Shuri suffers from a chronic case of mental diarrhea and is often plagued by a hyperactive imagination that does not show in her ordinary conversations with others. This blog is what her (imaginary) therapist recommended so that she won't explode with a build up of overwhelming thoughts.
"LOL" - "laughing out loud" or "laugh out loud" - is a very commonly used abbreviation these days. Even I struggle to limit its usage and use the term in a genuine manner for when I'm actually laughing out loud. The term has somewhat become a convenient word to replace fullstops, exclamation marks and for use as a sentence ending, even when one is not necessarily laughing out loud.
Ever so often you meet people who have clearly gone overboard and complicates the process of communication. Like this sms message I got today:
"Lol as much as am sad to say it but tomorrow am starting work again :( lol so see you tmr" [Shu: how does one use :( and lol next to each other??]
I have also met others who use the term 'lol' in very wrong context. Below are some closely-resembling examples:
My cat died lol.
I just hit a pedestrian lol.
The doc says I got 2 months to live lol.
I've been tech savy this week. Thanks to the great minds behind Nokia, I got a free upgrade of the operating system in my phone. This new OS favours more personalisation, it is quite user friendly, very easy on the eyes and it's got some cool new features like NFC and Microsoft Lync. The icons and backgrounds look so much prettier now, that I feel like I have a new phone suddenly. So I have spent a significant amount of time this week personalising my phone and getting new and useful applications.
I thought I'd mention this peculiar application in the blog. It's called "The Period" (read on, don't roll eyes yet). My first reaction when I saw it was "What?? That's ridiculous!", but then a wise friend said it might be useful for me. Actually, it is ideal. I have a disorder resulting in irregular cycles (the joys of being female) and my doctor had asked me to record all dates and durations of my cycle. Previously, I would record it in my diary the old fashioned way. But this application has taken record keeping to a new level. Apart from the records, the application predicts when the next expected date is, how many days left, where in the menstrual cycle I am now - these being the features useful to me. Then it also tells when I ovulate, when I should get busy if I wanted to get pregnant, days which have a higher probability of conceiving boys or girls (that, I'm skeptical) - these being the useless features to me. The developers had also given an email address for any feedback. I was thinking of telling them to include a random alert to make the user aware of: "PMS zone approaching, please try to stay away from loved ones and warn them of expected disturbances in your behaviour".
Google images was only able to provide a picture of an iphone version of it. The one in the Nokia store looks very similar.
So the lesson to take away from all that is not to be too quick to jump into judgements and conclusions. Like this morning another friend told me that she happened to observe a couple of girls in a club reduce to tears when the David Guetta ft. Usher song "Without You" played. I was quick to judge and say with much sarcasm "Oh they must have had their menstrual cycles in sync". Later though, I thought maybe there were other reasons for their behaviour that we would not have known, like a sad farewell perhaps.
Another interesting thing happened today. I had been expecting a card from Singapore. It was unusual for a card to take 3 weeks in the post. I had almost given it up for a lost mail when it arrived today (to my joy), in good condition AND with an explanation for the delay. The letter had a stamp on it which read;
SAUDI POST
MISS SENT TO SAUDI ARABIA
(when it was rightly addressed to arrive in the UAE)
The way I see it, the postal service is a love or hate thing. Only a few friends I know use it. It is a hassle to go buy stamps and envelopes, write old fashioned post cards/ letters/ cards, find post boxes to drop them in, wait for weeks till the recipient receives it and then wait many more weeks for the recipient to get back to you. There is a chance your item might be lost in transit or take a longer route like what happened to my card! And all this can be avoided by embracing newer and faster advances technology like courier, email, mms, instant messaging, VOIP etc. Yet, some of us want to keep the postal service from shutting down for good.
I'll admit, I was once crazy over this song. Heck, freaky Shu still loves it.
Valentine's day has to be the worst day in the year for singles. Even a content 'single one' such as myself can crack under the overwhelming pity poured out by the 'attached ones' and the heavy commercialism surrounding this day.
I defied traditions at our office today by refusing to wear something red this year. On two previous years, I participated in this tradition and felt silly afterwards. So this year, I wanted to express my displeasure over this over-rated, highly commercially driven and misinterpreted 'Day of Love'. The result was that I had to explain to so many curious staff as to why I was not in red; which led to questions of what my special plans for today were, which led me to saying "Nothing" over and over, which led them to pour buckets of sympathy over me for not having a significant other, which began to make me feel a little confused, small and pity-worthy.
