growing older, more used perhaps, to things. It wasn't a rapid change, but an incredibly slow one. I had always been rather protective of him when I was younger, even though I wasn't a huge fan of him, so that didn't really change. What changed however was that I started to see him more as a living, breathing person, rather than just an It. It was then that I really started to become a sister, finally able to let him into my heart and play little silly games with him. Then, I could pick him up in my arms and swing him around until he laughed with delight. I could tickle him until he curled up into a ball. I could appreciate fully the fact that he was smiling at something I had done for him.

I'm not sure when the next turning point in my life came, though I suspect it was around the time I was 17. I say that because I remember a classmate noticing a bite mark on my wrist in class one day, and me not being unduly upset about the bite to make a big fuss of it to my friends. It's like I finally understood, "it just is". This was where I finally transitioned from sister into quasi-caregiver. These were a hard few years, with my brother finally hitting puberty. He rapidly outgrew me and most of the family in height, increased in muscle strength, became more defiant. It was harder to control him now from behaving badly in public. Plus physical force, like dragging him away from something, no longer worked. I still played with him, but I could no longer lift him up even though he'd pull my arms around his waist like before. He also became less ticklish. I started helping out a bit more, disciplining, bringing him to and from classes.

Almost exactly a year ago, my brother threw a massive tantrum and was completely freaking out. My parents barricaded themselves in their room, waiting for him to calm down. I had been preparing to go out clubbing with friends, and so even though knew something was happening, didn't quite know the extent or root cause. In my distracted mind, I decided the best way to get him to calm down and go to sleep would be to stick to the routine. I took his toothbrush, put toothpaste on it and called for him a few times to come and brush his teeth. Instead, he got more frustrated and lunged at me, grabbing me by the shoulders while digging his fingers into my skin and leaned over to try and bite me as I screamed and screamed for help. My parents ran out of the room to help, and I went back to my room to cry because I was so shaken by the incident. I had never been so scared of my brother before.

The first time I really brought my brother out alone before was just last week. I was going for a walk to clear my head of R, and decided to ask my brother along since he looked so bored. We walked to a park about 15 minutes away from home in the sweltering heat, and I watched my 17-year-old-but-still-a-baby brother squeeze himself into the playground set, some 50cm too tall for everything. Still, he was happy there, never having grown up in his mind. Getting home proved a bit tricker, since he didn't want to leave. Later in the week, as I left the house on Thursday to meet Jiayun in Holland Village for lunch, my brother ran to the door, hoping I'd take him out. It made me sad to have to tell him I couldn't, as he looked at me with those large eyes of his.

Today as I walked with my father and brother back to the car from an emergency trip to the doctor's, I mused how just 24 hours ago I was being a totally irresponsible youth at Mong's 21st birthday party. Now, I had just brought my brother to the doctor's, registered him, applied cream as he scratched away from a major allergic reaction afterwards (hives, just like me last time). It was but a drop in the massive ocean of responsibility my parents carried everyday, and I thought about this was how just the beginning of me one day fully taking ownership of my very special brother. I thought about the duplicity in my life, I thought about Rajan and how he'd really be the only person that'd fully understand. I thought about how I missed him the teensiest bit.

Right before I wrote this, I went to check in on my brother. From going to bed just 15 minutes earlier, he was soundly asleep. Looked like the many antihistamines we gave him before we desperately visited the doctor's finally knocked him out. It was a nice change, from just hours earlier when I was trying to sponge him with a cold towel to stop the scratching. I had seen the welts and the redness spread all over his body. I had tried to hold him hands to get him to stop scratching. I thought about how good it was that I was home this time round, so I could help out. I think now, about my future, and how I'll never really be alone in this life because my brother is wholly dependent on me. It's both a scary and a comforting thought.

The Big Sleep

It wasn't all too long ago that the thought of sleeping alone presented me with a palpable anxiety. Growing up with doting grandparents and a small house, I had spent most of my childhood sleeping with other people in the room, to the sounds of late night Chinese television blaring. It wasn't till I was 13 that I really tried sleeping in a room alone, and even that was briefly ruined when I got dragged to watch Ju-On one day by a friend.

When I was Christoph, we spent almost every alternating night asleep together. Last academic year he had a nice double bed in his flat in Elephant and Castle, and this year I had the double bed at my place. I hated his pillows, which were really soft. In turn he said I was a blanket stealer. As this year rolled about, we eventually drifted to separate blankets. He preferred the super-warm-but-better-quality-Marks-and-Spencer single quilt, and I was happy with my crappy-but-large-and-enveloping-Argos-Value double quilt. I had my awesome and cheap £5 for 2 hollowfibre pillows from Marks and Spencer too. We were happy. He slept like an unmovable rock and I rolled about on my side of the bed.

The nights he didn't spend next to me however, I slept badly. I'd have trouble falling to sleep, because I missed his presence. I missed being able to reach out and touch him. Missed listening to his soft snoring. I'd think and think, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, about the daunting future and feel anxious. Having him around reassured me, somehow, that as long as he was here things'd be okay. I'd stay up later than usual as a result.

But of course it wasn't all unicorns and double rainbows. There were nights where despite him being there, I'd be unable to sleep. I'd still toss and turn, except now I'd be afraid to do so in case I woke him up. Then there was one very bad memory where one night, we both had trouble sleeping and just as he'd fallen to sleep, I'd woken him up. After he got frustrated and told me he was awake, I went to the kitchen and cried as he went to sleep. I didn't sleep at all that night and ended up having a nervous breakdown. Sometimes if I wanted to sleep early, and he wanted to sleep late, we'd be forced to compromise. Other times were more normal, where I'd get frustrated at him being able to sleep so soundly next to me as I did the insomniac's march (bed-toilet-bed every 10 minutes), and feel alone in my misery. Not that I wanted him to be unable to sleep too, it's just that him being able to sleep so soundly felt mocking.

Then one day he left and I suddenly had a double bed all to myself. I ended up using it as a dumping ground for my once-worn clothes. Books. Newspapers. Sometimes files and papers. Stuffed toys. Sometimes I'd lose things in the mess. At night I cuddled with my clutter. It felt strange in a way, like a smaller person occupying the bed with me. I started to regain control of my sleep, relearning how to sleep alone and on my own terms. I started to forget what it was like sharing a bed with another person.

And then one fine day, Rajan came into my life, and I found myself (albeit briefly) sharing a bed again. In what I found surprising more than anything else, although I initially welcomed the idea of falling in love again (HAHAHA MISTAKE), I began to resent the idea of sharing my bed with someone else after all the freedom I had been accorded.

First there were all the idiosyncrasies: no outside clothes on bedsheets/lying on the quilt top with outside clothes is ok/but then how do you tell someone this nicely? Then my sleep times were horribly wrecked, as I finally met someone who had worse insomnia than me, and I compromised by sleeping ever-so-late even though I was so tired. Even my stuffed toys weren't spared, as Rajan picked them up and tossed them around the room, probably deeming them amusing. It also turned out that Rajan was a tosser and turner in bed too, just like me. On my cheap bed, I could feel the bed move every time he turned. Which was often. ARGH.

Then came the blanket problem. Being with Christoph and then myself for the past few months had spoiled me into not sharing a blanket. Sharing a blanket (now that it was Summer and I had no other thin quilts) felt downright uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was wrap myself up in a blanket and I couldn't do it anymore because there was someone else in the bed. Plus I was quite sure I was still a blanket stealer in my sleep.

The mornings felt strange too as I rolled about to see someone next to me. I had gotten used to waking up slowly in the mornings with sunlight and a book. Now when I woke up I couldn't open the curtains, and had to deal with another not-morning-person even though I wasn't a morning person either. Rajan brought a whole new set of things to get used to, a whole new lot of things to compromise on.

As today rolls around, I realise it's been almost exactly a month since I've last slept next to someone, and in my strange way I revel in that fact. I loved it when someone slept next to me, but now I can sleep as late or as early as I want, and wake up however I want without worrying about the person next to me. I can wrap my blanket around me, or kick it off as I sleep if it gets too warm without fear of any repercussions. I can turn on my side as many times and as often as I want, punch my pillow into a good shape and sprawl all over the bed. The bed is mine, and mine alone. Phew.

Like the pine trees lining the road

I have an urge to take a few days off my next academic year and follow the North Downs Walk, walking from Rochester to Canterbury, and ending in Dover. According to Google Maps, it's about a 43.3 mile walk (why the heck is this in the Imperial and not Metric system?).

But then again I have many urges and to-dos, including so far:-

1) Doing Wing Chun when I get back to London
2) Travelling to Colchester by myself to look at the Roman ruins
3) Travelling (back) to Helsinki by myself to explore the city
4) Writing about my recent Baltic Cruise
5) Writing about my ethnic identity, as per an essay topic suggested by a website I stumbled upon, of which I have already jotted down some points

I have a very bad habit of not following through with plans, and instead bowing to random bouts of impulsiveness and laziness. I hope I manage to urge myself to follow through with these.

