the head in the driver seat

who is looking out for you? we never really know the answer to that. until the time counts.

it was haji. we chose to drive ourselves to kuantan instead of getting him to drive us there. it wasn't so much to let him spend haji with his family, for the meaning of the holiday has skipped our mind, but because we wanted to experience driving there on our own. the feeling was exhilirating, the freedom, the control.

before we left, he gave us last minute instructions on how to reach the highway. ha! not surprising he didn't have much faith in us, we didn't have much faith in ourselves either. still, we were armed with a polite speaking gprs lady and the foolish confidence of the youth. youth? we are still young? how else can we explain our baseless confidence.

when we reach destination, my handphone tweeted with an incoming message. have you reached kuantan, he asked? i was surprised. it sounded like he care. true enough, he has been with us for 10 years now, ever since the arrival of the oldest. but for the last 10 years, the only times we have crossed words were details of errands for him to run and rebukes when he crosses his line. rarely, though not never, have i asked about his personal life. we have kept our distance and that was the way we like it. i have long learnt that the best relation with employees was an impersonal one, unless you want to court for messy dialogues. they work for you. full stop. they are not your friend. otherwise you'll be hearing all sorts of sob stories on why they cannot perform their work and why they need to borrow more money. complications, i don't need.

his sms took me by surprise. even my parents didn't call me at my estimated time of arrival to check whether i have arrived safely. i replied that i have just arrived. he texted back advising me to leave early on the date of departure so that i will not be caught up in the traffic jam.

i never realised he cared for us. i have always thought that we were his employers and that was that. his duty was to perform his job efficiently and nothing more. when his duty was not required, his ties to us cease. perhaps i have been more cold-blooded than him all these years. unforgiving. walls raised too high.

come monday morning, after the holiday, he was once again the head that was in the driver seat. i see nothing more of him than the back of his head, and we say nothing more. life goes back to normal.

even principles can get confused

i am a person of principles, can't you tell? *smirk*


when it comes to adding friends on facebook, i only add those that i know. you can probably tell, from the miserable number of people i have added since i joined. that plus the fact that i don't meet people much everyday in my line of work. ants perhaps, numbers most definitely, dustballs a couple of them, but people, i only get to hear their voices more often than not. a far cry really from people i know who have hundreds and thousands of friends. i wonder. is there a limit to the number of people you can add? does anyone have friends going up to the millions? i probably should start another alter ego profile, just to find out the answer. i can add anybody and everybody. search for jane, mary, david (nah! there's this particular david i'm not too fond off. two, come to think of it), peter, john, and i'll add all of them. i'll probably be reported for spam activities even before i've started. my train of thoughts is racing away again.


according to my principles, i don't add people whom i don't know, friends of friends that i have neither met nor know of. a little freaky if you think of it. these are people that you don't even know your friends knew, until you see a little message saying that they exist on the face of the earth and will like to add you as friend. who?? then you click on the link and you see the common friend. soon, you'll have your friend's aunty's niece's boyfriend's step-brother's dog's cousin's owner's maid's husband's co-worker's patient's uncle wanting to add you as friend. that's where my principles come in. no, sorry, i don't add people i don't know.


pretty easy definition. unless you have a cheese-hole brain like mine. the people i know category is finely sub-divided into people i know and remember, and people i know but can't remember. recently, my number of friends on facebook have exploded significantly because i've found some old classmates, people from another life and time, which you can surely expect that i won't be able to remember all. names that i have brought with me along the journey of time, easy peasy, click the add button. but as more names and faces surfaces, there are some that i don't have a very vivid recollection of. errr.....who? ya, ya, i think i can faintly remember. a niggling feeling in some bottomless pit of my body that i know that person, though i cannot recall anything. amazing! my dna remembers him. that's why i've been having so much trouble trying to keep anything in my hard drive, i was using the wrong part of my body. anybody knows how to hardwire my memory power to my dna?


