I’m going to publish an archived post from my old blog today. (The one that I had in 2004/5 which I deleted after switching to WordPress.)

Back then, I had an impressive number of, like, 20 readers. Probably because my blogs then were text-heavy and only very serious readers could be bothered to read my rambling, inconsequential walls of text.

We all know that serious readers are a dying breed. If they aren’t already dead.

Today, after 6 years of blogging, my visitor count has gone up a bit, so let’s see if the number of serious readers (vs. people who just look at photos) visiting my blog has increased at all.

If you’re one of them “serious readers”, you might want to leave a comment to acknowledge your own existence, you think?

 

 

The following post first appeared on Sheylara.com on Jan 17, 2005.

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The Crazy Things We Do

Once again, I have fallen under the corrupt clutches of commercialism. I have now in my possession 28 exceptionally adorable (but also exceptionally useless) Neopets.

Huzzah.

I blame it all on the eyes.

[Qiaoyun] Angel says: “It’s a scheme to cheat parents of their hard earned money. To cheat struggling actresses who should know better than to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need. Besides, McDonald’s is fattening and you’re on a diet!”

[Qiaoyun] Devil says: “Look at the eyessssssssss…! Aren’t they all ohhhhhhhh soooooooooo dropdeadcuddlycoo cuuuuuuuuuuuute?”

[Qiaoyun] says: “Leave me alone! *pause* Awww… but Cloud Shoyru is looking at me with such adoring, beseeching eyes…”

And so, I have in my possession 28 Neopets stashed in a Metro paper bag, where they will remain stashed until such a time as I find a nice, gentlemanly billionaire to marry, who will buy me a mansion in which I can build classy frosted glass shelves to display my embarrassing collection of Neopets and Hello Kittys and the like.

Which, of course, isn’t going to happen.

Which means that the Neopets will remain stashed in the Metro paper bag forever. Or until I decide to give them all away to a kid sister or a baby niece, whichever comes first.

I never learn.

We never really do, do we?

So, my latest hobby is to take extremely close-up pictures of Chong on the MRT because we always take the same MRT home after a gathering and he enjoys annoying me, so I whip out my camera to shut him up.

 

 

It works, because when he’s trying to leer at me menacingly for sticking the camera in his face, he actually shuts up.

 

Compare Chong’s mugshot to this picture of a Leafy Seadragon (Phycodurus Eques), which I took in Sentosa’s Underwater World while filming there last month:

 

 

Notice that the resemblance is almost nil?

Yes, amazing, isn’t it?

So, you’re going to ask me what the point is in comparing two completely unrelated pictures.

The point is, who knows?

The point is. The world is illogical, so live with it. If you can’t beat it, you have to join it or it will drive you nuts.

If I am half nuts, I blame it on the world.

I recently bumped into a classmate from my Japanese class on the MRT while going to class. We’ve “known” each other for two months since the start of the course but have never spoken a word to each other and never knew that we actually lived just opposite each other… until that day we bumped into each other on the train.

It also happened to be the last day of our Elementary I course.

Which isn’t quite the point, of course.

The point is that, after half an hour of awkward and inane conversation about the weather and such, she suddenly looked at me strangely and said, “You look very young. How old are you?”

Now, I find that question extremely disturbing.

It’s okay for people to ask me how old I am because it’s one of those questions people ask because they can’t think of anything else better to ask.

But what’s with the “you look very young” precursor?

I don’t know what that means. Does it mean that she thinks I behave like an old hag but I look too young to be an old hag so she just needs to find out whether I really am or not?

Or does it mean that she thinks I’m, like, 12 years old and have no business attending Japanese classes without a chaperone?

If, for example, I behave like a 20-year-old and look like a 20-year-old and she thinks I’m 20 years old, a logical statement to make would be, “How old are you? Let me guess… 20?”

Where is the logic in: “You look very young. How old are you?”

What would make an almost stranger phrase a question that way?

Prior to that question, no mention of age or job or hobby or anything like that was made.

To compound matters, she looks like 22 or 23, which I think is young, so what is so amazing about me looking young or being young that she has to make a separate comment on it?

I don’t understand it.

 

So, I’m going to put up another extremely close-up photo of Chong:

 

 

Followed by a picture of a jellyfish who resides in Sentosa’s Underwater World:

 

 

Note that I’m not trying to imply anything by following pictures of Chong with pictures of seafood. I mean sea creatures.

Speaking of pictures, I am featured in a four-page interview in the current issue of Playworks (the EQ2 vs WoW issue) but I am embarrassed by the way I look in the pictures so I’m not putting any of it up here.

For now, applications to buy me a mansion for my Neopets are open. Please apply here.