Clay

Yesterday I attended my first pottery class in Singapore. Pottery has someone always been one of my interests, there's just something to feeling the malleable clay between your fingers and moulding it into something coherent with your hands. This class, much to my appreciation, was stocked with adequate equipment - enough wheels for everyone - much unlike my last class where everyone had to compete to use the two wheels among eight people.

So there I was, shyly smiling at everyone, the way I do with unfamiliar people. One was a cute little boy, around perhaps 6, who had the most beautiful bluest eyes and blondest hair. Another was a woman, looking eager, who apparently was new. Another woman sat at a mechanised wheel, working on an existing project, wearing denim bermudas and a white and blue striped collared shirt. It was the eager woman who struck me the most.

She was the one who attempted to start a conversation. She was French it transpired, and when the little boy said he was French too her eyes lit up. They started pattering away in French, as I smiled to myself, feeling like I was in a quaint French movie. Then she spoke to me. She talked about how this was just her 2nd week into a 1 year stay in Singapore. How she missed home, how she skyped her family everyday. How she couldn't get used to the temperature and the food. She easily looked in her 30s to me. I spoke about how it was when I first went to London, that it'd get better. Still I knew such words were of little comfort to her, platitudes even. But we had not yet reached the level of intimacy, and I could not quite remember what it was like when I first went to London.

It struck me then more so than ever, that even though we get older we don't necessarily get used to the changes life brings. I always knew in my heart, and that is perhaps why I try to be sympathetic when my friends complain about their parents, that even parents are just older people who are trying to do what they think is best. That they're only that much more wiser, and that all they've really mastered is some experience and a lot of Looking Like What They Know They're Doing When They Really Don't. I spoke to my Dad about it a few days ago, and he laughed, saying Now You Know. Still, it was different hearing it from the French lady. Hearing it in person that being an adult doesn't mean you know what you're doing - and that perhaps you'll never really know what you're doing despite your age.

How Many Roads?

After I ate lunch today, I stood up to clear my food away and instinctively looked at the fields behind my house. There was a man there, dressed in a white t-shirt, sitting amongst the tall grass. He sat with arms around knees, tucked to his chin, and looked as if he was rocking back and forth. The grass in the field is tall, and has not been cut since the last time I was home months ago. Snakes live and flourish there.

He didn't seem normal. I was worried. I wanted to call the police, but I wasn't sure. What if he had gotten lost?

I decided to wait. I came back to my room. Read an email. Went to shower and cried.

After I got out of the shower and looked again, the man was gone.

Like the Fool I am/And I'll Always Be

I played Blowing in the Wind today until my fingers could not take it anymore. Because my father said I Got a Name would be a wee bit too hard for me to restart 8 years of non-playing guitar on. He was right, but then again he usually is. Then I sat down and finally wrote one of those tough honest, emotionally charged emails to R.

As I lay down in bed, finally trying to put my mind at rest, I got the urge to eat salted peanuts. At 4:15am in the morning. Nevermind that I was just starting to feel sleepy. But I felt my soul would not rest until I ate some damn peanuts. So I went downstairs and ate peanuts. Then I decided to blog about it. Because I'm awesome that way.

I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get over this damn jetlag. Also, my untimely and odd urges amaze me.

Happy

One of my favourite stories is that of the original Grimm's Fairy Tale, The Little Mermaid, where she turns into sea foam at the end because she can't bear to kill the one she loves. She gives and she gives, and even till the very end cannot bear to stop giving.

It was my favorite story when I was 15. Now that I'm 21, it still remains one of my favourite stories.

Handphone

Second time in less than a week that I've woken up in utter confusion by my handphone ringing. Handphone. That's an asian Chinese word. Taken directly from shou ti dian hua, which literally means hand phone. Everyone else in the world calls it mobile, or cell. Me? I still can't not think about that device as a handphone. It's too deeply ingrained into my psyche.

Anyway so I just got very weirdly woke up by Hadi.

I woke up at 10am today and forced myself out of bed. At 12pm, a mere 2 hours later, I decided I might as well lie down and nap until Hadi called me around 3pm. I set an alarm for 1:30pm. At 12:45pm when I woke up to use the bathroom, I decided to reset the alarm for 2pm. I went to sleep and dreamed a weird dream. It seems I've been dreaming every time I fall asleep nowadays. At 2pm my alarm rang and I woke up for a second to grab the phone and turn off the alarm, then I went back to sleep. At 2:09pm, Hadi called, and I got woken rather bizarrely by a device vibrating on my chest.

It was rather fortuitous I suppose, that my sleep addled mind a mere 9 minutes earlier decided the safest place to store a handphone was by balancing it on my chest, because my handphone was on silent mode. The vibrations woke me up, and a very confused phone call commenced next.

La Paloma

As promised to myself, I have attempted to start playing the guitar again after 8 years of inactivity. I have a very bad knack of starting things and never finishing them. This time however I promised myself I'll pick up at least ONE song on the guitar, and I'd have to be a song I actually like as opposed to something merely easy to play. Tonight after looking hopelessly at gchat for an unnecessarily prolonged period of time and thinking about what a silly bird I am, and will always be, I decided to start trying to re-familiarise myself with the chords. Long story short, there was much giggling at the ridiculous sounds I produced, and lots of WTF-ing at the chords which seemed to demand far longer fingers than I possessed.

On another bizarre note, I just accidentally kicked my desk with my foot, prompting the phone on the table to somehow resettle itself in its charging port. It made a beep, startling me after I went "ow".

48 Hours

It's been about 48 hours since I started feeling really sick, and although the symptoms are abating, I still feel pretty terrible. I've spent a good portion of the past 48 hours lying about in bed, sleeping at odd times and generally feeling sick and dizzy if I'm awake. Though, that being said, I'm not sure how much of it is due to jetlag and how much of it is exactly due to the flu.

I have finished reading Diary of a Nobody, which was a good and short amusing read. Perfect for sick people, with its humour and nicely cut pieces of information (diary entries, after all). Motivated by my visit to Russia, I bought a book of Pushkin's stories (the Russians use a hard /P/ in pronouncing his name, a long sound with pursed lips - something I found highly fascinating) from Foyle's. Perhaps I shall start that book next.

It stormed like mad today, with such grey clouds that it blotted out the sun's existence entirely. Haven't seen it rain like that in ages.

Murder on the Orient Express

I have taken to waking up around 2:30am again, now that I'm back home and the sleeping draught (oho, a Christie word!) has worn off. I must say while waking up at that time when I was back 3 months ago sent me into a frenzy, now I am rather sanguine about it. I just polished off Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, which was highly enjoyable but definitely less satisfying than And Then There Were None.

As I went to use the bathroom, I saw a medium sized cockroach peer at me from my brother's towel which was hung on the rack. URGH. Nothing says 'welcome home' like disgusting bugs, which seem to live mainly in warm tropical areas. I quickly went back to my room, since I didn't know what else to do. I hope it's still not there, if I have to go out again later. That and I need to see that the towel is tossed into the laundry hamper before it's actually used on his person.

Influenza, Hospitals and Jetlag

I am back home. One 12 and a half hour flight from Heathrow, 3 movies and an episode of Law and Order UK (Enter the Dragon, Les Femmes du 6 étage and The Adjustment Bureau) later, I am back to what feels like 100% humidity and 30 degree celcius weather. Also, yummy food.

The day before my flight home I messed up and booked a cab for 3:30am instead of 3:30pm. The taxi company very nicely woke me up, and I had to haul my very dazed and sleepy ass downstairs to pay the driver, while beating myself up about making such a very silly mistake. Then I came up and found my grandmother waiting for me, which was even worse :/ Luckily she didn't tell my grandfather, or I'd never live it down. It's funny though, the transition from being fully independent quasi-adult in London to having to suddenly revert into the role of a subservient and obedient child the moment (grand)parental figures appear. I didn't really like it, especially since my grandparents are more domineering that my parents.

Today I went to the Singapore General Hospital, less than 24 hours after touching down, for my usual check ups. For once all my appointments were on time. Which is lucky considering that as my time there dragged on, I started to feel more and more sick with what I can only assume is the flu. That and I was jetlagged as hell and walking around the hospital in a haze. Things got interesting when I finally retrieved my Medisave form (some semi-medical state insurance in Singapore) from the nurse's office after 3 months and I realise the random doctor who signed off my form circled 'schizophrenia' instead of 'major depression'. Cue me staring at in a daze and finally deciding to go ahead and submit the damn form anyway.

As I sat in the Medisave office and looked even more confused over bureaucratic red tape (and jetlag), the Medisave woman took one look at my form and started talking to me in a very slow and low voice, enunciating every single syllable. I guess that's how they treat people with schizophrenia. How unfortunate.

For lunch I had awesome Teochew Mui (Teochew porridge) buffet and grabbed like everything available. It was the BEST MEAL I ate in a long time. That and I grabbed a whole plate of Ikan Bilis (small, fried fish). SO GOOD. Yes, I am a woman of simple tastes. I went home, took medicine, and slept my afternoon away.

