I’m home!

Funny how being overseas kind of warps time. And I mean even nearby overseas.

I’ve only been away for a little over 24 hours but it feels like days. Maybe because every time I go overseas, I’m stoned from lack of sleep.

My computer is still not fixed so I’m still using Fluffy. I don’t really like using Fluffy to blog cos I need my dual screen to work my pictures and get a better sense of the progression of my text.

You know the pink border I use for my pictures? They look white on Fluffy. So, like, if the colours on my photos look funny, I won’t be able to tell.

Anyway, this has been a crazy trip.

Nanny Wen and I had a lot of fun getting each other lost.

Both of us have the same bad habit of not paying attention to where we go because we like to follow people.

I don’t know about her but, for me, it’s because I’m always lost in my own thoughts and can’t be bothered with something as mundane as directions.

Yesterday, at Changi Airport, after we went through the departure checkpoint, we started searching for a place to sit down and have breakfast.

As we walked, we talked, and didn’t really notice where we were walking. We kind of started following each other. But I think I was following her more because breakfast was her idea.

We came upon an escalator and went down it. Probably because the escalator just happened to be there.

And we found ourselves at the arrival checkpoint.

After some oh shits and embarrassed giggles, we turned around to go back up the escalator, but the escalator was only downward travelling!

More oh shits.

I made a face at her and said, “I don’t want to travel with you anymore!”

She reminded me that I say that all the time but I still continue to travel with her.

I suppose it’s nice to have someone to strangle once in a while.

But she was very sweet and emptied a soft-boiled egg for me today so I forgive her.

Anyway, after a bit of panic, we found a staircase that we could go back up on. Wen had to clumsily lug her suitcase up the long flight of steps. Haha. I was carrying a giant tote bag on my shoulder so it wasn’t that bad.

Hmm… I took too many photos today in Kuching and they won’t all fit in one post cos it’ll take me like 10 hours to write.

Will talk about our adventure at Kenny Sia‘s new fitness centre in a separate post!

So, I’m now in Kuching with Nanny Wen, having been invited quite last minute to accompany her on this 2D1N trip.

I hardly had time to prepare for it, so all I did was throw together a few things and then I was out the door.

We had to buy air tickets at the airport at 8 am. Wen was supposed to buy them the night before, but she showed up only after the sales counter had closed.

We took AirAsia because it has the only flight to Kuching today. As budget airlines go, I prefer JetStar. It seems to be cheaper and it’s more comfortable.

For hotel, Nanny Wen booked Tune Hotel. Its a no-frills budget hotel where you pay for only what you use. We had to bring our own towels and soap.

Even the aircon is chargeable.

The bill comes to RM106.95 after service and taxes. Pretty decent for a double bed, I suppose.

Nanny Wen plonked herself on the bed the moment we arrived, to get her Blackberry connected.

That was when we realised that the RM12 we paid for wireless access only allowed one machine to access. We had to pay another RM12 for the other person.

Anyway, it’s fine. We’re both now happily stuck to our respective laptops after a tiring day of shopping.

We didn’t think we’d actually end up buying stuff.

We took a cab to The Spring, currently Kuching’s biggest shopping mall, because we’ve been to Kuching before and have already seen all the touristy stuff.

I guess I tend to buy more stuff when I’m overseas because I feel more relaxed and in the mood.

In Singapore, I’m always plagued by the feeling that I should be going home to work and I don’t have time to shop.

Before The Spring, we went to this tiny mall called Tun Jugah because it’s a few minutes’ walk from our hotel. But the mall is CMI. It has three floors and like 6-8 stores on each floor.

The only store of interest was FILA because I needed a pair of black sneakers. I saw three things I liked but they didn’t have my size boohoo.

But Nanny Wen bought something and she kept blaming me for dragging her into the store.

Lunch was Sarawak Laksa and Kuching Kolo Mee. We just walked into a coffee shop randomly and it was nice!

Dinner was silly. We decided to eat in our room so we ordered takeaway from nearby hawker stalls.

I have this funny smile cos I have food in my mouth.

Feeling nice and cosy now. We went for a massage after shopping, before coming back with our dinner.

I think we were quite brave. There was a dodgy-looking building behind our hotel which has only one shop open at the time we went (around 6 pm).

It was a massage parlour called Eroma. I forgot to take a photo at the shopfront but it’s all curtained up so you can’t see the inside of it. But Nanny Wen was dying for a massage so we went in.

We had spent most our money on shopping so we only had enough left for a 30-minute massage each. It was pretty awesome, actually.

My masseur’s phone rang halfway through the session and she actually picked it up and started talking. Then she kiap-ed her phone to her shoulder and continued to massage me while she talked, wtf.

She was speaking in Malay so I didn’t know what she said. Luckily the phone call only lasted a minute or so.

But her massaging skills are great so I forgive her.

It’s now two hours after the massage and I am beginning to feel the aches kicking in again after hunching over my laptop for the last two hours. Doh.

So, I’m going to stop here and probably go take a shower and then go to bed. I’m so sleepy. Only slept three hours last night!

And Wen is forcing me to upload my blog now so she can read it. She’s such a tyrant.

If there are any typos in this post, it’s her fault!

Messy

My mind feels messy. It’s like, I have so many things to do every day. So many thoughts to think. It paralyses me because I don’t know how to prioritise. Everything seems equally important.

Sometimes I end up not doing anything of worth because doing one thing makes me feel guilty for not doing the other thing.

I end up playing a game to relieve stress.

I feel better after a while. And then I feel even more horrible because the “important” things remain undone.

