Truths of Old

It struck me this morning how vasovagal syncope mimics hypovolaemia... pallor, sweatiness, tachycardia, hypotension...

One of our postops decided to spring a leak last night, and was producing a fair amount of blood in her wound drain every hour.

It wasn't fast enough to make me do more than sit up and take notice initially, and run through the preflight checklist of tests to do now, and things to be ready for in the future. (and call for senior support)

A short while later as I was finally savouring a moment's peace, the phone rang and a nurse politely informed me that our patient was slightly hypotensive at 70 systolic.

That's when you switch from surgical everything-is-under-control mode into A&E oh-shit mode, and sprint over to your patient. (Or in my case, limp)

Sure enough, she's drowsy, pale, sweaty, tachycardic and hypotensive.

Alarm bells are ringing in my head (but not on the monitor since, like every self-respecting doctor the world over the first thing i've done on arrival is to press the "suspend alarms" button) as I lower the bed down flat and press the call button for a nurse (since naturally, none of them are around despite their taking the time out to telephone me about it...). She recovers a tiny bit with the bed flat.

Her mucous membranes are pale too, which gives me a moment's pause. Perhaps we (ie the bosses) are wrong about how much - or rather, little - the wound is really draining. The wound site is also rather swollen...

A&E mode, on. (in an adult it takes for a loss of about 30% your blood volume to cause hypotension)

O2 please.
run the saline fast, and get me
iv gela, 500 mls, stat (why the heck don't we have any on our ward??)
and a large bore cannula, and blood taking stuff, and an ECG, and call the blood bank for 2 units of blood, go-go-go.

She pinks up and wakes up, and the rest of the evening is spent on tenterhooks expecting something to go wrong again any momet...

Much later, when the lab results come back I find I've over-reacted by far since her pre transfusion Hb is low - but not as low as I'd thought. No harm done to the patient, but I'm kicking myself for ruining the rest of my evening by asking the nurses to call me every 1 hour with her vital signs and wound drainage, hence ensuring the world's greatest sleep-deprivation hangover the next moning.

It must have been a syncopal episode.... but dang it, usually someone who's sick doesn't waste time or effort fainting!

Received Second Stamp of Approval from the King of Fairies, for good taste in women.


Wah.
So honour. Now have 2.

Sniff. Preen. Sniff.

But yeah, LMD, I agree : she has a beautiful laugh.

I was going to write this piece ages ago, but somehow life got in the way, as it does.

These days I find myself pressed for time to write... it's a trade off between social life, work and spare time I guess, and spare time is losing...

Anyway, the internet as a dating service. Good, or bad.

I think it's a horrendous thing.

I suppose it depends on context - there are dedicated dating websites that run along the lines of friendster, only with a less... platonic intent (meet your perfect match!) which are purpose built. And perhaps that's a good thing, perhaps not. I wouldn't honestly know - I've never felt the need to meet random strangers through electronic media with the sole intent of hooking up with them. It all seems rather sad, and meaningless.

Years later - dad, how did you meet mum? Oh I saw her on a dating website and thought she looked like someone I wanted to fuck...

Frown.

Of course if it's just an easy / pretty fuck that you're out for, then I suppose those webbys are perfect, innit.

Let's not kid ourselves... oh I'll just meet this girl, interesting "profile" (ha, girls, you think guys actually read the words with any other intention than to shag you?) maybe we can be friends, and then, and then maybe more.. and...

shrug.

I'm not casting judgement here... honestly if both parties are out for a shag then date-sites are perfect...

Dunno, speed dating might be more fun though, you get to actually meet the person in the flesh from the word go.

And that's why I think the internet is a horrendous medium for "meeting" someone.

I'd rather the first "touch" of minds, of skin - be done live. To see that person face to face, up close, and watch their eyes watching you.

There's a certain magic in being face to face with someone, a certain extra X factor that all the blogging and ICQing and MIRCing and MSNing in the world can never, ever capture.

And if it's a partner you're looking for, or rather I'm looking for - there must be "magic".

Of late, someone I don't know at all has confessed to a... less than platonic interest in my online persona, based primarily on my blog. There's a certain extra quality here, she claims, that piques her interest.

I tried to explain some of what I've written here to her, but she took it poorly... and thought I was trying to dash her hopes and hurt her.

I'm not... I just find it... wrong. These words here are not who I am. These thoughts that I have laid bare - are but a part of who I am... and an insignificant part at that.

You will never know me, as a stranger - even if you were to trawl through every last entry here, back to the Very beginning. Even were you to find my other "secret" blogs - we will always be strangers, until the time our worlds intersect and our paths cross - in real life.

There shouldn't be a fascination with my thoughts and mere words that amounts to anything more than a trivial fascination... I would never meet someone based on what they've written, with the hope of hooking up with them. In the same way that celebrity photographs are merely that - celebrity photographs, and nobody ever falls in love with a photograph.. blogs - even celebrity blogs... are "still" snapshots of a person, and superficial snapshots at that.

There are too many masks, and lies out here on the internet to trust mere words, and even photographs. Dawn Yeo, Daphne Teo, even dear Xiaxue herself...

... they are (probably) not who they seem.

And perhaps, neither am I.

Until I meet them, or you meet me in real life... we are all of us - merely online personas.

And I maintain that cowboy caleb is really daphne teo. haha.

I am Daphne Teo!

:D

Re-minisce had a small accident involving my boyfriend's car, and left me his blog in his hastily re-written will!! I will start posting my pretty pictures up soon! If enough of you vote me as number one blogger on technorati, ahead of Dawn Yeo, I may even post a few nuddie pics!

Okay, okay I'm just fooling with you guys. Ha-ha. I'm not really Daphne Teo. I have enough trouble managing my numerous public / private blogs without having to embark on an open/close easter-egg hunt with an invisible audience hung up solely on my youthful good looks. Preen.

But rumour has it he is really Daphne Teo. Really.

Think about it, all that subterfuge to keep his identity secret... rare "teaser" public appearances when nobody can actually figure out post event who the feck or where the fick he was, and even the creation of a whole new fallacious identity, Robert Goh.

You know it, crazed teenaged fans - this is the real Daphne Teo.

*****
May I have your attention please?
May I have your attention please?
Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
We're gonna have a problem here..

Coming right now to a blog near you - unexpectedly released before the due date, Re-minisce is proud to present the Fly By Night Video Review Site.

Uh. About that URL. I don't mean anything by it this time around. I'm just re-using the blog since it was there, pre-configured, and I have too many blogs to comfortably fit into one screen at the moment (ha. all the secret personal blogs that nobody else knows about, and then some)

So if anyone wants to tell me about their fly by night video which they've UPLOADED TO THE INTERNET, just drop me a comment on http://wearereallytiredofxiaxue.blogspot.com

This just in folks.

