Is it the way she looks at you? Seeing her face as you walk through the crowded avenue, That sets you afire

It’s Sunday now, and I haven’t slept in my own bed since Wednesday, thus it’s now piled with clothes, books and folders. In a monumental headache-related fuck up yesterday, I accidentally fell asleep after my hockey game, which resulted in getting nothing on my “Saturday To-Do’s” list done; I eventually did a fair bit of jazz theory at the boy’s house, which is a strike of today’s list instead, but catching up on this huge list is just a nightmare right now… In the meantime, I’ve rekindled my love for the album Primary Colours by The Horrors. I haven’t listened to it in a fair while now, and I’m just remember how much I enjoyed their noise, bass sounds and lyrics.

It’s funny because at jazz school, asides from some of the tutors, no one else seems to participate in any form of sports or physical activity beyond the fitness that we need to strenuously play music for hours on end. On Thursday evening, I was engaged in a lengthy conversation with the head of jazz about windsurfing and various other water sports that he does. And I’ve had many conversations with my old bass teacher about the diving and spear fishing he’s into, but really, no one else is into anything physical. It’s funny to me that in a discussion in the common room on Friday, none of the other jazz students could get their head around the idea of how I’m excited to get back into winter hockey again this season, because I’ve missed the stress relief it brings me. Plus the fact that it allows me to directly exert some physical aggression that might be building up due to stress… and the fact that I’m a bit of an intolerant, grumpy person to begin with anyway.

See, despite all my terrible living, sleeping and eating (the latter is improving though) habits, I’ve been rather missing the feeling of being physically capable, fit and toned. In other words, I really miss the feeling of being able to walk and walk and walk, run and run and run, and carry a load of heavy stuff without feeling like collapsing. I also miss how flexible I used to be. Gone are the days of doing splits and grand battement in ballet!

My point is, surely I’m not the only one who used to be and misses being much more physically active as a kid, running around playing sports every lunchtime and then playing more sports after school? As if to rub salt in the wound, lots of people I know could care less what they eat/drink/do, but still have “better figures” by definition of being slim. And boys! Think about how many boys you know that can eat four times as much as you and still complain about how they aren’t putting on weight. If only females had that luxury… especially as we are the ones who are more likely to have bad food cravings anyway.

On the topic of indulgence, here are two cakes that mum’s friend paid her to make for her daughter’s 1st birthday yesterday. I helped the the icing. An absolute nightmare:


Why must chocolate frosting taste sooo good? There’s a bit left over and all I want to do is eat it by the spoonful!

This is what happens when you sleep on me. You get photographed. Applicable to humans also, but in this case, darling kitty.

Isn’t he just such a sweet sweet?

I really want to fast forward into this time in 6 days because by then I will have done my three-assessments-in-a-row and will be enjoying my 2-week Easter break. It also means I get to finish off a the films I’ve started in three separate cameras, get them developed (ouch, expensive!) and see what the heck is on them.

Pieces of what… doesn’t matter anymore

Yesterday I got home after a treacherous commute from uni – slip-jogging downhill in the city in rain, with a heavy bag, heavy bass, semi exposed music folders, very full ferry, awkward seating – to the glorious sight of some parcels. My Asos package and some items from the BookDepository. I’m still waiting on 4(?) more books and a dress/convertible skirt thing to arrive:

OCD, Definition 1:

What I really want to write about is “obsessive compulsive documentation”, as per inspired by Marta’s blog. But first I have to get something off my chest: I used to be quite OCD as a child. I still am a little bit now, but it’s nothing compared to what I used to be. I’m sure lots of people out there will have done some of the things I used to do, but can you tell me – how bad did it feel when you didn’t stick to those “rules” which your brain somehow constructed and told you to adhere to?

