I think it's the quiet late nights that make me feel like posting. or perhaps it's because i just want to be doing something, anything, else.
 
it's quiet, the air is still and the only sounds I hear are the distant clicking of another keyboard, well, aside from my own and the barely perceptible hum of the pc. I'm waiting.

waiting for comments on a document that I was given a couple of hours to draft, a document that I sent out more than 24 hours ago. I know that a certain confluence of events has led to this - 2:30 am slumped in my seat, annoyance tickling like a stray hair in your shirt. and I know, to be fair, because well, we're always trying to be fair, it's not my counterpart's fault. it's the eternal battle between banker and lawyer, lawyer of the inhouse or of the practice front, it matters not. the client, the metaphorical princess in this story, has been captured, the battle is going to be waged until the sun rises and the warm glow of its rays banish the ghouls of the night. and then the game is finally on. the negotiation I expected tonight is not forthcoming. the comments, the changes, the fight is not forthcoming. it means only one thing, the evil lives to see another day.

funnily enough, it's my dad's birthday today. perhaps yeoh birthdays herald the onslaught of a placement. my pathetic texts about placements and closing and lodgment and not free for dinner, let alone lunch, are begining to sound fake, even to me - and believe me, they're real. real, unadulterated pain.

"beyond right and wrong, there is a field - I'll meet you there."

borrowed from the israeli-palestinian conflict, but today it's also so very on point for the girls who can't go too long without holding that oval ball.

and this applies, no matter what colour your blood may be.

so this year, I didn't do the usual and post a list of things I'd like to receive. I guess it being a GGBGQ* (say it real fast) year, I felt like it'd be wrong to ask for gifts.

and given that I've had serious work over the last couple of weeks and haven't had a slow down and haven't had a chance to feel the christmas spirit, I guess I've been a bit of a grinch.

but today on christmas eve, I feel it. maybe it's the rain, maybe it's the fact that I have only a few things to do before I leave for the holidays... but I'm glad I feel the way I do.

merry christmas, everyone!




* GGBGQ = the mangled hanyu pinyin version of jing ji bu jing qi which means the economy is not good. I know it should be JJBJQ, but that just doesn't sound right and can't be said supersonic fast.

or banned from driving or operating machinery.

I'm sick to death of paying for the mistakes of all the retards out there who can't drive to save their stupid little lives.

yes, I'm talking about YOU.

and your integrity... once again, astonishes me.

may all of your children be born without assholes.

how funny is that? and I watched it without sound at work. I was laughing like a hyena!!

I <3 jing jing.

Instructions... zzz
- Look at the list and bold those you have read
- Italicise the ones you want to read
- Underline the books you really loved and strikethrough the ones really didn't enjoy
- Reprint this list in your own journal if you want to... you know you want to.  

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen  (fine, I'll read it, even though it's period-y)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (didn't like the movies either)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (as a child, I especially identified with her outburst and simmering down by the fire)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible  (I read it a long time ago… does it still count?)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I believe I started this, but didn't finish. don't exactly like his style after reading Far from the Madding Crowd, waaay to descriptive)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (say whatever you want, ching.. =P)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (really liked it)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (took a while to warm up)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Is this not the same as the Chronicles?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (is there a double underline??)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (there were quite a few books of this, right?)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (frigging HATE his writing style)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (see 12 above)
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (yep, read it even though it's period-y. the period-y stuff I haven't complained about, I read as a child, probably forced upon me by my mother)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (very very unique. you should definitely read this)
60 Love In A Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (very sad story. slightly less loved than The Time Traveller's Wife. I also liked Lucky by Alice Sebold... the new one, The Almost Moon, not so much.)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (omg, I cannot believe this is here... it was suuuuuuch a drag as a lit text)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 

oops. 38 out of a 100. not sure who put this list together, but there are some books that should be included... We need to talk about Kevin for one. and crap like dan brown should be tossed out with the baby's bathwater. and why so much Hardy? Must be an English list. 

ok, soon as I finish Bringing Down the House, this is the stuff I want to read: 

- 1984
- Chronicles of Narnia
- Lord of the Flies
- Love in a time of Cholera
- Pride and Prejudice
 

ok, so who wants a ripstik?



it's essentially a skateboard, but with only 2 wheels - you ride it like a snowboard/wakeboard.

the front bit and the back bit actually rotate and the friction of the wheels against the floor propel you forward.

it rides like this:



for more info, check out http://www.ripstikusa.com/

it's US$125.99 on amazon and shipping to singapore is approximately US$70. Which brings you to about S$268 - which is pretty daym pricey if you ask me.

