Written by lainie at 02:49 AM on May 30, 2006 in Family, Rants, Daily Life.

I called my editor to tell her something, before realising that I forgot to identify myself, so about three different sentences tried to come out of my mouth at the same time (an apology, an explanation, and the continuation of my info), and I ended up making a lot of weird noises over the phone.

God, I sound like such an idiot most times. I should just stop calling people. Or have a script ready.

Hello
This is Lainie.
I am calling because

1)
2)
3)

Thank you.
Goodbye.

What is so goddamned diffficult??

=====

Being insomniac is stupid.

I came home at 1am, went straight to bed, and am awake again in less than an hour. Have not slept in ages, cause when I finally did this morning, my mother called me in about half an hour to tell me to get ready for an outing with her and my aunt. And I agreed, because I knew I wouldn't be sleeping for long anyway.

Mom bought me clothes again, and another pair of shoes. I'm so pathetically dressed all the time, in my holey clothes, broken shoes, skewed spectacles (I mean, I used to wear one with a massive crack right down the middle of the lens and not give a damn - but after a few months my friends made me change it cause it scared them. Or was it my mom cause I was scaring her friends. One of them.).....

Or I'm wearing a school tshirt. She pulled me aside today and asked how come I always never go shopping, or at least wear the new clothes she buys. I don't know, actually. I just.....never......buy stuff.

Everytime she sets eyes on me she gives me this look, like she doesn't know how I have her genes. I have quite decently vain parents, I don't know where I came from either.

My mom and aunt used the time in lunch to talk about how women get addicted to drugs easily, and all these sob-horror stories about this girl, and that woman, and how she was a top student before she started failing her course and stealing from family emerged. All the while, staring meaningfully at me.

Okay, whatever ma. I'm not the studious type anyway, I wouldn't need to take drugs to fail physics, I'm perfectly capable of doing that with my natural abilities.

I think I pissed my aunt off. Reckon she'd like it if I was filled with humility and all that obscure Asian value stuff. My uncle recently launched a website - he paid fifteen thousand for it, and frankly, the design is absolute SHIT. It sucks balls, and it's not a matter of personal taste, you don't need to study design to tell that it's horrible.

Hey I'm all for encouraging people to pay artists, but fuck, UGLY is UGLY, and I'd sooner be disowned than gloss over, be tactful, and say that it looks okay. There is a difference between design concepts I don't agree with, and THAT. That's not a concept, that's lazy work.

The colours are bad, the typography horrible, the grid non-existent, the spelling and grammar mistakes abundant, the graphics are shitty cartoon clip art, TWO OF THEM BLINKING FOR NO BLOODY REASON, the technology nothing to shout about, the font too small, the paragraphs too long (It's bloody wordier than my blog, do you have ANY FUCKING IDEA HOW SALAH THAT IS fuck, get a copywriter).

Aunt got really pissed and said it was my personal opinion, and that I wasn't a professional, and I just learn from the book in college anyway, I don't make websites so what the heck do I know. I mean, "look at your cousin he learned how to bake pastries and when he graduated they told him everything he learned was wrong and he started over".

In other words, I am young and should shut up and smile and say everything someone older than me does, and was actually paid to do, is good and if I disagree I should shut up.

*Vomit electricity*

He got ripped off, I don't care. That bloody website isn't worth ten bucks, I think some blind guy was randomly clicking on a WYSIWYG editor. I didn't even want to view the source and get a blinding headache.

And it's a fucking business website.

====

Okay why do I do this to myself, why WHY WHY. I just checked the coding, and was this guy working on some old version of Dreamweaver or what, there's all the typical useless formatting DW used to be such a pain in the ass for. Fuck, I gave up making websites years ago, and this looks like something from pre-CSS era.

Starts off transitional....which is okay. I'm not gonna bother to validate (because, really, that's kinda overrated and it's definitely not going to, lalala). Then first mistake: miscoded meta tags. Then, the measurements - a mix of px, and %. STILL doable. Messy, but DOABLE. MESSY.Then, the values just get kinda fucked up along the way. Non websafe colours, but that's still doable...................................(my god, the title bar is red, green, neon green, and purple, with scrolling text...................., and it scrolls from four different directions and vanishes before you can read it............)

