They stood side-by-side. One was too familiar, one was a distraction. Why did I even get distracted in the first place? I already knew what I needed to buy. Maybe it's being human, but I went with the distraction. I bought the second choice. I bought the new cleanser.

For a person with sensitive skin, finding suitable skin care products don't come easy. That is one thing I know. But yet, I chose to buy the new cleanser. That was two months ago. Since then, I'd been experiencing unmanageable, highly uncomfortable skin problems. The rashes, the pimples, the itching, and the extra money spent on facials. My initial reaction was to nitpick on all circumstantial faults. Stupid sensitive skin. It's the humid HOT weather. It's my bedsheets. I'm not washing my face enough. It's the dust in my room, gotta run my air-purifier all day. I found fault in everything I could think of. I tried to fix the problem to the best of my ability. Safe to say that I wasn't seeing things too clearly. After attempting solutions from every angle, I was on the verge of succumbing to the "inevitable" when it dawned on me. Every single time I used the cleanser, I felt like something was wrong. It didn't jive. The new cleanser was incompatible! Why did it take me two months to figure it out?

Several possibilities:
1.  I wanted my decision to buy the new cleanser to be the right decision. Pride check.
2.  I wanted to be in control of the situation so I did all I could to gain control. Stubbornness check.
3.  I thought I knew best because I've been living with sensitive skin all my life. Expertise check.

Things I could've done to rectify the problem sooner:
1.  Been more honest with myself.
2.  Taken some time to reflect.
3.  Not gotten distracted to begin with.

Life lesson much?

The weekend was like an escape from real life. I spent a night on a rooftop bar with a good looking guy. My group pulled off a song that we barely practiced. A relative told me I looked like a model at a cousin's wedding (God bless blood relations). I made my early morning commitments relatively on time. My mom made pork roast. I made up for a week's worth of late nights.

And then Monday came. Like a train off its tracks, it came. Unexpected, undesired.

I overslept. I couldn't find my device chargers. Everything I did had a two-second lag due to oversleeping and hand moisturiser (no grip). Didn't iron any clothes over the awesome weekend so this morning greeted me naked. I found my brother at home, which I hoped upon every shooting star and wishing well that that meant it was a public holiday I wasn't aware of. No such luck. Upon setting foot in the office, my mom gasped at my disfiguring eye bags and told me I look like I've been in mourning. -_-

Happy weekday everybody!

Hello World,

You've been sending me parcels of Grey Skies and Rain the past few days. I'd just like to inform you that I have received the parcels, and there appears to be a problem with the order.

In reference to my PO no. 1001, I ordered Everyday Blue Skies. The Grey Skies you sent has caused a slight raucous in my workplace. Job efficiency has dropped by 15%, while the number of absentees has significantly increased. This is unacceptable as the reason I placed an order for Everyday Blue Skies was to affect the exact opposite effect. 

Also, the Rain that you sent was too large in quantity. Its arrival has thus caused great chaos. The workplace is experiencing visual obstruction, slow traffic, damaged shoes, and dampened spirits.

The week is almost up. I need you to rectify this problem by early Monday morning. These mistakes have caused me and my colleagues much unpleasantness and additional monetary costs.

Please advise your counter measures.

Thank you.

Regards,
KL Man

I've found almost everything ever written about love to be true. Shakespeare said, "Journeys end in lovers' meeting." What an extraordinary thought. Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to that, but I am more than willing to believe Shakespeare had.

I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said, "Love is blind". Now, that is something I know to be true. For some, quite inexplicably, love fades; for others love is simply lost. But then of course love can also be found, even if just for the night. And then, there's another kind of love. The cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. Its called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. 

Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one-sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones. The walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space! Yes, you are looking at one such individual. And I have willingly loved that man for over three miserable years. The absolute worst years of my life! The worst Christmases, the worst Birthdays, New Year’s Eves brought in by tears and Valium. These years that I have been in love have been the darkest days of my life all because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back. Oh god, just the sight of him! Heart pounding, throat thickening. Absolutely can't swallow.

It took 2009 to realise that 2008 was awesome!

In 2008, at one point I was a student, an intern, an employee, and a freelancer all at one go. I had flings, I dated, and I also committed. I got full use of a spare car, I wrote a short story, I completed my degree course earlier than mapped out by my course counselor, I made great friends, I achieved monetary goals, I took up an array of classes and courses, I was in a band (even if only for a couple of weeks), I even took on a stray Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano with the muscle of a Mitsubishi Evolution 8 (yes, it must be said, that this was the highlight of the year). 2008 deserves a pat on the back.

