Conforming?

Let Go - His

Your smile’s always kind, polite;

Your conversation ceaselessly bright;

When we go out, you’re dressed to the nines;

And your humour is a definite gold mine,

But never once have I seen you let go:

I haven’t yet heard you chuckle or yawn,

Nor have your eyebrows come together in frown;

Your aura always seems a controlled brown,

And the golden halo is your perfect crown;

But I want to watch how you let go:

To dare and be more than society’s norm,

To be a bit crazy and let your hair down;

I’ll stand by you as you let it all go

Because, I only want to know the real you,

Not the shadow propriety can subdue.

Like always, each person gets his and her say for the sake of balance.

Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow - Hers

It felt good to see you again,

You in your T- shirt, its colour a bit waned,

Your humour light, as humble as rain,

Yet there were many things changed:

The way you looked so long at me,

As I searched for the rebel within;

The appreciative slight nod at me,

As you watched me frown, laugh and grin;

We were just not the same, were we?

I have changed you see,

Irrepressible daredevil no longer,

I am not who I used to be,

I am now a very different me.

Gone is the glaring individuality

I’ve become less of an eccentricity.

Experiences gained and friends lost,

Have made me that much more calmer,

Dreams let go off, achievements reached,

Have made me judgemental and stronger,

I’ve been moulded by the passing of time

And assimilated the rest traits you see.

And if you don’t much fancy the new me,

Then do us a favour, leave and let me be

Don’t expect me to turn back the clock for you

I cannot go back to who I once used to be

Or you could just hang around and learn:

To accept me as I am today

To remember what I was yesterday

And dare to stand by me as I grow tomorrow.

So what do you say?

The guy just wanted back the girl he had known and wondered why she would conform to an ideal she had not upheld previously. The girl, apparently not having an answer to that question, is just asking him to go with the flow and see what comes of it for she cannot undo the changes that she has made (has been made?) to herself.

Isn’t conforming part and parcel of everyday life? If not we’d find people walking around with leaves as clothes, using blood to write, sleeping in the bathroom and peeing in the kitchen and only heaven knows what else.

We do it for society, our family and friends, work, strangers, world peace (??) and ourselves. We do it knowingly and unknowingly. I feel Sigmund Freud-ish here.

I mean, all of us are rebels in our own ways, and allowing oneself to fit into society isn’t all that wrong, now, is it?

Why Summer is Sweet ;)

Comin’ home to walk those well loved roads again :)

We're officially 6th years and I should be jumping for joy and grinning like an idiot, but instead a thousand thoughts are running through my mind. I have NO IDEA how to pack my two suitcases and a million last minute things have seemed to crop up out of nowhere. Every year, I get this feeling, this tightness in my chest as I wait to see my loved ones. Waiting. Packing.Flying. Transiting. Walking around, sight-seeing and shopping. Flying. Landing :)

I hate take-off but love the moment we land. The moment those rubber tires hit home soil is something I could never describe.

I hope there's crab kootu curry waiting for me. Oh, wait. That can't happen because the only one who knows when I'm landing is my brother, keeper of secrets and driver of the Vios :)

Then I'll hope for crab kootu curry over the weekend once my family's gotten over the shock of seeing me. And I REALLY wanna see the girls again.

Woo-hooo!!! No exams for 2 months :)))))))

National Exams

they wanna abolish 2 out of 3 currently in place. WTH?

while i agree that national exams make some extra competitive and add pressure, why doesn't anyone else find it to be a good thing?

Everything has the good and bad and as much as i complain about our current education system, I think that the exams are one of the GOOD things.

1. i NEVER studied for any major exam in school, except for the final one before graduating high school, and even that i did mere weeks before. ask my mum if you don't believe me.
2. i doubt more than a handful actually did
3. the exams sort of gave us a sense of purpose
4. while being able to demotivate when results come out, even the failures form resolves to do something with their lives. i have friends in this category. i have friends who completely gave up too. and i have friends who fall in between both of these extremes. so don't tell me that exams bring out the best or worst in people. they just assess, it's how a person responds to the assessment, but that would spark a conversation about mentality and i'm not going there.
5. marking the papers actually gives senior citizens a chance to earn some extra money. these aren't high flying corporate successes. these are people who live on their pensions or EPF. it gives THEM a sense of purpose
6. exams help with streaming.... i know it sounds biased but it does help identify ppl with artistic inclinations and science inclinations. ppl who probably don't have a solid career ambition yet. won't streaming help them figure it out?
7. term-based assessments are nonsense in my opinion.everyone's gonna take it lightly. plus, how can you know the standard of the exam questions? it'll probably vary from school to school. what's gonna stop schools who want better results from not setting easier questions? or giving 'leaked' questions?

too much pressure. isn't school a means to teach kids how to HANDLE pressure? instead they're trying to protect us from it like overzealous parents.

if they do wanna make a change, change it to continuous assessments + exams. like in the south australian matriculation. or they could just hand us play dough in school.

yeah, i'm more than a little irritated. call it nerves if you want to.

