Friday, April 29
you know what!!! i was told today that my eyebrows are eloquent - when they're not being clumsy. (because that sort of hopefully jocular insulting afterthought is regular fare in shoojspeak, but that's not the point.)

the point is, i THEN realised that i emote A LOT with my eyebrows! just now even on msn, i realised that i'm always wiggling my eyebrows. not in a suggestive way, because wiggling eyebrows suggestively to self is plain psychotic, but you know.. lifting one eyebrow or raising my eyebrows or frowning or doing various other eyebrow-move-y things.

and sometimes i lift one eyebrow just for the hell of it, subconsciously. like, for no reason. i've only just become more conscious of my eyebrows and HOW MUCH THEY MOVE.

i worry that if i move my eyebrows around so much, i'll get eyebrow wrinkles or eyebrow lines or whatever, by the time i'm forty! i need to stop them. shooj and i were discussing the benefits of pressing down on my eyebrows with my hands all the time so i don't move. the social repercussions might be bad, which he as usual was compelled to do an exaggerated demonstration of. that is, some retarded person introducing self, with hands pressing down on eyebrows in most retarded fashion. so that idea was immediately trashed.

so i'm still thinking of eyebrow-saving ideas. help, anyone?

and the strange boy's just gotten addicted to gofugyourself. which is really a daily must-read for all those in need of fashion-related laughs, which is so me.

andddd i have really awful luck with booksales. again not free, but today i acquired middlesex by proxy, for $5. and i tried to give bookfinding instructions over the phone, but kelly hated all the books and shoojee sounded distracted by all the books, so ugh. but it's ok, atleast i have middlesex and i really shouldn't keep buying books considering how little time i have to read.

maybe if i didn't watch so much tv. in the afternoon today all i did was watch gg followed by alias and then read things on the internet, related to gg and alias. both had very very cool eps this week and i can't wait for the next ones! i loooove logan, he's terribly terribly hot. and vaughn too, although there was less of hot!vaughn in the ep than i was led to believe by shooj. it was far more of dixon, which is cool but not as hot as vaughn. duh, cos cool's not hot. hurhurhur.
Thursday, April 28
Handwriting analysis which i find rather inaccurate.
For a graphologist, the spacing on the page reflects the writer's attitude toward their own world and relationship to things in his or her own space. If the inputted data was correct Aparna has no white space or margins on a typical sheet of paper. Aparna fills up every last inch on the top, right, left, and bottom. Hmmm. If this is true, then Aparna has a very aggressive personality toward others and quite frankly lacks a bit of respect for the space and property of other people. I would be surprised if Aparna just comes into someone's home and helps herself to a drink in the refrigerator. This can be both an obnoxious personality trait and it can be assertive and effective in getting what you want. There isn't much fear of getting in trouble here, Aparna finds plenty of reasons to break the rules and get in trouble. (Okay, perhaps when she was younger, not anymore?) Basically, people with no margins are a handful.


Aparna has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. She lets new people into her circle of friends. She uses her imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.


Aparna is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect her ego when she feels hurt. She pokes people harder than she gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.


Aparna is a practical person whose goals are planned, practical, and down to earth. This is typical of people with normal healthy self-esteem. She needs to visualize the end of a project before she starts. she finds joy in anticipation and planning. Notice that I said she plans everything she is going to do, that doesn't necessarily mean things go as planned. Aparna basically feels good about herself. She has a positive self-esteem which contributes to her success. She feels she has the ability to achieve anything she sets her mind to. However, she sets her goals using practicality-- not too "out of reach". She has enough self-confidence to leave a bad situation, yet, she will not take great risks, as they relate to her goals. A good esteem is one key to a happy life. Although there is room for improvement in the confidence catagery, her self-perception is better than average.


In reference to Aparna's mental abilities, she has a very investigating and creating mind. She investigates projects rapidly because she is curious about many things. She gets involved in many projects that seem good at the beginning, but she soon must slow down and look at all the angles. She probably gets too many things going at once. When Aparna slows down, then she becomes more creative than before. Since it takes time to be creative, she must slow down to do it. She then decides what projects she has time to finish. Thus she finishes at a slower pace than when she started the project. She has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. Her mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. She can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. Aparna can then switch into her low gear. When she is in the slower mode, she can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. She is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.



Aparna will be candid and direct when expressing her opinion. She will tell them what she thinks if they ask for it, whether they like it or not. So, if they don't really want her opinion, don't ask for it!



Aparna uses judgment to make decisions. She is ruled by her head, not her heart. She is a cool, collected person who is usually unexpressive emotionally. Some may see her as unemotional. She does have emotions but has no need to express them. She is withdrawn into herself and enjoys being alone. The circumstances when Aparna does express emotions include: extreme anger, extreme passion, and tremendous stress. If someone gets her mad enough to tell her off, she will not be sorry about it later. She puts a mark in her mind when someone angers her. She keeps track of these marks and when she hits that last mark she will let them know they have gone too far. She is ruled somewhat by self-interest. All her conclusions are made without outside emotional influence. She is very level-headed and will remain calm in an emergency situation. In a situation where other people might get hysterical, she has poise. Aparna will work more efficiently if given space and time to be alone. She would rather not be surrounded by people constantly. In a relationship, she will show her love by the things she does rather than by the things she says. Saying "I love you" is not a needed routine because she feels her mate should already know. The only exception to this is if she has logically concluded that it is best for her mate to hear her express her love verbally. Aparna is not subject to emotional appeals. If someone is selling a product to her, they will need to present only the facts. They should present them from a standpoint of her sound judgment. She will not be taken in by an emotional story about someone else. She will meet emergencies without getting hysterical and she will always ask "Is this best for me?"


People that write their letters in an average height and average size are moderate in their ability to interact socially. According to the data input, Aparna doesn't write too large or too small, indicating a balanced ability to be social and interact with others.
I MISS THEM.
pretty in pink picking apples.
the nice countryish things one can do in a temperate climate.


"and there for me the apple tree
do lean low in Linden Lea" =D
big eyes
favourite cousins!
at the crocodile park place. she and her sister have an unhealthy obsession with reptiles. why can't they be proper girls?!
pinching kartik's cheeks.
wearing my spectacles.
trying to take a picture.
Strawberry :)
My baby cousin and dad, Changi 2001
my cousin is sooooo adorable! i just got the birthday card from my uncle, aunt and cousins and my cousin made me a birthday cake out of purple paper, drew, cut and pasted sixteen candles on it, and then wrote on the back: "happy birthday aparna, wish you has 18 candles".
SOOOOOO cute. i want to hug her. my sweet precocious baby cousin.

you know she uses words like 'insurmountable?' when she wants to get onto the bed that my grandparents are lying on, she goes round to the grandpa side to climb over and get in the middle, cos she says the grandma side is insurmountable (cos my grandma's fatter than my grandpa, haha.) my cousins are smart =P

i haven't seen her in more than 2 years! i hope i won't have to wait till i go to university to see my favourite cousins again. the littler one (who drew me the cake) will be 6 (or actually 7! i think she'll be 7 because i'm pretty sure she was born in 99 but i can't believe she'll be 7 and the last time i saw her she was 4!) and that's so olddd. it's horrible when little kids get old. her sister was the most adorable thing when she was small, and now she's a sullen ten-year-old who hates school and doesn't talk much. although the last time i saw her she was also smiley and huggable. i shall be a most sentimental mother. but atleast mothers don't have to be away from their kids for 2 or 3 years at a time so they have a longer period of time in which to see their kids being small and cute. hopefully. i miss my favourite cousins :(

hm are there dolphins and a butterfly sanctuary in singapore? my friend, A from delhi, is coming to singapore in june, and she says they want to see those. i seem to know very little about the tourist attractions in singapore. also don't quite see why people would holiday in singapore other than for the shopping and maybe the food. she says she's coming to do lingerie shopping because lingerie in india lacks quality.

