the year 2009

last year i didn’t write a very lengthy recap — it was infused by the occurrences of the moment and not wanting to write a proper one just because everybody else seemed to be doing so — but this time i want to write a sufficient one. regardless.

here goes:

as i remember, the year began at the end of the year before, with a thought: something bad will happen next year. after that one bang, everything ahead of it was, in comparison, soft and placid.  it remained that way for the most of the time, with exceptional bumps along the months.

in school i selectively chose activities consuming less time; i became lazy, i slackened, i became more brain dead. but i got the rest i needed. the freshness towards my school had worn off, and, dramatically said, i begun to see the dark side of it. i became a prefect. to paraphrase my music teacher: i started sucking up to the system.

being a prefect was something i wanted to do ever since primary school, where my application was rejected not once, not twice, but three times, with the excuse that yours truly has a “bad attitude”. the rejection was never hauled at my face… i don’t remember how i found out. the notion of wearing a tie seemed cool and especially it being red — i had never worn one [insert word i can't remember] know how to tie one. i say it was the best part of the job. i was so happy i wrote a frggin post about it. the job served as an eye opener to the reality of my school — of its clumsy operations and ridiculously high, ambitious hopes. i got to be one of the many “puppets” of the administrators’ show and i did not like it. it is only this year that i willingly admit its defects.

on the brighter side, i was nudged from the lonely feeling of the previous year. my class was of only 23, and i loved it for its littleness. i was proud to say that my class was the smallest in the entire school, and from the reaction of the listener, i derived a mild satisfaction. for some odd reason. this littleness proved to have screened all the people whom i was earlier on uncomfortable with — as a result, i made superlatively cool friends i didn’t know existed in all the horridness of school.

they were a freshness i could turn to, and one of the best parts of school. they were quite a fair bit — they laughed wholeheartedly at the little things i would never think of amusing from another person’s perspective, which eventually i too found the humour in. they’d whisper of boys (men occasionally if i may), sometimes amplify their names so loud our teachers would be stamped with a look of query, and pair themselves and the boys in form of… a game. my class likes playing Taboo during english lessons, and one of my friends accidentally said the word ”fuck” while trying to describe the tabooed word, in front of my english teacher, who replied something like “excuse me young lady?”. i hadn’t witnessed it, because of my frequent absence from school, if i did i would have laughed even harder. these things my friends were capable of — they showed me another life and another love.

i began a bit of a book-a-thon towards the end of the year. it was squeezed in somewhere around finals, an untimely but tending place. of everything i’ve read the fountainhead hit me hardest — i believed in its characters (when said aloud it sounds stupid) and in ayn rand’s objectivism. i had my own selection of whom the characters would look like in life if and when it should be adapted again. at one point of reading the fountainhead, i had to put the book down and tell myself: howard roark is not real. i suppose that read was the climax of the book-a-thon.

this was the year i begun making lists of my wants, and actually sought after it — i’ve now gotten 2/5 of these albums already, and have done #2, #16 and a bit of  #19 off this one. #7 has a slim chance of being done in the remaining of the year. i bought my first cd — continuum by john mayer – this year. funny how that rhymes. as well as a bunch of others i wanted. and a hat too.

artistically and creatively, i ventured here and there. i began sort of a digital art collection, with works by mostly anonymous artists and took up an interest in the 60’s pop art scene. this was after i watched factory girl some time back in march. by chance, i made my first musical arrangement for next year’s (school) musical for the song i could have danced all night. i tried a bit of public speaking, and wrote an article or two for my school’s yearbook. and for the very first time since ever, i cut my hair short.

with life comes death — i now understand the full meaning of these few words. there were two people whose death imprinted me this year: my grandaunt’s and heath ledger’s. though he died last year, it wasn’t till this one day in the year 2009 that i happened to flip to E!, and his true hollywood story was on. i didn’t even like E!, still don’t, but i watched it anyway. there was something in the way his friends and family talked of him as a person and the manner in which his co-stars and directors spoke of his extraordinary talent. i was reduced to tears at the end of it.

