i'm not sure why the title's hohoho. i couldn't really think of anything else, but am in a good mood now. tomorrow's one of those indian festivals where women go round to people's houses and take the haldi kumkum (or vetthalaipaaku in tamil) and stuff like that. some women do the puja and have people over, some women just go to the houses because they don't do the puja. i think it depends on your mother-in-law. if she did the puja, then you do the puja because it's supposed to be for your husband. i wonder if it's the same thing as karva chauth. and it's interesting that i'm better acquainted with the north indian customs of bollywood films than my own customs. or more fascinated at least. i wonder if 'familiarity breeds contempt' is a good enough excuse. anyway, my mother wants me to get dressed up and go round to the houses with her, because she herself doesn't do the puja. but i'm meeting chit (finally) to go see 13 going on 3o. initially had also planned on going for womad, but i'm thinking it's not so worth it anymore, because it's about 30 bucks (although a student discount makes it less i think) and i can only make it tomorrow night, and that too for only some of the night because there's stuff in school until about 6, and i need to get home fairly early because the next morning i have to go with my family for the president's charity junglethon thing at the zoo, because hp sponsored it and my dad donated a few thousand dollars to it (i wish he'd done the same for lysis). at freaking 730 in the morning. my parents are guilt-tripping me into going because nowadays i never go anywhere with them unless it's of personal interest to me. sigh. anyway will go check out womad website and see if there's anything really interesting tomorrow. ok there is - coco mbassi, talvin singh, natacha atlas and temple of sound, zap mama but that's quite late in the night. hmm. maybe i'll get ten people so that we can get 10% off. which will make it 90% of $24. which is.... good.

anyway i think i digressed severely. where was i. indian festival. the happiness is because i discovered some of my mom's old saris, and they're so gorgeous! like those really grand heavy silk ones that she rarely wears, and keeps wrapped up in a cedar chest. she opened it today and started taking out saris, and i spotted a really really nice one in off-white, with really striking sky blue and pink stuff. ok not stuff, because the whole thing is woven and the specialness is that it doesn't have little motifs embroidered all over, but is mostly plain but for the sky blue border at one end, and a bright pink (but not blindingly screaming pink) border at the other side, and the pallu (the back part which is always the most elaborate) is like a whole big bit which is fully the blue shade. actually the blue's not really sky blue, it's more like turquoise. a really striking turqoiuse. anyway my description doesn't really do justice to the sari at all, in fact it sounds quite bad. but it's a beautifully simple but striking sari. apparently it was bought for the occasion of my birth, so i'm rather proud. i've told my mom already, that when i start wearing saris i'll definitely steal that one from her. i'm actually anticipating the occasion when i feel old enough to wear a sari. saris are such gorgeous objects, and being my mother's daughter i can't help but adore all things indian-fashionwise. my mom has some brilliant stuff. another sari i spotted today is one she rarely wears because she hates wearing black - this is a fully black sari with a bright red-pink border with gold zari on it. again, simple but incredibly striking. it was also bought when she was pregnant with me, because there's this pre-birth ceremony in which the pregnant woman has to wear a black sari. haha, yay. i will steal all these saris from her. maybe i'll make an heirloom of it and wear the same black sari for my first baby (an event which it's too weird to think of now, i'm only 17! no babies for me yet! although as i said, i lurrvveee babies.) ohh gorgeous saris. oddly the saris of my mom's that i love the most are not all the newish designer ones but the traditional south indian ones. she has two temple border saris (haha i know all the terminology cos my mummy's such a sariho, and every year in india my indian fashion vocabulary gets brushed up) which are stunning. i think she bought them when we went for my dad's cousin's wedding in 2002. gah, so if it's not enough that i have a fetish for expensive western clothes, i have now the realisation that i have one for indian clothes as well, and decent indian clothes start at a hefty few thousand rupees (a thousand rupees is 40 dollars, but a few thousand is still a lot.) i'm definitely going to have to marry rich.

ok to add to my unhealthy habit of fluctuating caps, i also have a nasty habit of doing loooong paragraphs. tomorrow's a long day. must do more math, then sleep. busy weekend coming up. tomorrow: school, mrs perry meeting, openhouse meeting, chit. saturday: zoo, dance, cast party. sunday: haircut (maybe), lunch with kitson, fine arts. and to add to that, kwok essay HAS to be done by monday or else death will be delivered swiftly.

oh. LYSIS CAST/CREW. post-production party is THIS SATURDAY, 5pm until 11 or later, at the PANDAN VALLEY BBQ PIT. bring food. kelly and hadri will be organising the food side of things. for my part, i will provide rasam rice, and on my mom's friend's suggestion, we can barbecue pappadums. my family are very amused by the rasam rice love.