Genesis

Two Sundays ago...

Driving to town for brunch, Phil Collins was belting out Easy Lover over Mix FM. Rizal turns to me and says,

"Is that Phil Collins?"

"Yes it is."

"You sure? I thought his voice wasn't so high?"

"Yes it's Phil Collins."

"Hey, what band was he in before he became Phil Collins?"

"Err..., can't remember."

"Eh, yalah. It's him and his band. I can hear him in the background, it's not him with the high voice, it's the rest of his band."

"Yah orr. But I still can't remember what's his band called."


The issue has been bugging me ever since. Everytime Phil Collins came on, I'd think, "What band was he from?". I kept thinking of Simple Mind, for some inexplicable reason.



Last Sunday...

We were heading for dinner at Purple Cane, going through that roundabout on Jalan Tun Razak from Jalan Pudu, listening to the radio when Phil Collins comes on the airwaves again.

Then it hits me.

"Genesis!" I yell out.

"Hey, that's it! That's the band he's from." Rizal says.

Then silence.

I take a few seconds to think.

"Eh, how did you know what I was referring to?"

"Well, we were talking about it the last time and it was an unresolved issue."

"Hmmm..."


Strange, the things you know without saying out loud when you've been together for donkey's years.

Blue and Green

Feeling a little blue because it's a Monday and the start of the week.

A little green because I think I ate too much over the weekend, caught a major sinus run last night, and woke up with a sore shoulder today. Bad things happen in threes.

More of a foodfest tonight, but luckily it will be the last night of entertaining a supplier. Sigh, the real work begins after tonight though. Oh well...life and work must go on.

Banned the kitties from the bedroom last night because of sinus. Pixel yowled at the door at around 6am but was plainly ignored.

Looks like it's back to work and to another hectic week.

Saturday...

It's Saturday and the kitties were all over us this morning for us to get up to feed them. I ignored them till Rizal got up to feed them at about 9 or 10, I can't remember.

Just had loh mien, fried tofu and coffee at Yut Kee. Since they needed the table I took my kat chai shuen mui to Bodhi Tree and had my brownie there. Rizal is off for his Lampe Berger thingy at Berjaya Times Square and will be there for oh, another 8 hours or so.

My Bath Circles appointment was at two but seeing as I was running late and too sleepy anyway, I've postponed it till 5pm. I'm just gonna be stinking of Chinese massage oil when I meet the rest of the lomo freaks after that. Euch!

We're gonna be around KLCC and will be headed to Aquaria at KLCC (that's the KL Convention Centre, not KL City Centre) just a short walk away. It will be interesting. We'll be meeting fellow lomo freak Pink Sushi for the first time and well, I hope I won't be too late.

Even as I'm writing this I feel sleepy...

It's like a drug. Oh, wait a minute!! I remember...I took polaramine this morning. Shit!! Urgh...

I'm going...

going...

going...

... ...

...

Checked again...

I thought about it and figured, if I didn't hit the body with the curb, I might have got the rim or the undercarriage. I checked again.

There were scratches on the rim, but no, the undercarriage is fine.

Wow, the old 7 series is tougher than I thought.

Harbinger

I banged the car today.

It was loud and it sounded painful. I was navigating the little roundabout in front of my house. It's little because it's not more than 7 - 8 feet in diametre, put there instead of a road bump so people would slow down on the straight road heading into my residential area.

So there I was, already late for work, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift (it's an auto, what's my hand doing there?). I reach the roundabout and the next thing I know, I hear a tremendous bang on the front left corner of the vehicle. Fuck! The hit is hard enough that my hand moves the gear shift from D to N, and the engine just roars without moving.

Damnit! What the fuck was I thinking? Why wasn't I paying attention? I'm too upset to stop immediately and check the damage. I'm thinking it's gonna be a huge dent and that I should have just insisted with management on a smaller car and not some blurdy huge tank to drive around, beamer though it may be.

I gun it almost all the way to the office, all the while kicking myself for being so careless. There doesn't seem to be any exceptional vibrations or shake to the car, so I hope it's OK. I recall when I first got the car earlier this year I was treating it with kid gloves, begin extra careful to go slower around corners (it is a big car) and road bumps.

I get to the office slightly late. I scoot into a side parking slot, switch my slides to my heels, then steeled myself to go check out the damage.

