23rd May 2000

An understated beauty

Today I experienced :

1) another cardiac arrest, this time in the public corridor outside ITU in plain site of visiting relatives. I was reading a patient's notes in one of the wards when I looked up and saw a commotion in the public corridors just outside the ward, at the lifts. I followed the staff out the doors and watched a large team of doctors attempting to resuscitate a patient who had gone into cardiac arrest. The doctor performing compressions was pretty and rather petite and she got tired after a while and got up on the bed and knelt precariously over the edge to continue compressions. A central line was inserted; suddenly there was blood over half the bed. Visiting relatives taking the lifts up walked by with their eyes averted. I watched for five minutes then went back to my patient's notes before they "called it". This is reality : no snazzy ER music playing in the background, no green walled wards with white-coated doctors agitatedly asking for the epinephrine NOW. Just an atrium outside ITU, a large glass window overlooking london, a dingy staircase and three decrepit elevators, and ten doctors performing their tasks in absolute silence.

2) Battlestar Galactica. I love battlestar galactica, it takes me back to the days when I read Agatha Christie and spoke Chinese proficiently and was the world's most dysfunctional child. Nostalgia city, today the colonial warriors were struck by an odd virus and the women had to get in the cockpits and fight the cylons. The ships are so cool as well... sexy and fast, with flight sticks with 3 buttons. woooohoo.

3) a rather less than cathartic realisation that my best buddy's right; he's held for some time that I unrealistically compare females I meet to someone I once knew, you're not giving them a chance, nobody will be exactly like her etc. Naturally I've been vehemently denying it all along, oh but I talk to people as they are etcetcetc. But I guess you're right old buddy. It's appearing here instead of in an email because you reply to my emails so s...l...o...w...l...y, and you're absolutely right. And you know what? I don't care. It's what I want to do. If I do hold people up to the reflection of someone else, well, I do that because that's how I'm built. If subconsciously I'm thinking "not .... enough or too ...", that's how I'm thinking, at this point in time. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll meet someone who becomes the new yard-stick, it hasn't happened yet. But anyway this is my concession for the millenium, you were right.

That sums my day up.

Just gonna write a bit about me me me and me now. heh that reminds me of something Serling said once about how she wanted to live in a me me me me me world... but I'd best leave that off these pages.

Understatedness. I adore it.

I like all things quietly tasteful. I don't like loud flashy statements, as a rule.

I don't like trendy punk-kid attitudes. I don't like loud statements that proclaim I'm DIFFERENT if they're just statements. Don't people realise how common it is to want to say I'm different? It's easy to dye your hair,or get a nipple pierced. Don't do it to be different, do it because you like it. Predictable unpredictability is commonplace and trite. I prefer the quiet, exteriorly-normal thinking individual who is unpredictably unpredictable, and thence refreshingly different.

I don't like make-up. That's just me, I'm not forcing my opinions down anybody's throat. But I don't like eye shadow, and eye liner on a woman. I don't like layers and layers of foundation that make a truly beautiful woman into a pale clay mask.

I don't like flashy dressers. I mean, I could fall in lust with someone wearing something particularly risque or skin-showing - I'm still male after all - (skin tight PVC suits are something else lol) but I could never fall in love with someone dressed that way. Even if she was The One. It just wouldn't work. Give me dowdy rumply T shirt and jeans anyday. It's the sparkle in her eye and the spontaneous smile that'll catch my eye.

I don't like coloured hair. You've probably figured that out already. I don't mind subtle highlights, I think they can make a woman quite attractive, but bright glaring colours get me. I don't know why. I just like hair in it's natural state. I don't even like hair permed, and I particularly like wild messy hair that's been wind-blown or that someone's run her hand through several times.

I don't like loud-mouths, big egos and braggarts. People who walk up to you and open a conversation with "hi, I'm so and so and I did this or I was on the internal X team or the World X championships". I think that's enough to put anyone off. Knee jerk reaction is Sod You. You think I don't have any achievements either? But I'll just sit there and smile and nod vacantly and say well good on you! It's just as easy to walk up to someone and just get to know him / her and somewhere along the way, if conversation steers that way, if he/she's done something similar to what you have, if he/she's interested they'll ask and the same information will be conveyed in a much less abrasive fashion. Flaunt it if you've got it? What on earth for if nobody wants to see it. Everytime I meet a braggart I get an itch to prick their egos with a well-placed pin. Fortunately I usually have some restraint over myself.

I don't like superficiality. Everyone from my motherland seems to obsess about talking about flashy mobile phones and flashy cars. Whole conversations go by about the Nokia XXXX. It's so cool I wish I had one (left unspoken) so I could show it off to the world and everyone would envy me. There's a clever advertisement on TV for VWs latest. They show short clips of a girl powdering her nose on a schoolbus and fade the words "because I'm grown up" over her, then a hunky man driving a powerboat by on a lake and turning his head in slow motion to face the camera on his way by and fade the words "because I'm well-endowed" over him, then... I forget... but it ends with someone getting into his little tiny VW and they fade the words "because I'm going to the shops" over him. Fade to black. Fade in words "the new VW Whatever : a car, not a symbol". Cars are just cars to me. I like some of them yes, but that's because they're aesthetically pleasing. Simply that. I couldn't care less what anyone thought about my car other than me. Even if I fell for an inanely ugly, cheap, unprestigious car.

I go for the quietly understated. I go for the things other people see as conventional and boring. I like to think they're tasteful, and if they make me happy, I don't care what anyone else thinks. And I won't shout that I don't care about it to anyone, there isn' t any need.