I'm going to try and get the dlx for S$200. anyone want in? =)

today was my last day of freedom...

quick, run away!


look what we saw... an old school satay man. right downstairs!


and er, look what we saw yesterday before training. some people were very unhappy.


clearly, very unhappy.


from the peak in HK, over the weekend.


and yes, vacuum cleaners need some help too.

some lomo pictures from kunming 2006 and scc 7s 2006! ay, I know, v late. shuddup and enjoy.


this is kunming in the day. china is vair big, so the lanterns, also vair big.


this is kunming city at night. no we did not live there.


mundonald's.


the field we played at.


so pretty right? we all went peepee behind those trees.


this is crazy teammate lying down and using tubigrip to warm toes. you can call her haywire (like on prisonbreak).


this is her showing her true colours (white... and pure).


true insanity knows no bounds. (ok, I think she's gg to kill me.)


this is daym pissed off roommate. no, not with me...


src girl's rugby model no. 1 and src girl's rugby fotographer no. 1


these are src girl's rugby nutters.


and little people can play rugby too, ok.

WHO WANTS MUTHU??


turns 4 shortly and he's a splendid drive! no engine troubles, perfect service record!

everyone's favourite little SUV looking positively burly next to a mini...

I have things to say, pictures to post, memories to put down and resolutions to share.

but right now, I only have time to leave you with one nugget (and here I've fought the urge to make references to work).

we need a remote control for life.

something that you could click to rewind to the bad bits to right them, the good bits to remind you of why it is you should have faith in life and love and all that is in-between, something to pause the perfect moments because they're always so very fleeting and most of all, something to fast forward to the future, to make sure (and certainty is seriously underrated in this day of living most recklessly) that things work out right.

but there is no remote.

you just have to roll with it and hope.  

YOU MUST WATCH THIS OR YOU WILL BE OUSTED FROM FRIEND STATUS.

it is v v v v v v v v v funny. pls go peepee before watching.

merry christmas.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end

1) do not visit bkk during elections season, especially if you mean to party because there's a ban on the sale of alcohol;

2) if you must go to chatuchak, ensure you shop with like-minded individuals who are preferably the same size as you (facilitates the "you don't like? ok, I try") and who will all throw in the towel within 4-5 hours and end up sitting in the park and then going for a massage;

3) you should always strive to eat from a roadside stall because, everything is fantastik... salt baked fish, chicken wings and best of all, the noooooooodle soup. I seriously love the noodles there;

4) having said the above, I still think you should visit zanotti for some super yumz italian for cheap. but please be wearing longs and shoos or risk being hidden in the corner;

5) oh and lesson learned the hard way? when you see something at chatuchak and you're quibbling over the 30 baht difference and being an ass, remember it's only slightly more than a buck and stop fecking bargaining and just leave ego out of it, because inevitably, you WILL regret not getting it and thereafter have to pay more more more than what was quoted because you're no longer in chatuchak;

6) when you fly budget, expect the worst - that way, anything that isn't absolutely frigging disgusting, pathetic or annoying to the max, will be a bonus; and

7) you can take the eusoffian out of eusoff, but plonk a few chairs out in the open and you'll quickly find, the eusoffian will be most rapidly resurrected.

DO NOT ORDER ANYTHING FROM APPLE.COM

my order is LOST in transit and the mofos:

i) did not tell me when they found out that the shipment was lost and would thus obviously NOT be delivered on time (thereby giving me time to run out and buy one off the shelf and have it engraved);

ii) told me yesterday at 1 pm (whence it was supposed to be delivered) that they'd ring me back by 4 pm about the order and didn't;

iii) told me today at the COB that they have LOST the entire shipment (so good luck to all of you who ordered stuff on 3 December) and they have NO idea when the motherfucking stuff is going to get here. IF at all; and

iv) told me my solution is to WAIT for the mysterious-stolen-by-pirates shipment to arrive.

and NO one seems to understand that I NEED IT BY TONIGHT. I've just received a call from the sweetest voiced person in the universe who tells me, I will get it by next week. great. thanks. seriously, longest 24 hour delivery ever. I told her I feel bad about giving her a hard time, because it isn't her fault that the shipment decided to stop in the bahamas and have an icy cool mojito (because travel is so tiring for electronics), but I really need it tonight and failing which, I need it to be insured and sent to another address with no scenic stopping at random tropical islands this time around please. she very very sweetly told me that something like that has not been requested or done before... so, she doan know if it's possible. I think I will once again have to be world's most unreasonable person and make it happen.

so these apple.com types? a bit useless ah? they have now joined the ranks of proliferate uselessness, like nike watches and FJB in my book.