Mrbrown has had a baby. Yet again.
Congratulations to the proud father!

Man those teenage years are going to be a pain.

LMD : (cf Mrbrown) - He asked me to carry his baby!

.......

...

err. yes. quite.
That's a good line, that is. Hi, gorgeous, would you like to carry my baby?

*****

So I've finally been sent a link to this mysterious dawn yang person who has become the Chosen One to unseat the guardian of Hells Gate, Xiaxue herself. Word has it she's backed by powerful individuals and organisations, and is based somewhere in the states.

Well, a big welcome to the blogosphere to The Slayer. Personally, while you're reinventing yourself a bit of black leather and a name-change might help to augment your image too. You know, Dawn the Mediawhore Slayer just doesn't have a nice ring to it...

Jokes aside, let's break her down to try to understand the hype.

Looks, decent-ish but not a nine point something by any means. (California, land of the expensive...)
Writing - decent, surprisingly. Bit too yank for my liking, but that pretty much sums up Singapore, and the United States (which is apparently why she's "pan asian", whilst re-minisce is just Austin Powery Bah.)

But. And this is the big but.

Any girl who puts an mp3 onto her blog which you can't stop playing... becomes an automatic -10 in re-minisce's books.

What I really don't understand is this... they're just bloggers. Bloggers, for chrissakes. And we're getting hot under the collar about them?! What, no real celebrities with any real talent, so turn ordinary people with no talent into pseudo celebrities is it?
Shrug. Grow up, Singapore. And that goes out to the bottom-trawling pathetic little lump of regurgitated playdough that passes off as our media as well.

The following are videos which were submitted to The Fly By Night Video Challenge 2005. Just to refresh your memories, all clips had to be shot and edited within 48 hours, and had to be shorter than five minutes.

There were many more, but this is all that a technorati search turned up on the subject.

*****

Title : Zhi Yao Wei Ni Huo Yi Tian
Winner of the Judges Choice and Audience Choice awards.
Synopsis : Tribute to Kung Fu Hustle
Team Leads : Randy Ang and Nicholas Chee
Remarks : Well I thought it was brilliant. But I was part of it.. and I'm male too - so my objectivity may be impaired. Requires Quicktime by Apple to play.
Re-minisce's Rating : *****

Title : Loser
Winner of Judges Choice Award
Synopsis : About a "loser" who has the worst luck ever. Think Kenny from Southpark, only real-life.
Team Lead : Yee Wei (singaporecritic.blogspot.com)
Remarks : Yee Wei aka Jim Carrey jr acted as the loser. Well shot, deceptively simple, and very, very, very funny. 20 mb download - may take a while to load. Click on the small version if you can't wait.
Re-minisce's Rating : *****

Title : Four Play
Winner of Judges Choice Award
Synopsis : Four guys play mahjong and somehow end up hallucinating...
Team Leads : Unknown at this time
Remarks : Quite funny, and rather ingenious the way they worked in the theme for this year's competition...
Re-minisce's Rating : ****

Title : Upside Down World
Winner of Judges Choice Award
Synopsis : Life in another universe, where swearing is good and being polite is bad. Comes complete with authentic secondary school students and secondary school teacher.
Team Leads : Lots of foul mouth kids and a really rude teacher advisor
Remarks : No video upload at this time. The URL is to one of the 15 year old's blogs, and he writes like a 15 year old... sigh. But there is a transcript of the vid. Gratutious swearing.. like 40 of the other 50 clips... since a bunch of symbols has to be a swear word in Singapore, for some reason... but with an interesting twist. I sorta liked this one. Kudos to their teacher for dreaming it up.
Re-minisce's Rating : ****

Title : The Undecided
Synopsis : Bunch of guys gets together to shoot a clip for a video conference, brainstorm, and run out of time.
Team Leads : owners of anutshellreview.blogspot.com
Remarks : Funny, but weak plot. Personally I thought these guys would have done really well if they'd come up with a proper storyline. As it stands... it was kinda entertaining watching them throw it back at the organisers - you want ^#&$*), we'll give you ^#&$*)! They've also done a making-of post.
Re-minisce's Rating : **** - but they sure had fun shooting it

Title : ????
Synopsis : Matrix Spoof
Team Leads : owners of revatechnic.blogspot.com
Remarks : No video upload at this time. I missed see this one.. no idea what it was like.
Re-minisce's Rating : Uncertain

*****
If anyone would like to post a link to their own entry to the competition this year, feel free to leave an URL and I'll update this post when I can.
I will (eventually) start a separate blog page to keep track of entries if you lot are enthusiastic enough.

Okay, I reckon its coming up to a fortnight after all the fuss now... so it's probably safe to post this scathing review of The Fly By Night Video Challenge.

It was a great idea.

Just... "Grab a camera, shoot the video, and screen it all in one weekend!" (or so the website claims)

Okay, it's a little more complex than that.

Something... something... Five minute movie clip... something... Theme... something... Weekend.

The Theme was devised to ensure that production began 48 hours from screening time... to give everyone an even footing..

This year's theme was ^#&$*)

ah. yes. quite. Very clever... make them think ya? Encourage creativity, and lateral thinking by giving them an indecipherable bunch of symbols as the main theme, yes? All this while the clock ticks... and time pressure mounts, yes?

HELLO? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU GUYS THINKING.

This is Singapore.

It's bad enough that we have a dearth of acting talent, and directing talent, but now you cripple what chances the few people with some skill have out there of turning out something good by setting them some idiotic theme that leads to squat?

First boo boo - stupid theme.

It became evident, watching the 50 short clips being screened and enduring the same swear-sequences over, and over again ad-nauseum that something had gone wrong this year. Okay, it was also mildy entertaining watching several aspiring film-makers interpreting the symbols as the up elevator button (again, and again, and again)... and the floor level, yes, and AND, of course, and then money changing hands... and then...

Yeah. The same scenes taken over, and over again.

Let's face it. Last year's theme, "Fever" was much better. It paved the way to originality. This year's theme shot the organisers, and the participants in the foot with a 12 gauge shotgun. Some of the participants thought so too, and filmed themselves brainstorming frantically only to come up with zip, and deciding to submit zip to the organisers for asking it of them. Yes, quite, how droll.

Flaw number two : publicity.

An open event to the public?

How's the public even supposed to know about it if there's no publicity drive on mainstream media? (Sorry, cowboy caleb... but you're not quite mainstream yknow, what with the lesbian-kissing minions and all) Granted, the theatre at substation isn't large... but scanning the audience I saw mostly participants, and maybe a few of their friends. Fringe event doesn't begin to describe the occasion, well into its third year now.

