The Gnomes Made Me Do It!

My brother called from London last night, after he had finished a big batch of fish and chips. I want fish and chips wrapped in paper drenched in cheap malt vinegar! Ok, this wasn't really about food, but still! FISH AND CHIPS! How about fried mars bars at bondi beach. I'm sad now.

Too sad to blog about his house hunting woes.
God! I'm so self indulgent.
Whetever. It's my party, or rather, blog.
Meep

Posted by sideshowjo at 4:19 pm | Permalink | Comments

I have 2 close friends from boarding school, Marie Sophie and Stephanie.
We all live miles and miles away from each other, one in Prague and another in Guatemala.
It's been almost 10 years since we bade each other farewell, with hugs and promises to keep in touch.
The 2 years after parting, we keep very much in contact, with hand written letters, e-mails and occasional phone calls.
But as with all long distance friendships/relationships, the constant updates lessened and the e-mails trickled down to 3 a year at most. We were all busy with new lives in uni and with new friends.
Recently though, we got in touch again, e-mails stand at about 6 a year, but are lengthy with fervent updates on what has been happening in all the years we've not seen each other.

Sometimes I feel like I'm holding on the memory of the friendship, I'm not the same person then and neither are they. But reading their e-mails, I can still feel their spirit and essence that I fell in love with way back then. It seems as though we never changed at all. They will always have a very special place in my heart, and till the day comes to head to Guatemala for Stephanie's wedding as bridesmaids, or holiday together as old friends, memories of boarding school will always bring a smile to my face.

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:43 pm | Permalink | Comments

I sit in front of the computer at home, and when I'm at work, in front of 3 teevee screens playing simultaneously.
I don't want to work/do assignments! Can I just play! Like, now!

Posted by sideshowjo at 10:12 pm | Permalink | Comments

Over the past week, I've been reading, watching, seeing, hearing things with a common theme.
Identity
This has always been a huge factor in my life, because I am a firm believer of 'Your job, your friends, your educational level, your possesions, your social circle' does not equal to who you are, ie: it is not your identity.
That's not to say that I've got it together. As much as I would like to say I have my own identity, sometimes I forget who I am, and sometimes I feel that I've not even begun to find myself at all. Sad to say, most of my life has been spent working very hard to try and fit in, and I think I sort of gave up trying a couple of years ago, which has been the best thing I've ever done for myself. I realised, if I have to work so hard to be this person, then that's not really who I am, ergo, that's not my identity. Now. Discovering your identity is one aspect, being able to accept that this is who you are, is another matter altogether.

In life you are answerable to only 2 entities.
1) God (If you believe in that sort of thing)
2) Yourself

God is the constant in the equation. He is first person you've had to answer to, and also the last person you'll have to answer to once you're six feet under. His boundaries are clear, his message is clear, the infrastructure as been laid out since the very begining.
Now humans flawed as we are, come packaged with emotions and attitudes such as denial, ignorance, pride, delusions. We often choose not to accept our identities, even after intensive soul searching, we can choose to believe that that isn't who we really are.

I have 2 tasks I would really like to accomplish by the end of the year.
a) Determine my identity
b) Accept this is who I am, and attempt to excel to my fullest potential.

I do not want to be a sheep that is part of a flock, instead, let me wander off so I may find my way back to the begining, so I can start from zero again.

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:10 pm | Permalink | Comments

I have just received from the group mate, the essay I had previously sent yesterday.
We have to churn out a 10 page literature review by Thursday.
I had written about 7 pages and sent it over to the group mate who was supposed to fill in certain portions of the essay and write another 2 pages worth of stuff.

What irks me is not the quality of the work (I was already prepared to shoulder the whole thing, because getting good grades does not seem imperative for her), but the language. It was incoherent, and I spent the better part of this morning, trying to figure out what she was trying to say.

And why it irks me is because, she is an ENGLISH TUTOR.
What is the world coming to.

Let's hope the classes she gives are purely conversational.

Posted by sideshowjo at 2:10 pm | Permalink | Comments

So greedy it hurts
Do you get headaches after eating a really big meal/buffet?
I know I do.
For some strange reason, being overfull triggers a headache.
So I decided to regurgitate my food to see if it would go away.
And you know what?
It did.
So now you can cite headaches as an excuse for bulimia.

Now, isn't that so much more fun than saying its for weight loss :p

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:03 am | Permalink | Comments

Thomas the nephew was delivered via C section at tea time on the 17th of September.

Thomas is 1/4 chinese so he will grow up to be Constantine and fight the bad men.