2009, on the other hand, sure hasn't packed that much of a punch. Graduation was the biggest waste of six hours I had ever spent at any event, hands down (even driving to Kuantan and back for no reason would have been more gratifying). I'm single. I crashed the spare car. I got three short stories running on no substance. I have less time to spend with my great friends. Running a startup means that I'm spending way more money than I'm earning. My array of classes have dwindled to two and yet I feel the strain. I have no band. I have no access to any vehicle that can compete with even a Satria GTI.

2009, you have another three and a half months to prove your worth.

Men. Hot-wired for going forth and multiplying.

Women. Hoards, protects, and nurtures by instinct.

Marriage. A pandemic disillusionment.

If men, by order of evolutionary purpose, are inclined to spread their seed far and wide, and women can't suppress their inner calling to protect what's theirs by interfering with man's philandering ways, then marriage of the two opposing forces appear a grave mistake.

In life, I want it all. I want wealth and health. I want education and beauty. I want food and fitness. I want a sensitive manly man. I want a rationally irrational manly man. I want a driven, purposeful man with time to spare. I do want it all.

Think about it. If men are essentially the same from when the world began then, taking into account elementary and evolutionary changes, traditional men are the ones most likely to wear wedding ring marks into their wallets. Can't blame them. It's in their blood. So then maybe men who are more in-tune with their emotions, have a greater tendency to hoard, protect, and nurture i.e. effeminate, make better candidates for monogamous relationships? Because of the traditional man's inability to accept monogamy, and the traditional woman's inability to allow for polygamy, marriage of the traditional couple makes for an unhappy union built on discontent. Maybe now is the time for the hybrid couple. Feminine meets feminine, masculine meets masculine; no one makes up for anyone's shortcomings. And I don't get it all after-all. 

Life's a bitch. Watch YouTube.

Nothing goes better with a piping hot chocolate brownie than vanilla ice cream, nothing gets out the aftertaste of a bad date better than beer (and lots of it), and nothing washes away the long hours of the day better than a hot shower.

Switch on the heater, run the water for a minute. That first step under the shower head would feel like a Coca Cola ad: "Ahhh." The water's gentle caress wipes away those motorcyclists who, after years of self-loathing, have apparently forgotten that their bikes come equipped with brakes. The constant pounding sprays on the shoulders massages away the one hour of persistent trying to get through a government department helpline that finally wasn't of much help anyway. The stream cascading through portions of hair and scalp tickles away the wet shoes from today's erratic downpour, washes away the half hour of waiting in line just to save RM3, and swiftly blocks out the waiter who called me aunty.

Take a walk with me and I'll tell you a story. My story. You see, sometimes I think I don't talk about myself enough. People tend to develop strange assumptions based on what they perceive, and what they perceive is based on what we choose to show. So this is a dedication to me, in all its self-loving, self-loathing, narcissistic glory.

Now, I'm the kind of person who throws away furniture and repaints an entire bedroom when depressed. I'm the kind of person who buys a pet fish just because of one lonely night. I'm the kind of person who helps old people with stairs but gets irritated by beggars who work eateries. I'm the kind of person who spends hundreds on clothes but calculates beer savings to the dollar.

I'm the kind of girl that needed a man to discover her woman. I'm the kind of girl that knows the difference between feminism and gender supremacy. I'm the kind of girl that will always feel guilty for eating that extra piece of pastry. I'm the kind of girl that cringes at the sight of blood and melts at weddings, pet shops, and chick flicks. I'm also the kind of girl that is happiest between the sixth gear and the bottom of the gas pedal.

In all honesty, I actually can't stand pet fish. They don't respond to you the way you would want a pet, you can't touch them, they just swim around. They're basically an expensive ornamental fixture which you have to feed everyday and clean its tank every week. Might as well get a plant. So, why did I get myself a pet fish? I really actually wanted a dog. But the dark of that night was especially deep, I found myself at a pet store and the Fighting Fish only cost RM5 with a 10% discount on top of that! I was sold.

I chose not to name my pet fish. Some people thought it was cruel of me but I just didn't see a need for me to name it. I taught it how to follow my finger and how to jump for food. I guess teaching it how to jump was the cruel part because one night I came home to an empty bowl and a crusty fish on the ground.

