Logan Echolls on my morning train

8am in the morning is not my favourite time of day. Especially when I have to be on the morning train to show up and serve my 8 hours at work. In zombie mode before my first coffee, I am stuck in my daydream, nested away in my own little world.

I was staring blankly across the train until I saw the Logan Echolls personified. Logan Echolls, the troubled bad boy of Veronica Mars fame, the one of LoVe, destined to be embroiled in epic love with Veronica.

He was dressed in a brown well-fitted polo shirt and jeans, crouched over his seat, somewhat nevrously tossing a football between his hands. His gaze was confident, if not slightly apprehensive and detached. Somehow, he looked sad, carrying the same killer brood that Logan always had.

My stare shaded by the reflective gaze of my aviators, I observed him intently. Logan was lost in his own little world too - it seems to me he is hatching a grand plan of some kind, perhaps a grand gesture to get Veronica back. Or maybe he is on his way to meet Duncan, who is supposedly in Australia.

The train comes to a halt as it approaches the final stop, waiting for the oncoming train to pass. Logan flinches and tosses the football between each hand harder, more loudly. He is impatient, as am I, to get off the train.

The train finally moves, we stop at the station and I watch him breathe a sigh as he walks away from me.

my mom is a crappy cook

There, i said it. Growing up, I have never really enjoyed home cooked meals cooked by my mother. In my mind, I associate home cooked meals with bland, repetitive and boring, it was more of a requisite coming home to eat rather than something really enjoyable.

My grandmother, on the other hand was a brilliant cook - I remember her pungent, slightly sweet but definitely salty braised duck to this day. The smell of braised pork claypot congee stewing over a charcoal stove for hours still lingers in my mind. It could be that I was never allowed a huge serve of it as she made it to feed my then toddler brother that made it all the more precious but I can almost still taste the smokiness of the congee off the tip of my tongue.

My theory is that this cooking thing skips a generation. My grandma was a great cook so my mom never really had to learn to cook well. And because my mom is a crappy cook, I made myself master of the kitchen.

So Unpretty

I want to be thinner, prettier, hotter - more desired. These are probably drivers that motivate 80% of the western female population. Unless of course if you're starving, then I guess that's not really top of the priority for you.

For all my other achievements and talents, I am most obsessed about looking hot and perceived as desired. Shallow, pathetic but true. Ironically, I am not one to wear make up constantly and spend ridiculous amounts of time primming myself but I really really do care whether someone I meet thinks I am hot. Much more so than if that person thought I was smart (because in my conceited mind, I take that as a given!)

And so it really makes my day when a guy chats me up - its a real booster to my self esteem. So much for women's lib, I help take a step backwards.

do i believe in fairytale love?

There is something out of this world abour the way new love feels - the slight flush, the palpitating of the heart, the incessant gushing and the way your whole world is now focussed on only that one person. This feeling, commonly known as butterflies in the stomach, usually doesn't last for very long. While it does, it makes my world go round and round and keeps me dazed and entranced within its magical realm.

So what are we left with when this feeling goes? Is my beloved really The Beloved once I stop having the knots of anticipation?
When I was younger, I believed in fairytale love, discarding my beloveds once that magic feeling is gone. As time passed, I learned to hold on to being comfortable, knowing the bends and nuances of my beloved, relishing the familiarity as a different type of magic feeling - but is this the real true love, or simply a compromise?

I think I still believe in fairytale love, but I don't live in fairytale land.

When drugs are bad

There is a fine line between yes and no, especially when drugs are involved and when you have taken them voluntarily. The drugs were weed and GHB, the company was a former fling and sometime booty call.

He called to "catch up for a video at mine". As a fully consenting adult, I said "Sure, come around". He rocks up at 8ish with a boring, crappy video in hand and we get that thing playing. We start making out for a bit while I chop up some weed and he starts pulling out a little green vial.

