We, the Accidental Patriots, invite those we generally like to leave their favourite footprints on the reclaimed land of this sunny island. Regardless of taxi, MRT or cab, we unite in our moving conviction to drive the economy, based on some very bad clues, so as to achieve weed, young boys and everyone’s undying respect.

This was right at the beginning. Very cool, with the numbers flashing on the screen and Chris Martin appearing at the back of the stage. Yeah - that tiny little head and arm holding the mike that you see under the first number 3? That's my, our, Gwyneth's Chris.

I LOVE this picture.

He can sing lying down! And here you can see that the rip in his shirt near the shoulder was there right from the beginning of the show.

I really like this shot of the whole band! Chris looks adorable holding the banjo like that.

Taken right before they left the stage for good. Chris's hand is very dubiously placed.

Yeah, they were all yellow.

Mean postcard idea: "This is all YOU get to see!" written on the balloon and sent to people who didn't manage to go for the concert. And whom you'd like to piss off majorly.

Less-mean postcard idea: "Wish you were there!" Down the side of this photo.

You can safely assume that all the unidentifiable blurred guitar/mike-holding objects are Chris Martin. He moves a lot and very fast and his energy and unselfconsciousness are amazing. This shot is cool enough (post-lots-of-editing) to be a postcard for the tour, don't you think? Would be better if Chris were a little less unidentifiable though.

Colours!

More funky colours

LOVE.

I love photo editing software.

Chris Martin exploding! Actually I'm not sure what's happening here but after all the editing it just looks very cool so here it is.

The stuff on the background when they were playing In My Place

This is the same as a previous picture, but with a little special effect courtesy of Nasty

Random picture of one of the boxes at the side of the stage. There were a couple of guitar cases on top but in trying to remove all the noise in the picture the guitar cases were lost :(

See! He's looking at me!

The concert was abso-fucking-lutely amazing.

I nearly cried when he started singing "Fix You" right at the end; I'd been waiting for that song all night and at first they said goodbye and walked off without Fixing Me and I was momentarily disappointed but then I knew that they'd come back and sing it just for me. After a few minutes of yelling for them to come back they came back and sang In My Place and something else I cannot remember - and I was still hoping and hoping they'd sing "Fix You". And then when he sat at the piano and played the first chords I nearly fell off my feet. (I shan't mar this post with details of the horrible British woman and her kids who hogged the railing in front and tried their best to push me and make me fall off the little platform attached to the railing because they wanted it all for themselves and didn't want their personal space invaded.) And I had tears in my eyes through the whole song. It is so cheesy and kind of embarrassing, but Chris Martin ignited my bones, if that makes any sense at all.

Worth every last cent :)

Also, I love my Seven jeans. I have been extremely happy both times I've worn them out so far. And they're soooo flattering! Good days, good days.

I have just DIYed a pair of jeans! I had these 4-year-old Abercrombies that fit real nice but like all American jeans had a far-too-long inseam which wasn't as intolerably long as the inseams of, say, Sevens or Earnest Sewns and therefore I was too lazy to get them altered. For that matter I also have A|X and Levi's which I've been too lazy to get altered, which I will give for alteration tomorrow when I pick up my brand new Sevens, because when I bought them the salespeople at Inhabit recommended me their tailor (they'd normally have sent it themselves but during sales they don't do alterations and the sale is the only reason I found it in me and my wallet to cave and get those Sevens) and I thought if it's good enough for Inhabit it should be good enough for me. So my darling Sevens are in their care and I've been too lazy to pick them up although they were ready on Monday.

No, laziness is not the theme of this post. The point is that I was trying to decide if I should also give the Abercrombies for alteration, whether it was worth the 6 bucks (don't ask me why 6 bucks is suddenly a big issue when I can impulsively plonk down 230 for another pair; maybe it's because my wallet is still hurting from that.) They had frayed ends because I've been wearing them long for ages, and the friction makes them fray. I think the way jeans fray at the end is very cool by the way, so I'd just let them fray and then when they frayed so much that there were bits sort of hanging I'd just cut them off. So I decided that I might as well just do the job myself, cut a whole inch off with the little orange scissors on my desk and leave it unhemmed like Gwyneth's True Religions. So I cut them off! And I am very pleased. They're a nice length now, still a teeny bit long because I'm so used to wearing extra-long jeans that I cannot stand the thought of them being at a just-right length such that my ankles will get exposed when I cross my legs =]

Also, the jeans have paint stains on them from that glorious fall I had on wet paint while painting the Daisy sets last year. So, these jeans have a Character and a History and that's the way jeans should be.

