Hello...or perhaps not.

I'm not overly friendly with all of my classmates. I'm not a social butterfly.

I'm friendly with maybe five percent of them.

I can start a random conversation with about seventy five percent of them.

The remaining twenty percent I simply can't relate to.

I speak from experience. I was once thrown into a group discussion with a portion of that twenty percent. My naively enthusiastic 'So, what do you guys think?' was met with downcast eyes and mumbled responses. I was at a lost for the first five minutes of the discussion. Despite their individually buoyant personalities, they turn reticent when it comes to one-on-one interaction.

I was driven to wonder, 'Do these people think they're still in high school?'

When they were in high school, did they actually listen when their mothers tell them not to talk to strangers? They certainly don't look the type.

I had the misfortune of running into these recalcitrant barely-eighteen-year-olds in the bus on my way home from work today.

I saw one of them looking at me with a nervous glance when I boarded the bus. All the seats were taken and I was left with the one right across the aisle from the conversationally-handicapped-stubble-chinned. Much to my chagrin, the person seated next to this one was another member of that tight-lipped 20-percentile.

What an awkward situation. The moment passed for either one of us to civilly acknowledge the other's presence. No one said anything while I tried to imagine a way to break the silence. Finally I decided we were all party to this snobbishness; them even more so since they had the advantage of each other's company.

Even though I maintain a resolute gaze forward, our proximity in the bus enabled me to observe their behaviour without the intention to observe their behaviour. It was similar to watching synchronized diving, except there is no water and the participants were bundled up in winter wear instead of clad in skimpy briefs.

They simultaneously (perhaps even instinctively) brought out their respective iPods/iPhones/escapist gizmotechs and began to (perhaps arbitrarily) tinker with them. Next came the foot-tapping and nervous finger drumming on knees or handle bars, depending on where they're seated. They did a terrible job at masking the awkwardness of the situation by looking around the bus. There's not much to look at in the bus accept for ad campaigns to get children excited about homework or to stop them from being abused (perhaps by forcing them to do homework).

This situation is either too ridiculous or too awkward. Good thing the collar of my coat goes all the way up to my nose. It gets hard to repress a smile in the cold. I've learned that pursing your lips doesn't help. It just makes you look like your trying not to yawn. There's nothing wrong with repressing a yawn except you look twice as ridiculous compared to when you're trying to repress a smile.

Meanwhile the silent duo was studiously examining their gadgets again. They must have detected the threat of a friendly greeting.

Whatev, people. Whatev.

Another useless bit of information about myself

...that is useless even to me.

I've recently discovered my dislike for walking in the dark. Note that I do not say that I'm afraid of the dark. I'm not. I just don't like to move about in the dark.

Alongside my eye-sight-debilitating habit of reading in bed, I've gotten into the habit of turning on my reading light prior to turning off the ceiling light.

During the few occasions that I was so tired that I was rendered partially dysfunctional, I'd perform the switch-on-switch-off routine in reverse order. Hence the discovery.

It takes only five steps to get to my bed from the light switch. It takes only about half a second for me to realize that I've made a mistake in my light switching routine and that it's no big deal.

But in that short distance and brief period, while my eyes adjusted to the light and shapes start to become clearer in the darkness, I never fail to see a big, solid, looming figure standing in front of me. Just for a split second. The sensation is similar to that of blacking out. You know, when your eyes are wide open but all you see is black?

This occurrence is alarming enough that my mouth would open for a beginning of what might develop into a dramatic gasp but it was brief enough that by the first intake of air, I was already walking to my bed and reaching for the reading light switch.

There. This bit of information is so inane that I can't even think of a conclusion that would cleverly warrant this entry.

I'm finding a lot of hair on my garments that do not belong to me.

There is no historical now

We pass the time of day to forget how time passes
Time moves fastest when we try to capture it
There is no such thing as an historical now
We take pictures only to remind us that a moment had passed
A photograph, a painting, a letter, a note, a pathological clinging
A preserved moment only reminds us of the past's pastness
The dead soul of a living past instilled in a picture
A permanent mark on our temporal existance
A constant reminder of something lost

Looking back with humor

I need to pen this down so that if I were one day to reflect on this incident, it would still be with humor and not hate.