And where was the media throughout it all? Was there a reporter anywhere in the audience - even a fledgeling reporter for kiddy TV? Perhaps there was... maybe I'm being too harsh. But was the event covered at all, does anyone know?

Flaw number three : Technical Screwups

Okay, I know it was all very last minute and rushed... but enduring technical cockups again and again during the screening (incompatible format, blahblah) was trying.

Not because I didn't expect any... I'm pretty forgiving that way. But because if I was the organiser I'd bleeding try to run a preflight test before the screening proper... or if time constraints don't permit, a limited preflight test, then continue testing the rest of the movies as the first few are screened. Sort of like streaming a media file. Have a separate tech support crew in another room making sure everything is going to play just fine, in front of the audience.

Flaw number four : Post Event Coverage

I think it says it all that the official fly-by-night website hasn't been updated and is still asking participants to sign up.

And that it doesn't even have links anywhere on it to the rules, or anything vaguely useful.

I haven't seen a list of winners anywhere online, or synopses of plots. An email to the organisers to ask that they update their page received a curt reply that they are working on it.

Yes, yes I know... it's a good thing that they organised it in the first place.

But three years in... they ought to be getting slightly better at it, yes? Instead of ensuring that the majority of their submissions will be... difficult to watch, that several of the decent ones will not be screened due to technical faults, and that nobody has a clue after the event who won or what the video looked like.

Mmm. Perhaps I should sign with them next year... I wonder how much they pay? :)

I've been watching from the sidelines (well, actually more ground-level side-profile, sort of like the effect one gets from lying prone on the floor after, ah, too many drinks) for a couple of weeks now and itching to pitch in my three thousand dollars worth, but refraining for fear of repercussions from her ferocious mongol(oid) hordes.. (joke! joke, people, joke! Cough)

Xena as always has beaten me to the punch, kick, and throw shiny metal hoop thingummy at hapless-foes' head move, but with characteristic terseness she also killed the issue with a massive deathblow then moved on to gushing about her doggy.

Reading this bloke's take on the issue (dated Wednesday, November 16, 2005) reignited the flames, and now the words are coming off my fingers faster than I can hold them back.

Quoted from Mercermachine's blog :

"Xiaxue: ?Everyone who blogs is a blogger??

MercerMachine: Yes, dear, by definition.

Xiaxue: ??first tell me your name.?

MercerMachine: My name is MercerMachine, honey.

Xiaxue: ?Is it Lumpy??

MercerMachine: Lumpy? Wtf? No, I just told you, it?s MercerMachine. If that?s too difficult to remember, you can call me MM, okay sweetiekins?

Xiaxue: ?So, Lumpy, if you can manage to swim half a lap without dying, is it right for me to call you ?Lumpy the swimmer???"

It seems wendy is completely missing the point. I suppose it's difficult when you're under imminent threat of being dethroned by someone taller, better looking, and not merely computer photoshopped, but word has it... photoshopped in life under the surgeons blade (it wasn't me I swear. I'd have given her bigger boobies) to keep a clear mind and argue with some semblance of lucidity.

But blogging... sheesh. Blogging is just putting words to blog. Teenagers do it, complete with IrRiTaTinG SMS Spk. Lovers post each other saccharrine-sweet (pui pui) bulletins on their ickle lovely postit blogs. Computer nerds write about technowonders they saw this week, and foodies rant about seventh gastronomic heaven and orgasmic oregano oil.

And you know what, Wendy? (and Wendy Mongolian Hordes?)

It's all blogging! Blogging isn't an artform. It's not a gift, and it doesn't require talent. It's hardly plastic surgery.

It's - as you put it once, jello. For the masses.

What you're alluding to -- blogging with pinache and savoir-faire, blogging with cutting-edge style and exuding talent from every pore, and magic with every word (think Bond, James Bond) :

that's called Writing.

And it doesn't cater to the masses at all. In the same way that Arthouse caters to an audience who have chosen to develop their appreciation of film - as opposed to B grade horror flicks which give us all a good laugh (but ultimately, at the end of the day - are washed away into the seas of history) - writing is for a select audience capable of appreciating the value and beauty of written thought... and blogging is for the lay person who knows only the utility of words, as a communication tool.

It's the difference between painting a picture at home, and being called upon to paint the sistine cathedral.

Or perhaps swinging a sword around - as opposed to fencing.

****

Everytime I - and several of my friends have read her describing herself as a "writer", we've just... made little faces, then let it slide. Washed away, by the tides of time, and more important thoughts like where to get dinner...

I once thought that perhaps if she actually harboured an interest in learning in words - she might just make a passable writer.

Now I wonder if she will ever truly transcend the prison she has built around herself - and to be fair, we reinforced it too by crowning her blog-queen extraordinaire.

Wendy is queen of the bloggers by dint of popularity.

But will she ever be a semi-passable writer? Will she ever publish a serious book that has serious readers thumbing thoughtfully through it in bookstores - before marching decisively up to the cashier to make a purchase they won't regret... or perhaps even to buy it as a gift for a friend?

Or will she, like others before her (think Jordan) produce something half-rate that people might buy simply for the novelty of it... or out of blind faith to their queen, who can do no wrong - even as she batters the rights handicapped and underprivileged people, and mothers with children in tow / pregnant women into the ground.

****

I didn't write this then - I didn't want to be cruel. But it all ties in here.

Writing is as much akin to blogging, as shooting a "good" short-film is to wielding a handycam and pointing it at some weird devil-teddy-bear.

In both instances, the former takes equal measures of ability, effort, and perceptiveness - you have to be able to see what you're doing right, and what you're not, and try to refine your work into something that you feel satisfied with. You have to have a certain pride in your work; you really have to "Get into it".

With the latter, you just go through the motions...

It's a little like calling a certain unnamed drummer of a certain unnamed "rock" group a Drummer... as opposed to the attitude-less drummers that have occasionally graced Harry's Jazz Bar, that just slide into their music, and "feel" it - and become it.

I'll confess that I'm not a writer. I honestly don't see myself as one - I don't proof read these posts of mine. I just let the words run off my fingers onto the screen (hence the typos). I don't take that much pride in my blog. Once in a blue moon, I do... sometimes I write something extraordinary (by my standards) and and then I wonder if perhaps I might have the talent to be a real writer, someday.