Shower Curtains

When we first moved into the flat less than a year ago, I changed the shower curtains. They cost about £3 from the nearest Argos, located a 5 minute walk away along Grey's Inn Road. Today as I took a shower, I decided to sit down in the bathtub and splash warm water onto myself. As I sat there, hunched over and switching hands to hold the shower head, I mused on how dirty the bottom half of the shower curtain had gotten. From a rather boring shade of beige, it had somehow transformed into a rather brownish-yellowy patch. It also had a strange smell to it. I wondered what substances exactly clung to its synthetic fibres; skin cells, follicles, residual soap and shampoo, urine perhaps? Perhaps other even more sinister substances that I couldn't begin to even imagine, or wouldn't want to think resided within the weave of my shower curtain. Bacteria. Fungus. Viruses.

I close my eyes and feel the warm water running down my back. I think of Saturday, when I'll meet my grandparents at the airport for our holiday. I think of my exams, over just yesterday. I think of the irreverent ME NO UNDERSTAND QUESTION, complete with a dinosaur going RAWR that I drew for question 2 of my exam paper, because I didn't know how to answer it. I think of Rajan, and the whirlwind of the past few days. I think of the future, and feel the strange mixed feelings of my heart straining and the heady exhilaration of the unknown.

I consider putting him and our few days up on a grand, marbled pedestal. Pretend and tell myself that he's the love of my life, that I love him. Tell myself that, convince myself that, so I'll not be an emotional slave to another man. So I won't fall and be hurt again, in love instead with an impossible idea that only works because he's not around. Fall in love with an illusion, a memory, 7 days. Fall in love with what could have been. I think maybe I'll fly to America over Winter break, see him again, plan to do my masters in the USA. Start planning my life around him, think of our children running around our yard. Our exotic mixed-raced children. We'd have three of them.

Or maybe after Saturday when we both leave London I'll will myself to forget him. Erase from my memory the way his eyes crinkle up at the sides when he smiles, erase the smirk he always gives me, erase the way he smells. I'll never talk to him, never see him again for the rest of my life. Never send him the postcards I promised. Years later, when his name pops up in the papers I'll pretend not to know him. "But you went to the same university for a year," people will insist, "and you were in the same department!", but still I'll pretend to not know him even though I'll probably remember his laugh, the feel of his skin, thinking of him everytime I hear the word tautology.

He was my carpe diem, my trigger to remember why I'm living rather than just merely alive, a burst of life. And tonight, I see him for what could very well be the last time in my life. I will miss him, but it's the thought that he might miss me that makes things feel unbearable. That everything is so senseless. I think, rather pretentiously, of a Nietzsche quote, "what really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering".

I will see him at 6pm, and tomorrow I'll leave for a 12 week Baltic cruise with my grandparents.

Mantra

I just haven't met you yet.

I feel free

After talking to Hadi on skype, I started walking about half packing and half studying, now that my boxes for moving out had arrived. When 7pm rolled about I decided to go out and get some food from Kung Food, but instead decided on the spur of the moment go try the weird Chinese buffet thing I had seen down Leather Lane. As I was walking back, I swore I heard the cyclers gathered outside the cycling shop making fun of me for getting Chinese takeout, and I started to feel annoyed. Somehow as I passed by the Holborn Wine Bargins, I decided to turn in and see if they had any Crabbie's. As to why I did that I did not know.

When I came home I opened the beer and started drinking immediately. Took a picture of what could very well be my last real meal in this flat for posterity and sat down in front of my computer. It was then I realised what I felt, I felt free. I felt free because last time part of my behaviour used to be motivated by peer pressure. Imagine Zoe's face if she had come home and seen me not studying and drinking beer days before I have an exam. She'd be aghast.

Thus it transpires that I decided to celebrate my freedom from anything whatsoever by being totally irresponsible. Hmm.

Portions for Foxes

Today as I walked back from Chancery Lane tube, after having sent off/help drag Zoe's luggage to the station, I felt a strange sense of lightness. As Zoe was packing up the last remnants of her possessions in her room earlier, I sat there watching her while eating what very well could've been my last Daddy Donkey burrito, and musing about how everything had changed from the day we had moved in last Sept 2010. Life, as we knew it, had taken some very strange turns, bringing around with it strange bouts of lowness and self-realisation. This year we took such a different course from all expectations. We made new friends, drifted away from old ones, dug deep into ourselves and found new things.

I chased a slow walking pigeon on the way back home. It was fat and merely waddled away, unfazed by this crazy Chinese girl flapping her arms at it.

Last night was probably the peak of this self realisation. I had earlier contacted a exchange student who was a classmate, telling him how much I had appreciated him, but lacked the guts to say so during term time. I had concluded that since I'd never see him again - why not? Instead I ended up spending a memorable night with him, laughing away and talking about all manner of things random and in common. It was there in that moment spent with him that I realised how deep my love for Christoph was, and that the idea of love setting you free was but a myth. But all the same here I was, with this person that I thought I'd never know, solely due to the ever changing mystery of life - that damnit life is worth living because I want to see where it'll take me. I want to live, and see where my journey ends up.

Broccoli

Tomorrow it's Zoe's last exam, and I have successfully fed her on the night of her every exam (save once when she cooked for both of us, as we had the same HY234 exam). In the meanwhile, I have two more exams to go, incidentally both government modules. Today I reached home at about 7pm and managed to finish cooking by 7:30pm. I was impressed with how fast it took, and how tasty it was.

I made fish from some frozen fillets, cooked it in butter with lemon juice and some dill. Then I chopped up a zucchini and dumped it into a pot of almost-instant lemon and garlic couscous from Waitrose (the best tasting couscous I've had, I swear). For vegetables, I steamed up a large bowl of broccoli and cauliflower. It wasn't by far the most impressive meal I've made, but definitely one of the fastest for the amount of effort and time taken. Perhaps I'll keep it in mind when the next exam season rolls around and I need a square meal.  

In the meanwhile I've been cooking a lot, all things considered. Yesterday I made chicken soup at Flat 8 (Shu, Jean and Hui Min's place), on Sunday I made roast chicken with a rather interesting marinade of mango and peri peri from Marks and Spencer (note: please don't try this marinade). Before that on Tuesday last week I made Cielo and Zoe a meal of chicken adobo, rice and some random veg that I can't seem to remember anymore. Other than that, I can barely remember any other meals I've eaten. It seems that especially within this exam period, it either being the rather marathon like length of the exams or the drugs I'm taking, the days are really melting into each other, and I find it hard and harder to tell my days apart from each other.

In other news, I am almost done with watching Season 9 of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I am really such a sucker for police shows. Perhaps I should just go back home and join the police force, since I'm so aimless in life anyway.

Sourdough Loaf

Today I went out with Cielo and Elliot, visiting the British Museum and the Wellcome Collection. First we went to LSE, where I showed Elliot and Cielo around (alongside jokes to demand to see the Dean of admissions because Elliot got rejected from LSE). We ran into DOMINIC LIEVEN as we got into the lift for the East Building and apparently I totally fangirled out in front of him saying stuff like I was sorry to see him leave for Cambridge, how I really enjoyed his lectures this year, etc. We then bumbled into the 4th floor, where we ran into Shu and Jean who were dutifully studying. Later when I showed them the library, we ran into Jon. Lots of people hanging around LSE nowadays apparently.

Afterwards we went to eat lunch at Nando's, then briefly went through the British museum to look at the Egyptian exhibits before going to the Wellcome Collection. Compared to the British Museum, I much greatly enjoyed the Wellcome Collection's exhibition on Dirt and the other random permanent collection housed upstairs. I bought a bookmark from the bookshop there that reminded me of a gummy for Jean.

For dinner, Cielo and I (Elliot went off to meet distant relatives) cooked chicken adobo and fried beans with rice. It was pretty tasty, but a tad bit salty.

In other news, it's back to work tomorrow, for HY234 on Friday D:

Lipton Mango Tea

Monday afternoon and I find myself in the LSE 4th Floor canteen again, nursing a headache D: I think it's because for lunch I sat in Lincoln's Inn Field with Deborah SL and got my brain cells fried from excessive UV radiation or something. Still it's nice out today, a comfortable temperature, save the occasional gusts of cold wind.

Yesterday was a tasty day. For lunch after church, Shu and I went to get takeaway from Hare and Tortoise. I had tempura udon with maguro tataki as a side (small portion, but oh so sexy tasting). On our way back however we were blocked from returning to her place because the scaffolding off a building around the other side of her block had fallen, on Southampton Row to be precise. As a result the police were blocking people from entering, lest the scaffolding collapse more. Just as we turned the corner to leave, a random Korean girl came out, saw the police cars and blocked off road and went OOOOH in a very Korean accent. We ran off giggling because it was so stereotypical, heh.

