Monday, March 26, 2007

Aww, Shucks!

This evening, recalling what Chaitra said the other night about her boyfriend having no qualms about leaving her for Jessica Alba (and not surprisingly, vice-versa), I brought it up with Do, listing a svelte starlet that I thought might succeed in winning the affections of my better half. Without giving it a second thought, Do burst out into a tirade as only the best of friends can:


D says:
HELOOOOOO

D says:
r u crazy
she’s not pretty lor

D says:
she looks like, how manly!~

D says:
compared wit ur curves, she looks like a road lamp can

D says:
she is FLAT n MANLY

D says:
no competition for u, woman!


Girl says:
Awww!!! Dodo!!!

Girl says:
You are so sweet!

Girl says:
You're the sweetest friend ever

Girl says:
I’m SO touched!

Girl says:
No lah… She’s quite pretty.

Girl says:
But thank you for calling her a road lamp.. you’ve made my day!

D says:
hey woman

D says:
i didnt say tt to make ya day

D says:
i mean it!

D says:
well... i suppose she is pretty in a manly way

D says:
Hahahhaha

D says:
come on! no worries, if u ask me to choose, it will be YOU, ANYday!

D says:
=)



She went on to say in no uncertain terms that if myself and said starlet were to face off in a round of celebrity deathmatch (quite hard, considering that I’m not a celebrity) I would, quote unquote, “kick the living shit out of her”. Now we all know that’s probably not true, even if did I have a substantial amount of fat and muscle behind my plasticine-y left hook, but I was so well chuffed I almost got choked up for a second there.

This girl has been one of my BFFs since our junior college days (also happens to be just my type) and never fails to bowl me over and cheer me up all in the same breath and well, that’s hot.

The truth of the matter is, tactful reassurance or bold words of truth, I honestly have the best friends in the whole, wide world. Ever.


Wednesday, March 21, 2007

An Open Letter to Mr Gerard Butler

Dearest Gerry,


I like you, I really do. You’re adorable. You seem like you’re a really nice, unpretentious guy that someone can just toss back a beer with, you get along great with Craig Ferguson, you have a good sense of humour and you have a great Scottish accent. I happen to think you’re a very good actor as well, so you’ll understand that what I’m about to tell you is meant in the nicest way possible.


I have a problem with your face.

It’s a cute face and you have a great smile, so my issue isn’t in the nip/ tuck department. It’s just that – well, frankly, we don’t get to see it all that often. Sure you’re great in interviews where you’re beaming at the crowd and trying to teach crazy Japanese women to speak Scottish which I could have told you was never going to work out because they don’t know how to pronounce their ‘R’s. (Ditto the singing of Phantom of the Opera with them… somehow listening to “Opela” just doesn’t have the same effect). But really, you have a knack for picking the absolute worst movie roles for your looks.

I mean 300 was orgasmically kick-ass and made me want to run around on the streets shouting “THIS! IS! SPARTA!” and kicking random people into bushes. The experience, however, was somewhat marred by the enormous amount of screen time taken up by your copious and somewhat wiry facial hair.

I have no objection to the fact that we spent half the movie looking at your bulging 8-pack and that you were, for a few minutes, fully nude (at which point the movie tagline “Prepare for Glory” made perfect sense) but the scenes where you where having sex with your perky-nippled wife? Uh-uh. Not sexy. We were holding our breaths half the time, waiting to see if she would get rope burn down her chest from your pointy (conical) beard. Also, seeing as how you spent half the film yelling loudly at your soldiers, the Persian King, some random dwarf, the audience and really, anybody who would listen, we got to see more of the inside of your mouth than the outside of it.

And don’t get me started on Phantom of the Opera, mister!

You sing great and all, but that ridiculous acid burn down three-quarters of your face and your greasy, slicked back, half balding hair that looks like someone half-heartedly chewed a bunch of rat tails into shreds and threw them up all over your head? It feels as if you have some real life facial defect that you’re so shy about that you cover it up and make me feel like nudging you in the ribs and saying “Oh, you!” coyly when I finally discover that the things you were hiding all along were your cute little dimples.

My point is, I am speaking in your best interests. And I’m rooting for you, I really am. Just please, for the sake of the free world, show a little bit more (unscarred) face the next time you decide it would be a good idea to die for your country or abduct a pre-pubescent prima donna into your underground lair! Chicks will dig it. And if I’m not mistaken, a few guys out there will dig it too.

