My Harvest Moon farm is now called Highbury.

"This had just taken place and with great cordiality, when John Knightley made his appearance, and "How d'ye do, George?" and "John, how are you?" succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the good of the other."

"Mr. Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without difficulty, upon Mrs. Elton's beginning to talk to him."

... Jane Austen, Emma

It has taken me a while to get into Emma - everyone in the book is so annoying, except for Mrs. Weston, and Mr. Knightley, whom I suspect will turn out to be Emma's Darcy. I love Mr. Knightley, and would not wish that fate upon him, but oh well; I still have 150 pages or so more to pull a "if you're happy I'm happy".

Miffy has left her childhood behind and flying back-kicked into the next phase of her life, in which she eats everything. Her especial favourite is stickers, which she amazingly peels off any surface, but she is not adverse clothes, or magazines, or the occasional stray kotex wrapping. I don't really know that she's adverse to anything, but one can only hope.

Italian friend: ... I mean, the Romans killed Jesus in such a horrible way.
him: Yeah, well you know, Rome is in Italy.
Italian friend: Oh my god, ITALIANS KILLED JESUS????

I am so hooked to podcasts. Podcasts are my new best friend. Thank you, podcasts, for filling my life with meaning, and ending monotonous bus rides forever. Since most of the podcasts I'm listening to are Melissa, John and Sue (and now Frak, what kind of a name is that, I ask you?) happily obsessing about Harry Potter, I suddenly feel like writing a book.

No, no, not a book about a girl named Sally who discovers she's a witch and goes off to school. I am not yet that desperate, NTU's infinite plagiarism policies have worked, rejoice, NTU! The thing is I really don't know what on earth I'm going to write about, does anyone have a story in need of a writer? I am zero creative thought but I like to write, and my life is just too boring for journaling anymore, I am beginning to be tempted to make things up. April 5th, Mas Selamat kidnapped me when I was walking to endless tuition classes and told me of his next dastardly deed.

Give me some crazy ideas, friends!

Finally I have a bunny! Behold, the obsession.



mmm... foot.


The ultimate best thing ever about having a rabbit has to be seeing Les waving a stuffed leopard at it, shouting "HAKUNA MATATA! HAKUNA MATATA!", while Miffy calmly chews on an alfafa stalk, looking at me like "So what else is there to eat around here?"

On watching Goblet of Fire again.

Something like that SCENES FROM LORD OF THE RINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN USED AS SETUPS FOR BAD COMMERCIALS HAD THE FILMMAKERS NOT RESPECTED THE MATERIAL thing on mellie's blog. Also kind of one of those things that is not going to be funny to anyone but me and my sister, and maybe mel, but I had to remember somehow.

Barty Crouch JR.: I'll show you mine and you show me yours

He dramatically thrusts out his arm, revealing the dark mark.
Dumbledore looks shocked. He pulls Harry's arm forward, revealing the bloody scar left by Voldemort.

Holly: Huh? Why did he even do that?
Claire: Next take - Snape thrusts out arm bearing Spongebob Squarepants tattoo.
Holly: Everyone: Ooooooooh....

But seriously, after I watched GoF, I felt so darn excited. I don't even know why, that's not even the movie that I like, although I think it did redeem itself at the very very end when they reemerge from the maze, and you have to admit, all that nice chumminess between Cedric and Harry is kind of, well, nice. Anyway, I felt like re-reading all the books! The whole thing is just so amazing, the way it threads together, and to be fair, I don't think any commercial movie could give it justice in it's wholeness. It's sappy, but I love Harry Potter(!), especially when he bangs his head on the wall to the delightful rhythm of ANGST ANGST ANGST.

And I kind of realised that mellie, you will always be my friend, for who else could I turn to to gush about these things? I was looking for the LOTR thing on your website and so was scrolling through previous entries, and there was this whole 2-week period where you were like LOTR SOUNDTRACK IS MY LIFE every post, and I thought, man, this is totally the person I want to be friends with for the rest of my life!

