Insights into a Bimbo's Mind

Gone Baby Gone

2008-03-24T13:12:00.005+08:00

Great Movie Great...

Yesterday, I saw THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER. The greatest movie ever...ever...ever...

Oh man, what a show... Just when I thought the show is about to end and I was almost getting ready to get up and go, suddenly BOOM! I was suprised with a twist that totally left my mouth open. After a while, I thought, ok, NOW the show is going to end and I got ready to get up again... And BOOM! Another twist. Then Boom! Boom! Boom! A twist within a twist! And they kept coming....

The characters in the movie has got such depths.. and excellent acting! And don't even get me started on the plot! Cohen brothers should move aside for the Affleck brothers. It's the type of movie that leaves you talking about it for a long time after it's over. Narrrling and I were discussing about it endlessly yesterday, "What would you have done in that situation? Do you pity that guy? Do you think he should have killed him?"

Today i logged on to imdb.com to browse through the forum about this movie and read what everyone else is saying about it. Looks like everyone is debating about it as well.

Many parts of the show, I felt like I was almost choking with emotion but yet, it's not even a sad scene. Nobody was dying on screen. The characters were just having a very intense conversation that kinda makes you feel so overwhelmed. Next to me, I could hear some Malay chap sobbing away. It's just... complicated... And the excessive censorship did not even bother Narrrling this time. As usual, all the swear words and gory scenes were cut out in a non too graceful a la Malaysian cinema way but I think we must have gotten too engrossed in the story to notice.

Imdb gave it an 8.0. I totally agree with the rating. When i saw the title, "Gone Baby Gone" for the first time, I thought, "Oh no, another one of those movies."... but when I saw IMDB giving it an 8.0 with 25 thousand votes, I thought there must be something to it. And boy am I glad I didn't miss this one...

I've heard a lot about 'No Country for Old Men' by the Cohen brothers. I'll try to go watch it but from what i am hearing, 'Gone Baby Gone' is better. But damn! 'No Country for Old Men' got 8.5 with 84 thousand votes! How do you beat that?

Are you on Facebook?

2008-02-20T18:24:00.004+08:00

"Why are you not on Facebook?" I hear this question on a daily basis from Narrrling, from friends, from colleagues and now even my own sister the housewife is on Facebook. Narrrling says, "Facebook is soooo you yeah"... So me? What is it about Facebook that my hubby wants me to be on it so bad?

I asked him, "You sure you want your wife to be on facebook? I'm going to use the nick, Hentai Queen and I'll link you in as my husband. You sure you don't mind?"

Instead of looking terrified, Narrrling said, "Sure! Go ahead!" Wow.. this facebook is really something... The image conscious Narrrling doesn't even mind being linked to a Hentai Queen. What is the world coming to?

I logged onto Narrrling's account and started exploring and after a few minutes, I went crazy on it... I started searching for old friends, old boyfriends, old enemies, old relatives, old teachers, old tution mates, old neighbours, old men, old women.. When I was done, I moved on to Narrling's ex girlfriends, ex friends, ex colleagues, ex neighbour.. etc.... When I find them, I also find out where they're working, who their friends are, what they wore to a party, what their friends say about them, where they got virtually poked, kissed, hugged, slapped.... You pretty much get to size a person up from their facebook profile alone.

Then I moved on to searching for my boss and boss's boss and boss's boss's boss... and found it real strange seeing the normally serious looking people in my company getting snow balled and batman kissed and virtual yoga-ed... on facebook. I find it a bit.... emasculating.... Not forgetting that some colleagues we normally call by some Chinese names like Ong or Ah Chan or Ravendran, suddenly becoming Gary or Stefano or Raven... ooo... fancy

The next day I logged onto Narrrling's account again and posted some photos of Mini-N resulting in Narrrling protesting because he said all his colleagues will think that he's posting up photos of his baby on facebook during office hours. See, first flaw of Facebook breaking through. Your boss and colleagues knows exactly when you're wasting away precious office hours. Gone are the times when putting up a serious face in front of the computer is good enough.

Then I found my angel faced cousin on facebook and I was so suprised with what I saw in her profile. I know she recently broke up with her boyfriend but I didn't know she was THAT aggresively looking out. The photos she posted up were mainly photos of herself... In this dress and that dress, in this pose and that pose, in this changing room trying on a hot dress, in that room getting ready for a photo shoot ... It was a lot of self-advertisements. Photos of flowers she got on Valentine's day, her valentine dinner's meal, the presents she got...etc... She definitely needs a lesson or two from me when it comes to hooking up men from the internet.. If I was on Facebook and I was looking to bag a decent and nice husband, I'd put photos of myself helping out in an orphanage, offering chinese new year goodies to old folks, playing with children in a playground, bathing little puppies... and NOT pictures of myself lying in a suggestive pose on a bed on Valentine's night. But she looks hot, no doubts.

Then there are guy friends who perpetually only seem to only have ladies in their facebook and all photos published by himself are photos of himself surrounded by 20 formula one chics, photos of him dancing with 20 wild babes in a club, photos of him receiving an award on stage, photos of him getting a thumbs up from somebody, photos of his car, his house, his own office room... Sometimes people can see beyond what's shown and read underlying messages too and photos like these just says too much too loudly, don't you think? Next time put some photos of yourself taking little children to the zoo, man.

Anyway, having said all that, I'm just a boring girl turning auntie who is sour of everyone getting in touch with everyone else via one of those winks and pokes. Honestly, I do like checking out what this person and that person is up to every now and then but I'd prefer not to share too much of myself on it. I'm not at all a very private person and yet I find facebook a bit too intrusive. Strange that I'm the only person in the world who thinks so.

Post Labor: Confinement

2008-01-17T13:04:00.000+08:00

I’m just a week away from going back to work, so the coming few days marks the very very end of my maternity leave, probably the only long break I’ll ever take from work till I reach 65.. And it wasn’t even fun.

I was away from work for 3 months since I delivered Mini-N. It wasn’t really a holiday of roses and wine because in the first month I was plagued by some hormonal changes that locked me into depression. I cried a lot especially in the evenings without really knowing why. One evening Narrrling asked me why I was crying and I just said, “It’s..It’s…the ginger smell!”

It didn’t help also that Narrrling had to travel for work to the US for 10 days leaving me alone at home, confined together with the confinement lady who wasn’t exactly my best friend. Yes, she was an excellent cook who could whip up the best meals I’ve tasted for years but I HATED the way she handled Mini-N and HATED the way she’s on my back the whole time about this confinement bullshit and that confinement bullshit, which I waved off from the first day of meeting her. I told her, “Focus on the baby. He’s most important.”

Then she goes about to force feed Mini-N till he vomits. Drowsy from being over-stuffed with milk, she puts him back to bed and sets herself on my back again about wearing shoes, wearing socks, eating this miracle Chinese herb pill and that anti-wind herb pill. In my confinement month, the word, “wind” drove me mad. She didn’t allow me to drink plain water and I had to drink some longan water that was boiling hot at all times. Look, I don’t mind drinking that longan crap, but why can’t I drink water?? The more she was on my back, the more I ignored her. I drank water blatantly in front of her. I refused to wear the shoes and socks she kept harping about and I took once the Chinese anti-wind rubbish and refused to take them again. I completely dismissed her talks about ‘wind’ and ‘wind’ and ‘wind’.

I cried every night from depression. I felt ugly, weak, painful (where the wound is) and on top of that, I had to have someone trying to instill in me all these rules and boundaries in my own home. My house smelled like a huge pot of ginger and looked like a refugee camp with clothes hanging everywhere to dry and my shower smelled like pee. She probably pees as she showers. Poor Narrrling had to come over to my room to wash the toilet numerous times because the smell of pee was simply intolerable.

I was also extremely worried about Mini-N. He had colic and was making a lot of noise at night from discomfort. In my condition, it can be excruciatingly painful to get up from bed but I did that several times each night to comfort him, because the confinement lady was deep in her slumberland and Mini-N was wailing and vomiting milk the whole night, thanks to her 3 hourly overfeeding. If ever one of his wailing wakes her up, she translates it as he’s hungry and stuffs another bottle into his mouth. Nothing I say seem to change her. Bloody hell, Mini-N was only 4 days old and she was feeding him 3oz of milk every 3 hours. Some babies drink 1oz until they’re 2 months old!!

What stays most vivid in my memory was one night after getting out of bed too many times to comfort and clean Mini-N, I was lying in bed looking at him. And right there before my eyes, he shot a foot high of milk out of his mouth. One side of his cheek was completely washed in milk. I knew I had to get up to clean him but my lower abdomen was just so painful that I couldn’t bring myself to get up. I called out to the confinement lady twice but she was snoring so loud she couldn’t hear me. So I lied there, all the while looking at Mini-N with more and more milk regurgitated down one side of his face, trying to gather my strength to get up and while doing that, I cried. I cried, I cried and I cried. I wasn’t sure if it was out of pain, out of frustration or out of worry for Mini-N.

I use to think it’s not that tough being a mother, just make sure your baby eats and poops and sleeps. I was prepared for the late nights, I was prepared for the hard work, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the weak state I was in and the worry for my child. I was worried sick on the first month after delivering Mini-N because he was vomiting milk constantly and would wail out with discomfort every night during sleep. He does that the whole night long. Yes, the whole night long so you can imagine how much sleep I got in the first month. The confinement lady told me it’s normal, she’s taken care of other babies who makes funny sounds as well. She said he’s just stretching and that’s suppose to be a good thing. After that night I watched him shoot out the milk through his mouth, I told her the next day, “NO, it’s NOT normal. We’re going to see a doctor”.

Turn up the volume to hear Mini-N and tell me if you think that's normal.

The doctor confirmed that Mini-N has colic and prescribed medication. At some point, the confinement lady started blaming me for it. She said Mini-N has wind in his stomach and it’s because I didn’t do all the things she told me to. My wind was passed to Mini-N through my breast milk. Oh, she’s so good at this game.

All these contributed to my post-labor blues on my confinement month. What a wreck I was. I looked at myself in the mirror and hated the person who was looking back at me. Let’s put it this way. On the day I delivered Mini-N, the weighing scale told me I put on 27.7kg in this whole pregnancy. Beng visited me and was shocked at my appearance. He told me much later that he almost couldn’t recognize me. In his own brutish words much later, he said, “Ugly was the only word to describe you.”

My thoughts then was, this whole pregnancy has ruined my body. I am fat, I have a big gash on my lower abdomen that hurt like hell, I have stretch marks all over it, I had massive backaches still, I have asthma still and I was swollen all over still, a chunk of my memory have gotten lost, like I find it hard to remember a lot of things, at loss with certain words, names….

Man.. that month was tough. When Narrrling was around, we ignored the confinement lady and he took me out to the movies to make me feel better. I remember we watched “Stardust” in One Utama about 2 weeks after delivering. I remember I walked very slowly from the car park to the cinema and back before and after the movie as to not aggravate my wound. That was how desperate I was for something to cheer me up. Sometimes when the confinement lady was not looking, Narrrling would sneak me a nice drink like a pack of ribena, a coca-cola, a glass of orange juice. Basically, we were thieves in our own house.

Looking back now in restrospect, I think we made one major mistake. If we didn’t believe in all these confinement wind bullshit, we should never have hired a confinement lady. What we needed was a helper who would do as we tell them. That’s lesson No.1 for the future if I EVER intend to have another child. At this point, I am thinking not. It’s a miracle that my asthma didn’t kill me this time around.

The moment the confinement lady was out of the door, I launched myself straight into action. I had my hair done, I had eyebrow embroidery, I went for facial, I had eyelash extensions, I even signed myself up for a slimming treatment. So far, I’ve miraculously lost 18 out of the 27 kgs I gained. Now the slimming treatments deserve another whole story by itself. I never use to believe in these treatments until I tried them myself. They work like a miracle, at least the one I went to. I think I look ok again. Ofcourse, I’m still seriously overweight but at least it’s not that bad that my friends can’t recognize me.

And Mini-N, after 7 weeks of wailing through the night, he finally stopped. Oh, thank GOD!! And he doesn’t vomit milk anymore. When I say vomit, I mean shooting milk out of his mouth. Sometimes he still regurgitates a bit of milk but that’s normal. He’s a healthy and happy boy now. At 2 months plus now, he’s just learned to smile and has started talking back recently with coos and goos. He also has a natural flair for posing for photos.

For those who believes in confinement, they’ll read this blog and say, “Girl, you might think you’re mighty strong now but when you grow old you’ll suffer for not listening to your confinement lady. All the pains caused by the lack of confinement care will only surface when you grow old.”

Yeah, when I get a backache, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t listen to the confinement lady. When I sneeze, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t listen to the confinement lady. When my poop is too soft, I also wonder if it’s because I didn’t listen to the confinement lady.

To me, this whole confinement thing is like a religion. It’s up to you whether you believe it or not. It could be true or it could be self-fulfilled prophecies. It’s not been proven, nobody knows if washing your hair really gets wind into your head, nobody knows if walking without socks on cold marble will get wind into your feet, yet people follow it, for the fear of being punished later in life…. It’s just like a religion…

Look like Who?

2008-01-04T10:31:00.000+08:00

You notice when somebody has a baby, the first thing the friends or relatives try to point out is whom the baby looks like? Whether it’s the father or the mother or the grandmother, or the mother’s brother..etc… In our case, since Mini-N is born out of mix parentage of asian and caucasian, people are even more keen to point that out, even strangers in the streets walking by, you can hear them commenting, “Eh, faster come and see. Mix baby! Wah, this one look more like ang-mo”.

With Mini-N, it was all quite interesting. When he was born and was a few minutes old, Narrrling took this picture of him and sent it out to friends and relatives around the world. The responses that came back was, “Wah, Mini-N looks like mummy!”

Then I overheard my dad on the phone talking to my sis saying, “Mini-N ah, look like Miki-C. Mouth big big, nose big big, face big big…”

Errmm.. I was on epidural and all that, but I wasn’t so blurr that I’d find those complimenting. Beng, my best friend, being fashionably gay and all that, as expected was always brutally blunt with it. He said, “Honestly ah, your Mini-N look like an alien monster lar. I think look like you lar.”

Hallloooo?... Since when did I start looking like a monster? ALIEN MONSTER some more, ok..

In laws who saw the photo in the Netherlands, also said in unison, “Look like Miki-C”

Then 2 months passed by and now, Mini-N looks like this.

Suddenly, now people say he looks like daddy? “Wah so cute, the skin soooo fair, the eyes so nice. This one definitely look like daddy..”

Unfair! When Mini-N looks like alien monster, he looks like me, when Mini-N look cute and all that, he looks like daddy. Apalar!!

Labor

2007-11-08T19:23:00.000+08:00

29th October 2007, 7.00am, Narrrling and I walked hand-in-hand into SJMC to have our lives altered forever. Not knowing what to really expect and what will happen, I put up a brave front, occasionally cracking a lame joke here and there as we took the elevator up to the 4th floor.

We were put up in one of those labor wards, the anaethesian came in and did his thing and before I knew it, I was lying in bed waiting for it to happen. The doctor came in and checked me and said I already had a 3cm dilation. The plan was that I was put on epidural and then induced. Since I had such a good start and knowing that the doctor has got clinic duties at 2pm, I was expecting to have my baby out by noon. Ah, such confidence I had.

So the wait started. The nurse would come in every hour to check my dilations. Since I was on the epidural, I didn't feel any pain so the beginning of my labor experience started off as one boring wait. At some point, Narrrling whipped out 2 copies of his MBA assignment and we started going through it.

"Wah this part must change! Doesn't quite connect to the previous paragraph"

"Apa Ni! This word wrong spelling lar."

"Eh, how come this word is spelt as socialise here but socialize there? Better standartise it ok!"

The nurse came in to check on my dilations a couple of times, and after about 3 hours, I was only 4 cm dilated. Don't forget, I came in already with 3cms of dilations. The nurse came in, saw us and asked, "What are you doing?"

We gave her a sheepish smile, "Narrrling's MBA assignment.. heehee"..

Then at some point, we finished the assignment. I got bored again, I whipped out my handphone and sms-ed Beng. "Eh, I'm giving birth now you know. Doctor ask me to put my phone away but since we so best fren, nevermind lar.. I sms you ok?"

Beng took this as a permission to forward my message to the whole world saying, "Miki-C is in labor now. Still got mood to talk cock with me so i guess she's ok lah!"

So Beng and I started sms-ing.

"What are you doing now?"

"Waiting for my dilations to reach 10cm. I've been waiting already for 3 hours ok. Now still 4.5cm"

"How come your dilations so slow? What you doing now?"

"I'm watching James Bond movie on Astro now. Maybe the excitement of the show is slowing down my dilations"

With this, Beng sent out another bout of messages to my friends saying that I'm watching a James Bond movie during labor.

"And now, what you doing?"

"Putting make up.. Nothing to do lar.."

The nurse, coming in on the 5th hour, told me that my dilations has only reached 5cms, which means that in the last 5 hours, I've only dilated 2 cm. Seeing what a good time I was having, she decreased the dosage of my epidural, saying that my legs were getting a bit too numb. OK... and THAT's when it all started to hurt. Beng sent me a follow up sms and I replied with some profanities.

He said, "Ok, now you must be in REAL labor."

On the 6th hour, the doctor came in and checked me. Still 5cms of dilations and since the progress was soooo slow, the doctor told me that we might have to consider an emergency caesarian. The baby's been trying very hard to come out and the top of his head's a bit swollen cos he's been pushing very hard through that feeble 5cms of dilations. Narrrling and I talked it over and we decided to go for the caesarian. Plus, it was really starting to hurt!

Immediately I was prepared for a caesarian and on the 7th hour, I was wheeled away to the Operation Theatre in another floor. In SJMC, the Operation Theatre doesn't allow the spouses to enter. And as I was wheeled away on my own by a bunch of strangers, a sudden wave of sadness came over me and my eyes became teary. Seeing the image of Narrrling growing smaller and smaller as I was wheeled into the Operation theatre suddenly made me realize that I was going to be going through this birth thing all alone and fear and loneliness kicked in. It felt like my world was suddenly taken over by a group of strange people dressed like smurfs in their blue uniform and caps and masks. Each person doing their own thing on me, some sticking needles into me, some taping some round stickers onto my chest, some tying my upper arm with some band like thingy, some positioning and strapping me down in a spread-eagle hands apart style and lastly, a huge blue cloth was draped over my face so that my entire world suddenly became nothing but blue... And the procedure began.

