Questa è Enida

At the very moment I am in so much joy that I don’t know whether to smile or to…faint! Guess what? We just got the verdict yesterday. After receiving the offer letter and what not, we are happy to inform you that we are moving to Malaysia! Yes we so lah are.

Simple Past and Past Continuous Tenses

• Last weekend we went to Dubai.

• We were hoping to stay somewhere in Jumeirah, but all the hotels were fully booked. Oh yes! Even Mina as Salam! We didn’t go to Burj al Arab, us poor peasants.

• We drove to Sharjah, dropped Bibik off with Cik Nan’s bibique, i.e. Mutilawatie, and checked in at Kempinski.

• Kempinski, a German hotel chain, was the only hotel that had a room available on the spot.

• Kempinski is in Ajman, by the way. So lah the opposite direction nya of Jumeirah in Dubai nun.

• We stayed for two nights at Kempinski even though that made our wallet a little kempisnki.

• Kitreena enjoyed playing in the sand, the sun and the swimming pool; so much so that WE came home with a mocha latte senza latte girl at the end of those two days.

• We met Cik Nan and Co. and chatted for about an hour or so while looking at their digital photos on TV.

• They JUST arrived home an hour before we saw them (from a two-week skiing vacation in Risoul, France and a tour around Italy / Switzerland).

• Notice my sentences mostly in Simple Past and Past Continuous Tenses here? Well, what do you expect…I just spent 7.5 hours a day, for three days now, talking about nothing but!

This is especially special for a special birthday boy somewhere in Grand Valley, Ontario:

Hey Ya Birthday Boy!

I betcha have no clue,
How special ’tis to be two,
Ya bring smiles to Mom ‘n Dad,
When ya good ‘n when ya bad.

I betcha have nay-idea,
Whatcha’ll get this year,
Most of all you’ll get love,
Blessings counted ‘n sent above.

I betcha have grown a plenty,
And soon outgrow aunty’s Kitty
But hey that’s whatcha guys do,
I betcha start at two!

Happy Birthday, Adam!

This picture was taken yesterday, when Adam was three months old.
And today he’s blowin’ two candles on his cake. How can that be?
Yeah, it’s either my Maths is pitiful, or he just grows like a weed!
You boys!

My friend, Eza, sent me a giggle this morning. This picture. The best part was the subject: “The Making of Gerak Khas The Movie 3”. Thanks, Eza. She had no idea that she actually opened the flood gate of memories of my grandma. And tetiber rasa rindu. And I just realized, she is the ONLY grandparent I have left! My grandma, that is. Not Eza. Syeeeessshh, read carefully.

Malayam Vocabulary:
[ammamma] maternal grandmother
[achamma] paternal grandmother

It’s not difficult to tell, “Oh sawang buyah hatikoo” is “Oh sayang buah hatiku”. Mom told us girls a story from her childhood. There was this one lad in her kampung, Ron Stoppable (bukan nama sebenar, nama ini adalah untuk hiasan sahaja.) He was the bodo-bodo-alang type, if you know what I mean. A bit bodo, a bit chee sin loh. He liked one of Mom’s cousins ke saper ke ntah. So one day Ron wrote her a love letter asking her to meet him bawah pokok manggis besor dekat jalan hala ke tebing tu. His terms of endearment read:

“Oh sawang buyah hati koo….”

Ron was stood up. Right there, bawah pokok manggis besor dekat jalan hala ke tebing tu. And though the girl had a good laugh that day, little did she know that the lad she stood up di petang yang hening itu was going to be a legend. Pokok mangosteen jadi saksi. The lad’s words as the pembuka kata in his letter are stuck in our head like getah manggis lekat di baju. Today, many many many years later, his sepatah kata seulas pinang dan seponjot manggis made it to the internet…sawang and all. Us, girls shall never forget. Lest we forget, there’s another one we shall remember. The pun on a card Ka Cher received from her pen-friend, Dhoruri, today in 1985:

“A man-gos-teen just thinking about you.”

Banyak buah perkara buah. My oh sawang buyah hatikoo is not coming home tomorrow. Boo hoo! The Saih Nihayda plant is starting up any hour from now. So it is critical that he stays back for at least a week. My other oh sawang buyah hatikoo is doing great. Into Stuart Little now. She has been breaking records the last few days getting up past 9 am! Rainy mornings suit her sleepy head. Her musim bangun subuh al supi’e has now officially shifted to musim subuh al elephant.

