Ladies Night Out

What a weekend.
I was sloshed.
Funny how alcohol can make you feel sexy.
That's very dangerous isn't it?
A self confessed shy girl....and how true that is ( much to my despair because I am an Aries!!!!)
I need alcohol to sort myself out. Its quite pathetic really.
Even more so because once I've had two glasses of wine or a good strong margarita or two shots of tequila - I'm right there in the valley of stupidity and foolery.
I was glad for the pre celebratory wine before we had supper. I went with two models for heaven sake - sizes 4 to my size 20 ( OK I exaggerate, but you'd feel the same if you were as vertically and horizontally challenged as I am!). And they made me wear heels ( ok wedges) and show skin.... i was horrified. But thankfully too tipsy to internalize the worry. hehehehehe..
That gold lame dress C was wearing - she made it! F yes! And she actually got people asking her where she got it. It was a sexy as hell number...short and covering just the assets....Oh yes..its definitely a Crimson Lush label. Ho yeah!

How gumuk am I??? Gumuks!!!
So much so..I have out myself on a freaking diet as of today. Okay...granted cameras add 20 pounds to your face...shit...my friends must be freakin thin hey? Welll they were called models..by passerby that night..
Jools, YT and C

Jools and YT
Can you believe she is a mama? She is tight everywhere, you'd do a triple take if she told you she recently had a baby.
that's what I want to be when I grow up....( sheesh..)







A kiss, and ass grabber opportunist later..hmmm.....
Margarita anyone?

Writer's Rut and the Remedy

I've been having what you call a writer's rut. one word. SH$%!
I have been worried about this. 41 chapters later, 2 and half months later, it hits me and I am shi-ting myself only because I have such loyal readers who make me blush and glow with so much Alice excitement that it's impossible to not want to dish out the next chapter the next day. As we speak, I am delayed by 2 days already and no chapter in sight. freak out much? You can only imagine.
Why does it hit you when you reach the vital point of the story though? Who knows....
sigh.
I have been spending my single nights otherwise watching feel good girly movies...obviously trying to get the gears working again. Tried music - nope, didn't work. No amount of Foo Fighters, The Fray, Sting, even my muso Arvo Part has managed to help resolve the dry rot in my brain. ggrrh.
So yes, tried movies.
Watched Emma twice ( I don't care if someone thinks its a horrible adaptation, I happen to think it was a brilliant adaptation, as I found the book a little tedious to read) Ohh....others can have Mr Darcy, but when it comes to Austen, my favorite hero is Mr Knightley. Ahhh...swoon.
And then came sense and sensibility.
I have yet to be convinced of Pride and Prejudice ( Keira Knightley). Perhaps it's because I don't really like Mr Darcy there.
Tried Milk again ( only for James Franco's ass of course...I am so shameless.. I know).
I saw Nights in Rodanthe finally. Tears. Tears. A beautiful movie.
And yesterday it was Single, and Angry. Not your typical Hollywood movie but if you can overlook the cheap production, the theme is actually quite good.
And it was the push I needed.
Yahoo!!!

Happy women's day

I am back at work after three long days. Three very productive days. I usually update like once in two days, and I couldn't last week due to technical errors with FF. I was a little flustered at first, only because I was eager to post ( and get reviews of course..I live for reviews..can you believe this? Its..uhm addictive), but in retrospect, this inability to upload had been a blessing actually because I got to review my latest chapter, give it a critical read like a beta ( I should have but I don't) redo it and come up with the next two chapters simultaneously. Wow. The amazing mysterious ways in which our brain works. I swear I was just a medium, and someone else was channeling me to write the story out...whatever it is, Im just happy to be the first person to read the story..every time. And like my fellow readers, I laugh and cry and get frustrated just the same.
A movie later and lots of coffee and earl greys later and me writing away on my kitchen counter in my jammies no less - 3 chapters for the week! Whoo hoo. Now I can afford to actually sleep early this week.

Speaking of reviews, I had my first review of chapter 23 ( 0r 34) from Zulfiqar.Ohmgd. To say that I was stoked is putting it mildly. It's one thing getting reviews from any number of people ( who I really appreciate just BTW), it's another when you kinda follow their work as well. I felt so honored. Now if i can just get Oracle Vas to review mine, I'll probably combust. ( maybe not a good idea..)

Right..enough crap for the day.