For dinner last night I cooked Bak Kut Teh, and as a result was completely distracted from studying because of the extremely alluring smell that permeated the entire apartment. I ended up sipping some of the hot soup while it was cooking and burning my tongue a little.

Tonight I'm going to meet Elliot and Cielo at Goldmine in Bayswater. I'm told the duck there is very good but er, I don't eat duck. We'll see.

Toothbrush

I finished Hanif Kureshi's The Buddha of Suburbia today. It was a rather strange book, it's content most unexpected. Still, it's the ending made it as a good book for me,

"And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be that way."

In other news, in a fit of randomness this morning before I brushed my teeth, I decided to boil water and sterilise my toothbrush like the way I had seen in Monk. When I did brush my teeth, the bristles felt softer. I half wondered if they melted, but then put it down to a psychological trick.

Waiting to Wait

I can't wait to get out of this bloody city and go home. Just three weeks more!

The interim between exams is really terrible. It's like waiting to wait.

HY235

Yesterday I finished my first exam, had my first pint (strongbow D:) in ages, met up with Nithi, bummed around without guilt for an entire afternoon, developed a crush on a fellow classmate and lost it within my waking hours, got a post-alcohol headache, did some opinion group thing online for one and a half hours, ate the chicken rice Shu cooked (tasty), played Sims on Jean's iphone, had an epic facebook chat convo with Eugene, read a few chapters of the Buddha of Suburbia, watched an episode of Law and Order and went to sleep around 2am.

Sounds like a full day.

Cherub

Today as I walked along the snaking queue for a Daddy Donkey Burrito (chicken, fresh salsa, no extras), a man slowed down as he got close to me. I heard him say the word "cherub" to me, and I was puzzled for a while as he walked off without breaking his stride. I could have sworn he said the word "cherub", but that didn't make any sense. Perhaps he meant to say "cheer up" instead? That certainly made more sense, for in the morning I suffered from extreme academic inertia. The thought of exams on Thursday, and me being unable to focus certainly dragged my mood down.

For a while after I got back, the only way I could study was to skype with Hadi and ask him to watch me as I studied, making sure I didn't get distracted -______- After a while, I had to leave to buy groceries (for I had promised to cook a nice warm meal for Zoe before her first exam) and met Jia at Sainsbury. Then we walked back, made stew and Elliot came over halfway. Dinner was spent with Jia, Zoe and Elliot.

I have done barely any work today, and it's making me feel antsy. Oh dear, exams!

Waterloo

Showing my complete lack of focus and dedication to exams (a trope repeated in previous years with Adam's Apple and Indigenes in 2006), I went to see A Screaming Man at the BFI today. Digressing a little, I recall now that Indigenes was also the first movie I watched alone. Anyway it revolved around the relationship between a man and his son and the civil war unfolding in Chad. The end is predictably, sad, as with all realistic movies. As the ending unfolded however, my thoughts drifted along a rather surprising person, specifically C. When the movie ended I felt a deep pang in my heart, not for the pain of the characters that I had just witnesses on screen, but because I missed C dearly.

As I walked up from the riverside to Waterloo bridge to catch the 341 home, I encountered a female panhandler with a black dog sitting at the steps. I gave her 40p. 341 came within 5 minutes, and as I rode it, I counted every 168 bus that we passed. There were 2.

C Prompt

I saw C today for the first time in weeks. I was originally fearful of running into him as I was afraid of how I'd react, what it'd do to me.

Last night I had a dream that occurred in present time. In the dream he came back to me, said what a fool he was, and that we would stay together for the rest of out lives - something we had talked about before. He picked me up and hugged me, and my legs dangled in the air, 40 centimetres of difference in height between the both of us. After that I dreamt of eating barbecued chicken wings with my father. They had freshly squeezed lime juice on them. We were inexplicably in an in Singapore airport, and I was about to depart for somewhere. There was a hawker centre in the airport terminal, a legitimate open air and dodgy hygiene sort of hawker centre. That was where we ate the chicken wings together. I woke up hungry, and to reality.

Today when I saw him, I felt my heart clench tightly. I felt my body go into flight mode. I backed up a little, and took the left most door out of the library instead of the centre one I was about to take. He wore his red jumper, and was talking to someone I didn't recognise. He didn't see me. He never did because he said I was too short and he was too tall, and that I (and 85% of the population) never appeared easily in his field of vision. He didn't see me today.

Escitalopram

I woke up really slowly today, curling into various positions as I attempted to wake up. I don't know why it's been getting harder and harder for me to get out of bed, but I suspect it's because the medication I take at night makes me drowsy. After I finally woke up, I continued staying in bed as I read David Mitchell's Number9Dream for a while. A knock on the front door from the mailman finally got me out of bed, as I raced out to the door to see him struggle to cram a package for Zoe through the little metal mail flap.

Now I am finally up and about, but a terrible feeling has sunk into my core. A feeling of 'Don't Go Out Today, Something Terrible Will Happen'. Except I can't. I need to go to the National Archives, a one hour ride away from my place, because I need to do research. 'Don't Go, There Is No Meaning', something in me screams. Another thought comes, 'You're Alone, All Alone In This World', 'You Will Come Home To No Dinner And An Empty House'. I feel the unmistakable feeling of panic begin to bubble in my chest. I feel very strained and tired, and it's only 10:50 am.

I was fine yesterday. Perhaps it's the thought of going to somewhere so unknown, I've never been to Kew before. Perhaps it's the thought that for once in a some time, I have no definite dinner plans today. Perhaps it's the thought of exams looming over the horizon. Either way I feel very tense today, with some dark inner side of me chiming "There Is No Meaning To All Of This" repeatedly in my head.

Cycle Hire

I've had a recent routine as of late on Sundays. In the morning I pack up my things and my work for the day, and leave my house at about 10:15 am to walk to Shu's place. I usually reach there around 10:35 am, and we leave at about 10:45am for church on Tottenham Court Road. After that we grab lunch, study, have dinner and I leave at about 9 pm to go home.

As I leave at about 9 pm for home, it usually means I walk home after the sun has set. Not only that, but I walk through fairly deserted streets as all the shops and cafes have closed for the day. Every single walk home is filled with little pockets of paranoia, and I always make sure to loop my fingers around my laptop bag's handles and get my keys ready in hand before I reach home.

Today as I was just about to step into my lobby however, I was stopped by two men at the Barclay Cycle Hire stand right outside. Naturally, I was really suspicious, as the entire road was empty. They said they were tourists, and one was curiously East Asian while the other was Caucasian. They were trying to get a bike but they said they didn't quite know how to work it. I hesitated, but walked slowly forward towards them. As I got closer and stepped into the light of the Barclay's stand they saw the unmistakable look of suspicion on my face, and they themselves looked a little taken aback.

Needless to say, nothing bad happened to me. Still, as I stood there for those moments and watched them trying to struggle to get the bikes out of the rack, I thought about how things had gotten this way. About how it's hard to be friendly and helpful in London because one is just so fearful, especially as a female, that Bad Things Might Happen.

Thus is life in a big city, I suppose.

Total Eclipse

As I was walking toward Sedap today to have dinner with a bunch of people, with only two that I know vaguely, I mused about the last time I experienced such an incident. It was more than a year ago, when I put on my Extroverted, Amusing and Charming face. It was the 14th March 2010, the day where I met Christoph at someone's birthday party. Dinner was at a Mexican place, and the food fell all over my plate as I tried to eat it. I sat next to Christoph, with him on my right. When we stood up at the end of the meal, I was amazed at how tall he was.

At the bus stop we spoke en route to the bar. He spoke about coming from a small town, how he liked forests and abhorred the city. I told him about the Soy Sauce story, and how my grandmother broke the news to my grandfather that my Aunt was marrying her American boyfriend. At the bar we spoke some more, drinks were two for one. He 'bought' me a drink, I 'bought' him one in return. I ordered Sex on the Beach, the girly fruity cocktail I always like. We spoke some more. He joked about having multiple girlfriends. At the end of the night, he left without getting my number and I was disappointed. When we finally did get together, I asked him about that. He said it was because he thought I wasn't into him. We laughed about it.

We got together, we fell in love. We spent the Summer apart. We had fights. We went on holiday. I met his Mum. I fell in love with her. I met his sister. I was scared of her. I met his Dad, he was a dear old man. We came back. We spoke about children, moving in and our future. We had the fight. We went our separate ways, strangers again, dead to each other.

I thought about that night as I walked to Sedap, trying to put on my Extroverted, Amusing and Charming mask again. Perhaps it would be a bad night, perhaps it might be a good night, but nonetheless it would be a night of untold possibilites.

Sprung

The snow drifts of winter have turned into the pollen drifts of spring. A few days ago my friends and I passed by a young girl who asked her father "Dad, why is the ground furry?".

The pollen lies all over the streets, blanketing out the original colours of the pavements and roads. It is a strange, mossy yellow colour. As far as colours go, it is not a very appealing colour. Yet the texture, the light feathery-ness of it can be discerned just from a glance. It brings about the idea of a lightness in the air, of tiny particles floating about and weaving through molecules of atmospheric gas. The sun is out now more often then there are cloudy days. The absence of stockings, trousers and boots show a clear shift in the mood of the people in London.

