Wednesday, November 29, 2006

DEATH OF A NOVEL

After 3/4 of a month of word crunching, ugly elbows, unkempt hair, mad coffee and ice cream intake, I bow in defeat to this thing called time.

I don't know where it went, or how I suddenly got here although I swear that it was only 15 November a few days back.

Even if I sat or stood and typed and typed till tomorrow, the 18000 words I'm after is too far away... (I just sprained my side trying to reach for those words)

I hate to admit defeat so soon, but I've preservered, lied to myself, sabotaged my characters, sabotaged my story, not to mention hated my self and life so many times this month.

It's finally over.

My NaNoNovel Epitaph

The nights you kept me awake,
Seeking all my attention,
You shared my coffee and cake,
And caused a whole lot of tension.

Yet I cared for you,
In ways no one understood,
There were moments when I was blue,
Yet you never went unnurtured.

Then the day came,
It was so not expected,
Some may say that it's lame,
But I was totally afflicted.

In a matter of days,
Your health dwindled,
Life was falling to pieces,
In death, we got divided.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

5 THINGS : A TAG

I have been recently tagged by Princess Shin to do a tag about 5 things.

Based on observation in other blogs though, I noticed that the 5 things can be anything, some folks did 5 things you never knew about me, or 5 things I want to do, etc...

I have decided to go by 5 things I want to do before I die.

1. Bungee Jump in Australia

It was definitely a long time ago when I first saw someone do the bungee jump (on tv, obviously) and it was done somewhere in Australia. Since then I've been hankering over bungee jumping, but since I've never stepped into Australia it all remains a wish.

Anyway, the other day, I had to climb up a 10 ft tank to take some pictures (all in a day's work) and as I stood on top of it, I looked down and felt a wee bit queasy. This tank, however is only 10 feet above the ground, and if I fell down, I might have just broken a bone or two... Not too bad, eh?

But I'm not deterred. Australia, here I come! (When I can get leave long enough to travel!)

2. Rocking with The Darkness

I was reading while lying on my back on the floor one day after work when I heard the most magnificent guitar riffs from the tv. I turned instantly and watched the tv upside down to catch the name of the band. They changed my life forever. They are known as the Darkness.

However, what irks me is the fact that their songs rarely get played here, even on the radio. The morons in charge of music selection here are truly morons. They only picked one song out of their whole album (permission to land) for airplay, and it was the ballad! What's wrong with those people?

Of course there's nothing wrong with ballads, but these guys have got plenty of other interesting songs too!

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get hold of the album... It was a chase from one music outlet to another, one shop only had the cassette, and another had only 2 cd's.

Their new album, however, (One way ticket to hell and back) by the way, which is not so new anymore, has yet to see the Malaysian sun (at least in the stores I've visited)

I need to go to their concert, by hook or by crook, even if doesn't happen today, it must happen before I die.

3. Learn to dance

All this while I've always dreaded dances, especially choreagraphed ones. For some unknown reason, I can never remember the steps properly, and I can't stop laughing while dancing (I've been part of small forced to perform groups, sadly)

This has to end. I would like to learn a proper dance... anything doesn't matter, salsa, tapdance, two step, tango, whatever (please be reminded that I'm only churning out names of dances that I've heard of, but I don't necessarily know their routine and steps)

4. Words that create an impact

I admit, I want to write a book someday. And not just any ordinary book. It has to have a great impact on the reader like what 'To Kill a Mockingbird' had on me, where I can read it again and again and still find each page as exciting as the first time I read it, or how wonderful the book "The Catcher in the Rye' is that I truly wish that Holden Caulfield was real and I could have an interesting conversation with him.

5. Act


A long time ago, when I was about 11, my English teacher threatened me into writing a play for our class to perform at school. The topic we chose was truancy, and it was a tremendous success as the teachers unanimously decided to pick it for the end of the year performance.

Not only was I forced to write it, I was also forced to act in it. I had to act as the teacher in the story. (Honestly, I really do wish that I had the script to put it up here, but too bad I don't!)

It was cool, because when we performed the play for the end of the year performance, we actually used Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby, and some of my schoolmates who were supposed to be the truant kids rapped and danced to the song.

The last time I stood (or sat/died/became a bridge) in front of an audience was when I took 'Theatre' as an extra co-curricular subject. It had absolutely no lines, and I was part of a bridge, played a 'dayang' which only involved me waving a fan at a queen, and then I became a villager who died all in one night.

