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a July 6th, 2005

  1. Being Shallow

    July 6, 2005 by barffie

    Something bothered me a little about Hikikomori’s post about my bashing of this certain femes blogger on Cowboy Bar. Something tells me that, why should I be bothered by his comments? And something tells me that, I am entitled to my comments, however warped my thinking may be. But then, I am still bothered by criticisms like that.

    I remembered reading about “semi-famous bloggers” on that post of hers. Why is that missing now on her blog, the post seems rather short now? Or am I just in denial, when I read that? I refused to see her reasonable point of view about not being ONE of the bloggers?

    The last time I checked, there are many cliques in our local blogosphere. The food-bloggers have their own community, and somehow, I am sort of in that Cowboy Bar community. And there are also the Tomorrow.Sg community, and many more cliques that I don’t know about. Apparantly, she’s not in the Cowboy Bar community, because she doesn’t quite post in there. So maybe that’s why she felt that she don’t belong to that group of people sitting at the other end of Hideout.

    Memento, the movie, has a good line about memories: “Leonard Shelby: Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.”

    But if my memories didn’t quite go kuku on me, I remembered feeling quite annoyed with her post. Even if I didn’t read it with a biased preconception, I would still feel that, somehow, she feels that she is worthy of going out with some of the most famous bloggers, just because they get along well.

    Harlow? If the other bloggers like me get along well with the other famous bloggers, why shouldn’t we hang out? Just because we blog? It’s like, “Hey! Everyone blogs here! So we are friends! Even if you are an asshole, we are still friends because you blog!” No, it doesn’t quite work that way.

    Firstly, we must have a good vibe about each other to want to meet up for the first time. As for subsequent gatherings, it’s really up to the individual if they like the people or not, and if they wanna continue hanging out with the others. From what I observed in the blogosphere recently, there are people who didn’t quite click with each other, and therefore stopped keeping in contact. It’s pretty normal, that kind of progression. Mass gatherings of people who don’t know each other that well, will more or less develop this particular pattern, I would say.

    So, what’s up with her post? IMHO, I might have come off a little too strong on my exclamation on Cowboy Bar in “[Insert famous blogger nick] Strikes Again” this time. But I still don’t agree with her concept of, “I can hang out with [the other famous blogger], because he’s my friend and the rest are just clamoring for his attention”. It’s as if the others aren’t his friends as well? If I didn’t remember wrongly, he did enjoy the company of some of those girls he met that night, and the day after. I am sure many people have been talking to him via MSN prior to the event, not just her.

    Argh! I’m late for belly-dancing. Comments please…

    Category Whine+Die | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Steve Jobs’ Speech and Health Shite

    July 6, 2005 by barffie

    Read this speech by Steve Jobs (as posted by Linda Chia) during a commencement ceremony for one of the (whatever) colleges in US, I think. I never thought speeches could be that interesting and that inspiring. I re-read it a few times and I thought, “Why are all the speeches that I’ve heard, boring and impersonal?” They all seemed very well-written, usually by a PR person, but they lacks the personal touch such as this.

    Linda and SyntaxFree both went for their respective breast examinations recently, and found lumps in them. SyntaxFree had just been discharged from the Day Surgery, and Linda is currently waiting for the diagnosis. These 20 something ladies have just come in contact with one of the most deadly diseases in Singapore, breast cancer. It doesn’t seem real when a character on a sci-fi series (the President in the new Battlestar Galactica) is suffering from that, but reading it off a blog just sends a jolt in me.

    I had some old posts (but they are not here, yet) on health and check ups, stemming from the meetup with one of my poly mates, Desiree. She had 2 ovarian cysts removed at the age of 22. She is the 2nd of my friends to go through such an invasive surgery. She lost a ton of weight, and I can understand why. Will try to convert my posts that were previously on html to this blog quickly.

    During the meetup that was supposed to be a farewell party of hers, while chomping down on our pratas, Desiree passed around a picture of the removed cysts. Not a pretty sight I would say, and with her vivid descriptions of the pain she was going through, the horrible periods, and how it was diagnosed… I was really shocked. One was 8cm in diameter, one was 12cm across. A friend of hers even had teeth and hair on her own gigantic cysts (cysts are deformed eggs, usually) that somehow ruined her marriage because she couldn’t conceive, among other factors… Desiree advised all the girls she met to go for regular Pap Smears, whether you are sexually active or not. I advocate that as well.

    Immediately that night I blogged about my various Pap Smear experiences. Someone even commented that it sounded like a medical journal. Can you imagine that many of my friends had NEVER done that test before? The virginal ones would opt the Pap Smear out of the yearly medical checkups for fear of pain, breach of the hymen and extreme discomfort. Well, I don’t think many people around me have had their anuses probed to check for something called occult blood as well, which is used to detect pre-cancerous cells in the colon.

    Medical checkups aren’t pleasant at all. The waiting of the diagnosis is even worse.

