thoughts on the first day of the last year of my life

happy new year everyone! hmm i was just kidding about the title. got your attention din i? but seriously, i feel now that i should treat every year, or every day for that matter, as the last in order to not waste my life away. like i did today. you see, i'm back in an arbor, in my own apartment now, and everywhere and everything is closed on new year's day! so frustrating. i mean, places like starbucks are still open i guess, but i really wanted to grab lunch from the mexican food place down the street, but yea it was closed. and i wanted to go run in the gym but non of the indoor facilities are open. i guess i can go run in the freezing cold in the arboretum (ann arbor's closest thing to a nature park), but i aint willing to risk my ears dropping off or being gangraped in the silence of the arboretum by horny bastards feeling lonely in the festive season in order to fulfill my marshall plan.

oh have i mentioned my marshall plan before? yea my very funny pun on the term "marshall plan" (for those of you who dunno what the real marshall plan is about, shame on you. go google it u nincomputt!) includes two parts:

1. to train up for the chicago marathon in october 2006, and run under 3 hrs and 10 mins for the race, in order to qualify for the boston marathon in april 2007. ok hitting that timing is going to be really hard, so i shall not set the success of my marshall plan contingent on the timing. truth is anything under 4 and a half hours is fine by me. hahh.

2. to regain my abs as part of my training regime. well not exactly regain, because how can you regain something u never really had? haah. well the only time i had well defined abs was back in jc when i was training 4 times a week in the soccer team; that's a really long time ago huh?

you see, the origin of the marshall plan stems from the loss of man pride from unwelcomed prodding of my tummy (hereafter mentioned as "the tummy", or "the ugly piece of s***"), as well as the general degradation of my physical condition, and last but not least, a friendly bet that will result in the loss of the long mane that i'm trying to cultivate. specifically the fringe. the result which not only i will still be fat (having lost the bet), i will look like the a complete idiot with long hair everywhere but the one-inch long fringe in front. seeing the catastrophic consequences of my failure to win this bet, it is absolutely crucial, no, not just crucial, it's almost of life-or-death importance.

i have a major complaint: my external hard disk broke down on me. damned irresponsible electronic devices! i swear they have a mind of their own. just like my car, Heather, whose battery broke down just as the holidays came around. this time around, my external hard disk has decided not to respond to my continuous plugging in and out of the usb connection, or the constant switching on and off of the power supply. i'm absolutely stumped. sigh. gone is the access to all the important documents, photos, movies and music. the irk i feel almost makes me want to throw it across the living room.

just finished reading grace chow's "a pain in the neck". i was particularly enamoured with the part of her book where she says that every movie, and every life, needs a soundtrack. music defines a particular emotion, a particular period of everyone's existence. relating this phenomenon to watching a wong kar wai film ("in the mood for love" anyone?), which is filmed without a script but only a particular piece of music in mind, miss chow claims that we will always be influenced by songs that we identify with at specific moments in our lives. hence, having taken inspiration from her, i have taken on the task of compiling the soundtrack of MY life thus far, and i will definitely share it here with all my friends when the project is complete.