Imagine Me & You

Just had a fabulously delicious meal at Carol and Zahrul's fabulous new house last night. Carol is the most amazing cook - so far i've had the best chocolate cake and the best quiche at her house. Positively orgasmic. I would move in next door except for the almost negligible fact that the house next door costs almost three times the price of my house. Carol and Zahrul are one of the nicest couples too. Z is incredibly sweet and obviously dotes on Carol - lucky Carol!

Anyway, after that wonderful dinner, washed down with plenty of wine, we had to make a move as Sean had to go to bed since it was a school day the next day. I was thrilled when GL passed me her DVD of 'Imagine Me & You'.

I'd wanted to watch Imagine Me & You ever since i saw the trailer - being a fan of most romantic comedies. I had to wait for the DVD because i don't think it was shown in cinemas here. Piper Perabo (ex-Lost and Delirious and Coyote Ugly) had an interesting British accent. Made me a tad curious why the BBC couldn't find a British actress for this part. Maybe they wanted an American actress to appeal to the other side of the pond. Anyway.

Overall the movie was pretty predictable (i like that though..) and saccharine sweet. Made me think about the eternal question though - is there such thing as love at first sight? and what if you are married to/engaged to someone else and you see a spark across the room... what do you do, if anything, about it?

If you haven't seen the movie and want to, stop right here as i'm about to talk about the ending.............

For political correctness, Rachel should've left Luce to go back to Heck (if you don't know what the Heck i'm talking about, go watch the movie). It would be the 'proper' thing to do. After all, Rachel was committed to Heck in holy matrimony (and all that ^%#%). The lesbian theme is actually completely irrelevant except that it gives the love story a different twist. Rachel fell in love with some one else. Period. Her angst and what choices she makes is the basic storyline. The right thing to do would have been to NOTpursue it.

But are we in control of ourselves or not? Or should we be in control? Should we disregard strong feelings for someone else because we are so-called 'taken'? I personally think monogamy is overrated. But saying that, i wouldn't act on anything while i am with someone out of pure respect for my partner. It's all about self control and not giving in to our delusions and attachments and the golden rule of not hurting anyone.

There is one poignant scene where Luce is confronted by Heck's best friend, Coop. Coop throws the line back in her face - so much for not wrecking other people's lives... we all (well, most of us anyway) don't want to hurt other people. But often we do - sometimes unintentionally, which can be excusable, and sometimes intentionally - because we so-called 'cannot help it'. Is there anything we really cannot help when a decision is ours? But how far to we go to put others' happiness above ourselves? According to the Buddhist credo, or what i understand of it, we must always put others' happiness above ourselves. Do we then obey our parents blindly - because that would make them happy? E.g. marry someone because they think he is suitable for you even though you have no feelings for them whatsoever. Or not go travelling because they think that's not a good thing to do. How far do we go? Going back to the movie - i'm sure many people will be most disapproving of Rachel and Luce's relationship - more so because of infidelity rather than homosexuality. I think it's because everyone is so afraid that their partner will fall for someone else and leave them...

Saying that though, i'm glad Rach ended up with Luce! GL just pointed out to me that actually Rachel didn't leave Heck. Heck left Rachel because he didn't want her to stay with him out of obligation. And that it was nice that their friendship (Heck and Rach's) was emphasised as the cornerstone of their relationship and that staying together or letting go was decided by both. I guess that's how the writers redeemed Rachel for her infidelity - though she had only one kiss or two..

If nothing else, the movie's anti-homophobic stance deserves applause. The movie portrays a lesbian relationship as fairly normal, with Rachel's mother providing some kind of balance by being stereotypically disapproving and disbelieving for a whole 3 minutes or so. But support was at least predictably and warmly provided by Rachel's dad, played by Anthony Head (of Gold Blend nescafe ads in UK - gosh - does that tell my age.. but more famously, in the popular series 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', which also has a lesbian sub-plot but i won't go into that here).

With movies like 'Brokeback Mountain' and the TV series like 'L Word' and 'Queer as Folk', homosexuality is definitely moving into the mainstream. Hopefully, in time, gay marriage would become as accepted as interracial marriage is today, which is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Imagine that!

Exciting drive to Bukit Tinggi

Just had to blog this - It was a Friday evening. GL was driving her citroen, Kim was in the front passenger seat and Webby and i were in the back. We were following Carol and Zahrul's car to go to Bukit Tinggi for dinner. Friday evening traffic meant the road was quite busy. So GL then decided to make a U-turn. The opposite lane was clear and where the road divider ended, she quickly swung her car around.

