Like A Blind Date with a Dozen.

I have butterflies in my stomach, the kind you get before a date. I suppose this is like a blind date: I don’t know if they’ll come, how many will turn up, who they are and if we’ll get along at all.

I feel queasy and it feels great! With so many of the unexpected lovelies you meet, this had to come in the midst of five projects (with presentation and reports). I wished I had cleaned up my life before this but i suppose this is how it works sometimes.

I’ve got a really good feeling about this somehow. I think this is going to be one of my favourite babies.

Circa 2010 and Beyond.

I used to think i was on the forefront of web design but that’s false now. I am so circa 2005.

My HTML is dismal and my CSS is best described as ‘trial and error’. This is good news. It means that all throughout university i was learning something else. But I’m kicking my programming fingers into operation this term. Yes thank you Mr. Sumi. Three years of foobar on Visual Basics is finally paying off. Lo and behold, the payoff is dismal though. Oh well. Better than nothing.

Some social science students tend to recoil when it comes to numbers. It’s just numbers! Most of the math that you’ll encounter in an average smoo lifetime (if you didn’t major in QuantFinance, OpsMgmt, Accountancy or Econs) is often solely confined to statistics. Shut up and suck it up, folks. Statistics is your bread and butter if you align yourself with the behavioralists. Even if you lie on the other end of the spectrum (and i really do love and respect ethnography and its kin) understanding the language of math is important! Pay attention to the beginnings of an economic model (not the conclusion) where they state their assumptions. Economists could very well get away with murder. We’re partly to blame for not wanting to understand their language.

All the amazing works out there right now stems from interdisciplinary roots anyways.

No, it’s not good enough to cling to beliefs that Everybody Fails CAT or the like, though it’s likely that most people do fail the subject. So much the better for me!

The attitude for 2010 and beyond changes.

Starting now.

Shut Up and Get to Work.

I’m having the kind of day where you forget that all you ate for sustenance was two cookies for breakfast and a cup of coffee. Your tummy rumbles inside a meeting that you’re supposed to be leading but you know you’re rapidly losing control of.. well the meeting was okay, actually, it’s fine…. You’re just not completely sure whether you’ve grasped everything there is to grasp. Daniel doesn’t mind if you scream. 

Your body is feeding on reserve fat cells, turning them into glucose. It’s 4pm and you’ve got another meeting to go which rapidly spirals into an argument between two former lovers.  Her life is inside a suitcase with somewhere to go and nowhere to sleep tonight. What can you do?  You offer a room but you’re just a bystander. Deer in headlights. 

What the fark just happened here? You print a copy of the work over hushed tones and declare yourself a secret understudy. In the space of 24 hours you have 45 people to answer to outside of work which makes you happy, strangely. No you’re not confused, frustrated or panicking; you know exactly what to do.

That’s the weirdest part.

I’m having that sort of day.

All I need right now is a plate of food, a steady internet connection and maybe, a cup of coffee.

Long night tonight. Here we go.

Declaring Independence.

All at once, I don’t feel foreign at all. I don’t belong anywhere.

You know what, screw these socially constructed notions of nationality. I’ve had it, trying to fit in. I’ve had it trying to make concessions and going all out so i won’t lose touch with. with what exactly? So we worry about having anchors, worry about having nothing to say to one another but there it is you see: SMALL TALK.

I’VE HAD IT WITH BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT.

I’m making my own tribe.

Love Thy Neighbour.

I am hesitant to write about politics. I am not afraid of my opinions. I have lived here for eight years and Singapore is part of who I am but I cannot lay claim to it. I am afraid because I do like to live here. Remember I am a lowly migrant, humbly seeking a rice bowl in this lovely country.

It is a lovely country. I admire your pavement. I’m not being sardonic. I really do admire your flawless roadwork.

Peerless.

Dinner with Chloe finally! I know you’ll scoff at this but I missed you, for all the reasons I have outlined over dinner.

This is all I have lately. Not a lot of our lives are fit for print. It’s really not that interesting. Sometimes when it is interesting, it is often something that should not be written.

And that? That is the end to all the emo you’re going to get. I promise!

Also in other news I need fresh blooooood. BLOOOOOOD!

To a humanist,

You!

Yes, you!

I hope you’re happy now!

(=

Maybe when it all works out, you’d be one of the many proofs that
It exists.

as real as dust.

Guilty Pleasures on a Wednesday Night

Over dinner, the Racial Harmony Gang spent Ladies Night over non-halal satay, halal seafood pasta, vegetarian veggies, chicken rice, diced tomatoes and pig’s organ soup at Ann’s house with Singapore Idol playing on the telly. Talk about guilty pleasures. After discussing the merits of Singapore Idol…

“eh hallo? You don’t love your parents?”

“Did she just come out of the closet with that song?”

“WHY WOULD THAT BOY DEDICATE ORDINARY PEOPLE TO A GUY?”

and oh with much protests on my side…

“Sezairi is not a mat! He’s such an adowable dork! LOOK! He can sing.”

“You are such a minah”

“Nooo. He’s not a mat!”

“He’s wearing skinny jeans!”

The conversation got a bit racy when Ann started telling racist (and deliciously funny) jokes. Don’t really want to say what the joke was.

Okay.

It was about smelly indians. *gasp*

It’s okay! CRUNCH IS TOTALLY INDIAN. She was there. That makes it okay.