"Want some G?" I have had GHB before and I remember it to be some vile, nasty shit. It wasn't even really a fun experience, I was just kinda knocked, a bit carefree, but barely able to walk and stand up straight. Never been one to really say no to drugs, I nodded at him, "Sure, why not."

I scrunged my face as I swallowed down the green contents from a re-filled Japanese goldfish soya sauce container. Man, that shit taste as nasty as I remembered it. I followed that up my pulling a cone and sometime in the next hour or so (details somewhat hazy), we managed to stumble into my bed.

I was completely out of it. He came on to me. Being somewhat physically incapacitated, I really wasn't in much of a mood to get my freak on. He was rather insistent, pleading with me. I just really wasn't into it at that point so I simply turned away with whatever motor neurone abilities I had left. At this point, I really couldn't even move all that much and was barely awake.

I was however awake enough to know that he proceeded to fuck me. I didn't enjoy it and I didn't want it. But it happpened and I could not move to save myself. Then I fell asleep.

The next morning, a little awkward but not much different from any other booty call morning afters, I bid him goodbye and sent him on his merry way. We didn't exchange words and I didn't call him again.

Those damned little French cookies

One week, 12 foiled and 4 successful attempts. No confectionery has ever vexed me the way Macarons have. Seeing as it is Christmas and I was too broke to buy gifts for my friends, I decided to play super homemaker ala Martha Stewart and attempt some posh Christmas baking as Christmas gifts.

The general acknowledged truth about Macarons are that they are tough little buggers to master and chocolate macarons are the most challenging amongst all the macarons. This the ironic part. I am proud to declare that i have mastered them chocolate macarons.... BUT the art of the basic macaron still escapes me!

The aftermath of my experiments have left a macaron graveyard where the mishapen and footless would have been macarons go to rest - RIP little ones.

A caged bird freed

I feel like a caged bird freed. There is something quite ironic now that I am finally freed from my sell my soul to the devil job, I find myself paralysed, tittering around aimlessly, fearful of flying full force to pursuing my dreams.

This is supposed to be my time, the renaissance of me, where I flourish in my creativity. Every (now very free) second and minute should be used to write, read and draw, but its just not happening.

So I am still hovering within the comfort of my cage. The door is opened, but I am just not stepping out. I am sure there is much psychobabble as to the exact workings of this, but I just want to grab myself and give me a good shake, "wake up bitch!".

I will fly out soon, I promise.

who i was in high school

I was the emo kid. Kurt Cobain and Sylvia Plath were my idols, I wrote depressing poetry and hated everything mainstream. I sucked at sports, was president of the creative writing club and secretary of the multimedia club.

High school was a suffocating experience for me. I was blessed with a small but tight knit group of friends but I hated my teachers, I found the work boring and uninspiring and I yearned to get out of it.

One of the most defining moments in high school was the morning that my principal announced that one of my girls from my year had died in a car accident on her way to school. This affected me in a big way and I just could not stop thinking - what would she have done if she knew if she was going to die that faithful morning? Would she have gone to school in the preceding months? Would she have tied up all loose ends in her life? What would she do different?

While I didn't know her personally, this event affected me deeply - carpe diem I said to myself. Over the years, I would try to remind myself of the carpe diem principal conscientiously.

Pitter Patter

The intoxicating smell of impending rain after a dry spell is one of my favourite smells. It is not very often that it comes along but when it does, I always make sure I get me a few good whiffs of it!

Today was such a day. I was lying in bed half asleep when my nose caught whiff and soon it started pouring hard. It was a real priviledge that I had the leisure of staying in bed today. What luxury! Pulling my doona over me while returning to sleep as it rained outside...

When I finally got up, I looked out at the 11am dark grey skies outside through the water running down the window panes. I love looking at the world through the cloud of the wet window. It is like the outside is trapped in a snow globe, and everything in it is so still.