That happened almost a month ago and I have yet to fill its bowl with life again. Maybe I grow too attached to things. I'm the kind of person that has collections of the most useless things. I have a stash of movie stubs dating back to the first ever movie I watched without my family, I kept LRT season passes, bus passes, clothing tags, cute plastic bags... Note the word "kept" because I'm also the kind of person that goes manic on random days and gets rid of years of history to make way for a new photo frame.

After coming back from Australia, life took a strange turn for me. Don't get me wrong, Australia was beautiful.



So anyway, life took a strange turn for me after coming back from Australia. I just wasn't satisfied with the way things worked here, everything seemed so mediocre. I felt mediocre. I hadn't accomplished what I thought I would from Australia. I had big plans to gain boundless inspiration from being in a different country but that didn't happen. I had big plans to take up a course overseas and experience the hard life of an independent working student but that didn't happen either as flights to Canada cost more than my entire study budget. What did happen was small doses of depression, feelings of isolation and immense pressure from all sides.

I chose this path. I chose to take a year off to learn, explore, develop, and perfect; all things that may get kicked off my list of priorities once a full time job sets in. Somehow being cautious and prepared begot only ridicule and judgment. But I don't regret anything. If no one else, at least I had time and freedom on my side. And something's afoot.

I thank God for the organic nature that is life; its amazing ability to swing from bumming to so-swamped-have-to-resort-to-power-naps-and-15-minute-dinners within a day. I thank God that I gave myself the time to say "yes" to anything I wanted to and also for the fact that I'm young enough for ridiculous notes like these to happen.


Word of the day: The face of contentment is ugly.

When your eyes caught mine, you were looking at me. Deep dark eyes, round with wisdom and curiosity, it shook my soul. My heart pounded but I told it to still. My palms began to sweat. Suddenly, keeping my concentration on anything else was a struggle. You had me.

The night was beautiful. The three of us had taken the car out. The usual trip to Ikano was today my burden. As my dad plonked his tired body down into the plush seat of a Starbucks cushioned single sofa with his laptop bag in hand, my mom and I headed off to the shops. We purchased necessities and niceties, we chatted about our life's affairs, we stopped for some local coffee on the way. The night was mellow, and just what I needed.

The drive home reflected the entire evening, but no one knew the terror I bore.

With one hand on the steering wheel, something out-of-the-ordinary caught my eye. Sporadic night traffic was swirling around me, I couldn't focus my sight on this unusual thing. "Is it a loose wire?" I thought. My hand reached out to touch the black, wiry thing sticking to the interior of the car's A-pillar. I couldn't reach it. Traffic eased and I finally got a good look at the mysterious thing.

It was black, and then something sparkled. Your beady eyes stared back at me. Deep dark eyes, round with wisdom and curiosity, it shook my soul. My heart pounded but I told it to still. My palms began to sweat. Suddenly, keeping my concentration on anything else was a struggle.

I had no response for the conversation I was having with my dad. My mom uttered a panicked "Slow down!" as I approached the car in front just slightly faster than the constant speed I had maintained up till then. The rest of the ride home was silent and almost unsuspectingly rushed. As the car rolled up toward our house, I asked my dad quietly without ever removing my eyes from the road, "Do you know how we can get rid of a lizard in a car?" And that was when the horror and fear took over my body. My hands trembled, taking several tries before parking the car right. I practically pushed my dad's sick body out from the passenger seat so that I could, in turn, alight the car from his side.

He spent the next 10 minutes struggling to get that squirming lizard out of the car unharmed. I stood by the sidelines imagining fingers wrapping newspaper around the lizard's body, and then the application of much much more pressure.

P.S. Thank God I couldn't reach it.

I'm gonna keep eating until it tastes good.

Isn't it strange how often addiction starts from something you had to force yourself to enjoy. Maybe it's because we worked so hard to like it that liking it is like an achievement. Or maybe it's because we're afraid that we'll forget how to like it thus we keep consuming until we either get sick or grow dependent.

Anyway, I'm back. Been back for a week now. I did not like the fact that I came back hoping to come home but instead everything, from my room to the placement of the kitchen water jugs, were distant familiarities that I had to learn to get accustomed to again. So quickly I'd made a new home for myself. So quick to adapt. So quick to return. I miss the friendly help. I miss the efficiency and precision. I miss the value for money. I miss the convenience and the well planned streets. I miss having tissue paper in public toilets.