With epidural, I still felt what they were doing to me except I didn't feel any pain. I felt them cutting me, I felt them putting their hands inside, pulling, pushing and tugging.. One smurf decided to be nice and came by, lifted my blue curtain and told me, “Madam C, don’t worry, it’ll be over very soon, they’re cutting through the 5th layer now..”

I guess that was supposed to be really comforting. Then I heard the doctor say to her assistant, “You push, I pull. Ok ready? One two three! Again! One two three! Again! ONE TWO THREE!!”

And suddenly, I heard my baby cry…. I was expecting them to throw open my blue curtain and show me my baby but they didn’t. Instead I heard my baby being taken away, his cries getting softer and softer. A wave of emotions came over me again, “Why can’t they show me my baby? I want to see my baby!”

All I could hear was my baby cry in the distance and all I could see was the blue curtain over my face while I was lying there helplessly strapped down. The epidural was also making me shiver violently. It was cold and lonely and how I wish Narrrling were there with me.

“Miki-C, you ok? We’re going to close the openings and stitch you up now, ok?”

Those were the doctor’s last words before another series of pulling and tugging started over my stomach while I lay there shivering under the blue curtained world. At some point, the doctor and her assistant started chatting,

"Eh you know the angkasawan’s brother died? Poor thing ah. He’s only…."

"I delivered quintuplets last month.. Nobody wanted to take the case but I…"

At some point I even tried to participate in their conversation so I said, "What is quintuplets again? 5? 8?"

Both doctor and assistant went quiet for a while, I guess they didn't expect me to be so sociable in that state, you know with my guts and stomach cut open and lying about. After about 3 seconds of silence, the doctor hastily answered me and continued her story, this time more conscious that I'm listening in as well.

And I was lying there half listening to these conversations and at the same time, pining for Narrrling and my baby. I could still hear his loud cries from another room and I started to wonder about the color of his hair, his weight, his height… Why can’t they show me my baby??!!
After what seemed like the longest time, they finally brought my baby to my little world behind the blue curtain and said, “Madam C, this is your baby. Check ah, your tag number is 79992 and the baby’s also wearing the same number tag, 79992. Ok? Now we bring the baby to the nursery”

And that was it… I saw my baby for about 5 seconds before they sent him away…

I lay there afterwards, thinking about the little squirmy blue-ish baby I just saw, half listening to the doctor and her assistant’s continuous chatter. Gosh, it’s getting so uncomfortable lying there with my hands wide apart, shivering like crazy. It’s been almost an hour since I was in the Operations theatre and I couldn’t wait for the procedure to end. I wanted to get back to Narrrling, to more familiar places and faces.

When the procedure finally ended, I was so glad when they took off the straps on both my hands, I started waving my hands in the air because it was just getting so sore being tied down for so long. Just when I thought they were going to wheel me back to my room, they brought me to another room, saying that I had to be monitored before going back to my ward. So there I lay, shivering and shivering (side effects of the epidural), with one lady on my right who looked like she was in real pain because she was screaming out from time to time and on my left, an unconscious man who looked like he just underwent a sex change operation.

I comforted myself with thoughts that I’m the best one off among the 3 of us there. I just had a baby and amidst the shivering and pain and loneliness at that point of time, that is one of the most joyful moments of my life.

I also know that later when I’m wheeled back to my room, there’ll be someone there waiting for me..

And yes, that’s right, on a Monday evening of 29th October 2007, Hayden Nie Wen Walraven @ Mini-N came to this world. Welcome on board, baby… Now, another part of our lives begins together…

The End of One Era, The Beginning of Another...

2007-10-28T19:19:00.000+08:00

It's going to end tomorrow. The end of 9 months, the end of not being able to wear my own socks, the end of the backaches and elephant legs, the end of being my gynae's top 5% of the most swollen pregnant ladies she's ever treated, the end of living my life like a bachelorette, basically the end of one era in my life.

Tomorrow, a new era begins. I will join the league of the rest of the superhero moms! I will be Miki-C the speed hero who can change diapers and make milk fast like lightnin! Miki-C the body multiplier who can breastfeed, bath a baby and whip up a meal for the family all at the same time! Miki-C the mind-reading hero who knows what baby is thinking before he is even thinking it himself! Up up and away!

The truth is, I'm freaking out. I was inspecting the image of myself in the mirror earlier today. My tummy has grown huge, no sign of those Mystique appearance changing super hero powers to make myself look like a pregnant supermodel. My vagina looked very much like it was 9 months ago. I'm not sure a puppy can come out of there, what more an 8 pounder baby, no sign of that elastic super hero power. Basically, at times like this, how i wish i was a superhero. A power or two will come in real handy tomorrow.

Tomorrow 29th October 2007, 7am, everything will end.... and everything will begin....

Paranoia

2007-09-21T17:38:00.000+08:00

My 3rd trimester pregnancy has so far been mainly marked with one word, 'paranoia'. I was sitting on my bed a moment ago when i suddenly saw 2 round spots of wet stains on my sheets. The first question i asked myself was... "Oh shit, is that from my water bag?"...

Last night i was doing some cleaning around the house when suddenly I realised that my thighs were a bit damp with moist... As usual, I asked myself, "Shit, Is that from my water bag?"... I changed out of those clothes into something else, sat myself in an air-conditioned room and waited.. No further dampness.. i guess it was sweat after all..

So yeah, paranoia hits the pregnant woman... and the supporting male lead... Everytime I say something like that, instead of pacifying me, Narrrling looks equally as worried with that should-we-rush-to-the-hospital expression all over his face.

We started attending pre-natal classes a few weeks ago and in the first class, they taught us to watch out for signs of pre-mature birth or a troubled baby in the womb... such as sudden changes of baby movements, bleeding, waterbag leaking..etc.. From that day onwards, I started dreaming of bleeding when i slept and in my wake hours, i started feeling that my baby's movements have changed. "Eh, I never felt him kick so hard before. Is that normal?"

"Why's he doing the same thing over and over again for the past 10 minutes?!! This can't be right!"

"Is he kicking me harder today? Is he facing some kind of distress?"

Basically it's a lot of scaring myself... and the supporting male lead...

The second pre-natal class, the instructor taught us how to recognize signs that I'm going into labour... Extreme back pain, water bag burst, stomach pain like I urgently need to go toilet..etc... The next day, Narrrling and I went out for indian food. After the meal, i had a terrible pain in my stomach and immediately I thought, "Is that labour pain or normal diarrhoea stomach pain?"

I started counting the time between pain/contractions... Then poor confused Narrrling asked me if he should drive me to the nearest toilet or the nearest hospital. I said, "I don't know! Toilet first!"

Yeah, then i found it was just one big stomach pain as an immediate reaction to the indian food. Apalar.. again i managed to scare myself... and the supporting male lead..

Oh yeah, another thing that bothers me in my 3rd trimester is also looking into the mirror. I have issues admitting I'm looking at myself. WHAT THE... !!! No wonder recently i met at least 2 colleagues I've not seen for a long time who had troubles recognizing me. I saw it, ok. They hesitated for like a second or two before recognizing me! One of them is a lady I was fairly close to so i asked her... "Oh my gawd! You didn't recognize me!! Have i changed so much??"....

Then she was quick on her come back line and said, "No, No... it must be your hair!"

Eh, how can lar.. I just had a trim, ok. Sigh... I look awful. Some people say, when you carry a girl, you'll look radiant and beautiful but nobody told me when you carry a boy, you'll look like Beastmaster! I think i look like a ball, short and round. You know what, one of these days when I'm tired of driving home from work, i should just roll home.

Baby, Please Don't Be Like your Mother...

2007-08-06T12:50:00.000+08:00

When I was young, my mother use to say to me, "You just wait! One day when you have a child of your own, you will know how this feels!"

When I was young, I have never been an easy child especially to my mother. So now being 7 months pregnant and about to raise a kid of my own, my mother's phrase uttered somewhat 20 plus years ago keeps ringing in my ears. Some people say, "What goes around, comes around" and if that is true, I am soooo going to be in on a roller-coaster ride, the special double terror triple horror edition.

My first baby sitter who took care of both my older sister and brother gave up on me after 1 month. Her exact words were, "Mrs C, I raise the white flag on this last one". My mother had to scramble to find me a replacement baby-sitter.

Oh man, I was such a difficult child. I actually remember the times when I was a kid of about 6 years old and if anyone, just anyone touches me or makes me unhappy or if I didn't get my way, I would scream and cry at the top of my lungs (on purpose). Somehow I knew at that tender age of 6, the louder I screamed, the more the other person would back off, irregardless of who it is or what it is about. It could be my mother, my sister, my brother or my chinese maid, I always got my way in the end....

One very vivid memory I still have in my mind is my daily breakfast arguements with my mother during my primary school days. My mother is a nurse and no matter how tired she is from the previous day's night shift and although she didn't have to get up to make us breakfast, she still made a point to get up at the wee hours of every morning to see us 3 kids through breakfast and to wave us off in the school bus. Our daily arguement was always about the same thing. *drum roll* .The temperature of my cup of Milo. For some reason, back then I always felt that my mother could never get the temperature right. One day it was too hot, another day it was too cold. And i would push it aside everyday without fail saying that it's either too hot or too cold.. And my poor mother would have to fix the temperature until it was just right for my standards, either with more hot water or with ice cubes. Some days my mother tries to coo me into accepting my cup of Milo as it is or to have a bit of tolerance on its temperature but I never could. If it was not just right, I would just refuse it and go to school without touching it. This thing called temperature is also a very subjective matter, sometimes it depends on other depending factors. For eg. How long i take to eat my bread. Even if my mom fixed it just right, if i took too long on my bread, by the time I got to the Milo, it would be too cold. So it was trouble everyday and my poor mother had to put up with my nonsense.

Thinking back, if that was my kid, I probably would have let her go to school without it. I can imagine myself saying, "TOO BAD LAH!!"

But yeah.. easier said than done... Mothers always worry. After all, I am cut from the same cloth as my mother. What makes me think I'll be a tougher mother compared to her? So this is where I crumble at the thought of my mother's words, "You just wait! One day when you have a child of your own, you will know how this feels!"

Narrrling himself haven't been great neither. He said he use to accuse his mother of child slavery when he was a kid. He told me he shouted at his mother, "I know! You gave birth to me because you just want somebody to wash the plates and do the housework!!"

I slept with my parents until I was rather old and for some reason, I put up a big fuss every night about going to sleep. I lie in bed whining and whining because something was always not right. If i happen to wake up in the middle of the night, I continued my whining until I fell asleep again. My mom as usual put up with my nonsense and when I got old enough, one night I got a serious spanking from my father about whining at night. That was the very first time my father ever smacked my backside but thinking back, he waited pretty long before doing that. Having a whiny kid in bed every night is really no fun i guess.

A sweet girl who lives next door came by to my house one afternoon to visit. She saw me lying in my swinging cot for my afternoon nap and tried to coo me to sleep. So she starting singing some really sweet lullaby songs to me. I still remember back then, I thought it was the the most ridiculous thing ever that someone would try to sing me to sleep so I started laughing everytime she opened her mouth... Instead of sleeping, I was laughing at that sweet neighbour girl a-la "Who are you kidding" style. I continued laughing until she gave up probably thinking I was a mental case goner. Wasn't I such a mean kid?

I was also a sore loser. My siblings and I played a lot of imaginative role-playing war games when we were young. Each one of us had our own army and we all have our own special weapons. My brother's was an old broken umbrella, my sister had a broomstick and me, I could never find a fixed weapon for my army. Being the youngest, I always wanted their weapons instead. And since I was 4 - 6 years younger than them, I was always losing out because I couldn't think of a fight back strategy quick enough. My brother shouts, "Now we're breaking down your barricade!! Shooting at your soldiers! Chut! Chut! Chut! Chut! Chut!" (by the way, that's the sound of his old umbrella machine gun killing my soldiers)... And that's when I start to.......CRY!!!! And ofcourse, as loud as possible! I guess crying was my no.1 weapon because through some miraculous decision making process, my brother's army will always surrender very quickly once I start wailing. But very soon I found that no army wants to go to war with my army anymore and I was left alone playing on my own and once in a while, my game was to be a nuisance to everyone around the house.

Oh man, why was I such a difficult kid? Now I'm going to get the favour back from my own kid for sure. Days of justice are near! What if my child accuses me of child slavery when I'm teaching him the concept of 'responsbility'? What if my child screams violently because he doesn't get his way or his stupid Milo is too cold? I heard that the cane is now out of fashion and positive parenting is in. How long can I practice this positive parenting thing before I let myself relent to the good ol' fashioned cane? I bet my father persisted on positive parenting on my whiny nights for years until he realised that nothing brought positive results better than that good ol' 'backhand' parenting.

I don't know, man. I guess I've just gotta take it as it comes. Oh baby, if you can hear me at all, please don't be like your mother, ok?

By the way, I've set up a new space for the little one here. Enjoy reading!

I Must Die First!

2007-06-07T17:09:00.000+08:00

Last night, Narrrling discovered one of the worst fears of my life...To grow old alone and having all my loved ones die before me. Although I think maybe this is everyone's fear as well, but for me, merely talking about it draws me to tears followed by uncontrollable sobs. Or maybe it's just something pregnant women do. They get emotional and cry over everything. I thought about it this morning again while driving to work and cried until I managed to force some happier thoughts into my mind, like plotting on how I should address my boss's weaknesses during my mid year appraisal.

I felt really ill most of yesterday, had to skip a much anticipated dinner date (sorry gals!) and stayed in bed most of the night. Narrrling was keeping me company as usual, lying next to me, talking about anything that comes to mind. It all started with the story of Badawi getting married again, then we went into the usual banter of who will get a bf/gf faster after one of us die. At some point, our conversation got to a very morbid nature and that's when he started saying in a more serious tone, "You know, usually men die earlier. Since I'm 7 years older than you, you have to get ready ok, to be strong when i die."

I went into my normal mode of, "NO, i will die when I'm 65. That is fixed. I already said I WILL DIE FIRST!"

Narrrling continued in his serious tone, "You're not going to die when you're 65, darling. The odds are that I'm going to go first. I'll be there waiting for you at the other end, ok?"

"NO! I will die first! YOU CANNOT DIE!! I must die first!"

But as i said it, my imagination went hyperactive, imagining about life alone after Narrrling, how my kid will desert me and find me a burden, how I will be doing fox trots alone in an old nursing home with an imaginary Narrrling partner, or how I'll be living off other people's charity because I didn't save enough money in my bank for my old days... Before i knew it, I started crying because i knew that whether I wanted to admit it or not, it has been statistically proven that most women outlive their partners. My own grandmothers are the best examples.Probably your grandmothers too.

I got really depressed thinking about it to a point that I was sobbing and making whimpering crying sounds. Upon seeing that, Narrrling panicked and started going, "Hey! Hey! What's wrong?!"

All I could manage to say between sobs was that, "I'm going to die first! I said I'm going to die first means I'm going to die FIRST!"

"OK! OK! I don't die first, we die together ok?? By then euthanasia will be legal, and we both die together ok?"

"WHAT IF IT'S STILL ILLEGAL?!!"....

"Then when no one is seeing, you quickly push me off the hospital top floor. Then you also jump. You cannot bluff me by wearing a parachute ok?"

Then Narrrling quickly changed the topic and asked me if I'm hungry. He got me out of bed still in tears and marched me to the kitchen to look for food. In the kitchen, he went through the refrigerator while i checked out the food cupboard. He handed me a bar of chocolates and said, "Eat this, chocolates make you happy."

I ate the chocolate and went back to bed..

Somehow, discussing this topic is almost traumatic to me. Even writing this story was difficult because I was trying very hard to hold back tears. Didn't want my colleagues to think that I'm crying over work. Or is this a pregnant woman thing that I'm over emotional about silly stuffs?

Honestly, what is the point of living if everyone and everything you care about is gone from your life? I wouldn't be happy if a fortune teller tells me I'll live to a hundred because to me, what matters is actually how long will the people around me live? I will gladly have a shorter life if it means that I never get left alone. I'm scared of being alone. So next time, no matter what, I must die first, ok?

16 weeks

2007-05-31T15:19:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I was 16 weeks. Yeah, I'm pregnant. 16 weeks pregnant to be exact. This is a long overdue post, I meant to write about it when i first saw this..

Back then in February, it took us 3 home tests and a visit to the doctor to convince Narrrling and myself that we are indeed, really pregnant... Narrrling as usual joked about it while I was trying to make an appointment with the doctor, "What if the doctor tells us tomorrow that it's actually just a big fart?"

When the doctor confirmed my pregnancy, we went home and Narrrling attempted to give me some walking tips... "Now THIS is how you should walk from now on"...

He puts one foot in front of him, feels the ground for about 2- 3 seconds to make sure the step is safe and secured, puts the other foot in front and feels the ground again to secure the step and repeats this a couple of times.. then he turned back to me and said, "Yeah, it takes a bit of time to get to places but at least it's safe, you know"

Yeah, our kid is SO going to have a 'serious' daddy with lots of fantastic out of the box ideas...

Honestly, at 16 weeks, and after numerous visits to the doctor, sometimes, we are still in a daze. What? We're going to be parents now? Parents like those serious expressioned, stern looking, cane wielding fellas we see on TV? We SO don't fit the profile, the way we slug around the couch on weekends watching hours of TV or jump about like crazy people playing some stupid bubble whacking and jumping game on our Wii console. And the kind of immature jokes and slapsticks we exchange on a daily basis... like Narrrling till today would still say, "What if THIS time the doctor tells us it's just a big fart?"... Our poor kid, I think she's in for a very non-serious brought up in a very serious world.

Whenever I tell this to someone, he/she would say, enjoy while you can, because your life will change dramatically once the baby is born. Our lives will be dedicated to the baby, sleep will never be complete, quiet times will be non-existent, going out shopping or movies will be impossible, breast feeding is painful, giving birth feels like a million needles stabbing into your body... Ahhhh i see.. so there's a boot camp to convert people like us, the non-conformists into real, proper parents.... This explains it.