I also need those soundtracks, badly. I've lost mine ):

After the whole uni-drama with my family, I think I'm the kind of person who doesn't say what she thinks, because she's afraid to disappoint people, so she kind of just rolls with the expected course. This is baaaaad, because I just feel worse and worse until finally, the reveal, and people are disappointed anyway AND angry, because I took so long to tell them. So I'm just going to say now, before it's too late and the dreaded AND angry becomes an inevitable consequence, that I've decided that I won't be going back to TJ, or any church for awhile. Because it was getting more stressful to go to services than anything else. I don't know why it was stressful, maybe the weight of the noise, and the emotion, and the smiling people. It felt like the dreams I had when I was very young, that I was in a big field full of black, enormous tyres, and they were crushing me. I used to take the train in, and sit at Hans and just dread it, then I'd start walking and end up exploring the city, or listening to music at the Esplanade, and it felt so much easier to be alive and to love everything. The last DCD pre-service I attended, I left early and as I came out of the building and burst into the daylight it was like flying away. It was one of the best feelings I have ever had, and I knew then that TJ wasn't the place for me anymore. It was too hard, and an awful, pointless kind of hard. It's sad, but I'm a happier person for not going.

those crying potato-things

http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/03_16_2004.html

This totally beats all brenda's "Oh, it's so gonna hurt when you have a baby!" stories. Yes, I remember the good ol' days when we used to have sleepovers (make that sleepover, i only seem to remember one, the one when I got unbelievable headaches in the middle of the night and had to sneak out of the room full of sleeping bodies so I could cry in the toilet) and no sooner had we sat down and begun talking about girly things when brenda would whip out her arsenal of horror stories about how much giving birth hurts, and how much it smells, and how some unmentionable part of yourself tears (how will i ever go to the bathroom again!) and how in ancient china or tibet or somewhere the kings would only attend the labour of their wives, not their concubines, because it was too smelly blahblah. Brenda's stories have forever defined my image of child bearing, especially the smelly part, so that now I know, when that day comes, I will have my SARS masks a-ready.

starfruit juice, my new best friend.

Do you know that if i buy starfruit juice (from the very reassuring brand Allswell, how can you ever be stressed with a brand name like that?) from Cheers it is $2 for two, but if I buy it from 7-11 it's $1.70 each? scandalous.

from dooce.com:
"Your first day went relatively well, and other than a rough transition when we dropped you off — a few tears, some spider-like crawling up my legs — you had a great day, made a few friends, and got to play with what seemed like a million new toys. The highlight of your day, though, was when the teacher showed you the toilet, and it wasn’t just an ordinary toilet. It was a Dora potty, with a cushiony Dora seat, and it had Dora on it. With Dora. And when we picked you up you didn’t want to leave without showing me the Dora potty, so I was all, fine, let’s have a look at this Dora potty. So we walked into the bathroom, and you ran right over to it, and before I could stop you, you hugged it. You hugged a toilet.

Leta, most marriages don’t know that type of devotion."

And I may not be going back to school. Why have I studied for so long? Why? Life is waiting for me. So no, I am not going to continue a course I'm not even sure I should be in. I'm going to go off and do something big and exciting (or small and income-sustaining) for a year until that I-KNOW-WHAT-TO-DO-WITH-MY-LIFE revelation that is away somewhere, shamelessly blessing other people comes over and gives me some love.

Georgette is this weekend! See Life! today for a very, very strange picture of Yi Sheng and Yew Moon, complete with a very, very mindless caption. Oh, how glad I am to be free of potential-employer SPH!

And, I'm sorry Claire, but this blog layout just has to go. I mean, what's with the disguising disguise business? And whose hand is that anyway? Lame.

Now This is Art #2 - Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn

Haggard's castle was on fire, tossing wildly in a sudden cold wind. Molly said aloud, "But it has to be the sea, it's supposed to be." She thought that she could see a window, as far away as it was, and a gray face. Then the Red Bull came.

Chapter 8.
He was the colour of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed. A terrible light poured from him like sweat, and his roar started landslides flowing into one another. His horns were as pale as scars.

For one moment the unicorn faced him, frozen as a wave about to break. Then the light of her horn went out, and she turned and fled. The Red Bull bellowed again, and leaped down after her.

The unicorn had never been afraid of anything. She was immortal, but she could be killed: by a harpy, by a dragon or a chimera, by a stray arrow loosed at a squirrel. But dragons could only kill her - they could never make her forget what she was, or themselves forget that even dead she would still be more beautiful than they. The Red Bull did not know her, and yet she could feel that it was herself he sought, and no white mare. Fear blew her dark then, and she ran away, while the Bull's raging ignorance filled the sky and spilled over into the valley.

What beautiful metaphors and similes. Beagle's book is full of them, it is so fluid and sad.

while reading Why Birds Sing?

... I could say it's the bird of my loneliness
asking, as usual, for love, for more anyway than I have,
I could as easily call it
grief, ambition, knot of self that won't untangle, fear of my own
heart. All
I can do is listen to the way it keeps on, as if it's enough
just to launch a voice
against stillness, even a voice that says so little,
that no one is likely to answer
without anything but sorrow, and their own confusion.

... Kim Adonizio, extract from The Singing