My uncle had wanted a 50px by 50px animated gif. Apparently, the guy did not want to do additional graphics because "an animated gif will take too long to load". "Too long to load" is really not a very good reason.

And to top it off, there's some useless javascript to disable right click. Too long to load? Pfft. Never mind that only a nincompoop would still try to do that, the fucking script isn't even working. What kinda idiot.......AND. Massive abuse of nbsp (hello, padding so hard to code, is it?).

And the links. Shit, was a flowchart even roughly made. I can't even see the almost 20-links long navigation at the side, because it is white text on light baby blue background.

He got ripped off. By a massive moron.

Oh god, I can't take this, I'm getting so pissed off just looking at how ugly it is. Machauhaiiiiiiiiii. I refuse to say it is anything but a horribly designed website. I don't care how much it cost, and I don't care who I piss off saying it.

Family may be family, but ugly is ugly.

Like my blog is so lovely, I know.

Ugh.No enough sleep. Fucking grumpy. Stupid website. I get SO pissed off when I see shit like this.

====

Went to Bangsar for the meet up. Got off the LRT, remembered I was told the mamak was right behind it. So I walked, figuring it should be really easy. After a while, I realised I had no idea where it was. Tried calling Jac, but she didn't pick up.

Walked around this block, looking for Ananda's mamak, when I saw the Malaysiakini office, and was thinking "Hey cool, it's here!".

Next thing I knew, few minutes of walking later, I passed it again. That was not so cool. Especially since I wasn't walking backwards.

Was getting creeped out because I was confused by then and kept trying to cross roads in front of speeding cars (unhealthy, I know), looking in restaurants to see if anyone I could recognise was inside. That, and this weird guy was walking beside me for quite some time, with his hands reeeeeeeeally stuck down the back of his pants scratching his butt crack, the alleys were everywhere and dark, the area lonely, and fuck, there's a guy scratching his arse and I think I can SMELL his arse. Either that or it was the garbage dumps, and someone took a, uh, shit there.

Just *so* not pretty.

Finally called Jac she picked up and said I'd been there before. Hell, I can't even find my friend's restaurant when it is a five minutes walk away from where I stayed for three years, I very much doubt I can find a mamak I was at once, god knows how long ago, and never saw again.

Jac then told me it was near Malaysiakini office - thankfully I roughly knew where that was since I passed it, uh, twice. Made my way back there, she told me to cross the road from it and walk down three minutes. So I did exactly that, I crossed the road, and walked down. I mean.

Then I stopped after a while cause the building with lights I thought would be a mamak was actually a temple, and the rest of the road looked dark, creepy and buildingless (also, I'm chickenshit about the dark).

I called her agaaaaain, and she said "Not towards the houses". I didn't see a damn house, but I saw a giant seahorse sculpture and lots of apartments, so I figured "Uh, right, when you said "walk down the road", you meant "don't walk down the road". I knew that. Totally". I mean, I am so smart, I'm practically psychic. Which way is Malaysiakini again?

I tried to find the Malaysiakini office, but I forgot which turning it was (turns out it was right down the road, no turnings, pfah), went down the wrong alley before finding my way to Malaysiakini again.

I was getting pretty damned tired, actually.

Insomniacs are usually not healthy, happily peripatetic people, and I've not slept more than an hour every night for weeks. Don't do this to meeeeeeeeeeee, where is the mamak?

I had this horrible vision for a while this was some awfully weird prank, before figuring (hoping) that they wouldn't have that much time and energy for such nonsense. That, and I don't think they knew I have a horrid sense of direction.

Thank goodness they arrived then, and saw me walking around. Turns out there was this whole row of shops I did not see on the LEFT, I'd been walking round and round the right. Shit. Did I just say I didn't see an entire block of buildings?

It was kinda dark, I guess. And I was kinda dazed......Uh. Right. Whole row of shops. *Headdesk* Ugh. Idiot, make my own life difficult.