Look, I tell you what. If this thing between me and Johnny doesn’t work out (unlikely as that is), I’ll offer myself as your very own personal agent. Come on now, there's no need to be shy. Help me to help you, okay?


You know where I’m at,
This Girl


PS I hear you’re single at the moment. How long are you planning to make that last? Just, oh you know, in case.

Friday, March 16, 2007

So True

Over iced chocolates on Wednesday, Raqvind and I were recalling random moments gone by with nostalgia fuelled by tiredness. We agreed on the fact that it was hard to explain why some people preferred to keep journals or write down their feelings and some didn’t. Curious, I asked her what prompted her to write continually when she was younger and her gaze softened as she fished around for the answer.

“Well, it’s something like this,” she tried to explain as she dredged a memory up from some time ago. “Once I was on this flight, seventeen hours long at night, and for a large chunk of it, people were asleep and the whole cabin was silent. I was the only person awake and because no one called the stewardesses, they didn’t come walking through the cabin and interrupting the silence. I had some port wine, and my books and my diary opened up before me.” she mused, hands animatedly indicating where everything was on the table.

“And I looked out of the window and everything was dark, my light was the only light on and the only light shining in the whole darkness. And I just sat there, writing, interspersing little phrases and songs and poems in between my paragraphs when they came to mind. It’s funny, but it was like all my worries disappeared right then and there, there was no future and no past and I was just being, just living in the moment. It was like I was the only person alive and the only person who knew how special and secret that moment was.”

She tucked wayward hair behind her ear. “It was like being alone, but not lonely, just happy. And now, I just have to look at that diary and read that entry again and I’ll remember exactly how it was and exactly how I felt.”

I was staring at her in wonder by then because she just about described this one day out of my life four or five years ago, when my grandfather had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and we took my grandparents on a cruise for the sea air. I told her so, recalling the moment when I was sitting alone on the balcony at night, after everyone had gone to bed and was staring out at the endless black sea. It stretched out between me and forever, shiny and still except for the wake we were cutting slowly through the water. In the sky, a swollen round moon hung low over me, threatening to drop and disappear into the boundless sea leaving nary a ripple. And I sat there for an eternity, touching immortality, knowing that no one but me felt the same about that moment right there and then.

I don’t have that diary now – if I remember correctly, it was a present for a very special friend. I may not ever read it again. Yet, when I close my eyes now, I can still smell the sea, see the low moon with its craters dark like wet stains and hear the light splash of the water against the hull of the ship. And I remember what it feels like to be the only person alive, the only person who, at that moment, knows what it’s like to be truly happy.

Of course, it was just a feeling. And it was just one small speck of time in the entire spectrum of existence. But like Raqvind said, the rarity of these fleeting specks makes them all the more precious.

Sometimes as human beings, we believe that we’re all alone in the world and that no one really understands us in those moments. But if you’re lucky the way I am, one day, you meet someone who proves you wrong because she knows exactly, precisely how you felt.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Hippy Hippy Shake

Surviving an exhilarating day on three hours of sleep has left her slumped over her desk in exhaustion. A slightly twitching hand bears the cumulative effects of a congratulatory note regarding successful data collection from a professor in the morning, a lengthy afternoon session of scouring books and an equally long evening of slow writing to the white noise of stand-up comedy.

Happiness is draining too.

There is no energy left, and the promise of an early morning meeting tomorrow is sapping all life from her eyes. Then, just as she thinks it is all over, a rumbling rock and roll tune blares loudly from her earphones and a curious shiver comes over her.

Just as suddenly as she sat down, she is standing on her feet, hips cocked to the infectious boom-chick of the snare drum. She can’t help it, the wonderful swing of the drum sticks on the hi-hat is making her feet tap and shoulders shake. The door is wide open, but the music rushing through the room is contagious.

In a mad fit of animation, she leaps into an impromptu gavotte, derriere shaking in time to the pounding baseline. “Ain’t she sweet?” the lead singer asks in her left ear and she dances her agreement, arms raised above her head, eyes closed in a moment of secret rapture. Tripping lightly across the room, she struts cockily around the chair against the wall and turns, cropped hair flying to execute a series of messy pirouettes on the bed.

This is madness without method, pure and simple joy.

She belts the words with all her might, singing for the day gone by, for all the hours spent sitting in a chair crouched over documents with slowly closing eyes. She swings round joyously for the panicked emails sent at six in the morning, for sleep interrupted three hours too soon. She skips and leaps, shaking her shoulders wildly as the room spins round in a glorious blur.

