HANI's Honey

Monday, March 17, 2003

10:02 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Pass Word

Why don't I do the same?

It seems rather logical on the surface, to limit the people allowed to visit my blog. It's not like I'm gaining any material benefit from allowing anonymous strangers to read the words I write. I risk a lot for the attention-gratification of the forty-nine average daily hits.

Yet, my instinct screams adamantly against limiting my viewership. It shouts so strongly that I wonder if maybe my id has a stronger reason than my ego is aware of.

So I hesitate, and I wonder, what do I truly gain by opening my blog to the whole internet?

Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe I should be asking how the risks of discovery could ever outweigh the need to gain more readership?

I think that deep down, I keep secrets from my family to save them the pain of knowledge and to save my boyfriend's butt. I do not keep secrets because I fear punishment or disapproval.

As Tariq and my close friends know very well, I have revealed very painful truths before. Truths that had I hid, would have saved me a lot of months-long pain and misery. Yet, I revealed it because it was a choice between a slow and steady wound that would have bled me to death, or cauterizing it with a very hot knife.

Having revealed that truth the main parties involved, after months of anguish, pain and misery, I am now at peace with that truth. Pain, when you live with integrity, is merely fleeting. The pain of shame and secrets, though not as sharp and terrible as the pain of truth, goes on and on and on.

I think, sometimes, that I'm hoping someone who matters will find out and release me from the burden of protecting them from the truth. Yet, I wish that such truths as I know were not true at all, so that my loved ones need never risk the hurt at all.

So I keep the secrets from my family, pretending that such secrets don't exist at all. Perhaps my id dreams of a day, far away, that I can tell my Mommy, "I made these mistakes in my youth that I kept secret from you, but it's all over now," and maybe then it wouldn't hurt her as much as it would if she were to find out right now.

'Till the day I truly cauterize the wound of lies I live with, I'll lessen the pain by telling it all to the anonymous voyeurs of HANI's Honey.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030317

Sunday, March 16, 2003

04:28 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Let the ground beneath you boom

I didn't say yes.

I shrieked at the top of my voice in absolute excitement.

Now, despite it being nearly twelve hours since I came back from clubbing, I still feel very exhausted and stoned, and I doubt that this blog entry will be of any great quality.

It was a seriously excellent party last night though. We arrived sometime between eleven and twelve in the evening, and I didn't stop dancing until Morales ended his set at around four. Some white man in the dj booth was so impressed by my enthusiasm he gave me one of the mineral waters that the djs in the booth get free. Hee!

I love clubbing, and the price of the next day is worth it. I don't club very often. I don't go to be seen or to pick up men. I go, park myself as near as possible to a stereo bigger than me, and dance there all night.

I miss Movement. That was a club. My favourite spot was on the stereos themselves. The booming that vibrates up your spine all the way from beneath your feet is just fantastic.

Yes, I like dancing on the stereo. Most of my friends are too shy to get on the podiums and stages. They don't want to be stared at and looked at. To me, who cares if people watch? As if they care about me all that much. They'll forget I existed the minute they step out of the club.

I don't really like podiums and stages, since tons of people climb them and it gets very packed, but on the stereo, it's amazing. I don't have to fight for dancing space, the air is much clearer and cleaner above the sea of bodies, you get to control who shares your space with you (and I have pushed disagreeable men off my stereo before), and the view of everyone partying is great! I like watching people and maybe picking up a few new dancing ideas, or checking out cute guys and girls.

Sometimes, I feel slightly guilty when I abandon my friends to be squashed into small teeny spaces on the dance floor, molested and accosted by sleazy men. But hey, they're the ones who refuse to get up on the stereo with me. Too shy. Suffer!!!!

I'll probably suffer in my old age. Hearing problems, worn ligaments from dancing in high heels, lung cancer from secondary smoke....

