The gold-barr'd butterflies to and from
And over the waterside wander'd and wove
As heedless and idle as clouds that rove
And drift by the peaks of perpetual snow.
Joaquin Miller; Songs of the Sun-Lands
A wanton spirit coupled with an uncommon common sense;
Lips curled sweetly on a dozen flights of fancies around the world;
And an endless obsession with beauty, art, love and history.
The charm, of memory is that it is
choosy, chancy and temperamental;
it rejects the edifying cathedral
and indelibly photographs the small
boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon
in the dust. (Click for pictures.)
Monday, May 29
the perfect weekend.
friday night, i had a hard-hitting mojito at arthe. the mojito made me feel gorgeous; does that make sense? saturday afternoon, i eliminated all traces of rubbish juice on our balcony floor. am so absurdly proud of myself and my newest obsession is clearing the trash each time i leave the house - so rubbish juice doesnt accumulate, eat through plastic and get all over the floor. gah. at night, van and i had tingting, her hungarian roommate and sebs over for dinner. theme: 'introduction to curry 101' and 'revisiting the bulgogi, vanessa-style'. this is momentous because sebs who has a code-red aversion to curry actually semi-invited himself over for the curry. sunday afternoon, i made it down to 10 corso como (my favoritest place in milan!!) for the world press photo exhibition. it was gritty and sobering; pretty much a quiet, conscious-raising affair. jia is trying to get them to come to singapore which is a brilliant idea. to round it all up, x-men III in italian!! basically a loss-in-translation; i was desperately trying to lip-read halle berry for the first five minutes before giving into the allure of having a real-time running english translation at my ear. its a good thing that action and hysterics are pretty simple to follow. in short, i've been blissfully busy and my closest friends know why; which is more than i say for some, who are that little wee bit harder to keep in contact with. like say, being consumed by self-importance, or constrained by a bad china-italy telecommunications network possibly. cause-and-effect, cause. and then. effect. im effecting something possibly because of you.
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
11:41 PM
Thursday, May 25
*roar*
some stranger dropped a nasty comment on my pbase!
"Hi, just happened to chance upon this page.. i dont mean to sound rude but ur face appears really swollen in almost all pictures.. are u suffering from some illness or something? cos it's unsually puffed up.. anyway, nice pics of rome that u've got!"
imagine the resulting bedlam. loud exclamations and a frantic insistence that van immediately come take a look at the offending comment. GAH. swollen face?!!? that is the sum of my greatest nightmares and its coming true!! then van said she knew where this person was coming from: apparently i have a head that is disproportionately large to my frame. WHATT!! WHAT! sigh. soi look like i have an eating disorder. in other words, i look like a lollipop. in other words, i look like the most adorable little champignon on earth. in other words.... sigh, im depressed. what a rude message to drop on my pbase :[ do i really need to be reminded of my eating-disordered-past?
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
8:55 PM
i first noticed these esselunga (the largest supermarket chain in lombardy) ads when giant billboards popped up showing 2 large greasy fishes. i thought they were incredibly and adorably ugly. then, they switched to the rolls of butter, and i didn't know whether they were meant to be cream cheese, or butter, or some kind of pasta. then eventually, i realised that they were meant to correspond to the zodiac. at which, i started eagerly looking out for my own taurus which was in the form of a briosche, or croissant. now, its gemini and by the time cancer comes out, its time to go home :[
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
12:32 AM
Tuesday, May 23
dear ito,
THANK YOU FOR CALLING ME TO CHEER ME UP!!!! I LOVE THE 'ITO-ON-DEMAND'!!
"He must have smiled at me, though I don't really know, but I don't like to think that I would love someone who hadn't first smiled at me."
