taste and see

all figured out

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:52:21 -0500

at work, they've been working to pinpoint a very specific, tangible, and flushed-out target consumer. it so happens that i fall into this category, age-wise, life-stage-wise, etc. I have to admit, they have me pretty figured out, inside and out. And all this time I thought I had quirks and originality somewhere inside (ironically, they even noted that "feels that she is an individual and unique" as one of this target consumer's traits). They've coined key phrases that describe my attitudes towards life (dead on) and even what stores i like, what websites i frequent, what brands of cameras i would buy, EVERYTHING. sigh. all this time, i've eaten up and soaked up all those "you are unique" teachings. lies, i tell you! lies. oh well, i guess now i will just have sky high expectations on what they deliver since they must have some capabilities to cater to my needs perfectly.

in other news, some feedback on this would be nice - i love my job, a lot, and i like it more and more everyday, and the people i'm with, the company, everything. the city, though...not so much. now what do i do.

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raining all the time

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:07:00 -0500

today is may 19th.

exactly one month ago, on april 19th, i woke up early for two finance finals, packed for vietnam, and went out in singapore.

today, on may 19th, i woke up early for work, looked at ppts, and drank two mugs of coffee in cincinnati.

the persistent similarity between these two days would be the fact that on each respective sides of the globe, it was raining, raining, and raining. and of course, i was without an umbrella on both occasions.

i used to think rain was good nap weather, and that rainy days were almost kind of romantic.

now i just think they're annoyingly persistent, cause traffic jams and accidents, and get in the way of the all-time great mood-lifter, sunshine.

maybe i'll learn to appreciate rainy days again someday.

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premature

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:27:26 -0500

pretty sure i'm having a premature quarter life crisis.

oy.

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a fashionable 9 months...

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:03:04 -0500

i really love target. i think it's all around cute, and just walking through a target store puts me in a better mood. yes, maybe that is slightly unhealthy, but hey, it is a better picker-upper than drugs, alcohol, and excercise (yes, excercise).

since realizing how little luggage i can bring with me to relocate to ohio for the next 2.5 months, i've held back from shopping in dallas. it hasn't been difficult, mainly because i tend to still convert the price tags into various asian currencies & become offended or feel an almost insuppressable urge to bargain when the idea of purchasing items even pops into my head.

today, however, i went to target buy something completely practical & non-hedonic (extra large staples for upholstry making, fyi, b/c you know, that's really interesting to share and everything...), but soon found myself with arms full of clothes, waiting in line for the fitting room. SIGH. one item after another (i pulled all these items off of the sale/clearance racks), i started thinking, "GEE! my jeans must have really SHRUNK from the dryer." [the fit of my jeans is how i decide if i've gained weight...and basically, none of them are currently fitting me after five months of buffet-eating] miraculously, however, every piece i picked up today fit loosely, even to the point when i double checked the tags & began thinking that maybe...all the southeast asian eats made me LOSE weight.

my joyous moment didn't last for long though...i came out of the dressing room to show off my new pieces to my mom, who frowned, looked at the tags again, and told me the cold, hard truth. ...i had picked up all sale pieces from the maternity section. SIGH.

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& forget

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:57:02 -0500

i tend to fall asleep in movies quite a bit, and i fell asleep watching indecent proposal with my parents earlier this week (my mom is a huge fan of demi moore pre-ashton days. i guess she's not fully in the know of who ashton is. she just calls him "the younger guy with longer hair"), and i remember i woke just in time for this scene (after my parents had to fill me in on pretty much the entire movie)...

david (woody harrelson), the hubs who agreed to let his wife be with another man (the charismatic & handsome robert redford...) for a night for a million dollars (ah, movie circa '93 when that amt seemed much more & the US dollar was so much more attractive of a currency...), just a fill-in for those who haven't seen/may have also slept through the movie: I thought we were invincible. But now I know that the things that people in love do to each other, they remember. And if they stay together, it's not because they forget. It's because they forgive.

a quote like that, and an episode of HIMYM like this (probably my favorite of season 3 so far) trigger that bit of that hopeless romantic in me (which i think is a contradicting term in itself & another entry in itself).

well. good thing it doesn't take much to return to reality & remember that life goes on when the cameras stop rolling. alas :[ c'est la vie.

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you are here.

