Swans

Swans are the most deceitful creatures on this earth. They look so beautiful in water; elegant, graceful, nurturing, docile, Grace Kelly. But once they come out of the water, in my experience, to snatch the bread off your hand, they are ugly, vicious, loud, menacing, their feet ugly claws, eyes flashing, possessed.

That being said, swans, for me, represent England. They represent trips to the lake to feed the swans, rides on the see-saws, good weather, polite people.

Speaking of politeness, and I struggle to say this, but I was quite embarrassed by, and for, this Chinese/Hong Kong girl today. You know how British people queue for buses. I love it, and I think, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Besides, it's just nice! You get here first, you wait for the bus for 20 minutes, it's only fair that you can get on the bus earlier than the rest! So I was queuing at the bus stop, with about 20 other people, and the bus arrives. Everyone starts to form an impromptu line, and this Asian girl loudly says bye to her friends, ungainly in her heels and tights (ok, that was just a dig at the fashion faux pas of dress with tights that cut off at the ankles...I HATE it), and she cut across this old lady to get to the bus first! The old woman, bless her, puts an arm in front of her, and said a stern 'Excuse me'. She looks startled and her gaze met mine, and I threw her the iciest glare, with the rest of my face calm, looked away and got on the bus.

Hallelujah!

For some inexplicable reason, my keyboard is working again. Seriously, words cannot express my joy at the moment. Maybe typing the longest word I can think of would help. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

You'd underestimate the value of the keyboard if you think, Bah, I'll just use the on-screen keyboard if that happens. But the truth is, it takes ages, especially on a laptop, because you have to point and click EVERY. SINGLE. LETTER. Which is not only tedious, but makes your hand cramp up.

In other news, I'm totally loving the new So You Think You Can Dance. It's often marketing hype when they saw things like "for each season, it's just getting better and better", and you just think to yourself, "That's bullshit." Because a lot of the times, it is. Look at American Idol. Oh my goodness, it's the definition of shit on the telly. But I would say So You Think You Can Dance is right up there on my favourite shows, if not only because they truly have talent on the show, both dancers and choreographers. And it's actually witty as well, most of the time coming from the Brit (stereotypically) Nigel Lythgoe.

This is my favourite female dancer of the Top 20 at the moment, even though I think the producers milked her loving relationship with her mother a bit too much for my taste, before her audition.

Also, as I'm going back to Singapore in six days, I've come up with six dishes I just can't wait to eat:

1. Hokkien Mee.
2. White Carrot Cake with Black Soy Sauce, which makes it black.
3. Fish Soup with Vermicelli (god, it's heaven!).
4. Laksa
5. Rice with certain dishes that you can choose, at this specific stall.
6. Thai Express

I Need A Lawyer

Natwest is such a bitch. They totally don't deserve the bank holidays, which come practically once a week here.

I was recently short of money in my Paypal account, and was posted a £500 bank draft from my mother. Upon receiving it, I put it through the bank as soon as possible, which is the very next day. Bloody UK banks take 5 business days for a simple bank draft to process.

So I waited. Along the way, my mobile phone company O2 deducted their monthly bill from my already practically empty bank account. That made me about £2 in deficit.

Then what did Natwest do?

They slapped me with a £38 fine.

I called them up, and was promptly told there was nothing they could do. It's in the contract, apparently.

Fine. But that pisses me off. It's just the perfect example of a large, bureaucratic company taking advantage of customers, taking advantage of their unfairly thick legal shield. I'm not saying that they were unfair to fine me, even though I can't see how I'm to blame, to the extent that I'm fined £38! For a deficit of £2! The completely infuriating thing is, the next day, the £500 came through.

I began searching through consumer forums, and that's apparently a hot issue, so I'm thinking up my angles. Reading through the forums really opened my eyes to their greediness, or at least, inefficiency, because what happened to some people was that they incurred a mistaken direct debit, usually of a large sum, and obviously they wouldn't have the money in their current account. And what does Natwest do? £38. So the people are on holiday, obviously clueless to what's going on. Another £38. And another. All in all, totalling to over £1000, which they're fighting to claim back.

It's just ridiculous.

So I've used the template given by the consumer forum, and drafted my letter to the bank, pinpointing their responsibilities and why I need my money within 14 days. The forum warned that they don't usually reply within 14 days, which is why they have drafted another letter, titled Letter Before Action, which is to tell them that if they don't reply and do what they're supposed to do, I'm taking them to court without prior notice.

