Classé dans : 1
Have you ever wondered if maybe you were projecting on others? If maybe theirs was the simple question that triggered a slew of malice manufactured by your paranoia and suble disdain of that person.
I resent such existentialism.
Classé dans : 1
After months of chatting online and weeks of planning, Germaine and I finally got to hang out yesterday! On friday night it seemed that all was not meant to be with her husband falling ill from possible food poisoning or a stomach flu bug he caught at work, but miraculously he felt much better yesterday and so they drove for 77 miles, about an hour and a half from southern maryland to meet us! Kudos to Robert for driving so far and so long so that Germaine and I can hang out! Germaine is amazing. She is as pretty as all her pics on facebook, skinny also! Keeps it real, had a great style of sense, and omg her make up skillz are to die for! She was wearing eyeshadow yesterday a blend of pink and purplish blue, blended to perfection! Damn nice color also! I am hopeless at blending eyeshadow, or even the smoky eyed look despite spending time on youtube tutorials and infront of the mirror. So anyway the girls trawled the Annapolis mega mall, shopped a bit at Coach where Germaine got a pair of really cute butterfly earrings and I bought a pair of flats on discount for 80 bucks while the men sat at starbucks taking about superheroes of all things. HAHAHA. How endearing.
Then at Victoria Secret where she works as a supervisor, I even got to meet up with Samantha, another lady from Singapore residing in the Annapolis area . We all went for an awesome dinner of tête-à-tête, great conversations and amazing company at Red Lobster after that, since the Cheesecake factory was fricking PACKED out. Oh my it was like 60 people infront of us in the line and almost a 2 hour wait for dinner. Wth. So at Sam’s suggestion we scoured around for the Red Lobster and finally I spied it winking red sneakily near the mall after we drove around for 15 mins looking for the shellfish ( haha! ). Pat and I rarely have double dates so this was realy refreshing for us. Indeed we’re gonna try and meet up with the Wielands again in may when Pat gets back from FL and before we leave for Japan. But I’m pretty sure I will still see Germaine not so long after yesterday for a girls night with Sam soonish 
) It felt so good to be among sg girlies again!
I MISS YOU GERMAINE!!
Classé dans : 1
While waiting for the Wielands to get here or our dinner date which had been changed from the initial lunch date because Germaine’s husband caught a nasty virus the day before ( get well soon!! ) , I decided to fix myself some chow. Patrick decided he wasn’t hungry so I could make whatever my heart desired. As it turned out, my heart was yearning for wholesome, greasy hokkien mee. But being so far remote from the equator made things a little difficult for me to get them so an alternative was in check — mee pok with fishballs and bokchoi! The noodles came pre-packaged with the seasoning while the fishballs I got from Lotte were also thrown into the pot, together with some baby bok choi. After everything was boiled, I took out the fishballs and the noodles, seasoned them and also used some oyster sauce and sesame seed oil to add flavor to my bok choi. This is the end result:
And for dessert, I had my childhood favorite canned rambutans with pineapple slices in the middle with LOTS of ice. These are AMAZING during a hot, humid Singaporean evening but not any less so here in Maryland. Especially after not having them in a heck of a long time!
So aside from these babies I bought at Lotte, I also got a couple of other fun things for myself and Germaine. She’s gonna be soo excited to see the little food hamper I’ve made for her haha! It includes mee goreng, quails eggs, sea coconut canned, pineapple tarts from singy and milo
I’m looking forward to seeing my lady for an afternoon of awesome shopping, possibly camwhoring and a great evening of wining and dining.
Love you babe!!
I woke up bright and sprightly and completely itchless thanks to the anti-histamine pills I took. Thank you all for your advice and your company in some way or other whether it is on my fb wall, msn or just happy gossip that keeps me occupied and unitchy! Seeing how the skies are a lovely carolina blue outside complete with a sinfully delicious dose of chick -fil-a has cheered me up exceedingly, I shall blog about my long overdued post of how Patrick and I met.
Brace yourselves for a bit of a scrolljob
Before Patrick, I never really endeavored to commit in relationships nor was approved to have any by my parents who insisted that I focus my attention parameter on my education. Needless to say, most were superfluous flings and insecure flirtations perhaps a couple of boyfriends scattered around without any long term commitment. At the risk of bragging, my track record includes 2 jewish law students one from Harvard and the other from Wash U, a hotass Japanese guy from Kyoto University law school and perhaps less impressively so, a pastor’s son.
Believe it or not there was no deliberately attempt at dating law guys, au contraire as with most trivialities in life I didn’t give half a rat’s ass. I immensely enjoyed our intellectual conversations and the company was most refreshing as was the social networkng between our peers but it was difficult for two students to have a long distance relationship. Law students with wealthy yakuza/jewish parents or not, one thing remained. They had their school schedules and I had mine, regretfully these clashed and once seeing each other became a herculean task tempers flared and patience were lost, tears were shed and we had to break it off.
