getting thrown into the deep end

I had my first class in more than seven weeks today. It was Substance Abuse with a lecturer whom we've seen around and heard about, but never actually had. She was quite amusing. She said if she ever gets an MC, she will call the doctor up to verify your symptoms and such. And if you have to miss a quiz or a deadline or whatever, you have to tell her to her face so she can tell if you're lying or not. Very CIA-esque, she is. It should be interesting.

She also told us that we'd be getting our textbooks today cuz there's a quiz in our next lesson. HELLO!! We just started! So much for having time to catch my breath.

I watched The Family Stone again just now. Towards the end, Diane Keaton's character is looking out the window with a smile on her face, and when her son's boyfriend comes up to her and taps her on her shoulder, she turns to him and goes, "It's snowing!". The look on her face...pure, unadulterated joy. It took me back to when we were last in Switzerland, in the middle of nowhere, and we got out of the car and it started to snow ever so lightly. At first, you don't even notice. And when you do...it's priceless.

After that, we watched Friday's episode of Friday Night Lights. There was one scene in which Tim wraps his arms around Lyla and holds her so close. The feeling?

Missing something so much that it hurts.

Makes it a little hard to breathe.

And then you move on. Or try to, anyway.


Number of things I think I should be having more of - 1 Green Tea

health kicks

I was making lime juice for after dinner (I rarely drink just water after meals) and I remembered my mother telling me our organic sugar is from Paraguay, as is the sugar they use in Ben & Jerry's Vanilla ice cream, the advertisement of which caught my eye in a magazine she had borrowed. For the record, I used a lot less sugar than I usually do, in light of my so-called attempt to be a leeetle more conscientious.

Which made me realize that our salt is healthy, too - Himalayan Rock Salt. It's kinda reddish and it was difficult to get used to cuz it's a lot less saltier than whatever it was we were using before, but I suppose that's a small price to pay.

So right now, I think I'm doing pretty okay. I don't quite see me jumping on the muesli (horse food!! yuk!!) bandwagon anytime soon, tho.


Number of things I think I should be having more of - 1 Green Tea :)

shopping with a blister

Late today morning my mum, brother and me went to One Utama. Before we started shopping, we decided to check out this carnival thing they had going on in Central Park. It was quite cool. They had lots of food stalls; free popcorn, cotton candy, caricatures, face-painting, airbrush tattoos (none of which we had. I wanted cotton candy but I had just had half a brownie before leaving)...and we even found a Sony Ericsson phone just lying on the sidewalk. We handed it over to the dj cuz it's no fun to mess with the universe.

Heading back into One Utama, we stopped by the so-called Digital Gadget-y Fair Thing cuz I want to get an external hard drive, but all they had were keyboards for RM700. Then we went to Swatch cuz I was annoyed with the website and I wanted to check out the Fall/Winter 2007 collection. I was wearing my new sandals and by this time, I had a nasty blister on my right little toe. We went to Studio R cuz both my brother and I needed new sneakers after ours got stolen, and surprise surprise, I actually found a pair! They're white with light purple accents and Reeboks like my old ones. Love.

We didn't feel like having a proper lunch, so my brother and I had pretzels before we heading to the other sports shop cuz he hadn't found shoes yet. Then we walked around some more (slowly cuz of the blister, which I ended up getting plasters for) and eventually, we went to WH to get pj's. Aaaages ago, I fell in love with these black pj's that had little hearts outlined in red and white, saying things like "Kisses"...you know like the candy hearts? And another pair, also in black with red and white words like "Affection". But they didn't have my size, and seeing as how these are actually for men, nothing but a Small would do. They don't have characteristically-male features or anything, and decent pj's that aren't complete frou frou or see-through (which kinda defeats the purpose of wearing them) are ridiculously difficult to find, so I got a pair with checks on them.

After being home for a bit, I followed my mum and my brother to Brickfields where he had a tabla rehearsal and where we had to buy rakhis for Tuesday cuz I wanted to go for threading in Bangsar. After picking him up we went for tea, and finally we were back home again.

I'm tired, and the last thing I want to be doing right now is exactly what I'm doing - reviewing another journal.


Number of things I don't think I should be having: 1 Coke.

almost

My two-month sorta-but-not-really holiday is thisclose to being over. At the very beginning, when I was lying on the couch and thinking about all the things I was NOT going to do, my brother asked me if I was going to play PS2 (I'm deliberately ignoring how grammatically incorrect that sounds) at all, and I said hell yes. He bet I wouldn't.