I'd like to fancy that if I collated these sparse pieces of "almost-art" I've created... perhaps I'll be really publishable in the distant future. I'd like to imagine that someday I'll be able to give up the madness of medicine, snuggle down in my hammock / deckchair on the verandah of my quiet little (and at this moment alas, still utterly imaginary) island hut, glance out at the ceaseless crests of red-hued waveheads coursing in from the distant horizon, smile at the reflection of the sun burning low in the sky... then power on my laptop and start writing, forever. Or at least until dinnertime. Preferably distracted occasionally by the (also, alas still utterly imaginary) warm, beautiful, funny, smart and intelligent woman in the deckchair next to mine...

But something like this -- it's all just coming off the top of my head. And this, ladies and gentlemen - is just blogging too.

*****

So no, Xiaxue, you are wrong.

Dawn Wossname is a blogger.

And so are you.

Just bloggers.

Mercermachine reads like a blogger - but look again. Look at his latest (well, latest, today) - "X" - and perhaps you will understand what writing really is. And perhaps you will wonder why you have never, to date, written anything quite like that.

And with luck, you will be inspired enough to want to start learning how he does it.

Write well, Wendy.

What do you do the day after you've had too many nice little green drinks in shotglasses and too little sleep?

Well, the answer is if you have re-minisce's arse luck, you receive a text message on your official work phone which you naturally foolishly choose to read, informing you of a compulsory talk in the morning at eight am (argh!) given by the biggest of the big bad bosses. (suit, no umbrella.)

So you drag yourself to work a mere three hours later and droop in a chair, subtly refining the lost art of dozing off with your eyes open.

Afterwards (many, many long, excruciating and painful hours afterwards...) you wander over to the gym and fall asleep by the poolside under the clear blue skies of Singaland. (of course, by the time you wake up hours later the sky looks like something out of a ghostbusters sequel, complete with cyclone in the sky and lightning bolts from the blue effects)

Twenty halfhearted laps later you wander off to get ready for The Post Production Party. (zhi yao wei ni huo yi tian)

It was actually pretty good, complete with seatwarmer clips from another promising fly-by-nighter (Who did the clip "Loser" for fly-by-night, and whose name evades me... but he is quite probably Singapore's next Jim Carey)

Somewhere between getting lost en-route to ground zero, free flow beer, "acceptance speeches" and dinner, and The Screening I can't help but notice just how large our cast and crew really was. There are still people showing up whose names I never caught, who smile at me, and who I smile at slightly blankly in return. There's even a mysterious celebrity blogger present, think he snuck in through the cat-flap...

Someone or other is late, and Kung Pao takes centre stage. (arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhh) We don't even get treated to the matrix cow vs dork scene... just... a lot of bad lines and cheesy combat sequences.

Finally, with the arrival of the director of photography (a cinematic genius in the making) and the grizzled veteran cop (who was just plain late) the Screening commences, and its... well it looks just like the clip from the website, to be honest (viewable only in quicktime 7, or with the CCCP codec, thanks to randy's team picking the hardest damn format for a layperson to view - hmm? I wonder if they're getting sponsorship from apple.) but big-screen.

The out-takes are screened, and I laugh quietly to myself at how many more hours there must've been which aren't being shown.

As the event winds gradually down (with randy's eyes beginning to glaze over) I fear that my last-minute evening companion and her friends may be feeling neglected, and so we wander off - first toying with the idea of joining Zeus and his Lesbian French Kissing minions at Wala walas... (which put my evening companion off a little bit, I wonder why?) before finally berthing at our port of call, Balaclava for some quiet drinks, laughter, and chilling out.

And to end a near-perfect evening, bah ku teh somewhere out there near Zouk, in good company.

Phase Two : The Hair.

Status : Passed.

Pending : The Walk

He was making sympathetic noises to his hapless patient, and prodding pointlessly at the lump on his face (as we do. It's really just for fun you know. Pressing on a pus filled sac on someone's face doesn't really achieve anything...) when she walked in the cubicle.

He hadn't quite forgotten her, despite the probable Korsakoff's dementia borne of a fortnight of heavy, heavy, heavy drinking... (make that impending Wernicke's as well. haha) - somehow he'd subconsciously kept an image of her in mind's eye... why that should be so he could not explain.

Recognition was a granted... it hadn't been that long, and to be honest he hadn't really had that much to drink over the last few days.

Yet when he glanced up, he felt a... shock... of recognition.

The eyes were the same - they were... the same eyes that he had not written about previously - that he had unconsciously searched the room for before... that something "ill defined" he had left undefined previously. The eyes which he had wondered if Dr Metro had been referring to when they last spoke.

But her face... it was not as he remembered. It was as if the memory of her face had been stripped from his mind, sculpted, stretched, and reinserted. She looked... like a still photograph.

He caught himself just... looking on, in stunned silence.

It lasted all of a microsecond. Then she smiled and they bade each other hello, and life resumed.

Zhi Yao Wei Ni Huo Yi Tian (I'll Live Another Day for You)

I was going to write all about it, but he's done it already. So anyway, if anyone was wondering what the black suit dancing thingummybob was about... pop by Terz for the rundown about pool, cops in shorts, and the umbrella gang. (Part of the Fly by Night Video Challenge)

Apparently Cowboy Caleb's given the story a bit of a spin as well.

We even have a thumbs-up with second finger endoresement! Cannot go wrong liao. Today, FlybyNight, tomorrow, the world.

But the two names to watch, really, are this guy, whose anal retentive painstaking meticulousness, inspired cinematic eye and brilliance in the director's seat (actually he spent a lot of time standing up, and about an hour trying to make a broom flip correctly. inside joke) was evident from the word go, and this guy whose drive, zeal, passion and enthusiasm had us all showing up err slightly on time, fresh faced (despite 3 hours sleep the night before for me...) and ready to roll... and who, ladies, can dance and act cool/scared like there's no tomorrow. The rest of the umbrella gang, we were just there to make him look good.

Kudos to our two directors, who transformed their dream into something... kind of amazing, for all of us. (direct link to movie download)

(Latest quicktime viewer recommended for mpeg-4 layer)

*****
ps - this is what an early incarnation of their dream looked like... you could call this the "making of" prequel I guess. haha.

Everybody who spent his / her weekend dancing in a suit under the mid-day sun raise your hand, please.

You're all mad, all of you...

(how did I get roped into this?)

Ah, but it paid off in the end.

What you don't see - the countless re-takes upon re-takes, and the "axe gang" gradually wilting under the midday heat. The lollipop melting by the end of the scene. The two axe gangers (really, umbrella gangers) playing an "umbrella game" of pool. The unfortunate moments when umbrellas decided to take on a mind of their own.
And broomsticks too.

Thanks to us? No - thank you for the memories, Randy. We had fun.

