…and we are into our third day of rain.

i am rather ambivalent when it comes to rain. i suppose i do enjoy the lingering cool air and that soppy sentimentality (unintended pun!) that gets you as you sit in your room, staring out into the gloomy sheets of water that just keep coming. i do happen to have a couple of good books (fiction!) and have no complaints against curling up in bed and just being lazy. but i miss the sunny outdoors, and even the fierce summer heat back home (fatal last words…). rainy days in tokyo are awful when you have the brave the peak hour train crowds, all toting wet umbrellas, the stuffy trains smelling even more dank and stale than ever. sometimes, i imagine walking through those cabins with a bottle of febreze in my hands, spraying the seats (and people) like a superhero with a gun, and then turning the entire train inside out and laying it in the sun for a day. i love febreze. my walls (wallpaper) get that treatment from time to time, like after i eat natto. or kimchi.

but there is to be no more korean pickled vegetables for a while. i have gone clean, so to speak. and though i still stare wistfully at all the coffee and tea left on my shelves, and the fried chicken at lawson’s, i must confess that things are improving slowly. the heart burns no more, and i am slowly making the return to normal meals. for now, i cannot seem to get enough sleep; my body seems bent on getting its full share of sleep before it gets started on the eats, so i can only tag along and nod obediently, munching endlessly on apples as i go along. at the rate i am consuming the fruit, i foresee their appearance in my dreams before long, running after me, with wicked faces like jack 0 lanterns.

i bought a new kazuo ishiguro work just because i liked its title – nocturnes, five stories of music and nightfall. i can’t describe why that attracted me so much; it is simply one of those word combinations that tug at your heartstrings. i am trying to pluck up the courage to pick up murakami in japanese, because… well, it is always good to read good literature in its original language, but i haven’t quite gotten past that mental barrier. i read an acceptable number of japanese academic books only because i have to, but the grand total of fiction books i own? 2 (or maybe 3), one of which is alice in wonderland. rather embarrassing, i know, for someone who may end up teaching in a university here, but… i will get there. one baby step at a time.

i spent the better part of yesterday on the bed in a fit of anaemic dizziness, and could not even roll around to comfort myself because the slightest movement meant contending with nausea and a spinning room.

so i had to be contented with keeping my eyes tightly shut, and entertaining myself with strange dreams about going home and meeting the newest member of the choir – a female, in the bass section.

woke up this morning to yet another day of gloomy rains and chill, a headache, and still more nausea. i wish it would stop raining already.

march, to me, seems to be a marker that we have left “the beginning of the year,” and are well and truly “into the year.” it is the harbinger of spring and things to come; a time of closure and new beginnings. we are no more anticipating events, but are living them.

it has been a rainy sort of week, in the style of those hearty tropical thunderstorms that i miss when i am in japan. with lightning and thunder, and the kind of rain that really douses you, that no umbrella can protect you from. of course, i only love watching and listening from the safe cocoon of my room, sitting in bed with a book and a cup of hot tea. other than the rains brought on by typhoons, much of the rain in japan is fine and needle-like, stinging you as it hits your skin. you don’t quite get that it is raining, but still, end up wet and miserable. it is a little like the japanese people – subtle, yet eventually, making their presence felt.

i am starting to feel a little winded and daunted by all the tasks i have to complete before i leave. a month! and i never even got around to doing all those things i wanted to do – roaming around the island at will, eating a lot of local food, taking buses or walking, going to the beach, and admiring the blue, blue sky. i suppose i could find time if i tried to be a little more efficient, but being almost-30 is not the same as being 20. my body refuses to pick up its tempo, and there is only so much sleep i can sacrifice. at the end of the day, i suppose it would be enough to take each day a little more slowly… walk outside a little more (even when the sun blazeth or the rain falleth)… singapore really is an interesting little place given half a chance, and i preclude all those malls springing up like mushrooms everywhere; i don’t think i ever gave it enough credit. in fact, i don’t think many singaporeans do.

i haven’t mentioned s for the longest time on this blog. i suppose i have stopped moping about him as extensively as i used to, and all that bitter heartache has eased somewhat. there is still a twinge of something when i hear certain songs, see certain pictures, remember certain things… when i let my mind wander to the what-was and what-if. i am, in truth, a little unwilling to let it go. the pain has been such a constant companion it feels almost like a friend. it feels almost as if it would be a betrayal (not so much to him, but to my dogged passion) to fall in love again… so for now, i think i shall hang on to the remnants of my little love story and wallow in the tragic past. just for a while more. 

and when spring arrives for real, who knows what it may bring?

as opposed to the friday the 13th that never was. i’m sure the curse started with the chair, and even though i finally discovered how to raise it ten minutes before i was due to knock off for the day, the damage had already been done, and there was no saving my day.

i also know a day is cursed when it begins to pour just before lunchtime, becomes blazing hot after you return from lunch dripping wet, and starts to pour again just before the end of the work day.

