One McBS Meal, please?

I’ve realized recently that it takes more effort to be grateful and happy and just focus on the positive than it is just to let everything overwhelm you. There’s always so much shit around that if we don’t put up a wall and filter out stuff to focus on it’s that much easier to get caught up in a flurry of bullshit and self-pity – not a good meal.

Just Be Happy is not as simple as it sounds.
It’s easier to Just Be Angry.
Just Be Depressed.
Just Be Pissed Off.
Have you ever wondered why that is?

It takes supreme effort to find the silver lining not because it is so rare but because it is so much easier to focus on the looming cloud. But it is possible to find that silver lining and focus on that.
It’s an effort. But not impossible.

So I’ve been doing it all wrong.
All this while I’ve been focused on actively blocking out the cloud in the struggle to zoom in on the silver lining. And it hasn’t been working because that damn cloud keeps coming into the picture. You can’t repress anything without it coming back to haunt you, we aren’t made to hide things in the corners of our fragile minds. No, I have to look for the silver lining inspite of it. The cloud’s always going to be in the background, that’s a given.

Only difference now is that I am actively choosing to give that thread all my attention.
I’m figuring it’s at least something to hold on to until the sun comes out again.

Goodness knows, sometimes all it takes is one ray to make it seem worth while.

Redding materiall

Listening to: The Innocence Mission
” And you live life with your arms reached out.”
Currently hooked on: Isabel Allende – Of Shadows and Dreams

My mother raised my brother and I as readers. My earliest recollection of trying to read on my own was when I used to sit on the base of my staircase with my legs curled under me, trying to read from a hymnal. My mom used to read to my brother a story of trolls who lived under a bridge who used to go trip trot trip trot and I would sit on the bed and go “trip trot trip trot” with her, haha. Our house was always littered with Enid Blyton books which gradually got replaced with Fear Street and Sweet Valley and then attempts at literature was evident around my room. I adored the Anne of Green Gables series, dabbled with Shakespeare for a bit, got back to SVH for awhile when the Senior series came out, got into an Agatha Christie phase and horrifyingly got into Danielle Steele a bit. In university, I became absorbed with chick literature; people like Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes made my day. Stephen King and John Grisham were always in the background, constant fixtures in my reading history.

I went through a mad Jodi Picoult bout and then blogs became the online reading choice but nothing beats a book, which you can pick up and put down at your own leisure and have passionate conversations about. The main thing is, no matter who my Writer of the Month was, I made it a point to always read before turning in, it was a way to switch off whatever it was that had gotten me erratic during the day and prepare me for a hopefully dreamless slumber.

That changed when I started work. Somehow once I got back, all I had time for was dinner before flopping into bed. Which was sad because my grammar became atrocious! Seriously, past present tenses all having a party and then I forgot how to spell ‘neccessary.’ See, I’m sure I misspelt it just then! In my humble opinion, automatic spell checks will be the death of the human population as we know it.

Not to be dramatic or anything.

But yeah, two weeks ago I picked up an Isabel Allende book, an author who my friend has been raving to me about practically since time began. After way too many spelling errors and grammatical parties, I decided to get back to reading even if it’s just a chapter a night. Last night, I lay in bed transfixed, turning page after page. Isabel Allende is more than just a writer, she is a storyteller. I was practically drinking in each word, forming each scene in my mind, adding physical tweaks to characters, it was the most satisfying mental experience.

This is what I’ve missed about reading.

So I know I spent the entire post just writing about reading but really, long story short – I need to reading again before I start spelling it as neceessary readding.

Purring toes

Listening to: Ben Harper

No, I do not have the pictures to prove it right now but trust me, I had the best weekend ever.

Here’s the juice: My friend scored VIP tickets to attend “Hennessy Artistry presents Flo Rida” at Bukit Kiara Indoor Arena. Now the only reason I planned to attend was because I love Low, I think it is one of the most addictive party songs to come out in awhile (before the world was introduced to Lollipop), so I figured if anything it would be amazing just to hear, and dance to it, live. But turns out, it wasn’t just about hearing Low live that evening, it was everything.

Now I mostly dress up like a downright drag when I go out but thank God that night I decided to actually take some effort, as in, contacts, makeup, heels. It’s not that I’m lazy, okay scratch that I am plenty lazy, I usually just forget the contacts and heels and consider eyeliner to be dressing it up. But even as we were walking to the arena and my high heels began slowly torturing my ankles and killing my toes one at a time, I began whining to Barath that I can’t believe I left my thongs in the car and could we go back and get them.

