ennui

ever been so bored that u just type in random urls n see what rubbish page u come to?

i have.

i'm so bored, i feel like puking.

at least it's something to do.

i'm suffering a general air of malaise, that, while faintly offensive and frankly unbecoming, is not serious enough to make me take notice and stop, and has no perceptible cause that i can counter other than plain ennui.

yet, as with all things, this phase probably has its reasons. and im getting really irritated cos i can't for the life of me think what it is. i just lead a morose existence day in day out and i've not even thought to complain about it til now - maybe two weeks into this stupid phase - and i'm not complaining, i don't feel like changing anything.

don't u feel so irritated when you're bored and people keep asking why?

i'm such a bore.

go away.

why i don't like public transport

1) random acts of violence

2) loons on trains

3) falling asleep and missing my stop

4) people not giving up seats to old and pregnant

5) people snatching seats from under the noses of the old and pregnant

6) half of the total population crammed into trains and buses all day, everyday.

facial fiasco

yesterday i went for my first facial in my entire life. and, barring desperate circumstances, the last. it was long, boring, with a bewildering number of steps, and incredibly painful. the pain is somewhere between threading for the first time, and the half hour operation i had to extract two of my wisdom teeth. Ok, not that bad, but halfway there.

the first thing that happened was that when i stepped into the small, pint sized shop in a corner nook in far east plaza, was that the spa lady took one look and proclaimed, "your face is very bad". of course, when i told my friend this after the facial, she said that's what they always say.

of course, what transpired to take place was that the lady, aptly (or ironically) named Angel, told me that no way was the basic facial sufficient for me. I had to do the full treatment, mask, extraction (see i told you it was like the teeth) and the works. Of course, with the voucher that I have, i would get a fantabulous discount. (The basic facial that i came for would have been free with the voucher.) What with this and that, she managed to con me, i mean convince me, to part with fifty dollars (not including 5% g.s.t.) to get the upgraded treatment. hey, i saved fourty dollars off the usual price. plus i think the rain must have addled my brain or something.

so in i went, and was told to lie on the bed. i wasnt very impressed with the place cos i'd been to the bigger branch near bugis, and went for the (free) massage and spa there. it was nice, save i suffered a bit under the over eager hands of the masseuse. as i was about to find out in Angel's hands.

the first step was washing my face with warm sponges and applying some sort of lotion all over. she left me to stew with the stuff slathered over my face, and proceeded to boil water in the contraption not unlike the machine u find next to the dentist's chair. next, she wiped off the mess on my face, and told me to get my feet off the blanket which she went on to pull over my body, apparently in case i mistook the facial for a sauna. covering my eyes with pieces of damp cotton, she swung the arm of the dentist-like machine over my face. for the next fifteen minutes, i lay still while steam billowed over my prone face. i felt like a
pau in the steamer. breathing was a trial after a while. Abba crooned over the speakers throughout the whole operation.

fifteen minutes later, Angel came back. she started preparing implements of torture next to my head. she placed some metal stuff that clinked, suspiciously, next to my ear. she switched off the steamer. i had scarcely begun to enjoy the tepid aircon wafting cool air over my cooked cheeks. she slathered more stuff on my face. then wiped it off. and now commenced the torture.

with cotton, her fingers, and the various metal implements - it felt like a very fine tweezer and a needle, honest - she proceeded to work her way over my face, starting from the forehead. as she poked, prodded, pinched and tweezed, she kept tutting away and telling me all the problems with my skin. it hurt. "Pain ah?" she asked. "Mmph" i said. she called over the other spa girl and told her to see how it was going. "Not pain meh?" the girl asked in chinese. "Tahan lor" said Angel. After the first five minutes i quit flinching and tried to mentally sing along to Abba. When it got really bad, i bit the inside of my cheek, hard.

halfway through mauling my face, Angel added some fresh torture. she slapped on a thick minty smelling mixture on the skin she'd already done with. At first it was cooling. then cold. and lastly, it burned - imagine extremely minty toothpaste, spread on a fresh wound. i couldn't decide which was worse. the sting was bad but it signalled she was done with the mauling.

finally, Angel was all done. a few minutes later she wiped off the stinging stuff. she mixed more stuff in a bowl and spread it on, thick. it felt like peanut butter. it was cooling too, though not painfully so. then she left me for the next fifteen minutes. throughout the hour or so of the facial, i think i was abandoned to Abba three quarters of the time. i didn't mind, Abba was alot kinder than Angel.

the last part was the most boring. Angel'd taken away the cotton pads over my eyes so after a while i opened them and craned y neck staring around the room. i saw a mirror and half rose to look in it - i saw a stark white face with eye holes and hurriedly lay back down. after a while the mask felt stiff, i reached up to touch it and it felt like cement. just when Abba was about to lull me to sleep, someone came back and sponged off the mask. She applied a thin layer of something on my skin, proceeded to drum her fingers and pinch me on the cheek, and all over, as if she really thought i'd fallen asleep and needed rousing. then she helped me sit up, massaged my scalp and shoulders some, and told me i was done. it was the other girl, not Angel, and i said thanks and wandered out, kinda dazed. my face was half red and quite sore. no makeup for a few days. i skipped my class reunion, went shopping, and went home.

so there it is. i've described it to such detail for a reason. if i were ever, EVER tempted to do something like this in the near future, i will remind myself to read this to recall how pleasant i found the first experience.

and the most excruciating part of the entire process? Paying Angel fifty bucks to prod my poor face.

first post of 2005

and i've got nothing to say. i didn't celebrate the new year. am too old for countdowns in packed, airless spaces teeming with masses biddig farewell to the old and hello to the new, and the recent tragedy left me moodless to go out and have fun in the face of so much sorrow.

so i stayed home and watched tv with my siblings. it felt good, too. and when the clock struck 12 i was watching Colour of Paradise on Central, with my mom behind me watching something else, falling asleep.

next year i plan to sleep the new year in.

that's about it. school's started. im still filming for my final yr project, among the last few groups straggling behind. documentaries are time consuming, and i picked a difficult topic. just the thing for a memorable final semester, my final few days of studying in my life.. unless i further my studies, which i have some vague notions of in the not-very-near future. for now i just want to finish school and get a job and thus, money. yes, it makes the world go round, and im standing still.

i had dinner with the kachua gang. ZL gave everyone belated christmas gifts. HW presses the brown paper package thinking it was a soft toy. it's a cactus. she got two needle thin thorns in her fingers. we spent long minutes in a spotlit corner at inside the esplanade (we'd sat outside, near the river, in after dinner chat) performing amateur surgery, trying to extract the almost-invisible thorns. we got one out, she had to go buy tweezers to perform more delicate operations on the other.

all in all, just the kind of ending that so often puts a twixt to days otherwise yawnable.