Weekend Socializing and Rants

i'll admit: sometimes i'm averse to being around people, having to be polite and engaging in small talks. which is why i try my best to avoid situations like these and minimize my social outings with people i don't really know or care about. of course, this is nothing new if you've been reading my blog for awhile now, or if you know me in person. i'm not always like this (or so i think); sometimes i miss the younger bubbly self, but oh well. these days, that part of me only surface when it feels like it. :P

despite all that, my weekend has been eventful. attended a friend's bridal shower, it was a lot of fun. i don't know anyone else there except Sheena, of whom i went together with. but the girls were a fun lot. the whole event was carefully planned - you can tell - from the entrance that has the "action-cut take no.XX" cardboard (whatever you call it) to the red carpet to the Bollywood sign in the house with all the backdrop on a wall for picture-taking purposes and oh the props too. and then there's the stars of fame, just like the ones on Hollywood boulevard. as always i was in a hurry and left my camera at home. sorry no pictures :( might edit later if i can get a hold of Sheena's pictures.

then there's food! indian and greek food, all homemade by my friend's and a friend of hers' mom. i could go on and on about the food but i won't. all i can say is they were absolutely scrumptious i had a strong 2-second urge to wanna be their moms' goddaughter just so that i can eat those food whenever i want. :P on the tables there were magazines lying around, which they cleverly printed out the covers of well-known mags thoughtfully edited with headlines and pictures of all the attendees (all except me, because my friend wasn't my facebook friend and she couldn't steal my pics from fb *sobs*). :< ok i really need to get pics from sheena. words don't do the decor and food enough justice.

then there were games! won't go into details but it was definitely two thumbs-up for the girls who organized it. that's about it for the afternoon. we left at about 7-ish, dropped by the supermarket for some milk and fruits. the cashier attempted to compliment me but insulted pretty much all the other customers for their English level while he was at it, and then subsequently insulted me for my level of intelligence by trying to be funny. i can only think of him as odd.

rushed back home to change and went straight to jessom's birthday party at Tengu, West L.A. everyone was done eating by the time i got there. in a way that's good cuz i can't eat meat and seafood anyway, and it would be a tremendous torture to see them enjoying sashimi etc. i got to see raudee and joe; chean was in her own zone, jess too. :P they baked the bestest brownie kononnya, but forgot to save me a slice. :( so sad. but it's all good. all in all it was a fun but tiring day, had a headache due to the heat, so i called it a night and retired to bed early. i meant to do some reading and reflections when i got home that night but couldn't sit up straight let alone process anything in my mind. so that's that.

Sunday morning 8:30am - went jogging by the beach. jogged for less than 3 miles and i had a sudden urge to go toilet. had to rush home for that. lame. -_- after shower i raided the fridge in search of food for lunch. hereby comes the rant: as usual, the trash was full to the brim and who else but me is to be expected to take them out?! why can't they once do it out of courtesy! it's their trash mostly, with all the unfinished meat and whatnot that attracted flies and fruit flies, and boxes of Chinese take-out dripping with chili oil. all i contributed was sachets of 3-in-1 coffee packets and occasional tissue papers due to my runny nose. i tried. i really, really tried to not complain about this. but my patience is wearing thin, because every time they chose to sit their lazy asses in front of their laptops watching korean/chinese dramas over taking out the trash that won't even take more than 5 minutes, i suffer with 3 or 4 huge flies and dozens of fruit flies hovering around me. is it too much to expect from them? i don't even mind cleaning the kitchen after them and washing their dishes! and toilet! i keep asking myself, how can any girl be so frowzy and sloppy?!!!! i guess that'll be one of the biggest mysteries of the universe. one can only wonder.

