little miss may

After a couple of hours doing a few rough sketches, awful colouring and a final showdown with my coloured pencils + MS Paint, lots of eraser shavings from rubbing off the faint pencil marks…

May I present…

The portrait of our beloved Doktor Sotong Chen, Rainbow of Rainbows, Sotong of Sotongs, ever esteemed wisest sotong there ever is.

Like or not?

Rainbow tentacles for hair,
Ink-splotched (and not blood-stained) skirt,
White lab coat, stethoscope around the neck,
Pouty red lips,
Almost mesmerizing eyes (which I couldn’t quite get right).

Nothing as great as L B’s OctoBunny, of course. I don’t have the right drawing tools with me, let alone Photoshop! (And the last I checked, the shipment of MacBooks is stuck somewhere between the sea and customs… Aarrgh!! *Pulls out a few tentacles…* )

So, er…

Anyone else want their portraits done by an amateur artist?

*GRIN*

(p.s. If you’ve submitted a comment and don’t see it anywhere after that, don’t panic! My Akismet SpamGuard probably thought you were a bad seed. Not to worry, I’ll check regularly and make sure all your genuine comments are rescued from the Spamcycle Bin!)

I need to rant disjointedly today.
Whatever you read is what I feel right now.
Doesn’t mean it’ll carry forward to tomorrow and days after, doesn’t mean it won’t.

I think…

I’m running out of steam.

I still have my Ming Tombs & Great Wall tales to tell, but hard as I try, I can’t seem to work it up to write my story. I have little thoughts here and there but before I could catch and make sense out of them, they disappear into thin air. Maybe next time.

I looked through some of my older posts, and I wonder where my direction has gone. I started this blog for the purpose of settling my thoughts and voice out what I couldn’t with my own mouth. Where did that go? I guess the truth is because a lot of my readers know who I am, and it becomes uncomfortable revealing too much of what’s behind the walls.

Some days — like this one — I can’t be bothered hiding.

I feel tired.

I miss the days when I didn’t have to make decisions, strategise and manage. The pressure gets to me sometimes and I always wonder if I’m able to live up to such high expectations. And more often than not I feel I’ve not done a good enough job, simply because I’m looking for ways to slack or escape from it all. Then the guilt mounts up, the reality sinks in… and I make decisions, strategise and manage. It’s a vicious cycle.

I’m not motivated to make my move to Oz except for the nagging feeling that I know it’s something I have to do. Tell me again, why I’m doing this?

Sometimes I wish the earth would just open up and swallow me whole, keeping me safe and warm in its core. Alternatively I don’t mind staying in bed and wallow in self-pity for a few hours.

I wonder if I’m suffering from depression. Not the kind that needs medication, but close enough. I know I won’t have a public mental breakdown, but at times it becomes unbearable. I think this is one of those times.

Scary, isn’t it? Well, that’s who I am.

I know things will get better. No need to repeat.

End of rant.
Come back soon.

I’m in the mood for a little bit of romance.

For a little bit of love.

I was driving home late last night and I happened to tune into Light & Easy for a spot of soothing tunes. Neil Sedaka charmed me with his Laughter in the Rain…

Strolling along country roads with my baby
It starts to rain, it begins to pour
Without an umbrella we’re soaked to the skin
I feel a shiver run up my spine
I feel the warmth of her hand in mine

Oo, I hear laughter in the rain
Walking hand in hand with the one I love
Oo, how I love the rainy days
And the happy way I feel inside

After a while we run under a tree
I turn to her and she kisses me
There with the beat of the rain on the leaves
Softly she breathes and I close my eyes
Sharing our love under stormy skies

Oo, I hear laughter in the rain
walking hand in hand with the one I love
Oo, how I love the rainy days
And the happy way I feel inside

I feel the warmth of her hand in mine

Oo, I hear laughter in the rain
Walking hand in hand with the one I love
Oo, how I love the rainy days
And the happy way I feel inside

I haven’t heard this song for the longest time. I downloaded it this morning and had it on repeat on my iTunes. It certainly does put a charm to your heart with the easy beat and mellow lyrics.

I have a little playlist called “Laaammmm”, with songs that put me in a dreamy mood…

Loving you
Is easy because you’re beautiful
Making love with you
Is all I want to do

Building sand castles in my mind.

Sometimes I wonder if I dream too much, though. When the tracks are done, time has passed and clouds have floated by, I descend to earth where the roses are gone, the love-letters are in ashes, the whispers of sweet nothings are silenced.

Too bad the feel-good fluff hardly ever lasts for long. It’s like a temporary high, a sweet drug that makes you feel giddy with pleasure and subsides again after the sparkles have died down.

But it still makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, yea?

Ahhh.

Call me what you want.

I may not seem to be it on the outside.

But I resign to the fact that I am a hopeless romantic on the inside.

And I like it.

I’m HOME.

Oh, it felt good waking up late, without a rush.

On my own little bed.

My dog barking at some passer-by out front.

The fan gently blowing breezy air on my face.

Construction sounds from a neighbourhood house under renovation.

Temperamental Streamyx connection that gets disconnected once every few hours.

Talking to my parents when I go downstairs for breakfast.

Rain… oh, blessed rain.

I’ve only been away for 8 days, and though it’s not long enough a period to make me miss anything much back home, somehow it just felt great to be back on familiar ground, where people spoke languages I understood, and I could be as self-indulgent as I want without a worry.

Oh, and it’s so great being able to visit all your blogs on Blogspot again! One by one, I’ll be coming around to say hello… that’s on my itinerary for today.

Let me go off tangent a bit and relate to you what happened on my journey home yesterday. A bit of a long story, but bear with me, yea?

