Fruit Salad

I can never write when I want to. I went home last night intending to write a story. When the words come, they’re when I least expect it. And even then, the burst of inspiration doesn’t last long and I have a strong urge to finish it up and never leave whatever I’m writing to get back to at a later date. Add to that, I never edit or review my work. This is probably why I’ll never be the kind of writer that I envisioned I would become someday.

So I realized that I hadn’t given you an update on the various goings on in my life since the move to the new house, which I highly doubt you’ll be interested in reading. I’m opting to shove it down your throat, none-the-less. 😉

The most important thing is that I miss Stitch & MoCuishle. It’s been over 2 weeks since I’ve seen them and my heart breaks so many times a day when I think of them. They used to be the last thing I saw when I went to sleep and the first thing that greeted me when I opened my eyes every morning. I need to bring them over to spend a night with me one day soon. There’s nothing like sinking your face into Stitch’s silky coat at the end of a long day.

The great Dharmasiri Bandaranayake seems to think quite a bit of me it seems. He invited a friend of mine and I to perform in a Sinhala play with him. A classic satire of his from the 70’s which he is remaking in November. Needless to say, it has been a very different experience. It’s almost a complete 180 from the English theatre I am used to. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull off the performance because it is an absolute honour to be invited into his fold and be cast in a role without an audition, merely based on one previous performance he managed to catch the video of.

In terms of work, my office has turned into a factory. I churn out ideas and copy as though I was making hoppers. As a result my output hasn’t been brilliant. Some ideas are good, some are ok and some are just downright shit. If I had the luxury of time to think about one campaign at a time, the situation would be quite different. As it stands I have 4 jobs in hand!

I opened a Twitter account in April and “tweeted” (is that what you call it?) once about Attia in Rome. I suddenly got the urge to tweet again and I’ve been on a roll since a few days ago. Nothing of substance there either. Some random things about a Snuffleupagus and others about work. Following the right people is the key I hear, so I’ve been finding people who inspire me which seems far more interesting that updating my own excrement. Stephen Fry has proved to be a very interesting follow I must say!

And then the beautiful Cinderella bestowed this award on me called loyal friend and reader and now I am to name five bloggers to give this same award to. So here goes…

RD, for finding the occasional bit of substance amidst my blogging madness and becoming a friend in the process.

Brandix, for inspiring me to become a blogger. This blog exists because he introduced me to it and it has become one of the best outlets for my twisted mind.

Dishi, for writing from her heart and speaking from her heart as a person and a blogger. Her writing moves me and so does she as a person.

St. Fallen for reading me from the point he became a blogger himself. And along the way, I’m really glad we’ve also become friends.

And finally to Gyppo, whose posts make me feel like I’m in a scene from Ground Beneath Her Feet. She writes the things in my head, only she puts them across better.

There are many more I would like to give these out to, but alas I am limited to only 5. To my chosen 5, go ahead and knock yourself out picking another 5 yourself! (That is if you want to, of course)

That’s it in the life and times of the missing sandwich. Besides finding my first grey hairs and going into a state of manic depression interspersed with the occasion bout of OCD.

I’m terribly sorry this post became such a mixed fruit salad of things. Enjoy the weekend y’all!

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The Fruits of Passion

The agency I work for turned 10 yesterday. The boys & I spent many sleepless nights putting together someting that was truly amazing to showcase what 10 years really means when an agency pays no heed to conventions and makes waves from the word go. I’m exhausted, but feeling quite passionate about it all.

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Before I’m 30…

Ok, I think it’s safe to say I established my present age in numerous posts before and see no need to continuously repeat it. But I with a friend on Monday night who asked me about the list in my head of what I wanted to do before I’m 30. Not things I wanted to achieve, mind. Just do. And besides a couple of things, I came out blank. Me? The queen of list making couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do before the year was out. I gazed and gazed and gazed at Lulu trying to type something on her for the last 3 days. To make that list and post it here. Nothing came to me. So instead of trying to think it out, I though I’d start to type this post and see where it takes me.

I’m wondering if it’s that I’ve lost my mojo or jinthu so to speak that could think up a million kinky or adventurous things I wanted to do in a nanosecond. So why am I drawing a blank now. As we grow older and more jaded are we meant to lose those the few nicer things about ourselves as well? The things which never came into the equation when you needed to shave off the ugly, pick up the remains and move on? These things were meant to be constants. Like my muse. She just upped and took off a few months ago and I’m wondering what it is I have to do to get her to come back.

I woke up in the heart of Colombo on Tuesday morning at the crack of dawn because I was hanging with a friend. And I was in awe of what I saw. A city coming to life. Light just beginning to creep in. A man pounding away at a gym on the 13^th floor somewhere. A soldier stifling a yawn on the streets below. A series of bulbs going off in tall buildings, making way for the sun. The ocean glowing like a bed of jewels. A solitary bird looking for a perch. Put all of that together and I have no words to describe how beautiful it was. I should have been inspired to start writing right away. But all I did was light a cigarette, take it all in and go back to sleep. Why?

