playing grow up.

i had dinner with a few friends from university a couple of weeks back.

during dinner, i sat at the table and looked at all of us in our corporate wear when suddenly, i thought of us during our student days when grubby jeans, t-shirts and bomber jackets were our uniform.

i felt like an actor in one of those movies which follow a group of friends from their uni days through to their working lives. in those movies, the actors usually transformed from carefree students to working class adults in 5 minutes by wearing more formal clothes, styling their hair and combing it back so it looked that much more grown up.

for some reason, at that moment, i saw all of us as uni students, playing grown-ups by wearing adult clothes. i couldn't believe that it has been 4 years since we've graduated and all of us have moved on so quickly. it was almost surreal.

i could still see us in our worn out t-shirts (back then, wearing worn out t-shirts was not so much a fashion statement as a necessity) crouching around the stove and attempting to make a pot of soup with whatever we had left in our fridge which wasn't expired.

we're all more liquid and jaded now and we've officially entered our "late twenties". instead of examination results, we shared work tales and woes. we talked about marriages and babies and we discussed the rising / falling COE.

hello peddlar. welcome to life and adulthood.

a mark of shame.

the mouthless cat has finally justified it's existence!

excerpts from an associated press article today (i swear this is real):

"BANGKOK, thailand - thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "hello kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said monday.

"the striking armband features hello kitty sitting atop two hearts.

"'simple warnings no longer work. this new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,' said pongpat, acting chief of the crime suppression division in bangkok."

i'm so glad someone is finally putting that annoying mouthless cat to good use.