then there's inevitably the other group. the people i knew but i can't remember at all. that probably accounts for a very large portion of those who are not my classmates. i was a popular kid back then and it was easy for me to make friends. well, if i had known then that my brain is going to degenerate into a sponge foam, i would have aimed an instant camera in the faces of people i met and go 'cheeseeeeee'.....chee chak. these are people that i didn't see everyday, that i didn't have the opportunity to get to know of. not surprising that i wouldn't remember them, right? heck! someone told me that i once had a crush on his brother. i can only say that if i punch his brother's name into my memory bank and it comes out nada, zilch, not even a tiny niggling feeling, his brother couldn't have been very memorable. still, i accepted his invitation. i think i know him. if someone claims you had a crush on that person, you must have known him lah!!


so now, i have people giving me suggestions on friends to add, people whose names are only alphabets to me. i don't know if i ever knew them in the first place, or merely forgot them. category one, or category two. my principles are confused. i don't want to click, press the add button, only to have someone on the other hand go, 'who the heck is this? friend of my friend? i don't even know she existed until she tried to add me as friend!?!? if i add her, soon i'll have to add my friend's aunty's niece's boyfriend's step-brother's dog's cousin's owner's maid's husband's co-worker's patient's uncle as friend also!!'. then again, if i don't add her, i'll appear to be snobbish and cool. if i knew her, and don't add her, that's going against principle one. if i add her, but i don't really know her, that's going against principle two. now we know why a lot of people don't have principles. looks like i'm going to chuck mine soon.

evolution

monday morning. bah! best for pondering on the many mysteries of the world, as if mondays aren't depressing enough already.

is it just me, or did the entire population of youth just got more effeminate? red lips, curly wispy hair, pale white complexion, manja-ish tone of voice, and long slender limbs. and i was just talking about the barely-pubescent boys. see fahrenheit, f4, kat-tun (what's with this name? sounds like someone spitting.?!?!?!) and tvxq. famous up and coming boy bands. not like i'm very hip and happening, i just googled those names. frankly, i wouldn't be able to tell one boy from another with all the same above features. there must be this secret list somewhere that requires fulfilment of the said features before you can even think of joining the j-pop scene. i can imagine this conversation carrying on as we speak in some corner of the world, "sorry, your singing amatei is good, and you honda mitsubishi dance awesome, but you've really got to do something about that awful suzuki jusco tan of yours. that dark skin toyota-sony of yours is not going to rock."

i suppose there is nothing wrong with the new image of these soon-to-be man, except that all of them feel like your son. you feel like patronising them, patting them on their head and telling them to pull up their pants. perhaps this is a sign of my age, but i just cannot imagine asking any of them to help with moving boxes of books, chopping wood or making a d.i.y. furniture. ya, of course not, they are famous pop-stars!! but aside from their status, they look like they'll fall over if you blow hard enough. pretty pathetic if you think about it, because these are going to be whom we hand our future over to. male chauvinism may be so distasteful, but there is something raw, something comforting about a man wanting to protect his woman. for the young male generation nowadays, you feel just the opposite, that you need to nurture them, to harbour them.

maybe the world is becoming a more developed place, requiring more intelligence, wisdom, brain rather than brawn and sheer brute force, hence the evolution in these homo sapiens. still, there must be something out there that cannot be done with the power of the gab.

if the male population is getting more effeminate, how about the female? can the female be more female? or did they turn more butch? maybe it's a generalisation, and it's definitely not true for the entire world population, but girls nowadays speak with a very high octave voice. almost like they have swallowed an entire helium balloon. ross bagdasarian, sr. will probably be ecstatic, having no end of potential candidates to play the role of his alvin the chipmunk, but he's dead, so he wouldn't really care. it's quite cute and adorable, these little squeeky voices, but when so many asian wannabes talk with the same high-pitched nasal twang, it gets to be a little pretentious, and downright annoying. i can still hear it in my brain, having had an overdose of it last night when i was watching tv.

