Time spent with the Koh siblings is always fuss-free, and I love how I can be completely myself with them. Today, we caught 'Wolverine' at Vivocity, rambled around the whale exhibit and the National Geographic store for a bit, then wrapped up the afternoon with a trip to Mustafa's at Little India (where we spotted the wild ad for some 'men's health' supplement).
Axton sent me this pic of himself in full Halloween regalia, and you've got to hand it to him - the boy has wit and class oozing out of his every orifice!!!
Spent most of the evening redesigning my blog (you wouldn't think it to look at it, would you?), and I'm too tired to blog on as I'd wanted to, but I do want to record this little passage from David Levithan's 'Are We There Yet?' as quite possibly the best articulation of the inchoate thoughts swirling murkily around in my mind:
"Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our families. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it into our heads that we need to get that feeling - that intimacy - from a single someone else. We call that growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find."
Yenping's comment that I haven't been tending my blog much has occasioned this post. It's true - I do tend to leave gardens and blogs to fend a bit for themselves. Teaches them resilience, I say.
The past weeks have been busy - there are snatches of quiet and free time, but they've always haunted and shadowed by the thoughts of the heaploads of work that still remain to be done. I think I need to get away from that for a while. How lovely it will be not to have to go to bed thinking "Okay, there're still 2 stacks of marking, one photo shoot to conceptualise, and gosh - Thursday is prep for the religion elective, and oh no - there's Writers' Circle tomorrow..." There must be better soporifics.
I don't want this to be draggy, so I'll blog a little instead about 'There', this new MMORPG that I chanced upon. I wanted very much to play Second Life, which I'd read quite a bit about, and which seems like the most interesting social MMORPG out there, even edgier than The Sims Online (gosh, my beta-testing days seem an eternity ago, now). But my laptop couldn't handle Second Life, and so I've turned to 
'There' instead, which has been a nice alternative - less gritty, more whimsical - which is good for me. I think what sparked off all this to begin with was a huge wave of nostalgia for TinyTIM (tried to get back in there, too - telnetting to yay.tim.org 5440, but I just couldn't configure my telnet client to work the way it should...and don't remind me what a failed geek I am - I couldn't get BitTorrent to work either.)
But back to 'There'. I was really obsessed the first two or three days - I still recall it was the first weekend of the March break. Heaps of marking, but I just didn't care. Here was the world of my dreams, and I was going to establish myself in it - figure out how to get dressed - snazzily too, unlike in RL - build myself a house...lol, it's so much easier when it's virtual, somehow. Blew a small fortune on purchasing Therebucks (There's currency), but it was satisfying (virtual retail therapy).
I remember falling in love with the American accent all over again - 'There' allows for something voice-over-internet-protocol, so in some ways it's a glorified chat room with avatars and hyper-cool emoticons. Ubergeek, a guy from Illinois in RL, had such a lovely voice that I had to mop myself up from the floor. Same with EmmaJean, a youngish mother in...? Some US city, I imagine. I badly wanted to move in to 
Ubergeek's neighbourhood - they have these 'neighbourhoods' which are essentially small virtual communities - a lovely concept, because essentially what it means is that here you have a small community of friends who know each other well, and that keeps that wanting to play the game. In the end, I scratched that idea, and set up my own Japanese-theme home instead.
But the thought that recurs to me is that perhaps the theme for this year is healthy independence. Sure, I'm all of 31, but it doesn't make sense to keep pining for a relationship if I'm just going to muck it up when it eventually comes around. Let me be my own person first, and that will be a healthier basis for a relationship if it comes along. And if it doesn't, so be it - I'd still be in a better state that if I were waiting for a white knight on some fiery steed. No more holding out for a hero.
When life comes to you on a platter
-
served up, like the head
of John the Baptist
It's easy to be profligate with
the platitudes, then - "Live your
life the way you want it to be"
What have you ever had to fight
for, I ask you, you prettyboys,
you monied and landed Peranakan dames?
So you've had a heartbreak or two,
chipped a fingernail while slapping
someone perhaps, but what do you
Know of real grief, the unremitting
despair of having to live your
life
the way others want it to be?