I couldn't spot the damage. I thought it'd be huge or bad, judging from the horrible sound in the morning. I thought that there was a dent on the body right after the wheel but upon closer inspection, it didn't seem to be a dent. I walked over to the driver's side to see if the "dent" was also on that side. The driver's side did have the same "dent" (strange the things you don't notice if you don't really look; i never noticed there was a slight indentation on the body right after the wheel, where the door is).

So I guess it was all sound and no effect? I dunno. But I gotta remind myself to be more careful when driving, especially with big cars. I can't recall the number of times I've scraped the rim of Dad's Merc on curbs and pavements while turning. Sigh...I hope this isn't a sign of things to come over the weekend.

Things in common

I share a common trait with Korean women. Korean women on screen, anyway.

Apart from the fact that I am nowhere near as pretty or cute as they are, I'm just about as violent as they are. On-screen, they tend to be quite physically violent. They like to slap and push their men around. I've only watched a handful of Korean movies - My Sassy Girl; Love, So Divine; Handyman (I think that was the title, can't remember) - and I realized that all leading ladies in those movies shove, hit, slap, whack or push their men around.

The one movie that plays the physically violent woman to the hilt is My Sassy Girl. Not only is Jeon Ji Hyun physically violent, she's also quite selfish and mean. She makes the guy exchange his trainers for her high heels and will not stop at just letting him carry her heels around the park, she makes him wear them!! She also whacks him around and does a host of other mean stuff but somehow the director manages to make her seem quite endearing at the same time. Maybe it's because she's pretty enough to let the physical abuse seem like endearment when she lays it on the poor guy.

I'm not that bad but I'm not known for being girly or refined. Mot friends (guys especially) will remember me for my violent tendencies, of which I will not elaborate.

I thought that portraying the women as physically violent was just a parody of real life. However, one Korean friend did mention that the men have to be "more pushy" because if they weren't they'd be pushed around by the women.

Got ah, like that one?

Wah. Violence begets violence?

Luckily I don't whack or kick people so much anymore. :)

Aliens have abducted my sibling

Warning: the following excerpt is written with loads of sarcasm and should be taken with a whole fistful of salt.


Although upon further reflection, that may not be entirely true. It's more like the aliens have made a few tweaks to her hard drive and reinstalled Win XP with some other renegade programme in there that I haven't encountered before. Or possibly not installed Symantec so there's some virus running around loose in the system.


And before I get bombarded by said sibling again, I wish to reiterate (as I've said in her Friendster profile): she is ANAL with caps for all four letters of the word. But only her family gets to see that bit of her, not the rest of the world.


I should know. I get the brunt of it. And for the life of me, I can't imagine why. Maybe it's because I'm too direct and blunt and she's too hypersensitive to take barbs or constructive criticism or even statements of fact about her character without flying off the deep end.


Anyway, back to the alien hard drive reinstall. See, when she's at home (or when I was still living at home and was around to see her at home, as she'd put it), she'd be moping or grumpy or monosyllabic.


"Hey, I heard you're going out? Where are you going?"

"Out lah."

"Yeah, I know. Where?"

"Out lah! Why must I tell you?"

"I just want to know. Kehpoh lah!"

"Out lah!! Why do you want to know?! Why must you know?!"


See, typical sis behaviour. As if telling me where she's going would kill her.


Usually most attempts at asking her plans for after hours, who she's meeting up with or details about her personal life ends up in a conversation similar to the one I've just illustrated. It got to the point where our mother couldn't bring herself to ask her where darling sis is going out as she didn't want to get snapped at.


I should give her a new nickname: snapping turtle.


Anyway yes...and sis is not the type to hit the dance clubs or socialise excessively. She's more of the stay-at-home person (during the time I was still living at home, of course. I wouldn't know now as I don't live at home and I wouldn't want to ASSUME I know everything). However, since her introduction and induction into salsadom, all that's changed. Not only is she a social butterfly, she's even picked up a penchant for Joe Satriani. Satriani? What next? I'll probably hear her screeching her lungs out to The Darkness or headbanging to Metallica? This was someone who didn't have a clue about or showed any interest in World Music either. Next I suppose she'll be raiding my CD collection for Ruben Gonzalez, Ibrahim Ferrer, Celia Cruz or The Buena Vista Social Club. The greats certainly been sitting there a long time without her noticing that they were there.


I think it's great she's expanded her music repertoire from Josh Groban and Russell Watson to Satriani and salsa/latin. The transition somehow just seems to have been done at triple light speed. What transition? Hahah!



