Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Prematurely senile

I was walking home from work the other day, caught up in my own thoughts. Everything that was happening at work at the moment, friends I had spoken to recently, friends I hadn't spoken to in a while. Lost in my thoughts, caught in a world merged between fantasy and memory. Flashes of thought zipping through my mind on hyperactive neurons.

I hadn't realised how deeply I was lost in thought. How far away I was from the reality around me. Or how I was gesticulating fervently in line with my thoughts. Until I startled a poor innocent passerby.

"Aah!" He threw me a panicked look and shuffled quickly to the other end of the sidewalk. I remember the exact moment in my thoughts. I'd been going over an incident that occured earlier that morning, and thinking 'But why?! WHY?!'. And I'd subconsciously raised my arms in a dramatic gesture of questionning, startling the bejeezus out of poor Johnny D walking by me at that moment.

The look he shot me said clearly, omg you're mad.

And I wasn't about to take that. I mean, I'm not mad. Well, not classified as such anyway. So I had to pretend that the sudden hand gesture was not the movement of a woman enraptured by her own ranting thoughts.

Infact, I took it a step further. I pretended the movement had been a deliberate movement, to stretch my arm, as though it had I was gingerly stretching out a pulled muscle or something. So I deliberately, slowly repeated the gesture again. And again. And again.

See, I'm just stretching my poor wounded arm. And splaying my fingers. It may LOOK as though I'm doing a mad gesture, but really its just an exercise, see. Aah, feels better now, I can stop.

I cast a sideways glance at the man, to see if he had noticed my redeeming gestures. He wasn't looking at me (in fact had probably long forgotten about me), but just incase he too was casting a sideways glance at me, I did one more stretch. For good measure.

It was only after I turned the corner and was off on my own path that I thought back through the incident and realised how I had inadvertantly converted his suspicions to reality through my subsequent actions. Maybe I am really going mad.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Mortified

Absolutely mortified.

Bobbis, Ilajna, Delta and I were supposed to have dinner together this Saturday. Then Jeet dropped me an email:

Time: 5.00 pm
From: Jeet
To: Ficali
Subject: Birthday Karaoke and Dinner
__________________________

Are you free on Saturday January 27th to have a karaoke/dinner do? - Jeet

And of course - it was Jeet's birthday do! How could I NOT go?! So I wrote to Ilajna and Bobbis:

Time: 5.02pm
From: Ficali
To: Ilajna, Bobbis
Subject: Dinner this Saturday
_____________________

Sorry guys, it's Jeet's birthday bash on Saturday, so Delta and I might have to cancel on our dinner. Sorry! - FmP

And then I read Jeet's email again (with care this time), and realised that she was talking about Saturday the 27th, not THIS saturday. So I wrote to Ilajna and Bobbis again:

Time: 5.05pm
From: Ficali
To: Ilajna, Bobbis
Subject: FW: Dinner this Saturday
_____________________

Never mind, igore my previous email! Read the date wrong on Jeet's wedding invite, it is on the following Saturday! So Delta and I are back on for dinner! - FmP


And then, just as I saw the email minimize from my screen into cyber oblivion, I realised what I'd written with horror.

Time: 5.06pm
From: Ficali
To: Ilajna, Bobbis
Subject: FW: Dinner this Saturday
_____________________

Eeks!! I meant birthday invite! Not wedding! This is the last email from me.

And I got this back from Ilajna:

Time: 5.08pm
From: Ilajna
To: Ficali
Subject: RE: Dinner this Saturday
_____________________

This reminds me of the suitcase incident you and Delta had outside the UN. With a briefcase and a statue.
1. Face difficult situation
2. Have discussion to come to a solution
3. Realize your mistake
4. Feel silly. :)


Hilarious. Frickin' hilarious.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

A year gone by

Sunday marked the end of Ilajna's birthweek. Now, one might construe from 'birthweek' that she, as a child, caused a week of painful labour before bursting forth triumphantly. Nope, its just that preparations, celebrations, inebriations and reparations continued for seven days (just like the start of the world, what do you know).

