lost and now found!

i opened my little pouch of nail polish (my collection is growing thank you) and TADA!!--my memory card is sitting pretty in its little plastic case!! whoopie!! now if i can only get my stupid gateway camera to actually work. (nb: my advice is please buy a camera from a real camera company and not a computer manufacturer.)

so taking my own advice, dan and i just bought a polaroid camera from polaroid.com. i'm sure i could actually make some moolah walking around nyc and offering to take pictures for some guileless tourists. aye! what an idea! i think it's time to buy that five-pack film!

marco

oh and another fun thing that happened today--after dinner at rice with philip and hang, i walked home and decided to walk down orchard st. a cute art shop/gallery called marco arts still open and my walls still bare, i ventured in to see if perhaps i could make a nice acquistion.

talked with the owner who wore a belt with a diamond studded MARCO buckle (no prizes for guessing eh) and later he invited me to work for him on weekends if i had the time. just be in the shop and attend to people. not a bad idea. i came home and read the postcard which is also his business card. he is marco, the guy who designed alien baby for swatch! www.marcoart.com.

cool or what!

dependence

i have settled quite nicely into my slightly bigger new room in the same apt (my landlord doesn't care where she sleeps really). i was going to take pictures again to show off my makeover, but gasp! to my horror, when i turned on my camera, it said, "NO CARD". then my heart did a flip flop. shit. i open the card compartment (whatever it's called) and F***, it's gone.
then it's like one of those your-whole-life-flashes-past-you moments and i'm trying desperately to recall where i could have lost it. must have been the digital print stand at k-mart. F***! F***!!!!!! and in the midst of moving, i can't even find my lousy 32mb card. i feel like a real shithead now but it's too trivial to call anyone about so i just need to let my frustrations out here.

and sa, i totally spilled liquid into my keyboard too in freshman year and i think i almost cried coz my comp just kept whirring away when i tried to turn it on. i remember i was on my bed and a good song came up on my playlist and i wanted to find out the title. so i craned over with my book AND glass of water in ONE hand (had to use my other arm to prop myself up yeah)...and of course i toppled over and proceeded to drown my keyboard. and yes, i also stood there desperately drip drying it and trying to sweet talk it into regaining consciousness. i found out later that the best thing to do it to blow a fan over the wet area to dry it up quicker. *wink*

peiru was freaked out by my shanghai divas cd today. i think the idea of chinese people speaking broken english in remixed chinese classics was not too appealing to her. haha.

on a limb

on thurs evening, when everyone is home with their families tucking into their lovely thanksgiving feasts, i will be on the plane off to london. two things this time--an interview which i will try my best not to screw up given that i'll be up against geniuses/nerds from oxbridge and lse. and of course the real reason is obvious. ;p

i am in between rooms now. my roommate left for belgium and i've just started filling his ex-room with my stuff, rearranged the furniture, cleaned and cleaned. and i don't even know how long i'm going to be around in this apt, but i really enjoy this taking down and putting up, pushing about and moving around. i just love it--like i'm hosting my own home makeover show on HGTV. haha.

new york has been low key and i am loving it. peiru got us on the guest list for some real hip club called cane/cain(??), but at the last minute, we decided to stay home and watch six feet under and thirteen on hbo. and that's all we've been doing the past few nights--farenheit 911, belle de jour, run lola run. so what do you have planned tomorrow we always ask each other before i leave, "dunno, nothing i guess." "ok, just call then" and we know it's another lazy couch potato night. at 22/23, we're re-living what we used to do all the time when we were much younger--i sometimes forget how much of my childhood was spent with this best friend of mine. :)

today i saw liv tyler who is beautiful and pregnant. did a double take and then proceeded to call ru to share my starstruckness.

'And we have successfully moderated communal conflicts of interests by allowing arguments between the competing communities to be settled within political parties,' said Minister Mentor Lee, noting that the Group Representation Constituency system compels parties to field multiracial teams.

'The results have been better for all. No group is oppressed, suppressed or depressed. Instead we have a political culture that values integrity, meritocracy and fairness, and rewards people according to their performance.'

