do you know what khushnam's msn nick is right now?
"Cooooooli Diva"
what the hell does cooooooli mean?
what a piss-off.

god i'm unutterably bored. my parents are having the bridge group for dinner, and they're just about the most uninteresting people in the world. thank god i can use studying as an excuse to hole up in my room with my OC and my chocolate. i just hope there aren't any female kids arriving whom i'll be obliged to entertain.

ooh you know what? yesterday i was bragging to my mom about my self-restraint in going home instead of orchard, and i was saying that my friend had told me that there was a 50% sale at Guess, 30% at FCUK, and varying other degrees of sales at Zara etc (my mom joined in the torturing-Aparna fun with news about a sale at Mango as well which she'd popped by). Anyway, this friend was Shoojee. and i said something like "he's just doing it to torture me" and she said - (exasperatedly) "HE? another one of your gay friends? which one is this?" and i was like "... no, he's not gay. he just happens to have his eyes open while in orchard." it's pretty funny, really, but my mom seems to think all my male friends are gay. gee whiz. maybe i should just spread the news to my ultra-conservative grandfather so that from being worried that i might end up screwed up (literally, i guess) by having male friends that he does not believe are platonic, he can be worried about the homosexual influence. or something like that. in any case Freaky Bangalore Guy is always declaring that he's gay, which is immediately contradicted by his checking out of some female or the other's ass/boobs. guys are such strange creatures.

my history homework is still suffering badly :(

so i was bored and decided to try and find out when the next ep of the OC was going to air, instead i found out that Theresa is played by this actress called Navi Rawat. and that's an interesting name, so i imdbed her, and she's of East Indian and German decent, which is pretty cool. aaand she was also on 24. no wonder she looked so familiar. but i couldn't really remember her, so i did some further research, and figured out who exactly she was. she was also a girl from the 'hood in that - the previous girlfriend who is now sort of peeved that there's this upper-class girl sort of taking her place. she was much more of a tough act in that, though.

i can't decide if i like or dislike Theresa. she's nice, but she butts in annoyingly. and i liked Ryan/Marissa. i also can't decide if i like or dislike Marissa. but i loooooooovvvvessss Ryan. he's so cute! and Seth too :) i love adam brody.

i've been wasting too much time watching my OC dvds. my history homework is suffering.

yay i figured out why shutterfly and my computer were having a problem - ever since i updated my norton internet security the pop-up slideshow window was refusing to appear, so i figured out how to turn off the popup blocker yay!!! so kitson if you're reading this please give me the link to your photos again cos i wanna seeee.

anyway so i was looking at pictures of my friend from england recently, and i felt so NOSTALGIC for june! mannn and my pictures have st james park in full green summer splendour, and her pictures are all dead-leaved and grey-skied, and the carousel at covent garden's still there (ok of course i didn't expect them to just put a carousel there for a couple of days and take it away, but you know...) so basically i have been struck with wanderlust again. every once in a while i get depressed about being stuck in singapore for basically the next... year. my mom's probably going to go around with my dad again a few times next year, and i think next year there might be a thing in portugal!!! like there was in mexico this year. daymmmn. and i'll be supposedly mugging my ass off. atleast there's the prospect of my favourite cousins visiting. the ones who are the offspring of my favourite un-dvd-sending uncle. i shall not harbour any hopes that he might bring dvds when he comes, for fear they might be crushed yet again. but still he's my favourite uncle and i loooooveee my cousins to pieces. they're the most adorable kids in the universe. although the older one is like ten now and in a sort of grunge phase - all baggy tshirts and jeans. but the younger one is so precocious and her accent makes her sound so cute! haha i could go on forever. i just hope they come in feb. i'll be nice, right between my sat2s and march common tests. hurhurhur.

sooo this afternoon i went washbasin-shopping with the parents. my mom's refurbishing my bathroom and hers. well, just the washbasins and vanities i think. i doubt she's retiling cos that's a pain in the ass and the tiles are fine anyway. so i'm (hopefully) getting a really cool thing which is like this wooden trellis with glass on top and the bowl is literally like a bowl on top. big and glass. we didn't order it there, cos my mom didn't find a suitable thing for her. but they dropped me home and went to some other place which has the same line of washbasins we saw at the first place and more, and i think they're ordering me that one and have found something for their room as well. except my mom just called to say that the bowl is a bit shaky and it will be shaky no matter how tight they fix it. but it -is- attached to the base so i don't figure on having a washbasin disaster like the mirror disaster last time. oh and i'm finally getting a new mirror. my parents are so inefficient with these things. but i'm going to make sure i get a huge mirror now.

i've been spending inordinate amounts of time with my family and actually enjoying it. last week i went to pizza hut with them and had quite a good time, and a day later to borders and nydc and also had a good time. and yesterday when they picked me up a tad early from kitson's i didn't really feel terribly unhappy about it. i think when you're younger you're always trying to run away from home and parents and annoying siblings and stuff, but you grow to appreciate them a lot. my mom and i have actually begun to understand each other a bit. i mean, besides our common love for shopping which i totally appreciate and that sometimes i don't know what i'd do without her to shop with. hm.

and i've begun to enjoy talking to my brother. we spent innumberable nights in bangalore talking and laughing our heads off. and it was much fun sharing the bangalore gossip, because he's also friends with Freaky Bangalore Guy and we'd share details of all the weirdass entanglements there, romantic or otherwise. and my brother actually helped me spot cute guys. like the saudi arabian guy ajoy - my brother knew i thought he was cute, and would tell me whenever he saw him out cos he also knew i was peeved that i didn't talk to him even once this time. he even came to call me when he saw ajoy, but figured quite smartly that it would be damndamndamn weird to go "hey wait a sec, let me go get my sister". and he told me that ajoy talks like saif ali khan! i have a weird deja vu feeling like i've said all this before. maybe i told someone on the phone. sometimes i feel like i'm losing my mind.