Jac asked if I got lost. Oh, just a lil bit. Just a lilllllllll bit. Technically, true, cause that was probably a really lil area. I walk slow. I take it so personally when people yell at me to get lost. Like, shut the fuck up, do NOT further jinx me.

I spent most of the night tired and zoning out, looking at the train station, cause trains are trippy and have blinky lights, and it's so ironic. The mamak really is, literally, right behind the station. Annoying as hell too. Mahai.

At a few points, they stopped talking, and my eyes by reflex started to close on me. I took to biting my fingers and hoping someone would say something, anything, make noise before my forehead connects with the table and I doze off for half an hour (that would do wonders for my reputation, the girl who falls asleep in the middle of a discussion. No really, that would be so fantastic........).

I have no idea what they were talking about during the meeting, I'm not even sure when it started. I'm supposed to parrot back what was said during the meeting, to my friends who were too lazy / busy to be there, har har, har har.

Met Mien again...I'd actually seen her around many, many times since I was first introduced to her, but didn't really know how to say hi so I'd just kinda been quiet and awkwardly far away from her (I should probably learn to stop doing this, any decade now). She's really funny though...She did some imitation of a hippy, all flowers and love, and it cracked me up because she sounded exactly like a lot of my friends. Like Rish, and Daph, actually. Fuck, my friends are parodies.

Oh well, love love. I haven't heard one of Daphne's horrible "I love the world and all the people because the world is my friend and the world is round and I love my friends because they are beautiful though they are not round and I love the world and I am happy and everything is shiny and beautiful and I love you" type of song in ages.

I met one of Bernice's friends, and she told me that when I'd met her I'd asked if she was one of Bernice's stalkers..........................................Fuck, was I thinking at all when I said that?

Seriously though, I get the weirdest emails / google hits related to her (in case you're reading: not you, Lobak). Oh and she knows Tei. And she knows that I know Tei, which made me feel kinda uncomfy, I don't know why. Just bizarre. Small world.

She was complaining she was the oldest there. She didn't look very old, so I wanted to point out I'm not thaaat young, kinda, though I'm still in college. I calculated the year it was, with the year I was born, and I mean, I'm already 20. It's a good thing I didn't actually say that, because muuuch later, at another mamak, I realised I was 20 years ago. I'm 23 now. How the hell.......? And my birthday was this month. My god. I think I need to sleep more.

[ I mean, I know I need to sleep more. But I think I probably should, too. I'm pretty sure there's a difference, somewhere ]

So the demonstration. Someone mentioned jail (*groan* I don't want to miss Moonshine). Someone mentioned wires, and comics, and blurbs, and I wasn't paying attention lalalalallallaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

=====

Jac gave me a lift to The Curve after that. When I got out of the car her door made the scariest crunchy noise, and my heart actually stopped for a lil while.

Holy shit, okay. I thought the handle would come off in my hands, that was soooooo not funny................Uh. Jac kinda takes corners and drives into oncoming traffic, much like Kat. WHY? Why do these people do that? Passengers can, and probably will, get scared.

See lah, get free ride still whinge so much. Champion of the world, me.

Well I cross roads in front of speeding cars, I should talk.

Met up with Kat there - she was with Ivy, and another girl from Ipoh. Was surprised to meet her there, though Kat had told me before that she was friends with a tennis player from Ipoh (and there were only so many competitive players back then).

I've never competed against her, hmmmmm. Weird. Really. Oh and yes, once upon a time I could be persuaded to play many many many sports. That's totally changed now, good fricking luck convincing me to even use chopsticks, stupid fiddly sticks. I get weird stares when people who know me now see my sports trophies and certs.

We recognised each other straight away. She told me later we're the same age, and that she was my classmate in Ave Maria. I cringed. I mean, have there been any other kids been expelled there yet? Please don't let me be the only one...........(although, technically, my parents were told to enrol me in another school OR they would expel me.................a kindness they extended because I'm the grandchild / niece of two previous headmistresses there or some stupid politicky crap of the kind. Bitchesssss, I was only nine, fuck y'all. Yes I'm still a bitter cow, but you're all chinese school nazis. NAZIS!).

