Okay. So it wasn't really supposed to be a holiday, but a 'mid-semester break' where conscientious students can brush up on their, uh...

Anyway, my parents were down for the two weeks so it was a holiday so there, alright?

... and they've gone home now and school's starting tomorrow and life goes on. Thanks for reminding me.

Now, this is where I put in nice, colourful photos of three people vacationing in Adelaide but I have just found out that photobucket's not letting me upload photos so until someone redirects me to some other site where I can upload photos, I can't.

So much for blogging about my parents' holiday here.

I can tell you I've put on weight, though. Sharing food with my mom does that to you because she's smart and takes a bit of everything and leaves the rest to you (ie; you're dumb). I will never make fun of my dad's belly, ever again. Or at least until the next time I see it. I have the right to do that because in my two years here I've not befriended as many cafe proprietors as he had in the past two weeks.

Bottomline, I had six months of living in the gym down the drain in two weeks.

My mom thought it would make me feel better by telling me that they love me no matter what shape I am (read: no matter what shape I am, not what shape I'm in).

I'm beginning to think that Jason had some sort of premonition when I told him that I bought this hugeass european pillow because it was so 'fat, poofy and I fell in love with it... and it was only ten dollars' and he said 'sounds like you'. The fat, poofy part, that is.

I swear, I wasn't fat and poofy three weeks ago.

I can't believe I've been back here freezing my ass off for a month already.

Yes, I know of people who walked around in board shorts in Bermidji, where it's much colder, but there's a reason why I didn't go there instead. One of the reasons. A very minor one that was quite insignificant, but a reason still.

I enjoyed myself back home thanks for asking, if you're asking, and I know you are.

Didn't get to do much, though, but ah well. Back to the present.

The lecture material is killer this semester and I've been unsuccessfully looking for work, a job, some sort of employment but with certain boundaries. Other than that, and feeling like an eternal student, nothing horribly interesting has been going on.

I've been thinking of renaming this blog 'The Typical Blog of The Typical Student with a Typical Life'. Wadaya think?

Okay, here's an interesting anecdote.

I was at the gym (where else would I be), just after effectively stunting my growth for the next ten years by trying to lift what felt like 20 tonnes of weights, when I looked into the wall-to-wall mirror and realised that it really wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. Choking back tears at the reality of never shaking the nickname 'ketot' (which originally comes with the 'lesbian' suffix because it was given by my bro, whom I let use because it amuses him so), I also realised that there was a person staring at my behind.

Now, I know for a fact that my gym shorts aren't THAT short, althought they tend to ride up these days now that I'm... curvier. Yeah, curvier. Anyway, the point is not in my shorts (damn). The point is that there was a person running on the treadmill, shooting glances not at the tv screen and with a discernibly disturbed expression.

Like, hell, did I rip my pants? *considers switching membership to Fitness First*

So I turned a little trying to, uhm, see my butt in the mirror without being too conspicuous about it. Not easy (but also not too difficult considering that nine out of the ten who look into the mirror are too busy mind-measuring the circumference of their biceps or something).

Turns out there was no rip, but there was this hugeass (excuse the expression; pun initially unintended) bruise that stretched from the hem of my shorts til halfway down my thigh. Now, THAT was disturbing. What the hell have I been doing?! What did that guy on the treadmill think I've been doing?!

Anyway, it's still here and I would have liked to put up a picture of it but my camera's with Shan so you've missed a chance at looking at my butt. The sucky part is that now that I know it's there, it hurts whenever I sit. Amazing, the human mind.

Ah well, I just said that I had an interesting story. I didn't say in what way. You live with this, while I live with trying to find new ways of amusing myself around here.

And I promise I'll go to Melbourne before I graduate.

But then again, when else would I be able to find the time to blog?

Anyway, I've been having some issues with MSN for the past week or so.

Correction: MSN has been having issues with me. Because I always get along with everyone and everything.

I haven't been able to sign in, and I suspect it's due to the problem that the internet connection has with me. Again, I get along with everyone and everything. They just don't always get along with me.

I went through the whole troubleshooting shit but decided to stop at the part where they tell you to "backup your files before proceeding".

Now, I'm not afraid of tinkering around my laptop but I'm also well aware that I'm a technology idiot so I know enough not to go anywhere near something that requires you to backup your files/programs/data/whatever because chances are I'll either not do the backup and lose all my data and more somewhere down the line, or screw up doing the backup and lose all my data and more anyway (Damn, it's like religion where we'll all end up in the same place. I'll argue with you if you want but it'll have to be after this weekend)

So I decided to reinstall the damned application and got to deleting the whole program and what I think (and hope) are traces of it.

