Questa è Enida

I just did 3.89km on the treadmill, and that was just like to the Flamingo Hotel from home and back! Burned 230 calories, and that was just the two bhindis from the Kari Ikan, plus Ulam Raja and Sambal Terasi with dua suap nasik I had at lunch today! Okay, maybe plus the fortune cookies as well lah, cincai kasik lu. Yat yee sam sei mm look chat pat and I lost count oleady. Hmmm if only there were a machine to flash with a blasting alarm to show my calorie intake as I sumbat my mouth….

Be left last Thursday, north-east bound this time through Hong Kong and Vancouver, back to Calgary…for Blaire’s surgery. Right after dropping him off at the airport (yes, dropping him off, and not sending him off), I tapau some Nasik Lemak for Ka Cher & Pan Yau – breakfast in Bangi. Ka Cher berhangkut over to our Chong Khoon Lin villa and just took it easy in the afternoon. Came 5pm we were getting restless. So off we went to KDE for a splash! Pan Yau joined us later for a dip and a Dipidee Dog. The Claypot yee mee was so yummy that I just watched my diet went terkelepot down the pool!

Friday, after a 4-hour class at KTSN, Ka Cher called with a proposal:

“Want to check in at Marriot or Palm Garden IOI Puchong? Your pick. The pool at Marriot is better, tapi.”

Pack, pack, pack…off we were to Marriot, checked in at 4.30pm and was already having a splashingly smashing time at the pool by 5pm! Kitreena and Edrick were the two happiest kermits on earth, I tell you. Ka Cher, Pan Yau and I were just happy to have the pool ALL to ourselves. We paid for two rooms and we got one whole pool on a non-sharing basis all inclusive? Hoii, who can beat that? No, who can GET that?

Kitreena tripped and fell on the way back to the room. There wasn’t any trace of blood though she scraped her right knee…for the first 10 seconds. When she saw the redness, tiba-tiba je she started limping! And then, the whole world fell apart lah kan, needless to say. We had a hot shower in the room and Kitreena was ecstatically overjoyed, “Momy! Mommy! My oui is melting! My oui is melting!” [babytalk: oui = ouchy = sakit] And so it was.

It was a Mee Rebus night for me, after craving for it since the last time I had it at The Pan Pacific KLIA August 2000! Berdebus-debus calories for just one night. You should have seen the bowl it was served in. Not only that it was the size of a serving bowl [read: mangkuk tambah], the content was enough to feed the whole Muar! I did not and could not clean it up, even if I had wanted to. I didn’t want to. I would hate myself if I did even want to finish it. Whatever lah mangkuk!

Had breakfast in the room the next morning. The Smoked Salmon Hash was not what I expected it to be. It was very similar to the Eggs Benedict, though. But the salmon bits were baked in the muffin, or in less silly words…the poached eggs were served on a ‘Salmon Muffin’. Hollandais sauce on the side.

The Kermits, Bibik and I checked out on Saturday and moved our stuff to Ka Cher’s room. Had another dunk from 2 to 5pm. Well, not quite a dunk lah kan if it was three hours. Could not pass up the opportunity to have the pool all to ourselves yeah again! Had a hot shower at Ka Cher’s room before we left Marriot Putrajaya. I arrived at Marriot a plum, and I left…a prune.

On the way out, I had a vision of my past, a reminiscence…the last time I was in the viccinity, I was at the Palm Garden Hotel restaurant having a drink with an axe. I was looking over to the construction area where the Marriot is today and said, “Whatever that will be!”

Sunday was a totally different story.

I greeted the new year losing some of me. Some 6 kilos of me…fat. It was rather unintentional, really. Well, I kinda started on the 3Day-Diet that Aunty Jamila introduced – lots of water, no greasy food, fast food, junk food but still lots of (healthy) food, of course. What’s new? And I did try to do a few miles on the treadmill months ago. But it was rather challeging to keep on the routine in Calgary; with large lunches every Friday at either Earls or The Danish Club, and the four-night-in-a-row Christmas dinners at Mom’s and Ken & Gillian’s. Blame it on Mom for being such a great cook!

