listerine dream

why i love penny arcade.... tycho on wikipedia:

what you've proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information.

schrodingipedia!

i come online when i'm lonely, when the only other validation i can get is to imagine that i'm that sister in the virgin suicides who jumps out of her window and impales herself on the fence. i'm not a fan of physical pain but i can visualise it very well. it makes it difficult to have conversations with my grandma, who loves to regale us with her long long long history of gruesome medical ailments. just you try being an attentive granddaughter when you're covered in goosebumps and about to hurl.

i'm lonely now because b is away and lately, i've realised that i'm unable to get close to any of my colleagues, even after a year. all the new people buddy up after a few months and all the old ones are already in comfortable cliques and i'm just alone. i have people to eat lunch with but i wouldn't ever call them up outside of the office to go watch a movie or drink beer or something. i don't really mind but it bothers me.. am i really going to go postal one day and hack a whole bunch of people to death?

i come online coz there are other people here. and validation.. well, it can be sought. i could post naked pictures, for example. and then the straits times would write an article about me. and then i'd get a contract with one of the gazillion weight-loss companies and ta-daa... totally validated.

back to work.. i feel like ender sometimes. isolated and singled-out and that was the only way they could produce the genius to wipe out the bugs. i'm no genius. but it's hard to retain friends when you come with a pedigree and rapid-fire promotions and bosses are pleased with you for no good reason. it honestly feels like somebody's cruel experiment.. where they've set up the situation and secretly planted a whole bunch of electrodes under my skin and are waiting to see how i cope. if i cope.

if i fall, they'll all be watching.

ever since i got my nissan march, i feel this affinity with all other nissan march drivers. i love them, their cute cars and the weird looks we give each other when we end up side by side. but i also want to race them, for some reason. damn right.. when the light turns, i'll be slamming the gas pedal faster than you can yell "brake pads!"

actually, for some reason they always want to race me too.

i woke up this morning from a dream that m and t had gotten married, but t was wearing these weirdass large green flower earrings and bad eyeliner. and t wears the pants in this relationship (literally) so it was a trifle odd. it was raining outside.

i decided i wouldn't go to work. my employer actually has pretty good non-pay benefits, among which is the concept of a "call-in sick day", where you can just call in sick (doh) and an MC isn't needed. it's a thoughtful gesture, for when people are plagued with minor ailments that don't warrant a doctor's visit and feel too shit to go to work. me, i just felt too shit to go to work. so i called in sick, feeling a faint fog of guilt but that evaporated once i took my post-breakfast nap. mmmmm...

it's incredibly liberating to just slouch around. i'd been having this nervous tic thing since the not-so-relaxing vesak day weekend, where my lower right eyelid palpitates like a fish out of water. today, it went away. i walked my dog, read the papers, had my lunch and finished the diamond age, all without feeling that i owed people things or that people were screwballs or remembering that i was miserable.

so liberating it may be addictive. i'm addicted to being happy, are you?

but ..heh.. these call-in sick days are limited in number. i guess i'm not going to rant about the system that holds me captive and rations me my happiness, because that's old news. and the govt no like complainers, eh?

mmm. stupid philip yeo article. worse that right after i read it, i went into total rant-mode (woe to the people in my immediate vicinity) and spluttered angrily about how the P@P should control its people and make them not say stupid things.

so i guess that means that i think totalitarian governments are ok, provided they go about it with some subtlety.

ahahahahaha! sigh.

not that we have a totalitarian government, but since control is exerted over so many things, you'd think NOT letting a prominent person overreact and triggering all these totalitarian government comments would be a no-brainer.

what's the point in generating slick PR when it's so easily destroyed? micro-example: those a-star ads that say "be different", "challenge assumptions", etc etc.

when sporeans go abroad to work/study, we really are mini-ambassadors. we dispel the common myths - no, we're not part of china.. yes, everyone speaks english there.. no, it's not as bad everyone makes it out to be. but all it takes is just one sensational statement to undo the amalgamation of small positive things. this isn't the slick PR too.. it's genuine. at least mine was genuine.. and now i just feel ashamed.

in a funny mood.

i can't pretend to have had a very solid life really. i'll come right out and say it: i'm a slob. i've gone through my four-and-twenty (blackbirds)(baked in a pie) doing things for the wrong reasons. certain days i can look back and sagely yet bemusedly reflect on my youthful folly.. but other days my ribs crumple in a giant grimace and it feels like nothing has changed and it will always be so.

and if you're wondering what kind of folly.. it's nothing like that. nothing sensational. always half-baked. awkward. shouldaknownbetter.