RDJ is Love

This is quite an interesting piece I saw in Time magazine, on Robert Downey Jr., by Ben Stiller, albeit a bit boot-licking, but hey, it's Ben Stiller, and that's Robert Downey Jr. (if that makes any sense).

Okay, many of you don't know this, but I've had a crush on Robert Downey Jr. for absolutely aaaaages. From Natural Born Killers, to his stint in Ally McBeal, where I just melted into liquid every time he came on screen, then frozen into solid again every time Calista Flockhart appeared.

My, that's actually quite a surreal image of me in my living room.

But anyway, so from Natural Born Killers, to Ally McBeal, to A Scanner Darkly, where the fact that the whole film was in paint-mode, did not hide the awesome-ness that is RDJ. I even perked up when I watched that Family Guy episode, The Fat Guy Strangler, where he voiced Patrick Pewterschmidt.

So the fact that he did all that, and got fucking rave reviews for what one critic called a tour de- force performance in Iron Man, makes me delirious with happiness. For those of you who know me well, you know that high-pitched squeaky sound I make when I'm terribly excited, and I just have a big grin on my face? Yeah, that's my face now. I have no idea why, since I obviously have nothing to do with it, and I rarely feel happy for other people's success... which means, this must be love.

Oh my god, I'm so gonna see Iron Man in the theatres! Fucking 95% on Rotten Tomatoes!

And fucking hell, that guy sings gorgeously as well.

Skinny Tray

Just one of those ironic things that crack me up - I'm not quite sure whether it was intended.

Walking along the path to Morrisons from the university, you're bound to have some flyers handed out to you. So today I was given an innocent enough looking envelope, with an anti-drugs campaign in front.

Inside was all ads, art design competition flyers, and one special product placement campaign.

I love how blatant and hippie it is.

(Click on the images to enlarge it. Hehehe, enlarge.)

6 Things

Rita has tagged me to do this:

1- Name the person that invited you 2- Explain the rules 3- describe six of your habits 4- Invite six of your friends to join 5- Tell them

Ok, here we go, in increasing order of weirdness. At least, in my book.

6. I twirl my hair almost obsessively. It completely undermines my intelligence sometimes. But I can't help it. I also need something to do with my fingers. No, no dirty thoughts...

5. I listen to violent and trashy hip hop or rap when I'm working out. There's something about "Kill that bitch, muthafucka, or I'll burn down your crib!" and "Shake that ass, baby, shake that ass" that motivates me to work out.

4. I have to bite the corners off first, of everything I eat. Toast, hamburgers, steak, gingerbread man. I'm not letting any of you off.

3. I am only OCD when it comes to brushing my teeth. I think I've mentioned it on this blog before. It's 20 on the top left, 20 on top right, 20 on top centre, 20 on bottom centre, 20 on bottom right, 20 on bottom left, 20 on tongue, 10 on each cheek. After I've finished that, I go CRAZY! I BRUSH EVERYWHERE! YEEHAW!

2. I lied. I'm also OCD when it comes to bus numbers. Whenever I see a bus, I have to figure out if its divisible by 3. Then I divide it by 3. 429? It's 143. 252? It's 84. Even if it's not, I add/subtract 1 to make it divisible, and then I divide it.

1. I smell the soft side of my elbow when I want to feel comforted. I read somewhere, when I was 13, that it's where you can smell "yourself". How you'd smell without the scent of shampoo, perfumes etc. Besides, when I burrow my nose into my elbow, the rest of my arm holds my face in place. That makes me feel like everything is going to be alright.

I'm supposed to invite 6, but hey, 6 divided by 3 is 2. So I'll invite 2.

Isaac and Eef. Go!

Where's Ed? He's in Burgh.

Well well well.

I'm back from Edinburgh.

I'll not talk about the wonderful museums, art galleries, architecture of the city.

Instead I'm going to talk about, or rather, show the highlight of the trip - the zoo.

I've been to about 5 different zoos in my lifetime, in different countries, different cities. Every time I go, I see, at least on one occasion each, animals getting it on, mating, having sex, doing the horizontal tango... you get it the drift.

Usually they're the heterosexual kind, but Edinburgh zoo added a homosexual dimension to my voyeuristic collection.

When we first saw them, they were fucking. But then, after a while, they started wrestling with each other, and you could feel the sheer strength and power of each hippo. It was around that moment that I realised they both had balls, and therefore were doing what the prison brothers did.

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