Chapter 1

Have you ever read 'Hopscotch', by Julio Cortazar? I picked it up from the library a few years ago after a recommendation from a lecturer who specialized in Latin America. It is a curiously structured book that you can choose to read conventionally (Introduction is followed by chapter 1 is followed by chapter 2 and so on until you get to chapter 155) or unconventionally (chapter 1 is followed by chapter 37 is followed by chapter 102 is followed by chapter 9 until you finish all of them - there is a line at the end of each chapter suggesting which page to turn to next, not the one which follows numerically). It is a brilliant idea, to let the reader assemble the story as s/he will, and to have it fit at the same time is masterful. I digress.

Monday.
I watched as many movies as I could stomach on the plane, as I always did. Put on my face in the cramped, slightly disgusting airplane bathroom because I refuse to look a mess getting off. The queue through immigration is unusually long, and slow. Collect baggage. Queue again to get through customs with my white card and passport in hand. The official checking the ticked boxes on the card waves me through and for the first time, after countless struggles with getting heavy bags onto the x-ray machines for 4 years, I get a free pass.

He was waiting in the arrivals hall. No surprises there. Those came later. The usual exchange of pleasantries follows, how long have you been here, sorry to keep you waiting, work-talk, accept compliment, weather-talk. Kingsford Smith has a new addition to its infrastructure - a multi-storey travelator in the carpark. It is on the travelator that he surprises me first, although I can't say that I wasn't half-expecting it. Oh the uncertainty, always the uncertainty! I think that's what gives me, us both, the rush. That potent mixture of fear, anticipation, uncertainty, defiance.

There was a light drizzle that night. The roads from the airport to my place were the same as I remembered, semi-familiar landscapes.

Later, I found myself in a room that had been mine but now wasn't. Almost everything seemed the same - the same furniture, the same people (at least the two who were around), the absolute silence of the apartment. It was a strange feeling, being somewhere that had been a home. Another curious thing was the lack of emotion I felt. I was sorry for him and would have done anything to help, but not angry or hurt or any of the hundred things someone in that situation could have been. How complicated human relationships get and how much they can change with time. But then, this was never a solid matter to begin with.

Introduction

I'm back

I know I was only there for 12 days, but those 12 days seem both like a lifetime and a blink of an eye. Where to begin?

To begin with, 12 days was too short. In between meeting up with friends and shuttling the family around, I didn't get half of what I'd wanted to do done. Despite my best efforts, I missed out on going to the beaches (too cold), seeing the Botanic Gardens properly (too big), taking the ferry from circular quay to anywhere, taking the train anywhere, digging through the library for books (definitely not enough time. and it's being rearranged. again.), and taking a full walk through uni. In retrospect, I would have needed a month to be even remotely satisfied.

I did however manage to make it to the Opera Bar after dark, to the art gallery for a final(?) visit, to David Jones food hall (where I found my sister looking staggered by the sheer amount and variety of food available - "I need help... can we stay here all day?"), to the fish market for seafood and the best oyster I've had (ever) to catch up with Duncan over coffee (and listen to him complain about his 1st and 2nd year students. and to be amazed once again at how much he has achieved by 30), to walk along the racecourse from my old flat to uni on a beautiful, sunny-sweet day (after a not-quite-dark-but-far-from-bright-night), and, most importantly, to laugh, listen, reminisce.
I also graduated (officially), which was quite fun.

A lecturer once told me not use a sentence as a paragraph. He was right. But this isn't an essay or an article.

Does that count as a start? I certainly hope so.

in an anonymous cafe

dear family at the next table,
nothing says illbreeding quite like staring. i hope you take this into account while raising your toddler because you have clearly missed the boat with your teenagers.
love,
jeen

random but not

Somewhere in my head space, there is a gallery of sorts where I have stored the most important, most intense, most unforgettable moments in my life. They aren't memories of events, but brief moments in time - maybe a second or five, rarely more. Most of them are solitary, few have other people around, and even less have other people occupying more than incidental positions.

One or two are chance sightings of something unexpected and beautiful. I remember catching a glimpse of the opera house with the evening light glinting off it while I was on the train pulling into circular quay station. I happened to look up for the briefest second and was struck by the sight. That was one of the things that made me love Sydney.