---

it's been an amalgamation of things actually.

1. had a harried morning.

2. attended a typical management BS session, replete with very slick slides. the government is one smooth PR machine, some parts smoother than others. i believe i was actually optimistic about the afternoon, but at the end of it, cynicism was leaking out the corners of my mouth and it was so ugly i couldn't help the thoughts they were flying out like little poisonous bats.

3. someone i hadn't seen in a few months told me "you look like you've aged a lot". gee, thanks a bunch.

4. felt like a wuss when my night elf just played spectator as a lone lvl 60 undead raided astranaar. all these other people were chipping in to finish him off, but me, i stood at the fringes of the action and /clapped.

5. found a site of an old friend. or not-so-friend. i don't know anymore. (if you're interested, wuhr.com.. she takes gorgeous pictures)

---

oyasumi.

i think today i take the irrecovable step away from the early twenties. i am now TWENTY FOUR. that's TWO DOZEN and two dozen is plenty of eggs.

i tend to romanticise birthdays as special events, although i don't really do much in the way of celebration. i mean, i would never throw myself a birthday party, nor would i be pleasantly surprised if someone threw one for me (it'd be more like "wtf? i just wanted to take out my contacts and go to bed.."). but for some reason, it feels like birthdays should be happy days, where one wakes up with good hair and things are just peachy keen for the next 24 hours.

even though in the history of me, that has never happened.

but tomorrow i'm on leave. and i have grand grand plans. heh. we make our own specialness? *blink blink*

i am SOOOOOO addicted to WoW that i'm a little scared. it's worse than when i started playing sims. now everyday i can't wait to go home and become a gnome (it rhymes) and run around doing quests so i can earn money so i can buy things so i can do quests rhubarbrhubarbrhubarb

meep.

i can't help it! it's more fun than this life. o_o

if emotions can't crawl out of you to die on the internet because the walls someone built are too high, what happens when there's a pile of carcasses and it's growing and festering..

i stuck something sharp into my thumb today and i had a meeting with my boss while blood was seeping out from under my fingernail and he never said a thing. i wanted to be a kid and wave the thumb in his face while preening "ooh, it hurts!" and melodramatically flourishing the blood-spattered tissue. but i didn't say a thing either.

is it a grown-up thing to digest pain? like a rabbit eating its own poop, over and over and over again.

you know, how can kate bosworth be so pretty? she has perfect features.. eyes cheekbones, everything! *seethes*

i'm walking to work today, amidst the litter and fragrant fumes of dog urine, and ..pop.. this memory bursts in my head like fireworks.

when i was small (because now i am so big), i firmly believed that if i stood still enough for long enough, birds would think that i'm some kind of bush or tree. and especially with the lure of biscuit crumbs in my hand, they'd be persuaded to land on me. a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, donchaknow.

i was insanely captivated with the idea of having birds land on me. i think it's some disney byproduct.. wasn't snow white veritably covered in birds? BUT! not with bird shit, hence the attractiveness. oh, how disney perverted nature and children's minds.

anyway no adult deigned to illuminate me with the truth so i spent a few futile afternoons standing in the sun with crumbs in my hands.

(while we're at it, i read in some enid blyton book that if you put salt on a sparrow's tail, it wouldn't be able to fly. that i also tried to no avail.)

if anyone's wondering why i'm back (i know nobody comes here.. except maybe medha.. hi medha!) it's coz i finally got a desktop in my room. to play WoW. ta-daa!

hello.

one of my colleagues made a comment yesterday that can be succinctly put as:

"you've been looking pretty shit lately."

and it is kinda true. i revive momentarily on the weekends so i can look pretty at church while my grandma crows to her friends about her brilliant grandchildren (without fail, EVERY sunday).. but come monday i acquire a greenish cast and my eyebags bloat overnight.

i checked the other day and my bond value is $437k. what price, youth?

i am reading: enduring love by ian mcewan

i have recently read:
empire falls by richard russo
the forger by paul watkins
the lord of the flies by william golding

about that, for some reason the visual of piggy's head exploding as the rock hit him has been stuck in my head. not very nice leh.

i just watched quill last night.. yup, the japanese movie about the cuuuuuuute dog. i wept buckets. and after that, i had morbid thoughts about my own dog dying and wept some more. the movie dog was essentially the embodiment of goodness. and though its lifespan was so much shorter than that of all the humans, its birth and death marked the beginning and end of the movie, with the humans relegated to the background really. it's sort of like a psycho-slap saying, this dog did so much with its 12 years, what have you done with your threescore and ten?

