Frankly
I don't appreciate having to line up for 25 minutes for my regular fruit shake when I've only got half an hour for lunch. Where were all these people in the dead of winter when I shivered in my slacks and trudged through snow because I take my being a loyal customer seriously? (Plus, the fruit lady puts extra fruit on top of my shake) Jeez. Well, it's going to rain tomorrow, so all of you people in my fruit line better stay in and eat at your desks; you might get wet.
{Natural Anthem, Postal Service}
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Monday, April 28, 2003
Kinda shoulda sorta
1. Easter week-end = hotel + gift shop-bought swimsuit + first barbecue of the season + walking across the railroad tracks at South Amboy.
2. If you aren't already all perky-chipper-spring-like, this will cheer you up to no end. (Trust me on this.)
3. I finally saw all of Seven Samurai the other night. I watched it once in college during a finals night and fell asleep somewhere in the recruitment process. Well, I was an idiot because it is an excellent film, and no one should ever have to fall asleep in the middle of watching Seven Samurai.
4. Tonight's dinner: Shrimp (It's amazing how quick you can cook shrimp. You just have to literally dip them in boiling water with a pinch of salt), and the eternal mushrooms with garlic and olive oil. For dessert, my co-worker Mahendran's (whose wonderful three-syllable Indian name with a rolling R has been shortened to the vanilla "Moe") chocolate bar from Germany. Mmmhmm. The Germans make pretty good chocolate.
5. It really is no wonder everyone's raving about the Postal Service. The wistful, sometimes dreamy music and electronic beats are oddly infectious in an endearing kind of way. "Sleeping In", my instant favorite, has a shameless 80's feel to it. Come to think of it, their synthesizer-infused music may very well be 80's-inspired. Although I am a staunch Death Cab for Cutie fan, I did try to be more objective, to no avail, as I am now in love with Postal Service as well.
{Sleeping In, Postal Service} - Don't wake me, I'm planning on sleeping in.
1. Easter week-end = hotel + gift shop-bought swimsuit + first barbecue of the season + walking across the railroad tracks at South Amboy.
2. If you aren't already all perky-chipper-spring-like, this will cheer you up to no end. (Trust me on this.)
3. I finally saw all of Seven Samurai the other night. I watched it once in college during a finals night and fell asleep somewhere in the recruitment process. Well, I was an idiot because it is an excellent film, and no one should ever have to fall asleep in the middle of watching Seven Samurai.
4. Tonight's dinner: Shrimp (It's amazing how quick you can cook shrimp. You just have to literally dip them in boiling water with a pinch of salt), and the eternal mushrooms with garlic and olive oil. For dessert, my co-worker Mahendran's (whose wonderful three-syllable Indian name with a rolling R has been shortened to the vanilla "Moe") chocolate bar from Germany. Mmmhmm. The Germans make pretty good chocolate.
5. It really is no wonder everyone's raving about the Postal Service. The wistful, sometimes dreamy music and electronic beats are oddly infectious in an endearing kind of way. "Sleeping In", my instant favorite, has a shameless 80's feel to it. Come to think of it, their synthesizer-infused music may very well be 80's-inspired. Although I am a staunch Death Cab for Cutie fan, I did try to be more objective, to no avail, as I am now in love with Postal Service as well.
{Sleeping In, Postal Service} - Don't wake me, I'm planning on sleeping in.
Saturday, April 12, 2003
Saturday, April 5, 2003
A girl is a verb
The apartment still smells of salmon a little bit. I've been lighting incense like crazy and we opened the windows, so it's been better. We had the cousins over for dinner. Had mushrooms with garlic, salmon and swordfish, stuffed peppers. Ten minutes before they arrived, I had to run to the corner to get dessert - black forest cake - from the little French pastry shop. It's wonderful having everything so close. I've a newfound interest in cooking, usually involving mushrooms and bacon.There's a thrift shop a few blocks away that we've been frequenting, and where most of our "new" furniture comes from. They have really good, sturdy pieces though. Incidentally, I'm also very, very broke.