i'm not sure whether to be excited that i might meet her after... what's it been, 5 or 6 years? because i'm not sure how much the term 'friend' really fits the bill. because we were pretty tight back then, but then i haven't met her since, and she's become the ex of my other friend, K, who's alternately pissed off with her and in love with her - when he isn't insisting he's either gay or has a crush on me or doing other strange things. and my other friend, R, who's kindof an annoying person herself, intensely dislikes A. very possibly this is because R and K also have an on-again, off-again thing going on. the last time i was in bangalore, R and K weren't talking. all the soap operas. but i've known R for years, even longer than i've known A, because she lives in the same apartment block as my grandparents. and all the other girls our age have moved out so every time i go to bangalore R's my company. A comes every year to bangalore for the summer to visit her grandma who also lives in the same place, but i haven't been back in the summer since... well, the last time i met her. which was probably 2000.

oh and technically i'm disallowed from maintaining relations with K - even if they've only ever been platonic - because my grandpa has a profound belief that K is an amoral good-for-nothing. it is highly likely he's right, but a) i don't intend for anybody to dictate whom i may be friends with, and b) K is entirely harmless.

K is Freaky Bangalore Guy, incidentally. I worry that K may occasionally read my blog, as i did give him the address some time ago - quite a silly move because i vaguely recall blogging about the bangalorean real-life soap operas back in decemberish. although i've disguised names, he will not appreciate his sordid life being publicised. or he may enjoy the attention.

strange, these people.

today has been quite a lovely day, but now i'm tired and i still have tuition after dinner! ughh.
Wednesday, April 27
so catharsis is a shouting match with the mother, and a good long draining unabashedly self-pitying cry.

at least i got what i wanted.

oh and a phone call from dad in thailand, in the middle of all the shouting, and we compose ourselves and tell him about our day like the usual. and put the phone down and the shouting resumes, like someone'd just hit the pause button for a few minutes. funny how these things work.

i think i was just yelling stupider and stupider things in order to deliberately be more irrational than she was, and just piss her off. it was strange, because i think when i yelled the first absurd thing i didn't expect that it'd magnify and go on so long.

absolutely out of the blue - one minute i was standing there speaking to her and the next i got so pissed off i started yelling. and yet inevitable, i suppose. pent-up anger, stress, exhaustion, frustration. the sort of things i could only take out on her, and she'd be the only person who'll go back to normal in a day or so. or probably is already back to normal. she won't even change the things i yelled that i'd genuinely like her to change about herself. the same way i won't change all that she wants me to change. a less luxurious person might call it comfortingly familiar.

but even i - some strange tucked away part of me, anyway - am somewhat glad for all the shit she takes from me. not the ideal mother, but.... man this was supposed to be an angsty post, where did that go???

and did i just attempt to analyse an explosive row up there? just shows, doesn't it - hindsight makes everything funny, even a mere 20 minutes after the event.

ah well, i feel better. i like blogging about things.
From Answer Bitch on E!Online
Question:
...God WILL punish people who continue to delve into evil practices. Ask Mel Gibson, he will tell you. PLEASE TAKE HEED. REALIZE THAT HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT FUN AND GAMES. IT IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM, AND YOU MUST AT LEAST SHOW SOME RESPECT FOR PROMINENT CHRISTIAN LEADERS, EVEN IF YOU DON'T ALWAYS AGREE. IF YOU EMAIL ME, I WILL TELL YOU HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN.
Bud Wilfred Harold Cooper, Miners Bay, Ontario

Answer:
And verily I shall bestow unto thee the method for switching off the caps lock button.
i am being most diva-ish. my dad's not in town and neither is p's mom. these are the people who usually drive us to school. when it's supposed to be my dad's turn and he can't do it, my parents are ok with getting a cab. or, like last week, i was able to get sj's dad to give us a lift.
but i feel rather bad asking for a favour from sj so often. however, this week it's p's mom's turn and she's out of town and she's suddenly decided she's not happy with paying for cab and p can't ask sj because she doesn't know sj therefore she wants us to take a bus.

ugh. so i'm making p call a cab and i'm going to pay. i cannot wake up at 6am, sigh.
i sound like such a disgustingly lazy person. and i am, at that. what to do. my mom fully supported my wish not to take the bus, haha.

i wonder why i abbreviated the names there. it sounds like i'm trying to disguise identities, but that's quite silly because it's generally quite obvious. hm.

i have copious amounts of work to do!!!!
lit S essay
hardy essay
frost essay
econs essay
european history term paper
european hist table - 'ideology: the message'
probability tutorial
probability assignment
trig revision
trig 3-d revision
AP/GP revision
Partial fractions/binomial theorem revision - supplementary section
SATs

it doesn't rain, it really really really does pour. tomorrow everything sent me practically up in flames, i was snapping and stewing and stupendously horrible.

Off Alfian's LJ:
"The Germans are especially sensitive about war, with schoolchildren exposed to the trauma of their country's history as early as primary school level. Max tells me it's almost encoded in German DNA--this collective guilt, this shame at even the slightest overtures towards German nationalism. Even though military conscription is compulsory in Germany, you can actually opt out to do civil service instead (for a longer period)--in fields such as nursing, even counselling. All you have to do is sign a declaration stating that you are terrified of guns, or that you're a staunch pacifist--Germany is about the only nation where a State can countersign and approve of your conscientious objection."

I find that fascinating. sometimes i wish i did hist S. but i think i have enough on my hands with lit. yet hist s is so very intriguing. and don't you think japan ought to learn a lesson from the germans?

oh even the last-week gg ep which i just watched had a mussolini/stalin reference, related to emily gilmore. it didn't make much sense, though. implied that mussolini was worse than stalin or something like that. which i don't quite agree with. mussolini was stupider than both stalin and hitler. IMHO. all in all it was a thoroughly pointless episode.

rehearsal today. lots of fun, lots of laughs. it's quite a hilarious play, in most unintended ways. and can i say kelly is Teh PRO! she can play a song with her left hand on the piano and still carry the tune, and she can teach waikit how to conduct at the same time. and she composes really nice (though credit must - unfortunately =P - go to shoojee too for that.)

now i will go and do something vaguely useful before going to bed.

good thing about dad being out of town: brother can sleep in mom's room instead of mine. why oh WHY can his aircon not be fixed sooner.
Tuesday, April 26
i was going to blog all cryptic and dark about how my day went steadily downhill from the morning (and, really, fulfilled it's uselessness potential) but i decided that would be too typical and in any case, my day just got cheered up by a nice phone conversation and good food and a chat with my mom.

plus, there were some high points to the day. sitting in the general office waiting room and talking about sexy sofas and good food and generally laughing ourselves silly and hoping they wouldn't come in and ask why we were laughing. although atleast it prevented the impression that we were in the office because we were in trouble. and mrs seah is a really funny person. she came in when she saw us in the office and we tried to pull a serious face and tell her we were in trouble and being expelled, and without missing a beat she said "i'll be so happy!" i will miss her.

