Last Wednesday I was woken by a call from the newsroom asking if I knew any eyewitnesses to the Mumbai outrage.
That was the first I heard of it.

Then followed 50 hours of alternately rewriting copy posted by desperate correspondents in India and desperately calling, texting and e-mailing members of my family.

Those who share my blood are well. We've lost friends, however, and that hurts.

Too much now to write about. Too many thoughts jostling for space.
One thing is paramount - yes, something needs to be done.
But what?

I can't just join in the chorus screaming for blood. I'm trying to get together lists of recommendations to be sent via the High Commissioner - coastal security, higher salaries for those in the intelligence network.

And I don't want war. I don't believe we need war.
This is a suppurating infection that needs to be excised and military action will only make things worse, not better.

I've never felt this calmly furious in my life. No wait, I have. End 2001, when Lashkar attacked Parliament.

Wow. Just wow.

They've been learning English. Giving up water for farming so that Beijing can be green for their guests. Because it's a matter of "national pride".

And they were beautiful on stage. From calligraphy to fireworks, to the Confucians chanting "All are brothers" (I think), to the mascots named so that they sound like "Beijing welcomes you".

I have a lump in my throat right now.

The Olympics belong to all of us and China has done its best to show it understands this.

Boycotting the Games is not going to get China to better its human rights record - the only thing that might work is continued exposure to the world and economics. And insulting China at its coming out party is going to do no good and much damage.

Because the ordinary person on Beijing's streets only knows that he or she is presenting their best because the world is coming to their house to play.

Let's be good guests.

So I watched Hellboy II: The Golden Army. How I love a canon where the actors pencil in the subtext!

Hence, fanfiction! My first story in a while, be gentle. Or not :)

Disclaimer: The characters are not mine, but belong to the director, actors and syndicating company.

Rating: PG for language. R for theme


( Summary: Written after watching Hellboy II. Little snippets from the fae twins’ lives, from before the Golden Army was made to the time Nuala enters the troll market. Not twincest…but not not twincest either. )

Reviews, please?

quietus - noun
1.Something that serves to suppress, check, or eliminate.
2.Release from life; death.
3. A final discharge, as of a duty or debt.

Fantasy, original story.

But I'll swear it is true. Somewhere.

Rated R for language.

~*~

( He held out a feather and three pebbles. The immigration official stared at his palm, then looked up at him. )

Take an egg, the last of the butter and the ends of a brown loaf from the fridge.
Add a resolution to go grocery shopping soon.

Set water to boil for coffee and brush your teeth as a grey sky rumbles outside the window.
Add a clock that should be ten minutes fast but is actually slow.

Drink scalding hot coffee with milk gone slightly off as you fumble to find wrinkle-free clothes.
Look at your wristwatch. Add a curse.
Forget the ironing. Finish the coffee.

Make a fried-egg sandwich and dump the dishes in the sink. Grab the sandwich, forget your cellphone, wonder whether or not to get it as you bang the door and clatter down the stairs.

Slip and fall running for the bus. Save the sandwich from the mud. Miss the bus.

Add another curse.

Stand with a slightly soggy fried-egg sandwich in one hand as the rain pours outside the crowded bus shelter, as you wait for the next bus, and you can't even phone in to say you'll be late.

Realise that you can't even phone in to say you'll be late.

Shrug and try not to let the dripping umbrellas rain on your sandwich.

Oddly enough, it still tastes pretty good.

Woo me with grammatical honesty and passion.

Else don't bother.

~*~

To be a writer is to have the ability to be most content in your own world.

In other words, you bore me.

~*~

I'm a cynical romantic.

I'm cynical about you ever being romantic.

~*~

Yes, I'm heartbroken that we're breaking up, and yes, I do intend to turn the experience into a 5,000 word story. What else did you expect? And what do you mean THAT'S why we're breaking up?

~*~

Please ignore every Hindi movie you may ever have seen. When a woman says "No", she is NOT telling you to please try harder.

~*~

Yes, of course I heard you say you'd die for me. I was waiting for the sound of splashing as you dive into the freezing sea to prove it.


~*~

You wrote me a poem. How very sweet!

...

I could have written this a lot better.


~*~

The truest test of love is if I can show this to you and know you'll smile.

Yesterday one of my worst nightmares came true. A horny lizard wrapped itself around my ankle and wouldn't let go for millions of hours - okay, five seconds - until the very force of my jumping up and down dislodged it.