Posted by sideshowjo at 3:01 pm | Permalink | Comments

When all this academic stuff finally blows over and things get a move on in terms of a career of sorts, I will be well into my 30's. In 4 months, it will just be 3 more years before i hit 30, and so ticks the clock.

I suppose I am one of those that realised later in life that I should listen to my calling and actually roll up my sleeves and WORK for it. Because, answering one's calling isn't an easy task. St. Mother Theresa didn't wake up one day and say my calling is to help lepers, and it was all given to her. There was toil, there was work, there were obstacles, there was suffering. There is work to be done yet, and alot more of it.

Hence, my personal life will have to be put on hold for the next few years, and by the time I'm ready to start a brood, I may not be able to adhere to the 'Bear children before 35' advice that most doctors strongly dish out. Tonight I had an epiphany, one that I've not given much consideration to but, I suppose with friends and cousins all expecting/delivered, it got me thinking. I would really like to adopt. Not now of course, but when I do intend to start a family, it would be nice to have 1 or 2 adopted children in addition to 1 or 2 of my own. If this can alleviate the burden of a family and give 1 child a brighter future, I'm all for it.

Anyway, I'm just musing as usual.
Good night

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:21 am | Permalink | Comments

The best part about class is when I get to see that silly smile waiting for me when its over.
As much as possible I get a pick up, sometimes with wheels, most times on foot.
We'll have a late dinner and I get to wind down for an hour, then I'm whisked home.
All this so I get home at a decent time ready for work the next day.
Thank you for your support, it means so much to me.

Posted by sideshowjo at 11:18 am | Permalink | Comments

Out of print and insanely expensive.
I can only lust at his work via the internet.
Money is good.

Posted by sideshowjo at 11:02 pm | Permalink | Comments

From the Monkey's mouth: "You have to learn to burn bridges. When one goes to war, one has to burn their boats and planes once they reach their destination. Ergo, you can choose if it'll be a fight for victory or to do nothing and die, either way, there's no turning back."

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:04 pm | Permalink | Comments

Eating of Potatoes
Banana, Eat Potato
I've been labelled that all my life.
So it came as no surprise today that an ex-colleague whom I haven't spoken to in almost a year called to see if I wanted to watch a movie, and told me that an old secondary school classmate of mine was working in the same office as her.
Oh really! I exclaimed.
Ya! But he say you Jia Kang Tang so you guys never talked much.
Oh he said that?
Yes. But he's Cheena lah.

Should I be faulted for being brought up in an environment that warranted a smack on the hand when I spoke singlish as a child? The fact that he singled out the reason for our limited communication as me being "Jia Kang Tang" is, I suppose, painfully true. However, this is the very same git that I talked to on the phone for over 8 hours once when we were 14. Git. Anyway, that's not the point. Even at uni, the ex boyfriend who was in engineering had coursemates that all mostly spoke mandarin and I was once told that the reason why the girlfriend of one of them never spoke to me was because she found me intimidating, because my english was so, in her words...'Powerful'.

Is it true then that chinese speaking people abhor/avoid/dislike us Eat Potatoes?
I think it's very sad because as much as I have a long way to go in speaking good mandarin I certainly would like to be able to 'click' with my conterparts who are much more proficient in the language than I am. But have I stepped up to actually go forth and make the first connection? Familarity breeds comfort, it's the unspoken rule of herding, stick to your own kind, be safe. But will we actually learn anything if we choose to remain in our self implemented boundaries?

I believe that this relationship between these 2 factions is a symbiotic one, we distance ourselves from them, and so will they. That doesn't mean I'm going to start bringing my spoken english down to new lows for the sake of making a connection, but I think it starts with the discarding of lables.

As of today, I promise to stop labelling people as Cheena.

Posted by sideshowjo at 11:02 am | Permalink | Comments

Everybody say hello to Damien

30 hours(!!!) of labour later, our favourite badger is now officially mama hen.

Little darling, may you be everything that you can be and more.

Posted by sideshowjo at 11:24 pm | Permalink | Comments

I am painfully inapt in card games its not funny.
Seriously, give me biochemical signaling pathways over figuring out the finer points of Texas Hold'em.
My grandfather just slaughtered my brother and I in mahjong.

There goes making money from online gambling.

Posted by sideshowjo at 10:13 pm | Permalink | Comments

MELONHEAD
There was once a morose melonhead,
who sat there all day
and wished he were dead.

But you should be careful
about the things that you wish.
Because the last thing he heard
was a deafening squish

-Tim Burton

Posted by sideshowjo at 11:11 pm | Permalink | Comments