and then history lecture, discussing incredibly disgusting things. some really hilarious comments were made, so there we were in the back of the lt convulsing with laughter and trying to be inconspicuous.

oh choon's madness during math was quite unforgettable too.

in light of the happiness life can offer, other episodes should be shrugged off and laughed at. (god i sound like a self-help book, like Idiot's Guide to Living a Happy Life.) i just went and had a chat and a good laugh with my mom. i am cheered up, and full up from rasam rice and lots of vegetables.

i really couldn't live on just italian food. i need my rasam. i think i might need to learn how to cook before going off to university and dorm life. or else find someplace close to new york so i can go over to my uncle's place on weekends for my homemade rasam fix. though there are south indian restaurants in the US, but they seem to be more on the west coast.

i think the sun's just driving everybody a little bit crazy.
Monday, April 25
tomorrow looks set to be absolutely useless. the only reason i'm going to school is my mom wants me to go for civics to sign up for times with the tutors because she wants to see EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. i don't know if that's the epitome of concerned or kiasu. am quite peeved. i shouldn't have told her all the tutors' names. ok atleast i left out rathi ho, cos she'll probably drive home the point that i don't bother about gp at all, and my mom's concerned that i got a b3 for gp because i used to be good at english in rgs. it was away from an a2 by 1 mark! ugh. and she's all "look your comments are the same as last year's - you're not performing up to potential yada yada yada. more diligence is required, see i keep telling you to work harder!" ugh.

and also, she knows i'm not going to school on friday so she doesn't want an excess of aparna-being-around in the mornings. i suppose she likes her quiet mornings. ie lots of phone conversations with other women who have nothing else to do while the kids are at school. actually their phone conversations sound quite interesting, when i do eavesdrop if i'm home in the afternoons, since my mom gets about 15000 calls a day. today she got a call from a friend who just returned from a month-long vacation so my mom was updating her on all the fashion shows and parties and gossip and scandal she's missed. fairly scintillating stuff. all these desperate housewives, haha.

speaking of DH, the show has finally gone nuts on tonight's episode. just about every housewive's got a soap opera twist thrown in. my god. it's getting to be a stylish, less criminal version of days of our lives. ooh knife in the gut.

i should go sleep now. looking forward to an incredibly boring day tomorrow. yay.
i do so love good food.

lunch at Toast today - avocado caesar wrap and a mocha ice blend. really good stuff. and good music, so soph, kel and i stayed there for about 4 hours eating and then studying for a bit. it's really nice and empty after the lunch rush. and the music is surprisingly studyable-to. they even had a couple of songs off the OC soundtrack.

and then went to kino and borders, and then home.

basically blew off school.
2.4 was a bust, but who the hell cares. i'm quite happy because yesterday i had a really good run all by myself with my ipod plugged in and my happy/power playlist blasting into my ears while i was pumping the sidewalk. it's just when the sun shines that i am absolutely incapable of running.

at home, my mom gave me herb bread with olive oil and feta cheese, and pasta. so i had another extremely filling meal. i could live on simple italian food, especially italian bread and olive oil. and feta cheese is not only tasty, but also healthy. as is olive oil. ahhhh heaven. ok i might need my occasional rasam fix too.

time to go do UN document paper. one day late, gah.
Sunday, April 24
I'm still taking online quizzes like there's no tomorrow and this is freakily accurate.




Your Life Path Number Is 1



1





Your Life Path is is characterized by individualist desires, independence, and the need for personal attainment.

The purpose to be fulfilled on this Life Path is that of becoming independent.

This is a two part learning process; first, you must learn to stand on your own two feet and learn not to depend on others. After you are indeed free and independent, you must learn to be a leader.



Many of our generals, corporate leaders, and political leaders are men and women having the Life Path number 1.

You always have the potential for greatness as a leader, and you may fail as a follower.

Many 1's spend most of their lives shaking off their dependent side.

When this happens, there is little time left for enjoying the rewards to be gained through independence.

You may have to overcome an environment in which it is very easy to be dependent - and difficult to be independent.



You have an abundance or creative inspiration - and possess the enthusiasm and drive to accomplish a great deal.

Your drive and potential for action comes directly from the enormous depth of strength you have/

This includes both the physical and inner varieties of strength.

With this strength comes utter determination and the capability to lead.

As a natural leader you have a flair for taking charge of any situation.



Highly original, you may have talents as an inventor or innovator of some sort.

In any work that you choose, your independent attitude can show through.

You have very strong personal needs and desires, and you feel it is always necessary to follow your own convictions.

You are ambitious, and either understand or must learn the need for aggressive action to promote yourself.

Although you may hide the fact for social reasons, you are highly self-centered and demand to have your way in most circumstances.



If you are not fully developed, you may express the negative side of your number.

That means your demeanor may appear very dependent rather than independent.

If this is the case, you are likely to be very dissatisfied with your circumstances and long for self-sufficiency.

On the strong side of this negative curve, the 1 energy can become too self-serving, selfish and egotistical. Over-confidence and impatience are the weak side of your Life Path.


Saturday, April 23
haha just went mad taking quizzes.

today's been tiring. i seriously need to start studying for the sats. it's disgusting, the third time i'm taking the sats. ok so one was the sats2 so this is the second sat1s i'm taking, and i'm not even so sure i really need to take them again but i just am. and now i'm worried that i might only have 2 sat2s ultimately since Writing is now a sat1 component. so basically i've only got math and biology. hm.

anyway i will be very glad when i can finally say goodbye to the sats part of my life.

today -- second round of rp interviews, and we've finally settled an exco. seems pretty good, although i WISH council didn't exist because it's such a pain having 5 candidates in council. but it's good that we've got it done now. and then future plans for rp, which make me feel slightly exhausted.

and then kel and i trooped over to orchard to look for my levi's bag. i didn't get the one i originally had in mind, but another one that's sort of khaki coloured and $120 instead of $130 as the other one was. it's nicer. spending too much money! i've spent about $200 this week, taxis and random nonsense included. thank god the taxi fares get reimbursed because it's mostly my parents' fault i have to take cabs, like this morning when i came out of my room ready to leave and realised my dad had gone for breakfast with my brother and i had to rush out to get a cab. ok so the rest is probably cos i'm too lazy to take a bus.

and then i came home, fell asleep, bummed around. story of my life.

yay i have figured out what i'm wearing to daph's brother's wedding. now to hope the wedding's actually on next week - as in, not that they won't get married or anything cos they already are married, but that i hope it IS next week and all, because none of us seem to have received any details.

oh i have a really nice new shower gel! it's blue and smells like french perfume, i just can't figure out which one. i shall take a long shower before going to bed tonight, so i smell nice. haha that sounds like i'm going to bed with someone i'd like to smell nice for, but really i'm not! (wish i was, though.) i just like being clean and smelling nice when i go to sleep. sweet, fragrant dreams =]

ok now i shall go.




Your Inner European is French!









Smart and sophisticated.

You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.






You Are A Romantic Realist


You are more romantic than 50% of the population.






You tend to be grounded when it comes to romance.
Sure, you can fall hard... but only for someone you've gotten to know.
And once you're in love, you can be a total romantic goofball...
But you'd never admit it to your friends!