a psycho-talking-slap.

not very lucid today.

my short term memory is really lousy now.. i rely on little notes scrawled on receipts and loose paper to remind me just what i'm here for, in illegible point form.

one of the things i forgot is that things are actually better than i thought they would be. in may, i was worrying that i would be permanently stationed at a construction site trailer, decked out in my safety hat and work boots, yelling at construction workers to vibrate that concrete, dammit. i'm obviously not doing that now and in truth, that situation was as remote as siberia.

thus in comparison, things are technically peachy-keen. even if they're not.

i wonder how long it'll be before i stop having dreams where i'm still a student and grappling with things like homework! and exam stress! all that stuff feels really distant now but i think some parts of me are still hardwired for school.

i also wonder how long it'll be before i can be a mature adult. hehe. i was kerflummoxed by a project the other day and had to ask my boss for help. so i stood in his office and wrung my hands like a little girl, while badly strung sentences tumbled out of my mouth. i couldn't even stand still.. i was shifting my body weight from one foot to the other, and occasionally emitting animal-in-pain noises. my excuse: i'm only 23.

'i'm only 30.'

'i'm menopausal.'

anyway: where are the hot men in uniform? this military stuff isn't all it's cut out to be.

it is odd to post from work, for a variety of reasons.

first, it's obviously not the thing to do, even though i don't actually have things to do, as i sit in an open cubicle (oxymoron?) and my boss likes to pace around the office.

second, being a civil servant with ties to the military, i'm pretty sure they tap all my communications. failing that, there are evil people plotting the downfall of singapore who are monitoring my internet usage so they can blackmail me into betraying essential national secrets. [disclaimer: not that i know any]

however, i really don't have the internet on IV anymore. i'm online during office hours, and offline otherwise. and the security filters block all the porn.

kidding.

well, not really. coz the filters do block porn. they even block non-porn. and i bet every instance of blockage is recorded and will be used against me at some point in the future.

so, several short paragraphs later.. this is why i'm posting from work, in spite of oddness.

it's been 2 months of gainful employment. i'm not a happy person. work tires me and frustrates me and i get mired in all these barbed psychological knots because i want to do reasonably well but i probably won't because the only motivation i have to do so is the fear that i won't. capisch?

i think what i really want in life is to to be an auntie running one of those craft shops that are tucked in the nether regions of not-so-popular shopping centers. but i need to be able to knit better first.

i'm surfing on a stolen wireless connection. granted, it's probably not too safe for me as well, but whatever. i like to walk on the wild side. heheh.

haven't been up to much since i'm at work 80% of the time, and mostly sleeping in the other 20%. trying to stave off the premature aging that must come with being a capitalist slave.

i'm playing sims 2.

i've started working and i'm still not able to deal with the fact that this dreary horror will continue for a long long time, and will not in fact end in a couple of days, allowing me to happily sit on my ass once more.

if you didn't think the government was full of inefficient stupid people, and riddled with red tape and petty politics, think again.

yikes.

the only good thing is that my office is only 15 minutes by bus from my house. the accompanying bad thing is that it's a 10 minute walk in, along a dusty road where cars and huge rattly trucks barrel past at a million miles per hour. the accompanying secondary good thing is that maybe one of those vehicles will swerve into the ridiculously narrow pavement and KILL ME.

i'm less than a hundred pages into gibson's pattern recognition and already that weird choppy style (which it seems he adopted just for this new book) and that deliberate empty font has taken its toll on me.

i love/hate it when that happens. one, it's a sign that the writer has done his thing.. that i've tumbled so thoroughly into this other world that i feel disconnected from the real one. two, this disconnection isn't the happiest of feelings.

i think i'll have to start work next week. coz i didn't do too well at my interviews (heh.. understatement), i've ended up with no choice at all about my posting. soo.. i'll be stuck at some army base for at least a year, changing them army lightbulbs. i'm so excited.

but at least there's a 5-day work week happening soon. hooray for the new PM!

coz things like these always happen, i have the flu and also an interview tomorrow at 9 in the morning. there's nothing that dictates both have to occur simultaneously amidst 2 months of utter inactivity but haha! i guess the universe wants to keep me on my toes.

by the way, i hate dry retching. if i have to sprawl on the floor next to a toilet bowl with my jaw slack and drooling, there'd better damn well be vomit. i need visual indications of having expunged the bad stuff.