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.
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
... and a happy new year! New Year's Eve is the night when tradition bids you to light firecrackers and fireworks to drive away evil spirits. However the recent empowerment movement of the evil spirits has reclaimed the firecrackers. Impatient as evil spirits can be they usually don't wait until 12 am but currently are firing away eagerly. Nothing adds more to the celebration than war-like sounds of explosion.
When you think it's over, you still have 20 minutes to watch but that's ok because I went to the bathroom during intermission Just watched The Return of the King. I liked it most of the time despite my headache though I never thought of Sauron as a giant vagina in a lighthouse but that's the director's artistic freedom, I guess.
Don't you just love Asian mothers? The joy of spending money that should have been saved for more important things was reduced when my mom commented on my new rugby shirt-like wool sweater: "Horizontal stripes make people look fat." But then again, I've really gotten fat so there's really no point blaming the sweater.
Fun with photos Met with a childhood friend in Essen, one of the rare places in Germany with a Starbucks. You can tell me all about evil capitalist empire builders but I'm a sucker for Caramel Macchiato. The last time I had a Starbucks coffee was in Singapore and it was some weird concoction with coffee-flavored jelly cubes in it, so you can imagine how I looked forward to getting my favorite hot beverage. Starbucks was closed. But I still got that special warm feeling inside later on when my friend and I were browsing through some old pictures from our past. How could I forget that we used to wear some seriously dorky clothes in the 80s and 90s? Not to mention my "I'm your evil middle school teacher from hell"-glasses. I bow to the inventors of the contact lens.
Merry Christmas to everyone! The good thing about being a heathen who will sooner or later burn in hell is that you can choose your personal degree of involvement with Christmas. When I'm up to it, I don't only eat Christmas cookies, give Christmas presents and sing carols but also expose myself to hypothermia in church. This year I really don't feel like doing any of these activities so I'd rather surf the internet which is unusually fast as the majority of Germany is stuck at Christmas dinner with the whole family. And don't you tell me that I'm missing out on anything fun. I know that you're lying.
What I did during my Christmas vacation If I was a prep I'd be writing: "I just did some random shopping at the mall and got myself the cutest Louis Vuitton bag in the world. You know, like, it's so small that a lipstick won't fit in there but it totally matches my new Prada shoes." but instead my idea of a relaxed day is lying in bed and watching the entire series of Flame of Recca (42 episodes) in one go. It's an anime about a boy who has flames shooting out of his hand and therefore has to fight the forces of evil. As the natural law of anime wills it, he enters a martial combat tournament after the first half of the series which means there's not a lot of storyline left but a lotta fighting scenes. At least I practiced my Japanese a little so that I now know the word for "Idiot". Well, that's a lie. I've known the word for "Idiot" since watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. Somebody please shoot my inner nerd.
Whoa, that was a close one! I need to get some rest. No seriously, I really do need to get some rest. Yesterday was the day after the last exam so we had brunch at a friend's place. She scheduled it at 11 am so that was more of a breakfast than lunch but we showed up one hour late anyway. It was a nice cozy event and then I almost accidently kissed TJ instead of TS. That was a very traumatic incident but can you blame me for it? I was tired and stressed out and TJ and TS are roomies and both of their names start with a T and their both have blond hair and almost the same haircut and height and so on. Good excuse?
Subject: birthday I’m for people giving you presents when they feel like it and not when they have to. In the course of a year people usually stumble over a couple of objects their friends would love to have, but they don’t buy them because their friends’ birthdays are months away. On their friends’ birthdays however they will have forgotten about that and buy a generic Hallmark card with an attached gift certificate for a dinner because they didn’t find anything clever. Their friends will pretend that they are delighted by the presents and make a mental note on giving them something as crappy in return. Your birthday shouldn’t be about you anyway. After all, it wasn’t you who had the inconvenience of squeezing an oversized head through a cervix that dilated a mere 10 cm that day.
It's like Waterworld, when you replace "water" with "concrete" There was some fun action today at the construction site in front of TS' apartment. They brought a giant machine which covered the whole courtyard with tons of wet concrete so that people can only access their apartments by walking over a couple of planks just like in Waterworld. Except that Kevin Costner can't breathe under this shit, not even with gills.
The beauty of being krill Nothing extraordinary going on here. It's cold and rainy, there's too much work to do and I haven't bought a single X-mas present so far. Sometimes I manage to scare Tupperware girl when we bump into each other accidentally in the badly-lighted hall. I watch TV shows on MTV which market Chelsea Clinton as one of the sexy celebrity bachelorettes out there. TS is humming the tune to "I feel pretty" which clashes with me singing "Copacabana" in my head. These are the moments I wish I was some krill floating in the ocean with nothing more to worry about than being eaten by a whale.
