I don't mean the Britney joke in this post. Really, I don't.

I started writing up some (ambitiously) meaningful post about Friday the 13th and the unexpected kindness of people, but suffice to say I got a little sidetracked. Sidetracked by things that include but are not limited to: packing suitcases, getting surprised with Tori Amos tickets from my Mama and ultimately watching her at the Opera House, Tetris on Facebook, plane rides where I contentedly drank Baileys on the rocks, more Tetris, and getting re-acquainted with Tropical heat and mosquito bites.

My sister is sprawled on the bed, watching Wipeout, and I am doing the only appropriate response - turning around every so often from the computer to make leering, pedophile-zombie faces at her, like so:

I'm sorry. That was a cheap blow.
At pedophiles.

Moving on...

Yesterday, I like to think I did quite well on fulfilling my humanitarian quota. By that I mean I contributed generously to the Philippine economy through some, uh, necessary shopping. While meandering the mall, Isabelle thought it hilarious to walk behind me and routinely fall at the disposal of giggles. Reason for giggling? She took it as a personal mission to count all the heads I apparently turned. And while I am cringing at writing this down, tooting my own horn, and generally floating face down in the pee-filled ocean of my self-indulgence, some of her anecdotes were, dare I say it, amusing.

Anecdote 1: We walked past a KFC. There were a group of guys sitting by the glass window. A guy takes a bite out of his chicken. We walk past KFC. The guy's jaw drops as does the chicken.

Anecote 2: Walked past a couple. The guy's head turns and continues to follow the direction in which we walk. The girl realises she has momentarily lost her boyfriend's attention and whacks him. This was immediately followed by the largest laugh of the day spilling from my sister's mouth.

I'll just clarify why I get ogled at here in this country. See, the average female height here might accurately be described as 3'11"(*Note: this is a guesstimate, slightly exaggerated for comedic effect). I am 5'7" - 5'8" depending on whether I decide to slouch. I AM A GARGANTUAN BEAST. You would stare too if you saw Sasquatch roaming around your mall, coming at you with an ample number of shopping bags. What a sight!

Today I made it to a beloved pump class at 8:30am. Pump is delicious here, on account of the class being relatively empty and thus I don't have to wrestle and shove for space. Pump and any subsequent cardio efforts were rapidly nulled by having lunch with Dad at Shakeys and conveniently forgetting the existence of the word will-power. Hello delicious thin crust pizza! Hello deep friend potato mojos! Hello chocolate shake!

This is now the part where I backtrack and attempt to write what I have been wanting to recount for the past few days. Here goes:

I'm at two minds about people. As individuals, I'm perpetually appreciative and so easily fascinated by characteristics like intelligence, talent, beauty, rising above strife, etc. So often I end up seeing so much of what I admire in a person, and consequently end up crushing on, wishing to be, and plotting to kidnap said person for my own personal enjoyment. But in considering humans as a race, as a people, I am pretty cynical. My default is to think that people are shit, attractive shop assistants will not give me the time of day, and people will cut me off in traffic. Basically, I don't have the best expectations about people when it comes to kindness.

I must say, however, that Friday the 13th seemed to test the above sentiment. That night was supposed to be Isabelle's 15th birthday party, and as such, I was entrusted with some last minute errands during the day. Sometime in the afternoon, I get a txt from my Mother saying that the cake I bought had no 'Happy Birthday' on it, and could I immediately replace it for one that did say 'Happy Birthday'. I should mention that when purchasing the cake, I did see the one that said 'Happy Birthday' on it, but for some reason, it just didn't occur to me to pick that one over the plain one. Is this a clear sign of mental difficulty? I think so. Anyhow, I returned to the store with dread in my heart, sweat in my 'pits - you know, that sort of thing. As expected, they couldn't trade the cake I bought for the one I required, seeing as Occupational Health and Safety standards mean that you cannot change food once it's been sold to the grubby customer. I asked if anyone in store could possibly just write the 'Happy Birthday' for me, but unfortunately none of them were trained pastry chefs. I found tubes of the icing for the lettering, and decided to just purchase one and try my luck at the shopping centre... only to find out that I had no cash in my wallet. Although the store had a credit card minimum of $30, in my distress, the really nice guy made an exception and let me charge the measly $4 tube of icing to the card.

