Put your hand up if you loved Slumdog Millionaire but then cursed that bloody Jai Ho fucking remix with the Pussycat Dolls and were shocked (and annoyed) about the Bollywood Hero American Television Show Dance in Times Square and are now miffed at the sudden surge of Indian psuedoculture in Western cinema and dislike the smell of representation and cultural production, oversimplification and culture as a resource.




P.S. I love Lisa Ray. Ever since Kasoor and who cares if her Hindi was dubbed. She rocks my world.

Exeter. Balliol. Brasenose. Magdalen. University. St. Hilda's. These consume my life at any given moment. If I keep readings or don't do the work I set out, I wake up in the middle of the night consumed by guilt and do it. Cannot rest, cannot sleep. Too tired to process. RUnning self into ground. But it's only starting. It's only just starting and I cannot be weak. There's still so much more to do, to come and this intensity is the only way I know how. Feel it full. Throw yourself into it. It is absurd. Keep writing posts but don't publish them cuz I'm too damn tired. Found some amazing blogs - stuff to make me think - stuff about the world - about expeditions and social conditions and policies and development.

There's a girl who's a friend of this guy I know...and she's taking her combinatorics/optimization degree and trying to figure out how to create sustainable social development. Bloody amazing. Sort of wish I were good in math so I could skip the discussion and save lives or build infrastructure. Must keep it brief...about to pass out from 14 hours of sleep over 3 days and a coffee high that's sending me crashing.

Soon enough. For now, The Economist on convergence:





P.S. Kate Beckinsale and Sophie Kinsella (real name, Madeline Wickham) went to Oxford. WTF.

Red Curtains

Recently, I bought some fantastic readymade curtains for my room. Well...red is a bit of an overstatement (if you're looking at it from a saturation standpoint) and also an understatement, if you're looking at it from a shade standpoint. It's more of a lovelt copper/auburn that glows a fierce and deep hue of red. I love waking up to it and feeling so utterly encased in a warm light, a cocoon that reminds me so much of when you're eyes are closed but you're looking at the sun - the light filtering in is bright but mellow, warm, not yellow, reddish.



I don't like using the word emo, but that's what I'm feeling. It doesn't happen very often (not unless its in a feeling-down-about-world-affairs-feel-their-weight-on-me sort of way) anymore. Perhaps writing off what I'm feeling in such a remorseless, thoughtless way is unfair of me and maybe I'm buying into pop culture more than I should. But...I have no words, none to describe what I'm feeling.



All I know is, now, I never feel like drawing the curtains, I'm sitting in a dark room with my father's office lamp (that I stole...it was mine first!) and tapping away at my desk...looking for a purpose. Looking for a reason to take action. It's not like I'm happily idle; I have a million things piled up. I finally finished an application last night and I have editing work for Existere - second round corrections are (mostly) in. It's due Friday but what is freaking me out is that we have to be ready by the middle of next week....the issue comes out on September 10th. Or it has to be in to the printers by then...I don't know. All I know is that there's shitloads of work piling up - and I have no will to do any of it. To even consider it. I'm imagining myself doing it; in fact, I'm feeling very go-getter, very productive. I have to start planning my duke of ed...I have to find money to take a dressmaking class on avenue rd. and find time to volunteer. I have to get involved, chase opportunities, be fresh and re-read last year's essays. Finish Benazir Bhutto's thoughts on democracy, and essays and lectures by George Steiner and Jorge Luis Borges, respectively. In other words, I need to get in gear for next year. I need to blow Johnathon Warren out of his Yale-educated mind.



But I also feel like I want to light a room with a thousand light bulbs and then smash them all. On occasions like these, I need to sit back and absorb. I need to...I don't know, get lost. Synthesize. I'm feeling tired, gross, icky. I'm feeling drained - not of energy or hope...but of will. Of reality.I'm tired of the 9 to 5, the children, walking to work and back every morning routine. This is why I could never be married. Domesticity makes me itchy. If I ever had to care about carpool and PTA meetings...I'd stick my head in the oven too, minus the lovely poetry. (not that that's why she stuck her head in the oven by any means...)



It makes me numb. It makes me smile falsely at the parents of the school where I work when underneath I'm too exhausted to even produce a halfway decent insult about the correlation between their children's level of indiscipline versus the cars they drive. It's a positive one, needless to say.

Sometimes, it's not enough...and sometimes, there's just too much. So I'm now going to go drown myself in A Bit of Fry and Laurie and finally watch Kaminey. Vishal Bhardwaj + Shahid double role. This, I gotta see.

This was bound to happen. Lots to consider. Many things come to mind; one of them: do what you have to do so you can do what you want to do.

Liz coleman says: What do you do when you are feeling overwhelmed?

Answer: You have a mind. And you have other people. Start with those.

Mmm...Shoes.

The story of Beatrix Ong and the Hermos boot

YEAH. Enough said. These are quite possibly the sexiest boots alive. They are so beautifully English - I could wear these on a dozen things. I am quite obsessed with British things (must be the occupied Indian in me). They are just the most perfect riding boots...that alternate as a piece de resistance. I mean...you could walk around naked in those boots and still be classy. Not that I would walk around naked in these...I have yet to build up a body for that - currently I'm alternating between Bridget Jones on my lower half and someone thin on my upper half. What I'd like to be is April Wilkner all over.

And just because I love her so much - APRIL SPAM

Back to the boots:

Of course, at 198 quid, these are understandably out of stock. Sounds like a bit of a sham, very sketchy, really, because the official site states them for £264. Which...when you do the conversion, comes to about $479 CDN. Which, along with delivery/shipping makes me shiver in my knickers that this is wholly more than I pay on a visa bill in a month. It is nearly half my limit and that is...scary as shit. It is not more than I would pay in rent, since real estate is not really THAT down in Toronto. The only reason that keeps resounding in my head is that perhaps I should invest them now because this is one of the last times in my life where I won't have to worry about rent.

Also, I hate that I'm doing such a silly, frivolous post; the poor-rich girl likes, all she worries about is if she can afford shoes. But seriously...I would live in these shoes. Also, women are justified, especially single ones because they are prey to the metropolises they live in and have no one to badger about leaving the toilet seat up. So they must occupy themselves with shoes. Personally, in my experiences, shoes are a better investment anyway. Though the bitches will sometimes pop their heels or break a strap if they're feeling particularly underloved.

Really don't know how/when I'm going to be able to shell out enough money to buy these but, essentially, I must raid my the cracks of my couch and under my bed and in old jeans pockets before november. This is rather inconvenient, me falling in love with these shoes because I was kind of saving up for these (much less expensive but no less sexy in their own right) Steve Maddens:

So BRIGGHT

God...they're sexy. The boots. And I would finally own a piece of the british brilliance that is beatrix ong. Someday, I will not be poor. And by not be poor I mean able to afford shoes on a whim despite exorbitant rent-like prices.

OH shit. I really really miss Singapore and I want to go back, like now. Back to Takashimaya and orchard and bukit timah and jalan besar and mee goreng on sentosa and shopping at kallang and taking the mrt everywhere. shitshitshit.