Overheard #467

On a very crowded bus with my students, standing space only, co-teacher and I were doling out positive reinforcement for dealing well with the situation, in form of verbal praise.

“Jason, good job standing nicely.”

“Vin, good holding on to the pole.”

“Annie, nice standing.”

“Pete, very good holding on to your bag.”

When we got off the bus, another colleague told us that he overheard one passenger tell his friend, referring to our verbal praise: “How I wish my girlfriend is more like that.”

Huh?!?

Took a Tumble Down the Stairs

I limped in and surrendered my foot to the doctor. He took a look at it, felt around gently and chuckled, “Don’t you want to celebrate the new year?”

“He must be joking,” I thought. “The new year is a good 10 days away. Surely, it’s just a little sprain.”

The doc then proceeded to extract the most pain possible with a series of bone cracking maneuvers. Good thing it lasted all of 2 minutes. I trooped out, collected my medicated bandages, made an appointment for a follow-up in 2 days’ time and went home confident that I would be able to work the next day.

Next morning, alarm goes off, feet touches the ground – Ouch!

Ok… Maybe it’ll be better after a warm shower.

After shower, step out – Ouch ouch!

Ok… No going to work today. In fact, it turned out, no going to work for 2 days.

Back to doc’s for follow-up. I begin to get the feeling that this is more than just a leeetle sprain.

Surrendered my foot to the doc again.

“You weren’t joking the last time?” I asked. “When you asked if I didn’t want to celebrate the new year? I thought it was just a small matter.”

“Doctors never joke,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye.

After another 2 minutes of pain, he announced, “Come back again in 2 days’ time. And that was not a joke.” *twinkle*

Alright. I get it. It’s more than a little sprain.

The Ghost with the Sad Eyes

Mr. Gregory Page, observer of life and exquisite song writer.

My Guilty Pleasure

Go Fug Yourself is where I go to gawk over the stuff that celebrities and wannabe-celebrities wear. Actually, I don’t really care if they’re celebrities at all. It just happens so that if one is not famous, no one takes notice of what one wears. Well, don’t take notice enough to want to make a website and put up photos, at least.

Often enough, I see people wearing outfits that are so wrong that my first thought is “Yikes!”, followed by “I so need to blog about this”.

But I restrain myself because, well, that’s not nice. After all, I have plenty of outfits and accessories that others will never be caught dead in. I just prefer to think of them as quirky.

But today! What a day. Today, I walked past a lady whose outfit arrested my vision.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t stylish, nor that she was absurdly outlandish. There was nothing very wrong with the cut, nor the style, nor the fit. The thing that was all wrong was the colour.  Or rather, the colours.

This lady was wearing a black top with a brown skirt, topped with a blue jacket and red shoes.

The brown was a pure chocolate-brown. The blue was well, blue. The red, fire engine.

I think she broke about a few thousand rules. Let’s name some:

1. Never wear black with brown.

2. Never wear brown with blue.

3. Never wear black with brown with blue.

4. Never wear black with brown with blue with red.

I’m not a stickler for fad or fashion. Not the kind who subscribes to lesser rules such as no white after Labour Day, wear darks in winter, wear lights in spring and wear bikinis everywhere in summer. In fact, I pooh-pooh those rules.

But, there are rules that one must abide by. Must! The above being some. The others being never wear navy-blue with black, pink with red, skimpy tops with skimpy bottoms, floral on floral, checks on checks, and such common-sense stuff.

Then, just as I thought I had about recovered from the black-brown-blue-red incident, I walked by yet another arresting sight. This time, it was a lady wearing a poofy blouse over stirrups tights and flip flops.

Stirrup tights. The bane of the ’80s. I thought everyone had been adequately warned by now.

I have to say that I do not fancy the footless tights fad. Footless tights are for modern dance classes with lots of floor work. Cropped footless tights are for modern dance classes on a hot day with *hopefully* not too much floor work. Footless tights with stirrups are for aunties doing aerobics.