For the record, I think my baby likes hip hop music and is not a meat eater in general. Those who know me well, knows that I've always enjoyed a tasty, juicy carnivorous meal. Vegetables are like these unimportant bitter green slime that I can't be bothered with. Ever since I've been pregnated with this so-called "big fart", I've turned almost vegetarian. I've gone off rice, I've gone off most meat, I've gone off seafood, all 3 were once my all time favourites. Nowadays I eat plain soup noodles with green veggies ok.. dun pray pray... And for some reason, I've found new passion in hip hop music. It's a puzzling phenomenon.

Walking outside on the streets, sometimes I worry that people thinks that I'm fat. After all, my tummy is not significant enough to pass as a pregnant stomach yet, so to many people, I'm afraid I'm just passed off as "That FAT woman"... Talking to colleagues sometimes, i can feel some of their eyes darting back and forth between my face while talking to me and my tummy. After a while it got so awkward that i just came right out and said it, "YUP I'm pregnant! So you were saying these 23 licenses will expire in June but the contract says....."

In general, the idea that there's going to be a new member in our family is slowly but surely sinking into our brains. We find ourselves talking more and more about babies and I find myself less and less, shopping for high heels by mistake. Yeah, it's slowly coming, alright.. And yesterday, the doctor said.. "Maybe, it's a girl"... So there! Another healthy addition to the bimbo's club.. I'll be sure to fill her in when she gets here..

Bad Guys Do Exist

2007-04-25T15:45:00.000+08:00

Bad guys do exist. If i were to have dinner with some close friends and the topic of my Ex came about, the word 'Bad', would be the nicest word used to describe him around the table. When it comes to describing my Ex, there are no limits to foul words, languages nor dialects used. And after the loud profanities, vulgarities, obscenities in every dialect/language possible, they always end with, 'Miki-C... WHY?? How could you stay with him for FOUR years?? If we would have known, we would have stopped you, tied you to a tree and shouted at you until you woke up!! WHYYYYYY??? How could you do it??"

We read the news everyday and we constantly wonder, why would an abused wife continue to live with her husband? Why would abused children continue to cling on to the very person who hurts them not just physically but also mentally and emotionally? Although I must clarify that what I've been through is nowhere nearly as serious as what the victims in news must have been through, I have a feeling I know how they feel.

Nowadays when i think back of those days when my self-confidence was negative hundred and I was being called, "Stupid and Fat!" on a daily basis by the one person who's suppose to love and adore me, I do try to analyse, "WHAT THE HELL was going on in my head then? Why didn't i just tell him to bloody go to hell!"

I think in the midst of the confusion of having one of my most loved one hurting me, somehow, just somehow, I had started to mistaken fear for love and cruelty for superiority. First of all, my self confidence was completely bludgeoned to death. I felt worthless and he was probably the best thing that can ever happen to me. What with those good looks, good education, intelligence, what other guy like him would want me? Not to mention, he's a fast thinker too. Whatever you had to say, he was two steps ahead and would and could battle any arguments you might put forth.

He made me feel like I absolutely deserved it when he shouted at me in front of a group of friends in a barbeque party for telling someone he just got a promotion. Didn't know it was still a secret. I lived in fear for saying the wrong things. I felt so guilty, sometimes to a point that i felt if he shouted at me, he was right. If he called me "STUPID AND FAT AND SLOW!!" in the context of me doing something wrong, i deserved it. Everyone at the barbeque party went quiet and one girl followed me when i ran to the ladies room.

Yes, i deserved to be shoved to the ground by force when I left his broccoli soaking in water.

I also deserved to be left sitting in a busy coffee shop on my own with my food because he finished his food quick and the coffee shop was getting too hot for him.

I also deserved to be deserted in a shopping complex when i was standing in a long queue. He just left. Yup. He just went to his car and drove home without me. And i didn't even know he left until he didn't pick up my calls and the final walk to the car park confirmed it. The shopping complex was about 45 minutes away from home.

I deserved to be shouted at and called names in public with people looking on for being a few minutes late from a class.

I deserved to be in tears, kneeling on the ground trying to scrub the carpet clean while he shouts at me in front of his business partner because i spilled sauce on the carpet. His business partner looked more embarrassed than anything, trying very hard to stare straight at his computer.

Yes, i deserved it. I deserved it all.

I lived on in this nightmare for years but one night, something happened that made me see the light. I was reading the newspapers about a housewive who got gang-raped by a bunch of robbers in front of her own husband. I showed him the article and said, "What if that's me and you?"

With a bit of horror in his eyes, he turned to me and said, "I will DEFINITELY divorce you!!"... His answer left me stunned. I waited for him to tell me it's a bloody joke but that moment never came. Then I started to realise that he was DEAD serious. How can I share my life with someone who'll leave me when I need him most? Surely I DIDN'T deserve to be gang raped. Why is he then still punishing me when i DIDN'T do anything wrong??

That incident woke me up but yet, I stayed in the relationship for another year. I had hopes. Maybe he would change, maybe he'll get better, maybe he'll love me more tomorrow... But that tomorrow never came... I continued my relationship in the nightmare edition and finally one day, in the midst of one of his loud fits, he threatened to stomp out and then me, with a heart burnt to ashes, I said in a cool tone, "If you really want to leave now, don't ever come back. And leave the keys."

Those were my last words to him. He left the keys and he never came back. That was the end of it. Yet i still cried. After 3 days, all the good memories with him came flowing back and I cried and I cried.

Then one day, his business partner asked me out for dinner. Over dinner, he told me, "Miki-C, one day, you will look back at the day you broke up with him as the best day of your life. Because your relationship with him is over, now the world is your playground. You are given another chance to go out there and find that man of your dreams. I know you only remember the good times now. But think about it. You were having about 30% of good times and 70% of bad times with him. Don't you think now that you're alone again, you can do better than 30%?"

Yes, trust a businessman to give you love advice presented in a very business and statistical way but if you think about it, what he said is so very true. Surely I can be happier without him. Even if i stay happy for half a day all by myself, I would have been declared better off without the asshole.

Very often after that, I reminded myself of all the pain I went through while I was with him and over time, i started to really hate him. I didn't think he deserved happiness. Or more like, I think he deserves happiness about as much as a gang-raped wife deserves to be deserted by her husband. He deserves goodness about as much as the frail old man on the bicycle deserves to be taunted by him when it got in his way. Yet you'll be suprised, in my 4 years with him, I HAVE met friends of his who supports his actions. The first thing his dad told him about me after our first meeting was that i was fat and i should lose some serious weight! So here, now you know where I got that weight complex thing from? And YES, bad guys DO exist.

Ladies, wake up. If you start to feel that everything eventually becomes your fault and your self confidence is constantly being challenged, let this story alert you to ring that fiery alarm at the back of your heads. That's how it starts and most of the time, it doesn't end just tomorrow.

And yes, when I look back at the day he walked out of my door, I might not be thinking so at that time but now, I see it as the best thing that has EVER happened to me. EVER. EVER. EVER.

Eyes on Malaysia?

2007-04-16T13:58:00.000+08:00

This is a story of how Europeans, or specifically the Dutch in particular see (or more like don’t see) Malaysia. The story began one tragic Monday morning when my mother-in-law had an accident in my home, a few hours before they were bound to fly back to the Netherlands. She climbed onto an office chair with rollers in our study to fetch something from the top shelf. As expected from those devious chairs with rollers, it moved and she fell. It was a bad fall, her shoulders were dislocated and she was in desperate need of professional medical help because she was in pain. And now you and I know, when your shoulders are dislocated, most of the time, ‘being in pain’ is a real understatement. She was in excruciating PAIN!!

My father in law and Narrrling driving at 150kmh in a most dangerous manner, rushed her to the nearest hospital and checked her in at the emergency ward. At Pantai Hospital , my mother in law was hospitalized for half a day, where the doctors most kindly put her under full anesthesia to spare her the pain while they ‘fixed’ her shoulder. After that, they bandaged her up nicely in a soft cast, prescribed her with morphine patches and pain killers and sent her along the way, but not before giving her a letter to pronounce that, she is obviously NOT FIT TO TRAVEL.

So my mother in law came home, had no choice but to miss her flight back to Holland and recuperated for a few days before popping by Pantai again to get a follow up check on her shoulders and also by then, her swollen leg. Before she was pushed out of Pantai hospital in a wheelchair, this time the doctor gave her a letter that says, “FIT TO TRAVEL”.

Immediately, they booked a flight the next day back to Holland. I do understand the rush, since my mother in law has a condition called Muscular Dystrophy, and the doctor in Pantai admitted that this disease of muscular weakness is rare in this part of the world. The fall has somewhat aggraveted the side effects of the Distrophy problem. My mother in law’s joint and muscle problems and pain didn’t look like they were going away very soon.

On the next flight back to the Netherlands, my mother and father in law were on KLM’s business class seats, prepping themselves for the upcoming challenges to seek the proper professional medical help for my mother in law in the fastest speed. For those that are unfamiliar, the Netherlands operate their medical services very differently from Malaysia.

Whether you are rich or poor, young or old, very sick or just quite sick, you MUST go to the medical institution/hospital or clinic prescribed to you by the government, and most of the time, this medical institution is bounded to your residential locations. If you need a heart surgery and you’re filthy rich, you’ll still need to take a number, queue and wait for your turn for surgery and that could be months later. In summary, there is NO such thing as private medical institutions in the Netherlands. Ofcourse, the brighter side of this is that, medical help is always free, it’s for everyone, paid by your compulsory insurance and the government. Everyone is entitled to medical help, whether you live in a mansion or a manhole. There is no discrimination to wealth, race nor connections whatsoever.

So the first thing my parents in law did when they got home, was to drop all their luggage and called the hospital to make an appointment. What they were hoping for was to seek treatment for the dystrophy problems that has gone worse since the fall. My mother in law was in more pain everyday. Over the phone, my mother in law explained the situation, that she had an accident in Malaysia and was treated in a Malaysian hospital for her dislocated shoulder and now would like to get further scans to check on her dystrophy problems because it’s getting worse.

To her surprise, the hospital staff on the other side of the phone sounded shocked that my mother in law got herself treated in a Malaysian hospital and followed on to say that BECAUSE she was treated in a MALAYSIAN hospital (we’re talking about Pantai Hospital here, not just ANY Malaysian hospital in some ulu kampung), she is now NOT allowed to enter the Dutch hospitals anymore. The staff on the phone asked her to go to her prescribed clinic to get a range of tests completed, blood, mouth swab..etc.. and once these tests come back and she can prove that she’s not carrying any bizarre virus or bacteria from Malaysia, THEN she is entitled to make an appointment for the hospital again.

My mother in law tried to convince the hospital staff that the hospital she went to in Malaysia was a prestigious private hospital and to top it up, she was in pain and needed help but all these were in vain. She HAD to get the tests done before she can enter a hospital in the Netherlands.

I tell myself that the Netherland folks are just being extra cautious but I really can’t help but feel surprised when Narrrling told me this. What with the Skyscrapers and Twin towers, F1 circuits and some bizarre Eyes on Malaysia a.k.a London eye wannabe, it looks like we’re still pretty far from proving ourselves to be the civilized nation that we want the world to see us as. For all they know, we could still be living in trees. 50 years of independence is approaching, folks. Look how far we’ve gone.

Muar Mandarin

2007-03-15T15:19:00.000+08:00

This is really funny... If you listen to the song carefully, you'll find that actually the background music repeats itself over and over again but the creativity in the lyrics(in so-called Muar Mandarin), the showsmanship and the Muar made illustrative short clips make this MTV downright fun and ingenious!... Hats off to the creators of this MTV/song... The name of the song is directly translated as "Muar Mandarin"...

Caution: Beware of vulgar language, racist comments, inappropriate content and the uncontrollable giggles.

Updated 30 minutes later... Initially i thought Ma Po is Malacca... Ha ha.. thanks to Vad3r (my first commentor below), i quickly came back in and corrected any reference of Malacca to Muar... Sorry lar.. Banana mah...

Perfect Guys are a Myth

2007-02-21T10:49:00.000+08:00

When I was young, I always thought it was my destiny to marry a doctor. As a toddler, I was placed with a baby sitter who has 3 sons who use to tease and kid me around like a baby. They all grew up and became handsome young doctors. It was a sign.

As I grew up, I developed this liking for doctors, maybe because my mother’s a nurse. When I missed the school bus home, I would walk to her clinic after school and hung around until her shift ends so that we could go home together. So that familiar Dettol scent and all those tools and gadgets used in a clinic, I grew up dancing around them. Any patients who starts to doodle this lil girl who runs around wildly in the clinic, I would very proudly tell them, “MY MOTHER IS A NURSE!” and I almost expected them to envy me for it. Yeah, I loved that lil run down clinic, I loved the smell, I loved everything about it.. So I thought, maybe one day, I should marry a doctor!

I met the guy of my dreams when I was in my early university years. Yes, don’t try to count my age but that must have been a decade ago. He was a 2nd year medical student in an Australian university and we met when he was back in KL for holidays. He's tall, well spoken, good looking, funny and charismatic. I fell in love with him when he told me one day with those blurry eyes, "When I am a doctor someday, I will make sure i talk to my patients and really hear what they have to say. That is the ONLY way to make an accurate diagnosis."

I thought, “Wow… I am the luckiest girl in the world because he is JUST SOOOoo ideal. My very own PERFECT guy!!”

One thing I’ve learnt over the years, is that there really is no perfect guy and all good things always come to an end, sometimes faster than you can anticipate. He went back to Australia to continue with 3rd year of prestigious medical school and oh, he sure broke my heart… and soul… I bawled my eyes out for months…After that heartbreak, I kept my distance away from him… He came back the following year for 3rd year semester break and called me. I kept my cool tone and avoided him at all expense. He drove 40kms to my university residence and called me. He was standing downstairs of my flat looking up and still, I told him to go home. I refused to see him. I woke up the next day, and saw that he left me a present in my mail box.

The first few years, he continued to call me from time to time, I continued to avoid him at all expense. Never am I going to let someone so perfect come near my heart again. Then he gave up and for the last 5 years or so, we never contacted each other… I do admit, that this guy has burned a very strong mark in me and I would occasionally still google his name to see what he was up to…. He graduated from that prestigious medical school of his, went to Singapore to practice and is pursuing surgery…

Yes, we’ve lost contact for many years now.. but a few weeks ago, as I was scrambling into the car with about 20 bags of groceries in my hand, my phone rang.. As usual, my phone always ring at the most inconvenient time.. I dropped all the grocery bags and started rummaging through my handbag for my darn phone! It was an unfamiliar number. As Narrrling started picking up the bags i dropped one my one, I pressed that lil’ green button to answer the call.. “Hello?”

“Hello?… Hey.. Miki?”

“Yes, speaking. Who’s that?”

“It’s T, remember me?”

It took me a while to register, Oh my God, it’s T!! Next to me, Narrrling started driving us out of the car park..

“Oh, Hi T!! It’s…it’s… been a long time...”

“Yeah, it has, huh… and you still have that sweet voice of yours… How are you?”

“Good… good… and you? Are you back in KL?”

“Yeah, back in KL now.”

“For good?”

“Oh, no no.. I’m in Singapore now. Practicing in GH.”

There was an awkward silence… I wasn’t sure what else to say.. In fact, this guy has been out of my mind for so long, I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore.. Then he said..

“Hey.. so how have you been? Married already?”

“Me? Oh yeah.. I got married early last year.”

“Oh…”

We paused again with another awkward silence… Then he broke the silence again and said..

“Which guy is this? Is it anyone I know?”

“No, don’t think you know him.” I said this as I turned to look at Narrrling who was driving next to me as he turned and made a silly face with a silly grin, baring his teeth at me. Narrrling knew I was talking to somebody special from the past about him and as usual, wanted me to laugh because now it’s too late and I’m stuck with this Narrrling who has a silly face.

“Oh… hey, congratulations!”

“Thanks!…. And you? When is it your turn?”

“Me? Ohh, actually, I’m getting married in 2 weeks”

When I heard that, I was puzzled.. but ofcourse, I continued the graceful act.. I congratulated him and after another minute or two of empty conversations, we hung up. And that was it… It was the weirdest phone call…

My mind started spinning, why would he call me after what must have been… 5 years of non-communications?? And why call me 2 weeks before his wedding? I’m sure it’s not like he wanted to invite me… because he sure didn’t mention it throughout our call…. Oh well, maybe he genuinely just wanted to catch up... but who has time to call old friends to catch up 2 weeks before their wedding?...

I was telling Su3 about this yesterday.. She still remembered the day she had to come over to my place because I was crying so badly over the phone… She came by and sat with me while I cried and cried and cried for hours…It was not every day that you chance upon the man of your dreams…and lost it… I went on crying for 3 months and eventually only got over this ‘perfect guy’ after 2 years.. That was the biggest heartbreak I’ve ever gone through in my life..

And that phone call, although I’m still wondering what it was all about, to me, it’s a closure…. It turns the last page of my dreams about doctors and perfect guys.... because Narrrling with his silly face is my imperfectly perfect version of the man I’d like to spend the rest of my life with..And being imperfectly perfect is the best anyone can ever get because from experience I know, there is really no such thing as a perfect guy..

Tagged!

2007-01-30T13:35:00.000+08:00

Was tagged by Krazie Angel. I’ve never done this before but figured it’s a good get-to-know-you game.

For those who came from Krazie Angel’s blog.. you might see some similarities, cos I copy and paste mah… No need to reinvent the wheel.. All Asians have dark brown-black eyes, takkan my eyes are tiba-tiba, “The colour of dark chocolate with a nocturnal mood of darkness”.

Part 1: On the Outside
Name : not Miki-C
Date of Birth : 6th September 1986 (Wah, I’ll finally turn 21 this year! So excited man!)
Current Status : Fat
Eye Colour : Dark brown, almost black
Hair Colour : Dark brown under the sun, otherwise black
Righty or Lefty : Righty
Zodiac Sign : Virgo

Part 2: On the Inside
Your Heritage : Chinese
Your Fear : Dead Fishes in Aquariums (This one long story lar.. )
Your Weakness: Chocolates, Ice-Cream AND Old people begging for money
Your Perfect Pizza : Crunchy crust with lots of salami.