Went to the local shopping centre and frantically tried to find a bakery with a resident pastry chef who could possibly write the happy birthday on for me. The only one who could happened to be my previous boss - whom I had not spoken to for a year since the time of my leaving, seeing as we didn't part with the best of terms. I'll say it - I was shit scared about asking for a favour. But then clarity sunk in and I realised I'm far more frightened of my Mother. (Haw haw haw - she's an exceptional homemaker - you just don't piss her off with sub-par domesticity.) I was not going home empty-handed, or in this case, I was not going home empty-caked.

I bit the bullet. He wasn't too friendly, but he agreed to write it for me. Awkward small talk pervaded the air. But he gave me a nicely written 'Happy Birthay', and all was well!

That night after meeting Isabelle's friends, finishing up with my share of the cooking and general cleaning, I ventured out via train to Neel's 21st shindig at Soho. I packed my purse in a haste that night, and forgot to pack my student ID. As my luck would have it, a transit officer was on the train, checking tickets and the necessary concession cards. I handed him my ticket and he asked to see my student card since I had purchased a student fare. I then rummaged through my purse and felt the sickening sensation of inevitable doom. Upon my failure to find my student card, he said, "That's a $200 fine."
I didn't even try to get out of it, knowing fully well that CityRail has recently had a major crackdown on fare evasion with on the spot fines. I just kicked myself for not having my student card that night since I am always so vigilant about having it with me.
So I just bowed my head in resignation and said, "I know."

Then he said, "Please be more careful next time. Have a great weekend." And he walked off.

HE WALKED OFF.
PARDON THE PUN, BUT HE MADE CONCESSIONS FOR MY LACK OF CONCESSION (CARD).

And if you've been fine, or know someone who has been fined, I am sure you are absolutely livid with me at this point. I fully understand. It's not fair.

But Mr Transit Officer, whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you. My gratitude runs deeply.

So there, people pulled through for me that day. And I was stunned. But I was equally appreciative. I definitely subscribe to the idea of karma - that what you do comes back to you. And while I am so incredibly grateful for how the tides flowed in my favour, I don't know why they did. And I think I have to re-evaluate my stance on people. People can be kind and people can be generous, and I hope that despite people pissing me off on the road, or reading headlines about atrocities and tragedies, or how easy it is to be a critic these days of people's endeavors, I hope I don't forget that maybe kindness and compassion aren't myths. They're real guys. As real as body image woes!

So as customary of this blog, I will round up with a picture dump from Neel's 21st. Just in case you want to know, my preferred drink of choice is no longer Vodka Tonic. It's Southern Comfort. Just, you know, in case we ever cross paths and you need something to quell my social anxieties with...

Me with the birthday swine:


And moaaar:















Night folks!
x

Posted in: , , , on Saturday, November 14, 2009 at at 11:33 PM 4 comments Links to this post  

Almost

It's ten forty pm on a Tuesday night, and there are only hours until I will be unable to include "university student" in any sort of personal description.


I will have my last class ever tomorrow. I don't know how I feel about this. Actually I do - relieved but immensely terrified - but for simplicity's sake, I'll just say throw concrete emotion to the wind and bask in some faux-indecision.

I've come back from the gym, where my favourite, very handsome receptionist greeted me with the smile I would sacrifice my meals for (HUGE CALL!), just to have said smile continuously thrown for my personal amusement. I swear, there are no such thing as lesbians, only girls who have not met handsome-receptionist-fiend.

He fired his obligatory, "Hey! How are you today?" doused in smile (cue swooning), and I responded quite fruitily with the pace of one who knows no such thing as pauses, "Ijustwokeupfromanap! ItwasAMAZING!"
He asked through chuckles, "How many hours was it?" and I responded with 4 glorious hours! He laughed and said, "That wasn't a nap."
"What was it then?" I asked. 
"That," with impeccable pace, he said, "was a sleep".
I threw around whatevers and rolling eyes, he humored me and threw around laughter. By the time I got to the treadmill, the face was grinning and the heart pumping!