what are they feeding the youngsters nowadays that everybody seems to be getting an excess of female hormones? must be something they are injecting into our poultry, or perhaps our meat. chemicals to make the meat more tender, the chicken juicier, and as a side-effect, our men more endowed in the boobs department. when my little batman starts raising his little pinky to drink his cup of tea, i'm definitely cuttting off all meat from his diet!!

critical level

eeeeeeeee oooooooooo eeeeeeeeee ooooooooo

the alarms are blaring, the red siren light flashing. the emergency status has been activated. unauthorised personnel, please proceed to nearest exit for evacuation. it has now reached a dangerous level. dangerous, i repeat. stay at your own risk.

apparently, my level of cynicism has surpassed my dad's.

all hopes at redemption is gone.

ahhhh, how i wish i can return to the naive, carefree, trusting days but looks like this big cement chip of cynicism is here to stay for good. hubby, i need more space on the bed.

apple of my eye

as you can see, i'm still here, writing the next post. i've only survived the potential body threat in the last post....because she is still asleep. lol.

moving on to the next topic.

everyday at 4pm, i will hear a thunderous roar of footsteps clamouring to greet me, followed by excited screams calling my name. it is the most beautiful sound in the world, i think, for i know when i hear those sounds, that they are safe and sound, and by my side once again.

little princess is sweet and affectionate, as usual. she runs to my arms and give me the biggest hugs.

little batman, on the other hand, is quite rambunctious, as boys usually are but more passive. he is resilient yet quiet, he is tough, yet fragile. i see him mouthing off, talking with such confidence that once in a while, i forget how little he still is, how he keeps little things that affect him quietly locked in his heart.

yesterday, he ran to me and greeted me, upon which he spied the little plaster on the inner crook of my arm. ma, what happened?, he asked in a tiny voice, his usually loud boisterous delivery gone. i've forgotten all about the routine body check that i did that morning, the many bottles of blood that the lab insisted on taking. faint, i'm feeling faint at the loss of blood as we speak. ha! so dramatic. i brushed his question away with a brusque 'went to the hospital this morning' for i thought the entire household is already aware of the much talked about agenda. for a split second, he was quiet. then he asked, 'are you sick?', the silence in his voice louder than the noisiest thunder.

i can't remember what i told him but he left, satisfied with the casual tone in my reply. looking back, how i wished i've gathered him in my arms, and reassured him that i am fine and healthy, that mommy will always be here for him. it's a little scary sometimes, to remember how the little ones are depending on us and how fragile our lives are. for that moment, i should have gave him the reassurance that he needed and held him close, until he squirmed. but that moment has passed, and i can never replay it once more.

still, for him, for her, for them, i will be trying every day, to stay healthy, to be there, to give them all the love in the world so that they will know, no matter how often they fall down in the world, how hard they fall, we will still be here, waiting with open arms.

wanted: ms. bat-friend

i know my life span will shorten drastically if i post this up.

i am going to be so dead.

*grins*

but short of advertising in this blog, i have no other way of locating her.

i have a friend.

if you call at 8am, you will not get her. she is most probably asleep.

if you call at 10am, you will still not get her. she is most probably asleep.

if you call at 12pm, you will get her voicemail. she is having lunch in her sleep.

if you call at 2pm, still don't think you can get her. she is dating mr chao's son in her dreams.

if you call at 4pm, you think you'll definitely get her.......

......but she is dating mr chao.

she is fully awake and raring to go when i have gone to bed. when i have woken up from my first bout of sleep, she is probably having supper. and back to bed i'll be.

she said she'll call me on tuesday. today is thursday. i have not heard a snore or otherwise from her.

you'll think that i have a bat for a friend. but she is not. she definitely belongs to the homo sapiens species, i can reassure you.

however, i think after i post this, i will have lost a friend. still, i couldn't resist pulling at her leg. *grins*

friend, if you see this, and you know i am talking about you, please report for attendance at the nearest information counter.

readers, if you see my obituary in the papers next week, you'll know that she has indeed reported for attendance, with a cleaver in hand.