*****
Aha, so that's what a graveyard is. So des ne. And so that's how it puts people out cold... ahahaha.

Revenge is sweet. Grin.

And Miss NPS is still most definitely NPS.

*****
It was the strangest thing.

It was noisy in the club, and I had that sense of slightly surrealism which I get everytime I go somewhere so loud I can't hear myself think.

"Meet Ti__a!" someone said.

I looked up into her eyes with a shock of recognition even as I took her hand in mine.

That name... it couldn't possibly be?

I smiled absently, then proceeded to text message the wrong number about it. I thought about her the second I heard the name...

Coincidences, coincidences.
I turned around after messaging her to leave for the loo.

She stepped in the door at that very instant; we almost walked into each other.

I think she's here....?

And indeed, it was her.

With some people, coincidences - or perhaps destiny - cluster around them like flies to fresh meat...

... I remember what that felt like.

(New Word.) Adj. eg, This ice cream is frugged -
tastes of refrigerator.

Things rapidly went downhill two nights back at Forbidden city, the
second the waitress walked us outside to the open air (smokers
section) balcony to seat us... at ten in the evening, long past the
last seating, when three quarters of the tables had emptied out. It
took for a point-blank request to move back in for us to be relocated.

And then there were the desserts we ordered, which didn't live up to
the promises delivered on the menu at all. DIY dessert is not
something a supposedly fancy restaurant should serve up.

It was really all rather shabby - even the establishment itself seemed
run down. The mens toilet had paint worn off the door handles, and
even the walls in patches.

I came dangerously close to losing my temper (rare) after having a
taste of my dinner companion's sesame ice cream (which she said tasted
of refrigerator)....

It was quite simply frugged.

It didn't just taste of freezer; it tasted of defrosted freezer the
day after all that horrible mould and fungus takes root. It tasted of
rank, dank stomach-churning odours from the pit.

I raised a complaint, and the waitress promptly, without even trying a
sample (despite my invitations) proceeded to patronise us with
"this is how it is supposed to taste, sesame ice cream is an
acquired taste."

Pause. Reign in desire to begin reply with "young lady..."

Anyhow, she backpeddled afterwards, and the nasty DIY fungus culture
was exempt from charge. But really, all it would have taken to repair
the situation would have been a masterful touch of class, of an
attempt to persuade the customer that the server was on their
side..... let me taste that, oh dear, yes, quite I see your point, we
shall have the situation rectified?

*****
Modern Women

He raised an eyebrow when the message came in. If they (cf steak
sandwiches at Morton's which he had been rhapsodizing about) are
really that nice, then your treat; name a date and time.

Wah, the modern woman doesn't just pick up on a hint, she picks up
before the hint.

He smiled.

*****
Fatigue... it was fatigue.

Adrenaline high cancelled thanks to unscheduled return to OT

Grand Ward Round the next morning -- haven't read up yet leh. Die liao.

And simple exhaustion

It's strange that complete strangers feel compelled to judge the characters in that last story on my blog... in fact it's been strange all the way since even friends / acquaintences were happy judging and casting opinions about everyone save the one person it really mattered to.

Funny that nobody really asked her for her truth, or even how she felt about it.

That's the way this stupid country goes.

Truth - 0
Half-informed judgementalism - 1

Sometimes when people ask questions, they're not really interested in
hearing the truth at all - sometimes they're just interested in hearing an
answer which satisfies them.

We are all driven by different motives. Often these motives are
transparent, but sometimes when other peoples' actions seem
irrational we hazard guesses at their motives. Irrational behavior is
usually precipitated by some bloke fancying some bird (or vice versa)?
but sometimes it's something far more childish, such as enlisting
someone to side in an imaginary war? trying to turn people against
each other with your own half-informed brand of truth.

I didn't hazard any guesses at your motives. I really wanted to let
the issue slide.

Since you're busy rooting around a year down the road, why don't I give you a little helping hand?

*****
Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario.

What would you do if you were friends with a girl, and some guy hit on
her, and then on another girl who was friends with her? Would you tell
the girl? Or would you try to get her friend to tell her?

*****
Now let's complicate the issue a bit for the sake of argument.

We'll have to name the characters in this story or else it's going to get really confusing for all of us.
So let's have a Girl A.

Girl A is interested in Guy Z.
Girl A is also close friends with Girl B. (great, this is beginning to sound like a whodunit)
Guy X is the dumb fuck caught in the middle of the mess that's about to unfold.

Okay, let's up the ante a little. Let's have Girl A already kinda going with Guy Z. Point of inference - body language, hand on knee, hand on leg... well you know, the usual guy things.
Oh, that and she tells Guy X about it. Then binds him to silence. (although, at the time of writing that restriction has been removed, thankfully)

So here's where it gets complicated : one evening Girl A asks Guy Z, Guy X, and Girl B out for drinks.
Guy Z still seems totally into Girl A, same "handiwork" (ahaha). Girl A seems to be having a good time. Girl B seems her usual self - a little oblivious to the world around her (ie doesn't notice the handiwork) and Guy X is tagging along for the ride and having a laugh with a very good friend... who he shan't put a letter to because there's too many damn letters in this story already.

At some point, Guy Z and Guy X wind up in the toilet together.

Get your minds out of the gutter, this isn't that kind of story.

So they're standing in front of the mirror not looking at each other (as guys do) and Guy Z turns to Guy X and says, that Girl B, she's quite something eh?

Guy X thinks ?eh? did I hear that right? aren't you with girl... A? but just smiles a little vacantly and agrees.

Party breaks up, Guy Z flies off to oz for a little sun, sea, and sex with an ex (ah. but he was "just meeting her" eh...) and first thing he does is send back an SMS. Sweet.

To Girl B. To tell her how impressed he is with her, and ask her to date him.

Girl B tells Guy X about it, and says she's totally uninterested in Guy Z so that's okay. (ah apparently in retrospect she also bound him to silence... but he doesn't recall this at all?)

Guy X is a little disturbed, cos Girl A's still pretty keen on Guy Z... and Guy Z is still sending her the sweet ickle SMSs too.

So he suggests to Girl B that she tell her buddy Girl A about it... after all, today Girl A, tomorrow, Girl C? D? Little Miss Dictionary? Geesh.

Girl B insists that Guy X is over-reacting and its all ok because she's not interested in the guy. Also, she has a feeling Girl A might kinda like Guy Z, so she doesn't want to get in the way...

