There is something I have to say but since I'm the Queen of Beat-around-the-Bush, I guess I'll ramble on a while first.

On being true. I just watched 2 film fest movies: Venus Boyz and Disco Pigs. Especially taken with Venus Boyz, which is about drag kings in New York. As opposed to Drag queens, Drag kings are women who though not necessarily lesbian, adopt the behaviour and dressing of men. The subjects interviewed in the documentary are remarkably frank and true to their beliefs about their gender identities despite the hardships they face. The lengths some people will go to, to remain true.

I have grown weary of being wary. A few events happened in the past year which I couldn't blog about. I remember confiding in a friend about such an incident, and was asked why I didn't blog it. He said he couldn't understand why I was censoring myself if my real identity was already pretty much under wraps. What is the point of having a blog I can't be true to?

It's not the writing, I really love that. It's just this blog has gotten as far as it could go, and as a friend pointed out, it's already getting unhealthy. A trapeze act which has now become a circus freak show. It's time to end this blog and try writing what is true to me, no holds barred.

To digress.. I once had a colleague who was a heavy smoker. He tried all means to quit smoking but he was too addicted. There seemed no way he could give it up, but one morning he just woke up and thought, Today is the day I stop smoking. And he did. Just like that. So thanks for taking the ride with me, but here's where we get off. What happens next? My story goes on and yours too, and we'll all try to wing our way through life.

Vaya con dios.

It's been too long since my heart let go enough to play the clown.

While getting out of the mrt train at my station, I found a couple feuding at the top of the station's escalator. The other commuters had to step around them in order to go down the escalator and the couple was so caught up they didn't bother to move away at all. The girl was trembling visibly with anger and she said loudly in Mandarin to the guy that he made her sick. Everyone pretended not to hear and scuttled away as fast as possible. The couple must have been really overwrought to have a showdown right there and then, so overcome that they forgot where they were. I hope they can sleep tonight.

My personal life is starting to mirror my work life in terms of target settings. At work, it's how many new business contracts or projects to achieve. Personally, it's how many films to watch, books to read and overseas trips to take this year. Everything is in quantitative measurable quota. omg.

I couldn't buy any suitable moisturizer today cos those I found have whitening effect. I don't want to look paler dammit! Why do they assume most women want whitening skin products?

Hegemony told me that the last meal he had before tonight's dinner was yesterday's lunch. I asked him how that could be possible and he said he only eats when he's hungry and so at this moment, he finds no reason to eat. I couldn't get my brain around the fact that he needed a reason to eat.

If You can't Please Yourself, You can't, Please Your Soul.
- title of a compilations album I bought from the Tower Sale

Bought this cos the title just caught my fancy. Something about that deliberate second comma intrigues me, as if one's self can be separated from one's soul; that they're running whimsical paths apart. Plus the fact the album's only $1.95 of cos.

Wanted to wear my Vietnamese beaded heels this morning but found that the left sole has come unglued. Sad.

Spent last night tinkering with the ringtone composer on my mobile phone and currently it's programmed to ring with Modjo's Lady. Happy.

There is no reason to be unhappy today. I watched a movie, had a wonderful lunch chat with my UK travel mate, bought 4 CDs from the Tower sale and played pool which I haven't done in a long time. There is really no call for discontent.

My mobile phone just got spoilt yesterday but I don't remember any major mishandling on my part. It could send and receive sms but I couldn't hear anyone during phone calls. The warranty has expired though so it doesn't justify fixing it, so I got another new mobile phone instead (with free haversack). An old Nokia model 8250 but it serves its purposes.

Why are things so wrong?
and how could things be corrected?
- from my best friend's .plan

These words struck me cos I was having a similar discussion with Yoyo yesterday. I've read somewhere that some situations keep surfacing to teach you a lesson. If you don't learn it, the situation will keep recurring till you do. But somehow, I don't seem to be learning.

I went to watch the Korean movie A Sassy Girl alone last night and ended up buying the Taiwanese TV serial adaptation of Meteor Garden. Watched the beginning episodes but didn't like it as much as the anime. Don't think there'll be any urgency to rush through watching this series then.