Never by your own lights, because
you'd been assigned the role of
the serving wench in the corner
not Salome.
And
here I was, feeling all jaded and morose about the Net, when along comes a slew of
new web services (mostly free, how lovely!) that have had me cheering
and staying up late. I thought I'd share some of my more interesting
finds. Everyone knows about Flickr, of course, but raise your hands
(and take 5 brownie points) if you've heard of...
1. 43things...a kind of community blog that lets you list your goals and see who else has the same goals. You can write entries about your progress on those goals, and see everyone else's entries. You can also comment on people's entries, and leave them "cheers" for goals that you approve of. You can also list goals that you've accomplished, and offer to help others complete those goals. And of course, you can tag the goals for easy searching.
2.del.icio.us...a community bookmarking site. You add sites that you like and they appear on the main page, along with descriptive tags that you can search for. Very convenient for storing and searching for your bookmarks, in comparison to the traditional way. Also check out Flock, the sweet browser that builds on top of del.icio.us
3. Backpack (and Basecamp, and Tada-Lists)... Backpack lets you easily create webpages for notetaking, making lists, setting reminds, and generally getting organized, without opening Microsoft Office once. There's also voo2do, but i think i prefer Backpack.
4. upcoming...lists shows, parties, meetups and other events in different metro areas and venues. You can subscribe to an events listing which lets you see an up to date list of events on your personal calendar program (iCal, Outlook). Currently only available for NYC events, which is a real shame!
5. (saving my favourite 2 for last - I really love this site). Consumating.com...we've tagged photos, goals, links, what about tagging yourself? Consumating is a dating site that lets you give descriptive tags to yourself and others for easy searching and matching. Has questions every week that you can answer to give people a better idea of what kind of person you are. Kickass wit on display in amazing quantities.
6. Konfabulator/Yahoo Widgets...allows you to put all sort of lovely useful/useless things on your desktop. I liked this a lot more before it was bought up by Yahoo - same thing with Flickr...getting taken over by a mega-corporation really does zilch for a website's personality.
Now, if only the nice people at Fridae could be persuaded to learn a trick or two from these new sites!
A couple of snapshots from the last few days. Here's a sunset of sorts, taken at the VJC Concourse...James and I were hurrying off somewhere, but I just had to capture this first.
Saw someone wearing this in the underpass between Lido and Tangs, and it brought to mind a hilarious Japanese skit I saw a year or two back...wouldn't it be lovely to have a VJC t-shirt that reads: 'VJC Futebol Clube'?
And just spotted at lunch today, a new addition to the really interesting people that pop up with fair regularity at the Marine Terrace coffeeshop. This was one cool guy in Jamaican reggae-type cap. Tony thinks he had long hair, I found it difficult to say. Beautiful attitude to go with the cap.
It's kind of sad that I need a Colour Quiz to tell me how I'm feeling. What's scary is how eerily accurate it is - and this despite 3 different attempts at the quiz. It's as if it can read my mind over the Net. I do feel cut off from many people...how does one achieve security? Another colour site I've stumbled upon of late: Colorstrology - much more pollyana and feelgood than Colour Quiz.
Recording my colour quiz results:
Existing Situation
Non-realization of hopes and the inability to decide on
necessary remedial action has resulted in considerable stress.
Stress Sources
Wishes to be independent, unhampered, and free from any
limitation or restriction, other than those which he imposes of himself or by
his own choice and decision.
Restrained Characteristics
Feels cut off and unhappy because of the difficulty in achieving
the essential degree of cooperation and harmony which he desires. Feels
that he is receiving less than his share and that there is no one on who he can
rely for sympathy and understanding. Pent-up emotions make him quick to take
offense, but he realizes that he has to make the best of things as they
are. Unhappy at the resistance he feels whenever he tries to assert
himself. However, he believes that there is little he can do and that he must
make the best of the situation.<P>
Badly in need of rest and relaxation, freedom from conflict,
and the chance to recover. Wants to protect himself against destructive and
exhausting influences. Longs for security and freedom from problems.
Actual Problem
Seeks security and a position in which he will no longer be
troubled by demands being made on him.
