Accent

Friday night was cosying up with a blanket on a friend's sofa with pizza, Italian ice cream, Californian wine in a big-bowled wine glass, and Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson in French-American film "Le Divorce". It was the best kind of a lazy luxurious start to a slow weekend - the kind I dreamed of as a 13, 14-year old.

I used to daydream of living in a penthouse in LA or New York. Weekdays would be a long work day, and coming home to my very own Siberian Husky. I'd toss my handbag onto the sofa, remove my work clothes piece by piece and drop them on the ground as I crossed the living room to the bedroom where I'd slip on a silk nightie and drop off to sleep from exhaustion. Mornings would be a mad rush of pulling on clothes, a grabbed croissant and coffee, running into my car, putting on my stockings and shoes in the car during rush hour traffic jam - by the time I pulled into work, I'd emerge from my car immaculate and perfect for work. And weekends would see my three lovely girlfriends Chin Kit, Yoke Phun and Siew Wei come over for a girly sleepover - an all night movie marathon with pizza and ice cream.

So I'm not living the exact ideal life that my 13-year old self dreamt up. Wrong city, wrong person, no dog. But if you squint a little, the broad ingredients are in place.

The stay-in late night DVD on a couch is indulgent enough, but the big wine glass and French film brought a brought the experience to a whole new level of luxury. There's just something so beautifully poetic about large (not small) wine glasses - I love the feeling of one in my hand, how the big bowl fills my hand. It reminds me of a different world, and makes my life feel that little bit less ordinary. When I grow up and have a place of my own, I think I shall Only have big wine glasses in my little house of dreams, and use them for daily use.

I liked Le Divorce, although half the film was in French and there were no subtitles. I was happy just hear them chattering in the beautiful language. I love the impeccable sense of style and effortless elegance of Parisiennes and wish I could emulate that. I really must make sure I act on another dream of mine - to live in Paris for at least 6 months or a year.

Metroblogging

I've discovered a wonderful collaboration called Metroblogging at paulark's.

Their very catchy tagline is a copywriter's dream - "Think Global. Blog Local." Metroblogging is a group of bloggers blogging about life their own cities, giving a "hyper-local look at what's going on in the city".

There's something so Sex and the City about Metroblogging - where your main job is really to Live, so you can make observations on Your Life in the City. It also gives you a peek into the lives not only of random strangers, but also of distant cities, effectively shrinking the world.

I like being online, because in cyberspace, distance and space doesn't matter, you can traverse the globe and meet like-minded people with a few mouse-clicks and the comforting clickety-clack of the keyboard keys.

Check out my city.

Running

I like the feeling of my lungs burning with the wintry chill of the air I suck in. Your limbs let loose, the cold wind against your face. And it hurts, but the pain is good, because everything else melts away. You are running away from, running towards, battering down your demons with every footstep that hammers down onto the pavement.

And at the end of it, you feel released.

...

It's a strange feeling, to be staring at a blank fresh blog post screen and to feel like you have absolutely nothing to say.

Is it possible to have bloggers' block?

Anyway, note to self: next year I will do this NaNoWriMo thing that meeloop brought to my attention.

I must conquer fear and embarrassment of failure and trashy writing. A start, however bad, is still a start.

Wisdom

Isn't the point of growing older to become wiser?

Age, Time, and Experience are supposed to bring along Wisdom. We are supposed to learn from our mistakes.

But maybe that is all a myth.

What if we Don't actually become wiser with time? What if age brings no greater enlightenment, only crows' feet around our eyes? What if experience merely embitters, without enriching us?

Perhaps time cannot heal all wounds, solve all problems. Scars which seem to have faded sometimes return. And mostly, I find that I am as confused as before. For a consumate escapist, who has spent a lot of her life running, I'm finding it is futile to try to put time and distance between myself and the questions that I eventually have to return to. My instinctive reaction to problems is denial and flight, and after a while, it seems like they don't exist. But I'm running out of places and time, and at the end of the day, the questions still remain.

I know that a Great Answer Book to All Questions in Life will not be bestowed upon me. But I keep delaying having to think about the direction I want to take in life - to be the pessimist or the optimist, the idealist or the cynic, to be of the heath or hearth, to be of wind and fire, or that of the solid earth. To avoid problems or to tackle them head on, to hold back or to rush madly into the storm.

Nothing can be planned anyway, and I am happy to take things as they come. A day at a time. But I am not talking about planning, I am talking about a fundamental attitude . And these fundamental decisions will affect me, steer my future as it were - towards clear summer skies, or dark storm clouds.

But what I'm afraid of is that I have not and perhaps never will learn the lessons that I'm supposed to have learnt. And in the end I will forever be stuck in the place s that I've been. All my life I'll be trapped within a neverending cycle. I'll forever be Lulamae running through the briar patch, just giving the emotions a different name.