Part 3: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
Your thoughts first waking up : Shit, have to go to work…
Your bedtime : 11pm - 12.30pm
Your most missed memory : Holidays!

Part 4: Your Pick
Pepsi or Coke : Both
McDees or Burger King : Both
Single or Group Dates : Both
Adidas or Nike : Neither (Can only afford Bata ok)
Lipton Tea or Nestea : Neither (Milo pls)
Chocolate or Vanilla : Chocolate ofcourse
Cappucino or Coffee : Neither (Milo pls)

Part 5: Do You...
Smoke : No
Curse : In 3 languages

Part 6: In the Past Month
Drank alcohol : No
Gone to the mall : Yup
Been on stage : Nope
Eaten sushi : Yup
Dyed your hair : No

Part 7: Have You Ever?
Played a stripping game : Yes (and not with Narrrling!!)
Changed who you were to fit in : Yes

Part 8 : Marrriage
Age you're hoping to be married : 26

Part 9: In A Guy/Girl
Best Eye colour : Green or Light, light blue
Hair colour : No preference
Short or long hair : Short and clean cut/shaven

Part 10: What Were You Doing?
1 minute ago : Doing this
1 hour ago : Thinking up yet another diet plan
4 1/2 hours ago : Thinking up yet another diet plan, different from the one 1 hour ago
1 month ago : Running all over town preparing for my beloved brother’s wedding
1 year ago : Running all over town, preparing for my own wedding

Part 11: Finish The Sentence
I love : doing nothing
I feel : bored
I hate : Old wood or anything made out of Old wood (another long story this one..)
I hide : my ears under my sheets before I sleep every night (also long story…)
I miss : my sister’s babies (oh sorreee, and my sister too)…
I need : a good diet plan

OK – at this point, I’m suppose to Tag someone else… errr.. I guess I have to tag someone who actually reads my blog right? Cannot simply simply tag people like Jeff Ooi, right? Actually, I don’t know if anyone really reads my blog. I pay people like Metria and Su3 to comment in my blog on a weekly basis to create that popular feeling, you know. Ok, I’ll do it anyway… but I’m not sure if I’ll get to 5..

Part 12: Tag 5 People
1) Metria of Potpouri of Insanity
2) Su3 or Lil E of My Thoughts, My Love, My All
3) Jolene of Jolene’s Diary
4) Asther of What was In My Mind!! (Asther, sorreee, i know maybe now got to mood to play tag with me.... Later ok?... Meanwhile, take good care of your dad and also yourself... )

Oops.. can’t even think of 5 person who will read this. No. 1 and 2, ok lar, I put them on a monthly payroll to read my blog… :P So both of you, better perform...

Career Related Habits?

2007-01-23T12:02:00.000+08:00

A few days ago, my team mate and I had our weekly early morning telecon with our boss in Houston and it was our ritual where right after our boss hangs up, my team mate and I would linger on in the meeting room for a while just to catch up. My team mate and I, although there's only 2 of us in the team, we spend most of the week in our separate worlds. Our boss have divided our roles so clean that there is almost no reason for us to cross paths when it comes to work. So this weekly meet makes up the only ocassion for us to do a lil' team bonding. Sometimes we talk about work, sometimes about everything else. And that day, we somehow started talking about some mutual colleagues of ours. He started with saying, "Isn't it weird, that all finance people think the same?"

"Ya man, it's amazing how they all think alike. Save every penny. Their eyes light up when they hear that the company is giving out freebies. Then they go through great lengths to GET the freebies. They skip breakfast because they know there's going to be free team lunch so that they have the capacity to order and eat more. And most importantly, they MUST use up every cent in the social budget allocated for their team.Talk about maximising opportunities!"

I still remember, in my previous company, the Chief Financial Officer(CFO) use to ride his teenage son's BMX bicycle to work everyday just to save on petrol and parking expenses. You remember? Those medium sized colourful teenager BMX bicycles that was really popular a while back? And yeah, we're talking about a 40+ year old CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER of a large company riding a bike too small for himself to work. We might be saying it's ridiculous and all, but our friend the CFO is probably the richest guy in the whole company.

Honestly, if suddenly one day crisis hits planet Earth, I think it is very likely that this group of people will be the sole survivors and people like me will die of hunger squatting by the longkang trying to catch guppies for dinner.

Yesterday over lunch, I was chatting to a certain Miss Finance in my company. She started with complaining about the current toll rise and being broke, then i went on by saying that I am broke too, but because i bought a whole new range of skin care products last weekend because my current products which I've only used for a few times, totally sucks! She started with saying,

"What's wrong with your current products? Give me lar!"

"Can give you lar cos I want to get rid of them anyway, but I am obligated to tell you something about the products first."

"Uh-oh. What?"

"They're Lancome products, but I bought them in a Lancome warehouse sale. So it is possible that the products are old and maybe expired."

"It's ok lar, skin care products won't expire one lar. Did you bring them?"

"No lar, i didn't bring.. You sure you want ah? I used the moisturizer and they gave me shit loads of pimples wor."

"Maybe you got oily skin lar. My skin so dry, I won't get pimples one. Or better still, I give to my mother, her skin so old already sure won't get pimples anymore."

"You sure ah? Then the Toner right, after I used, I got a few patches of red rashes on my face wor.My nose also dunno why started peeling like crazy."

"Can lar! My mother's skin so old already won't get these kind of things. Tomorrow you bring ok?!"

"Ok, but if anything happens to your mother's skin, throw away the products quickly and don't blame me ah"

"Ya lar. Tomorrow remember to bring the products ah!"

Yesterday, as if knowing I am not convinced, Miss Finance came to my cubicle later and took a long look at my face. First she said my nose was not peeling, then she said those red patches are eczema that I probably got from somewhere else because it's contagious. We were standing there for a long while argueing about whether or not my nose was peeling and whether or not eczemas are contagious until I've finally resorted to just giving her the products and hope for the best.

So today, a bottle of Lancome Moisturizer and Toner is sitting on her table and I am still thinking if I really should give it to her. I mean, although I'm not 100% sure, but I've made it clear that there are possible defects to the products. Is this good enough to help me demolish my guilt if anything happens to her or her mother's face? When she saw the products this morning, she messaged me online and said, "You should keep the skincare product bottles clean next time, I saw on your bottles got dust lar. Dust can cause pimples too, you know."

OK-lar.. then I guess there's really no reason to doubt the products anymore. I rest my case. I gotta go practice catching guppies!

With Walls Thinner than you Think they Are..

2007-01-15T16:27:00.000+08:00

Narrrling have lived in our current home for the past 4 years and me, for the last 1 and a half years. I've always felt that we lived in a super high quality condominium. I've always thought to myself, "Wah, the walls must be so thick. It's always been peaceful and silent living here. I've never heard any of my neighbours before, regardless of nextdoor, downstairs, upstairs whether with children or single or with old folks. The walls must be so thick, good enough to keep all our privacy within our walls. Great! Perfect!."

So in my last 1 and a half years here, I let myself go... A small tickle leads to a SUPER loud laugh.. A small smack on my hand leads to a SUPER loud scream... Boy i've screamed... Not out of passionate love making or anything of the sort but out of the smallest trivial thing, like Narrrling jumping out in front of me, Narrrling staying in the bathroom too long, Narrrling putting my pendant necklace on his head and calling himself a Starchild and me the Starbuck... All these time i've lived here, I've never heard a single sound from any of my neighbours. Until recently...

My neighbour upstairs moved in. It started with us hearing things being moved around in the middle of the night. We heard footsteps directly overhead, running, walking and people pushing back their chairs. Then it got worse, things would drop suddenly in the middle of the night and Narrrling and I would wake up suprised. Or sometimes, our neighbours above would sound like they're doing aerobics and we hear a consistent stomping noise... Noises like these happens ocassionally and we've always dismissed them without really registering what it means.. But yet, this noise got more and more frequent, and constantly starting only late at night..

The story then takes us to last night... Narrrling and I had a Nip Tuck marathon last weekend. We watched the whole season 3 of Nip Tuck, one after another over the weekend and by Sunday night, we were both convinced that plastic surgery is the way to go ahead and getting a liposuction is as normal as waxing our armpit.. As we were trying to outdo each other with how many kilo of fats we could each suck out of our bulging middle, the noise upstairs started again. The usual furniture dragging, things falling on the ground suddenly with a loud thud thud thud and then some consistent stomping noise like they've suddenly decided to do aerobics in the middle of the night...

We both looked up irritated and I started complaining about them. After about a minute of old lady's ranting and complaining, we both forgot about the earlier topic of liposuction and decided to go to bed.. I got up and walked to my dressing room to prepare for bed.. As i started smacking on my night cream, I noticed that the noise from upstairs is much clearer and louder from this room. That was when i heard for the first time, in between the loud stompings, there was a lighter sound.. I thought it sounded very much... like... a.... like...a.... Whip!

OH MY GOD! They're having an S & M party up there!! I called out to Narrrling and told him what i thought it was... and to my suprise, Narrrling came in with a very serious look and an empty glass which he pressed to the wall! Then, very carefully he pressed his ear to the edge of the glass...I was left stunned for a few minutes when i saw Narrrling standing by the wall with his ears on a glass like a PROFESSIONAL snoop...

After a while, i thought, "Damn!" I ran outside and got myself a glass too and ran back into the room and pressed it to the wall next to Narrrling... Upon putting my ears in position, i heard music, some trance music.. then once in a while, some moaning-ish kind of sound that weren't too loud but loudest of all, the consistent thumping... Narrrling and I stood with our ears to the wall for a while and then got bored because all we heard was the same thing over and over again... With our imaginations running wild, we both decided to go to bed... Above us in our own bedroom, we heard yet another set of loud thumping coming from above... Narrrling went, "Another one?"..

"Must be an orgy!" Jokingly i continued, "You want to go upstairs and join them?"

Narrrling's face suddenly lighted up all too fast and said, "What if i went upstairs and found a group of girls wearing a strap-on doing each other because there was not enough men?"

I stared at Narrrling and said in an artificial tone, "Wow, wouldn't that be JUST your lucky day??!!"

At that, Narrrrling suddenly realised what he had just said out loud and and snapped out of his fantasy... I laughed very hard and Narrrling grew deep red in the face... What a way to discover your hubby's wildest fantasy!...

The night went on and so did the thudding and thumping and humping.. At some point, some people must be reaching a climax because it got REALLY loud and then silence... The party probably ended about 2 am.. The thudding and thumping went on for a whopping 2 hours plus... Boy, that must have been some wild night for those girls and their strap ons......Can i get an invitation the next time around?

The moral of the story is, beware, walls are always thinner than you think they are.. and the most ordinary people can one day suprise you with their hidden talent and aspirations, what with Narrrling and the professional glass snooping method and girls with strap ons... I need to sit down...

Bear & Brad..

2007-01-08T13:19:00.000+08:00

Pooh! Pooh! All the hours of internet researching and camera manual reading cannot compare to a 2 minute casual tip from a real professional. I did it! I made Teddy's background go blurr, giving him just a tad more attention compared to Brad in the blurred background...

To those who wants to know how this is done, very important is that you have to first repeat after me, "To hell with all the manuals and internet research! TOTAL waste of TIME!!"...

Then give yourself 2 seconds to cool down, reach out for that camera of yours and do the following... just select the AV (Aperture Priority) feature on your camera and numerically adjust it to as low as u can (2.7 or about there)... walk as far away from your object as possible... focus and zoom in to your object using your camera's zoom feature... make sure the background of your object is as far away as possible.. then snap your picture.. as easy as that! Cheers! Congratulate me! My first new year resolution fulfilled!

The Path of the Afterlife...

2007-01-03T17:16:00.000+08:00

I was watching this British sci-fi TV series called, "Torchwood" recently about a group of investigators working for a secret organization called Torchwood, who deals with alien technology, alien crime or anything that has to do with aliens..

In one episode, they had this alien equipment that can bring a dead person back to life for a few minutes. Yes, just a few minutes. So right after they asked the guy who killed him, they had nothing much to say anymore to the dead guy so just to make some converstaion, they asked him, "So what's in the after life? What do you see after you die?"... The dead guy look confused for a while, looked back at them and finally said, "Nothing.. Nothing at all.. Just darkness..."...

When i saw that, i thought, Whoa... a lot of people is NOT going to be happy seeing THAT on TV.. especially those with strong believes in the afterlife.. Heaven and hell, reincarnation, the light at the end of the tunnel, the pathway to heaven, the chinese bullhead with a horseface, the angels of death....etc..

Now in previous blogs, I mentioned before that I am a fence sitter.. never wanting to really take sides when it comes to religion... In secrecy, sometimes I wish there really is nothing after we die... I find it rather tiring to have yet another circus to perform in after this one. What? I have to learn to play the harps now? or or.. What? I have to lie here while you gut me out because i took 50 cents from my mother's purse when i was 8 because i wanted to buy myself a packet of Chickadees?

I don't know.. maybe when i grow older, I'd appreciate this thought of having an afterlife... Somehow I don't think I am the only person in this world who secretly thinks that maybe this darkness thing after death is somewhat what's best for us.. What do you think?

Or are you a strong believer of this?...

A light at the end of the tunnel..

A stairway to heaven...

This year, my name is Fluffy..

2006-12-26T13:51:00.001+08:00

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas! At this time of the year, all bloggers are either publishing their New Year resolutions, their Christmas wish list OR their recollection/events of the past year. I gave it some thought and decided, "If you can't beat 'em, why not join 'em".

I've not been bloggin much over the past few months if not over the past year, mostly because i deem life this year as generally uneventful. I have always called myself a storyteller and there will never be a dull day in my life. Storytellers always have a story to tell no matter when or where, yet, this year has gone by so quickly and so uneventfully that even the storyteller herself couldn't find many great or exciting stories to tell. On top of that, this thing called storytelling in writing style? ... If you don't do it for a while, it just gets rusty, u know..

As for blogging, i'm at this crossroad where i'm just not sure where this blog is going... Is this a diary of my life? Is this where i tell partial fictional stories? Or is this an avenue for me to bitch in public? Bitchin' online throws me in a dilemma as well. Here are the general rules of bitchin in public... First, the person you're bitchin' about better not be reading this blog unless you're prepared for consequences, Second, the people reading this blog better not be capable of using the evidence in this blog to affect your career path.. Third, only bitch when you're the kind who don't give two hoots about washing your dirty linens in public, Fourth, when you write a bitch blog, you can be totally honest and bitch full force without holding back and Fifth, you are strong enough to withstand any kind of evil eye from anyone after you publish your latest bitch blog..... and having said all these, I must say that I failed all 5 criterias..

As a result of it, my blog especially this year has been all cotton candy fluffy, and sweet and marsh-mallowy... Because of that, i've received all sorts of comments, I'm being too sticky to Narrrling, my life revolves only around Narrrling, I''m overtly flashing my happy newly wed life in public, I'm insensitive to those who's unhappy in their own relationships/no relationships, you name it... Damn, i almost feel bad about it.

But not that i have a lot to bitch about... In fact, what a quiet year it has been... The story-teller has got practically no stories to tell, all mellowed and quiet.. There just doesn't seem to be one thing that i really feel strongly about enough to write about this year. This is why, sometimes having people like Miss Itchy Private Parts or Mr Crazy Date in our life makes life generally more interesting. At that point in time, it might not be the best experience in the world, but looking back in retrospect, it gives colour to our lives, a sudden blood rush when you think about it, a step out of the normal....

This year of 2006 however, hasn't been all that exciting in every way throughout all 12 months... Yes, there has been 'some' excitements but not so much till i can't gather em all up in a blog... some reflections of the year for Miki-C.

So i got married this year in February...

Then i went to Perth for our honeymoon and did crazy things like battle with monstrous flies that attacked our eyes and nostrils unless we were protected in the wilds of the great outback by a net over our heads.

We sand surfed a.k.a sandboarded in some sand dunes by the sea....

We went on a day hunt for the Hutt River province in the great outbacks but never managed to find it. For those who don't know, Hutt River Province is a small country (actually just a farm) embedded in west Australia who declared their own independance by declaring war on the queen of England in the early 80s. Queen of England couldn't be bothered with sending soldiers to this lil' farm in God knows where in the middle of the West Australia and hence, that is how they got their independance. Due to the lack of response, the farmer declared his farm an independant province and crowned himself 'Prince Leonard George Casley'. Today, his farm has their own passport stamp, their own postal stamps and even their own currencies. Now, it's a small tourist site where the 'Prince' would sometimes receive guests at his small farm house. Narrrling and I were peeing in our pants, excited to be able to meet someone of 'royal' blood at last.. but unfortunately could not find it and decided that it was as much muddy roads and old farm houses as our poor battered rented old Honda could take in the middle of nowhere.

Then that was it.. half the year flew by... Sometime in July, i picked up a new hobby in beading...

And because of it, i picked up yet another hobby in photography.. I spent a lot of time reading the camera manuals for my Canon IS3 and surfed up on countless pages of websites on photography and i STILL haven't figured out how to get this background blurry effect, my lil unfortunate teddy being my model for over a couple of hundred of pictures i took... Damn these bloody aperture, AE, MF, TV, F2.7, 1/3000 and all those photography jargons!

Before i knew it, it was my birthday in September.. I bloody turned 30 in September but as you can see, continued to live in denial in my cake below...

Enjoyed the gorgeous volcanic front sceneries in Bandung with Narrrling, Beng and Ren in October...

Narrrling's birthday in November...

And suddenly, it's Christmas!! That time of the year YET again... The year flew by and I hardly even finished reading a book!.... I have a few more pages left of Chronicles of Narnia. I gave up halfway, Anne Frank(because i decided it was too depressing and whiny) and Bag of Bones(because i can't even find the darn book anymore)! Since then i've moved on to Christopher Paolini's 'Eragon' and Jeffrey Archer's 'False Impression'. Notice i never read non-fictional books? I hear lots of people talking about books by people like Evolutional Biologist Richard Dawkins, British philosopher Bertrand Russell and Chinese professor cum writer Li Ao. Don't know why, no matter how hard I try, I can never get into one of these philosophical, political, economical, evolutional..etc..books... Maybe that's why I am called 'La Bimbo' and not 'La Intellecteur'... Eragon is turning out to be a great book, i have a feeling i am going to finish this one. For those who have seen the movie and not read the book, don't be discouraged by the movie.. the book is a MILLION times better and the story in the book is NOTHING like the movie.