But I did lose 6 kilos in 6 weeks.
It wasn’t anything obvious or drastic, just that my pants kept sliding down and giving up to the gravity after every wash. It was great having a dryer again, I thought, but I don’t like how some material just expands or shrinks after tumbling in one. Good ole line drying is a lot more gentle on the clothes. Anyway, I had so lah no anticipation nya to any weight loss that I didn’t bother packing any belt to balik kampung this time. In other words, all my belts needed an extra hole at their ends! That’s it lah, to the point that me thinks my own kilos were there to stay and was ready to chuck the cheap-and-always-stuck-at 70kg-senggat-IKEA scale out.

The truth is, everytime I panjat the scale, the jarum timbang tu simply refused to stop selagi tak sampai the over-weight limit. Both scales pulak tu, at Mom’s and the one at our rental apartment downtown. Though none had the metric measurement, semuanya pakai pounds and stones, I was stuck at the ‘too-heavy-for-my-own-good’ pounds! And I had no idea how many stones I should have been. But I felt like I was carrying too many stones. It was like I was going to be ‘stoned’ to death. Echeh!

Walaubagaimanapun, it has been over a week now since I came home and a week on the dot today since Bibik returned to our Chong Khoon Lin home. Life has started to pick up its pace and I am almost back into routine. Plus one new routine. I have put a bit over 10 kilometers since our arrival. I repeat, 10 kilometers. No typo, tuan-tuan dan puan-puan. Not kilograms. Kilometers! On the treadmill, that is.

And I tell ya, it was a wonderful feeling when I first saw my family waiting and waving frantically at the arrival hall KLIA Monday morning last week! All these years that I have come and gone…all ten years, almost, my family never had the chance to send me off or pick me up at the airport. And this time…all of them, all 12 of them (including ipar duai) were there! And the first thing Ka Cher said was, “Eh you look kurus a bit lah!” That…made my week!

I feel good and motivated…so far. So let’s weight and see.

Tercapai hajat Kitreena to play in the snow.

The view of downtown Calgary from our PH in Mission.

For some reason I am hooked to Shawn Colvin’s old number, I Never Saw Blue Like That. I thought it was just Dawson’s Creek’s theme song, but after watching The Runaway Bride baru ni on Shaw Cable, I realized it was also in the movie soundtrack. Tapi dah lama pun saya ‘limaunipiswayar’ kan onto my P850. For days like today, I guess.

The sky has been blue since last week. The snow is melting away here and the hope for a white Christmas is also melting along. Boo hoo ho ho ho! Kitreena had the time of her life it seemed when we had those 7-10 inches a week after we arrived. She needed no push from Mommy, pakai je snowsuit…belechoosss! Off she went outside to make snow-angels. Nak buat snowman, the snow was a bit too dry. So was the air. So…no snowman.

Speaking of snowman…ahak ahak, tersebutlah kisah nak jadik kisah seorang sahabat saya (if I dare or I am good enough to call him a sahabat lah kan!), an originally Malaysian claimed Parisien cum Englishman getting so upset, uptight and ‘up-yours’ when I kinda gave him a nudge that it rarely snows in Paris. I guess it was my fault for not understanding where he was coming from – like hello, making a snowman in Paris on Christmas? I said he was stretching it a bit, for the snow (if it snows) doesn’t stick to the ground long enough – or even enough to build a mini/micro snowman.

I did actually give him a friendly reminder to pack warm winter layers and at least one wind-breaker to fend him off from the windchill. Because from my own experience, Paris tends to get crispy one minute and damp the next. No, I did not assume he didn’t know how to dress for winter in France. Afterall, he is working with an international company based in France. (I admired his ambition, nevertheless, to make a snowman in Paris…should have wished him all the luck he needed!)

