It's that time of the year

I keep telling myself it's just a case of volume, not weight, and I wonder how big your handcarry can be. Another suitcase would be helpful.

I'm crap at packing. My dad repacks for me here, and Weng packs for me over there. I can never make it fit perfectly and from what I've seen so far, my stuff is definitely not going to fit. While I try to solve this increasingly pressing problem, my dog has renewed her hatred of suitcases and has been glaring at it whenever she follows me into the room.

I'm also nursing a bad cough courtesy of my sister, not getting enough sleep, and trying to remember what errands I still have to run. My mum's been shoving 'a gentle infusion of raw ginger and honey' down our throats in a bid to stop us from trying to hack up our lungs. It's really foul tasting.

I fly tomorrow.

They've got little bows

Finding that one accessory that transforms your outfit from drab to fab is like the ultimate quest, and I think I've found one such sacred item in the form of a pair of shoes.

I feel a deep sense of satisfaction. Nothing irks me more than going to the shopping mall with a plan and coming out empty handed.

I am at peace.

Stomp

It was as if the most organic sounds from our everyday lives had been taken and forced into a lattice of pure noise. Listening to the pulsing rhythms and trying to pick out the interplay between all the musicians was like looking at a painting for a split second and trying to admire the care of each stroke and stepping back to absorb the overall effect at the same time. There was a lot of aural squinting going on.

My favorite act, if you've seen it, was with the sinks. So cool.

Two hours of raw energy has left me dying to turn over the pails in the toilet, grab my mum's bamboo frying slice and bang away to my heart's content, but I predict that my effort will be less warmly applauded.

Headlines

On the international front: I'm relieved that Hurricane Rita didn't make the damage from Hurricane Katrina any worse. I'm still wondering how New Orleans is going to drain though. Maybe drain is not such a good word because it looks physically impossible. I didn't know the city was below sea-level. Evaporate might be better.

On the church dedication: it totally owned.

On fantasy football: that totally owned too. Pedersen double, Murphy double, and Owen. I eagerly await my points. (Tish, watchout!)

On real football: +sigh+ ...good thing Cisse's there to save them all the time.

On packing: Not looking forward to it. My dad looked at the stuff I had bought to take back and he asked me when I'd like to start prioritizing.

On stressing about leaving becausetherearesomanythingstodostillarghwheredidthetimego: High

And it starts again

We're about halfway through the mass exodus of Malaysian students as they head back to the UK to start another year of lectures, parties, and exams, and not necessarily in that order either. I bet the flights are full of them, each one dangerously overloaded as I'm sure I'll be in a week's time.

Summer started off real slow but ended amazingly as Evan and Ade continued to show us how much side-splitting laughter they bring into our lives. It's just not the same otherwise.

I'm not looking forward to all the setting up that goes on at the start of term. There's usually a lot money involved as well, and I get unnecessarily stressed out. But while one part doesn't want to leave the security and good food of home, the other part of me can't wait to go back.

So to everyone who's left, I'm glad you arrived safely, and to everyone about to leave, I hope you have a quick, safe flight. This year holds so much promise and so much of the unknown, so best of luck. I know God'll walk with you on whatever decisions you make.

Let me hear you!! HYAH!! poot.

I don't see many guys in workout classes. I wonder if girls are just less self concious about jumping around like idiots or whether we think we look cool no matter what. Or maybe we don't think.

I wanted to throw up after today's combat class - something I haven't felt since spending every night in the pool under the whistle of a Russian coach.

The guy didn't build it up, he started at fast and worked up (very quickly) to suicidal. He would yell 'Level 1!!' shortly followed by 'Level 2! Hup!' and then 'Level 3! C'MOOORRRNN!!', at which point I was like there's no level 3, I don't think there's even a level 2, this is all I got. Gnhhh.

An uppercut is the most embarassing move. Ever. Closely followed by a back kick. Mg.

Quotable quotes

Ewan says:

"Girls are probably really good at navigational stuff if they just put their minds to it; but I guess they don't think navigating is all that important and are too busy thinking about other worldly matters anyway."

Chay says:

"I get around."

Hashing down memory lane

I was just thinking, my favorite movie line is "You have six smiles..." from Win a date with Tad Hamilton, after which he proceeds to explain all her smiles. So schweet.