Back to the topic of 'It's that time of the year again', I must say that all that fluffiness has gotten into my head... On a daily basis throughout the year, I read Jenn Tai's blog. Narrrling and her use to work together and i've met her family only once in a really busy dim sum restaurant(without exchanging more than a few words) but reading on her life abroad with her family and her beautiful girls, simply amazes me. I love the pictures she puts up (one of my motivational factors to picking up photography). I love the little family stories she writes about life at home with her girls.

Actually, what i'm trying to say is, I think i'm ready to start a family. A REAL family with more than 2 jokers chomping down a meal of McDonalds in front of the TV while watching the latest episode of "Lost". So what i want for the New Year is, for 2007 to have 2 jokers chomping down a hearty meal of McDonalds and 1 more mini-joker sucking on a bottle of breast milk in front of the TV watching the latest episode of "Desperate Housewives"....

I stole a peep at a book i didn't buy in MPH last weekend of my horoscope in 2007. I was to have a lot of changes in my life in 2007. Standing on a pedestal of uncertainty at this point in time, i am truly not suprised to see those lines staring back at me from a horoscope book of 2007. Will there be an addition to my little family? Will we be in another country? Will i stay in my job? Will I grow really fat? Will I be able to finally make that background of Teddy go blurr? Will I finish reading a book?

Now THESE are the things i'll be blogging about in the coming year of 2007... To all of you reading this, may you have lots of joy and love in the coming New Year.... from 'La Bimbo Fluffy of 2006'.

What Men Talk About When You're Not Looking...

2006-11-24T18:26:00.000+08:00

Yes, you put them together and this is what they talk about.... Ofcourse, names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, as you can see below...

[17:58] Narrrling: Hi Beng
[17:58] :P Beng: Hi
[17:59] Narrrling: Can you take Miki-C to the movies tonight? I’ve got an appointment, I can’t go with her.
[17:59] Narrrling: need to do this for future job
[17:59] :P Beng: ok no problem
[17:59] :P Beng: already told her is ok
[17:59] Narrrling: thank you
[18:00] :P Beng: no prob
[18:00] :P Beng: credit card number please?
[18:01] Narrrling: i am jobless
[18:01] :P Beng: cool
[18:01] Narrrling: so no money
[18:01] :P Beng: but u still have money , i know, u still drive a peugeot
[18:02] Narrrling: just sold
[18:02] Narrrling: we are selling Miki-Cs car next
[18:02] :P Beng: then u r cash rich now
[18:02] :P Beng: better still
[18:02] Narrrling: neeh got gambling problem
[18:03] :P Beng: yeah Miki-C has drugs problems too
[18:03] Narrrling: ah you know, her nickname is slush
[18:03] :P Beng: what is slush?
[18:03] Narrrling: sake you know
[18:03] Narrrling: she loves the sake
[18:04] :P Beng: yeah i know
[18:04] :P Beng: she is an alcoholic too
[18:04] :P Beng: and a drug abuser
[18:04] Narrrling: sometimes embarrasing she sings out loud
[18:04] Narrrling: beware in the cinema
[18:04] :P Beng: she used to be a prostitute for the armies you know
[18:05] :P Beng: i am not supposed to tell but i thought i better come clean now
[18:05] Narrrling: is ok... she has many girls employed now
[18:05] Narrrling: books me too
[18:05] Narrrling: for japanese ladies
[18:05] Narrrling: brrrrr 60+
[18:05] :P Beng: cool
[18:05] :P Beng: so you are officially a prostitute now?
[18:06] Narrrling: nono i only do lapdance
[18:06] :P Beng: cool
[18:06] Narrrling: and i dance
[18:06] Narrrling: exotic dance thank you
[18:06] :P Beng: but i think prostitutes earn more lah
[18:06] Narrrling: much more glam
[18:06] Narrrling: what can I say Miki-C is my manager
[18:06] Narrrling: i think she keeps 60% herself
[18:07] :P Beng: Miki-C also arrange kids to america as sex slaves
[18:07] :P Beng: did she tell you this too?
[18:07] Narrrling: see so smart man
[18:07] :P Beng: actually Miki-C has all sorts of business ok
[18:07] Narrrling: why dont you work closer with her
[18:07] Narrrling: your contacts her business man
[18:07] :P Beng: she is into drugs, gambling, sex and etc
[18:08] :P Beng: no i use her service for all my customers

Fast & Furious: Cyberjaya Drift

2006-11-17T23:50:00.000+08:00

You wake up, the first thing you do is to look at that little black clock next to your side of the bed, the first thing you say when you see the time is “SHIT!”..

You jump out of bed, your mind thinks.. “Shit shit shit.. can I work from home AGAIN or should I make a dash for it. It’s 8.10am! How can I possibly make it in 50 minutes!”…

There is no time to think, decide NOW! You stand beside your bed for 2 more seconds and you’ve decided.. Take your chances!.. You run into the bathroom, Pee! Rinse! Shampoo! Condition! Brush teeth! Wash Face! All in 5 minutes.. You run out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around you ignoring the winter wonderland feeling thanks to the 2 horsepower air-conditioning and on the way out of the bedroom, you bark at your husband, “Narrrling! Get up! I need help!”

He springs out of bed at your order and in 2 seconds transforms from the sleepy head to the soldier drone.. “YES!” and runs after you..

You continue walking fast out of the bedroom to the next room on the opposite side of the house while you shout, “Pour out a glass of milk, take my lunch box and put it into a paper bag. Shut down my lap top and put it into my laptop bag!”

You reach your dressing room, you power up the hairdryer and blow it at your hair like crazy.. While your hair is flying wild all over your face from the strong gust of hot air coming out from the hairdryer, your eyes scan the racks of clothes. Choose something that doesn’t need to be ironed. Ah damn it. Jeans will do! With one hand still pointing the hair dryer at your head, the other hand pulls open a drawer searching through the clothes to find that company mini-t.. Got it!.. Hair is half dry.. Half dry for today is good enough! In the background, your husband says, “Darling, which one is your lunch box?”

“The one with 4 compartments!” You pick up your eyebrow pencil performing the usual ritual of your daily morning make up…

Almost in a panic, “Which one? I don’t see it!”

“The ONLY one with 4 compartments!” You pick up that eyeshadow, then the eyeliner then the blusher brush..

“Sorry, I can’t find it.”

You toss your make up on the table, yank on that pair of jeans still on the floor, pull over that mini-t you just found, run out to the refrigerator, grab the 4 compartment lunch box, throw it into a bag, gulps down the glass of milk on the table and runs out. Your husband is standing beside your handbag, your laptop bag, standing at the door, getting ready for a quick good bye.. You exchange a few hasty kisses and is out of the door in a minute.

You get into the car and you start driving like mad. In between the radio deejay’s morning gotcha calls and singers singing about ‘London Bridge’ in rap style, you curse, “Why the hell do I have to live 40 over kilometers away from my office!”

You drive for the next 35 minutes, making your way to Cyberjaya as fast as you can, at the same time trying to practice safe driving on the road. You decide, to overtake or not? How much time will it save me? You decide, to bust the speed limit or not, how much time will it save me?

You finally arrive at the one and only windy road that leads to your office… It is close to 9am. Your chances are cutting real slim… As you are driving, you look left, you look right.. Suddenly you see a familiar face in the car next to you!.. At the same time you saw him, he turns and sees you! You both started feeling nervous.. You step on the accelerator a little, just enough to overtake him. Seeing what you’re trying to do, he steps on the accelerator too! Another car coming from behind, spotted the both of you and at the sign of recognition, tries to overtake the both of you!. Upon seeing the 2nd driver, you floored the damn thing! No way are you going to let them get there before you! Seeing what you’re doing, they do the same! One young local guy and one senior foreign gentlemen, all trying to do a Formula 1 with you, the vulnerable and young and helpless young lady who probably needs it more than the both of them combined!

It was a close call, you reach the office entrance. Local guy got in first, you second, and senior foreign gentlemen 3rd… The moment you drive through the boom gate after flashing your card at the security booth, the 3 of you zoomed into the office premises with your mean driving machines…. Left, right, straight! Each one for its own, to find that glorious thing! In the car park, you see other cars driving wild, turn in here, turn in there, all squinting their eyes looking for that one precious emptiness.. You do your own thing now, don’t follow the car in front, it’ll limit your chances, you go your way.. faster! Faster! Ahhhh… gloooriouss.. you find an empty spot.. You maneuver your mean machine into the tight spot and you stop the engine. You close your eyes for 3 seconds. You let out a long sigh of relieve.. You say, “Aaaaaaaahhhhh… I got a parking spot. I GOT A DAMN PARKING SPOT!!!!”

You gathered your stuffs, composed yourself, stepped out of your car and saw senior foreign gentlemen wildly driving past. Guess he’s not as lucky as you. After a while in the far distance, you see senior foreign gentlemen slow down, and slowly, with his head low, he quietly drove out of the office premises. If you were just a second later, your fate would have been sealed, just like senior foreign gentlemen. The time now is 9.08am.

You must give yourself a pat on the shoulder. You woke up at 8.10am and got there by 9.08am and in between, you did everything a girl needed to do in the morning to prepare for work, you drove 40 kms and on the way, you participated in a Fast & Furious Cyberjaya drift race.

While you are walking into your cubicle dragging your big in-fashion handbag, your heavy laptop bag and your lunch bag, you imagine senior foreign gentlemen parking his car in that faraway land near the sports center, probably now slowly getting out of the car, getting ready to start that long 10 - 15 minutes walk towards the office (depending on what shoes he’s wearing and how fast he’s walking). Brace yourself, senior foreign gentlemen, at least you’re not wearing stiletto heels and carrying 3 big bags.. You think to yourself, “Phew! That was a close call! I MUST wake up earlier tomorrow..” then you turn back to your lap top with a self satisfied smile, power up your Outlook to get ready to start, yet another brand new day…

by Miki-C..

2006-11-04T09:08:00.000+08:00

This was written somewhere middle of the year 2006...

"July 19th, 06 - Miki-C has found herself. She is not meant to sit around inventorising and renewing contracts for stuffy servers and software. She had her calling and has found a new love in beading!! Well, ofcourse she's not too sure how long this hobby will last. Narrrling says it's hot hot chicken shit. Well, judging from what happened to her last few endeavours, i guess i don't blame him for saying that. "

And this is now... and featuring my favourite piece for the recently passed October 2006...

This piece is called Autumn in Rome. It's made out of a combination of Swarovski crystal beads and imported Korean glass beads with a beautiful Indonesian Natural Rock Pendant as the center piece. Yes, if you're interested to own this piece for only RM58, write to monomiki@gmail.com. If you're not too far away in the Klang Valley, delivery can be easily arranged.

For more designs, click here. Prices range from RM18 - RM98.

The 'Good' Wife?

2006-11-02T10:48:00.000+08:00

Some people say, being a good wife has different meanings with different people. Yesterday, my brother told me that my very traditional grandmother recently told his wife-to-be, that being a good wife is to wash not just my brother's clothes but also his parent's clothes (good thing she didn't say grandparents as well because then that would sound highly suspicious).. My future sis in law must have had a quick fright.. When i heard that, i laughed.. because that notion of a wife diligently washing, drying, ironing and folding is just so distant to me.

Let me see, in my laundry room at home right now, there is a mountain of dirty laundry. If i don't get around it, Narrrling better starts doing it himself if he wants to wear a fresh pair of his favourite underwear tomorrow. When i do get around to doing laundry, Narrrling gets all excited because his favourite underwear is going to be clean again without him needing to lift a finger. It is funny sometimes when i hand him that particular pair of his favourite underwear just to see the excitement in his face. He throws his hands up into the air and goes, "Yay! It's clean again!" and inside me i thought, man, it's so easy to make this boy happy.

Now back to the part about being a good wife. From my grandmother's stand point, i've obviously not been a very good one. Shame on you, Miki-C.

Alright, alright, if all it takes is to do the laundry and keep that particular piece of darn underwear clean, i'll put that into my new year resolutions for 2007.. Friends and family, if you are reading this, next time you see me, check on me, ok? Ask me if that piece of Banana Republic underwear is clean. If it is, it means i've been keeping up to my side of the promise to be a good wife.

Paris van Java

2006-10-13T18:41:00.000+08:00

7 - 10th October 2006 - Last weekend, I went to Bandung with Narrrling, Beng and Beng’s partner, Ren. It wasn’t intended to be a double date but somehow, sometime last year, Beng and I turned kiasu and instantly booked 4 Air Asia tickets to Bandung when we found out that it was going for free in one of those anniversary-giving-out-a-million-tickets-free-thingy-kinda-promotion.

Where the hell is Bandung anyway? What does one do in Bandung exactly? We didn’t care... The kiasuness side of us told us, it’s free anyway so what the heck... So approximately 10 months later, Beng, Ren, Narrrling and I went a-hopping merrily onto a crazy all year round Chinese New Year-ish mood airplane a.k.a Air Asia en route to this place called Bandung somewhere in the middle of west Java.

At touch down, the first thing we looked out for was the anticipated haze. When we left KL, the morning sun was masked under a thick layer of dark depressing smog. To think that we’re going towards the source of where it all comes from, we expected to see some serious smoky town here. Narrrling brought masks for everyone; I brought my inhaler, Beng was equipped with all sorts of herbal tea, just in case. (talk about a group of people desperate for a holiday).

Well, arriving at the Husain Sastranegara Domestic airport at Bandung, not only was there no haze nor any sign of smoke, the weather was clearer than KL than it ever was, with a light cool breeze blowing gently from the north caressing our faces like it was serenading us with it’s fresh morning quality. At that moment, it dawned upon us that no wonder the Indonesians aren’t half as worried about the haze as us Malaysians. What haze u cakep about? As far as I see, over here it’s blue skies, fresh breeze and good times..

After some haggling with a taxi man to bring us to the hotel for an alarming amount of fifty thousand rupiahs (which only SOUNDS alarming but in actual fact only translates to about USD7), we launched our drive through the city of Bandung to get to our hotel destination.

Bandung was once a dutch colony and at some point in history was called Paris van Java (Paris of Java). As we drove down those old battered roads of Bandung, Narrrling immediately recognized some of his roots. He fell quiet as he started to take in the beautiful old Dutch structures along the roads. You’ll see a huge expensive house lavishly decorated and right next to it, an old battered shack that is almost falling apart. My first thought of this town was that there is a significant gap between the rich and the poor. Not a socialistic society for sure.

Whilst Narrrling was silently enjoying the reminiscence of his old country in a foreign land, Beng and I, being the crazy pair that we are, was joking loudly all the way through the taxi ride. At one point, the taxi stopped in front of a red light. Suddenly right outside our rear window, a young local chap appeared, standing in the middle of the busy road of motorcycles zooming past. We were a bit surprised by his sudden appearance right outside our window and we wondered what he was up to. Suddenly, the local chap picked up a guitar and started playing, and singing to us. Beng and I were 2nd time caught surprised because we didn’t expect that and we weren’t sure what to do. The guy was standing right outside our window, singing at the top of his voice, strumming away like there was no tomorrow. We stared for a while and the taxi moved on, leaving the guy behind in the middle of a busy moving traffic. We looked back and realized, that’s what this guy does for a living. In Europe, we have the buskers who sings in subways to earn some loose change from the busy passer bys, in the east we have these local young chaps, singing to taxis and vans in the middle of the road, hoping we’ll throw them a dollar. Or in their context, a thousand rupiahs.

As we made more stops, we’ve had multiple of these surprises at our window, some were guitar strumming, some were violin stringing, some were just plain begging and sad to say, these are always the young children who probably haven’t had a chance to learn to play an instrument. Yet at the same time, we were driving past huge majestic mansions. There are those with the large Romanian pillars, the ones with the modern Zen designs and most of all, the huge Art-Deco houses or should I say, mansions.

Most of the people in Bandung did not speak English. Beng, Ren and I spoke Malay. But even that, it was quite difficult to get around as we’ve discovered the hard way, that some Malay words and Indonesian words can be very very different. For eg. Rabbits in Malay was called, “Arnab”.. In Indonesian, rabbits were called, “Kelinci”… Now now.. who would have thought we were referring to rabbits when we said “Arnab” when the Indonesians called it something as different as ‘Kelinci’?

Bandung is a heaven of Factory Outlets. They have streets and streets of them. And as you and I know, Factory Outlets are famous for selling goods of branded names or designer names for cheap. And yes, I have to say the things are cheap. Whether the branded goods are genuine or not, I wouldn’t pledge for that but in general, quality of the clothes are pretty up to standard. So if you’re into shopping for cheap designer clothes, bags and shoes, Bandung is the place for you..

On the 2nd day of our trip, we went to the volcanoes. Now to me, that was the best part of the trip. I’ve never seen a real active volcano before close up. As our van was driving up to the volcano, the air was cool, the view was beautiful, there were tea plantations on our left and right with fiery red flame of the forest trees amongst them. Simply breathtaking.

The moment we stepped down from the van, two things surprised us. One was the strong pungent sulfuric smell coming from the volcano and the 2nd was the sudden ambush by about 20 locals trying to sell us something all at once. They crowded around us so aggressively that it was almost difficult to move further. They were selling strawberries, bookmarks, pens, postcards, musical instruments, necklaces, fruits, keychains.. you name it… We bought some fruits and subsequently forced our way out of the circle of peddlers. They followed us. Yes, they followed us wherever we went. We spent about an hour in the volcano site and the peddlers never gave up. Although some dropped out eventually, there will still always be one or two persistent ones who followed us. When this 2 got tired, another 2 would appear, almost like they were doing a shift job following the tourists around. Towards the last part of the trip, it really irritated me to find out that they were not haunting the other tourists as much as they were haunting us. And what was the factor behind their aggressiveness on us particularly? Yes, you got it right. It was because of the existence of the one-lost-mat salleh amongst us, namely Narrrling.

