Waiting for something to dry. You should never sit on a plier. Actually, you should always look where you sit, because there is always a slight chance, no matter how neat and tidy you usually are, that you should forget that you had accidentally misplaced a plier on your chair. You would then sit on its handles (thankfully), instinctively reach behind for it and stab your finger. Just some friendly helpful advice. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Bored. Time passes very slowly when you are waiting. Waiting for the bus, waiting for the end of the month, waiting for waiting to cease, waiting for something to dry, waiting for something to die, waiting for something to write itself out of mind, waiting, waiting, waiting. Someone said to write yourself out of a writer’s block, and though I’m no writer, I see no harm in writing myself out of this suspended animation. Write about the different words you can find in another word, write about the weather that sees no change, write about the past, write about the plants, write about the months, write about the word ‘orange’ which can’t find its homonym. Think about the minutes, of the seconds that write themselves gone as these very words surface. Backspace to rewrite, backspace to erase. Backspace to know its future, backspace to renew history, backspace to relive the current. Current. Space space space. Bic Runga’s The Be All and End All.

Friday is here! I like weekends.

It did occur to me at one point that I might spend the rest of tonight pretending to think, but. But! There are no ‘but’s. I am thinking, albeit the discernible lack of activity in the brain hemispheres (both), I think. Anyway, because I’m a changed girl and I spent only four dollars today, I’m hereby making a more perdurable effort at thinking. Written words, regardless of their quality and therefore for better or worse, have a certain permanence about them. Sure, it is important to write about life-changing events, cholesterol test results and your discovery of the 112th element, but it is just as fulfilling to write as you think, regurgitating every single comma as they pop up in your little typewriter mind. Decades on, you will wonder what happened to you on a certain July Tuesday/Wednesday evening, and if that evening was a probable cause of your eventual rebellion against what are defined as acceptable societal parameters (though rebellion implies a degree of voluntary participation, and you aren’t quite sure if that applies in your case), and you might be a wee bit enlightened. Keep reading and you’ll be rewarded with the end of this inanity.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking about online travel planning tools, and though I haven’t really explored a lot of options (it sucks when Google doesn’t answer your question, especially if the question was so precise), it seems like there won’t be any up to my high but entirely reasonable standards. Am, for instance, very disappointed that none of these travel planning tools doesn’t include a currency converter or a calculator. I place calculators in very high regard. A perfect anything in my books should at some point feature a calculator. Like a perfect notebook should always have a calculator in its back pocket/flap. Like a good brain should always be good at mental arithmetics.

Yes. A currency converter, please. I was tempted to use Google docs, which I’ve been using recently, but there wasn’t an option to insert or embed widgets or any interactive apps. Imagine, if you have a list of possible accommodations that you’ve pulled and shortlisted from various sources (i.e. it is not a list of search results from tripadvisor), you type them up in a list, define dynamic fields (in this case, the accommodation rates), tag them to a fixed or dynamic value (your exchange rate) and they get converted automatically to your preferred currency (though I’d prefer the unconverted amounts to remain as well). Uh huh. I think it is pretty obvious that I’m extremely fussy about stuff like that.

Maps. Very important. Typically, I’ll have a list of places I’m interested in, and then pin their locations on what I call the overview map. This is useful because I can then gauge the general distance between one place and another, and then plan an appropriate route accordingly. Each destination then will have their individual writeup, complete with a summary of what it is (particularly helpful for museums), address or map, admission costs (tagged) and getting-there information. Ideally, getting-there directions should come with one recommended route and several alternatives. Another tick on the anal list, uh huh.

Transport. When Ms. J and I were in Japan two (two!) years back, we made a list of train departure times and transfer points for all the (long-distance) trains we planned to travel on. This might sound ridiculous, but it did help knowing, if you missed a train, what time the next one would arrive. We knew when to run, when to amble, when to be fussy over bento decisions, and when to just grab a drink and run. And I swear we milked every last drop of our rail passes. The key to travelling cheap is to travel informed (and it doesn’t equate to predictability)! And it left us more money to throw at the post office.

Off the Beaten Path. I feel like a Lonely Planet guidebook. This is my favourite part, though I’ve been pretty slack about this for the past few trips. For each place or city, I usually make a list (painstakingly made over endless Google searches, Google translations; sometimes I copy wholesale from Wikitravel) of places that are less known. Mostly, they will be places I’ve a personal interest in, like photo/art galleries, bookstores, or weird museums.

Of course, everything goes poof on the actual trip and I sometimes end up abandoning all plans in return for a satisfying getting-lost experience or a relaxing stroll across unknown fields and laughing at weird scarecrows. But I guess I just really do quite like making travel itineraries. Or planning to make travel itineraries.

And because this entry is so damn wordy, I’m inserting a photograph here.

Abelardo Morell makes damn gorgeous camera obscura photographs.