So, he told me off…asking me to stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine. Oh, it wasn’t his first time in Europe and he – for all to know – has been working abroad for many many many many many years it’s not even funny. In his very own words, he “…work around the world, from desert to icy place, i been in the most coldest place up -25 and the snow more than 2m thick and the hottest 50^C, i think you also never feel these tempreture.” And the end of it he VERY politely asked me to not to try to teach him how to live. Oh ye high and mighty Mr. Seen-It-All.

(The italicized part above as per original email…not tempered with, nor edited with Spell/Grammar Checker. I do have high respect for Parisiens’ attempt to write in English, by the way.)

But of course I did not tell many people about my homelessness for many years. I mean, who would care about the 55°Celcius in Rustaq where we were when we called Ras al Hamra our home for five years? And it was only two weeks ago that we had to mengharung -32°C on a daily basis here in Calgary with the windchill at -41°C. That too went unannounced. My hubby is from Calgary and we had the opportunity to live here for almost two years not too long ago. But who’s competing to be in the hottest or coldest places anyway? It doesn’t make me THE most important human being on earth, does it? Nor that I would want to rebut the pingat emas untuk anugerah saper pernah pegi tempat sejuk or panas on the planet.

I have been places, yes. But this ‘homelessness’ has only brought me closer to home…Malaysia. And I am proud of that. I am not embarrassed to admit that the very first thing I looked for at Safeway was beras wangi! Heehee. And my husband eats gulai on a selang-sehari basis. Ngo em ngak lei lor! But then again, that is beside the point. Yes we have seen quite a bit of the land on the globe, and we are humbled by the opportunity, and it delights me to see that friends and families who get to do so, as well, these days. Right on!

But when a friendly nudge was greeted with that ostentatious “You don’t try to teach me how to live!”, who would not be taken aback?

With a smirk on my lips I thought…Wow! I never saw blues like that.

It has been a long time. But I am not going to give excuses like I have been busy, or the kids and family have been taking much if not most of my waking hours, blah blah blah. It has been a long time. But I am back.

I liked what Mak Andeh said in her comments about bloggers and what the media feeds us. Sebab I, too, have no care about Siti Nurhaliza’s wedding. Much as I ‘disagree’ with her choice and the whole oh-he’s-so-lah-loving-father excuse for choosing Datuk K, it’s her life. Maybe she didn’t get enough of her own father’s love growing up. So she needs Datuk K to father her now. So be it. And maybe it is all mutual, Datuk K has no daughter either. And so be it.

Life goes on after the big loss of a star, Hani Mohsin. But I had wished that the media would cover a bit more on Hani than it did. But I guess nothing after the death that would sell the papers. So life goes on after the tribute from Tiara on The Star Sunday that followed.

Palestine and Israel…
Maybe we should just let them kill each other clean. Afterall, what has the world NOT tried to do to help? Why is the voice of Muslims in the South East Asia louder than that in the Middle East? Do we seriously think our say will make an impact when the neighboring countries (their so called brothers) have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear on the Palestinians? It has been going on for so long. Don’t they see that fighting is not the way to go? What have they accomplished?

So the children are dead, the children are dying and more children will die. So, let’s make more children and keep on fighting so that more children can die. Is that it?

I know for sure that my view will be perceived and interpreted differently by those who read my blog. I don’t care. The children are still dying in both Palestine and Israel. Read me as distortedly as you want. Because God ‘melaknat’ orang yang membuat kemusnahan di muka bumi. Regardless who these orang are, or what their religion is. End of story.

I would actually like to see more news on what we don’t see or hear much about. Like what teachers all over the country are doing to our children at schools. Ways they have taken to improve educating and education. What the authority is doing to enforce the laws – from as silly as running the red lights, to parking senget kat parking lot. Dah siap ada line pun lagi tak reti nak parking lurus. Baghal!

It may sound and seem trivial. I don’t care about big things in the world. Because I know, once I change all the tiny things that I can…the big things will fall into place.

