21 Jan 2004

Yes, so begins the Chinese New Year. As the custom goes, we’re all a year older when the clock strikes midnight. Just thought you’d like to know.

Anyway, we ended up going to one of the festivals held around these parts. It was about ten thirty in the evening, and the three of us, (MD, DD and me) were having a quiet night at home reading the newspaper. The house was deadly silent, and every now and then the noise of revellers and the crackling of fireworks would carry through our open window. Of course I wasn’t actually going to suggest that we go, coz if I did they’d refuse for sure. So we’re sitting there, quietly turning the pages of our respective newspapers when suddenly DD gives in and puts down his reading, “Does anyone want to go see what it’s all about, then?” Bingo.

I decide to go out in one of my new dresses, despite MD’s protestations and urging me to put a sweater on or something. No way I replied, I mean what’s the point of going out at night to something packed with people if you don’t look good? Never mind that I’d forgotten about my heinously unshaven legs until I’d gone out of the house … but hey, that’s what shonky street lights are for!

As we approach there is the deafening roar of Britney Spears blaring out of an oversized loudspeaker. And on the stage there were these people hip hop dancing. In terms of originality and inventiveness the girls at school could do better, but what was really disturbing was to see the guys doing all the hip-gyrating movements that are clearly really made for the girls. It’s just wrong! Kind of like the dancing-purple-hippo that’s been popping up everywhere wrong. But not quite.

There’s all these food stalls loaded with smoking hot Asian food, a few Buddhist worship areas, and the car park that had been transformed into an amusement park for the night. You know, I love going to amusement parks in the dark. The lights are so much brighter, the colours so intense, and it is just so much more exciting than it would be in the daylight. I decided to go on the Ferris wheel gone wrong where it goes so fast the people in their cages are tipped upside down. It may not be the scariest ride, but it was enough to elicit screams of terror echoing through the night. Not mine, of course!

My parents insisted on gathering around the stage to watch some old fogies singing and playing traditional New Year’s songs, and dancing the traditional dances. That basically took up most of the night. So I’m standing there, freezing my little tushie off (on second thoughts, NOT so little tushie – yup, time for me to get back into the ol’ exercise regime) while trying not to shiver, as this would provide MD with her much desired ‘told you so’. There’s a stiff wind out, stripping me with any remaining warmth I had in my legs and I can feel the goose bumps spreading like a rash over my exposed skin. Whatever happened to balmy summer nights, I say! So add that to the fact that I was being sporadically walloped in the head with a helium balloon in the clutches of the little old lady standing next to me, need I say I was very eager to get out of there …

So I guess I had fun, I guess it could be loosely classified as a “learning experience” – but it was a nice way to start the new year of the monkey.

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//9:55 am

0 comments

14 Jan 2004

Have you ever noticed (of course you haven’t, I’m the only person who actually visits this bloody page) how the banner ads right above the title of this blog have a direct correlation to the subject of my last entry that actually talked about something instead of rambling on about miscellaneous crap? Freaky! I am suspecting it’s not a computer-generated automatic incident, non? It’s like the people who host this site actually come here and read the thing once in a while. Which I know is the whole point of a blog but… whoa there! Someone’s actually paying attention to the content of my ramblings! Is there an anonymous worker at Google checking up on all of us??? Hmm. Will possibly get back to you later.

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//5:11 pm

0 comments

12 Jan 2004

Another reminder of how hopelessly unfit I am:

Mother Dearest woke me up at some ungodly hour of the morning today with the crazed idea of a ‘refreshing’ early morning bike ride. Not the wake-up call I was expecting but hey, that’s what you get for encouraging a notoriously budget-watching parent to buy a new bicycle, on sale – naturally – at our local friendly-neighbourhood-department-store. I swear if it weren’t for sales we’d never buy anything in this household. And a big kiss to whoever invented the factory outlet.

So anyway, I’d only gotten… what? Four, five hours of sleep the night before? Playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘Greatest Hits’ album until the wee hours of the morning is not particularly conducive to a perky rise-and-shine outlook on a random day during the Christmas holidays. Needless to say, being greeted with a dubious opportunity to firm up those Thanksgiving ham thighs with an activity I had not attempted since I was eight years old did not put the much-desired spring in my step or the motivation to get up from my smushy, comfortable fortress of a bed. However, MD hung on with the persistence of a pit bull terrier on some hapless victim’s leg, going as far as opening the blinds on my bedroom window (aargh, sunlight … I’m melting) in a bid to force me into the world of waking. So it came to pass that I went bike riding with my mother on a weekday morning.

