“did you know, grasshoppers and other performers like aaron kwok tape their dicks down?”

i choked on a spoonful of shredded pork and chinese mushroom rice. “to avoid wardrobe malfunction?” i wondered, thinking of the shiny tiny hot pants favoured by mr kwok.

“it’s because they will, y’know, ‘stand’.”

i sputtered a few grains of rice onto the table.

“you mean you’ve never heard before meh?”

do enlighten me on the hong kong entertainment scene, dear pickway.

“guys,” she said knowingly, smugly and triumphantly, “get hard when they’re tired.”

my whole life flashed (heh) before my eyes. i felt like a high school-er again.

“my boyfriend runs marathons, and he told me that when he and his friends finish running all tired like that, it gets awkward… cos you know.”

boy, was i confused. was i sorely lacking in the sex ed department? was she pulling my leg? was this something everyone knew? was this a rawang thing? i mean if only exhaustion caused erections. pfizer would go out of business.

*conversations originally in canto, yo. which makes it that much more hilarious.

the birthday and the week leading up to it was Cowabunga! simply because there are no other words to describe it. a daily surprise countdown: little (and not-so-little) things from the person i love most in the world; the finale: a super-pariah, uber-mabuk, 我像 lambie/please speak english, drinking session with my new and old friends. no, seriously, to all those who called me lightweight, you try downing 2 pints of hoegaarden + 1 graveyard + 1 flaming lambo + 4 random shots then you walk a tightrope in your Jimmy Choos while balancing seal pups on your face. so from my vantage point, which was face-first in a puddle full of stomach acid, i saw (or rather, i would have seen it if i stayed conscious) those whom i should continue hold close. i love you guys. thanks for taking care of ‘lil ‘ol smashed me. :)

new year’s eve was bloody beetroots at life centre. @khairulnz blew us off because of the traffic that existed in his head. @hailat was probably not feeling well. and despite retiring my aching feet by 2am like an aunty, my day & night ’twas fun you obviously didn’t have on new year’s. because i’m a snob like that and the world revolves around me, not you.

and that’s all i have to say about that. that, and wannabe writers should do less writing and more salsa-ing or leg-spreading or refine their cock-sucking techniques and shut the flying fuck up.

danke, 2009. you were very good to me. /hugs

so malacca is, in the loosest sense, a home town of sorts. sketchy family history about supposed baba nyonya heritage, teochew wanderers touching points along the west coast, and the annual ching bing (qing ming to you) trip which i’ve never participated in, all tie me back to the state. plus i am head-over-heels for the lard-soaked chicken rice balls. probably the strongest proof of my heritage, methinks.

closed my eyes and picked two cameras to accompany me on the trip: the beloved LC-A+ and the paradoxically under- and over-rated golden half.

expired centuria dnp lends a rather strong purple haze to all photos (tested in a few trial rolls) which i’m not particularly fond of. i guess despite my occasionally pink hair, i’m a conventional girl at heart.

the weather was blazing, which just screamed for a fixed-speed toy cam and a tribe toyota brolley.

how obliging.

overpriced baubles and the throngs of KLites aside, the town has also fascinated me with that delicious creepiness old abandoned buildings have. as you peek through a crack in a mildewed door, you start pondering the “whys” “hows” and especially the “whos” of this dilapidated shell of a house, even expecting to be greeted by an unblinking otherwordly eye (because that’s what always happens in the movies, ok).

these place are supposedly unclean but with my starbucks-numbed senses i couldn’t and haven’t felt a thing. maybe just a little imagined loss and despair which in all probability stems from me trying to inject some romanticism into my yuppie life.

still, annual pilgrimages to the place has made me a little sick (though we could pin that on the horrid horrid satay celup).

chicken rice balls. check. st paul’s church. check. techni trishaws. double and triple checked. eye on malaysia. maybe not. baba house. hmm. cendol. check. geographer. limau limau. jonker after 8pm. it’s as if time elbowed its way forward just to stand still.

a sparkling, gleaming white tomb of a 500-years dead and gone and forgotten malay warrior. i dare you to make sense of that.

but then again, i’m merely rambling, waiting for my hair to set. which it just has.  i wish i were a peranakan princess.