Vamplover signing off and wishing that all the girls out there had a wonderful women's day. ( Isn't it a tad discriminatory though? We actually need a woman's day? So the rest of the year go to the men then???)

xoxoxoxo

Ahahhaha..
I finally got a review for my first smut. I must be a bad writer because no one reviewed it..it's not too graphic or it's too graphic? I wouldn't know now would I? Perhaps I was too technical. Oh well..no matter, while it was quite fun writing it, I couldn't quite bring myself to using certain words..I don't know why that is..reading it from the many "smut" stuff I have been reading on FF is obviously very different to actually penning it. Probably a result of the subtle brainwashing I've had from the way I was brought up ( not that I am complaining of course)..where certain words are just deemed ermm...sinful.

My sister reviewed my 2nd baby - Tripod. To say that I am elated is understating it. She liked it so I am overjoyed! this is impetus to write more.

It's a long weekend. Hopefully no more margaritas this weekend. My liver has no tolerance for alcohol I have to say..one and I'm dizzy.
two and I start talking shit.
best margarita I've tasted in town: Cubana, Rafiki oh and how could I forget: Polana ( I got pissed at first round)
Shittest so far: Cape to cuba.

I better go now..

the pen and papers are calling.

A buaya is a buaya is a buaya.

I have a problem with people. I put too much faith in their goodness too easily.
You want to be hopeful that people are naturally inclined to be decent and honest people.
Because that's how we should all aim to be shouldn't it?
And yet...
And yet..
you come across people who just ..what can I say, yank that hope away from you. You can't help but feel that maybe this crap about keeping "hope" is futile.
Life is. ..full of shitty people whether we like it or not. we must just deal with it as best we can and hope we don't bring ourselves to those levels.

Back to school

Whew...
haven't seen this website for ages.. I guess I have been penning somewhere else..
I used to love to write. Even with my hideously crap grammar which I have recently realized is one of the many silly phobias I have. Probably why I only wrote for my own private viewing before ...kesian kesian.
Anyway, one my favorite haunts on the WWW is fanfiction.net. Thanks to JAG shipper - i found this site some 9 years ago. Do I feel like a loser because I ship TV/movie romance?No.. my thoughts and feelings are mine, so whatlah if I do..we all do silly stuff to entertain ourselves. This happens to be mine.
So anyway, ever since I saw Twilight ( Although to be quite honest I loved vampires eons ago with Lestat and the gang), i got hooked on the Cullen family. So baliklah to FF to get my weekly dose of TWI based FF stories. I tell you, there are so many talents out there... I've cried buckets and laughed so hard reading FF stories by 14 year olds, 30 years olds 50 year olds...

I'm a movie buff. I collect DVDs so i can watch them again and again...( Obsessive much?) SOme of the recent movies I recommend aside from Twi ( only cause Jasper is so smokin in that baseball scene..damn and Pattinson does Edward's sex hair sooo unbelievably well..sends shivers down you know where...lol) is the movimentary( is there such a word?) MILK ( Franco and Penn kissing you say? Oh God..I never thought I'd say this - because I'm straight and I avoided Brokeback Mtn for obvious reasons, sheesh..their liplocking scenes were *squee*-a-licious. I couldnt help but go aaahhh everytime they traded spit. Such is the power of penn hey? He was good there and so was Franco. Oh yes.. I musn't forget - franco's backside..totally worth my R45 ticket!! ), Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Anyway, I'm digressing. I was talking about writing.

Yup, thx to Twilight, I have been visiting FF.net again as a reader, finding my angst, romance, dare I say it - smut *gasp!*, humor , friendship fix in the FF twi world.( some are so much better than the books..I should know, I read it in one go, and the books are part of the 'benda benda cantik' sitting on my bookshelf these days)

I feel compelled to cite this powerful quote below:

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Imagination put to words. That to me is where the power of written works lie. Watching a movie, you get the audio and visual input simultaneously. Not to say that movies made aren't great works of art themselves. They are. But written imagination is well simply magical. How with the tweaking of words put together in a sentence or a phrase, then a paragraph can evoke such 'real' emotions from the reader. Magic.

I was so blown away by this that I've gone back to school. Not literally.
I am back in writing class 106 with Mr Nama or maybe it was English form 5 with Cikgu Uzaimah.
flexing my writing fingers with my cheap BIC black pen and from time to time, the keyboard. Writing. and absolutely loving it.
Grammartical errors be damned. ( but I'm learning too! so not all is lost). So far I have written approximately 72 0000 words...and going strong, I think. I am sure Mr Nama would be proud, even if my text contains a lot of expletives. (wooops)

of course, it helps when you write about things you like...and i happen to like the very thing I am writing about..hehehehhe...nasib baik lah.


visit me : http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1972933/vampirelover44


signing off now,
vampirelover44.

Reality check.