I must confess. I once bought a pair of black tights with stirrups. They were cheap, very cheap. The first thing I did when I got home was to grab a pair of scissors and cut off the stirrups. Tada! Tights for modern dance class.

Now that’s not to say that I abhor tights. On the contrary, I adore them. In all colours of the rainbow. I am ever on the conquest to procure more colours. I wear them with skirts, dresses, and even capri pants if the outfit needs a dash of colour. But never with shorts. And they must be footed.

This is correct.

This is not correct.

Outside of the dance studio and aerobics studio, tights must always be footed. Always.

But then again, those are just my rules. Not everyone needs to live by them. Besides, everybody knows how fashionable I am.

Wings and Rings

I crave.

“It’s Raining”

I texted B so that he can make an alternative arrangement to walking home from the train station.

B *mock disappointment* : Oh no. Cannot go running.

Me *flat affect* : Oh no. What a big disaster. You poor thing.

B: Hehe. Yeah.

Me:  Just for that, you’re getting an honourary mention on the blog.

So here it is.

This post is specially dedicated to “Theodore”.

I Just Can’t Get Down To Work

I’m so going to pay for this when I’m writing the essay at breakneck speed on the day of the deadline. But, oh well.

*procrastinating*

Was searching for old school mates on FB and felt the need to put up a half-decent profile photo so they know it’s me. I’m sure they wouldn’t have a clue from my previous South Park character.

And found this photo while I was at it.

This was me just before I left SD. Wearing TBF’s clothes cos all mine were either packed up, given away or waiting to be worn to the airport.

Look at all the bags I attempted to bring in with me. There was one gigantic black suitcase, half-hidden behind me, one almost as gigantic polka-dotted trolley, one 75 litre-capacity backpack, one laptop haversack, one green woven basket that would serve as my “purse”. At least that’s what I tried to sell it as.

I had checked in the two gigantic suitcases and was going through security check, trying to convince them that I really only have 2 carry-ons cos the Mogu bear wearing underpants is a neck pillow and the green basket is my purse, or in mother-island lingo, handbag. The security officer chuckled and said, “No can do, Ma’am.”

Ok, so I did a bit of a re-shuffle.

Strapped the Mogu to the haversack. Emptied the four precious boxes of dark chocolate covered soy nuts, previous occupants of the green basket, into a large Zip Lock bag that had previously held clean clothes, then stuffed them all, loose clothing and packed chocolates, into the backpack. Strapped green jacket (seen hanging in the wardrobe in photo above) to the other side of the haversack. Stuffed wallet, travel documents, book, pyjama pants, pills, mints etc etc into haversack. Strapped emptied green basket to the front of the backpack.

Two ladies, natives of the large island that is neighbour to our mother-island, seated across from this mayhem, watched with interest and commented to each other that I was crazy, not expecting that I, of a different skin colour, understood enough of their language to know that. I did not have time to discuss the state of my mental capacity. Not that my grasp of their language sufficed to support a psychological assessment anyway.

Ok, try again. I presented myself to the security officer. Visualise this because there was no time to take a photo.

There’s me, 5 foot 3 inches. On my back, backpack stuffed to the max and green basket hanging from it. On my front, laptop haversack, also stuffed to the max, with a Mogu bear strapped to the right and a jacket and Nalgene to the left.

I was covered from neck to hips with baggage, front and back and sides. If someone had decided to let loose with an AK-47, all I had to do was hunker down and tuck my head in and I’d be none the worse for wear. The only thing that kept me standing was the fact that both back and front loads were about equal weight.

The security officer gave a hearty laugh and said, to my surprise, “That’ll do”. And waved me through! I pulled it off! And didn’t have to pay a single cent in excess baggage.

Power to me!!

Post Lasik Random Thoughts

So many days with nothing to do but close my eyes and rest.

Some things I did to pass my time.

Listened to CNN on TV. RIP Ms. Bhutto.

Day dreamed.

Supervised the roasting of a 13.5 pound turkey. Not too large by other nation’s standards, but pretty darn mighty over here.

