The unexpected email explained a lot of things. Like how you would gently pry my fingers away from my eyes when I cringed and covered them during horror scenes in movies. How you tried to understand my music. Your joking comment that I sent you the most number of sms, when I thought I was simply replying the ones you sent me. Things you said and did took on a different slant upon hindsight. I guess we've been friends for such a while that I've been oblivious again.

Paranoia. I've been sneezing involuntarily at my customer's all day but haven't had a chance to visit the doctor. Though I explained that I've got no muscle aches or fever, and my co-workers tried not to panick, I think SARS is on everyone's mind. Better have a good night's sleep tonight and recover cos I still crave going to the gym tomorrow to run. The urge to run manifests itself all the time.. even when I was simply quickening my steps in skyscraper heels, I'd feel the rush to break into a full run and hurl myself past everything and everyone in my path.

An unexpected email has blasted my world apart. I guess I'm bewildered.

I don't know what constitutes a good day for you, but today is a good day for me, brightened by simple incidents.

A colleague drove me to a customer meeting and along the way we didn't talk shop. Instead, he put dance music on and we fiddled with the car speakers to check if the rear ones were working. Asked him how life was after he got married and he said it was fun; he grinned as he spoke and I laughed. Then I heard Ladytron being played and beamed. Cos I'm with the only colleague in the office who could possibly know this band and we were cruising down the road listening to them.

My jc girlfriend sms'd that she just got promoted. Jogged 6.4km on the tracks near my place before going home for a family dinner. Saw my bro and sis-in-law whom I haven't caught up with in about 3 weeks cos of my hectic schedule. Upgraded my Palm V to a later OS. Chatted online with my best friend whom I've convinced to go take the gender test linked from da blind mouse's blog (turned out that we're both tested positive as women, lol).

I'm thankful for little miracles, especially in times like this.

It's been an emotionally draining day at work from all the politics at my customer's. Remembered the poem from Charles B which I've just posted. Cos I am running out of days, and I don't mind having no rest in my dreams as it's better than not dreaming. The only thing is I don't know how to reset broken moments but I'm going to sleep anyhow.

running out of days
as the banister glints
in the early morning sun.

There will be no rest
even in our dreams.

now, all there is to do is
reset
broken moments.
- Charles Bukowski, blasted apart with the first breath (excerpt)

Mercy Relief.

I've just got a Russian co-worker. Amazing. And my knowledge of Russia only boils down to: Borsch soup, Chicken a la Kiev, Shashlik, Battleship Potemkin and vodka.

Oh, experience is cheap
if that's the company you keep
and a chance is all that I need
and I've had it
- Aimee Mann, I've Had It

Online now swapping mp3 files with a friend, or should I say laundering music over the internet. Inbetween I'm experimenting tying my hair up so I can run without my hair plastered to my neck, but the only way I can tie it up is in 2 itsy pigtails. Really not image enhancing in the gym at all. lol.

Bought Nick Hornby's latest book entitled 31 Songs today and well, it's about 31 songs he loves. I've only got 4 of these songs though: Nelly Furtado's I'm Like a Bird, Beatles' Rain (at least I think I have this), Royskopp's Royskopp's Night Out and the Avalanches' Frontier Psychiatrist. That's only about 10% of the songs listed so I'm trying to download the rest to no avail.

Watched Adaptation yesterday and The Hours today, and the weekend's gone again. Come for a longer visit next time won't you?

Conversation overheard today.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm complicating things."

It's such a frank answer I just couldn't help smiling.

Time to sleep and let go, in that order.

I ended up at the pub I was at on Valentine's Day. This time I sat on the other side of the room and it was the same band, with nearly the same songs. I was half squinting throughout cos the place was really packed and smokey, but everyone there had a smile on their face. Life still goes on doesn't it?

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
- Jules Renard

So many things you can't tell just by looking at me. I'm too bloody sunny.

Don't read too much into what I do. When I walk out on a film, it's not cos I don't respect the film. It's just that I respect myself enough to know I'm not where I want to be.

Another accidental helicopter crash in Kuwait. No civilian casualty pics on CNN. In the office, someone's tuned into the radio broadcast of the war but it's too soft where I sit to hear. How long will this go on?

