Wearing eye make-up is a wasted effort if you have to wear glasses. Hmpfh!

It Takes Several Colours to Make the Water Blue

My grouchy mood continues... but between the two Leos I know... I should be alright soon. One persists in asking 'Are you ok??? If you're so grumpy for so long then it means there are issues you have and you need to think and sort them' and the other tells me to
'be calm
and feel happy
unless you are happy
you cant keep others happy'

I can't possibly screw up too much when am being watched and kept from falling like this. Anyhoo, onto other things... there has been much in the last week that has deviated from the groucho show.

I had my blonde moments when firstly I ate paper... it was the dark brown casing on the chocolates that a colleague brought back from his trip... it looked So like one of those dark chocolate covered thingies... I could hardly have known it was friggin PAPER!!!

And THEN I went and had another blonde moment... cursing Indesign for not typing in caps when told to... only to have the boss ask if my caps lock was on... and then discovering it was. He had a good laugh at me... but given his own incidence of stubbing his fingers while trying to close the cap on his pen, we've settled score :P

Then there was google. On its best days, Google is God. This wasn't a good day for it though. I was searching for the city's largest PO and google cleverly returned a search asking me if I was searching for the city's largest POO. I didn't bother envisaging that... but I'm thinking now that perhaps I should have clicked and seen that set of results.

I also had a moment of weird imagination. I was reading about the new French president and his very public affair with a lady of radically opposite political views and in commenting on something the article said, I ended up having the boss explain political ideologies to me. Informative and something I'd wanted to know for long... but here's what it led to. The boss was saying how being Leftist and Rightist arose from some weird conception of the political landscape stretching out on a straight line from left to right, with Communism on the left and Monarchy on the right. And then he said that these days it was common for politicians to sit somewhere in the middle purely to win votes.

And I suddenly had this vision of those sitting in the middle swelling in numbers and thus weighing down the line till they brought it crashing down with the left and right sides hitting the roof hence uniting the two radical sides... we'd still have a stright line then... but a damn interesting mix of ideas I'd say... maybe it would finally mean the world had a measure of peace.

Lastly, visiting D over the weekend proved to be a very good thing. It was the one time in the whole week that I wasn't sour. Movies, conversation and good food were good reason. And then of course there was D's intuition like friends are wont to have... My exclamation on seeing an actor I happen to be hopelessly partial to produced a 'I was waiting for that reaction' reaction from D. Ah I just LOVE the way she does that :D

But the highlight of this entire week was something that didn't even happen to me. D's partner has had to go back home since there was a death in the family. And happening to call him, she was talking to his family. Her partner's father came on the phone and what he said shall always remain with me. He said 'Thank you for sending him over'

In a society where women are frequently treated as the property of the family they marry into, where they most often don't receive the smallest acknowledgement of their efforts let alone appreciation, where leaving behind everything you've ever known and having to quickly adjust and adopt to a new life are the norm, where things are merely expected of you without any hope of thanks, this is the biggest gesture of goodness that I can conceive. It's amazing really... that out of all of them there, only one person could think of what D must be going through, not having her partner with her at a time when she really needs him around and thanking her for doing what would be considered her bounden duty. It's amazing that there are people who can imagine their sons as belonging to their partners and having lives that demand other things of them instead of centering around just the boy's family.

As D marvelled 'He was half asleep!!! And that was the first thing he said to me!!! No one else thought anything of it but he actually thanked me!!'

I don't have words enough to wish well for that gentleman... may they never ever go extinct!

The Way To A Man's Heart...

Sam and I were talking about relationships and the strings that come attached to them... such as behaving well with those who are dear to your partner. As always, Sam managed to combine hilarity and sense with her odd moment of misplaced wisdom.

Me: You know what they say...'If they love them you gotta love them too'

Sam: The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Don't ask me any questions right now. I'm grumpy and I'll probably make fun of you.

-Effie Kaligaris from Girls in Pants

Now Available Encased in Bubble-wrap

I've come to the conclusion that I like to compartmentalise my life. It isn't so obvious now because I guess it's become an ingrained habit, but the fact is that I do go to lengths to keep the various people I know separate. I do not talk of my personal life at work. I refrain from mentioning family matters and anecdotes in front of friends. I have never ever tried to match-make or fix up any of my friends. I have never consciously made an effort to get one set of friends meet another set... although I might occasionally speak of one to another and thus spark some rare instance of one of them taking the initiative to chat up another (all thanks to social networking on the web... hmpfh!) In fact, recently, I have been thinking a whole lot that I ought not to have freely invited (ok coerced, pleaded, forced) people to read this blog given that I now feel like writing stuff I do not really want them to read... it's about anonymity now... whereas earlier it was about being praised for writing well...

:) Of course, one or two of them will certainly get in touch when they see this and grant me that sense of well-being that always accompanies their missives... but for the most part... maybe...

My penchant for compartmentalising has been highlighted in the light of recent events. Somewhere it even feels okay to do that...

I've managed to have arguments with a whole lot of my friends... not by actually doing anything... it's just happened. With those whom I have not somehow created a rift, I actually feel distanced... I haven't felt the pressing urge to shoot 3000 word emails to update them as I likely do every other week... Life's boiled down to going to work and coming home... a tiny bubble that seems self-sufficient and yet it's like outside looking in all the time... as if my bubble was blowing across the landscape of other people's lives and interactions, merely witnessing but not being able to participate or touch anything that can be seen. I seem to be so content in my bubble that the thought of having to do anything that is apart from it seems to be a really really bothersome task... I find I'm irritable at really small things.

The trouble is this is a phase that comes and goes regularly.

I used to think that am the sort who likes leaving footprints just so she may be assured that her presence was marked somehow... and yet, I am so secretive that I might as well die tomorrow and leave people wondering about trivial things people seem to know so well apropos each other. I have not read a new book in ages... or enjoyed any of the ones I did re-read. My writing's taken a gigantic leap downwards and I am still happy in my bubble.

I'm not saying I want my bubble burst. I shall emerge by and by.