spank-a-doodle-doo

YES! am bonafide Spank Godd-esssssss. a fellow highly stressed (and highly strung) commercial partner in a carrier recommended the spank website on condition of anonymity.



"helps us relieve streessssss."

erhmm. right. it works like a stressball. know those sand-filled / rice-filled / crumbs-filled balloons that supposedly help you cool down?

my ass.

it stresses me out even more cos i feel like bursting it all the time.

i think they call it a stressball not because it eases your stress but because it is what it is. a stressball. it stresses you out.

i'm slightly nervous. have several huge deadlines, most of them due tomorrow and i'm not clearing my mails as fast enough though i am clearing them as fast as humanly possible. would not usually be an issue but - i've a flight to catch on saturday morning. cannot live all the shit for someone else to dish.

and eds, am going to lose all that weight i'd put on in hong kong!

khao san, here we come!

hello blog.

long time no post.
i miss my colleague. when i returned from hong kong, he continued to canada, then usa. i miss him cos we laugh about everything, we laugh about the anal people we work with, we halve all our work between us and we make ourselves feel better by bitching about the freaks we encounter on a daily basis at work.

also no fun dealing with 180 mails a day by yourself.

am busy, but extremely distracted. been fantasising of bangkok, cairo, dubai and doha.






one week in bangkok seems a bit much, but i need the break. and it would be oh so luverly if ravi and i could just have excess time on our hands for once. also, this is our last chance for a holiday before he leaves. he's been tipped to leave in august.

too soon! too soon!

we were thinking "oh, november ... still got time."

but august?! that's only a month away!

and i'll remain in singapore for at least 10 more months before i join him. will be a crazy year from this moment on.

the heat is on.

a harbour view

it's 0201am.
it's hot out here in hong kong.
it's cold in here in the room.

feet ache from overuse of 3" inch heels.
back aches from ascending hilly roads and steep stairs.
eyes hurt from lack of sleep and dry eyes.

when we first touched down in hong kong, i was horrified at how some of the mainland chinese behaved. we were in the train on the way to customs and this obviously mainland chinese lady (so says my chinese friend) pushed so hard when the carriage was obviously hard. she forced her way in, then shouted above the shuffling feet, toppling luggages and gasps of horror and disgust "just come in! come in! come in!". i almost fell over from the force. a little girl in front of me almost got squashed between the support pole and three luggage bags bigger than she. and this moronette kept on encouraging her fellow friends to just force their way in.

i.could.have.whacked.her.face.with.my.laptop.clutched.tightly.between.arm.and.body.

then immigration - reminded me too much of malaysian customs at KLIA.

on the airport express to the international finance centre in central hong kong, my colleague commented "you'd either love hong kong. or absolutely hate it. i hated it. now i don't really feel anything."

i love hong kong.

i dont care how ching it is. being a foreigner gave me a false feeling that i was an expat. and there are more expats here than in singapore. although hong kong is distinctly chinese, my subconscious could not help but register all the subtle (and not so subtle) british influences all around the islands.

and ships - so many of them.

and water - so much of it.

it's surreal. hong kong is just a maze. the roads are a challenge, the buildings are somehow connected by overhead links and the neon signboards calls for a camera with good battery standby.

i could stay here. for three to four years. but i could not live here. reality would set it too soon.

and the food - i'm not a chinese foodie. did not realise this till a colleague suggested chinese food and i didn't realise i was grimacing. it would, after all, be my 3rd chinese meal in two days. this is more than how much i'd usually take in a year.

the clubs here are promising, crowd is friendly, atmostphere electrifying.

and tomorrow, i mean today, i will visit a few more clients, hope to hop onto my company junk and suck in the sights on the water.

i hope, that it will not be as hot and humid as tonight was.

adult life

i feel like a confused immune system, attacking itself by accident. i am an adult.

but not really.

i've thrusted myself into the adult world while scoffing at it. i embrace adult life while holding contempt for it. i hang out with adults while i tolerate the acrid distasteful resentment for them at the tip of my tongue.

doesn't mean being a child is any easier.

i am an adult.

but not really.

i am a child pretending to be an adult. i'd rather drop everything.

i am a child, yet everyday i worry i'll make an expensive mistake at work and suddenly find myself having to pay rent without a job.

i am a child, yet every week i tell my parents why they did at least one thing wrong.

i am a child, yet every week i wonder how i am going to afford retirement.