The world was too big to sustain our appetite for each other.
Curiously in the fall of 2005, I met Patrick on myspace a social networking site akin to facebook. Not unlike now I was just as obsessed with embellishing my profile and checking out the whos and whats online. Funny enough I decided to check out the NUS network to see if I knew anyone on it to add to my growing friend’s list. See. Inconsequential rubbish like that irk me. Like many impressionable women ( and girls ) out there, I found a random girl’s profile and clicked on it only because I thought she was hot. So scrolling through her profile I saw a guy on her top 10 friend’s list thingy and hey ho he is hot! Shrugging, I clicked on his profile and sad to my utmost disgust that he was a sailor. And an old one at that!
I’ve always had bad impressions of military men; their reputation of sleeping with women at the ports they pull into or tall tales of them having illegitimate kids running around they dont know of reinforced by plays like Miss Saigon. As a student of political science specializing in military studies in the far east I was only too aware of young, hot blooded ( handsome nonetheless) marines running amok in Okinawa, murdering the innocent populace and raping their female offspring. NOT the most flattering picture of them huh. Obviously there was always the exception of the rule but its hard to take your chances when faced with the challenge of pessimism and a paranoid media.
Suffice to say, I never mustered up enough courage to talk to any just because I am reserved when talking to strange men nevermind rowdy sailors, intimidating enough with their brashness and big group of friends. I’ve always secretly thought that I am somewhat of a social inept, awkward at social gathering and too impatient for small talk. To be fair, I did do a fair bit of oggling and girlish giggling with my girlfriends but rarely did we try to spark anything. I was also tired of this long distance bs and was not about to begin another.
In my voyeuristic exploit I also saw that he lived in texas. As few of you may know , my college football allegiance belong to the USC Trojans. Forever and always. That year was a fluke win for the Longhorns who won the Trojans at the very last second damning me to the pits of football angst for the next couple of days. I hated Texas. And I still harbor a deep suspicion of the denizens of the lone star state that teeters on the border of dislike most days. Anyway I also saw that he was a smoker. I’ve sworn never to date anyone to smoke because I hate the smell of cigarettes to the fricking core. My momma told me once to never harbor such strong dislikes because fate will play a mean trick on you and you will fall in love with a man like that. Yep that came true although he later quit for me.
In spite of myself he was cute so I chatted him up and we started talking all through winter and Spring. This was about the same time as my application for the work and travel program. When I got selected to participate I chose to work at Dulles airport in Virginia, a cheerful coincidence that Pat’s house is about an hour’s commute from. Thus began our courtship every weekend I’d stay at his place and the poor devil would drive a total of 2 hours on thursdays and sunday nights. Our fletching love took flight literally with me flying to and fro Singapore, Maryland every time there was some sort of break be it december for a month, march for a week, summer, or 2 weeks in fall. We’ve spent a whopping 15 grand on air tickets so far, the cost of our mini cooper.
Crazy.
But it had to be this way. Surely there are couples out there who elope for more noble reasons but we are not all alike for our circumstances and desires differ greatly. Ambitiously, I felt I could ride it out and I was sure our relationship was sturdy enough to see through this. I took a chance on my relationship but it was neither flippant nor callous.I did not want to short change ourselves or my parents by running away from home leaving a trail of angry tears, broken hearts and sheer disappointment.
Neither did I want them to blame my prospective husband for my actions that I had full prerogative over. Thankfully he was as supportive and adamant about me staying in college , so we resolve that I would complete my education before anything. I refuse to let all that I’ve worked hard for go to waste and I loved what I was doing in school, I enjoyed the mental stimulation of our discussions, the university scholars program also provided ample opportunities that I did not want to miss out on.
For sure there were moments I was ready to fling it all behind and catch the next plane out to Baltimore and get married. But I wanted to start off our marriage right with the blessing of my parents, and also earn my degree that I had invested much time and money into. Indeed the parentals were quite unhappy that I was engaged to a sailor of all things, and white and so much older although they were supportive enough to come for the wedding. Happily my mom and dad eventually realized this chinese new year how much Patrick truly cares for me.
Then his iraq deployment came and I was hysterical for about 3 hours in the USP lounge room surrounded by amazing friends who talked me out of my self pity. My ISM professor, Matthias also helped a lot in talking sense in me bless his heart. So I got back on my feet and trooped on even though the stress was unbelievable. It was the stress of doing 6 modules, one of them a mini thesis of 6,000 words and another a language module ( french ) while planning a wedding overseas. I was also the stage manager for our usp drama production, saving grace and also a participant of the EU-ASEAN conference, and aside from all that I also planned a short trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia with my Norwegian friend ( hello Tanya! ).