I used to, and often still do now, but in a more oppressed manner:

– have to take three steps per slab of concrete
– count everything obsessively, out loud, in my head, all the time – especially when running and swimming (which is why I gave up the latter, counting up to the 5000 region is painful whilst swimming km after km in a lap pool)
– have to touch something a certain amount of times
– have to experience the same thing on both sides of my body (I still do this, my friends find it funny, but I really don’t – especially when they trigger it intentionally, it sets me off like a house on fire. e.g., if someone slaps one arm, I will have to ask them to slap me on the other arm, at the same angle, with the same strength; or if someone steps on my foot or something stupid like that.  Actually, I’d appreciate if everyone who reads this blog that knows me in real life would please fucking stop laughing about it and triggering it, it’s anguish in my head to try and fight the urge to punch my own arm, for example.
– in addition to the above, I like to touch things with both hands. I line people’s phones up when it’s on a table. I like to stack my ipod and phone together because they’re about the same size, and I hate feeling a phone vibrate in one hand but not the other.
– most especially in homeware-type stores, I have have have to backtrack my way out of a store, as if I had a spider web-like things trailing me and I have to “untangle” my way out, so that this “thread” doesn’t loop around a shelf or rack in a store. It used to make my mum wonder why I kept walking in circles back and back around aisles.
worst of all, I have a counting system and this is the most frustrating and made-fun-of thing ever. As mentioned above, I count. A lot. Moreover, I do this weird thing where I count three to 3, then three more to 6, then three more to 9, then two to 11, two more to 13, then three to 16 and then seven to 23. When I was younger, this systematic pattern only existed up to the number 9, but then at some point it grew to 11, 13, 16… and it did stop at 21 for a while, but somehow ended up at 23 instead. Weird, I know. And that probably made no sense to anyone else but me anyway. But the worst thing is, people make a joke out of it and I just can’t stand it! At its worst, you can tell my mind’s distracted from say, if I’m reading a book, I’ll end up reading really fucking slowly (I’m generally a fast reader otherwise) because I’ll have to look at all the punctuation on the page a certain amount of times… the page number a certain amount of times. And if it’s a number than I deem as “not good” or that I don’t like (such as 2, 4, 8), my mind psyches itself out and I have to “fix” it by looking at “good” numbers certain amount of times.

Not to mention, these are just my main things that I “have to” comply/count to. There are all sorts of random things that I obsess over as well, but don’t kick in that often, or are more easily overridden by my logic and common sense. For example, I have really, really messy (what people like to call “artsy”) handwriting – it’s mostly because I write really fast and big, and that’s just how it ends up. But those silly people that have attempted to copy my handwriting (fuck knows why), or, those even worse ones that try to criticise my handwriting beyond a necessary point, don’t realise that there’s a whole other reason which I let it become and stay so messy. To put it simply, once I make a conscious effort to make my writing neat, I end up obsessing over making it perfect. If I’m writing down music and my “neat writing” thing kicks in, then every little thing that pours over one line must immediately be erased. Or if my clefs don’t fit in the lines perfectly. Or if I haven’t divided each bar to roughly the same size.

It’s the most unbearable thing ever. Just now, I’ve scratched the back of my neck twice, on both sides, with both hands, because I can’t talk about this without succumbing to the “NEED”. I haven’t told my therapist any of this yet, though. Simply because we’re always dealing with something else and I forget about this until I get back into my car and something sets it off.

OCD, Definition 2:

Now, the other, less annoying type of “OCD” is “obsessive compulsive documentation”. To be honest, this goes beyond the desire to blog or to write in my notebook. For me, I like to keep a documentation of my mere existence and how I think/feel about things. I’ve learned so much simply by reading back in old poetry/lyric notebooks, old diaries, old blog posts, and looking through either digital photos or physical photo albums. I can’t remember how that quote goes, but I truly do believe that everything we’ve ever seen, everyone we’ve ever met and everything we’ve ever done has had its part in creating who we are today. I guess the whole “documentation” thing began the minute I was born, because my mum is a professional photographer. She’d done the big studio thing in Tokyo, did reporting for major newspapers and magazines in Taipei, and later opened up her own studio specialising in children’s photography – so my sister and I were constantly her subject of her films. She also used to do work for a parenting magazine, so whenever we so much as cried, out came the camera, snap snap, the dough rolled in. Obviously, being photographed whilst being told off or upset in general was really quite traumatising, and caused us to cry even more – but as I’ve grown up, I kind of appreciate having these things to look back on. When I was six, I asked my mum to buy me a navy and white checkered hardback diary. It came in a matching box with a lock on it, and it was to be my best friend during our immigration to New Zealand. The last time I read back through it, it occurred to me how I had started writing all in Chinese, and then in the middle was a bit of Chinglish, and eventually the Chinese got filtered out to remain only in the phrases where there’s a lexicon gap.

Then, at age 12 I discovered blogging and it changed my life. As you can see, I’ve been doing it ever since.

