TRE39: Food & Technology, Habits and Desires
DISCLAIMER: This is a personal blog-post. It ain't about the latest and hawtest toys. It ain't about the next happening movie. It ain't about what YOU want - it's about Me - Everything me and what relates to me and my current life, and becoz it's going to be my birthday tomorrow and I'm in a mood to reminisce, rage/rant, pay homage to (the pitfalls of "advanced-aging") and share for those who care to read about me. (Cool if you don't care for it - DO NOT READ and bitch about reading it afterward :p)./// CLICK THRU to read about things I put into my body / what gets my attention / what makes a regular-joe like me tick / and what I get out of putting alla that junk into my own fetid swirling mind - Celebrating 39 Things that I like, that I enjoy, live with, collect, get inspired from, love and hate = split between 3 days/3 posts.
LIKES: It's Instant Cappuccino or nothing. Comfort beverage in a satchel, just add hot water, and hear the liquid thicken as you stir, the dull repetitive swirly-sound drowns out the world's ills ... At less than 50-cents per pack per cupful, starbucktealeafscoffeejoints hold little sway in my caffeine-loving heart (except for the whipped-cream - I break for whipped cream, cholestral be damned! :p). A close-second would be a cuppa in the local kopi-tiam. Used to lurve milk with tea to end my long day, but now I chug coffee to keep awake at night, to better blog-on about stuff you may not necessarily care enough to read on about LOL
LIKES: My weakness is sodas. Anything carbonated both quenches my thirst and lifts my spirits up (yes, I know it's the sugar-rush) - a perfectly palatable replacement are cordials - specifically Calamansi-flavoured cordials - as artificial as it tastes, it still is as refreshing as "the other" flavours ... perhaps it has to do with my pub-drink of choice, Vodka-Lime. I can feel the sourness swelling up in my mouth now ;p
LIKES: Nothing beats a Peanut Butter and Margarine sandwich. And nothing less than Chunky peanut butter, NOTHING LESS! My lurve for nuts is paralleled with my desire for creamy margarine. (Actual dairy butter is best left for hot buns, thanks.) In these very severely cash-strapped times (understatement of my life right now), a PM&M portion is a meal. Washed down with instant cappuccino is a near complete comfort meal indeed.
LIKES: I am a desserts man, with a high sweet tooth tolerance, and a penchant for ice cream over warm brownies. Melts me loins if the brownie be just right. Serve me the right type of rich concoction, and I'm ya biatch. Used to be a time when I chugged desserts for every other meal outside of home (perfect lovehandle-makers they are) ... nowadays? Probably festive seasons with reasons, with the above being an early birthday-treat Sunday last.
HABITS: I've not remembered being ever much of a big fan of newspapers in my adult life, as I do nowadays. I used to be just a "headlines"-reader. Just throw me the highlights of the day, and off I go to work serendipitously ... Now? I pour thru nearly every other page (except sports and finance LOL) - most times focusing on entertainment, world news and the odd political reports - and given the limited variety of newspapers readily available in Singapore (in English) - the nation's main newspaper is my drug to start off the day with.
Why? Perhaps needing to quench my desire to read - anything, everything (brought on, perhaps, by the next item on my list...)
And the first portion/section I'd always read is the LIFE! section. Non-committal and less "heavy" (and the horoscopes are a hoot). Nothing beats a crisp new stack of papers in the morning tho, especially Sunday mornings :)
LIKED: One of the first things (or "habits") I gave up - when it was time to tighten personal expenditure - were magazines. I have a notoriously short attention span, and magazines, with their non-committal short-ish articles, variety of topics and
From IdN to FRAME, from MiLK to East Touch, from Premiere to Details, from design to film to fashion, I'd stopped buying everything. Although once in a long while, I may still pick up a 2-month-old MiLK at the local newsstand (that's how long they get here). I only miss them when I think about them. Now, there's the internet - but nothing really ever beats a tactile and tangible flip of a crisp page, does it?
LOVED: What I dearly missed the most are comic books. My main source of inspiration and awe, my ticket to the journey fantastic, to realms of imagination far beyond mortal understanding and acceptance, a sanctuary of the soul and mind ... Every Friday night past, I'd return home with my weekly bounty of 4-colored comics, and Friday nights were my "alone time", when I devoured the stories within and admired the artwork. Til now, comics have inspired me and my thought processes and even general direction - specifically at work - in my "professional life". Comicbooks were the last thing I "gave up", in lieu of dwindling finances (near-zero, in fact).
Once in a very blue-tinged moon, I may scrounge up enough to get a trade paperback or two, and that, is as close to a semblance of bound paper-print a novel I'm ever going to get. (Short attention span = no novels)
These days are spent digging up old issues, and reading them over and over again ... and you know when the good ones still affect you, still brings a tear to my eye, a smile in my heart, a triumphant phantom fist-pump in the air ... I fcuking miss my comics.
