thisguy

i've yet to get my head around the past couple of weeks - its flurry, darkness and haste - but somehow this blog must move on.

while i sort out my stories and pictures, lemme plug the perfect pre-chinese-new-year reading:-

nyx's series of posts on liondance trivia -read them and astound your drunk friends and bickering relatives with newly reaped knowledge on the subject.

really enjoyed her posts since i've been fascinated by lion dances since i was a kid. my godparents even bought me my own mini-lion dance kit. wonder where it is...

endured a seven hour bus-ride back from penang - mercifully it was a pretty comfortable bus and my mp3 player had fresh batteries.

chinese new year mad rushes are part of the fun i guess - getting picked up by a very sleepy kitten made the whole ordeal a lot more bearable.

having slept so much on the bus, i find myself here trying to mark out this moment with some thought. i love the quiet period between 2 and 5 am. just before the birds wake up. when you own every sound you hear and every thought you think.

although i have about 12 days more to celebrate the chinese new year, the festivities more or less end here this year. i fly off to the desert soon, and won't be able to host or make house visits, gorge on cookies and develop a sore throat till next year.

random thought :
has anyone noticed how silently the sms industry murdered the chinese-new-year-greeting-card industry? people used to send those pink envolopes out months in advance to avoid postal "traffic jam" but nowadays, people send out sms-es days in advance to avoid telco service traffic jams.

sitting on a gaudy red couch in a serviced apartment somewhere in the middle east - just lost a long journal entry post to the depths of cyberspace.

my meat shwarma dinner just got delivered.

was planning on writing a travelogue-esque post but i've been writing so much about the country i'm in, i'm a little sick tired of it - i'd rather write bout anything else.

while checking out this girl's blog - recommended by nyx - i came across the term "elevator speech" - trust the MBA wielding community to come up with a phrase for everything yuppies do.

i'm pretty bad at it - those minute long conversations with clients who pay you to spend time with them or colleagues whom you get paid to spend time with. yet given the profession i'm in, it's something i have to learn to pull off better. still, it's like pillow talking with one night stands - not really my thing.

anyway, more randomness some other time. i'm hungry.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
R. Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

stumbled on the above poem while surfing. quite like it although I don't know much about Frost's other poems, except for the overquoted "two paths diverged in a woods" poem.