Anyway, one day, when I've garnered enough confidence to step into a theatre audition room and audition for a small part (even a tree would do!) because I have no proper training, I hope that I can act in a play in front of an audience.

As with all tags, I'm afraid I have to tag people.. but I shall leave it to you. All right, do drop by Sharon's Five Things so she can link you up in this five things mania.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

TAPDANCING IN BANGSAR

One of my shortcomings is that I have a penchant for (what I presume to be) spiffy titles like this one. They just pop into my head and don't leave me peacefully until I've used them.

Anyway, if you live around here, it's common knowledge that Bangsar is synonymous with cool happenings, shopping, a wide variety of food and dancing (or clubbing, as most of the people know it)

It is something of a curiousity, but I have a feeling that regardless of whatever other forms of dance that may be present, tapdancing may not be one of them. As I said, I'm going by gut feeling, so if there is tapdancing going on in Bangsar, then I'm afraid I have to eat my shoe.

(PS: I think they should have the Riverdance performance here; it's awesome)

But I digress...

This is a story about me, Bangsar and shoes.

One of the few attractions of Bangsar is the food, especially since it has a myriad of restaurants
serving banana leaf cuisine. I'm not particularly a fan, because when it comes to banana leaf food, my grandma makes killer dishes (minus the leaf, that is). So obviously I prefer eating what she cooks.

To those who are unfamiliar with the term, banana leaf cuisine means Indian food (usually south Indian) that includes rice, curries (chicken, mutton) and vegetables served on a banana leaf instead of a plate. This apparently gives the food an appetising aroma and enhances the flavours.

However, when the gang meets up in Bangsar for lunch, banana leaf cuisine somehow always manages to sneak into the picture.

We did the Saturday afternoon in Bangsar thing twice this year. Living about some 40 minutes away, I usually take a train and get picked up by one of the friends at the LRT station.

As always, I'm the kind of person who prefers shoes to open toed heels - very dangerous footwear, I should add. That is open toed heels, not shoes.

I wore a pair I bought a few years ago. At the train station in Bangsar, my left foot felt funny... the sole was slipping of the shoe. This was followed closely by the right foot. I was horrified, as I can hop on 1 foot, but if both shoes were unusable, then I might as well be dead.

Nevertheless, I didn't die, but both my shoes gave way in the end. There I was in the middle of Bangsar town, dragging my feet on the sole of what was formerly my shoes while holding the top of the shoes in my hands as I didn't want to litter. And all those people looking at my bare feet. The vulnerability I felt at that moment is beyond words!

My friends fetched me, and I ended up buying a pair of Reebok flip flops at Bangsar Village for an absurdly high price for flip flops - RM 45.00 which is about USD 12 (that was the cheapest available, and I had not much money, and I left my credit card and ATM card at home for safety reasons) I might add that normal flip flops are about RM 15.

The second time around, I went with shoes once again, this time though, I made sure that they were quite new (less than a year old), and things were just fine, or so I thought.

However, to my horror, the material that coats the shoe started peeling off to reveal the insides which were of a horrible colour. And with each step I took, I felt the heel coming off, and all other fears connected with having no shoes to walk with flashed through my mind.

I made it back safe this time, but barely so. Next time we have banana leaf at Bangsar, I'm going tapdancing! I don't care how...

Friday, November 17, 2006

SUICIDAL STRANGER

Two ways to (commit) suicide
1. Quick death: Take a BIG rope, tie it around your neck and hang yourself.
2. Slow death: Take a SMALL rope, tie it on a girl's neck and marry her...


I received this through SMS earlier today, it was from an unrecognised number, so I'm just going to go ahead and assume that the person who sent me this is a stranger who accidently sent the message to my phone number instead of the person it was intended to reach. It might be also safe to assume that it was from one guy to another guy.

What worries me though is the fact that why would anyone use a rope to marry someone else?

Thursday, November 16, 2006

THANK YOU VERY MUCH, I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER NOW

In a Past Life...


You Were: A Famous Undertaker.

Where You Lived: Ireland.

How You Died: Consumption.


PS: Credit goes to www.blogthings.com
The HTML code refuses to co-operate with the formerly famous undertaker

Thursday, November 09, 2006

NOVEMBER IS ANOTHER IDIOT

I broke down in front of the colour spectrophotometer this morning while I was having a discussion with the QA executive regarding some colour issues that have been mushrooming at a rapid pace the last two weeks or so.

