Monday, March 29, 2010

X vs Y (or this really shouldn't be titled)

Note: You might want to give this a miss if you're a guy.

There is a time that comes around once a month,
When a woman walks down a path,
The pain endured is like no other,
That the woman can only blame her father,
For providing that wretched X chromosome,
When Y would have been so much less troublesome,
Because you see, when a cell dies,
It goes down in a frenzy, all cries,
It tears down endometrium walls,
From all the grand halls,
Violently, like an imp with claws,
But it's not against the laws,
What was once a womb,
Suddenly feels like a tomb,
While sometimes she just couldn't be bothered,
At other times she's just annoyed,
Because all the gore
Can really get to be a bore,
And again there's the pain,
Which is simply quite plain,
Oh, monthly woe
You have stepped on my toe!

Inspired by hormones, pain, and Tim Burton's Vincent.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

This was funny earlier this week

You know that there are way too many look-alikes in your work place when you accidentally congratulate the wrong person on getting married just because they happen to have the same hairstyle as the person who actually got married.

And the most amusing part of the whole story? The man who was congratulated already has a wife and kid.

Oh yes... people actually tell me stuff like these over brunch ;)

Monday, March 22, 2010

Flash Floods - Through the Wire Mesh

The rain threw cats and dogs all over us without so much as a warning, and although we were safely in a car, vision was pretty bad, making us go slow while the wipers worked overtime. A few minutes later we were safe in our aunt's house, or so we thought. Hardly 10 minutes after parking the car, the water levels rose to the point that water threatened to enter the house from the front. The lane at the back looked like a river and and a whole jim bang (edit: jing-bang) of creepy crawlies came up to breathe.

It was odd watching the 'river' through the wire mesh at my aunt's kitchen door. Cockroaches of all shapes and sizes adorned the pink walls of one of the houses opposite as the water level rose. A creepy looking centipede climbed the wall stealthily to enter a crevice in the pink walled window, while a wet rat the size of cat stood on a flower pot, drying itself, preening. Iguanas swam around, tongues darting throwing the cockroaches off the wall into the water which were then eaten with relish. One of the iguanas was a tad bit more ambitious, and tried attacking the rat which just ignored the iguana.

Look what the flood brought!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Where Alice Kicks Some Butt

"Have I gone mad?"
"I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are"

Saturday morning saw three of us traipsing along the 2nd floor of the mall headed towards the darkened walls of the cineplex, where we were supposed to watch Alice in Wonderland, a well loved child's tale, brought to life to tease your visual and auditory senses with colour, strange characters and well spoken lines. It was never part of the plan (I had reserved my very limited movie watching for Thundercats), but with the knowledge that it was directed by Tim Burton, and had Helena Bonham Carter AND Johnny Depp as part of the cast, it would be crazy to give it a miss for any reason unless you're physically incapable of going to the theatres or dead.

It has been said that the movie was below expectation (what kind?), but I beg to differ. I found it enjoyable, and the characters endearing, especially the Red Queen (HBC), who despite her evilness, displayed a vulnerable side when all she really thought she wanted was to be loved. Besides, she had this particularly nonchalant manner of saying "Off with 'er 'ead" which added so much charm to a character you should hate. Another lovable character was the Hatter (Johnny Depp) despite the fact that he reminded me of Madonna when looked at certain angles, especially the eyes - for some reason. His loyalty to the White Queen and saving the Underland (which sounds pretty much like Wonderland, don't you think?) is extremely commendable, and it was played in such a way that you just cannot help liking him.

For reasons owed to *good book karma, we actually have a copy of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass at home although I don't ever recall reading either of the books (I would have, though, seeing that I never left any books in the house unread) and therefore cannot remember what the real story was like. I did like that the fact that the now grown up Alice was accused of losing her 'muchness' but seemed to have been able to slay the Jabberwocky despite not being certain about it. It clearly shows how having a good imagination helps. I should know... having spent countless hours nurturing mine when I was left to own devices when younger.

However, there was one extremely irritating character in the movie, the White Queen (played terribly by Anne Hathaway) who probably acted assuming that she was either in a mime, or in stop motion animation (I find it a bit hard to explain what I mean here) She looked terribly frightening as well.

All in all, it was alright as movies go... much more enjoyable and definitely much less regrettable that the movie I caught in January.

* When my mom was younger, each time they moved house, their dad would give away all their books to other people, and therefore, as kids we (my sis and I) were deprived of good reading materials (story books, mainly) as my parents were never really into buying fiction for us. And for some reason, neighbours and friends tended to give us books instead... and this book was one of those.

Picture flicked from some website. Quote at beginning of post flicked from the movie.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

East Meets West and Leftovers

Who knew Tabasco sauce could work wonders with leftover briyani? Now you know...

Firstly, you need some leftover briyani rice (best if you use balance rice from lunch for dinner if you don't want to spend hours in a cramped room with lots of toilet paper the next day)

To allow the fragrance of the rice to emanate around and make your neighbours jealous, heat it up for two minutes, on medium heat in the microwave oven.