Let me begin by saying that the one hour gap bestowed upon my hectic Tuesday schedule was efficiently and peacefully spent catching up on my reading assignments in the quiet peace of Victoria Park. The Universal Journalist's Chapter 12 was a breeze, thanks to its abundance in anecdotes and case studies. I was obliviously oblivious to my surroundings until I came near the end of the chapter. There were some raised voices that was invading my realm of concentration. I looked up to see a couple - both seeming either a little intoxicated (or recovering from an intoxication) despite the cup of coffee they were each cradling - clumsily looking away from me. When I looked back down at my book, I found that I had completely lost my concentration so I decided to start on another assignment - listening in to an anonymous conversation and observing their habit in reporting speech. As I tried to inconspicuously listen to the couple's conversation, I found that it wasn't really that much of a challenge since their conversation was essentially aimed at me, as I soon discovered. The dialogue went something like this :

Lady : I saw him, I mean I SAW him and I thought to myself this guy is...is...(waves hand)

Man : Yeah...yeah...

Lady : Yeah...they had Ben Ladin on there...and I SAW him with his...his beard and...I was saying right under my skin, this guy is NOTHING but trouble...just WAIT and see...

Man : Yeah...yeah...

Lady : ...and a month later nine eleven happened...and I thought...I KNEW it! I KNEW it! I thought, why aren't you guys LISTENING...I KNEW it...it's all right THERE...

At this point I decided to close my book and move elsewhere. I was having trouble keeping my face straight. That lady was talking with an intensity that can only come from complete ignorance of what a fool she was making herself out to be. There was a sense of tragic humor in her patheticalness, her misguided presumption and her vapid speech. I imagine her to be one of the million or so self-proclaimed experts of the string of catastrophic events that's hit the world in the last decade. In my mind I saw her nursing her ego with visions of imaginary men in standard issue black suits and dark glasses knocking at her door saying, 'Ma'am, we've been made aware of your confounding abilities in forming conjectures based on as meagre sources as your basic hunch. Would you like to come and work for the CIA?' In her mind she would mostly likely gasp (or perhaps rasp) in surprise before reluctantly agreeing 'for the good of the country'. I don't know why I thought of the CIA. We're in Canada. 'It doesn't matter, Ma'am. The world NEEDS your expert misguided insight!'. Adios wackos.

2a.m. Biology Quickie on Aviants

The brown-specked bird I saw bobbing around our backyard yesterday is the song sparrow. The red-breasted one perched on the big silver maple in front of our living room window is called an American robin. The pairs of geese we see more and more often since the receding of winter is know simply as Canadian geese.

I know this due to a relic left in our house by it's previous owner. It's a wall clock with a native bird adorning each hour.

I remember the birds' names because of the ten-minute transition period I give myself upon waking up in the mornings during which I stare at the clock, count the seconds (and memorise the birds' names) and pull myself fully out of sleep.

I am not a bird watche. It's not an activity that's entirely pointless, but the point to doing isn't entirely justifiable to me. But then, the same could be said about watching t.v. so perhaps I should give it a try. Bird watching, that is. I'm already a master at t.v. watching.

Care to join me, anyone?

You, Me and An Eternity

I nervously drummed my fingers on my glass of cold water. The television blared at an annoying loudness while the weight of the heavy silence hung between us.

I realized I had started shaking my left foot. Out of nervousness perhaps? Then I noticed that his left foot was also wagging like a dog's tail. Was I subconciously immitating him or is it the other way around?

Such is the conundrum.

Anything I might venture to say will be infected by the awkwardness that this silence has become. There is no possible way to assume an air of normalcy once the period of awkward silence has imposed itself on our nervous presence.

I should not have let it begun in the first place, this awkward silence. The trick is to keep up an exchange, however banal or pointless, prosaic or preposterous.

I was going to comment on the way the great angasana tree in the yard was listing abnormally towards the house but I decided not to. I thought I might sound desperate for a conversation.

What a mistake that was. Now I really AM desperate to chat.

Old habits die hard.
Bad habits die harder.
Bad instincts die hardest.

www.woes.com

How many times have you entered the wrong username for the wrong email account?
How many times have you entered the wrong password for the wrong account?
How many times have you accidentally activated the capslock key when entering your password?
How many times have you forgotten to check the box for the statement of understanding?
How many times have you overlooked that pesty little word verification?
How many times have you simply given up because all that trouble is just not worth the precious little you had to say?

Question to self

Is active blogging a sign of a social life in dire straits?

MacBook Air

Yummy.

Discussions over pizza/random ramblings

It's always amusing to see what kind of hair-brained scheme the clowns in power will come up with to lure in votes come election time. One scheme for this year seems to covet the most innocent of voters - the infringed and impoverished minority susceptible to the meagre promises made by politicians. Parents of school children who are on the RMT will be called to school for a special ceremony to recieve certificates (of achievement?) in recognition of their child being in the program. FYI the RMT stands for Rancangan Makanan Tambahan - a supplementary food program to provide kids from impoverished families with a stable and healthy diet. (What kind of food these children are getting through the program - now that's a whole different can of worms!) But this is not going to be just a simple ceremony for according certificates. How can it be, when the local politician (or whoever holds the most clout in the area) will be invited, speeches given, food catered and served, buntings hung and loads of kow-tow given, all at the expence of the innocent John. Q. Taxpayer. What it will hopefully do is boost the image of the powers-that-be in the eleventh hour of campaigning.