I repeat...

DO NOT ORDER ANYTHING FROM APPLE.COM

especially this holiday season... and defo not when you need it to be shipped on time.

when I will most shamelessly declare what it is I want for christmas...

(this post is so the aftermath of the mindnumbing task of signing 100 christmas cards)

my christmas wishlist for 2007

expensive (mindbogglingly/insanely for first 2) - for those who've pledged their souls to me
1) 207cc (I reaaaaally want it, pwetty pweaaaase?)
2) the villain chair. hello, dr evil
3) snowboaaaarding for a week
4) luxe beach holiday - self-funded!

>100, but <1,000- for those who really love me
1) suck uk 6' slide light
2) nike skateboarding shoos - I got airforce 1s... but it's close
3) an iphone (but this one must be an IOU, cos I want it to be launched in Sgp first)

>50, but <100 - for those who love me
1) kenneth cole old skool tap cufflinks (cos the "hot" side on my pair has gone off on a frolic of it's own) - I got a pair of Raoul ones
2) gap kids heather classic v neck sweater in XL
3) hoody from neighbourhoodies (ask me what it is I want, this could possibly fall north of 100)

<50, but >20 - for those who like me quite a bit
1) kickin t shirts (threadless, vintagevantage, bustedtees)
2) reef slippers in a colour other than green edit: or yellow
3) a lowball glass to suck some johnny blue out of

<20 - for those who just like me
1) kickin t shirts on sale
2) funky crew length toe sox
3) a box of ubiquitous yellow pencils with eraser on the back (2B please)

free or kinda free... - for those who like me only a little or who like me, but are broke
1) hang out by the beach with me
2) cook me dinner or get shitfaced with me
3) a kiss (although I reserve the right to refuse this gift... =P)

it's a little cold and overcast today, perfect weather for sleeping in. the fan is whirring, my shoulder is aching and the ambiguities of life as a twentysomething are weighing in heavy this morning. right now, in this instant, I'm gg to lie inert under the weight of all that responsibility. there are many things to be happy about, but I'm tired and I'm sleepy and the bright side isn't so easy to focus on when you're a little grumpy and you have bedhead and pillow creases on your face.

I should get up and go in to work, there are agreements that are verily screaming for review, calls that have to be made, a desk that needs sorting, an inbox with upwards of 1200 emails waiting to be filed and a shredded mind that just needs to focus. for a bit more. I tell myself that every day, just a little bit more. and somehow, it gets me through the day.

this moroseness must stem from the relative inactivity of the last couple of days and the accompanied lack of endorphin release. I have to get up now, the laundry has joined the 64 other things hollering for my attention and I need to pack my gym bag. tonight, I will be stronger. for the rest of my life, I will be better faster stronger.

and because I couldn't possibly start the day on this emo nemo note... guys, I need to get shitfaced this weekend. absofiakinglutely shitfaced.

words can't do a moment justice.

no matter how well thought out or how eloquently delivered. there's still a dearth, between what it is you feel on the inside and the words that come rolling off of your tongue.

some days you just have to listen to what's underneath all that sound that seems to encroach on the vaguely triangular space between your eyes and your gut, the space where you try to shut it all out so you can rationalise all the curve balls that life throws at you and find some semblance of order.

perhaps that's why mogwai says it best. wordlessly. you listen to the music and your mind fills in the blanks and it hits home. because if you don't have to say it out loud, if you don't have to re-jig it before it enters the universe and then listen to it in an eternal loop in your mind where it inadvertently sounds so goddamn much like a whine, maybe it's easier to face what it is you feel.

maybe.

Tagged by nico

Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, and things. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name. Nothing made up!

Your name: ren
Four words: renounce, randy, robust, rootbeer.
State/country: romania
Boy Name: rolf
Girl Name: rebecca
Occupation: renegade
Something you can wear: ring
Something found in a kitchen: rolls
Something you shout: rooster!!
Something you do at school: rule
Name of an animal: racoon
Name of a drink: rum
Name a holiday: errrrr....
Name a body part: rear-end

tagging: do iiiiiit.

muthu got hit in the carpark last night. no note. again.

bad bad bad people. vair vair bad.