    I’ve done the usual blood and urine tests, X-Rays , I’ve had an ultrasound scan for breasts (I had lumpy breasts during a general checkup), ECG tests for my heart functions, anal probe (yes, I have a family history of colorectal cancer alright!), colposcopy (because of an abnormal Pap Smear, I have to check if I might have pre-cancerous cells in my cervix)… Except for a scope down my throat, scanning done to my brain, amongst other more unpleasant tests, I have done quite a few myself… Luckily for me, all is well.

    And boy, am I glad I went through the trouble anyway!

    What I am trying to get at, is that, checkups are not all that awful. It’s for a peace of mind! Don’t be afraid of embarrassment, especially when the doctors are so used to probing the insides of people all day long. It’s another fish in the market for them. No problemo. The more you panic, the harder it is for them to do a proper check up. Remember that.

    Have been nagging at Jeffwee to go for a proper checkup about his vision for the longest time, but he is always pushing it back, due to the possible costs of the checkups. I have to say that while some of my previous checkups were paid for by my ex-company, most of them were subsidised to a very affordable amount in the gahmen hospitals. So, there is no reason for us to run away from checkups, unless something starts to work funny? It’ll be too late by then. And costs will be much higher to cure them.

    Diseases are disgusting things, but we can’t do anything but to try to prevent them and to detect them as early as possible. So girls, please do your Pap Smears and breast examinations. And men, don’t think your balls are spared from diseases as well (not like you don’t know about it, right?).

    Alright. Enough contemplating, time for me to do work.

    And to quote Steve Jobs, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

    Category Darkness | Tags: | No Comments

  3. The Belly Is Dancing

    July 6, 2005 by barffie

    Whoohoo! Tonight I am going to sign up for the Beginner 2 module. Another $120 down to the hips. Women (in well-to-do countries only) are the only people who’ll burn money to eat less, starve and generally work towards looking like a skinny thing. People elsewhere want to eat also got nothing ah!

    Been secretly practising the bellydancing steps at home now. It’s getting more and more complicated by the song, and hopefully I am coping fine. Some steps are simply hard to catch, and to perform it well. It’s not helping when my knees aren’t exactly on tip top condition. I guess I have to use lighter steps from now on.

    I have even uploaded the songs onto my iPod, so I can mentally revise the steps. This is what we call DEDICATION ok! I don’t just go for the weekly 1 hour lesson and just follow the commands of the instructor. I guess this is the Virgo in me talking. We seek perfection in more ways than one, and we expect 101% of performance from ourselves. When we don’t perform to our own expectations, we are so gonna be disappointed. Likewise, during the bellydancing class, I put in extra effort to dance well, I shake extra hard, I shimmy extra fast, so that I perform better than my dancemates, but sometimes, it doesn’t quite work that way. Dancing is about immersing yourself in the music, isn’t it?

    What’s with the competition?

    As for listening to the current song that we are learning on repeat mode, while I travel (boringly) to work every morning, sometimes I find my hands twitching a little, my hips wriggling a little and my shoulders shivering a little. This is nothing new to me, especially since I usually bop my head to a nice beat, mouthing the lyrics of this song that screams of emo, and fighting the urge to just jump out of my hard, plastic seat on the train and dance. Arms flailing and all.

    Sometimes I wonder if it’ll be like that in Bollywood movies… That people’ll dance along with me. Not synchronised at least, but still jiggling and laughing. Fighting monotony is a good way to enjoy life, isn’t it? And what’s wrong with wanting to dance? Stop looking at me like I’m some goon, will ya? Don’t ostracise me just because I don’t look like I hate to go to work (which I do), sitting like the undead on the coveted hard, plastic seat and I just wanna enjoy my song and dance, on the train, right here, right now.

    Which, I haven’t done so. Heh. Still fighting the urge, really.

    You guys out there, do you sometimes wish to jump out of your seats and dance? Please tell me I am normal. :P

    Category Music, Film and Videos | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Diet Day 3

    July 6, 2005 by barffie

    Yay! I have survived. Just fork out a little more money lor. I had Coffee Bean’s salad yesterday, and although it was a huge serving, $8 is way too expensive for me, luckily it was both breakfast and lunch (brunch lah!). And the chicken isn’t that nice anyway. Too much cheese flakes (I bet they are full fat ones) and the sauce they used for the salad doesn’t look too low-fat as well… But at least I wasn’t feeling hungry the whole day like on Day 1.

    Today I marched to Cafe Krema and demanded a Ham & Egg salad with balsamic dressing. Now, this is what I call a good salad. Lightly tossed with some cherry tomatoes, celery (which I don’t eat, tastes eeky), red capsicum (nada too), and nice hammy ham… Droolsome I tell you. I like salads, just can’t be arsed enough to make my own, not until I shift into my new place anyway. And they are way too expensive on a long-term basis.

    Alright alright, I am boring you guys with my mundane (read: pathetic) dieting posts. I shall go sulk.

    Category Whine+Die | Tags: | No Comments