Tomorrow I will take my A|X and Levi's jeans with me, and if I discover that the Sevens have been suitably altered, I will also submit those for alteration. I will also investigate Chuck Taylors at Converse because I feel like owning a pair of sneakers. And I will help my brother exchange his soccer shirt thing at Adidas. And I will maybe make it to Orchard Towers to get one of those nifty International Student Cards.

I will also visit a store called Actually, located at Seah Street. Okay maybe that won't be tomorrow because Seah Street is a little bit far. I just discovered today that such a place exists, and it stocks Earnest Sewn! Am kind of pissed that I only discovered this after buying my No Exchange No Refund Sevens. Although I can't actually afford Earnest Sewn at the import-mark-up prices, or even the US prices for that matter. Maybe in New York I can convince my mother and her credit card to accompany me to the Earnest Sewn flagship store. And to buy me a bottle of Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker from the KrisShop catalogue. Because I just dabbed a little on my wrist from a sample bottle in a magazine, and now I can't stop sniffing my wrist. And my mom gets a lot of KrisShop vouchers for some reason, so on an SQ plane is the best place to get her to buy me perfume.

KrisShop is where all three of the fragrances on my dressing table came from, and when I bought a bottle of Burberry London at Tangs some time ago which my mother then convinced me to return, she told me that she'd buy it on the plane instead because it's cheaper (I'll have to look into that, because I never thought import duties added much to perfumes) and she has vouchers. A bit nonsensical but I think half the reason I bought Burberry London is because I liked the ad campaign. The fragrance itself didn't move me to tears or anything. I am so susceptible.

My mother just came in and I made her sniff my wrist and she said "God! American perfume! So shallow!" She has this snob I-Will-Only-Wear-Dior-And-Chanel thing. I wish that would extend to handbags too because I would totally raid her stash. Am trying to convince her to buy a YSL Muse in white. I wonder how much it costs and whether it comes in multiple sizes because we were looking at one of the pictures and she proclaimed it far too large. She of the proclivity to extra-large Tod's bags. OK the Muse is probably bigger, but it's the sort of bigger that I prefer because it's a softer leather than the Tod's so it's slouchier and therefore the largeness is not annoying. I hope there are multiple sizes.

On Wednesday I went to the US Embassy to get my student visa. My inbred Indian neurosis served me well because I brought along all the right documents and then some, so the process inside the embassy itself went very smoothly. Before, though, there was a veritable Mountain of paperwork to be completed, and there was a two-hours-in-the-sun queue (I swear I do not exaggerate) to get into the embassy before the security check and then the room where you take a queue number and wait some more fortunately in airconditioning and with chairs to sit on. I just thanked god I wore flats and kicked myself for bringing two bars of Kit Kat instead of a bottle of water. But my 'interview' itself lasted just a couple of minutes unlike some other people who stood there being interrogated for a very long time. Probably because they mispronounched Michigan and brought photos of their future offices to prove that they were going to work in the United States. And they couldn't provide accurate addresses. They were of my species - that is, Indians - so I am allowed to wonder where they left their brains that morning.

I probably shouldn't say anything else until tomorrow when I go back to the embassy (with a little yellow card this time which will help me cut through the painful queue, yay!) to get my passport and stare at my shiny new visa. Like I was telling Kelly, I hope the guy wasn't just being nice to me while secretly plotting to deny me a visa. After the visa experience and after hearing about the various initiation rituals that government scholars have to get through, I have decided to be very fascinated by the various paranoias that governments have.

And Lovely gets a bit grating after a while. Am still sniffing my wrist, though, if only to figure out why the fragrance is starting to get on my nerves. I have no nose for perfume. I should just stick to buying them for the pretty bottles. JLo's perfumes have surprisingly pretty bottles! And Creed have a very expensive very nice fragrance called Spring Flower or Pink Flower or something but the bottles are a bit large and bling. Creed is highly respected fragrance, though, unlike the dime-a-dozen JLo/Paris Hilton fragrances. And they're European so my mother will not dimiss them immediately. They are not, however, represented in the KrisShop catalogue. And if I were to buy them myself at Tangs I might as well splurge on a pair of Earnest Sewns. So I'll cross Lovely off the shopping list and make a plan to fit Earnest Sewn flagship into the New York schedule. Such is the balance of life.