What must not change: the 'unique political culture' of clean, honest politics and a commitment to a just, fair and caring society.

- excerpts from PAP's 50th anniversary speech by who else. LKY.(ironies are in bold)
- i am not anti-PAP. i'm just against us being babied. but that's what we've allowed ourselves to become. content to eat the processed mush they feed us.
- and like i told ru and sarah, i still love singapore and will sing our national day songs with pride and clap my hands and say "wah our mrt is so high tech!"

blessed is me

new york has not been half as bad as people say. first, there is free unsecured wireless signals everywhere it is just wonderful. i don't even know why i was so stupid not to try earlier (perhaps because my building is so old, i just thought that no one in here could possibly have wireless installed) and subject myself to the pain of DIAL UP for a whole week. but now i am one happy lark. no more waiting till 3am to use the internet because my roommate has a swiss bf that she talks to for hours everyday (she just talks a lot in general, but she is a darlin!)

later, taking my usual route down colourful st mark's place on my way home, i walk into chipotle to check out what they have on the menu (i had just had lunch, but you know, i'm just one of those menu-voyeurs). a little bird crashed onto the ground as i walked in and the poor creature just seemed to not be able to move. i went over, picked it up, took it outside and told it to fly. i went back into the restaurant to check out the menu and thought, wah lau, double the price of the stuff at san loco (which btw, i think will become my favourite place to eat in the next few weeks seeing how much of a big ten/panchero's addict i was in AA). i guess the manager saw me staring at the boards above the counter and asked, can i help you with the menu? erm, no it's ok, i was just looking.
"well, you helped the bird, this meal's on us."
"oh! no it's ok, i've had lunch already."
"no, please please."
"oh really, it's ok. i'm full"
so he gave me two vouchers good for a burrito each. WHOOPIE!!

and the blessings kept raining down. i was anxious to the bone the whole day waiting to hear back from bloomberg, and finally at 5pm, i got a call from them. "Hi, Jia? (haha i love to hear them try to pronounce my name. i always tell them just Ern. simpler for everyone eh?) we would like to extend you an offer..." double whoopie!!!
i'm beginning to like this city more and more.

so tonight i'm running down some ave and i make a turn onto a quiet street when i chance upon a perfect shelf unit. decided to lug it 17 blocks back to my place where after a couple of knocks into place, it looks quite perfect! and i refused to take a cab because it would have defeated the point of it being FREE. and in any case, i was in my running gear and know absolutely no one in ny that i could possibly bump into and look at me like i was crazy. i love this anonymity--i could be a bum, a superstar, no one cared. and neither did i for that agonizing 45 minutes.

so yes, maybe i am slowly beginning to understand why so many people love this place. i think maybe i can get over the fact that i no longer have daily access to heavenly whole foods outlets, or the convenience of meijer or the ever-reliable target at close range...
funny how the burbs have turned me into a sucker for sprawling stores and one stop shops.

"u rock" rock

what we call our kitchen

laura has one fish in that tank. and it's ugly. i think it's a gourami, but it's not pretty like the ones we had ru, this one's like a pale (uncooked) pink/flesh.

the cosy living room.

dan and i bought a print each from a streetside vendor in sardinia. his was of a lone bike and mine, this lone boat. also the makeshift closet on the right.

cute, cheap string lights are so hard to find in this city!! where's target when you need it??? but of course there's the ever-reliable sale section at urban where i scored this cute daisy print shower curtain for $4.99. whoop!

brainfood

dresser cum computer table

AFTER

BEFORE

inspired by ju's before and after shots of her new hairdo (which i love by the way--very cute!), here's my room makeover.

neck lace

today i wore a string of black pearls. leon asked, "are those REAL mardi gras beads??" ack!

exhausted!

my first week in ny is almost over. i got in last sunday night, had monday to unpack, tuesday to prepare for the forex interview. forex interview was on wednesday, after which i had to rush down for an interview with the scandalous cup. thursday i met with sweet jennifer from marc jacobs who hasn't hired anyone for pr/marketing for the last 4 yrs. later on thursday i sped interview with bloomberg and friday another informational with interbrand.

