| switching places |
[Tuesday, August 28th 2007] |
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I'm moving back to my old home. I really miss it, and I've never really felt that comfortable here. So there we shall go.
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| coming a little bit short |
[Thursday, August 9th 2007] |
I'm leaving for KL in about three hours, and don't want to leave the promise of my nikah pictures hanging in the air. It is, however, three o'clock in the morning and I have been looking for jobs, retyping cover letters, reading old essays to see which would be appropriate to send to employers as a writing sample, and really thinking about what the hell it is I want to do with my life from here on in. SO. I'll put up just this one first as a point of intrigue (I'm working purely on the fallacy that the few of you who read this are, of course, interested to see more).
Have a good National Day weekend, everyone.
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| i am a happy camper... |
[Monday, August 6th 2007] |
...so happy that I have single-handedly gone through 915 wedding pictures in an attempt to narrow them down for the photographer to put in our album. I've managed to pick about 150. And this is from the nikah alone, which means I have about 2500 more to browse through. I will maybe do this next week, because it's 4.30 am, I'm sitting up straight in my bed, and I have motion sickness.
I want to put some up here but, because there are so many of them, have not yet decided how. So, yeah. This post really isn't about anything.
I'll be back.
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| it's out of my hands |
[Thursday, August 2nd 2007] |
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"Unforgiveness is like drinking poision and expecting the other guy to die," says some dude on Oprah. I feel like I've swallowed ten gallons and I can't stop.
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| they got it right |
[Tuesday, July 31st 2007] |
We were all in the living room when my mom said that she thought Calista Flockhart is pretty, and I guess she could be. But if you listened to the way Abdillah talks about her, you'd think he was talking about a chihuahua. It seems, however, that her looks don't really matter much. Whether she's going through her My Lips Are Too Big For My Face phase or sporting that I'm So Anorexic I Could Die Tomorrow look, she's still bagging the best fucking lines on tv. Some would argue that Meredith Grey has them, but I'd contend. Her delivery sucks (I'm speaking with reference to her "Pick Me" speech and her every voice-over) and her annoying voice sort of negates whatever good there is in what she's saying.
Anyway, if you haven't been putting aside your Monday eleven o'clocks for Brothers & Sisters and Brothers & Sisters alone, you're missing out. Flockhart plays the role of Kitty Walker.
***
Kitty: I had a boyfriend who cheated on me once, in college. His name was Alex Sapien. And when Tanya Cavinaugh told me what he'd done, I went. I found him and I told him what I thought. I said "the world is too fragile for people to be untrue. There's too much at stake, and life's too short for lies. And you're the worst kind of person in the world, because you wasted my heart, my time..."
Warren: What did he say?
Kitty: It doesn't matter what he said. What matters is I'm sitting here thinking the same thing about my dad. and I know its so silly, because I'm a grown woman and I know that's what men do, but he was my dad...and he's dead...and I can't kill him. And I can't ask him why.
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| daydreams |
[Thursday, July 26th 2007] |
I've been missing and thinking about a lot of different events lately. Some very specific, others incredibly generic but no less beautiful; hari raya mornings at my grandma's and the little slices of standing around at void-decks before we all go up to people's houses, walking in the woods at night (I'd kill somebody to be surrounded by those trees right now...you're thinking, "SHUT UP ABOUT THE TREES ALREADY," aren't you?), watching Florence bathe gloriously in the sunset, sitting on the train with Elvis and his always either half-drunk or hungover indie friends heading towards Medborgarplatsen, hearing the Swedish Train Voice Lady tell us that we are in fact heading towards Medborgarplatsen and to please watch our step when we get off, that afternoon at Starbucks with Shabaz, Kai, Faeeza, and Abdillah, with newspapers and coffee and our secret hanging ever so lightly in the breezy Simei air.
I don't remember ever missing so many different things all at the same time, and was wondering why I was until it hit me: It's because I have absolutely nothing to do. The consequence of which, naturally, is that I'm craving for anything that remotely resembles any form of activity outside the domestic/recently-graduated bum realm. I sleep late, I wake up to iron (if I haven't the night before), prepare breakfast (when Abdillah gets up early enough), and wave my husband off to work. From this point on I either watch tv and go online or go back to sleep. If I go back to sleep I'd wake up around 3 pm and then watch tv and go online until I decide to take a shower clean the room wash the dishes take the clothes in and wait for Abdillah to come home. If I don't, I'd do everything else and then take a nap at around 5 until Abdillah comes home. It really is quite appalling.
I hardly go out because of my cough and that other thing that I've been going to specialists for, and I have no money, which is just as depressing as being fucking sick all the time (I went to an ENT yesterday, and it turns out I have an ear infection too so if you bump into me somewhere, project whatever you're saying to my right ear only).
