Soulful Billie August 27, 2007

Ironically, it’s my students’ introduction to the “Gloomy Sunday” (aka Hungarian Suicide Song - such emo beings they are) that compelled me to pick up a $6.50 Billie Holiday CD last weekend at some reject CD shop. And boy, what an entrancing listen it has been (especially combined with groggy runny nose medication). I used to find her voice a little strange, but now, somehow, I am finally able to her sense her sorrow and pain. Like Ella Fitzgerald, she sings with soul, unlike that Bubble guy and those sweet young things trying to sound as smoky as possible.

Ivana’s Curse August 23, 2007

It all started with a particular colleague (code name: Ivana) labelling me as a “lady of leisure” for no apparent reason except I was playing with my dangly PAPER earrings during a meeting.

But now that there is a break from grubby teenagers for a couple of weeks, I have the sudden urge to purge myself by going for a hot stone massage, a nice minty body scrub and some much-needed beautification on my hangnailed fingers and stained (shoes got wet and colour ran, sheesh), calloused toes. Oh and something for the hair too…keeping it long is driving me crazy!

And my wardrobe! Sigh, I never knew I could say this…but I need to do some shoppin’.

And it’s all Ivana’s fault.

Houston, we have contact August 19, 2007

It’s been a while. Between unpacking, getting addicted to Facebook, attempting to kickstart the reno process (with some fine help from Mademoiselle Abi), and of course, Work, I have neglected Project 365 and the usual blog rant I spew every few days.

This  accumulative lack of reflection has made me a little antsy and so I shall resume. I ‘d like a bowly sink because it looks like an astronaut’s head gear thing. And I am a space cadet, after all.

Moving madness August 9, 2007

I never really had a problem with packing and going. I throw things out fast. I throw things in even faster. But this move has been particular painful because:

- it’s to a much, much, much smaller place and it turns out we did not throw out enough.

- my sis has a seriously excessive clothes/stationery-hoarding habit (she took up 23 boxes, not counting her doll cupboard and heaps of Hello Kitty bed linen)

- had a very very dodgy packing team who seemed to do as little as possible

- my mother and helper cannot live with incomplete unpacking and were ripping boxes open till the wee hours of the morning. Now. we unfilial children are bearing the brunt of keeling over by 11pm the night before.

- my beloved Birkies got stolen and my heart is a little broken.

Old things August 5, 2007

Why does the past seem so much sweeter and more charming? Do we subconsciously believe that this world is on a decline, hence the old ways are now being embraced as hip and cute? And then again, there are so still so many forgotten relics and people who have turned to dust, blown away into oblivion.

The last few days of packing, garage-sale clearing and visiting antique shops has brought about this bout of retrospection. What I’ve learned: people are by nature wasteful, people collect strange things to make life more interesting, and people attach certain memories to select objects, usually of no economic value. I feel slightly fretful for the state of storerooms and rubbish sites around the world - they seem beyond any kind of inventory.

Hoarding aside, Maye-e and I had some old food in the form of a mouldy chocolate cake a few days ago (she initally thought they were blueberries). Apparently, certain people believe that eating mouldy food is like a natural form of pencillin, which I suppose is good (though green mould, I googled out, is considered more toxic than white mould). I’m glad Nate chose to remain angelically silent during that moment of revelation, because we were wailing quite a bit and felt nauseous and gross the whole night (possibly psychomatic).

Don’t mind me if I spring musrooms out of my nostrils one of these days.

A fairytale memory August 2, 2007

So today I dug out this personalised storybook called “Me, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” while packing. I absolutely loved this book and was inseparable from it when I was younger. I even had this deluded perception that I really had gone through these adventures with Dopey and company, just that I had been too sleepy and had forgotten what transpired during my time in the Magical Forest (entirely possible). The best part of the story is where Snow White is making pies for the dwarves and one of the pies has my name on it:

Then Melanie helped Snow White make eight little berry pies with sugared crusts. Snow White put the pies on the windowsill to cool.

I’ve been wishing to jump into a fairytale. The goodies overcome all kinds of shit, the baddies have bad skin, and becoming a hero is as simple as spitting out a rotten piece of apple.

But of course, life ain’t Disney. Never was, and never will be.

To take cue from the last page of this beloved (and probably overpriced) fairytale:

Then it was time for Melanie to go home. All the dwarfs kissed her goodbye. Dopey had a tear in his eye. Melanie touched the bright pink worm…and she was home again!

Back to reality.