Let's consider for a second the ingenuity of this magnanimous gesture of pseudo-recognition. If my child were on the program, yes, I would very much like to be invited to the school to be recognized. I would very much like to recieve a certificate that would remind me of my daily struggle to simply feed my children. I would really love to go up on stage and have a hundred people applaude me for unwillingly depriving my child of his or her most basic need. People like me, whose children are 'previliged' enough to be on the program, are majority working on a daily wage. If I miss a day of work, I'd miss out on the day's wages. But hey, this ceremony is such a big honour that I wouldn't mind leaving work for one day.

Really, I don't mind depriving my child of another day's meal because the powers-that-be are generous enough to put up a ceremony for me. The rest of my children will go hungry too because only one child per family is allowed on the program. But hey, the powers-that-be have a budget to work with just like me. They can't afford to feed all of my children through RMT, although they all go to school equally hungry. If they do that, then there'd be no money left to spend on the more important things. You know, things like the chauffer driven luxury car to transport the bigwig from his mansion to the ceremony. Or for tipping the local press so they'd make this event their cover story for tomorrow's print. Or the colourful buntings and decorations that someone will take home as theirs at the end of the day. Or the votes that this glorious occasion will garner for the-powers-that-be. Or the heavy, embossed, signed, and sealed certificate that I'll take home and...serve to my children for dinner, perhaps?

Rejection is...

...a hard pill to swallow.

Deduce this...

Children tell the truth,

Politicians were once children...

...see what I'm getting at?

too-owh-owh-eyt

So what has the waited-all-year-for 08 brought us thus far?

Randon Ramblings #17

When the 25th of December officially marked the arrival winter, albeit having received snow weeks before, I sincerely thought we wouldn't see green grass or the yellow sun till spring shows itself. That's when I started worrying about becoming a couch potato despite the fact that we don't own a couch. I scrabbled around my head for some form of exercise that wouldn't require too much effort but yields drastic results (yes, I see that it doesn't make sense NOW). I settled on crunching abs with my brother's 10lbs weight. It was convenient enough since I could park myself in front of the teevo, no worries about changing into proper workout attire, and crunch away. It's fail-proof plan, or so I thought.

There's a reason why Dr.Oz came up with a contract you can sign as a pledge to carry out that work out regime. Apparently personal resolutions scribbled in that brand spanking new journal doesn't cut it anymore. Apparently you have to take an oath of obedience of sorts or at least tell someone about it as a support system to see you through the year. Otherwise it's goodbye treadmill and hello couch half-way through the first month. So true.

So...

I hereby promise myself to go out walking for at least 3o minutes everyday, be it to walk my brother to school or to go to the grocery store or to simply walk around the neighbourhood.

A week's gone by and the half-hour walks have done diddly squat to improve my figure. On the flip side of that my psyche has improved by leaps and bounds. I sleep better at night, I work more efficiently in the mornings and I spend less time in front of the tube downing crisps. Plus I find myself jumping out of bed every morning instead of walking in a cloud until noon time. Considering what a grump I am in the mornings, that's a huge improvement.

Grandma entries

Our daily routine usually begins with my grandmother waking me up for prayer at dawn. During my early days I believed I could pretend to sleep and she would leave me be. But her gentle, cajoling calls never failed to make me rise and sleepily fumble through the mosquito netting that enclosed our bed and head for the bathroom. I would rush through my prayer and fight to salvage what little sleep was left in my eyes. It was always a race to fall back to sleep before the light of dawn crept up from the horizon and filled the sky. Often the voice of my grandmother, still on her prayer mat, chanting her zikr, would be my lullaby. Soft, rhythmic, soporific, her voice had a hypnotic quality and often I would fall asleep thinking I was still awake, listening to her prayers.

I miss jambu batu

sweet, green, paper-thin skin
succulent, crunchy white flesh
pink, hard-as-rocks seeds
oh apek-jual-buah-tepi-jalan
slice me a piece
sprinkle it with asam boi
and send me to the seventh heavens

"the pieces of my broken heart are so small they can pass through the eye of a needle..."

Random ramblings #15

Random ramblings #15

Why is it that everytime I signal to change lanes, the car in the other lane will speed up to close the gap so as to disable me from changing lanes?

Maybe I should stop signaling and simple swerve into the next lane, let the other motorists fend for their lives.

How tempting....