Which suddenly brought home to me how quickly the year had slipped by, since Ilajna's last birthday. Last year, Doobie and I had bought Death-By-Chocolate-Ilajna a cakebook, apron, oven mitts, the works. Everything to encourage her to practice her baking on us helpless guinea pigs. I mean, we even bookmarked pages in the cakebook with the cake(s) we particularly preferred - how much easier can one make someone's life?!

Sigh. You can lead a horse to the water but you can't force it to drink. A year has gone by, and we're still waiting on the first cake. THAT's how quickly this year has gone.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Only in New York

There's a screech, a scream, then silent panic like a dream.

A cyclist cuts across an intersection, skipping a red light. The taxi entering the intersection tries to screech to a halt, but there is no way for it to avoid the collision that follows. No time even to blow the horn. A sound of scrunching metal. The bike disappears under the car. The cyclist flies through the air, his crumpled body falling inert a few feet away.

For a moment, the world freezes. Time staggers in milliseconds. The taxi driver sits frozen behind the wheel.

Then he notices that the cyclist is stirring (and therefore not dead), and immediately leans out the window and starts yelling at the cyclist.

Not the concerned "are you okay?!" kind of questionning, oh no. The "What-the-F-are-you-doing-its-my-right-of-way!" kind of berating. The type of invective that one might, for instance, anywhere other than New York, choose NOT to give someone they had almost killed.

The taxi driver continues his face-reddening, fist-shaking tirade. The cyclist gets up slowly, shakily. Realizes that he is, after all, still alive. Mounts his cycle, and continues on his way, without so much as an acknowledgement of the surrounding scene. The crowd, visibly released from its frozen poise, heaves a sigh of collective relief. A moment's pause, out of respect for the horror which could easily have been, and then everyone continues on their way.

A brief pause, a gasp of shock, a glance to make sure everyone's still alive, and the world continues on, without so much as missing a step.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

A general sense of angst

So I don't know if it's the balmy faux-winter New York's experiencing at the moment, but something prompted me to finally to watch the Al Gore film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. And since then, I've been living life in a general state of continous panic.

The world is ending, and in fifty years it will all be gone. There'll be global warming and ice age and waterworld all in one, and it's all coming at us now.

I spoke to a number of people about the findings on the documentary, and to my horror, at least half of them reacted with a, "Oh I don't want to think about it, don't talk about global warming!"

WHAT. Don't talk about it? Don't we HAVE to talk about it? How else will we ever DO anything?

This morning, I picked up a sandwich for lunch, and it came in: Paper packaging 1 --> paper packaging 2 --> plastic carrier bag 1 --> plastic carrier bag 2 --> 50 paper tissues. Does it seriously call for this level of armoured security to bring a sandwich back from the store? Global warming is now one degree higher.

I was just working myself into a right old panic about global warming, when Delta and I watched a different documentary about Yellowstone being about to erupt. So apparently Yellowstone is a latent volcano which erupts every 600-650,000 years. And apparently it's been 640,000 years since the last eruption. And scientists have measured increased heat, more frequent geyser bursts and rising ground levels in the park over the past two years. Go figure.

So then I stopped panicking about global warming and started focusing on the more imminent threat of the Yellowstone apocalypse.

I suppose the good thing about this, at least I've stopped panicking about retirement savings and the 401k.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

New Years Non-Party

Boy, the world makes a bit of a kerfuffle about New Years, doesn't it?

So it came about on New Years Eve that the world was abuzz with talks of different bars in the the city. Yours truly however, averse to trendy bars at the best of times, found the whole thought of celebrating New Years in a public house of collective inebriated inanery rather perturbing. So by the morning before New Years Eve, a plan still hadn't transpired, and I looked at Delta in mild panic. "What are we going to do?!!!"

So I called Doobs: "Are you going to that bar you were talking about??"
"Nope, decided I didn't want to spend that much money."

And I called Anj: "What's your plans for New Years??"
"Nothing at the moment - you?"

And we called Vish: "Anything on??"
"No, I was hoping someone would call!"

And we called Jenn and Sarah: "Want to come over to our place for New Years?"
"Yay!"

And so we pulled together a non-party, for those who didn't have any party plans. A bottle of bubbly (or two), a bottle of wine (or ten), a bottle of beer (or twenty). A lot of general cheer and goodwill. Some party poppers and an avid photographereer. I mean, what more does a celebration need?!