*grins*

complications

life is so complicated.

perhaps because we make it so.

scenario: i need to get a quote to buy some presents.

price quoted was way over my budget. faint. i replied, too expensive, anything cheaper? another clearance item was recommended. price was reasonable, but stock was outdated, unattractive and well, looks like clearance stock. hey, not acceptable. anything between the two prices? how about i sell you the first item at half the price, he said. half the price? fainter. don't want to exercise my authoritarian muscle that way. that's like daylight highway robbery. ok, it's obvious that i managed to get the quote because of privileged status, a status that i cannot abuse and must be a role model for. i am the black-faced justice pao reincarnated. ta dang! such injustice i cannot be the perpetrator. motto for my life: never take advantage of people nor be taken advantage of. ooooooooooo, aaaaaaaaaa....that's the sound of justice pao's court coming into session, by the way.

(that person must be thinking expensive cannot, cheap also cannot, don't give discount cannot, give too much discount also cannot. go die lah!!! *one hard kick off the mountain ledge*)

sigh.

in the end, an agreement was reached. which leads to another series of dilemma. how many to buy? should i even buy? to all appearance, it's still a present at the exorbitant price, eventhough it's not going to cost me that much. others in the group may be expecting such offerings in the future. not a very good example to set, especially if i do not intend to follow-up with such a tradition in the future. so how? cheap but looks expensive, also cannot. faintest. so, i asked for the catalog. but not directly. after racking his brain for so long, and dragging him through hell, only to come to an agreement, i'm not about to ask him for the catalog. never die before meh? so, i got someone else to ask for me. she has already called me. yes, i can sense the very swift kick in my behind imminent. must go put on some heavily padded underwear.

i wish a hole can open up in the earth and let me hide inside for a little while. at least until this whole thing blows over. you guys follow my train of reasoning, right? no? even my faithful readers have abandoned me because i am too wishy-washy. justice pao can be wishy-washy, right? no rule in the agreement that when one is exercising justice, one must reach decision quickly, easily and efficiently.

maaaaa, why is life so complicated?

headache over? not even remotely so. such a good buy, get for little princess or not? she would love it. but she already owns one. if buy for her despite that fact, little batman will ask, with shivering lips and teary doggy-eyes, what about me....?

i don't know how to answer the questions anymore. i think i bit off more than i can chew, and i've dug my grave too deep so i'll just go lie in it now and hide from the world.

please don't give me anymore options.

when will you be gone, mr h1n1?

frustrated.

anyone who possess any of the following qualification, please write in for an interview.

1. can eradicate the swine flu, kill it and wipe it out from existence, pull it out by its roots, you get the idea.

2. owns a private, sanitised, fully-fueled (ask me to pay for fuel also i die) private jet and is willing to extend unlimited mileage usage

3. can build a giant rubber condom bodysuit, with porous valves which only allows ventilation through but not germs (only ventilation, but not germs? sounds pretty impossible. that's why i'm hiring! if i know how to do it, will i need to advertise?). note: rubbersuit must be very attractive and in the latest colour of the season; we can't allow safety to get in the way of being fashionable, can we?

4. can follow me on hand and foot, with a bucket of commercial grade cleaner and air-freshener, sanitising everything within 500m of my vicinity, making everything h1n1-free for me

5. can hypnotise airline staffs not to forfeit my tickets / spent-so-many-hours-earning-until-back-is-broken-hard-earned-money.

6. can make me a flying carpet, or failing that, an old brass lamp (preferably with a brad-pitt lookalike genie....am i asking for too much?)

