Sevenses

Without being tagged, here are my sevenses... Work's temporarily not hectic atm. :P

Seven things I plan to do before I die:
1. Perform with a famous bellydancer
2. Attend the whole Glastonbury Festival at least once
3. Live in Europe
4. Expand my Mandarin and Cantonese vocab (terribly limited atm - I'm good at ordering food :P), learn more languages (Arabic, French, Swedish)
5. Travel more (Nepal, Bhutan, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Europe)
6. Get tattooed
7. Experience living in a goth community

Seven things I can do now:
1. Do tedious but fairly beautiful beading for costumes and bead jewellery
2. Bellydance (without looking like a total amateur)
3. Type the proper way, very quickly, without looking at the screen or keyboard
4. Build a website with handcoded HTML on Notepad
5. Make myself look almost Middle Eastern with makeup
6. Write painful poetry in the throes of angst
7. Do simple Feng Shui analyses

Seven things I cannot do:
1. Drive
2. Write a novel (I don't think I can sustain interest long enough)
3. Stay in noisy, frenzied, crowded places for long
4. Not get a chill down my spine when I look down from a great height
5. Stay away from the Net for more than a few hours, unless I'm with F
6. Be tidy
7. Watch local TV productions

Seven things that attract me to the same (or opposite) sex:
1. Genuine warmth
2. Intelligence - widely read, curious about everything
3. A good height - I admit, I like tall men
4. Strong hands and arms - Mmm
5. A warped sense of humour - so he'll get my own twisted mind
6. Inner strength - because I want someone to take care of me sometimes too
7. Creative and spontaneous - I like a good imagination

Seven things I say most often:
1. "Okay...."
2. "You should try taking up bellydancing..."
3. "I'm a writer for..."
4. "I know I'm weird...."
5. "No, I'm NOT going to use my credit card today, NOOO"
6. "Anything-lah"
7. "Hmm, what do you think?"

Seven celebrity crushes:
1. Jude Law
2. Colin Firth's Mr Darcy!
3. Alan Rickman, velvet voice
4. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love
5. Lovely Nicole Kidman
6. Angelina Jolie? Although I don't like her taste in men after Jonny Lee Miller
7. err... Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn?

Seven People I would like to do this:
... I don't think I have enough readers/friends who blog :P

Wisdom: Rest is V. Important

It's been a lovely day home alone, spent on some long-needed rest, talking hour after dreamy hour with F on Skype, listening to music, supping on thin-crust pizza and cold blackcurrant cordial, lounging around naked. My good mood has been restored. :)

Here are the last 2 parts of Daniel's Fives meme:

Five turnoffs in other people

1. Rudeness and fake niceness.
2. Trying (seriously) to speak in an accent that clearly does not come naturally. Eg. Speaking with a British accent after visiting the UK for 2 months.
3. Making fun of those less fortunate than oneself, such as the disabled or even the socially inept.
4. Greed for power/megalomania, no matter how small the scope.
5. An attitude of helplessness in spite of the obvious ability to help oneself.

Five things that were probably spawned by the Devil

1. Music videos that shove sex and bling bling into the audience's faces.
2. The Thin Ideal.
3. The irresistible urge to give in to lying down for just "a few minutes" when you are really tired but still have a lot to do, knowing somewhere in the back of your mind that you will fall asleep.
4. The idea most employers have that just because they pay the salaries, they have the right to all your free time (as if you sold your soul to the Devil? :P ).
5. The female predilection for shiny things.

And now, I'd like to share an amusing, but somewhat alarming snippet of a recent conversation with a new dancemate:

Me: are you a manager?
C: was an accountant
C: tho life was tough then
C: now a financial analyst
C: life is goin down the drain
C: should have stuck to being an accountant
C: i'm trying to con my bf into marrying me so dat i can quit work and go full time into dancing
C: and charity work
C: but he's too smart to be conned.
C: :'(

Do men really have to be conned into marriage these days?


P/S: Meme was fun. Should I do the Sevenses too? Heh heh

Am I Wise? No...

Five Pieces of Alleged Wisdom You Would Like to Share

1. Don't put off things you've always wanted to do (eg. taking up a new dance class, going backpacking, climbing a mountain, etc) because of excuses like not having enough time/money or you can't find someone to accompany you, etc etc. Where there is a will, there's a way, and if you don't do it now, you may end up never doing it at all. Plus, you don't know what you'll miss if you didn't...

2. (Hmm, I'm not feeling very wise atm...) Before acting on negative feelings, calm yourself, and reflect on the consequences of the action you want to take. If you can't think, try to purge yourself of the negativity without affecting others. Most of the time, that's the best way to go.

3. Don't let other people tell you how to live your life. Take responsibility for your actions and choices, because at the end of it, no matter who you blame, you have to live with what you did/chose.

4. Don't worry too much about what other people say about you. You can't please everyone.

5. Always remember to make time for the people you love.

Meme from Daniel (Part 2)

Five places you would love to revisit

1. JapaMala Resort, Tioman Island. I remember this beautiful, rustic little resort with much fondness; my time there with F was almost like a dream: looking out to the ocean from the tiny balcony of our elevated wooden chalet feeling the warm breeze, swimming in turquoise waters, having cup noodle breakfasts with almond coffee on the verandah, exploring huge boulders on the beach, taking an evening walk after dinner right to the end of the charming wooden jetty with its uneven planks to watch huge schools of little silver fish congregating frenziedly there, attracted by the floodlights. Just lovely.