Now I find that I can't reinstall Windows Messenger, probably due to the same grudge that the internet connection has against me. Or I've deleted something which I wasn't supposed to.

And to give you your dose of lameness, eBuddy's now my new buddy. Felicia's gotten a double-dose of this, God bless her sanity.

But that's not too bad, since I really should be studying anyway *coughFINALScough*. The best part is trying to explain all of this to my mom. Via SMS.

Ah well. I'll probably get it all sorted out when I get back home next week. No big.

Oh, yes. Before I forget again:

Two more papers to go, wish me luck!

Note to KLites: This is not the same Uncle Lim who serves roti bakar and kopi-O, although I would have been so very much more fond of him if he were.

Anyway, I was assigned by him to bring back a few bags of chips, which I pretty willingly obliged to doing since there was this great offer for Doritos and Smith's at the supermarket and so I bought a few bags in advance.

And then, I found myself having Doritos for tea, dinner and in between.

Most of my pants don't fit anymore, as it is, and I'm blaming Uncle Lim for this because putting the blame on myself would be stooping too low. I mean, c'mon!

Ah well... I'll burn it all off. Sooner or later.

Not now, though, because I sprained my ankle again. This one takes the cake because I didn't sprain it at the gym or at the park (common occurence in M'sia where the weather is so much more conducive for the park).

I sprained it tripping over my heater.

Tiny bastard, and it was just there in the middle of the room. How the hell was I supposed to know that it was there? What was it doing lying around the middle of the room anyway?!

Uhm... anyway, yeah. I sprained my ankle.

And stubbed my toe, too, while I was at it.

This blog is NOT dead. It's just... on life-support.

Also...

I've booked my flight back to M'sia.

That's probably going to go under "Exciting News of the Month" too, at the rate things move around here. Although it looks to be that way but, trust me, I've got no plans of abandoning my blog yet. I just lack... blogworthy subjects of interest.

Which I why I invariably fall back on quoting some vaguely ticklish conversation on MSN just to keep the blog moving (note I didn't say 'alive'). Which doesn't make the selection process any easier because I obviously can't put up anything that's too much of a personal nature to anyone but me because I have no qualms about embarrassing myself. Anyway, what's a blog for, if not to embarrass yourself with?

Anyway, sit back and have a latte. This post may go on for a while.

People ask me what I do with my time, now that I'm living on my own and by the sounds of it some even wonder if I've left Adelaide on the quiet. I wish. But, no.

I'm actually pretty happily preoccupied doing my own thing and dancing on the table when the sun goes down and the dim, yellow lights are oh-so-captivating and it's not my fault if a bunch of your remaining brain cells decided to die on you after reading that.

What I've come to realise, though, is that I do have a pretty serious problem going to sleep.

I'm a pretty light sleeper. Make that very light, like my head. I take ages to fall asleep and wake at the slightest noise. But there's a pretty easy way of telling whether you've interrupted my slumber or not.

If I'm asleep, I'll wake up uber pissed-off at you and if I'm not, you're not going to get any sort of reaction out of me because I've sort of conditioned myself through the years to subconciously ignore external noises so basically the only thing I can hear during that stage is this occasional voice that tells me to do things.

I've been told that I should get some friends to hang out with. It's a little sad, when you think about it, that people think that you don't have any friends. Jason thinks that I show signs of Asperger's. I thought that was a little too much, but when he mentioned the social isolation (it's really not that bad), obsessive-compulsiveness with symmetry (not that bad, too) etc, it wasn't all that far-fetched after all. But, really, it's not as bad as it sounds. I'm not gonna notice if you move my pasta out of line or anything like that.

Hey, everyone's entitled to their own quirks, right?

Speaking of quirks, any requests from home for anything? I'll do whatever I can and ignore impertinent ones like strawberry-flavoured gummy candy. Coming in contact with things like these are against my principles.

P.S.- I just bought a packet of red lentils sourced from Australia, processed in some factory on Jalan Tampoi, Johor, Malaysia and, well, sent back here again. Carbon footprint, people!!!

Well, not exactly a toothache per se, but swollen gums thanks to a wisdom tooth that's trying to break free again.

It's pretty bad this time. I sound like I've got a lozenge in my mouth (feels like it, too) and I can't eat anything too... solid. (I've got a headache too but I can't tell if it's because of the tooth, or my sinus problem. Zyrtec-time's here again.)

So it's soft foods for me. That didn't work out too bad for today because I had this fantastic idea of baked beans and egg. Just like what mummy used to make.

Damnit I've just about totally forgotten the existence of that dish! Pure comfort food, so I'm a contented girl for now!

It captures the, uh, essence of our personalities.