7. can build a time-travel machine, and sanitise the entire time-space continuum whilst you are at it, will you?

applicants only have to possess any one of the above qualification. remunerations.....who needs remunerations when you are a genius of the above standard. your skills and your level of satisfaction at job well done will be reward enough.

meanwhile, i will be here, sulking and pouting, counting and getting acquainted with my hard-earned money that will soon evaporate into thin air, waiting for interviewees to walk in.

aiyo....my eyes.

sigh.

these days everybody seem to be under an invisible blanket of pressure. high profile businessmen, professionals, teachers, politicians, right down to housewives, maids and even roadside sweeper.

this literary genius, ahem, is of course not exempted. faced with continuing oppression, even this faceless blogger has to give in - to the current trend, to the global demand, to the whims and wants of the readers.

for the unobservant few, please note that my font is significantly larger. spoils the 'feel' of this cosy little hideout if you ask me, but my number one fan is getting old with age, and with that eyesight is deteriorating. as such, to ensure continuing goodwill and readership count, i have done the inevitable.

i hope reading this blog will now continue to be a pleasure.

if this still proves to be ineffective... *hands over magnifying glass*.......



:-p

medical discovery

eureka!

i believe i've just discovered a new strain of the h1n1 virus. i think it has once again mutated to a different strain, faster than any antibiotics can tame it. since i'm the official discover of this new mutation, i shall name it the h23n-me virus. at the moment, little batman is down with the virus, my life specimen, and is home recuperating. characteristics of the virus is as follows, so please be on your guard:

Name: H23N-me

Incubation period: couple of hours / overnight, especially when the next day is a school day

Symptoms: fever, blocked nose, fatigue, perceived insomnia, aversion to school, followed by stay at home and ki ki kat kat, want this and want that, eat this and eat that, inability to focus on revision for exam, distracted, hunger unsatieted when attempting to revise, increased degree of complain and whining.

Degree of infectious: not high. close family members not infected, sibling still has to go to school.

High-risk group: male, aged around 8 yrs old, wears batman mask.

Transmission: through the lazy bone.

Treatment: high dosage of cartoon and non-school work related activities. forcing the patient to go to sleep and abstain from the above will also lead to dramatic recovery. continuous feeding can lessen level of complain. cooling herbal drinks are advised to keep patient hydrated. the level of bitterness is proportionately related to the speed of recovery of infection.

do study the above information with care to familiarise yourself with the current trend of virus. although transmission has not been proven, it may very well transmit to 38-year old married women as well, especially when it's a friday.

*grins*

war-zone

even before i step inside, i knew it was a hopeless case. like losing the battle even before i have begun. still, i have to do it, i was the only one suited for the position. one look at the messy room, and i wished badly that i can turn on my tail and make a run for it. but the messy room will always be standing there, waiting for me, beckoning me with a mournful wave. with a sigh, and glazed look in my eyes, i walked in.

i didn't know where to start. everywhere was strewn with strips of paper, momentoes, toys, stationeries, rubbish to me but perhaps invaluable to them. anything that you can imagine, and can't imagine. slowly i worked my way through the mountainload of things. i grouped, gathered, sorted and threw.

inside i saw things that made me shake my head. broken pencil leads. cut clothes tag. erasers smaller than the nail on my little pinky. broken rubber bands. ice cream sticks. made me sigh out loud and wonder why my kids are akin to homeless bag ladies, collecting every single piece of rubbish that passed their hands. inside i also saw things that made me smile, sitting there like a resident of the asylum, grinning quietly to myself. scraps of paper with imaginative drawings of monsters, with equally creative names. perhaps if little batman does not quite succeed in his studies, by his day-dreaming trackrecord now, he can make it as a manga artist. the motherly pride blossoms in me. little pieces of paper in the little princess' handwriting, detailing how she should prepare for mother's day. little comments left in her brother's testpaper, pretending to be the teacher and re-marking his results. things that made me smile for all the sweetness, the naivety, the carefreeness of my children.

simple act of kindness

people who know me well knew i had a difficult hurdle to cross a few years ago. i lost someone very dear and close to me in the blink of an eye, which left me with a multitude of extreme feelings and emotional turmoil beyond which i have experienced. perhaps it was the first time that i have gone through such loss or perhaps it was the abruptness of the events. i never knew how it felt to lose someone whom you will never expect to leave you. people die all the time, yes, but usually old sick people. not young ones who were just laughing and talking with you last week.

