this is quite disturbing. lol

ooh, it's been a long time since i last visited this place. sure feels good to have a monologue once again, where no one can contradict anything i say. =)

so, what was the impetus that sparked off this blogging tonight? probably my morbid fascination at finding out how ugly i look in some photos that i happened to be browsing through idly, photos taken during my venice+ski trip by.. surprise surprise, my friends.

ladies and gentlemen, i present to you, the mug shot that flooded venice soon after it was taken:




(in jest):minah who was taking this pic ugly as sin, meee had to close mee slitty eyes

now, if u'd just look past the elaborately girly mask (which incidentally wasn't mine), u might possibly think, what was actually going on when this pic was taken? trust me, i dunno.
wince factor: 90%




now, what's that lumpy michelin-like thingy on the left with those two fat cheeks?!?!
wince factor: 80%




skiing amateur acting pro. on a flat surface. how.. very impressive.
wince factor: 80%



those craggy sides of the mountains.. ah.. i tried my best to avoid them.



at last, some semblance of beauty, courtesy of mother nature.



eeks. i hate slopes like this during the first two days. i tend to accelerate so quickly i feared i wld defy all laws of physics. thankfully, or perhaps unfortunately, i always obeyed the laws of gravity. butt first of course.



i really like this pic. the mountains just look soo august and resplendent with those trees fringing the front.



why did the sky suddenly lour? because ugly boy's out to ski!!

on the subject of ugly, i have to concede that someone outstripped me in this esthetic category. on an unanimous basis no less. i'm talking about susan boyle, a scottish woman who was recently catapulted to fame on Britain's Got Talent. without much further ado, let's see her in her full.. unattractive glory:



i first knew about her on facebook ( amazing how such things get published on fb actually), but when a friend mentioned her this evening, im beginning to think that it wasn't her who was ugly so much as our reaction to her.

to be fair to susan, she isn't all that ugly. she does look slightly squashed and frumpy, especially with her unruly teeth and unkempt hair. but that gold lace dress.. ah that's a different story. she looked like a slab of pork sitting on a doily. and what's with that hip-wiggling?!?!

the british lot isn't exactly known to be blessed in the looks department. look at graham norton. he sure is funny as hell, but he looks like a baboon with mascara. and that chef gordon ramsay.. boy, if only he looked half as appetising as the british foodfare he whips up ( which isn't much). his face reminds me of a dried-up riverbed. go google or wiki him if you don't believe me. God is fair though. for every gordon ramsay he created, he created a nigella lawson.

now that woman really invented food porn. watching her cookshow just makes one feel all funny inside and below. and im sure keira knightley and kate beckinsale are two of e best-looking british actresses ever. oh and emily watson too. smart girl to boot.

oups, ive digressed. but seriously, wasn't it incredulous how the audience reacted to her? that long unpleasant wolf whistle. gawd. i wld prob have died from shame on the spot. and that simon cowell, buffed to e sheen of an ornamental pebble, rolling his eyes so high they threatened to roll down the aisle and onto the stage to gawk at susan more closely. amanda holden ( another rare pretty brit, with the faint snail trails of botox over her perfectly smooth face) had the decency to choose neutrality. brownie points for that. piers morgan winced. just like i did at my pics above.

i like the moment where susan steadied herself, feet apart and sang like a scottish edith piaf. those few seconds where the audience and judges were spellbound and ashamed. ashamed at having misjudged this sad little spinster, beloved only of Pebbles her cat. till the shame gave way to unabashed gasping and involuntary clapping. clapping at how this scottish woman with that cheeky grin dared to aspire to be like elaine paige, and clapping probably at how astounded they were at having to swallow their pride, since susan's having the last laugh now.

amanda sums it up most succinctly i guess, when she said that everyone was against susan. poor little susan. even paul potts, winner of Britain's Got Talent in 2007, had an easier time, even though his face was equally squashed. i dun remember there being any smirking or derision.

now perhaps there is some basis for feminism after all. seems that only women with bright empty beauty get to go on screen. ugly women get their fair share of airtime on the news, where they can weep pitifully because some awful personal tragedy had befallen them, as their fate would have it naturally.

i really hope susan wins this competition. she will probably be the talk of town, and perhaps Toys'R Us would have a miniature toy replica of her.