I still have tomorrow and Sunday to prove him wrong.

I got my results today - an A- for Cross-Cultural Psychology and a B+ for Ethics. I'm actually more annoyed with the A- cuz i kicked some serious midterm ass. But then I remembered all the quizzes I flunked (I didn't have time to flip thru the chapters the night before class, so I had to resort to making things up...terrible, I know. Shut up.) after that. There was at least one quiz I got 8 out of 15 for. So yeah. An A- is still an A...almost. Okay, no. It isn't. Grrrr.

Recent health issues have had me drinking green tea and contemplating a lifestyle change. Almost. We already eat organic vegetables and antibiotic-free chickens. Eggs, too. The only thing I can think of is cutting down on sugar, and we both know the chances of that happening are very, very slim. For one crazy minute, I even thought of cutting down on Coke. I don't know if it will actually work, but I figure it's worth a shot, even if it doesn't at all affect said health issues, it'll probably feel good to be in control of something.

I'm trying to decide if I should spend the weekend like I spent the last week (which went by way too fast) - reviewing journal after journal - or if I should just chill. Hmmm.

hmph.

So the one morning I actually decide to get out of bed at a semi-decent hour, it rains. I mean, come on. Who doesn't love staying in bed when it's all cold and rainy outside?

Getting work done when you're on holiday is excruciating. The lack of motivation is really, really bugging me. I have about two weeks left of holidays, so I've decided to stop working at my internship for a while so I can get some work for part of my thesis done.

But then, it decided to RAIN.

afternoon reflections

I miss being in class. Being at work is...I don't feel like I'm doing anything relevant. But I keep telling myself that by helping them send e-mails and update databases and put together sponsorship kits, it gives them more time to do the really important things. It still doesn't help with how much I actually miss going to class. I miss my friends and arguing over where to have lunch.

The Bali and Penang trips still need to go here. On Saturday, we went to Bukit Tinggi with some family friends. Even though we've been there too many times, the company was excellent so I had a good time :)

It's been raining, so it's all cloudy and cool and sleep-inducing.

Have you ever felt like the universe is against you? Or that to have something you want is a constant fight against everything and everyone? How many times can you pick up the pieces and put yourself back together again before you just stay broken?

I think what's most important is realizing that you're not in this alone, and what you're fighting for is so beyond worth it.

I'm not giving up.

so much more than a destination...

I spent the weekend in Bali. We arrived on Friday afternoon, and in the cab on the way to our hotel, I was looking out the window and I said, "I think we might have to come back...". I had barely been there for two hours, and already the place had captured me. The big fancy mall (Discovery) with the likes of Marks & Spencer and Topshop was so beautifully juxtaposed with little prayer offerings in containers made out of leaves, placed outside every shop and inside some cars. Walking down the little streets, we constantly had to look out for these, and the way in which the shopkeepers reacted to our swerving to avoid them ("never mind, it's okay!") told me that they were completely used to people walking into and over them, which didn't bother them at all. The contrast between old and new, modern and traditional, reminded me of Thailand, as did the people, who could seriously give the Thais, famous for their hospitality, a run for their money. Taxi drivers wait patiently and never use their horns, except to warn animals who wander into the street. Stuck behind a horse carriage (I think it's called a doka)? They wait until overtaking is possible and not a moment before. Tourists walk around shirtless. They drive motorcycles barefooted (and shirtless). The McDonald's in Kuta has a rack for surf boards outside, and instead of the usual pose on a bench, Ronald is catching a wave.

All of this made it seem like Bali is really more like a lifestyle than anything. I loved it. Details soon.

capsicum - yuk.

One of the things my mother made for dinner today was capsicum with potatoes.

I hate capsicum.

I was having nachos with Kevin the other day before watching Transformers, and he was watching, amused, as I picked the capsicum bits (and onion bits) out. I explained to him how capsicum is just nasty, cuz even when you pick out every single bit, you'll still know it's there. You can tell that capsicum has been hanging around cuz it contaminates everything it comes into contact with.

On a brighter note, I spent most of today in pj's cuz it was all cold and rainy, so after having a shower that's what I reached for. There's absolutely nothing on tv, so I'm dealing with the pictures from our trip to Bali. That'll be up soon-ish.

21

I turned 21 a little over two months ago. I promised details, so here they are.

