Some funny happenings worthy noting of.
We were carefully choosing among the few options of how we're gonna go to the airport. Our classmate has a private van which he uses for small business of driving people to and from the airport at a price of 30 dollars, not much cheaper compared to taxi. In the end we decided to take the subway which only costs two bucks. HAHA what a satisfiying feat!
Going through the custom wasn't smooth at all. There's a new regulation which states that all liquids and gels are prohibited. I wasn't aware I was carrying a small bottle of Esteem Lauder perfume and a tube of facial cleanser in my small pocket. "You either check them in another baggage or throw them away." "Throw them away??!" I was gasping nonetheless (although I know it's normal). For a bottle of perfume costs a lot and I hardly use it! In the end I had to borrow a plastic carrier from the nearby magazine shop and empty all the stuff in my backpack so I could check in my perfume and facial cleanser! Stupid!! And they didn't even discover the eye dropper Ya was carrying. Isn't that liquid as well???
15h flight, slept through half of it, ate through 1/4 of it, read through 1/4 of it. Borrowed "The portable Dorothy Parker" from the library, a Viking 'portable' of a single distinctive writer. I read an anthology of Dorothy Parker back in JC. Her poems are witty, feminine but limited in style and verse. And I've always had the impression that she being an extremely beautiful woman filled with suicidal thoughts, eventually died young. It turned out after I read the introduction to the book, that to the exact contrary, rather ironcially, Ms Parker died an old lady, lonely and old, just like anybody else while all the while her writings were filled with death scenes and morbid thoughts. That makes her half pretentious and ingenuine to some extent but still I enjoyed her monologues more than any author I've read so far (not many so to speak), especially in a short essay titled 'The Waltz'. I just have to laugh all my organs out and am head over heels at her sarcastic yet hillarious descriptions of the psychology of a tormented dancer.
Some quotes from 'The Waltz" >>
Here I was, minding my own business, not doing a stitch of harm to any living soul. And then he comes into my life, all smiles and city manners, to sue me for the favor of one memorable mazurka. Why, he scarecely knows my name, let alone what it stands for. It stands for Despair, Bewilderment, Futility, Degradation, and Premediated Murder, but little does he wot. I don't wot his name, either; I haven't any idea what it is. Jukes, would be my guess from the look in his eyes. How do you do, Mr. Jukes? And how is that dear little brother of yours, with the two heads?
... There was I, trapped. Trapped like a trap in a trap.
I'm past all feeling now. The only way I can tell when he steps on me is that I can hear the splintering of bones. And all the events of my life are passing before my eyes. There was the time I was in a hurricane in the West Indies, there was the day I got my head cut open in the taxi smash, there was the night the drunken lady threw a bronze ash-tray at her own true love and got me instead, there was that summer that the sailboat kept capsizing. Ah, what an easy, peaceful time was mine, until I fell in with Swifty, here. I didn't know what trouble was, before I got drawn into this danse macabre. I think my mind is beginning to wander. It almost seems to me as if the orchestra were stopping. It couldn't be, of course; it could never, never be. And yet in my ears there is a silence like the sound of angel voices...
---------------------------------
I know I behaved abnominably, dispicable if you despise me. I was acting very cold or just dumb. I slept all the way from the airport en route home while he sat there trying to bring on a conversation, mostly reminiscing the tiny bits from childhood I could scarecly remember. At least I made an effort to recall but still failed. And I was being honest in saying "I can't recall. My memory is hazy." Maybe, or certainly if disregarding his inentions and what not, it is ME who's overreacting and therefore spoiling the fun which we could've enjoyed as old friends in a reunion. He just wants to have a good conversation, savouring the old fun. What is your bloody problem??! Ah, I'm a social failure.
***
1. z, 2006-08-28 16:59:35
No worries. We lived (and are living) through each other's (in)adequacy without a problem. So be happy with it ;P
2. jady, 2006-08-28 12:26:02
lol, what a time to come across this word again--was talking of 'social deficiency' to a friend two days earlier..personally i think i can never be as adequately and spontaneously social as need be, so probably the only thing i can do is to feel comfortable with my own level of social (in)adequacy, and Others just have to live with it. hiahiahia.
3. z, 2006-08-27 22:18:26
how it continues, i'll quote the last paragraph in my next entry. I won't call myself social failure then, "social inadequacy"? I'm really just too harsh and self-defensive.
4. jady, 2006-08-26 00:33:49
crazy liquid regulation, interesting passage (i'd really like to know how it continued), and no, that doesn't make anybody a 'social failure.' that's perfectly normal reaction to some really awkward situation. you'd be helluva social genius if you could talk perfectly normal and cheerful to him...take you time. let things figure themselves out. ^^