as for my my grandaunt, i liked her best out of all my aunts, uncles, grandaunts and granduncles of my mother’s family. she helped me a lot in my application to secondary school — she was a former student and dedicated teacher, as well as a very active member of its ex-pupils’ association — and i think it was this which brought my mother and grandaunt to reasonable terms. (apparently they hadn’t really spoken to each other for some 17 years.) since we had this school in common, the mutuality pulled us closer. i might not have known her entire life’s twists and turns, but i felt whom she was. i felt the strength, the pride, the dedication, the love, and the woman in her.

as a student of our school and grandniece of her, i was asked to write a memorabilia of her for one of the newsletters of the ex-pupil’s association. this is an excerpt i’d like to share:

I choose to remember her as a woman who left us with every last ounce of pride left with her, even in her most vulnerable state. Though, there are times when I feel that subduing tug inside, reminding me that such a beloved woman has left us. Then when I look at all the lives that she has inspired, changed or touched in any way, that feeling gradually leaves me. I have realized that if you look close enough, you can still see bits and pieces of her in those lives she has touched. It is then that my affection for her rekindles. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

that subduing tug? i still feel it sometimes before i sleep, or when i’m alone with my thoughts. when i think of heath ledger, it saddens me that a prodigious talent has been lost. i think of all the great directions he could have taken, and what he could have done. he could have been like clint eastwood. when i think of my grandaunt, i am poked by the fact that i she is gone. and she won’t come back again. that there will be one less person to greet during chinese new year, one less person to share my school experiences with. nobody to referee our mahjong games anymore.

this is the year 2009 as i remember. some experiences might have been swallowed with time, and some might last a lifetime. but all are mine.

mwaahahahaha.

the artist and the musician

i met two people tonight through this awesome medium called facebook — a musician and an artist. i shan’t tell you of the artist, for the way i met her was rather stalker-ish and it scares even me. all you need to know is that she’s really good and i like her.

the musician is tamar kaprelian.

she has a bunch of singles out on itunes, has recorded an album that will be out next year, and reminds me of rose bryne. oh yea, she was featured on the hills. i like her voice and her style — i’ve been searching for stuff like hers for some time now. when her album comes out, my bet is she will be a hit, so much so that i probably wouldn’t listen to her anymore, just because.

i like discovering artists before they (possibly) become big.

meanwhile i am enjoying it.

p.s. i am attempting a proper yearly recap as well as a bunch of thoughtfully written new year’s resolutions. there.

what goes round comes back again and again

i am a selfish person, and i don’t quite regret it. there’s a need i feel to protect the integrity of things i like — things, let’s say, i care about enough not to let others taint them.

in silent, sparse moments, nowadays i often find myself loathing little things that source from uncertainty — things only there because another party dictated its presence. and so i reply with a very indifferent and cynical manner, in a way not very becoming. but neither are these little things.

i’ve found a mini back door to this situation. and while it lasts, i shall be content.

i feel like saying — i don’t care about you.

it has been said.

well basically this is just another conception of all the previous posts; i’m saying the things i mean over and over again in different pictures. that’s because i’m not very happy with those little things. and if you don’t get the idea… a) i wouldn’t know but i’d say it in a different way every other time just because i feel like blogging about it, and b) you are the problem.

after i get over this phase i will venture onto a new one: atlas shrugged!!

(and you’d probably hear the same things over and over again but do i care?)

i am having it so much better ha ha ha

the last time i was away on holiday my blog views did not drop to 4. i feel so unjustified.

i knew that it was time for me to get back to listening to franz ferdinand but i didn’t wanna push it. so at singapore there was a sale, and i bought you could have it so much better. listening to them feels like home. i love it when i “rediscover” bands. i love love love that mixed feeling of a fondness and freshness.

and i also bought my muchly (i just had to use that concoction) sought after first impressions of earth and electric ladyland. singapore can be so genius sometimes.

i should be packing but i just had had had to write that bit first, cause i

bye im off to pack

unrest

the house is empty, almost empty, john mayer is playing; and i’ve just cut my nails, and they look hideous. and i’m semi-depressed.