i am a child, yet i ask for a child everyday.

i am a child, yet everyday i find new ways to pass off as a non-child.

i am a child wondering how i can pass off as a non-child during my business trip to hong kong next week. they're gonna see through it all, i am a sham.

a partner today said "you're 23! but you sound so experienced! (surprised smile) or you're really good at bullshittin'!"

that's right, i'm really good at bullshittin' and one of these days, you're going to peel me like an onion and find this trembling child at the core.

i'm resisting it.

what am i resisting?

klang valley

if temperatures keep soaring like this, i might as well melt away. weight loss (as pledged to edzie) is on target. have lost the 1kg i had gained in Kuala Lumpur. not quite sure if the 1kg loss is considered weight loss seeing how i am still at the pre-KL weight i pledged to lose before i went to KL.

had a fantastic time in KL although ravi was on site most of the time. his exhibition site was such a dreary area that i recoiled when i visited him. but the boat ride (tourist shit) was pretty nice. pictures will be up soon by procrastinating little me.

edzie and matchap succeeded in feeding and overfeeding me. by the time i was on the train to the airport, i was bursting out of my shirt. not a pretty sight, and i had strange middle eastern men staring at me. then i realised that one button, strategically at my chest, had conveniently popped open.

nice.

first night. immigration is unbelievable. if we thought taking the flight would have been a fast alternative, we were dead wrong. an hour before flight takeoff in singapore, 45 minutes in plane, 15 minutes on train to immigration checkpoint, half an hour at checkpoint, one hour in cab to the city centre. an hour shy of a sin-kul bus ride that would have cost me 1/3 of the plane ticket. at first i could not understand why there were belts for queues at the immigration checkpoint when there were so few passengers. then i realised. the immigration process was so slow that the queue simply built up. didn't help that i made the mistake of switching the filled out arrival form with the blank one and actually handed the immigration officer the blank one. that wasted another fifteen minutes as a family came through after my turn and i had to wait for all 6 passports to check out. nice.

then came the longest taxi ride of my life with a cabbie from hell. he sped down the expressway at 140km/h. i was too tired to worry. then we were stuck in friday night jam near the hotel. arrived at the hotel and realised we had not travelled too far from singapore. half the occupants were singaporeans. you know they are singaporeans. children running through the lobby with high pitched sirens that inconsiderate parents are oblivious to, loud singlish echoing off the walls, teenage girls in mini skirts dragging their flats around and senile grandparents shouting dialects at the top of their lungs.

and then there was the hotel room. have to be honest, i was disappointed, but i didn't make a sound, didn't complain. there was a toilet (not too clean), there was a bed (missing a blanket) with sheets that came out too easily and the walls were stained with tens of luggages scraped past. an hour later, ravi complained, but i didn't mind - as long as the air-con works. that night, we had the famous Madam Kwan's nasi lemak at Midvalley Megamall that edsie and matchap introduced us to in KLCC, and slept our exhaustion away soundly.

second day. when ravi and i are asleep, we do not wake up. period. lover's cuddle. you hug, you attempt to wake up, you sink back into the pillows, and two hours fly by. ravi was late for work the first day and i missed the hotel breakfast. but it didn't matter much, was going to meet edsie and matchap for breakfast.

i was super asscited. edsie had raved so much about the duck confit at Delicious by Ms Reads and the nasi padang at Bangsar, i couldn't care less about missing the hotel breakfast which was probably "Continental Breakfast and Local Delights" anyway. it's the same in almost every hotel in KL. bad "american" breakfast and nasi lemak. always. donned a halter top and white pants, hoping that white would shield off as much cruel KL sunlight as possible. my hair raised the temperature around my neck and shoulders by two whole degrees. i wish i had brought ravi's company's Family Day battery-powered portable fan. that would have been very takglam though. translucent blue cheap plastic portable fan tak kena dengan baju i.

and then there was the nasi padang. ooooh. sedapnya! matchap introduced me to the fish eggs lemak gulai but not having eaten a lot of fish eggs as a child, i declined. it's an acquired taste, like sashimi. then we went off to Delicious by Ms Reads. the chocolate cake and bread pudding was droolicious. it's no wonder that my network password at the office are always names of food or ice-cream brands.