Jamaica Kincaid, "The Autobiography of My Mother"
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
6:01 AM
Sunday, May 21
gee, i am doing absolutely everything i can do to not study. like steeping copious amounts of coffee the good old-fashioned way in a good old-fashioned italian expresso maker. like stepping outside for a smoke every now and then. like imagining that i need to go to the toilet ever so often. lol. sigh, studying needs getting used to.
but at least its free. haa, which is more than i can say for existing in milan. yesterday i tried to spend a 'cashless' day in town. how paradoxical. even in the free public gardens, i ended spending money on a yogurt gelato (2.50euro) to beat the heat and a pack of fags (3.90euro). after about 15 free minutes minutes of lying freely on the free grass patch, boredom set in; now what - shopping in town is out, so that just about leaves chinatown. off we go and i ended up buying sesame oil (1.60euro) for the house and consequently with the movie at night (7.50euro), lynn calculated that my 'cashless' day added up to 15.50euro, or 31 sgd. happy happy, joy joy.
so here i am, on the poorer end of the societal spectrum of order and class. lol. the better half is meanwhile happily doing grocery shopping at peck, this gourmet supermarket that sells cherries for 22euro/kg! (!?!?!?!) and ONE asparagus for 12euro (!?!?!?!). seriously, i almost fainted when i went food-window-shopping there. everything is at least 5x more expensive and they wrap their fruits up like its some kind of divine treasure. a pineapple wrapped with shiny silver paper and a bow on top, anyone?
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
5:40 PM
the book is like 100,000,000,000,000 times better! :[ its so depressing. booo. audrey tautou and tom hanks were respectively, horrifying innane and completely wooden! boooo. and i was so excited about this movie. maybe they'll produce angels and demons better? haha, i much preferred that book anyways. beh. i second cheryl; ian mckellen as sir teabing was the only one that provided some slight amusement throughout the show. and the show is waaay too draggy. i dont know if its typically italian to have a break in the middle of the show, but last night's screening had a 15 minute interval in the middle. lol. anyhow, zh is off to china. bon voyage, dear! time for oily lip-smacking chinese food.
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
4:53 PM
Wednesday, May 17
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
11:40 PM
everything's so jarring. the brand-new pompous sign-off on emails. vague airy points of discussion. grand plans of liberty and new representation. the great americanization of david. he thinks i dont like change; i beg to differ. i merely think we're both changing and growing apart is a very real threat.
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
7:48 PM
hearts' all grown.
growing apart. growing away. growing dull. perhaps what i need now, is a dosage: of what, i ask -
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
10:45 AM
okaaeys yaaay. i've finally uploaded all my pictures, and blogsurfed and msned to my heart's content, knowing that my friends are either happily gallivating in vietnam (lynn), or dreaming about japan (cheryl), or safely in cannes, i hope (debbie), or just back from the states (deb), or about to abscond to china (zh), or about to start internship (liwern), or already working (serny), or travelling europe (pak), or in the army (kennethy), or back from tuscany (jia) or stuffed from dimsum in london (van). phew life seems good.
my alghero album's the bomb. my pbase counter reflects 553 hits in under 24 hours! it must be that magical combination of endless blue skies, sparkly ocean crests, gleaming beiges of the catalanian terraces and stark contrasts that make it perfect backdrops for a magazine photoshoot. so i made debbie my muse, and we took like an hour getting from one end of the bastione to the other because we kept getting distracted by ledges, towers and stairwells that seemed just so perfect for yet another attitudinal shot! :]
we'd decided from the start that we wanted to make our trip special. not just mundane sightseeing, but with a bit more soul and story instead. which is why we decided to reincarnate ourselves from sheltered-giggly-and-bordering-on-bim-girls into the brand new adventurous-ladies-of-sardegna! so we figured that renting a car and driving on italian roads would be an experience to behold; so off we went! on a breezy bubbly smart car, hurdling at a top speed of 50kmh towards the grottos.
the grottos were awesome. like a golden fairytale setting comprising of the most majestic stalactites and stalagmites you can ever imagine. after trunching down 600 steps and panting all the way back up, all we could do was drive straight to the bombarde beach where we crashed out and tanned all afternoon. but what's an adventure without mad italian traffic!? so we drove into sassari, the 2nd largest city in sardegna, but freaked out after 5 mins in the mad-ass traffic with like 5 million people honking at us, and abruptly forced ourselves out and back onto the safe, breathable route back to alghero. we like alghero. its quiet and positively charming; a town where people drive normal and the midday siesta religiously upheld.
when we got into rome, debbie's moment of rome-realization came. you know that feeling: when you've watched too much la dolce vita or roman holiday, when you expect to come to rome and be seduced by the eternal city and romanced by dishy roman men on vespas, but instead come face to face with hoards of ruddy-cheeked tourists in tacky shorts and innumerable restaurants that come complete with touristic picture menus and cappuccinos that go for 5 euros.
