a second chance

'twas keeping my fingers busy by clicking around flickr. i noe, i'm an egomaniac. i trawl through my own photostream ranked on "interestingness" and i'm glad i did. a second chance for old pics. i rediscovered some photos of yore and found this one titled patchy. change bradley to amy, his to her and there you have it. how apt... even the caption fits =)

...and then bradley got his heart and head patched

'tis the day before chinese new year. a second chance at starting this awful year right. up and at 'em! *beams* i'll never forget something my laoba once told me *waves hi to mikey* ~ 'twas something i never really realized about myself, or thought true. time has subsequently revealed to me what some others already knew. i'm a people person, i'm a pseudo-introvert. all those myers-briggs personality tests say so. it must be so. well, i know so =)

getting out of the house, seeing friends and catching up these past few days has done wonders for my downcast lackluster spirit. seeing other friends online and sharing emo times hasn't been too bad either. i'm beginning to feel a lot better as the world that i'm familiar with slowly rebuilds itself, as more friends return from their holiday haitus. watch out world, amy's ready to tackle the new year =)

aussie day misadventure

a phone call snaps me from my reverie
the voice at the other side offers some company
"shall we traipse to the foreshore for the fireworks?" it asks
"we should get there before nine and half past"

a mad rush for the shower to get ready, i run
cooped up all day was definitely no fun
this invitation, i couldn't refuse
many a firework, will me they amuse!

we clamber into her cute car from the nineties
with a handcrank for the sunroof, it was such a tease!
vroom vroom past the police to the city
fireworks had already started, oh what a pity =(

stopping the car at a random spot to climb up a random city bridge,
we ran into some blokes, the air turned colder than that in the fridge.
"oh! we're no baddies. happy australia day!" they assured.
we smiled and ran back to the car, we weren't sure we were insured.

no fireworks were to be seen,
save the ones that had just been.
what a lousy display it was this year
oh, we forget - it's newie, my dear!

we counted our blessings later at home
we saw more than at new years' but still we moan
i retire to my bara as the eve draws to a close,
i still have this singapore firework, at the very most =)

pillow talk

talk of these beating hearts still hasn't died down (legal bots, o legalbots ~ images are edited from the webby!)

now there's a new name for it!
here's a random chat of the day ~

he says: what u doinz
aemii says: nothing much
aemii says: what about u?
he says: that was delayeddddddddd
aemii says: hee i was clearing emails
he says: just reading ur cute lil blog......... those beating heart things arent too much to look at
aemii says: awww
aemii says: if they didnt cost so much, i'd buy one
aemii says: a hundred and twenty american dollars!
he says: how muccch is much
he says: eiya, wonder what makes em tick, cant be bothered finding out cause first page took so long to loud
aemii says: for ONE pillow!
aemii says: lol some comp chip
aemii says: it ticks differently every time
aemii says: it's like u get to hug a diff person each time hehehe
he says: slut pillow!
he says: hehe
aemii says: 0.0
aemii says: haha
aemii says: i like that one... that's going in the blog

now that you've put it that way, $120 isn't too bad an investment eh? *wink*

like a moth to a flame...

i'm attracting all sorts of negativity here. need to rewrite that sticker slapped across my forehead pretty soon.

couldn't help but bring a smile to my face when i stumbled across numbandnumber's 2006 greetings. the two lines i love... the very first and the very last. lol.

i'm already feeling sick and this random stumble with a smile was the saving grace from having half-digested tummy contents see the light of day again. i guess it's cumulative. haven't seen another person since i got dropped off by my shuttle bus five days ago. home cooked meals aren't as tasty as home cooked meals should be. having nothing to do really bugs me. i've finished putting away all my luggage. knowing that school's about to start in another week also really bugs me. listening to the nasal voice at the other end of the line tell me "thank you for waiting, your call has progressed in the queue and we'll be with you as soon as possible" accompanied by cheesy music for the past 33mins and counting is fast coaxing a migraine from its slumber. selling my precious powershot s40 cam on ebay didn't help.

i've been home for less than a week and i'm already homesick =(

man, 2006's barely started and i'm already deflated. let's hope it's pms.

introspecting

a skype call with my mom this afternoon got me thinking...
she wanted me to email my aunt to "show my concern" whatever that meant. i guess we have different levels of caring, different definitions.