What I enjoy about documentation is that there’s evidence outside of myself that an experience or thought had occurred. Our memories aren’t reliable, and more often than not gets gray and blurry around the edges. Sometimes you see a view so amazing or had such a good time that you think “I’m going to remember this forever” – but really, you don’t. Some people enjoy just keeping such memories within, to themselves, but I just can’t. On top of this, such documentation often becomes a source of inspiration for me later on, when I am feeling more creative. Reading old poetry/blog/diary entries of my own have often resulted in extended verses, a new reflective blog post, and once even a painting – so see, for me it’s not just about “did that, *photograph it*, file it”, even if it appears to be to onlookers.

As for less meaning for documentation like taking crappy party photos versus taking decent film ones with a bit more effort, both are important to me. Whilst I may not (unlike most people my age) splash all my party/drunk/whatever photos all over facebook, it’s still nice for me to know that someday when I’m older and these days are over, I will have something left of it to look back on. Heck, I don’t even party that much or often anymore, so even looking back on photos from a year ago evokes nostalgia and makes me feel old already!

Point is, I like documenting. And even though I believe that, at the core we never change that much and essentially remain the same at heart, I still like to be reminded of who I used to be at any particular given point. It’s like those amazing lyrics or songs that I write in the shower, that I feel are so worthy of being worked on and properly written out, which I then forget the minute the water goes off – so too do the amazing memories and experiences that we have, if we don’t record them in some way. Plus, it’s always fun to see things from a new perspective, or think my god, I was that retarded at that age?! and then feel like a better person a few years on, isn’t it?

 

Left: welcome to the neglected corner of my room, where I tend to stash the biggest, heftiest items (refer to multiple basses and hockey gear), which then gets in the way of me trying to reach my wardrobe.
Right: my wardrobe door, on which I stuck a pile of those whacky film photos taken in Japan (my heart melts!) and Taiwan.

Traces of last night.
Left: Chocolaaate + acrylics I used to paint my bedside table last night.
Right: The remains of the beer and cupcakes which the boy and I indulged in along with Boston Legal last night.

I’ve been meaning to post this ever since Christmas. She may not enjoy my documenting ways which entails (undisclosed) unflattering photos of us, but my special lady friend sure gave me an adorabubble Christmas present which she made herself! It graces a prime spot on my wall, of course.

 

So we hold it close, When we feel the most – Like a love that we could not leave behind

Three photos I took in LACMA a couple of months ago. I don’t know what it is with my obsession – and often OCD – about numbers; especially the number 3.

I have such a great love of art galleries, art museums… and as I mentioned here, I’m often more preoccupied with the space itself, rather than what’s in it. I took those photos in a section of the art museum where the minimalism just got too much and I was far more interested in the floorboards and white walls, than the large canvases featuring large blocks of colours that were on said walls. I know, I know – it sounds terrible – but whilst I’m into countless forms of art, there are just some things I find more fascinating than this “minimalistic” theme in this wing of things.

“Those who are trying to find love will end up with hatred, frustration and insanity. Those who are trying to find wealth will end up totally neurotic, psychotic and totally crab. Because if you are trying to find something, you have basically, intentionally, intuitively, and individually accepted that you do not have it.” – Yogi Bhajan

I read this quote just before, and it’s completely gripped me in the sense that I find it so true. Or at least, the latter part of it. Such a bittersweet declaration that most of us would not think of viewing things this way. Or perhaps, more correctly, we wouldn’t want to.

The good news with me posting this blog entry is that, hurray, I’m still alive and haven’t suffered from any major nerve damages from my wisdom teeth removal surgery on Thursday. The bad news is that all those worries I had about general anesthesia should have been the least of my worries. Shortly after surgery (sometime after 8am), I woke at around 9.15am and the first thing that gripped me was how sore my throat was, from whatever pipes they had shoved down it to help me breathe and suck out saliva, etc. The next thing that I felt was the fact that I couldn’t feel most of the bottom half of my face. All of this so far is pretty standard, thus far, and I was relieved when my surgeon said I should be able to feel in a few hours, and that I would be able to eat rather normally by that evening – fantastic news, really, as I was starving by that point.

However, my paranoia and problems began when I started asking my sister, my friends and friends of friends who had had their wisdom teeth removed as well, to see how long it was before they regained feeling in their mouths. My sister merely said “a few hours”, and the worst I’d heard was “12 hours”, so I was thinking surely, by midnight at the latest, I would be able to feel and move my mouth. I spent much of the day mooching and lounging around, reading, watching TV, falling asleep in the boy’s arms whilst watching TV – that sort of thing – and making a general dick of myself by not being able to talk properly because I couldn’t feel my tongue and my jaw was locked up pretty tightly.

