Lists and A Fond Memory

My best friend recently introduced me to an awesome new webbie, called listography.com. It's basically a site where you can make lists. It's so cool because I do keep lists... In fact, I have a book of lists: list of books I want to collect in the long term, list of movies I want to own, list of furniture I'd like for my future house... More importantly, I have a list of all the things I love about my ex as well as, err... embarrassingly, a list of some guys that I've had crushes on. Well, I guess I could say it's these lists that are the entire inspiration for this blog. I wanted to have a place to expand on the stories that some of the points in my list represent. I mean, the points on the list don't exactly tell the entire story... they just sort of act as retrieval cues for those memories that I wish to keep forever. I guess you could say that I'm sorta afraid I would forget these beautiful memories... Hmmmm, come to think about it, I often fear I may never make such beautiful memories again. So it's good to sometimes remind myself that I once experienced such wonderful times in my life...? Sigh...

Anyhow, I will soon make an account on listography and transfer my lists in my book into listography.com. So, you can look out for that! Well, today, without looking at my book, I was just pondering, off-hand, some of the things that I loved about my ex. Two things came to mind.

The first one. I loved how he always put most of his beansprouts in his noodle soup into my noodle soup whenever we went to Asian restaurants for noodle soup. He did it ever since I once told him how much I loved eating beansprouts. I think I should add that he too loves beansprouts in his noodle soup... and that's enough said.

The second one. We were lying in bed one night, talking, before we finally drifted off to sleep... I was gushing  about how I was having a sudden craving for the wanton suppe that they sell in my hometown. (This was during the time when we were both studying and staying in the hostel of our school in Switzerland... It was where we met.) Fast forward to two weeks later... I was hanging out in my friend's room - Rosie's room. Some of us girls from my class were having a mini party because it was Rosie's birthday. We were chatting, having some cake, playing with balloons, sitting on her bed, drinking some red wine when suddenly, there was a knock on the door...

image source: http://dearoly.blogspot.com/

When they opened the door, it was Jack! He had a serious look on his face and he was looking for me. My face was slightly flushed from the red wine. "Ohhhh, you're in trouble Jenny!!" the whole room cheered teasingly as I went with him (We were still a fairly new couple at the time). When I was out, he said quietly, "You drank." It sounded more like a statement than a question. "Err.. yeah. Just a little. Just to celebrate Rosie's birthday, you know." Then, he looked at me, still with that serious-looking face and said, "Come with me." Then he held my hand and walked me to where he wanted to bring me. On our way, he suddenly asked, "Are you hungry?" "Not really," I replied. It seemed his face became a bit more serious that it already was. He did this thing with his lips that he always does - it's a little hard to describe, it all happens really fast... he sorta bites his bottom lip and slides his bottom lip from right to left... ah, nevermind.

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We reached the recreation lounge - a place in the school with plenty of tables and chairs, a pool table and a vending machine. A bunch of his friends were seated round a table, actually, two tables... there were quite a few of them so they had to join two tables together and pull up the chairs from the other tables to gather round. Seems like they were having a mini party of their own. Two big pots were set on the table and they were all happily eating out of the bowls in their hands. Everyone smiled as they saw us approach. I felt so shy meeting all his friends... of course I'd seen them around school, and we'd hung out before too... but it just felt so weird at that moment... him bringing me into their little party. It almost felt like I was intruding, somehow.

"Come eat!" one of his friends started ladling the contents of one of the pots into a bowl for me. No prizes for guessing right, it was... wanton soup! It turns out that Jack had kept in mind that I had a craving for wanton suppe so that afternoon, he'd suggested to his friends to cook something that day, in particular, wanton soup. The other pot contained green bean soup, another one of my favourites. He and his friends had spent the entire afternoon and evening buying all the ingredients and preparing and cooking the food in the students' kitchen.

image source: http://dearoly.blogspot.com/

Frankly, I'd almost forgotten all about my prattle those nights before. Later that night, while we were once again lying in bed, talking, he told me why they'd cooked that night... because they never did cook, you see. Then I remembered and when I realised, I was soooo touched! My heart was leaping with happiness. I think I also figured out the reason for his serious-looking face: he was worried that after eating and drinking at Rosie's mini birthday party, I wouldn't have any more appetite for the wanton soup he and his friends had prepared (for me - even though his friends didn't exactly know that! Haha!)... which was true in a sense, but I'd made myself to eat as much as I could anyway. But in retrospect, he always had a very serious face whenever he was going to surprise me. I think it's his way of covering up his embarrassment... how cute is that, isn't it? :D

I'll leave you with this song (I feel like a DJ) that I'm currently addicted to... I've been unable to stop nanana-ing the tune even at the dinner table. Yes, while eating... My mom, was surprisingly, not irritated. Perhaps I sing well! Nah, I'm just kidding... I think she's just used to my irritating her.