On the up: Phone calls
On the down: Waking people up with phone calls

I have this really irritating habit that I am completely aware of but which I can’t seem to stop.

I ring up people in the morning, and I’m thinking to myself “Oh dear, I hope I don't wake them up. "

When the other person answers and sometimes, if they sound like they’re still asleep, I squeal very loudly down the phone, “Oh hellooooo! Are you awake?!” Then I mentally slap myself for doing it again.

I know the answer right away. It’ll be something like, “Well, what do you think?!” or “Well if I wasn’t awake, I bloody well am now, aren’t I?” but they’re always too polite to say that, so they mumble something like, “Uhhh, no don’t worry. I’m awake already,” (they’re not really, of course, and are cursing me now for interrupting their nice dream)

I had to ring up Seng Piow yesterday about some stupid little techy question ("Why can't I connect to the Internet connect? Whhhhy?"). I always feel dumb around him as it is and of course, what happens when I ring him? He's still asleep and I woke him up.

I was very clever about it though and stopped myself from being annoying, so I said instead, “Oh no, sorry, I think I just woke you up. I’ll call you back later” (was very proud of myself) but he seemed in a good mood so made me stay on the phone to finish asking what I rang to ask. *glee*

So I did, secretly glad because it afforded the chance to listen to his nice gravelly, just-woke-up voice, which was surprisingly schmexy, and, for a change, not really that scary at all. Gave me the temporarily wicked idea of ringing up all sorts of boys in the morning just to hear what they sound like when they’ve just woken up.

Cheap thrill.

And I was just sooo proud of myself for not saying that irritating “Are you awake!!!!” thing.

Even cheaper thrill. Look at that, I’m even using myself for thrills now.

On the up: Dreams
On the down: Real life

I seem to blog an awful lot about my weird dreams, but if you lived inside my head you'd probably also think that my sleeping world was a lot more interesting than this wake-up one.

Last night I dreamt that my fanatical Christian aunt told was trying to stop her husband from talking to me because she wanted to get him away from "these idol worshippers" (since I'm Buddhist lah), so I started to explain to her very nicely what the Buddha statues actually meant, and why we have them. I was so articulate and NICE about the way I was talking, I even started to scare myself.

There is no way that would happen in real life. I'd probably be screaming at her, calling her ugly names and causing a riotous scene.

Then I dreamt that I was somebody famous and the whole world adored me, and lots of boys were IN LOVE with me, including a boy from high school, Shaun, who was a total piece of shit (though I did fancy him madly in Grade 8) and Ben from the Dharma centre, who I only just met about a month ago.

All very weird of course, since Shaun was a piece of shit, and Ben I know next to nothing about. Why is it that people furthers from your consciousness turn up in dreams? I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that the further away they are from real life, the closer they are to the sleeping life? It explains why I always dream of people I never really bother about.

And as with all dreams, I wake up and I remember all the lovely-jubly feelings and I get all amourous when I think of Ben. Incidentally, he's got this photo of himself on MSN today that's so HOT it's ridiculous, and it makes me want for him to fall in love with me, even if I don't really fancy him at all actually.

See, sleeping world really is a hell of a lot more interesting than the wide-awake one. It does funny (though nice) things to my head and makes me feel oddly happy about all sorts of unlikely things throughout the day. In fact, it's probably the alter-living of sleeping life that makes real life bearable at all!

Really now, I wonder, what happens to those people who don't remember their dreams at all? Living wide-awake must be painfully ordinary.

On the up: Making new friends
On the down: Forgetting their names

Yesterday, I started talking to one of the girls in my creative writing course. It's been the third week and it was a bit shaming that I still didn't know everyone's names (there's only 8 of us). So I asked the nice girl next to me with her fantastically large, wavy hair what her name was.

She told me, and I thought, "Oh, what a nice name!"

And fifteen minutes later, I had completely forgotten what it was. I thought maybe it began with a K... or an N... and then was convinced it was something like Kamatchy. It had only been 15 minutes and I thought it would be just too awful to ask her what it was again so I didn't.