2. Alnön island off the coast of Sundsvall, Sweden. Was there with F and his mom and half-brothers to bathe in the sea. On the way to the secluded beach we had to go through a little foresty area infested with huge mosquitoes, and trees dying slowly due to parasitic insects that left the branches bare and covered with a fine net/weblike substance, giving them the ghostly appearance of trees in an enchanted forest. Mosquito bites and all, it was worth it.. there were few people at the beach, because apparently not many knew of it. The beach was clean, and the water was chilly, with undercurrents that were alternately very cold and delightfully warm... and hardly salty at all (this fascinates me for some reason). I also saw ponies and their riders swimming in the sea for the first time in my life (the ponies left turds, but oh well..). It was a very fine day, the air was nippy but it was very sunny. I began to understand why Europeans love the sun so much, and started to appreciate it too..

3. (This isn't a place per se..) It's amazing to finally meet someone you know very well online but haven't met in the flesh. It doesn't matter where we have it, but I'd like to have another gathering with my friends of and from Cymmeria, the kingdom in which I was a member in the online text-based game, Utopia. Everyone was so familiar, the different personalities that we knew online just came to life, and all these people who'd never met before got along like a house on fire.

4. If I could go back in time, I'd tell the teenage me to take up bellydancing (or some other form of dance) and tailoring, and to ignore the demons in my head and the bitches around me.

5. Following a cultural and food trail in Penang (wrote about before, here). At the hottest time of the year, F and I spent 3 days going from place to place eating traditional Penang food, checking out old buildings and temples and trying out new things. Power-touristing, as F would call it. I rather like it, though it can be exhausting. :P

P/S: Apparently I'm as long-winded as you, Daniel, hehe ;)

Bellylicious

I've updated my radioblog with favourite bellydance tracks, as promised. :) Just posting the track list quickly before heading out for assignment:

Alf Leyla Wi Leyla - A great mix of fast and slow.
Harem (REG Project) - One of the first choreos I learned was to this. REG Project is marvellous.
Shashkin (Omar Faruk Tekbilek) - I love this track!
Bitwannes Beek (Warda) - A beautiful traditional song.
Dance of the Scarves (Marcel Khalife) - Lovely for veil dancing.
Bent El Balad (Tarkan?) - The requisite drum solo.
Ah Ya Leil (Shereen) - Irresistibly danceable Arabic pop.
Cleopatra - I imagine the golden-skinned Cleopatra being entertained by her handmaidens when I hear this; great for practicing snake arms. :P
Sanatein Wanahayel Feek! (Hossam Ramzy) - Great stuff from the Egyptian master percussionist.
PURE: Foundation - Represents my tribal aspirations; from PURE.

Enjoy! :)

Back to Blogging

I've voluntarily been tagged by Daniel of Suitcasing for his meme. Since there are five of them, I will post one (or more) every day for
the next few days:

FIVE BOOKS YOU THINK ARE GREAT

I enjoy reading, but I don't claim to be a great reader... Most of the following books can't be considered great pieces of intellectual literature, but they each mean something to me.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)
Mr Kundera has the startling knack for putting into words the most abstract of tangled human emotions. This is my first Kundera book and my favourite thus far.

Bridget Jones's Diary & The Edge of Reason (Helen Fielding)
Actually 2 books, but read them as a set. In Bridget, Helen Fielding has created a character that is as warm and loveable as she is exasperating, yet avoids the pitfall irritating her readers. I personally know many women who can truly identify with Bridget and her experiences and feelings.

Boy & Going Solo (Roald Dahl)
I'll never get tired of Mr Dahl. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but perhaps it is the way you look at things that makes life interesting or otherwise. Follow Dahl through the highlights of his life, from childhood till the time he returns from his stint in the RAF during WWI (also 2 books, but I read the omnibus :P).

How to be Good (Nick Hornby)
It was a toss-up between this and Hornby's About A Boy. The characters in 'How To Be Good' feel so incredibly human, especially Dr Katie Carr, the main character. Her constant examination of her own values and actions really hits a chord in me.

The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
This was one of the things that helped me through a rough period in my life. I won't say how now, but maybe one day I will.

More to come:
Five places you would love to revisit
Five turnoffs in other people
Five things that were probably spawned by the Devil
Five pieces of alleged wisdom you would like to share

P/S: I suspect you all know why I've not been blogging... been very tired lately. But I will start to make time!

Here Comes the Ocean

Through the falling snow
Through the falling snow
Glides the electrical train
Bar Acacia's closed
Draw my fingertips
Down the mountain stream
Trace your body and soul
In the window steam
Neon city burns harsh and bright
In my eyes, I'm compromised
Hurry me home

Through the falling snow
Through the falling snow
Flesh and bone, heart and mind
To the shore I go
Winter wonderland calls to my heart
And I'm realised
Carry me home

She's the kinda girl who makes the darkness bright
Smiles toward the world and makes it all seem alright
Here comes the sea
Here comes the ocean


Words and music by Roddy Frame