By the midnight, 1am mark, everyone had gone to sleep, and I asked my mother to wake me up in the morning to see whether or not I could feel or not, or if I should ring my surgeon up (apparently she had nightmares about this, oops). I was starting to freak out that I wasn’t even feeling any tingling in my face, you know, signs that the local anesthesia was wearing off – and my bottom lip was cold! I even started having thoughts as to whether I’d rather I had a paralysed leg or a paralysed bottom jaw… my imagination pretty much took off and ran far, far away into the realms of worst case scenarios. After failing to sleep in bed, I ended up on the couch, channel surfing and trying desperately to fall asleep. I ended up making myself a “cup-a-soup”, which I had to keep sticking my finger in, to make sure it wasn’t too hot and that I don’t burn my mouth – because obviously, I couldn’t feel a thing. Luckily, the hot soup seemed to help bring some further tingling and feeling into my tongue, except that it didn’t affect anything else. The last time I glanced at the clock was 3am and my imagination was driving me insane.

The next thing I knew, I woke to my cat prodding my face at 5am. And I thought my face! I can feel! I’ve never been so happy to be woken up at such an hour by my cat before, and the rush of adrenalin resulted in me not being able to sleep for the rest of the day.

Anyway, the point is – yes, I can feel everything now, thankfully, although unfortunately, these painkillers aren’t doing anywhere near enough to help sedate this constant pain I have, even when I’m not moving my mouth. I succeeded in my endeavour to devour an amazing burger from Burger Wisconsin today, but I had to cut it up into tiny pieces with a knife and fork in order to eat it. In the meantime, I keep checking on these stitches of mine, wishing and hoping that they would quickly dissolve and my wounds will heal so that my favourite pastimes (it seems to be) of talking and eating wouldn’t be so painful!

I’ve been listening to Radiohead’s new King of Limbs – does anyone have any thoughts on it yet? It’s on its second play right now, and I’m rather undecided. I guess it will be typical for it to grow on me (as I expect it to), but thus far only one track has really stood out to me.

For love is the breath, For the scariest things are not half as enslaved

Even though I’m not its biggest fan – Happy Valentine’s Day. Even though I’m far from domesticated, I did something sweet and cooked the poor boy dinner last night and even delivered it to him, because he’s been essay writing and studying for an exam that’s on tomorrow.

I think the main thing that I can’t stand about Valentine’s day is all the articles in the newspaper, magazines and on the internet about “tips” or “do’s and don’ts”, etc similar “how-to” guides for males. Sure, it’s nice that the world of consumerism is trying to help males in this world with trying to please their lady-friends – but I just think that even the tiniest romantic gesture would be a thousand times sweeter, if he conceived of the idea himself. Furthermore, I think romantic gestures in general would be way more romantic when not conducted on Valentine’s. It’s the one day of the year where so many girls say “no I don’t want anything for Valentines” or “I’m not expecting anything, it’s okay” – in terms of chocolate, roses and a card – whilst they are secretly teeming with anticipation in the hopes that maybe their boy will do something sweet anyway! Seriously – how many people knows someone like this?!

On the wave of social issues, here’s some food for thought: if someone (with seemingly no reason to lie or shit stir) told you that someone in your circle of friends went around saying something waaay untrue of a veeery private nature about you a couple of years ago – would you ever ask/confront the person in question whether they did or not? Knowing that they will very likely deny it even if it were true?

Also, I always find it funny how much you can tell about a person by the way they deal with money amongst their friends – and how nit-picky people get about owing small change. And in case it wasn’t obvious enough, I wasn’t saying that in a good way either.

Another thing that’s stressing me out this week is that I am getting my three remaining wisdom teeth surgically removed – under general anesthesia – and frankly, I am freaking out about it. In addition to this, it’s three days before the surgery now, and I still haven’t gotten all the paper work sorted yet! My surgeon works at three separate clinics (if not more, unbeknownst to me), and my health insurance needs a fax reply to them to confirm the procedure that I’m getting done, before they will approve paying for it. The trouble is, they faxed it to him main office, which isn’t the one I’m seeing him at (and thus doesn’t have my files), but he only works once a week or once a fortnight at the clinic that I’m seeing him at, so everything is getting lost in translation between fax machines and three different clinics and the health insurance company. ARGH!!!!!!!!

