Now my mother approached me and proudly showed me the photo again. Only this time it is encased in a glitzy BeJeweled silver frame.

I choked. “What the f-!”

“Do you like it?”

“Take it out!” I demanded.

“But I just bought this frame!”

“You can put in another photo.”

“You don’t like it?” she asked.

“It’s….disconcerting,” I replied lamely. To be honest, it’s disconcerting to be faced with any photo of mine, except when I was a baby and still legitimately adorable-looking. Way before the onslaught of Teenage Acne and the onset of my own photo-phobia.

“Then what frame do you want for this?” my mother asked.

“None.”

Thankfully, my mother is by now, more or less, used to my idiosyncrasies (except when I tried explaining to here the advantages of an asexual lifestyle).

I can already hear several of my friends raising their eyebrows and saying, “Only sometimes?”

So, okay, yes. I admit that I’m generally a clumsy and forgetful person. But never have I felt the effects of that bad trait so keenly as I have today. (well, maybe except for that one time I misplaced my passport.)

It started with a towel. My white, fluffy towel I brought with me during my trip to Greece and accidentally left in the backpackers’ hostel when we departed Athens for Santorini. To replace it, I *ahem* purloined a towel (white, and fluffier than mine) from the cosy hotel we were staying at and brought it with me when our group traveled back to Athens. And then, from Athens to London, I left the fluffier, white towel in the hostel. Again.

OTL x 1,000

Now back in London, I decided to legally purchase a towel. I went to the shopping centre I frequent at and picked out a blue fluffy towel (yes, fluffiness is an issue for me, so sue me!), but upon having the cashier ring up my purchase, I realised that I left my wallet at home.

So, I went back home, found my wallet lying innocuously on my bed, took it, went to relieve my bladder, spent a few minutes reminiscing on succulent Grecian meat dishes with my housemates, went out, arrived at the shopping centre, and realised that I left my wallet in my bathroom.

OTL x 10,000

I probably would’ve misplaced my head if it wasn’t attached to my body today.

The situation wouldn’t have been half as bad, in my opinion, if my Macbook came with an iMovie (for some strange, bizarre, unexplainable reason, it didn’t). So my video compiling and editing hours are severely constrained to the time when the college Mac lab is available.

Doesn’t help that I can’t really keep the narrative straight in my head. More and more, I forget why I’m doing this documentary and find myself putting in components for no other reason but that I thought it would be fun to watch. Which ironically makes the entire thing more of a hassle, because this project has been trawling back to the years of my super-otakuness and extracting scenes I like from my favourite anime.

Of course, I inserted clips from my interviewees favourite stuff too. Unfortunately, Josh’s pick is Elfen Lied, which I have not watched, and now after seeing a few clips, will choose never to watch ever again. On a one-eighty note, my bro’s favourite is Clannad, which I haven’t watched either, and after nearly experiencing a spit take while googling it, will probably not watch it either.

To be honest, I knew this was going to be a lot of work. I just didn’t imagine how much pre-editing work had to be done. It’s a matter of recording the interview, editing the audio – cutting out the ‘um’s and pauses and separating the conversation into snippets, searching Youtube for a good piece of anime, downloading it, converting the video clip into mp4 and then splicing it into manageable parts. And then there’s photo editing, which I should have left well alone, but I’m too pedantic for my own good.

*shakes head*

Sometimes, I wish I would just take the easy way out on long projects like these.

Yes, I'm kinda in love with these ionic columns.

The Nereids

The next few were taken from my brief visit to Royal Holloway for an interview. I was late for said interview because I lost track of time taking these photos, lol!

Statue of Thomas Holloway and his wife

the grounds around campus

There are some pretty flora near the church I attend at Brompton Road, Knightsbridge. I have been told that I took too many photos of plants. I do not deny it.

One time, I saw a bird swooping into a bush and plucking the new cherries with its long beak. I stood for a few minutes staring at it and was late for church. I don’t what is it about it that felt so surreal to me. Like…I’ve read about it many time in textbooks and whatnot and this is the first time I’m seeing it with my own eyes (true story). I feel like some sad, pathetic city kid (lol)!

Postscript:

When two siblings get together during "crunch time", tidiness is a notion of the past.

I craned my neck and when he flipped the book, I saw the other portraits he’d drawn from life and he was really good! What endeared me most about him was that he didn’t look like your usual airy-fairy, hipster artist or even the crazy one who wears whatever he/she likes. He had this crown of messy hair, down to his neck and large headphones resting on his shoulders. He was wearing a faded hoodie and jeans. He reminded me a lot of a friend (who shall go unnamed here) and invariably made me miss home, and my old life at art college. Sure, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses but I had a lot of good times then too.