is it too callous of me to not want to email my aunt, so she can wander around her personal space without being accosted every week about how she's feeling? i heard from her after she had her first chemo session. i heard her msg on the answering machine last week. her next chemo session's not due for another week. what else is there to ask about in terms of new developments?

to my mom, i'm not caring enough. i'm supposed to show my care and concern during my aunt's darkest moments. she needs to be cheered up, she needs the support, my mom insists. (don't tell me who to email and why, dammit. write your own emails, make your own phone calls! yells the me with the teenage angst.)

to me, i'm invading someone else's private space. had my aunt wanted to involve me in her battle, in her chemo sessions and everything else, she would've indicated. i don't want to turn naggy. then again, i wonder if the real reason deep down is my fear of turning into my mom.

a comment by a friend last night got me thinking...
rgs girls seem to lack eq.
maybe i'm fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy. maybe i'm heading towards a downward spiral. the more i think, the more confused i get - not just with the whole "email ur aunt" issue, but everything emotional in general. the fact that i'm questioning whether my eq's lacking kinda highlights the fact that it can't be too high, no? *scrunches forehead into a mess of wrinkles*

touchie feelie

when i was a kid, i wanted a lot of things, especially cute and fluffy things. my mom curbed that insatiable desire by telling me to "mong mong eh d'oh hurh" in hokkien - roughly translates to "go have a feel and that should be enough." for those chinese-inclined, it translates to "muo yi muo jio hao" aka "touch touch can already" in singlish.

i usually ended up giving the stuffed animal a cuddle before putting them back. occasionally, i liked one so much it would sit cozy in my grubby chubby arms as i toddled around the store. the bottom line was that since i "owned" it for a period in time, i should be satisfied and should be able to leave the store with out it, appeased.

sounds too abstract a concept for a 3-yr old to understand, let alone follow through eh? i surprised everyone and as a result of this "conditioning" of mine.. well i still have a habit of lugging various things around stores for random quantities of time. ask mr sleepyhead. that's how he eventually came home with me.

***

in the spirit of "mong mong eh d'oh hurh"....
i couldn't resist sharing... 'tis a manifestation of the mong mong conditioning.

(bleah. i can't believe how easily suckered i was. man, parents can be evil if they want to. look at A's mom. she recordered A screaming her lungs out during her daily morning tantrums one day and played it back to her the next morning at maximum volume during another tantrum. it definitely shut A up quicksmart.)

anyway, look what i found...



that bag...

*swoons and faints on the spot*

:: psst :: aemii can be easily revived in the presence of at least one of these ::

another 40+ hour day

finally back in oz! *konks out on bed* ZZzz... um. not quite yet, but soon enough =)

just finished downloading pictures from the past 3 weeks onto my comp. i had wanted to write about what's happened, every little detail for my failing memory's sake but after trawling through all those pictures, i don't know where to start!

all i think imma do for now is gather all my backdated entries and generate a list of links. will be updating this list as i find time to flesh out my topsy turvy break. new additions asterisked. pix will eventually be up at flickr.

• singapore fling
• tee & kay
• he said, she said
• too uh-oh seeks
• backdating [*]
• home is where the heart is [*]
• a whole new world
• toilet training [*]
  

toilet training

remember that toilet-themed restaurant called Marton that was in the "weird and wonderful" section of the news some time back? no? well you're about to be introduced to the toilet shrine =)

'tis one restaurant that kaohsiung has and taipei doesn't. a rare find indeed...
went to test the waters with my parents before L and YH arrived at the WenHua Zhong Xin branch. small, dingy place. very odd atmosphere. especially when one dines with one's parents at a toilet-themed restaurant and has to eat out of toilet bowls and urinals.. there was this underlying tension throughout the whole meal, challenging any of the 20-odd patrons to whip out cameras and pose as distastefully as one can given the restaurant deco.

the other branch we all eventually went to was much nicer. despite a better ambiance, i was still a bit squeamish. after a while, that curry sloshed over the mound of rice and veggies starts to look a tad foul in a bowl shaped like a squatting toilet. the hotpot nestled comfortably, bubbling happily in its porcelain toilet bowl suddenly sprouts the potential to make tummies do somersaults..

nevertheless, three smiley people walked out as two others went to get the car and those three bowed to the toilet bowl that night...