"look at this! it's ugly, it sings, and best of all, it can wiggle its hips!!" introducing the sexy singing susan.

i feel like susan at times. the freakish exception that becomes very malicious because others grind my very existence into dust. i do not deserve this, but hey, they probably do not deserve me either.

i'm annoyed right now, for reasons inappropriate for expounding on this blog. and to avoid typing an expletive-laden post as im wont to do, ive decided to peek my head out of the hole i've crawled into over the past two months to check in and let everyone know that i'm still alive and squealing like a pig whenever i eat something good, and rave on something insignificant.

i'd actually planned to blog briefly about my trip to california and all the orgiastic festivities that i thought i wld have, and have silly captions below pictures that i'd taken throughout the trip. blame it on laziness or, i don't know, laziness, it's just that sometimes it's so exhausting to watch the card reader transfer all those photos from the memory card to my hard drive. i burn at least a hundred calories just thinking about it. and oh, just the thought of transferring 1gb of photos will positively send me straight into a coma. besides, who wants to see pictures of the golden gate bridge solely when u can see a more 'happening' version?





but i've come to see how wordy this place can be, so here's a token shot from an angle that not many have seen:




isn't it sad that some people choose to take their own lives by leaping off such a majestic bridge? apparently they'd be hurtling towards their deaths at more than 100km/h after a mere 5 seconds..

speaking of suicide, a conversation with an unctuous man in church this morning certainly brought on waves of murderous intents. evil? i know. sinful? definitely. on the 1st sunday of 2009? i think i see the gates of hades there yonder.

plus, my 'good karma' accumulated from having done some good in myanmar is probably all dried up by now. add to that the fact tt i kept forgetting to say grace at the table before some meals when i was at my friend's place, and my tombstone will probably read smth not very pleasant. but if God saw the spread on the table i'm sure He'd understand. =P

basically the conversation with said man transpired roughly like this (we were discussing about my hols in the US, and how unhealthy the food there tends to be):
Mr Unctuous: "so aren't you afraid of eating soo unhealthily? what about your health when u get older?"
me: "coz not, i'm only 24, and i still get hard-ons in math class. "

alright, i jest.

me: " okay, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. good-bye. "

i wished i had the balls to say that, but nope, social niceties dictate that you plaster on a stupid smile while proffering a nicer reply.

me: " nah, my metabolism is very high, and i usually eat very healthily on weekdays to compensate for my weekends and holidays.."

seriously, some people...

so, what struck me about the US this time round?

it's big. it's really big. i know it's big but the interminable flights there slapped me in the face and on my arse real hard. i emerged dishevelled after my 3rd flight with butts sore from getting squished for 14-15hrs.

AMERICA THE BIG. ginormous malls filled with megastores that span a few football fields, malls that will make vivocity look puny in comparison to them. malls so big that there are usually a few exits off freeways/roads that lead to it, and getting off the wrong one could mean a long long walk to the store u want.. and oh, at this mall, this man was driving around looking for parking lots and when he spotted one, he parked head in, but then reversed, and headed straight for another one just a couple of feet away. probably so it wld save him all but 10 additional seconds of walking. how lazy can americans get?

but gosh, i love the way the americans do things. who says good things come in small packages? the bigger the better. especially when it comes to food and shopping. big servings at affordable prices. warehouse factory outlet shopping with massive discounts.

wait. why was i annoyed again?