that is all history, and i'm not trying to relive that part of my life again.

it was a trying time. during that time, one person texted me every couple of weeks, or perhaps months. he wasn't even what i would have termed a friend, we weren't even that close. he knew me by reason of marriage and he only knew her in passing. still, i received text messages from him every so often, enquiring how i was doing, how i was handling. simple short messages. i didn't pay it much thought back then, and perhaps i still do not. but deep down, i am grateful for his simple act of kindness. people that i have thought were my friends have not enquired about my condition quite so often. here, a person who was just marginally more than a stranger, was helping me through the lowest point of my life then. nothing much, just some 'how are you coping?' or perhaps 'how are you?' are already a few sentences more than some friends expressed.

when someone ask, i can answer. i can say what's bearing down hard on my mind, and in my heart. how i'm missing her still, or how i can't take it anymore. but when no one asks, i can only keep it quietly locked inside of me. so silently, even without my realising it, he eased the pain a little. he provided me with an outlet, as short as the replies were.

sometimes, when you don't realise it, your simple act of kindness makes a little difference in the lives of others. when you find a lost wallet and call the owner to return it, when you smile at the person in the lift and leave with a 'have a nice day', when you call a lost child's parent to locate her parent, when you lend a helping hand. decent acts by decent human beings, which amount to just being gracious in your daily life, having a thought about someone else other than yourself. simple acts that touches the lives of others. these are so few and far between nowadays.


thank you, mister.

lesson never learnt

last friday was spent curled up like a prawn. been a long time since i last had an attack. should be smarter after all these years, but still my mouth operates faster than my brain. don't know what triggered it off this time, never did know every time. could have been stress. could have been what i ate. could also have been what i did not eat. every time i can only curl up like a prawn, down various types of antacid and pills in the hope that one will finally work, do nothing and wait. and the pain will cease, it's only a matter of how long.

the answer to the question is.....

ok, so i'm a snob. i get pissed off when people are dumb. plain unintelligently dumb. not like duh...! dumb, but dumb as in irrelevant, pointless, incomprehensible dumb. see my example.

i texted him: is last thur's document with you or the office?

to which he replied: i am in the office.

what the !??! please, pray tell, how does that answer my question? irritates the hell out of me and begs for the quick retort, "i'm asking about the document, not you. don't care where you are", doesn't it? to which i did not execute. i am much too nice.

i am in the office. how does that relate to my question?

a. the document is not with me, but i am in the office, i will check
b. the document is not with me, but i will get it from the office.
c. the document is with me, but i can't give you because i am in the office
d. i don't know where the document is but i know where i am; in the office
e. i am an idiot, but at least i know i am in the office
f. who cares about your document, i am in the office.
g. if my wife ask, i am in the office. not in the shopping centre with my girlfriend.
h. this is an automated text reply. i am in the office.


the interpretation can be a thousandfold, limitless even in your imagination. but the reply is one that definitely does not answer the question. arggghhhhh! if i were a teacher and i asked this student to write a composition about his hobby, i think he will write pages after pages detailing about apples, rocket science, the beginning of man and the upcoming game between barcelona and man u even, to which i will scribble a red big fat IRRELEVANT across his essay and give him a satisfying F.

i take a breath, and i hope, i pray even that the document will appear in my hand, magically, at the end of the day. i don't want to know where he is or how it came about.

friends we are, forever friends we'll be

coffee bean. a place which holds millions of memories and thousands of stories. a place that is the beginning of many things, and the ending of even more. a place that is more than just the neighbourhood coffee corner.

today it held one page of my life.

i was nervous as hell, never thought i would be. i thought butterflies in the stomach only happen when you are meeting the opposite sex. apparently not. 28 years. i have not seen her in 28 years. i don't even remember how she looked like, until i checked out her profile in facebook. her present features do not ring any bell, until i caught a glimpse of a photo, yellow with age. that was the girl i knew. that was the girl that was an integral part of my life when i was 9 years old. her eyes remind me of something familiar, something close, something that i am unable to pinpoint, at a past that i have mostly wiped out but that pair of eyes tugged at me still.

