So I Heard...

As soon as Wee returned from his Eastern European trip, windblown and tanned, I pounced.

Me: Hey D told me you're a super big beatles fan. How come I didn't know?

Wee: I think he only found out cos he sat in my car lah. I don't usually go around professing my love for them haha. But ya i'm a big fan... are u?

Me: I am a GIANT beatles fan. You can't tell?

Wee: U are? but how can i tell? do u ride a yellow submarine to work? do u drive a newspaper taxi to the door?

"Newspaper taxi", eeek! On reading that I nearly toppled from my seat. Thank Lennon, there are kindred spirits everywhere!

Jelly

It can't be. It absolutely can't be, I thought, standing stock still in the middle of the dressing room. Okay, don't panic. Take a breath.

Well, maybe not too big a breath.

There I was, in the middle of John Little's in my underwear, and the evidence was staring me straight in the mirror. I was like a deer caught in headlight. My headlights.

Trying on a black brassiere would have fit me a year ago, I could now see that... well, my cup runneth over.

I always used to be petite. When I was younger, as Phizz and Bex can testify, I was one of those girls that remained flat-ish right up to the last year of school when the tiniest of speed bumps appeared. Slowly, throughout Junior College I put on plenty more weight and started filling out in places where the sun don't shine. And by the end of JC, boobs became the commonest of talking points, less mundane only than the weather.

Jun would threaten to poke my chest as we were walking down the street together and in University, Fongster and I would unabashedly compare chest sizes. By then, I was no longer insecure about what was no longer insignificant, and while I didn't exactly warrant Pamela Anderson-eqsue attention, I thought I was probably doing all right in that department.

However, recently at work, Betty and Patty, as they are otherwise known, have become a conversation piece - well, conversation pieces - once more. Dawn commented the other day that I was looking "boobsier" than ever and Di kept asking me to unbutton my collar. All this came to a head last weekend on a shopping trip with my mother when I found that on top of looking lumpier in the hips and thighs than ever, the cleavage had just become a whole lot more ample.

Holy, smokin' shit.

Look, God, Xenu, Allah, whoever. It's about time we had a little chat.

I know I used to wish that I would one day boast a va-voom set of curves comparable to Jessica Rabbit and I cringed whenever my friends teased me about being diminuitive. I'm sure you remember how I used to parade around in front of the mirror, fervently wishing my chest was bigger and imagining just how much better I would look with perky puppies.

I know I used to pray that I would achieve a letter far away from the top grade given out in class and I used to study my mother's bras, wondering if I would ever fit into them.

That I'm now two sizes bigger than her is a study in irony, and something I'm more than a little glad about. So thanks God, for listening and heeding my prayers and helping me fulFILL my true potential, I'm grateful for that. Also, I might consider taking it as proof that you do exist somewhere up there.

However, the continually expanding size of my bust, right up till today is no laughing matter. See, I'm not exactly tipping the scales here, but to inflate by even a little bit more would be bordering on disproportion. For someone who used to be runway flat to have to sneak the bras out from the back of the shopping rack is getting to be a bit much. So I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave the bazoombas alone for now, they're really, honestly, truly just about right.

I understand that you're trying to make a point... or two.

But enough already, I get it.

The Train Game

Every morning when I take the train to work, if I've forgotten a good book or my iPod, I play something I like to call the train game. I examine every single person in my carriage and ask myself: if I could, which one of them would I be?

And I invariably end up picking someone.

Sometimes it's the young girl in the slouchy jeans, long straight hair and secondary school-style tote, who looks as if she's got her whole life ahead of her, full of second chances she can make or break without the fear of consequences. Sometimes it's the older woman in her sophisticated up-do, clearly a wealthy homemaker with grown-up kids and all her debts in life settled, free now to go out meeting friends and shopping as she pleases. And sometimes it's the business woman in her power suit with her crinkly black Prada bag, who's got everything under control.


"Oh my god, it's a breakthrough!" Dawn said, in mock surprise when she saw me yesterday. "You're wearing a skirt at last and it's even a little bit short!"

I laughed and hiked my black bubble skirt up my waist to tease her further.

Later that afternoon, ten of us promptly left our work desks at 5:30pm, leaving our bosses wondering where we disappeared to. In a move that was orchestrated and coordinated mostly by Jay, we trooped upstairs to the basketball court on the roof and changed clothes. Shedding our work pants and corporate tees for bedraggled baggy shirts and sporty shorts, we laughed at each other in the tiny two-cubicle toilet as we emerged in varying shades of hot pink, black and blue.

Then, for fourty-five minutes, under the searing sun, we proceeded to have the Captain's Ball match of our lives. I haven't played Captain's Ball in at least eight years and all the running and jumping made me completely flushed and combined with the fact that we couldn't stop laughing, it was a complete riot.

I was on Ben, Dawn, Jay and Mav's team and while the girls were like swallows, tripping lithely across the court and stealing the ball, Ben was our stalwart guard, bearing down on anybody who tried to get past him to the goal. Mostly, I laughed and ran and threw decent passes and marvelled at how much more coordinated I have become since secondary school.

And up there, giggling like little children in the afternoon light, we watched the ball sailing through the bright blue and forgot every responsibility we had for the better part of an hour and emerged from the game joyously tanned and refreshed.


Last night on the train home, back in my work clothes, with my sports gear safely tucked away in a paper bag, I realised that I had forgotten my iPod earphones. Leaning back against a glass pane, I proceeded to play the train game.

And for once in my life, there was no one else I wanted to be.

To Be

"Be brave," she said, quietly looking me over, her face pale with a nameless fear that grows as swiftly as mutant cells.

"I am brave," I replied honestly, looking away, knowing her words were more to give her courage than me.

I am a coward.

I am frightened of many things: of rollercoasters and heights and the idea of bungee-jumping, of large, goggle-eyed fish, of evil, triangle-headed praying mantises that sit on the door frame staring at me, of walking around alone in a darkened house and falling down the stairs, of losing my dog or having to put him to sleep, of my teeth coming loose when I sleep, of not drinking enough calcium and suffering osteoporosis, of grieving familes and unpredictable mad, urine-soaked old men, of pain and blood and failing everybody's expectations and being fired and of being undesirable and unpretty and unwanted, of being scolded, of being hurt by people I love, of hurting people I love.

But having survived the night, I now know one thing with absolutely certainty: I am not afraid to die.