this is beyond magnifique.. i get frissons down my spine each time i listen to this. if only i cld still sing like that. gone are the days where i can sing as a soprano, now i sing like cher getting high on helium. =X

isn't it amazing how clémence pales in comparison to jean baptiste? she lets in so much air when she sings, whereas jean's voice rings out loud and clear. no wonder the vienna boys' choir tried to preserve the incredible voices of some boy singers through castration. the death knell of puberty spells the end of such angelic male voices..

on a totally unrelated note, i took a shower just now and nearly froze to death. there was no hot water and it's 6 degrees out there. i had no idea where all the hot water went. i used to joke with my army friends that all our important bits could freeze and drop off at such frigid temperatures, and i swear that could have happened just now. i was gasping for breath when i put my head under the shower, and soaping, lathering and rinsing off has never been soo painful. the cold was so biting i was half-afraid it cld cause a cardiac arrest. i think i might not shower the next time there's no hot water at night. the caucasians usually do that and shower in the morning. to hell with the dirt and grime of the day. my bits are more important to me.

business management exam tmr. help!! signing out.

this is just a quick post for memory keepsake, which i hope will be useful decades down the road. i was made to do additional homework in English class (damnit, I can't get exempted from it because of the ECTS credits that I have to earn in order to graduate) because i'm anglophone, and was thus assigned to study Robert Frost's poems. Gosh.. the last time i touched english literature was 10 years ago. boy am i an old man now..

anyway, here's one of which i particularly like:


The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20


nice right.. yea, i think so too. so, reading it brings to mind the fact that, upon hindsight, i'm sure i'll look back on these 6 years here in time to come, at times with jaundice, at times with rose..

sadly that's nothing more i can say about it. at least not until i do some wiki-ing or googling on how the metric pattern works. i can't believe that in prepa i had to churn out rubbish in french philo, only to do the same now in english.. 2 weeks ago, i had to study excerpts of famous American speeches (think JFK, abraham lincoln and dr. matin luther king) and i had to research on it for about 2 hours. grr 2 hrs gone like that!! the time could have been better spent catching up on my american series =P

anyway, just a quick update about moi. school's fun, though really tiring. lessons are lighter than in prepa but it isn't as slack as i fantasised it to be. come end of this week, i'll have taken 6 exams already! and next week, a programming project is due, following which we have a projet d'électronique. outside of sch, im drinking a lot (whee!!!), which makes me very happy. and friends are fantabulously nice (yes!! a bit of redeeming grace for the french after all!), and i've gone out quite a bit with them and crashed at their places after having a red too many.

money gets frittered away really quickly now that im in paris. i told myself that i'll be good and save money by preparing sandwiches for lunch. eating in sch ain't that cheap, let alone those stupid bistros and cafés outside. sadly, i surrendered on the 3rd day. why? because i couldn't stomach another piece of ham anymore. just looking at it makes me retch. and worse, i was dumb enough to put it in wet tupperware once, so when i opened it, the sandwich laid there in its full soggy glory, with a few paltry ham strips lying amongst limp lettuce leaves in a sick shade of green that droop out like... nvm. anyway im eating 2 bananas a day for lunch now, i'm gonna be so slim soon lol.

activity-wise, i've joined the junior entreprise, yacht club and salsa. german lessons take up 3hrs each week, add to that the 1 or 2 dinner outings with friends on weekdays, soirées(parties) and cinema outings, and i can safely say i dun have much time left. but i just wanna say that i'm much happier now than before. and for that im really grateful. you may think it silly that all of the above makes me happy so easily. but it was as if prepa robbed me two years of my rightful happiness. to be meaningfully occupied and enjoy doing things with friends in and outside of school, that's happiness as i once knew it. it is smth that some people take for granted. some find it in the company of friends and/or loved ones, some find it in their work. some find it in shopping, and some in solitude. for me, i think im most content when im kept busy. sure, im happy whenever i have some free time at hand too, but all too quickly i'll find something else to do so i wun waste time.

i wish i can go on rambling, but my statistics assignment's beckoning. à la prochaine.