sing for november...

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i'd slept through most part of it, ipod stuck in the ears, save for the parts where they served the meals and when they stopped for toilet breaks along the expressway..
a solitary ride. yes i guess sometimes some things like these are not that bad after all. i can do solitary after all.
i see people travel in pairs, some a family of four or five, and many, a solitary trip as well.
they eat, they snooze. like me. then they wake up unable to sleep anymore, they start to plug in the huge headphones and join in the cheesy flicks on the drop-down screen...
some attempt to read.. i see one holding a novel from disembarkation until now. reading her "into the wild" on and off. yes, she is sitting just in front of me slightly. others attempt lighter stuffs like magazines. yes, she's sitting just next to me across the narrow aisle.
the others, they just sleep summore. on this home-leg of the journey, i am fortunate enough to manage myself a twin seat. the girl beside me shifted to a seat upwards with a power-point. imagine a pretty girl like her having to charge up her laptop while on a ride home from singapore, on a sunday.. .
now with my cardi up and my sleeves rolled-down, i hav one foot curled up under the other, while gibberishing on this... i just cannot sleep anymore.
and as i am at this, i cannot help dreading how i'll have to check on the woek week in advance once i reach home eight-ish later. yeah, i'll hav to make sure i do not fumble up on the meeting dates again... no, not again.

Work, Play, Life.
unfortunately, i cant seem to make them Not co-exist.


now that was the conclusion i made while i closed my book shut.
right after that the coach halted to a stop... both me and magazine-gurl across the aisle craned our neck out and saw the unmistaking bumper-to-bumper stretching all the way up.
almost instantaneously, we turned to look at each other and blurted out the same word.. "jam~"... and silently laughed at it all.. sigh~
and from then onwards the ride inched forward ever so painstakingly all the way past Seremban before it eventually got better.

what was supposed to be a 5-hour ride had me reaching home almost by 10PM....
that being said
i just luv KL ...
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~along Orchard Rd. the big new tree at the big new mall... ION Orchard...

at Bugis... a soupy lunch @ Ajisen Ramen.... and New Moon's all the rage there too :)


across bugis junction, another queer mall. the ILUMA... which looks like a giant bubble-wrap from the outside...

Chinatown... yeah, been there too but. i still wanted to go so badly.... the anticipation as the street and the sunglight emerges at the end of the long flight of stairs up (escalator larh~)

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another itch scratched...

footprints

we had another training workshop at the office this week.. this time, it was on Customer Service. as usual, i was not involved In the training, only, to arrange for the things preceding it. half day through the first day, our branch head from the pahang branch had to rush back to office.. as he had received news that one of the members of our technical team there had met with a road accident.. a fatal one.

this late morning, while preparing brunch in the kitchen, dad came home from his sunday swim at the selayang public pool. apparently, he cheated death (that's how i thought of it.. ) when an out-of-control cab drove straight into the back portion of his mini-lorry. the lorry was okay, the cab was not. the bonnet was up and the windscreen a goner. the driver looked like he wasnt there at all... dad was unhurt. i imagined all the worse things that could've happened.
for example, like if he was at the doors having his back facing the oncoming cab. or when he was just reversing his ride to hav the cab bang right into his driver side door.

yes, fragile. not in the humorous sense of fuh-gile, but really, life's good and Life Is fragile.

i'd have to remind myself time and again,...
that i shall not be too calculative on the petty stuffs in life.
i shall remind myself that work is after all, just work (it is a miserable pre-monday, sunday night after all..)
loathsome as it may be, WOEK.. i'd still hav to conform to it.. who else is gonna fund my trips and my dinners and my shoes otherwise yea??...

that being said, a recap of my weekend is a must i guess...
SY finally had her wedding reception tonight.. while yesterday morning was the tea ceremony at her parents' home at SD. we were roped in for the jimuis thingy... which we all obliged. turned out not too bad though.. better than what i'd expected. consolation came in the form of the outgoing jimuis... at least, they were less passive than i was (shame on me!).
consolation also came in the form of the old faces i saw from my college time.... Soo and some of the other guys... :)
my my, how things have changed. and yet, they still looked kinda same to me, like we were just hanging out at the mamaks not too long ago.. but then i had to tell myself.. that it's been almost 10years ago. some things must have changed... people grow and people move on.

dinner tonight was bearable... again, more faces from college time.
i cant help noticing too though, that ive been attending dinners lately where i've been seated near the aisle (to the door, that is..). so ive sort of concluded to Bo that, recent dinners had me attending to those of my acquantainces. either all my best and closest mates are married, or they're still very much single. hmm... a pretty simple conclusion, but still.


this week too, me and office mate Hristine had lots of 'free time' chatting away while the bosses were attending to the training. being the avid singer that she is (she freelances at events and cafes).. we very naturally chatted on songs.. from over the years to now. she had the courtesy to extend to me, some mandarin songs which i'd not been listening to for a while now.
well u know, a bit of Sandy, a bit of Shin, and a bit of Billie... :)



footprints.. all i wana say is, i guess... people from all sorts of manners and patterns leave footprints in our life.. at different stages, at different time and different places. school, college, work, holidays.
scattered they may be around our memories... but still.. you cannot deny the presence they once had in your life...
hmm,.. i do wunder how many sets of prints i've left in others' life...