Although logic dictates that there is no reason to feel upset over not having special plans with a special someone on the fourteenth day of February, my emotions might have got the better of me today. When one does not pass socially accepted milestones at designated points in time, one becomes an outcast and a target for bullies (just as a fat green caterpillar might appeal to a hungry bird). No matter how content one is with one's pace in life, society can sometimes eat away one's contentment and slap one as an outcast. And if one is not careful enough stick with one's guts, it's easy to cripple under the pressures and lose one's self-confidence.
366 more days to enjoy some (socially accepted) leave-the-singles-alone days, before the next hoard of Valentine's day bullies come to bite me.
On a positive note, I might be back to blogging.
[Afternote: Here's a great article to complement this blog post.]
I'm not sure why I lack the inspiration to blog these days. Too much on my mind? Too little on my mind? Bored? Nothing interesting to blog about? Nothing I want to share? Getting too old for it? I don't know.
I think it might have started with a certain article I read about the trails we leave behind on the internet. The more we reveal information (however anonymous we think we might be or how secure an account we are made to think), the more we make ourselves vulnerable for external factors to penetrate our various security defences, like passwords and anonymous names. Funny, that's sort of how it happens in the real world too, with regards to one's personality.
Also, I hate to use my precious blog to vent out my frustrations of daily life, which have been growing in the last couple of weeks. I've always wanted this blog to be a retreat of happiness. One which brings smiles or better, makes way for higher reasoning. Mostly it falls short, but I still try to stick to my original plan.
I have observed that the peak of my imagination and creative thought-flow is early in the day. That's when I get great ideas and inspiration for good blog topics. Sadly, by evening, after the weight of the day has got to me, I either forget it or lose the rosy-tinted spectacles I wore in the morning. Even if I make note of little things to blog about later, I've most likely lost that streak by the time I sit down to blog at night.
Finally, I feel like I'm losing moral support. Looks like it's a dry season for blogging in general. Most of my fellow bloggers have either hit the rocks with their blogs or are struggling to keep them going (YES, you know who you are). Must be a pandemic o_O
Lately, a lady from work uses me for a free shrink. We are in no way close and I don't open up to her about my personal life. May be I look like a safe target to unload worries or may be I come off as a good listener because I prefer not to give my two cents worth to people I'm not close with, but she sure goes into lengthy detail about her life and personal issues. I try to hurry my steps as I pass her table during peak hours. Shu feels guilty but at the same time, Shu is not that selfless.
We have a coffee machine at work. It dispenses several types of cheap-tasting beverages in very minute quantities at a time. Employees are allowed unlimited access to these so when I am bored, I try mixing different combinations to 1. have a decent volume of beverage to consume and, 2. attempt to make better tasting ones.
1. Black coffee - normal black coffee
2. White coffee - normal cheap-tasting white coffee
3. Cappuccino - too much froth and too little coffee
4. Mochaccino - hardly lives up to the reputation of 'mocca' and has three times the recommended sugar
5. Expresso - worse than any coffee anyone has ever tasted
6. Chocolate - concentrated chocolate drink, again with three times the recommended sugar
7. Chocomilk - identical to 6. So I figure it is there just to confuse employees
8. Tea with cardamom - this is a joke. It dispenses plain hot water, to which one is supposed to add a tea bag from elsewhere and add a little cardamom harvested from elsewhere
Through many experiments, I have discovered that combinations 3+4 and 2+6 are the best options to satisfy random chocolate cravings and stay awake after a heavy lunch. I suppose I should be grateful we at least have an abundant source of warm beverages to rely on.
Also at work, I am irritated by one of the hired cleaners who comes to clean the office every evening. Before that, I must admit I suffer from a condition called hyperparanoidism so it is possible I overthink things. He keeps giving me constant glances (I usually ignore him, but sometimes my line of vision does meet his gaze and I often find him staring) and like with a lot of people from his country, he automatically breaks into a song when I walk by sometimes. Now, this is not new to me and it only adds onto the countless observations and experiences gathered over the years with this 'sub-species'. Males from different countries/ cultures/ species have different ways of trying to get noticed by the fairer sex. These range from catcalls, songs, poems, display of colourful feathers (or other parts), flattering gifts, building structures to even stalking and making unwelcome physical advances. How much of a success/ failure rate each method has, I cannot be certain.
As it happened in the STONE AGES. How far have we advanced as a society since then?
There are other dimensions to think about when speaking of propagation of species. Like what females do to be attracted by the opposite sex or how females react when they come across a specimen of interest. BUT... I've been called for dinner twice now and if I'm reminded once more, I might snap, so I better go enjoy the dinner prepared with a lot of trouble by our hired help. Her food rocks.