and i've begun to enjoy doing math! this is the best one. i mean, sort of enjoying. i guess i always enjoyed the satisfaction of solving a math problem successfully. and that satisfaction has come a little more often lately, so math has become more enjoyable. i've finished my math homework!!! i'm so fucking proud of myself. every single question - done.

so kitson's last night was really fun. it was fab catching up with the class. besides the requisite absentees, it was a good turnout. soph and kelly and vaish up to their usual pervy antics. and it seems that every time i'm at kitson's, soph wants to look at my bra. (ok maybe a blog isn't the best place to reveal such things, but she was looking down my shirt which is shameless enough anyway. hahaha but i truly love the christmas present. especially the box: its soooo pretty, it will be a fantastic addition to my Box Collection.)
shoojee and vaish and me in a corner looking at kiddy pictures, immersed in the music, acting drunk as usual although there was only beer to drink and i hatehatehate beer. going up to kitson's house again and subtly asking if there were any drinks still left there, in an attempt to wrangle some wine. failing badly because all the drinks had gone down already and wine wasn't among them. bringing popiah(sp?) down instead. the turkey - which is a dead BIRD, for all you cruel nonvegetarians out there. vaish, who doesn't even eat egg, thinking it actually looked good. kitson menacing the two of us with a turkey limb, waving it in my face causing me to scream at an embarrassingly loud volume. screaming at an embarrassingly loud volume outside at the pool when shoojee took a fancy to kicking water at me all of a sudden, thus causing me to be almost entirely drenched. and then he himself being a spoilsport and rushing off to change into a dry shirt before we could get a photo of him/me/vaish looking like drowned rats. getting "those people" to take a class photo. choon eeking grace out with her flirtatious stomach-hugging ways. Claudia's Sordid Love Story. shocking secrets on the way to the toilet. oh and the best part: kitson's beatles-era hair. i LOVE it! it was the first photo of the day. on my camera, anyway. so i have a nice new haul of photos.

i should go print some photos soon.

it occurred to me today that i have quite an obsession with boxes. i was clearing my room - something that i hate doing and yet is immensely satisfying at the end, but unfortunately my room being the ungodly mess that it is, i haven't quite reached the end thus far. anyway, i was clearing my room and i realised what an awful lot of boxes i have.

i just seem to.. collect boxes. i have a godiva box which is extremely convenient for earrings, and in fact i have my eye on a mezza9 box which is currently in the fridge and which i will snatch as soon as my family gets done with the chocolates (i would help with the finishing of the chocolates if not for the fact that all of them seem to be nutty and i hate nutty chocolate.) every girl should keep her earrings in a nice big box which used to contain chocolate, because the little chocolate squares are really convenient to organise earrings in, and chocolates and earrings are every girl's best friend. of course, if they're diamond earrings - and diamonds are a girl's best friend - you should let your mother keep them locked up in a safe instead of in a chocolate box.

i also have a famous amos heart-shaped red box which used to contain famous amos cookies, what else, and an old wooden box my mom gave me, for more jewellery. and then there's an oval-shaped dark pink straw box i bought in india, which i'm using for make-up. i have a larger dark pink straw basket similar to the box, filled with nailpolish bottles which i used to collect pretty avidly as well at one point.

and then i have another godiva box, and a ralph lauren cologne box, and another velvet box from some chocolaterie, all three full of greeting cards: birthdays, good lucks, thank yous, diwalis, christmases.

another ralph lauren box, this time one that contained a shirt, which has pictures. printed pictures, newspaper pictures, magazine pictures of my favourite people. an ikea box with bright polka dots in primary colours, for a lot of junk like Tube and Subway ticket stubs, entrance passes to Disney World, the White House, maps of Vegas, some cards from the Great Wall of China, brochures from various events. The tickets etc from travel, my mom and I alternately keep saying that we'll organise and put in albums with the pictures, but considering that the photo albums themselves aren't exactly in order, the tickets etc might as well just be dumped in a pretty box for... posterity, maybe.

then there's a whole bunch of shoeboxes, one with stationery (there's also a red ikea box with lots of those little notebooks that seven-year-olds around the time that i was seven years old, seemed to cherish), another with other junk like my mp3 player and a bunch of power cords or something all of which i never touch, and a nike box with a lot of little things from england-june2004. there's a bunch of empty boxes under my bed because the respective shoes are in various other parts of the room/house, and i think there's a teva box in a drawer containing a bunch of empty audio cassettes which were useful while i was still going for music lessons at fine arts, but i quit in october so i suppose when i get round to clearing my chest of drawers that will find a more useful use.

then there's a really nice reddish-pink box which was the box in which a desk-stationery set came for my dad from his company. you know, those things with a letter opener, a card-holder, stuff like that. anyway the box is large and pretty and i put all my performance memories in there. like tickets, brochures, scripts etc.

what else. on my dressing table i've got a yellow box for scrungies, a blue box for cotton swabs, a green box for odds and ends like nail-clipper, nail file, random stuff i'd never find if i didn't put them in a box. and the other day at jelita i was coveting a little transparent box that's like a suitcase except it's small. only problem was, it was a box with nailpolish bottles inside and i have more than enough nailpolish which i never use so i figured it was a bit useless to spend 30 bucks on. my mom says watson's has nice boxes like that anyway so hopefully she'll buy me one. i think chloe had a box like that, which in fact i think she bought from watson's. chloe has the cutest boxes. i think she's got a box fetish like i do, in fact!

ooh there's a coffin-shaped box under my bed which my guitar came in. all that's in it is dust, though, because the guitar's outside looking cool next to my bookshelf, with half the strings gone. when i get the energy to remember how to play the guitar again, or in fact relearn because i never did learn much, i will maybe go get the strings fixed.