Started at the hotel where my colleague helped hail a taxi for me and explained to the cabbie where I was heading. I had a feeling he was waiting for another passenger that didn’t show up, and he didn’t seem pleased that I was taking up his ride instead. Either way, I got on, after much what sounded like debate, he almost reluctantly started his journey to take me to the airport.Being absolutely lousy at Mandarin, I tried my best to understand what he was asking in his thick accent — where am I from, where was I going, domestic or international, what time was my flight, which highway do I want to take. It was quite embarrassing yet quite funny trying to speak putonghua to a native who didn’t understand any English except for the word ‘airport’.

Anyway, we turned out to the airport expressway, and just a short way after that, a massive traffic jam loomed in front of us due to a three-car accident some way up front. Bumper to bumper, every driver trying to inch their vehicle as far forward as possible, squeezing this way and that. Oh bother. I looked at the time, it was already 2:30PM. My flight was at 4:35PM. I was supposed to be at the airport already, or at least close by. This didn’t look good.

The cabbie must’ve sensed my anxiety by my slight fidgeting, and asked again what time my flight was. He assured me that I could definitely make it before 3:30PM, which was just cutting it for check-in. Ok, that’s not too bad.

Suddenly he spotted this man along the highway, with a small hand luggage and some documents in his hand. What he was doing there, we didn’t know but I’m guessing he crossed over from a trunk road which ran parallel to the highway. The cabbie pointed and said he’s probably going to the airport as well, and asked if I mind giving him a ride. I didn’t see any problem with it, since how on earth would that guy get a cab in the middle of the highway anyway? Thank goodness we were still going at a crawling pace, and were able to inch our way to the side.

From what little Mandarin I understood, I could make out that the guy was very grateful we picked him up and thanked the cabbie profusely. The cabbie then startled me by saying he should be thanking me instead for letting him up the cab, and not him! What a laugh! I mean, it was the cabbie that spotted the poor guy and suggested to give him a ride, not me. Oh well. Stranger things have happened, but this was certainly strange enough that day.

What’s more, the cabbie somehow convinced the guy that he should be paying for a bit of my taxi fare because of the good deed, and the guy agreed. And when we reached the airport, guess what? The man paid my full RMB100 fare plus the toll fee, and I got the receipts for claims! I felt so bad he had to pay so much for his short ride. And no matter how I tried — using broken Mandarin and sign language — he refused to take the money back. Awwwww. I was speechless for a while, and all I could do afterward was to thank him for paying on my behalf.

It was a really nice gesture. Left me a good last impression of Beijing.

At the airport, I finally stepped into Starbucks for the first time since my stay there and ordered a latte and a muffin. The latte tasted darn good after a week of instant coffee at the hotel and whatever I got from McDonald’s. The muffin was so-so, but I was hungry having not eaten lunch earlier. I didn’t mind though, it was a good change from all the rich Chinese food I’d been indulging in for the past week.

The passengers on my flight back to KL were about 90% Malaysians. You could tell by the frantic rush to the gate when they unhooked the partitioning line. They didn’t even bother waiting for the announcement for boarding by seat numbers. Oh, and they were a noisy bunch too. I was stuck between 2 large tour groups — one Chinese and one Malay — and you could imagine the noise level as they sorted themselves out on the plane.

Either way…

It’s still good to be home.

To my small, messy room.

To sitting on my bed and blogging instead of at the desk.

To hugging my own pillow to sleep at night.

Mmmmm.

A few days ago I made an arrangement for a day trip to the Great Wall and Ming Tombs with the hotel, which was organised by another tour company. I’ll save up those two for another day; for now, let me relate on the smaller but no less interesting visits in between the two big tourist spots. We made pit stops to a jade factory and a something which looked like a traditional Chinese medicine hall / store.

The jade factory was interesting; they taught us how to differentiate A from B grade, and whether it’s real or fake jade. I wasn’t much of a jade person, so whilst the others from our tour group selected items to purchase, I just wandered around snapping a few shots of the place. Everything sold there, you could get it back home. And perhaps even cheaper too. I didn’t want to risk buying something that was overpriced, especially since I didn’t know my jade stuff.

The traditional Chinese medicine place was a bit of hoot, if you asked me. This man introduced us to the yin and yang of nature and how we have that in our bodies, why we have aches and pains due to the imbalances of these two forces, how Chinese medicine is all made from natural herbs, punctuating his sentences with “ah!” here and “ah!” there every now and then. Really amusing.

Then two kind of elderly doctors in white lab coats came in to give us free consultation by checking our pulse, just like how it was in the old days. Apparently our pulses at the left and right hand each give out different signals. Ah! Ok. The Italians and Finnish who were in our group (there were 5 of them) bought some recommended herbs which would “solve” their problems over time (of course, this meant they had to get more than just one box). The two Singaporeans, two Chinese nationals and two Americans were like me; we listened, we smiled, we said thank you. Ah. You get what we’re trying to do, yes? Ah!

Lunch was at a place about half an hour away from the Great Wall. There was a cloisonné enamel factory there, where they made all sorts of vases, jewellery, wall hangings and ornaments. A very interesting sight to see, since it was the first time I was taken through the process of how it was done. After the little factory section, we were led into the main section which was three times as big, selling all the finished products, silk, jade, pearl, paintings, and all other “Chinese” things you would expect tourists to be taken in by. I couldn’t help but walk around with a rather unexcited feeling, because everything they sold here has become a common sight in our own local markets. Besides, my Mom’s multiple trips to China have sort of grown what little collection we have in the house.

Someone (or two) commented to me on a similar topic. I find that the uniqueness of China — other than the historical sights, the culture and perhaps the food — seems to have waned a bit in my eyes. The daily things we see and buy are no less different from what’s available in other parts of the world now. In a way, almost the entire world is now made in China. Literally! Food for thought, isn’t it?

Ah!