Thursday, July 27, 2006

It’s been a bad day. Please don’t take a picture. It’s been a bad day. Please.

I hate starting out my day in a black mood but sometimes it just can’t be helped. There is no real reason even. Just vague irritations creeping up on me from all corners. Maybe it is the mild hangover I am nursing. No, that’s not it. I never get hangovers. What does bother me is less than 8.5 hours of sleep because then my contact lenses are torture. So right now my eyes feel like poached eggs. I don’t really know how I know what poached eggs must feel like but surely this is it.

I was in a much better mood last morning. That was mainly because I received notice that U2 has FINALLY rescheduled for November. First Paul McCartney cancelled on me all those years ago and then U2 postponed on me earlier this year… it was quite a pleasant surprise indeed to find out they are coming back as promised. But I’m soooo not getting my hopes up again. Oh, and Billy Joel is also coming to Australia in November. But I think I plan to be in India then… it can’t be helped Billy ol’ chap… you’ll have to sing me a song another time. Speaking of Billy Joel, I heard Uptown Girl the other day after so long and I fell in love with it all over again.

Mmmmm… my morning toast and jam has helped ever so slightly. Although, it is some 0 point WeightWatchers fruit spread and it doesn’t taste all that wonderful. I don’t know why I even bother really… I know I don’t care enough about my weight and health. I still eat unhealthily and I quit gymming a few months ago. The 24 inch waist was a lost cause the minute I started drinking copious amounts of coke with alcohol. So now, as long as I don’t go beyond a 27 inch waist, I don’t give a crap. But I am trying to get back to breakfast everyday because we all know it is the most important meal of the day. I think you’re supposed to eat as soon as you wake up though – not 2 hours later. Well, it cannot be helped… my morning routine leaves no room for such luxuries. I have a real problem with waking up. Quite often I have a problem with falling asleep. But my real problem is waking up. I know that no one likes waking up early but you would have to get inside my head to understand just how intensely I dread it… and there’s no escaping the fact that I have to do it every freaking morning. Saturday is my only relief. Sunday I can’t take the chance of sleeping in because then falling asleep on Sunday night becomes an issue and Monday morning is that much worse. Yawn…

So anyway, I’m really enjoying my new food stash setup. Every couple of weeks I go to the supermarket at lunch and stock up on fruits, nuts, and chocolate, and breakfast items. Breakfast items include cereal, bread, and Marie biscuit type biscuits. I messed up on the cereal though – I bought some healthy looking Kellogg’s Special K thing with real fruits and it tastes horrible. I should’ve just followed my instincts and gone with Cocoa Pops… sigh… See, this comes back to the whole health thing. I don’t have it in me to eat stuff I don’t like just because it’s “healthy” so why am I even trying when it’s just going to sit in my desk drawer until next Christmas!? But my absolute favourite breakfast item is dunking my Marie biscuit type biscuits in hot coffee and having them melt in my mouth. I still can’t “drink” hot coffee, but I imbibe it through the biscuits and it is to die for! I hope I don’t get addicted to coffee though… there’s no room at the inn for more dependencies!

I haven’t eaten breakfast in four years. At home I sorta used to, especially when I was in school and college. Here, as a student I never woke up for breakfast, and as an employed individual, the snoozing has always been more important than the eating. Also I’m not into the whole Indian breakfast thing. I’m not a fan of idli vada dosai sambar… I know… and I call myself a South Indian! Indian food at lunch and dinner any day but the English and the “Continent” really have the breakfast thing down pat. Pancakes, sausages, eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, muffins, bagels, waffles, fresh fruit, fresh fruit juice… need I go on?! So my favourite breakfast/brunch activity is going to this place called Amici on Chapel Street… Amici means friend in Italian… just a little non-handy trivia… and they make the most unbelievable hollandaise sauce and the yummiest milkshakes. So that is a fortnightly routine… eggs Benedict on crispy bacon and freshly made toasted sourdough bread covered with a generous serving of hollandaise sauce and 1 chocolate thickshake, thanks! It’s all about the poached eggs today, huh? But seriously, handy travel tip… if ever this side, Amici on Chapel Street is a must-stop (and I’ve tried the same meals at other places and its never up to par)… and on a Saturday or Sunday around noon, look out for a rowdy bunch of people who quieten down considerably as soon as the food is served :)

Well I think I have bludged enough for one morning. Ha, the US dictionary does not recognise bludge but trust the Australian one to… and here I always thought it was slang. It means faffing, wasting time, etc. Ha, neither of them recognises faffing. I think I need to stop playing with the dictionaries and get back to work now. Goodbye!