Oh, the social butterfly bit. Not that I ASSUME to know what she was like before, but she was less of a social butterfly than a social misfit (yes, I'll be getting yelled at again for this). Never known her (here again I go ASSUMING) to be very much of a conversationalist or sociable person. But hey, here she is now: fluttering from one end of the dance floor to the other, pals with almost everyone.


Which is cool, of course. No problems with me. If only she could be more sociable with yours truly and the rest of the family and less of a snapping turtle. At least the family have seen the crazy, insane, happy side of me together with the grumpy, moody bits. I doubt if the parental units see much of sis' bubbly side at home.


I think the aliens didn't do a good enough reinstall job. They reinstalled her skills at socialising outside but left the networking with family bits to rot. Sure, I annoy the hell out of her. For the life of me I don't know why. Except for the fact that I ASSUME everything and that I ASSUME to know everything. And that somehow seems to annoy her. Because she assumes I ASSUM to know everything.

However, I have it on good authority that ever since she took up salsa, she's become a changed person. Socially, that is. She reserves the worst bits for her family and some of her close friends (hmm, sounds like somebody I know...). Which brings me to ponder that change. It's all happening a little too fast, too much. What was the name of that movie? Too fast, too furious? And not overall, but only a selected side of her. A friend put it succinctly. "It all seems rather superficial. Maybe we should treat it as her mid-life crisis." Well, I would except that she's not even reached her thirties yet. Hahah! And no, said friend and I do not spend all our time bitching about how anal she is as we DO have better things to do with our time, such as enjoy Banoffee pie and exchange wisecracks about life and work in general. Not everything we do and say has anything to do about anal sis.


My two cents' worth about the whole alien abduction/hard drive reinstall?

1. Finally, she's learned how to socialise. Great!! Shows that you can pick up more than just salsa while learning how to dance (some guys have picked up gfs too!). Social skills always come in handy.

2. She's into Satriani? Hahah, she should raid my CD collection. And Jus should loan her The Darkness. And she should give Green Day a try. Since she likes All American Rejects, Good Charlotte, etc. Green Day is, in my opinion, THE pioneer of the genre. And then on to some Metallica. Rock Rules!! Oh, and to Latin music. See, there is more to music than Josh Groban and Harry Connick Jr., not that I don't simply adore the latter.

3. Too much socializing makes Jill an exhausted girl, eventually. I've done my share of it in college and university. Now's her turn I suppose. She always was a late bloomer.

4. Despite the socialising and the added social skills, she is still as ANAL as ever. I still can't, for the life of me, figure out why the hell she finds me so annoying (she hates my guts?). Sigh, like I said, there must have been something left out during the reinstall.

5. Oh, and yes, there are a myriad other worlds of fiction out there, Neil Gaiman would be just one of them. I would recommend Clive Barker's Abarat, Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality, a douse of Steinbeck, some Salman Rushdie (East Meets West is a good start), Terry Pratchett, and lots more actually.

6. She'd better learn how to take sarcasm at face value. And learn how to either accept what people say about her or learn to let it just roll off. And to accept statements of fact as what they are: statements of fact. You either take it or learn from them and improve where you can.


All I know is, she used to be a cute, smiley, good natured albeit quiet kid with an aversion to strangers. Somewhere along the way growing up she morphed into a grumpier, more introverted version of yours truly. And then suddenly now, she's a social butterfly, but at home she's as reserved as ever. At least I can lay claim to being a moody, grumpy, obnoxious kid (with sudden bursts of bossiness and energy and effervescence) ever since I've been born (I really haven't changed that much).


Again, these are just statements of fact and personal observations. I make no claim whatsoever of complaining (I should put a disclaimer here and reiterate that).


Maybe the aliens should just rebuild her entire system. Switch her from Windows to Mac OS. She'd be cool on the inside as well as on the outside.


Oh yes, and I am expecting to be fried for this piece. Oh well...what's new anyway? After all, the blood connection allows for and forgives transgressions by and from both parties. I dunno about her but my motto (unless you've done something so unspeakable) is forgive and forget. But that may be due to my exceptionally bad memory anyway. Oh, and of course she has her good side too. But I'll leave that for another day and another post. :)

slightly off kilter

There is something about the way a person uses the windshield wipers of a car that annoys the living daylights out of me.

I don't know what it is, I think I'm just slightly demented about this (Slightly? I think this may be an understatement).

I wrote about this sometime ago on my lomo blog about how irritated I can get, especially when the person is driving my car. Well, that happened again over the weekend.

