I wrote a post for today. A long one.

But I decided in the end that it was too long and bitchy and whiny and full of egotistic, self-pitying rants that I decided to save anyone that might have read if I had posted it the torment.

So you get this instaed.

A tooter who tooted a toot,
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
"Is it harder to toot or to tutor two tooters to toot?"

That's my fave tongue twister - I can say it super-fast and I love the blank looked I get in return when they hear what, I guess, sounds like gibberish to them. Actually, the most common response I get is, "All I heard was toot toot toot toot toot"

Caught the end part of Lewis and Lily fucking (my parents' dogs - I refuse to admit they exist except when they annoy me, or in this case, amuse me).

It was so funny. It was like a scene out of a movie - in dog.

Think one of those movies where a couple 'get together' after one drunken night. Soon after, they realize what happened with start, sober clarity. She did not look like she had fun. He did. And afterwards, they both looked like they were just dying to get away from each other, which didn't work out so well since they both live in the same cage.

I hope that she doesn't get pregnant. I don't want mini-annoying-doglets running around.

Holy crap, I'm crazy. Okay, not crazy. Just seeing things that cannot possibly, logically be happening.

I am sitting at my computer right now and sometimes my eyes wander to various things in my room like the window or my bed or my closet that is sitting open - the damn thing can't stay completely shut so I leave it completely open instead. It is sitting open and I have a few clothes hanging. Well, here is where it gets kind of creepy.

Every time I look over into my closet, I swear I can see the hangers (and thus clothes hanging) lightly swaying - with no fan or air-conditioner on at the moment, no windows open, no doors ajar. No anything, wind-wise.

Creepy, huh?

I am fairly confident that it is just my mind playing tricks with me though that doesn't make the swaying any less creepy.

After all, let's consider:
1. I have had some major sleep problems this week where I have only been able to sleep about 4 hours a day so my brain is kind of wacky anyway. Very annoying.
2. I am not wearing my contacts or glasses so my vision is seriously impaired.
3. I have been staring at this computer screen trying to revamp a website (plus, apparently, staring some more on my 'breaks' writing on my blog).

Oh my goodness. There are few things in life that are as marvelously tedious as downloading almost three hundred photos off the net. One by one.

Was downloading some holiday photos from one of the past tour groups that came to this little part of the world. The photographer even had a DSLR camera to snap pictures with.

I want a good camera too *pout* Actually, my camera is pretty good but I really would like a better one.

And more rechargeable batteries. I bought some 2500 mAH rechargeable batteries... damn things aren't AA. Oh, it said 'AA' on the packaging but they are just slightly larger. Not large enough to tell unless you line them up with the other AA rechargeable batteries I have but large enough that my camera won't use them and I can only just barely fit it into my battery-operated mouse (if I push hard enough). How an entire company manages to mass produce God-knows-how-many rechargeable non-AA AA batteries is beyond me.

Ah, remember the days long gone when you would answer in quiet confidence your age whenever someone asked it of you? "I am eight and three quarters," I would reply after gathering enough my pluck about me to overcome my crippling shyness that often rendered me socially inept.

Of course, back then, I was just making that up. Oh yes! For, you see, dear reader, my brilliant skills in mathematical factors did not come to into full bloom till many a year later. The disbelief that I used to be so befuddled by the likes of '3/8' and '5/6' continues to reverberate incredulously into the farthest reaches of my brain. I am deviating.

Back then, each day was long, each month stretched the horizon, each year never ended. In my ever present yearning to leave behind pinthood, I would, with assured (though masked) tenacity, inform any who would ask it of me my age in its fullest possible glory, knowing full well that the older you are, the wiser you are and just all-round better you are.

I think it was at age twelve when I stopped adding the frills. Because, at age twelve, you realize that the constant jibes you receive from your frugal parent for having to pay for another 'adult' is just not worth growing older for. Oh, harsh reality!

So to you, reader, I bequeath you this task: The next time someone asks you your age, tell them with all the spunk in your heart, skip in your step and grin on your face, "I am twenty-three and one quarter years old!"... or whatever your age is... and watch them slowly comprehend that maybe, just maybe, they might be conversing with a crazy person.