So Guy X spends the next week getting to know Girl A better. It turns out that she's
1) really really interested in Guy Z... you know the usual... he's really really nice, he's nice, he's so really nice, him? lie? you've got to be joking... blablah
2) the type of girl to whom knowing the truth - regardless of how unpleasant it might be - is more important than happiness built on a lie.
They discussed many hypothetical scenarios of cheating husbands, cheating boyfriends, and cheats in general, and nice guys who aren't... and Girl A was impressively consistent with her single-minded dedication to truth.

See, there's the nice people who'd rather live in the matrix and just be happy - because sometimes it's important to have a few lies to keep us happy -- and there're other people who'd press the big red button and switch off / blow up the matrix and make everyone else see the grim reality of the greasy world around them - complete with mechanical squid eating out their brains - because.... well I think mebbe it's just a genetic defect, but they get to wear cool trenchcoats and darkglasses so who cares, right?

Anyhow, it turned out Girl A was the matrix kinda girl, and she was also his friend, so Guy X - after a lot of deliberation - decided to tell her the truth.

Unfortunately - this is where it gets complicated again - Guy X began his friendship with Girl A on the premise of attraction. In truth, he begins quite a few of his friendships with females in this manner - it's probably a global phenomenon, except that Guy X believes in brutal honesty and telling it the way he sees it right from the start. There is a caveat though, and he usually spells it out too - that attraction may not - and in his case, usually does not - lead any further than friendship, when two people get to know each other too well... And Guy X does not act on attraction until it proves to be sustainable over time.

Guy X is caught in a quandry - tell the truth and risk being mistaken for an opportunistic wrecker of relationships (and unfairly so, because he and Girl A have arrived at the definitely nothing more - or less - than friends stage) or stay silent and watch his friend be hurt.
It is thus that he attempts to enlist Girl B's help in telling her friend the truth - he calls her, and asks her if she will speak to Girl A. She reluctantly agrees, then changes her mind and doesn't - but that is enough to make Girl A understand the truth.

And then suddenly Guy X is having... difficulties with Girl B, and her faithful retainers.

An attempt at communication some months later makes him realise that he and Girl B are very disparate individuals. Her motives for keeping silent - because this was her friend, and not a stranger whom she could speak more freely with; because she wasn't interested in the guy, and because it wouldn't involve her at all. Her reason for being angry - because Guy X put her on the spot, and apparently chose Girl B over her.

That was never his intention, to choose between friends.

How's that for a ridiculously and unnecessarily convoluted, and utterly juvenile short story?
*****
And so now one has heard the truth, and since one is apparently still - one year down the line - so intent on seeking out "answers" - there are several possible paths for you - who are probably, in your own deluded mind, trying to "protect" Girl B - and perhaps even the rest of Guy X's friends from himself.

You can choose to disbelieve these truths - and motives. That's well and fine. Shrug.

You can still do the decent thing and actually consult the person to whom this story truly belongs - Girl A. You can actually try to seek out the truth at its source - instead of creating one from the shadows.
Go ahead - she's waiting for you.
And perhaps you cold stop placing any more people in the middle of all this, and making them feel awkward. Instead of trying to make them take a side... in an imaginary war.

*****
Thank you, Girl A, for releasing Guy X from his bond of silence.

*****
AK-47
1/3 oz. Brandy
1/3 oz. Whiskey
1/3 oz. Gin
1/3 oz. Vodka
1/3 oz. Rum
1/3 oz. Bourbon Whiskey
1/3 oz. Cointreau
1/3 oz. Lime (Fresh)
Fill with Soda Water

well that certainly explains a lot...

I haven't dreamt in a long while. Sometimes, reading other people's dreams online (have you noticed how often people write about their dreams... and how rarely they speak about them?) I can't help but feel a tinge of envy.

I think I've forgotten how to dream - or perhaps my subconscious purges them from memory before I wake.

When I was younger I did use to dream; sometimes I had trouble falling asleep, and I'd imagine myself lying flat on my back on a large circular stone slab, rotating through the depths of space. (I was very young at the time) It made for some strange dreams.

Sometimes I dreamt up inventions, and when I woke I'd draw them down, driven by a sense of urgency not to forget. Once I actually built one of them, and was surprised when it worked.

When I grew older I'd try to fall myself to sleep... falling through nothingness, just falling downwards... until... I fell asleep.

Sometimes I closed my eyes really tight - have you tried that? There's an almost half-light when you do that, a very dim light inside your head, almost as if you're somewhere primal. Sometimes I saw shifting shadows in the darkness, and a sky... and for some reason it always felt like I was in a cave. It had an almost prehistoric feel to it. That gave me a few odd dreams too. Mainly of running away from big scary things with teeth.

Once, much later, I met a girl who did it too... that was rather odd. She was much younger than myself, but we had a few things in common including favourite ice-cream flavours, birthdays a few days apart, and this one dream. Oh there was a major difference though, she was very, very, very pretty. And I am not. haha.

Then there were other dreams as I grew older.

Often they were simple dreams, just the two of us sitting - on benches, on a bed, across from each other at a table - many, many different places, just talking and laughing. Looking into Her eyes, and laughing.

They were good dreams that had me smiling when I woke. But they made me ache inside when the realisation returned that She wasn't really there... but in truth, a few thousand miles away.

Some of them were before that rather odd year when things were... peculiar; many during, and a few after. The dreams began to die, in the Aftermath.

A few of them are particularly memorable.

*****
We were at home - my home, sitting on the bed next to each other talking.
It became time for you to go... time to go back to that other world.
You stood up, and Your eyes were sad. I haveto go, you said.
I walked you out the front door, and down the drive to the main street.

As we walked I looked at you, committing you to memory. I noticed in the background a small crack in the white brick of one of the gate pillars, with a vine growing in it.

And then I stopped, and you continued walking down the road towards the sunset.

When I woke up I got dressed for school, and waited for my mum to warm up the car. And I walked up to the pillar on a whim.
And there was a small crack in it, with a vine nestled within.

It was a strange feeling.

*****
You were a tall presence by my side, and I knew it was You. We were walking.
We walked side by side through a seedy motel lobby towards the grinning uncle at the concierge counter.
We stepped around him without breaking stride through a door and suddenly we were in a hawker centre walking past singleted bald uncles drinking their twenty cent coffees.
We threaded our way through the crowds, and through a street market, I think.
And then we were walking through a truly vast (vast) airplane hangar, only there was sunlight all around us. I think either there was a skylight in the ceiling, or perhaps the sun was actually suspended from the ceiling, miles above our heads.
A fine rain began to fall and it caught the sunlight, transforming the air within the hangar into a soft golden mist.
We walked towards the gigantic gaping maw of the entryway, filled with blinding light streaming in from outside.

Some years later as we meandered through Your city in quest for dinner, I was reminded of the dream. It had felt like this.

