this is long

hello

a lot of my time have been spent on drafting excerpts of my life in a hundred, forty bunches of words, feel like i've neglected true, long-winded writing because of that, it is just so easy to think in short spurts i guess. i followed more people just now in a whim, then googled 'how to remove followers on twitter without blocking them' frantically an hour~ after, what was i thinking, i don't know if they would 'get' me, my language already feels constraint as it is

my time at cali cafe as a server the whole of last week was up, i'm back at the office working on these omnipresent sales kits i tire of revivingly each day, i like to say there is prominent progress but i need to move faster i think, when i talk about this assignment e-journal after e-journal i can imagine my liaison officer sublimely rolling her eyes, exasperated, shouting, doesn't this useless girl do anything else

well i'm a ben & jerry's ice-cream scooper by weekends, occasional waitress by weekdays, i'd speak meekly from afar
to jon and charmaine, i'd say, you must understand i'm not a designer
which reminds me, i have to update my log book

i bought 'the great gatsby' today at united square's popular bookstore for four-eighty bucks. this is a 'legendary' book, i've seen the word somewhere on tumblr, describing it that way, i saw catcher in the rye on the bottom row of the right-most shelf under 'fiction', another classic which picture appears on the website every two-three posts if i were to exaggerate, but i read 'franny and zooey' and i didn't like it too much so well done nonconformity, i picked it up, placed it back almost immediately even though there was a whetting twenty percent discount on all more-than-cheap english books

i didn't get a discount for 'the great gatsby' because the price was already the lowest a book could get

i like holding up books with both hands mildly, my fingers look nice, skinnier than usual acting as whiskers for them, regret not painting my nails red before, they are red now, i downloaded a camera timer application just for this, i will take photographs of my new novels like this from now on

my three kazuo (i always remember, spell his first name as 'kazuro') ishiguro reads arrived sometime last week too, i've finished 'nocturnes', a novella of five seemingly unrelated stories- though i think of some familiarity when i read them back to back- which was as david sexton of 'evening standard' described, 'quiet, but [...haunting]'. i took a picture with the book but i don't like it because it's in a portrait style, too much of my face showing

jing zhi and i met up for another day out together last sunday, we exchanged two, three emails back and forth before that which made the meet-up all the more anticipated i think. i love, appreciate how we never run out of things to discuss, i say 'discuss' because everything we share is thought-provoking yet not in a droning way, that does not mean silences do not occur between us, because naturally they do, but in comfortable, self-reflective nuances. this friendship with her makes me feel most of the rest unworthy of my time, why does everyone else focus on the superficialities of the world to talk about, is there really no one else except her i can respect, like fully, wholly. i think in ordinary instances, a flaw surfaces in every 'friend', this is why we subconsciously attempt to have as many, so that on days we know our caprice can't take one of another's, we pick out the people who do not aggravate our [bad emotion] to enact as company

group therapy had a full-house, we did not want to share a table squeezingly with two caucasians, the loft had a private party, restore had only sweet snacks so we ended up at the plain sweaty again

earl grey tea with lavender
my favourite dean's breakfast, i still can't find vegemite anywhere
turkey ciabatta, i did not know that ciabatta was a kind of bread, i'm not pretentious enough, i exclaimed, embarrassed
jing zhi you look very pretty in the last photo even though it is 'misty'

it was agreed upon that sweets come after savouries, we went back to restore for it looked inviting, quiet from the first time we stepped in, out, it is a vintage furniture store [slash] cafe, i liked some teacups they had put up for sales but the prices were truly 'vintage', so we just had a plate of waffles with berries which were too expensive too anyway, a pot of potpourri-smelling tea, i forgot its name but it sounds very sophisticated. the signature dish of the place is bagels, i forgot then, too. i love teacups, on tumblr i reblog pictures of them almost exclusively

dinner at bugis food centre because we are pigs, we want a lot of food but we have no money left, i think i ate here with jing zhi during our meet-up too, that seems like years ago to be honest. we shared sagos as dessert, shared about the problems with other people, with us