So, as I wrote in one of my recent posts, I started officially working at the office this week.

Yep...

Every morning, I wake up, take a shower, brush my teeth, put on my contacts, have some breakfast, step into a white/grey coffin till lunch time, go eat lunch after which, I step into the coffin once more till the sun sets and the world outside is left colourless anyway.

I asked today why the staff aren't allowed to personalize their desks with anything - no photos of kids or loved ones, no random splashes of colour, no personality, no soft music playing in the background (which, by the way, makes the office seem even more coffin-like). She replied that she didn't want them distracted or something to that extent.

I supposed I can understand that.

However, if I were her, I wouldn't essentially tell my staff that their lives belong to me as I see fit to make them live it during work hours ("When I hire them, it means they are selling their time and services to me") and then complain that they don't put in more than they really need to. If I were them, I'd be dying to get out and breathe again too.

I have managed to convince her that we are at the very least in need of new (non-grey) carpeting. So maybe some time in the next decade, we'll get colour.

Oh, and I'm getting a new computer there. So next week, I can say goodbye to working off a 128MB RAM computer.

I was sitting in the the car, mind wandering as I lazily took in the swiftly passing scenes of a town not yet fully awoken.

My eyes zeroed in on this weathered looking man by the roadside. His hair was brownish-white and his face wrinkled and leathered. He looked to be in his early 60's; though he also looked like his life was just hard enough for much of it to be spent tolling under the heavy gaze of an ageless sun that he might well have been in his fifties instead.

I casually watched as he squatted down beside the road, thinking nothing of it. His next action, however, happened just as I was passing him. So surprising was it that it made me sit up straight and crane my neck as I peered out the window in desperate hope to confirm that what I saw was simple a trick of the light. It wasn't.

This old man had knelt down by a muddy puddle that had pooled on the road and started washing his hands. Further yet, on my second take of the situation, he had just mouthed a handful of the puddle and was rinsing his mouth out.

Wow, I haven't blogged in nearly two weeks. Longest streak since I started blogging again late last year.

There hasn't really been too much happening around here and I haven't really felt like blogging about what little has been happening. Today, though, is definitely a black-marked day - I think. I'm not sure yet. We'll see.

Today is the first day I actually start working inside my parents' office. God, I hate it. It is a windowless box of hellish proportions. Good thing I brought my iPod.

I do have a slight sense of enthusiasm and interest and, hell, I'll say it, eager anticipation when it comes to dealing with the tourism industry. But then throw into that equation the fact that I am to take orders from my mother and pretty much all that enthusiasm and interest and eagerness implodes into itself and turns into this massive black hole that just tries its damndest to suck enjoyment out of life.

So, today was my first day. First order of business: Make a brochure for this new year. The guidelines she gave me was that it concentrated mostly on the Borneo side of our tours and that she didn't want it thick because she would be lugging it around all over.

OK, awesome. Let's see: if I don't want something thick, I make it as thin as possible, hence, one page. A one page brochure? How ridiculously common. She must have been talking about those single-page folded brochures.

So I slave away for about 6 hours on a 128MB RAM computer with a video card so crappy that I could barely clearly make out the pictures I was using. I demand all computers with less than 512MB RAM be destroyed!

Anyway, 6 hours of slaving later and I have an initial draft and show it to her. She see it and goes "What? Only one page?". Apparently, when she said she wanted a thin brochure, she meant 'thick but thinner than, oh, a calculus textbook'.

I guess to summarize all that: my mother and I have MASSIVE communication issues. It is not going to be fun working for her.

'It's 4 am,' I blearily note as I glance at my bedside clock.

I ponder why I am suddenly awake for all of two seconds before realizing that that line of thinking is not really worth the brain power and slide further into my warm, comfy duvet.

As I get comfortable and prepare for re-entry into Planet Dreamo, my ears pick of on some loud and rather obnoxious chirping going on outside my room. 'So that's why I'm awake.'

I spent a good 30 minutes trying - unsuccessfully for the most part - to tune the damn birds out before I finally managed to slip into sleep.

