smilax

So, while going to pick up supplies from the supermarket (Ready meal, Coke, cucumbers, butter, tinned pineapples. I think the old lady behind me was looking at me in an unnecessarily judgmental fashion.) I walked past a guy wearing an eye patch. My stream of consciousness basically went Huh, he's hot. Starting to expect a parrot and a peg leg here... Oh hey, it's the wrong eye and all but Moshe Dayan and secret plans to invade Lebanon in the 50s!

And that's when I stopped. I'm quite sure it's a good thing that bits and pieces from HY203 are beginning to stick around in my head since the exam's in five days and all, but it's still making me feel like I have a case of the crazies. 

If the bureaucratic politics model was criticized for being highly similar to work done by the Kremlinologists, then why on earth would the model not be applicable to the Soviet Union? There are too many ideas swimming around in my head and not enough time to pursue each and every line of inquiry. Damn you books full of conflicting narrative. 

This year, Daddy has come back from his business trips with a seemingly endless string of tales of must-buy items. Snake-oil salesmen probably love him, or people very much like him. because once it's in his head that something's worthwhile, he won't stop till he gets his hands on it. And once he sees results, everyone will hear about it, even if no one really wants to find out over dinner about miraculous Indian laxatives that will cure constipation and creaky joints for ten cents a pop. 

Recently, someone he met overseas told him about the hair regenerative powers of Pigeon baby shampoo, and since then we've been hunting for a bottle every time we chance by a supermarket. Till date, we haven't found a single bottle on the shelves because apparently it's all sold out. For all I know, maybe it does work to stop hair loss, just that other people found out about it first. Can you imagine, poor babies who won't be able to have their hair washed because baby boomers with thinning hair are snatching bottles of shampoo from under their noses? Try to, it's a pretty funny mental image.

We'll probably have to make a trip down to the Isetan baby section one of these days, just to get a bottle. Ah, the things we do for his vanity. 

---

I bought a stuffed penguin from Everland last year, and when Mommy found out that I've been calling it Penguin all this while, she gave me the stink-eye and told me I was being completely unimaginative. 

There are some conversations you never, ever expect to have that somehow happen anyway, as a slightly bewildering by-product of our times. Case in point:

Mommy: Oh dear, I think one of my Farmville friends is dead.
Me: Wha-at now?
Mommy: Her crops are all withered and I think her display picture has the words 'In Memory Of' at the top. I can't be sure because I can't make it any bigger. And I don't know how to unfriend her.
Me: Well. I suppose this is the sort of thing that happens when you die on Facebook. 
Mommy: O_O
Me: If her account suddenly sends you any gifts.... DUN DUN DUUUN!
Both of us: *giggle snort*

Went to watch The Vow with Mommy, and I was all prepared to start ugly crying in the middle of the cinema since these type of things always set me off - I even brought a new packet of tissue paper along. But in the end it was all for naught, because it either wasn't all that sad, or my heart has hardened so much that I don't even feel keenly for fictional characters any more.

Weepy movies just aren't the same experience any more. Just a number of tears discreetly shed here and there, nothing like the major water works of the past. I'm still amazed I didn't pass out from dehydration when I watched Bridge to Terabithia. Oh that book, and all my feeeeeelings. 

It is the weekend again, and as I made my way to the end of Feminist IR Theory For Dummies with the sounds of my parents gently bickering over nothing in particular in the background, Brandon ambled over with the vaguely content look of someone who woke up at noon then proceeded to have another two hour nap on the couch. Maybe it's because he's finally out of those terrible teen years or because I'm away for stretches at a time, but his aversion to hugging has lessened, and he's much more amenable to my grabby ways. Still, he's being surprisingly pliable, so I gave him a (literal) prod and a "What?"

"My nap was very good. I had a very nice dream."
"What did you dream about that's given you the warm fuzzies?"

At this he gives a small and rather distressed moue. "I don't know. I can't remember anymore."

"So you woke up from something nice and found that reality is harsh and starker than you remembered. Poor thing."

I pat his arm, because his head is a bit of a stretch away, and then we both go our separate ways, me back to my room, him to the study. 

---

We had high tea at Goodwood Park yesterday, and I was once again delighted to steal every last slice of banana from the Apom Berkuah sauce. Cheap kicks are alright. 

---

"Look! You have to see this!"
"What? What's so stupendously brilliant this time?"

Of course, there's really no point asking, because Daddy moves in fits and starts, and when he's excitable he's prone to floating off as soon as he's made his big announcement. So I sigh and go over, if not there'd never be any answers.

It turns out he finally managed to plug his iPad to the TV because the cable was working after all, you just had to bend it a certain way. Sometimes I shudder to think what would happen if he did one day accidentally discover something really amazing. Like explode into bits of happiness and triumph. 

Mommy sighed and patted my hand. "He dragged you over too huh?"

---

I slipped and fell on freshly mopped tile again this morning. And I was being careful. The Spartans would've left me for the wolves.

Oh bitter crushing disappointment. The one day I don't check my phone and I'm invited to eat sushi. I've been dreaming about sushi for days!

OH TREACHEROUS BRAIN