For the longest time, I've been telling my mother I don't want to do the whole have-the-whole-world-over-and-parade-around thing. That's not really my sorta thing, and partying would have to wait till people were actually around. I said that I don't want to be here, and I wasn't :D

I had my suspicions a few months before, but even when you know something is up, you don't really believe something is going on until you know for sure. It bugs you for a while, then something else comes along and it gets chucked to the back of your mind. Anyway, when I got home on Wednesday, I was told that we would be leaving the next evening. I wasn't told where, which made packing a bit of a bitch. It shouldn't have, really, cuz I knew we weren't leaving the country, but still. I was only told to take "something nice for dinner", so other than that, I just took random things out of my closet and tossed them all over my bed, then tried to figure out what to put into my bag.

The next evening, I chose not to find out where we were going until the last minute possible, which was pretty much at the gate when they called for the flight - we were going to Kota Kinabalu. I still didn't have any details.

A two-hour flight later, we were picked up by my cousin (who lives there), and we went back to his apartment. Dinner was at this cool waterfront place just across the street from where he lives, and I was told that we would be "going to the real place" the next day.

from cousin's apartment. waterfront place is on the right.

After breakfast, we got into a cab and set off. I didn't know where we were going until we got there - Shangri La's Rasa Ria Resort, and holy mother of god let me tell you that they don't call the place the Shangri La for no reason. I still didn't know what we were doing there (no complaints, though...) until my mother told me that two years or so before, I had read about this place and told her I wanted to go there cuz they have a nature reserve with orang utans you can adopt!

the view from the lobby

I swear, the whole hotel knew it was my birthday. We were greeted with a bang on the gong, then as you walk in the musicians start to play music. It's the coolest thing. They just sit around until someone arrives or walks past, then they start playing.

musician fellow

The manager person was there, too. They gave us cold towels and iced peach tea while they were checking us in, then showed us around the place. We went to the Activities Desk to plan what we wanted to do, and after that we went to check the rooms out. Gorgeous. Completely gorgeous.

Then we went exploring. The pool was gorgeous, and the grounds are completely massive.


On one end are the stables (more on this later), the wedding pavilion and a very cool restaurant. Then it's the pool, an outdoorsy food place, the bar (more on this later, too), and further down is the nature reserve. We went to have lunch at the outdoorsy place, and while waiting for the food to arrive, my brother and I went to check the playground out, and we found one of the most amazing things - a trampoline! A few hundred bounces later...


...we went back to have lunch.

my lunch - fish and chips with ketchup in a little jar...so cute!

After lunch, we walked to the stables to get our horses for a ride on the beach. Each person gets a guide, but they let you ride your horse by yourself. You're totally in charge...or it's between you and your horse, rather. I walked mine right by the edge of the ocean, and it was completely beautiful. Oooh and on the way to the stables, we saw a little snake! I named him Steven.

For half an hour in the evening, you can have whatever you want from the gorgeous outdoorsy bar and not pay anything for it. I had a margarita while we played petanque, and then we hit the pool.


We watched the sunset from there, and later went down to the beach. It was unreal. Saying it was beautiful doesn't even come close to describing it.




After that, we went over to the gym place cuz in the locker rooms, they have a jacuzzi and steam room. It was the perfect finish. Then it was back to our rooms for showers, and then it was time for dinner at the hotel's North Indian restaurant, Naan. The chef came out to talk to us, and the food was excellent. Then, we went for a walk by the pool and just chilled. We went for a walk to check out the other gorgeous restaurant, and the place is crazy cool! It's got all these cool light things.


We went back to the room after that, and I had a gorgeous bubble bath. The water was really, really hot and there was heaps of lavender-scented bubbly foam. I settled in with a book and it was bliss :)

When it was 12, I was in the little garden outside our rooms. My family thought I was quite mad, but it felt so good to be outside and underneath the stars. My brother and I went back to the pool area and lay around on deck chairs. We had the most random conversation while I was looking up at the stars.

The next morning after breakfast, we headed to the Nature Reserve. My brother and I volunteered to do this ranger thing, where you help cut fruits and make milk for the orang utans, and you get to see them before everyone else does. We walked up into the jungle and at this clearing, there they were!

About six of them, and they were so cute! Swinging and playing and rolling down the hill :)

It was quite impossible to tell them apart, which I needed to do to chose who I wanted to adopt for a year, but right at the end of the tour, I chose one of the really cheeky fellows named Alan. A few hundred photographs later, we headed back down, and when we reached the Nature Reserve place, I (and a whole bunch of tourists) was surprised (again) with a cake and the hotel staff singing Happy Birthday, with a guitar player too!