unfortunately, edsie had to go back to work, hardworking scientist she is, and matchap was kind enough to accompany me around KL which is Strangeland to me. i should not say this, sssh, but Imbi is a funky place with great bootleg DVDs and Photoshop for Mac programs that work perfectly. it reminded me of Sim Lim before the shops cleared out most of their bootleg stuff. don't tell me piracy kills creativity. i ain't gonna pay USD400 for a program when i'm no pro photographer. Sungei Wang reminded me a little bit of Far East back in Singapore. floors and floors of shops with amazing stuff, mostly unique clothes that fit small chinese girls/small malay girls/small indian girls. enough said, i went away with only a hotdog in my stomach. a girl in a shop recommended a blouse to me, "dis un? dis un can stwetch one." er ... thank you, honey, but i ain't gonna buy something just cos it bluddy fits me.

the torture of the day was watching Senario XX with matchap. i am no malay movie fan (except P. Ramlee, who isn't a fan?!) but i appreciate a good movie anytime. even if it's malay. i've seen senario episodes and tv and they mostly left me with rolling eyes. mine. my rolling eyes. senario - you either hate it or you love it. i hated it. but i thought, what the heck, just watch it.

for half an hour, i just could not laugh. i froze over. i laughed whenever matchap laughed cos it was so funny. he really digged it. after i got over my high-and-mightiness, i actually laughed at some parts. i mean, how realistic can one be when the movie is about an alien landing in some kampung with an overzealous indonesian immigrant bomoh?

Apa ka, he?

went back to the hotel and fell asleep. am no shopper. walking around malls tire me out. am an eater. explains why i've put on 10kg since my 22nd birthday. if i can put on 10kg in a year, i sure as hell better lose it in one year. am not going to be a dumpling at my wedding. or a siao long bao as a male colleague once called me affectionately.

dinner saw us at Madam Kwan's again with ravi's dad. this time, i had nasi bojari. am/was/always will be, a pig.

third day. again, we could not wake up. but this time, we could have breakfast at the hotel. rushed to Sungei Wang to get my airticket back then went to Midvalley Megamall to shop around. bought lots and lots and lots of socks. thought i saw a familiar face, am quite sure i knew her, but walked past her in Vincci anyway. then i went to tacky little Mines. i could not believe i had to pay 20sen to enter a toilet that was so gross. was i paying 20sen to be grateful for other malls' cleanliness? ravi made me come down to Mines for the boat ride through the mall and out into the artificial lake - an abandoned tin mine now filled with water. a resort has been built at the brink of this lake.

then off to the out-laws. i've grown to love ravi's family. i'm such an emotional pussycat. and a pig. you just have to feed me, and i'll love you. had to force food down my throat there since i was still full from delifrance barely 90 minutes before that. then we sat in the living room, just talking. like families usually do. as we got up to leave and meet edsie, mike and matchap at bangsar, suresh, ravi's brother, surprised me with a birthday cake although my birthday was two weeks before that.

that was unbelievably schweet. did not know how to feel when ravi's mother took a slice of cake with her hand and fed me.

by the time we got to bangsar, i was about to pass out from overfeeding. ravi ran off to buy more bootleg Jesus DVDs. i swear ravi's a closet christian. needless to say, we hit the sack the moment we went back to the hotel.

KL, our friends and family have been good to us.

but little did i know that our friends had more in store for us. more food in store for me.

fourth day. hotel breakfast disappointed me again. soggy cold cuts, missing butter (again) and chalky mee goreng put me off. packed my bags, felt slightly depressed as ravi wasn't around and promptly waited at the lobby for edsie and matchap. this time, we had the famous duck confit. i wish i was hungrier. but i was full from bad hotel breakfast so i gulped everything down instead of savouring it slowly as i usually would. i didn't want my friends to waste money on me - i'll finish the food. duck confit was great. at first i wondered how i finished it.

nevermind that. i finished it. and half the scones, and half the chocolate cake.

then at KLCC, the nougat milkshake.

on the KLIA Ekspres to the airport, i was hoping SQ would not serve snacks on the flight. 28 minutes later at the airport, i realised there was nothing to do but eat or shop. i could not sit down and read as my buttons were popping. so i shopped. i shopped for food to eat. i chocolate shopped.

it's no wonder that they say the taurus is indulgent and loves her food.

i already miss KL sans conniving/cheating bastard cabbies. i already miss edsie and matchap.

too bad i wasn't able to mishandle george this time around!

ok, edsie, i'll get my driving licence, we'll talk of a car, then we'll see you guys more often and come back to singapore with more scratches on the car :)