One more reason to continue with Evil Job, make bank account happy and visit the UK next summer. Besides the fact that almost all my dearest friends will be there, of course.


Bon Voyage - The Jet Set Weekend Bag £245

www.pinklining.co.uk

And! I need to shop. Now. MAC Tinted Lip Conditioner Sticks, meaning no more icky finger-in-lip-balm-pot. Still have my beloved dark red Lip Conditioner in pot version, and Benetint lip balm also in a pot, but the whole icky sticky red fingers thing (that sounds perfectly disgusting, doesn't it?) makes them so un-portable, so the stick will come in very very handy. Also must cross fingers that the Gold Dusk limited-edition pigment's still available, although who'm I kidding? It's already onto the new collection and MAC limited edition pigments sell out so damn fast.

Also must check out Peter Thomas Roth for a sunscreen that doesn't clog my pores up after one day of use. I keep attempting to save money by buying from The Body Shop, but if I put anything from The Body Shop on my face which is not meant to be washed off immediately, breakouts are inevitable. Thus the concealer's been thrown away and the brand-new Moisture White SPF25 donated to my brother when he went to Malaysia. And he probably lost it in the jungle or something and I can't really be bothered. Must stop being cheapskate about stuff that I put on my face. Though when I go to the PTR centre and balk at the prices which will predictably be much higher than the exchange-rated price, I'll probably think to myself that I have too many face products that are lying unused and filling up a whole drawer and then I'll mumble something about hitting Sephora on 5th Ave with the mother who will hopefully consent to buy me expensive beauty products. High is the price of beauty, hur hur hur.

And Kenzo Ryoko! How could I forget. And still need to find that perfectly fitted, perfectly affordable white button-down shirt.

Rushing off now to eat omelette and make shopping list and count money.

starting over again you've made your mind up let your hard luck end and make it new do it now girl if you're leaving then leave if you need it then i want you to let your thoughts come in dedicated to you stories i've heard like a man on the moon lessons i've learned if you're leaving then leave if you need it then i want you to there's no use thinking why these phases change you you're not waiting here for anyone i'll break down if you come around when you need it i want you to take the past and cut it out let the knife turn to rust make something else up there's majesty in motion you've made your mind up if you're leaving then leave if you need it then i want you to if you want it i want you to if you're leaving then leave if you need it i want you to

follow through / hotel lights

i'm exhausted from thinking. exhausted exhausted exhausted.

German parking garage. How super-efficient is that? Apparently it takes up only 20% of the space that a traditional carpark with the same number of cars would take up. And it's less expensive to build, and everything is mechanical so you don't really need attendants and cars get retrieved really fast. Coolbeeeeeeeeans.



Paper soap by cheeky chimp. So you never have to worry about the public toilet having run out of soap. Just reach for one of these nifty little soap sheets. I think they dissolve in wet hands and get all soapy and clean. Trust the Japanese :)



This is, IMHO, the coolest. Alexandra Neel strappy stiletto with metal-covered heel. Beautiful.

I just received the following sms from my favourite uncle: "I am in Chicago. It is freezing at the end of May. You will enjoy."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I like cold very much, but freezing in May? That's a little nuts!

I got this in an email. Email is a constant source of amusement, no? Click on picture to enlarge.


Damn I just realised it's still very small when clicked on. Maybe you could save it and zoom in or something. Or ask me to send it to you.

How I love Daily Candy.

Latest recommendation from them: healthy cooking classes by someone called Megan McCarthy. Cooking classes are not really for me, but the opening line of the email? "Time for your yearly visit with Dr. McFriendly." Hee :)

And "her Quick and Healthy Cooking class, a crash course in nutritious cooking, is a crucial cram session for anyone who’s still living (and eating) like a co-ed on a meal plan." Which I unfortunately will be. And I have figured out that the Freshman Fifteen are quite... inevitable. Unless I become religiously gymtastic. Which I have been for the past couple of weeks, but that's only because I have absolutely nothing else to do in my life. Besides obsess over Grey's Anatomy. I swear I have never been in such a funk over a TV show since season 2 of Alias ended with Vaughn telling Sydney that she'd disappeared for two years and that he'd gone and gotten married to a blonde evil bitch.