Hubby was driving my car when it started drizzling, then pouring, then drizzling again. The thing about windshield wipers is, if there's no rain or water or just a slight drizzle, I'll turn the wipers off till the screen gets really blotchy. Some people turn on the wipers and just totally forget about them and leave them on even though the rain has ceased or has slowed to a drizzle.

For some inexplicable reason, I find that utterly, infuriatingly annoying. And if the windshield wiper control were on the left side of the steering wheel, I'd reach over and turn it off myself. If not, I'd snap at the driver or grumble till the cows come home.

If there's no water to get rid of, why leave the darned wipers on? It's esepcially irritating when there's an audible "whup, whup, whup" when the wipers go across the screen.

Since we were ferrying guests around (and I didn't want to look like a naggy, hen-pecking wife), it took all the restraint I could muster to just tell hubby ONCE to turn off the wiper. He left it on again after another bought of downpour slowed down to a drizzle. I had to sit on my arm (which so wanted to reach over and give him a smack) and bite my tongue (which wanted to snap, "turn the wiper off! can't you see there's no rain?") so as not to appear the monster wife to our friends in the back seat. The rubber was practically streaking across the screen, almost screeching as they went. Still he left them on! AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!

I had to endure at least 5 minutes of watching the wipers pass blindly in front of me before hubby noticed the lack of rain and turned the blurdy things off. Luckily my butt is heavy enough to keep my hands to myself. Next time, I'm driving my car myself. It would spare me needless anguish.

Hothead

Looks like the hair's a hit! Especially to those who can't remember what I look like in short hair or who haven't seen me in it.

Alternatively, my two best buddies had this to say when I emailed them a pix of my short new do, "aiyah, we've seen you in short hair before mah!". Heheh, so much for being enthusiastic for me.

No matter, I know them well enough.

Good reactions all around to the new short crop. People at the office are like, "wah!" and the salsa gang is quite happily surprised too. More so than I'd thought. Especially Sam. Heheh, I should do this more often: change my look.

Rizal said to me, "You look like a boy! From the back anyway."

Oh well...I'm happy. Feel like a load of junk's off my head (and shoulders) AND I don't have to contend with irritatingly messy hair, urgh! And I don't look like I'm balding!!! Hahahaha!! Got some of the incredibly high forehead of mine under shadow.

Kudos to Sean, my stylist.

So far so good

Not bad. My ETEN is still surviving. I think it's been two or more weeks. I've dropped it twice (both times from my table to the carpet at the office), I've jostled it around in my handbag. It's still working and in good condition.

I've only messed up once: deleted my contacts folder from my outlook when i synced to my T41.

Other than that, it's as good as a phone cum pda can be lah though the camera sucks and the battery life leaves more to be desired.

Feline escape

Last night Meg made a stealth escape. Again!

Only difference is I noticed earlier. I sent Rizal out on a search mission and he would have got her except that for some inexplicable reason, she bolted when he neared her. Bolted not to hide but to escape capture! Of course, this meant I had to go do the job myself, so armed with the torchlight, I headed out into the back garden.

The good thing about searching for cats at night is that their eyes will reflect light. So there they were: those two eyes reflecting off the light of my torch, crouched in the dark with two white paws attached to them, hiding by a bush. Unlike Rizal's experience, our furry friend didn't bolt away but tried to crawl into a bush. Crawl into a bush away from me? Fat chance! I grabbed her midsection and dragged her out. She didn't put up much of a struggle and I carried her back in, paws a little grimy from ground and bits of undergrowth stuck to her belly.

Looks like I'll have to be the one going on the search missions from now on. Rizal just seems to bring out the worst in the girls...

Sigh...bummer for me.

Last week in history...

Highlights of last week:

1. I got locked in the office because I'd forgotten my keys. After I'd been rescued, I found out I had them with me all along! Such an idiot!

2. I got plastered on Wednesday (first drinking session in months!) and then crashed on the bed, fully clothes, without showering, bleck!

3. Because of said drinking session, my performance the next day during my team's canvassing round was less than satisfactory. Mild hangover in the morning, lost the ability to bend over without keeling over.

4. Meg got herself lost. Escaped through the back door (no idea how), made us panic and worry for the rest of the day, and finally, when we'd come back from dinner, was meowing at the back door to be let in. Highlight of the day for her: a shower.

5. Buying spree for household product: vacuum cleaner (my life is a model for mundane).