Tuesday, June 13, 2006
I Am Extraordinary
by venitha
Up three hours later than intended, I can't escape the thought that it's going to be one of those days. In line with my high expectations, my usual trick, mining the laundry basket, turns up damp running clothes too odious for even my bottom-rung Singaporean sweat reekage acceptability standards.
My eyes search my closet fruitlessly, then settle on the top cabinet, where all the skinny clothes have been sentenced to exile, leaving me and the chocolates in peaceful commiseration. I jump gracelessly several times (and you wonder how I've broken all these bones) and liberate a pile of sleek running clothes down onto my head. If only the body that goes with them were so easy to excavate.
My POS MuVo (it has earned the current top spot on my list of things I would love to jettison from the roof thanks to its trick of randomly turning itself off and thereby losing its place in my book) is not worthy of accompanying my snazzy new look, and I'm unable to bear any more of Don Quixote anyway (What was I thinking?) so the iPod it is, and I give thanks to Abhishek, iPod tutor extraordinaire (and he thought I was drunk), and make a playlist of snappy tunes from the summer of 2003, the last summer I was truly happy. I vaguely wonder if this isn't Singapore's sad explanation for the ubiquitous presence of sappy 80s love songs (So now I come to you! With o-pen arms!) and the conspicuous absence of smiles.
Liz Phair reminds me that I am extraordinary, and I dance riotously round the elevator until - oh, crap! - it stops at the tenth floor and ushers in a middle aged Chinese man in khakis and a polo. I smile at him, then at the new old me in the elevator's mirror. I've got to wear this color, light blue, more often, I telepath to the beautiful blue eyes that gaze back at me.
In skintight running shorts and an only-slighty-less-skintight sleeveless cropped tank top, humming along with the bright white iPod clutched in my hand, I present myself to Wati for the gym's air-con remote and am greeted with a double raised eyebrow look. She clearly thinks I've found religion, though not (she is Muslim) hers. I opt not to share with her Liz's
se-e-e-cret beauty routine (does that song have to be so catchy?) and skip off to my hot date with the treadmill.
venitha
My eyes search my closet fruitlessly, then settle on the top cabinet, where all the skinny clothes have been sentenced to exile, leaving me and the chocolates in peaceful commiseration. I jump gracelessly several times (and you wonder how I've broken all these bones) and liberate a pile of sleek running clothes down onto my head. If only the body that goes with them were so easy to excavate.
My POS MuVo (it has earned the current top spot on my list of things I would love to jettison from the roof thanks to its trick of randomly turning itself off and thereby losing its place in my book) is not worthy of accompanying my snazzy new look, and I'm unable to bear any more of Don Quixote anyway (What was I thinking?) so the iPod it is, and I give thanks to Abhishek, iPod tutor extraordinaire (and he thought I was drunk), and make a playlist of snappy tunes from the summer of 2003, the last summer I was truly happy. I vaguely wonder if this isn't Singapore's sad explanation for the ubiquitous presence of sappy 80s love songs (So now I come to you! With o-pen arms!) and the conspicuous absence of smiles.
Liz Phair reminds me that I am extraordinary, and I dance riotously round the elevator until - oh, crap! - it stops at the tenth floor and ushers in a middle aged Chinese man in khakis and a polo. I smile at him, then at the new old me in the elevator's mirror. I've got to wear this color, light blue, more often, I telepath to the beautiful blue eyes that gaze back at me.
In skintight running shorts and an only-slighty-less-skintight sleeveless cropped tank top, humming along with the bright white iPod clutched in my hand, I present myself to Wati for the gym's air-con remote and am greeted with a double raised eyebrow look. She clearly thinks I've found religion, though not (she is Muslim) hers. I opt not to share with her Liz's
se-e-e-cret beauty routine (does that song have to be so catchy?) and skip off to my hot date with the treadmill.
venitha
