As I’m typing this post, it’s raining heavily outside. The sky has turned white with all the gathering rain clouds and occasionally, I can see a leaf being whipped around by the strong wind. In the background, the singing of Paramore’s ‘Decode’ from my laptop speakers mingles with the vague sound of thunder. Most people would be curled up in a cozy corner with a mug of coffee or hot chocolate and enjoying the hypnotic rhythm of rainfall. Me, I’m taking this moment to sit down and wonder…why isn’t my Internet connection stable?

Ever since this morning, my Internet has been screwing with me. When I awoke to discover that my laptop is disconnected from my network, I puzzled over this phenomenon. Shrugging, I simply restarted my router and my Mac’s AirPort. To my glee, I watched as the connection went through and opened up my Facebook as I always do in the morning. Suddenly, from the top right corner, an error message popped up to inform me that I have been disconnected. And so I restarted my router and AirPort again. And again, and again, until finally I left the bloody things and went out for lunch.

Now that I’ve returned, I thought, “Surely by now, the Internet is stable” and clicked on my connection. Yes, I can finally go online!!! Buuuuuuuut…no. Nope, once again, my connection has thrown me out of cyberspace on my butt. It seems to get this sick joy of seeing me happy and letting me open a few pages before kicking me out and watching my face fall in misery. Damn you, unstable connection. So now, I’m simply typing into my ScribeFire and refusing to open any Firefox page until I see that the connection remains online, or I’m going to slam the router into the ground.

Yeah, you might think, “Oh, my God. This girl can’t live without the Internet.” Hey, I resent that. I once went a whole week without Internet…’coz I was stuck in a place with absolutely no modem or computer whatsoever.

Sigh, maybe I should pick up one of my dusty books and settle down to read until Streamyx deems me worthy again to enter cyberspace.

The deal between my skin & the steel has ended…after months of keeping the pact. I now grow afraid of what might come next…what might happen next.

What do you see when you close your eyes? And I don’t mean, close ‘close’, like closing your eyes to sleep. I mean, like blinking, a second’s worth of closing. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, most likely the answer is…nothing.

We blink and what we see in that split second is, well, darkness if we even realize that. Sometimes if you squeeze your eyes real hard for a while, you can actually see weird zigzaggy lines of colours (well, I see them sometimes). But that’s not what I’m talking about.

The reason why I’m bringing this topic up is because I keep seeing things when I blink. It’s hard to explain and many people would say it’s just my imagination but anyone who knows my family’s history would understand.

Both sides of my family have dealt with spirits, the supernatural, etc. We’ve seen ghosts, been plagued by spirits, and had even witnessed someone get possessed. I myself have had two encounters; one by sight and one by sound. But lately, I’ve been seeing things that, while they don’t scare me, does make me wonder why they appear, especially when they have no connection whatsoever with what I’m thinking or talking at that point in time. Heck, sometimes I’m not even thinking about anything.

The first one I remember ’seeing’ was a few years back when I was praying. The image was so vivid that I remember every detail even until now. It was twilight in a dark open field. There was a great big tree and underneath it, just a few feet away, was a freshly dug, empty grave. Standing right behind the grave was a ‘penunggu’ (spirit) with a hood covering its face, looking straight at me. The way it stood, the way it looked at me, I got the impression that the grave was mine and that it was waiting for me. I saw all that within one second and it scared the hell out of me.

The second one I remember ’seeing’ is one that I keep seeing over and over; a young girl with shoulder-length straight hair, parted in the middle, looking right at me. The weird thing about her is that I can only see her from the shoulder up, like she’s standing right infront of me. But that’s not all. The freaky thing is her face keeps turning from human to skeleton. One time I’ll see her face and the next, I’ll see her skull but with a semi-transparent image of her face over it.

After that, I didn’t see anything anymore and I thought, ‘Hey, must be my overactive imagination’…until a week ago. This one is really creepy. A dried-up corpse of a woman with holes in her eyes sprawled diagonally over some sort of black furniture, her head almost touching the black ground, her face turned to me. And when I say holes in her eyes, I don’t mean blank sockets. I mean, real eyes but with actual holes carved in them.

Yeah, yeah, I know. ‘Aslina, you’re being paranoid. It’s just your usual imagination going berserk.’ Well, I will never know. All I know is that I’m writing this down because early this evening, I saw another one and this time, it’s a coffin. Thank God I didn’t see anything in it.

Man, have I been out of action or what? I mean, my Friendster is like totally un-updated. I even forgot I had one. With my mind (what mind?) caught up in so many stuff, I can’t even remember to check my mail, my Friendster, even my mailbox (the physical one that comes attached to a house). Speaking of which, I think there was an Astro bill inside. Shit, I better pay it before my Astro gets cut.. for the third time.

Yes, yes, yes, my cousins, I do hear your screams of “Where’s our pictures??!! Give us the pictures nooooowwwwww, or suffer the consequences!!” Once I get my head straight (when does that ever happen?), I’ll send them to you, as usual, through your Friendster. Just hope some of you remember to make some room in your Friendster album. I think I also have pictures for my high-school buddies. Maybe I should deform the pictures first before I send them, muahahahahhaha!!! Add Jean’s head to a little penguin body, attach some flies buzzing around Ah Si, some feathered handcuffs to Joon…. urkk.. let go.. of.. my.. neck.. pls.. fine, no modifications.

Anyway, if you did mail me or msg me or whatever, give me a nudge once in a while to make sure (1) I’m still alive, (2) that I reply you, (3) hmmm, is there a 3?

No, I am not having a sex change if that’s what you guys are thinking. I just had a somewhat life-changing information given to me. You know how some fishes have no gender and some fishes can change genders? Well, apparently, cats can change gender too. I’m serious.

I went to Australia for a holiday and left my cats in the care of my vet. When I came back, my vet handed me Pablo, the adult cat, and then said, ‘Oh, yeah, your other cat, Ayu, is a male.’

I just went like, ‘Huh?! Really??!!’ What is it with me and male cats? I was sooooo happy when I first got Ayu from my cousins, coz she’s really pretty and I was so happy to finally get a female cat. And she turns out to be a ‘he’. Sigh, I wonder, if I didn’t send Ayu to be castrated, how long would it have taken me to find out his actual gender?

So now Ayu is called Ayun. Yeah, yeah, weird name. My mom was the one who renamed him. Sigh, sometimes when I look at Ayun, I just feel so frustrated. I mean, he acts like a girl, he sounds like a girl, he even looks like a girl. Now I got 2 male cats. No wonder Pablo hated him so much when Ayun first came into the house. He must have known that Ayun was male, and was probably thinking, ‘Why the heck is my owner bringing another male into the house?’

I want a female cat. Wahhh!!!!!

The brown tabby is Pablo, my first cat, and the white one is the gender-changing Ayun.

I don’t particularly like having my private thoughts and opinions read by people I know or who know me. I like the anonymity to be able to write freely and without worrying whether I’ll offend anyone or say something wrong. Humans are sensitive and cunning beings; whatever I write or say might offend the people I know, or be misunderstood, or be used against me, and I find it, to put it mildly, annoying. But that’s what makes us humans. Nothing can change that.

Thus, I hope you understand where I’m coming from. It’s nothing personal. It’s more of a safety-catch. I blog elsewhere so if you find me, you’re welcome to read it. Mayhaps I will use this blog sometimes, if I feel like it. In the meantime, please have a wonderful life and do take care.