The Chrystler Building in Hotel Room, 1997

The Grand Tetons in Resort Room, 1997

Camera Obscura: View of Central Park Looking North-Fall, 2008

Grand Canal Looking West Toward the Accademia Bridge in Palazzo Room Under Construction, 2007

(Photographs from artist’s site)

Hooray for random entry titles. Hooray for it being a day closer to October, yet again. Time gets on my side, this way, for once. Yet, it is amazing how all of a sudden, there seems to be a ton of tasks to achieve, a possibly equal number of decisions to make, and a few more hundred calculations to make the budget fit. Maybe I don’t need a weekend bag. Maybe I don’t need a gorgeous coat. Or a new wallet (I do, actually). Or a new passport holder. What I need is to get my camera fixed and stop eating Japanese food (Ootoya is yums) for days on end. Focus, rewind, focus.

On Saturday, I watched the most horrible movie (’Obsessed’, not worthy of a link) ever. I’ve griped aplenty to different people already, but I’m not rid of my irritation yet. So, here I am again, despite having run out of adjectives to describe the show. Miss J. and I were desperate to see a movie, and that was the only one available without us having to aimlessly wait two hours. (I must say, however, that the Filmgarde cinemas are pretty decent and the tickets are cheaper, too.) Now, I’ve watched a decent number of movies and I’ve watched a decent amount of crap, but none so far has made me entertain the thought of walking out of the cinema halfway so badly. I didn’t in the end, but it was probably because I still had a lot of popcorn left (they forgot we wanted mixed, so it was all terribly sweet). The movie has no redeeming feature. Typical enough plot, with boring lackluster bland characters and acting, cheesy dialogue, and a ridiculous ending. Arghs. Thoughts that went through my head during the movie were: I really want to toss popcorn at the screen | Wtf, she is knn irritating. | I wish she died in her suicide attempt. | Wtf, wtf. | Kill her, kill her | Why isn’t it over yet? Rinse and repeat every 15 minutes for 2 hours. It made ‘Ice Age 3′ look like a serious Oscar contender.

Why do we have so many cinemas showing the same stuff at the same time?

But anyway.

So! I’m heading to Japan! No itinerary and no concrete plans to conquer the land yet, but Japan is where I shall be come October and where I shall dream about from now till then. My friend (Abula the Great V) and I are also taking part in Design Festa, where we will hawk our currently-still-nonexistent wares, eat plenty of sashimi, shiver in the cold autumn winds, and perhaps finally get to see the snow-capped mountain. To motivate ourselves, we set up a blog here where we shall blog about our progress and travel plans. Yeah! Exclamations are plentiful here!

A little uninspired, but many good exciting thoughts are abound.

Thought a bit about rewriting the last entry, since it was written half-asleep and half-thinking, but a few days on, it didn’t read so wrong anymore and I don’t really know how to fix it (erm, I changed my mind about that). Fixing stuff seems counter-productive somehow, so I am here with a spanking new entry about nothing that really deserves to be written about. Dance dance dance.

Saw ‘Ice Age 3′ yesterday. The whole Singapore was watching the movie too, it seemed, seeing that most of the screenings were sold out. ★★ It is half a star lower from yesterday’s initial impression, but it isn’t that good really. Predictable laughs, and the same old plot from two sequels ago. No wonder the animals became extinct. If you have to recycle gags all the time, sooner or later suicide will seem like a very viable option.

Dance dance dance.

Also saw ‘I Love You, Man’, which was a lot better. ★★★☆ (3.5 stars) At least, it got some real chuckles out of me.

Watched ‘Bashing‘ a little earlier on on The Auteurs. ★★★☆ (3.5 stars too) Some parallels with another Japanese flick I saw last month, which I guess are quite telling about the societal norms (and expectations) in the country.

Movies Entry Sunday. I can’t believe it is midnight aka Monday already. The weather today has been quite perfect. Was trying to finish a book earlier this afternoon, and that proved to be quite the impossible mission. It is an excellent book, but every time I read it, I can feel my brain die a little from the over stimulation, which is quite the exact opposite desired reaction that I’ve been hoping for. Yes, I fell asleep.

就让你深夜的秘密透一口气。
蔓延满街的宁静、独占着晚间的沉默，庞大而无法制止。 无形。
是黑色的天空，还是暗色的云？

我对夜间的要求很高，但也爱放纵夜间的自己。

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - — – - – - – - – - – — – - – - – - – - – — – - – - – - – - – -

很想问的问题躲在一个迷了路的梦。
一个迷了路的梦卡在失了足的倒影。
失了足的倒影反映在一连串被遗忘的记忆。
然后，因易忘而被遗忘的一连串记忆也都会渐渐地自我抹杀，溶化成气，飘离这捉摸不了、
似以想象的地方。迷宫。

如忘了怀念，就不应该再想念。
因曾想过想念，所以停滞不前。
停止了思考，欲言又止。