Spring has finally arrived to the joy of most, except for those who suffer from hay fever (not me, thank goodness).

I carry it in my heart

Today as I walked home for good, from Shu's place since Zoe came back, I teared up as I passed the Barclay's bike stand right outside the lobby. I longed to see the abnormally large, looming and comforting figure waiting there patiently for me. The body language, changing upon sight of me. Arms wide outspread. The utter look of amazement, delight and love as I walked closer into view. The person who is now forever lost, living only in the confines of my memory. My love, that still reaches its curling tendrils out only to grasp nothingness.

I once heard a friend say that the length of weeks taken to get over a love is proportional to the number of months one was with the person. I will give myself 5 and a half weeks more to mourn and to forgive myself.

Going Gentle into that Good Night

I have just come back from the bathroom, where I spent 5 minutes heaving up nothing but water and phlegm. All I can say is, thank goodness it was not food or stomach acid. I have spent the entirety of today lying half prone on the couch in Shu Wen's place, reading Jonathan Coe's The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. I spent last night at her place, and will probably be hiding out here for the next few days. Though a far cry from the comforts of home, it is a pretty damn good substitute as I still hide in my own head, although there are 3 other people in the same room as me.

My thoughts feel discordant today, a combination of many ongoing and half completed ruminations on various subjects. I thought of Shu's father and his new(er) life with his second wife, prompted by seeing his photo in her room, and the scrawlings of her young step-sister in her room. I thought about Christoph (of course) after seeing Joel and Hui Min together. I thought about having hours and hours ahead, and no concrete structure. I thought about these really nice t-shirts I want to get from Oasis. I thought about my parents, I thought about life. I thought about the state of my health (I have asthma today, and a nasty jetlag induced headache). I thought about tomorrow, when A New Chapter Begins and A Door Closes. I thought, and thought, and stayed within my head.

I stay within myself too often for my own good. My thoughts too varied, fleeting and yet oppressive in their tone. So much for anti-depressants slowing down one's mind.

Freedom

One of the supposed perks of moving away from home and staying by yourself (figuratively, flatmates never quite equate to family) is that you are given the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want. To me however as I've learned from being away from home this few years, it also means the freedom to fall deeper into whatever psychological abyss one had carved out. It means the freedom to fuck up your life, and the freedom to stay in bed all day and be depressed, because there is no one there to come and ease you out and back into the land of the living.

I am deathly afraid of the freedom that has been accorded to me, especially now upon returning to London (at least the weather is cheery today).

Last night I fell into a deep distress when I woke up (jetlag and stomach problems) and could not get back to sleep. After a call from my mother, and a skype call with my father after, I managed to fall back to sleep and woke up at about 9am today. Truly there is nothing that can beat the love and comfort of one's parents.

For all of you out there, no matter what deity you believe in, please pray for me. I have never fallen into such a deep well before, and need all the strength and love I can muster to pull myself out.

Back to Reality

Tomorrow in the early afternoon, 12:45pm to be precise, my flight leaves back for London. It is something I am really not looking forward to, but not really something I can help either.

Hugging my brother and trying to tell him that I'm going back tomorrow wasn't easy either.

Despite my misgivings, London is pulling me back into its gritty, tough-love arms again.

Like a North Wind Whistling Down a Sky

Although arguably pseudo-scientific, this quiz result seems rather apt for now.

I just transferred a bunch of my Dad's songs onto my computer, good old stuff I grew up with when I was a child. I need neutral, unangsty and especially unlovey songs now.

Cold, dry, oatmeal

Last night I met up with some old classmates from .9. When the night was over, I took a cab ride back with Chun Wui. The cab driver was initially chatty, talking about a transvestite prostitute who always trawled the same junction (between Raffles Hotel, Raffles City Shopping Centre, Chijmes and the new Carlton hotel) to good nasi lemak in Changi Village and Boon Lay. When the conversation with the cab driver finally died down, Chun Wui and I started to talk about people we knew in general, and how from the past 2 years since school ended they had changed.

It got me thinking in a way (of course it did, for people are innately egoistic and navel gazing) of myself, especially in the state I now find myself in. Chun Wui commented that I, compared to others, did not seem to have changed very much. I agreed, but at the same time replied that psychologically, I have undergone so much more changes that even I can't quite conceive the extent of it myself. I have changed, in ways that I couldn't help.

I know for a fact that I have become more scared, more fearful of life and everything it entails. I have become less receptive to change, even though I know now with even more certainty that nothing in life is certain. I panic more. I withdraw inwards into myself more often. I have learnt how to hide it in plain sight, which is perhaps not a very good thing. I have become more pessimistic about myself. I question more. I fear being alone more. I fear myself more. I know for certain however, that the only thing holding me back is myself. If I can transcend that, I can do anything. That thought terrifies me with it's potential and abilities, and at the same time makes me more anxious because I really only have myself to blame for wasted dreams.

Life is a journey, not a sprint, and this is something I need to repeatedly remind myself of.

I am a drum

I feel as in my insides have been hollowed out: flesh, blood and tissue gingerly scooped out with a metal spoon, leaving the insides smooth as a water battered pebble. In lieu of solid matter my insides are filled with emptiness and air, somehow yet still dense enough to prop up bones, skeletal structure and skin. I feel that if I tap my fingers lightly against my chest, a deep resonant sound will emanate. I am empty.

21

I am now 21.

I wish I could say its been an easy few days, but its been harder than usual. The words "there are still so many things I want to see with you, so many things I want to say to you" keep running through my head. I miss him dearly, and regret much.

Against the Wind

I turn 21 in a day's time, and I've never felt more unprepared to become an adult.

There were times in the past where I did feel prepared. Doing little things like making my first bank account, my first angry letter to the landlord, even fixing the problem of the sticking lock (WD 40-ed it) made me feel accomplished. Look Ma! I can do these things by myself, I can take care of myself. Yet today I find myself, having fled home, immensely relishing my time here being cocooned away under the safety of home and my family.

Small steps I suppose.

Ready to Start

My world has been shattered once more. I am flying home on Tuesday. I booked the tickets last night.

I love him, and he he says that he loves me, which only serves to make things worse.

The Kitchen

I was originally going to attempt to show I clever I am by going into a mini discourse about Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth. I was going to talk about the fact that Romans worshipped her showed that they understood that the kitchen was literally the heart of the household, integral to its being. But then I realised hearth could also mean a conventional fireplace located somewhere else in the house, not necessarily the kitchen, depending on how annoyingly picayune a reader could be. Therefore I choose the safer, but still pretentious path of attempting to highlight this possible deviation in definition and distance myself slightly from its originally desired (but definitely pretentious) narrative.

So anyway I cleaned the kitchen today. On Saturday, Jewish people celebrate the Sabbath. On Saturday, my roommates celebrate the fact that I clean the kitchen, and simultaneously clean up all my dirty kitchen implements. I'm not exactly sure to the extent which they appreciate me cleaning however, as I often take around an hour to clean the kitchen. One does no housework at all, and the other takes about 30 mintes to clean the bathrooms. The kitchen is by far the hardest thing to clean because of the raw work and time needed. Still, I am surprisingly less peeved because they tolerate with my dirty dish pile and often take the initiative to toss the contents of the large black bin in the kitchen away when it overflows (one of Christoph's friends told me about her household last year... the flatmates refused to take the initiative to toss the trash and after a few weeks maggots started appearing).

This week as I cleaned the kitchen, I listened to Outlook on the BBC podcast. The first one which was very interesting was about this woman who went to Afghanistan to live among the locals and befriended a local family after 7/7. The second one was far less invigorating, but nonetheless interesting. It was about a man, who suffered from domestic abuse for more than a year before the neighbours called the police to rescue him. He spoke of how his partner would pour kettles full of boiling hot water on his lap, punch him until he got black eyes and the like. It was rather depressing really. What depressing really was that it reminded me of my flatmate. While merely confined to what is apparently self-induced emotional abuse in her relationship, the fact that she sits there and just takes it while non-stop justifying it to herself, depresses me to no end. I really hope her other friend moves in with us next year because I'm at the end of my depth of empathy.

On another note, I apparently forgot there was an ACS dinner last night. For some reason I thought it was on the 14th of March, and not the 11th. It only occurred to me to check when I was showering last night around midnight, when I suddenly remembered. I then realised why I thought the 14th March was a special day. It is, for starters the birthday of my uncle, an event we celebrated every year at home. Secondly, it's also the day I met Christoph last year. This is the second year running that I missed the dinner, I bet there's going to be more gossip again.