I survived that, but am now almost paralysed by this thought - omigosh, is this the kind of thing that happens after you ask the universe to make you stronger, more able to deal with crises?

Oh crap.

One worst nightmare down, only hundreds more to go.

Wow, a record. My first NSFW post.

Actually there are two NSFW links below - by which I mean they link to material not safe for work, this is adults only, don't click if you think you can't handle it, but if you can - and you share my sense of humour - this is absolutely hilarious. (And NSFW!)

First, thanks to svilleficrecs, we have this clip from Clive Owen's upcoming movie. It involves sex, guns and violence.

And then we have these scans from the life of secret agent Kev, who bears a striking resemblance to Clive Owen in that he's vaguely British and has dark hair. And a leather jacket at the opening.

Seriously, they could be mirror-images. They really really could.

Couldn't they?

August was 'hell month' for me quite literally. During hell month in Singapore, many Chinese people burn joss sticks and paper money to venerate their ancestors. They also leave large amounts of food out for them, but it's the burning that generates neverending clouds of smoke and ash that aggravate my allergies to borderline asthma attacks. Thanks to a timely diagnosis by judemustard, however, I'm back in trim and have even started going for my dance lessons again.

I passed my beginner's Japanese lessons and have gone on to the next level. Classes start in October and I'm trying to get ahead by studying Japanese kanji, which are more often than not Chinese characters. I need to study early, as everyone else in my class already knows Chinese - is Chinese- and will at least be able to understand the kanji, if not pronounce them.

Studying kanji is really really different from studying an alphabet. Example, a straight sideways line like this: '-' means 'one'. But depending on the other pictograms it's associated with, it can be pronounced as 'ichi', 'ikka', 'hito', and in one glorious case, 'tsuita(chi)'. So as I learn kanji, I find I need to learn as many words as can be made with it.
( More on learning to read Japanese/Chinese )
I see pictures and more meaning everywhere now and I can't tell you how much more amazing the world has become to me. The very way the language is structured is different - I always knew that, but now I KNOW that.

Does this make sense to anyone else? Anyone have any similar experiences to share? I'd love to hear!

Tonsilitis and a trip to Bangkok kept me away from the newsroom for over a week. I'm glad to be back, because surfing the wires always gives me a pleasurable chuckle now and again.

For instance, on hearing that my PM Manmohan Singh has been invited to George W Bush's ranch. Now I know that is a "signal honour", but what I'm wondering is, does Bush know Mr Singh will not eat beef? And is probably vegetarian?

Have put down "possible international incident" on my calendar, around the days of the visit.

In other news, my interest in anime grows apace. If only my fluency in Japanese kept up!

Anyone who has ever lived in, visited or vaguely thought about Singapore, should visit this uncyclopaedia entry now.

My personal favourite, however, is this bit about the origins of our current prime minister.

"Having successfully conquered and subdued the pathetic people of Singapore, Immortal Cyborg Lee Kwan Yew sought to pursue more inward goals - that is, becoming a family man. However, due to his unique philosophy regarding the "purity" of races, Lee was unable select a mate from amongst the hundreds of females that were offered to him as a bride. Undeterred by his lack of success, Lee Kwan Yew chose a different approach - to fashion a cybernetic imitation of personhood and imbue it with a portion of his own artificial intelligence. Thus, on 14 August, 1952, codename Robo Lee v2.0 was unveiled to the general public. On 22 August of the same year, the artificial intelligence was christened Lee Hsien Loong, meaning "boring dragon" in Mandarin Chinese."

I only wish the entry on India had been written better.

Just wondering, because was up late last night editing the book review for the paper, which contained no spoilers except the obvious 'it's the last book and the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort'.

Potter mania bypassed my household. We three went for a jazz performance on Sentosa and two of us stopped off for coffee afterwards. As we entered Starbucks for our caramel-caffeine fix, I noticed a table with the Deathly Hallows tome atop it. A page was bookmarked, and I suspect the owner was standing in line for a caffeine jolt, so that zie could stay awake long enough to finish reading the book tonight.

I wonder how many others did the same.

At class today, A-sensei, male, was going through numbers with us. He'd scribble a number on the board and ask a random student to say it in Japanese.

I like A-sensei because he draws funny cartoons and makes quirky jokes to keep us interested. A typical example is today's lesson, when he wrote '17', pointed to himself and said, "My age! Now say it in Japanese."