A Reason

This is for you guys at home.

My family, My Pillow

And I’d take the mighty moments of crazies,

With the bits of peace interspersed between,

I’ll also cherish the worrying parents,

And hold close to heart my protective siblings,

I’d gather the habits of all their lifetimes,

The good, ignorant, pleasant and the mean,

And would keep them under my little pillow,

The place each day upon which I choose to lean:

My spring of solace and determination,

That which fuels each day the fight in me;

My haven of comfort; the many moments of glee;

You hold up my aspirations, wishes and dreams,

With eternal hope that in the blackest night gleams…

Thank you for caring to bear the weight of me,

Do move over, let me too your pillow be!

Happy Fathers’ Day, Appa. Had it not been for you I wouldn’t have known what ‘acceptance’ means.

Happy Fathers’ Day to Annai, Attan and all other Dads out there too! :)

p/s: I used to be cynical about celebrating Mothers' and Fathers' and Valentines' Day and all those other days that so many of us think is 'commercialised' and 'cheesy'. Perhaps they are commercialised and cheesy, but they don't mean any less to me, because at the very least they give us a reason to be nicer to each other on these days.

That's what I think the world sorely needs... more reasons to be nice to each other.

Hope you guys have a great week ahead! :)

FB Conversations

I don’t like adding people I don’t know and love hitting the ignore button on those friend requests. I’m irritable like that. If I do add a person, I either know them by name, sight, smell, sound, blog, or through another friend. At times I do the unthinkable and accept unknown people’s friend requests. The things an insomniac can do!

Anyway, a couple of unknown people have been initiating FB conversations with me and while I’m aware that the whole purpose of a social network is to, well, socialise, I would rather not. 

Being friendly and approachable might ruin my chances of one day ruling the world and achieving world dominion, see?

*Evil laughter which makes my roomie crack open an eyelid before falling back asleep*

Right. Here’s a little sneak peek at my conversation skills and PR capabilities. Do take note, ya? ;)

Unknown: So what’s cooking tonight? (Obviously he read my shout out the day before about hunger and the woes of having to cook one’s own meal. It’s a long story…)

Me: I don’t know yet :) Roomie’s cooking pork, I think. Wait. Did you literally mean what’s for dinner, or was that like a ‘what you doing’ question? I like to be really precise when I answer questions, so what exactly did you mean by that?  

I add in another smiley as an after thought  :)

Unknown goes offline for some reason. My innocence, perhaps? :P

Unknown2: Hi, you look so good in your pictures. So, you live in KL?

Me: WAA. HOW COME YOU TALK ENGLISH SO GOOD, AH? YOU GOT LEARN WELL IN SKOOL IZZIT?

Unknown2: Haha… I’ve read your blog. I like it.

Me: WHAT? WHERE GOT BOG HERE? WEATHER VERY HOT LA… HAIYA. WAIT AH. I’M SHAVING MY HEAD BALD AGAIN LA. THE HEAT MADE THE LICE COME BACK…

Unknown2 also goes offline. I suspect the capitalized letters irritated him as much as they irritated me. Oh, and the lice remark might have done the trick.

Unknown3: Hello. I’m your friend’s neighbour’s cat’s breeder. How you doing?

Me: Naan inggu nallam. Bomb yeppedi seyyanam endru kattrukolla muyirchi seigiren. 2012 varum pothu intha tholil uthavipadum endru ninaikiren. Ungga idatthil ellam nallama?**

Well, he blocked me. He either doesn’t understand Tamil or figured I’ve got terrorist connections.

 Hmmpphh. Nobody wants to have a decent conversation anymore nowadays.

**rough translation : I’m good here. I’m trying to learn how to make bombs. I think this trade might come in handy come 2012. Is everything all right at your end? 

Movement

I was browsing through my D and a few pictures caught my eye. Without realizing what it was that made me open each file, I had 6 pictures minimized onto my taskbar, each one showing movement.

