Of passing time and keeping interests
There are things to do while waiting for the appearance of an occasional late friend – pop by the nearest supermarket for fun! I like grocery shopping and usually end up with unused items or food just to fill up the sad-looking trolley. That day, i was determined not to spend a single cent on groceries since the friday before, my colleagues and i spent an obscene amount totalling to SGD 270 for the New Year’s Eve dinner held at Kai’s place which included a SGD 50 rock melon from Japan (oh the pain!). And to sidetrack, for those who are curious about how a 50 dollars rock melon tastes like, it tasted like a rock melon soaked in an entire packet of SIS sugar. Yes, it is that sweet. I am contented with a SGD 2 rock melon really. I am more of the “siew dai” type of person anyway.
Back to the grocery shopping, I decided to hang out at the pasta corner, learning the names and differentiating the types of pasta. So there is angel hair, spaghetti, penne, linguini, fusilli, conchiglie, fettuccine, macaroni and ravioli. There you have it! A good way of passing some excess time without spending anything and learning something to keep for a lifetime.
In a bid to keep my reading interest going, i went on a mini spree to procure white, lined craft notebooks from Muji and at the shop, i could not resist the urge for a beautiful charcoal, fabric-lined notebook. When i was still in school, i had a habit of copying lovely quotes off books and compiling them into a mini collection of well-used phrases. Reading them again brought back a sense of nostalgia and a desire that this habit should be continued as long as i should live.
* siew dai is hainanese and it means “less milk”. For me, it means less sweet.
The start of a “happily silly” new year
I am happily silly, a quality i find endearing for the holders of the “happily silly” title do not attempt to hide beneath the veneer of sophistication and efficiency, leaving them operating like machines on a roll.
I am into the second day of a new year and i think i am adopting a right attitude to start it with. I hope to love bravely, smile happily, speak sincerely, gym religiously, sleep sufficiently, work conscientiously, spend carefully and it sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? But one shouldn’t have to deliberately go all the way out to make those happen. They should have been put in practice ever since we started to think for ourselves.
Perhaps I am also feeling exceptionally optimistic since some of the favourite bands i despair of ever seeing are going to be in town in March for the Mosaic Music Festival. I made plans to spend some of my March evenings with Broken Social Scene, The Bird and the Bee, Sondre Lerche and Yanokami. I feel rather talkative but the other topics will have to wait.
Have a good day.