also, there are about 15 million fileboxes containing all kinds of junk except... files. because the only files i seem to use nowadays are fat ring files which don't fit in, or need, fileboxes. the only useful thing i probably have in fileboxes is my sentimental collection of all the nice 'projects' i did since primary school. you know... overzealous primary school kid with a 100-page report about land transport? that was me. i did get a full score for that, so i was proud and i still have it. along with some useless geography map which was actually really pretty but the teacher didn't appreciate the prettiness and instead picked on the lack of contours or something silly like that. i always hated geography. *ducks from the geoggers' flying tomatoes* i also have an extremely fat report about the taj mahal, which i did in primary 5 for irs. that was fun.

eek i just sighted more boxes! under my dressing-table. there's a black box full of unknown objects. tomorrow for part two of operation cleanup, i will open it and investigate. there's also the box in which i received the hamburger at my birthday this year. haha i almost said "the box in which ________ gave me the hamburger for my birthday" but i realised that that secret is still supposed to be a secret. how fun :)

haha i had fun writing this post. although it probably wins the grand prize in the 'most inane post of the year' contest. still, my obsession with boxes will go down in history. and if i ever write an autobiography this post will definitely be included. (if i write an autobiography and this chapter isn't in it please... scold me or something.) i just read a magazine article today that the passage of time is the best thing to make the smartest men look like idiots. because thomas edison said before he invented electricity that the alternating current was a waste of time, albert einstein in 1932 said that nuclear arms would never be invented by the human race, and coco chanel called the miniskirt a joke.

oooook i'm so bored i'm going to blog.
weird - about two months ago, say during the exams, i'd blog at every opportunity. i'm glad to say it has become a last resort. this is the NEW me.
hopefully the blog-freeness sticks. nowadays when i go online i can't find enough to do. the things india does to you...

hm. and i can't even think of anything to blog about! possibly because i have done nothing the past few days. i went to school a bunch of times for some moving ceremony nonsense basically carrying a flagpole around and learning how to walk around the netball court and hall in the proper fashion. any councillors who read this will excuse me please, when i say that with a few exceptions, councillors are NUTS. they never seem to get tired or lose interest in crazy things like flagpole ceremonies or anything! wow. actually i don't quite admire it.. i'm just. awed?

and then i spent some alone time walking around borders and soaking up the bordersness. i loooooovvveeee borders. it's so happy! and TEMPTING. i almost spent about 70 bucks on various things, but i took out the book the calendar the notebook and the cd and it was down to one photo album for 24 bucks, yay. i've developed an amazing (for me atleast, for some people it'd be normal) amount of self-reserve. is that the word? self control. self discipline. anyway the photo album's very nice imo. and i've put it to good use - i spent all of yesterday making a photo album of my life. i found another nice album at home and filled it with pictures from when i was a baby until i was 12 and then the new album with important pictures from 12 onwards such as performances, china, new york, vegas, england, birthdays, friends. nice things. secondary school and jc. and i only have like 50 places left despite having more pictures to put in! how easily albums get filled up. but i think it's a nice thing to keep, and this way if my house is ever on fire i'll know what to grab first. because otherwise we have this cupboard full of photos, and the only ones that seem to be in order are US 2001 and china 2002. actually there are two albums with the same US photos. one day when i'm feeling charitable i might decide to organise the rest of the family photos. and one thing about digital cameras: they make you super lazy. i have millions of photos still on my computer, waiting to be printed. before going to india i printed a bunch, but that was just like newzealand, england, lysis, my birthday this year, navratri, halloween. i think after printing the china photos in 2002, we never printed anything until now. except my mom printed her US/mexico photos from april this year, but i think that was in the hotel in sanfran or cancun or wherever itself because hp set up hp photo printers for the guests to use for free so my mum being my mum made full use of the free printing facility.

what else. i've been reading the picture of dorian gray. or rereading, i suppose, since i read it many years ago but it hardly counts because i don't think i even understood it then and i certainly don't remember anything i read. it's strange, because when we did to kill a mockingbird in sec 2, i had read it before but then i reread it for the class and realised i'd forgotten most of it. my memory's really screwed up that way. i remember the craziest things and forget the craziest things.

random thought: i want a holiday. like a proper holiday, in some place i haven't been before. with lots of snow. i half-feel jealous of my brother and parents for having been to newzealand in june when it was freezing and snowing and therefore ultra-fun for anybody who's as annoyed with singapore weather as i am. but then i wouldn't replace the england trip for anything. my family's crazy, it seems, we always go to countries with temperate climates in winter. and i've never seen a proper fall. except when i was 4 or 5 or something but all i remember is walking down a typical san francisco hilly street, and the golden gate bridge being covered with fog or mist or something, and sitting inside a gigantic redwood tree trunk. actually i think the redwood memory is only because yesterday i found a picture of myself sitting inside the trunk. but i think i remember the redwood forest, although i could just as easily have seen that in a picture recently or something. all i know is that we did go to some redwoody place, and i was fascinated by the trees and it was really.. red. i suppose that's a good fall memory. memory is a weird thing.

i want to jump in a pile of red dead leaves. i want a temperate climate, dammit. singapore gets so BORING after a while. hm. i'm not sure if i'm looking forward to school starting or not. the new campus is exhaustingly large. and the whole rumour or whatever about humanz getting aircon classrooms because the teachers demanded it, is... amusing, to say the least. i can't say i'm not glad if it is true, but it will definitely be fodder for some more humanz-hatred. ah well, as i told kelly, who cares? we'll just barricade ourselves in our aircon rooms and mock them. no that's just mean, and there are non-humans people possibly reading this so pretend i didn't say anything. but aircon would be real nice, because the building is pretty damn hot inside when it's not windy. and i have a new levi's pullover i bought especially to go with the uniform, and it would be wasted if there's no aircon to make it useful. the things we do.

i shall go now and hope that i can find something constructive to do with myself. i guess i can blog if i want, but of course it's been the most inane post ever. gahh. gimme christmas presents!

merry christmas, by the way.