Yay we thought.

For about 30 seconds.

A car came round the corner, heading straight for us! Idiot! We all unanimously pronounced. The car swerved around us and fortunately there was no mishap. Moron! We thought, looking at each other incredulously. Where do people learn to .. before we could even finish the thought - another car came hurtling round the corner and we had to swerve..as we went round the corner, we saw streams of cars coming straight at us and we finally clicked that we were on a one-way street, facing the wrong way! The road divider meant we couldn't turn around so we simply threaded hair raisingly through the traffic until we emerged at the end of the road.

It was quite amazing that no cars honked at us - i think they were just too stunned. Probably thinking what are these four Kedah women doing! It's quite a miracle that we were completely unscathed.

What a classic.

A Bra Shopping Break

Pooi Lam invited me to join her at a one day Wacoal and Shiseido Sale so i thought why not. I needed to pop into KMT in Piccolo Galleria anyway so it would be great if we could have lunch in Bukit Bintang after shopping. She picked me up yesterday at 10.30 a.m. Oh such luxury to have a driver! The sale was held at American Express at UOA II in Jalan Pinang.

What bras have to do with travel i don't know.

In fact, when PL and i came out of the lift, we were wondering if it was hoax. Maybe it was a marketing gimmick. Sorry, we have no bras for sale maybe you would like to book a holiday? We walked nearer in trepidation and were relieved to see a few shiseido eye shadows on the reception desk. i wonder what Amex's business travel clients thought of that! Was that all the shiseido products, i asked... there were like four compacts and one refill sitting sadly on the desk. Oh and one eye whitening serum. Yes, the receptionist cum cosmetic saleswoman said brightly. Oh we said, wondering if we'd see the same number of bras on offer.

We went in and were led to their conference room which was their bra sales room for the day. It was crammed with women diving into brown cardboard boxes of bras. PL and i walked round the room once and then divided to conquer. The boxes were labelled with the sizes so it was quite well organised. I found my box without much difficulty but was very disappointed to see how ugly they were *sigh*. Oh well, at least they can be perhaps used as anti-rape devices. One look and any libido will droop...

At RM15 a pop, i thought i'd get a couple.

Then i thought i'd shop for Webby and friends. Yes, i know i should've thought of it earlier but.. anyway at the finishing line, i decided to sms Faery, Cookie, Kim and GL. Shirl i thought wouldn't want to hear anything about bras at that moment in time! Cookie was first to reply so i went in search of bras for her. Next came Kim, who's the same size as Webby. That size had the most choices available so i smsed Kim to ask her which color she wanted - white, black, black with embossed print, flesh color, yellowy flesh, pink with polka dots and frills, dark olive green, blue...

She wisely called me back and gave her order. In the end, i bought 13 bras of various sizes. All for RM195. Not bad for an hour's shopping. It appealed to the Penangite in me!

After shopping, we had a nice lunch at Moussandra and strolled over to see KMT's renovated premises. It looked really good but the rest of Piccolo Galleria didn't look as good. The ground floor was turning into central market and many shops had shut down in the floors above.

PL dropped me back around 2 as i had truckloads of work to do. The morning was a lovely break though. And i wish i'd bought more bras...

good cake-ma

After the bad car-ma the night before, we had some good! A lovely surprise arrived on Saturday - an absolutely fabulous cheesecake was dropped by our house - my favourite kind - with the crunchy biscuit base and lemon topping! It was really 'Just Heavenly'! Thanks darling - you know who you are - we'll drive you anywhere anytime...

bad car-ma

Last night, or rather early this morning, when GL and Kim left our place after the Germany-Argentina match, GL called and said it looked as if someone had knocked into Webby's car. We rushed out and sure enough someone had! It had a huge dent on the bonnet and the right front headlight was gone. The street was deserted. So there was nothing we could do but go to sleep and get it fixed in the morning.

We took some photos before we took it to the workshop.

The photo below shows the position of the car on the road. How on earth could someone have hit her car i don't know.

And the fact that the bonnet was hit means it must have been a really big car - a truck or lorry. There is some sand on the floor in front of the white gate on the right of the picture. So we were wondering if some contractor had backed into Webby's car while turning out. We don't know exactly when the accident happened, which didn't help.

The workshop told us it would cost about RM1300 to fix it (including a dent on the side when some girl drove into Webby's car). More experiencing of karma. There was no note on our windscreen from the person who hit the car. Not that i'm surprised. I'm sure loads of people would simply drive off - wouldn't you?