I never told anyone about this, but every time after I shed a tear or two, I would weigh myself. You would never believe how big of a water-retention problem you have until you cry, really. Well, for crying out loud, that’s what I believe anyway.
This morning I put myself on the scale to find that I was actually lighter than a feather. So I was left to wonder if I had opened the floodgate or if I had been crying too much.
Or does hope float?
Posted in Sense | Tagged Crying | Leave a Comment »
After six and a half years of wearing a curly hair, Kitreena had a blow of change. May 1st, 2009 – for the very first time in her life Kitreena wore a straight hair and was extremely gay about it. But of course the hair went all curled up the very next day. Good thing I had warned her about it. You know… the usual ‘be grateful for what God has given you’ line. “People spend a lot of money to get curly hair like what God gave you for free?” line.
“I know Mom, you don’t have to tell me again and again.”
Oh, I know that line by heart too by now.
Posted in Monchies | 2 Comments »
I lied.I don’t like it here. Not all of it, anyway. I hate the dry air. My hair done at Okairi has lost its bounce. It is now as straight as I am not gay with it. Not only that it stands up in protest every time I make an attempt at brushing it with my anti-static Silva hairbrush, it is also flatter than my tummy.
My skin is rough – yes, from the dry air as well. It is so rough that it makes the sound you would only hear when a jackfruit rubs against the raffia sack that wraps it. Imagine my jackfruit-rough skin rubbing against silk stockings. Yes, jackfruit. Not durian. And that’s why my new stockings are now as linty as a towel. Durian would have ripped ’em.
I dislike the carpeted floor upstairs as well. The carpet sheds so badly that every time the kids roll on the floor I have a few extra items added to my job description. I have never seen a carpet that sheds this bad since that expensive but cheap Chinese silk carpet I bought at a clearance sale in Ruwi. Gosh, I might as well just turn the lint it sheds into a wig by my fourth week here (I vacuum-clean it twice to thrice a week).
The dryer machine. Ahhh the dryer machine is a blessing in digust disguise! Obviously it speeds up the second item in my job description i.e. Laundry. But the dearest drying machine shrinks almost all my clothes! So shrunk that it sends me to the weighing scale every morning thinking I have put on weight! With shrinking comes wrinkling and crinkling. With wrinkling and crinkling comes ironing. With ironing comes an irony – I hate ironing but despise it if it is not done MY way!
I did actually get help – especially with ironing – last week. In fact I did get help with mopping, vacuuming, cleaning and babysitting from a Filipino lady named Joy. She was supposed to come Tuesdays and Fridays. But the joy did not last. She came VERY late on her first day. She said she overslept. Okay no worries. She left halfway through cleaning on the second day (with a good excuse) but did not call as promised. Not a problem, I am not fussy about calling. She brought a friend over on her third day. Hmmm…I frowned a bit. And this week she has not come at all! All I have said is…”Oh what a joy!”
And today, on my 19th day of being in Moscow, I saw Autumn. The fourth season.
Now that I am four-seasoned here, shall I backpack and backtrack? Or shall I just write that great Russian novel?
Posted in Pokrovsky Boulevard | Leave a Comment »
Time for the truth is never better than now.
And now, I finally feel like telling.
The truth is… I like it here. I like the land of the Tsars. I like it… physically. It was the most perfect time to arrive – mid April. Within less than three weeks, we have seen three seasons. Where else can you experience that other than, of course, in Calgary. In fact, it was deja vu seeing all the blacks and browns around. It was raining when we landed, which you don’t see much in Alberta. Love the rains in Malaysia though, no matter what season!
There were no leafy trees to see or speak of, the Saturday morning we were transported from Domodedovo Airport to this Taman Bukit Pokrovsky. Nyet! Our first Tuesday in town, winter reappeared. So we let it snow. And then spring sprang just two days after that. Now it is as warm as the coolest nights in Kuala Lumpur, circa 25 degrees Celcius. And that, in Russian thermometer, means summer. How’s that?
That’s truth nomer a’deen (numero uno). Yes, the more I hear it, the more similar Russian is to Italian – the rhythm of the language, that is.
The truth is… physically speaking, I can live here for many years to come. The Russians don’t scare me any more than those China Police interrogating me at Beijing Airport last December. After all, not many of them have a superpower like the one I have watching me from above the Russian clouds.
