Something new, the learning of

Listen: Passenger - Lisa Hannigan

First things first - OMGWTFBBQ SINCE WHEN DID BLOGGER'S LAYOUT GET SO CLEAN AND GOOGLEY

Okay excitement over, so to start on the explanation for the title of this post -

Was lolling about reading Smith's I Capture the Castle earlier today, and Le Boyfriend just stared at me and said, "How can you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Do nothing. If I was that free (which he would be after tomorrow, hah!), I'd learn something new."

"Like what? Learn what?"

"Oh you know, something productive. Not just lying there doing nothing."

Reading is not "doing nothing" for me. But some people would insist on digressing, and there's nothing much I can do about it.

I have been learning new things in the past few months though, like:

1. Learning how to drive - although extremely and excessively unwillingly, as Le Bf would doubtless tell you very certainly and repeatedly if you'd hear him out

2. Filing my own taxes - although I don't earn that much to get back any refunds, but ah well

3. People who want to walk down escalators in the LRT stations have the right of way, so if you're just going to stand all the way down, please stand on the left and don't look offended if someone taps you on the shoulder and politely excuses him/herself. Really, move to left a bit also cannot is it? Think it's your grandfather's station is it?

4. The exciting intricacies and processes of Microsoft Access and Excel

5. How to listen and pick up Mandarin/Cantonese in a sort of osmosis process

And probably lots more, but I can't be bothered to list them out cos you'll be bored.

There are things I should learn, I know, but there's a general "I-can't-be-arsed" feeling whenever I get home from work. And on weekends, what I really want to do is sleep in late and read whenever I want. I still read - the news, weird news, my old books, my new ones - but is that really learning something new? Do you think so?

I wished no one had taught Dame Antonia how to use Excel. Because The Children's Book was quite disappointing after I really liked Possession...ha can you hear how pretentious I sound? But no - really - the new book has too many characters that I didn't care about. After a while I felt like Byatt herself - I wanted to open my own spreadsheet to keep track of who I'm reading about. But then again, I didn't get that far in the book.

Will you look at that! Blogger has even put in an option for you to attach your links, whether you want them to open in a new window or not. Last time in the dark ages before Google, I had to manually insert target="_blank" into the HTML thingy...what is Google going to do next? Predict what I'm going to blog next based on my past trends and then help me to draft a post based on projections of my previous posts?

Oh yeah, and

6. You can be influenced by someone's music taste when you've been exposed to a lot of it. Witness Taylor Swift - although if you do listen to the lyrics of Speak Now, she sounds more stalkerish in it than You Belong  with Me. Trufax, no lie. Seriously, Taylor, ruining someone's wedding? If someone plays it at a wedding, then yes, you'd probably want to check the guest list for the inconspicuous ex.

Even Lisa Hannigan thinks of Minneapolis as all snow, like I do - haha, look at her lyrics in Passenger - 


We came to Minneapolis,
all fizzy blood and twitchy fists.
I buried you in a day of snowing.

What I remember was December and wading in knee-high snow and getting chocolate malt balls from the sweetshop down the road in St. Paul (a proper sweetshop with sweets and chocolates you buy by weight) and going through the tunnels and skywalks and the cold. Happy, yes, but sad because things were ending.

And it's a similar thing that's going to happen tomorrow but there'll be no snow and no chocolate malt balls and then there won't be an ending, not really. Just relief. And happy, of course, because you'll be free now.