So I grouped them chronologically and found each one represented one year, except for the last two… weird, huh? Anyway, here they are :)

2005-06

First snow fight ever. Everyone’s moving and the picture’s blurry due to poor focusing, but I like the way everyone’s in a different position. Talk about a literal cold war :P

 2006-07

It was a tradition when we lived together during our orientation period to celebrate each birthday with a bang. One of the ickier traditions involves covering the birthday boy/girl from head to toe with flour and eggs.

This was when a friend cracked an egg and flung it at the birthday boy. Hehe… it made Ki duck for cover and the hovering egg overhead looks pretty unbelievable! Cool, eh? ;)

2007-08

During our outing to Yalta, Herb was trying for a star jump off a ledge, but it ended up looking like this! Maybe it was the Nike shoes...? Just do it! ;)

2008-09

I love this shot, which unfortunately I did not take :P I like the way the two at the side are closing in on the ball, eyes upward at the opponent and how the guy in the centre in taking a leap toward the ball, attempting to kick it midair. The energy in the shot is kind of incredible, I think.

2009

The quiet ones are usually up to something... If his eyes were visible, I’m sure they’d be sparkling with mischief! Notice the way the snowball is breaking off at the edges as Nav bounced it up and down in his gloved hand.

2010

A few weekends ago, at Saki. We lined up in a row and tried to toss the beach rocks back into the water. The winner was the one who tossed it out furthest, and the one who won it incidentally shares my name, except that hers is spelt with an E, as in to l-o-s-h-e-n-i :)

Can you see the blur of the pellets in the air before us? 

She shared with us later that the rock should be flat and fit comfortably into one’s palm for the best momentum and apparently we need to throw it with a flick of the wrist upwards, but by that time we had already managed to bury her in the sand and we couldn't hear anymore rock throwing tips... Hehe! :)

Doing the Needful

I twisted the ponytail into a bun and looked at my reflection in the mirror. “You can do this,” I told myself, noting cynically that my eyes seemed a bit apprehensive. I snapped on the rubber gloves and felt the familiar lurch in my tummy. Nerves.

I managed a smile at my colleague and together we strode into the well-lighted room. She stood at one end, and I positioned myself opposite her.

We wiped the area clean first, meticulously and saw no sign of the disease. Then we made the opening carefully and that was when we smelt it, the subtle smell of decay, and we saw the little dots that patterned the inside lining, tell tale signs that we had the right diagnosis.

“Are you ready to rumble?” she asked me with that quirky sense of humour of hers and I gave her the thumbs up. I was as ready as I would ever be.

Then we set to work.

We held ourselves in awkward positions, standing, bending over, squatting and squinting. Perspiration ran down our faces in rivulets. We gently moved the insides, sometimes removing whole complexes and just letting the cleaning solution run through. We made sure the amount of cleaning fluid was just right and dabbed up the excess quickly.

Then we found the focus of infection.

I am not sure how she felt, but I wanted to get the hell out of there. But to do so would have been a waste of our efforts and I hunched up my shoulders, reached for the roll of toilet tissue and started squashing the six-legged vermin.

They were small and fast but we were faster and meaner.

Squish-squish-stomp-stomp-stompity-squeal-squishity-shudder-stomp!

Both of us brought out our A-game and we murdered a good twenty roaches in under thirty minutes.

Then came the gross part. We had to collect their mutilated carcasses and scrub out their eggs and droppings. Our jaws set, we moved our hands mechanically, gripping the soap riddled sponges as though our very lives depended on it.

Satisfied, we dried the area with a clean towel, replaced the planks and arranged back the containers we had removed earlier.

She made one last survey and gave me a grim nod. “Good work,” she said and her voice sounded as disgusted as I felt.

I shut the door on the food cupboard.

We removed the gloves and scrubbed out, weary to the bone.

We had managed to contain the infection for another month, but there would have to be a follow up procedure soon for those buggers multiply damn fast.

* twenty or so roaches were brutally murdered to inspire this story, and every bit of the story’s true. Almost ;)

FIFA In Mind

Everyone keeps saying ‘Play for fun, not to win’ but how many of us actually mean it? I have to admit I’m pretty bad at sports. I can play futsal and volleyball, but I’m no where near decent at either because I either end up freezing or giggling whenever a ball comes hurtling my way in the parabolic curve that balls like moving in in sports.

My track events and netball are better, or at least they were better when I did them in school, but team sports always left me bummed.

If the team’s winning, everyone smiles, cheers and claps and if the team’s losing, everyone’s frowning and the silence surrounding a missed shot is resounding to say the very least. Team mates end up yelling or hissing at one another, and words slip out in frustration. Words like “What are you doin?!”, words that wouldn’t mean much except for the tone of voice they were uttered in.