it is quite amazing, when you think about it, that i have managed to find this long lost friend of almost 3 decades. i have obliterated the memories of everything else. sometimes i don't understand why memories of her and her alone have survived time. but it did. no one is any longer surprise when i don't remember things. that is me; the worst possible memory. when they were giving out cranial memory capacity, i was probably last in line, and when it came to my turn, they said, 'sorry, we have run out of stock'. that's why it's amazing, especially to myself, that i remember not only her but also her chinese name, her brother's name, her sister's name and the area where she was staying. where that memory comes from, i have absolutely no idea. the last time that those information surfed through my head was 27 years ago, the last time i talked to her. today, when i talked to her, those details came out clear as spring water.

her mother says this is fate. i agree.

m.i.a. report

i am seriously quite worried.

i seem to have lost my sense of humour. i've looked everywhere. under the blankets, in the cabinet, in the oven, under the sofa, even in the hamsters' cage, but it's still as elusive as ever. i would make a police report, hoping that the extra manpower will be able to aid me better in the search, but i've only realised it's disappearance in the last 24 hours, and our men in blue won't accept a missing humour report until at least 48 hours. sigh. what can i do?

i'm beside myself with anxiety, wondering where could it have gone? could someone else have picked it up by mistake and perhaps abuse it? i dare not imagine such atrocity. i can only hope, i can only pray, that it will turn up in due time. perhaps it was the stress, the routine of the daily grind; i have not been paying it enough attention. maybe it felt slighted, and has resorted to running away to gain my attention. well, gain my attention it sure did. i have a very funny feeling that it eloped with my laughter as well. whatever will i do without the both of them?

i should have known there was a problem when i seldom see it hanging around anymore. people will tell jokes, and what that they will get in respond is a 'ha!', or a grimace at most. the funny bone refused to be tickled. i tried stephen chow, i tried the return of the pink panther, i even tried joke books. i tried all i could to bring a closer bond between the two of us. somehow, i feel that all the efforts have gone unappreciated.

i can only hope that this is only a temporary break, that it will return once again when it has seen enough of the outside world. i have tried substituting 'lol' with the missing echo of the laughters ringing in my ear, but it seem shallow, fake and cold. how many days can i go on without my sense of humour, i do not know.

please, hurry home, i miss you so.

smelly business

kids have a defunct olfactory sense.

i know for a fact that my two not-so-little ones do. why else would they be interested in knocking on my door, attempting to barge it down in order to gain access, everytime i go to the toilet for some heavy business? sometimes, in their eagerness, they will come complete with tools; screwdrivers, coins, anything that can operate the lock from outside. other times, they will come unprepared and just knock, knock, knock, knock the door in the hope that the door will finally collapse under their persistence, or at the very least, their mother will have stress-related constipation and give up altogether.

i don't know what is so urgent that they must demand my immediate attention each time, braving through all types of weird smell and noise emating from the toilet. if someone is in the toilet doing whatever they normally do in there, whatever pressing business i have with them can wait. house on fire? i'll probably wait until i hear the sound of the flushing system before sounding the alarm. my kids, they are different. they do not seem to mind the fact that you are in the middle of serious negotiations with your body and insist on coming right in, if the door is unlocked, which i've always made sure it isn't, and carry on their conversation as if nothing is out of place. if they can't gain entry, even after trying for the longest time, they'll satisfy themselves by oogling through the semi-translucent toilet door and barely make out the figure of someone sitting on the throne. otherwise, they will sit by the side of the door, leaning, waiting, dreaming, until business negotiations in the toilet is over. on their more creative days, they will shove letters and papers under the door sill. i don't know how they expect me to walk to the door to pick it up though. toilet business is becoming a lot more stressful in this household. they don't seem to do that with their daddy though. funny.

kids = strange.

mummy = constipated.

walking down the same old lane; memory lane

life is a many curious thing.