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:26:10 -0500

3 stops, 2 suitcases filled to the brim & on-the-border of overweight, 1 calendar day - and i am back in the us of a. it's actually been a full week since i've been back in texas. during this week, i've managed to unpack the suitcases that i struggled so long and tediously to stuff and zip, and i even found my way down to austin to see some missed-faces. the past two days, however, i have been embracing my typical home-habits.

every break, i tend to soak up a pinch too much enthusiasm from watching the food network excesisvely and end up actually aspiring to work the kitchen. today i purchased a variety of odd ingredients (can of black beans and nectar, both included in the cart of hodgepodge craving-satisfiers) to create some stellar concoction, whose recipe i envisioned myself penning down in a hippie-bound notebook with browned pages. unfortunately, the reality turn out was several-folds: `1) the brownies i attempted to bake from scratch and with all substituted ingredients (in a meager strive to be healthy sort of way) were awful, just purely awful. silver lining: my mom enjoyed them and has eaten half the pan. i worry for her taste buds, esp since i know she's not one of those "aw, honey, because you baked them, of course i'll eat them" type of mom who bothers to cushion my feelings. they really do taste like mexican food...mushed. i guess in the spirit of cinco de mayo...OLE. eat the brownies, mom, eat the brownies.

a few entries ago, i wrote a couple of absolute riveting [HA] paragraphs regarding my broken electronics. well, many $$$$ down later (sigh), i have replaced the broken with the new, including a blackberry. i am now an official crackberry head. however, having all of my life & its tech support sides synced has its down sides. for example, i used to be excited everytime i approached my computer to check my email. now, i know what emails i get instaneously. the brief excitement from before when i'd click on my gmail bookmark just is not there anymore. i guess the moments away from the internet made me realize how much i appreciate it; now that it's readily available, it's not too special anymore. it's true. i only want what i can't have.

with my suitcases finally empty from singapore, i've begun the process of refilling them for the summer. out come the trinkets & summer dresses and in go slacks, sweaters, and button ups. this entire past year, starting last may, has been filled with packing and unpacking, one after another. through it all, i feel like my head, my heart, and my body are usualy all in dfferent places, one failing to catch up with the others. trying to be and feel fully here, wherever i am, is quite a challenge.

i'm still in singapore, i'm still in austin, and i'm supposed to be in cincinnati in less than a week. maybe everything will piece together by august.

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excess baggage

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:23:35 -0500

the past few days i've been spending a large portion of my time packing. while i personally think i've become quite a snazzy weekend-trip packer, these large packing jobs are still beyond my skillz. probably the worst case of this was moving out of my dorm room freshman year. i had no exams yet managed to not finish packing the entire room until my parents had already showed up at my door. furthermore, i rode for 3.5 hrs back to dallas in the same position, without moving - with my still-inflated yoga ball pressing me against my seat since the entire car was packed full. how? i know not.

two years later, and unfortunately, the story has not changed much [with the exception that i did not pack my yoga ball to singapore, although it is still inflated and has remained so all the various times i've moved it since freshman yr]. attempting to fit a semester's worth of stuff [used not b/c of a lack of a better term, but really just for the fact that it generalizes & accurately reflects all that i'm stuffing in. pure stuff] into two suitcases was impossible. i added on an additional backpack [80 oz] and a duffle...everything is BARELY fitting. should check-in stop me tomorrow morning and question how a duffle+huge backpack = personal item+small carry on, i'll have to pray/wink/cry [in that precise order] myself onto the plane, hopefully with all my bags in tact.

so, while sweating bullets [in my non-aced, extremely humid singaporean dorm room], i slowly realized how much the small things add up - the small knicknacks here and there that i'll collect/keep/pick up for the keepsake; a bit of this to remind me of that trip, a little of that to represent so-and-so. overtime [a semester to be exact], the little things collect and become excess baggage [or rather the 5kg that won't stay within the designated luggage].

with one suitcase down, i formulated one of those "only b/c my mind is going crazy" metaphors. my daily pack-rat/keep-it-all habits extend beyond southeast asian trinkets; the habit leads to a pile of back-tracking memories [not the fond ones, but the ones that stay past their welcome & hinder present/future judgments due to pure sentimentality] that cause present&future stuttering. maybe i've always subconsciously made this connection; maybe that's why it feels so good to get rid of things sometimes. or to pass them on. i'm not sure exactly how much i got from these past few months, but i'm sure that i've figured some things about letting go of things; it's not the receiving that's the problem, it's the ridding process. regardless, these months are done, the page is mid-turn, and the hand flipping through is slightly more steady and sure. only slightly though.

on a less personal note...