I need to stop whining, eat my vitamins, and send out more resumes ff'ss. Now though, I'm just going to lie down.
( snip snip )
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| keeping nocturnal hours |
[Tuesday, July 24th 2007] |
Quote of the Day: "I wish my pillows were like your breasts so I can fall asleep as soon as I put my head on them."
-Abdillah, half asleep, tossing and turning on his side of the bed, wrestling his pillows for the ultimate comfort
Indriana's Small Acts to Help Save the World list (as of today):
1) Buy one medium-sized bag. Buy one big-sized bag. Bring either or both when going shopping.
2) Buy Pruta Food Saver from IKEA. Bring Food Saver when intending to buy take out.
3) Buy big tumbler. Use big tumbler for necessary weekly doses of Iced Caramel Macchiato.
4) Buy big box. Label big box with "PAPER ONLY". Empty box into yellow plastic bag HDB people periodically selit into flat gate and put out for collection.
4) Quit asking husband to wake up early on Saturday mornings to chauffeur lazy ass to Commonwealth for Mendaki lessons. Quit asking husband to pick up lazy ass from Commonwealth when lessons end. Make use of country's very clean, very efficient, public transport.
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| hack hack |
[Monday, July 23rd 2007] |
After two visits to the very sweet and very soft-spoken specialist, it seems like I might be on my way to being alright. I think my first specialist was only being super cautious by seeming urgent, not in fact intending to scare me shitless. On a completely different type of being sick, though, I'm still coughing like hell. And on a completely different type of having your body do really annoying things, my left ear is completely blocked (I still use q-tips to clean my ears everyday even though my ENT doctor has told me that this is not a good idea). Consequently, Vicks VapoRub is my new bestfriend and I am partially deaf, especially when I'm eating cause then all I hear in my head is my food getting chewed. If I can stand it, I'll raise my own money before I go to another doctor to get my ear fixed. My mom has been paying too much.
My eyes are now half closed. The life that was once destined for this post has now been cut short. Between the end of this entry and really good sleep (thank you potent but disgusting cough syrup and the snoreless sleeping position that has found my husband tonight), I will try to decide whether or not I should send a letter to the producers of CSI: NY asking them to kindly rethink their decision in handing Claire Forlani a role on their show. She looks like she can cry any second all the time (Mack should be going out with someone stronger), and her British accent coupled with the Ally McBeal-ish pout that it comes out of make me wanna smack her across the face all the time.
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| nobody updates their blogs anymore |
[Tuesday, July 17th 2007] |
The most current development is that I'm sick. Again. They say if you fall sick more than twice a year, you're immune system must suck. It's a little bit over the half mark of 2007 and I've probably fallen sick six times already. My immune system must suck ass.
I saw two doctors today, one for my cough and another for something that's apparently become more serious than I ever thought it could be. I have to wake up early again tomorrow to see another specialist. I'm praying for a good outcome. I haven't been this scared since The Fucked-Up Beyond ALL Reason Incident of 2003, but that's only when I really really think about it. Things are different now; I'm at home, it's not -40 degrees out, and I have a good man by my side. It's not as easy to feel completely doomed.
Don't worry, if you're worrying. I don't know anything yet. It could be absolutely nothing.
Speaking of doom, though, has anybody seen the super depressing short movies from Live Earth? The ones of the drowning earth seem to come straight out of my nightmares, except with sharper colour and a better soundtrack. And the sad but funny but totally sad one of Rip Torn in a polar bear suit with one of his buddies sitting on a pathetic ice block they call "the last glacier in the world"? I don't want my kids to live in a world without polar bears! Would you want your kids to live in a world without polar bears??
I'm trying to figure out my game plan to save the world. I'm not kidding. That, along with trying to start writing an impressive cover letter for my resume (I thought I'd slack for a few months, but had an epiphany this afternoon about how nobody else but me can or should support my desire for very material things). If I come up with anything at all for either, I'll let you know.
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| on the other side of the threshold |
[Thursday, July 12th 2007] |
The big hoopla is finally over. Gone are the three days of nervous stomach aches (and gassing the people around me), the two-hour applications of acne-inducing multi-layered make-up and the setting of 5-tonne head pieces, the gorgeous gorgeous (but itchy and heavy) clothes, and sitting on a big stage having aunts and great aunts and friends telling me to stop fidgeting and keep smiling from all the way over there. Apparently I wasn't the most graceful bride, but I don't know how to smile for hours on end and how not to periodically swing my feet after being seated for so long.
Before you start thinking that I have some kind of an antagonistic attitude towards the super long event, I'll tell you now that I loved it. I loved the dresses, I loved hanging out with Abdillah and the people whose jobs were to make us pretty (they're frickin hilarious). There were moments where I distinctly remember saying to myself, Man I am so going to miss this, moments where trying to get a grip was serious serious hard work, and others where holding back was totally impossible.