What brand is your...
1. Wallet/ Purse :: fcuk
2. bag(s) :: backpack- mambo. brown suede - some store in level one. black handbag - dorothy perkins. white handbag - topshop. and these are just the ones that are within my view. there are lots more in cupboards and drawers.
3. Slipper/Shoes :: the ones i was wearing most recently are teva sports sandals. beyond that, too many to count. nasty will attest: she practically had to drag me away from all the shoes in england. and i'm still lusting after those beautiful boots.
4. Sport Shoe :: nike
5. School Uniform :: the one that's not biba&baba.
6. Cap :: i never wear caps, but i think i have a billabong one somewhere. and a couple of hats, one of which is from topshop and another from someplace in covent garden.
8. Handphone :: 6600
9. Bracelet(s) :: it's from a silver market in mexico?
10. Pen :: the one in front of me is a funny black postit pen. it's damn cute
11. A4 Paper :: a'zone!
12. Clock :: computer clock - it's the only clock in my room. computer's hp.
13. Shampoo :: loreal
14. Shower Gel/ Soap :: palmolive i think
15. Toothbrush :: oral-b
16. Bedsheet :: i think it's aussino
17. Television :: panasonic
18. CD player/ Radio :: sony
19. Fan/ Air -cond :: fujitsu
20. Eye Shadow :: red earth
21. Lip Gloss :: body shop
22. Foundation :: maybelline, although i use bodyshop concealer far more often.
23. Perfume/ cologne :: flower by kenzo or chance by chanel
24. Nail Polish :: my favourite is mac
25. Toothpaste :: colgate
26. Body Moisturiser :: jergens and bodyshop
27. Glasses/ Contact Lens :: glasses is solvil titus. contacts i have no idea, i buy them from my doctor.
28. Pencil Case :: polo ralph lauren. i've had it for years and i loooove it. i don't think i'd ever get rid of it. i had a bright pink phuture london case at some point but got sick of it and reverted to the ralph lauren.
29. Watch :: swatch skin.
30. Tracksuit :: i only have nike track pants
31. Travel Bag :: it's big and red.. i think it's lesportsac
32. Jeans :: abercrombie/roxy/topshop/levi's
33. Pyjamas :: susan something
34. Undies/ boxers :: i dunno - some from topshop, some from just random lingerie depts.
35. Ciggratte :: i am anti-cigarette
36.Mosq spray :: no idea.
37.Room Freshener :: no idea.
38.hair gel/wax :: i have some anti-frizz stuff from john frieda and body shop. neither has been able to tame my hair.
39. speakers :: altec lansing
40. computer :: hp media centre

i think my answers are too long. i rant too much.

mmmm so i've totally lost the inclination to blog (which is probably a really good thing), therefore i'm just going to go the quizzy route. just got home a while back and am too lazy to do anything more constructive than this.

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
i was the title character in a play

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
i haven't made any new years' resolutions since i figured out that it's pointless because i never keep them anyway - and that epiphany came a few years ago.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
my aunt did, but besides being a blood relation i'm not close to her

4. Did anyone close to you die?
my dad's aunt, whom i also wasn't close to

5. What countries did you visit?
england and india

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
a lit S paper, better grades, and a driving license. i would hope for a car but that's high hopes.

7. What date(s) from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
21st feb - dramafeste which was one of the best productions i experienced and kickstarted the whole rp thing, and the period from the 4th to the 19th of june because that was the england trip

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
lysistrata

9. What was your biggest failure?
promos

10. Did you suffer any illness or injury?
nothing major, just a couple of colds here and there - one of which i'm currently suffering from

11. What was the best thing you bought?
a trip to england

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
a lot of people. a lot of people have made me happy this year.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
i can't say.

14. Where did most of your money go?
clothes, food, music, books. the usual.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
the trip to england.

16. What song/s will always remind you of 2004?
vienna, just like honey, all the OC songs like dice and honey&themoon, reflecting light, lots of BNL songs because i 'discovered' them this year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? happier
ii. thinner or fatter? fatter, definitely and unfortunately
iii. richer or poorer? richer, probably

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
studied. god i wish i'd studied more.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
internet - msn, blogging, surfing.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
i don't have plans, but then christmas never has been a big thing for me.

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?
i don't believe i did.

23. How many one-night stands?
none.

24. What was your favourite TV program?
the OC. as in, compared to other years. because gg and alias have been around a while.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
i don't think i -hate- anyone, but 2004 definitely has added one or two people to the dislike (or "inner irritation", remember nasty?) list.

26. What was the best book you read?
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, which is actually a play.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
the OC soundtrack

28. What did you want and get?
great new friends.

29. What did you want and not get?
the grades, and the S paper (so far, crossing fingers)

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
i'm still loving Before Sunset. i also loved 13 going on 30, but despite it being a very enjoyable film half the reason for the love was the loyalty to jennifer garner, whereas before sunset was plain and simple a wonderful film. there were also Lost in Translation, Big Fish, Cold Mountain, Starsky & Hutch.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
i turned 17 - i went to school and i think it was one of the few times this year that we went for PE. it was a thursday, the horribly long day. then all the girls went to my place to shower and change, and we met the boys and some other friends of mine joined us and we watched The Prince and Me, and I think we had dinner and there was supposed to be a poetry slam back at my place but everyone was tired and had to go back.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
if i could have combined all the immense fun with slightly better grades. those grades just cast a horrible pall on this year.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
i actually decided to buy skirts this year. i was never into skirts before. other than that, pretty standard aparna fare. occasionally ethnic, usually colourful, a lot of jeans, big earrings.