There are a few that I remember and keep deliberately for the sense of peace and fulfillment I felt then. When I was backpacking through Vietnam and Cambodia a few years ago, we stopped in the mountains for a night or two. I remember a breakfast of the sweetest mangoes I have ever eaten, purchased the day before from a street vendor and chilled in the mini-bar overnight, and hot, strong, Vietnamese coffee at a tiny cafe/house. I could want for nothing more.

There are a couple of moments that maybe I would forget if I could but cannot because they are ones which make my heart ache for what might have been but was not.

And then there are those that are so intense, the first time they arise unbidden, I shudder involuntarily. During a lag in the conversation, or a quiet moment, the memory of these moments almost consumes me and transport me away to a different place and time.

If I were to try and count them, the sum of these moments might number less than my fingers. I don't know because I cannot count them - I get confused as to which are and which aren't - but I suspect that they are that few and far in between. It's odd, but most if not all of them happened elsewhere. Maybe life here is too familiar for anything to hold that much significance for me. Or maybe I'm not meant to live in my birth country.
I should just be a nomad.

sydney shopping list

strictly food-related, this one

harissa
truffle paste
olives
dark chocolate
tahini (if its cheaper there)
maldon salt or murray river salt
jams! strawberry and champagne, sour cherry, plum

crunch

is the sound stupidly healthy, borderline tasteless pretzel crisps make as I try to keep from falling asleep at my laptop

nyik

I have a confession to make.
I am a language snob. Unless the writer is someone I know personally, bad writing sends me running. Or squawking. If I cannot comprehend a paragraph, not because it's been written GGMarquez-Autumn of the Patriarch-style but because it is fragmented, incoherent, or just downright rubbishy, I'll close the page and never go back. Okay, I might open it again once in a while to see if it's still bad but then I'll shudder and kick myself again.
There really isn't a point to this post, I just felt like complaining.

Oh, and S offered to pick me up from the airport when I arrive on the 13th. I don't know. April is a day away and it's making me fidgety.

whatever. time to scour the web for information again.

thunk

it's done! and it's taking 5 minutes for the report to get sent through gmail

musical chairs

My dogs treat me like a piece of furniture. One walks over me repeatedly - back and forth and back and forth again - before settling his heavy ass on me if I'm sitting on the floor. Just now both of them tried to climb onto my lap at the same time, while I was seated on a chair, working on my laptop.

I don't think I'll be sleeping much tonight. 35 more pages to go before I can compile the whole damn report and arrange and edit it.

Also, I just turned down a job offer from the first job and interview I went for. It would be more sane, but it still sounds boring. And they took what, a month? to get back to me. Harumph.

Also, I love the way the rain smells grassy and damp and heavy :)

gargle blah poo

i take it back >(
see I was just about done at 7 when they sent me an urgently needed 10 page document - 'can you handle this?'
like i'm going to say no!
blargh
i don't like not having the time to shower and eat!!

hustle

I'm happiest when I have a tonne of work to do and deadlines to meet. Unfortunate, but true sometimes.
Today I have:
the usual media coverage
2 reports in Indonesian to translate, edit and restructure
and then, when all that is done, research! corporate dirt-digging! fun :)

in passing

1. I'm really looking forward to April.
I got an email from Duncan about attending my graduation ceremony and it made me miss the smallest things about Sydney.

2. Does last week count as a seven day week?
It sure felt like it. And I know I can expect more of the same this week.

3. I actually enjoy the info-digging thing
so long as I don't think about the ethical aspect of it.

4. steely blue nails *love*

campbells tomato soup

Now. You know I've been toying with the idea of adopting a sustainable, organic, local, and ethical diet, which thus far I have yet to follow through on simply because it requires conscious effort and I am lazy. However, after reading this article, I am seriously considering throwing all canned and processed foods out with the trash. Or at my sister when she's in bitch mode.

The problem for me is not so much the fact that the curry powder or cinnamon I use may have bug bits in them - after all, a little bit of dirt is healthy, sterile food is bad for the immune system and all that - but that, as the writer asserts, "we don't really know what we're putting into our mouths". For all the ingredient lists and ticks from regulatory agencies on food packaging, we don't actually know much about what is inside that microwave meal. Chances are, tongue-twisting chemicals and plant/ animal derivatives couched in scientific terms make up half the list, obscuring the true nature, sources, and usage of these 'ingredients'. And by extension, the effects they have on your physical and mental self. More disturbing than this is that the use of these ingredients/ chemicals is approved by the agencies (USFDA being the no. 1 culprit) we look to for nutritional guidance.