Bleeding Love

Leona Lewis

my british lovey from singapore is in love with this song; when we are listening to this song on the plane during departure/landing, she will ignore the flight attendant who signals/yells/pulls to get us to pause the ipod; when others speak during this song, she thinks they're disrespecting the music; whenever we heard this song on the streets on bangkok [which was quite frequenly], we'd stop until it finished. anyway, basically, i've listened to this song QUITE a bit since my first week here. HOWEVER. i didn't pay much attn to the lyrics until recently...and um, let's look at them shall we:

My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding

... graphic much? seems in the middle of this british idol's pop hit, she decided to insert an extra dose of emo-licious-lyrics. i think the imagery is disguised behind the catchy tune, but now i can't listen to the song without imagining McDreamy & open-heart surgery.

heading back to america in t-8 hours.

adios-la, singapura

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tricky tricky

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:52:58 -0500

local singaporeans love asking me what sports i play, or what sort of athletic activity i am involved with back home. i used to think it was just a generic greeting-esque question, like "do you have siblings" or "what's your favorite food" or "what is your take on clinton vs. obama's view on [america's pork consumption/any other topic]." something along those lines. i've learned, however, that all these inquiries do not stem from my impeccable graceful balance [ha] or agile moves [double ha], but rather because i'm broader, wider, bulkier & darker than the avg singaporean. SIGH. the wakeboarding & surfing instructors were both grossly disappointed when they judged me to have participated in regular, outdoor sports; instead, they found themselves with a clumsy student that can barely jump without spraining an ankle [hey, it's happened. don't judge]. oh well. c'est la vie.

off to vietnam now. plan to do the entirity of vietnam, ho chi minh to hanoi in 3.5 days w/o flying. oof.

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a little piece of singapore

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:43:48 -0500

my friend christophe, as i like to call him, has urged me to write something since i hit submit on the previous entry. since then, i've thought of blurbs here and there, but no little blurb has grown into a full fleshed paragraph.

however, being as skilled as i am at picking just the right time for things...i am now writing. why? because i have two of my hardest finance tomorrow from 9am-3pm of course. rarely has there been a better time to write a blog entry. no doubt about it. consider this a hodgepodge of the happenings [or rather, the mental on-goings] as of late.

snaps to you, singapore/NUS...

for promoting the anti-plastic bags campaign! in addition to overwhelming the shops with "i'm not a plastic bag" bags, the school also charges for take-away bags now. 10cents/bag. even those odd ads that talk about turtles..and plastic..and choices..and...well, who knows what point they're trying to get at; regardless, snaps to you, singapore, for promoting the plastic-reduction campaign. and while paper recycling isn't wildly popular (or even slightly available in most cases), the school has set its printers to print double-sided on default. genius! esp. good for me b/c i always mess up when i try to print double-sided. [i mean, seriously, that tiny little indescript instructional image about which side is up is HARDLY instructional.] gg, singapura

also. i sincerely feel that i've met some of the brightest people here. really. singaporeans seem to combine a good mix of work ethics & discipline with lots of ingenuity. maybe it's bc asia really is growing & exploding & they're in the right place at the right time, but really, my classmates are so freaking bright. seeing that my classes here are graded on a bell curve & i have two of my hardest finals back to back tomorrow, their bursting intellects are not currently working in my favor...

along the lines of the whole changing dynamics of asian growth, i think the resumes the students here hold are quite impressive. i'm not talking about killer gpas, but one guy in my group has been running his own international, 30employees+ business since he was 21 [4 years now]. another girl works for the UN 7 does relief work in Africa, another girl works for Bloomberg, and another guy moved to the US for a year to run the marketing department for a start up in Pittsburg. of course, not only do they pwn me & then some on all sorts of US knowledge, they also seem to have a vast mental storage of asian & european insights that put me to shame. again, back to how all this intellect is currently working against me as my textbook sits in my backpack, which is still zipped.

this blurb has sufficiently been exhausted.

moving on.

mayhaps i will dump some semester wrapup thoughts my last four days here, post vietnam trip, but in the meantime, i have to say that the most refreshing thing about this land of merlions & hainanese chicken & egg pratas & queueing is how chill it has all been.