The coming weeks are looking pretty busy for me. Bossanova just offered me a class in the morning. 5 hours per morning, 3 mornings per week. Three weeks ago I was sedikit anxious kotnyer tak dapat class this February intake. Well, what can I say. I am known for my ‘blowing things out of their proportions’ punya perangai. Evening-class-wise…I indeed got a class. A HUGE one too, I must add. Hawthorn usually limits a class to 14 students. But mine has 15. By logic, I should be paid double kan? Shoooosshhh! Dasar si mata kaching!

Hmmm…skejap, nak digress sikit. Check this out girls and boys:

• Mata kucing: [ku ˆt∫ıŋ]
  The fruit. Longan meh. Also the deria penglihatan haiwan yang bernama kucing whose taik can be associated with berangan, in my wordbook. Nothing to do with buah berangan, though. By the way, how does a buah berangan look like? Is it related to buah bidara? Or buah keras? Have you ever heard of the term mati beragan? Not mati akibat banyak sangat berangan. It’s spelled as B.E.R.A.G.A.N. not B.E.R.A.N.G.A.N. I remember my mom used to describe lipas yang mati kering tersepit celah buku tu, as mati beragan. I suppose it means mati kering. If you have more info of any of the above, come, humor lah me.

• Mata kechengg: [kæ ˆt∫æŋ]
  Mek Ja taught me this istilah. It applies to anything that is supposed to have a pair of eyes, but one is not functioning properly. You can use it for car headlights yang sebelah dah kaputs. When I first heard it, I was driving Ka Cher to PD for her memarekek session kat Glory Resort. In the car other than myself and Ka Cher, were Mek Ja and Reen. We ikut jalan belakang through Dengkil, Sg. Nipah, Bukit Pelanduk nun, the jalan through the areas yang sangat termasyhur masa wabak J.E. melanda dulu (“ter” in termasyhur is as in tak sengaja tertetiber opocot! Termasyhur pulak aku, gitu. Bukan kemahuan fikiran.)
The route was really dark back then. But irony nya, we bertembung with banyak se’sangat cars that had mata kechengg – one head light out. Mek Ja has this way of pronoucing the term that made us girls laugh like hyenas that night. The ‘-chenggggg’ part is just sooooo memorably funny and very lah Jalan-Pengkalan-Chepa-isy. We drove the same route again the very next night to PD sebab Ka Cher tertinggal her Pooh at home. Everybody knew she couldn’t sleep without that comot bear. I almost ran over a kobau that night. Hah, nasib tak kechengg.

• Mata kachingg: [kЗ ˆt∫ıŋ]
  Mata luit loh. What else?

We went camping when Be was home a week and a half ago. Nowhere too far. We went camping in our backyard. Be was mengemasing the under-the-staircase storage area one morning looking for stuff for our yard sale (macam main kedai-kedai je). It was then that he saw the tent. We have been talking about going camping for many moons dah pun. But tak terpegi-pegi. I am a pretty laid-back person when it comes to living a back-to-basic life. Frankly speaking, I can kais-mengais and then cangkung-mencangkung anywhere at any time. Then, happily I would kambus-mengambus. No qualms.

But not Be. He went and bought a portable potty chair, aka (plastic) mangkuk jamban recently just because he simply can’t go eau naturel. To the point that I had to take his blood pressure one time because he was under so much stress designing an out-house. He literally spent one afternoon shopping around tengok kalau ada orang jual ‘partition boards’ that he can build a cubicle out of, for a jamban to use when we go camping. He so lah cannot melakukan itu secara semulajadi.

The timing wasn’t quite right either for us to go camping baru-baru ni. My class was at the tenth week, meaning…final exams and such. Memarekek papers time for yours truly. And Be had to focus on his MOR post-hunting as well. So, we took the road less traveled. We camped where there was none ever camped before. Our backyard.

We wandered and wondered no more about how we were to find the camping ground and the middle ground for our differences. We – especially Kitreena – were happy campers sleeping under the stars for a week singing The Happy Wanderer…

Val-deriiiiii
Val-deraaaaaa
Val-deriiiiii
Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-deriiiiii
Val-deraaaaaa
My knapsack on my back…(yard).

Reality Check:
If you ever get a message like this from someone nak berkenalan with you, would you reply to it in a split second and be leaping with joy?