A song by a Beatle / The Beatles:
Strawberry Fields Forever :)

A song featuring piano as the main instrument:
The solo piano version of Full Of Grace by Sarah McLachlan

A song with a woman's name in the title:
Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego by Rockapella

A song with a man's name in the title:
World Before Columbus by Suzanne Vega

A song about money:
Sabse Bada Rupaiya from the Bluffmaster soundtrack (title translates to 'money is bigger/more important than everything else')

A song with some form of weather in the title:
Shelter From The Storm by Bob Dylan

A song with parentheses in the title:
I Eat Dinner (When The Hunger's Gone) by Rufus Wainwright and Dido

A song made by a punk band:
I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones

A song with the word 'song' in the title:
Your Song by Elton John/Ewan McGregor. I prefer Ewan McGregor's version, incidentally.

A song that you love so much you stop and listen whenever you hear it:
Currently, it would be Let Go by Frou Frou or Grace by Kate Havnevik. However, I have never heard either one except on my ipod or my computer, so maybe Meet Me By The Water by Rachael Yamagata because I did actually stop and listen when it was playing in a Holland V boutique a couple of weeks ago while I was looking at clothes.

I just emptied my bags and one of the various things that came out was the programme booklet for Shifting Gears. I just finished reading it properly, and I have been hit by the strangest, strangest wave of enormous nostalgia. It's kind of... inexplicable.

I'm going to take my freshly-filled-with-workout-playlist ipod and proceed to the gym. Angst and ennui. I need to go shopping.

hello daph! yup i'm excited about chicago :) leaving in early september, and the clothing/packing dilemmas have already begun :/

list twenty people you can think of off the top of your head, answer the questions (don't read them before you make your list!) that follow, and tag five people to do this thing too.

1. daph
2. chit
3. kelly
4. nasty
5. andi
6. claud
7. vaish
8. shoojee
9. kitson
10. soph
11. minty
12. jireh
13. shirin
14. wiggy
15. michael
16. zhi an
17. karthik (from bangalore, not my little brother)
18. ramya
19. heather armstrong
20. mcdreamyyyy

how did you meet 14? in RJ, on the first day that we met our classes. I remember not being very thrilled with the class, but quite fascinated by wiggy's musical taste.

what would you do if you never met 1? i'd never have cried my eyes out in an airport, i'd never have been in a band, i'd probably never have fallen in love with BNL. or it would have taken me a longer time to fall in love with them. i would also not have read the two or three trashy romance novels i've read in my life.

what would you do if 20 and 9 dated? i'd have to kill kitson. brutally.

did you ever like 19? yes, oh my god i'm only COMPLETELY in love with her.

would 6 and 17 make a good couple? what a painful thought. claud's eyes would fall out from rolling them so much at karthik.

describe 3. she's a good listener. she repeats things and gets cranky when she's tired. sometimes she talks a lot and sounds drunk when she's really not drunk. she has dirty dreams and then denies that they're dirty. she's a strangely good catholic. my mother wishes i could be more like her, and once told me she'd take me to the moon if i could have grades like kelly's. i like her very much.

do you think 8 is attractive? he's tall and has cute hair and interesting shirts.

tell me something about 7. she's going to berkeley and i'm wondering if her Good Indian Girl-ness will stay with her in that ultra-liberal of a university. i would like to see her high on pot.

do you know any of 12's family? nope. his parents once, many moons ago, gave me a ride from somewhere in simei to mel's house, though.

what is 8's favourite? football team is manchester united, if i'm not wrong. music would be jazz. and jeans would be his apc denims which i hope he's washed.

what would you do if 11 confesses that he likes you? 11 is not a he. i'd tell her to quit smoking first.

what languages does 15 speak? english, chinese, maybe some dialect?

who is 9 going out with? last i heard, nobody. and he only blushed when asked about his love life.

how old is 16 now? eighteen.

when was the last time you talked to 13? it's been a couple of weeks. last conversation i had with her, i remember feeling very sorry for her that she'd be holed up in NTU hosting a Russian physics olympiad delegation for a week in july and therefore unable to attend the coldplay concert. but excited that she's learning russian.

who is 2's favourite band/singer? i know this! the decemberists. i think she now has all their albums and her favouritest song is Grace Cathedral Hill.

