It's a wonderful, wonderful life.

Happy 21st birthday, Jolene!

With HJ, the person who introduced us!

Yup I know, very unbirthday-like photos :p

I will walk on water
Just to be with you.

Make it happen.

Just as I was getting through the most stressful times of the past semester (i.e. when TV was the only best friend I had), the remote control decided to die on me. Which meant no more lazing on the couch for hours on end, with the luxury of not needing to walk to the TV set to change the channel or turn up/down the volume.

The couz and I tried fixing it - we thought the batteries died, so we got new ones but still it refused to work. A couple of days ago, three months after it first died on us, we got our faithful 'handyman' Aa-chan in to have a look and even after he took the entire device apart and gave it a thorough WASH (O_o), it still DID NOT work. Nonetheless, I believed that we could live with it. After all, it was just a TV remote. As long as the TV itself worked, nothing else mattered. All we had to do was make ourselves get up from the couch and walk a couple of steps whenever we wanted to switch channels or adjust the volume... even though it annoyed the hell out of us lazy pigs.

OH THE HORROR.

At the beginning of this month, I very happily took out 'The Godfather' one random afternoon and thought to myself, "This is the day when I will finally agree that it is the best movie ever made". The DVD was slot in, and the player started to whirr.

Eh? There was no image on the TV screen -- NO IMAGE. The DVD was playing, but there was no image.

My heart stopped. I redid the process, switched off the TV, restarted the DVD player, said a silent prayer, but nothing worked. I panicked and asked the couz when was the last time she played a DVD, she told me that the same thing happened to her while I was away and she didn't know why either.

OMG. The DVD player. My life. Just when I had all the time in the world to catch up on my 1001 bought-but-never-watched DVDs.

And trust me, when I say I tried everything, I mean EVERYTHING. I disconnected and reconnected the wires, turned on and off the player a hundred times, even resorted to borrowing wires from Piggy, but still there was no image displayed on the TV screen even though the player was running as usual. Even Aa-chan couldn't help much, except figure out that the problem was with the player and NOT the wires, contrary to my predictions.N

Damn it. I have only slightly more than two weeks before I leave here for good, so it makes no sense to get a new player, obviously. I do not have a DVD player in my laptop. I have SO MANY movies on DVD to watch, and a relatively decent amount of time to do so. BUT the damn DVD player just wouldn't cooperate!!!!!!!

The remote and the DVD player have died on me, and I too, am dying without them. Bleh!!!!!!

Ah well, guess I'm off to the (ex) neighbours'...

No need to cry about it
I cannot live without it
Everytime I wind up
Back at your door.

Maroon 5 - Back At Your Door.

And after the phone call with my mother earlier on, I was slightly perked up. Very much perked up, in fact. Raaarrrr my stormy universe! ^_^

O Captain, my Captain.

I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. - "Dead Poets Society"

Another new addition to my list of all-time favourites. OMG, I could play the final scene over and over again.

First of May.


Whenever a friend tells me how much he/she cried reading a particular book, I always reply saying that I've never cried reading a book, because I am more of a 'visually-stimulated' person. "Words just don't do it for me", I would remark, at the same time feeling somewhat amused at this strange trait of mine. I can bawl my eyes out at movies, TV shows, cartoons -- but never at written tragedies or touching stories.

I guess I am wrong, after all.

Today, more than seven months after receiving the above book as a birthday present from a close friend, I declare John Grogan's "Marley and Me" the first book that made me cry. I started reading the book in January/February, got busy during the semester so I put it down for awhile, continued reading again during the June-July vacation, and finally finished it on the tram a couple of hours ago. I'd always known that it would have a sad ending (most books about pets always end with their death), but I didn't expect myself to be this moved by a true story about a dog and the family he'd shared 13 years of his life with... a dog I'd never met, and the family I never personally knew. The author never put Marley on a pedestal; the book was an honest, unpretentious account of what having destructive Marley in the house was like - a terrible experience, but at times also very enriching and fulfilling.

It was very embarrassing because I was reading it on public transport, and when I got to the part where Marley the dog had to be put to sleep, I felt a slight sniffle in my nose and my eyes well up with tears. I managed a couple of sniffs, continued reading, felt even sadder, then desperately tried to stop myself from losing it completely as the author recalled memories of his pet, and how much he missed having him around. Fortunately I soon arrived at my stop, and it was also then that it was time to read the acknowledgements page *relieved sigh*.

Recommending this book to everyone young and old, especially if you love animals (and of course, dogs).

What I really wanted to say was how this animal had touched our souls and taught us some of the most important lessons of our lives. "A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours," I wrote. "Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things -- a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty."

John Grogan -"Marley And Me", pp. 279.