I feel like I've been running for weeks.

Day after day, night after night, everything done in preparation for today. So many people to meet up with, so much stupid car stuff (or lack thereof) to deal with, so much work, so many deadlines (including those of expiring shopping vouchers), way too many obligations to fulfill. All for a mere absence of nine days.

I can't say I'm glad that the week has finally come to its end. I still have so many things I'd like to have done but, at the same time, I haven't even packed yet! It's all about priorities, right?

Well, I'll be back. Unfinished business demands that I do.

I had intended to take my mom's car instead mainly because I'd left a CD inside that I was in the mood to play. I locked the front door and turned my back when I realised I'd forgotten to grab the keys to her car. Oh well, guess I'll just take my dad's car.

The drive to Kota Damansara was not unlike any other. Music was blaring, dad had topped up the power steering fluid so the steering wheel felt much lighter, roads were uneven and scattered with potholes; not anything I wasn't used to. I was on the way to pick up a friend from an apartment building I had never been to. Since working in KL, I'd developed a strange liking for exploring the unfamiliar; getting lost was two-thirds the fun, finding my way spelt victory like no other. So I wasn't really worried (or paying attention) when he gave me the directions. I can still remember vaguely him telling me about a roundabout.

I got lost for a bit, called the friend for further clarification, and was on my way in the right direction. He said go straight all the way to the end. The road was long and lined with intermittent lampposts. The air was warm causing a fog on the windscreen. I flicked the wipers on. "Shit." I had reminded myself over and over again to get my wipers replaced, and forgot to that many times over. The screen was blurry with smudged moisture, and I'd reached the end of the lit street. I was entering into a stretch of darkness, and a spotlight from straight ahead was causing a bad glare on my windscreen. I was driving blind for a few moments. The water smudges began to dry a little bit, and then I saw it. A band of red. "SHIT." Swerve, break, bang, suspend, land, swerve, break, stop. There in the foggy reflection on my rearview mirror was the roundabout with the rim of its curb painted red. Tiny and seemingly useless.

So many thoughts ran through my mind. So many inappropriate thoughts. I imagined myself getting away unscathed. I imagined hitting a tree and getting propelled out of the car and into a patch of broken glass. I imagined my bonnet bursting into flames as it hit the tarmac. I imagined crumpled metal and broken axles. I imagined telling my dad that the car was stolen. I imagined wishing the car had been sold like we had planned to initially. I imagined my dad's face rising and falling in anger and anguish. My dad's gonna kill me.

I didn't think I would still be saying those words twenty-four years into life. I felt like a kid again getting caught walking the halls of KLCC when I really should have been in school. "My dad's gonna kill me" was a phrase I used repeatedly when I was in high school and was constantly finding myself in troublesome predicaments. But what sets the kids and the grownups apart is the ability to stay grounded even though overwhelmed with the allure of running away. I would've lied my way out of any troubling situation when I was fifteen. Heck, I was lying my way out when I was twenty! Come to think of it, I still do sometimes, but at least I try to live up to a certain standard when it really counts. Honesty and sincere remorse reaped just about as much ill-feeling as a cover-up would've, but at least the honest story didn't pile-on guilt, on top of all the crazy anxiety I was already experiencing.

On further reflection, leaving the house without my mom's car keys was an unforeseen stroke of luck. Switching between cars because of a CD and absentmindedness may very well have saved me from greater injury both mental and physical. My dad's car is the bigger of the two, and bears larger tyres thus they absorbed a lot more of the impact. No crumpled metal, no broken glass, no punctured tubes or tanks. Only two torn tyres, a bent axle, and a shattered confidence.

Well, my new year's off to a great start won't you say?

"Happy New Year!" As the countdown reached one, the crowd erupted in elated shouts and cheers. Party noisemakers added to the voluminous celebratory din. Multicoloured streamers and balloons fell atop sweaty heads. All around were people hugging and laughing. The prospects of a New Year and all its attainable possibility was definitely an occasion to be shared with those close to the heart.

Amidst the warmth of a tropical night and the momentary exuberance of the youthful, she sat glued to her seat masking her shifty discomfort with polite and poise. It absolutely did not help that she still felt like it was August, prices everywhere were overinflated, and they were having a fight. No, she was sure that there had to be some sane reason for celebrating yet another new year of evanescent potential.

Kicking off the New Year a pessimist was surely something she'd never done before.

Word of the day: To love without condition does not mean to love without concern.