so phew, thank goodness i survived! it was very very crazy, and i don't think i've taken as many cabs in a row than i have in the last three days. i tried to walk to all my destinations but i often overestimated the time i had(which i often do anyhow) and so end up hailing a cab to save my life and my feet, which are squished into pointy shoes that look pretty but are in reality quite brutish.

i am so pooped now. i think i will sleep in tomorrow and just not be productive.

cold as hell

yeah sarah, all my lovely white christmas dreams i threw out the window ever since i started school at Michigan too. now i hate the powdery white stuff that freezes over to form hard sheets that i too often have slipped and hurt my buttocks on. BAH. hate winter. though there's heat in my room, it's drying my skin out like a desert and outside is too damn cold i just want to wrap myself in a blanket damn it.

today i met kelly for coffee. we went to this swanky italian cafe midtown and everything was too overpriced for my liking. funny because both of us used to study at cafe rendezvous--bohemian/hippie hangout of ann arbor. so watching him sip a posh cappucino and me with my gioppicia (??) verde bancha with all these people in suits and stuff...something was just not right.

lynette's here for two days and we met up for a little, shopped at h&m and went to nonya for some char kway teow, prawn mee, hokkien mee, sambal kang kong, roti prata, fried tofu and chendol. thank goodness we had richmond's help and also morgan stanley/citigroup's expense accounts which paid for my dinner and cab ride home. whoopie! cheers to investment banks!

"for bohemians what mattered above all else, and certainly above the ability to pay for an elegant home or clothes, was the be receptive to the world and to devote oneself as a spectator or creator, to the primary repository of feeling art. The martyr figures of the bohemian value system were those who had sacrificed the security of a regular job and the esteem of their society in order to write, paint or make music, or devote themselves to travel or to their friends and families."
--alain de botton, status anxiety

i think de botton is now my favourite quote. status anxiety is quite a great book although i am still a wannabe-bohemian and perhaps will only live up to it in style--bohemian eclectic, was my self-description when peiru asked me ten years ago, "so what's your style?" (of course hers was tomboy chic!)

can the real boho please stand up?

new york new york

i got here late last night and the cheapskate that i am, i thought to take the subway all the way to my new place on the lower east side. so i had to push, pull, kick, yank, etc etc two huge luggages through the airport (which was the easy part), to the subway, up and down flights of stairs and through turnstiles that were very luggage-unfriendly. at one point i was pushing my suitcase through those one-way human turnstiles (those vertical rather than horizontal ones, picture with me now) when i realized, shit i'm stuck in it too can't get back out. and my other suitcase was still outside. ah f*** i cursed out loud. and some good samaritan looked over and said, go through, i'll push it over. oh thank goodness. :)

and i just got internet to work on my comp. it's dial up btw. haha. my landlady is loopy as peiru described, but very reasonable and friendly. so for the next two months i think i can live with this.

after the bush fire

aye, so i am scared to set foot back into the US. to think i will be starting my professional life in a country i don't even believe in. am i too easily lured by the bright lights and buzz of nyc or the laid-back love-life coolness of san francisco? of all places i think i love and hate the US the most. love it for the cheap, one-stop shopping all across the country (target, old navy etc etc), the wonderful brands/companies it has bred (wholefoods topping that list), the openness and liberties (although we now know that to be rather false). hate it for the horrible poking-about-at-other-people's-business it has done and will no doubt keep doing. i am starting on a book, manufacturing consent by noam chomsky and edward herman about media manipulation--of the people and of itself. i'm sure i'll have much more to say after that.

i am not politicized

"This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, "Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?" the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way." Thomas Friedman for the NY times today.

Another very good one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/opinion/04wills.html?th

dan asked, are you devastated at the election results? i said, "i'm not politicized"

ellen, who did you vote for?

bush-fire

bush is leading. this really sucks. i've been talking to so many people who have told me their vote is for kerry, but i guess for each one i talk to, ten others are rooting for the other side. check out msnbc's election update--really looks like there's a bush-fire in the US starting from the center outwards.

and i still don't believe i missed being in the US for the most historical elections of my life. but then again, if bush wins, i'd rather not be there.