See?
There's Sherry the Idiot on the right being an idiot with me as she is always inclined to be,
that's me reciprocating her idiocy as I usually do to get her to quit provoking me,
that's SiewLi with her classic 'mom-I-don't-want-to-hang-around-these-people-anymore-can-I-go-home-now' look,
and that's Felicia posing for the camera and feinging ignorance (didn't come without practice!) of the happenings on her left.

Like I said, damn good photo. I even considered using it as a header in place of the current Elvis one but besides that being an act of blasphemy, I had to crop the photo as you can tell to protect my dignity. Why do these things always happen to me when Sherry's the one who was being annoying in the first place?!

Hence, I would rather just use it in a post coz it's a damn good photo and let it get lost among the mounds of posts long-forgotten as I continue my life as a leisure-blogger.

I wonder, when we're sixty-four, will our photos still look like this?

You can't believe how long I've been searching, and when I saw the tag with her name on it I went "LORETTA LYNN!!!" a little too loud, I think.

But the best reaction I got was when this employee, who was trying to check with the system if they had anything finally found something and exclaimed "Oh, you meant OLD Country!" a little too loud, too, I think. We got a few sniggers.

I can make a guess now on how they categorise the music (Country-Pop, Country-Rock and Country-For-Doddering-Old-People?).

Really, you don't know how hard it is to get good Country music around here if it's not Johnny Cash. I'm talking country Country (fine, OLD Country). With titles like 'Coal Miner's Daughter', 'Louisiana Woman, Mississippi* Man', with that guitar-plink thing. So, Loretta Lynn's my latest Country crush.

I know, I know... Lady Gaga's more my generation, but I already have a male version for a brother, so that's enough kookiness in my life.

Anyway, bottom line: I've finally got my CD which wasn't terribly cheap, but I'm happy and singing along regardless.

To divert a little, it's bloody cold today. I know it's cold when my coconut oil solidifies. It's pretty fun to watch, actually, since it solidifies when the temperature goes anywhere below 25*C, to make a rough estimate. I put the bottle in different rooms when I'm lifelessly bored just to see which room is the coldest.

I think I'm eating black nail polish chips (keep this to yourself, Jo!).

*Anyone remember how to spell 'Mississippi' with your butt?

It's a public holiday, yay, and nowhere's open!

Mamak? What mamak? Don't get me started. A few more public holidays here and I'm going to revere the mamak so much that I'll start spelling it 'Mamak', with a capital M and referring to It with a capital I. The Mamak is universal, so there's no plural.

My brain's melting as I'm blogging.

Anyway, here's a funny anecdote of mine from a couple of days back at Gloria Jean's:
A typical day, with a long black, a magazine and my Ipod on. You know how you start tapping your feet, et cetera when Lady Gaga comes on? Well, I tap my feet, et cetera whe Elvis comes on. Not all Elvis numbers, of course, because you can't really tap your feet to something like 'Love Me Tender', nor should you even attempt to sway to it.
Anyway, I must have been tapping my feet or the table or the table with my feet or all of that because this person who was standing near my table asked me what I was listening to. I told him it was 'The Girl of My Best Friend'. Then I went back to my magazine.

The incident actually struck me quite a few hours later. That explained the odd expression.

I must remember that not everyone's familiar with Elvis' discography.

Tell me, is there a better reason than that to blog?

Anyway, I was just reminded that I have not put up any photos from my holiday back home, so I'll put some up now.

Now, in the first place, why didn't anyone tell me that I was supposed to?

Strange things, what people expect of you sometimes. Ah well.

I don't have much, though, and most of what I've got here I've taken from Fel's Facebook page. I figured that since we're BFFs, I don't have to let her know first that I'm using the pictures in my blog.

This was taken on our first of many nights at my place, getting stoned on BFF-talk.

Fel and Huiling. I think I've either had a bit too much to drink at this point of time, or I'm still as talentless a photographer as I have always been.

...and thank god I didn't give away this lil' momento that Fel gave each of us back in Form 5. *sideglances at HL*

Inside joke: HL eating nuts. Quick as lightning.

Here's a nice one of us with some Kampai at some cafe in SS2.

The Spectacular Seven @ 1Utama. The photo Fel bought the tripod for.

(I'm putting it a bit larger, coz that's what she bought the tripod for)

Come to think of it, it has been years since our last photo as a 'complete' group, huh?

Come to think of it again, we have put on quite a bit of weight, huh? I can't find anything that dates far back enough to when we were still wearing, uh, 'handkerchief-like' clothes. This is the closest I could find.

They're not that 'handkerchief'. Maybe Fel has better ones, being the vault of photo albums.

And, to rub it in, here's Fel checking to see if anyone's balding.

...Well?