My final semester came and went, then for 3 weeks we had to embark on our conference to Jakarta, Bangkok, Brussels and then to Paris. Incredibly tiring made even more exasperating but the lack of communication because for some reason the european network didnt hold up long distance well enough ( their workers are perpetually on strike maybe thats why) . Of course I was still charged for the shitty phone calls from Pat that will hang up most unpleasantly in the middle of a conversation. The bill came up to a whopping $900 half of which was forked out from my dad after waging a tirade at a very repentant me, and the other was paid by Patrick.
Anyway all this while I’ve been liasing with my mother in law, Patty in Portland who did a lot of the wedding planning and spent a lot of money on our one day celebratory affair. The stress of planning a wedding was unlike anything because this is my special day and like most, if not all hope to do this once and for all. Of course if we didnt have a wedding, my stress load would be severely ridden but Pat and I wanted a wedding even though I often talk about marriage being an institution ( which it is! ). We felt that after all the shit we’ve been through we deserve one other , and also to thank everyone who has been so supportive and as a signal of how much we value the commitment of marriage, a sacred promise to ourselves.
Thankfully everything fell into place when I got to Portland, it helped that Patty is illustrious and quite diligent in her appointments and organization skills. We were able to finalize everything down to the minute details of table decorations in about the 3 weeks I was in Portland before flying over to Baltimore in the advent of my fiance’s return from Iraq.
Its been a hell of a 3 years since Pat and I met but I would not trade any moment of it for an alternative. Except for the a smattering of fights and quarrels, we have been happy, relishing the moments of muted joys in our domestic idle. Needless to say I miss my friends and family in Singapore more than I can ever say because these people were there in the toughest of times and I am not one to forget my loyalties and familial allegiances. Sadly, our time in Maryland is whittling by the days. In pursuit for military classes he leaves for florida in about 1 and a half weeks. Faced with the emptiness of a house that was our lives intertwined from the moment we started us and as the hollowness of the house echoes deep into my night I shall be desolate, and lonelier so in my new bed of a futon.
But a new beginning in Japan beckons with the prospect of a better life ahead so I will take heart.
Its easy to read all this like a novel but to actually be living it or grappling with the sheer temerity of possibly messing up your wedding and wondering if things will turn out good is another thing altogether. Id like to quote Philip Roth aptly on that:
“terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic”.
I love you, Patrick.
Classé dans : 1
It has been quite an eventful day and all, for a girl who trotted around the houses in pajamas. I just read on my newsfeed that my son of a pastor, turned missionary of an ex is now married and expecting a son due in july! The wonders of facebook but boy did not see that coming! And no I am not bitter, seeing how after I broke up with him I met Patrick. Its a trip, especially when the lean mean filipino baby making machine is in her 30s and he is only 23.
Now did you think the 8 almost 9 yrs age gap between Pat and myself was bad?
Classé dans : 1
Well, not really. Just my hackneyed attempt at making fun of the flobots. Real chipper song btw!
The movers will be here on friday, an alarming 2 days from now and beside having to grapple with the stress of getting our life boxed away and organized I am sorry to say that I have hives. Even sorrier is the sight of me scratching before all and sunder with awful hives from the goddamn japanese encephilitis vaccine I had last wednesday. As a follow up I was suppose to visit them again for a follow up, but today was just not the day to be cheerfully cavorting to the damn clinic. Little, then increasingly large flurries of snow assailed the streets and frost was spectre-grey. That’s right the day was so bleak I saw it fitting to include a thomas harding line from the darkling thrush into my prose, you get the picture. With the gloom and biting cold I cant be arsed to leaving the house in anticipation of more pain. Instead I stayed home and took a 4 hour nap filled with dreams of the strangest creatures and the bizare. I dreamt I was a spy for the bolsheviks during the cold war, skulking around in the shadows of secrets, wrapped in a coat of stealth complete with a confection of sweet firearms. Within the somber of slumber, I fell asleep and when I tried to wake up ( for real and in the dream ) I found myself trapped in an invisible straitjacket. Then my itch started and I woke up. Bastards. This is most unpleasant! I’d rather be a demon russo spy than a domestic consort, scratching in her pajamas. First my right foot, then my entire arm, next up is my other arm and lastly my left foot. Thankfully they dont itch simutaneously otherwise I will put a gun to my head and rid myself of this misery afterall if an animal can be put down why can’t I, a human being with opposeable thumbs and a right to live also be accorded the will to die? Frighteningly, I say so halfly in jest. I’ve been semi conscious the entire day, drifting in and out of exhaustion tottering on the edge of sleeping. So much so that it has become a herculean task to get up from bed when my body leaves a dent of an orifice on the mattress from sleeping on it all day long, incredible I know. This is the modern day caricature of the sleeping beauty.
