head notes

in the lacuna a missing laptop has created, the library has become my new best friend.

and an ancient portable radio tuned into to BBC radio 3 plays all day long.

i wonder if my life will now be further sub-categorised into pre- and post- burglary.

registering for school this morning, i realised how much i prefer the school buildings quiet and devoid of students. this whole fresher's week bazaar will only give me headaches as i attempt to join societies and clubs tomorrow.

quinoa (say keen-wah) is an amazing crunchy-poppy-squidgy thing that is somewhere between millet and rice. gluten-free, high protein and gives your mouth some amazing textures - what more could i want?

postcards are apparently very trendy at the moment. but i have been sending them to those whose addresses i have had for ages, so i'm trendier than trendy. and if you give me a postal address, i will send you a postcard as and when i come across an interesting one.

i may be getting a new-old bicycle that may have both its brakes working and a smaller frame and not too rusted over as to fall into little red pieces when i try and ride it. *cross fingers* now all i have to do is get over my fear of london traffic and roundabouts.

at east street market just now. on a sign outside a carpet shop

'SALE! more drugs inside!'

c'est la vie

so we got burgled on friday.

we, as in the boyfriend and i. because our rooms are right on top of each other in the same house, so presumbably that made a lot of sense in the filthy-scum-bastard-burglar's mind that only my room and his room get hit in a house of 7 bedrooms.

the weird thing was, i didn't even realise anything had been taken till the boyfriend called down to me from the top of the stairs saying all my bank cards (vodafone top-up card, UOB electron visa, HSBS savings card) were strewn around his doorway. so i took them from him, went back to my room, put them back in the wallet they were originally in, before realising that my table looked a bit bare. thought over it for 2 seconds, and realised

FUCK MY LAPTOP IS GONE

and so began the great burgled! debacle. police were called, then got shoved to the Southwark police division, then to the CSI, and then the Peckham police calling and wondering whether 'there might be a chance... i hate to ask this, but do you trust everyone in the house?.

that is just so not a question you ask someone who has just lost her beloved 12-inch G4 Powerbook with 2 years of academic work and 8 months of photographs evidencing my summer holidays and other exciting events that happened and years of painstakingly sourced and collated music files and tonnes of other personal notes and writings stored in it's hard-drive, mofo.

but on the bright side, nothing else was taken save for a packet and a half of marlboro lights. bloody stinking scoundrel of a smoker that burgler is. and no one was hurt. i can't imagine if someone was in the house at that time, or if we'd walked in right in the middle of the operation. knowing them south london scumbags, i'd probably be in hospital - as evidenced by the two turkish shops across the road who have shown us scars above the eyebrow from fighting off robbers/burglars/lowdownstealingscummybastards and also new doors because the last one installed just last month got broken down by those vile creatures i shall not name again.

such is the peril of living in my part of town where we are surrounded by the biggest council estate in europe, that is rightly being torn down soon. cheap rent and nice street, sure. but the area has just gone to the dogs. i think all the cute kids suddenly realised that they are disaffected and impoverished, thus giving rise to the prevalent crime culture and gangsta-emulation that i see everywhere - and also giving birth to the immoral monster that burgled our house.

on the other hand, i'm not goign to move out just because someone took my laptop. it could've happened anywhere at anytime. in fact, i think so far i've gotten off pretty lightly. this has been my first brush with the actual violent (or potentially violent) criminal world where rape, mugging and knife-point robbery happens on a daily basis. just getting my laptop stolen is probably making up for everything else i've lucked out of.

this is not to say i'm not upset and am rather contented by all that karma shit. no way jose. i hope that burglar gets his own stuff stolen. or gets an ounce of the most disgusting skunk that makes a bad trip sound like a holiday and smokes it all and then keels over into a gibbering wreck never to go around stealing someone else's property ever again. or get thrown into police custody. or get knifed. or get struck down by lightning.

whatever it is, i have to accept that i'm not getting my laptop back.

so farewell my lovely, i hope you find a nice new owner who will recognise you for what you're worth even though he/she probably bought you in a cash-converters or from the boot of a car.

and to the guy that took it,

damn you cheebye motherfucker i hope you die in the worst possible manner and never get reincarnated but spend the eternity of your afterlife in the 18th level of hell getting your just desserts you fucking prick.

laundry discoveries

i hate doing laundry, but i love the smell of fresh clean clothes so i do my laundry whenever my massive stockpile of underwear runs out (i'm serious, i have at least 2 weeks worth of underwear in my closet).

whenever i'm back in singapore i don't do any housework to speak of because i'm a pampered pig and i have someone else to do it for me. blah blah blah. no separating (not that i really do it), no turning inside-out, no waiting, no hanging, no folding.