How did it come to this? Where once I've only written for you, now I'm writing for everyone else.

And one of the things that always mystifies me is how anybody in corporate America will run Outlook. To say that "they don't have a security story", is being very charitable. Opening a piece of email in Outlook is really asking for it.
- James Gosling, Java creator and vice president and fellow at Sun Microsystems.

Seems like I'm asking for it everyday then.

Discovered that I got the name of a newly hired baker wrong and as a result, have to junk 2 boxes of erroneously printed name cards. What am I to do with this fickle memory that forgets names but remembers Pi?
That forgot your phone number but remembered your birthday.
Happy birthday again.
Say Hello Wave Goodbye.

Wore a new pair of boat-shaped black clogs to work. Isn't there a saying that if you wear good shoes, they'll bring you to good places? Like MSN says, Where do you want to go today?

Home. I wanna go home and sleep till the cows and all assorted farm animals turn up.

We're all dying.
- what Quest told me when I asked him to tell me something I don't know.

Well it's not something I'm ignorant of, it's just something I wasn't actively thinking about. Actually, I don't think I've ever considered committing suicide before. The thought just never crossed my mind.

During lunchtime, my colleagues bought a carrom board so we can play games on it during breaks. The problem is the board is too rough, and it's hard to propel the carrom tokens across the board. Someone suggested adding powder to the carrom board but the only powder available is a colleague's Prescriptives makeup powder. We actually considered this option but it'd be the most expensive carrom game any of us has played, so I guess we can't play till someone brings talcum powder tomorrow.

And yes, I'm still swarmed with work.

You people only go for supposedly high brow movies and act all cultured.
- joking remark from a friend who was trying to convince me of the merit of the movie Blade 2. Eh. Think I'll pass. :)

I just came back from watching the Film Fest movie Startup.com, about the start and end of real life startup company GovWorks.com. My favourite scene is when the CEO Kaleil was asking the camera crew if they'd have to pay royalties if he turned up the music in the car. Someone replied yes and he had a funny grin and turned up the music anyway.

Last evening, I haywired and bought 2 peasant tops (for what Yoyo calls the Babooshka Russian gypsy look). One of these tops needs lots of ironing and it already broke one of my cardinal rules for purchasing clothes, ie. to buy wrinkle-free clothes. Another rule is to buy clothes that don't need drycleaning. Sometimes I'll try to wing it by buying dryclean-only clothing and pretending it's not, chuck it in the washing machine and cross my fingers. Normally there is a 50-50% chance of the dryclean-only clothing surviving the identity crisis and converting to the machine-wash category.

Finding a soulmate is somewhat like that. You get dryclean-only people and wish they're machine-washable. If you value them enough, you won't try to change them by chucking them in the washing machine. Instead you should think that dryclean-only is what you want.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is ... impossible.
- Richard Bach

Weird thought of the day. I think it was Gandhi who said that God has no religion. I don't think this statement borders on blasphemy at all. Man is the one who has religion; God just needs to believe in Himself.

I don't know what I can save you from.
- a song from Kings of Convenience's "Quiet is the new Loud"

This was the first entry I've blogged a year ago today. Not a very optimistic start is it? I was addressing myself, at a loss on how I could go on. So much has happened since then. I'm somewhat surprised that I'm still blogging, since the reason I'm blogging now is no longer the reason I started blogging initially. Happy birthday to a year of musings. I know I've changed since then, hopefully for the better. We all live and learn don't we?

This year will start differently. This year it'll be: "I don't know what I can save you from, but I won't let you down."
I won't let me down.

Pupi has an extraordinary memory about the anime Meteor Garden/ Hana Yori Dango. She saved me from suspense by describing what happened in those missing 3 episodes. :) I finally understood about the flashbacks (and there were lots of those!) in the anime. Bliss.

