A Look To Remember

(Taken during the Aussie photoshoot)

For those who might have forgotten how I looked like =)

A Feathered Guest

We had a little feathery guest today. Pretty much like the Striped Tit-Babbler who decided to drop by one year ago when I was rushing off to school. The poor ball must have been exhausted, as my mom discovered it just outside my unit.

As usual, it didn’t put up a fight when we brought it in and placed it in a container in my sister’s room. When it finally woke up, it was just sitting there quietly staring at my sister. Due to my sister’s fear that it may start buzzing around her room once it had recovered, a cover was brought in to aid the process of transporting it to a window where it can then fly free. However, no one likes to have something gently pressed over your head, and this is no exception for the little feathered friend, as it started to struggle against the low roof.

Pretty soon, (due to a fault on our part in removing the cover when we were nowhere near a window), it started flying all over our house in an attempt to return to the wild. It didn’t help that mom was cooking dinner, as we were worried that it would just plop into our food.

But finally, Birdie has left the building… =)

Start of a Monthly Cedar Love Affair

The start of our monthly Cedar gathering, aka Monthly Mahjong Madness (where possible) was a success. Turn out was great, 7 out of the original 8! And even though I was kind of cheated into buying my own MacDonald dinner, hey, at least I got to see my darlings again! I missed them all too much!!

And while we exchanged belated birthday gifts (it was a Leo birthday celebration) in the midst of all the mahjong and bridge, there was the usual fun, joy and laughter (together with pain from laughing too much) that accompanied every gathering =)

Till the next month! (That would be my birthday celebration then, haha)

Of Recognition and Pride

“The photos were very nicely taken.” 

“Our business partners were very satisfied with your work.
They liked it very much.”

“They were surprised to know that it was an occupational therapist who designed the posters.”

Nothing gives me more pleasure than to know that my efforts and abilities were being recognised and appreciated. Time to work harder and improve! =)

Platonic Love

I’m sure many of us have wondered before if a platonic friendship between a guy and a girl is ever possible.

For me, my bestie is a female. Yet somehow, I’ve always more or less wanted a best friend who is a guy. One who can provide an alternative view of perspective as compared to the fairer sex. But then, the thought always come, “Is it ever possible?”. Who is to say that either one might not want to take a step further?

Sometimes I wonder about my own psyche. What makes me tick, what doesn’t. What makes me fall head over heels, what turns me off. And at times, even I confuse myself. But then came this article:

She says:

Ok, I’ve got to admit that with attractive men, it is hard to just be friends.

Women are naturally very affectionate, otherwise known as touchy-feely. We’ll hug our friends, lie on their shoulder, hold their arm and in general, be comfortable with human touch. With our girlfriends, it’s completely normal and everything is cool.

But with our male friends, (yes, we do have male friends. We, unlike men, are not inclined to want to sleep with every man we meet) this touchy-feely habit sometimes changes things.

For instance, if we jokingly punch them only to collide into a well-muscled and toned set of abs, it’s pretty clear what we’ll be thinking about for the next couple of hours. It’s unlikely we’ll act on it, but from time to time, the thought of being “more than friends” will cross our mind.

For most girls, we tend to categorize the boys in our life. There will always be some boys we meet that for various reasons (too immature, too silly, too superficial, too in love with someone else, too –insert any negative adjective-) we will NEVER be interested in dating, or going further than friends.

These are the boys we refer to as “not my type”. As long as the boy doesn’t fall in love with her and make things complicated, these male-female friendships can survive pretty well. It’s always platonic, brotherly-sisterly at most.

Then there’s the other extreme category of boys who are totally your type from the get-go. For this bunch, girls will permanently be attracted to them; sometimes it’s a superficial physical thing, sometimes it goes beyond just looks. But whatever the reason, these are the boys that girls will never be able to be good friends with, at least not deep inside, simply because they keep pining for that “something more”.

But as in any spectrum, the trickiest part is the in-between category. Most boys in our life are unclassified. We occasionally feel spurts of great concern for them and worry on their behalf. But then we also know that nothing beyond friendship seems to be happening, yet the possibility never dies.

This is what makes such friendship a very confusing mix of platonic and romantic. The key to making a transition into either category on the extreme ends is very situational.

For instance, you’re having a crisis, say you just had a nasty break-up. The reaction of this boy is critical in deciding whether you fall head-over-heels for him, or whether he reminds you of a fatherly-figure instead. The more comfortable you get with sharing your private demons with this person, the more likely that your friendship becomes less and less platonic.

On the contrary, when the boy is having his crisis and you have to be there for him, sometimes him over-sharing his personal issues plants him firmly in the platonic category. There’s always a fine line between knowing someone very well (and it’s still vaguely romantic) and knowing someone too well (that you are quite sure you don’t ever want to date someone like him).

The male-female friendship is a strange relationship, sometimes fraught with sexual tension, but mostly, sisterly tolerance for his stupidity.

The bottomline: there really is no clear-cut answer, because complicated creatures that we are, we can actually straddle both and self-delusionally ignore some of our own feelings too.

I would say that the article nicely summarises my perspective of guys (as well as the categorisation). And for the extremely complicated creature that I am, well, I guess time can only help me. But meanwhile, is it ever possible to just have a very good platonic friendship with a male?