This is ridiculous. I am twenty, soundly aware of my overall person, and still, I feel like an acne-riddled adolescent and get excited when attractive people show me the time of day. Hopeless!

But moving on, I really did come straight home from uni today and fall into a delicious slumber. The days leading up to the culmination of my academic servitude have been intense. Yesterday, I left the house at six thirty in the morning in order to get to Hannah's house and trudge off to film one final interview at eight. Made our way to uni, and aside from attending my last ever Magazine Publishing class, spent the day in the film lab, possibly in the fetal position, finishing off our project. We walked out of that lab at nine twenty that evening, and with exhaustion and offending sleepiness on my back, the one hour commute home was quite possibly the most excruciating train ride I have ever experienced.

Handed the finished film in today and felt vastly disappointed with the realisation that this was my last ever Television and Current Affairs class. So grateful to have had such a thrilling and inspiring lecturer in Mark Bannerman, who actually works at the ABC on Four Corners and the 7:30 report. WE LOVE YOU MARK! There is now a group on Facebook aptly titled "The Mark Bannerman Appreciation Society" for which I might possibly be an admin... Um.

And because it's virtually an impossibility for me to walk away from a blog entry without a picture dump, I leave with some stills from our copious amounts of footage - five and a bit hours worth of footage, to be precise. Naturally, I have an overwhelming amount of scenes to screenshot, but I only picked a handful to show:
















So goodnight, I have my screenplay to refine for tomorrow, which ideally if I don't fail anything, will be the last assessment I ever have to hand in.

I leave you with three picture of me being an uninspired pirate wench from the weekend:



Posted in: on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at at 10:37 PM 7 comments Links to this post  

i put a wig on you when you were sleeping & i just lay there & spooned you

The current state of my existence - a thorough exploration in bullet points:

* Tinned tuna and crackers have become a constant in my life. Their relative cheapness and easiness to pack with other necessary items for uni outweigh the obvious downside of smelling like a poor man's concubine for the rest of the day. It should also be noted that tuna and crackers are devious little f*ckers because they trick me into feeling good about my calorie-controlled lunch consumption, only to have me then put McDonald's out of business because I am a) immediately starving, and b) viciously obsessed with eating. And thus the whole "doing my body good" thing is grievously nulled.

* I have undertaken one of the most arduous character building exercises ever. Yes, it's akin to volunteering at retirement homes to wipe bottoms, and even more painful than watching Beyonce for longer than anyone should have to. (Sorry Kanye) For a large part of this week, I've put my self-consciousness on suspension... and worn glasses. In public. TO THINK I HAVE HAD PHYSICAL INTERACTION LOOKING LIKE A FOUR-EYED-BEAST!!1!!1!
 

* Have spent more than sufficient time in the uni film suite this past week to be at liberty to call it my (volatile) lover. He's made me laugh and made me (want to) cry! He's encouraged my creativity and pushed me to exhaustion! He's been at the forefront of my mind and been a needy, attention-craving little maniac. Like I said, a volatile lover. Just a preview of what I've been working on:


* Clean underwear has also decided to become a myth, or gremlins have decided to raid my underwear drawer and present the findings to their leaders. I have been wearing bathing suit bottoms. Yesterday, while walking back to my car from the supermarket, I felt a sensation that can be acutely described as 'falling underwear'. One side of my bikini strings came undone and I ended up walking the rest of the way back holding dearly onto my bottom, as if I were rescuing turd from premature departure. 

* Hannah asked me to do a speech at her upcoming 21st. I am ecstatically flattered at being picked amongst her HUGE list of loves to share a few words and anecdotes, as well as violently mortified about my dull droning's ability to inflict sleepiness upon her guests. She is beautiful and charming and the baby spinach to my cous-cous, and damnit, this speech better amazing.