I found that despite its flaws, Big Mac Small World (the documentary I watched yesterday) was quite interesting. It follows some MacDonald's managers around the world in their daily life, as well as their work in Mac's. There's a terrifying scene in Switzerland (I think), where the husband of the Mac's manager featured actually killed a rabbit in front of the camera. Just held a pistol in one hand and the neck of the struggling rabbit in the other, and blew its brains out. After that, they showed mass processing of raw minced meat (rabbit's?) and I felt sick.

Bought a blue and silver tri-panel messenger bag yesterday. Today I'm eying the electrical device that eh, generates subsonic imitations of male mosquitoes to attract and kill female mosquitoes. Yes, it does seem like strange buying habits doesn't it?

I'm up to Disc 12 of the Meteor Garden/ Hana Yori Dango anime after watching 7 discs at one go yesterday. Today is worse, I woke up after only 5 hours of sleep so I can continue watching this anime. My favourite character is Doumyouji Tsukasa, the leader of F4. he's frank and self-assured to the point of arrogance. Not sure how the drama will compare to the anime.

Woke up only after 6 hours of sleep despite watching the midnight Film fest movie last night. Though I wanna rest, somehow the weekend is too precious for me to sleep away. Another 2 movies tonight. :)

Quotes so bizarre their authenticity seems doubtful... even if they appeared in Computerworld. And it's not an April Fool's issue either.

Yes, I wanted to take over the world, and I can't believe that we ever got away with those OEM contracts. Oh, and I always thought that Oracle was better than SQLServer. And I wish I'd written Linux.
- Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation

It was true, Oracle's software was a buggy, overpriced con and MySQL was actually much better.
- Larry Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Oracle

I didn't really give a rat's ass about the Compaq deal, I just had time on my hands.
- Walter Hewlett, member of Board of Directors, Hewlett Packard

Whirlwind day at work but I'm all clear already! I'm the baking diva, yes I am!

Didn't sleep much last night cos I ended up watching Meteor Garden VCD on my laptop. The MPEG format is corrupted on 1 VCD disc and the story got disjointed cos I had to skip over 3 episodes. The impulsive me is thinking of buying a VCD player just for these episodes. As usual, my problem is I can't stand not knowing.

My US travel mate. Woohoo!

My bro and sis-in-law came home for our weekly family dinner but I was too tired to speak. When my bro asked me how I was, I just said ok. What I meant was I'm glad breathing is involuntary, cos I'd feel too tired to do so otherwise. Though they're dear to me, I was relieved when they finally went home. All I wanted was to read a book or watch some VCD to destress.

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
- Saint Augustine

I just learnt that the trick in growing good bonsai is to starve the plant. You're only supposed to add nutrients once every 1 or 2 months; otherwise the bonsai will grow too rampantly and look ugly. That sounds so abusive. I'm glad I'm not a bonsai.

Asked a baker to attend a meeting with me. He said ok, I only have to look pretty right? I replied no, I look pretty, you look desperately sincere!

It's good we can still joke about work.

Seeing the reviews of video cameras in the papers today actually got me thinking about buying one to make short video clips. I think it'd be great to make video clips of my ex-colleague and her family in Poland when I'm there. Urgh, no time to plan the trip yet, sorry pupi!

After another late night at the office, I dashed off to the drycleaner's and they were just closing shop. I was crestfallen but the shop lady was kind enough to let me retrieve my coat anyway. This could actually be the best thing that happened to me today. omg.

Baking analogy at work today. Overwhelmed with work and another unreasonable task arose. A customer just asked for a 3-tier wedding cake slightly over 2 weeks before his wedding. To be baked with a bread toaster. Since we've only baked with ovens, the bread toaster is a huge black box to us. Tried phoning the toaster folks but they're always having meetings. Pissed off cos, since the customer already knew about his wedding way in advance, why did he take so long to tell us? Does negotiating about price matter so much to him that he'll risk marrying without the wedding cake? Frankly, this is not the sort of guy worth marrying then.

SLEEP! I SHALL SLEEP NOW AND NO ONE'S GONNA STOP ME!

Trying to find a weekday evening to meet up with the girls, but I only managed to find one free weekday night per week till end of this month. Good grief.