34. What kept you sane?
kelly, quite often. friends in general, really.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
brad pitt. he was almost literally a god in Troy, and in Ocean's Twelve he's just plain beautiful. Johnny Depp's still there as well, as always.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
i'm not much into politics, but the indian elections were pretty interesting.

37. Who did you miss?
daph

38. Who was the best new person you met?
new bunch of people - 13a.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
i learnt... that i have to study. i can't coast along like i did before, and hope to achieve the same kind of grades.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Vienna - Billy Joel. It's quite a sad song, and this year was far from sad, but I think it appropriately sums up the mistakes of this year.

Slow down you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart tell me why
You are still so afraid?
Where's the fire, what's the hurry about?
You better cool it off before you burn it out
You got so much to do and only
So many hours in a day

But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
When will you realize...Vienna waits for you

Slow down you're doing fine
You can't be everything you want to be
Before your time
Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight
Too bad but it's the life you lead
You're so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong
You know you can't always see when you're right

You got your passion you got your pride
But don't you know only fools are satisfied?
Dream on but don't imagine they'll all come true
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you

Slow down you crazy child
Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It's alright you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize...
Vienna waits for you.

But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
Why don't you realize...Vienna waits for you
When will you realize...Vienna waits for you

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY
aparna, aps, pondicherry (it was strangely nice to bump into nasty today and hear the ol' 'pondicherry!' again)

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF
my handwriting, my eyes, the curliness of my hair

THREE THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF
my weakness for shopping and other general distraction, my zits, the frizziness of my hair

THREE THINGS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND
economics, how my hair used to be straight when i was little, physics (something i will never understand and fortunately have no compelling need to ever again attempt to understand)

THREE THINGS THAT ANNOY YOU
cigarette smoke, toejam, toilets left unflushed

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU
cockroaches, lizards, traffic in indian cities

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS
phone, soap, chocolate

YOUR FAVORITE SONGS
Reflecting Light - Sam Phillips
If I Could Write - Sam Phillips
Where the Colors Don't Go - Sam Phillips
Dice - Finley Quaye and William Orbit
Strawberry Fields Forever - The Beatles
Across the Universe - Beatles covered by Rufus Wainwright
Greek Song - Rufus Wainwright
Barcelona - Rufus Wainwright
Want - Rufus Wainwright
God Put a Smike Upon Your Face - Coldplay
Cruisin - Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis
Vienna - Billy Joel
Tiny Dancer - Elton John
Destiny - Zero 7
When I Look in Your Eyes - Diana Krall
Your Body is a Wonderland - John Mayer
St Patrick's Day - John Mayer
No Such Thing - John Mayer
Strange and Beautiful - Aqualung
Wild Horses - The Sundays
Babylon - David Gray
Thanks That Was Fun - Barenaked Ladies
What a Good Boy - BNL
Wrap Your Arms Around Me - BNL
Call and Answer - BNL

Incomplete, and, it occurs to me, a very eclectic list and I'm just going to stop here or else it goes on forever.


THREE people/or set of PERSONS YOU SPEND THE MOST TIME WITH
- my family
- the 13a gang
i somehow can't think of any other set of people that i spend a lot of time with, physically. maybe shirin/nasty/andi/blee etc, since they're my favourite people to hang around with in school after the class

THREE THINGS YOU CAN'T DO
- cook
- sew
- tolerate annoying people

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES
- shopping
- watching alias, gilmore girls, and movies
- music

THREE THINGS YOU WANT REALLY BAD RIGHT NOW
- a new phone. the 6600 is too damn fat. it's a boy phone, not a me phone. this is what one gets for losing two phones in a space of 3 months.
- a dior bag
- an ipod

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING
- journalism
- advertising
- something international-relations-related

FOUR THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE
- travel. a LOT.
- learn more hindi, latin, sanskrit, french, spanish, italian and chinese
- act in a movie
- do something meaningful and community-service-like in india. i actually want to do something for AIDs awareness but there's no chance in hell my parents will ever let me while i'm still under their jurisdiction.

guess what
i went to this temple called guruvayur yesterday - it's in kerala where everyone speaks this really funny language called malayalam. ok atleast i think it's funny, but i also think kannada and punjabi and marathi are funny, so yeah. maybe it's cos when malayalee people speak tamil they speak real funny. kinda how vaish talks to her mum in tamil. it's very cute.

anyway. we took a train to the place, which is 12 freaking hours long through the night, and the only train we could get was a 3-tier sleeper. as in, there are three bunks per wall so it's really freaky when you're on the top bunk cos it's damn high. we normally go in the two-tier first class sleeper but then there's this mountain near guruvayur called sabari mala which is a sort of pilgrimage site - and very chauvinistically, women in between puberty and menopause aren't allowed to go. normally you can't go to a temple when you have your period, but this is just completely if you're in the.. ovulating phase of your life, you can't go. anyway apparently at this time of year a lot of people go to that mountain and before they go they have to go to the temple at guruvayur so all the trains to that area are fully booked and we only managed to get any train because due to high demand for train tickets, they introduced a special train from bangalore and it only had the 3-tier since obviously a compartment with three tiers per wall can have more people. and obviously because we were travelling with the grandparents, my brother and i had to take the top tiers. it's impossible to sleep in a train. or... actually i did sleep, but when i woke up i had a terrible backache. and the toilets are disgusting. they lead straight to the track, so indian train tracks are pretty gross. but indian train journeys are really Experiences. and indian train stations are scary but sort of interesting. it's like a cross-section of india, in a way. cos there are certain parts of india that it only really makes sense to go to by train. my mom said that from now on she forbids my grandparents to go anywhere by train and that we should've flown to cochin and then taken a car to guruvayur even though we'd have been stuck in the car for a few hours, but anyhow. it really was an Experience. it was probably the first -long- train ride i've taken in my memory. otherwise it's the 4 hours from madras to bangalore or vice versa, although mostly we fly and if we do take a train it's usually in the day. once we went at night but comfortably in first-class. not that first class in a train is really anything much. it doesn't compare to the orient express or european luxury trains. but when train rides are short, they're fun.

