simulacrum of life

i try not to dwell on the negative occurrences in life, and for the most part, i do succeed. sometimes though, the accumulation of a few months worth of negativity bubbles to the surface, and it feels like someone's tied a millstone around my heart. the depths to which it sinks causes a pain of the physical sort. to have your heart literally ache because of emotional turmoil is not something that i'd wish upon anyone. the sad thing is that during times like these, i can't point to any one thing and say that it's responsible for my current emotional state. truly frustrating. i yearn for a time when life is uncomplicated. for a time when what i see is REALLY what i get. sometimes, tears really do wash away the pain and anyone who denies the therapeutic effect of shedding tears needs to lose their macho facade.

i was writing about my irritating neighbour just now when my computer decided that i'd been spewing too much vitriol for my own good and she decided to hang. i took that as a sign not to continue with that post. belatedly i remembered that if i can't say anything good about someone i should just not say anything at all.

Another summer day
Is come and gone away
In Paris and Rome
But I wanna go home
Mmmmmmmm

Maybe surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
Oh I miss you, you know

And I’ve been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two
“I’m fine baby, how are you?”
Well I would send them but I know that it’s just not enough
My words were cold and flat
And you deserve more than that

Another aerorplane
Another sunny place
I’m lucky I know
But I wanna go home
Mmmm, I’ve got to go home

Let me go home
I’m just too far from where you are
I wanna come home

And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life
It’s like I just stepped outside
When everything was going right
And I know just why you could not
Come along with me
But this was not your dream
But you always believe in me

Another winter day has come
And gone away
And even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Let me go home

And I’m surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel alone
Oh, let go home
Oh, I miss you, you know

Let me go home
I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done
I gotta go home
Let me go home
It'll all be all right
I’ll be home tonight
I’m coming back home

~ Michael Buble

i've got an idiot for a neighbour, who is sooo bored with life that he insists on knocking on my door to disturb me 24/7... and he does it to my other friends who are also staying in the same building. more about idiot neighbour in another post, but for the purposes of this post, what i've said is enough. to escape from him, we decided to go to the supermarket about 7 min walk away at 11pm.

so there we are, the 3 of us, D, C and me strolling up and down the aisle seeing if there's anything we want to get. finally i find some parmesan cheese (for risotto... recipe to follow soon) and then we slowly make our way to the check out counter... as we pass by an aisle, we meet an acquaintance from uni, P. so there we are chatting away and then out of the blue this supermarket staff approaches us, and quietly tells us to make our way down to the back of the store. P was about to pick a fight with the lady and ask her what's her problem and all, when she told us that there was an armed robbery in progress. YIPES... anyways at the back of the store, we find all the rest of the shoppers crowding around the deli section. beside the deli section, is the door to the storage area of the supermarket, where the deliveries are made. D, P and i slowly inch our way to the door ready to bolt if necessary. C on the other hand, being a curious female, felt compelled to have a look at the robbers. the rest of us were like "are you out of your friggin' mind, woman?!?!" so there we stood at the back.

along comes a samoan guy pushing a trolley. he looked scary enough that D whispered to me "do you think he's 1 of them?" the guy was a buff specimen who looked like a bouncer and he had a bunch of chains around his neck. and then he goes "you know.. those robbers looks shit scary man!!".

at this point, D and i stare at each other with the same thought running through our minds... "and what the hell does he think he is... a teddy bear?!?!" it's almost like hearing a big and tough guy cry about how he's scared of the dark or something equally incredible. samoan dude proceeded to describe the robbers. they were wearing sweats with hoods, and they also had ski masks on so that their faces couldn't be identified. 1 was armed with a HUGE knife and the other with a shotgun. samoan pondered whether the shotgun might be fake.

anyhow, within a span of 10 min things settled down and the robbers left, and the supermarket resumed business as usual. i got my precious ass back home, safe and sound. D and i then had a double shot of bourbon to calm down our frazzled nerves.