I wear a ring on my left middle finger.
Every so often, people ask about the ring. It's funny how, back in the UK they'd just slide it subtly into conversation : what's that written on your ring? What does it mean?

In Singapore however, the ring takes on a very different meaning - eh you have girlfriend is it? Who give you?

So just for the record, it's a friendship ring.
It was given to me in the truest spirit of friendship - asking nothing in return, giving, for the sake of giving, no inneundo, no intention attached. It was just a gift, from one friend to another. An act of (agape) love.
There was a significance in the act of giving.

The events that unfolded afterwards were unfortunate; but they don't cheapen the memory of why the ring was given.

The word on the ring is the name of an order of religious knights that fought in the crusades, out of faith.
Faith is something I've always wanted to believe in, and in today's world, a fast-dying and little-appreciated virtue. As the years pass it becomes harder to practice and I find fewer things worth believing in, except for my one constant, God.

I stopped wearing the ring a few years ago when I first hooked up with the ex; I felt that it upset her a little to see me wearing a ring given to me by another girl. After we fell out, I started wearing it again for a bit, but... an unfortunate turn of events with the giver had me not wearing it again, out of sheer silliness.

These last few months I've rediscovered the value of friendship, and of friends who are worth keeping - and those who are, unfortunately not. I've learnt that some people keep friends just in case they might come in useful someday, and that perhaps placing my faith in these people... is an error. But I also remember that some friends will stay faithful friends forever... barring stupid complications like some dumb bloke telling them goodbye forever.

And this is why I wear a ring on my left middle finger.

I should be so lucky if I could find, and live my life in Faith, and love. With Truth, and courage.

It finally happened... re-minisce got pissed last night. For the first ever time in his life, he found himself doing the alco-puke which until then, he'd long heard about, but had been unable to attain - not for want of trying.

It wasn't as pleasant an experience as I imagined it would be.

I'm a twenty-unit guy, or at least that's the most I've ever imbibed at one sitting, without ill effect.

Methinks I might have crossed that line with a flying leap last night, thanks to a trio of rather nasty drinks C, a newly acquired friend (of LMDs, surprisingly enough) plied on me.

I should have smelled a rat when he smilingly toasted me with a pitcher, and sipped about a quarter of a sip from the jug while encouraging me to down his vile, vile concoction, which tasted suspiciously like four rather unpleasant clear liquours rolled into one, for the sake of it.

Me, I'm a bacardi person, yoho, yoho.

Anyhow, I'll leave the rest to your sordid imaginations. Suffice to say that I required great assistance walking after the puking, and it felt very surreal to finally be in my little half-speed fantasy... and not really enjoying it as much as I thought I would. (where's that happy buzz everyone keeps talking about?!?! I feel so cheated.)

Oh, and miss nine point something was there too. (ah, happy buzz)
I'll admit it, this whole numbers game I play - it's just a joke. It's not even mine... I picked it up off a bloke in the UK, and it stuck. It sounds so wonderfully superficial... so blase... so... Joey. (Friends)

It's good for a laugh. Well, my laugh anyway. Haha.

It's difficult to keep the joke up (ha. alcohol does that to a guy sometimes.) over time, so I'll shrug it off and speak my mind now - no numbers, no joke - in all seriousness... she's very attractive. Anyhow, miss nine point something (henceforth, Miss NPS) dropped me off, and I was so sloshed I didn't have the presence of mind to thank her (doh!) or tell her what a pleasure it was to see her again (doh!) or even to ask for her number (doh! doh! doh!)

Haruumph.

Oh, the evils of alcohol.

*****
Ah, but where are my manners?
Thank you, LMD, for bringing me out to meet your dodgy friends again. :) Oh, excuse me, are you a model?
Thank you, C, for sneaking me through the fast-track, for all the (manymanymany) drinks and your hospitality... and for those three toxic excuses for drinks, you bast.... nice man, I will repay you someday, somehow...
And thank you all three for baby sitting me after I crossed the threshold of sobriety (never thought I'd see the day), apparently leaving my legs behind at Velvet.... And for taking me out for bah ku teh, which was yummy.
And thank you Miss NPS for the lift home :)

*****
Now I can't get it out of my mind.
The images just keep floating back into my head, like little fluffy heart-shaped balloons.
I am smitten, I'll admit it. Maybe even a little bit in love. Oh, I feel verse entering my befuddled soul, the words cannot be stopped...

Ah, starry, starry night,
oh, love, love, love -
like a velvet spoon,
fairer than an apple corer,
or even an alcoholic moon,
alack, aday, melancholic malady
sigh swoon simper
and all that...

I must have...

... bah ku teh.

Now who's gonna volunteer to bring it down to me at work then. Pleeeeease?

*****
"Miss Nine Point Five will be there" she said.
He looked up. He'd like to write that he looked up sharply, but he has a funny feeling it just looked like him looking up.
He corrected her : "Nine point Something"

... must maintain a bit of mystique lah. Right anot.

*****
The Murder of Melody Chen - addendum (for Melody Chen)
Eh it wasn't imagination lah. It was faithfully chronicled ok. I is a powerful scribe. Think about it... LMDs explanation is all wrong. You accidentally hit a straw to your right, yah, it can land in some random babe's hair to your right. But how do you explain the martini splotch to the left?

*****
PS - I have discovered the hidden passageway to freedom! Muahahahahahahaha. Work has never been so much fun....

Words can bring consolation, comfort, encouragement, and hope. Words can take away fear, isolation, shame, and guilt. Words can reconcile, unite, forgive, and heal. Words can bring peace and joy, inner freedom and deep gratitude. Words, in short, can carry love on their wings. A word of love can be one of the greatest acts of love.

- “Bread for the Journey,” June 22

*****
The thing is, not everybody can achieve mastery of words - not everybody can find the right words, at the right time.

And some people will never find the right words, even given all the time in the world.

And some people will never understand those words when they see or hear them, and their significances will be lost to them.

I see it now.

*****
We're standing, looking out to sea.

The sky is a hung sheet of black velvet before us, the air a chill cloak of stillness draped around our shoulders.

Perhaps we shiver just a little, hanging suspended in time in those magic moments just beforea a new day breaks.

We hear, rather than see the waveheads crashing onto each other up just ahead. We taste the sea in the air. We feel its humidity on our lips and eyelashes.

And then it begins.

The breakers take on an eerie light blue glow - almost white, as they coarse in to shore like tireless ghosts of time.

We begin to make out where the sky begins and the sea ends, far out on the horizon, and the sea unfolds into ripping, surging life.

The sky lightens, and streaks of colour bleed across its cloud-strewn face. Fist pale reds, then oranges, then vivid hues of gold and yellow - an artist's impression in oil-paints of sunrise, applied to the endless canvas of the sky.