we also just created a book review blog today, jing zhi came up with a cool name combining both our birthdays and our names. i know we must sound like a 'corny' pair of friends, but that word is only really used by people who are ashamed of expressing their genuine good feelings for people i think, in the train that night on the way back to tampines, both of us just kept on telling each other, it's been such a great day, can't believe the day is ending, i don't want to leave, i love you; at that point i thought, this is the kind of relationship i want to have with anyone, a friendship, kinship, romance robust enough to be cleansed of silly, minute fears, where we can affirm one another constantly without fretting over alleged 'lameness', 'smothering'

i have more pictures

friends:
seventh may, ikea with weichong, shaun, the night ended with a low when it could have been with harry's, we promised weichong to go prawning with him when he books out of bmt
eighth may, habitat coffee near my workplace with hannah, i don't really like the ambience there, seems run-of-the-mill for a 'cafe', i had earl grey tea, mushrooms pasta which were good, the bowl was fancy, it tilted towards me
fourteenth may, men men don don, starbucks with christy, i love her, she is one of those i really like entirely, i'm trying to think of more people

joanne (aruna) stayed over at my house on friday into saturday, i drank most of the wine i think, i don't remember, felt like that was a great night, fuss free, i sang a lot, aruna read quite a bit

home:
thirteenth may, cooked prawns with mushrooms, waist meat with broccoli for victor and i, feel proud of this trial-and-error session, they tasted quite nice

work:
eighth may, jon brought his dog into work because there is a grooming shop just downstairs from our office, i feel like cute living things don't ever like me, but cookie did, kept on pushing the top of his nose into my hanging hand when i stopped stroking him, responded, pranced towards me when i clapped
fourteenth may, i made badges for the new 'scoopies' before training, which i attended, met some nice, pretty, really intelligent girls, adding each other on facebook, saying, see you soon, felt natural
jon laminated my clumpy, old paper bookmark, thank you
i made a mixed cd for cali to maximize my joy at work there, janet didn't like most of the forty-four of my favourite songs, they make people sleep, she said, good, then they can wake up hungry and order again, i replied. i also burned another cd, labeling it as 'old people like these' for the breakfast crowd in the morning
someone stole our menu, are you fucking serious, said jon, i told him, it is karma

also leon and i haven't been talking, bryan and i started communicating again, i feel okay

WARNING

for years i had a private blog to mourn about a ghost. yesterday i realised that the ghost was gone, and so the blog was useless. i looked at the words, they did not feel funny like i thought they would when it left, they were, are whole, i still remember the consciousness of it all, the fluctuation of gravity from us both, less me, but it has relinquished. i deleted it, my boots are now lighter

what's happening in my life now:

two stacks of unread books on my bedside table
finished the elegance of the hedgehog, which is now my favourite book, extremely loud and incredibly close, tragic, first time i cried over a book that isn't romance-based i think, maybe not, reading franny and zooey now, excited about hunger games trilogy, jing zhi and i are going to have a deep discussion about this

sales kits done all wrong, haven't came up with something new, deadline is mid-may
i don't like capital letters, they are structured, disciplinary, i most certainly am not

my mother thinks i have an inappropriate size, a couple of times she said,
did you start dancing, how come your thighs so fat,
my wrist is smaller than yours,
your body is okay, just have a chubby face,
then, you must eat, you are very skinny, don't diet,
sometimes i feel like asking her, can you make up your mind, do you want me to eat or not

new twitter account, i write better, can't find anyone else i want to follow other than the ones i'm following now, i like the quietness of the feed, feel proper to tweet a video of me singing jar of hearts in my jammies with happy bears and more red things

shopping list:
twix, [something quaint], postcard and/or postcard holder for natalie
more yoghurt, ham for breakfast, salad greens
i also need a shelf, my books are stacked up on the floor beside my eiffel towers

i bought jing zhi's present online way too early because somehow my subconscious believed that her birthday was this coming wednesday when it really is in june which i knew but chose to doubt myself. we met up last monday for korean bbq (we didn't eat as much as we would on any other normal, non-jaded day), awfully chocolate, talked in animation till two~ a.m.. the next day was labour day, it was a great night