I've always imagined this: if ever I won the lottery, first thing I would do, is to go pick up all the issues i've missed.
LIKES: It's funny now that I remember it ... I used to be so utterly against DVDs, it was positively tragic! Having survived the transition from VHS to LDs, then to VCDs, DVDs were the "devil's tainted candy"! It didn't help that I'd have to change my player yet again, and have to re-fill up my catalog of movies, and DVDs "back then" was nigh expensive ... Now? I am a DVD-'hoe.
I am perfectly happy with "pre-loved" DVDs found at the local video-rental establishment (my constant checking for scratches must've pissed quite a number of counter-staff off, I reckon :p) ... but with the recent death of my DVD-player, and subsequently adopting a hand-me-down from my brother - I'm stuck with being only able to watch Region-3 DVDs, as the current player is not multi-adaptable ... *gggrrrr* ... but I count my blessings whenever I press *PLAY* now :)
NEED: My link to the www. Wireless-connection has been dropping more frequently lately. Late night (Singapore-time) surfing has not been smooth and most times am left with clenched fists and veins near popping in my temple ... why can't blogging be less stressed, eh? ... My cyber-happiness and curiosity is dependent on the flickring of this module's LED, sat utop my computer-screen, looking down at me, mocking me...
HABIT: The one true tangible nemesis to my online "life" = the television remote, and by default, the googlebox. Many a blogging-schedules and plans have been thwarted by the deadly idiotbox, or rather my addiction to it, via prolonged exposure in front of.
Coming out of my hideyholebedroom for lunch is always a struggle to not turn on the telly, becoz once I do, i'll end up transfixed, until the sun sets. From Numb3rs, to Amazing Races, to Restaurant Makeovers, to the Daily 10, to K-dramas and various sordid Chinese variety gameshows - I am sucked-IN and find crawling back out to be getting harder and harder each time :p
NEED: I wish I had a working video camera. One with flash memory would be nice, but I'm not too picky. It's all connected to my passion for "filmmaking" (not in the quasi-professional sense, as I'd given up on that notion years ago) and of wanting and needing to record little vignettes from my mind, to exorcise stories and create "life", and even to record the passing of time and events, to share, to keep, to lord over. A very "self"-edifying notion, no doubt.
And editing together 14-second clips from a digital still camera is pretty darn stressful and un-fulfilling, much less of a quality beyond mere youtubed-videos (which I too am a stanch supporter of btw LOL).
And I admit now, I am slowly (but surely) getting addicted to producing little filmlets and video-slideshows on my iMovie - the sense of "creation" is quite addictive, I must admit. But it literally takes half to a full day to download / digitize / edit / upload a video, so that affects blogging very much. But I'll still be trying to make more moving pictures in time to come ... heh.
NEED: My powershot is dying. And becoz of the pain of data-transfer, I am taking lesser and lesser pictures these days. I spend as much time cropping and photoshopping my pictures, than I actually do taking them.
EXAMPLE: A weekend session downtown snapping pics for PHU!'s and ANTZ's took less than 4 hours, including travel time. Downloading (another story by itself) data / cropping / photoshopping / uploading online / blog-publishing - took a combined 9 hours to complete.
*faints*
Naively, I'd even envisioned making a living out of taking photos, of toys (inspired by Brian McCarty :p) ... But of coz when I do (eventually) get a new camera, I'd haveta consider getting a proper "space" ("studio" is too pretentious a word to volley around now LOL) to take the pictures in, innit? heh.
HATE: I absolutely hate the sound of ringing phones now. My mobile is on perpetual silent / vibrator mode, so most times I miss a lot of calls. And folks get pissed off with me for that. Fcuk that noise. I don't owe anyone an answer, least of all anyone who gets pissed with me for not answering.
Have I become so disconnected with humanity, my only mode of communication is via the internet? Perhaps moreso than anyone suspects. I already find it hard(er) to communicate face-to-face with folks nowadays, so technically via mobile should work better right?
No. Becoz I get impatient when I cannot hear the other party, or if they mumble or choose to whisper ... then perhaps "they" are not interested in a conversation, they just want to say what they want and to be heard. A "conversation" is communication between 2 persons, and if they cannot even get that right, don't bother dialing my number.
*calms nerves*
HABIT: I've always mentioned "I'm running out of time" - the irony is, my wall clock (which has been a "shelf-clock" for as long as I remember) is on the fritz, battery-changes not working - and I've since run out of time ... Altho, I've imagined if the clock stopped, would time stop too? heh.
NOT for this coming birthday, innit? heh.
*Thank you for reading thus far*