So…

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Does anybody know if there is a way we can contribute to say…

• The dotted lines on the road/highway you travel on regularly are so lah malap and in dire needs of repainting job. Does JKR have a program that allows individuals or private companies to pay for the repainting job in exchange with some little thank-you’s like discount on road taxes ke, or discount on tolls ke, or advertisement board saying thank you to Enida for sponsoring the repainting of the dotted lines on Lebuhraya Karak between kilometer 29 and kilometer 39 (10km je yang dia mampu, nak buat macam mana? Kalau nak tunggu JKR or MTD or saper yang responsible for the maintenance of the highway, 10 meter pun belum tentu dia nak cat.) Contoh sahaja.

• Papantanda jalan to our house dah tombang and rebeh because a container truck sudah masuk itu jalan driven by a bozo whose license was bought from his brother in law in 1975. He didn’t care, itu jalan is not his. So, how do we The Chong-Khoon-Lin-ers replace the papantanda ourselves? Sebab nak tunggu whoever responsible replacing or updating the signboard would probably take 3 years and 8 months to do. To make a signboard dengan cardboard is silly because of the rain we get everyday. Pagi letak, petang dah jadi mashed potato cardboard that signboard.- Another contoh lah.

I am reading four books at the moment. Not all at once, of course, though I wish I could. Sebab dah lama sangat not sharpening the saw, I feel as dull as any kepala lutut. I am forever reading Da Vinci Code – a year ago I stopped at page 87. I picked it up again and seemed to stop at the very same page. Three months ago upon hearing Da Vinci Code played by Tom Hanks was coming in May, I clicked on the Microsoft Reader icon on my iPAQ again and went to the last page read. It was page 87. I am nowhere far from that page today.

My angelbuddy just bought me the two books by Mitch Albom. The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Though I can hardly put any of these down, I have disciplined myself to reading only three pages of each at one seating, to be fair. My special reading time comes at bedtime when I get to read as many pages as I like from my favorite book.

“People make mistakes. Sometimes very serious ones. As often as not, the mistakes aren’t deliberate or personal. Sometimes people just don’t know what they are doing. This means that if, in the past, people have behaved badly towards you, it wasn’t necessarily because they meant to be horrid, but because they were as naive, as foolish, as human as the rest of us. They made mistakes in the way they brought you up or finished a relationship with you or whatever, not because they wanted to do it that way, but because they didn’t know any different.

If you want to, you can let go of any feelings of resentment, of regret, of anger. You can accept that you are a fabulous human being because of all the bad things that have happened to you, not in spite of them. What is done is done and you need to just get on with things. Don’t use the labels ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Yes, I know some of it is indeed bad, but it is how we let it affect us that is the real ‘bad’. You could let all these things get you down, fizzle away internally like some emotional acid making you ill and resentful and stuck. But you will let them go, embrace them as character forming and in general as positive rather than negative.”

~ Richard Templar, The Rules of Life
Rule #3

I have been thinking and looking back a lot after reading this rule. Thinking about the mistakes I made in life, hurting quite a few people along the way. There were times when I justified those wrongdoings by telling myself that I had been wronged by others many times myself. So what?

So recently, when a friend set up an online group for a uni program I was in…I couldn’t help but feeling like I was sent to the past. I was sent to deal with some unresolved issues and emotions from those years. I was afraid of judgement then. The fear was so vivid that I held myself from participating in the forum for the first bit.

I was young, stupid and cared too much about what others thought or said about me. Too much for my own good. It all started the day when a housemate told me that I was weird and that many people hated me for the reason unknown and unexplainable. I told you I was stupid – I believed her. I cried myself to sleep that night and woke up the next day a new person: I was the new female hunchback of Notre-damn! And so for years I carried the burden of not being liked and I stayed away from the group.

