damn sad

I have had no inspiration to blog at all. For such a long time. I wonder if working in a company called Inspirations does that to you. Or the daily 3-hour battle with the nefarious energy-sucking vampire called London Underground.

Moving forward...

Okay, first backwards a little. Summary of the past months starting from the most recent.

No. I haven't gotten this fat during my hiatus. Or pregnant. Although it's fun to scare you reader(s?) a bit.

Anyway one week after this picture was taken...

Baby Sep came into the world. He is so super mega adorable! I can't believe I have to wait until July to see/touch/pinch/bully Baby Sep. Barely a week old and he can smile like this!

I envious. I want.

(and Peter freaks out)

Other than my birthday, May was a month of strawbies. I finally fulfilled my wish of plucking strawbies in a real strawbie farm. Outside Peter's family house. Which were then turned into pie. Fruit of labour indeed!

I want lotsa strawbies outside my house also.

(and Peter freaks out again)

April was a month of Eryn. Finally she's here. In London. And she brought me many presents, the most memorable being bedbugs. I really hope the scars would fade in time.

I actually miss having a room-mate now that she's found her own place.

greetings

Happy New Year to my faithful blog readers! Yes, the three of you should know who you are. I am now back at work, and "at" is the most apt description because it denotes physical presence and not necessarily mental. The final few days of holidays I couldn't wait to get into work with renewed vigour, but now that I am at it my engines seem to have iced over in the numbing cold. Thaw, dammit, thaw. Or else the Bossman will have my skin when he's back.

My new year celebration was a nice and cosy one, surrounded by loved one(s) and fluffy pets and 3 different boardgames (intellectual innit) at Jos and Marjanne's in Heeze (a small town south of Eindhoven). The fireworks at midnight were surprisingly Chinese New Year-ish too, with neighbours all standing outside on the streets greeting each other and the smell of gunpowder in the air...

Had a very auntifying New Year's Day walking the dog in the nearby woods for 5km. My toes are still blistered. But good company always make up for physical discomfort. Come see more pictures!

What's your celebration like?

christmas

On Christmas Day I went to Peter's mum's for dinner with the rest of the Beerguzzlers. My earlier self-inflicted stress and worry proved to be merely self-inflicted (as always) because they were really nice people. It was a night of merry-making and introduction to a very different Christmas dinner do. Instead of stuffed roast turkey and Christmas log and brussel sprouts like what I anticipated from telly... my first ever European Christmas experience was a... gourmet.

"Christmas dinner in The Netherlands is a bit different from customs in neighbouring countries. One typical Dutch tradition is that of 'gourmet'. This is an evening long event where small groups of people sit together around a gourmet-set and use their own little frying pan to cook and season their own food in very small portions. The host has prepared finely chopped vegetables and different types of meats, fish and prawns/shrimps. Everything is accompanied by different salads, fruits and sauces. The origin of gourmet lies most likely in the former Dutch colony Indonesia." (from Wikipedia)

I'd sift through hundreds of mouth-watering foodie pics and post the best ones up but alas, as my luck with cameras would have it, the camera battery died before dinner started. Fuck. It. Lah.

Backview of the house where Peter grew up in. Was too shy to take pics of the frontal so I sneaked around the backyard, stepped in shit, and took pictures of...

... a homegrown brocolli (hopefully) plant. Much to the amusement of the family, whom I realised too late, could see my every move from the kitchen window.

The garden shed. Although, garden is very wrong a word to call the heee-yooooge piece of land around the house. And everyone's cajoling Peter to build his house on it, much to his aghast. As for me... why not? I can have the biggest mofo-ing kitchen in the world. And summers filled with strawberries around the house where I can just squat and stuff my face. And wave snails about at the faint-hearted. Fun! Let's see if I get my way in this... *rub hands in glee*

Note - Peter's family name translates into "in the beer house" in English.

bologna

The Whirlwind Called Peter came and left during the weekend. So has Incubus, the main reason Peter flew over (of course there's me, as well) to see them in action and, being the general disorganised person (new busy career-woman is how I like to put it) I am, there were no more tickets when I tried to book some. So I compensated by bringing him to the British Museum and look at ancient, shriveled dead people.