would you date 4? my little pumpkin-poo? maybe, if she were a guy and i had to date somebody.

would you date 7? why so many dating questions? probably not, i'd rather date 4 hahahah.

is 15 single? as far as i know, he is.

what is 10's last name? wong.

would you ever be in a serious relationship with 11? haven't i already been asked what i'd do if she confessed that she liked me? anyway, no i wouldn't be in a serious relationship with her. for starters, i'm straight.

which school does 3 go to? currently, she's teaching at RJ. cambridge in a few months :)

where does 6 live? 88 corporation road. 17-15. lakeholmz.

what's your favourite thing about 5? hahahaha she made it possible for me to know weeks in advance that coldplay were coming to town! and she therefore caused much hysteria and happiness in my life and i hope she gets to come for the concert too.

tagging: nasty (because i know she'll never do it), claud, vaish, kelly, heather armstrong (hahaha).

Check this out. Canadians are cool. And so are the French -- downloading for non-commercial use and P2P networks have been legalised in France.

Help!

There is a lizard sitting in the crevice of my door, and much as I hate lizards I can't bring myself to shut the door because it might smush the lizard into... lizard mush. Which firstly is cruel to the lizard which didn't do anything wronger than EXIST and secondly lizard mush is actually more gross than live lizard, in my humble opinion.

I tried rolling towards the door on my trusty rolling chair and the stupid lizard didn't move. I tried rolling faster, as though I was going to crash into the door (although I'm so afraid of being near lizards that I'd never allow myself to crash into a door that is near a lizard). I tried opening the door, hoping that the increased amount of space might convince the stupid reptile to move somewhere else. I tried grabbing a badminton racket (for once, thank god I have been forced to take refuge in The Room That Is Used To Store Junk And Also Happens To Have A Bed) and hitting the racket against the door, but the lizard STILL didn't move and I didn't want to make noise because my grandparents are asleep in the next room.

And if I leave the door OPEN, a) the light will disturb my grandparents anyway b) it'll alert them to the fact that I stay up until disturbing times such as 3am c) the aircon will leak out which is bad because the room is enough of a furnace already d) the aircon will leak out which is bad for the aircon unit e) the aircon will leak out which is bad for the electricity bills f) in the morning, people will wake up before me and make noise and I will hear the noise through the open door and be awoken several hours before I like to be awake g) other pests will enter the room, like the tiny flying insect which is currently trying to eat my fricking knee.

a to g, that's 7 reasons the damn lizard needs to GET A MOVE ON IT ALREADY.

EDIT: There are atleast two small flying things here. One is really tiny like a mosquito or something, and another is about a centimetre long. One of these repulsive creatures just flew into my face!!! I wish the lizard would just eat the stupid insects and leave me alone, pleeeease.

EDIT AGAIN: The lizard disappeared! While I was venting my frustration on the internet :) I just hope it went out of the room instead of coming back in. If it's lying in wait for me near the door in the morning I just might have to stamp on it. Or shut a door on it. Or get escape through the bathroom and get someone to help me do evil things to the lizard because I cannot let any part of my body come into contact with evil reptiles. Did you know there's this Indian book - my brother calls it the Book Of Superstitions - which tells you what your future holds depending on which part of your body comes into contact with lizard? Some parts are actually lucky. Of course, it's not for superstitious reasons that I avoid contact with lizards. It is merely because they're ugly and monster-like and brown and brown only really looks good on Bottega Veneta and Michael Kors runways.

I'm sleepy now. I shall go sleep. I guess I didn't really need to worry about reason (b) after all.

This is a random post about some of the strangest (ie The Poor Man What Were His Parents Thinking?!?!?!) Indian names I encountered during my stint at the bank:

Toshit
Viral
Hardik
Shitin

I will update as I remember more.

Did anybody know that in Sanskrit "Kaavya" means 'literature'? Interesting, yes?

There's a review in the paper today by Whitney Otto, about the whole Kaavya Viswanathan issue, a slightly confusing article because it starts off talking about genre fiction, chick-lit being the latest incarnation of the romance genre, and the fact that the attraction of genre fiction is its predictability, but it has all these bits about young writers not being able to write well, and that writers have to be a certain type of person which Kaavya isn't and therefore she's only a faux-writer. She says that "a chick-lit book comes with such specific requirements to be considered chick lit that enormous similarities to previous books within the genre are almost inevitable. Or you could just write your own book."