Yesterday I asked a friend what the legal term garnishment meant. To put it simply: it's when A sues B for money, A wins but B has no money to pay A, C owes B money, and A garnishes C for money instead. Actually I was musing over this in the context of emotional debts too, except emotions are non-transferrable.

Today is really not a day to be flippant, yet work was no different at my customer's, with nary a mention of the war against Iraq. How did we get so blase? Can't seem to concentrate so I put a song on auto-repeat and listened to it almost continuously for 14 hours. Told a co-worker I wouldn't be in tomorrow, and he asked me what do I do when I'm not working for them.

What do I do when I'm not working? I don't sleep enough, don't read enough, don't write enough, don't run enough. I don't reflect enough on the world. I don't spend enough time with people who care about me. I watch way too many movies and have lost my appetite. I wonder why I'm not a bohemian free spirit, and why it's so hard for me to fall in love. I scribble notes, none of which I'll blog. My mind drifts.

I don't understand myself enough. I could have the audacity to cheekily lie that I was attached but had broken up with a buddy to a mutual friend, while he looked on horrified that I've "tarnished" his reputation. But I'm not brave enough to call you first. It used to be that I couldn't let go, but now I let go too easily.

And I worry. About the way the world is going. About people who matter. About work.

Today is really not a day to be flippant.

In the movie My Son's Room, there was this scene where the father visited a music store his son used to frequent, to come to terms with the son's death. He asked the salesman for non-Italian music recommendation, something a teenage boy like his son would have listened to. The salesman took out a CD and asked if the father would like to hear it. He replied yes, and well, here's the song.

This is for the good friend who offered a chuppa chup during the screening; a nice chat during dinner and beer; and giving me free rein to uninhibited swearing and bickering at pool. Thank you. :)

I know the world is falling apart, but I'm trying to cling to what good things there are.

Can't sleep for the past 3 hours. I think it's caffeine. Urgh.

This encounter with the girl showed me.. that I'm still capable of feeling. And I suppose if I were not so disappointed, I would recognise that as being what it is -- the most important thing to come out of all this.
- something I read from da blind mouse

The bugger just plucked the words right out of my mouth. So I'm oscillating like a yoyo now and have the emotional stability of a hamster on drugs. But I do feel, though I don't know for how long.

I just walked out of a movie after yawning through the first hour. I've got death-defying patience so this isn't normal for me. No matter how the movie sucks, I'll usually carry on watching with increasing incredulity and raised eyebrow, snorting with disbelief but somehow still fascinated by how bad it's turning out. Anyway, turned out other folks really like this one. Hmm.

I feel another moodswing coming on. Sometimes it's better to just give up and wipe the slate clean. I'm going to escape to sleep again.

The pebble has resurfaced, or I don't understand how a small gesture from you can make me smile but it did.

Remembering the strangest thing out of the blue. In the middle of a movie about friends coping with bereavement, I recalled feeling justifiably angry and refusing your goodbye hug all those years ago. It's not our last hug after all, but you seemed to know then it was the one which would have mattered. You were upset but let the moment past. Odd how this memory projected itself.

But what the heck, it's the weekend soon and I'm going to bed. You all sleep well too.

The pebble has sunk.

I'm not the perfect kinda girl. After drinking 2 glasses of wine, I would be slightly high and echo "Wow" with a beautific smile on my face. Any more drinks after that I might even sing. I'm the sort to exit a movie screening with messed up hair, and cause friends to comb their fingers exasperatedly through it, going "You ah". I've never even kept long fingernails cos I can't stand the clacking of nails on keyboard, even though it's been pointed out to me that I only type with my index fingers and left thumb.

I'm not the kinda girl who gets worshipped; I'm the sort who gets teased. Like when I was musing to my best friend about those slim fast ads where some girl could lose 3 kg in 2 days and wondering if I could be capable of that, and he joked that it's impossible for me but taking out my brain might be an option. Like when no one would trust my sense of direction or believe I can cook (which frankly I can't).

But surely I'm good for more than being a walking reference on movie trivial, music obscurities and books? Surely I'm good for more than playing pool or being logical to bounce ideas off? Surely I've made you smile?

About that song Fooling Myself. It's paradoxical to claim that you're fooling yourself, cos if you do think that, you're probably thinking clearly and not deceiving yourself are you?