Attempted to make a tzitzit in the dark. Got as far as the third knot for Yod, which is about the equivalent of getting as far as C out of the entire alphabet, when I got myself into a huge knot. Realised that tugging blindly at a knot is about as futile as giving a chimp a typewriter and expecting Shakespeare.

Speaking of chimps, I did manage to catch a few reruns of that Man vs Beast TV show. It’s a programme that doesn’t require one to have vision to view it. Had wanted to write about it previously but just couldn’t find the words. What does one say about a show wherein men pit themselves against animals in events such as tree climbing and running? Is it not a lose-lose situation for man? If one loses, well, ok, so the animal is a faster runner. We kindof knew that already. If he wins, then what does he say? “Yeay!! I beat a beast! I am better than animal!!” Hmm…

I haven’t seen that many episodes, but it seems, every time an animal loses, it’s because he isn’t aware he’s in a competition, and a nationally-televised one at that. Case in point, man challenges Orang Utan to see who can hang on a hang up bar longer. Man is straining to stay on. Orang Utan swings about, makes faces, pees, then (it seems) strolls off. Man comes down, triumphant, for his winner interview. He says, in gist, “My arms were aching but I held on. It really was a challenge and the opponent was strong, but I held on for the victory!” Yeay for the man!

Meanwhile, Orang Utan thinks, “May I remove these ridiculous black underpants already? They’re wedgy and the colour doesn’t go with my fur.”

On the other hand, the tree-climbing chimp, who also lost because it appears he was enjoying a leisurely climb, was issued a pair of knee-length black with yellow trim gym shorts that were just darling on him. At least he got to look good.

I digress. Back to what I did to pass my time.

Applied eye-drops.

Had lots of random thoughts that I’d thought I’d share here but have long forgotten by now. Can’t be that important then.

Had lots of vivid dreams in my sleep. Perhaps to make up for the lack of visual input during the day.

New Year’s Eve was spent in my dark room listening to the local radio station’s disco hits countdown. Disco rocks. I could almost forgive the DJ for choosing that horrid song as the last one before the countdown. I sang Jive Talking to myself while B sang that horrid song into my ear. There was a little medley tribute to Sir Cliff Richard and I was demonstrating Una Stubbs’ particularly energetic dance when B reminded me that I’m prohibited from excessive head-shaking movements.

Yesterday, I decided to be brave and make a trip to Mustie’s. We were in serious Nacho Libre withdrawal and needed to get our hands on the DVD. I equipped myself with two pairs of shades – superduper-powered water sports serious athlete and oversized white-framed I Love Lucy – and a pocketful of individual serving-sized eye-drops. Turned out that Mustie’s was a bad idea after all. My eyes watered and hurt the whole time we were in there and they had run out of the Nachooooooooooo DVD.

But then, we adjourned to Sak’s (not the Fifth Avenue one) across the street for a late lunch, and boy!, was it a good lunch. The North Indian Vegetarian Meal was huge pile of fluffy savoury pilaf rice surrounded by seven side dishes and one mysterious sweet tasting liquid thing. Maybe dessert?

B just messaged to inform me that there’s a newly-opened apple strudel cafe at his workplace. Two weeks ago, he announced the opening of a gelato stand and a something-else delicious I can’t remember. I worry for his waistline. He resembles Theodore and Nacho too much. But I have to admit, I’d take pudgy over skinny any day.

Ok, got to go get some shut-eye and have more random thoughts. Maybe I’d remember them this time.

So Long For Now

Dear Reader(s),

Thanks for following the whims and fancies of this writer thus far. That’s all you’ll be hearing from me for the rest of the year, not that there’s much left of it. My corneas will be going under the knife in a few hours’ time. Will be back in not too long more!

A last song for now.

Ladies and gentlemen, our last act of the year, Tim McGraw.

K.D. Lang

Not one that non-country music listeners would associate with country music, but Lang’s roots are country indeed.

Here she’s singing a song written by fellow Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.  Most people know it as the Shrek song.

Ladies and gentlemen, K.D. Lang