Bagaimana hendak kulengat,
Kait-kait dengan padinya;
Bagaimana tidak kuingat,
Orang baik dengan budinya.
Posted in Write On | Tagged Pantun | Leave a Comment »
Post-decisional Justification:
Right after making a choice people tend to value what they chose more, and value what they did not choose less.
Over three months ago I met up with a friend whom I had not seen nor spoken to since 1996. Simply because we lost touch with each other. After a roti canai-teh tarik breakfast, a summary of 1996-2006 life all in 3 breaths… I chose to tell her my post-2006 life, including my August 2008-February 2009 life.
Just as I turned around walking towards my car parked under the scorching sun, I started wondering why I told her as much as I told her. I never finished that wondering process until recently. All I have, as a matter of stating the painfully obvious, is one life. I have lived it in a way that no clocks can ever put yesterday back into tomorrow.
So I told stories the way they happened. I still do. After all, honesty is still the best (and easiest to maintain) policy! When I told her the stories of my pain with a smile, I knew what I had long gained. With every single grey strand of hair I now have on my head, and every wrinkly line on my face… I know I am justified.
Posted in Sense | Tagged Life, Past | 1 Comment »
… until I saw a superbike following me at a safe distance!
Well, he wasn’t following me. We were just cruising, kinda alongside each other at times. And at one point he was right beside me when I was laughing at Edrick’s question: “Mom, am I a boy?”… I saw a pair of smiling eyes from behind the full-face. Those eyes, down the highway lane, looked very familiar.
We parted ways at Exit 233.
Posted in Travel | 3 Comments »
We had enough of our house-arrest lifestyle for 3 days. All of us! So today, my vote for driving 300km southbound went unchallenged. Me Monchies’ face just lit up, oh brighter than the mid-morning sun! And even after completing the 300++km challenge and even when the Tuesday’s sun was no longer hanging on the Danga Bay’s horizon… Kitreena and Edrick were still spinning around jumping up and down like the Ever Ready Heavy Duty batteries that they are. I must have conserved enough energy those 3 days – these kids look like they will not need to be plugged in for another month! Hoy!
Driving 300km south of Kuala Lumpur seemed to be the best idea today because:
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My brother, Deal, just received his pink bundle of joy!
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I have not seen, touched, held, cuddled, smother a newborn ever since Edrick!
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The last time I was in Johor Bharu was at Deal’s wedding over 3 years ago.
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Kitreena only had an ‘ON’ button for the manual reminder/request: “Mom, I wanna see the baby. Mom, I wanna see the baby. Mom, I wanna see the baby. Mom, I wanna see the baby.” No, no ‘OFF’ button.
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I like driving south – all my body parts are going in the same direction anyway.
So when the sun woke my son up, and my son woke me up… I assigned myself a Jalan-Jalan Cari Pasal mission. Johor Bharu, here we come!
I wanted it to be an easy-going day. An easy-going day it was, an easy-going day indeed. Well, at least in the beginning. Armed and equipped with all the munchies & nibblies, we took a leisure shopping and lunch stop at KLCC. Shopped at MotherCare, had lunch at Dome, reloaded Touch-n-Go at Maybank, bought kuehs at La Cucur, plus 3 washroom visits in between. Yes, three! (Boy, these kids were leaking!) By the time we hit the SMART Tunnel, it was quarter to 1600hrs!
With the half tank on my rented City, I knew I could go quite far. So I passed on filling up in KL to beat the rush hour – which was against my long-distant driving policy. But I hushed myself with two words: easy going. It was only 300km. The first quick stop was right in front of my mak angkat Chan Yoke Lin’s fruit stall Hentian Serdang – to set my GPS pointing me to Mount Austin. The second stop: Nilai Utara – to shift Edrick to the front seat so Kitreena can lay down in the back seat. Total stop time: 6 minutes 22 seconds accumulative. I could feel my easy-going mission ‘going south’ very easily.