The guy finished his portrait of the old man. I saw it from the corner of my eye and contemplated on whether or not to compliment him on it, because it was good. But then, he started glancing up at me, which of course means that I was his next model. I was flattered to say the least. It’s not often that I’m the subject of an art piece.

I have no doubt that his rendition of me is beautiful, and I wish I could’ve seen it. I also wish I could’ve stayed long enough for him to complete the portrait properly, because he was sketching out my hair when I had to get off. I considered apologising and asking where he and his friend went to school. Or if they were already out working, who they worked for.

But I chickened out. I settled for a smile at him instead and hopped off.

Still, I feel strangely giddy knowing that my likeness is in someone else’s sketchbook somewhere in London. Maybe in the future, some strange turn of events would lead a mutual acquaintance between us to pick up his sketchbook and say “Hey, I know this girl!”

It’s serendipitous stuff like that that make life infinitely interesting I think.

He (or she – I couldn’t really tell – with babies, you usually can’t) was playing in the garden outside my flat with his mom. I was coming back from grocery shopping (read: chips and chocolate shopping), and I smiled at him, because babies (when they’re not crying) are just that adorable.

He grinned back openly and waved at me. I waved back. With most babies, I usually just get a blank stare or a blatant turn of the head, ignoring me in favour of their parent. But this one actually waved back and started waving at his mom as if to say Mommy look! A kind-looking stranger!

His mom did spot me and smiled. And then her child grinned again. (Very happy duo, don’t you think?)

Then I climbed up the stairs and disappeared from them. I’m always envious of carefree children. Their world is often no wider than their caretakers and food. And because they’re so cute, people are just dying to lavish them with attention. The part with the ‘goo goo ga ga’s and unintelligible speech, I don’t envy, but the rest, yes.

Our guest is a prospective new flat-mate once I move out in June. The flat I call home currently in the middle of bustling London would but a jot in my memory once September comes and I move into the student accommodations of my university (still undecided).

Hence, the audition. A guest has come to see my room and evaluate whether she would be the new tenant once I’m gone.

This morning, I woke up, showered, vacuumed the carpeted floor, rushed out to Piccadilly Circus, helped a woman carry her baby carriage down the stairs in the Underground station, interviewed the staff of the Trocadero anime store for my media project, bumped into a fellow Malaysia while sweating like mad because I ran up the escalators, came home, bought myself a cup of Costa coffee for a reward, attempted to transfer the audio interview from my mobile to my laptop, and spilled my Costa coffee onto my newly-vacuumed carpeted floor.

My first reaction was to curse. My curses are all PG-13, but I’m pretty sure most kids under the age of 13 are already swearing worse than I do.

My second reaction was to sob and whimper because I hardly had two sips from that coffee. That’s a large hazelnut latte from Costa drying on my carpet and it was all I could do not to break into tears. The scent of the latte wafted up to me as I kneeled before the stain, as if taunting me. So I snatched up my mobile and sent a text message to my brother, begging him to get me another cup when he came over.

After that, it was a desperate attempt to clean the carpet before the guest arrived.

I’ve spilled stuff plenty of times but never on a carpet, so I have zero experience in cleaning it. So, I did what most people would do in this modern age. I Googled.

Google led me to eHow which led me to sprinkling laundry detergent into a bucket of water and trying to blot out the stain with a towel. It didn’t look like it was working very well. I slumped in despair and when I turned my head, saw that the impact of my coffee cup when it hit the floor was bigger than I thought. There were splash stains on my bed as well.

First thought: You’ve got to be kidding me.

 Then one of my flat-mates came in, announcing that his friend / our guest was on her way to see my room. And it couldn’t happen at a worse timing.

Second thought: Murphy(‘s law), why doth thou loveth me so?

My other flat-mate came in, saw my distress, and in a flash of genius, brought out her all-purpose surface cleaner and helped me scrub out the large stain before our guest arrived.

“I’m going to hide this,” I say, holding up the towels with which we cleaned the stains. She chortled good-naturedly and went out.

I dumped the towels into some soapy water and collapsed onto the bed. To my right, my brother’s shorts hung over the armchair (don’t ask) and under me, the duvet lay rumpled over the many, many meals my dear sibling and I have had under it (again, don’t ask).

Third thought: Our family back home would cry at the state of my room.

I even took a picture of it before I cleaned it all up, quick as a tornado. I’ll show it to my sister and my mother. We’ll have a few laughs. And this will reinforce the idea that I can’t take care of myself alone.

I’m … kinda tired.

Can you figure out how he did it? XD

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