A friend from high school visited some weeks ago. Mario was my seatmate. He and I and the other guy in our row called ourselves M Cubed because our names all start with M, and I was M sub 1 and he was M sub 2. God. Our Science teacher had a soft, soothing voice and I'd usually sleep and ask Mario to wake me up when there were new notes on the board. So I was very glad when he emailed me and said he was going to be in Rhode Island for a month (He's doing experiments for a study on tropical diseases. How cool is that?) and that he was going to spend a week-end in New York. So we went to Madame Tussaud's, had dinner at our favorite Japanese restaurant in Chinatown, and watched Rent, as much as we could cram into a day. After the show, we just stood in the middle of Times Square and basked in the light of the signs.
I didn't like Rent as much as I expected to. I found the plot a little disjointed. I didn't like the set too much. I thought some of the songs didn't quite hit it. I thought the characters were charming, though. I can see how it was such a breakthrough when it opened back in '96. Jonathan Larson, who died just days before his show opened takes controversial topics - drugs, sex, homosexuality, AIDS, not your typical Broadway show theme - and talks about them through the mouths of relatable characters. By the way, Taye Diggs seems to be coming up a lot lately. He was the original Benny in Rent, I saw Chicago a few weeks ago where he played the bandleader, and I just saw Go again, where he plays Simon's (one of the main characters) friend.
I just read from Ramon's blog that Leslie Cheung killed himself. He played Tony Leung's lover in Happy Together. And I just happen to have rented Happy Together (which I haven't seen) and now I'm dying to watch it eventhough it's 1 am and I was planning to call friends up in the Philippines. Oh well. I guess I can pay off my sleep debt tomorrow.
{Girl, Frente}
The apartment still smells of salmon a little bit. I've been lighting incense like crazy and we opened the windows, so it's been better. We had the cousins over for dinner. Had mushrooms with garlic, salmon and swordfish, stuffed peppers. Ten minutes before they arrived, I had to run to the corner to get dessert - black forest cake - from the little French pastry shop. It's wonderful having everything so close. I've a newfound interest in cooking, usually involving mushrooms and bacon.There's a thrift shop a few blocks away that we've been frequenting, and where most of our "new" furniture comes from. They have really good, sturdy pieces though. Incidentally, I'm also very, very broke.
A friend from high school visited some weeks ago. Mario was my seatmate. He and I and the other guy in our row called ourselves M Cubed because our names all start with M, and I was M sub 1 and he was M sub 2. God. Our Science teacher had a soft, soothing voice and I'd usually sleep and ask Mario to wake me up when there were new notes on the board. So I was very glad when he emailed me and said he was going to be in Rhode Island for a month (He's doing experiments for a study on tropical diseases. How cool is that?) and that he was going to spend a week-end in New York. So we went to Madame Tussaud's, had dinner at our favorite Japanese restaurant in Chinatown, and watched Rent, as much as we could cram into a day. After the show, we just stood in the middle of Times Square and basked in the light of the signs.
I didn't like Rent as much as I expected to. I found the plot a little disjointed. I didn't like the set too much. I thought some of the songs didn't quite hit it. I thought the characters were charming, though. I can see how it was such a breakthrough when it opened back in '96. Jonathan Larson, who died just days before his show opened takes controversial topics - drugs, sex, homosexuality, AIDS, not your typical Broadway show theme - and talks about them through the mouths of relatable characters. By the way, Taye Diggs seems to be coming up a lot lately. He was the original Benny in Rent, I saw Chicago a few weeks ago where he played the bandleader, and I just saw Go again, where he plays Simon's (one of the main characters) friend.
I just read from Ramon's blog that Leslie Cheung killed himself. He played Tony Leung's lover in Happy Together. And I just happen to have rented Happy Together (which I haven't seen) and now I'm dying to watch it eventhough it's 1 am and I was planning to call friends up in the Philippines. Oh well. I guess I can pay off my sleep debt tomorrow.