The other truth is… truth nomer dva, if emotions come from the heart, I need a heart transplant. Desperately! The one I have now is not functioning anymore. It bled love not long ago. Now though it’s still bleeding, nothing trickles out from it. Not blood, not air, not even emotion. Love? What’s that? I keep getting confused between love and practicality. Love doesn’t come from the heart anyway, does it?
The only time this heart comes close to functioning is when the two oxygen bubbles (aka Monchies) come home from school. Other times… I would just gasp like a fish with lungs wondering why the very thing that makes me alive suffocates me. I long and yearn for something to hold on to. But I honestly don’t know what that something should be. A person? A marriage? A future? Or is it just an idea? A make-believe that time heals everything? What if I don’t have time? Or a heart anymore to go on?
The truth is… I gave my heart and time last October to forgive this imperfect little me. I forgave Enida for being so busy with everything else that didn’t matter much to her relationship with her other half. There! I was not available for many years. Though I honestly think that a good fraction of the negligence came from the post childbearing period, I was profoundly at fault for not reaching out for help. I thought we were okay.
The truth is… we were not okay. There was already a huge gap physically and emotionally when we decided to go for a rotational job – him being in a Godforsaken workplace for supposedly 4 weeks at a time, and home 4 weeks at a time. But we thought the 4 weeks home would do us good. Apparently it never went as long as 4 weeks at work for him. It was 6 weeks and longer. And at one point, we only had 2 weeks together. It killed us. And on August 6, 2008… after only a year of being the rotational wife, I died just from reading an email.
The truth is… people fall in and out of love. We gave our love too much time and too many miles away from each other. So when love didn’t come back to Malaysia in September 2008, it went to Spain for a few good weeks. Weeks when he thought he had found a soulmate but instead had a violent truth staring right back at him, scaring him away and reminding him of what exactly he ran away from, years before we met.
The truth is… love lives, and infatuation short-lives. And when Bali happened, I was convinced that love at last found his way home. We talked like we always did before the year of 2002 BC (Before Children), we spent time being honest to each other, crying in each others’ arms, worrying like two warts that will never go away no matter what. And in the whole process we accepted each other as two imperfect humans trying to make do and best in this short life together.
The truth is… we are no good apart. And in less than six weeks between March 6 and April 18 of not being together, faithfulness left our door again. This time in exchange of $200 per hour going rate. The key that I just found and brought home has been thrown away again, and I am expected to go find it again. I will go and I will find it again I am sure. But will I bring it back to where home is, time will tell. In the meantime, if I seem lost between trust, fidelity, practicality, and this love and relationship business… well, I am.
The truth is… people say, the truth will set you free. Maybe I am not lost. Maybe I am just free.
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I watched The Reader late Saturday night and read way more than I could be read to. Loved the movie and its nudity because it made me realize that I am on the right track. How so? Hehehehe. Kate Winslet is younger than yours truly – can’t change that. But when I saw her naked body (stand-in’s or whosever’s it was), I was convinced that my degree of sagging-ness is perfectly right for my age.
So now I love me boobies just the way they are – no matter where in the south countries they are heading to. I’m right behind ’em!
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
If I were a mistake
waiting to be made
I would surely wait
wanting to be
none but me.
So make mistake
and make my day.
You made mine.
Posted in Write On | Leave a Comment »
Had tea with Jo-Anne last Friday and met with Diane (Jo-Anne’s fellow South African friend). Had cappucino with the CEO’s wife at her place and had the most stimulating conversation within the last 11 days! (Of course talking to Edrick about his itchy spots was very stimulating as well!) Tomorrow Marilyn and Lirang are driving across the city and up the hills to sample my Nasi Goreng lunch. Yeah, big deal. I’m grappling inside, still toying with the idea of returning home not knowing where home is. But who cares.
So dear angels, here’s Jo-Anne:
Hey there Jo-Anne!
Yep! Got your email, thank you. And while I’m face to face with this laptop – and has no husband to go to bed to (he has been deep in the Siberian oilfield since Sunday) – I’ll linger a little bit to tell you about my night out last Friday (just in case we never get around to talking about it. Haha.)
