new dots, new thoughts

After changing my hair, it's time to change the look of this blog.

It's been almost exactly one year since One Hundred Days Of... was started. I've forgotten the smidgen of HTML I learnt to cobble together the original site. If anyone can solve the mystery of that thin white line on the left of the three big dots on top, please enlighten me, cos it's bugging me to death. And yes, I'm anal like that.

Work is still in progress. To be continued...

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

We were all prepared to weep our eyes out at the movie, even handing out tissue paper right at the start.

But only a few tears slipped out. That is not to say the show was a disappointment, just an example of great control over my tear ducts.

I've always loved Charlies Kaufman's work -- Being John Malkovich and Adaptation -- and I think Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is now my new favourite.

The idea of erasing all memories of a past love doesn't quite work for me though. I'd prefer to keep the good and the bad intact, something along the lines of "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it".

For anyone who have ever had a relationship gone wrong and wanted to forget, this is the movie. Word of warning for those who suffer from motion sickness though, that there are some shaky camera angles.

hair today, gone tomorrow

While lunching on Saturday on penne vongole -- after applying to become a maid, but more on that at a later date -- I was given two ho-hum reasons to cut my hair short. One, it was cooler. And two, it would make me look fresher. Not particularly compelling reasons. Yet, suddenly later that same day, I was struck by the urge to just snip it all off.

So today, I did it.

"Are you sure? I'm going to cut. This is quite drastic," the hairdresser warned me. Two hours later, I emerged with what looked like bed hair and a satisfied look on my face. For the first time in three years, I actually felt the sun burning into my neck as I strode out for lunch.

Responses so far have ranged from no comment at all, to gasps of shock, "why???" and "I prefer girls with long hair", to compliments that I look "so purdy" and that I should now form a band cos I look like Joan Jett. Or was the last one a compliment at all?

But the best one had to be from my sissy, who pointed out that I now resemble this adorable paperdoll I love, which was also used for the Zouk flea market poster. Will post a photo if I take one, but in the meantime, scroll down to look at the poster.

penguins

I like them. Birds that don't fly. Birds that are so inaccessible that I will never meet one in real life, so they will never be able to peck me to death.

I used to have a penguin icon on my mobile phone. And I have this crazy book of photos of two penguin-sized fibre-glass penguins, lugged to places such as London, Paris and New York just to be photographed.

And now, I found Edward Monkton's Penguin of Death.

Also check out his gallery. I love the shoe, the frock, the chocolate and the potato that can't swim.

my so-called friends

Do these names mean anything to you?

Dave, Charla and Keith
Rob and Amber
Lex and Rupert
JPL, John Stevens, La Toya and Fantasia
Adrianne and Elyse
Wai Chung, Adam, Sivert, Mark and Rachel

I know them so well. The tom-boy model. The overly-competitive male. The red-haired freak. The bimbo with the big tits, big eyes and big teeth. The cao ang moh. The construction worker from Boston.

In fact, I feel I know them better than some people I regard as friends, but who no longer bother to share what is happening in their lives.

Am I watching too much reality TV? Or is there something wrong with the state of my friendships?

happy birthday to me

Isn't it wonderful to receive birthday presents? Especially when it isn't even your birthday anymore!

And the best gifts, as I was told a long time ago and which stuck in my head for being so apt, are things that someone wants but will never buy. Such as the Sex And The City book I've had on my wish list for the longest time. Thanks, my lurve!

Now, if only someone can buy me Carrie's wardrobe...

flea & easy

We thought the flea market was going to be in the outdoor carpark of Zouk, so I dressed to beat the heat in my sluttiest denim cut-offs, cotton tank, flip flops and hair in plaits. Then it turned out to be inside Zouk itself, with aircon and even alcohol.

Exhausted from a whole day of selling off my clothes and bags for meagre sums of $2 to $5. My target was $250, or half the cost of a new Elna sewing machine, but it seems I can only buy a quarter of it.

At least I controlled my urge to spend at the other stalls, otherwise I might not even have any profits to speak of.

Flea and Easy

Ginnie, Mousey and me [it rhymes!] will be having a stall at the flea market next Sunday at Zouk. Come and buy our unwanted junk and cast-offs from our wardrobe, ok? Must support lah, we're poor and we need the money.

It wasn't supposed to be a dirty weekend at Bintan. But it ended up that way when I decided to indulge in a Mud Detox Wrap. Could not resist even though (1) I need to save money, (2) I know it does not really detox, and (3) a massage would probably have been more helpful for this chronic shoulder ache.

But it was fantastic to get away -- 45 minutes by ferry and we were in a foreign land! -- and just lie by the pool with an open Vogue flapping in the sea breeze. What's more fantastic is that I didn't pay a cent for the Angsana hotel stay and enormous buffet dinner on the beach. Yet another perk of working in a newsroom and having a kind and generous journalist friend. [Thank you, Clare!]

Of course, it helps that I'm shameless when it comes to freeloading.

The first anniversary of this blog is coming up soon. Unbelievable how much rubbish I can write about and how self-indulgent I can get. I don't even dare to read back some of my initial entries. So blardee precocious and whiny at times...or should I say, all the time?

Anyway, one of my goals for June is to re-learn DreamWeaver, which I never managed to master last year. Hopefully that skill can be put to good use to redesigning this site.

At the same time, I'm still trying to get the hang of doing page layout at work [take note of the What's On, TV highlights and comics pages, they are likely to be done by me] and learning to make skirts and camisoles on my off days [just completed my second skirt today, a lovely sky blue flare skirt].