But regardless of that, the volcano site was breath-taking, the active boiling hot crater was simply amazing. There were other tourists boiling eggs in the hot crater. I found a little pond that has somewhat lukewarm sulfuric water from the crater and dipped both my hands inside. Yes, apparently sulfur is good for the skin and heals skin surface problems. And boy are they right.. those lil’ bumps I had on my palm prior to the trip have completely disappeared after that 10 minute soak in real life hot volcano sulfur water and still today, remains healed. Amazing…

Not forgetting to mention that Bandung is famous for Sundanese food. Ikan Gurame Goreng, Sambal terasik, Gado-gado, Sayur Asem, Jagung Bakar.. we had all of these on the first 2 nights of our trip…While we were there, our group made it a conscious effort to be careful of what and where we ate.. So we mainly ate at the hotel or at respectable looking Sundanese restaurants.

Unfortunately, still, on the 3rd day of our trip, Beng and Narrrling had food poisoning. We spent the 3rd day of our holiday in the hotel rooms where Narrrling and Beng were having a temperature, purging and vomiting… while I spent the day attending to Narrrling, watching re-runs of National Geographic and Animal Planet while I ate up all the snacks I could find in the room because it doesn’t look like we’ll be going out for another Sundanese treat anytime soon.. Whatever it was that hit them, it was bad because they were still purging and feverish the following day when we made our way home to Kuala Lumpur.

Overlooking the hiccups on the last day, going to Bandung was a good break for all of us. It was the first time I saw an active volcano site upfront, the first time I shopped at 20 factory outlets in half a day, the first time I bought myself a pair of Gucci shoes (apparently genuine), and last but not least, the first time I had strange men serenading me personally with love songs on a guitar every 5 minutes in a taxi ride. Not an experience you get everywhere..

Presents at 30

2006-09-06T13:02:00.000+08:00

So, it's my birthday today and i really can't think of a better time other than today, to put down some of my thoughts as someone turning 30 for the first time. Yes, i'm 30 today and i can hardly believe it. Some people say, turning 30 is like reaching midpoint in life. So here i stand at midpoint looking back and my only conclusion is, "I am indeed a very lucky girl".

Although i've not had great achievements nor done many great things, life has given me a very comfortable life so far with the love and support of a close knit family and good friends that is always there for me. So if you were to ask me what i'd like to have for my birthday this year, i'd really have to say, 'Nothing, nothing at all. I have everything that matters to me and thank you for that.'

Talking about birthday presents, i must talk about Narrrling's presents. Gotta put these events down on record before i forget them. The first year we were together, on my birthday, Narrrling got me a handbag with a matching wallet. I guess that's a pretty spot-on present for a new girlfriend. Thumbs up to Narrrling for that.

On the following year, Narrrling got me another wallet... Hmm.. ok, i doubted his creativity for 3 seconds then i brushed it aside. Probably my older wallet was looking old by now.

The next time it was time for presents, Narrrling suprised me with a travel luggage bag. That was when i decided to once and for all comment on his creativity and choice of presents. Ofcourse, i pulled him aside and gently told him that although i looove the luggage bag, it would be nice the next time to get something from him that was not a bag or a wallet.

So it was again that time of the year for presents (this was last year), this time i know Narrrling got something else other than bags or wallets because i gently reminded him again before that. Suprise! It came in a small box. I tore it open and it was a....... an Oxford Pocket Dictionary.. Oh.. that's, that's creative.. errr.. what an interesting choice of gift for me.. Have i been using too much bad vocab in my blogs or something? Now i didn't dare to comment on that anymore because maybe i should have kept my big mouth shut the last time.. You really don't want to get a guy confused when it comes to buying presents.

For my birthday this year, i've been teasing Narrrling, saying that he'll probably get me a pair of pliers for my birthday present this year because i needed a pair of new pliers for my beading escapades. Everytime i mention it, he'd say that he would never give me something so unromantic. Err.. well, i wouldn't call pocket dictionaries romantic neither..

Now here comes this year, or more like, today... This morning, Narrrling woke me up with an excited expression on his face.. He wished me 'Happy Birthday!' and then passed me a card and asked me to read it out loud. The card from Narrrling welcomes me into the 30s club, wishes me a "Happy Birthday" and lists down a series of events i should be expecting today. It starts from morning where i'm supposed to get a present from him, then later lunch with him where he will make himself available at Cyberjaya and then finally dinner at a restaurant called "Out of Africa".

OK! So it was time to receive the present from Narrrling. My mind did some quick flashbacks of the past, where i got wallet, bag, wallet, bag, then pocket dictionary. Let's see if this time Narrrling has decided to fall back into his old wallet bag ways or he's doing something creative again. Narrrling shouted, "SUPRISE!", and dragged out from our walk-in closet, a huge roll of carpet, my birthday present of year 2006. Yes, a roll of 8 * 12 foot carpet. With an expression brimming with self satisfaction, Narrrling dragged the roll of heavy carpet all the way across the room and plonked it right on top of the bed in front of me so that i can take a look at the design.. I said, "err.. Wow! Thanks! It's really nice! I love it!"...

Ok, i'm really not complaining, it's the thought that counts, right? It's actually a very nice design, just that at the moment when Narrrling was excitedly dragging the carpet to the bed, i was trying very hard not to laugh out loud.. You know, carpets, are indeed pretty 'unique' birthday presents, don't you think? So pliers aren't romantic enough, huh? What about carpets?

But having said all these, i must say getting a piece of carpet on my 30th birthday really marks it off as one of the most memorable ever. I loooove Narrrling and his funny ways.. I think i'll laugh about it until i'm 80..

The Fat Soul

2006-07-11T16:53:00.000+08:00

The other day, I caught my mom looking at me for a long while. At the end of it, she finally said, “It’s not easy maintaining that body, isn’t it?”

I looked back at her, shrugged my shoulders and said, “Yeah, a piece of bread makes me fat.”

My mom is probably one of the few in my life who really understands how tough it is for me to maintain my current weight. She knows I have a fat soul.

A person with a fat soul is someone who’s destined to be fat. They become happy when they see food, they groan when they have to exercise, sleep is their best past time, they wake up in the morning thinking of what they’d like to eat for lunch or dinner, they order too much food in a food rest, they overfeed their own pets afraid they’ll go hungry, sitting around watching TV is always better than going around busy cleaning the house or doing up the garden, fattening food tastes best… I think it is no doubt that I have a fat soul because I am guilty of all of the above.

Which is why, mom sees me now and understands how difficult it must be for me to stay with my current weight. Over some months, I have lost 13kgs by overhauling my entire system and the way I live my life. Dieting is no more called dieting but is a new way of eating. Starvation is no more called starvation but is what life is all about. Feeling full is no more called satisfaction but is re-labeled as ‘guilt’. Meals are no more looked forward to because I tell myself, trust me, there is nothing exciting coming your way. The toughest part is telling myself and truly believing that THIS is how I’m going to live the rest of my life.

Maintaining this weight is not just about saying, “No, thank you” but to also stop desiring the food that you’ve just refused. Re-program your mind, have a paradigm shift, kill the inner desires, this, I believe is the secret to successful weight loss.

I asked Beng today if I should lose more or if I should just maintain my current weight. One thing I’ve learnt for sure, gay men like Beng, don’t cream their words so I’d be thankful if he just gives me brutal honesty and not be over-critical like he usually is.

Beng said to me, “Actually ah, you look fine now. You can lose a little bit more if you want but not too much because then you’ll look sickly.”

You must wonder why I didn’t post the same question to Narrrling. For someone who asked me to marry him when I was at my fattest, I guess it’s no point asking him if I should lose more weight because he is obviously oblivion to my weight woes.

So Beng says I look fine now. Considering the fact that I’m not single and desperately looking out for a man and neither am I aspiring to be a TV talkshow host nor a beauty pageant contestant, can I live with myself in my current body or should I continue this lifetime quest of mine for that waif thin body? This must be the first time I’m asking myself this because I’ve spent my whole life being obsessed with my weight and food, constantly launching myself into new diets that doesn’t work or new eating or exercise regimes that ends up in disasters.

If I decide to sign this peace treaty with my body, then I will just work to maintain this weight for the rest of my life and give away all those smaller sized clothes that I was hoping to fit into one day when I am ‘slimmer’. Oh, that skimpy green dress that I’ve only worn once in my life and oh, that lil red dress I so want to wear again. Is it time to say goodbye? Is the distant image of that waif thin Miki-C to go a-flying and disappear, like the believe we once had of Santa Claus when we were young? I don’t know.. I really don't know...

Of Toothpastes & Politics

2006-07-07T11:00:00.000+08:00

What is it about Bush’s obsession with toothpastes??

In a press conference about antiballistic missiles held in the aftermath of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Shanghai, Bush told the press, that himself and President Putin of Russia (some big time macho ex KGB chief) likes the same toothpaste!

Then in another press conference in the White House, when asked what he has in common with Tony Blair, Bush says they share the same Colgate toothpaste!

Later in yet another one-to-one interview with BBC’s Steven Sackur, with a tongue in the cheek, Steven asked Bush how he knew Tony Blair and he was using the same toothpaste? Bush says, “I didn’t know! I was trying to find out!”

You know, I was never a fan of Bush but he sure does crack me up sometimes... With more jokes like that about toothpastes in serious antiballistic missiles conferences, the Americans might just love him enough to re-elect their darling into his 3rd term of office if that was possible. But thank God for some intimidating constitutions in the US that disallows a president to serve office for more than 8 years, Bush's 3rd term is no more possible.

But little do we know is that in January last year, a new legislation called the “Doomsday legislation” was passed very quietly in the Congress to allow elected legislators to change laws or constitutions in the event of serious natural disasters, attack from another country..etc, basically doomsday situations… So who knows, our toothpaste friend might find just enough crack to slip through to the 3rd term… It is not easy, but it’s possible…. For the love of toothpastes, good luck, President Bush.

Smile!

2006-07-05T16:09:00.000+08:00

At 18 months, the twins learnt to smile!

*with the sexy voice of my sister in the background..

The Social Life

2006-07-03T15:13:00.000+08:00

When I was younger, I aspired to be someone in the line of PR because I imagined myself to be very sociable, friendly, bubbly, smart, and constantly having to entertain some big shots who would talk to no one else but me. Reading Sidney Sheldon’s books from a very young age with his heroines who are always beautiful, sociable and smart has done it to me.… I had this cool notion of myself, up till I really started working and these supposedly ‘friendly’ qualities were to shine through.

Well, I guess I could be friendly and bubbly and all when the situation requires of me but one thing I realized was that it was so faked. So, so faked.

Recently, my boss has thrown me into some new projects that required me to participate actively in some weekly night telecons with some Americans, Brits and Dutchies, with me being not just the only Asian, but the only female. When my manager in the US told me I was going to take on that role, I felt sick….Ugggh… The first thing that came to my head was, “Shit, how I hate having to pretend that I was so darn interested in the weather in UK or Holland or the on-coming hurricanes, elections, war riots or whatever in the US.” Basically, having to move out of my comfort zone of hiding and communicating via emails. I hated it.

I know people who genuinely love chatting up colleagues and am genuinely interested in their family life; the outcome of the colleague’s newly renovated home, the colleague’s children or growing up puppies…. They remember to follow up on it in the next phone call, they suggest to show them around the next time they’re in town… I mean, yeah, I know the dance… I know what needs to be said, when and how, to make a person feel good or welcomed…. Unfortunately, I’m just too lazy to do it. Narrrling always say he’s glad I’m so lazy, if not, I would have turned into a real manipulative bitch.

I do sometimes note a little hesitance from the voice of my colleagues because I’d jump into business so quickly upon picking up the phone, the female colleagues especially. They’d probably expected me to at least ask them about their holidays since they just came back or ask about their baby since they just came back from maternity leave. Sometimes I make an effort to be sociable, but most of the time, I just don’t bother. If they turned around and invited me to their baby’s full moon party, I’d regret asking for sure.

Nowadays, Narrrling travels very often. The only times I spend with him are the weekends or the one or two precious weekday nights he has to spare for me. I’ve heard friends condemn the fact that I’m stuck to my husband from the hip. Little do they know that out of a week of 7 days, I might only get to see my husband for less than 2 days and half of them is spent sleeping. So you can’t blame me for planning my schedule around those few precious days.

But the surprising thing is, the rest of the days when I am alone; I actually don’t feel bad at all. I go around doing things on my own. It feels good being able to do whatever I want, anytime I want. In other words, I think I’ve grown more comfortable in my own skin. It feels great not needing to rely on anyone else but yourself for happiness and peace and acceptance.

When I detect politics among friends or a particular friend, no matter how good the friend(s), I shy away very quickly because I hate being entangled in webs of who should have or shouldn’t have done or said what. I’m not into stuffs like confrontations nor self-justifications nor saying things I don’t believe in anymore just to make anyone feel better. We do our best to meet expectations of others and if we can’t, it’s just too bad. There will always be social decay in our lives and people come and go in our lives as we move on. We just have to accept it. Other people’s lives still goes on without me trying to justify myself and so does mine so why the hassle?

Probably some might think that I need to be taught a lesson. I need to be thrown into a situation where I’m desperate for friends and I’ll have bloody nobody to talk to when that happens. The perfect situation is if I somehow lose Narrrling, and is in dire needs to talk to someone about it! That will teach this Miki-C, alright. Well, whatever it is, I hope the friend imagining for that to happen is not you because honestly, it says something about you too..

But anyway, I think I’ve learnt to loosen my grip on a lot of things in life. I already know that I don’t want to be a career woman barking orders at the top of the ladder, I also know I can’t be a Mother Theresa giving out unconditionally to society, and most importantly, I don’t want to be anyone’s hero, sung or unsung… In my little shell, I just want to be the selfish bimbo that I am, not committed nor obligated to anyone else’s life but my own.

Look Around You

2006-06-10T11:30:00.000+08:00

Over the last few days, splattered all over the front pages of our local newspapers, are news and updates of the verbal spat between Pak Lah and Dr. M(or more like Dr. M against Pak Lah). These 2 gentlemen, we Malaysians refer to them as 2 of the most powerful figures in the country at this point of time. Now this phenomenon is not something Malaysians are used to. For one, Dr. M has been in office for 22 years before 2003 as the longest serving prime minister since independence and throughout his term, who ever dared to stand up to Mr PM, challenging him of his decisions openly? Even if a certain Mr. Braveheart stood against the wind and openly challenged him, which local press would dare to openly publish his thoughts? Without attention, Mr. Braveheart's challenges will wither away very quickly with the wind. Opposition parties? Which opposition party in this country, (I’m not talking about any country, but this country, Malaysia) thinks deep in their heart that they can afford to make a serious point-of-no-return accusation against the Prime Minister or the government and end up winning the next elections? The answer is none. Allegations made in press funded by the opposition parties like ‘Harakah’ are read by minority groups. People like me read it for a good laugh sometimes. Ofcourse, there are heroes like JeffOoi's blog and Malaysiakini.com (who's been said to be funded by Soros, the same person who caused the downfall of the sharemarkets in Malaysia some years back). But then, these channels are only limited to those who's on the net. Key word, 'limited'.

I bet all over the country right now, people are taking sides. Politicians are openly renewing their loyalty pledges with Pak Lah. Seize the opportunity! If not now, then when is the best time to win some brownie points with the prime minister?

It is no doubt that Dr. M has done a lot for the country. I respect him for putting Malaysia on the world map. The twin towers, the Multimedia Super Corridor, the KLIA, the Sepang race tracks, the KL tower, the KL Sentral, all these built by a visionary who knows that taking a step forward is first, by giving the best first impression. And not forgetting the times when Dr.M speaks out in international channels. How do we put a small meager country like Malaysia on the world map if we don’t brave the silence and sometimes speak the unspoken? Grab some attention. See us, Malaysians, who don’t live in trees. See us Malaysians, who has more sky scrapers than both the city of Melbourne and Perth combined, some say the whole of Europe combined. For this, I thank you, Dr. M.

But now, perhaps it is time to start mopping up the water from the running tap again. Life is always a good balance of 2 sides of everything. After years and year of working towards Malaysia to be known as part of this thing we call the global community, perhaps it’s time we take a look at ourselves and start improving ourselves again as a growing nation. And that is exactly what Pak Lah has been doing. Within weeks of being sworn into office, he initiated programs to recover the country’s financial stigmas. In the past, too much money has been spent on boisterous projects to prove that Malaysia boleh! Now, the effort to recover slowly begins. Collection of traffic fines, recovering school loans, increased petrol and diesel prices lashes out at the citizens one by one. Pak Lah’s popularity starts to landslide but could he be a misunderstood man? Take Thaksin for example. Everyone in the world shouts for the downfall of Thaksin. Yet how many really knows that corruption has decreased 10 fold ever since he entered office in Thailand? Yes, he is a very rich man, probably and maybe from corruption but under his reign, the taxi man instead of paying 10 times to different authorities passing from one road to another, now only pays once. Wouldn’t you call that an improvement? Shouldn’t you give him some credit at least for doing something good for his people?

Now it is very wrong of me to put Pak Lah next to Thaksin because they are nothing like each other but I was trying to illustrate something very simple. Just like the taxi man in Thailand, we don’t have to look too far or too wide to prove the effectiveness of a prime minister, just look around us and see how the experience of going to a government office (though sometimes still painful) is seemingly better than before. Look at the decision made to build that 2nd bridge to Penang, somewhere where it is REALLY needed. Look at the improved relationships with Singapore. Look at how lives have improved at rural areas of the country. Look at how much lesser the enforcement parties are asking for bribes. Look at how the power charges have been increased without affecting the poorer folks. Look around you. Look.

Celebrating it Their Own Way..

2006-05-25T17:25:00.000+08:00

I attended a wedding dinner a few weekends ago. I have always loved wedding dinners because they are one of my rare opportunities to play dress up. If an Indian friend gets married, La Bimbo dons her best sari or Punjabi suit. If a Malay friend gets married, then here comes the glamour sequined nyonya kebaya. Where else do I wear all those nice dresses / costumes if not for somebody’s wedding?

This wedding I attended recently was a Chinese wedding in Klang, in a restaurant called 'Restoran Taman Rashna'. Ok, I know that doesn’t exactly sound glitzy but I chose not to see the obvious evidence.

The moment we opened the front door to the wedding venue, both Narrrling and I gasped. Two different stream of thoughts were running through our heads. Narrrling thought, “Holy macaroni! What a huge wedding! The whole of Klang must be here!”, and I thought, “Oh My God! I am SOOO overdressed!”