wei chong's birthday was the highlight of few days before that. i left my phone on the dining table after picking up a call from a stranger on friday morning, the actual day of his 19th, i felt handicapped, it was ironic, the day before charmaine, jon and i were talking about smart phones during lunch, i recall saying, i would die without my phone, i lost it for two hours once and i nearly died. it was a bad week for necessities, if it was not my phone, my earpiece or book would not be with me, i can't live without these three things within reach all the time i think

so after work i cabbed home, back to paya lebar to pick wei chong up, then to tanjong katong for bar bar black sheep with shaun. i loved that night, our 'clique'- what a degrading word- is strong, we are meeting again tomorrow for ikea, wei chong is starting national service on wednesday

six people shaved wei chong's disgusting long hair last sunday at eugene's house (wei chong, shaun, miss yeo and i decided on this during supper at changi village after karaoke with the rest), it was far, felt like being in jurong, there were so many people who looked different. we had soup, grill steamboat, bought ingredients at the fairprice in lot one, bought one too many packets of meat, nearly had an overkill of cabbage too

i liked cabbage that night. miss yeo picked shaun and i up from tampines, we bought awfully chocolate rum and cherry cake with good word-frosting, i liked that too, shaun punched me in the face, mark got yoghurt cake, i liked that three, miss yeo drove around again to fetch us all to chua chu kang. i think we are getting too old for road trips/we have differing music tastes. before that i bought a fhm magazine and some aloe vera lube at a crowded tampines cold storage while shaun was being a coward in the toilet, the shaver was ~eighty dollars i think, wei chong said his friend shaved his head for ~a dollar- these were his presents, miss yeo contributed a box of masks

this is shaun christening miss yeo with the shaver and scissors, wei chong looking miserable. the night before this, saturday, leon and i met up with him at paya lebar's waffle factory (?), ate laoban beancurd at old airport road, he said we should postpone the shaving, i said no. it was an okay night, feel like we had talked too much about our internships, it was supposed to be a day to celebrate nineteen years of wei chong

the last photo is hilarious. i have two videos, one of miss yeo being spastic, singing hair-py birthday wei chong, twirling her hair literally, the other is the process of wei chong's hair dropping off, onto eugene's toilet floor, until his mohawk, then my phone ran out of space because i have too many songs, i need an ipod. eugene, you look nice in the first photo, thank you for talking to me on the phone just now in the afternoon and being my 'current' friend

[shouts] that is the fhm magazine i bought! sheri made a beautiful card of lace-looking roses, so gay like wei chong

i think it was clever that we bought two cakes. the yoghurt cake we ate before the shaving was lite, healthy, just for after a full steamboat, the chocolate cake was for wei chong's depression, though he really looks better with little to no hair at all. i loved this night, proximity in a friendship, relationship, is but an excuse

leon, wei chong and i met up again last wednesday for frog leg porridge at dunman food centre, i am sorry, recounting is not my strongest suit, i find that emotions of then ebb away to form the less than intensity i feel now, i'd like to write about affairs within seconds, hours at most, of happening, yet i can't, sometimes, most times i'm stuck

but it was a random, lively meet-up, the sauce of the dish was thick, hence satisfying enough for the walk we had towards the food centre before that

early mother's day dinner with relatives tonight. i miss pamela, fenella, brandon of my childhood, how close we used to be, i look at old photos with yellowish hues, sandcastles, pamela and i hugging each other by the waist, shoulder, beaming with all the teeth we had then. i don't remember the memory to the pixels but i see the bits of it, we used to dread leaving upon meeting, cry when we had to, throw tantrums and demand to stay over at either's houses, now we sneak away from the table of once, twice a year whenever possible, interact only too cordially, sometimes i sit there and i think, this could work, we could be like siblings again, on my wedding day, on hers, his, we would tear for each other, bless each other not out of politeness but of kinship, but how could it, where would this start. i don't remember the things we loved about each other, this sounds tragic, for now i think it is too

this was eugene's birthday back in march:

we watched hunger games and sang karaoke together after this too, the latter was awkward, not good. i want to surround myself with people whom i respect, enjoy, and who feel the same, whenever i can so that the rest of my life, their lives, would be fulfilling and tireless

back to work tomorrow. it felt like a long weekend though it really wasn't, i don't know how i am going to be creative with a few hours of sleep, don't feel to communicate with anyone i don't care for really