October 29, 2006
Enrapetured
After looking through one or two local bridal magazines and seeing way too many floofy poofy wedding gowns which would swallow me whole, I decided to have a look round online and soon found some tempting options. For example, "beaded embroidery trims the sweetheart strapless neckline and cascades onto the asymmetrically raped bodice of this slim fitting gown". How lovely. I am sure all my guests will be raped with admiration.
October 26, 2006
Bushwhacking
Walking out from Tanglin Camp after Yi-Sheng's book launch along a rather dark creepy path, Alec and I were the last two in the procession with Fay just in front. We had fallen silent, perhaps a little cowed by the atmosphere. Unnerved by menacing jungly shadows, I amused myself by walking like one of the Bushwhackers.
"Um...dear...you're being weird..." Alec whispered, as he walked beside me.
I thought this was a bit rich coming from someone I have had to physically restrain from public vogue-ing whenever the song in question is played, so I protested "No one can see me, what's the problem?" and continued merrily.
After a good thirty metres or so of my happy bushwhacking, Fay turned around as if meaning to say something to us, but suddenly her eyes widened in fear at something behind me.
"WHO IS THAT???!!" she exclaimed, lunging towards me to try and see who, or what, was behind me. "ARE YOU SOMEONE??"
My heart performing the sort of spasmodic leaps one's heart performs in such circumstances, I whirled around too.
Who or what emerged from the shadows? A short, slightly plump, totally ordinary looking lady who was somewhat shocked by the outburst and walked quickly past us, laughing nervously, to the distant sanity of the shuttle bus.
According to Alec she had been behind me the whole time, so the poor lady first had to deal with walking alone behind a group of silent strangers on the dark creepy path, one of those strangers beginning to walk in an exceedingly bizarre fashion (look, use your imagination - the Bushwhackers were funny on TV, but if you saw a shadow walking towards you like that in the darkness? Meep!), and another one of those strangers loudly demanding to know whether she was "someone". Maybe you just had to be there, but I'd have been a little shaken if I were her. Sorry, lady.
Apart from that, what I also wanted to record here was a lovely evening spent steeped in pride for Yish, the filthy synergistic hilarity that characterizes our particular group of friends, and the immense honour of being able to purchase a book with my name among the dedications in the front, spelled the way only Yish spells it.
October 25, 2006
Dreampolitik
While we're still on the topic of dreaming, let me tell you how dreams spoiled my Tuesday. Again, I don't know if it's just me who this happens to, but do you ever get stuck in a dream just around the time you're supposed to be waking up? You may or may not know you're dreaming, but it's always so incredibly vivid that you can't stop. Whether or not your body is physically ready to wake up, your mind just won't.
So anyway, I was brimming over with plans to wake up early and spend the public holiday doing useful things. Instead, I got stuck in a dream that I was an aide helping Tony Blair prepare for a very important UN Security Council meeting, so I woke up at 1.30 pm. What was I going to do, just up and leave? I had responsibilities.
October 15, 2006
Popcorn
You know how when half-asleep and half-awake you can get lost in thoughts that are almost like Dadaist films? And if someone happens to come wake you up in the middle of this you start babbling incoherently, like “No, I’m not going to work today because I need to stay and wait for the clothespeg inspector,” and it’s really embarrassing while you sleepily try to explain why the clothespegs need to be inspected (so that your kindergarten teacher can use them in her home renovations, naturellement) and somewhere along the way it slowly begins to dawn on you that no clothespeg inspections will be necessary, you haven’t seen your kindergarten teacher in twenty years, and the other person is laughing their ass off?
(Please God, don’t let this just be me.)
So anyway, this has happened to me a fair number of times while sleeping normally in my bed, but Friday was the first time it was prompted by the particular music I was listening to. Deep in my usual commuting drowse on the bus to work with Hood's Cold House on the iPod, somewhere around the last 50 seconds of I Can't Find My Brittle Youth I became convinced that the popcorn machine on the bus was overheated and about to explode. Why was everyone so calm? Maybe I needed to raise the alarm and alert everyone to the danger so we could escape from the bus! Maybe it was too late and we should just all hit the floor to avoid being skewered by flying shards of hot buttered metal!
I jerked awake in shock and stared bug-eyed around the bus for a good five to ten seconds before I realized that springing into either course of action would be a very very bad idea.