The men were wearing slippers, the ladies were wearing a simple blouse and skirt and I even spotted a few in jeans. Even the bride was wearing a simple white gown. It was such a lucky day that I also chose to wear a light cream lacy dress that night and I almost looked like the bride myself. If not for the bride’s fashionable beehive hairstyle, I would have definitely been mistaken for the bride!

And the wedding, for as far as we could see, extending to all corners of the restaurant, every space was packed to the brim with tables and chairs. I took a peep at the guest list and saw a whopping 102 tables in the wedding…. Wow, Narrling was right, the whole of Klang was there!

And it was some wedding, alright… I guess it’s always difficult to control a big crowd, especially when everyone is crammed into a little restaurant with walls that deflects noise instead of absorbing them. Have you been in a small restaurant where when everyone’s talking at the same time, it sounds like there’s a riot going on? Everyone starts to speak louder and louder because it’s the only way they can be heard in a noisy and enclosed place like this. That was what happened in that wedding dinner of 1020 guests. It was a voice competition. I gave up speaking to people across the table. I gave up listening to what the girl sitting 2 seats away was saying. At the same time, the pastor on stage was very intensely giving a sermon that nobody could hear. Yes, believe it or not, it was a Christian wedding held in a Chinese restaurant.

Somewhere halfway through dinner, some guy came in and started selling lottery tickets to the wedding guests… Then after a while, another guy came in and sold Chinese newspapers and 4D result slips. Guests who bought newspapers also started reading newspapers as if they were back home sitting by their good ol’ TV while the bride and groom were on stage being solemnized. "I now pronounce you, Man and Wife", even though spoken loudly over the sound system, nobody heard it, so nobody clapped or acknowledged it in anyway at all. On stage, the couple and the pastor was doing their own little thing, exchanging rings, lighting each other’s candles, etc.. On the floor, the guests continued celebrating the wedding, in their own preferred way, that could translate to reading newspapers, talking as loud as they can to be heard, choosing lottery tickets and those who got hungry waiting for dinner to start, was buying keropok from this guy who came from outside selling keropok and kaya...

At some point, all the 1020 guests were asked to stand up to sing Christian worship songs and I thought it got really weird when the lottery seller continued with his business of trying to sell his lottery tickets to the guests. Some who didn’t really participate in the singing were using their 10 cent coins to scratch their lottery tickets in hope of winning that darn Proton Wira behind that silver rectangle. As usual, no luck. The lottery seller moves on with his business and the wedding guest stuffs the lottery ticket back into his pocket and continues to sing about Jesus and love.

Narrrling stopped a girl pouring Tiger beer and asked for some. The girl responded, “Sorry, Tiger is for the groom’s guests” and walked away… My jaw dropped and Narrrling quickly reached out and pushed it up again before anyone sees. After a while, some girl holding a bottle of Carlsberg walked past. We stopped the girl and asked her for some beer. With no hesitation, she filled up Narrrling’s glass and continued to do so the rest of the night. Ahhh.. I see.. So we can only drink Carlsberg since we are the guests of the bride. What an interesting segregation. Throughout the night, I was also offered XO at least 3 times by this XO waitress who looks like she’s at least 60 years old but was donned in a pair of skimpy shorts and fashionably colored hair. Strangely, she never offered Narrrling any. I guess with my cream lacy dress and all, I must have looked like I was drunk. I mean, what must this girl be thinking, wearing something like that to the wedding, right? Definitely a drunkard!

We were kind of expecting the part where they will power up the karaoke screen and some great uncle comes onto stage to render his version of Old Chinese Classics. But that never came, instead, the pastor came on stage again and sang some peaceful Christian worship songs to a very unpeaceful, loud and noisy crowd, by then half drunk with the generous offerings of XO and beer going around.

At the end of the night, quite opposite from what I expected, Narrrling said, he really enjoyed himself. The food was good, he had unlimited drinks throughout the night and experienced a totally out of this world wedding. It is not everyday that you find yourself in a bizarre circus wedding like this. As usual, that’s Narrrling’s optimistic side speaking. But yeah, I guess I wouldn’t call it the most sophisticated dinner ever, but for sure, it was a dinner where everyone celebrated the wedding in no other way but their very own way.

Grow up!

2006-05-05T15:45:00.000+08:00

A long, long time ago, this young chap bought himself a brand new expensive car and is very proud of it. “Ahhhh”, he thought, “My car is soooo cool and soooo unique. Everybody in the whole wide world is going to be sooooo envious of me. My car is one in a million! Muahwahwahwahwahwahwaaa!!!”

With much pride and joy, he drove his car to work everyday and parked his car at the most prominent spots in the company’s outdoor car park, right smack in front of the office lobby entrance. “Ahhh”, he thought, “Nobody will ever miss my car this way! Muahwahwahwahwahwwaaa!”

2 weeks later, one morning, suddenly he was told of some terrible, terrible news. It was reported that there is a sighting of another girl driving a car similar to his that morning. Upon hearing the news, he immediately dashes to the window to look outside. What he saw before him totally bewildered him.

Outside the office, he caught sight of a bimbo, with an ultra-gleeful expression on her face, zoooming up and down, up and down the office outdoor car park, obviously looking for another prominent spot to park her brand new car. Same colour, same model, same design, same car!! What the fuck!!!??? “WHO THE HELL IS SHE!!??? “, he roars…. The earth shook, the wind howled, the windows rattled… Somebody timidly runs up to him and whispers something in his ears… Suddenly, his frown turned into a smile and he says,

“Ahh...That car driven by that bimbo? It’s white man’s money”…

You know, it’s really funny. I was just wondering, were those words meant to protect the manhood? The masculinity? It’s just like automatically saying someone is a mistress when you see a young girl driving an expensive car. It’s probably a self attempt of putting some justice back into the world or to restore your faith in God? And since this bimbo is NOT someone’s mistress, you go down to the skin color? Desperately trying to find the flaw somewhere?

Listen here, boy. So what if the bimbo is driving a car her husband bought and she didn’t have to pay a single cent for it? If you had to do five day jobs and seven night jobs just to afford that car, it’s your bloody problem. You can threaten to compare dick size with my white man husband or even better, you can sell kueh teow soup during lunch time to all our colleagues to afford to have that car of yours serviced next month. I really don't care but just bloody GROW UP, will ya?

And that parking spot right smack in front of the office lobby? It's MINE!

From young..

2006-05-03T14:48:00.000+08:00

I’ve always been convinced that certain characteristics are in-born. Take a look at the picture above of Miki-C when she was almost 2. According to the family, she was participating in her own imaginary beauty pageant. Presenting to you, contestant number 2.

Insomniac Ramblings

2006-04-28T06:08:00.000+08:00

It’s 4.50am and uggh, it’s one of those nights I stay awake all night, don’t ask me why. If you ask a fortune teller, he will as a matter of factly tell you something like, “Your star is in the house of Neptune, that’s why.” as if expecting you to know exactly what it means. If you ask a doctor, without a hint of doubt, he will tell you something probably to the effect of, “Your esophagus released an anti-oxidant chemical reaction into your blood, passing these neuron signals to your brain saying that you have had enough sleep for the night”…. Ok maybe that sounds a bit far-fetched, but come on, don’t expect a bimbo like me to give you medical quotes that makes sense, especially in the middle of the night like this.. I mean, even big words like ‘anti-oxidant’, I only know because they seem to have a lot of that nowadays in facial products. At least I chose my words carefully or I would have used words like SPF15 and anti-UV as well.

I never thought I was ever going to be insomniac at any level. When I was younger, I was the champion sleeper. When I finally get out of bed, with my au-naturel ‘lalang’ hairstyle, I would drag my feet downstairs to find the house quite empty, only with that crazy dog waiting for me, looking oh-so-restless because he can’t wait till I found out which of my poor friend or neighbour or family member he attacked and bit that morning. After breakfast and all, I could very well have gone back to bed to continue that sweet dream about that same Hong Kong star I try to dream about every night.

Now, almost 10 years later, here I am sitting here in the middle of the night staring at my pc screen, no sleep and worse still, no Hong Kong star and instead, a huge heap of white-skinned belly heaving up and down with deep breathing next to me. I am so tempted to smack that up and down heaving belly, simply to wake him up because I’m bored and need some attention. After some sophisticated algebra-tic and statistical calculations, I decided the gamble was not worth it because that belly is up more often than me in the middle of the night, depending on how stressful the day was so wouldn’t want my tummy smacked on nights like that. No, it’s not worth it.

Ah, I should have powered up my work laptop again to give my boss in Houston the impression that his A1 staff here in Malaysia is a round the clock hard-worker. If he asks me, I’ll tell him I’m working on creating some sophisticated processes for Software Lifecycles and will throw in some intimidating jargons to make an impression. Very busy. Very busy. Then I’ll say, “Oh by the way, can I get a copy of MS Visio on my machine? I need to draw up some flow charts to support my processes. Too bad MS doesn’t have a mind-mapping software, it’ll come in SO handy for my work now!” In actual fact, Miki-C is just kiasu-lar, although I would have to admit that things like MS Visio and Mind mapping software are great things to have on your PC. But still, it’s a good thing my boss doesn’t know about this blog. Or does he?

Sometimes I wish I was one of those who can write about really intelligent stuffs like politics and world economics and such. Imagine, nights like this when I can’t sleep, suddenly I churn out an article that sounds super intelligent like “Capitalism for a Democratic country, Is that still possible?” and I submit it to the Herald Tribune tomorrow and then subsequently win a Nobel prize for it. I tell you, one gift I know for sure I have, is a really vivid imagination.

Have I ever told you before that Narrrling’s ex is a political journalist? She’s one of those who thinks that anyone who don’t know politics are either stupid or retarded. I’m glad I never met her because she would probably have classified me as both of the above. I use to feel intimidated by the thought of a super intelligent ex like her but not anymore. I live a total stress free life with the occasional worry of breakouts and weight-gain while she probably lives her life with the world on her shoulders, de-faming politicians and government bodies as she goes along. Thinking about it, Hollywood movies love to make girls like her the sacrificing, country-loving heroine while girls like me the blonde with big boobs who actually thinks that cheerleading is a career. Me? Cheerleading? It’s as absurd as telling everyone I use to do ballet and was somehow able to support my large mass with my toes and hop around gracefully without causing a domestic earthquake or crashing into the nearest monsoon drain. Seeing my lifetime obsession with my weight, I am probably more of the Bridget Jone-sy kinda type. The kind who almost always feel inferior to the smart and beautiful Claire who’s the ex and the perfect match for the hero. In my case, as long as we don’t bump into the ex one day and she doesn’t start a political debate with Narrrling in front of me, I don’t think I am going to waste my time feeling intimidated by someone from so far back. But if we do, I think there will be quite a scene.

You know, I am guilty of sometimes intentionally falling into the opposite role of the person I’m speaking to. For eg, if some girl came to me and spoke to me in a VERY obvious fake accent, with no hesitation, I start speaking in a VERY local accent. If they said something in some fashionable accent to me, I’ll very loudly reply something that sounds like, “Oh, is it like that ONE AH?”, “Cannot ah? WAH, I didn’t know wor! You so smart ah..”… I did that once to a new girl who joined my company who spoke in some silly American accent. We were in some battle. The more Americanized her accent, the more local mine became. I think after a while she caught the hint and started speaking normal, which was the exact moment I decided to speak normal back to her too. Same goes for someone who brags, I go the total opposites. If they talk about their Gucci shoes, I start talking about the shoes I bought in pasar malam and about how handy they are although in actual fact, I have hardly anything from pasar malam except the fruits in my fridge. So I guess if the ex came about with her political musings, Miki-C will ace the dumb bimbo act of someone who doesn’t even know there’s a voting system in the country.

I remember once I went with Narrrling to a bar back in the Netherlands. Some dutch guy, seeing some Asian girl sitting alone by the bar, probably thought was the greatest opportunity for some bragging. The more he spoke about his expensive shirts, the more I talked about how poor the people in Asia is. People like him probably has no clue where Asia is anyway, so what does it matter? At some point, I told him people in Asia sometimes still wore clothes made out of goat skin and I somehow borrowed the clothes on my back from my dutch bf’s sister. I guess he got the point that I was exaggerating and stopped the silly bragging, which was ofcourse the exact moment I started talking normal about Asians again. I tell you, sometimes Narrrling shouldn’t leave me sitting by myself, because then I’ll have to start spreading false delusions about Asians when some braggers come by. Sorry fellow Asians. If some foreigners stepped down from the plane at your local airport and ask you how come you're not wearing clothes made out of goat skin, you'll know it's Miki-C's doing.

Believe it or not, the night is almost over and I was awake since 2.45am. I could never understand these insomniac losers, I tell you. How difficult is it to go to sleep? Just close your eyes and kaput lar.. That’s why, the lesson we learn tonight is, don’t speak too soon…. Ok-lar, I’m getting dressed to go to work now.. But believe it or not, just when it's about time to go to work, i'm starting to feel sleepy.. Ugggh.. I'm going to have a 'great' day...

Canine Tales

2006-04-21T15:31:00.000+08:00

Beng and I went on a dog-talk binge recently. Everytime we met up or chatted online, we spent 90% of the time talking about dogs and the rest of the 10% on other topics like American Idol, crystals and La Mer skincare products. Beng is considering which breed to get and me, I just ride on the fantasy that I can get one myself. Unfortunately Narrrling and I live in a condominium and rules in Malaysia aren’t exactly kind or fair towards aspiring dog owners like us. So nope, no dogs for us, but you can’t kill me for fantasizing.

Talking about it so much reminds me of the dogs I use to have when I was living at my parent’s home. The dog that carved the deepest memory in my head was a dog I had about 10 years back. I called him,(note that it’s a ‘him’), “HahhhhNeeeeeeee”…. In other words, “Honey”.

Thinking back now I wonder, what must have been going on in that wind-hollow head of mine to call a male dog by the name of Honey. He must have hated his name, because he grew up into one hell of a nasty dog. Now, it doesn’t seem very nice of me to call a dog nasty, because after all, dogs are famous for being nice and loyal. Honey was loyal, alright… but only to me. Anyone that came near his territory or me is either declared enemy or food. The grown ups were perceived as dinner, the kids were perceived as snacks. Oh man, I can’t even begin to recall the number of family member and friends he bit but for the love of the canines, I protected him.

One fair morning, he bit my mom’s wrists and it snapped some veins. When I heard my mom scream, I ran out and found my mother standing in the middle of a large pool of blood, with more blood still gushing out of her wrist. That was the morning I told myself, love dog or best friend, NOBODY, I repeat, NOBODY hurts my mommy. This insane-dog saga has got to end.

That weekend, I deliberately took an overnight trip to the highlands and told my family to ‘take care’ of Honey. When I came back, Honey’s leash was lying lame on the front porch and he was nowhere to be seen. I felt an ache for the lost of a long time good friend who has along the way, lost his way. I felt like it was my fault because after all, he grew up with me. I asked my family members what they did to Honey and amusingly, none of them told me the same story.

My mom said, “Oh, we released him at the market place and there was so much food there for him. Honey was so happy!”

My dad on a separate incident said, “Oh, we took him to the jungle and released him. He was so happy, he ran and ran. Even when we called him to come back, he didn’t want to come back anymore. Good place. The jungle is a good place for dogs like him..”

The little lies your parents tell when they’re protecting you and the funniest thing is, it never crossed their minds that they should sync their stories before telling me. I think in the end, it was my sister who told me the truth, that they got SPCA to come take him away. Since then, I’ve never really had a dog, not because I’m afraid of dogs that bite, but because I think I realized that keeping a dog is not just playing with him, feeding him and giving him a bath. Sometimes, you form their personality too. It’s more than just keeping them well fed and their fur fluffy but also teaching them, what is right and what is wrong, what is accepted in society and what is not. It’s just like bringing up a child of your own.

IT Savvy

2006-04-18T13:44:00.000+08:00

Last night Narrrling suddenly dragged me into the study to see something interesting on his computer. He made me sit in front of the computer screen, then gave me a background of what I was about to see.

Of late, Narrrling’s father has been complaining about the church he attends back in Holland, saying that it is a church for “senior citizens”. Young people living in the same area, are either dropping out or staying away from the church, with the mindset of the church being old-fashioned and behind time.

With this, Narrrling’s father, a man of age himself, has recently took up the initiative to plan a re-vamp for the church. Narrrling’s father spent most of his life as a baker, running a bakery in that same little town called Maasluuis at the south of Holland. Only after he retired years later, he started venturing into other hobbies such as traveling and photography and lately, using the computer. And yes, as of today, my father-in-law have not only mastered skills of searching for information via the internet but is also slowly trying to pick up video editing using his computer.

With the project of the church revamp looming overhead, he told Narrrling he will need to explain to the church council what he intends to do and how. Narrrling said, "You mean you need to prepare a proposal and a presentation." So Narrrling gave him a template for a proposal and also suggested he use powerpoint for his presentation.

Although he doesn’t say it, I know Narrrling has always secretly been very proud of his daddy, where a head full of white hair and thick glasses doesn’t once stop him from punching at the keyboard finger by finger whilst slowly but steadily trying to be an IT savvy old man. So what Narrrling was about to show me, was his daddy’s first attempt at using Microsoft Powerpoint. There is only 1 single slide on his powerpoint, presented in Dutch. The moment the file opened up, I couldn’t help but broke into some fits of giggles. Narrrling joined me. Through the irrepressible laughter, I think Narrrling and I, we were both sharing the same thoughts in our head, that we’re sooooo proud of him. And looking at it now still makes me smile.

A Life out of the Ordinary

2006-04-10T21:35:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I think my life is quite the ordinary just like everyone else’s, I never get chance meetings with aliens, I don’t have a 3rd eye to see spirits(not that I want to), I don’t have gifts to talk to animals, nothing out of this world ever really happens to me… but yet, I have people like Beng and Narrrling around me.

I was chatting with Beng this morning on MSN chat and somehow our topic of conversations drifted to his old days while he was still studying at Oxford.

I typed into my chat, “Beng, I bet all those years you were in the UK, you NEVER saw a single musical play, did you?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “I did, I did, I saw a few in fact..”

“What was it called? Name one. Don’t lie ok”

To this, Beng’s answer popped up on my MSN chat screen, “Swan Leg”

Seeing those words, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “What kind of name for a musical is that? Must be a comedy musical of some sort?” So I asked Beng, “What was it about?”