We went on the Metro and walked a little to the GodKnowsWhereItWasKaya Street and stopped to have dinner at a restaurant that actually looked more like a club called Etaj Projekt (etaj, I later found out, means ‘floor’ – hence the four-tiered interior). So Floor Project Restaurant, it was. There was no menu in English, but the server spoke not bad English and took the trouble to explain what we were about to poison ourselves with. 🙂
I love fish, so I gladly went fishing that night and ordered me a Fish Soup that I thought would be like the French Riviera style seafood soup or Italian Zuppa de Pesche. But it turned out to be salmon chunks soup, served with two good-sized dumplings that were stuffed with yummy salmon chunks. And for main dish, I chose Salmon with Spinach. Boy, at the end of dinner, I was so fished out I felt like a Salmon swimming home!
Hubby had what they called ‘Mini Steak’ since he wanted to have something light. What the server did not say was… the dish was actually Mini Steaks (not just one mini steak, there were three mini steaks!) They were mini only by Russian standard, of course. But I am happy to report that though hubby and I were each steak-ed and fished out… the food at Etaj Projekt was awesome!
Oh, just googled the restaurant. It is on Tverskaya Street (No. 14).
Okay dear, see ya tomorrow.
(I know you’re leaping with joy that it’s a short week this week and next. I know I am!)
PB-09 Gal,
Enida
p.s. Speaking of fish dinner, there is this really good fish/seafood restaurant in Perth Australia called ‘A Fishy Affair’. I thought that is such a perfect name for a fish restaurant. Very creative! Extremely appropriately fishy!)
_____________________
Postlude:
No, I do not go to bed with moy mush.
I go to bed to him.
Posted in Pokrovsky Boulevard | Leave a Comment »
So my angels took aflight on April 15 to the city of SIN where their sinful mommy’s bestfriend dwells (yes both Mommy and her bestfriend are sinfully sinful when they want to be). It was supposed to be an uneventful flight. Until this boy decided to explore what he could do with his hands. Yeah, already!
The first 20 minutes after taking off was a bliss and I was sure the next 35 minutes was going to evaporate on me before I could say ‘Singapore Zoo!’ or ‘Night Safari!’ Well, be still.
You know those cabin table-top thing you put your food on or you write on? You know the space where you hide or stow the top away? Edrick just HAD to see if his arm would fit in the space. I don’t know to this day at what degree of an angle that he did it, but he managed to stick his elbow and the whole forearm just nicely in the stowaway compartment for the table-top! His arm was in every meaning of stuck, STUCK!
I, with the other two cabin crew, spent the next what felt like 20 minutes trying to get Edrick’s arm out of the stowaway compartment! It felt so long that I didn’t know whether we were coming or going. While Edrick, being that easily freaked-out boy… naturally freaked out like there was no tomorrow! Nah, nyaman rasa! Edrick was so traumatized with the whole ‘stuck’ experience on that short flight to Sin City that he never let anyone take his table-top out again after. He held on to his cup of water until he fell asleep holding it.
Our flight to Domodedovo Airport from Changi was another story worth posting another entry for. For now, let me fly to and with my Alsace and think what I can do with my hands.
Posted in Write On | 1 Comment »
I was supposed to be all right and writing about how all right I am. As I was supposed to show you pictures of how all right this place is and put up captions of all the right words for you to see how all right I was supposed to be. The truth is, I was all right. For a while, I was. And even now when I am not all right, I am. As I am supposed to be all right.
.
But things went all right until they didn’t. Just like lies were all right until truth be known. So the truth is… lies were swept under the carpet. And unfortunately, that carpet was fortunately me.
.
For the reasons known only to me…please trust me that what I am not writing here today when I am supposed to be all right is something too embarrassing for me to even believe. You just have to trust me on this. Because I have traveled so many miles, left so many angels, gone this far, this long to face what was supposed to be love – but on my fifth morning to have woken up to a demon waiting for a battle.
.
I was supposed to have come home. I was supposed to be home. And so I did come home to this supposedly all right place, only to find that it has been painted with dishonesty. Still, I stay. For I have traveled so many miles, left so many angels behind, gone this far, this long to know… that I am not in for the demon waiting to fight, I am in for the two angels taking me aflight.
.
I am angry. I am sad. I am tired. I am all that. But be still. I am all right.
.
Posted in Sense | 1 Comment »
It is ‘See you in May’ for now. No goodbye. You’ll see me in Singaporean words the next couple days. By next week, I’ll be speaking in Russian tongue. And bite with Russian teeth.
So it is a coma for now. Not a full stop. That, my angel, will come in May.
See you in May.
Posted in Sense | 3 Comments »
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Questa è Enida 