* My feet smell terrible.

* And my beautiful Min turned 20 last week, so naturally we put our livers through some character building of their own. Cue necessary pic-spam:
















WELL HEY, it is currently 12:30am Friday. I have a halloween party tonight, to which I STILL have no costume. JOY!

Posted in: on Thursday, October 29, 2009 at at 9:54 PM 4 comments Links to this post  

sometimes, i love my papa.

My father and I have a very formal standard of correspondence.


Posted in: on Sunday, October 25, 2009 at at 5:08 PM 3 comments Links to this post  

Blogging is a huge priority [extremely picture heavy]

Look, I won't lie.


See that title? Well, let me clarify it a little for you. I thought about blogging, for days now actually. Thought about blogging on my drive home this afternoon as the sun glinted nicely off my bird-pooped-on windscreen. Situated myself in front of the computer, did the token back stretch in preparation for blogging, then I thought long and hard about blogging while looking at pretty pictures and playing some tetris.

And how! Look where we are now.

....The ridiculous thing is, the above words were written on Monday evening. It is currently Thursday evening. Time has elapsed, Kanye West died, Kanye West regrettably did not really die, the desire to blog remained present, and still, my wordcount remained unsubstantial .

Ridiculous, I say.

I'm so exhausted, but not unfulfilled. Today was productive, if by productive we mean I have tired (and smelly) feet attached to weary legs, am a few dollars poorer from beers, and have read an admirer note possibly penned to me in mx - the free paper.

No, really. Today was productive. Spent the morning in the editing suite logging and capturing footage for our tv journalism final project. We're doing our story on parkour - obviously am excited about the subject matter and the talent we get to work with. The thrilling thing is that I managed to capture the entire tape. The not so thrilling thing is that there are currently three other tapes in my bag left to capture.

Made our way to UNSW, also known as The University of New South Wales or 'that campus that regrettably is a lot more attractive than ours' to film an interview with a law professor. Being journalism students, we couldn't just film a lovely promo piece for parkour, so we're exploring public liability and legality with regards to parkour. Much to my annoyance, we discovered that the equipment store supplied us the wrong cable, and as a result, we could not attach the external mic to the camera. So I totally had to put aside my patent perfectionism, swallow my dignity, and settle for the sub-par sound quality of the in-built mic.

(By the way, any reference to apparent perfectionism is a joke. A funny one at that!)

Fortuitously, Djordje txtd me earlier of a training session occurring on those very grounds! So we got around to filming more footage, although I should clarify that Angus filmed more footage while Lauren and I ogled and perved. Maybe I shouldn't speak for Lauren though, so in that case, fine, I did it - all the ogling and perving. It was all me!

We needed to interview Shaun, but the lousy in-built mic and the wind were a most ill-fated couple, so Djordje was gracious enough to drive us all back to uni to obtain a functioning lead for the external mic. The interview went swimmingly, and Djordje, Shaun and I headed to the uni bar where I bought them some well-deserved beers. There was myrth! And there was laughter! I swear, they are my favourite parkour swine.


And while reading Mx on my train trip home, I came across this:


This may just be my overblown self-indulgence talking, but I think... that was for me. Last Wednesday, I wore all black - from my boots, to my top and my jacket - except for my skirt which was blue. (But blue and black are practically the same thing if we disregard that "ack" is phonetically different from "ue".) The train line mentioned above happened to be the one I was traveling on. I was handed a note, by the young man seated in front of me, whereupon he told me I was pretty, followed by a series of numbers of which we can assume are the digits of his mobile phone. Not to be rude and completely disregard the note, I shook his hand, told him my name and said, "I'm off at this stop. Nice to meet you." He then told me I had pretty eyes... which I think is a load of bollocks considering I am asian and asians don't generally luck out in the eye department. Just saying.

In conclusion, was that note for me or was that note for me?

Anyway, it's almost 1am. Am heading in again to uni to get as much footage digitised as I can, so shut-eye is in order. I'll scrimp on the words now and leave with my trademark picture dump from the night of my gig and from Hugh's 21st the night after.