anyway. my grandpa's super-religious and apparently his guru appeared to him in a dream and told him to go to guruvayur so we had to go. the dream thing is completely absurd, but it's the sort of thing you can't argue with my grandpa about. so we went. we arrived there 4am sunday morning, at a train station an hour away from guruvayur itself, while the closest airport is about 3 or 4 hours drive away, giving you an indication of how infrastructurally isolated it is. it's not a village though, cos there are proper big houses. atleast it doesn't look like villages in the movies. but it's quite pretty, with huge paddy fields and mountains in the distance. but apparently there's a lot of middle eastern money in kerala so maybe that's why it's not village-like.

the hotel was quite ok, although depressingly silent and airconless. but it's walking distance from the temple and the best hotel in guruvayur, so that was that. food was really good though; i think i've inherited my dad's taste for kerala food. actually i think my grandma was partly keralan. malayalee, whatever. and for the temple, i'd brought a salwar kameez because that's what i normally wear to temples. and since we were there for just one day, the only other clothing i had was jeans and a shirt. so i'm happily wearing my pretty pink salwar and eating my breakfast, when i realise that all the waiters are looking at me and smirking. i just put it down to weird oglingness in this pious temple town and i just ignore it. but THEN, when we're stepping out to go to the temple, the concierge exclaims that i can't go wearing that! because salwar kameezes are actually of muslim origin, and pants are of western origin, so anything pants-like is not allowed in the temple. men have to wear dhotis and no shirts, like the priests, and women have to wear saris or lehengas or pavadais (skirt and blouse combinations, and even western skirt-and-blouse combination is fine as long as the skirt is atleast shin-length). and i have nothing of the sort. all the bottom-half-covering clothing i have is of the pants variety. so - Quandary. and now i know why the waiters were smirking.

so GUESS WHAT. on the way to the temple, there was a row of shops selling everything from kerala lamps to saris to kerala pickles. so my mom bought a sari (typical white kerala sari), i tucked my kurta into my pants, and rolled up the legs because if the pants were seen at all i wouldn't be allowed into the temple, and tied the sari around. and because it was a brand new sari and it was stiff cotton, it was totally puffy, and i had this long-sleeved hot pink kurta underneath and the sari was tied in such a hurry and my pants were elastic, not drawstring like a normal sari underskirt so it totally felt like it was going to come off and it looked so ridiculous that i felt like i was being stared at or smirked at even more. but when you're feeling self-conscious that's what you imagine, so i just told that to myself and looked at the ground and kept walking. thank god we didn't take a camera for fear that it would get stolen on the train, because i do not want any visual memories of that day. i'm just putting it down here because it's hard to imagine how ridiculous i looked if you weren't there, and it's undeniably a funny story.

super orthodox temple, basically. and there was this really really long queue to get in, somehow because my grandparents are old the guy let him cut the queue and go inside, but he refused to let my mom, brother and i do the same. so we had to queue, and i witnessed atleast two guys get chased out of the queue for wearing pants, and told to go buy a dhoti. i saw one girl in the same situation as me, coming out of the temple and unwrapping a dhoti that she'd tied around like a skirt, with her salwar underneath. it was in it's own way worse than my makeshift sari.

and talk about religious fervour. the interior of the temple is PACKED. there are people rolling around the floor of the temple (not in a fit of madness, but some people roll around the perimeter of the temple as a service to god, some people walk around the perimeter 108 times because that's a holy number, some people walk precisely placing one foot right in front of the other instead of walking normally.) and this temple is famous for this thing called a thulabaram, which is where they have this huge weighing scale and you sit on one side and they weigh an equal amount of fruit or sugar to your weight, and you pay for that amount to be donated to the temple. we all got weighed and donated bananas and sugar equal to our total weight, and we also managed to get a darshan (viewing) of the sanctum sanctorum which is a crazy rush but my grandpa managed to pull strings and get us in so we wouldn't have to wait three hours in a queue. there's a 15minute wait to get into the temple, and then a 3 hour wait to see the statue of the main god which is inside. and inside the sanctum, it's even crazier. there's no space to breathe, and right in front of the statue, or rather right in front of the room in which the statue is deep inside and it's sort of dark and people try to stay and see and pray for a while, there are temple guards who literally have to pull people away to keep the line moving. and the statues are extravagantly adorned, although the most extravagant i've seen is at tirupathi (another temple on a mountain) where the deities have long diamond necklaces and there are emeralds the size of your fist. that one's the richest temple in india; it receives billions of dollars of donations every year. going to a temple like that is an Experience of another sort. the religious fervour is really infectious, suddenly you're also anxious to look inside and see the deity and pray for good health and Yale and everything and you even start feeling slightly emotional, because it's such a special place for so many millions of people and you're there and all. it's strange.

and then we went back, my mom bought 5 kg kerala lamps which i had to carry, we bought banana chips and kerala mango pickles, got driven back to the train station, and had another 12-hour harrowing train ride back to bangalore. and i'm back. it was quite a special trip.

before that - on friday i watched ocean's twelve, and i'm really confused about the plot, so i need to watch again. still haven't watched vanity fair, but maybe i'm not fated to. on wednesday my mom took my brother and i for lunch at this posh italian restaurant called it.Alia, where two years ago i sighted the hottest guy i've seen in real life. he was italian, he was wearing this black suit, he was chain-smoking, he was atleast 30, he was HOT. this time around, the food was weird because they had a Piedmontese chef for this Festa Italiana thing going on. Cool that he's from Piedmont and all, but it was weird food. my brother took all the potato gnocchi, which was the nicest. there was a red wine risotto which was interesting but a little too rich. Porcini mushroom noodle tasted like maggi mee, which I hate. And the vegetable thing was ok. My mom was pretty pissed off, because the previous time we came we loved the food and this time the food was just not worth the money. Unfortunately the normal menu was suspended for festa italiana.