I know my cousin is damned near driving the school board there nuts now, attention span problems, extreme disciplinary problems. Hmm, that does sound familiar, wonder if it's genetic. Why the hell is she NOT kicked out? She can be such a horror, I couldn't possibly have been worse. I think.

Actually, I might have been. I was such a horror, even my primary school teachers can recognise me now. Heck, even my kindy teacher recognises me (but she loved me so that's different). But god, I can't be worse than my cousin. She's a nightmare to babysit.

At times like these, I could really learn to resent my older sister. Bloody hell, that much to ask for is it? Can't you misbehave too? Shit, make me look worse.

Anyways.

Had dinner at The Curve. They remarked I eat very politely. Kat made the worst jokes possible from that. Bleh. Oh, and I really like this conversation with her:

Kat: My ex said that I like you.
Lainie: Ahah...
Kat: So I told her, actually, you like her!
Lainie: Wha......WHY would you tell her that? Oh my god, I want to KILL you!
Kat: She just kept quiet. Haiya, she's very cute lah.
Lainie: Can we get back to WHY you would tell her?! WHY? WHY? WHY?
Kat: Hee hee.
Lainie: Awww, dammit. I'm never telling you guys anything again. Ever.

Check out someone once and it follows you forever. And ever. And ever and ever and ever.

This is getting so bad. KA, Kat and Tei combined together are stressing the hell out of me. Could you guys PLEASE, NOT tell them, am I not close enough to digging a hole in the ground and disappearing everytime I'm around them that you guys do this?

*headdesk headdesk headdesk*

I am never going to be able to see her again. The only time she'll see me is when she approaches and I'm hightailing it the opposite direction.

=====

Later we left, and went to SS2. Met up with Seng and Fang - hilarious duo. Fang pointed out a guy rubbing his mantits nearby, and we just stared bug-eyed. Oh it was so horrible.

Seng asked me to play Charades. He shushed, then put his hands in front of his chest, cupping invisible boobs. Silent Hill................Was tempted to point out that hill was elsewhere, those were hillS.

His Malay is worse than mine, this is the directions he gave:

"You simpan kiri, kemudian, jangan terbang atas, you terbang bawah ke terbang atas".

Which is his idea of "Keep to the left, then don't take the flyover, go under it".
What he actually said is probably "You keep the left (physically), then, don't fly, fly under the fly up".

Fang pointed out he probably causes bleeding ears everytime he gives directions in Malay. I'm just glad he wasn't giving them to me, I'd never see him, ever.

Then he discussed rice recipes. There's this Chinese saying, "eat shit, shit out rice". So he was saying what kinda shit he could eat to produce the rice we wanted. Something about lumpy watery shit producing polished rice, and vegetarian shite producing unpolished rice. Fang ate her satay throughout, ignoring him.

Fang can make Doraemon impersonations, oh cool.

=====

I bought the Shrek DVD, finally. I hope it works, I already have three bum copies. Gotta watch it and write my dumbass report research on it. I also bought some anime dvds that Kat pointed out I will never ever watch. I cannot sit still that long.

She has a point, I never watch tv. I just buy all these shows so two years down the road I can admit I own it, I've just never seen it. I couldn't resist though, I mean, Angel Heart by Tsukasa Hojo! Fine, I actually didn't like the manga, but dammit, Family Compo! I LOVED F. Compo something crazy. So anything by the same guy can't be that bad (though really, the manga was quite cheesily bad).

And I saw all these animes to manga I used to read sommat crazy, I had to remind myself there was no way in hell I could afford to buy movies I'd probably never watch. Seng told me Angel Heart is practically porn -_-". I'm pretty sure it could be worse.

And Black Jack, which I also used to love.

I stared and stared at Inoue Takehiko's Buzzer Beater, but I've already watched that so I really, really, really shouldn't..........................................I wonder if they made an anime of Vagabond? I'm so out of touch.

And Tokyo Godfathers.

And Millennium Actress.

I'm never gonna watch all these, you realise. I'm just gonna look at them and think for years that I should get around to it. But Kat said she'll sit me down and watch them with me. So we'll see.

=====

Insomnia = blog post.

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