I didn’t have many friends back then. And when I did, somehow I managed to hurt them before they got to hurt me. I sabotaged many friendships, and I hated myself more than others could possibly do me. Nevertheless, I found a few people from a few different faculties that didn’t know my ‘history’ and found friendships in them afresh.

Writing this today, the one word I could think of that would best describe the then me would be ‘MISUNDERSTOOD’. I put the blame on no one for not understanding me then. No one. Since I am now a Rule Player, I accept what is done is done. I was young, stupid and didn’t know any better. So were my friends. In fact, I can name a few people whom I could not figure out back then. I hurt in ways that I was, too.

And so it is…
Just like Richard Templar said it would be.

I know I am okay now. And okay will I be. I just hope that the people I had wronged and betrayed have grown wiser and stronger – because they chose to be. Like I did. And even if they didn’t, I fully understand that: Some people grow up, the rest just grow old.

I don’t know whether I should get upset or not. Well, I know I shouldn’t stress myself out. But hey, don’t you love banking? Especially with banks yang offer you macam-macam cik main canggih lagi. Interbank funds transfer within 24 hours lah, bill payment tu needless to mention lah kan. If they don’t offer you that, they might as well bukak business kopitiam, lagi manyak ong meh.

Jarang sangat I am happy doing banking here. Tak macam when I was in Perth dulu. Yes they charged me through the nose, but they delivered. Tak pernah…I tell you straight from the heart, TAK PERNAH ada masalah. Baik with the phone-banking maupun (ehcheh! Maupun, okay!) net-banking. Never once. And they don’t pass your mobile phone number to other banks for tele-marketing either!

So what’s upsetting me so much ni?
Arrrgghhhhhh. I made an interbanking fund transfer on Wednesday last week. Out the Mai Bank and in to Boom-Me Bank. Since it was after 12 noon, the fund wasn’t going to be credited until the next day. Thursday night, tak de lagi. Friday morning, tak bertambah lagi my Boom-Me amount. So I called Mai Bank. “Eh, daaahhh. Dah debit dah. Boom-Me Bank yang belum update cik puan punyer akaun.” Oh, okay.

Lima hari kemudian…which is today, STILL tak ada lagi! Check punya check, my Mai Bank account had been credited the amount I transfered to Boom-Me minus RM2 as the interbank transfer fee. Aiii, they charged me for an unsuccessful transaction? How was I to know if they transacted the money and it was Boom-Me who couldn’t ‘reconcile’ and receive the fund and put it into my account? Because when I called Boom-Me, they said they never received the said transaction.

No, I am not upset. I just learned a lesson. Banks here don’t like each other. They don’t want to do business with one another if they don’t have to. I should have known better. Bukan banks je yang macam tu, kedai kasut ke, kedai barang letrik ke…sama je. If Bata doesn’t have the sandals you’re looking for…they would never in a million years suggest that Kickers or Scholl kat Parkson might have them. Vice versa. If Courts Mammoth doesn’t have water dispensers, God forbids if they ever let out that HSL mungkin ada.

Had lunch with Ka Cher & Lil Sis, with lil Kitty tagging along mood-swinging and all. Downed some Dim Sum at Chi Kelana Jaya. Not bad for a franchise. The only complaint I have would be…their Milo ada sikit perasa ubat gegat lah. Macam mana tu?

Ka Cher bought a pink Barbie watch for lil Kitty, and a pair of sunglasses for herself. I bought a dirt-cheap bra for me boobies! Dirt cheap of course if I were to compare the price to the Calvin Klein’s I purchased in Oman. The former being RM6.99 and latter RM97.89.

Nothing wrong with inexpensive bras, I tell ya. Not like you’re going to grow another two pairs of boobs or shrink to a flat ‘panel’. Some of these are as comfortable as Victoria Secrets’. Besides, even if you were wearing your bra on the outside, who’d be able to tell between a seven and a ninety-seven ringgit bras?

A bra is a bra. When your boobies are happy, YOU bounce!

[Picture courtesy of www.onmyplate.com]