Feel like my brain is being overloaded these past few weeks, but in a good way.

While slumbering between being awake and trying to return to sleep yesterday morning, I had this "dream" in which my grandmother was in my house.

I can still recall vividly that I was trying to force breakfast down my throat, which is what happens every morning because it's always too early to eat. Somehow, I saw her walking towards my parent's room, dressed in one of her flowery blue samfoos.

I remember smiling at her, totally unterrified. Only when I regained more consciousness that I began to feel a tingle of fear.

Of course, when I told my pantang mother, she insisted that my grandmother must have missed me because I didn't pay my respects during Qing Ming last week. So bright and early tomorrow, I am going to the temple to bai bai.

"In certain offices, it is considered sexual harassment to show you this Hotel 81 brochure, right?"

Out of nowhere, this not-that-young male colleague presented me with a full-colour brochure of the rooms in Hotel 81, the insides of which I have never seen before. I was so dumbstruck, all I said was "Ermmmmm..."

This is the same guy who, while telling me how to crop photos, suggested that I could safely chop off the cleavage of the woman -- unless she was Amy Yip.

"Big Sister is watching."

Not sure if the handful of regular readers of this blog know, but I do have a site meter which keeps track of the number of visitors and shows partial addresses. And for the longest time, I've been intrigued by an on-off visitor who apparently works for the NHS. Would the mysterious stranger like to leave me a message, in return for my ungrateful bitching about the free medical service the NHS provided to me?

And on a marginally related note, why is it that I get more than 10 visitors a day -- that's more than 4,000 (!!!) in total in 10 (!!!) months -- reading my rambling thoughts, but I hardly get any feedback? It's like I'm writing in a vacuum, or as that philosophical conundrum goes, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?"

While doing the cheapo magazine-browsing thing at Borders, I flipped through the latest Cleo with its annual gratituous 50 Most Eligible Bachelors spread.

To my horror, I realised how much I've aged, since those days when my hostel mates and I always ended up with one copy each of that particular issue to ogle over. The next stage came a couple of years later, when I began recognising the guys featured, including my mudding buddy.

Now, I've progressed to the third level, where my friend's younger -- and I'm ashamed to admit, but he is rather cute -- brother is considered an Eligible Bachelor. The terminal stage will be when the sons of my peers make it to the Top 50.

"Today is a vicious day for moving."

Because I requested to do sub-editing instead of writing -- with effect as of today -- I was supposed to exchange desks with the chatty colleague across the cubicle partition. But just when we were about to cart our barang barang to our new desks, this Indian colleague came up and stopped us in our tracks by solemnly quoting the Indian almanac.

So we're both now sitting amid piles of haphazard files, notebooks and other junk we somehow accumulate, waiting for Monday when it will be a full moon, hence more auspicious. And we have been advised to move only after 9am.

Chinatown has become my new hunting ground.

Have been on leave the past four days and have been there daily to eat, shop and take dressmaking lessons.

After just three lessons, I'm almost done with my first attempt to make an A-line skirt. I wish I could quit my job and do this full-time. It's so satisfying and relaxing to hunch over a sewing machine or just tack with needle and thread. As I commented to Mousey, who is my partner in crime and the business of skirt making: "I just love doing things which don't need me to use my brains."

I know this guy we call Bee Keeper, because that is what he would do if he could do anything in the world. I told him I wanted to be Carpet Weaver. But Dress Maker would suit me just fine too at this point in time.

"During the visit, you will also be able to see the room where the visitor produces the sperm."

This line, taken from the KK Hospital's reply to my colleague's request to write a piece about its sperm bank, just made me chuckle silently for a full minute on a Monday morning. That is quite a feat.

”Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even have a dog.”

Exchanging a spate of sloshed SMSes while at Velvet last night with a friend, who was out on a hot date somewhere he refused to divulge.

Can’t remember exactly what nonsense I was babbling to him about, but do recall hazy laments about all men being MARRIED [I recall keying those words in CAPS, even in my drunken state] and being found half-eaten by an Alsatian three weeks after I’m dead [see, even when not sober, I can quote Bridget Jones].

Nursing a vague hangover now. Just reminded my friend -- who brushed off his hot date by saying they just “chilled and took a walk” -- that we still have an on-going bet. Whoever gets attached first will have to buy the other a complete set of Tintin comics.

I have a feeling I’m gonna win.

On how to write good

1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They are old hat).
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
8. Be more or less specific.
9. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than unnecessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should never generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Profanity is for assholes.
26. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shattering ideas.
27. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed. [“it’s” = “it is”, “its” = possessive form of “it”]
28. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
29. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it effectively.
30. Puns are for children, not for groan readers.
31. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
32. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
33. Who needs rhetorical questions? [A rhetorical question is one asked for effect or to emphasize a point].
34. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

And finally . . .
35. Proofread every space and letter carefully to see if you any words out.

More about married men.

Talkative photographer: Last night I dreamt of [insert name here of my version of Mr Big].
Me: Erm... [Trying to change the subject] That day I dreamt I was Drew Barrymore. I think it was because I saw the trailer for 50 First Dates.
Talkative photographer: I dreamt of him because I haven't talked to him for a long time.
Me: Erm... Me too.
Talkative photographer: [Still oblivious to my lack of response] I've been wanting to call him.
Me: [In my heart] Erm... Me too.