Then he wrote "69" and said, "B-sensei's age! Ask her on Monday if you don't believe! Now say it in Japanese."

I giggled. The entire class giggled, because B-sensei is barely 35, if that.

Then I got to thinking.

It was perfectly fine for A-sensei to make that joke about B-sensei. It was construed as mild teasing and evidence of the good collegial relationship between them.

But what if B-sensei, female, and some years younger (looking, anyway) than A-sensei had made that joke? I just felt it would have been taken badly. I would have blinked a bit, had she made that joke, yes, even if A-sensei were somewhat younger than her.

Remove the age difference, and even then, a joke like that from B-sensei would have made me wonder just the teensiest bit about whether the relationship between her and A-sensei was collegial or other.

And then to my dismay, I realised why B-sensei, who has a lovely sense of humour, probably doesn't take the joking liberties in class that A-sensei does, flirting avuncularly with the students and all that.

I had to take my gender goggles off and give them a good seeing to after that lesson.

My brother wants to start a photoblog and we're discussing hosting.
Any ideas? Any recommendations?
I don't mean photo hosting sites like flickr etc.
I mean, are there any photoblogs you enjoy perusing and what are they so we can ask the bloggers how they like their hosts.
Thanks in advance!

I don't think it's coincidence that heroic figures of story and legend often have sad and sorry childhoods.
One of the hardest things in the world for any loving family is to let a member of it slay dragons alone.

In honour of my parents then, the truest heroes I know: thank you for giving me your swords and staying away from my adventures - at least until you're asked!

I get the strangest feeling I've used that title before. But it is so apt!

( By the by, for those who came late, this is where and what I've been: )

Now it's July and I'm Still Not Galactic Ruler. However I am trying to push myself to sketch more, just as the fleetingglimpses site was my effort to write more. So now I need to figure out image hosting.

Wordpress and LJ don't seem to have what I think I need. Please correct me if you know better.

I could also host the stuff at gatefiction, but am afraid of the coding it would involve. See, my gatefiction site is written in basic html in notepad. The thought of typing all those img srcs is just... shudder.

What I really need is something like wordpress for images - an image-blog host or an image-blog updating engine. Like an engine that would serve a webcomic. If anyone can help me, I'll be very very grateful and promise not to use you as a character in my sketches.

Thank you kindly!

In 10 hours I'll be on the flight to Pune, India.
In 20 hours, I'll be embarking on a road trip with my family, heading south to places like Trivandrum and Kanya Kumari.
I'm packed. I'm excited. I'm trying not to worry about what I've forgotten.
See you in a month or two!

So, watched a midnight movie tonight, with the same person I met yesterday.
We talked until 5 afterwards.

Don't get me wrong. This wasn't a 'date', nor was it even vaguely romantic, despite some of the topics that came up in the course of our conversation. It was just, the morning after the night before, we decided to catch a movie together and after that, have coffee.

In summary, we hit it off. Again. Though it wasn't as easy as the summary makes it sound.

I told him off three times for being self-absorbed and monopolising the conversation. The third time, I was practically leaving the table, I was that annoyed - which was when he got it and he apologised for treating me as a lamppost listener. After that, we managed to find topics of conversation where both could participate equally and it was really nice.

I'm happy.

Tonight was awesome. I didn't expect it to be.
The actual day itself mirrored a day in February when everything went wrong. I mean, everything went wrong. I spent much of the time sick to my stomach, wanting to cry and scream and yell and not being able to, because I had to stay strong for the people around me.

But like that mirror-night in February, the night was awesome, though I didn't expect it to be.
Like that mirror-night in February, it involved a cute male stranger. They even looked alike!

Suffice it to say that I saw a cute boy across the dance floor. I needed to blow off steam. Using the power of positive thinking and various subtle feminine wiles, I got to dance with cute boy.

I will no longer complain about the fees that I'm paying for my Bollywood dance & bellydance lessons.

Dancing, when two people know what they are doing and are echoing each others' rhythms, is an indescribably glorious experience.

We kept dancing till 4 a.m., long after my friends went home.

We walked by the river and talked till way past 5.

Tonight was awesome and I didn't expect it to be. Just like that mirror-night in February.

Of course, just like that mirror-night in February, it was a chance encounter, two ships passing, a beautiful transient gift. But oh, it feels good to be a girl tonight!