Thankfully he ignored me and kept walking because the second I saw the red carpet, I knew if I had worn slippers, like I was going to some pasar malam, even I would have had the decency to blush. Seriously, I didn’t even know that the event was by exclusive invitation only, unlike the recent Summer Splash, where about fifty million people turned up claiming to have been invited as well. So we registered at the Hennessy VSOP booth, walked down the red carpet and had polaroid shots taken and then, about 5 photographers took individual snaps of us, I felt like I was on E! and gratefully grinned (and tried to be cool), happy that I wouldn’t, for once, be photographed as a four foot gnome on an ego trip.

We strolled into the VIP lounge and performance area and I have to say, though things rarely do nowadays, this place took my breath away, Hennessy did an awesome job. It was the urban club that looked like a transformed warehouse, it was divided into Hennessy Miami, Shanghai, KL and Paris each with different themed backdrops. Red lit bars and DJ consoles cordoned the club with a huge stage front and center, and there were a free flow of drinks that night, each representing the four Hennessy flavors. It is my humble opinion that Miami was the best, the mint leaves did the trick I think. There were happy beautiful people everywhere and I once again glanced down happily at my feet, although my toes didn’t look quite too happily back at me.

When I was appropriately inebriated about three hours later, Pop Shuvit opened the night – and they were amazing as usual. Followed by Machi, who were also quite good. Now mind you, I have been abraod for three years so I had no idea who they were before they began and Barath told me, Machi was a french rapper, I kid you not! So when a group of Taiwanese guys came onstage I knew he had, once again, been shitting me. They were good though, I have to admit.

Flo Rida, however, was amazing. I didn’t know much of his other songs and it was clear that was the case for a lot of the crowd because he kept teasing us with Low and people responded pretty loudly to it. When he did do Low however, it was just as good as you can imagine it.

We left a bit after Low, close to one am, because my agonized toes had begun to become verbal and when we saw a couple of people puking near the bars, it was time for adieu. We scored a couple of hotdogs from the makcik vendor outside and I happily slipped into my sandals, my toes purring in satisfaction.

I slept most of Sunday and my mom didn’t even nag me once about mopping the house, which is in my view, the best weekend ever. I only regret not being able to meet up with Jason, as timing was the only thing that wasn’t in our favor this week. That and me not having my own car. I don’t know which would have made the most difference. I’ll catch you at the end of the year, Jase, I promise.

Meanwhile, I have to start work, I have a big week ahead of me as I’m sure most of you do. But for once, I didn’t get out of bed reluctantly, I’m trying to be positive again which isn’t easy, but I’m trying to make it work. And catch Dark Knight while I’m at it.

burn up your atmosphere

Listening to: Daughters (from Where The Light Is) – John Mayer
Currently Reading: The Purpose Driven Life (Rick Warren) & Of Love and Shadows (Isabel Allende)

I wasn’t going to blog this but I figured might as well while it’s fresh in my mind.
Sometimes things can get really shitty and you feel your walls caving down around you, and it’s like nobody can get through.
But it really makes a difference when you can tell someone something that means a whole deal to you and watch them connect with you.
When you know that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done as long as you’ve been there.

Since everybody left school and went to work or graduate school, I finally understand what it means when people used to tell me, “I wish I could go back to school again” because all I wanted to do then was just to be done with exams.
So now I know.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world and here are a few things I’ve learnt :

1. Keep your nose clean and do your work with honesty and thoroughness. Don’t do anything that will make it impossible for you to look in the mirror in the morning.

2. Be yourself and don’t get lost in the crowd, work wisely with your teammates, not against them.

3. There’s always going to be one person (at the very least) who will make it seem like their life’s motto is to ruin yours. Listen up, that’s life. Repeat Rule 1 and be prudent but most of all maintain your respect and dignity. Nobody has the right to walk over you unless you let them, so don’t.

4. Leave your work when you get home, at the end of the day, work is where you earn a living – not life itself. Exercise regularly and take care of your health; fitness of both mind and body is imperative and goes a long long way.

5. Take a break when you need it. And I cannot stress this enough. You should be Numero Uno.

6. Do not engage in office gossip, you never know who might be listening.

7. Know who your friends are and keep in touch with them, knowing that they are in the same boat as you, can do wonders for your self-esteem Your friends are the ones who hold your hair back while you’re making a connection with the toilet bowl, not the ones who knife you in the back when you’re not looking. Maintain your priorities and keep perspective.

8. Find passion in your work, if you wake up thinking, oh shit – it’s another day, something’s going wrong.

9. Pray so that you will always be led to make the right decisions, when push comes to shove, values trumps salary.

10.Take it one day at a time. Keep the faith. Stay strong. And reach out when you need help or even a shoulder. At the end of the day we are here to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives, not our own.

