Ouch

1. Woke up this morning feeling scared. Then somehow it flipped over and I was singing along to Laura Marling and SNSD while taking down posters from my wall.

2. YESTERDAY WAS MY SISTER'S BIRTHDAY! As we all know, I think my sister's pretty rad. In lieu of giving a present(because I'm broke like that), I tend to commemorate her birthday on the blog via really bad poetry(oklah, baru sekali je pernah buat, but maybe I'll make it an annual thing. The horror!)

The time has come
the walrus said
For me to do The Annual Tribute.
Where I say things and tell the tales
the world cannot refute.

About the girl who joined the world
In August of '85.
The girl whose torment of how many years
I commendably have survived.

But yes! She isn't always nice
She can be mean, and that's a fact.
Or maybe I'm just being dengki here
'Cause until now, she can't get fat.
(Whereas I can eat empty air
and end up like an obese cat).

Anyway.

She tells me that I drive so slow
"Like a makcik", I think she said.
And the time she said my cake was ugly
I wanted to bash her in the head.
(Sorry for the aggressive sentiments
But with baking I see red).

There was one time(and recently too!)
where we fought while I was driving.
Other drivers must have been perplexed
to see these two girls crying.

And we've been emailing each other less this year,
a fact that fills me with rue
But despite these things, I'm sure you know
That of course, I still miss you!

That I'd rather be bursting into your room
And crash-landing on your bed with glee.
And instead of being poor
I'd rather ask you to belanja me.

I'd rather be home,complaining you're slow
While helping mom make chicken pie.
And I'd rather be making you laugh at my jokes
Than typing all of this with a sigh.

Happy birthday kakak!You are still awesome,
I know that this is true.
And I couldn't think up two more lines for this verse
My poem is a failure, boo.

May you be blessed and graced
With all the things that make you happy.
And now I'll stop before things get
Unbearably sappy.

Joyeux Anniversaire!

Ok nak pergi buat tutorial bye.

I just picked up a parcel at the post office that contained my baju kurung raya, a raya card with individual messages from the family(you guys chose the nicest raya card out of the pack for me,right?), and a smuggled packet of Brahim's kuah rendang.

I'm going to miss them on Raya. I miss them right now. RIGHT NOW!

Feel

I really wanted to talk to someone after I got out of there! Almost immediately after I left, I started chuckling, I was giggling, and I felt infuriated at the same time, it was ridiculous and therefore funny. It was realistic and disillusioning and expected. How disappointing, how shatteringly funny.

I came out onto the street bursting to talk to someone, I wanted to have someone beside me to whom I could explode and voice out all my thoughts, the kind of conversation that would involve crazy hand gestures, high-pitched, incredulous exclamations, some slight hopping up and down, a genuine disregard for what the people around me might make of this lunatic I'd become. I wanted to be animated, I wanted someone in front of me to bear witness to this, I couldn't remember the last time I had so forceful an opinion I just had to make clear to someone, just for the sake of sharing this experience.

It felt like I'd been in a coma, being kept alive on feigned nonchalance, feigned interest, and feigned surprise, the mundane monotony of trying to match circumstances with the socially correct stock of reactions. Express suitable level of awe here, try to pass off friendly response there, attempt politeness, nod in understanding.

How silly. How sad.

But I didn't talk to anyone, and by the time I was sitting in the tram to go home, the last vestiges of the feeling were draining out, as I rested my head against the window.

You know what else I've been thinking? I've been hoping I'd be able to write something beautiful. If I can write something beautiful, something that draws you in, something that distracts you from your current happiness/sadness/indifference, something that feels like the silence that rings in your ears before you fall off the precipice.

I think I'd be happy if I could do that.

The usage of profanity when writing and also inside my head has been increasing, it worries even me.

Just about as much right as pigs have to fly

Having never read the original Alice In Wonderland before, when I came across it while trying to look for something to read in the library(useless fact #967:It takes me ages to choose a book to read. Indecisiveness is the new procrastination), I grabbed it with my grubby fingers and went off.

It somehow annoys me when people say that Lewis Carroll must have been doing LSD when writing the book, even when in jest, simply because it seems to imply no sane, sober person could have crazy awesome imagination. I may be arriving at this conclusion belatedly, but I think I love this book! Caterpillars smoking hookah pipes, babies that turn into pigs, grinning disappearing cats, a mouse that takes offense easily. The dialogue of the characters, the weirdness of it all. The Disney movie was always a favourite, but the book is more eccentric, disturbingly so at times. And Alice is different, she is ridiculous and likeable and she argues with herself and overall I quite like her. I don't know if I would have liked the book as a child, but I do now. I wonder if Jijim's read it.

It helps that the copy I've borrowed is an old, small, almost pocket-sized version, with yellowed pages and the apparently original illustrations by John Tenniel. It doesn't say when it was published, and the book's been rebounded by the library, so the cover's completely blank except for the title and author printed on the spine. It adds to the experience of reading it, I think.

