I am
...getting rained on in Tokyo.
...old enough to drink alcohol but not old enough to know when to stop.
...blogging since 02/22/03.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
School of hard knocks lesson #306: Trying to feed myself It's been a while but things have been happening that resulted in me moving to Tokyo in February. New country, new challenges, some of them involving basic tasks as feeding myself as I am an idiot who does not understand Japanese and thus have to rely on the illiterate's time tested method of guessing based on the pictures on the packaging. That approach is mostly successful but can sometimes end up in colossal failure. Such as that one time when I bought an onigiri that surprised me with an unexpected filling. Apparently a longish pink shape on the package means fish rather than hotdog in Japan.
Ling means monkey in Thai First and probably last vacation of the year, so I'm making it worthwhile and chilling with my boyfriend in a bungalow with private pool in Koh Samui. Instead of Do Not Disturb signs, they have a wooden monkey to hang on the door. How more obvious can you make it that there is monkey business going on the other side?
My family knows me so well I haven't seen D, one of my Australian cousins, since I was in Australia almost four years ago. Now she's on a world trip and has included a stop in Copenhagen to come and see me.
D: It's been such a long time, so I wasn't sure what to bring. I asked myself, "What does Annie like? And then it came to me: Alcohol! Remember when you chased my cat through the living room after you were out with friends in Sydney?"
Then she proceeded to hand me a bottle of champagne.
The internet was made to reinforce my misanthropy I have developped an obsession with etiquette advice columns such as Dear Prudence and Social Q. Those columns reassure me that there are people in the universe with even pettier grievances than me. I'm still amazed that they get riled up enough to write to complete strangers about their babies being excluded from dinner party invitations. That's what sets the pros apart. Me? I'm lacking focus (plus, I want to preserve my amateur status for the Olympics, wait, they've just ended? Dang!).
The comment section of Dear Prudence is the cherry on top. I love the obnoxious commenters whose spouses and friends probably deal by penning letters to other etiquette columnists themselves. It's the internet equivalent of reality TV: you can't help but feel better when there's people who don't know that accept and except are spelt differently. Internet, I am silently judging you. Emphasis on silently.
Back Lax blogging moral turned into an unintended one year hiatus. Like always, no news is mainly good news. It meant that I either wasn't annoyed enough to sit myself down to blog or that there was no internet when I was (which would explain why I was annoyed in the first place).
My new flatshare is a major improvement to the loft of resentment that I was stewing in during 2008. My roomies are easygoing enough and their quirks only cause me Tourette-ish episodes when they commit cardinal sins such as putting their yoghurt into my shelf in the fridge.
They love me, too, I'm sure of that. How do I know? They haven't smothered me with a pillow in my sleep so far. And I've been living here for a year. Without a lock on my bedroom door. If that doesn't reek of normal social interaction, I don't know what does.
Happy new year! New Year's celebrations are either spectacularly great or spectacularly dull - the excessive expectations and the excessive alcohol consumption leave little room for anything in between. When you happen to spend new year at a Swing ball in Scandinavia, however, you're surrounded by people busy worried about they're coordination and beer that costs more than your grandmother.
With alcohol removed from the equation, my vision was unmercifully sharp when my eye caught my not so secret crush dance partner kissing a Swedish theology student. Immediately "It's My Party" started playing in my head and I was embarrassed that my subconscious had selected a song so cheesy and old that it could be my father. The next morning, I replaced the background music in my head with Robyn's "Be Mine!" but it's too late to cover the truth that I'm less cool than a theology student.
