really...

yesterday just goes to highlight how socially inept i can be. at times, i even question if i'm mildly autistic. i don't mean to make light of autism ~ it's a heartbreaking condition for parents to accept upon hearing the diagnosis. sans the repetitive behavior for a restricted number of interests, i think i qualify to be labelled as having impaired verbal and non-verbal communication and having problems with social interactions... *hmm*

a cocktail party. what does one wear to a cocktail party? i was supposed to reach gosford around 6pm so i could hitch a ride with nuls and abs down to sydney. saved us the trouble of parking multiple cars. by the time i was ready to go, it was 5.30pm. what a way to start the evening. i wasn't gonna make the 50min journey in half an hour. the entire contents of my closet were now sitting in a dishevelled heap on my bed. my bathroom was in a similar state.various pairs of shoes had been rudely ousted from their nooks and now lay strewn all over the floor. go me! worst thing was, i wasn't sure if i was in appropriate gear. too casual? too fancy? arghhh...

stopped by the gas station to fill up. here comes the socially inept part. been so long since i've dressed to go out anywhere, i felt uncomfy pattering around in my heels. a tug here, a pull there and i thought i was ready to step outta the car. stepped out i did, right onto my skirt. straightened up and nearly pulled my own skirt off! eeeeeek! the very amused look shot over by the guy standing at the pump across from me didn't help much. at least my makeup was complete ~ on top of lip gloss, i now had on a generous helping of blush.

the evening slowly got better and we eventually made it down to sydney. by the end of the night, the bdae girl was a tad tipsy and extremely happy. a few hugs and kisses had been exchanged, of all sorts. good ol' mikey scared a few of the guys with his enthusiasm i think...i have evidence of another awful wardrobe malfunction on someone's camera. blame my top. we had forgotten to bring down the present after wrapping it right before leaving gosford. drove back to newie expecting to indulge in a pack of yummy oily spud fingers from the golden arches, only to find it closed. then what's the point of having it at the service rest stop along a major highway chock full of interstate truckies?! grrrrrr.

got back to newie in one piece despite it being 3+ in the morning, only to be greeted by mr vee's link from the LA Times.

...what you see each day on television, read about in the newspaper or hear during those 22-minute segments in which all-news radio stations promise to deliver "your world" is not, in fact, your world. Rather, it is the negative image of your world. Put another way, the news provides you with a high-resolution snapshot of what life isn't.

- Steve Salerno, LA Times

I've been trying to get this message across to my mom for the past 5 years!!! if only they had a chinese version of this article... to stop that incessant stream of phone calls telling me to be wary of bottled water because the news said some bug was discovered in a bottle, to eat more of this or that because the news says it's good for the liver, to steer clear of ktvs because the news showed a fight at one last nite, yada yada yada. doh!! it pains me to see one so gullible...

of course you're going to get a skewed picture by following the media. c'mon.. does anyone really want to sit through an hour's worth of "millions of first graders reached school safely this morning, yet again" or "seventeen million office doors opened and closed without incident today" instead of "ride-by stabbing: girl gets stabbed by passing psycho bicyclist as she walks to school"?

My advice would be to defer worrying about whatever the TV shows are hyping until you begin seeing unending waves of good news. That's when you'll know that the world is indeed a mess. In the meantime, the worse the news, the better you should feel about life.

- Steve Salerno, LA Times

so you see, the world's not as bad a place as you may think after all, even if it is made of onions and paintshop pro-ed =)