nirvana. or lack thereof.

listening to: jack johnson – do you remember
 “you played me boogie woogie; i played you love songs.”

I’m trying this new thing where I try to make things sound more positive then negative so instead of starting out the post by saying I had a fucked up weekend I will try to begin by saying…

…I had a really challenging weekend.
The para familia is sort of going through the motions, struggling to find a routine again and get used to living in a new home.

Working out the kinks is not as easy as Keeping Up With the Kardashians make it seem. Of course it helps when you have shitloads of money…sorry, trying to stay positive right? Moving on.

Turns out, living alone and working out the kinks may seem harder but you get used to it because your routine only has to fit you. But when you’re living with four other people, it becomes even more challenging. Everybody gets stressed out because the hand soap wasn’t where they left it – when you live alone, if the hand soap wasn’t where you left it, it just means your new place is haunted. But when there are other people in the same living space, it’s a huge complicated blamefest carnivale.

The dog keeps getting into the house and you don’t have a phone line yet and there is that incessant itch that will not go away. The curtains don’t fit right, the TV is in the wrong spot, it’s too hot, it’s too cold; everybody gets annoyed really easily and that generates a huge wave of negative vibes that affects everyone else…it’s like some stupid but oddly cataclysmic chain reaction that once set off, shows no sign of slowing down or stopping completely. (Sorry, I could find no way to make this paragraph in the least bit positive.)

But…the silver lining is that with all its challenges, you can start to see how it all starts to fit in. Though we eventually find the hand soap in the oddest of places, we invariably always do find it. The dog has learned that there is only so many times she can be allowed into the house and that her puppy dog eyes, no matter how adorable the first 59 times, does have an expiry date, as does my father’s patience. I’ve finally learned how to work the blinds so I don’t get Vitamin D poisoning every morning, sorry, blinded in the face every morning (I don’t know which one is more positive so I added both).

Meanwhile, life goes on and if you can’t make sense of it for awhile, you make do.
After all, it’s only the first weekend.  The neighbors look nice, the big boss is away for two weeks and ironically, though work seemed to be stressful earlier, it is now becoming my refuge – ha ha, how the tables have turned.

Anyway, things are sloooowly getting better and that’s all that matters. If this were a movie, we would have moved in next to some either incredibly good looking family or a maniacal killer but this being Real Life, we have regular boring old neighbors; the ones on the left eat inordinately obese amounts of Secret Recipe cakes and the ones on the right have no furniture, at least none visible to the human eye.

So yes, positive note, maybe we are the normal ones. 

Xena meets Red

listening to: alexi murdoch – orange sky
“with my brother and my sister standing by.”

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged simply because I’ve been hectic busy. But I’ll update you since these are the few moments in the early morning when I have the privacy and sanity to do so.

We’re settling in quite nicely in the new place, it’s in a really cozy neighbourhood that has lights stringed up in the trees at night. We can see the sunset horizon from our balcony which I found totally romantic but which my dad didn’t seem remotely interested in when I gushed to him about it, seriously, that man can be so practical sometimes

Plus we’re finally near everywhere now, train stations, malls, uni! It takes me 15 minutes to get to uni now versus the previous 90 minutes and now I’m in a perpetual shock when I get here because it’s like, I barely had time to sleep! Hehe.. I’m really gonna miss home though and everyone else. Even, Wasbudi okay, which is like our neighborhood supermarket which turned out really dinky but eventually became two-storied and an all-around supplier for the neighborhood. I’m going to miss my friends, my boy next door but I guess life must go on and that house served its purpose to the fullest.

The travelling just got so tiring, and you guys who live there and work in the city will know what I’m talking about. The endless traffic, the mind-blowing commutes – and not mind-blowing in a good way – mind-blowing as in, you want to blow your brains out, it’s that frustrating. But home is home and now we have a new home and my mom is going on and on about how we grew up in the old house, now she hopes to see her new grandkids in the new house. And I’m like, MA, PLEASE!

