30 days of music - Day 5: a song that reminds me of someone

It was crazy for a few days. I was humming this song, D was humming this song, this dude Jude was playing in the city, D was sitting in a concert a couple of seats away from music-boy Jude, the radio was playing Hey Jude way too often, Media Player pulled out Jude on shuffle at the precise moment D popped up online, at least twice, it was FREAKY, it was official - Paul Was Dead and he was haunting us, well not 'us' but D, because she was born on the VERY SAME DAY as the song released, but about a couple of decades later.

Spooky.

Love ya D.

Also, I am not fully sure where that fabulous flowchart is from, but it seems to go back to that link there.

Shoebox memory cull

I threw away my Bon Jovi poster. The first love of my life is now lying with his pretty face in old news print. 

It was faded, frayed, spotty, stained, and ... old. It had been an indulgent gift from caring friends that I treasured almost as much as JBJ CDs. The poster was about shared fantasies, dreams, conversations, and stories with friends. But it was dusty and so were the memories.

It all started exactly a month ago when I packed all my life's possessions and moved continents. Besides the 46kg + 8kg hand luggage (+ laptop bag), I was dragging with me enough memories and, some would say, emotional baggage.

So when I first began emptying my room, every little ticket stub and visitors' information booklet was carefully packed away. But during the period of wanderlust that followed, and before I landed up at the next place I would call home, the memory cull had been ruthless. "I can't lift so much stuff," might only have been an excuse to shed carefully collected tokens of memories and shared experiences, left behind as I continued onwards on my travels.

A first restaurant bill was just a piece of paper and my security-blanket t-shirt really didn't have another wear in it. Bin 'em.

Finally back home, the things that once defined My space didn't seem that important any more. For one, Jon was already off my wall, rolled and left in some cupboard.

Out went Jon, old textbooks, old stuffed toys (the cow that went moo was put in a plastic bag and stuffed in a cupboard nobody can reach, at least till the next cull), papers, bags, clocks.

As did old birthday gifts, friendship tokens, thank-you/ happy-new-year cards...saved text messages from three years ago.....

I'd like to think that I can get rid of some of this stuff because my relationships have moved beyond names signed on restaurant tissue (yea, we did that) and an awful drawing that sprouted one particularly boring class. These people are still in my life, I'm making new memories with them all the time, and I hope I can show them I care in ways that don't include hanging onto a present from seven years ago.

But I can't escape that some of these things are just dust-gathering-junk, the stories behind them aren't that special any more, and the people or the experiences are from a past that was wonderful, but now well past.

I still love JBJ, I'm pretty sure I always will.

But there's only so much that a shoebox can hold, and we need space for the new.

Everyone's a hack's friend

Family and friends of us journos don't have it easy.

Hounded for contacts, asked to drop everything for the sake of quotes/ soundbytes/ 'expert' opinions.

More so for student journalists who just need some camera practice before the real thing. This one's called 'Trains Outside my Window.' Haha.



Of course, sometimes in the process, a star is discovered. Thanks for being a sport Salil!

Thanks for the thought!

An email sitting pretty, read, re-read and treasured - no use pretending I wasn't waiting.

Phone calls, long winded and pleasant.

A photograph that sparks off hysterical laughter to drown out self-righteous indignation.

And everything really is alright.

Good memories just make for more :)

(Pic: Kriplet and the Rascals.)

Princess Lessons

It ought to be my dirty little secret, but I owe these books too much to hide the truth.

I love the Princess Diaries. All ten of them.

I'm quite certainly too old to be in the demographic that the books target, but I remain a sucker for happy endings and I credit them immensely for their significant contribution towards my social and emotional development.

Why deny it - I've learnt more about myself, my friends, and everything that goes with being part of the cell phone, iPod, pop-culture, consumerist generation, from TPD.

Other books have real conflict. The heroes and the heroines have real problems - war, poverty, no family, evil witches.

It's all very well that that's inspiring, but that doesn't really help me in my cushioned existence now, does it?

Just because I have nothing but love, friendship and comfort at every step, doesn't mean I'm going to give up on having some drama in my life.

Me and Mia, we like the drama.

It's my right to have problems. Loads of them. Nobody has problems bigger than mine and I'm convinced that my world will end.

So it's an extremely grounding experience to be reminded in rather amusing literary style (full of smart contemporary pop-cultural references that have for too long been denied the recognition deserved in fiction) that none of my problems are problems at all.

That every nobody-understand-me or nobody-cares-about-me situation is a been-there-done-that-so-get-over-it for every other formerly self-pitying teenager (and 20-something to be fair).

That happily-ever-after is only what I make of it. And hence, there's still hope for happily-ever-after. After-all, everyone needs the fuzzy feeling of a happy ending :)

Non-alcoholics Anonymous

I am the Little Green Mango and I am Not an Alcoholic.

The night starts with a glass of fruit juice. And another. Then I think I can handle a glass of tap water. On the rocks. Just one more.

But it always ends the same - drama, drunk friends and someone else's dinner on my dress.

It's quite a challenge being a non-drinker at any party or night out.

Of course I'm automatically the designated driver - and it's no mean feat driving around with either extremely high-spitrited or temporarily-lost-to-the-world friends. When I'm not driving, I'm making sure we're on the right side of the road to catch the bus or cab. After a head-count obviously.

But I'm also the non-designated chaperone. There's the responsibility of frequent supervised visits to smelly loos that always leave me with toilet tissue stubbornly sticking to pointy heels. There's making sure that nobody steps on the glass that's always on the dance floor. There's magically producing tissue for when half a glass of something lands on someone (not me if I'm lucky). And remembering to check if their passport is in their bag as they head to the airport to catch the first flight out.

I've to deal with the crushed spirit when after wading through crowds by the bar and screaming over the music, to the extremely cute bartender for some water - Yea, just some tap water please - for a friend that could definitely use some, only to be greeting by, "Yuk! This tastes like water."

I've to tread carefully as I assure friends putting on quite a show that I'm laughing with them and not at them.

Sometimes, the party ends before I've even ordered my first lemonade. Which turns out to not be such a bad thing after all when the paramedics at the scene play a guessing game about what exactly a friend who's passed out has been having to eat all day. ("Definitely cheese. And tomatoes.")

But if I find myself cleaning said regurgitated dinner, it probably means there's a long night (or day) still ahead of me.

Despite the evident martyr-like suffering and the seeming prudishness, it really has do do with having more fun.

It's hard to give up on non-drinking when it's always the sobre one that has the wildest night. With the added advantage of fully functioning mental faculties to remember every single delectable detail the next morning. (Except details of puke. That should be blocked out of memory.)

I'm probably one of the few people with a hand steady enough to document the evening with the promise of enough material for two facebook albums and some more saved for special blackmail. I doubt I can ever give up the pleasure of saying to a mildly embarrassed friend just out of a 24 hour hangover: "I know what you did last Saturday night." Or better still, in mock righteousness: "Well if you can't remember if you danced on tables then there's no point in me telling you, is there?"

It's not easy being the non-drinker. But it does help collect a whole lot of stories. Stories that one day shall be retold over fruit juice and tap water, and laughed about.