I was, nonetheless, making a good time doing my Autobahn-style speed whenever the GPS went quiet and doing 119km per hour on the stretches that are ‘Police Ambush Area’ and ‘Speed Trap Zone’. And that was despite Edrick’s frantic attempt to scare me with what he misheard as ‘This Dragon Zone’! He kept on repeating the GPS’s instructions as though I was going left on all the right turns. Arrghh! I was busy driving and he was busy driving me nuts, bolts and screws!
Our little City on four wheels eventually became quiet when me Monchies dozed off, which gave me some quiet time to reflect on my life. Chewah! Well, I was truly reflecting on my life until…
Posted in Travel | Tagged Driving, Monchies | Leave a Comment »
I, for one, am not the kind who falls into fashion fad very easily. No I am not fashionable and I can say I am fashionably stable that way. But when I do let myself fall into fashion, it’s wayyy away from what you can call a fad anymore. And I let myself fall fashionably, too. Fashionable, in my definition, is being comfortable. Comfortable when I pay for them and when I wear them. Whatever they may be. Clothes, shoes, perfumes, phones. Yes, phone. I wear my RAZR2V9 like a second skin. Comfortably.
So steadfast my belief is in comfort that I never joined those bask of crocodiles flocking to Crocs for the love of zeal. Skeptical was nowhere near to describe how I felt about those rubberlike-colorful-good-for-pasar-basah-Selayang (wet market) footwear. As a matter of fad, I was once convinced Pua Chu Kang must have had a fat share in spreading the rage for Crocs in this Southeast Asian region. (Oh! He was so hamsem in Sumolah! His English is like unagi on my tongue! Sukane!)
But two weeks ago I had no choice but to borrow Untoo Pet’s orange Crocs to Untoo Mas’s swimming pool. They were very surprisingly comfortable on my feet. For someone who has a lot of issues with her feet, I cannot afford but to be extremely careful choosing my footwear. I have pes-planus feet (fallen arch), a problem that was caused by the weight I gained when carrying Kitreena (pre-natal and extended post). It was worsened by the bunion I had especially on my left foot – a condition that is unfortunately hereditary.
So last week, I comfortably put my foot in my mouth!
Posted in Write On | Tagged Crocs, Fashion | 4 Comments »
One thing I like about WordPress is how simple it is for someone who doesn’t know much about html codes to change blog header pictures – compared to Blogger (Blogspot). Hence you see I have been playing with it… changing the header pictures as often as I like.
Today it features the verandah teak swing we had at the corner closest to the swimming pool. Used to be my retreat swing – with a good book or this netbook – on rainy afternoon. I was going to get some padding custom-made for it had we stayed in Malaysia a bit longer (or at one point, I thought I was going to stay there indefinitely!) This swing is now sitting and not swinging in our garage in Pokrovsky. Hmmm…
My life had taken a different swing towards a direction I did not believe possible when I bought this swing at Gotic Jalan Ampang. I still do not know what could swing my way, but I have faith I can anytime do the Buble’s Sway and won’t stray. For now, I just let the Marimba play.
Posted in Country Heights, Write On | Leave a Comment »
Did I tell you that whoever is responsible for translating the title of English movies to Bahasa Malaysia has chosen this for the latest Ron Howard’s work ‘Angels and Demons’: Malaikat dan Jin.
Hwwaaattt?
Yes! That was exactly my reaction. Where on the middle earth did that jin come from? Jin Mata Satu dari Gua Hantu, hai meh? I foresaw something like Malaikat dan Roh Jahat or Malaikat dan Syaitan, even. But jin is a very specific being.
I am not actually remotely questioning the language side of the translation, but rather the simple homework somebody simply did not do. How challenging is it really for a translator to Google for a definition of demon?
Here’s what I found on my basic dictionary (WordBook):
Word Links
djinny: (Islam) an invisible spirit mentioned in the Koran and believed by Muslims to inhabit the earth and influence mankind by appearing in the form of humans or animals
Synonym
Hypernym
Domain Of Category
Hyponym
I did specify that jin is a very specific being, did I not?