i felt sorry for her, because this was exactly the same kind of disappointment i had when i first saw rome. but then, our rome trip took an unexpected and amorous twist. every 'sight' we visited, was accompanied by a amorous encounter of sorts. im guessing two asian girls are irresistable. haha!! when we were at the spanish steps, two men came up to us and bought us a rose each. they're policemen from naples and i gathered (from my rudimentary italian again) that they were here to visit the police headquarters in rome. when we got to piazza navona, a complete random guy came up to me and tied a jamaican band onto my wrist and said he really liked me and wanted to meet again the next day. i kinda couldnt figure out if he really meant it, or maybe he wanted to cheat me into paying for it.
the next day we headed for the vatican and after exhausting ourselves with ornate domes and fresco ceilings, we went for a midday drink. vini and frutta. the waiters loved us, and demonstrated it with a free round of wine for both of us when we called for the bill. a blazing midday sun and too much wiiiine - recipe for disaster and an infestation of greasy smarmy waiters asking repeatedly for pictures. this is what happens when you get buzzed during mass time in the vatican city. BAD KARMA!!! so we breezed through the streets of rome, smiling dazedly and perhaps even flirting subconsciously with hawkers, tourists and romans alike, well aware that we were too buzzed to be sightseeing that sunny afternoon.
so what do we do instead? we screw the sights - and we went shopping. hee :] but even while looking for the shops, we met people still. this time, we met an american guy called john who was working in torino and was in rome for the weekend on company expenses, before going back to florida. he was nice, and suggested dinner near the colloseum but debbie and i betrayed our touristic duties and went for chinese ourselves in the end. we just didnt feel like making interesting american-friendly conversations - which is a good thing, because that night he started messaging me weird stuff like: i have a really big hotel room and i would buy you girls strawberries and champagne. i'd really like to see you again. ummmm... :S
the next morning, we went flea-market-shopping near travestere and it was HUGE. the guide book says you can find things you never thought you could buy - and we hardly disagree. its like a high-class chatuchak with classy things once you get past the first series of stalls that all sell the same chachat stuff. then we wanted to chill at campo del fiori but we got lost, so we basically randomly asked someone for help, and he turned out to be a cool algerian-italian tattoo artist who told us that if we ever were to go to greece, look him up cos he's opening a parlor on the islands this summer!
so then we camped out on the piazza for like eons until the sun went down and an italian girl next to us struck up a conversation. she thought singapore was in australia, and she hates all cuisine that isnt italian, but she's hell of an adorable girl and so genuinely interested in practising her english that she just charmed us both. we ended up going for our last roman dinner with alessandra and her 2 other friends; to a true-blue packed-with-locals pizzeria near piazza della pace, which was seriously hipper than thou.
rome is more than a checklist of sights. its about the art of living and the eccentricities of the people. and nothing proved it more than this positively alternative side-step tour of rome :]
when i was little, my daddy used to say that when i turned 21, he would turn the living room into a disco for me and my friends. now that we're in 2006 (and discos, uber passe), it has turned out that im celebrating it away from home :[ nonetheless, i still had a lovely one with van, eejia and debbie :] :]
so it began with the sweetest video zh made, complete with birthdays songs from his flatmates and handmade birthday signs waved around by jeremy with the grand canyon in the background. then i went out for some 'late-night gallivanting' (according to jia) and when i came back, a HUGE bouquet of flowers was sprawled over the couch, lilies beaming up at me. its 3/4 my height, i kid you not! he also promised 21 presents; i dont know if the flowers count as the first, but there are at least 20 more to go. heh, wheee!
then my 'born-in-singapore, made-in-america' present was delivered to linate at 3pm. debbie!!! :] its good to have her here! along with some fortune cookies and reese's peanut buttercups and a (far-fetched?) promise to clean out the greenhouse, she also had a mexican cigar for me :] later at night, we went for indian food and after a stomach-splitting meal of paneer, tandoori chicken and curry, my lovely roomies had a frozen fragola birthday cake for me :] i love my part-time moms, they make life so sweet for me! (side note: ever paid 3 euros for a piece of naan? that's 6 sing bucks!!)
being away also means that i have to trek all over the internet just looking for my own birthday tributes! haa. cheryl writes, 'dear amanda, HAPPY 21ST!! you: small eyed men. me: jap-looking men. some things still don't change. still the bit of conundrum of a bohemian spirit trapped within sensibilites of a modern powergirl, you continue to fascinate, charm and drive the boys everywhere (and around the world) crazy. stay sexy! muacks.' muacks to you too dear :]
and lynn puts up the most tak-glam picture of me and still dares to exclaim, 'this photo goes back to our year 1, sem 1. hey look, i still have my eyebrow stud! i know you'd think u look damn unglam in this pic, but i think i look worse. this is the only picture i have of us. we really should take more pictures together next time. have i told you that i'm very happy to have known you?' no darling, but now i know. hurhurhur. muacks.
and the best present i received? a poem from becky. thank you; it means so very much to me.