Then there was today, which has been one of the rainiest Mondays I can remember, oh, and I saw Ewan Harney.

Who is Ewan Harney? A classmate from the tiny town of Miri and even tinier Shell school - the pale, scrawny kid. He managed to get a hold of Chay who got a hold of me. Who is Chay? Someone I used to carpool with, also from Miri and also from Piasau, who was really fat and had a bad haircut (which was in at the time, he claims). Fortunately both turned out good, and it was incredible seeing them after so many years.

It also turns out that I wasn't the only obsessive sociopath that has spent a great deal of time Googling whoever we could remember in a desperate attempt to get back in touch with primary school. Isn't that reassuring? Our combined search didn't turn up many people though, so for the sake of others who'll also spend an idle Sunday afternoon Googling old friends, here I am: Ashley See from Piasau School, Miri.

He showed me pictures. Mg, I wanted to cry. The Shell Camp is exactly the same, and so's the school and the Boat Club! Except that they've built a tall green fence around the entire expatriate settlement. Oh well, you gotta expect them to move with the times and the level of paranoia.

There was a lot of 'do you remember'. I never imagined I'd be sitting at Devi's corner with Ewan and Chay comparing memories and fitting missing pieces into each others' recollections. Boy were those naive times, really good naive times.

Thank God!

I can chew. Full masticatory ability right here. You have no idea how good it felt to wake up this morning and realise that enough of the swelling's eased up to let me work my jaw. Oh the simple things.

I'm so grateful, I've decided to rename my space. 'As good as it gets' is a little too negative, and change is always good. Deep fried everything, here I come!

My mother asked my sister and I to clean out the fridge today. Which brings me to Chinese fridges.

Chinese cooking's not like English or French cooking where you can do anything with some meat, milk, butter, salt, pepper, and those neat little bottles of herbs. Nope.

Chinese cooking demands bottles and bottles of preserved meats, vegetables, and seafood, processed sauces from meats, vegetables, and seafood, bundles, sealed bags, and boxes of herbs, and various soy derivatives. Mg, it is a chore to clean.

There were oily, starchy fingerprints all over the place because not only is Chinese cooking extensive, it's also fast (generally), and my mum's a good, but messy, cook.

Then there was the crusty stuff. Crusty stuff in all shades of brown were adhered to the shelves, and, against all laws of physics, on the underside of the shelves too. What you couldn't wipe off, you had to scrape with your nails, which was a lot.

We found a petrified lychee, a shrivelled up lotus-wrapped rice dumpling (also fondly known as 'zhang'), and a couple more misshapen lumps that were unidentifiable, not to mention lots of murky looking jars that were way past the printed expiry dates.

Ew. I guess what Mum hasn't realised yet is that when she asked us to clean the fridge, we only cleaned the fridge. The freezer half +shudder+ is another story for another day.

But I'm hungry, not to be deterred by what I found in the fridge, five days of agony and nothing but soup and water has put a real edge on my hunger. So I'll be back later.

In the throes of self pity

Wisdom teeth are a genetic throw back from when we had to eat branches. Now they're nothing more than four irritating lumps of enamel that cost you thousands in dental fees and hours and hours of time wasted in painkiller-induced agony, because our steadily shrinking jaws are only good for processed food.

Painkillers make a big pain a slightly smaller pain. They don't make it disappear entirely.

I'm so depressed. There's so many different kinds of foods I want to be able to enjoy in my last couple of weeks here and I can't. The most I can manage aside from lots and lots of water is lots and lots of soup.

I have a serious craving for fries and chilli sauce. Crab. Butter-fried prawns. Calamari. Deep fried wan tan. Omg. Rice. Steak. Do you know how difficult it is?!

It is done

I'm so glad I was under. The SJMC daycare staff and anaesthetist are so professional. I didn't even realise I had fallen asleep until I woke up with an almighty pain, a crappy tasting mouth, and an icepack wrapped around my jaw. So much better than ten days ago even if it did take me awhile to fight off the wooziness.

And I got to take my teeth home.

The two upper wisdom teeth seem to have been pulled out quite nicely, which would explain why there's hardly any swelling in those areas, but the lower one had to come out in pieces, so it's back to being a lopsided hamster for a while.

