hit the ground running.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Hello, you.

Hello again, I've decided to be nice and write. You've probably noticed that humour hasn't been top of my list of priorities lately, but well, when you're in a generally moody state and hardly have enough time to clip your toenails, you generally also have the sense of humour of a slice of bak kwa.

So anyway along came - and went - one of the more welcome breaks of the year. This year though, I vowed not to binge like I did last year, when I gained 5kg over the CNY break. Welllll... I shan't elaborate too much on whether or not I kept to that vow.

Anyway I was just thinking that CNY really is a season of obligations, when more often than not you're obliged to visit a relative or a 'friend', rather than it being a case of you actually wanting to visit the person in question. Not that I've anything against visiting people, of course, it generally does help the economic situation (mine, of course). But you know me (or maybe you don't, but just pretend you do for a moment), and you know that small talk is one of the banes of my existence. It's meaningless, always leads to the same topics, and always results in someone slagging off the government or a certain prominent Minister (or his mentor) and then looking around the room, face reddened with too-much-wine, finger to his/her lips, warning everyone within earshot against divulging anything to anyone.

Sometimes, there's someone with a sense of humour around, and you thank your lucky stars for that. Other times, everyone's just boring. It's a little odd, small talk, how it can lead from the weather to politics to neighbours to politics again and then to the weather.

Worse still, CNY small talk, in particular, invariably involves large amounts of munchies in the middle of the table. And we ALL know that leaving munchies alone when they're put in front of you is plain bad manners. So what to do then? Eat them, of course. And that's what your resident writer here (who has very good manners, thankyouverymuch) does/did. What, it's my fault now, then?

Anyway, CNY apart, Lance has correctly identified me as morphing into the bike geek now. I am going absolutely bonkers looking for suitable upgrades to my bike, and I can't seem to decide on what would give me the best bang for whatever little "buck" I have now. Right now I've got my eyes set on a new set of wheels, but I really don't know if I should be spending $650 on a pair of wheels which I'm not sure will be used much after France. Well, at least it's about $500 cheaper than its original price!

8:53 PM