Sunday 1:30pm. Took out trash, off to work. Except I couldn't back up my car from garage because some retarded driver decided to park his black Prelude right in the middle of the narrow road!!!! At that point I had all the cuss words at the tip of my tongue ready for spillage if the driver decided the show up. lucky for him, he didn't. too dumb of me, i should've spat on his car or into his car (he left both his car windows unwound). so i went to Pep Boys thinking it might be their customer's car, and was hoping they could get him to move it. or something. this asian guy helped me page him while i stood there for 5 minutes waiting for the driver, but to no avail. so i went back into the office to ask if anyone came to them. this other chunky fox-lookalike asshole (who on a previous encounter ignored both me and another customer's existence who had been waiting in line for a while but tended to a lady with boobs the size of melons the minute she walked in) shrugged and walked away. wtf!!!! i absolutely abhor him and if it weren't because of the fear of God and the consequences of bearing ill wishes towards others, i'd have wished that he be plagued with leprosy and die alone and then be sent to hell. i'll probably be sent to hell as well for this thought, but i don't really mean it. writing it here is merely an expression of my frustration and fury at that moment. there. now that i've said it, i felt much better. and no, i don't mean a word of it. it's not the first time i came across inconsiderate people like him, and i'll probably meet more of the same kind in the future. note to self: i really should learn to be indifferent to people like this and control my emotions.

anyway. the Prelude owner didn't show up, so i had to squeeze my way out. took me quite a while but i managed. if i'd done it earlier, i wouldn't have to see that fox face and invoke such distasteful emotions in me. 2nd mental note to self: always depend on self to solve the problem first. i got to work in time, but was still flustered and chafed. thank god the rest of the evening was rather peaceful.

got home after work, having a cup of hot Milo with some Ritz crackers. going to continue working on my application. so, after all these rants, i've decided not to write about them - the roommates and the flies - anymore in the future. i'll just have to live with it. or find a place to move.

Cold Souls

because there wasn't any production going on and my supervisor (who initially gave us a task to do for the 3 days he's gone) went on vacation, my supervisor's female boss took charge and sent us home for 2 days. asked us (the temps) to take 2 days off (without pay, whaddaya think -_-) and come back on Thursday, which is today. it was a mixed feeling for me: i mean, who doesn't like not having to work??--but only if you get paid all the same! so i only had half of my wish come true - with regard to my facebook status the day before. oh well.

no fret, i thought i could get some stuff done and relax a little. :) so on tuesday, i hopped-skipped to the theatre 3 blocks away from my flies-inhabited apartment (no thanks to my roommates), and settled myself in front of the silver screen showing Cold Souls.

*****

ooops. my bad. those were written on Thursday Aug 27, but i had to stop half-way to get to work. the next thing i know it's Sunday already. at work now, break time. i'll see how much i can write.

so yeah, i was about to write about what i thought of the movie "Cold Souls". Here's a very brief synopsis, taken from its offical website: "...In the surreal comedy COLD SOULS, Paul Giamatti plays an actor named... Paul Giamatti. Stumbling upon an article in The New Yorker about a high-tech company that extracts, deep-freezes and stores people's souls, Paul very well might have found the key to happiness for which he's been searching. But, complications arises when he is the unfortunate victim of "soul-trafficking". Giamatti's journey takes him all the way to Russia in hopes of retrieving his stolen soul from an ambitious but talentless soap-opera actress..." the very idea of soul-extracting and keeping it in a safe for whenever we need it again seemed ingenious yet mortifying at the same time. being a dreamer that i am, i can't help but marvel at the ingenuity of it - who knows, with technology so advanced these days, it just might come true one day - but i hesitate on the ethical aspect of it. after all, it's widely agreed upon that what makes us human and more superior that other animals is the very fact that we have souls. so if we were to take away that factor, does it mean we're just like animals then? so does it justify cannibalism and embryos as delicacies then?

and then there's the social behavioral aspect of it. the extraction of soul to make one feel less burdened and sorrowful is a reflection of how our society seeks simplification in order to solve problems. it's like saying, if your hand aches, chop it off. migraine? take aspirin. marriage facing problems? divorce. obese? take weight-loss pills or go for liposuction. don't we all just want to turn to the shortest easiest painless approach to all the problems we face in life? in the movie, the doctor said, "a twisted soul is like a tumor, better to remove it". if only it's that easy. some people can't bear the emptiness that was once occupied by their very own soul; some carry on with their lives perfectly fine. you won't know how it'd be for you until you try it out, but there's one thing we all know: without a soul, we probably won't feel sadness or depression, but we won't feel happy too--we wouldn't feel anything. happiness is meaningless without its contrast of sadness.

on the surface, many might think of this movie to be pallid. but in hindsight, it's a rather complex one, offering layers of contemplation for the audience. it's a pity i'm only writing it now, because i can't seem to recall my thoughts as i was watching it. everything blurs into fuzziness right now, so i can't share any more than this. if i could get a copy of it, i'd watch it again. i think i've given it a 8.3/10 on plurk right after i watched it. but now i'd say it's maybe a 7.3. it's good, but i've seen better ones. then again, maybe it's because i forgot what emotions it had stirred in me.

another good movie to watch is 'Shrink'. this one is a high 8.8! i saw it last month and really really liked it. i meant to write about it, but after a while i forgot what i wanted to say and so i just.. moved on. trust me though, it's really good. i'm definitely gonna watch it again, and write about it. okie dokie, enough about movies for a day. i have rants to share, but only after work--when i get home. till then!