The beach stretches out to eternity all around us, but instead of the virgin sands of morn we expect in minds' eye, untouched and unspoiled by raucous families and lonely walkers...

...we see, out of the corner of our fields of view - its surface pockmarked, scarred, with hundreds of thousands of bottles of every shape and size and colour. Perhaps each contains within it a note or a letter, or perhaps some are empty, their contents worn away by time and nature. Perhaps some are farewells, perhaps some bridge between forgotten times and tomorrow.

We spare them a scant glance - we know that those are not what we seek. We know that those are of little consequence.

We glance out to sea, searching the roiling reflected reds and golds on its surface for it.

Waiting.

Regretting.

Hoping.

We will know it, when it comes. As we knew it, when She was.

If it comes.

All we can do... is wait.

Okay, I admit it.

I went canoeing without a change of clothes.

It was an extremely last minute decision, which I have a funny feeling I, in my post alcoholic haze, might have been the initiator of.

Oh, but it was so, so good. I discovered that with enough willpower one can produce quite a turn of speed in a kayak. I was tempted to go out and catch a wild oil tanker... how's that for a pet then.

It was not quite so fun when the warrior princess gamely took me on for a race to shore, then nonchalently attempted to capsize my canoe, and then when that failed, to drive me into a breakwater as we paddled furiously back to dry land. Much to her chagrin, I survived. She muttered something about "...next time..."

Much later as we headed out to find me a change of clothes, smelling the heady scent of freshly washed and cleanly clothed female... I began to regret not having read that last email : maybe watersports, bring change of clothes.

It was a good day. Now I can't get the mental image out of my mind of a hot babe in sexy attire clinging desperately onto a bar counter by her chin and fingernails, as the barstools fall all around her like jingo towers... and of her husband standing impassively by and sighing "Aiyah, why like that?"

Oh, and a friend suggested I should have brought my handcuffs to the costume party... doh. Why didn't I think of that? That would be scary, a "doctor" with handcuffs.... Muahahahaha

He watched them over dinner.

She was very pretty, in a conventional way. Large eyes, delicate features, perfect skin.

He was : familiar. He was everyday, he was work, he was his boss.

They looked down as they ate, and spoke once in a while, once, when she pointed to his shirt to tell him it was dirty, sometimes when he made incredulous noises at her comments that it was hot today, so hot, and so, so hot, went home and took a cold shower, wah. And that her mother had made prawns for a snack.

As he watched, he felt a deepening sadness... perhaps not for them. They seemed comfortable, letting words and moments wash over and past them... it was very ordinary.

Very mundane.

It lacked... magic.

******
He watched them, after dinner. By accident, most of the time, since his sleep-deprived mind had him hazily floating on fumes as he lay spreadeagled on the floor. Once, when they thought he wasn't watching, he knelt down as she lay on the sofa to kiss her.

There was a magic between them, moments shared, eye contact returned instinctively...

He remembered.

******
Perhaps it reminded him of exactly who he was, and what he remembered from his past - and hoped for, from his future.

Perhaps it reminded him that it had all been a fantasy once... a silly fantasy, with no more truth to it than a childish desire, a random, over romanticised dream.

******
Last minute costume party (Zouk) ideas...

err.
uhh.

okay, let's wear scrubs and stethoscope...

As we strutted walked past, someone said in hushed tones... wah. That's the real thing lor.

Strangely, I don't think they were talking about the authentic "localbrand" variety my unnamed friend was wearing... but about the dark blues I had brought back from the UK, marked CGH (Colchester General Hospital) which puts most of the paper-thin "baju" healthcare workers wear here to shame...

******
And so it seems the nation's favourite attention whore pink-child has attracted bad press by slagging off a group that's finally prepared to fight back - without risking the ire of her two thousand rabid devoted slaves fans. Worse still... apparently many of her legion are bound by their own codes of decency and are pausing for thought.

Well, to be honest, I feel sorry for her.

And I'll write more later.

Right now I have to go out and get drunk, yet again.

******
Addendum

I didn't get drunk. To be honest, I haven't ever gotten drunk - and not for want of trying. God, it seems, has seen fit to provide me with a liver which prevents me from experiencing the alcoholic joys of life everyone rapturously used to describe in uni. (And then I threw up here, and then there, and then everywhere... right into ___'s lap...)

In fact, and this is rather exciting for me...

I actually came home early tonight. If you call 23.30 hrs early.

And I didn't have anything (alcoholic) at all to drink all day!

For the first time in three weeks.

And we exercised! Sun! Sea! Surf! Kayak!!

How come I don't feel any healthier. frown.

Anyhow, evening drinks with the german friends were cancelled, leaving me to chauffer two lovely ladies back to their abodes.

And now, listening to Craig Armstrong roaming around on the piano, I'm feeling a little too... content... to really want to write much.

******
About a girl

I actually feel a little sorry for XX.

Not because I don't think she had it coming. She's taken it upon herself to slag off countless individuals and groups now (I seem to recall something about all doctors being overpaid MC prescribing machines...) and it was only a matter of time before she hit a group or individual that the public would prefer to herself.

I feel a little sorry (in a non-patronising way) for her because I think she's being cruficied for a little lack of foresight.

My friends think that it's not really her fault - she's so young! Only twenty one!

I beg to differ - not because I wasn't quite like that at twenty one (but I wasn't...) - but because she's been... consistent. Over the years. She isn't gaining that mantle of maturity...

... and that's why I feel sorry for her.

We are shaping her - we, the community. The media, the public. The very people she whores herself to... we dictate who she is, as well.

We laud her for speaking her mind - she feels pressured to continue writing irreverantly, thoughtlessly. She doesn't feel a need to do her research before slamming professionals (doctors. yeah, i have a chip on my shoulder. haha)... She writes as much out of youthful ignorance as childlike enthusiasm. And we tell her she's doing good by being honest.

She swears on her blog, and we react like it's a good thing - somehow, in our opinions, she's being a sassy and spunky girl for daring to fuck the world.

We even "endorse" her with monetary rewards from... "attitude" clothing labels. She's found a winning formula, and she's going to stick with it...

Shrug.

We did this to her. In a strange way, we were the parents, and she the child.

Except this country - this media - this government...

We are, ourselves - immature. Thoughtless. And graceless.

I hope that one day she finds it within herself to grow. To learn to be more than she is. To shrug aside her fetters of popularity, and transform from the petulant child into a creature of grace, courage and maturity. Despite us all.

Unfortunately, churlish parents that we are...

... we will forget and neglect her, when she does.