After that, we went for a traditional boat ride on a nearby river that leads to the open sea.

part of a golf course

On the way back, we passed mussel farms and the like, and there was this little boy on a little boat, who was just paddling along and checking his traps for crabs. It was the coolest thing to watch. We had lunch at the outdoorsy place again, then we went to chill on the beach.

lunch - shirley temple and pizza

Chill, actually, might not be the best verb to use - it was intensely hot. The hotel staff came around with pieces of fruit on a skewer and to sell ice-cream. I went to the edge of the water for a bit, and cuz the sand was HOT, I couldn't take my flip flops off. The result? A flip flop tan :) But the water was sooo clear. I was in the evening before, and I saw a little fish and lots of seaweed things.

We left later that afternoon, and on the way to the airport we stopped at a craft market.

So that was my 21st.

guilt

I haven't been doing a thing - and I feel very, very guilty. I should be getting started on my thesis. I really should be.

Monday, my mother wanted cake so I made one. Tuesday, I did absolutely nothing, and we had dinner in Antonio's with some family friends. Today, I was with Vee and Sue Peng. We had breakfast (roti canai for Vee), watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, had sushi (for Vee), went over to Sue Peng's and learnt how to play a beautiful, beautiful song called 9 Crimes by Damien Rice. Then was dinner in Decanter with everyone (and Jun Guan and Ling from England and Australia on the phone). The food was really, really good (Thai Crispy Chicken, Sizzling Tofu and Prawn Fritters), and there were lots of laughs :)

I've taken two polaramines since I got home from Sue Peng's and I just had Swiss Miss, so the only thing I can do now is sleep.

Not good.

everything changes

It's been forever, hasn't it...but I confess, the main reason I'm doing this is cuz I'm on a sort-of-not-really holiday for the next two months or so, and I really, really don't want to lose track of the days.

A quick recap of what's been happening over the last month and a bit. Summer semester is now over. My two subjects were Cross Cultural Psychology (which can be summed up as - there are intercultural and intracultural differences as well as similarities...but seriously, this was a fun class) and Ethics (which can be summed up as - when in doubt, consult ethical guidelines/colleagues/laws, but at the end of the day, none of them will give you an answer. It's all relative...).

Recently, there was the B.Psych Student Council's first social event - Acoustic/Barbecue Night. That was quite a bit of fun. Before it started, Lavan, Harveen and me went to Kiosk for some fizzy vodka thing (Lavan had Vitagen), and even before we had any, we couldn't stop laughing. It was madness. I don't even remember what we were laughing about, but I'm quite sure we sounded absolutely ridiculous, cuz I was talking to Kev (who came later on) and Durvesh on the phone, and they were all, "what's going ON??".

There was also Summer Variety Concert, and even though we had no idea who most of the performers were, a few really stood out. There was a gorgeous acoustic version of Maroon 5's Sunday Morning and Pete Murray's So Beautiful. Even though the guys who performed So Beautiful couldn't really remember the words, they made up for it cuz one of them sounded so much like Brandon Boyd!

I watched a bunch of really good movies, with it being Summer and all. There were two beautiful French movies - Mon Petei Doigt M'a Dit (By the Pricking of My Thumbs), which was completely random and spur of the moment, and Hors de Prix (Priceless), which I really, really liked. There were also the big ones, Spiderman 3 and Fantastic Four 2 (FLAME ON!!!)...I still haven't watched Shrek 3, for some reason. And The Namesake, which was absolutely beautiful :) You wouldn't think that Kal Penn would've been able to pull off a non-Kumar (of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) type role, but he made it work. Oh, and I also watched Borat. I don't get what the big deal was. It was...not good, to say the least.

Vee came back from Melbourne. We went out for dinner to Friday's in The Curve, and she brought me Ozzie koalas, a Shrek keychain from Movie World that says "Princess" (hahah!), my postcard which she bought from the Gold Coast but refused to send cuz she didn't think I would get it...and after seeing it, I have to say I agree with her. There are three extremely foxy surfer type males on it ;) And she also brought my birthday present from her and Ling - a gorgeous, handmade purple beady necklace thing! Oooh and on the day she came back, she brought Krispy Kreme Original Glazed donuts and gummy bears!

My cousins came back, too - Khanitha (from Dunedin) and Vijay (from Perth). We went out just before Khanitha went back, to Friday's in The Curve...again. That was fun, even though it was supposed to be drinks and we ended up with a non-yummy brownie.