Besides that – nothing much. There’s so much homework and I’ve done barely any, as usual. And according to vivien there’s an econs essay which I didn’t even know about. I have to find out about that. Tonight my aunt’s taking us out for dinner at someplace called tamarind. I hope it’s good, after the lousy train food the past couple of days. Or rather, packed food since eating the food they sell on trains can possibly give you typhoid fever or something horrible like that. Man, they should really never ask me to advertise Indian trains. I liken them pretty much to hell. Actually they’re rather fun, like I said. Just that sleeping in a train for two days in a row makes you kinda crabby.
Oh yay vivien’s replied –properly- to my mail and the econs thing is for econs S. thank god. Although now I’m worried again about my lit S. I really hope I get it in the end. And MAN I should start doing my homework.

omg i'm boooored. my friend came to call me out at like 115 and i was bathing, then i had lunch and then i forgot to go call on her again until just now, and she's studying cos she's in the middle of her exams which are the equivalent of our a-level prelims. gahhh it's so shitty that everytime i come in december, people's exams crop up. well, atleast freaky bangalore guy doesn't seem to care much for going to college, so he fairly keeps me entertained. only it's still sort of... clandestine because my grandpa insists that he's a druggie with a really bad rep and stuff. ok truthfully, he did do dope for a while in june or something, but now he just smokes normal cigarettes, something which every other teenaged guy in bangalore seems to do. another friend of mine's been smoking since he was 13 or 14. he snagged a couple of his dad's cigarettes and has been addicted ever since. but i'm totally digressing here.

i'm freaking bored. and the weather's screwed up. it's freezing in the mornings, then the afternoons are extremely bright and sunny, and then it's freezing again in the evening and through the night. in fact apparently there's a dense fog in the early morning, something i could only witness if i could induce myself to rise any earlier than 1030, which is something of a lost cause during the holidays, much as my grandparents and mother try everyday to wake me and my brother from 9 in the morning. but inside the house it's cold-ish most of the time, though not a newyorkwinter kind of cold which requires heaters and stuff. it's an england-in-june kinda cold. quite nice, although for some reason right now my fingers feel really frigid. bangalore's got this kinda weather most of the year, which is nice. but the weird extreme sunniness outside is pissing me off. i could barely see just now when i stepped outside.

and i think i'm missing orchard road, because the other day we went to this huge mall in bangalore which opened recently and it's like a proper mall you'd find anywhere in singapore or the US, complete with a real cineplex with 11 theatres. it even looks a little like PS inside, and i felt right at home and strangely happy in there. talk about retail therapy. although actually we didn't have time for shopping since we'd stopped off at a dozen other shopping places on the way and got to the mall just in time to meet some people for dinner. we went to this food courtish place called the transit lounge (cool name yeah? it even looks a little like an airport lounge) and stuffed ourselves silly - mediterranean, turkish, mexican, indian, chinese, italian food, and swiss icecream.

crazy thing: that mall has the first macdonald's in bangalore, and it has a LINE outside the place, which extends all the way OUT of the mall. a novel sight, coming from singapore where macdonald's are a dime a dozen and i've barely ever seen any sort of a line at mac's. india isn't really that backward, that macdonald's is like a major cause of excitement, but the progress comes in weird places and in really amusing ways. atleast there are already pizza places from domino's to pizza hut to pizza corner, every few blocks. i suppose by the next time i come, the same will be true for mac's as well. it's interesting, coming to bangalore once every year for a few years, because you really notice how a place changes. but then my friends here have no clue what the OC is, so there's still some way to go =P

ohohoh and the mall had a Lush! ultimate sign of coolness. i have to go back there sometime and SHOP properly and watch vanity fair or something. my mom says she'll take me if i do a certain amount of math and econs. damnnnn i wish life were easy. in other news, my dad now heads a division of 11 countries which includes pakistan therefore he's going to pakistan soon. i feel mildly envious, because i've always wanted to visit pakistan and saudi arabia and stuff. my brother was saying that he feels afraid for my dad, a hindu going to pakistan (my brother comes up with weird fears like that) but that he thinks my dad looks like a pakistani, like a khan. my entire family finds that very funny. but i suppose it's true that my dad doesn't look indian (although veer-zaara would tell you that indians and pakis look the same) - once in an airport in the US, he got asked if he was white.

gahh i have to go now. post full of randomness. bye!

k it's been a whileee. haha i simultaneously have nothing to say and too much to say.

before i begin, i have to blog about the kanchi shankaracharya case. i think vaish mentioned it already, but generally it's been annoying me for a while so:
there's this thing in india called the kanchi mutt (or math, maybe, but pronounced mutt and both english spellings just have completely weird associations). the mutt is basically a very important hindu institution, sort of temple-ish except they have lots of temples and lots of devotees and stuff, including my grandfather. the mutt has these ascetics who are like the heads of the mutt, sort of like the pope and the vatican. and currently there are two of these sanyasis, called shankaracharyas. my grandfather's very close to both of them and believes deeply in them. i don't have a problem with his belief, although i wouldn't personally put so much faith in a man or a human institution, but that's my own sort of faith/antifaith.