jm is starting to become a guilty pleasure. i assumed that with her gone i could indulge peacefully without worrying if she’ll step in and start humming along, but instead i come to terms with a feeling of unrest — something isn’t right, i can hear her lined in the music. i can hear her listening to the music. i can hear her stealth.

as selfish as it sounds, it is mine. if you could understand the unwritten rule then you would back off but you don’t so i guess there isn’t anything you can do cause you just can’t understand. there is nothing you can do to fix this unrest. and i don’t know why i am lamenting about it. i just need to type it out i guess.

even in all this i am still swept by the music. that is how powerful this selfishness is.

i wonder how you feel, what it is that makes you want to want what i want. because think again, you don’t know what you want, you just want what i want. you want what the rest of the world wants. and that is not how you should feel. you can feel a million other reasonable ways, but not that.

—-

there are two things i’d like to add at this end.

in the movie elegy, dr. kepesh said something about how you can never read the same book twice. or more like, you can never feel the same thing about the same book.

and then in the fountainhead, dominque says:

“You know, I never open again any great book I’ve read and loved. It hurts me to think of the other eyes that have read it and of what they were. Things like that can’t be shared. Not with people like that.”

she also (thinks) she falls in love with a sculpture, buys it, and smashes it. simply “so that no one else would ever see it.”

however, i won’t be smashing my cd.

the day i spoiled my nails

when i was younger, there was a day when we had somehow gotten a “do it yourself” nail manicure package. i was particularly enchanted by the nail buffer, after having seen my older cousin use it — it seemed to have a pretty effect on her nails. and so i wanted the same effect to be bestowed upon mine.

equipped with the nail buffer, i buffed my nails. i remember my sister being there, apparently knowing the ins and outs of using the tool. if i remember correctly, she had said something along the lines of: ‘No Manda, that’s not how you do it.’ she took the nail buffer into her own hands and showed me how it was done, with what seemed to look like skill at the time.

after that one time, i secretly went back to the nail buffer and buffed away to make my nails shiny. and in the midst of that i suddenly got annoyed with the convexity of my nails. i remember resolving it with that very buffer — i flattened my friggin’ nails. i was stupid, so stupid.

then there was the time my sister told me that you have to cut your nails in a “curved” way. i tried, and i only made my nails stumpy.

—-

i don’t think i’ve ever had the natural flair for beautifying my physical state.

my mom frequently tells me over and over again to wear something nicer when we go out — to wear a skirt, a nice top, or whatever it is that will “doll” me up a notch. it’s not that i don’t care about how i look like, i don’t think anyone will come up to me and say: you need to wear something more appealing.

i just don’t really see the point in dressing up. but of course i like to look good once in a while. but sometimes it’s just fruitless so what is the friggin’ point?

same thing goes with my nails. or rather something remotely similar, if you can somehow connote them.

—-

there’s this excerpt from the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde that i’d like to fit in over here:

“But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are!”

Hence.

mahjong!

This is me.

Playing mahjong.

I won RM 5.50 you know.

showers etc.

i rarely bathe in a good shower. the one at home is crappy, it doesn’t know hot from cold, and sometimes in the morning, i am forced to take a frostbiting shower. the one over here at the house i’m staying gets cold when it isn’t supposed to. i can’t find the heater. and it looks and sounds like it’s having an orgasm; the way to stop it is to turn on the tap underneath.

the best shower, most kickass, most satisfying, most making-me-wanna-get-a-similar-shower, is/was at my uncle’s house. but even they are moving to the US. there goes the shower.

we went to delicious for lunch today, i’ve inched closer to finding the world’s best pasta, and, to having a clearer idea of what my dream loft is to be like. the uncle with the kickass shower will be moving into a loft in the US. one of the rooms’ theme will be light, as inspired by the restaurant, and have lots of glass to let natural light in… this room would have to be situated such that i don’t get burned by the evening sun. it’ll most probably be my study. colours to note: black base/floor, genuinely white walls (none of that off white crap), natural light brown wood, almost beige, and variations of blue, or another colour but currently it’s blue.

as for the pasta, i tried angel hair/capellini and caviar — which did not taste like i thought it would. (flashes peace sign) i’ve always thought of caviar as a “scary” type of food… food that people like Artemis Fowl eat, ravishingly. also, must put olive oil, must be light with the sauce, whether it’s a tomato base or cream in my own version of pasta i’d like to master.

and so that was the most part of my day. it was rather accomplished.

how was yours?

reminiscing

i found this in my laptop just now.