But I will always have the memories of feeling the best music of my life vibrating my body, while the adrenaline and endorphins of letting my body groove for hours and hours rush through me.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030316

Saturday, March 15, 2003

01:39 a.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Introduction of HANImentors

I've been assuming that my audience is around my age, give or take five years or less, and that they're either my friends, reality TV fans, people who have longed to be like me but never quite dared, or surfers looking for 32D breasts. Having no real way to actually conduct marketing research on my HANIfans (due to lack of money, lack of research skill, and the reluctance of HANIfans to give feedback), I've had to heavily rely on assumptions.

I have discovered a segment I never realized was interested in my blog, however. These are women around their thirties, seeking to mentor someone who they perceive to be running through problems they have just themselves recently overcome. Yup. I have had e-mails from at least two separate women offering encouragement, support, and an ear. Both are married, not working at least temporarily, although highly educated, and seem to have their lives pretty much well in hand.

I am... flabbergasted, amused, excited and slightly cynical, all at the same time. HANImentors?

Before I thought of writing all my thoughts on the web, I used to write it on paper. I'd just take a sheet of paper, write furiously, and throw it away. I didn't keep a book reserved as a diary, but I wrote on those thrown-away sheets of paper as if they were pull-out pages of my diary.

I addressed them all to one fictional person of my own creation, K.Ayu. K.Ayu was ten years older than I am, and is exactly where I thought I wanted to be in ten years. I pretended that she was far away, and I wrote to her, and she would write me back with advice. Except her advice was never really clear, since I couldn't imagine K.Ayu all that clearly.

Now, I suddenly have genuine K.Ayus, willing and ready to be written to, with genuine real advice to give.

There's something about life that's really ironic: You wish and you wish, and you pray to God like mad, for something you think you need so very badly. Time passes by, and your request is never granted, until you have finally learnt to do without that thing. Then your wish and prayers come true.

Now what I wish and wish and wish, is someone who will tell me what my target audience is like!

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030315

Friday, March 14, 2003

03:19 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Paranoid Maniacal Stupidity

Oh my god, I archived last week's entries!!

I have only one criteria for entries to be archived. If there exists even a single person who, should he/she read that entry, acquires an urge to beat up any party mentioned in that entry that is not me, the aforementioned entry will not be archived.

As in, if my brother reads last week's entries, he would beat Tariq up.

See, it's when I do stupid things like this, that I end up truly believing that a man should be in charge of his household proper. I told Tariq that once he marries me he will responsible for the decisions I make, and he was most panicked by the prospect. He says that he wants his wife to be independent and able to think for herself.

He's so cute. As if even if he tried to order me around, he would be able to make me obey without one huge battle ongoing for a month. As if I'm not the most amazing manipulator on earth, and I would not find a way for him to forget what he wanted to order me to do.

But PMS! PMS runs a fog into my mind, and then I couldn't run circles around a dog if I tried. Argh! I was so stupid! How could I have archived last week's entries?

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030314

Thursday, March 13, 2003

02:27 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

pep-talking myself

But for the life of me, I can't seem to get my leg joints to move anywhere remotely productive. Not even to eat or to shower.

I am definitely in one of my more dangerous modes of PMS. Not the angry-I'll-kill-you mode, but the bah-I-can't-be-bothered mode that ends me up behind in school-work and is what begins my road to failing the whole bloody semester....

HANI, you can overcome your PMS! Your mind can over-rule your PMS! Move! You can do it! You will do it! PMS is nothing compared to your amazing and brilliant ADD mind! You will get to college and do productive things!

And we'll reward you! Sushi or a Subway sandwich? Or how about a new book? Yes? Go work?

Well. We'll see if pep-talk to self works....

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030313

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

11:06 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Is panic a symptom of PMS?

Just a few minutes ago, I attempted to have my nice lovely new search engine re-spider my blog, and for no reason I could determine, it thought I have only three documents on my site. Considering that I have many, many pages of archives, being told I only have three made me feel very incredulous.

Considering that for over a year, I had been perfectly content at having my archives be navigation unfriendly, I'm very surprised that I panicked when I saw the number of pages SiteLevel had spidered.

Maybe I'm PMS-ing. I think I might be due for it.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030312a