point: the older of the shankaracharyas was recently arrested (on the night of diwali in fact) because he's believed to be involved in the murder of one of the mutt accountants, or something like that. and basically there's been an uproar among hindu devotees because this is one of their leading religious figures, in jail, and apparently not being given the deferential treatment he deserves.
1. nobody seems to be able to accept the possibility of his guilt. i don't claim to have any conclusive proof of his guilt OR innocence, but if anyone raises the possibility that maybe he is guilty of conspiracy to murder, people like my grandfather immediately get huffy.
2. innocent until proven guilty and all, but he's suspected in a murder case so deferential treatment doesn't make sense in legal terms.
especially bail - there usually is no bail in murder cases, so i see no reason why my grandfather's displeased that the shankaracharya's been denied bail.

however, there are political forces playing here. jayalalitha the fat bitch who's chief minister of tamilnadu, is likely to have an ulterior motive with this. he doesn't seem to be likely to get a fair trial. the media is totally screwing with this, and has repeatedly reported inaccurate information. plus, politicians under arrest often get to stay in -guesthouses-. fine, so they weren't usually murder charges, but the innocent until proven guilty could kick in for an old ascetic who's heavily diabetic.

anyhow, i don't actually have a lot of interest because i have no vested interest in the shankaracharya though my grandpa'd like me to. but what pisses me off is the obvious sentimental religious bias that my grandfather refuses to admit, and his taking for granted that he should be allowed to hog the tv to watch the latest news about this thing. he claims to be so interested, but he's not writing to a newspaper or going to the tv stations to talk about these people whom he's normally so close to, and follows around the coutnry and stuff. i don't want to accuse him of hypocrisy, and i know it's for the family's sake and due to the political intertwinedness that he doesn't want to get involved in a murder case, but i'm just in general kinda peeved about the whole thing. and he's supposed to come to singapore in february, but he says that in jan when he goes to the mutt for some function, then he has to ask the shankaracharya for permission to come to singapore in case they need him to help due to this stuff going on and all. so.. it's just the importance he gives to this, gets on my nerves because the shankaracharya's only a -man-.

next week my mom's going to chennai, and my brother and i aren't going because we hate chennai (yay!) but i think it's a bit shitty cos my little cousin's been asking us to go for his birthday for the past two years and we haven't gone. his birthday's dec 7. and basically my brother hates chennai more than i do, so he absolutely refuses to go, whereas though i hate the salty water and the horrible weather which is similar to singapore's but somehow worse cos the city's so dirty, i don't mind chennai so much cos the shopping's good. but my mom says that either all three of us go or just her. anyway i guess it's just as well because she'll probably buy me some stuff, and not going means i don't have to endure endless visits to chennai relatives. and she's got to go to one place to condole my dad's cousin because my paternal grandfather's sister passed away in october. and i hate those kinda visits, where you sit and talk about dead people. god i sound so flippant.

anyway, talking about shopping! i did some marvelous shopping yesterday. finally went to united colours of benetton on brigade road - i've been meaning to see that place, because i'd heard that benetton's become really good - and it was -really- good. plus my mom was in uber-generous mood, so i got a really nice blue cord jacket. really really nice. actually my mom wanted me to get a leather jacket which was about 150 dollars more, because she's got this bee in her bonnet that i should get a leather jacket cos she saw some girl wearing one and thought it looked really cool. but i bought the cord one instead, cos it was sooo pretty and i couldn't let go of it and the leather jacket was cool but i've seen nicer leather jacket designs.

anyway after that i figured my shopping quota was like, really really really over, but then we passed by lee and there was this red shirt in the window and my mother pointed it out, and i was like hey that's nice can i go in and see and i thought she would say no, no more shopping, but she said ok. and then i tried the red shirt and it didn't look good, but then my mom picked up 5 other shirts for me to try and there was a nice blue one and i got that.

then i walk down the street and i see a shop full of bags. the day before my mom and i had scoured commercial street to find nice bags at a decent price cos i wanted to buy a couple for friends, but everywhere they were either not nice or like 200 rupees and when you're buying gifts for 15 people you can't afford to spend 8 bucks on each one. especially when they're just holiday gifts. anyway the thing is, when i bought the jacket my mom was like maybe you should forget about buying gifts for 15 people, but then when i was asking if i could go check the prices of these bags, she said ok! and the bags were actually nice -and- decently priced. it's amazing how in india, three places will have three totally different prices for the same thing. i swear, i've seen the same bags for 150 rupees, 250 rupees, and 400 rupees. along the same stretch of road even.

anyway i have decided that brigade road is -the- place to shop. when my mom goes to chennai, i will make my grandpa bring me shopping. plus i have to make him take me for ocean's twelve. has it released in singapore? it's releasing here next friday. plus vanity fair just released so if my mom's nice to me again, i might actually get to see it. poor thong, i don't think he finally did see it and he really wanted to.

oh last night! koffee with karan - saif and preity!!!!! omg saif is sooooo cute and so damn bloody hot and he was wearing really cute red sneakers and preity talks sooo much but she's also completely adorable. this ep, and the first ep with shah rukh and kajol, my favourites. although there have only been 3 so far. but the middle one with rani and kareena was such a bore. shah rukh talks so well. he should've been the host. i think if i ever met him in person i'd be completely dumbfounded, because he's so bloody intelligent and so charismatic, i'd just be awestruck. even saif is somewhat awed by him. and saif is the most adorable thing! he's lost his cute accent though. he used to have this really nice american/britishy accent. btw koffee with karan's this new talk show hosted by karan johar, the supergay director of kabhi khushi kabhi gham, and producer of kal ho na ho.

ooh i also saw veer-zaara: new shah rukh-preity movie. shah rukh's HOT. and preity's gorgeous, and her CLOTHES are gorgeous, and the jewelry's gorgeous. my mom and i just spent the movie jaw-droppedly admiring the costumes. manish malhotra, what else. (designer to the stars, and unfortunately his only store is in mumbai.)

ok now i have to go. so i did have much to blog.