These birds weren't your normal chirpy birds. Oh, no! These birds, I'm pretty sure, were the main vocalists in the Bird Choir From Hell. They were so loud and their tunes were so musically-inclined (in a high-pitched bird-song way) that at one point in time, I actually got up out of my fantastically warm bed to take a gander out of my window and over at my neighbour's to make sure that it wasn't some drunk guy whistling (I was even prepared to give a spectacular yelling if it really turned out to be a person).

But no, it wasn't a person. It was a bunch of fucking birds singing for all they were worth in the tree right outside my room... at four in the fucking morning! The world shouldn't even fucking exist that early in the day.

Birdkind, however, did redeem themselves by providing me with afternoon entertainment. Ever seen two birds fight? Interesting (and odd) shit. Occupied me for a whole ten minutes before they flew out of sight. I don't really know if it was a fight or not but it certainly looked that way (if I thought birds had sex, I'd think that instead but I don't think birds have sex).

Let me see if I can describe it. Kind of like: there were two birds sort of 'hugging' each other (sans the arms/wings since they had to use their wings to fly). So their bodies were constantly pushed up against one another. Think of when two testosterone-driven males in movies are prepping for a bar brawl and they sort of meet chest-to-chest? Yeah, like that.

So their little bodies were constantly pushed up against one another. For the most part they were on a solid surface like a tree or fence or yard though sometimes they would start flapping their little wings and take of for a few seconds and end up doing a little twirly dance in the air (still bumping up against one another) and they were making an awful racket too (which was what caught my attention in the first place).

But yeah, if you saw a pair of birds twirling around like that, you'd think they were fighting too. Or, if you think birds have sex, you might think they were doing the dirty. Whatever.

Yesterday afternoon, I saw a dead dog on the road.

Just regular roadkill like you see every so often. There wasn't anything special about the dog or the way in which it died (let's face it - though violent, it is not uncommon).

I just have never actually given any more than a glance at roadkill. Just enough to register in my head that there is something on the road that should probably be avoided.

In fact, the only time I have actually had to do more than just make a passing note on the roadkill as being in my way was a couple years back when a gopher got run over in front of my house.

That one was really annoying because I had to walk along that road to go to work and with each passing day, the smell of decaying, maggot-ridden flesh got worse and worse till the silent, invisible, road-cleaning elves came. Ugh, I have never smelled anything so nauseating in my life.

Oh wait... and then there was the time as I was leaving Michigan when another gopher suddenly shot out onto the road and got run over by the minivan right in front of me. (Too many gophers get run over - it's a good thing though because any living creature stupid enough to constantly get run over should probably get on with getting extinct).

But this one was different because 1) I didn't actually see it get killed and 2) it hadn't reached the point where it would start decaying and smelling bad and 3) I wasn't in my car; I was on a run.

So there I am, running by, and I spot this sandy-brown mongrel on the road. As I'm running by, I get this real close up look. There was this thick (but small) pool of congealing blood around it's mouth and ears.

What made this particular accident memorable (and I use the word 'memorable' in the loosest of terms) was how it struck me that congealing blood looks like sliced red jello. (This thought was closely followed by the mental image of another car running over it just as I ran by and splattering me with dog entrails - didn't happen but man! that would definitely have made for an interesting way home).

Aw man, I have some massive unobtainable cravings going on.

A Domino's mushroom pizza would be absolutely divine right about now. I love the texture of Domino's crust with mushrooms. I think the two make for a delightful party in my mouth. Plus, I love mushrooms. 'Shrooms+doughey goodness = yummies!

And I would pretty much kill for a Panera Bread Sierra Turkey sandwich with Broccoli Cheese soup in a bread bowl.

Damn... my mouth is watering just thinking about that. And I can't do anything about it *sob*

Been lazy to update this blog. There really has not been much going on for me to write about anyway. I haven't really felt like doing anything to begin with. It's one of those phases where you just want some solitude.

My parents had a business client come visit the farm yesterday/today from the UK. He seemed really excited about it. But I don't really want to write about anything work-related (my work or anyone else's).

So... erm... what, oh, what should I talk about?