Extremely exhausted playing badminton again tonight after a long leave of absence (due to me being busy or out of the country). Realised I missed the free anime screening at Goethe Institute tonight. Sigh, but at least I tried to stay healthy.

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind - these are all a drive toward [loving the One] who rings our heart like a bell.
- Abraham Heschel

Something my jc girlfriend sent me. Beautiful isn't it? :)

After years of experimenting with expensive skincare products from Clarins and what not's, I've gone back to basics with off-the-shelf drugstore stuff like Kao Biore. To be honest, the basic stuff feels better. What took me so long?

I realise I have been trying to unclutter my room unconsciously. It started with reorganising part of my CD collection, then on Sunday I threw away old unused skin products (there were actually quite a lot of those). And yesterday I dropped by ikea unintentionally after a long day at work and bought those accordion files to file away important documentation. To top it off, I actually went into a packing frenzy after I got home.

Sometimes I can't believe myself. I don't know what is more laughable: me keeping years of bills for audit purposes (yes yes all chucked now) or me only yearning to pack when I have the least energy to.

Random fact of the day. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character with highly selective memory. Whatever he knows, he excels at. Whatever he doesn't bother to know, he knows zilch.

Sunday morning I went to Goethe Institute for a Film Fest fringe movie, which is an 11am screening of German animation. However, the event got cancelled but no one was there to spread the news, and no notice was posted. The security guard just repeated that the Goethe Institute only opened at 1pm. Urgh.

Went to Books Kinokuniya again to look for translated works of Mariko Habayashi, this time armed with the Chinese translation of her name. Managed to locate a collection of short stories translated into Chinese, hesitated briefly before buying it anyway. I started reading it right away while waiting for friends to appear for lunch, and somehow it didn't satisfy me. Though I can read Chinese prose adequately, I don't seem to get the nuances the text is trying to convey. I much preferred the English translated works of other Japanese authors like Murakami or Banana Yoshimoto. But I still dropped by the library to borrow another Chinese translated work of Mariko Habayashi, just to reaffirm my incompetence with reading Chinese text.

I just bought the 18 VCD series for the classic Japanese animation of Meteor Garden. This is from the manga, where the drama adaptations are supposedly based on. I haven't watched the drama versions though (with F4 etc), but I chose to buy the animation rather than the drama version. Still have 3 other animation series to watch among other VCDs, goodness knows when I'll have time to finish. Oh well.

Actually, for those who read my blog but don't know me personally, won't you leave a comment or email me to say hi? I'll be glad to hear your story :).

Early this morning I'm going to pay respects to my dad and grandma with my family and relatives. Their urns are stored in those locker-like slots in a temple, and every year there's always a huge crowd of people there despite it being the crack of dawn. My bro and I are normally the only ones from my generation to turn up; the rest are all the older folks. My cousins elect to skip this event cos they don't know most of the rites and rituals (besides it being at an unearthly hour). Actually, my bro and I still don't get the praying bit despite having gone to pay respect for ages. 'We just follow our uncles and aunts blindly and mimic what they do. Mum never taught us how, she probably doesn't see the point since we're free thinkers.

When my dad first passed away, there was a time when my bro and I couldn't remember the lot number for his urn. I distinctly recalled that an uncle chided us for not being respectful enough to remember the resting place of our dad. It was awful cos we didn't mean to forget... we just remembered the other more meaningful memories of our dad. But I did jot down the lot number into my Palm Pilot afterwards, and every year I'd transfer the lot number to my mobile phone so I wouldn't forget. Odd. I wonder if dad would be disappointed with me if he could see me now.

Today? Busy.

A friend told me that she met her ex for dinner, and I asked her how he is. She replied that he's happily engaged now, and looked straight into my eyes. We didn't say anything, but her sad eyes spoke volumes. They told me that she loved him so much she wished she could have been someone else for him. And I understood, cos I had been there too. But it was beyond us to be someone else.

I wanted to tell her: Look, isn't it funny? When I broke up, I kept repeating to myself the phrase "He and I are not in love" so I could drum the breakup into my head, so I could acknowledge its truth. Then after a while, that phrase became an involuntary mantra, an odd statement that popped up out of nowhere all the time even though it means nothing now. The sentence just became part of me, and it belongs to me as much as my hair or my nose does.