A view from the tram

It is torture to be stuck on a tram on a smokey afternoon with a flat battery ipod without a book. Especially when the tram is almost not moving, stuck in a sea of cars. Alas, I knew I should have taken the train instead. Could have, Should have.

Times like this, one has no choice but to people watch closely, looking at fellow commuters sweating away on the tram (but being careful not to stare and make eye contact) and peering out of the window at the wonderful suburban sights of upper middle class Melbourne east - rows and rows of look alike houses that I could never afford cross-sectioned by main streets with posh little shops and eateries.

Until the tram came to a dead stop, right outside a construction ground of a major renovation project. And I locked eyes with a deadset cutie in his cement stained wifebeater with a military dogpendant swinging around his neck as he walked his wheelbarrow. He was quite a sight glistening in the sun with his well-muscled arms tolling through with his wheelbarrow.

I would normally look away and blush, sneaking a look now and then but there is something empowering about being behind the shield of a passing tram, albeit it was stopped in traffic that gave me the confidence to stare into his dark brown eyes. He had a baby face and looked about 20. His lips moved to crack a smile at me, revealing his dimples and his first signs of premature aging, the crows feet by his eyes.

The tram finally started to move again and for the first time I was happy that it only managed to move about 2 metres before halting and builder boy was still well in my view. I looked back at him and smiled too and there we were, tram girl smiling to builder boy, our gazes locked in a suburban traffic jam.

The tram continued to move ever so slowly and we continued to lock eyes until we were pried out of sight of each other by distance, with me mustering a slight wave to him to bid him good bye.

Up in smoke

I quit smoking about a year ago, both cigarettes and pot.

When it comes to quitting cigarettes, I really mean ceased smoking habitually, daily and frequently. I do continue to smoke socially (usually while intoxicated), while on holiday and during a particularly crapola day.

The amazing and lucky thing is I am usually able to confine the smoking to those circumstances so I can indeed be free from the constant pollution of tobacco smoke into my asthma-prone respiratory system. My lungs really don't like it and I actually have never been able to chain smoke unless I was high on ecstasy or coke.

"But you were never a committed smoker anyway." says Jody, a former workmate of mine that I used to sneak cigarette breaks with, who was also unaware of my affection for mary jane. Jody was a hardcore smoker, usually going through a pack and a half a day. This obviously made my 2 pack a week habit look amateurish.

Scientifically, tobacco cigarettes are supposed to be alot more addictive than pot. However, I don't linger and think about missing smoking cigarettes all that much. I do however miss smoking pot. ALOT.

In Jody's terminology, I was a committed (pot) smoker. I smoked weed almost continuously for 10 years every night and the reason I quit was because I could not find a reliable purveyor to procure it from - ha! It just became too much of a mindfuck trying to score, so I decided to put it to rest. And I miss it everyday like a lover who has moved out of town. If mary jane moved back to town tomorrow, we would probably be in bed again in a heartbeat.

And so it is perhaps better for me that my mary jane trade links remain closed for the time being while I stay almost-committed as a non-smoker, sucking on the odd cancer stick from time to time.

Chapter 1... and so it rolls from here

Writing a book has always been on my Things to Do Before I Die wishlist.

I once aspired to be the youngest writer published - well, time passed, I procrastinated and that didn't happen. Then I aspired to write a super uber pulitzer winning book before turning 30. That's not looking particularly optimistic either, since that's in 3 years and I have written... err nothing.

There is this particular story arc which I am particularly attached to revolving about what my main character would do if she found out she had 3 months to live. Over the years, I have had various gos at writing a book about that. I tried the traditional pen, paper, write, then I had a go on the computer, finally I had a go on a some writing software. Everytime, I got distracted about 3 to 4 (very non-focussed) chapters along and abandoned it.

And so a few more years passed without much writing and too much time wasting. Tonight, I am lying in bed unable to sleep because I have run out of pot. I get hit by a sudden pang of guilt and panic because I have written absolutely nothing for the last 2 years.

I want to write again. Anything, everything - just write!