		6:55:42 PM		madny mandy				everyone’s been telling me that mj is dead =.=
		6:55:51 PM		adelyn				he is
		6:55:53 PM		adelyn				he died
		6:56:00 PM		adelyn				but
		6:56:02 PM		madny mandy				you cannot imagine what the first thing i heard today in school was
		6:56:05 PM		adelyn				are they even genuinely bothered
		6:56:10 PM		madny mandy				‘MJ is dead’
		6:56:11 PM		adelyn				I WOKE UP TO NEWS OF MJ IS DEAD
		6:56:11 PM		madny mandy				….
		6:56:18 PM		madny mandy				how?
		6:56:26 PM		adelyn				heartattack
		6:56:28 PM		adelyn				not confirmed though
		6:56:30 PM		madny mandy				and mom was like farah fawcett is dead
		6:56:36 PM		madny mandy				how did you wake up
		6:56:38 PM		adelyn				who the heck is sarah fawcett
		6:56:39 PM		madny mandy				gez
		6:56:41 PM		madny mandy				ez
		6:56:44 PM		madny mandy				i know how he died
		6:56:53 PM		madny mandy				farah fawcett
		6:56:58 PM		madny mandy				actress
		6:57:03 PM		adelyn				mom knows her?
		6:57:03 PM		madny mandy				never heard of her?
		6:57:03 PM		adelyn				LOL
		6:58:22 PM		adelyn				nope
		6:58:22 PM		adelyn				0_o
		7:00:30 PM		madny mandy				did he suffer from that skin disease?
		7:00:40 PM		madny mandy				or was it plastic surgery?
		7:00:49 PM		adelyn				uh
		7:00:52 PM		adelyn				i have no idea
		7:00:55 PM		adelyn				post mortem isnt out yet
		7:01:02 PM		madny mandy				waiting.

i want continuum

i am subtly disappointed. hurt, sad and fragmented. i wanted to fall in love all over again, and to submerge myself in killer guitar. this is how it all began:

i was watching House, and i didn’t understand what was going on, but it was almost ending, the medical talk was over, and House was looking pathetic, so i stuck with it. then this song started playing, you know the type that fortifies the sadness/mellowness of the characters, with this velvety guitar easing its way in backed by some light drums… and then this voice came, singing, Gravity [velvety guitar in the bar after] is working against me.

using my “voice recognition ability”, i thought it could be john mayer, but no, john mayer did bigger than my body, and he kissed the mike in the video. so no, john-mike-kisser-mayer could not be singing and playing this, it just not his style. my VRA led me to no one else… and then alicia keys started singing. i was like — are you serious. it was a good blend, a kickass one in fact. like starbucks.

so after House, i googled Gravity. and guess who popped up?

bingo. john mayer.

the rest is pretty much of the conventional, i youtubed more of his songs, and *downloaded them into my iPod*, and listened to them over and over again. a few months later i bought continuum, with 15% discount. my first every english album, and the beginning of my cd collection.

the only other band which i have fallen in love with is the strokes. i met them before in my indie period, dumped them, met a whole bunch of other artists, and in the mean time fell in love with john mayer, and found the strokes all over again. i thought: this is some serious shit. i wanted to get first impressions of earth, but our lousy stores didn’t have it. whenever i was pissed at something/someone, i’d blast/listen to you only live once, cause the opening line is some people think they’re always right.

back to the john mayer and why i am subtly disappointed. because his new album is out. though i haven’t heard all the tracks, only three or four, so far they haven’t really shown the very essence that continuum has. but i need to understand that it obviously isn’t continuum, it’s different, it’s battle studies. not that it’s bad, just different.

i can’t help but feel subdued.

on the other hand, i think i now get why sgt pepper’s lonely hearts club band is still number one on all, or most, of the lists of best whatevernot.