Puffs of Candy Floss

Dreams again. They invade my sleep in the most random form. Here we go.

1. A Good Cuppa in Siberia
   snow. lots of snow, as white as white can be. snow-covered fortress. we were running at top speed the only sounds i could hear were the soft thuds of my footsteps and my increasing heartbeat. i think we were escaping from there (the fortress/prison), seeing it fading into the background as we moved forward. (no idea who i was with, but there should be about 3-4 of us.) the land ahead of us stretched for acres and acres, there seemed to be no end. seemed like we were in Siberia. we were lost, scared,  and hungry. bumped into a KGB officer; stopped him to ask for directions. (of all people, why the heck we stopped him, i had no idea. it was a dumbest thing to do if you ask me, because we just escaped from a fortress and someone could be tracking us down right now. for all i know he could've dragged our asses back to our nightmare). but lucky as we were, he didn't seem to recognize us and pointed us to the nearest town, instructed us to turn into a street named Manny (i live at a crossroad of Manning and another street. go figure how i came up with the street name. how unoriginal. bleh). at this point, i still didn't know where we were headed, but found ourselves in a big cozy store that sells toys and books. there was a little cafe in it, so my companions and i thought we'd settle for a cuppa hot choc, and figure out the rest later. *abrupt end, switched scene*
2. Lovers in the 1960s
   setting: a street in Hong Kong. rows of shoplots, just like how it was in the drama series. time: the 60s. i had company. i didn't get it at first, because i thought i was me, but i wasn't. took me a while to realize i was encased in another body--an actress. i was merely a spectator but i'm watching from within her, my perspective was her perspective, her consciousness. (kinda like in the movie 'Being John Malkovich'. except i didn't watch the movie until a week after this dream occurred. strange.) anyway. there's this guy who seemed to be interested in the actress. the lad invited the actress for dinner at his house of which he's living with his dad and twin brother. i think he didn't expect both the dad and the twin brother to be at home; so it became 4 pairs of chopsticks instead of just the intended 2. quiet dinner interspersed with small talk. something didn't seem right but i didn't know what. counting the seconds for something to happen, because i knew it's coming. and then just as abruptly the actress exploded, demanding for answers from the twin brother with strings of questions and accusations of not professing his love for her. twin brother was mum; the lad was in shock. turned out the twin brother wanted to be altruistic and all, intending to 'let' the brother have the girl. oooo drama!! so now everything is out in the open. awkward silence. (omg this is such a HK drama series plot! i think i watched too much of it when i was younger, so much so that it was ingrained in my subconscious.) *changed scene*
3. Puzzle
   [warning: at the risk of being labeled as a pervert, i decided to share this dream as discreetly as possible. so people, please read at your own risk. my advice is: if you're a conservative or just not very open-minded, i suggest you move on.]
   girl meets boy. girl and boy in a bedroom with only a mattress on the floor. boy sits next to girl, leaning against the wall. slowly inching closer, boy embraces girl from behind, chit chatting about mindless stuff. then things got strange. girl turns around to look at boy while he talks, but boy looks like someone else - another person of whom girl does not like. girl got scared. glances away immediately, and begins to contemplate escaping. but before she runs for the door, girl decides to take another look just to make sure, and boy looks like the boy she knows, as before. strange-ness increases when girl suddenly recalls that boy is gay. it's just illogical to girl that they are in that intimate situation when girl feels nothing for boy and boy likes boys. then just when you'd think things couldn't be any stranger, boy unzips his pants to show girl his 'equipment' not in the erotic way but in a professor-ish way giving a lecture on an anatomical part. boy starts by explaining that it's a man-made mechanical equipment, attached to him surgically but works exactly like a real one. girl is dumbfounded, doesn't know what to say but instead asks what happened to the real one (or was there even a real one?). boy says tragic accident , lost the real one, hence the surgical attachment. *fast forward--more demonstrations* girl cringes, and to stop herself from throwing up, she looks elsewhere: notices boy's left feet that was all black and rotten. boy says oh that. frostbite. it looks worse that it really is, i don't even feel anything. girl feels fuzzy, shifts her focus and sees his left leg that seems to be attached to the torso at the thigh part. explains why he doesn't feel anything. girl faints.
   