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Can I get a Woop Woop Can I get a Woop Woop? Single ladies, I can’t hear ya’ll!!

I cannot get the freaking song out of my head. It’s my own freaking fault of course.

Do you sometimes remember things you’ve said or done and want to die laughing?

So thanks to Saturday night, I will never listen to this song again without blushing prettily and smiling embarrassedly… except when next I’m drunk of course… cos that next time with the right crowd and the right mood, this is an encore just waiting to happen! It’s a dangerous trend though… no one can shut me up with singing, but now is it also impossible to stop me dancing?

Its true that I think of her all the time… she still puts in an appearance in dreams of green lawns and white picket fences… and I still get teary-eyed talking about her… but I still want to tell her story to anyone who will listen… Holly in the Sky with Diamonds… the dog with kaleidoscope eyes :)

I used to think of myself as the girl with kaleidoscope eyes… but what does it even mean? Colours and shapes in a different pattern every time I open my eyes? Never see the same thing twice… makes for an interesting life… or not… I don’t know… I can’t express my thoughts clearly sometimes… And sometimes I get bored with trying to express my thoughts… like now… so let’s just drop it!

There was this song that came out last year or maybe the year before. It was the old Linkin Park Numb with Jay-Z’s Encore and I was pre-biased against it because this was a particularly strong anti-R&B phase of mine. I say R&B because I have nothing against hip-hop and even enjoy it sometimes. But these excuses from such “R&B” artists as Nelly and Akon and even Snoop fucking Dogg (I just don’t get Drop It Like It’s Hot) make me physically ill almost. I’m sure The Beatles make a lot of people feel the same way so to each his own and all that! But anyway, this song did grow on me and finally came that drunken night where I insisted on playing it every 5 minutes and memorising as much of it as I could… the Jay-Z parts were hard. I think Jay-Z is a cool rapper.

So what was my point? There wasn’t one… I just felt like talking about the song. And I guess it would be funny if anyone ever saw the three of us singing it. I even looked for it at karaoke that last time… of course it wasn’t there. When we go our separate ways (which is coming up quite soon, really), we have to do a night of just the three of us at home, singing Numb between cigarette breaks on the balcony.

So who is responsible for those karaoke lists? I understand popular singable songs and all but how does that excuse only five Beatles songs on the list? I didn’t even check for Pink Floyd… actually when I’m 100 drinks down like I was that karaoke night, I’ll sing anything. And I did. They sang Madonna’s Like A Prayer and they sang Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel and of course, I sang (whilst cringing)… my sing-every-single-time-I-have-a-mic-in-front-of-me song is I Will Survive and so of course I sang that… but the best was in the final 10 minutes of having the room with everyone fighting over songs and the mic, someone reminded me about Bohemian Rhapsody and I just kicked everyone out of the way to sing it. I might have to revise my sing-every-single-time-I-have-a-mic-in-front-of-me song to it… but then again, I don’t think so. I’ll make it my sing-every-second-time-I-have-a-mic-in-front-of-me song!

Sometimes I write for the sake of writing. Do you ever go back to something you wrote a year ago and cringe? I do it all the freaking time. Why is it that something that seemed so profound and/or entertaining then seems so pompous and/or juvenile now? I don’t know…

I love this latest trend of remixing old disco/80’s songs… they sound awesome… and they bring together the tastes of so many more people. They did a brilliant job with Owner of a Lonely Heart (and the video simply rocked, it was so cute) last year and my current favourite is Thunder in my Heart! And then there’s the whole clubby reggae business which also rocks… how brilliant was Love Generation and his new song isn’t too bad either!

Wow, can this really be true? Can I actually enjoy the music of today? I don’t think this has happened since my boy band phase in high school (and let’s not pretend we didn’t all have one)!! And it’s strange how those clubbing songs from the late nineties and early noughties (that is what they are calling this decade FYI) didn’t affect me then the way they do now. Then they were like background music in a way… a backdrop to much more interesting events such as wild beach house parties and meeting old and new people at discos. Now I actually listen to these songs just for the fun of it… and a couple of years ago a whole bunch of them were compiled into CDs called Wild Gold… the irony that those songs are considered “classic” club music never fails to amuse me. I love them though… one of the advantages of having house parties in Australia… we never get as fancy as having DJs so we get to pick and play… and we play Wild Gold a LOT!! And now I will be adding Fat Man Scoop to the playlist… haha!

It’s nice that I’m listening to music again… I go through phases where I just don’t… I didn’t touch my iPod for about five months this year. But now its back… and it certainly helps me write…

Here’s hoping the music never lets me go!