{Girl, Frente}
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Saturday, March 8, 2003
Moving
It's that time of the year. Over the last ten years, I don't know how many times I've moved. I thought I'd count today, for the record. The first time I ever lived away from home was ten years ago. I was twelve years old, scared and naive, but an opportunity I just couldn't miss required me to live in another city. I remember being in the hotel room with my dad and being excited and sad and scared at the same time. For a few months, I lived in a room in a Girls Scouts headquarters. The room was actually for visiting Girls Scouts officers from out of town for whenever they had conferences or meetings but they let me and my roommate have it for as long as we wanted. She eventually left, and for a month or two, I lived alone. I felt all smug and independent. I'd go to the local mall and stay there until closing hours. On week-ends I'd go swimming and grocery shopping by myself.
My parents were worried about me being alone, so I had to move in with the rest of the kids in my school, most of whom were staying in my school's temporary dormitory. The dorm, which was newly constructed, was supposed to be an orphanage. My school's real dorm was still under construction. When I first moved in, I slept in the lower bunk of a double deck, with my suitcase at the foot of my bed. We all realized this was no way to live, so I moved to another room with three other girls, where I got the top bunk. It was great. I had never really lived in a dormitory before, and in the beginning it felt a little strange having to share a bathroom or to actually see your classmates twenty-four hours a day. It had its good moments, though - like the Friday nights we'd stay up late, or the watermelon-eating contests, or the long, extended dinners.
The next year, the real dormitory was completed. My room was on the second floor. The boys' dorm was across from ours and at night, they'd use cut-out letters and flashlights to project sappy messages on the wall from their balcony. Every year, we changed rooms. Packing and unpacking became a routine every summer. On my last year, I had amassed boxes and boxes of stuff, some of which still remain unopened to this day.
For college, I moved even farther away. During my freshman year, I stayed in a "boarding house" - half-dorm, half-apartment - with a crotchety old landlord. The next year, the other occupants and I, disgusted with living conditions (curfews, limited phone use, subpar fodder, etc.), moved out and in to our own little house. It was a pretty little two-storey house, with three rooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a huge dining-slash-living room, perfect for the seven of us. My roommate and I had the smallest room in the previous house, so we got the best room.
In the middle of our second year there, the landlady suddenly kicked us out because her son needed the place. Never mind that we loved it there, or that it was perfect for us. We found ourselves walking along the avenue in front of the university at 8pm, looking for an apartment. What we found was unexpected and we couldn't believe our luck. It was a huge apartment - two floors, enormous living room, garage, skylights - that the owner kept as a sort of life-sized toyhouse for his kids. Unfortunately, it was only available for a few months. So we moved yet again into what was probably the worst place I had ever lived in. It was practically miniature. The five of us (by then I only had four roommates) slept in one room. We studied, or at least tried to, in the balcony. The "kitchen" had a maximum occupancy capacity of three people. We couldn't close the door to our "computer room".
After graduation, I moved back to my parents' house for five months to experience bumhood in its purest essence. When I turned twenty-one I moved to New York, first living with my cousins and my sister in a two-bedroom apartment. Last year, we moved into this dump that we live in now, the one that seemed perfect when we first saw it. It just gets worse every day. The sun room, that was supposed to be the perfect hangout for summer, has a leaking roof. On Sundays, our neighbors play music so loud the wall vibrates. Our basement got broken into a few months ago. And so on. So, when our lease ended, we weren't exactly sad. Well, we were ecstatic. Since last month, we've looked at quite a few apartments, some of which were no more than boxes with two holes cut out for a door and a window. The apartment that we found is a very lucky find, and my sister and I frequently find ourselves stopping in the middle of doing something - such as reading, eating, sleeping - to marvel at our good fortune.
After all the moving around, I still haven't learned my lesson. I still wait until the last minute to finish packing. I still mix different things in a single box. Well, first of all, I never buy enough boxes. Something tells me it will always be this way - the slow lazy days before packing, the frenzied, almost panicky dumping into boxes on the day before the move, and the stressful move itself. Buildup, climax, denoument. Someday, I'll have to stay put, to know corners and crannies for more than a year. But not now.