All too soon, the moment passes and she stops to catch her breath and spots her neighbour standing in the hallway, staring at her with undisguised disbelief. It’s three in the morning, her eyes disapprovingly telegraph. Red-cheeked with embarrasment and exertion, she laughs, shrugs shyly and turns away, pulling her chair and reading towards her.

But in her left ear, the singer still croons, “Ain’t she sweet?” And unable to suppress it, she does a last exuberant hop for good measure, just a little one.

Because if you ask her very confidentially, sometimes, life really is that good.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Revelation 9

I wake up this morning, mind still clouded from the alcohol-induced dream I had the night before. Your arm is thrown over your face and the alarm clock is clutched in your other hand in a failed attempt to rise early for the day ahead. Where are you now that I can’t follow?

You are so close yet to so far, the scent of your hair in finger’s reach but as intangible and intoxicating as angel dust.

Every time I hear you breathe, my heart breaks a little.

I don’t know how to say it to your face and I guess I never will but after all this time, I’m still crazy about you.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Viva Piracy!

Before bloody Google takes this down... Ben Folds, meet my friends. Friends, meet the God of Piano Rock.

Sure, I have to admit it was better when he played with Darren Jesse and Robert Sledge but this is a KILLER song. And he can play the hell out of the piano and work the crowd at the same time.

Also, that is a cute ass hat!

Saturday, March 03, 2007

I look up at the girl in the mirror and she looks back at me.

And suddenly I realise – she must be as lonely as I am.

Irreconcilable Differences

In the middle of reading about dyslexia, I suddenly develop the munchies and reach a hand out for the open bag of peanuts lying on the table. She has the same idea too though, and beats me to the punch, practically knocking my hand out of the way to grab at a little fistful of nuts. I stare in surprise as she begins to shell them, oblivious to my dismay.

“Excuse me?” I manage to say.

She looks up at me questioningly, still shelling the peanuts and scattering little bits of shell everywhere. They lie discarded, skittering around on the table under the fan’s light breeze.

“Don’t you think that was a little bit… oh I don’t know…” I try to phrase it delicately while she waits for me to find the words, her patience slowly wearing thin. “…Insensitive?” I finish.

She drops the nuts, stops all movement and stares straight at me without blinking. I’ve really done it now, I think, I’ve really overstepped the boundaries. From the way her mouth is set and her head is tilted I can tell we’re about to have a fight.

A few months ago, we were getting on so well together. Sharing a tiny room wasn’t an issue so long as we respected each other’s personal space. But lately, I realise, we’ve been quarrelling an awful lot. How did it all go wrong?

She continues to stare, her gaze growing more and more impatient and accusing. I wait for a sound, an argument.


Nothing.


My words hang in mid-air between us, a sign of our growing discontent. “Look, I just think that maybe you should apologise or at least not push like that. And PLEASE. Please stop throwing the shells everywhere. I’m just tired of sweeping the floor.”

She continues to stare at me, hoping to guilt me into silence and submission. Sometimes, I feel bad and apologise, thinking I must be the intolerant one. But not today. I’ve just mopped the floor and her bad upbringing isn’t going to mess it up again. I’ve tried and tried to be tolerant, but today, at last I’m going to speak my mind. “Look, you heard what I said. Don’t just look at me like that.”

And then she does what she always does when she doesn’t want to argue anymore, when she just wants to get her way and put an end to the conversation. She gives me one last glare, practically rolls her eyes and begins to shell the nuts again.

I almost leap up from my chair in frustration. This time she’s gone too far. After everything we’ve been through, I won’t just sit here and be condescended.

Just to exasperate me further, she takes a handful of about six shelled nuts and puts them in her mouth all at once, creating unsightly bulges in her cheeks.

“Oh now you’ve done it,” I rage, as she turns to flounce away. “You rude, silly, completely spoilt little thing.” And I raise my hand, flick her on the nose and then pick her up. “You’re going back into your cage for the rest of the afternoon, Missy. And don’t even think you’re going to eat all six nuts at once, you’ll get diarrhoea and then who has to clean up?”

She innocently blinks at me and twitches her whiskers, playing the cute card to win my favour. But I’m an old hand at this. I just whisk her to her cage, pop open the door and shove her inside even though I’m secretly longing to cuddle her and laugh over how funny she is.

Then I indignantly turn my back on her and start sweeping up nutshells.

Back on her big orange running wheel, Noelle merely wrinkles her nose and starts to eat her first nut.

Friday, March 02, 2007

This Must Be Love

If only I could hold him this warm, this close, this tight and this safe forever.