So there you go, she's halfway exonerating Kaavya, but there's clearly quite a bit of disdain. Otto talks about other 'real' writers who have managed to transcend their genres -- Margaret Mitchell, Raymond Chandler, James M Cain, among others -- and that Kaavya, by virtue of the fact that she's a serial overachiever, "might have had more success at fiction if she didn't bear the burden of the overachiever". She is not the sort of person one would expect to become a writer. Or rather, she might have wanted to be a writer for the sake of being a writer, but not because she's compelled to write. Because as a writer, failure is unavoidable and she doesn't seem like the sort of person who might want to take that chance. "If you aren't compelled to write, because you're maybe an overachieving future investment banker, then a write-by-numbers approach might be the way to go, book-wise."

So I guess the point is: given that Kaavya chose to write a book in this manner and this genre, maybe it's not so surprising that there are so many similarities to other books. But she could never have expected to be respected as a writer.

I enjoyed the book, but I have to agree with Whitney Otto that Kaavya doesn't seem like the book-writing sort, much less the sort of person who writes this kind of book. She herself admitted in interviews that she's not a very funny person and that she's into fashion but not really into pop culture, so how on earth did she manage to produce a book that's quite hilarious and loaded with pop culture references?

It's sad, really, because what I really liked about Opal Mehta was that it wrote about being an Indian in America without any angst. So many other culture-confusion writers -- Jhumpa Lahiri, Monica Ali, Salman Rushdie, even Zadie Smith -- are full of a sort of angst about their displacement and alienatedness and all sorts of things. I know it's blasphemy to even begin to compare Kaavya Viswanathan to such writers as these, and even if it was ok to compare the writers, it isn't a fair comparison because culture/ethnicity never really took centrestage in the Opal Mehta plot; being Indian never got in Opal's way. The Indian parents, family, friends etc merely provided humour. But it was enjoyable, all the same, to see all the familiarly insane Indian-people behaviour chronicled in a light-hearted manner instead of "oh my god look at my crazy parents I cannot stand my life I need to run away and sleep with a lot of lilywhite boys." I identified with Opal, really, because my mother's a lot like hers. Except she knows better than to wear a Hermes scarf with a sari.

However, one thing that bothered me about the book is that a family of Mehtas would never come from Chennai. Chennai is the bastion of all things South Indian, and Mehta is a North Indian name and the food mentioned was all North Indian and calling your child 'beta' is a North Indian habit. Though technically, for a girl, it should be 'beti' -- 'beta' is Hindi for 'son', 'beti' for 'daughter'. So there was clearly some cultural confusion going on in Kaavya's head. Kaavya is South Indian and originally from Chennai, by the way. Also, I watched an interview of Kaavya by Katie Couric and the way Kaavya mispronounced 'Mehta' really got on my nerves. She said something like 'May-da'. The real pronunciation would be 'Meh-tha' where the 'meh' rhymes with 'heh'.

Incidentally, according to Whitney Otto some people have pointed out similarities between Salman Rushdie's work and Opal Mehta. Can somebody please tell me what these similarities are?

I am tremendously upset. My favourite Cookie Monster Junkfood tee has a huge green stain on it. It's like the entire fabric has changed colour or something and it's so ugly. Ok truthfully I hadn't worn the teeshirt in a while and I wasn't really planning to wear it, but I saw the stain when I was looking for something else in my mess of a wardrobe, and I was very upset. Asked my maid if she did something to it, and predictably she started swearing up and down that she didn't do anything and if she had done something she'd have told me immediately and all that. Of course I can't accuse her of lying because I have no proof whatsoever that she is the culprit, besides the fact that she's the only person who could possibly have interacted with it on its way from my body to the laundry bin to the washing machine and back to my cupboard. Unfortunately I cannot remember if the last time I wore it was during the reign of the previous maid, because the last time I remember wearing it was the morning of prom when I went to check into the suite and get my hair done. That was December 7th. So I just have to live with the stupid green stain, which essentially comes to shoving the offensive teeshirt into a dark corner of the wardrobe and forgetting it exists until one day I clear the cupboard up, good sense prevails and I just throw the damn thing away.

Or I might get the maid to wash it again in the (hopefully not vain) hope that the stain will miraculously go away. Pray for me, friends.