Sometimes it’s because while I’m doing one thing, another urgent thing comes in so I work on it, then I forget the first thing.

Sometimes yet another urgent thing comes in while I’m doing the second thing, so I attend to it and then forget the first and second things.

It’s all very messed up.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fizzle

Bought a new super computer on Saturday with Windows 7.

It worked fine for two days, then I installed Mozilla Firefox and it started getting laggy. Firefox hung twice.

One brand new 500GB harddisk was diagnosed faulty.

The next day, the computer refused to start up. It said no OS detected after two hours.

I won’t be able to send it to the PC clinic until Saturday.

Using Fluffy in the meantime, which makes me uncomfortable. I love Fluffy but I can’t do serious work on her.

It feels very claustrophobic.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Change

I’ve thought about this for several months. I finally decided it’s time to make some changes for Gamer Girl Friday.

A long weekly column doesn’t work for me anymore. I’m still going to keep the GGF tag because people have grown familiar with it, but I will now write gaming posts as and when, instead of just once a week.

So you’ll get many small posts over the week instead of one long post once a week.

Regular non-gaming posts will still operate as usual.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Flying

I’m flying to Kuching tomorrow morning.

It’s an impromptu trip!

I was talking to Nanny Wen on MSN about work and she went, “By the way, you wanna go Kuching tomorrow?”

I was, like, “YOU DON’T INVITE PEOPLE OVERSEAS IN A BY-THE-WAY MSN ESPECIALLY WHEN THE FLIGHT IS LESS THAN 24 HOURS AWAY LOR.”

Actually, I didn’t say all that. I just think I should’ve.

I said, “Okay!”

Because I love spontaneity.

We’re going to attend Kenny Sia’s new gym opening ceremony.

Provided we can get air tickets. AirAsia refuses to let us book online for flights less than 24 hours away. And JetStar doesn’t have a Thursday flight. Damn them.

Nanny Wen will have to go personally to the AirAsia office after work tonight to check.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Awesome

Princess Academy is an awesome book. I realised after reading it that it had won tons of prizes and awards.

It’s been a long time since an author has impressed me so much that I felt compelled to Google her because I want to read all her other books.

Princess Academy tells of a group of mountain girls recruited into the princess academy to learn how to become princesses. The palace priests had divined that the prince must marry someone from that mountain.

The girls get to prepare themselves for a year to impress the prince when he comes to choose.

Although the book is kind of written for teens and young adults, I think it can be enjoyed by all ages. The prose is beautifully written (it made me cry several times) and the plot twists are inventive and delightful.

I wish life could tie up as neatly as they do in books.

But I guess that’s why we’re addicted to books and movies. Cos that’s the only way we can experience beautiful neat lives.

What are the top 10 things you can’t do without?

I took a long time to formulate this list because I think of myself as having very simple needs. Give me a computer with Internet connection and I don’t need anything else. For a long time.

So I had to think out of the box a bit and that’s when I decided that I needed to take a hot shower.

Find out what other things I can’t do without.

A moth in my bathroom taught me this harsh lesson recently.

I was going to take a shower when I noticed it in the shower stall. At first, seeing a small brown lump on the floor, I thought it was a piece of rubbish.

But part of my mind considered that it might be a moth.

Even as I started to turn on the shower, a few options flashed through my mind.

• Investigate it.
• Heck care it. Just let it wash down the drain.
• Clear it or it will clog up the drain cover.
• Scare it away in case it’s a moth cos I don’t want to drown it.

As I mulled over my options casually, not really caring very much really, I turned on the shower.

And then turned it off abruptly again.

I really didn’t want to drown a moth. If it were a moth, it would definitely get wet and then get stuck to the bathroom floor and eventually follow the flow of water to the drain cover.

I bent down and looked at it.

It was a moth! And quite a pretty one. Medium brown with pretty dark brown patterns around the edges of its wings.

It fluttered weakly once and then stopped. It looked dead. I couldn’t be sure if the flutter was due to my movement or because it was alive.

“Boo!” I said to it, hoping it would get scared and fly off.

Nothing. It remained motionless.

I scrunched up a bunch of toilet paper, then gently picked up the moth with the toilet paper.

When I turned the toilet paper around to look at it, I saw it had clung its legs around the folds of the paper. But it was still motionless.

Not quite knowing how to deal with it, I placed the whole ball in the rubbish bin, with the moth facing up. I hoped it was still alive and would fly off to safety by itself.

I went to take my shower.

And that was when it struck me that the moth’s prettiness had saved its life, if it were alive to begin with.

I have washed lesser insects that are small, puny and ugly, down the drain, without thinking. It’s like those insects deserve to die because they’re ugly.

I might even allow a plain or ugly-looking moth to die, but I couldn’t allow a pretty moth to die.

I am so shallow!! =(

And I think this applies to people in some ways. We have a tendency to subconsciously treat attractive people with more respect and care, as if less attractive people deserved less.

I often hear people cursing other people when inconvenienced.

“Ugly bitch! Block my way and make me miss my train! I hope you fall down!”

I think people would be less likely to curse if the person blocking them were an Angelina Jolie lookalike.

It’s so unfair and it made me sad thinking about this.

I felt guilty for all the times I had killed insects because they weren’t pretty. But I think I will probably do it again because ugly insects gross me out.

By the time I finished my shower, the moth had disappeared from the ball of tissue paper. Yay! It had flown off to safety. Or so I hoped. I couldn’t see it anywhere in the bathroom.

I hope Morty didn’t eat it.