Substitutes are sent in to replace ‘under performers’ and as they run out of the field/court, they smile but in their hearts I’m sure that at least half of them are upset. Upset at letting their teams down and upset that the coach knows that they aren’t good enough to complete the game for the greater good of the team.

There are those who end up picking fights with their opponents and I know that some of these punches are emotion-fueled while some others are cold-blooded calculations to disqualify both their own team and the opposing team.

I’m not making these things up however much I wish that I was…

But there are other excellent incidents which exemplify that the true spirit of sports does in fact live on in us.

Like when the losing team’s players hold hands and do a ‘happy jump’ for a game they played together as a team.

Or when a player I know ran the whole length of a field when the ball he kicked made an opposing player go down. He ran all the way, knelt down, massaged the other guy’s ankle, held the ice bag and each team played with only 10 players in that match.

Or when a sworn enemy began cheering for another girl because she was one smash away from being best over-all player for the tournament.

Or when a player asks another to replace him in the court because he’s missed more shots than he managed to hit and he knows deep down that his team needs that one win to keep their morale up.

When the game becomes bigger than the player and the sport becomes bigger than the score board. That’s when I know that team sports might be one of the greater inventions of man.

The author of this post realises that there is no mention of the big event in the world of football in her post, but she decided to bring it down a notch or two, to a level at which she could relate to the hype surrounding the World Cup. She is going to wear yellow and green and wave the Dutch flag the whole season, even though her friends might have to re-explain what exactly an ‘off side’ means. 

Peanut Butter vs. Marmite – A Matter of Choice

http://www.notjustbeans.com/images/peanut-butter-spoon.jpg

You’re like peanut butter.

The smooth richness of your talk, the heavenly aroma of something nice and the crunchy bite of your wit and humour, all made complete by the outer packaging that’s just too alluring to the eyes.

Just one bite assures a craving for more.

But when you are there, the throat swells up, words won’t come out right, the heart starts pounding and chest starts heaving as I gasp to breathe. Once you’re in the system, my BP starts going nuts, I break out in cold sweat and my heart palpitates, rhythm gone awry and I truly believe that I’m about to die.

You’re like peanut butter.

You set off an anaphylactic reaction in me.

You’re like peanut butter, the ultimate temptation, the one who gives me a glimpse of heaven and hell all at once.

You’re like peanut butter, perfection on the supermarket shelf. You’re the one I walked right past by because you’re no good for me.

Now marmite is all I need to get me through the day. An acquired taste, I know, a humble one too. Without your pomp and marketing, but see, peanut butter’s the unattainable ideal and marmite’s the real flavour of life.

And I choose marmite.

Courage and Determination. Herbs

“Courage doesn't always roar.  Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I'll try again tomorrow’…” 

- Mary Anne Radmacher -

“You lose half the battle when you lose faith”

- My sister, though she may have gotten it from elsewhere! -

“Any idiot can fail. To be truly great, dare to fail big, get up and face the world and try again and again till you get it right”  

- I think it’s from a movie, the title of which escapes me right now :P. Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Durnst, I think...-

“Success : 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”

-Thomas Edison -




Talking of courage, guess who tried making white sauce WITHOUT garlic? Hehe... turned out pretty decent though, thanks to the oregano, basil n bay leaf. And boy do basil and bay leaf have a BOLD taste. Completely unlike Western spices, but it's not nice to stereotype anyone or anything, even if it's just a bunch of herbs, so pretend I didn't say that, aite? ;)


Ooh-kay... too much talk about dried up leaves and stuff sprouting from the ground. Sleep deprivation talking here...


Good night, all. Am gonna eat and sleep and hopefully wake up in time to study :)

Amazing Grace

I've always loved church hymns. I think it may have to do with the fact that I was a regular chapel goer during my school days. 

In case you were wondering, I'm very much a Hindu. But due to my heritage, we offer incense and lotus to Buddha and I am also passably well-versed in many things Islam because I have quite a few close Muslim friends. I honestly don't bother about other people's religious beliefs. I'm inclined to think that it's between them and God but more than one person has questioned outright what religion I belong to and though I think it's none of their business, I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain it anyway. 


I'm aware of the Buddhism being a teaching, but I don't know why I personally feel it's a religion of sorts, at least back home.

Enjoy the clip. Watch her expressions. That and her voice gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside :)

Her voice adds a whole different depth to the song. God bless her.

">