..and then she said…

“It’s because of the coconut milk right? You bathe in coconut milk.”

*Crunch and I keels over with laughter*

“What coconut milk? NO we don’t.”

“IT’S COCONUT OIL LA! Not coconut milk! You know what you get if you mix and Indian with coconut milk? Pulot Hitam”

Ho, midweek break feels goooood. Reality television is best watched with twerps who will cringe with you. Seriously, SI. Enough with the running notes! Nobody does it right. And please tell me why Charles “Stitch” Wong is still there? His friends are loaded aren’t they?

Yep. Life’s good.

Declutter.

I’ve been bunkering at home and at the library for the past week, taking stock of all the clutter. Did resurface a few times for a break. You know the feeling you get when you suddenly want to cut off all your hair? Yeah.

I reorganized my files, created backups, tossed all the useless items and defragged it. I feel a lot better now.

I need to meet chloe and zoe but where the hell are yoooooo? no msn, no geetalk and no sms at all.  So i’m sending out a smoke signal here. Poke if you’re still alive or in the same country okais?

bah.

Oh my god what the f’k was i thinking when i wrote that babble on race/ethnicity. I sound icky. I vow not to write this sort of subject when I can’t sleep at 3am when I clearly am not fully awake enough to think it through properly.

Night Mares.

After hanging out at Psychology Today, i think i figured out why I have these strange upsetting dreams.

Threat dreams is the norm. We have it to simulate danger. We get to do it over in our head so that when it comes, you’re prepared. Read it here.

ugh. The dreams i remember keep getting weirder.

On Being Un-Malay

“You’re so un-malay. I think i’m more malay than you are. I’ve got some malay in my family too”
says my half chinese half peranakan friend.

“I’m un-malay” yeah there’s no need to get competitive, my dear.

Takdir & Ikhtiar.

One day you feel happy. The next day you’re … purposeful? Jaws clenched with a vision and a list of things to do. And the day after that, you wake up from some hazy nightmare and you are a small colourless unwanted mess stitched entirely out of flaws. Sometimes, I feel like a speck of dirt. I am a grain of sand. 

The Fancy Word is… Exult!

“What was that about?”

“I was caught skipping across campus green. They saw.”

“So why are you happy?”

“Because… I don’t know. I just am!”

Sometimes My Brain Falls Asleep.

elle says (7:43 PM):
how’s MIS?
Renee Arlette says (7:44 PM):
wat u mean how’s mis? u mean e grp proj or?
lol
tot we cldnt do anything yet?
elle says (7:46 PM):
we tried meeting up and then at that meeting we realised we couldn’t do anything until this week’s class
haha
Renee Arlette says (7:46 PM):
ya…im in ur grp wat..
Renee Arlette says (7:47 PM):
lol
elle says (7:52 PM):
OH SHIT
HAHA
I forgot
omg bimbo moment

Peristalsis.

Have you ever felt that something is happening somewhere today in a wave of consequences that will affect you in some profound way but you have no idea what it is or how it will change you but you know that it will? Birds and elephants know minutes before that the ground beneath them will shake, tectonic messages tapping on their hooves and claws telling them to be prepared for the best and the worst.

It’s like that. An eerie discomfort.

But because I’m human, if I say it out loud I sound like a paranoid freak. Or someone who’s dreaming too much about Flashforward and midget clowns. Something is going on but I don’t know what.

I Chose Silence.

Dear Kitty and The Curves,

I don’t know what to say to you both. I’ve written pages, all in honesty with an outline of the arc that’s missing in your story. Any more words from me and it will be deja vu. You don’t want me to write it. It wouldn’t be right. I still believe you two are the best people for the job. You may resent my silence. Take it as a sign that I’ve given up, that I have disappeared.

I haven’t, really.

I’m still here with words clutched in my hands, voices in my head but they’re different from yours. I don’t want to intrude but if you want to hear it, take it as scribbled ideas on paper. Toss it aside if it doesn’t appeal to you or keep it. I mean no offence and I’m afraid of saying how I feel with honesty.

I can’t do this anymore.

It’s Not An Arranged Marriage If You’re Liberal.

Mama,

Have you considered adoption? I know you wish he was your son. He’s charming. He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s hardworking. He has a master’s degree. He fits so well with our family. We like him too. Dad would trust him with his life. You would gladly keep him around for eternity. Grandma adores him. His parents are wonderful.

But I’m sure there’s a state somewhere in the world where it is possible to be a permanent legal guardian for a thirty year old man. So please adopt him! Maybe it’ll come with the right to feed him dinner every single night and never permit him to leave the house. It’s much better than getting your stubborn daughter to

… wait what is it that you want me to do exactly? Consider falling in love with this man? Seduce him into proposing so that he’ll marry into our family? He may be good for me but I’m positive I’m lethal.

Try adoption, mother! It’s much easier.

Please!

Because I own an extra pair of tentacles.

Ahh family reunions. Mid-conversation, a tilt of your head and your eyes glaze slightly for a second and then:

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

or “Why are you still single?”

Same question really.

I think I’ve got it down to a science, economics to be precise

A Stillness and A Stirring.

I sleep.

Mama thinks I’m lazy.

She doesn’t know this is the closest thing to a frontal lobotomy.

I’m not auditioning. I have a lot of things on my plate. I think I need to go for a run. Or something.