Grounded Ox Vol 2: Coffee and TV

It was strangely gratifying to notice that tonight's episode of Law and Order SVU took a swipe at not one, but two artistes. Not the most original of episodes (I was hoping the kid would turn out to be some psychopathic delinquent) but it was good for a few laughs, plus having the term "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" bandied about kind of made up for it. Take that, Eminem.

So anyway. How are you, folks? It's been a slow day. So slow that in fact I'm itching to go to work, and I may just jump on the train at 6.50 am tomorrow so that I'll be just in time for work at oh..10.00. Thank you, KTM Komuter. As usual your speed in conveying us all is unprecedented.

As I was talking to a friend over coffee today (yes this is what people who don't have cars do, we have coffee) I couldn't help but look around at the people in the vicinity. Yes, that includes pretty girls, and then the question suddenly popped into my head: what constitutes pretty or attractive (and this goes for both sexes)?

From a male point of view, in my experience it evolves as you grow older (doesn't help that we're at least 5 years behind mentally). I used to go ga-ga over pretty tall girls with legs that "go on forever", so to speak. Being firmly entrenched in the geek/nerd camp, the probability that I could actually interact with these "pretty people" was statistically just below the one that tells you when pigs could fly. Therefore the myth that these people were snobbish and wouldn't give you the time of day was reinforced, partly because we were too busy being geeks and some of them were snobbish. These days, thanks to a certain planetary alignment I run into (and interact with! Yay!) these figures of myth occasionally, and I'm happy to report that not only do they give me the time of day, sometimes they give me the date as well...which means that there are some nice ones out there. Ahem.

As time went on and the myth of the tall pretty bombshell dissipated, I realised that the definition of attractiveness changed as well. No longer was I only content to ogle boobs and a nice pert arse (although honest to God these are desirable attributes which merit their own blog entry) but I began to look for more. A certain..spunkiness, perhaps. Intelligence, also. No doubt influenced by the novels I read as a teenager the vapid doe eyed fair-skinned maiden gradually got replaced by, well, a more..compact package. Preferably wielding dual swords +2 (Ash, lay off the RPGs - ed.)

I guess I just outgrew the notion of the whole princess who needed rescuing thing as well as the oh-God-she-better-be-pretty-so-I-can-show her-off-to-my-mates thing. So as I sat there sipping my overpriced (but still relatively sedap) coffee I realised that it could be so many things: the shape of the mouth, the symmetry of the face, the way the hair is cut/falls across the face, the clothes (oh even with a hijab a woman can still be elegant), the bleedin' obvious (yes, pert/medium/large top and bottom), the walk, even the slope of the back (especially that little hollow in the small of the back..yum!) and that no matter where you look there'll always be someone who catches your own particular fancy, whatever your pleasure. In fact, I may be brave enough to venture that to perhaps one or two people out there I'm not that bad a catch either, hahah! Now doesn't that warm the cockles of my heart!

Anyway, here's to Malaysia (where the grass is green and the girls are pretty AND well..er..read) and to subjective attractiveness! By the way, what turns YOUR crank?