You Are a Drama Princess (or Prince)


(You are more dramatic than 40% of the population.)


You're not over the top dramatic, but you have your moments.

You know how to steal the spotlight...

And how to act out to get your way.


People around you know that you're good for a laugh.

But at times, your drama gets a bit too much for everyone.

Tone it down a tad, and you'll still be the center of attention.






You Are 50% Normal

(Somewhat Normal)









While some of your behavior is quite normal...

Other things you do are downright strange

You've got a little of your freak going on

But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself


SO cool!




Your True Birth Month Is April









Hasty

Moving

Consoling

Emotional

Aggressive

Diplomatic

Revengeful

Adventurous

Good memory

Loves attention

Strong mentality

Loving and caring

Brave and fearless

Active and dynamic

Suave and generous

Easily get too jealous

Decisive but tends to regret

Motivates oneself and the others

Attractive and affectionate to oneself

Friendly and solves people's problems

Prone to sickness usually of the head and chest



Friday, April 22
Aha!

Just read some alias spoilers while looking for gg ones, because strange things seem to have happened during the latest gg ep.

AND i was RIGHT about something that is going to happen!!! or rather, is going to be revealed. Hee. if i knew how to do that thing they do on twop to make spoilers be invisible until highlighted, i'd put it here. anyway it's very very interesting and intriguing and all that.

and i have acquired 3 cds this week: want one, 'ha' by talvin singh, the garden state soundtrack.
am still somewhat befuddled over what to order from amazon. might have to make the parents chip in a little for the shipping expense. hm.

the interpreter today. thrilling, well-directed, very well acted, nicole kidman and sean penn both fantastically sexy and real. but ultimately it's little more than a thriller and the plot is somewhat predictable. some good lines, though - "vengeance is a lazy form of grief".

too tired to blog properly.
Tuesday, April 19
oh NO.

I have discovered a very nice rory-logan fanfic - here.

and it's got a million chapters. ok, i exaggerate, it's got 47 (SO FAR) but 47 is a LOT, for a WIP.

ugh.

just when i was abandoning hope of finding anything good, i go and find this.

ok it's not fantastic as fics go, because i've read better, but rorylogan is still a relatively young ship, and the fluff's nice, and i was looking for fluff. and the writer actually has a beta with brains, and doesn't type "should of" instead of "should have" -- really, that should be on the list of the world's worst english faux pas(es? what's the plural of faux pas?) and a lot of american fanfic writers make it, and it is most annoying. there is a clear difference between "of" and "have" and people ought to understand that!

ok time for another chapter of the fic, and then bed. shall do rolly tutorial prep during econs or something, sigh. too tired to do anything that is more than brainless.
Really good but strange episode of Alias. Aptly named Pandora, but I think the whole thing with Vaughn's dad is a little bit stupid. I shan't say more in case Shooj hasn't finished watching yet. I feel sort of unsatisfied with the episodeeee.

Oh! In about 30 hours, the new GG will be available for download! :):):) it feels like yonks since the last. well, it has been yonks, as hiatuses go. about 5 or 6 weeks, it's been.

And Desp Housewives -- Gabrielle was wearing that Catherine Malandrino dress we saw at the Link show, and which Nadia wore on Alias. Really popular dress, that. God I obsessively notice these things. I think, during Samara, when Vivien was freaking out and I was noticing that she was wearing a jacket like something Lorelai would wear, she got kinda irked with my distractedness. Later on I was doing my fair share of squealing, though.

i'm getting sort of sick of DH. it's getting soapy. Mike's incredibly hot but the lack of information about his past is getting to a weird mix of Alias and Days of Our Lives, which is just so wrong! Gabrielle is gorgeous though. Haha that alliterates rather nicely, doesn't it?

I should get my vcr fixed so i can tape and watch OC instead. but maybe i'll just wait for the DVD. then i can enjoy it properly. since i don't know what's going on with the show now anyway.

Gah. I am absolutely Unable to sleep anytime before 1.30pm since yesterday. Last week it was about 1230. Tomorrow I must really do something to make myself go to bed early.

TIME TO SLEEP.
Monday, April 18
Shoojee and Wiggy got me Want Two!!!!!!!! Most thrilling. Am about to listen to it now :)

So I will duly update my wishlist. Haha. Have to keep track of these things.

And Garden State's $20.95 at Borders. So it might be even cheaper elsewhere, but probably nothing comes close to US$9.99 on amazon, haha - so I'll decide whether I want to save money or if I want to get it sooner.

Oh that reminds me - today Sowden was talking about online shopping during lecture and saying "Mum, Dad, I want this -now-" and Claud stage-whispered my name so everyone turned and looked at me. It was most embarrassing. And I don't even do online-shopping, I've only got this amazon thingy now so I'm going to! Perhaps cos Claud wants me to buy garbage for her, off amazon. As in, Garbage, not garbage.

school was otherwise uneventful. Kwok's very cute and funny. the usual annoyances, especially the person who changed her surname recently to mean "a manservant (usually the head servant of a household) who has charge of wines and the table".

US universities talk, not highly helpful. all the talks are too short.

then to orchard with kelly. sembawang is useless, borders is increasingly useless music-wise.

i'm going to go take a shower.
Sunday, April 17
incidentally, today's jennifer garner's birthday!
she turns 33, i think.

just spoke to my cousin, and from what she tells me, kids in new york elementary schools are scary! she's only ten years old, but she's got this girl in her class - the most popular girl, apparently - who has 5 livestrong bands, and she'll sell each to anyone who can pay her $100, and if someone does pay her $100 for a band, she'll make sure that that person becomes popular immediately, so some kid actually stole money from her parents in order to pay for the band. it's the stuff of american high school movies, so it's freaky that it actually happens. my cousin's transferring to a private school in the city when the fall term starts, though; i hope for her sake that being among the best schools on the eastern seaboard actually means something.

ugh. i am truly a Soundtrack Whore. i desire Garden State, Eternal Sunshine, and the OC soundtracks currently. and i think i want the Before Sunset DVD. wondering if i want Before Sunrise as well.

i spent 7-8pm sampling various cds on amazon, and then 8-9pm looking at various movie trailers on apple.com.

i do so waste time.
Ohk - happiness/confusion.

I finally got the Amazon gift certificate from my uncle, and I thought to myself '$150 (USD, no less, hee!) of pure joy' but now I can't decide on anything! CDs or DVDs, which DVDs, books? $150 is still sort of limited, especially with the vast numbers of DVD box sets I desire.

Definitely getting:
Want Two, which I am seriously convinced is banned because it's got explicit lyrics and a song titled "Gay Messiah", something Singaporean powersthatbe would predictably find very offensive, but Nasty said 8Days reviewed it recently so maybe it will finally get imported, maybe censored but Amazon would not be censored so yay. I have been so disciplined about waiting till I get the cd, I haven't even sampled it on Amazon yet.
Garden State soundtrack, because it's currently 9.99 and it looks fantastic. Coldplay, Zero 7, Frou Frou, The Shins - gotta love it.
9 Objects of Desire, unless I find it nice and cheap somewhere in Singapore first.

I think I also might want the OC Mix4, but that's usually available pretty cheap here.