Priya came back from Perth, and she was here last week. I met up with her and Kay Li after my last exam on Wednesday, and she bought me a book I've been meaning to read for ages (The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the same movie I mentioned). We walked around Midvalley for a bit, looking for shoes, then we found these huge armchairs in Coffee Bean and didn't move for hours. Until a friend of hers called her and said that if we went and found the Mix FM Mega Shopaholic, who happened to be near Dorothy Perkins, we would win RM500. And we actually walked up to random strangers and asked them!

Yesterday was 07/07/07. Two things happened - the Live Earth concerts on every continent to bring attention to global warming (I watched it live-ish on the Internet...Jack Johnson!!), and the new Seven Wonders were revealed after a worldwide vote - Chichén Itzá, Mexico; the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Brazil; The Great Wall, China; Machu Picchu, Peru; Petra, Jordan; The Roman Colloseum, Italy; and the Taj Mahal, India. I've seen a grand total of one of those wonders, and I don't even remember it cuz I was a year old and running around the grounds of the Taj Mahal. That will change.

Yesterday, we went for dinner to Tarbush in Starhill's Feast floor/area/place thing. The place is really something to see...there are all these cool restaurants, and each one is so different from the others. Completely unique and completely gorgeous. Outside Starhill is the most bizarre thing - it's a Lecka Lecka al fresco place, but they've done it all Moroccan like, with billowy organza curtains and pretty lights. A closer inspection revealed that they don't only have ice-cream, which as much as I love the stuff, would be quite mad...they also have drinks and shisha. I wish it wasn't so far away, it looks like quite a cool hang out place.

The title of this post is 'everything changes', and yet, nothing has been about changes of any sort. What I meant by it, I can't go into detail. But two things happened. I thought I was close to this one person, but I realized just how far apart we were. I was a mess for a while, but I think I'm okay now. With the other...we just got a whole lot closer.

Have you ever heard that the more things change, the more they stay the same? A part of me wishes this was really true so that things between me and person #1 would be better. But that wouldn't work for person #2 as much, cuz then there would be no moving forward. Not completely a bad thing...okay, I think I'm bored of this already. I haven't read a book in ages, and there's one I just started right next to me :D

when the truth is...

Yesterday, Vee got my postcard that from Kota Kinabalu. She left a message for me on MSN -

biatch!!!!!!!! i luv ya luv ya very much
i received your kk postcard today!!!!!!

It made me smile. I think everyone should mail something to someone they care about every now and then, cuz getting stuff in the mail is seriously, so much fun.

Now, I'm working on a case study for Ethics about Sigmund and Ling (who is a boy, unlike my friend of the same name, who is a girl), which is why there are still no details about the surprise trip.

Late, late last night (or really, really early this morning), I remember thinking about my friends. And how much I miss them. And how much I'm looking forward to seeing them soon.


Song for a rainy afternoon - Warning Sign by Coldplay

...when the truth is, I miss you.

4.0

Our results were released on Monday, and I almost don't want to put this here, but because it's a historical moment of sorts...*pauses for effect*...here it is.

I got 4 A's for Biopsychology, Human Personality, Abnormal Psychology and Human Factors and Ergonomics..

Meaning that my GPA for last semester is a solid 4.0 <--- this has never happened before.

Contrary to popular belief, I have never had results like this. I think the one that threw me the most was Ab. Psych., especially since the other day we heard that no one got Annie's diagnosis correct except one person (she was in our case study).

But everything I bitched about was very, very real.


Biatches - details of my birthday are coming soon, I promise.

tribal surprises

Today we had our first Cross-Cultural Psychology lecture. I loved it.

Our really cool lecturer randomly divided us into four tribes. Hannah ended up with Nick and Viv, Ming Yan and Lavan ended up in the same group. I ended up with a bunch of people I've said approximately three words to (with the exception of one of them) in the two years I've been here.

But anyway.

Each tribe was assigned an identity they have to adopt for the duration of the semester. Ours was Extreme Individualism, which I didn't find a problem seeing as how I don't know the practically anyone in my group. We had to also come up with a tribe name (we chose The I-Me's, for obvious reasons...) and a tribe flag (one of them saw a lil sun thing I had drawn in my planner and liked it and that ended up being our flag). Then, adopting our identity, we were asked questions like what determined our self-esteem, and how we would react to a researcher wanting to study us. Some of my classmates really got into their roles, and it was quite scary! The Extreme Collectivism group answered one question in a chorus, and for another each person said one line. We did quite well ourselves :) So anyway, that was one of the most interesting classes I've ever attended.