Last night was so much fun. We haven't been to Ade's house since year 10 or something. Good food, good company, and bridge.

Anchovies@Modestos

Lunch with Rudy was great. After so many years, he's still got such a beautiful face. Pity about the hair though. Lol.

I can only hold wit slanging matches online because it gives me time to think. At lunch yesterday I was reduced to "shut up" and "whatever". Oh the shame. But I do have a shiny 50p piece sitting in my wallet, so I guess we know who won in the end.

I really suck at DoTA still. I need to research a character and figure out the best way to play that particular character. Sneaky ambushers. Grr.

I took my suitcase out this morning and my dog saw and she got very upset. I think she's still sitting in the spare room glaring at it.

I managed to get my hands on music score software, thanks to my brother. I should've known you'd be able to get it here. Malaysian pirates will copy anything and everything if there's a hint of profit.

110905

Happy 2nd Anniversary, Weng. Two years, has it really been that long?

I know you've probably felt every single month of the 24 we've been together, but thanks for sticking by me and watching out for me all the time, and for teaching me to relax and enjoy the ride that is life.

So here's to the football, the computer games, the choir practices, the long walks, the corny jokes, the travelling, the obsessive neatness, and every single household chore we do together.

I love you.

A 90degree learning curve

CBC rocks. Left, right, and centre.

I really really hope the dedication goes well because we're working so hard for His glory, and the best part is that all the rehearsals and planning are so much fun.

Music is like a foreign language. If you don't practice writing, playing or arranging, it doesn't come easily anymore, much like I discovered at 1am last night, which resulted in an embarrassingly messy practice session this afternoon when I transposed all their parts in the wrong directions. The musicians were more than patient though, and a guy who lectures in music at one of the local universities was nice enough to offer advice and give the project some direction. I've learnt so much from the experience.

What I think

How I wish I could belt out songs like Carrie Underwood. Have you seen her sing? Absolutely wonderful.

I have to say though, I wasn't always like this. When I was little, probably too little know any better, I would oblige my adoring legions of fans (mostly aunties) with highly tasteful renditions of "I'm a little teapot" with choreography.

Then puberty hit, and suddenly you become conscious of everything. Throw in a couple of music teachers who cried in exasperation, and I find myself listening to other people sing with complete confidence, believing that they're really that good. I don't admire their singing, I admire their self-belief. The simple fact that they believe they're right on key and that everyone else loves hearing them sing.

+sigh+

Lack of confidence is crippling, to the point that even your own boyfriend has to work his tactfulness to the extremes to tell you that it's really not good and no one should give you a mike. Ever.

Disclaimer: I dramatize. Weng's been nothing short of supportive of my choral efforts. The tactfulness part is true though.

I loves Fridays

Mum ordered a massive clean out this afternoon, at which point my sister decided to give in to her allergies and headed straight to bed, leaving me and Bryan to sort through six months' worth of junk. Most of it got thrown out - we're highly efficient.

Today I'm tweety bird-looking, yesterday was Elmer Fudd, so there's an improvement and I managed to coax my dimple out of hiding too. I'm well on the road to recovery even if I keep mistiming my antibiotic doses.

As things go, I could bump my surgery up to Wednesday or Tuesday maybe and put more time between that and my flight. Apparently things get messy if you fly too soon after, something about blood and pressurised cabin air.

I'm happy today, even with a brass ensemble arrangement hanging over my head. What you can do tomorrow, you do tomorrow. Ah, procrastination.

And Rudy, since you'll probably read this before I get to talk to you, lunch on Monday is on. Tish is coming too, and so's your 50p.

Entertainment value

Russell Peters is so funny!

Watched Win A Date With Tad Hamilton, played Monopoly, had dinner with Weng's colleagues.

A relatively happening day, I especially enjoyed Monopoly because I was winning until I entrusted Bryan with five minutes of play time and Weng went from nearly bankrupt to watching everyone else mortgage their properties. Damn, so close!

Win A Date was another brainless romantic comedy of the kind I really like. Topher Grace is the ultimate geek with the best lines in the whole movie +sigh+ what a darling dweeb.

Ticking over so slowly

Judging from his reaction, we've established that Tish has an admirer, because I'm pretty sure he didn't yahoo himself much less sexy tish. But the interested individual not only thinks he's sexy and but desperate enough to do a search on him. I say go Tish!!