Instead, I came up with the grand plan of maybe getting to class extra early next week and asking someone else what her name was. But then that would entail asking them what their names are and it would only cause more confusion.

I am definitely turning into a fish with 3-second memory.

Silly sent me a message this afternoon that said, “I miss dollygirl. Bring her back” so I felt loved and wanted and because I love any tiny modicum of attention, I thought I should maybe try to revive this sad little pink page in case people do miss me (I like to think positively).

So. What’s happened between then and now:

Jamie O’Neill wrote back.

I’ve gained another kilo (Krystal at the Dharma centre pointed this out yesterday. She says it in a very nice way though, like it’s a compliment. Like, “Oh! You look so pretty today. That’s such a nice skirt. Oh… you put on a bit of weight? *giggle*” and because she’s all round and happy and has this huge smile all the time, and because she can recite 5 mala rounds of migtsema without breathing, it’s actually okay for her to say that. But hell, I do need to lose some weight. None of my trousers fit anymore).

Two books I edited have come out. Hurray! Then one day, as I flicked through it, I spotted an enormous spelling mistake on one of the chapter headings, freaked out silently in my head, freaked out to the next person I saw, and vowed never to look at it again. I could just get better proofreaders to help me.

I got elected onto a committee to build a Vajrayogini chapel. When I told A that, he said, “What the hell do you know about building a chapel?!” which is funny, really, because I really don’t know very much at all.

Not only that, but I’ve been elected in as vice-chair and I have about as much common sense as a fly so I don’t seem to be able to come up with any good ideas and even when I do, I can’t come up with any logical processes to execute anything properly. I told Wendy, who’s on the committee, who’s an accountant, that I think in circles, so she better help me out with her nice accountant-linear-logical-process thinking. Thank god for clever people, truly.

I have signed papers for our gorgeous interior designer to start working on the apartment. (Truly, he is sooooo gorgeous. You don’t think it’s possible for someone to look that gorgeous but he does. And this isn’t just my weird mind and weird taste talking – many other people agree).

I have also written out a ridiculously large cheque out to them to start work. Never has my bank account been so quickly depleted – it better be pretty. The living room is all white and blue and full of white, round shapes from the 60s. Our bedroom is a sort of geometric-zen. And my study will look like a bohemian threw up in it. An ID’s nightmare, surely. Still in an eternal dilemma – pink walls or orange for my study?

I went to France and met His Holiness Gaden Tri Rinpoche, the head of the Gelugpa school of Buddhism. It was an amazing journey that was just so crazily spiritual, it actually made me a little bit scared.

We had tea with HH in his little apartment, had a wonderful interview with him and got forewords to our future books signed and endorsed by him. (So anyone who tells us we’re wrong lah, our lama is wrong lah, we’re practising evil black magic lah, can go fly a nice pretty yellow kite).

I think I should be saying really profound but all that really sticks out right now is me trying to zip my hefty calves into my knee-high boots (a big production, since my calves are so, well, hefty) and Gaden Tri Rinpoche standing in the foyer of his apartment looking at me and laughing as I tried to get them on. We wonder if maybe he rang the Gaden Shartse Monastery abbot after we left and asked, “Are you sure those are the right people that just came to see me?”

I’m taking a creative writing course. We’re supposed to spend the first half hour of being awake writing – it’s an exercise in spontaneity, tapping into something other-worldly of our half-sleep but really, what I write in the morning sounds just the same as what I write the rest of the day. I have failed in this anyway because I never wake up in time.

We also have to write at least 1000 words every day. So by today I should have written a total of 15,000 and I’ve only written about 2000. Pathetic really, that even with the one thing I love most in the world (writing), I can’t myself organised. I asked the course facilitator what he thought of blogs and he said he thinks they’re just too self indulgent to really merit being good writing…. We should be creating new characters, looking for new stories, expanding the stories we know – not just continuously writing about ourselves and our angst. So that just made me feel… well… self indulgent and not really like a serious writer at all.

But then I got Silly’s text which made me feel wanted and ego overtakes effort, so bleah. This blog lives on. Huzzah!