All the best to all my fellow peddlers.
Here’s to riding this through together.

161

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately. Not more than usual but something I’ve picked up on was that lately I only ever write when I’ve been in some weird ranting lunacy. One of my friends read Check Out and said that it had to have been the Mother Of All Rants. It was.

And then I realized that when I was studying in uni, I definitely had a way more dynamic life. I got on a bus in the morning, traveled with a whole bunch of different people, got off in the city, took a fifteen minute stroll to university and then on the way back, I reversed the procedure. I’ll tell you how that made my life dynamic.

It was the bus. With all its various people from different walks of life, though only chance encounters for me, coloured my life with stories that I will never forget. I took the same bus almost everyday for three years and it was rarely an uneventful experience. The fact that my bus route was shared by that of a mental institute only aided my dramatic flair.

On this bus I once thought I heard a man talking busily on his cell phone until I got off the bus and realized that he wasn’t on the phone, he was busily entertaining his own reflection in the mirror.

I met Tarzan (I swear that’s his name!) on the Bus, a 2L Coke guzzling hunkering Hagrid type character who was convinced that my name was Jane and that I looked just like his wife.

I met a guy while waiting for the bus who opened the conversation by asking me who I was listening to on my iPod (it was John Mayer) and then we proceeded to have the most amazing conversation – this guy was so well versed with classical music and had an obvious passion for it but had dropped out of school too early. Pity, the only thing was, he was a skittish type – very fidgety and nervous and I figured he really needed to be somewhere and the bus was running late. He later apologized by saying that that’s how he gets when he’s high on pot. True story, I had never met anyone genuinely high before and who looked like he was positive he was about to be sprung on by someone from Cops.

My first year in university, I found myself seated next to a young adult who had some mental retardation of some sort, but he was all smiles and I had no qualms about sitting next to him. Halfway through the journey, he asked me loudly if I wanted to scratch his hand – as I turned to look at him quite sure someone would soon yell out Candid Camera, he proudly opened up his palm and grinned at me. The guy wasn’t kidding and I didn’t want to come off like some weird bigot so I obligingly scratched his palm. He was happy for a bit and the bus people went back to their magazines or whatever until he beamed at me again and asked me if I would scratch his tummy. I stared at him in shock and he came closer and proceeded to lift his t-shirt when I firmly squealed, No, and ran to the front of the bus, uncaring of the stares people were giving me because they thought I was accosting him.

Once I thought I was getting robbed at the bus stop because this drunk guy came up to me, stretched out his hand and yelled for a “fecking fiver”. It took me three tries and a near heart failure before I figured out he was asking for a high five, not five dollars.

I met Jared Edgar on the Bus…well that’s the name my friend and I gave him, long story short – the boy was a blonde, long skinny legged bundle of hot. He was young though, probably a freshie when I was a senior, sigh, such a pedophile I have become but JE became the highlight of my every week in that final year when all the semesters blend together and there is nothing left to live for but a possible discount of Heaven chocolates at Coles. He would be on the 8.27 every Tuesday, wearing a signature red sweater and some kind of furry thongs, even on the coldest day. I would stare at him as discretely as possible but got caught a couple of times, something I don’t regret now although at the time would quite gladly have accepted any offer of cyanide to ease the humiliation.

There was also this guy who was your garden variety transit demon aka Konichiwa which was how he once addressed my Chinese friends. He would ride every trip our bus route ever made and when he was in the mood, he would verbally accost the passengers as he saw fit. He had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore a black leather jacket on every bus ride regardless of the weather; we seldom saw him without it, come to think of it, I rarely saw him sweat. I did however once witness him make an autistic girl cry on the bus because he kept making fun of the way she drank from her water bottle. True story, the guy was evil.

We later found out that Transit Demon lived at the mental hospital near our bus route and got release passes out on particular days, which was when we would see him at his best transit behavior.

So really, the bus made up a huge part of my life – now I just get in the car, get out, spend the whole day in the lab with mice (who are hardly dynamic though to their credit excellent animal models) and walk back to my car and back to my family. No Harry Potter crazies or eloquent junkies to brighten my day. Here when I take the bus, I just shudder continuously simply because it’s been ingrained in young women everywhere that every man who looks at you sideways means you some kind of harm. And I’ve heard stories that have convinced me that not all of them are well-intentioned enough for you to falsely accuse me of being paranoid.

But I digress. The main point of this post is that I miss that clunky old bus that was always on time with its most interesting mix of people. And maybe, just maybe, Jared Edgar is reading this riiiight now and looking down at his furry Aussie flag thongs, thinking, no way!

Have a great weekend everybody!