Sunday, February 15, 2009
L.O.V.E

This Valentine's day, I've decided that there is nothing better than loving yourself. I don't know why I am getting frequent bouts of 'depression' recently. I don't know if depression is the word. Because what I feel is something so intangibly overwhelming and numbing, causing me to feel so helpless.
It must be some darn hormones or something. Or the genes. Or external factors. Who knows. I don't want to pinpoint some explanation when I can't find a concrete one. Because I believe it's a combination of factors- Time, projects, soul-searching, family, etc. How I wish as a human, I didn't feel so fucking much sometimes. So that I could avoid times like this. Times which I know shouldn't be wasted sleeping in/off or moping around or blank-staring into nothingness.
So this Valentine's day woke me up to the fact that loving oneself is important. Trust me to take advice from a song. Whitney Houston's soaring lyric-line rang resonantly in my mind this time:
Learning to love yourself, is the greatest love of all...
Anyway, back to talking about everyday stuff, well, I was asking a clock store person in my neighbourhood yesterday, about the costs of repairing my beloved cat clock. It's been about what, 2 weeks since the battery in it failed, and I had to rely on my Little Mermaid alarm clock to keep the time. It was so troublesome to move it around to face me or take it off my bedside table and place it in a more visible position. And then to place it back on the bedside table at nights while setting the alarm. In the meantime, I was trying on countless batteries for my cat clock=old, new, rechargeable. But, the darn minute hand just wouldn't move. I then sadly thought it was time to buy a new clock for a replacement. But, while out grocery shopping yesterday, I passed by a clock-shop and spied a similar fruit clock being displayed, and saw the owner standing at the doorway and knew to immediately ask her what the hell was wrong with my clock and whether it had any chance of being saved. She was so so helpful. She told me the costs of repairing it, going on about having to replace the whole machinery inside and all, and when i told her no battery seemed to work with my blasted clock, she oh so flippantly mentioned that i had to use NORMAL batteries and not ALKALINE ones. At that point, I was like, 'huh? WHAT does she mean? I thought all batteries were alkaline or something?' Apparently, they are NOT!! She said to use non-alkaline ones, meaning heavy duty ones like the brand 'EVERYDAY' and not ENERGIZER batteries. She said Alkaline and rechargeable batteries were too strong. I was freaking skeptical and yet anticipatory to test her advice and immediately shot to a nearby bookshop to look for those elusive batteries. I spotted 'Super Heavy Duty Everyday' batteries in the store and deliberated what that meant. I then asked the shop owner if I could use these super batteries for my clock. She said I could! DUH! Because when I flipped over the battery pack, I saw they had 3 pictures in its info blurb: of a torchlight, radio and clock. NOW we know huh? Even my dad couldn't help me, lending me all his new ENERGIZER batts to no avail.
Well, my clock had a happy ending. It's fully back to life now, ticking heartily away on my study desk. When I had inserted the battery to my clock, and saw the minute hand sputtering back to life, I immediately wanted to check how strong the batt was. And how did I think to do that? By looking at the expiry date. There was none. Apparently, the pack said to check the batt for the date, but there wasn't any. Which reminded me of another item which doesn't have an expiry date found anywhere- Lexmark's ink catridges. Nope, no expiry dates on them either. SO does that mean they can be stored FOREVER? I remember being kiasu and wanting to buy 3 ink catridges at Popular bookstore that fateful day after looking for it high and low in the whole of Jurong Point shopping mall (ie Challenger, Harvey Norman, Courts, other small computers/electronics stores). And when I FINALLY found them tucked away at the basement in Popular, my dad said 'Buy all!' or something, and we triumphantly took down all the 3 on display. But when we got to the cashier, my mum was like, 'if you're gonna buy so many, u better check the expiry date in case u don't use them so fast'. And surprise surprise, neither us nor the staff could see a darn expiry date printed ANYWHERE on the box. You would think something so simple wouldn't be so hard.
Anyway, back to V day. Roses are so outrageously priced this year don't you agree? If a (single) person like me would disgustedly care to loathe at roses and hence notice,
Everywhere, the average cost of one stalk of rose is $5. I was super outraged because I had bought a bouquet of roses (about 11 stalks) for my mum's birthday last year in September
for less than $10. And then my mum calmly told me that it was in the news that flowers were 20% more expensive this year or something. still.Outrageous.
And today's my bro's birthday. He turns 20 and was exceptionally well-behaved today instead of being a spoilt brat like I would be. He was peaceful, docile-like and even chatty? So unlike his usual explosive, laconic self. If he was this tolerable everyday, the world would be a much better place. That's how.. pleasantly different he was today.
And I finally got that freaking huge world map up on my wall! It was a headache for me cracking my brain for a few weeks to figure out how to put it up because my blue tacks worked uselessly on my plaster wall. So today when I finally decided to ask my dad for help, he had the brilliant idea of staple-gunning the map to the hollow partition plaster wall in my bedroom. Cool beans. He said it wouldn't spoil the world, oops, WALL or something (it's 1am plus now and I'm getting disoriented). Super cool. Now we shall see how much this map will come in handy when I become an Amazing Race Asia contestant or inspire me significantly to be a frequent traveller in future.
Tomorrow I've got lots of shopping to do, go to the Chan Brothers travel fair to see if my family can book a US tour in September, go and look for digital cameras at audiohouse, and also get tickets for The Importance of Being Earnest play (starring brilliant actors like Chua Enlai and Hossan Leong and even director Ivan Heng) which I am so excited to catch! It'll be my first play in who knows how long. I am either booking the 2nd or 9th April one because there is a dialogue session with the cast after the show. It'll be interesting to watch how the stars are offstage, you know? :D I am such a lit geek.
12:26 AM