Evian

Today at Subway the sub of the day was Tuna Mayo. Now I ordinarily like Tuna Mayo, but it had the tendency to make one's breath incredibly stinky, and therefore I do not like to eat it in public. Instead I opted for Chicken Tikka (sub of the day for Monday), but the poor stressed Subway Man dumped one scoop full of Tuna Mayo onto my bread before I could say Chicken Tikka! Chicken Tikka! Instead, he apologised, and then put the Chicken Tikka on to of the Tuna Mayo. I wish I could comment and say that it was a weird combination, but I ended up not tasting any Tuna Mayo at all (which makes the Tuna Mayo rather suspect in terms of taste).

In other news, today my Korean GTA who cannot pronounce "L" and instead replaces it with an "R" sound, repeated the world Election multiple times because we were studying the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party in class. For some reason, I was the only person who apparently found this funny. Also when a classmate, Chet as he is known, attempted to say "LDP" he went "LG" (as in LGBT, for we just had student union elections where that particular acronym was shouted about often) before correcting himself. It was a very accidentally sexually charged class. If you call juvenile mispronunciations and brain farts sexually charged that is.

In other, other news, I have a headache of the same sort that has been recurring everyday nowadays for the past few days. I also cannot think of any other versions with the word "day", except for weekday and Doris Day.

Chicken Risotto

I actually made Chicken Risotto for dinner today. It sits in front of me, a yellowish shade of grey. The smell of freshly ground peppercorns is more overpowering than the chicken, or the onion, or the risotto itself. I'm amazed I have found the strength and willpower to cook it after the breakdown I had last night, which lasted till I fell asleep at 7:30am today. \

I am very tired again.

Dizzy Rascal

So here I am awake at 4:24am again. Again like yesterday, the insomnia of today is traceable. It started off when I leaned under Christoph's arm to look at the condition of the Cream of Mushroom soup I was making. With a movement known to all klutzy people everywhere (for I am one of them too), he lowered his arm and his elbow crashed into the top of my skull. It hurt. After a while I started to get a headache and feel a bit dizzy when I was showering 10 minutes later. When I got out of the shower, I concluded the best thing to do was for me to just rest in bed, and leave preparations for my Mock Exam to tomorrow morning.

My hair was damp. I asked Christoph if he would help me dry my hair with the hairdryer. As I stared into the space of the white wall in front, blankly, I heard a horrible sound and a feeling of my hair being yanked out. My hair got sucked into the hairdryer. It wasn't even just a little bit of hair, it was quite a bit of hair. I snipped it off, probably adding layers my accident. I dried my hair mysef, then both of us went to sleep at about 8:30pm.

We woke around 10:30pm. It is 4:29am. Sleeping at messed up hours does not make for good sleeping patterns. Christoph's managed to go to sleep, thank goodness, but as always I am unable to. I don't even feel tired or sleepy, just rather stoned. For the past 1 hour I have put my mind to work by working on my Mock Exam notes, but now can't be bothered. After I finish this piece of bread, I will attempt to sleep again.

Karl V

After a night of sleeplessness, punctuated by the various wails from the sounds of the night, I awoke to a gloomy rainy London day. Just as I wanted to start studying for my mock exam around 1pm, I felt my brain fail on me. I could barely think, yet I was not sleepy. I was just tired.

Somehow, around 2:30pm, I felt my second wind coming. As I started to type away at my notes, I felt myself grow calmer as the panic started to recede (helps that I find Charles V such a fascinating character). Then, Modern Man by the Arcade Fire came on and I was filled with an immense sense of exhilaration that I am where I am, not necessarily living a perfect life, but in possession of all the things that one needs to live a life. I thought of Christoph, and I thought of us, and I felt refreshed.

Of Roommates and Flatmates

I have done and spent very little of today awake. I woke up around 12pm (surprise, considering I went to sleep only with the aid of melatonin around 4am), and then dozed off around 2pm to 4pm when I was reading in bed. I have just finally managed to force myself into doing something productive, which was cleaning the kitchen. This time, rather than clearing the ledge with the plant, knife blocks and wine bottles, I opted to clean the oven door instead.

It was very strange cleaning the oven door. As I cleaned it, I wondered how long it was since the last person cleaned it. As I recalled further, I remembered that when we moved in, out of cleaning the entire kitchen, Ching and I didn't clean the oven. But since then, various people have cleaned the kitchen other than me (probably about a combined 5 times from both Ching and Zoe since we decided to specialize in our duties). Then there was the time I apparently put a styrofoam base into the oven under a frozen pizza when I thought it was cardboard. The story then goes that Christoph saw it and cleaned it up before I saw it because he didn't want to make me upset. Did he, or any of my flatmates clean the poor oven then? I don't know.

What was interesting however was that I realise the oven door actually isn't tinted slightly brown/sepia-ey. The moment my sponge and yellow rubber gloves touched the door, the brown gunk promptly stucked EVERYWHERE. The yellow sponge turned brown in a split second. I do not exaggerate. It's like it was just sitting there, waiting to be touched to be removed. I didn't even have to scrub very hard. As I gingerly scrubbed away with my sponge, I noted the dominant smell of the oven was of chocolate cake. I made chocolate cake last term around Week 5, which would've been early November 2010. It smelt the same as my chocolate cake, which was too chocolatey for its own good and collapsed under its own sheer density. It came out more like the richest brownie I could've ever imagined.

Anyway I digress. As I was cleaning the kitchen, I was thinking about the whole idea of flatmate-ing, and roommate-ing. One of my flatmates from this year was Zoe, my roommate from last year. You'd think living in such confined quarters together, that things would not differ from this year. They have. Now don't get me wrong, I actually really really care and like Zoe. But inevitably, as with all humans with their unique idiosyncrasies, people can and will grate on each other. An example is the issue of slamming doors. For some goddamned reason Zoe cannot close the front door silently. I suspect she even gets a kick out of slamming the door. On a scale of irritating behaviours, this is actually something like a 2/10. But depending on the time of the day, the mood I am in, that could rise on the scale very significantly. Then there are little stuff, like who throws out the trash (which I admit to being an extremely lousy flatmate for), suspicions that people are not doing their duties in turn. Another thing about girls is the hair accumulation in the shower, which I feel I remove very often. All these little irritants add up, and colour perceptions whether valid or not with each other.

Which brings me to my original point, regarding staying in the same flat with your close friends. It is not a good idea. On Weds when Jia and I met up for a lovely sushi dinner at Atariya, we spoke briefly about this. Little things that one finds endearing in a friend, might not necessarily translate to being a good flatmate. An example is about a house I know where a group of close friends stay. One of them is known for being self-interested. As friends, its something one can laugh about, since he does take the piss out of himself too. As a flatmate, it turns out he actually is self-interested. He takes and uses things without paying, never takes the initiative to purchase combined household items, and leaves messes in the kitchen without cleaning up. That translates into being a horrid flatmate. As for the group of them, their relationship is rather strained now. When looking for flatmates, its best to not look for how close you are them them sometimes, but rather how they are in their lifestyles, habits and behaviour. If you're a messy person, room only with messy people, etc. Little things like that can very much affect how much you enjoy being at home.

And the most important point: never move in with your boyfriend with other mutual friends. By this I mean for example, in a 3 person flat where you and your boyfriend have a room each. Don't be either party, the couple, or the third wheel. The couple will gang up on the other person if they work out, and it they don't work out the other person will invariably need to take sides. If you're in the couple that does break up, then you will be stuck with seeing the ex all the time. Either way at a given time, someone is miserable. Of course this does not affect all living arrangements, but it is a good rule of thumb. If you want to move in with your chosen partner, do it when its just the two of you, and not with a random other person. I've heard enough horror stories regarding this to look upon all such arrangements with a sense of dread.

Settler Aggression

This is ridiculous. I think I am less recovered from last week than I am ready to acknowledge. On the BBC website, I saw a picture of cricket fans stuffed into queues attempting to buy tickets for the cricket world cup. When I saw the picture, I instantly felt very sad because 1) they're passionate enough about something to suffer just to buy those tickets and 2) some of them might be disappointed because there aren't enough tickets available. 1) is because I haven't felt lively enough in ages, and that's what I was reminded of when I saw the queues, but 2) really strikes a chord because it's like I can almost feel the disappointment of not being able to get what you've really want, and worked so hard to achieve.

The last time a photograph had such an impact on my feelings, it was when I saw this picture from the Gaza Strip:


I will eat a banana, and then attempt to sleep again.

Coca Cola

I am yet again awake at a ghastly hour. Earlier, from about 8 to 10-ish, I feel deeply asleep. I had one of those deep sleeps which takes ages for the body to reawaken, yet you wake up more tired than before. It was one of those deep sleeps where you remember and (especially) have really strange dreams which feel very real, but are very strange. So instead of sleeping at a proper time, I am now awake at 3:26am typing away.