I took her to the lake-cum-pond a block away from our house and proceeded to do lazy laps around it, in the hope that it would pass for some semblance of exercise. Alas, it was not to be, as MD deemed it too risky after my near crash into a man walking his fluffy white dog and my propensity to take sharp swerves dangerously close to the many prickly bushes and flocks of ducks around the lake (do ducks even come in flocks?). But cut me some slack here, it’s been over half a decade since I’d got on the damn thing! Sure you never forget how to ride a bicycle after you learn to, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can still ride it without falling down…

So repetitive circles around the lake was scrapped. MD then dragged me to the oval where there was a ‘perfectly good bike track to ride on’! I’m reluctantly propelling myself along the little dirt road, narrowly avoiding the women with strollers and fitness freaks making their way to the tennis courts when suddenly there’s that funny feeling in my legs – (like my muscles are going, “Whoa, exercise! It’s been a hell of a while since THIS has happened, dude!”) – my face goes red and my sweat glands career into overdrive. Pretty soon my breathing is getting ragged and my feet on the pedals begin to slow down ever so gradually – until they stop altogether and the only thing stopping me from falling down is the two seconds of momentum-enhanced balance I have left. I basically collapse onto the frame of the bike and my thighs are screaming bloody murder. The annoying little voice inside my head’s whining, feeeel the buuuuuuurn on a loop like some tacky aerobics video gone seriously wrong. Then I’m panting, “I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” and you know what the sad part was? There I was, struggling to pull myself up what barely passes as a hill on a track with an incline of about two inches as MD is merrily pedalling along, passing me with the speed and efficiency of a yuppie power-walker. How embarrassing is it to be out-cycled by your own mother who is like two and a half times your age and half your size? I really need to get out more.

So come on, come on, welcome to the Little Miss Nobody show! Tickets are free to whoever wants them and drinks are on me! Oh, and before I forget, check your dignity at the door, ‘cause you sure ain’t gonna be needing it for this debacle!

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//6:40 pm

0 comments

3 Jan 2004

You know how sometimes you get a subtle tingly feeling on the skin of your arm or your leg that feels like an insect? And when you look over to brush it off you can’t see an insect at all? Then if you’re an ordinary person who’s not unnaturally afraid of creepy crawlies, when it’s happened often enough and you become old enough to realise it’s just one of your nerve endings gone funny, or a brush of zephyr wind. Then you learn to ignore that subtle tingling on your skin that feels like an insect, but really isn’t.

Unless you’re in my house.

If you’re in my house and you feel a tingle of invisible insect on your skin, that ain’t no nerve ending sugar, there’s an ant crawling up your leg!

Ever since we moved into this house (a few years ago) there have been slight creepy crawly problems that the real estate agent just happened to forget to mention. My first winter here was spent picking little dead worms nestled snugly in the corners of the otherwise pristine white carpet. Moving back the couch after a mere three months revealed a motley collection of upended flies, moths and other interesting Unidentified Flying Insects. Which were dead. And don’t even mention our summers!

Every summer, the shonky wood they used to build our doors and walls expand and, not only making my bedroom door impossible to close, give a free pass into the house to our friendly neighbourhood family of ants. Don’t ask me how, I bet you’re thinking that if the wood expands then it effectively makes any ant-fitting hole even smaller, but this is a ‘phenomenon’ that only happens in the summer months. If you spill a miniscule drop of pancake batter near the stove and forget to clean it up, wait two minutes and you’ll find a swarming pack of ants going for their lives to grab all of it they can. Just in the last two months we have gone through two cans of insect spray! It’s like MAGIC! If you sit at our computer desk for fifteen minutes, I’ll bet you anything you want that you’ll have found at least six ants crawling along the keyboard/hard-drive/table/your arm/your leg. And no matter how many times you squish the bloody buggers, I can guarantee that there’s another five lying in waiting to make the mad dash from the door to the fridge. And then for revenge they’ll send one of their big red bull ants to bite you in the elbow. I never said they didn’t have a sense of humour.

Let’s talk about the Ant Trail of ’02. It was a sweltering summer day when I came home from school looking for refreshment and cover from the unrelenting heat of the walk from the train station back home. I collapse on a bar stool in the kitchen and do you know what I see? A pulsating, black, slightly wobbly line of ants making steady progress from the corner of the ceiling all the way into the pantry. Not a pretty sight. So naturally I screamed and grabbed the Mortein and went totally crazy with the spraying. And practically blinded myself in the process as the little droplets never reached the ceiling and most likely floated back onto my own face. Of course then we had to clean out the whole pantry, finding many a mouldy abandoned foodstuff in the process. The ‘lemon fragrance’ of the insect spray gradually insinuated itself into the walls and our clothing, and our kitchen had the slightest hint of ‘lemon’ for the rest of the month.

Must go, as I can hear the pitter-patter of six little legs making their way across my bathroom counter. More ants to squash, more trails to discover and another summer of little black bugs awaits.

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//4:21 pm

0 comments