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I am irate, pissed off, and certain muses always get the bulk of the burden. I just spent the past two and a half hours unravelling and coiling back two small ball's worth of pre-knitted yarn. Ribbing no less. Two knit two purl.

It was meant as a Christmas present and I finished 15cm of it and there is seriously not enough yarn to be knitting two strand at a time. It is also a discontinued type of yarn in possibly the only shop in my district selling it.

Now I've got to start again and finish it with using the horrendous exercise of using 98 stitches per row for about 32 inches or 81.5 cm.

If only the yarn was still available. Anyway, I'm in a foul mood and feel like snapping at the slightest thing. I suppose there are fouler moods than this to get through. Problem is for the past few days I've been having drastic highs and lows in a single span of 24 hours. This tops it.

I wish I had bought Dracula. I could use some blood and gore and murder to satisfy my hunger. Both physically and emotionally.

Spunky Grandmas

Most wouldn't agree but that elderly lady selling malt candy at Holland Village outside the Crystal Jade Restaurant has spunk n' attitude.

Mother passed me two dollars for her and I had to give it because apparently, people get shy when they reach their mid-life crisis. The malt candy costs one dollar.

I gave her the money after greeting her "po-po" (grandma in chinese) and she just squatted down to get the malt candy from the old steel pot. The candy looks like burnt caramel. Really sticky, she just got some of it on a small stick about three inches with the help of a flat wooden spatula.

She handed it to me and just waved me impatiently away. Without the change of one dollar which was intended to be given to her. Mind reading or just acknowleging charity?

Contradiction and Unproductiveness

Contrary to what I have mentioned in the previous post, the nails turned out horrible. Or more like the comments I received about them were. They looked alright and I managed to apply the french manicure look on four fingers but my mother came in and said that the quality was not good enough. Just because we were going on a stressful vacation in the midst of my dad's colleagues and my first meeting with his new boss. It's the boss who's new, not my dad.

It's the trip to Port Dickson in Malaysia. And the meeting of our relatives, just a friendly couple, which makes my mother a whole conservative 19th century woman. Not that I can blame her. I blame the exuberant manicure and pedicure prices about US$50 for both. Excluding the french nails.

What's to blame? The bad economy and the whole thing about people looking down on the others. Please, as long as the nail polish is not on my hair it is fine. I mean you see people walking and working with a streak of red nail polish on each nail. Who cares if I couldn't be bothered with the expense of a wanted "luxury"? Paying a bomb for paint and service is not pleasurable.

I'm in an exceedingly foul mood. I am expected to do so many things to be presentable. Such as eat properly and give intelligent answers and dress with style since it's to reflect on our lifestyle. I suppose it is the same as every other type of world there is but I'm quite sure most people say live and let live when they see teenagers.

All the nail polish is gone now and I have gastric.

The Artist who Can't Paint Nails

My morale is at an all-time low. I have concluded that no matter how nice your drawing may look or how nicely done your mediocre watercolours may look, your nail painting skills will quite suck. Nevermind I shall keep them on and leave them as so.

For the Want of Company

I had a wonderfully insightful chat with a friend of my mother who also considers me a friend. Despite our obvious age difference we hit on quite well on some topics. She's Ellen and lives in New York City, just dropping by into the humble streets of Singapore after 3 glorious weeks in New Zealand.

It's amazing how the three of us (Ellen, my mother and me), can talk for three hours straight in a little cafe with just three drinks and a slice of cake. That woman is seriously engaging and has no qualms talking to someone who could nearly pass of as her grandchild by a couple of years.

Oh I do envy some youngsters in America, how surrounded they are by engaging people. I haven't yet found a westerner boring. I suppose many would beg to differ.

Ellen has got such a splendidly horrific idea in my head. To spend about ten thousand on a trip to New Zealand and get into a nearly full transparent helicopter and view the snow-peaked mountains from a height of 8000 feet and a dangerously driving pilot. A pilot who has every intention of landing on a lake hanging off the solid rock of a mountain. Yet for a woman in her late fifties that was quite a daring act. Telling her children to get ready for an early inheritance no less and telling them to wait a couple more decades after surviving the ordeal.

Of course we women are strong hearted. Her husband, who was quite game and to whom she consented, didn't dare take photographs of the panoramic view which plunges you straight into the ravines of death in peaceful New Zealand.

It's strange how much I crave a proper conversation with people. I have few friends to talk to in great detail on moral issues like abortion or capital punishment. Or even listen to someone talking in an interesting tone about the current economic and social status of America, though briefly. These days, such things are rare and far between. It's hard to keep up with long distance contacts and hard to bear with the longing to meet up with them soon. I miss her already and she'll be leaving tomorrow for the plane flight back to New York presumably.

Here's to the Holidays. Holidays with the capital "H", it deserves the title.