The verdict: cut down (if entirely eliminating is not possible or practical) on packaged and processed foods.
Sigh

*gasp*

I LOVE green nails!

midnight munchies

hey.... they didn't scrap the little packet of seasoning in Mamee noodles after all. They just don't include them inside the individual packets. How do I know this? I'm awake at midnight once again because that's the only time of day (night) my intellectual brain is actually malleable enough for me to push in less frivolous directions. And I woke up from my pre-work nap hungry. Say what you will, but coffee + carbs + MSG saves the day.

:)

CNY excerpts and then some

she pored over my palm
"hmm... your fortune is exactly like mine. Lots of broken relationships"

"KL boys are such dufuses. Or gay"

"so she's thinking of turning it into a novel, with gung gung's death and the big secret as the finale"

"DIDI! get off the car"


on to the news:
2 weddings (both in July, both in Sg. Consider yourself forewarned-forearmed)
2 jobs (fine, one is a 2 month research project I'm supposed to be working on from today. the other starts proper in April (May hopefully))
Sydney in April. I'll be there for a few days before the hurricane of a family hits.

A close friend sent me a piece on solitude after he found out that I actually enjoy it. I was on one of my KL diatribes, all loathing and nostalgic for Sydney and he asked me what I missed there that was absent here. Solitude ranked quite highly. Other, less mentionable factors went unspoken. And I forgot to say that I felt more fully of myself there than I did back here. That only occurred to me in the taxi.

new modem

did you catch it? did you catch it?

fine, so this is a day or two late but Barack Hussein Obama is now no. 44. Leader of the free world and all that. I'm not American, nor do I usually want to be, considering what the country has been through the past decade or so (can you say Bush?), but since this guy clinched the Democratic nomination I have had to grudgingly admire (and envy) Americans for the mobility their society affords to its best and brightest.


On to more pedestrian topics, CNY is around the corner. I can already feel its fiery breath in my skull as the heat takes over. Why does it never/ hardly ever rain during Chinese New Year? Did the astrologers who set the date manipulate the weather so to add to the suffering of celebrants? I've been reading too much sci-fi. I've read almost everything else in the bookcase and it is unfortunately addictive. No hidden meanings or moral preachings, pure entertainment. Much like watching E! but with no epilepsy-inducing flashes. I digress. CNY. Right. Anyway the whole thing must be messing with my head and twiddling with the little knobs which control my internal soundtrack. To give me Damien Rice. Not even new stuff, but the 2003 album. Freak. Depressing stuff.

You know that strange sensation where it feels like a lot of time has passed or a lot of things have happened in a short period of time but you can't actually place your finger on what has happened and you can't even say if anything has happened but you feel as if it has? I'm sure there's a phrase for it, but I don't know what it is.

[back in 5-6 days]

pax?

Israel has declared a cease-fire. Now, I've been rethinking my position on the conflict - although I do not condone the severity of the war waged by the Israelies, I do understand their reasoning.
more after lunch

almost end of the week update

I have been lazy. Forgive me?

So here's what I've been up to this week:

sent out summaries of research findings (finally)
- sent copies of thesis to participants who made requests
- received request from city council to present findings at a mini-workshop (! hahahaha)

applied for first job, wednesday 11am
- received call from company, wednesday 3pm
- phone interview
- second interview friday morning (blah, job not as interesting as I thought it would be)
- to know in a week or two if I got through to the third and final interview

finally bought clothes in KL
- topshop dress (that takes care of CNY)
- basic shorts

finally got a hair cut

And in between all of this, the usual going out, getting high, and a smidge of baking. I like KL best at night. You can't see the filth and the riff raff then. The lights wink at you as the car passes through the city, denizens of the city slave away in their little high rise cubicle-prisons.

Bright lights, city nights. Stay in the car, turn off the lights.

I read this some days ago and meant to link it but forgot: on kindness
food for thought. and something to aim for.

move aside metafilter

because viceland is my new favourite site. go. now. thank me later.