Ultimate Moment "where holding back was totally impossible": Abdillah's mom saying to me as I knelt in front of her and looked up from putting my forehead on her knees, "Jaga Abdillah baik-baik eh?"
Wah. Lau. If a composed reaction had ever been formulated as a response to such a motherly request, it lay very very far away from me.
So far jaga-ing Abdillah and being a wife has been easy because (I love doing it and) I have nothing else to do. Making the bed, cleaning the room, picking up the clothes on the floor, ironing Abdillah's shirts and pants may not be such pleasant tasks when I start working, although God knows when that'll happen.
Now I know how my mother has felt all these years trying to wake me up and get me out of bed. It takes about half an hour from Wake up, baby #1 to the point where I've said it about a dozen times to the point where I would actually see Abdillah walk pass me in the kitchen. I'm not complaining, though. I know how even an extra minute of having your eyes closed counts.
Below are pictures from our pseudo-honeymoon. It was oh so wonderful.
( i blame it all on the five o'clock sun )
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| i need a head shot |
[Wednesday, June 6th 2007] |
Invitations are still not even half done (there's probably a hundred more to write and fifty more to send, and for that to happen I'd have to sms/e-mail/call people for addresses/meet-ups and I haven't done that either), my wedding's in twenty-four days and I have absolutely no idea what it's going to look like, I still have about five or six more things to get for Abdillah's hantaran and pick a nice bag while I'm at it, and me and my sister have not even begun preparing for our room-switcheroo (which will involve large-furniture-moving, repainting, and an insane amount of cleaning and reorganizing). This has from the beginning been a very kamikaze wedding, and with the help of my apparent idleness and frequent indecision, it seems that it will remain so until the day itself.
My mom (who has been running around staying up late making sure everything's all good and being the superwoman that she is) is taking me to pick a bed tomorrow and shop for dillah's stuff. I'm sort of excited about the former, not so much for the latter. It's not so much "shopping" as it is "looking extensively" for very specific items that have to satisfy certain above average standards without costing an insane amount of money, and that gets annoying by...I'd say...the third trip. I'm so tired of looking I don't even want a bag anymore.
And did you know, colours are the worst hell that you will ever have to coordinate in your whole entire lifetime if it all has to be just absolutely perfect.
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| days of taboo |
[Monday, June 4th 2007] |
day one
tantrums
abdillah: when we're fighting you get really.....???
me: sad
abdillah: no, some more...
me: angry..
abdillah: yes. you loooovvveee to do this when you're that. you LLOOOVVEEE to do this...
me: huh? throw tantrums?
putri and abdillah: YES!!!
epilogue
putri (the arts student): ok, at the end of a story you have a...
abdillah (the computer science graduate): an appendix!
putri: NO. A story a story!
abdillah: Oh! OH! A preface!
putri: No, at the end!
abdillah: A postface!
slate
putri: ok, this is a type of stone...
abdillah: diamond!
putri: no, it's a...okok...you're not early but you're...?
abdillah: late?
putri: ok, longer.
abdillah: later!
day two
glaze
putri: ok! honey what chicken?
daddy: uuhh...
putri: it's a type of food...honey what chicken!!!
daddy: ...
putri: okok...I do nothing all day...I what around?
daddy: ...
putri: DADDY!!! I do nothing all day...I what around???
daddy: laze?
putri: ok longer.
daddy: lazy!
putri: no, lonngggeeerrrr...
daddy: honey lazy chicken?
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| beauty swallowed you whole |
[Monday, May 14th 2007] |
Somebody I know said to me last night, "How come all your UWC friends are so ugly ah? I've always wanted to go to a UWC cause I thought the girls there were pretty. But your friends all buruk siul. Ah, and who's that ugly negro girl? Only Vasia was pretty what." Something like that, not exactly in that order. And all I could muster was, "I didn't know Vasia from UWC." I was half lazy and half didn't know what to say. I was too fucking pissed to do anything but turn my cheek.
So my beautiful pearsonites, my next entry shall be both my tribute and my apology for not standing up for you.
PS. The next entry (and perhaps more that are to come) will be set to Friends Only. If you want to be able to view them, you have to get a livejournal account, add me as a friend, and have me add you back.