We're not bitter. We were only being ourselves. But I didn't breathe a word and the moment passed.

Yesterday I met an old friend who left the country for an overseas posting about 2-3 years ago. She broke up with her boyfriend then. I guess it was hard for him to follow her there, and she didn't have much choice in terms of a good job here cos she's not a native and had specialized skills. They tried to make a long-distance relationship work in the beginning, but it was futile and gradually wore them both down. When I met her again yesterday, she was stopping over before carrying on to another posting in an exotic location. She's still single cos her job entails much travelling and not much chance to rest. She's her usual wonderful self, but she looked more tired and much much older. I wonder if I look like that to other people too.

And then I think back about the 2 of them not so long ago and I wish things had turned out better. I hope she'll be ok wherever she goes.

When I was in Japan, I stumbled upon a second-hand book/ CD store. It was amazing cos CDs are really expensive in Japan but it's possible to get CDs for about $14 or even less here. I bought Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha and Golden Smog's Down by the old Mainstream for about $5 each, and my best buy is Bonobo's Animal Magic for about $14. Along the way I even came across Singaporean musicians like Dick Lee, the Padres and Maizurah. Bizarre.

Reached office just after 8am and left just after 9pm. Been busy but that's fine. Planning to visit friends' homes this weekend. Reading Banana Yoshimoto's N.P. now. How quickly routine sinks in again.

Still checking for incoming office emails and it's been 40 minutes. I wonder if it'll hit 1000 unread emails? At least it'll take whole of this morning cos it's only up to 153 unread emails.

Quiet fulfilling day. Watched The Royal Tennabaums. Bought April's issue of Mixmag and a travel guide to Poland. Dropped by the library and borrowed a couple of books (Nick Bantock's The Forgetting Room, Banana Yoshimoto's N.P., Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing as well as Nicholson Baker's The Everlasting Story of Nory). The last book surprised me cos I didn't expect Nicholson Baker (who wrote the infamous Vox, the book Monica Lewinsky gave Bill Clinton) to write a children's book, but I guess I'll have to read to find out. Then I went to a nearby cafe and sat through the whole reading of The Forgetting Room.

Ok, I'm prepared for the havoc tomorrow when I relaunch myself to work.

Sells cakes but loves pi(e).
- Quest describes me in 5 words. How apt.

Other random images of Japan. Watching the backview of a kimono-clad girl running along as fast as she could in the underground subway corridor. Carrying garbage while I walked for ages cos I couldn't locate a dustbin, though there were lots of vending machines around. Marvelling at the nifty new arcade games at a games arcade. Drinking Sapporo while chatting at the Ryokan. Seeing a baseball team practise on an open field while I was passing by in a train. Wondering why there were so many people commuting on the trains just after 5am in the morning.

I'm so glad.

Strange little flashback of Japan. I remember sitting at a desolate rural train platform, watching Shinkansen trains zooming by in both directions cos that station was too insignificant for a stopover. I remember smiling like an idiot cos the scene was so surreal.. I wondered about those tear jerker movie scenes where the couple separates lingeringly at a train station and it's all so romantic. But what if they separate on a train platform with the Shinkansen zooming by madly as a backdrop? No time for tender goodbyes as the Japanese are all too efficient in their train schedules.

Did I mention I finally boarded a train by accident? I took one bound for Tokyo cos it was 7 minutes ahead of the one I've reserved seats for, also bound for Tokyo. 7 minutes made a world of difference. The train conductor kicked me off at Nagoya so I can switch back to my intended train. He was funny... he echoed me when I said "Oh. My. God." upon discovering my error. I thought Punctuality has to be a religion for these folks, and if it is, won't I be right in place?

You know, I never read that novel I brought along 'cept while I was on the plane. There's just too much to see.

Putting aside considerations like the language barrier and high costs of living, I think I'll feel comfortable living in Tokyo. This is the same way I felt about New York and London. I know for sure I'm nothing but a city girl.