I generate a massive pile of emails to my customers (which all of them confided to me at some time or other) they have no time to read. What a waste of words. If all these emails were to become blog entries, I'd be the most prolific blogger of them all. But then again my blog would also be anal-retentively detailed, politically correct and damn boring.

For the past few days, I've been babysitting my customer's printers which have been suffering from indigestion and spewing out printouts repeatedly and erratically. Needless to say the printers and I were traumatised, and it boils down to the fact that the printers and the print server is a world apart (well, make that a continent). The eager-to-please print server couldn't detect if the printers have received the print signals and kept resending them anyway. As a result, we had to lengthen the wait time and teach the print server patience.

Maybe it's time for me to learn the lesson too.

So it's just past midnight and finally I realise I'm hungry. And upset. But I'm going to go sleep, wake up, watch more movies than I need to simply cos I can, run when I'm not, and hopefully sort my life out along the way. Against my will, I'm slowly getting tired and resigned.

Like my US travelmate, recently I've inexplicably lost my appetite. Eating suddenly became as much fun as swallowing my glucosamine sulphate capsules. If I didn't consciously think about eating, I'd end up only eating a bun, half a bowl of laksa and 3 tomatoes like I did for the whole of yesterday. I just have no cravings at all.

I don't know what I'm feeling but I don't want to feel too much.

Today I sprinted 16 laps round a school track near my place, which comes up to 6.4km. Cos I wanted to prove that being a treadmill queen doesn't mean I can't run outdoors. Cos the urge to run has manifested in a tight knot clenching my heart which I must undo. Cos time is suspended when I run, and the only thought that surfaces is keeping track of laps. Cos a pebble has rippled upon the pond of my consciousness and I'm biding time till it sinks.

Cos I won't do anything else, I run.

Tell me that I make you happy
Tell me I'm devine
How everyone around adores me
Please, don't let me down
It's only me
Fooling myself
- King Kooba, Fooling Myself

What's on auto-repeat in my Discman now. Dancey, sweet and so bloody sad. Download from the link if you've got the speed for it.

After examining the shoot, you pointed at the fuzzy bits on your digicam display screen and asked, "Can you see the noise?". The phrase sounded so odd it stuck in my head, but yes I did. And it made perfect sense.

Sometimes when this place gets kind of empty
Sound of their breath fades with the light
I think about the loveless fascination
Under the Milky Way tonight

Lower the curtain down on Memphis
Lower the curtain down all right
I got no time for private consultation
Under the Milky Way tonight

Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find
Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find

And it's something quite peculiar
Something shimmering and white
Leads you here despite your destination
Under the Milky Way tonight

Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find
Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find

Under the Milky way tonight...
Under the Milky Way tonight...
- the Church, Under the Milky Way

For Makhmalbaf (when will I ever spell this name without resorting to googling it?), who's never heard this song till it appeared in the movie last night, and cocked his head at me when I started singing softly to it. You've been a good friend, thanks.

And I found myself humming the tunes as I guessed the songs on yet another Random Smiths Lyrics Generator. Songs were good back then weren't they?

I'm still busy. Still lack sleep. Still slack in blogging. Still haven't read anything in ages, not even magazines. And *sings offkey* I still haven't found what I'm looking for. lol.

My mum's into eating raw tomatoes now, which means I've started eating the same too. They make strange comfort food but they do. Comfort that is.

A guy I've dated casually before just emailed me a URL site out of the blue. I didn't bother to check it out but replied him with a "thanks, how are you?" since we've not been in touch for 2 months or so. He wrote back that he's seeing someone now, and asked if I am. Perhaps I'm sensitive but somehow that email exchange felt weird, like he triggered it specifically just so he could let me know he's snagged someone.

The guys running on the treadmills on either side of me, kept darting furtive anxious glances at my treadmill panel to check my speed and distance. So I reciprocated and pointedly looked back at their treadmill panels too. Can't understand why they felt compelled to race with me cos hey, if anything could incite me to run more than my regular 6km, kiasu guys would.

Feeling restless and antsy nowadays. Mood crystalizes into one moment.. sitting on a bench alone in the quiet changing room of my gym, while someone's mobile phone kept ringing insistently in one of the closed lockers. Only the caller and I were aware of the call, but there's nothing I can do about it.

Who would have thought there's a band called Damn You Dave? lol.

Can do will do.
- my jc girlfriend's parting words to me last night. But this is one lesson I can't seem to learn.