Questa è Enida

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]

But noh, that was not the case. My point is…what is the point? What is the point of registering your number so honestly when some other dishonest people CAN be dishonest? Like I said to my mom, I could have written my name as Noorkumalasari if I so wanted. (I did, when I was in kindy – I even struck out my name on the back of my chalkboard and tulis “This chalkboard belongs to Noorkumalasari.” How I wanted to be Noorkumalasari’s adik angkat, jangan tak tau!)

So, tu lah dia. Today I went to the agent again to get 3 copies of the registration form for Bibik, Kar Cher and Pan Yau. Kebetulan we went out tonight to Low Yatt. They filled out and signed the forms. Tomorrow I can hantar the borang back to Celcom. I could have just signed the forms myself had I not seen them tonight. I thought the mandatory registration was a brilliant security measure. And I thought it was about time those involved were doing something to prevent anonymous sms-related crimes. So serious that Celcom has now sent out a ‘threat’ to its prepaid users warning those yang tak register will get their number “deactivated” comes January 1st 2007. Cik main serious lagi okay!

Elok-elok anda happy mengaktifkan hidup anda, Celcom berhak mentidakaktifkannya. Nah kau! Punya hot tak hot the link, I tell you. I wonder how the prepayors from the Active Planet are doing.

The truth is, I am not able to talk much lately. I mean, I have lost the ability to express my thoughts in speech. Temporarily (I hope)! Tetiber je on Monday, my throat started to feel very sore. It quickly turned into a sandpaper pipe. By Thursday, I couldn’t make a sound. If all I could say was boo, I would have liked to. But I could not. So the truth now is revealed.

Hari ni saya bertukor-tukor sms dengan Tuanku. Nothing stimulating and far from merangsangkan things that are not supposed to terangsang, of course. He was on duty at the Malaysian-Singaporean border today, and on a big ordnance operation of some sort. Sounds like kerap jugak Tuanku terpaksa berjauhan dengan kerabat, terutama anakanda nan bertiga.

But like in those ancient years, Tuanku rajin bercerita about his duties. Sometimes bahasa Tuanku agak formal, sending me smiles and chuckles. Just like bahasa Tuanku dalam hundreds of his letters, many many many years ago. Or did those years ever really exist? Ah well.

Have you ever thought of someone from your past and ended up thinking more about yourself? How you have changed, and what have become of you. Saya selalu. Mengenang Tuanku, saya sebenarnya mengenang betapa rumaja nya diriku ini waktu itu. Deep down I still am that. That rumaja, that is.

But my body obviously cannot stay that way. That rumaja, that is.
I have started to lose a lot of hair. Oh yes I am…balding. Probably not as bad as my deary hubby is. But hey, he’s a man. Bald men are somewhat sexy what? But the fact is, I really am balding. There are two ‘bays’ on my head now. And the part on top pf my forehead looks more like a ‘tanjung’ the way I am balding.

I have lost count of my grey hairs. Long time ago sudah. And now I am counting the black hair – lost. So, what have become of me? Kalau umur saya ditakdirkan panjang, people would probably think my hubby and I were twins. So what.

I’ve been meaning to say this for the longest time…that I don’t mind growing old. Though mencabut uban boleh menjadikan saya asyik in front of the mirror for hours, it is some kind of a satisfaction. Like this one advertisement I saw on Oprah magazine. A picture of an elderly woman. Grey hair, wrinkles on the face, eye-bags and what have you. Grey hair represents invaluable experience, and lines on her face stand for birthdays and anniversaries she has celebrated in her life. How graceful!

I thought of myself when I saw that ad. And now I thought of that ad when I see myself. Kadang-kadang saya bayangkan diri saya berdiri sendirian dalam hujan in a field, enjoying every little drop of an afternoon rain. Not that I can’t describe it further, but those who can imagine it…(put yourself there instead) should feel cool by now.

When I said sms’s dari Tuanku tak merangsangkan…I lied. They did today. Like they have been, lately. Merangsang saya untuk mengenang masa silam. Of what I was and what I was becoming. The very least, I would like to think that I have become drop-dead thoughtful.