There's a girl I know She's gorgeous, glamorous and gifted A magnet She draws everyone in And polarizes them: You'd either love her, Or be deathly jealous Yes, she's that fabulous
She happens to be someone Very dear to my heart For past the surface Don't be distracted, boys Is a sensitive soul Who perceives and responds In tenderhearted compassion And though I don't often get to say so I thought I'd let her know Before she turns 21 That
I can't imagine those 2 years without you And all the support you gave to me All the things we all went through Teachers, classmates, the dreaded A's When the urgency of the present Was so overwhelming That we'd never imagined how things'd be today But here we are 2006, 5th of May
Thank you for calling me that night When I was at my wits end and in tears Though you couldn't see, over the phone Thank you for sending those flowers Though you couldn't be there that day Y'know, I never loved flowers till then Thank you for calming me down And putting up with my paranoia and insecurity That gave me the courage to face talentime The most fun I've had in my life Thank you for the day-to-day In our all-too-short time in AJ
Perched on the brink of adulthood You're already, have always been, independent Perhaps now we learn how to depend On God, and family, and friends Don't be sad, be happy, today That's how we'd want you to be We miss you, and we'll see each other again soon
Though my prose is rather verbose All I really wanted to say Was Happy Birthday =)
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
7:10 AM
*on an ethnic roll! *
kimchee and bulgogi yesterday,
tandoori chicken and paneer today :]
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
6:46 AM
Thursday, May 4
what do you want, really? i say, grow up and grow up. stop abusing the love your friends have for you. there's a certain limit that we're all almost at, if not already at. you're not in some glam soap opera drama and certainly not the vulnerable/confused/misunderstood heroine. like marissa from the oc, who incidentally is so fucking irritating even though she may be gorgeous.
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
5:25 PM
the funniest thing happened. we were at taxi blues, and seb went to get drinks. so while i was alone at the table, this drunk italian guy came in and sat next to me and insisted on introducing himself. so he rambles on in unintelligible italian and when seb came back, this guy's friends suddenly realized that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. so they tried him to drag him away, but he refused and wanted to introduce himself to seb as well. so they shook hands. (at which seb later said that it was the first time he's shaking hands with strange drunk men.) after a while, the guy's friends finally managed to drag him away. but another 5 min later, he came back again - this time with roses, of which he grandly presented to seb and said he was sorry and only joking. and that the roses were for him to give to me. as if that wasn't enough, he then meekly asked, 'baci?' and then leaned in for an italian cheek-cheek kiss. and this time seb was definitely mortified at having to kiss strange drunk men.) well, yay. i have roses from a complete stranger.
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
7:57 AM
i love spring. because i get to dress boho again; because the alfresco cafes near school bustle with people soaking up the sun while sipping their cappucinos; because the parks are filled with little children playing ball and couples lying side by side; all because its warm, warm, warm!!!
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
3:25 AM
Wednesday, May 3
Dear Amanda,
I'm getting younger at heart. Surrounded by young people. They say I'm happening if I smile. But Nat's friend said I'm scary. So you've charged $500 to the credit card huh?
Dad
o o p s.
Swirls and whirls and butterflies.
1:55 AM
Tuesday, May 2
labor day. all shops in town are closed, so we went to switzerland for some shopping! on the way back, we dropped by lake como on impulse - which wasnt such a great idea; think dress and ballerina flats in the middle of some freezing lake area. it was pretty, but not something i would go up specially for. when i got home, i drew flak from my boyfriend because i went with someone whom he thinks likes me, but whom i have said doesn't anymore. well yay, arent long-distance relationships great? our lives are alienated from each other, we have long awkward silences on the phone and we lose trust in each other.
cinque terre. 