{Soon, Moonpools and Caterpillars}
It's that time of the year. Over the last ten years, I don't know how many times I've moved. I thought I'd count today, for the record. The first time I ever lived away from home was ten years ago. I was twelve years old, scared and naive, but an opportunity I just couldn't miss required me to live in another city. I remember being in the hotel room with my dad and being excited and sad and scared at the same time. For a few months, I lived in a room in a Girls Scouts headquarters. The room was actually for visiting Girls Scouts officers from out of town for whenever they had conferences or meetings but they let me and my roommate have it for as long as we wanted. She eventually left, and for a month or two, I lived alone. I felt all smug and independent. I'd go to the local mall and stay there until closing hours. On week-ends I'd go swimming and grocery shopping by myself.
My parents were worried about me being alone, so I had to move in with the rest of the kids in my school, most of whom were staying in my school's temporary dormitory. The dorm, which was newly constructed, was supposed to be an orphanage. My school's real dorm was still under construction. When I first moved in, I slept in the lower bunk of a double deck, with my suitcase at the foot of my bed. We all realized this was no way to live, so I moved to another room with three other girls, where I got the top bunk. It was great. I had never really lived in a dormitory before, and in the beginning it felt a little strange having to share a bathroom or to actually see your classmates twenty-four hours a day. It had its good moments, though - like the Friday nights we'd stay up late, or the watermelon-eating contests, or the long, extended dinners.
The next year, the real dormitory was completed. My room was on the second floor. The boys' dorm was across from ours and at night, they'd use cut-out letters and flashlights to project sappy messages on the wall from their balcony. Every year, we changed rooms. Packing and unpacking became a routine every summer. On my last year, I had amassed boxes and boxes of stuff, some of which still remain unopened to this day.
For college, I moved even farther away. During my freshman year, I stayed in a "boarding house" - half-dorm, half-apartment - with a crotchety old landlord. The next year, the other occupants and I, disgusted with living conditions (curfews, limited phone use, subpar fodder, etc.), moved out and in to our own little house. It was a pretty little two-storey house, with three rooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a huge dining-slash-living room, perfect for the seven of us. My roommate and I had the smallest room in the previous house, so we got the best room.
In the middle of our second year there, the landlady suddenly kicked us out because her son needed the place. Never mind that we loved it there, or that it was perfect for us. We found ourselves walking along the avenue in front of the university at 8pm, looking for an apartment. What we found was unexpected and we couldn't believe our luck. It was a huge apartment - two floors, enormous living room, garage, skylights - that the owner kept as a sort of life-sized toyhouse for his kids. Unfortunately, it was only available for a few months. So we moved yet again into what was probably the worst place I had ever lived in. It was practically miniature. The five of us (by then I only had four roommates) slept in one room. We studied, or at least tried to, in the balcony. The "kitchen" had a maximum occupancy capacity of three people. We couldn't close the door to our "computer room".
After graduation, I moved back to my parents' house for five months to experience bumhood in its purest essence. When I turned twenty-one I moved to New York, first living with my cousins and my sister in a two-bedroom apartment. Last year, we moved into this dump that we live in now, the one that seemed perfect when we first saw it. It just gets worse every day. The sun room, that was supposed to be the perfect hangout for summer, has a leaking roof. On Sundays, our neighbors play music so loud the wall vibrates. Our basement got broken into a few months ago. And so on. So, when our lease ended, we weren't exactly sad. Well, we were ecstatic. Since last month, we've looked at quite a few apartments, some of which were no more than boxes with two holes cut out for a door and a window. The apartment that we found is a very lucky find, and my sister and I frequently find ourselves stopping in the middle of doing something - such as reading, eating, sleeping - to marvel at our good fortune.
After all the moving around, I still haven't learned my lesson. I still wait until the last minute to finish packing. I still mix different things in a single box. Well, first of all, I never buy enough boxes. Something tells me it will always be this way - the slow lazy days before packing, the frenzied, almost panicky dumping into boxes on the day before the move, and the stressful move itself. Buildup, climax, denoument. Someday, I'll have to stay put, to know corners and crannies for more than a year. But not now.
{Soon, Moonpools and Caterpillars}
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