Here are some photos of Yeasayer from Laneway a couple of weeks back:

I say the right thing, but act the wrong way – If you wanna be with me, baby there’s a price to pay

I’ve fallen asleep in so many places in the past week that I haven’t really been home/online/at my desk, thus the slack amount of blogging. I desperately need some form of decent daily routine to up my productiveness, but the calls of partying is just too loud as the end of summer grows closer in sight. This past week has been quite a whirlwind for me, reconnecting with old ties, severing some recent ones and meeting new people all at the same time. I’m definitely guilty of biting off more than I can chew all the time – starting up more projects than I can physically juggle, and keeping up a sort of rotation-like social life. On one hand, I really enjoy it. I thrive off the copious amount of choices I have with anything from what music I want to listen to/play/write, to who I want to see/chat/dance/drink with, to what I want to be reading and writing in bed, before I sleep.

I had a cold a week ago, largely from Big Day Out, being cold, drenched and tired, and then partying too hard. When it finally eased up a couple of days ago though, what did I do? Drank too much and slept too little again. Aka partied too hard. That, and the storm that New Zealand’s been hit with hasn’t really helped the chances of my immune system with keeping up with me. It looks to be a relatively tame Saturday night tonight, but I think my Wednes, Thurs and Friday nights have made up for it, haha.

The other day I caved and bought these killer shoes for half price. Although, having said that, half price was still fucking expensive. They are ridiculously comfortable though (took them out for 5 hours of dancing, standing and walking around to test drive them that very night, haha), and has resulted in me listing a pile of shoes that I don’t wear on Trademe.co.nz. I’m also currently selling a Sufjan Stevens ticket (Wellington), dress and various shoes. Click here for my listings :).

These bad boys make me veeery, very tall. I’m 5’7″ to start with… the platform itself is 1.5″ and then a 4″ heel wedge…

Mum didn’t say much (guilt, guilt, guilt about retail therapy, but I’m happy with them, haha), except that she looooves the leather. So soft and amazing.

So uhh, I don’t know how my legs ended up looking this tanned in the photo, haha. Very messy room though, am tidying out my wardrobe – dirty laundry on the floor, etc. Typical Amanda.

Aaaaand I’ve finally gotten my Laneway Festival Media Pass. Just smudged out my media outlet’s name until I have the photos and write up to link to.

This track – listen to it. I am so hooked it’s not funny. It’s a mash up of The Strokes’ “Hard To Explain” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle”. Asides from being pure genius, they happen to be two of my fave tracks – “Hard To Explain” was the first Strokes song I ever heard, and they’ve been one of my favourite bands ever since, so there we have it.

Conversations from Wednesday and last night have really got me thinking about the chronology of my music tastes. I get really flustered whenever people ask me “what music to you like/listen to?”. Because I honestly listen to such a wide variety that I don’t even know where to begin to describe what my tastes are. I know it seems really superficial, but being the music freak that I am, I really do feel that these days, to a lot of people, what music someone is into makes a big enough difference on the impression they leave – akin to that of a first, visual impression. I can’t be bothered analysing my own musical etymology right now, but put it this way, within the two past weeks I have: gone crazy on a one-woman-dance-rampage over Ratatat + relived the nostalgia of my youth in the Deftones moshpit + creamed myself (awful expression, I know) over Rammstein’s set and pyrotechnics from the 2nd row at BDO + gone clubbing at places where “everyone goes” and they play supposedly the “most popular” tracks + had a blast to Tidball’s set at Cassette 9 + spent the rest of that evening listening to pop favourites from the past decade with friends (think Britney Spears, Blue, Christina Aguilera, Back Street Boys, Liberty X, Mis-Teeq sort of stuff)… not to mention, in the next two weeks I will see an array of bands at Laneway Festival that are more akin to recent music tastes + go to see Rusko + be at Sufjan Stevens’ concert in Wellington… I would also love to see Queens of the Stone Age again, but I can’t really bring myself to fish out $85 ish in my current state of unemployment.

Don’t even mention it – I’ve been looking and applying for jobs. And I know that I’m picky, because I want to keep whatever job I get as a part-time thing for the next two years, like I did with my last job – so I don’t want to hate whatever it is!