Just quickly though: so grateful to everyone who swung by to hear me offend the silence with my vocal chords. Nikk and I did 4 of my originals (So Incredibly Profound, I Quit Being Miserable, If I Wrote A Letter To Myself and Walk Away), The Mamas and the Papas' Dream A Little Dream of Me and Britney's Toxic. Thanks guys! Thanks Nikk!

Gig:













Hugh's 21st:
(birthday swine & i!)

























Posted in: on Monday, October 19, 2009 at at 7:50 PM 8 comments Links to this post  

(:


Will update more later. Am getting my vanity on and getting ready for Hugh's 21st tonight. Yeow!

Posted in: on Saturday, October 10, 2009 at at 5:04 PM 9 comments Links to this post  

october is for births.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the majority of you have not lived. Unless you can actually say that you've had your piece of cake stabbed my elbow, then you haven't lived. Mona, however, has certainly lived.


Instances like this reinforce why I should never be let out in public. But she still ate the cake, mind you. That could be testament to a) how much of a trooper Mona is, b) how delicious the cake was, or c) how much my (unmoisturised) elbow-assault probably made her night. I like to think it was c). It's always about me, damnit.

Giselle's 80's-prom-themed-21st was a chill way to spend my Saturday evening. I had the fearful premonition that I'd spend the evening as a wallflower since I did not know her crowd, and also because my social skills are not much evolved from pond rocks. Fortunately, I found some familiar faces and even...I daresay it, made new acquaintances. It should also be noted that, while I love the western social paradigm, very few things beat the food at asian gatherings. By that I mean there is ALWAYS real food. And lots of it. None of this finger-food crap. And if you've read my blog enough, you know it's unnecessary for me to detail just how much I get into food. I get into food in a big way, alright.

Anyway, happy-snaps:






Disregard the fact that I look pregnant in the next photo. But it was the only (almost) full-length photo I found:


Aaaand the next photo, being a 'milestone photo', deserves its own special mention. For the past four years, I have been wanting to meet this fine specimen named 'Stef'. Stef is very close pals with Hilary, who I met on myspace back when I could freely admit to using it without fearing an onslaught of judgment... and now the Hilaroo and I are close pals. For the past four years, I've been hearing anecdotes about this hilarious individual, and lo and behold, I finally met her in the flesh:


Seriously, how stunning is she?! Stef tooted my own horn and said she stalked my own pictures and whatnot and has heard many an anecdote about me from Hilary. After needing to disappear for a ciggy, Stef immediately came back and relayed her boyfriend Duncan's, also a fine human being, comment. "I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here," he said, "but is that... babyporridge?"

Caught up in my own fangirling and then having them acknowledge / know of me... well you can imagine the hearty amounts of squeeing I did. OR CAN YOU?

These next couple of months are going to blaze on so quickly. October is essentially my last month of academic study, so that means a whole lot of being frantic. On top of this, everyone gets horny and goes at it on New Years Eve, which is why all the proverbial buns pop out of the proverbial ovens in October. Can we say more twenty-first parties? Oh you bet we can. Just off the top of my head, my tentative party schedule is as follows:

  • 9th - MY GIG !1!!11one (which I know doesn't count as a party, but we shouldn't think me above drunken festivities after the professional portion of the night is over)
  • 10th - Hugh's 21st
  • 18th - Hugh's 21st, part 2 (You wish I were kidding)
  • 24th - Min's 20th
  • 30th - Szwec's halloweeeeen party
  • 31st - Daniel's 21st
And come mid-November, I fly off to the homeland (AGAIN :D) just for three weeks though, to accompany Isabelle for when her school semester ends. We cut the trip short on account of her wanting to come back just in time for her formal.

And just on a really abrupt parting note, I thought I should say that the only thing better than a Hayley G Hoover blog entry is a conversational thread of Hayley G Hoover personal messages sent straight to your facebook inbox. Oh yeahhhh.

Posted in: on Sunday, October 4, 2009 at at 4:17 PM 9 comments Links to this post  

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)