Anyway. Have a nice Sunday.

Il pleut

I slept for 9 hours yesterday. Holy cow yeah man.

I need some new mind-blowing music. Mind-blowing. Plenty of decent stuff, but I haven't heard anything new that makes me want to gobble it up or liquidize it and consume it intravenously so that it would be part of my blood, that kind of mind-blowing. Maybe it's because I've been listening to too much kpop (the 'Kpop' playlist has been growing steadily), I must stop. But, while we're on the topic, my favored song by the hairless dancing adolescent variety at the moment is She's Back by Infinite(rookie group,ftw!).

Selamat berpuasa to those who do so! Seeing as how my demons seem to get the best of me most times, Ramadhan is a welcomed period.

You know how there are some people who take to cutting themselves? Well, I'm nowhere near that stage, but I think I have the much(much,much) watered down version in the form of looking up pictures of food when I'm fasting. I was doing the whole last-minute ganti puasa thing, and more often than not, whenever I was on the laptop, I found myself googling up recipe/cooking blogs, and savoring pictures of nasi lemak, nasi beriyani, sesame and soy sauce chicken, pau buns, banana bread, etc. I would look at these pictures, feel my taste buds pop out of my very head, and then contemplate how long it would be before I buka. Why inflict this self-torture(if you can call it torture?). I don't know. It was particularly pointless, given that when I buka pun, it would be with a self-cooked meal tasting of either oyster sauce, kicap manis, ketchup, chilli sauce, or a combination of any of these sauces(my cooking skills are as stunted as ever). It's not as if I'd get anywhere near the gastronomic heaven of nasi tomato and ayam masuk madu anyway.

It's pretty gloomy outside today.

I want scones. And I want durian.

Grown-ups

Hi.

I feel like I want to vomit out words, but strangely can't construct my thoughts as my fingers lightly brush the keyboard, awaiting orders.

Part of me wants to join the mad rush for the job search. Go to information sessions! Find out who's hiring international students! Do I need PR? Hurry up, Ayang, it's time to grow up. It's time to be a grown-up. It's time to know what to do.

Part of me sneaks glances at the faces around me in the theater, all attentive and ambitious, go-getter faces, asking questions, reassuringly confident with their abilities. I feel like a kid attending a grown-up event.At a friend's place I watch as my newly-made acquaintances talk about future plans and career paths, job options and bonds with sponsors, a million and one abbreviations and acronyms. These are people my age, and yet I feel infinitely childish compared to them, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing.

Part me just sits back and watches. I know it would be effective to start scouting around now, but this part of me is defiant. I have played it by the textbook so far-got decent grades, got into uni, not flunk anything, did the internship. Can I buck convention this time? I imagine my relatives asking me what I plan to do after this and me stubbornly sticking out my chin and saying "I haven't thought about it yet". And when they start giving me advice, what company I should join, what accreditation I should get, I'll cut in and say "Actually kan, I want to be a go-go dancer. Accounting is no longer my calling".

Some part of me has conceded that I am not terribly smart, not as smart as I thought I was anyway(oh, the perasan-ness), and part of me is fully aware that I am still a social retard. Another part of me has maintained a sense of vanity or conviction, I'm not sure, that I have something to offer employers, that I CAN do a good job, even if I don't know what that job is yet.

All this talk of jobs and future options. Tutors and lecturers and information session coordinators are encouraging us to ask them things we want to know about their profession or field of lecture, each time they extend this offer I want to go up and ask them "Are you happy?". And I don't mean this cynically at all, I genuinely want to know. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with the happiness factor, why I am so scared or certain work means being unhappy. Is it because my dad seemed so unhappy with his? I was talking with an acquaintance I met while I was in Canberra doing my passport, and somehow I actually blurted out the question, I asked him if he was happy with his job at the bank. He considered my question carefully before answering, that was nice of him.

I know I'm making everything sound like a downer, but it's all good, in a way. Having to think about this fork in the road, it brings up questions and it makes me second-guess myself, but not necessarily negatively. Maybe thinking about growing up is in itself part of growing up?

Confession. That scene in Fight Club where Marla says the reason why she goes to support group meetings is because when people think you're dying, they actually listen to you, instead of just waiting for their turn to speak, remember that? I'm pretty sure I do this sometimes, I don't listen. Sometimes I'm in a conversation,saying something, and I realize I haven't been attentive of my companion, that I keep drawing the conversation back to myself. I realize that, and then feel obnoxious as the words come out of my mouth.

Second confession. Sometimes, when I'm out and don't have my journal on me but suddenly have the urge to write things down, I end up scribbling on the back of receipts. I have this daydream of accidentally leaving one of the receipts in some public area(usually the library) and have someone find it and read it and not think it's stupid. And anytime I find folded up paper left on the tables in the library, I open it up hoping it would be something similar, written by someone else. It's a very Postsecret fantasy, I admit.

Oklah, nak kena pergi siapkan kerja rumah. I managed to vomit out quite a few words after all.