I want to be less afraid. I want to learn to throw the doors to my heart wide open and Trust. I want to go out and conquer all, to forge my own Brave New World. I think that requires a lot more courage and strength than keeping up walls and hiding wihtin my own fortress.

In a bizarre twist of events

I ended up kissing a boy yesterday.

Land of the free

What upset me most about the US political election wasn't Bush winning the elections.

Of course I am anti-Bush. But I was half-expecting the result, so it wasn't a huge disappointment. And the hope that a Bush victory brings, is the chance of another Clinton in the White House.

What upset me most was the kind of people that have been elected to office, and the people who have voted them in (see excerpt below). And perhaps what was most horrifying, was the Number of people who voted for Bush. Yes I expected there to be people with mush for brains who would vote for Bush. What I did not expect was for So Many people to vote for him, and for these voters to display antiquated prejudices.

An excerpt from The Economist:

" In Louisiana, for instance, David Vitter became the state's first Republican senator since Reconstruction thanks, in large part, to his uncompromising stance on abortion: he stated flatly that there should be no exceptions, a message that played well in this heavily Catholic and evangelical state. In South Carolina, Jim DeMint not only pledged his opposition to all abortions, but announced that neither homosexuals nor unmarried pregnant women should be able to teach in public schools. In North Carolina, the victorious Republican, Richard Burr, devoted much of his campaign to tying his opponent, Erskine Bowles—one of Bill Clinton's former chiefs-of-staff—to his former employer."

I don't understand the mentality of these people. In a free, enlightened world, why do such closed, narrow views still exist? It is like returning to the dark ages.

Motifs

There are often many things that I'd like to say. Ideas and thoughts that flit about through my head. Many of them songs from yesteryears repeating again. Motifs from the symphony of our lives that recur. (Imagery from "Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera)

Sometimes I wonder if I've written about these thoughts here before, because I think these thoughts so often, that they've become more familiar to me than my own hands, and it seems to be that surely I've shared them before. And yet, it might turn out that I have not. Other times, I Know I have talked about an idea, an image, a motif - and if you root around in my archives from other blogs and journals, you'd see them all... like the modus operandi of a serial killer. And though I would hate to be repetitive, I can't help but return over and over again to the same ideas, because I feel so strongly about them, or they so strongly influence or even form the framework of how I see life, that to talk about anything else, would be to misrepresent the "I" at that moment in time.

Stirring

I was flipping through Vogue the other day, which featured women who have bucked the home-bodies convention and undertaken extensive travels, like Gertrude Bell, apparently known as the "uncrowned Queen of Iraq", who explored the Middle East with Lawrence of Arabia. Women who have undertaken wild travel, spent years travelling around South America in jeeps, trekked around Cuba with husband and five-month-old child in tow.

And suddenly, I'm really itching desperately to be out on the road again. I yearn to travel. And I have my December holidays to play with. But I'm yearning not for a tame, bread-and-butter, plain vanilla city tour of established countries in Western Europe. Instead I'm longing for something with at least a little hint of excitement in it, if I can't go for a full-blown wild-adventure travel.

Reading about these travelling women has reignited that restlessness, always rumbling just beneath the surface of my daily life, that has driven me all my life. Above all, I want to move. To keep on moving, rolling under the stars, standing still only enjoy the breeze, to breathe in the green smell of fresh grass after the rain, but to never become petrified.

I can imagine living with any of a number of guys. I'm fairly easygoing, and am used to sharing my space with different people over the years, so I can imagine setting up home with any boy really.

But when I think of that right person who will come along, and the life that we'll lead together, in my mind, I see us walking hand in hand, yes, cheesily along the beach at sunset, but also along streams and waterfalls in a rainforest, or in crammed bus careening along dusty African dirt paths, exploring the streets of Rio, undertaking risks and adventure together.

Of course I am not only looking for any adventuring boy. There must be more to a boy than that, and the wandering aspect doesn't have to be the main part of his personality, as long as the boy is willing traveller.

Maybe someday a boy will come along who will convince me that what I Really want is a still life in sterile suburbia - a house with a white picket-fence, with two cars, a dog, and 2.1 kids. In fact, I'm Waiting with amusement to see that happen, it's a challenge I throw out to Life. You want to see this girl's life and dreams buried? Come and get me.

Yes, I'm alive

Today, after having Friday and Saturday off, I finally felt a bit more human, after three weeks of long working hours and no day off. It's a little bit scary though, how it takes two days for me to feel like a human being again. And now, by 12 midnight, the perpetual headache that I've grown accustomed to has returned, and I'm feeling guilt and annoyance at myself for not having gone to bed earlier.

The problem now that I've started working is: too little time, too many things to do; whereas in my student days it was: too much time and too little money, nothing available to do.

I'm finding it difficult to find time to care for myself and to do even the most basic of maintenance.

And yet, for now, there's nothing which pays a wage, that I'd rather be doing. And what more can I ask for, really?

I did manage, over this long weekend, to cut my hair. Rear views available below:

before