I had earlier lay in bed and attempted to sleep. While I lay there I thought of many things, too many things in fact. I started to feel distressed and panicky. Chief of these was the fact that I felt that I had lied to one of my government tutors about why I was missing for class today. Honestly, I had not done the work. I had seen the readings, but had missed the lecture the week before, and as a result I all saw was a bunch of incomprehensible statistics and probability formulas. But at the same time the reason I gave was valid. I did, and have been, running on about 5-6 hours sleep every night from Tuesday onward. Thursday, my day to sleep in was ruined when Camden Council decided to be maddeningly efficient for once and cut the damn grass at 8am in the morning. I was already starting to feel the effects on my body and my psyche yesterday evening, but had I have really wanted to go to the class, I could have pushed myself. I feel guilty because although my reason was valid, I knew I could've done better had I wanted to.

Which brings me to yet another distressing thought: more essays and mock exams. It's not so much the act of preparing and doing it that worries me (surprising, even to me), I realised, but the fact that I have seemed to be consistently under-performing. Today, while having drinks with the usual people at 5pm on Fridays, they spoke briefly about essays. One said the lowest he'd ever gotten was 59. The other said he was used to scoring high 60s on his essays. I did not participate in that particular conversation but instead smiled, nodded, and laughed as appropriate. Just the thought that I have been getting nothing but 58/59 for all my essays this year was enough to diminish any joy I had within me for that moment. Worse still, it was not something I felt I could allow myself to admit to other people. It makes me feel like a failure.

Last time, something like that would not have affected me to this extent. I am used to under-performing. The report books of my past are littered with comments like "is a bright girl... I don't understand why she gets the grades she does". Unfortunately this seems to be a 14 year rut I seem to be unable to get out of. No matter how much I try, seeing teachers, seeing writers-in-residence, I never seem to be able to break the barrier. I have no idea what to do. And the fact that I don't know what to do, the fact that it scares me so much, makes me go into denial and attempt to push the thoughts out of my mind. This means however that whenever I am reminded, my mood takes in instant leap into a void. I had hoped things would've been different in University (although it could be a British style education that doesn't agree with me in general), but its really the same as when I did the IB/O Levels/PSLE.

I had originally hoped to post about the very tasty Vietnamese food I've been having of late in the Clerkenwell area with Christoph, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

*Instead of drinking a pint today with the guys at 5pm, I drank a can of coke because alcohol would've put me to sleep instantly.

Tuesday, Week 7

Apparently there is no hot water at home again. I think I was the last person who had a hot shower this morning before I left for school. Wasn't my fault, I didn't break anything. In fact, someone (it might've been me, but the pettiness inside blames it on another flatmate) knocked off my shower gel and didn't move it back upright. The whole bathroom, much to my chagrin, now smells like Sanex Moisturising shower gel. I was upset to see what must've been 1/4 of the shower gel all over the sides of the bathtub, leaking out, when I got home to investigate the panicked texts of a flatmate (perhaps she was the one who tipped over my shower gel and didn't put it back upright!!!).

So anyway back to the investigation, after testing all the taps in the house I determined that the water pressure of all the cold water taps in the house was much much more lower than usual. Usually if you turn the cold water tap in the kitchen on the slightest bit, BOOM, your clothes are all wet from the intensity of the splatter of water. This has happened to me numerous times because the tap directions are a bit counter-intuitive. It did not happen this time. ALSO, after just going to the kitchen for my nutella sandwich, I have discovered to my chagrin that I am right, there is no more cold water coming out from the taps. It is a Camden Council problem after all, not of my dearly beloved landlord.

I suppose the perks of having freaked out so much last week is that I am oddly sanguine about this whole water business now. I've run out of energy to freak out. Well, that and perhaps because this is the second time in weeks that this has happened (I think it was Week 4 when the water stopped working).

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I originally wanted to blog about my day today, when I was eating a Wright's Bar sandwich (with salad, extra 25p) and was wandering around the East Building. I didn't want to disturb the calm of the History Common Room, and so went outside. There however, I was in a hallway surrounded by the doors of various professors and such of the History department. One door at the end of the hallway was open too, and I could hear talking from inside. Feeling a bit silly and awkward, I decided to move onto the staircase area. It was unusually cold because someone had left a window open (and today itself was a pretty chilly day) so after consuming one sandwich, I moved on to look for somewhere warmer.

My search for a warmer part of the building brought my downstairs, past rooms bearing more familiar names, and onto the link bridge of the East Building with the Clare Market Building where I found a warm radiator. I promptly propped myself against it, munching on my sandwich while hoping no one noticed me. This was because again, I was in a very weird and awkward position, eating a sandwich randomly outside offices. Of course as it always is with such situations when you hope you're not seen, two people walked by while I kind of shrank inwardly. Soon after I finished up my sandwich and scarpered back to the Common Room to continue my reading.

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I hope Camden Council fixes the water soon.

A Recount

Looking back at the comments written on previous posts by kind commenters, I feel guilty. Unfortunately it's guilt for feeling something that I felt, and therefore not quite something that I can change. I don't know. I am slowly feeling better. The weather outside is very gloomy today.

8th Feb, Tuesday, I went to the National Portrait Gallery with Shu Wen to see the Taylor Wessing portrait prize.

12th Feb, Saturday, I celebrated Dexter's birthday with some other friends at Tiny Robot. The food was good, but strange. We went back to Jon's and watch the remainder of Shaun of the Dead (which I had previously seen with Ianthe, Steph and Jiahui during Summer last year).

15th to the 16th, Tuesday to Wednesday, I skipped school and hid at home to lie low.

17th Feb, Thursday, I went shopping. I walked from school to Covent Garden, then to Leicester Square, cutting through Soho to reach Oxford Circus. It was a nice, sunny day.

18th Feb, Friday, I went for the Talking With Nazis talk by Laurence Rees, then I went to Kam Fung to eat dinner with Christoph.

Today, I'll be watching True Grit with Christoph at the Barbican, followed by dinner afterwards. I received the Calvin and Hobbes comic book I bought the other day on Amazon. I might go for a run. I ought to clean the kitchen. I am resolved not to do any studying today.

Que Sera Sera

Last night I attended an LSE Literary Fest talk by Laurence Rees (there seem to be various versions with regards to the exact spelling of his name) called Talking with Nazis. He was an ex-BBC producer of historial documentaries around the WW2 era (why the hell does that sound like such an awesome job, and why aren't there more like that to go around?) and did one of the first documentaries about Germany and the Nazis. As a companion to the talk he gave, which was on the nature of interviews and interviewees, we watched some clips of interviews conducted with old SS guards and a woman who denounced her neighbour. For the optimists, it's not a sob fest of the interviewees crying their regret, and for the pessimists it wasn't a straightforward denial (they did agree to be interviewed after all). Instead it was insightful listening and watching to their responses. It was just simple, plain, matter-of-fact recounting. I did it, but I won't tell you whether I have regrets. It was part compartmentalisation and part self-denial. It was an excellent, refreshing talk.

That wasn't really why I wanted to post about last night's talk, though I seem to have accorded it a nice paragraph without really setting out to do so. I went home and googled Laurence Rees, and it turned out he wrote one of the core texts that I used for my extended essay in IB. The fact that I had actually handled his work, read his words and seen his person (albeit retroactive realising) made me excited (retroactively), so I spent a solid few minutes bugging the hell out of a Philip Pullman-reading Christoph. That was exciting.

In other news, my digestive system seems to have gone completely haywire. Last night before I went to bed, I ate a pile of pasta and went to sleep straight away. 4 hours later I wake up, bloated and hungry and unable to sleep as a consequence. I spend the next 30 minutes eating all sorts of random things, toast, biscuits, slices of ham before I am full enough to go to sleep. I wake up 5 hours later, still tired, and now completely bloated. My stomach feels so sick, and its been like this for the past few days.

Week 6

After talking to some friends today, I realised that a lot of people have been burnt out from school too. However, their burn out manifests in less destructive ways, as my skin surely attests to.

Perhaps next week will be better.

I haven't wished this in a long time

but I wish I was dead now.

I am very tired of living, and attempting to live.

Pesce

Week 5 is finally here, and by extension A Week of Hell right after a week of Preparing for Hell. I am very tired.

Today I finally stumbled upon a good recipe which is fairly chinoise enough for my palate. White fish, cod in my case, marinated in a soy sauce-chopped garlic-brown sugar-sesame sauce mix. Tastes almost like the soon hook my grandma would always order in restaurants back home.

Thank God for valium and Yes Minister.

Fuck Internships

I don't know what to do with my life.

First off, my grades are crap. No one wants to hire anyone who's managed to fuck up her First Year in Uni and get a 2:2. Nevermind that I missed it by 0.666666 marks. Fuck the rounding up and rounding down system.

Second off, the things I actually am interested in are very hard to get due to numbers. The world has too many PhDs running around clawing at academia and think tanks as it is. Even working in NGOs is hard for the same reason, too many people and too little places.

Thirdly, I can't take a job that is high stress. I simply cannot cope with stress or insomnia (which is brought about by stress anyway), because at the rate my neuroses are going, I am going to end up dead sooner rather than later - and that's just with the stress LSE brings.

Lastly, and worst of all, I have no confidence in myself at all to even go out and apply for anything. Even rubbish like HR wants applicants to have a 2:1. In the eyes of the competitive working world, I am nothing even with my shiny expensive degree from LSE and intelligence.