I went for a test today.
I was pretty sure what the result would be, but it was a nerve wracking 15 minutes nevertheless.
Which goes to say that being 90% or even 99% sure about your partner's status based on what she or he says isn't proof enough.
I was lectured by a concerned but good friend yesterday for taking someone's word of their status as gold. Stupid, I know.
Never. Again.
We have to appreciate the health given to us.
It means taking the precautionary actions. Always be 100% sure.

Baby sold for pittance

The AFP reported that an indian women who had recently given birth to a baby sold said baby to a childless couple to pay for her hospital bill. It was further reported that she received a grand total of 6000 rupees ( about USD120 = ZAR1200) in the exchange. A pittance.

Apparently baby trading is on the rise in poverty stricken India. This is just one of the many social ills - or trends if you will, inflicting this godforsaken country. It seems ironic to see how India's society is falling apart in so many ways, when one considers the fact that the plains of Mohenjo Daro and Harrapa once supported one of the oldest human civilizations in history.

Who do we blame for this? do we blame the mother for her lack of morality for selling her own flesh and blood for money? or do we blame the hospital for forcing a poverty stricken mother to pay for fees she cannot even afford? Maybe we should point the fingers at the couple who were party to the exchange - even though the baby might now have a chance at living a better life?

In today's world where money is the ticket to surviving the modern world - the thousands and millions who are without are left to fend for themselves by whatever means necessary. This means selling babies, selling body parts, killing people, maiming children, kidnapping young girls and putting them in the flesh trade...Put this way, it paints a very scary prospect for the future. When money becomes the singular currency by which society measure their quality of life, ........moral values or decency might cease to exist.

All of us that work for somebody or something.. we are dependent on money to live. We have been brainwashed to believe that the more money we have, the better our quality of life will be. Its not so far fetched to think of this because every month we have bills to pay for what we consider as "basic necessity" - i.e house to live in, car to drive from one point to another, cellphones by which we communicate with others, ADSL to be connected with the world, food to eat. etc etc.. its like a neverending need for more money..a downward spiral to more and more dependencies on a piece of paper.

which brings me to my point - if you have a means to reduce your dependency to the green/red/purple/blue paper - do it. If you have arable land, don't waste it - till it and grow your own food. Barter skills when you can - "I fix your roof, you fix my toilet"...that kind of thing.

A little bit of consciousness/awareness when collectively put - can make a huge difference. Don't you think?

link to feature: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hbq93uNbFurrROW6KeyJaKVa1i0Q

Breathing new life into the old

The other day, I was listening to one of Sepultura's singles.( W%^&#$G?! Joche..you?) I know.... this heavy metal group is definitely not one for my ear or heart for that matter, but this album is not too bad....because it has elements of tribal music in there that I like.

Maybe it's the tribe in me, you know how the saying goes ~ you can take the girl out of the kampung but not the kampung out of the girl. Educated I may be( ahem!), far as I may be away from all things familiar ~ I will always belong to those violent tribes of "headhunting, spirit appeasing people of Borneo". (It's cool what!)

Anyway, so there I was listening to the native Indians 'hahaa-ing and hoho-ing' with the guitar riffs and drum beats of the band in one of the tracks and it made me think of the bobohizan chants. How awesome would it be to incorporate this "mystical albeit somewhat eerie" sound into contemporary music?
I know, I know..ATAMA has already done it, and he's hasnt done done a bad job either - but really, can you expect the majority of people to take hiphop that seriously? er...No...
Honestly, I'm thinking a more serious genre of music - one with a wider reach.
( yessslaiik it.. mencari nahas budak ni..)

That said though, I have to credit the likes of local musicians like him (ATAMA) and Kan'id ( of Sarawak) who have taken our ancient, folk music and breathed new life into it. Yes, some may see it as a sign of disrespect as these traditional sounds/tunes have deep/esoteric meaning attached to them and isn't just a play of words that one can simply 'hiphop-tise' as it were. But in another perspective, by incorporating these ancient tunes into contemporary music as they have done, it serves to remind others - us natives really, of the threat of extinction to our language, and thus culture.

As a child, my mother told me that I must conquer English foremost and I spent many a times watching Sesame Street as a kid to achieve this. She wasn't necessarily wrong, but the mistake lies in the fact that no one impressed upon me or my siblings the importance of mastering our mother tongue as well. I believe Kadazan is one of those endangered languages of the world. And when you think that the preservation of a lot culture (and this is true to the Kadazans of Borneo as we do not have our own writing system) depend heavily on the existence of our mother tongue - it is most sad to think that if we do not actively promote the preservation and continued use of our language, one day the Kadazans of Borneo will be akin to the the Yetis of Himalaya - a myth.

