On the up: Teh Tarik
On the down: The weird things it makes you do

I thought I would brave the ghastly effects that cheap teh-tarik tea leaves do to you and drink a big glass tonight. I demanded they make it EXTRA HOT, so they did and I slurped up the whole thing in 5 minutes.

So now I'm full of caffeine and bouncing around the house like I just woke up from sleeping for a week and it's almost 6am.

BUT

It also made me temporarily intelligent and hard working because I got heaps of work done and wrote a totally sublime foreword for a book (and it isn't even going to be mine). If Joe doesn't like it, I'm going to hit him with a really big khavantga and then resign.

And then I decided to go look up Jamie O'Neill (which is going to make people think I'm a lesbian even more, I know) and there's this email address there.

YAY! I CAN CONTACT JAMIE O'NEILL!!!!!

So I wrote him an email:

Dear Mr O'Neill,
Just wanted to drop a note to say I totally, absolutely, entirely adored At Swim. Since reading it I've been trying to make (force) everybody I know (to) read it. Thank you for fabulous fiction and wonderful writing. It inspires me towards all my own silly writerly aspirations.
Cheers,
Dolly

(Not in pink, though).

He's going to wonder if it was really worth writing such a sublime book if it means getting such random, stupid sounding emails from people on the other side of the world.

Then again, I've had emails from people about their secret sex lives and cheating on their spouses when I was working ... surely Mr. O'Neill won't mind an adoring little note from me *blink blink*

On the up: Discoveries about the opposite sex
On the down: Trying to understand the opposite sex

Sharon and I were having lunch with Joe the other day. It was supposed to be about work but ended up being about finding him a new girlfriend.

Wah, damn fussy lah that one: cannot be too old, too young, too fat, must be pretty, cannot smoke, must be Chinese, must be like this, must be like that.

I was like "Look, just get laid. It doesn't matter lah, right?" but didn't say that in case he gave me his BF look.

So anyway, clever Sharon asked him to give us an example of who he thought was pretty.

There was a girl sitting across the restaurant, behind a laptop, so you could only see her face. "What about that girl there?" (She was soooooooooooooooooooo pretty).

"No lah. But but nice body" said Joe very quickly.

Sharon and I were all "HUH?! How you know?"

"I saw her walk past just now what."

"Yah but you noticed that quickly?" asked Sharon, who seemed baffled even for a girl who likes girls.

"Hmmm yah lah! Men see these things very fast wan," + knowing glance, like trying to be clever.

So, this girl walked by, and sat behind a laptop so you couldn't see her and like an hour after she'd walked in Joe still remembered all her vital stats.

And there we were thinking that men were totally unobservant and incapable of multitasking. cheh.

On the up: Being busy
On the down: Being exhausted

I've been a busy bee lately and I've been doing lots of work (in case all of you out there think I am a slacker!). I've forgotten just how bloody exhausting it is to work hard. What to do.

But.

Thing is, I seem to be real busy busy busy and then at night I collapse in a big bundle of tiredness but nothing ever seems to get done.

So much of the day gets spent doing stupid little shitty things. Like I've just spent an hour backing up all my files and spending lots of time in huge paranoia double checking to see if the files really have been burnt onto a CD. (Some shitty little virus has wormed its way into my compuer and is sending out deranged emails to people, including weird sex-titled mails to people in Dharma centre. So everything's gotta get binned and we gotsta start all over again arg)

Another half an hour emailing everyone in my address book to tell them not to open dodgy emails from me because I'm being plagued.

Then I spent another half an hour cleaning up the junk on my desk, and discovering lots of funny name cards in my handbags (there are many, all over the room).

Another 45 minutes frantically looking through a gigantic stack of ID magazines in preparation for meeting with interior designer tomorrow.

About 3 hours doing three piddly write-ups.

And then suddenly its midnight and I'm exhausted.

How do those 9-to-5 people do it?!

On the up: Underwear
On the down: Recyling underwear

My cousin Allen had to go to India for business so the other night at dinner someone asked him if he'd finished packing.

He said, "Ya. Two trousers, two tshirts, enough lah."

Then his brother, Stanley said, "Ya, then one underwear can wear four times."

Another cousin's girlfriend and I were like, "WHAT?! HOW?"

So he gave a little demonstration. "Okay, see. You wear it one way the first day.

"Then second day, you turn it around so the bum part is in the front.

"Then after that, you turn the whole thing upside down so it's the other side of the cloth. And wear for another two days lah."

All the girls at the table felt totally gross and I pulled this big gross face.

Then Stanley said real quickly, "A bit hard with panty lah because different shape. But for guys it's easy wat. Same shape, like a square."

See, you learn something new every day.

On the up: Cults
On the down: Getting exiled from Planet A

This is why you should never talk to your parents about anything other than the weather:

Apparently my father is now following the advice of some dude up in Cameron Highlands who people believe is a half-god (whatever that means lah). Cameron Dude says that superstition and religion is pointless.

Okay, so I agree superstition can be silly but wait, Cameron Dude also says that following any religion is pointless because apparently we are all from another planet, called Planet A. And we've been put on earth as a punishment. So following religion is pointless because we're all going back to Planet A soon anyway.

It follows that we shouldn’t bother to try to be nicer people or try to achieve better qualities, because “if you’re born evil, you will always be evil” and anyway we’re all going back to Planet A, so what’s the point.

There's also a Planet B and a Planet C but I didn't bother to find out what those were about.

(When I told Bibi, he said, “Oh, too bad there isn’t a Planet T and a Planet C.” As in TC. HAH.)

So I had this little debate with him about how this and was talking about my own experiences from the little time I’ve spent in Dharma.

Back track a bit: I’m in a Dharma centre and our spiritual director/Guru/teacher/whatever is man who was severely abused as a child – emotionally, mentally and physically – and speaks to us most often about what it means to develop qualities like patience, forgiveness, kindness. The teachings encourage bringing happiness to others and being of less harm.

That’s all it’s about and is what makes me stick around (cos I sure ain’t the holy sort that would otherwise be caught dead praying into a string of beads!). Sound simple enough? Sound logical?

But during our little spiritual debate the other night, he told me I’m in a cult, I’m following with blind faith, I’m not doing things the right way. But his Cameron Dude friend and the Planet A theory makes total sense.

Go figure.

Anyway, every time he goes up to Cameron Highlands to worship the planetary system, he brings back bags of strawberries and fresh vegetables and big bunches of pretty flowers, so I can’t complain.