The Wern Yi has moved south to London! Befriended her friends and brother as well. Cool, cool people. Now I know someone in Leeds to bunk with, if the desire to visit ever arises. Funny how people connect and become friends so much faster in a foreign country than our own.

And tomorrow I fly to Bologna for Cersaie.

nido

It's been 3 months since my godbro's passing. I missed my opportunity to pay my last respects or attend his funeral, and I was quite depressed with that fact that I didn't say goodbye when I could. For the past 3 months I busied myself keeping on with moving on. Living so far apart, we weren't as close as I would've liked, but that didn't stop me from missing his online presence. I was angry at how our mutual friends could bounce back into everyday normalcy within weeks, I couldn't bear hearing them talk about travel plans and gatherings. I wanted to wave my fist at them and shout but he's dead, why are you guys so happy!

I know why. Being sad is so tiring. Being angry with the neverending why is so tiring. I'm afraid there will come a time when I don't think about him every day, and that scares me. I don't want to forget about him. But I also don't want to hear "there's something wrong with you since you changed the hair but I cannot pinpoint it" or "you are just grey and lifeless these days" from friends and colleagues. I'm slowly sinking into a bottomless abyss of gloom and I have to snap out of it before it's too late. I get ill easier and tire faster these days. It's amazing (and scary) how powerful and tempting and easy this negativity is. Enough.

Nido had awesome photography skills (to me, and it's all that mattered). He's the one who encouraged me to fumble and learn my way in finding the perfect angle, perfect moment to capture a picture that tells a story without words. Even if that means standing in the cold, waiting, waiting for a leaf to fall from the branch.

Yea he's crazy about photography like that. He could haul the heaviest equipment to other countries and stand in the same spot for 3 hours just for one shot. ONE! I used to say, traveling with Nido must be very torturous. Look who's talking, now I'm torturing my travelmates. Although the same level of enthusiasm doesn't mean same level of output quality. Shuddup, I'm learning ok, learning!

This series of waterfall shots are my favourite, and I wouldn't stop bugging him to develop a poster-size one for me. He'd laugh it off, saying that a poster would cost him a bomb. Ok and here's when things get a little... surreal. After he died, I asked a mutual friend to check if his parents are releasing his photo album... and if I could have a waterfall film to develop it myself. She didn't get back to me and I didn't pursue the matter further.

I was cleaning my room to prepare to shift to my new apartment (or rather, dumping my stuff there and take off to London) when I discovered a letter from Nido which I have absolutely no recollection of receiving and opening. But apparently I did, so I opened (reopened?) the envelope and 4 photos dropped out. And one of them... the waterfall. It was sent on January 2006. I'm not gonna say anything further here. I'm happy (and sad) enough with the pictures.

Thanks, Nido. For everything you've done, given and taught. From now on I'll take the pictures. And one day, I'll trace your footsteps in Greece and your beloved Aegean Sea.

vodka

I just had Manhattan Fish Market for dinner again! Two nights in a row. Can't help this weakness in me. Their baked dory is excellent! But I'm damn thirsty now, so the tastiness of their fish dish might be all artificial. Oh well.

Everyone, meet Vodka my goddaughter. Vodka, meet everyone. And stop staring at the handsome black-and-white he-bitch already. He ain't real. Actually, a lot of male species out there ain't real, but I'll lecture you when you're older.

Vodka likes to sleep like this. I wonder if her throat/neck hurts when she wakes up. Now Vodka's mummy's got her a nice big fluffy cushion to sleep on so it's much better.

Vodka and I sharing a moment of bonding and closeness. In silence. Just look at her sombre, deep-in-thought expression. Fwaaaah. Or it could be sleepiness, because...

...Vodka didn't wanna camwhore with me no more after a while.