At the same time, cook some sausages (once again, this depends on how hungry you are and how many sausages you have at your disposal) in a wok sans oil on low heat. This will ensure that the smell wafts out of your kitchen window right into the neighbours house. You will be certain of this when you hear their cat meow. If they have a cat, that is. Other than that, the low heat, long cooking ensures the sausage is well cooked and piping hot.

Serve the rice with the sausage(s) and with any other vegetables you have, if you're into that balanced diet thingy. If you couldn't care less, the rice and sausage will suffice. Cut up the sausage(s) and sprinkle pour a healthy amount of Tabasco sauce on the sausage and on random spots on the rice.

Your east meets west leftovers magic is now ready for consumption. To counter the burning sensation caused by overzealous sprinkling of Tabasco sauce, a small bottle of Yakult does the trick.

Picture credits: Top, stolen, middle, mine, bottom, flicked

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Tale of the Wannabe Script Writer

She used to frighten the hell out of us with her somewhat forceful demeanor, loud voice and sharp eyes that caught even the slightest indication of mischief in the making. 18 years later, after a *strange dream of directing a play in which an old friend of mine was the actor, I wake up to the realisation that she was probably one of the best teachers I ever had in my entire life.

Miss Eliza was both my class and English teacher in Year 5 (Primary school - I was 11) and she was the kind of teacher who saw potential in you and made you see it for yourself as well, to the point where you'd even start doing things you never knew you could do. I remember the time she forced me to write a play (and act!!) for my class for an inter-class competition which we won eventually and after a few tweaks (addition of a few annoying characters and a dance sequence to Ice Ice Baby, yeah zOMG!), was used as a performance to entertain the parents on our annual prize giving ceremony day, or the time she talked me into participating in the Commonwealth English Essay competition. I didn't win this, but I got 'commended' and a certificate. It was then when I realised that I could actually have fun writing, and started some half-baked personal projects.

(My secondary school didn't place much emphasis on us taking part in writing competitions outside the school - the internet was more of a luxury back then, so I could never get the titles for the competition if the school didn't help out - which they didn't)


Last night, I stumbled upon a website that got me a wee bit more excited than it should have, going by the name Script Frenzy. It's a contest similar to NaNoWriMo, except instead of writing 50,000 words in the month called November, you write 100 pages of **scenes and dialogues in April (or as they say, 30 days) The prize, as usual is self satisfaction, bragging rights and the possibility of being one step closer to having your very own play being acted out. Plus I think I'm slightly less busy in April than I am in November (Well sometimes you just never know, but I'm staying positive for the moment) And despite the fact that my only experience in writing a play (we called it drama) was that when I was 11 and touched school-kid issues, I think I can do it again. After all, there should be a reason why I suddenly thought of Ms Eliza after all this while.

 * The dream was probably an extension of my excitement from last night when I stumbled upon the Script Frenzy website and got a tad bit over-excited. My 'actor' friend also is an aspiring writer - we're not in touch anymore either, unfortunately

**I still need to read up more on this

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

One Hand in my Pocket

How often do you find yourself being faced with a situation so ridiculous that you are torn between giving out one of those mad guffaws while one hand violently and repeatedly hits the thigh of the person sitting next to you or crying into your pillow like there is no tomorrow, or doing both at the same time?

It must have been over a week ago when I was involuntarily held against my will at a short meeting, in which I and another colleague were informed that we were chosen to give training to a bunch of middle aged men who belonged to the most exclusive club in the automotive industry (the <insert name of notoriously popular car maker here> supplier's club)

If you asked anyone in the industry, they'd tell you that it is indeed a big honour... especially me and my colleague (lets call him Ace, shall we?) being 'young guns' and all... I'm almost 30, and he's around 35. What they can't possibly imagine is how intimidating it would be for the likes of us to 'train' middle aged businessmen no matter how experienced we were in that particular field. See, the whole ridiculousness of the situation was pointed out during that very first meeting where the organising committee (it was represented by one woman) of this training had casually informed us to provide her with our respective profiles, while providing us with a sample of the profile of the trainer from a previous training conducted by a representative from another company who belonged to this same exclusive club. He had three freaking pages of achievements he had accumulated over the years in the field he gave training for. THREE FREAKIN' PAGES!

Ace and I tried picturing our profiles, and could barely come up with half a page... and joked about including achievements like having 3 kids and a wife (Ace, not me) or getting a cool new ride (me) and other such nonsense that has no connection whatsoever to prove that we are knowledgeable in the fields we were picked to train on - to the bemusement of the organising committee lady. The due date for the profile submission is next week, and I haven't even started on it (well, I suppose if I could create a whole 15 page power point presentation sans animation in less than an hour, half a page of achievements (ahem! snort) should be a breeze right?) My only worry (and rightly so) is that no one is going to take either of us seriously because of the less than impressive profile. They'd probably think it's a joke considering that the training will be held on April 1st. Damn.

Edit: This just in.
Turns out the club wants our profiles today, so Ace and I spent a few minutes this morning preparing it... we have three lines each. Less achievements probably means less expectations, so we're on the right track, I guess. And funnily enough, the organisers themselves thought that April Fool's Day may be a tad bit troublesome (are the middle aged businessmen full of fun and up to no good kind of people??) so they have postponed it to the 5th...  

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 ...