thinkcink.net

Video montages of my trip photos - first one of France, second of Belgium. [High resolution costs more. I'm cheap so sue me.]

Highlights of France montage -
1. Jump! Again! Again!
2. Faces. One might notice that I also seldom reveal my face on this blog, not to mention those of my friends. Let’s hope the low resolution helps protect our identities somewhat. Erm.
3. A certain love declaration for me which got me all giggly.

Highlights of Belgium montage -
1. Foie Gras Crème Brulee. Mmmmm. YUM.
2. Deb as a model ghost.
3. Dog!

Oh how can I forget.

I now own a set of bikini. Body image issues notwithstanding. I just need to remind myself constantly that during the Tang dynasty (and perhaps in obscure but very much ENLIGHTENED small tribal communities today), my fatty bits would have been much coveted beauty assets.

Coupled with the new fins, booties and dive bags that I bought a couple of months back…it’s time to go diving again!

Again, spiderwebs and armpits.

But I have good reason this time! I was away. First on a short work trip to London, then to France for a wedding - my good friend Ms M is now Mrs D! Mind boggling! - and then to Belgium to visit another friend. All in less than two weeks. *pat on back*

Some quick snippets and observations:

1. Cindy has a new crush. Enough said.
2. It’s always better to be poorer and fatter after a holiday.
3. I miss living alone, overseas.
4. Boys are much more fun when drunk. As in when I am drunk.
5. I should go on a non-European holiday next. My pictures are looking more consistent but less inspired.
6. Mussels, check! Waffles, check! Frites, check! Lotsa wine, check! Amazing food and (alcoholic) drinks on the trip means that I have put on weight, which I now feel also energised enough to try to exercise to lose. Win-win situation!

More stories to follow. But for now, 1,500+ emails to clear. Erm.

Again! I lost track of time and my blog has spiderwebs in its armpits. Some quick updates:

1. My sister-in-law and niece are in Singapore a short visit. I am deeply in love with my niece. The little girl is a 20-month-old chatterbox now and is hilarious! Oh the extent to which I clamour for her attention and love! The day she hugged me, I felt like I had been knighted, awarded the Nobel Prize, struck lottery and reached nirvana, all rolled into one.

2. I am going to London for a short work trip right before my holiday to Bordeaux for my good friend Ms M’s wedding. You can tell this is a bittersweet announcement.

3. I have had so little sleep in the past weeks, someone pointed at my face, specifically the dark rings, and asked, “Are those hereditary?”

4. I’ve had yet another haircut that removed 50% of my hair. Everytime I go to the hairdresser, I remove 50%. The mathematicians out there can figure out at which point I may have just about enough to cover my scalp.

5. I am seriously contemplating buying a car. Mostly because I realise I am still too poor to buy my own place and would like to squander my meagre savings on a big piece of metal. So sue me. You may also wish to offer to sponsor my new place, and I will gladly snap out of my act of exasperation and rebellion.

6. I have given up on my marathon plans for this year, and promptly gained 2kg by sheer will power (or lackthereof).

7. Because my sister-in-law and niece are occupying my room, I now sleep in my parents’ room. The mattress is sunken in the middle and my mom snores. I think some of my dark rings can be attributed to that. But I have no complaints. Because I LOVE MY NIECE.

[Sidenote: I passed by this condo estate near Newton today, called Rich Mansion. Direct and forceful. Now that's where I'd like to stay. Hah!]

“Why are you not together? Obviously you like her!”

“How do you know? How do you know that she’s the one I can be happy with for the rest of my life?”

“You don’t. It’s actually very simple. You don’t know, until you try, and you get to the rest of your life.”

For years, I was the shy anti-social girl.

Then I gradually opened up and “put myself out there” a little more if only so the Popular Girls would talk to me.

Near graduation, I run into one of the Popular Girls in the washroom. She very kindly compliments me, “We love you! You’re like a clown.”

Therein defines my public persona.

I succumbed to peer pressure and designed a quiz on facebook called “How well do you know Cindy?” where I devised 12 tricky multiple choice questions ranging from my favourite foods to occupations of my ex-boyfriends. Tricky especially because I knew the common intelligent but wrong guesses people might make.

Is it sadistic of me to confess that I don’t expect many to pass anyway? Of course, I also don’t think it really matters that you don’t know my favourite colour. Who cares! So this is but not only a sadistic, but also narcissistic exercise.

But it brings up this issue of perception.

Here’s a public announcement: I am in fact a very private person. Might seem odd of me to say that, as someone who’s maintained a public blog for a decade. It’s perhaps the very fact that I have a reasonably well developed public persona that I am confident that the private (and so-called Real) me is invisible to most. It all makes sense, don’t you see?

Of course, I’m not as silly as to think that the public persona is any less an important part of me. I am still very much a person who loves telling stories, has an inflated optimism about her sense of humour and loves fried chicken. These things I don’t bother to hide.

I also accept that that there perhaps are other qualities long-time readers would have gleaned from this blog, that I subconsciously/unconsciously reveal in my writing.

But let’s just accept that there would always be a gap between (A) one’s self-perception and (B) the composite picture of multiple external points of view. Who you think I am, is almost certainly not who I think I am.

Which then is the Real me? A, B, or both?

More importantly, I have come to accept the reality that the success of the public persona has made it harder for the quiet and more private side of me to reveal itself to others so the gap between A and B might narrow.

Times like now, it deepens the sense of loneliness.

My mother called, just as an important meeting was about to start. She tells me, calmly, “Your dad and I are going back to Malaysia. Your grandma…she may not make it.”

In that moment, I contemplated if I was to abandon my meeting and dash home and to JB, to what might turn out to be my grandmother’s deathbed.

But Mom says, “You don’t have to come. You’d better not come, we can’t wait for you. Just wait for the news, we’ll call you.”

So I returned to my meeting, dilligently taking notes and calmly waiting for a phone call that never came.

She eventually got better and was discharged - Mom tells me there was a moment when Grandma couldn’t catch her breath, and it seemed like, it. But the doctors somehow did something right, so crisis averted.

Suppose it didn’t play out that way?

Days after the incident, it continues to bother me. Especially knowing that my grandmother is getting weaker by the day and spending more and more hours in bed, that she’s no longer lucid, that she’s not eating or drinking much. I worry know that the Real Thing will come soon.

What would I do then?

I was in a mad hurry. Scurrying down the steps before my office building in my 3.5-inch heels, I saw an empty taxi passing by across the road.

I raised my hand and yelled, “Taxi!”

Surprisingly, it stopped! In quick little steps, I then skipped across the road and jumped into the cab, smiling brilliantly and gratefully.

Completely made my day.

In a not-so-deep movie, a line that might be true:

“You know the thing about meeting your other half is, you’re walking around, you think you’re happy, you think you’re whole, then you realise you ain’t shit without her. Then you can’t go back to just being a half, cos you know what it’s like to be whole.”

In which case I count myself lucky, that I continue, blissfully, to be a whole half.