a whole new world

it's a tad premature to be contemplating anything of this sort, methinks. maybe even extremely premature, but it seems awfully close at the same time. 'tis like some huge mountain rising up from its misty shroud of fog and dancing sunbeams in the distance. you see it. it's huge. it's right ahead of you, yet you know very well that it would take you another week to reach its base, let alone summit.

what is this i ponder about, you ask.
'tis my future, i reply.

it's not my immediate future that i have trouble grappling with.. it's that whole "where do you see yourself in the next decade" business that's blurry. frankly, i didn't expect to see a clear picture but i was hoping to visualize something less like something off monet's canvas by this time. hey, in the eyes of the 11-year-old me, anyone over 20 was eye-poppingly old. i'd be ancient in my own books, fast approaching my quarter-life crisis.

taiwan. australia. states. somewhere else totally different. somewhere i can practice without taking anymore qualification exams. part-time bathroom singer extraordinaire. full time hobbyist. part-time babysitter. full time pediatrician. part-time gamer. full time artist.

so many roads... here's my spin on robert frost's "the road not taken" ~

One and twenty roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel all
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent under the waterfall.

Then took the others, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because some were grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And all that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept them all for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Several roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I watched as the world passed me by,
And pondered each possible difference.

home is where the heart is

one week left before i head back to singapore for a quick stopover (canon powershot s80, here i come!) and then onto oz.

i've been anticipating the worst - flareups with my parents and such. in the ~2 weeks i've been back, i think i lucked out. my dad's copped the brunt of my mom's fury and impatience. me? i just sit there and try to blend into the walls or slink away unnoticed til the storm blows over. sometimes, i don't time it just right and mistake the eye of the storm for prolonged calm. deep breaths, deeeep breaths. walk away. atta girl.

i've been given the royal treatment i think. most of my whims have been catered to... except the one where i want to buy a qipao. hehe. hey, i tried one on and would've gotten it 'cept i thought it a tad extravagent to blow about one grand in aussie dollars on it. gimme my mac mini any day!

this year's visit has made me see my parents in another way.. still parents but in a way, they're also like little kids. "lao lang ginna" they say in taiwanese ~ old folks kiddies is the literal translation. get the gist? =)

new home's looking awesome too. i gripe about the interior decorators all the time though. they don't deliver what they promise. *pissy* life's like that eh..

like i said, pix will be uploaded once i reach oz. [edit: already uploaded!] lotsa reorganizing, lotsa reordering to do in all aspects of my life. hopefully, i won't be aimlessly babbling as i am now once i hit ozzie shores.

welcome home, welcome home =)

backdating

one driver.
two grandparents.
three hour roadtrip, prolly to stop for lunch and head back home.
four years apart, my cousins and i.
five of us in the car... what will we all talk about? *scrunches up forehead and makes a million creases*

oh dear..

my cousin and i hadn't really talked or spent much time together. 'twas nice to be able to reconnect over dinner with him last night. he was back for a courtesy trip to visit our grandparents and would leave tomorrow morning. today was the day a-gong and a-ma (that's what we call our grandparents) would take us out on one of a-gong's legendary "day trips" - ones that would consist of driving at least a few hours to a certain remote destination so he can show us an orchard or a building, stop and have lunch for an hour before driving back home.

what worried us was not the unknown destination, but what we'd talk about in the car. my cousin's smattering of taiwanese, heavily tainted with a filipino twist plus my limited knowledge of unorthodox mandarin and taiwanese would prove any conversation a challenge.

at the end of the day, things weren't as bad as we thought. we managed to keep a-gong occupied with random comments and questions throughout the day whilst also keeping ourselves occupied with my cousin's movies on his lifedrive *grins* we didn't do a lot of reminiscing, but we sure made up for lost time with all the yakking we did today. comfy comfy! i'm working on my list of relatives i truly feel comfy around... one more cousin added to the list today =) many more to go...

photos will be up once go back to the dorms in another week or two ~

[edit] all in a day's journey to southern taiwan, visiting the aborigines with my cousin G and my gramps with thanks to A for driving!

it's only the 4th day and i'm already playing catch-up

couldn't hold off the blogging addict within me, so here are a few backdated entries from when i was computer-less. new year's wishes to everyone, but the proper entry's sitting snugly in my powershot memory disk. uploading pix when i get back to australia ~

too uh-oh seeks