In any case, my mom's got this notion that I shouldn't spend the money just yet because anything I order from Amazon is bound to be distracting, and I have to study and all that jazz. She's right, unfortunately, so I might wait before spending. And my daddy's going to the US soon, I think, so perhaps he can procure Want Two and I can save the gift cert for DVDs :)

Actually I think I shouldn't waste an Amazon cert on things I can find here at a decent price, so I think a serious cd-hunting trip is in order. Hitting Sembawang, That CD Shop, HMV, Gramaphone, in that order. Something like that. Perhaps on Monday. Unfortunately it is a busy week.

I just discovered that Imogen Heap is half of Frou Frou! I never realised that Imogen was a -person-. Although I knew perfectly well that Imogen is a female name, it never occured to me that Heap is a last name.

I also just realised that Lata Mangeshkar is on the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack. The things you discover while trawling Amazon. I haven't been very enthusiastic about that soundtrack, but I've been getting quite attracted to it. And after sampling it just now, I think I'll have to add it to my list.

Ooh just bit into a chocolate and it is gorgeousnessss. Liquor flowing into mouth after first bite, rum I think, really good. And my maid's toasting me some funny potato&herb bread my dad buys at some bakery, which sounds suspicious but tastes fantastic. Gastronomically fulfilled.

Speaking of food, 3 places I want to try: Menotti at Raffles City, Toast at Taka, Corduroy&Finch at the Bukit Timah-6th Avenue corner.

I'm sitting here and making lists of things to buy, movies to watch, especially old movies, DVDs and books to buy, etc etc etc. Obviously an obsessive consumer.

Ugh I've developed blogging-averseness. I have things to blog but I cannot be bothered to blog them properly.

But, well. It's been a pretty good week. Skipped school on Monday, Vivien's lovely birthday gift (kama sutra and 13 going on 30 and a really pretty notebook in a really pretty box) on Tuesday and Bras Basah after school - 3 great books for $16, rehearsal and RP stuff on Wednesday which was fairly interesting, Samara (scary but not fantastic) on Thursday followed by Vivian Balakrishnan talk which was depressing but sparked off interesting discussion, Friday was the usual, Saturday was rehearsal and then the Pacifier with Kitson etc - amusing and pretty sweet, if silly - and then home and watched Rolly's Sideways DVD. Sad part was that Kitson left last night, right after demonstrating his adorableness by calling me up from the airport all excitedly telling me to guess who he just bumped into. unfortunately for him, i already knew that it was nasty because she'd messaged me minutes earlier that she just saw kitson at the airport. so he was cutely deflated that i wasn't surprised. today i went to the temple because it's my astrological birthday or something like that, and a strange person whom i haven't spoken to in years remembered my birthday, which was most odd. and had pre-lunch at this little restaurant called Ganga while my parents bought vegetables, because brother and I got hungry. and the guy's super nice cos he knows my dad so we had half the meal free, and extra stuff thrown in that we didn't even order but was very good. and then proper lunch at home, potatoes and spinach which i like very much. and i discovered the amazon gift cert in my mail, further happiness and, as explained earlier, confusion.

there you go. my week in a (relatively long) paragraph. not a fascinating week, i must say. but then i guess i really do do this for recording-my-life purposes. just so, in 20 years, i can still refer back and know what i was doing between the 11th and 17th of april 2005.

now i'm off to update my wishlist and finish homework.
Wednesday, April 13
how absolutely absurd. i took the test again, and now i'm at the first level. and i'm pretty sure i put most of the same answers! i mean, i wasn't dishonest this time or anything, and i even went back to try and make the answers badder because i'm probably not as good as a first level. but it's really weird, it stayed the same, except when i put yes for "Think about some of the sinful or wrong things you've done in the past. Do you foresee yourself continuing to do these things?" it went to the 8th level. yet kelly put yes on that question and was stuck in purgatory anyway!!! i don't get it. this is a screwed up test. so i shall figure i'm somewhere in between levels 1 and 8. an average of 4.5. haha. i'm not so bad!

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)High
Level 2 (Lustful)Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Low
Level 7 (Violent)Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test
Monday, April 11
haha i am so Bad.
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)Low
Level 2 (Lustful)Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test
Sunday, April 10
it has been a lovely weekend =)

yesterday's party was lots of fun, hilarity, and nonsense. glad it was enjoyed.
some infinitely memorable moments, chief among them the memories of scandal the last time kitson was in my room, before last night.
soph: you didn't go all the way, kitson.
kitson: but i came halfway!
and then a splitsecond before everyone bursts out laughing at the utter wrong-ness of that exchange.

there were other moments, but i don't remember. mark was red without any alcohol, and sophie was a strange mixture of high and stoned, also without any alcohol or drugs. proof enough that parties can be fun without alcohol, yes?

gotta agree with vaish, hanging out in the (REAL) garden was the best part. extremely nice and relaxed. shooj got an attack of stoned boredness and trooped off to my room to watch alias, and after a bunch of people left to go home, the remaining of us also went to my room, and some good ol' alias-watching ensued. 414 is a fab episode, confirming my belief that season 4 will live up to season 2's standards, because they've finally got themselves a proper story arc that is alive, kicking and fantastically intriguing. and the 'i love you' - well, it was really nice and unexpected, but the out-of-the-blueness was a little weird especially since it was so unprecedented by sydney-vaughn moments. besides the dance and the flirting in Tuesday. in any case, i am happy and i have a theory/hunch that sophia (as in the alias character who raised nadia, played by sonia braga, not sophia wong) is actually elena derevko. that would be funkyy. oh and ruth's addicted to jen garner now!

and then there was kitson getting psychological allergic reactions to everything in my room. if i told him anything he was close to was dusty, he'd get an immediate fit of the sniffles. and then he forced/'persuaded' his mom to pick him up. and thennnn samjo, mag and shooj were left - we stoned and talked until i got sleepy and kicked them out, about 1215ish i think. all in all, really good relaxed fun. fun is in short supply this year - i wonder when will be the next time we can do something like this together. it's really pretty much the first time most of the class got together to do something.

oh and yes the cake was fantastic! here's promoting the boo boo cake from nydc. it's really really really really good. i've had it several times before, but somehow it tasted even more fantabulous last night. made up for having no dessert at pete's place due to lack of stomach space. haha my mom was trying to get me to order cake so they could embarrass me by singing me a birthday song in the middle of the restaurant, but thankfully i was really full so that provided a good excuse.

speaking of cake, i shall run off for a minute now to sample some of that chocolate ruth gave me :) i feel spoilt for sweet things, and possibly later the zits will have a party on my face to celebrate the cake and the icecream and the chocolates. but who cares. live life, right?

mm very good chocolate, and a great box for earrings later on. haha i'm such a Collector of nice chocolate boxes. boxes in general, really. my box collection's grown a lot since i blogged about it last year.

ok so today i woke up at 11, and then decided to set out on a mission to clean my room. my maid sweeps and mops everyday and vacuums once a week, but as maids are, they always ignore whatever they can ignore. therefore the area behind all the junk under my desk, and the area behind the dressing table and chest of drawers and everything, and the floor under the bed and all was infested with dustbunnies, as i discovered last night when shooj pulled the legendary ts3 flag out from under the bed.

i put the snake and the one from my brother's room in the wash, because it really was unacceptably dirty, and my brother's was cleaner but i got it washed anyway. and i vacuumed all the soft toys, and i cleaned the basket in which my 60+ unused bottles of nailpolish have been sitting for the past three years. and i threw away all the 5-year-old victoria's secret products i've had on my dressing table that were just too pretty to throw but really needed throwing. and i have ensured that there is absolutely nothing under my bed to prevent my maid from cleaning underneath Properly. i spent until about 3pm vacuuming and dusting everywhere, so now i am immensely proud of my room.