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| love is |
[Thursday, May 10th 2007] |
They butchered my eyebrows, first and foremost. Shaved them downwards and upwards and sideways, and periodically trimmed them throughout the making-up process. I had never had a razor so close to my face in my life, and it hurt, but I was too excited to even let out a whimper. The first time I touched a single hair on either of my eyebrows was about ten years ago, when I attempted to "clean out the strays" as advised by some teenage magazine. I told my mom about it and she told me that people say girls who pluck their eyebrows will start seeing ghosts. Hence the first also became the last. This time, though, I was in the hands of a pro and it had been a while since I had paid any attention to what people say, and so I was alright. An hour later my newly-shaped eyebrows, along with the rest of my face, were decked out in about ten layers of very nicely applied makeup, and I was like, woo hoo.
I think it was the moment they hooked the almost metre-long curly brown wig to the back of my head that I started going "hmm". I'm not good at telling nice people that I don't like what they're doing, so I asked Abdillah to do it, and he did, but to no avail. We're weak in the face of persuasion. With the hair and the make-up and the selendang and the white nikah costume, they unanimously agreed that I looked like a doll. I guess to some, this can be considered as a good thing, but to me, it wasn't. I thought I looked like a little kid playing dress up. And then later, when I smiled my first smile in front of the camera, the photographer actually asked me why I didn't go through with the teeth implants, and that didn't really help how I was feeling at all.
The second costume we wore was the songket, and even though there were no wigs involved, the hair the guy came up with for this one took some getting used to too. I was trying really hard to get comfortable with the fact that I didn't look like myself. Meanwhile, Abdillah is looking more gorgeous with every frame. The third shoot saved me, though. They put me in a Javanese kebaya and kain batik complete with a sanggul and bunga melur. I guess you could say I was in my element, and maybe it was hard to go wrong.
The outdoor photo shoot that came after that was the real challenge. I hated everything: my hair, the flower on my hair, the veil, the overbearing necklace, the colour of my lipstick, and while they were putting all of this on me I could hear thunder clamouring outside. When we walked outside the ground was wet, and the clouds had sucked all the blue out of our sky. However, I have to say, the shitty weather didn't piss me off as much as the fact that I wanted to be beautiful for this day but looked like shit instead. So on the drive towards sentosa, I almost lost it, and Abdillah pretty much bent over backwards to make me feel better. He was pissed at first, and then a little sad. Apparently he thought I looked really good, and so I sort of took his word for it and pulled myself together. I was not about to throw a crying tantrum. I kept in mind the fact that we paid too much money for me to forget that I'm a grown woman.
By the time we got to our second location, though, I totally forgot how shitty I was feeling cause I was having so much fun. Between shots Abdillah would attempt to catch the bugs stuck between my gown and my netting, and I'm slapping ants and mosquitoes off my legs. We posed, and sucked at it, and laughed our asses off at the things the photographer's making us do. I had a ball of a time walking around with a wedding gown like it's no big deal.
There is no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't have been able to go through with it if Abdillah hadn't been there to put me into perspective, and to tell me things only he can say. He shows me how lucky I am to have him with shit like this all the time, and he has no idea what he's doing. But I tell him. I think it's important that he knows. That he's my hero in so many ways.
When we got back to the studio it took me like five tissues to wipe off the lipstick, and I used my own for the last shoot. I think it turned out pretty good. I donno. I guess we'll see. At least now I'm armed for the wedding. I have to be cerewet. It's a once-in-a-lifetime gig.
Now I'm off to decide on a colour for the big day's decor, and pick a cake to match.
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| about ten layers. |
[Wednesday, May 9th 2007] |
That's the amount of oil and dirt I feel is on my face every time I step out of the house. And it seems to increase exponentially with every hour. For that, I blame my genes and the 99% humidity. For the zit on the centre of my left cheek, however, I blame suay, which I must admit I am at fault for teasing for the past couple of days.
Tomorrow's the day of the long-awaited photo shoot, and me and Abdillah have been extremely self-conscious and extremely worried about the state of our skin, our teeth, our hair, my nails, my gimp toe (I kicked my left pinkie toe downwards against the bed frame about three weeks ago, and it still hurts like hell in shoes) , et cetera, et cetera. It's understandable, no? We want the pictures to be perfect. And we're vain as all hell.
Our hunt for shoes and wedding bands have been punctuated by remarks like; How to smile ah? I think I should go for facial. Shit, my teeth are so yellow. We have to quit smoking.
I have actually cut down quite a bit, and since I am past the PMS period, I haven't had any breakouts. So I was pretty excited to point this fact out for some self-assurance. And I did. And whaddya know. The next day: A pimple on my cheek. And the side upon which it has chosen to rest itself is, of course, my best side. My boyfriend tells me it's barely noticeable, or at least, photoshoppable. I have decided that it's beyond my control, and have therefore chosen to adopt his spirit of optimism.
The forecast predicts storms for tomorrow. Pray that we don't get rained on. And that I don't continue to chip my french manicure on anymore hard surfaces.
Now I shall sleep in an attempt to prevent eyebags. Goodnight all.
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