BUT i have realised something very strange, and have been pondering over it for a while. why is it that my whites in singapore are always whiter than my whites here in london?

and i know the answer now.

the reason, taking away the other possible factors such as pollution and acid rain, is that there is just a lot more sun in singapore.

the sun bleaches yo.

which is why i'm supposed to turn my coloureds inside-out or else they'll fade. which is why the dhobis (dhobys? dohby? dobhy? indian laundry men) had such white whites - they left their washing out on the field in the bright sunlight.

which is why for most part of the time in london my whites are never really white, but more a light variation of grey.

so either i go buy bleach and make all my clothes nice and white (those that are supposed to be white, anyway) or i live with the scummy-water colour that it eventually becomes in this sun-lacking climate.

but then again, as my housemate says, what does it matter? you put on so many layers anyway. no one's going to notice. AND since everything else is greyer than it, by comparison it still looks pretty bright white to me.

such barley pearls of wisdom.

Reisende

back from berlin.

pictures and reflections on the trip will realise themselves eventually, but for now am too distracted by the everyday to sit down and sort through my images and thoughts.

and all this distraction has been brought on by my wanderlust. i've already been checking up flights out of the country to go somewhere sunny this christmas (apart from the very obvious hometown location). we were already planning another trip back to berlin even before we had left the city.

also been pre-occupied with calculations of current and potential financial states. and wondering why these companies keep sending me credit card applications and winning lottery tickets. i honestly don't care for credit, and i only spend what i have. the thought of paying interest on money that i don't have just so i can buy something right now is frankly quite frightening. but then again, i've never had to buy big ticket items like a car or a house. and everything else that's relatively expensive has always been bought for me by the parents. so maybe when they decide to stop giving me money i will plunge straight into credit heaven and debt hell.

but yes, all this travelling is costing lots of money. and i'm sure that if i didn't go away so often, i could probably afford to buy a new wardrobe. however, i live a much better life whilst on my travels than i do when i'm here in london, and i much prefer taking in the sights, experiencing other cultures and getting to know the differences between peoples. the food is a pretty good deal-clincher as well.

i love the european cafe culture and the sense of centuries of known history just around the corner from whichever place i am standing. and the languages that are so similar and yet so different, i like comparing them and going 'oh! of course that's what it means, because it's ___ in spanish/italian/french/english isn't it?'.

the one thing they can save on is perhaps the amount of dog-poo on the streets.

so, yes. that's what's been on my mind today while sitting in the garden and staring at the sky, watching the planes pass by and making cloud/icicle patterns across it.

kitchen garden

tomatoes, spinach and cauliflower. they were a good dinner, they were.

list #892375892

This is my life so far, in a list. Because I am a lazy slug.

1. Instead of Singapore – London, someone on my flight decided to have a medical emergency. And so it became Singapore – Mumbai – London, making an already long and tedious journey almost unbearable save for Neil Gaiman and his genius.

2. My garden is amazing, and Tuesday night we harvested the cauliflowers, spinach and tomatoes and made a yummylicious dinner of cauliflower cheese, spinach, rocket and nasturtium salad, a vegetable stew with lamb, and rhubarb crumble. YUM YUM! (pictures of the now-depleted garden will come whenever I upload them. soon-ish, I promise.)

3. Wednesday was spent waking up really early and feeling rather productive until I fell into bed again around 11.30am and didn’t get up till 2pm. And then I just mooched around and did online research about law firms and other boring things like that.

4. Today, I had an interview. It was really good - I had lots of fun chatting to other interviewees and enjoyed the group exercise. Even the actual interview went rather well, although obviously I could have mentioned many more intelligent-sounding things. Overall, rather impressed with the firm, and wouldn’t mind working there if they gave me an offer *fingers crossed*


In other news, its very surprising how easily I slip back into routine here in London. It’s almost as if all those weeks I’ve been away never happened.

The man at the Turkish shop still smiles his recognition, the Safeways-across-the-road is still disgustingly Safeways-across-the-road. East Street is looking the same as ever, except for an explosion in colour and range of vegetable and fruit sold by the stallholders. The pub is still endearingly old and falling to pieces and honestly quite grimy, but much better than those pub chains they have everywhere nowadays.

As I mentioned to someone today, its odd how I feel more at home here than I do at home. It’s almost as if here I’m living a real life, while back there I’m really only watching someone else’s home movie.