i remember being led around my dorm on move-in when someone pointed out the tv room as the chill-out room. i chuckled a little thinking it was the strangest title [confession: 'chill' always seemed like a geographic buzz word to me. along the lines of mad, wicked, hella, etcetcetc]. also ironic is that the temperature here never seems to fall below 85*F and your skin is never quite dry [nor your laundry]. and yes, i probably should include a significant factor in that i really did live for the past 4 months plane ticket/bus to plane ticket/bus with a few hours of lectures a week in between, hardly much to complain about. but yes, taking it all into account, singapore has been so chill, and hopefully, this will cast its lasting effect on me.

there is something so simply reassuring [despite being scientifically inaccurate, yes yes] about realizing that while being 13 hours ahead [of typical life, as i know it back home], the sun still comes out [tomorrow, techincally] and yes, there will be rain [in fact, at approximately 3pm everyday for approximately 30 minutes], but the sunshine will come back, and the day after, too. life keeps going, and we'll all float on all right.

</end word vomit>

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new likes.

nobody@vox.com(michelle) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:07:52 -0500

since the beginning of my temp. relocation to asia, i've really picked up on a few new favorites [*this blog will, unfortunately, not be one of those blogs that will be shortly mentioned below where complete strangers will stumble upon it & consider it a gem; instead, it will probably [cast this effect on most other readers and] be an unsteady flow of thoughts that i hope to recall by skimming these lines a year from now. *end disclosure]:

- black coffee: sipped via straw, preferrably hot [often resulting in scorching the top of my mouth], when iced, i still prefer a little sugar. i was a caramel macchiato/frappachino addict for years until last fall, when the twin girls i tutored and i had a lesson at starbucks & i ordered a macchiato while they grabbed regular, black coffee. One of them looked at me blankly, and really without judgment but more out of mere, innocent disbelief, and asked, "wait, when you say you love starbucks, you don't actually drink their coffee?" that, and my dad always told me i'd be an adult the day i started appreciating black coffee. not sure about the adult part, but black coffee sure can be tasty.

- taste of beer: okay, my intake of alcohol since being 21 still varies between barely to none, but the taste of beer has really grown on me. #1 pick: corona extra, #2: heineken; actually, edit: #1 pick: water, #2: corona; #3: heineken.

- wes anderson movies: i tend to fall asleep in most movies [esp those that begin after 10pm...or really any time of the day now that i think about it], but after watching darjeeling limited & the royal tenenbaums in singapore, i've decided to expand my love for the films into support for the director as a whole.

- reading blogs: gone are the days when i check xanga subscriptions, but i have found a new addiction to good blogs. http://lexxy-pie.livejournal.com/ hiya (1/2) is my favorite entry. i feel slightly voyeuristic at times from reading so many blogs...esp since they are all from people i have never met. oy :-[

- vegetarian food: asia does mock meat well! & tofu, my most dreaded enemy since childhood (t'was up there with bittermelon & eggplant), is probably one of my favorites of all time now. i will surely miss all the ways singaporeans eat tofu when i'm back home, one of my favorites being yong tau foo

- folksy music: i've previously only been able to categorize my taste in music as "easy listening," unfortunately, this gets lumped together, or at least mentally in my mind, as 'adult contemporary,' which raises a great deal of undesirable associations/schemas in my head. with a little help and enlightenment from my singaporean/cornellian soulmate stephanie, however, i've realized that in the end, i just like folksy music. upon recommendation: here's a brett dennon song i listen to quite a bit.

- papaya: i've hated papaya [and most tropical fruits] with a previously comparable tenacity as my hatred for beer, tofu, and black coffee, but like all of those listed, i've grown to love it in singapore. maybe because the papapyas here are 1. prepared, 2. cheap, 3. sweet like brown sugar, and 4. readily available, as are most fruits. i don't even know how to sustain this love for papaya when i'm home. i don't even know how to pick a good papapya, what's an appropriate price for it at the market, or how to preserve it. must get my papaya learn on upon return.

- the color red: i don't know why i never appreciated this color more. for some reason, it used to seem so plain, so...primary, and so basic, but really, red is the about as exciting as a color can get. really. what doesn't look good in red? minus teeth, i'd have to say nothing.

alrighty. trip wrap-up entry is a-coming. i miss singapore/being abroad/the familiar faces already.

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