"The 2003 Convention recognizes the vital role of language in the expression and transmission of living heritage. All intangible cultural heritage domains – from knowledge about the universe to rituals, performing arts to handicrafts – depend on language for their day-to-day practice and inter-generational transmission. In the domain of oral traditions and expressions, language is not only a vehicle of intangible heritage, it is their very essence. " ~ UNESCO

on relationships.

pink spring blossoms -----
Dead, brown litter squashed by heavy feet
scattered in the autumn wind.


I'm listening to Yann Tiersen's Comtine d'un autre ete: L'apres midi ( from Amelie OST).

I love this tune. It's so haunting, so heavy and sad. Perfect for those dark, rainy days when everything seems bleak and hopeless. Makes you want to just cry buckets and bawl your heartache out, but without having to spell it out because the notes are there already expressing it for you. And yet.... there is beauty in it. And therefore hope. Hanging somewhere in there on a thread, waiting for you to grab and hang onto when you're ready to face the SHitty world again.

I didnt make this video clip. Appparently it's a clip from Discovery Channel: Planet Earth. I'm just borrowing it for my blog.

Housewarming Party

In line with the new year, M and I finally had our overdue housewarming party last Saturday and it was a resounding success! Phew... and that's a sigh of great relief from the perfectionist side of yours truly because in truth, I had my doubts.....



It's always amazing how good food and more importantly - good company, can make even the most minimalist ( in other words....lacking a lot of stuff) of parties turn out great! I think we're both amazed and also glad that it turned out alright despite the obvious problem of not having any furnitures for people to sit on or eat from...(I know! isnt it a little ironic that we call it a housewarming when our place is still a work in progress for the most part?). The truth is, both of us love to host these dinner- parties- with - friends events; since I've been with M, we've hosted maybe three or four parties for friends. M is a just social bee and loves having people around, while I simply enjoy cooking for people (err... just call me Monica...). So when the opportunity arose one sushi night at a friend's place, we thought "ahh what the hell, let's just throw one - we'll deal with the 'we have no furniture problem later' ".


The big problem - we don't have a dining table or chairs, actually we hardly have anything to show for a housewarming party. But we have a little courtyard out in the front and a recently finished coffee table. Lay a throw on the floor and tell everyone to bring their own cushions - et voila, problem solved. It was to be an evening of sushi (again!) and finger food, with everyone sprawled on the floor. How very bohemian. I like to call it ZEN though. By the by, that's what M and I have decided on how to decorate our cosy little semi-d house- minimalist style. No furniture needed.hehehehehe....so we can put all our money into purchasing a huge TV...

As was said earlier, we had a big sushi feast night. And a little Malaysian/oriental fare on the side - chicken,ostrich and vege satay with spicy satay sauce ( I realize this gravy has become a real favourite among my "newish" friends...I'm very glad. As a Malaysian, I may not be very positive and patriotic over our the malaysian car, or the many "idiotic"biggest tallest, most expensive, guiness record projects and developments ( i.e throwing a car on the antartic/artic, the eye of Malaysia ( yeah..very original) - but I am proud of our food. But I digress... suffice to say, the kebabs and satay sauce saved the evening as I heard someone was virtually ready to stage a revolt due to starvation...


The party started way late - on the invite we stated 7:00pm, but we only really started eating around 10:00pm, because of the damned sushi. If I thought that a sushi themed party would be quick quick - I was wrong!!!! As Dubya ( George Bush ) likes to say - I "misunderestimated" the preparation and time needed to actually make the sushi. Lesson learned # 1: If you think it takes 3 hours to prepare, it takes double that in real time....

M really turned the place into an amazing, cosy setting for our guests. We had just gone on a totally "gila" ( malay. adj. crazy, mad) shopping spree - at this tiny Asian shop of all places. We bought this Chinese paper lantern and he hung it out on the avo tree outside our house with fairlylights weaving around the branches that evening , and there were little candles strewn about the floor as well. He has such vision when it comes to decor - that M.

No party is complete without dessert and we had a very un-asian dessert - a decadent Belgian Chocolate Mousse which I improvised on with the amazing Romany creams biscuit. This is the quickest, but totally decadent dessert recipe I have found so far - that works perfect the first time - a sure winner ( unless you are allergic to eggs!). We also had some seasonal fruit salad that went really well with the mousse.

It was all in all a truly fantastic soiree - everyone had a really chilled but amazing time and it's something we both look forward to having again in future. I would show some pics had we taken any, but no one wants to be taking pics when everyone's simply enjoying themselves..