Rudy asked me whether it's fun being a hamster, or something along those lines, I can't remember exactly, the painkillers are befuddling my mind. But yes, I've heard them all. Today is the first time I've ventured out in public since Monday. Public meaning downstairs in the lobby of my condo, sitting in the car, and at the petrol station.

It's kind of hard driving while trying to duck behind the steering wheel and even harder to skulk along the wall of the corridor in the hopes that no one'll see me, so everyone from the kiosk attendant to the security guards and the newspaper man were doing double takes, and I know for sure it wasn't because of my sparkling smile since I can barely crack one at the moment.

I just wanted to cradle my hamster cheek and run home. Everytime I've passed a mirror I've paused to will my swelling to go down.

Who could've guessed that a single wisdom tooth could cause me so much grief?

Relevant wei

It's time for another how to find me on the web. If you enter the following words, my page'll come up:

1. how did basketball start
   
2. rascal flatts
   
3. speech for dad's birthday
   
4. sexy tish
5. dog on as good as it gets

Number 3 must've been entered by a someone who's a complete idiot or desperate enough to hope that someone's posted "The speech I made at my dad's birthday" to plagarise.

My favorite is number 4 and I'm really curious as to who yahoo-ed it.

Now it's just annoying

"It's okay, Ash, when my face is swollen, you can laugh at me as well." Declares Bryan, with a huge grin on his face.

It's been that kind of day. So I took a four hour nap and refused to get out of bed.

Now that everyone's back to school, it's been really quiet. I've got to start figuring out what I need to bring back. It's really hard to remember what's over there and what's not. It's usually a case of a long email detailing what else I need to be sent by post once term starts.

I love lists.

It pains

I woke up this morning and found myself being able to work my jaw a little more, but when I looked in the mirror, the swelling hadn't only shifted downwards but had increased as well. I look like I'm sucking on a gobstopper only it feels much less pleasurable, and Cheryl's been calling me D.C.

I'm thankful my new jawline is only temporary, because I just want to make like an ostrich and never come out of hiding.

Pretty pictures

I like the beige coloured ones, they make the pain go away for a bit.
The yellow and green ones make me throw up, but they make the pain go away for longer.
The red and grey ones are my antibiotics.


This is my "Once in a lifetime".

Badly traumatized and in abject misery

It was awful. I let them talk me into giving it a shot. How bad could it be? they said, Go on, try take it out under local.

I lay there underneath the operating sheet trembling, trying to be brave but ended up having a complete breakdown once the drill started to whirr away inside my head. The dentist shot me full of anaesthetic but it didn't seem to be working well enough for him to continue.

I've always reacted strangely to anaesthetic. I remember one doctor having to give me three or four times the usual amount to fix a dislocated finger, and another panicking slighty when I came round half way through another op. This was no different, and the needle soon became a regular instrument in my mouth. The dentist's response? Hmm, interesting. It was already wearing off as soon as he was closing up the wound, and the sturturing stung but I was too exhausted to care.

Apart from the frequent interruptions because I was hysterical, the dentist was also having problems removing the tooth because I had an "interesting root pattern" - whatever that means. He had to remove the root in teenyweeny pieces, it just refused to come out quickly.

And now I'm on two kinds of painkillers that don't seem to be working either. My left jaw is incredibly sore and I'm feeling the full side-effects of the pills that include nausea and dizzyness.

So the other three wisdom teeth are due to come out under general in about ten days' time. I'm a right picture of misery and I can't even eat to make myself feel better. Had it been any other body part, I'd be walloping scoops and scoops of icecream right now, but I can barely manage sips of juice. Urgh, gotta go lie down.

Waiting to suffer

Tish got me the coolest painting ever - it's done on two pieces of wood and it is a picture of a figure lassoing a cresent moon with amazing sunset colours in the background. I love it.

Gosh, you wouldn't believe how long it took me to formulate that paragraph in my mind and then try and spell everything correctly while getting the words in order. I don't think I need painkillers, I seem to already be in a near state of delirium (oh boy was that a tricky word to type).

But yes, I'm scheduled to have my wisdom teeth removed sometime this week. That's the plan. All four in one go under sedation because they're growing at right angles to everything else. I will probably be feeling very sorry for myself later. Tish's a veteran at this, he's been there done that and told me not to worry. But if it's all the same, I think I will.