another itch scratched...

the ties that bind..~

we're all grown up now... That, i could pretty much, be sure of, and confidently say...
all of us, cousins, are pretty much grown up by now.
attending marriages (we'v done church weddings and then we'v done some tea ceremonies at hotels too~) and hearing the baby showers of our cousins hav been pretty normal n frequent along these few years too~

we try our best to attend to all of 'em.. me and sis.
be it wedding ceremonies, receptions... or even on a more sombre note, funerals.
yes, of course, aside from the merry occasions of having additional members to the family tree, there would be also, of course again, senior members leaving the clan.. you see, most of the uncles and aunts we have a generation above us, are by now, well over the frail age of 60 plus...

hmm, yes. we made our very best effort to attend to all... well, most if not all.. at least for those we deem close and dear to us, even though, close and dear does not necessarily mean frequent visits and contact. these, i would say, are the ties that bind...

back to the cousins...
the elder batch has all gotten married now. yes, with the final one of the elder batch being rudy chen. happily hitched with a hongkie and leaving for home, london, soon. i got the chance to mutter the salutation 'ah sow' when i greeted them new couple and received my 'single status' cousin angpow. yes, i dare say that would be the only time i'd hav the chance to greet some stranger as ah sow. well, of course, stranger as she may be to me, she's now part of the family tree.

i cant say we cousins have a firm or in any way, affectionate grasp on each other. no, we're all somewhat strangers to each other too~ the only ties that bind, of corz, we cant erase that in any way either...

one thing for sure though, i'd be happy for All of how they all turned out to be now.. All meaning all the good and bad of it.
those married, and blessed with a brood, well i see on the primary that they're happy. well blessed with young and old in the household. i cant b bothered to scratch anymore beneath the surface... they still paint a happy picture to me.
those unmarried but in a 'its' complicated' mode, well, queer and boggling as it may be, still, i gotta giv it to them for their frankness and boldness in stepping up to it all.
those unmarried on papers, i see them nonchalantly forging ahead making a name for themselves too. not at all maiden-in-distresses, these cousins of mine are ferocious and independently carving out their own fortune..


well, well,... what am i trying to say here then?
nothing concrete... just some gibberish recap after spending a full day at holiday inn glenmarie, attending a first cousin's big day.. right from the 11am tea ceremony to the 8pm dinner reception.
yes, this one is Big. bigger than all the other cousin receptions.
rudy's the only male child of our generation. and his dad is the eldest of our uncles.
this one is a Big one where all aunts and cousins congregate. the one where i get to snoop at all their faces, and that of their spouses, on and off paper... =}


and im not gonna start with all the well-meaning queries on when i would be next.. .
i'd rather go swat a fly...




another itch scratched...

blurry

everything's movin' at lightning speed these days...
everything except me i shuld say.
is it just me? or is it just the rest of notme?
i'd say it's just me...
had i been so oblivion to things ard me?
to not notice them go unnoticed?
that suddenly it's november.. nearing december.. nearing another year...
that i find im nowhere nearer to anywhere than i was back in january.

i guess this doesnt realli specifically, literally implies on this gregorian calendar year..
but rather, the state of how things are .. revolving ard me.. like a mass of revolving dust, particles, unsettling, whirling around me... while i m but still, motionless in the epicentre...
yes, the universe revolves regardless.. like how it's certain night falls come every evening, and the sun comes up at 6ish everyday... regardless of whether i m still stationary.. regardless of whether i did not set the alarm to wake at 6ish.

it doesnt matter.. ~the rest of the world gets up and go... and the dust never settles...
vicious at times.. but amazing at most of the other times...





another itch scratched...

devilicious.. .

i cant really recall the last time i'd chased after the pages of a book so fervently...

the most recent prior to this, .. that was anything close to this, was Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death... yeah, tackily titled.. but still, it revolved around a detective (somewhat) in 1892 London...

anyhow... i guess ive just came to the conclusion that.. my taste for books hangs more loosely to the bizarre side...

ten days... it took me ten days, well.. not without sleep and woek time included of course, to complete all four books of the Twilight Saga..

i'm not sure whether 10 days is an impressive feat for 4 books... but still, i cant deny the rush and thirst for the story to unravel, eventhough i've somewhat known how the ending'd go..

still, at the same time, i hadnt really wished for the story to end so soon either...

hmmm... anyhow.. i am still glad, pretty much, to have stumbled upon this story.

fong has tipped me that there is a 5th book on hold... this time, "Edward's point of view", she said... Yes~! the whole book through Edward's perspective... (*grin*)

ive managed to download the unfinished copy from author Stephenie Meyer's site...

this one, i shall savour.. instead of devour...

crazy... i know.

another itch scratched...