shabby blog

Monday, January 25, 2010

Dance Figure by Ezra Pound





Dark-eyed,
O woman of my dreams
,
Ivory sandalled,
There is none like thee among the dancers
,
None with swift feet.
I have not found thee in the tents,
In the broken darkness.
I have not found thee at the well-head
Among the women with pitchers.
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;
Thy face as a river with lights.

White as an almond are thy shoulders;
As new almonds stripped from the husk.
They guard thee not with eunuchs;
Not with bars of copper.

Gilt turquoise and silver
are in the place of thy rest.
A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in
patterns, hast thou gathered about thee,
O Nathat-Ikanaie, 'Tree-at-the-river'.

As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;
Thy fingers a frosted stream.

Thy maidens are white like
pebbles;
Their music
about thee!

There is none like thee among the dancers;
None with swift feet.


I love Ezra Pound's modernist approach to poetry because it's refreshing and thought provoking. And the imagery is mind blowingly beautiful . I LOVE IT!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Perfection in anomalies

I was going through Popular( a local bookstore) the other day and to my surprise I found an interior design magazine( forgot the name) that contained some of the images I found on noquedan...I was like whoa....This kind of stuff actually interests people HERE? Had a good but pleasantly surprised "epiphany" there. Haha. I haven't been able to update my blog for some time so here goes, a fresh batch of random snapshots that caught my eye from my favourite
sites:


Talk about edgy cupcakes! Wondermilk (http://cuppacakes.blogspot.com/) take note!




This really made me laugh out loud.



That is why elephants rock and my room rocks.


Would it be too vain to include self destruction? ;P




This is just so adorable! Nifty!


Apparently there is sushi etiquette. Now there's etiquette for eating raw meat. Wow the human race is progressing.




This is quite sad and sad things are funny to me.



Wouldn't it be funny if demolition crews started using GIANT delete buttons to destroy houses?




The tagline for this has got to be: You can wear your cake AND eat it too!



Van Gogh's Ear Mug. Haha this is an inside joke. You'll have to know about Van Gogh's ear: http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7506786&page=1



This is a specially designed 45 degrees slanted exercise book. Saves all the hassle of angling your book to write. Why can't we have such books in school?




An Alfa Romeo advert describing how easy it is to buy one! XD



From:







Sunday, January 17, 2010

Banana Pancakes: best song ever by JJohnson!

Il y a six ans

6 years ago....


1) I was a social misfit. I rarely let my hair down( like literally coz it was always in a permanent granite ponytail). I was panicky and socially anxious; I abhorred crowds and stuck with the same group of frenemies. Before this starts sounding like Gossip Girl I better get to the next paragraph.

2) I was just beginning to learn that I couldn't live without music...I was even a little into the goth rock and emo; the likes of Evanescence and completely sappy ones like Delta Goodrem and Mandy Moore.

3) I had no style, no distinct personality and I definitely did not know anything about makeup. Heck I didn't even have ear holes!

4) I used to ride on a van everyday for 2 hours to and back from school and brought a pillow( yes im a sleep addict and im not ashamed to admit it) to sleep out the bumpy ride. The van and the driver looked like they were part of each other and the van toasted like a burnt metal scrap piece in the sun. Thank God for the windows. Fun times though wouldn't change it for anything.

5) Six years ago I could tolerate my siblings, now the limit has exceeded. It's true what they say, children should only be seen, not heard. Period. Whoever came up with that is either a tortured genius or just was plain tortured.

6) I was so much more naive and clueless about the world and idealistic. Now I'm still idealistic but I've hardened up because the world isn't your oyster and the bed bugs are not going to leave you alone if you just shut up and keep quiet.


Now...


1) I don't think I've changed. It's more like I've found myself. Sometimes it can take years just to find yourself and I'm glad I found myself before they put me away six feet under.

2) I'm not popular but I have a true circle of close friends that I treasure and spurting drinks up your nose because of too much laughter and silly antics, is becoming a daily staple of my life.

3)And I'm happy. I've learned that you don't have to force yourself to be different just so that other people will accept you, not in the movie sense but the real life sense. Movies aren't all full of commercial generic bullshit all the time. Sometimes they do have hidden gems of wisdom. SOMETIMES.