I hate it when people ask me about the future, because presently, I have none.

Drei

Since I have not been doing this for some time, I have decided to write about 3 books that I have read recently.

Imre Kertész's Detective Story took a while to get a hold on me. At the end however, I was left with a fairly discernable impression. It was not enough however, to strike quite a resounding chord with me. A good read nonetheless.

Anne Tyler's Digging to America was highly entertaining. Jumping from narrator to narrator, I especially loved the bits the grandmother Maryam narrated. I even brought the book the school on multiple occasions to read when I was between classes. Still at the end, it seemed to lack a little something (or as Jia puts it, umami).

The best of all 3 however, was Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. The titular story did not impress me as much as the latter three short stories did. When it comes to a well executed and finished story, Capote is simply one of the best. The problem I usually have with short stories is that they ring hollow when they finish. Sometimes, you even wonder about the motivation for even wanting to write them. They tell something unsatisfactorily and answer nothing. This was especially the case for Enright's Taking Pictures and D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum. Capote however tells and sums up a good yarn.

Eating Animals

Apparently I am heartless. On Wednesday, I somehow managed to drag my hungover ass into the Old Theatre by 6:25pm (luckily, because at 6:45pm the lecture theatre was full), and listening to Jonathan Safran Foer talk about his newest book (albeit published more than a year ago), Eating Animals. As some of you might have recalled, I am a great fan of his writings. Every year that I have read them, every year they have made my list of Top Ten Reads (which reminds me that the 2010 one is still tardy :/) Going for a talk by him, even though I like my meat very much, seemed only natural.

So anyway I went and listened. He was very good and very convincing. Not everyone can go vegetarian he argued, but surely you can give it up for just one meal a week? And he's right. Unfortunately while my mind and my heart, arguably thinking organs, I am unable to reason with my stomach. 30 minutes after eating a satisfying meal of spaghetti bolognese (fine there was beef in it), my stomach started to bray for more food. As much as I like the idea of going vegetarian, and I do know of the health effects of eating too much meat, meat is still one of those stomach fillers that keeps it full for the longest period of time. And I am frequently hungry because my metabolism is completely out of control, to the point that it is detrimental to my health >:(

Thus today while separating the meat into single person portions, I realised I had 4 portions of pork chops for 1 person, 1 portion for 2 people (Christoph gets 1 more pork chop) and 3 portions of chicken for 1 person. Therefore I must conclude, I am heartless to the poor animals.

I need a life part deux

In my neverending wrestling with essays (!!!), this time with the Chinese Civil War, I often mentally turn into a mush pile as all my energies are directed towards dissecting, rephrasing and plagiarizing works of the Good Men. That and wishing I was playing CIV4 instead/getting a haircut/pulling out my hair strand by strand.

Therefore, my latest obsession: the waiter in the first part of Kelly Clarkson's I Do Not Hook Up. SO HOT.

Somedays, I just wake up feeling anxious and strained, and don't know why. Today is one of those days.

Wright's Bar, Tea and Me

So here I am sitting in the Govt Common Room, Book I Have to Read, next to me - and blogging instead.

My expressed purpose of bringing my Not Very Light laptop to school, was to do work. Instead I am procrastinating. I blame it on the earlier HY235 lecture, which is the academic equivalent of crawling under barbed wire in the mud while the enemy rains machine gun bullets over your head. The enemy in question in this analogy is my lecturer, who shoots Narratives and Facts at us, with no real Organisation, in a RapidFireRateMode. Instead of feeling refreshed, invigorated and stimulated by the material, one feels like they have just run a marathon where all you do is mindlessly scribble down Shite, because there is no time to actually process the material. Not like there is much analysis anyway. I hope no one decides to vanity google HY235.

So anyway to recover, I resorted to my old trusted activity: a good tea with sugar from Wright's Bar (45p!) while sitting outside the Old Building and People Watching. In front of me, there were two fairly wizened people handling out fliers and trying to detain people to harass. I caught whiffs of "cuts", "government doesn't care" and "near SOAS, Birkbeck". I sat there for 15 minutes as they floundered around, the woman managing to detain 2 people and the man detaining none. He also called an IHT around under his arm, probably nicked from the LSE reception. They did not once approach me, even as they stood, defeat by the unmistakable air of Apathy from passing LSE student hordes. I found that amusing, perhaps they decided by virtue of my race I was Apathetic anyway. I also saw some friendly faces, Filipe for one, and some other people I wanted to dodge, some people from my old dorm. I also saw a women walk by in a striking mustard yellow coat, with a deep plum dress and stockings. She really likes her colours I suppose.

I have now procrastinated for 47 minutes. I'm off to the loo, then I PROMISE that I will start work after.

OXON & BOOKS: a list

Yesterday I popped up North for a whirlwind visit to dear old man in Oxford. As usual I paid my respects to The Last Bookshop, £2 for all books, located near St. Aldgate's. The Last Bookshop stocks a delightful array of books, some exquisite photography books (for when I get my own proper flat and proper coffee table I presume) and general literature. There were loads of tempting buys, vying for my attention like Chabon's Kavalier and Clay (didn't get it though) and Nemirovsky. I managed to stop myself at 5 books though:-

Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion
Imre Kertesz - Detective Story
P. D. James - Cover Her Face
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
Bret Easton Ellis - The Informers

Along with the generous £25 Amazon voucher I got from Christoph's mum for Christmas, I also got:-

J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red
Edmund de Waal - The Hare with Amber Eyes
Anne Tyler - Digging to America
Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's

I am currently reading Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm.

I will finish and post the very delayed 2010 list next. I promise!

Boeuf de Tartare

The last dinner I had in Germany was a very nice beef tartare, homemade. The beef was excellent, and much tastier than the one I had a few days ago in Bürgerspital. Although that being said, the atmosphere at Bürgerspital could not have been beaten because WoHu joined us there, along with many bottles of wine and schnapps. We had a nice table, inside a large wine barrel. The service was very German though. The highlight of the night had to be just as we were about to leave, someone could not stand up because she had too much Silvaner (wasn't me), and I turned around to see a large chunk of the wreath surrounding our table MISSING because WoHu had ripped/pilfered a large keepsake just like the last time we were out. The sight of the missing chunk, complete with the fact that I had tried to take some earlier but found it superglued down, made ME collapse in giggles.

The damage that night (one spoon, two menus, the wreath, all the decorative nuts and apples on the table for the restaurant) was at least 4 glasses of Silvaner, 3 bottles of wine, 2 glasses of schnapps and 1 rustling for me: some €250. Needless to say everyone was very very happy. I was only happy by proxy though, since 3 completely happy drunk people make from awesome dinner companions and I was still recovering from my cold. At one point, WoHu started banging the sides of the barrel with his head, and I started hitting it with my fists. All the other diners were staring at us, two middle aged and two young people being completely rowdy and shouting, while ordering lots of wine. I think we completely ruined it from the couple seated near to us, who were obviously trying to have some romantic night out.

Yup. That's going to be a night I remember for a long time.

But like I said, the beef tartare Christoph's mother prepared today was simply par excellence. The size was very generous too. Now, while Christoph and his mum are busy walking off their dinners (his sausages and mustard, her's a beef tartare too), I am being a lazy bum and sitting on the couch half watching Viva (I have no idea why I am so fascinated with MTVs again, probably because it makes good background noise in a language that is not German) and half typing this.

Tomorrow, back to bloody London and the problem with the fucking landlord again.

*on a separate note, why the hell does it seem all the music popular in Europe is clubbing/dance music?

Silvester

The top song of 1996, apparently: 10 Kleine Jagermeister

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The first new years' I spent overseas, has probably been one of the best new years that I've spent. Namely because for the first time (well I do recall a class party in 2008/2009 that involved a group playing Mahjong in my dining room, and the rest of us watching The Shining in the living room - with Cheryl arriving late and scaring the bejabbers out of me), it was actually properly celebrated for the sake of New Years'.

We went to the oldest restaurant in Wuerzburg, had a really nice dinner for a very nice price, then we walked home. On the way back, we saw lots of fireworks as 2009 passed into 2010. There were lots of drunk people setting off fireworks, some in a rather alarming way best observed amusingly from a distance. One firework even ricocheted off a tree branh and bounced across a road, near to where we were walking. Towards the end of the walk, we crossed a bridge which spanned the Main, and watched the fireworks being set off in all directions.

Back at the house, we watched some trashy music television - some Boney M, some Genghis Khan - which was enjoyable in its trashiness. We even saw some countdowns of (goodness knows what categorization they used) that put O Zone's Dragostea din Tei at number 5, and Las Ketchups' Aserejé (The Ketchup Song) at number 6. Also some What a Feeling, sung by the original singer and some weird Swiss DJ. It was bad trashy music TV at its best.

I am now listening to Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way (1999) on the TV now, a new countdown that began with Roxette and The Scorpions in 1990. Good, good New Years' Day.