I’m honestly clueless. I’ve taken every possible drastic action possible to get her back. Trust me, I have. And still nothing. Ideas are my life. Creative ones. And minus the muse, I’m getting bored and complacent at the same time. Bored with what I’m doing now. Complacent because I can’t seem to figure out what else I could do. Under normal circumstances as much as I love advertising I could also come up with a lost of alternatives in a nanosecond too.  

That’s what I need I guess. My muse. My ability to come up with a big list of things. With alternatives. With the ability to never be bored just because I conquered the mountain I wanted to. Hopefully I’ll get it all back soon and I’ll be able to make that list. 30 isn’t going to be a far away number for too long and I’m running out of time.

There. I put it all out. Hopefully things will start to improve now.

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It’s All Good

There are times in your life where you feel you’re standing still. It’s like you’re in this one stagnant place and you can’t quite put your finger on what it is you need to do to move on. You look for inspiration within and without and still… you feel like it’s so very senseless. You’re simultaneously standing still and drifting around that place like some out of body experience in a B-grade sci-fi movie. But you’ve never let yourself get to this place before.

So why now?

How is it that your resilient, albeit somewhat fake smile still manages to stay on, plastered on you like a good caking of kreolan stage make-up? You look at photographs of the folk at Elsie’s and you’re happy re-living those moments with people who over the last few months became your family. And you think of how attached you all are to eachother now. You met on Monday. Conference called on Tuesday. Met again on Wednesday and with some again on Thursday. Today may not be any different. And come Saturday, you head out of Colombo together. How long is this going to last before other parts of your life scream to get back into your system and you start to drift apart? A few months down the line you’ll hardly be in touch as a collective and you wonder if you’ll all be ok with that. Or will you talk about how much we miss eachother and not really do much about it. That’s show business for you.

And then you go and quit your job. Just like that. Partially on impulse. Partially thought through. Many don’t hesitate to tell you that you’re an A-grade fool. How bad the economy is and how you need money to clothe, feed and intoxicate yourself. Well, fuck it. Honestly. Just fuck it. You’ve come to this point in your life where you realize that most of the past few years have been based on a lie that you foolishly let yourself believe. To the point where you may not even know yourself anymore. And you’re ready to discover it again. What will you do for a living? Do you want to even be in advertising anymore? Do you want to be an activist and fight for human rights? Do you want to sing? To act? To even write?

I don’t know.

And for once in my life, that doesn’t scare me. As long as I am not standing still, as long as I am drifting in limbo, as long as I am starting to discover myself anew… it’s all good. 

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“I’m Evil!” and other things…

 

Oh God. I took the quiz.I am ashamed and a little stunned. Almost as stunned as the award. And all I did was tick all the boxes that applied to me. Oh dear. 

I am also looking for the appropriate words to let you know how I feel about the Blog of the Year thing that has been so wonderfully bestowed upon me. Needless to say I have just discovered that I am evil and am at a loss for words. I’ll find them eventually and post them. I promise. They may not be as appropriate as I want them to be though, given this new situation I have on my hands.  

Since blogging has been officially banned in the workplace, I decided to spend my office time designing a new blog header. That can’t fall into the blogging category right? It was a design job and I do work in advertising. Albeit as a writer. I’ll let it run through the weekend and see how I feel about it. May revert to the red hair again, but I’m not too sure since my hair is not considerably shorter and blacker. Well actually dark brown, but whose noticing eh? 

I’m evil. And I have to live with it. Sigh. 

 

 

You Are 76% Evil

You are very evil. And you're too evil to care.  Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

How Evil Are You?

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Desperately Seeking Dawson

This is an update of sorts since I have been snowed under with work. And since this occasionally becomes a pimped out diary like that of RDs, I feel it is only fair to share the sordid and shameful things that I have done and that have happened to me in the past few weeks. And trust me, this is juicy. In an embarrassing sort of way that is. Simply because I have found myself digressing back to my juvenile delinquent days. Of course this has been interspersed with some rather delicious happenings in the process as well.

Firstly. Work is not as pleasant as it used to be. And it has nothing to do with the excess of work at all. Its just suddenly turned into an environment that doesn’t seem to be conducive to lost sandwiches. And I know this because I wake up hating the day because I have to go to work. Its not something that I am at liberty to discuss at this point so lets just leave it at that shall we?

Next, in the middle of the overload at work, it leaves me with nothing left to spare for the other parts of my life other than a single brain cell which is in suspended animation anyways. So this single braincell, lets call her Ms. Juvie, happened to come across a video of Joey & Pacey from Dawson on You Tube. Yes, shameful. And then she remembered that she used to have an instance crush on Pacey (that Jackson boy was just divine!) and went on a mad search to every DVD store in Colombo looking for more. Needless to say, she didn’t find any, which was very good in the long run for me. Ms. Juvie has decided to calm down now and help me focus on other things.