4) I'm going to be a law school graduate in a year's time. How fast time flies. Back in the days all I wanted was to dabble in social politics and wonder about the meaning of the world like the nerd I am( which I still am) or write books whether they get published or not. Now I'm doing something I never really imagined myself doing but now that I'm in it, it seems perfectly right.

5) Hopefully I'll find my special someone and if I already have, I hope it's real this time.





Thursday, January 7, 2010

A day in the life of a LLS( Lost Law Student)




Considering the place that I call uni is so orthodox, Im surprised I still manage to have fun there.
This is what a day in my life at "uni" is like:

1) Before going to bed at night I'd set the alarm to 7 am every morning coz my classes have the audacity to start at 9 am. But then I end up waking up at 8. 30 and then rushing through everything. Coffee, a bite of toast, throw on a jubah and drive my furry little atos like blue madness on wheels.

2) Once I've parked my car, I plug my earphones in under my tudung,blocking out some of the reality-that I'm hopelessly late for class and I hate classes in the morning.

3) Once I'm in class, I put on what I call the mask of "nodding and agreeing" with everything the lecturer says so that to the stranger observing, I'd look like a dexterous student taking in every morsel of wisdom. When inside really I'm listening to "Don't touch me now" by Busta Rhymes or some upbeat music to keep me from falling asleep.

4) Or when I'm with my fellow sunlight hating friend in class, we'd sit the farthest away from the monstrous reaches of the imposing UV fingers and a) nod off or b)( more common) exchange a flurry of notes describing in intense detail the distracting baldness of our hairless lecturer and burst out in random fits of suppressed laughter.

5) During lunch time just before tutorials start, if my fellow evil comrade in arms are busy with their classes, I'd sneak in food(usually a big cup of coffee and a sandwich) from Nescafe( there's a stall) into the library and wolf the so called food down in the most unladylike fashion. It's either eat fast or die being found out. Trust me uni life is not that much different from a battlefield if you know how to draw the comparisons.

6) Sometimes if I'm really tired, I'd nod off in the library till i get a beeping sms from my FCIA asking me why the hell I'm not in tutorial; at which point I'll do what I do best, sprint, files askew to class.

7) And in tutorial, my tactic is usually "Attack to defend". In other words, it works like this: I ask the lecturer questions before he could ask US questions and give out head spinning cases to discuss. It's a 50/50 strategy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But it involves stealth and cannot be used too many times on the same lecturer. They actually notice. Wow.

8) Then at around 5 pm, I'll drive my furry blue box home and crash onto bed like a dead log.

See what a wonderfully productive law student I am? Grandma would be proud :)


Saturday, January 2, 2010

Maybe-Ingrid Michaelson

I LOVE THIS VID! The illustrations are so cute. It's like a modern day Mary Poppins!


Friday, January 1, 2010

My Sister's Keeper: A Disappointing ending



I found My Sister's Keeper quite a disappointment. But then again in my opinion most movie versions of great novels are disappointments, with the exception of the Lord of the Rings( and that by a slight pass).

I really hated the fact that they changed the ending. It changed the whole dynamic of the story and therefore the anti-climax was practically distilled tap water in a cup. I mean( spoiler alert for those of you who haven't watched it) Anna was SUPPOSED to die at the end to tie off the story with a satisfactory twist. The bittersweetness was lacking it's full force.

And it kind of seemed like the director made Kate sleep with Taylor in keeping with the changed ending. " If the poor girl's gonna die, might as well let her live life to the fullest and that means sleeping with a cancerous guy". In the book Kate just shared a kiss with Taylor, she didn't go the whole way.

Alec Baldwin as the lawyer totally ruined my idea of Campbell Alexander. He's supposed to be this long suffering character who makes allowance for his weakness by being better than everyone else at what he does. Instead I cannot get the image of him as the fat, gold digging toad from Cat in the Hat out of my mind. In other words, he didn't fit the role of CA.

Abigail Breslin was the only one whose performance I praised. She totally fit the role of Anna. Innocent and lost yet strong and intelligent and fired up with a fierce love for her sister.
Sofia Vassilieva played Kate pretty well too. Her face just milks pity from the audience without any effort. And I think Joan Cusack would have been better suited to play Sara Fitzgerald than Cameron Di because she has this soft motherly aura with the right mix of the protective lioness about her- which I think Cameron lacked and made her look at best like a frustrated close friend.

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