I have just remembered that I can play DoTA in the comfort of my own home. The joys of wireless. So when you guys are ready, let's make it a day (k, Tish?). That way I don't need to sit in a puddle of male testosterone at the cybercafe and no one'll have to gently remind me that it's getting late and I should be getting home. Um, if that makes sense. Oh, someone'll have to bring the game. kthxbai!

Let your imagination run free

I walked into a game shop the other day with Weng and his brother. As like any other game shop there were rows and rows of CD covers on display, each one a riot of colors vying for the attention of the buyer, and on any bit of wall not taken up by game titles were posters, each one bigger than the last.

These posters were a work of art, an extreme extension of the imagination. They made me sit there thinking, No way could she have breasts like that and arms like that, and fight off evil monsters without needing some serious structural bosom support possibly involving several steel girders and cables.

It's the sort of picture that grabs your attention and doesn't let go because you also wonder how that piece of gauze stays like that without some industrial-strength double-sided tape, and whether nipple plasters and tweezers are part of the Amazonion survival kit.

I mean Tara Reid has enough trouble preventing her breasts from falling out of a comparatively modest dress while standing still on the red carpet, and as for that Janet Jackson superbowl mistake, well the warrior princess in the flowing chiffon get up accented in studded leather would have a bit more to deal with than Justin Timberlake I'd imagine.

Fantasy is great isn't it? Everything runs riot, especially male libidos. But that's okay, because the same kind of minds came up with DoTA All-Stars which I currently can't stop thinking about. VA anyone?

Disclaimer: I really really suck at DoTA. I die a lot, but it's still ultra addictive.

Game on

The boys didn't want to pass to me. But I'm quite used to it, I don't blame them anyway, I don't really run around a lot so I'm real easy to mark, and it was pretty hot today. I still can't play basketball, netball's definitely more my style. Dribbling's quite skill intensive, I can only stand and shoot/pass. And boys play so fast.

There are a lot of things going on at home that are being left unsaid. There's a bit of a standoff between my mum and dad. I don't really know exactly over what anymore, but I'm praying it'll end soon.

Meanwhile I'm gearing up for our 2nd anniversary. (Gosh, I just realised that ruyen.blogspot.com is just over a year old now - I totally missed that). I'm really crap at remembering dates, but I've had a stranglehold on remembering this one for the last two months, and now it's a week away, I'm so excited!

His gift needs more work though, and as usual I'm wracked with nervousness, fretting over whether it'll compare to whatever he's getting me. We've also been trying to crack each other into giving up the surprise early, trying to get each other off guard, we've even resorted to threatening to pump each other's siblings for information.

I hate buying for him when I'm largely broke and he always seems to get it just right. No pressure.

A lesson in entrepreneurship

I hadn't been on an Asian tour in a long time before Shanghai and I had forgotten exactly how much stuff they try to sell you. You don't get taken to see historical sites if there's nothing they can't sell you in relation to them, which, fortunately for the enterpreneurial skills of the Chinese, are few and far between.

During the course of the seven days, we were sold:

1. Painted crystal balls
2. Silk - duvets, clothing, and other products
3. Chrysanthemum tea
4. Green tea
5. Teapots
6. Jade at the Heritage Museum
7. Jade at a jade processing factory
8. Embroidery pieces
   
9. Quartz and other precious stones
10. Pearls and pearl-derived products (as outlined in pidgin below)
11. Wuxi pork ribs
12. Herbal miracle creams/ointments/oils
13. Umbrellas - but only because it rained five out of seven days
14. Lucky stone figurines
    

We were constantly being ushered into room after room where a someone would spend hours trying to sell us things. It was marketing stunt after marketing stunt as the Chinese tried to prey on unsuspecting Malaysians.

And those were the organised bits. Every night, we were aso left in the downtown shopping district for a couple of hours to defend ourselves against the extremely persistent vendors that have made China what it is today. The shopping portion of the trip culminated in Shanghai's Petaling Street - a market that's taken piracy to a whole new level. The sightseeing part almost slipped by completely unnoticed.

I swear that the Chinese economy is growing on the backs of tourists and its bicycle/scooter industry.