Addendum: TJ was enraged that I stole his idea of "wanting to be plankton floating in the sea" for this post. Therefore I hereby officially state that this was his idea and not mine. Frankly I'd prefer to be dead instead of being krill but this was the only way to use "krill" in a post. Maybe I should name my first-born "Krill" so that I can use the word more often without being accused of stealing anybody's intellectual property.
The perfect gift Today TS gave me an early Christmas present: a punching ball which looks somewhat like this except that TS has taped a portrait of his onto it so that I could vent my anger by whacking the punching ball instead of him. The gal on the picture isn't me but if you took away the pigtails and the smile and if you were about 50 feet away and squinted, that's what I would look like. Unfortunately the boxing gloves that came along with it were too small so that all that bare-hand fistfighting made my knuckles hurt. However this won't stop me from putting it to good use in future. That's the good side of Christmas, the bad one is that I don't know how I will ever find a present comparable in coolness to that punching ball for my sweetheart.
What only goes onto the lips doesn't make you fatter My theory: Buying lipsticks whose shades are named after food like "very cherry", "dark chocolate" or "glossy plum" is probably a compensation for being on diet.
The non-fun part of social interaction It's almost 2 am and another day filled with anger for and resentment of my fellow students has just ended. I already mentioned in the blog that I will never do group assignments with friends again but I have to rectify my statement: I will never ever in my life do any group assignment of any kind be it together with friends or a nemesis. I don't want a job working in a team on a project, I need control over the end result which will not be ruined by some morons who don't do their job properly. Then I will gladly take the blame for anything I screwed up myself. But right now I'm just angry that the person in charge of proof-reading didn't do their job and didn't even correct the typo "Honk Kong" (one of many). Honk indeed. Honk if you're incompetent.
The fun part of sports TS keeps wearing these shorts that he got for his basketball team in high school. His coach appears to be of the sadistic kind who made sure that the tushy area of the shorts say "Play hard" when he ordered them for the team. This must have been the laughing stock of the their opponents but it could have been worse. Just imagine the writing printed on the front of the shorts.
Ho ho ho help, Santa's clinging to a rope The forebodings of Christmas are everywhere. I got a Christmas songs CD from the Red Cross for my blood, there's a Christmas tree on campus and very Christmassy but seldom tasteful decoration of gaudy lights in the shop windows. And don't forget the displays of nativity scenes with plastic figurines.
But the worst thing among Christmas decoration monstrosities is the 4-feet tall Santa Claus doll hanging outside of many people's windows. It looks like a eight-year old burglar or a suicide that didn't really know what to do with the rope. If that's what people think Christmas should look like I better lock myself at home and drown my winter depression with a lot of mulled wine.
Every cloud has a silver lining Even though my bike is broken now and has no prospects of being repaired any time soon there's a positive side to it. From now on I don't have to walk to the bike shed which is situated across the street. When it's dark it always gives me the creeps to walk there because there's no proper lightning so that I basically unlock the door to the shed in total darkness, feel around for my bike and imagine that the door will slam shut any minute so that the multitude of monsters that inhabit that eerie place can feast on my flesh and bones. Adding to this rather immaterial menace, there is the more realistic threat of stepping into dog poo on the way out as the path leading to the shed is the unofficial toilet for the dogs of the neighborhood. Life's going to be much safer for me...and my shoes.
Walking life Yesterday my bike pedal broke. There was no one-armed mailman to repair it (that happened to me once). So I am reduced to a mere walker. I need to get that driver's licence fast.
Three's company? Tupperware girl's back from her 1-week "self-declared fall break" trip to NY, the city she deems to be the most wonderful place in the world. NY is not that bad but I precautionarily moved to TS' apartment in case she has "Thanksgiving in NY"-stories to share. My contingency of patience for this year had already been depleted during this weekend. She also brought a poster from the Metropolitan Museum because she seems to have an inexplicable urge to decorate the living room which she only enters to water her plant, the other decorative item she's already placed in that room.
As you can see I'm not in a good mood.
Did I already mentioned that the poster depicts faces of people that were shot?
Always look on the bright side of life Working life can't be worse than working from 10 am to 5 am. On group assignments. On a Sunday. Two wrongs really don't make a right. But my internet connection now is much faster than it is during the day.