I’m pretty sure Dan Brown did not have any jin or djinn in mind when he wrote Angels and Demons. A translator does not have to read the book, nor watch the movie to be able to tell that much. Am I stating the obvious that the translator did not do his homework? Or was there a member of Illuminati putting a burning satay skewer to his neck ready to stamp him with this word had he not used the word JIN?
Posted in Grammaticalizationism | Leave a Comment »
It is never a short answer to “Where are you from, Enida?” Never. Neither is it a short story. Now, how do you summarize this:
I was born in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah – hence the XXXXXX-12-XXXX in my MyKad. A few years after I was born, my parents were transferred to Taiping, where I started school and finished Form Three (Grade 9). Much to my and KaCher’s resentment, we were sent to Temerloh, Pahang, to complete the two remaining years of our high school. KaCher and I were both born in KK, raised in Taiping and sent to Temerloh. Two years later, together, KaCher and I got a place in the TESL Program at PPP/ITM Shah Alam – and that was where we were asked a lot about our origin.
Am I a Sabahan? Apparently Sabahans do not think so. If your parents were not born and bred in Sabah – no matter how much your blood spilled on the land below the wind and how fluent YOU are in Kadazan-Dusun – you are as outside as an outsider, bah! So, no go. Can’t claim I am a Sabahan, can I?
Am I from Taiping? Well, I am basically not from there. Wasn’t born there, wasn’t from there. I just lived there for 15 years or so. So, not good enough to keep on kami-hang, kami-hang with the Taiping-ites no matter how smooth my kami-hang, kami-hang still is. My MyKad could not be converted to XXXXXX-08-XXXX just because I lived in the metal state for 15 years either.
Do I claim myself Orang Pahang? Muahahaha. Hmmm… no offence to Orang Pahang, but no thanks. I did mention the word resentment that I was sent to Pahang, didn’t I? I kicked, screamed and cried the Sungai Pahang crocodile tears back then for two years, hating my own inability to adjust to its koi-awaok, koi-awaok. But I must admit it is a source of amusement mocking the leweh dialect ever since we left the sleepy town.
I mean, really… where am I from? Which do you think shall be my preference, if I can have a preference?
Posted in Persona | Tagged Asal | Leave a Comment »
There is something nice about me that is nice for you to know. Hopefully I can get around to fessing it up nicely within the next sentence or two, or within the next paragraph. But when I tell you this nice thing about me, my niceness will probably not seem as nice anymore to you. I am a bit torn here to tell or not to tell. Ahhh well!
I am, by virtue, a very thoughtful person. I think about others – the people I carry in my heart – when I travel. My thoughtfulness will exceed the speed limit or passengers seating capacity especially when I go to souvenir shops. Everything I see will have a name on it: KaCher, LilSis, Mom & Dad, Blaire & Meagan, Cik Nan, Bibik, Cik Rome, Neil, Lish, Chin, Nor, Kanaga, Sia Peng, Anne George, Yanie (not in alphabetical order). Everyone!
And then everywhere I go, every little place I visit… I imagine who would like it. And I’d start looking for postcards to send to the people who would ‘miss’ what I just see. Like that butterfly postcard I sent to Lindt from the Butterfly Park tucked somewhere in Florida I visited in 2003. I knew she would appreciate it the most as I could not think of anyone else who loved butterflies more than I did.
But that’s just one nice story to hide the so many not so nice stories about my nice-but-not-so-nice thoughtfulness. I am thoughtful when I travel. I think about everyone and I buy souvenirs for (almost) everyone. But… I never give the souvenirs away! (Oh no!) I still keep them. (Oh noooo!) And I have no intentions of giving them away now though I have made my confession! (Oh noooooooooooo!)
Maybe I should go hide behind my souvenir chests!
Posted in Persona, Travel | Tagged Butterfly, Thoughtful | 1 Comment »
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