It was a long, long day with a Student Council (dammit I forgot about the minutes!) meeting and a briefing for our undergrad thesis. But when I got home, I received a surprise which unless you already know by now, you'll just have to wait to hear about ;)

answer the phone

What do you do when missing people becomes almost a default emotional state? It's always there, just at varying degrees. You become used to it, but that doesn't make it easier.

Everything else feels transient. Fleeting. Temporary distractions.

It's like you're on hold, which isn't always a bad thing. It gives you time to space out for a bit, or gather your thoughts. Sometimes, you get to listen to music, although let's face it - it's high time we got rid of the irritating elevator jingles and played some real music. But sooner or later, the waiting just gets on your nerves. You think, Hurry UP already! You contemplate hanging up, but you know you won't. You just keep waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Because the alternative, is nothingness.


*Answer the Phone is a song by Sugar Ray. Whatever happened to them? I think the reason behind this title was me randomly picking up the phone and dialing four hundred digits to talk to my cousin in New Zealand. She wasn't there.

it ends tonight

It's been a long, long day. I woke up and went to the gym while my brother was at his taekwondo class. Lunch was at Lake Club too, then I came home, had a quick shower (cuz i hate the changing rooms/showers in the club), then Mum and I went to Ikea and Ikano to pick some stuff up (another notice board for me and those really, really good biscuits from Sweden with jam in the center). When we got back, I made the chicken for dinner (tortilla wraps) and then it was time to leave again. My brother went for his tabla class so Mum and I went to the Buddhist temple in Brickfields while waiting for him, and ran some errands. I've been trying to go since Wesak Day, but it was weird - I felt nothing. An absence. But whatever.

When I got home, all I had time for was a quick shower before I made my dinner, then it was time for a really, really good episode of Grey's Anatomy. And somewhere along the line, I realized it was the last day of my so-called semester break. Maybe one that should have been spent doing nothing but lounging around the house...

thanking the music gods

It's a hot, hot afternoon and I'm in my room with the a/c on. I finished a book, and logged on cuz I was bored. And I've got music on shuffle now, and the most perfect songs are playing. It's everything I want to listen to. It's completely perfect for the sleepy mood I'm in.

All I Need by Mat Kearney.

Honey and the Moon by Joseph Arthur.

Miracle by the Foo Fighters.

How to Be Dead by Snow Patrol.

Home by Michael Bublé.

Perfection.

someone stop the clocks.

I slept in today, deciding to relish the tiny iota that's left of my so-called semester break. Then, I did nothing but watch tv and zap more humans. I've been having a major craving for Chinese food - Thai Fried Chicken in particular, so we went to Lake Club for dinner. We also had Butter Prawns which were amazing, and a broccoli, asparagus and tofu. On the way back home, we picked up The Devil Wears Prada, which I somehow managed to miss in the cinemas. The movie was okay...but the book was waaaay funnier.

I'm still tired. All the mornings I've slept in have evidently not been enough to recover. I am so not ready to go back to uni on Monday.

One good thing is that Mum bought these gorgeous, gorgeous mangoes in India. They taste like...okay, they're pretty amazing.

watercolors

An sms-convo late, late last night resulted in me waking up today morning with a very graphic image of sunset on a beach with a hammock. I lay in bed for a while, looking at the image in my mind. But then, I just had to get up and grab something for me to draw it. I found a sketchbook in my watercolor set, got back into bed and tried to put down on paper what I had seen. Later on, I turned the sketch into a little watercolor painting. I'm happy with everything but the hammock. Who knew they were such a bitch to paint?

But man, does artistic expression feel good or what.

today, i was an alien...

I spent about an hour today zapping KGB agents with my lazer gun thingy, and snatching the bodies of hippies.

Yes - me and our PS2 (named Beans) got reacquainted.

I wanted to continue playing Bully, which I started the last time I was on holiday, but something was wrong with it. It's completely ridiculous that I only play when I'm on holiday. That is going to change (something I always tell myself but it has yet to happen...). So I started playing Destroy All Humans 2 instead, after deciding that I wasn't in the mood to restart Prince of Persia 2.

ZzzzzzAP! Zap! Zap! I so missed it.

Later, I took the boys for dinner and a movie (The Number 23). It was a bit of a strange movie...I have two words to describe it but they're a bit rude so I won't put it up here, but you can ask me. If you've already watched it, check this out, which I figured out while driving home:

1 + 2 + 5 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 6 (my date of birth) = 32, which is 23 backwards.

You'd have to watch the movie to get that, but dum dum dum...lol :)