last weekend, fate brought me back to a place that i have never re-visited in 20 over years. eventhough it holds many a memories, most of which i have let drifted away with the wind of time, it is a place that i am most unlikely to return to. simply because there is no reason to. it's tucked away in a corner of bukit timah, not close to anywhere that you will want or need to be in, and so it remains a stranger to me all these years while it changed and transformed with time.

bukit timah plaza. a place where i spent 4 years of my life amongst strangers and friends, amongst family members.. but not quite, a place where i learnt a lot of things, a place where i grew up with the companionship of me, myself and i.

even after 20 over years, i was amazed to see that some things did not change. most things have, of course, but in this world where everything moves in lightning speed, and life moves on in the blink of an eye and leaves you grasping at the empty air, the familiarity of the place is like a security blanket; musky, old and comfortable. pizza hut was still there. dbs bank was still there. but more surprising, even gallen sports was still there.

where i bought my first pair of dark blue nike sports shoe. i can still see the image clearly in my mind..... or at least i think i can, because suddenly it feels like it could have been new balance, and not nike. *grins* sometimes, you think you know something so well, and you think you remember it very clearly, but it's all a trick of the mind. yes, definitely, it's new balance.

even bro's favourite music shop is still there. amazingly, even the decoration, or the lack of it, doesn't seem to have changed much. i wonder if i walk in there, will they still remember my bro? was it tony? i don't remember. then again, i didn't know him very well back then. despite staying above the shopping center, and probably coming down here a million times, i didn't visit that shop more times than the fingers on one hand.




a part of my memory of that place brings back the whiff of the most delicious mee siam, available only at the corner stall in the highest floor. my mind knows that it is the most delicious mee siam ever, the typical wet soupy type of singaporean mee siam, but i can't really remember anything else about it, except for my favourite moniker of it being 'the most delicious'. is it hot? is it sweet? is it aromatic? i've forgotten every single detail.





it's not on the highest floor anymore, but it's still in that cute little corner spot, several floors down.

last saturday i had a taste of it again. it was delicious. undoubtedly. was it as good as last time? i can't even remember how it was suppose to be, so i wouldn't be able to tell the difference. but being able to recapture that part of my memory again, even for a little while, even for a small bite, was priceless. it was like a dream come true. i didn't finish it, i couldn't, but just being able to be there, to have another taste of my memory again, it was enough. if i could freeze it and bring it back with me, so that i can let the memory melt on my tongue and re-awaken memories from long long ago, i would have.

the funniest part of re-living this gourmet experience, with all the satisfaction that it brought, is that i probably did not have this mee siam more than 10 times in all my years there. so why is it so special? because it belonged to a time past, where things are now only pictures in your mind, where memories are what you think or remember it to be, and being able to physically taste it or re-live it, and to capture at the elusive past even for a moment, the experience is so real and mind-boggling.

heck, i think even the floorings are the same. sigh. familiarity brings comfort.

money wise

i just paid $60 just so that someone can come and fondle my refrigerator. caress its doors, push its buttons and make its engine purrrrrr. sigh. i don't see my fridge getting all excited about it. a waste of money, if you ask me. i can think of hundreds of better ways to spend the $60.

like...

60 pieces of roti canai *drools* or
60 packets of taman tun nasi lemak *drools* or
10 sets of macdonald's mcvalue lunch or
1 large pizza, 1 regular pizza, 1 set bbq chickstix, 1 breadstix & 1 bottle coca-cola or
52 chances of winning 4d *yes!!* or
60 pieces of kilometrico pen; beribu-ribu perkataan or
200 packets of pocket tissue *atchoo* or
200 stamps to send 200 letters locally *dear john, i'm sorry to tell you....* or
75 packets of maggi mee curry *drools* or
200 copies of photostat i/c or
60 cups of kopi o or
60 packets of bee hoon kosong or
60 cups of 7-11 mini slurpee

instead, all i got was some cheap thrills for my fridge, who is not even humming louder than normal.