hotmail is giving me negative vibes again, and no amount of reinstalling webmail extensions and rebooting thunderbird will help. no amount of googling will throw up helpful answers either, so i can only wait and hope it captures some positive vibes soon. not from me though, for i am cursed.

a friend gave me a 2×2 rubik’s cube with shiny, reflective sides. i confidently thrust aside the 3×3 cube i had been attempting to make some sense of for more than a month now, and went to work on mini-me. never, never underestimate the power of the small. after some time, red started to look like orange, blue like green, yellow like silver, and me like a complete loser; my eyes were crossed from the effort, and i was this much more frustrated because unlike the 3×3 cube, you could actually get this much closer to solving it without actually solving it. but how can i not be able to solve it when countless others have? so i push on, refusing to look at all the solutions offered on the www, refusing to concede that i am, really, not that smart.

my room lies in a mess as i battle the mysteries of a multi-colored cube… as does my life. i refuse to attempt any more work because it is a cursed day, and further efforts will only result in further failure. i call this garfield philosophy. so useful to natural procrastinators, don’t you think?

three full days of the runs have doused my passionate call for civic action and world peace, but i am too in love with eggs florentine and morton’s (free) steak sandwiches to abstain from food so that things could be just that little bit better, so i shall retire meekly and whine about other things instead.

like how work returns after a brief lull – not in the form of a pleasant drizzle, but rather, all at once like a sudden cold shower. i have too much work again, and am somewhat torn between relief and despair. and i hate it when i cannot settle on a single emotion, so it has generally been an annoying day.

the weather won’t settle into any sort of permanency either. i strutted out with my sunglasses at three in the afternoon today, only to remove them and don a cardigan just two hours later because it started to pour. and pour. and pour. i haven’t been friends with sunglasses for something like… ten years (because when you are young and poor, you can generally only afford the variety that makes you look like you need a white cane too). i suppose i should be grateful that i could be as pretentious as i wanted to be for at least a couple of hours.

and in the vein of young bloggers who like to detail every single thing that happened in their lives, and every single thing they have to do in the next twenty-four hours – did i mention that i have yet to look through that nightmare of a piece for tomorrow’s practice; nor have i learnt the arias for voice class the day after (incidentally, the new assignment is due that very same morning); nor have i completed the photo-video i am supposed to be making for The Bride on behalf of ten friends (or thereabouts) and the wedding is in all of four days. i received the manuscript for the new book i am supposed to be working on for the next three months and really have no inclination to even glance at the first chapter (which is due, again incidentally, on the day i return from The Wedding).

i don’t suppose anyone understood any of that, or even cared to read through it (but it is all so meaningless, i would likely respect you more if you had not read it)… but then i write for no one to begin with. i am still not sure why i blog so much when my words do not mean anything to anyone. perhaps having a nom de plume makes me feel mysterious and important, and possibly famous. or perhaps it looks a little more sane than sitting around talking to myself the whole day. or perhaps i could pretend that someday, it would become a celebrated book – a record of life in the twenty-first century, a study of creative expression on the web, a testimonial to the infinite greatness of unlimited cable connection.

oh, i think i’ve lost my point. do you not think it is admirable that i actually spell out all my numbers?

i was woken up at half-past three in the morning by the gentle whooshing of rain outside. i left my windows wide open, snuggling into the blankets as the wind swung the curtains this way and that.

it is a lovely feeling to be awake at that time of the night (when you are not dead tired, that is). to be conscious as the world sleeps; to feel safe and cocooned in the midst of a storm; to let your mind wander far and wide as you take your time to fall back into unconsciousness, rocked to sleep by a cool tropical storm.

after many months of sleepless nights spent rushing through senseless translations, i am enjoying this rare lull in work pace (although i might not be saying the same if it goes on. after all, one has to eat to enjoy anything at all). i mean to savour this time, even as i try to silence the voices that play on loop in my brain night and day, day and night – when will i know about the scholarship?

but there are many things to be done in the meantime; i cannot allow myself to fret over things i cannot control. news to catch up on, (text)books to dig out and fresh ideas to give birth to, music to learn and love, bridesmaid duties, movies, birthdays, blogs… a whole country to get myself re-acquainted with – to try and understand, all over again, the physical and social fabric that makes singapore, for it is the understanding of self that feeds the understanding of others.

yes, it should be an exciting few months ahead.

…it starts pouring just as you are heading off to work…

…your cab driver is cranky and doesn’t listen to what you say…

…he insists on dropping you off at a taxi bay five minutes down the road from your destination…

…he stops the cab about a metre away (must have been!) from the curb, so you end up entirely drenched before you have even started to take that five-minute walk…

…you order a coffee and realize you have enough cash for just half a cup (oh, visa the saviour)…

…you walk, shivering, into the office, and spend ten minutes trying to get a sneeze out of your system (failing which, you end up sniffling the entire day)…

it sounds like a bad movie. it’s just the beginning of a rainy wednesday. oh, i can’t wait to fly away already.