She didn't know what to do, except saying, hey, calm down... and patting me on the shoulder.
Apparently, I'm not the first to break down in tears. A few other 20 somethings have been at it too.

Things have been going on quite awfully the last few days especially. There are so many things to do, the problems keep cropping up, I investigate, and my findings leave me even more baffled than before.

I spend about 12 hours a day in that place, taking in as much crap as I possibly can. It's too much. There's only so much I can bear.

But I still don't get why I cried. The last time I did that at work was when I just joined this place and was in charge of something I had no experience in (I was practically a fresh graduate right out of school that time) and the thing didn't turn out as expected, and I was scolded by almost everyone in the hierarchy. At least, I had the sense to run into the ladies to do my crying then. Now I realise that those idiots just took advantage of my gullibility.

I've been feeling so miserable that I didn't have the energy to blog. I just went around and put in comments on other blogs that I read. I'm beginning to feel that I've bitten off more than I can chew... the Japanese Exam (the main one is in less than a month), I've not read a book for more than a week, I can't attend the second biggest life changing event of my friend's because of the exam, and I don't know how to tell her. And all the stupid damn problems that refused to be resolved.

I actually hate life right now. And I hate November too.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

UPDATES!

Woo Hoo!

The internet connection has been fully restored to it's normal self. Yay!

That means, I've finally linked this blog to the NaNoWrimo Project I'm working on. The adrenaline rush is awesome, I tell ya... The link to the temporary blog I've set up for this November madness is right at the bottom of the sidebar at the right and somewhere above on this post.

The last five days have made me realise that this is an extremely daunting task. My characters actually had a small argument without even me knowing. Ha! Ha!

Time for some Non-NaNo stuff....
I had to go to the bank today to fight for my rights. In reality, I should have done it at least 3 weeks ago, but due to many other unavoidable obligations, I've been putting off this activity until today. Alas! It rained the whole morning... somewhere in between cats and dogs and a mild drizzle alternatively. I should have been sleeping instead of getting ready to go and errr... fight for my rights.
So, mom gave me a small umbrella to use when running from the car to the bank. Parking spaces are scarce in that part of town. Neither am I exactly in the mood to catch the flu now. Turns out I didn't have to fight for my rights at the bank after all. My request was processed immediately. All the dramatic speeches I practised in my head the past 3 weeks on the journey back and forth to work was just unnecessary drama.
When I reached home, I kind of shook the umbrella, to get rid of the excess water from the folds... and then I saw the words imprinted on the umbrella. I never knew umbrella had names. This little blue one apparently goes by the name Justin.
A long time ago, when I started believing that I had the ability to pull off a 300 page novel, I started my story with a character named Justin. For reasons I cannot remember, the name stood out amongst all other names. A plus factor was I didn't know any Justins personally back then.
Turns out, a few months later my whole family shifted to where we still live right now... (not the house, but the same town) and voila! we had our very own neighbourhood Justin there. I never spoke to the person (I must admit that I was an extremely anti social person at that point, besides, this person Justin was way older and we had nothing in common to talk about)
I remember though that he used to go around on his mountain bike, and play tennis in the evenings with his shoulder length hair flying in the wind - this I observed when I used to get down from the school bus after school in the evenings. He was dubbed our own local Andre Agassi. (When he still had the shoulder length hair!)
In a later revision of the novel that will never see daylight, I changed the name of my lead character. It had to be a name of someone I didn't know personally, or never will know personally. Of course now that the novel is dead, the name of the characters don't matter anymore.
I just can't believe that I am writing a post about a person I've never spoken to before and all because of an umbrella that shares the same name.

PS: This story was written somewhere in August but I didn't post it at that time...

Thursday, November 02, 2006

NANO MADNESS, 1667 AND COUNTING

I'm officially a NaNoWriMo player this year... I think I'm slightly insane. I'm digging my own grave. I'm actually writing long pieces which I've never done before. At least, there's something positive out of it.

Clueless is what I am... I don't know how the story is going to be. In fact, I'm just going to let the characters lead the way, and I'll follow. If they want to commit suicide, so be it.

Anyway, I've set up a separate blog somewhere around here to put it up once I'm sure that I've gone too far to abscond it...

Anyway, I hope to continue blogging as usual, but the internet connection at home has mysteriously ended... so I have to make do with what I can during break time at work, like now.

IT's THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN

Time for the Annual Appraisal again.  It's a cloudy Sunday afternoon, and I had just finished giving scores to my subordinates on their ...