Only thing is, there was some problem with plumbing, and yours truly killed 7 cockroaches one night. SEVEN. Isn’t that like the number of evil or eternity or something? Whatever, seven is seven too many and I plugged every whole in my bathroom and convinced my dad to call the exterminators. So my father told me I should sleep with the lights on for awhile, but NO WAY do I want to wake up  to see the winged beasties perched on my shoulder looking back at me. I would rather sleep in blissful ignorance. So yes, besides the unwelcome nasties, everything else is okay, I guess.

Work is okay, I got stuck in the lifts yesterday for a grand total of 8 minutes and it’s a good experience to make you realise if you are (a) claustrophobic and (b) a wreck under pressure. Turns out I’m neither but then again I was (a) alone and (b) more annoyed at being stuck than scared so that may have overridden the fear.

So it’s the weekend. Wow. And so far I have nothing planned for the weekend except a friend’s 21st that I may or may not attend depending on whether I can hitch a ride from anyone.

Barath will be attending a costume party at work and he told he was planning on going as a seer.
To which I affirmed,  a seer? Is that like Yoda?
Turns out it’s like a person with psychic powers, or something to that effect.
Said I: What do seers wear?
Barry: I’m envisioning monk habits. Do you know where I can get some?

… Yes, because monk robes grow on trees. (Actually if they’re made of hemp they may, but of course I didn’t retort with the second part.)

I suggested he wear a trench coat and go as Dick Tracy so I could go as Madonna but the theme was magic so, no. Anyhoo, turns out there are some really cool costume stores you can call that supply costumes of ever kind, so if you ever wanna go costume partying, lets! Because I can dress up as something uber-cool like Red Riding Hood meets Xena the Princess Warrior i.e. wear a hoodie, boustier and boots

Tee hee

Okay me is gonna take off and get some real work done.
You guys take care and party hard this weekend – I’m going to take a cat nap that will hopefully last throughout the weekend.

Twinket

listening to: Santana
      “I can’t tell anymore if I’m coming or I’m going.”

Okay, here’s the deal (wait, the PC spellcheck doesn’t recognise ‘okay’ as a word and suggested Tokay?)

Here’s the deal.
I’ve lived in the same house since I was six months old. That comes to about 23 years. A variety of trinkets as evidence of a girl growing up – dolls, pyjamas, memory boxes, diaries, broken earrings, certificates and report cards, old uniforms, Enid Blyton’s, Sweet Valley High’s, yellowed photographs of days at the zoo with mama in an oversized floppy hat, kindergarten concert memorabilia, high school yearbooks, cassette tapes, Jonathan Brandis posters…

Yeah I have all that stashed somewhere in every corner of my room. Now, I have to unearth all of that, decide what to keep and what to say good bye to and then drag the whole lot to a new home and start rebuilding the memories all over again. Thankfully, nowadays, just because someone moves, it doesn’t mean they don’t get to see their friends anymore. If anything, being in town will make it easier to meet up, so let’s do that (t)okay since everyone more or less works/studies near each other.

The traffic jams will be something I get to bear less off for sure.
I’ll just miss having my very own backstreet boy
Thank god at least he has a car.
Which is something I’m going to have to start working on very soon.

Caged

Listening to: Aretha Franklin
“I know we got to part.”

Much of what is said, cannot be trusted unless taken with a pinch of salt.

When the phoenix rises from the ashes, it must ensure it does not do so only to be trapped in a cage of its own making. That said, neither man nor bird was made to be caged. Sometimes, the risk of entrapment in a new cage has to be weighed in the balance of potential freedom. If you are caught between a rock and a hard place, it is true that there is no place to go – but up.

Empowerment comes from knowing that you had the option to lie down but chose to break free.

Come what may, the phoenix may have chosen a cage of its own making, but at least – it was his choice to make.

Massacre

I had my presentation today.
It was a bloodbath.

TGIF tomorrow.