4. Lucky Draw
   *another scene* time: present. i was in queue with 2 other friends for something, when it was my turn i handed the lady my ticket with the number '4002020'. the lady let out a small gasp, stood up and congratulate me, told me i won some special prize. she said hold on a sec let me go check what you've won. she came back with an inch-thick logbook and pointed at the entry #4002020 that said: immediate admission to Harvard Medical School. -___- it followed with lotsa details but i won't bore you with them. such a stupid dream i know. wishful thinking...
5. Sexuality Dilemma, Not
   this last one, the most recent one. this one is quirky too. i was both a boy and a girl in the dream. or at least it felt that way. when my dad's talking to me, i was me--a girl. same too when i was with my bf (of whom only existed in that dream). but apparently there's this girl who claimed to love me, which for some reason led me to believe i was a guy when i was with her. it was a two-part story spliced in between one another, back-and-forth several times. in the dream i was trying to tell the girl off and make her understand i don't have feelings for her. but she threatened to commit suicide (oh how typical -___-). i related this dream to a friend, and he asked if i am having some dilemma about my own sexuality. of course not!!! have to admit i was a little disturbed by this, but now that i think about it, it could be that i was a girl all along in the dream, and that the other girl might just be a lesbian. nothing to do with my sexuality. phew!

okay that's about it. that's the end of my rather entertaining dreams.

at the end of the day, when candy flosses melt, they are nothing but puddles of sugar coloring. don't take them too seriously. i know i won't. ;) cheerio!

Summer Laze

apologies for the inconsistent frequency of my postings.(haha and this must've been the umpteenth time i apologize for the very same reason). i have been shamefully indolent, yes. the thing is, every time a thought occurs to me, it almost always happens at work or when i'm in the shower, which makes it almost impossible to jot it down. by the time i'm equipped with paper and pen or the laptop, i'd have forgotten most of what's invoked my mind. (even if i do remember pieces of it i'd shorten it to 140 characters and put them on twitter or plurk.) because of that, each time the little brain is infused with tiny sparks of thoughts and are not taken care of, they form an interwoven ball of unkempt thoughts, which ultimately led to the frustrating and extremely perplexed state of the owner of the thoughts (aka moi). i have thoughts dated back to beginning of June that i have abandoned. last night i actually contemplated sitting down once and for all, and try my very best to recall as much as possible, then put them down in words. but i realize a lot of those are dark and broody - probably not a good idea to expose my vulnerable self here. so what i'm going to do is to write them down somewhere else, be in another blogosphere, or perhaps my old-fashioned journal (highly unlikely, since there's a possibility that someone might read it if they get their hands on it).

the point is, i have definitely learnt my lesson here (yeah.. took me long enough though). never, never push away the 'voices' in my head because when it gets too crowded up there, and it becomes noises too loud to ignore, i'd only end up confused, befuddled, and utterly lost. it is a never-ending loop, because after brooding over my incapability of sorting out my overloaded consciousness, i would then decide to wipe them all out and pretend everything is back to normal. i'll be fine for a while, but sooner or later the brain will start clogging up with the surges of excitatory peaks again - if i don't deal with them immediately, that is.

i don't even know why i'm explaining myself here. i guess i just want to spell them all out here in my little space, and maybe hold myself accountable for my actions (or inactions) in the future. find it hard to talk to anyone about it, especially people at work. they don't seem to understand what's there to think about other than the usual daily stuff. for them, there is nothing much to life beneath the perfunctory. which is true, in a way. it just so happened that people like me wanted to believe there's more to life than just 'that'. it's purely a matter of choice, really.

so for now, i shall pen off. when i get those dirty little secrets/dark broody (but fuzzy) thoughts sorted out, i might write bout them here. i promise, the next post will be up soon. :)