i am typing this whilst under the influence of alcohol... it might not be that apparent due to the fact that my bloody comp hanged halfway through whilst i was writing up the original post. also i'm such a prick that i actually bother reading through my post before posting it, so some typos might not be obvious... there's 1 thing i must say about typing under the influence... and that is to succumb to the temptation to use sms-speak and to use ellipses as can be witnesed in the post :D right now i'm not even sure if witnessed is spelt right. having to backpace 10.1 million times is a sure indication of how high i am. the cause of this state. a double bourbon+ ginger ale and 2 kingfishers + a double vodka martini. as i've realised, my alkie tolerance abso-fucking-lutely sucks when it comes to drink mixing. and playing monolpoly whilst drunk is not something i would recommend. unless you've got something watching out for you :P btw, about 1/2 of a bottle of kingfisher got spilt in total during our game of monopoly which started at 2330. yes, i know.. late.. oops i actually typed that out as "kate"... but the reason for that is that we were stuffing our face with prawns at star city,sydney's premier casino. the end result of which i felt that i was 6 months pregnant. i guess i really oughta sleep now...

p.s. i bought harry potter at 9.11 am today... that's 0011 gmt, and i was 10 min late because of the friggin queue.. i have yet to finish the book cause being the spunk that i am, i slept at 3 am the night before and i cannot wake up at odd hours, so i needed a nap after i bought the book.

p.p.s. i really am high, in case you don't believe me.. and i rellay oughta be in bed by now. good night world

running down the homestretch, just seconds away from finishing the race. barely metres from the finishing line, i stumble and take a dive. as i grimace in pain and pick myself up, i gaze upon the end, which was just seconds away, but now.... it seems like an eternity away. frustration grips me. do i call it quits and walk away in shame or do i crawl along in pain and finish what i'd started?

failing subjects in uni (or anywhere else for the matter) is never a pleasant experience. it is an especially distasteful occurrence when a person is in what is supposed to be his/her final semester. the scenario in the above paragraph encapsulates the situation rather well, i think. i don't know if i'm just trying to comfort myself or whether it's true, but i do think that failing subjects has made me a better person than some others who have never failed, because i do believe that at some stage in our lives, we will all fail. it's just a matetr of when. so it might be better to fail at something relatively trivial like an exam, so that one learns to cope with failure and learns to pick up the pieces and persevere.

it is at times like these that the following dialogue by neil gaiman gives me hope...


Morpheus: It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt. If you do not climb, you will not fall. This is true. But is it that bad to fail, that hard to fall? Sometimes you wake, and sometimes, yes, you die. But there is a third alternative.

Todd: Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

- "Fear of Falling" from The Sandman: Fables & Reflections by Neil Gaiman

i've become a fan of his flash films and have added him to the sidebar.

bozzetto's flash films, it is called.

a hilarious cartoon i found via maximus kuseikos.

http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html

as a struggling student who is a part time vegetarian and who also happens to like good food, i've had to cook my own food. the recipes i present are relatively easy. the first in the series is scrambled paneer. i prefer to make my own paneer, because (a) i get a nice mushy consistency and (b) more importantly it's cheaper :Þ of course you may use packaged paneer from a shop.

firstly the recipe for paneer. you can use just about any recipe you can find, although i suggest using citric acid over lemon juice for a curdling agent, because lemon juice leaves a sour taste in the curd. and for scrambled paneer, the curd does not need to be strained so much, as a crumbly texture would suffice.

now for the recipe proper.

Scrambled Paneer

ingredients:
250 gm mashed paneer
2 large or 3 medium/small onions chopped fine
1 tsp ground ginger and garlic paste
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp chilli powder (amount can be increased or decreased according to preference)
1 tsp garam masala
2-3 chopped tomatos (i use 1/2 a 400gm can of chopped tomatos because i'm lazy)
1 green chilli chopped coarsely
100 gm beaten yogurt
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp chopped corriander leaves for garnishing

method:

1. fry onions in about 1-2 tbsp of oil/ghee (depending on your level of health consciousness)
2. when onions start to brown, reduce heat and add ginger and garlic paste, turmeric, chilli powder, garam masala and stir.
3. add in chopped tomatos and chilli
4. simmer on low heat until tomatos attain a somewhat liquid consistency
5. add in yogurt and 50 ml of water and mix well
6. when gravy has reached a creamy consistency, mix in the paneer
7. add salt and pepper and stir until liquid has evaporated and paneer browns a bit
8. turn heat off and sprinkle corriander and give it a quick toss

scrambled paneer goes quite well in wraps. just add in your salads. you can also make kebabs using this. at step 7, don't wait for the liquid to evaporate completely. when it reaches a mushy consistency, remove from the heat. mold the paneer onto skewers in the shape of a sausage and roast in the oven.

in case anyone thinks the above recipe is hard, it isn't. it just sounds harder than it actually is, so do give it a try and please do tell me how it turns out.