Wrong day to be so sick, comrade. As if this obnoxious itch isn’t bad enough, there is the constant harangue that the movers are coming. The movers are coming, a’coming, a ‘coming. Like an annoying bitch of an advertorial jingle only you cant turn off the tv.
I am sick of typing on this space so before I turn hysterical I will endeavor for greater things in life. Like to shower for one. After which to consume the anti-histamine meds I have from the hair dye ( yep allergic to that also ) and go to bed. And have I mention I am tired of this insufferable cold weather? Of course listening to Charles Trénet croon about la mer and the azure summer sky merging makes me wanna cry.
But alas spring is ever so far away.
Classé dans : 1
There is something romantic about receiving a single stalk of rose for valentine’s day perhaps its the simplicity and eloquence of the solitary rose amidst other ostentatious shows of affection. The singularity of it accentuates her beauty leaving me breathless and thankful for my husband.
He’s sent me a bouquet for the past two valentine’s days to show his appreciation no matter the distance but this year it was our good fortune that we got to spend vday together. I actually didn’t expect him to buy me anything especially since we were going for an expensive dinner that evening so the rose made me smile in spite of myself.
Classé dans : 1
Let’s do it old school, with roses and poems:
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
Classé dans : 1
Classé dans : 1
Yesterday was the first valentine’s day Pat and I ever spent physically together in both our courtship time and marriage life of a few months. It was virtually impossible for us to ever spend vday together because feb 14th is right smack in the middle of spring semester for me; so to make up for his absence he’d always send me a bouquet of 40 roses like the did last year and the year before only he also gave me a coach purse last year and a wee teddy bear. I’m not a fan of soft toys but still it was a sweet gesture.
Although the evening ended well at Morton’s steak house, the day was disastrous. We had a big fight over dishes, pots and pans. I know, the absurdity of it all. What started out as a rather exciting mission to buy new kitchenware for our new beginning in Japan deterioriated into an arduous task of visiting 4 different retail stores that eventually never materialize into anything fruitful. So far we’ve perused Walmart, Target, Bed bath and beyond, Macy’s and today we are going to Nordstrom. The problem with the plates was that he didn’t want to buy any China because we already have 2 sets in Portland that he intends to ship over to Japan regardless of the insane cost of shipping 2 crates of china and silverware. He wanted plates that were skinny, light, red and square that came with an array of other serving sets like soup bowls, mugs, serving dishes, serving bowls all in sets of 8 for hosting family and friends. He wants matching silverware with a certain acrylic moulding on top that has to match the colors of the plates ( green and red ). And to make life more complicated,he wants a specific set of pots and pans that retail for 600 bucks at bed bath and beyond. We are NOT spending so much money on fricking pots and pans I insisted and he slyly remarked about my purses the chanel, gucci and coaches that amount up to thousands. Obviously I can’t say much to that. I was seething quietly inside. Long story short this is how we spiraled into a big fight that ended up with me calling Morton’s and canceling the reservations but rebooking it again -_- We fought because I was irritated with shopping for 3 days straight with no resolution and annoyed also because my opinion didn’t seem to count that much.
In the end, we decided we will go to nordstrom today to see if there’s anything worth buying. Otherwise we will go back to bed bath and beyond to settle for the $600 set. We are two different people and while we do seek quality our priorities lie in different areas. Mine in purses, bedding and bath accessories. His in kitchenware and furnitures. We share interests in food but while he would gladly pay 250 bucks for a meal at morton’s, I would be happy going to Olive Garden. That is not to say I am largely ungrateful, I just guilt a lot about things and the economics of opportunity costs really get to me. That said I am still grateful for spending vday at Morton’s and this time around they made my fillet mignon perfecto, cripsy crust and medium rare with a beautiful pink inside dripping with à steak. I really like the ones we saw at Target but for him ( even if he refuses to admit it ), it’s too ‘cheap’. Well, its his money afterall and he can damn well spend it on whatever he wants because he does buy me anything I want afterall. So I really should relent and let him buy what he really wants, because he hardly wants at all usually.
I love you Patrick, your eccentricities included. And hopefully today we will find something he likes and get this over and done with. I’ve never been so sick of looking at kitchenware.
update: we finally bought a $200 set of pots and pans together with some cool zen looking plate at bed bath and beyond and our total came to less than what the $600 plates would have us pay. I’m just glad he listened to me and decided to go for the more practical choice