except that in the process of vacuuming the shelves of my desk, i took everything off the shelves and dumped them on the front area, and i haven't put them back yet. and i still haven't found any use for the shoeboxes and other funny boxes i've collected and stacked up in front of my bed. and there's still a pile of notes etc from the common-test-studying-binge, which i have yet to sort out.

well. after that i finally had a really good hot shower, switched on my computer and read blogs, and that was the end of productivity. i ate icecream, my parents came home, i fell asleep on the daybed, woke up, read reallybad alias fanfic, had dinner, here i am now. i need good fanfic, and there is none.

i should go now and do the history homework, since kwok's decided to be anal about tutorial preparation. i've always hated sourcebased questions with a vengeance. was never any good at them.

after that i should really sort out my iTunes and do some proper transferring to The Bride.
Saturday, April 9
rahul's dad is at home for lunch. he and my parents are having a Serious Discussion about universities. i don't know what it is about indian parents, but lately all they seem to be talking about is universities. it's getting irritating.

daisy rehearsal today was interesting - atleast realising how lesbianfied the play is! haha, the audience'll have a good laugh. it's going to be like Spot the Ho!Yay. and smriti and i are thinking of making a teeshirt for Daisy, which says BIGGER across the front, right where the boobs are. because that's like perry's mantra for the actors. Bigger, girls, BIGGER! oh there was another one - "jolly hockey sticks", as in that the girls should be all jolly hockey sticks, but currently the BIGGER idea is the favourite. although it's only funny if worn by a girl.

and then perry gave me a lift home; pretty interesting conversation there. apparently her and mr perry's childrearing patterns are just like my parents -- she's the bad guy and her husband's the good guy. and various things about her daughter and her antics. and about how batchelor is really calm even deep down, he's not boiling underneath even when the class is being completely awful. he's a cool guy, our civics tutor.

ok i'm bored of blogging. i shall go take a nap now.

nydc boo boo cake for party! :):):)
Friday, April 8
hm i was trying to not-blog, in an attempt to rebel against the completely dead tagboard, but i feel like commemorating today in some form. it wasn't particularly eventful, as birthdays go, especially 18th birthdays (i suppose, though being 18 in singapore also means A levels so it isn't exactly much cause for celebration, unless you're choon/claud, december babies.) but despite the un-eventfulness, it was a day to remember, because it was sweet.

it began with birthday greetings from the most unexpected sources, which are the best kind. old classmates, really old classmates, people i sort-of know overhearing very old classmates and then wishing me, friends from india, etc. classmates trying to sing me a birthday song at assembly and shooj going around trying to find random people including batchelor and sean loh isthathowyouspellit to wish me happy birthday and sing me a song, which was majorly embarrassing but really amusing.

oh and then the Admiring of the Ipod, and mark trying to psyche me into regretting it or begin the transition from ipod-my-baby to ipod-my-hateful-teenager because a) the headphones suck and b) the 5th gen ipod's coming out sometime this year and will outclass the rest. but i'm not enough of an audiophile to desire the very best in headphones, and as for waiting, technology's always getting obselete-fied so there's no point in waiting forever, right? in any case i've waited long enough for the perfect ipod, and now i've got it.

lessons: fairly routine, except gp was fascinatingly freaky. jean baudrillard's simulation and simulacra, which has so many manifestations in life it's disturbing. i even noticed it at dinner, which i will mention later because this post attempts to go in chronological order.

on my 18th birthday, the supposed age of defiance and all that, i was definitely not planning on going for pe, so vaish, vivien and i skipped and went to j8. thai express, which was an novel experience but not worth enough to repeat. spicy and very indian-like and a little bit sweet and too little rice. but i'm not much of an asian food person, except indian and a little bit of middle eastern and chinese when there isn't an alternative. especially not south-east asian food, i suppose.

oh that reminds me! mr sowden's very cool -- a vegetarian as fanatic as my parents (as in, ovo-lacto but the type who checks about the stock in soup being vegetarian and all that), and a teetotaller! i told my parents about it a while ago and they were very impressed. it occurs to me that they'd probably find him perfect husband material if he were a boy my age: economics, a subject my parents love, vegetarian, teetotaller, presumably doesn't smoke. only problem is the lack of indian/hindu/brahmin-ness. hahaha but my devotions are devoted to rolly, right?

speaking of devotion to rolly, yesterday kelly tried to get me to name my ipod Rolly, but i decided it would definitely become the subject of more ridicule than i would like, and rolly would find out inevitably because someone would tell him and then he'd smirk and i'd blush and it'd be embarrassing. not, of course, that i ever seriously considered naming it Rolly. i named it The Bride, which is slightly weird but i think it's appropriately cute because my ipod's sexy and white like Uma Thurman as The Bride. i'm in this quentin tarantino phase anyway. and who cares that the white wedding dress ends up with blood all over, she's kickass because she survives the shot to the head and to the chest and everything, so the name will cast an aura around Ipod and protect it. yes, i'm at the ipod-is-baby stage.

ok so we basically wasted the sowden lesson almost entirely, talking about various things. i have lost all hope of a cleanly chronological post!

walked around, bought a thingy to keep my ipod in, had coffee to try and wake self up which didn't work at all, chatted lots with viv and vaish which was nice because i haven't had a nice long conversation with either of them properly in age. we walked around, tried clothes, looked at stuff. was relaxed.

back to school for lit s, which was rather pointless because he just read poems, but purvis does have his way of reading poems so in some sense it was useful. i just wish he'd Lecture like mac, mac's lectures are fascinating.

after that.... back home, fell on bed in a stupor with ipod plugged into ears and complete exhaustion overtaking me. until my uncle called to give me a happy birthday greeting-cum-pep-talk. he was rather sweet about everything. i like talking to my uncle. even when he's on a train commuting to manhattan and is shouting in tamil because the train is noisy and he doesn't want to talk in english because of all the nosy americans around him. it was a nice talk.

and i received a card from daph, which was also unexpected and very nice.

and my mom made gajar halwa, which is this indian carrot sweet thing that i love, and she made it exceptionally well. and after filling my tummy i was getting dressed for dinner, when my mom thrust the phone at me and it was rahul's dad congratulating me! which was so out of the blue, until i realised he was in town and he was on the phone with my mom when he realised it was my birthday and wanted to congratulate me for becoming an adult. so while my uncle had half-jokingly told me that i was legally an adult but emotionally but three years old, rahul's dad told me to go out and Have Some Fun! and then he also peptalked me about universities and college tours and financial aid and rahul's going to do med and he's got into johns hopkins & upenn & tufts and is currently trying to decide which one to go to. i haven't spoken to him in so long. kinda funny, just the other day i noticed some j1 who totally reminds me of him and my brother knows him and also thinks there is a strong rahul resemblance. and i just remembered his birthday is on sunday! he's two days younger than me but he's been driving for two years and he'll be in university a year ahead of me.

yeah so i got peptalked in succession.