One of those things being “the world premiere” aka the wedding of 2 dear friends for which she was asked to belt out the notes to show me heaven by maria mckee. A song that always reminded her of Tom Cruise running a little toy car up Nicole Kidman’s thigh. So she jumped at the opportunity. The thing is, I am the one who had to sing it, not her. I had never been able to. Had never tried. The night arrived. She downed three bacardi cokes and breakneck speed and sent me off to sing. This surprising things is that she actually did a good job with those b&c’s coz I actually pulled it off. In fact it was one of the best ever performances by the sandwich if I do say so myself.

Finally, I will be acting in a new play come mid June. A good thing indeed. The script is deliciously unusual and challenging. It was written by a 16 year old boy and short-listed for the gratien. My fellow cast members are amazing and I hope a jot of their talent will rub off on me. I was exhausted at the first reading so I asked Ms. Juvie to take over and she did a pretty decent job if I do say so myself.

So that’s that in the life and fortnight of the missing sandwich and her loyal braincell sidekick. I hope things clear up in the work front so that I can write more often. That’s one of the few things I don’t trust that Juvie with.

TTFN

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Rice, Curry and Racism

Just wanted to write about something that enraged me over lunch today.

There’s a girl in my finance department who I don’t like very much, simply because she has that financial-power-over-the-other-departments thing going on like most financial types I’ve worked with (for details see my previous post “those financial types”).

The thing is that she also a very conservative, traditional Tamil and I spent my lunch watching a lot of people bug her about the recent bombings. She was asked why nothing happened during the day and went to the extent of repeatedly asking her when the next one was going off and if she could check with her sources about it and let them know. Everyone was having a big laugh about it while she put on a forced smile and joined in the joke, telling them she’d let them know. She finished eating in a hurry and left the lunch table, never faltering on that smile she kept on her face.

I’m sorry, but I’m enraged, infuriated and disgusted at this. Isn’t this the route to bringing racism closer than we need it to? Could people possibly leave their uncooth, unlearned opinions at home before coming into work? What makes people think that joking about a controversial issue makes it more palatable? I think it makes it harder to deal with because a joke about something so ugly only solidifies what’s really going on inside.

I may not like this girl, but she sure as hell didn’t deserve this just because she works with a majority of people who are of a different race.

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…and did the clouds part?

If you’ve been reading, I’ve been in a funk about my two final decisions of where to join and it was about money over job satisfaction. Life and the powers that be have a strange way of working things out.

I chose to follow my heart and it wound up actually working out financially. In the sense that, knowing about my tough decision, hubby’s boss decided to give him an increment. So we won’t be penny pinching at home whilst trying to come up with newer and better ways of selling soap. Advertising, after all, is not about being the romanticized starving writer. Its about biting off all you can chew – you need to experience it well enough to be able to sell in convincingly after all.  

I will however be going to work for yet another female boss. She’s a bitch, by her own admition to add to it. That kind of helped with the decision actually. Everyone else has been all sugary and wound up being snakes in the grass. This one’s frank about being the devil incarnate. Meeting with her today just to finalize a few things and then I’ll officially be in ‘action’ by the 1st.

After making the decision, the place offering the money just decide to call and also offer the dream. Have I made the right decision? Did I jump the gun by not waiting? Was honest with them, told them that I already decided and its something that I need to try out and might come running back to them in a couple of months. But for now I need this personally. Even if it is a mistake, I need it to be mine to make. And they were understanding. Wanted me to call them if I ever felt unhappy where I am going.

Its a heady feeling to be wanted after I thought I was forgotten with the big-wigs after chosing to play in the small pond. If nothing, its been such an ego boost. But I’m still afraid that I may not have made the right decision. I’m telling myself that, the fear maybe good. Better even than I expected.  

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Monsoon Monday

What a Monday it is. Storms brewing all over.

After a Friday spent at interviews, its even worse coming back to the hell hole. Its made me realize how right I was to finally let go and leave. I am also proud that I tried really hard to change something that I couldn’t. It gives me more conviction instead of a sense of defeat. I can’t say my work here is done, because it was never meant to begin. But people make mistakes along the way and I leaned much from this one. The biggest one – how NOT to run an Agency.

The bigger storm pops in now. Not a dampner but just wondering where the lightening is going to strike now. You see after the interviews, I’m seriously at a loss as to where to go. The one place I know is going to give me immense job satisfaction and help me grow as a creative is offering me less money. Significantly less in fact. I don’t blame them. Considering that I have been forced to do mediocre work here and not really grow as a creative. The other places are kind of nice too, but their offers are going to be coming in during the course of this week. I know for a face they’ll offer more money. Thus the dilemma.

I know it sounds simple. Go for multiple satisfaction. Learn to live with less. But its not that easy when you’re used to living with a certain amount and you’re not single anymore. Being happy at work and penny pinching at home is not really going to help, you know?

Lets give me a few a days and see, right? The storm has to blow over – even a monsoon. And things just might start to get clearer.

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