“hi i’m XYZ from muscat can i knows u if ur never maind pleaze ?“

This is the warkah nan sepucuk that brought a smile to my morning. My cloudy Omani morning.

“Hihik…awak musti dah dengar speculations yang saya, Lil Sis and the gang dah kisutkan dak? Hah…tu lahnya sokmo buat surprise. Sekali tak buat, double plak the surprisenya tapi! Saya dapat message awak pagi tadi. Tergezut gak.Tapinya tok leh nak balas.

Hmmm…baru ni, to top up (echeh) our excitement, dapat la pulak MAS punya travel fare list. Tertonggeng tonggeng rasa nak pegi la la ni jugak. Siap sempat berangan nak gi cakap ngan big boss dah saya ni sebab time tiket murah tu, UXYZM would be in the midst of 3rd Sem., time exam pun. Apa tak nya, ke Dubai less than RM1500 round trip per person!! Tak ke murah siuuttt!!

But then, nak tak nak, kena buat reality check.

Dipendekkan citer, tak sempat jugak nak ke mane kot. As for me, before June tu, time tu lah saya tersangat kisut dengan 3rd Sem. UXYZM poohjee buat Kursus Pemantapan Bahasa Inggeris. 7-week Intensive course la kiranya, siap dengan Language Camp skali. Start 4th April. Habisnya betul betul the last week of May.

Tapi tu lah, like I said earlier, at least berangan tu dah start la. Macam awak and Cik Nan! Berangan tu perlu untuk menyetatkan susuatu tak ke? Eceh…menyetat pullak.

And satu hal lagi, tiket tu pun, belum dapat dipastikan whether they are still available now sebab Travel Fair nye dah lepas, lebih kurang a week ago. Sampai jem berhari hari kat Mines tu orang sume sebok nak travel.

Awak ok ke? Bila balik kampung Mak Bonda? Can’t imagine Kitreena menghiburkan hati kat cultural show tu. Soheh anak mak yek.

Saya ni for sure la kat opisnye. Friday memang saya tak de kelas. Tapi tadi ada consultation sket ngan students. Esok ada miting plak tu. Letih betul saya rasa this week. Since next week would be the last week of the semester, students kisut la dengan presentation. Saya pun makin rasa letih mikir kan a whole week full of only listening and grading, and not to forget kematuing ponggong…(kematu + ing). Cikgu kata kena parallel kan verbs…hihik.

Can’t wait to know where you’ll be next, after Oman. Dari anganan awak and Cik Nan tu, macam dah sure no dapat sini nye. Hihik. Amiiiiiiinn….

Ok lah awak…nanti ada masa sambung lagi. Hi to everyone eh?

Oh haa…awak sempat lagi ke teaching before pindah?

Kay haaa…take care sis. Big hug to my one and only niece!

Luv
Ka Cher“

Just in case ada yang tak perasan, I am Ciceroed now. Ciceroful again. Or rather re-Ciceroed, grammatically speaking. It took me a while to finally accept the fact that I did blow the whole thing out of proportion. Sunish came on Sunday to bring my Cicero back. Itu pun ada jugak drama nya pagi tu. I called at 10.30 am. But he didn’t answer. Uh, didn’t want to. You know, when you get the nada dapat, berdering once or twice but then tetiber you get busy line pulak. I am sure you know that it’s because the person you call pushes the hang-up or off button – refusing to answer.

Whateverlah.

So Sunish came no longer than 10 minutes after I called Jijoy – and Jijoy profusedly promised to kill Sunish with his bear hands if he didn’t return my Cicero sebelum loceng bunyik at noon. My first question to Sunish at the door was, “What happened to you?” Tapi dengan nada yang ala-ala, “Why in the seventh petala hell didn’t you pick up your phone, you bozo? And why in the seventh petala langit dan bumi didn’t you come last night and have no courtesy to call to tell?”

He mumbled some Mumbai, but I was just too busy trying neither to listen nor understand him. Happy I was, that I didn’t lose my Cicero to any penyangak. So, Cicero is now all made over. XP Pack 2 and all. Sunish didn’t install any anti-virus because “I didn’t ask him to”. Well, ni lah dia. Ibarat paku dengan penukul, sekali ketuk sekali masuk. Sunish promised to come the next day to install Norton 2005 for free! That next day was three days ago. Has he called? Well, take a wild guess.