and then my dad took AGES finishing up his meetings and getting home, so we finally left and then i realised my granduncle and aunt had invited us over to their place so we had to go there first before dinner, and it was already almost 9! but the good thing was that they gave me money :) and then finally dinner, by which time i was really not hungry because it was almost 10pm and my grandaunt had given us some stuff to eat at their place. but pete's place at the hyatt has the most smiling waiters i've ever seen in my life! so the service alone made it worthwhile, and the menu's predominantly non-veg but they made special stuff for all of us. and the food was pretty good, but i got filled up on soup and the bread buffet (i love bread and they had about 10 tyoes of bread and 3 types of dip and olive oil, could i have resisted?) before the real food arrived, so i suppose i didn't enjoy the meal as much as i would've if it had been at a normal time and if i'd been truly hungry.

oh yes, jean baudrillard reminder at dinner: my dad was trying to tell us about the time he discovered cornflakes or something, and how he'd risen from not knowing how to eat cereal, from such humble beginnings... to eating at pete's place. and then i realised that the decor of pete's place is trying to simulate american country ranches, which are sort of humble. so you have this italian restaurant in a five-star hotel, trying to look like a simple country ranch while charging exorbitant prices for its food. i don't know if i'm right, but i think it parallels the hyperreality theory.

after that... we were all completely stuffed and came back home and it was almost 12, and since then (so far it's been an hour) i've been typing this post, which is getting annoyingly long, and explaining the story of ate_aparna to samjo while demonstrating my scary alias-addiction to mag. example: i get all defensive when i read articles that are negative about the cia? because i think "sydney and vaughn etc do Good Work". but the 'alias-related haze' was thicker in secondary4, the year of the season 2 and the ENDING of season 2. the heartattack-inducing ending. wow that was a kickass season. thinking about that last episode still gives me the shivers.

talking about endings, i should really end Today because Tomorrow i have to go to school in the morning! or Today, really. because it's 115 now.

goodnight!
Tuesday, April 5
haha i went off msn, ostensibly to do history homework, but i ended up randomly blogsurfing and ended up at audrey's blog from sam's -- and what did i find? a soulmate!

she's got jennifer garner pictures every few posts, and sometime in january she was ranting about being unable to wait for the new alias/gg seasons, and she reads kristin's tv transcripts on E!, she watches desperate housewives and she loves johnny depp the same way i do, and she aspires to a body like jen garner's (though she actually has a working exercise plan to attain that aspiration, unlike me), and she wants to watch sin city because of alexis bledel.

heh.

i am being bad and downloading music now.
Sin City looks to be AMAZING. the cast list alone is supremely enthralling, and alexis bledel looks gorgeoussss.

alexis bledel (rory!)
carla gugino (who starred as 'karen sisco' which was an ABC show and sort of an Alias rival in it's asskicking femaleness but got beat hands down and cancelled, teehee)
jessica alba (this seems to be a nice mix of Honey and Dark Angel for her.)
rutger hauer (who was the bad guy who electro-tortured jack in Phase One which was the pivotal episode of Alias season 2)
clive owen (!!!)
benicio del toro (the ultimate cool)
elijah wood (hobbit turned gangsta)
brittany murphy (eep.)
jaime king (who is going to be on an upcoming OC episode)
bruce willis (his aging face actually looks sort of good with the leather trench and scars and all)
michael clarke duncan (he's so made for these kingpin roles)
josh hartnett (who bears an amazing resemblance to leonardo dicaprio, in the trailer atleast)
rosario dawson (whom i've never seen in anything but is supposed to be very good)
michael madsen (budd on kill bill 1 and 2, plus this guy's crazy. he's done 99 movies since 1982, and he's currently signed for 10 movies that have yet to be made. then again, he's always been a small-part actor, so i guess it makes sense.)
devon aoki (who i think is really ugly but she looks pretty cool in the trailer, standing all broody on the top of a building)

genre:
Science-Fiction/Fantasy, Fantasy, Cops, Film Noir, Sci-Fi/Horror/Fantasy, Crime, Guns, Love Affairs, Violence, Revenge, Strippers, Urban Crime, Fantasy Worlds, Urban Life, Based On A Novel

stylized, graphic novel film noir, ultraviolence. not usually my kinda thing but this somehow is incredibly intriguing. apparently, at the heart it's a dark, harsh tale in which characters struggle to do what’s right by doing wrong.

and quentin tarantino's a guest director - a novel concept. never heard of a guest director on a film before. apparently guest director means he directed a scene. should be interesting, because this movie's touted as a masterpiece on the pulpfiction/killbill scales. main director's robert rodriguez, so it's got to be fantastic. and rottentomatoes gave it 78% which is very high.

also, the latest alias ep has a very killbill2 feel with sydney stuck in the coffin and all. and she was wearing a leather jacket, too, like uma thurman. i will, however, concede that uma thurman is hotter than jennifer garner and the Bride is more amazing because she kicked her way out of the coffin on her own instead of waiting for marshall flinkman to come and save her. the dance at the end was extremely sweet.
Monday, April 4
Cocktail
Cocktail


?? Which Alcoholic Drink Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
Saturday, April 2
a period piece with a gender-bender agenda
today. hasn't been particularly eventful. rehearsal, and then Stage Beauty with nasty and ying sze -- it was an incredibly thought-provoking movie. it could've maybe been directed a bit better; the characters got rather confusing at times, but it was very well acted, and the whole thing was fascinating, because it's sort of a recap of a period in the history of the role of women in theatre. well, the first woman in english theatre, and the last guy who played a woman. and the whole idea of jealousy, sexual ambiguity, sexual identity, gender politics and all that.

and the screenplay/script is brilliant. i need to get my hands on a copy of Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which is the play jeffrey hatcher wrote before adapting it into a screenplay for the cinema.

it's like Closer, in a way -- one of those films that doesn't immediately impress you other than for its acting, yet leaves you with this unfulfilled feeling, not because the movie hasn't lived up to expectations, but because it's left you with so many things to think about and figure out. and i'm reading the director's notes etc on rottentomatoes and googling ned kynaston etc(instead of reading my history stuff, gah) and it all actually happened.

READ NO FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE SPOILED ABOUT THE MOVIE.
ned kynaston was really described by samuel pepys as the most beautiful woman in the house, and he was really trained in the cellars of london because for 18 years there was a Puritan ban on theatre altogether, there really were specific gestures the boy-actors were taught in order to act female. charles II took the throne after spending many years exiled in france, and because of the french influence took a liking to the theatre and for female actors which were allowed in france - so he lifted the ban on the theatre and allowed women on stage and issued the decree that only women can play women (this last bit under pressure from the clergy and not from nell because nell only became his mistress 8 years later; she's an anachronism in the movie). margaret hughes was really the first woman legally on an english stage, and there was rivalry between her and kynaston because she upstaged him, he was a homosexual, she was the mistress of charles sedley, etc etc etc. i don't know why i just recapped all of that. i love 16th/17th century english history. fascinating people, they were.

apparently jeffrey hatcher found a copy of samuel pepys' diary and was fascinated by his entries about ned kynaston, who apparently was as much of a star in england then as, say, brad pitt is now. or something like that, except more intense because it was just the london theatre circuit. which only consisted of two theatres at the time. anyway, he read about kynaston and thought, 'Somebody really has to write a play about this and if Stoppard hasn't done it yet, I'd better hurry up!' Which is really funny because in many ways the movie's a lot like Shakespeare in Love, which maybe is part of the reason it wasn't so impressive for me. (SiL was written by Stoppard.) but on the whole the movies are equally impressive IMO, and Claire Danes acted as fantastically as Gwyneth. they both have the whole woman playing a man playing a woman thing going on, except Stage Beauty is actually based on a true story.