Oh the Christmas tree. The fucking Christmas tree.

It's still up and my brother has come and gone. That means it's going to be up to me to bring the damn thing back down.

Wait! Shhh... Hear that? That's me growling and hissing at that fucking tree as I stare it down. Maybe if I scare it enough, the trimmings will pack themselves up and the tree will fit itself back into its box (neatly). You never know... supposedly nothing is impossible.

Personally, I think that's a load of crap. I mean, ok, yeah, fine, "nothing is impossible" - but there is a lot of shit out there that is so incredibly improbable that it may as well be impossible.

Just round it to the nearest number... like the chances of X happening is 0.00000000001 probable. So if you were to round it to the nearest number, the possibility of X happening is zero and therefore impossible. Makes sense to me.

Although...

With that kind of logic, if you tried inverting that possibility of X (which is zero and therefore impossible), the universe would probably implode. ('Cause you can't divide by zero). And the inversion of 'impossible' is 'possible' right? So... like... if X suddenly became a real possibility, we'd all be dead! Oh my God! Humanity needs to stop trying to achieve the impossible like right now!

My parents went to the farm for the weekend, as they usually do every couple of weeks. However, this time, they came back bearing gifts for our collective stomachs - jackfruit and sweetcorn.

They were so excited when they were describing how sweet the jackfruit is and how juicy the sweetcorn is. I swear, every time anything happens progress-wise at that farm, my parents are changed into something not unlike babbling, cooing parents of a newborn babe. Yeah, they get that excited.

Although, I do have to admit, the jackfruit really is incredibly sweet and the sweetcorn... well, my first bite into one squirted juice into my eye. I don't think I've ever been attacked by corn before but if I were corn, that'd be my mode of attack too.

There was an article in the Star a couple months back. I don't remember if I wrote about this yet or not but my mind can't help but go back to it every once in a while.

It was about plagiarism.

The author spoke of how 'everyone has done it', though innocuously and for virtuous reasons.

For example:

One day while you were still in college, you look at the clock and it's midnight and you only just recalled that you had an essay due for a class that was scheduled early the next morning.

In a hectic Google-frenzy, you stumble upon the work of an unknown 40-something schoolteacher from Smallstown, Nowhere who had written about the very subject you are writing about too.

You think to yourself, 'This is no one, living no where. They put it up for the world to read. For free, at that! It's not like I will be depriving this person of their livelihood. Why not?'

So you copy it, hand it in, get a decent score.

My initial reaction was indignant rage. I certainly have never outright copied any one's work. At least not intentionally. Therefore, 'everyone' has not done it.

I read this article on a plane flight so I had plenty of time to just sit and contemplate the subject. The more I thought about it, the more my rage died down but not the feeling of offense.

Each person owns their own writing style. Sometimes, if you read enough of their words, it becomes apparent. I know I have a writing style (I believe it to be immature and underdeveloped but I do have one).

Style cannot simply be copied. It is personal and developed over time, customised if you will, according to each person. It is an extension of a person's individuality and personality.

There, in the plane, I realized that if someone were to copy my words, the 'hurt' would not come from not having credit or not being paid or anything like that. No. The sting would come from something else. They did not just copy my words. They took my idea, a product of my identity, my soul even (if I were to get 'deep' on you), and claimed it for their own.

I find comfort in my individuality as a woman and a human and to have someone come around and just take it and say it's theirs. Kind of defeats the purpose of being your own person, don't it?

I suppose the argument can be made that if it is so precious, you shouldn't put it out there for the world to read. But there is something incredibly therapeutic about that.

Ok... the internet is downright annoying now. Now online, now offline, now online, now offline, now online, now offline. I only just managed to upload pictures to Flickr because the damn internet kept cutting out in the middle of uploads in the past (if Flickr even managed to load to begin with).

I don't have anything to blog about, really. This past couple of days have been downright boring - even in my head... and that's saying something.

I could talk about how annoyed I am because - once again - just as I thought my work on the socio-economic project is coming to an end, I get more papers to sort through and compile. Damn... it's like a freakin' cockroach. I just keep squishing it down and it comes right back.