and stage beauty's better in a sense, because it goes a lot deeper into the whole idea of theatre, the evolution of naturalistic acting; there being no such thing as a new play, only new audiences (i think that's what it was); the role doesn't belong to the actor, the actor belongs to the role; and most fascinatingly, the idea that men capture the essence of femininity better than a woman because women are too close to femininity to capture it the way men see it - which is a concept borrowed from the kabuki onnagata, actually. the director wrote that "female impersonation is always an imitation, it's never a state of being. And all acting is a criticism of life: when men act women it begs questions about the sexual roles we've been allocated, even if there's always a touch of parody (and implicit misogyny) in the voice and the gestures."

what i really liked was that the movie didn't make any sort of judgement on the confusion of sexual identities. it doesn't say it's good, bad or indifferent to be gay, straight or bisexual. it was a really nice touch that the movie ended with kynaston saying "i don't know" when asked who he was now. the acceptance of the ambiguity.

oh this is funny:
When asked to describe the effect of his feminine garb on his performance, Crudup laughs. "If I'm asked what it's like to wear heels," he says, "The presumption is that I've never done it before. So I feel it's imperative that I answer the question in the most evasive way possible."

and relevance to Mac's lecture yesterday about the pendulum swing in poetry -- "The passing of a style of acting usually takes a generation or two to occur. In every era there's an outstanding actor who audiences find shockingly realistic, then striking new actors appear and the iconoclasm of one generation comes to be regarded by as the mannerism of another: today's artificiality is yesterday's realism." pendulum swing in theatrical style. actually now i can't really remember why exactly he mentioned stage beauty in the lecture, can someone remind me?

ah and i JUST realised why kynaston looked so familiar -- billy crudup played the black sabbath guy in almost famous! he was very hot and i was briefly infatuated with him. and apparently that role was initially offered to brad pitt, hm. but he's short, which is part of why he was perfect for kynaston. haha. and he's acted in a production of stoppard's arcadia!!

oh another shakespeare in love thing -- the guy who played betterton the theatre owner in stage beauty, was fennyman the theatre owner in shakespeare in love, and the same studio was used as the soundstage for both the theatres in both the movies =)

it occurs to me that i would really like a Stage Beauty poster.

ok so i've finished reading reams of stage beauty synopses, reviews, trívia etc, and billy crudup's biography. and i've bored you darling readers enough so now i'm about to research the history of the word 'fuck' because i didn't think it was in use in the 17th century.

ooh apparently i was wrong:
The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. Translated, the line reads “they are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].”
When the word was expelled from polite usage, becoming profane, is unclear. Some evidence indicates that, in some English-speaking locales, it was considered acceptable as late as the 17th century, meaning 'to strike' or 'to penetrate'. Other evidence indicates that it may have become "vulgar", in polite use, as early as the 16th century; thus other reputable sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary contend the true etymology is still uncertain. The two seemingly contradictory hypotheses might reflect cultural and/or regional dialects.

after stage beauty, i came home, worried about dying in a supervolcanic eruption in indonesia or an ensuing ice age, and then went to sleep, woke up, had dinner over a very nice episode of buffy where willow goes lesbian, and then i'm here reading more about one movie and related things that i've read about dictatorship in italy -- the jury's still out on which one's more relevant to my life.

but i think i'll go do history anyway. conscience calling.
ugh. my msn is not working. so i'm checking my mail by actually going to hotmail.com -- the first time in forever that i've taken that long route.

just got back half an hour ago from a most torturous carnatic concert. 3 and a half hours of a guy wailing in the esplanade concert hall. ok so i exaggerate, but i've honestly lost any appreciation i ever had for carnatic vocals, despite learning it for a total of 7 or 8 years through my life. but i started and stopped about 3 times, so i guess i got the message finally, that i didn't like it. stupid, really. hindustani is much better. the only time the concert was good was when he sang a small bit in hindustani raaga of some sort. my technical knowledge is very limited.

and now i'll stop the rant about the concert, because a lot of people thought it was very good, and it was fun looking around the hall at all the people falling asleep etc. and sushma was there, very amused that i actually turned up for one of these concerts, but i was coerced by mother dearest. actually it was quite fun, every few minutes talking about random things to my mom, and pointing out people falling asleep. except we were just a few rows from the front so i think i was rather rudely turning around and staring at people. well, it was better than falling asleep, which my mom prevented me from doing because there were Important People around and it was Rude to fall asleep during a concert. i don't think my parents paid for the seats, and i'm glad for it because that is one purchase i'd have disapproved mightily of. i think they got free vip seats cos my dad got hp sponsorship for sifas. hahaha. well atleast my mom enjoyed it quite a lot. and for that torture she put me through, i will try and make her buy me a ticket to diana krall. except people who want to go have already bought, so i'll have to find someone to go with.

and i asked her various other random things and she said ok, such as getting a membership at a gym and go for jazzercise and yoga and stuff (though my dad just came home and told me it would be more cost-effective and spiritual to go to the ramakrishna mission, sigh.) i should've also asked her to buy me kiehl's products (i discovered the reallynice store at scotts on wednesday and i lovees it but can only afford on mummy finance). i will ask another day. and being bored at one point, she started staring blissfully at her brand new beautiful diamond-studded baby pink Corum watch and told me that she ought to get a pink bag to go with it, so she was thinking of a Kelly. so atfirst, rather hilariously, i thought - kelly bag? but kelly has such bad bags i needed to buy her one! - and then i realised she meant hermes, but anyway i think chanel's better. i really like the new chanel bags. anyway so if we find time to go shopping tomorrow i will drag her to chanel. in any case hermes is only at liat towers and there's no reason i'd go to liat tomorrow, except for the zara which isn't on my current wishlist so i wouldn't go. or borders, but tomorrow will be clothes shopping.

ok so that was my requisite paris-hilton-wannabe paragraph. though she probably doesn't go to borders on any day, besides to promote her stupid heiress book which really is unbelievably pink and stupid.

basically, concert sucked and there are two more tomorrow that i am NOT going for. though there is a dance on sunday that i might want to go for, depending on when the fashion show is. and i just checked, it's at the very horrible time of 1pm. so maybe i'll go for the dance. and gahhh the two concerts tomorrow which my parents will be going for, means we may not have time to go shopping tomorrow! maybe i'll just go do my own market research after rehearsal, so i'm all prepared with shopping list so that my mom doesn't tire out before all is accomplished. or something like that. shopping techniques to suit the person with the credit card, honed to a fine point over the years. or not so fine or i'd have a lot of things i want already, but i'm still working on it.

ok see that was a not-so-paris-hilton paragraph, because she probably doesn't have shopping techniques besides pointing at dress/bag/shoe/car/hotel and flashing credit card. and she probably doesn't consider attending classical indian dance concerts.

it occurs to me that i did not stop ranting about the concert after i said i would. bad aparna.

anyway the rest of the day was so boring it isn't worth recapping. except for my rather ditzy mood in the morning, with both grace and kelly noticing my amazing ability to go off on tangents.

time to sleep, i have to wake up in about 7 hours to go for the first rehearsal i've been for in ages! i am Excited. though it's a really small part, but acting is fun =) so i'm not complaining.

god this entire entry sounds absolutely stupid. extension of my ditz!morning, sorry.