Don't mind me... I'm just in a super pissy mood because I had to miss my run to fix my fucking computer. It was making beeps at me earlier that didn't sound like it could just be ignored. Of course, it fixed itself after I hit the computer and then let it sit a couple minutes to think over how naughty it's been and then it started behaving again.

Internet was being stupid yesterday. Stupid internet!

Anyway, my brother arrived yesterday. The silly goose (oh yes! I said 'silly goose'!) didn't book his flight early enough and when he finally buckled down to ask me to do it for him, most of the flights were booked already. So he ended up having to go all the way up to KL from Singapore and catching a flight from there. Silly goose.

He bought Christmas presents. He got me a diamond necklace.

My brother doesn't know me *pout*

I guess he thinks 'Oh, she's a girl. She'll go ga-ga over jewellery'.

So, money was spent and I didn't want to seem ungrateful because, even though it's something that will be stored away and never used since I don't wear jewellery, I really was grateful for a present. It was pretty much the only real present I got. I say 'real present' because my mom gave me something too but that something was something she had in her 'possible gifts to give people' stash that holds all kinds of random junk and souvenirs.

See, this is why I hate celebrating any sort of celebration where gifts are involved.

As 'relaxing' and 'retreat'-ful going to the farm is, I never quite fully enjoy myself there. Usually due to the fact that the place is just swarming with mosquitoes; and also, out of some odd twist of fate, each of my visits to the farm is usually timed in such a way that I end up spending the second day of my period there (worst day for cramping). So, more often than not, I end up lying around in bed feeling completely uncomfortable and pondering how more beautiful life would be if I were a guy.

This time, though, I made sure to reapply some mozzie repellant every hour or two. In fact, I think I may have gone just a bit overboard but now I'm back in Miri and I have minimal itchiness (about as minimal as I think I can get just short of none).

The visit was not just to celebrate New Year's; it was also a house-warming. That translates into: lots of people (most of whom I don't know), lots of food, lots of drinking, lots of drunk people come midnight, lots of singing, lots of tossing and turning in bed trying to go to sleep while there is lots of singing outside that will inevitably continue into the wee hours... wee, wee, wee hours. As much as I would like to say it is annoying, it is actually something I have missed over the years - a sort of cultural experience I would not get anywhere else. I mean, yeah, there are parties and there are parties with drunk people and there are parties with drunk people singing - but this is different somehow.

I got to use my new blanket that I bought from China. Well, actually, I got to sleep on top of my new blanket that I bought from China. I didn't actually get the chance to use it for its intended use because there were already two people asleep on it.
Pretty hot, ain't it? Bought it in Dali. It's sort of their version of batik. I love walking into my room with this blanket all splayed out. The sudden burst of colour as I open the door is just a visual feast for me.

And the bathroom is right there next to my room. My dad's unique idea of a bathroom - an open air bathroom. Aside from the walls it shares with my room and my parents' room, the other two walls are bare, save the shower curtains you pull when you want to shower. I have yet to shower in that bathroom though. In the daytime, it feels weird showering and having the jungle remain in my peripheral vision, even with the curtains pulled. At night, I get a super-strong feeling of some voyeur out there watching (especially since it's dark and the light in the bathroom will give everyone outside that much clearer a view).

Right outside the upstair's balcony, there is a rambutan tree and there were even some rambutan fruits ripe for picking when we got there. Just reach up and grab.

I didn't go riding this time. Instead, I ran after my dad and snapped away as he rode. Got a few good pictures too. This is one of my favourites. He rides Amy (the horse) right up to the house and it seems so surreal because you have a house and cars and then right in the middle, you have a horse with a rider.
The two colts. They roll around on the ground (which is especially muddy now, since it's monsoon season) and get caked in mud. The one in front is the older one by about a month. I named her Thunder. The younger one is named Storm. We have a theme going here, huh? I like Thunder. She's a funny one. She is really jumpy. When I make sudden movements, she jolts.
Ringing in the New Year with a long, long line of fire crackers.

And some fireworks.

More pictures on my Flickr account... if that damn site will just load.