Beng said, “Oh, it’s a ballet”

“My Goodness, did y ou mean Swan LAKE?”

OMG, what’s next, Beng? Miss Saigon becomes Mist of Saigon? Phantom of the Opera becomes Phantom of the Soap Opera? Starlight Express becomes Starbucks Espresso? SWAN LEG?? Hahahahahahaha…. If you say nothing out of the ordinary ever happens to me, I’d say having an out of this world slapstick like Beng around me really makes up for it.

Then there is Narrrling and his usual funny conducts. We were coming home from dinner earlier this evening and Narrrling once again fell into one of his funny role playing habits, pretending to be some guy checking out my butt from behind.

So yeah, I walked all the way back from the elevator lift to our doorstep with Narrrling behind me, whistling and making lip-smacking noises at my butt(I wonder what the neighbours must think). After coming into the house, I walked straight to my dressing room to change into something comfortable and the ‘pervert in disguise’ naturally follows me. When in the room, I thought, why not join the game and seductively said to Narrrling, “Come and get me, baby” and stripped off my top...

Upon seeing me pull off my blouse, Narrrling suddenly said, “WHAT? You’re a GIRL??! DAMN! I thought you’re a man! A total waste of my time!” and he stomped off…

Left me stunted for 3 seconds before i started laughing... hahahahahah… but ahem, yeah, a bit weird, my hubby,huh? Did I tell you that Narrrling is very versatile when it comes to role-playing?… Today he’s playing a pervert, tomorrow he’s playing a gay pervert. One moment he’s a car running me down as a roadkill, another moment he’s himself, the Unix/Linux geek trying to install something strange called Ubuntu onto his computer (geek stuff!)

So you see, who says you need to meet Big Foot and Nessy to live a life out of the ordinary?

I have D-I-D..

2006-04-06T23:20:00.001+08:00

I think I have DID. No, this is not a blog about self confessive sluts talking about sexually transmitted diseases(because that's STD, not DID).... Reading this, I think most of my closer friends will immediately translate it to ‘Damsel in Distress’ because that’s also one of my famous traits (especially when a policeman stops me for committing a traffic offence). But today, I’m referring to Dissociative identity disorder. Now, what the hell is that? The definition given by wikipedia is..

"Dissociative identity disorder is a diagnosis described as the existence in an individual, two or more distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment."

I mean, sometimes I don’t know what to make of myself. With the gweilo hubby and all, one moment I’m trotting about looking like a super SPG, but another moment, I’m secretly driving to work every morning listening to Chinese pop songs and Jacky Cheung.... Whenever Narrrling's not home on one of his far yonder travels, I entertain myself nightly with watching 'Wah Lai Toi' and Chinese drama serials.

Beng, who knows my secret trait, loves to call me on these nights and ask me what I’m watching on TV. “What are you watching, Lin Fa? The O.C? Desperate Housewives? National Geographic? CNN News?”…

Very happily I’ll reply, “No.. I’m watching Tai Kik Cheong Sam Foong!” a.k.a “The Legend of the Tai Chi Master”.. and each time he’ll have such a kick hearing me admit it..

For some reason, it seems very funny when my friends hear me telling them that I luuuurve watching Chinese Drama series…I remember Metria even told me once, that she didn’t know I can speak Chinese... Halllooo… I don’t only speak Chinese, ok, I can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and blardy two types of Hakka ok.. dun pray pray…

Ooops.. the writing of this blog was suddenly interrupted for 3 minutes.. Narrrling recently started this new habit of whenever he sees me sitting comfortably on the carpet, he would come by and push me over to lie flat on my back and then start making noises of a busy road traffic and then crawl over me.. After he crawls over my head, he would say, “Ha ha ha, Roadkill! Roadkill!”…Yeah, a bit weird, my hubby.. But these ‘Roadkill’ moments really cracks me up.. I must say, Narrrling has very creative ways of making people laugh..

Ok, back to my DID problem. One moment I’m married to Narrrling the blue eyed blondie.. Another moment, I’m secretly fantasizing about meeting Jacky Cheung one day and marrying him still… I know, I know, he’s married with 2 kids himself.. I won’t go to hell for fantasizing, right?

Sometimes I think if I was Chinese educated, I will never have this dual personality complex. At least then, the books I read and the TV shows I watch will one way or another collide, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, I also immensely enjoy Western TV shows.. All the weekly series like Desperate Housewives, American Idol, Lost, I must say I will die if I miss a week of it. It is a fact that ‘English’ is my true forte because I express myself best in this language and there are no inhibitions to topics of discussions. But yet I know, Chinese is my mother tongue but sometimes I do feel a bit strange that as my mother tongue, I can never dwell into it any deeper than the basic entertainment because of the inhibitions of not being able to read or write the language.

To conclude, I think over the years, I have learnt to live with my dubious personality. Continue to dress, look and speak like the human sized banana and then ocassionally surprise someone with the ocassional, “Yes, I AM Chinese and I DO speak Chinese and dun pray pray, I know who Jacky Cheung is ok and I love him sooo much”... And for that, poor Narrrling, he still thinks his wife is infatuated with Jacky Chan...Haha... He thinks his wife has got such bad taste..

Going off with a loud BAM!

2006-04-05T16:29:00.000+08:00

“BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAMM! BAMM!!...”

My goodness, these white shoes I wore to work today look so sweet and dainty (with Swarovski diamonds and all) but they sure make me sound like I’m stomping about with rusty saucepans attached to my feet. Did anyone have the courtesy to tell those shoemakers that it’s not just the design or comfort that matters but also the amount of audible sound it projects when in contact with solid surfaces?

The problem with these shoes is that they tend to exaggerate the mass that's wearing them. Hell, BigFoot might choose to wear white crystal studded heels and pay a visit to KL for a change of atmosphere.

Oh dear, what must my colleagues think?

“BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!...”

“There, Ms Loud Shoes going to the toilet again... "

“BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!...”

“Her majesty announcing her arrival again..."

“BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!..”

“Ms Saucepan Feet going to the pantry now”

“BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!”

“The elegant Miss BigFoot crossing by again”

You wait lah! Tomorrow, I’m going to wear to work, my ballet slippers from 16 years ago!! See still got sound or not! That will keep me nice and quiet for a while... Nobody calls me Saucepan Feet ok, NOBODY!

Husband of Mysterious Lane

2006-04-03T12:09:00.000+08:00

Narrrling has been acting strange lately. It started last Tuesday when he suddenly, out of the blue, said he’s sick of life and wants to take the day off from work and just do nothing at home. Upon hearing that, it got me worried sick because I know by nature, Narrrling is one of the most optimistic person I know. Everything and everyone in life is always good to him and he constantly thinks that we’re a lucky bunch. He’s the kind who’ll look at our messy house, which has not been cleaned in weeks, and sincerely say, “Wow, I love this place and I’m so lucky to have you”.

So when he suddenly told me he wanted to take the day off because he’s sick of work and sick of life? Now statements like that from Narrrling would seriously summon a great deal of worry from anyone around him who knows him well. What made me feel even worse was when I asked him if he’d like me to stay home with him that day, “I could work from home and stay with you, you know.”.

Without hesitation and with a defeated tone, he said “No, it’s ok. You go to work.”

What? Normally at the suggestion, Narrrling’s eyes will light up and with a twinkle, he’d say, “Could you really?”

That day, I went to work but my thoughts were constantly thinking of home and what’s going on with my Narrrling. Could it be that the project in Hanoi last week really tired him out? Could it be the promotion he wanted to get but didn’t? Could it be me? Could it be the ex? I must have called him 8 times at least that day. I hated myself for it and it wasn’t because I didn’t trust him being alone but I was constantly wondering what he was up to and what was going on in his thoughts. I found all sorts of excuses to call him and everytime I did, he seem to be normal. Earlier in the day he was playing some games at home, then later he went out and did some errands. It all sounded normal to me though he didn’t sound very happy and that chirpy tone in his voice was not present. When I got home that day, he was very much back to his normal self again. I tried a couple of times to wring some kind of deep thoughts from his head but failed miserably because everything seems well according to Narrrling.

In the next few days, Narrrling was back to his old self and I, slowly started to put the whole chapter behind me and classified it as a once off depression, maybe a male version of a period thing. Just when I was about to forget the whole incident, came Narrrling’s second wave of strange behavior.

On Friday night, before we fell asleep, Narrling suddenly asked me, “How well do you think you know me?”

“Quite well, I think.”

Narrrling said, “How well do you think I know you?”

“I think you know me better than I know you.”

Narrrling said, “Really? Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you that well. I can predict what my sister does but till now, some things you do still surprises me. It’s nothing bad, but I just feel that I’m still learning to know you”

Some people say, you are telepathic to your spouse’s thoughts because you are tuned to his pattern of behavior and therefore, you are more inclined to know what he will do and say next.

Narrrling and I were supposed to send our new car to be serviced last Saturday morning. For some strange reason, Narrrling became rather anal about getting up early to get it done on Saturday morning. You see, Narrrling is the last person I know who’ll want to get up early on a Saturday morning.

Something about Narrrling wanting to get up early on a Saturday morning, raised yet another flag in my head. I quietly went along with it. After we were done with the car, I suggested we went for breakfast at his favourite mamak stall. To my surprise, he said "No. I want to go home". This time, I insistently asked him why, why, why? He didn’t want to tell and was dodging answers with some silly jokes/excuses of wanting to go home to use the toilet. I went along with it, joking about his toilet urges ruling his head and foregoing a delicious meal of juicy ‘Roti Pisang’ and “Roti Tisu”. In my head I thought, something’s not right again.

As I was scheduled to meet my own friends that morning, I drove off to my friend’s place shortly after that, with an unsettled mind, leaving a very mysterious Narrrling at home.

I think I must have spent a good few hours at my friend’s place, the few of us as usual, talking and laughing about silly things, when suddenly Narrrling called me. “Will you be out for a long time more??”, Narrrling says.

“I think I’ll be here for another hour then I’ll be home. Why?”

“Just checking, that’s all.” Narrrling replied.

Now, something about Narrrling’s tone and the way he phrased his question gave me that X-files feeling again. I really should go home and find out what’s happening. Those thoughts stayed on my mind for 5 minutes then I forgot all about it when the conversation with my friends took an interesting turn.

Two hours later, I made my way home and was reminded again of Narrrling’s strange behavior all morning. Walking up to my doorsteps, I was asking myself if there’s anything I could do to try to understand Narrrling better, if it’s normal for a wife to sometimes have no clue what the other half is up to.

With a mind full of thoughts, I put the key through the keyhole and opened the door to our house. And there, right smack in the middle of the living room, stands a new shiny black piano. I drew in my breath sharply and stared at this new majestic addition to our living room and out of nowhere, Narrrling jumped out in front of me and with a huge grin, said, “SUPRISE!”

The piano is yet another wedding gift for me. Narrrling said, he’s been planning it since last Tuesday. He took the day off to go pay for the piano. It was a piano I saw and fell in love with weeks ago when we were shopping. I’ve been talking about it ever since and was going to buy it on a 36 months installment (because of my pathetic bank account). I was going to call the lady in the piano shop to ask if they take payment terms of 36 months. Narrrling told the lady to tell me that the piano is sold off. And here, before I even made that call to the lady, the piano is right here sitting in my living room. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Narrrling said later, he was anxious to get home this morning because the piano was going to be delivered between 10 to 11am, explaining why he rejected the delicious ‘roti pisang’ and called me to find out when I was coming home from my friend’s house so that he can stand-by to jump out and say, “Surprise!”.

Goodness, what can i say, it was a great suprise indeed! and thank you sooooooooooooo much Narrrling!!!

PS: Marriage D'Amour here i come!

There's a Hoax in Everyone

2006-03-18T04:41:00.000+08:00

It’s 3.42 am on a Friday night, reporting from yet no other place but the same ol’ cream colored couch of newly wed’s haven. As to why I’m awake at this God forsaken hour, it’s punishment from God for relenting to extreme laziness. Basically, Narrrling and I went for dinner, both came back with at least a 20% enlarged potbelly of Thai food, and fell asleep within minutes of changing into comfortable home clothes. At close to 1am, I woke up suddenly and realized everything in the living room was still alive.. So I woke up to switch off the lights, TV, computer..etc.. Standing in the darkness of my living room, I realized that sleep is going to be impossible and this was confirmed later, after 30 mins of lying in bed next to a snoring potbelly.

So I got up and sneaked out of the room. The first thing that came to my mind tonight, strangely, was work and what I did was that I powered up my laptop and started working till now. Woo Hooo! My boss is SO going to think of me as an A-grade champion hard worker… but I must say I do enjoy my work nowadays, contrary to the old days when I was sitting around Ms Private Parts, wondering everyday about the meaning of life. I also recall more than one time where I’ve quietly told myself, “Everything about this new job, new team is great!”.. Do you know what I like about this new team? Bizarre but true..

I love the fact that everybody is anti-social, just like me. I love it when I have no obligations to lunch with anyone, anyone at all. I love being left alone most of the day at my cubicle doing whatever I want at my own pace without having sneaky colleagues peeping at my monitor screen from behind. I love the fact that my department doesn’t try to go out of the way to force us into stupid inter-department sport activities as if it’s all that matters. I love the fact that my new team seems to have a silent bond that we’ll stand by each other although we don’t see the need to go for meaningless expensive team dinners every other month just to talk chilvary. It’s great here, really. I have no complains.

My job itself, sometimes I wonder if I’m a hoax. I constantly wonder how I manage to do my job the way it is, as if I’ve been doing it all my life although I just started on this job last August and I’ve had no proper training or background in this area. Either my work is really easy or sometimes I think, I might not be the only hoax out there, which is what encourages me sometimes to boldly ask when I don’t understand because I realized that many a times, I am not the only one who doesn’t understand. I use to be really afraid to admit that I didn’t know things because I didn’t want my hoax cover to be exposed. I always thought, in a company where people send in 5000 applications and only 1 is selected, you’ve got to act smart. Now I realize, the 1 selected might have gotten through because he/she has better hoax skills while I just got lucky because I got the right head hunter to do the hard work for me.

I attended a 3 day training recently and the first hoax I spotted was the instructor herself. She made a very fatal mistake, while she was talking about listening skills, she tried to crack a joke and she said this, “I heard a joke recently and it’s quite funny. They say that when normal people say ‘yes’, they nod their heads but when Indians want to say ‘yes’, they shake their heads! Hahaha.. I don’t know if it’s true but yeah, apparently they shake their heads!”

Oh My God, where has she been? And it’s not even funny! I lost all respect for my instructor on the first day of my training. Bear in mind, she’s talking to a roomful of people who won the battle over 5000 other applicants. Over the next few days, as predicted, she was struggling to manage us. At some point, some started to give up. During presentation, some would give really bizarre answers. For eg. we were asked to complete a case study where we had to complete a problem analysis of a situation, whereby 80 barrels of oil was produced in a day instead of the usual 120 barrels. Some groups just simply blamed it on the neighbour factory and closed the case. Every symptom of the problem was the neighbour’s fault. It was hilarious. Some groups gave some highly technical reasoning(that includes technical jargons that doesn’t make sense like O3 created in the air, creating the ozone later to lower the magnesium level in the air…bla bla bla.. ), some wrote things on the board like, “Duh, ofcourse you can only see the problem after the development lar”… It was actually hilarious for us but I guess not too funny for the instructor who was struggling to manage a group of rebels like us.

Oh My, it is 4.37am. I should at least try to sleep, right? Alright.. that’s it for now.. Leave some comments if you care..

Memories from the Wedding..

2006-03-05T07:42:00.000+08:00

The preparations

The Tea Ceremony

The Party Outside

The party begins

The Grand Entrance

The Move

The Night Continues

Speeches & Toasts

Bimboz & Friends

Being Pretentious

2006-03-03T15:53:00.000+08:00

A night out with Beng is like a night out on one of those “Back to the Future” machines and everytime without fail, we go back to the same place.. Our childhood… But don’t get me wrong, Beng and I never met each other when we were kids… But when we get together, we sure do act like some...

To a lot of people, our chemistry together is really rather weird. When you separate us, we are our own selves, and we act and behave like nobody but ourselves. But the moment you put us together, it’s as if some kind of magnetic field suddenly Clicked! and Zaaaped! We change into completely different people.

Over dinner, we pretend to be super models, talking about how fashionable it is to nibble on celery sticks and start wondering how come restaurants don’t serve potato juice and how other people are so fat compared to us. While walking, we pretend to scheme about getting married and running away with his dad’s money (although Beng’s gay and I’m married). When we pick up the phone, without fail, everytime we start with chivalry of not having met up for a looong time although we just hung up from each other 5 minutes ago. Sometimes we speak to each other in a French accent, and when Narrrling’s not around, we even attempt the Dutch accent. And sometimes when we’re completely in the mood, we simply skip the accent part and speak the language itself. In public, one will pretend to be speaking loudly in fluent French (which is ofcourse a whole lot of gibberish that sounds exactly like French) and the other will pretend to listen very attentively and say, “Ofcourse!” or “Oh, that’s great!” or “I beg to differ!”… and mind you, we can go on having a pretense conversation for a VERY long time…

Sometimes we pretend to be rich and dumb, sometimes we pretend to be gorgeous and dumb, sometimes rich and gorgeous, and sometimes,…just plain dumb.. I guess the key word here is, “pretend”… And when we are together, the sky’s the limit.

Last night at Ikano Power Center’s Pet Safari, Beng was the Fish Breeding Specialist and I was the dumb bimbo apprentice, walking over and over the aquariums (in our world Beng owns this ‘lab’). Beng would say something really convincing about the fishes’ natural habitat and behaviour explaining why this fish is doing this and that coral is doing that while I asked some really stupid questions as we went along. When we’re in one of those pretense modes, the entire world around us is switched off while we try to outdo each other with more and more suprising and original come back lines. The only times we jump out of our pretense world is when we simply had to stop and LAUGH! And immediately after that, we would immediately switch back into our world of Educational Fish Science or Hollywood Celebrity World or Kampung Life or C’est La Vie or Romeo and Juliet, depending on the theme of the day….

Last night, after one whole night of Educational Fish Science, I went home and thought to myself, Goodness, life can be so fun AND funny sometimes, why do we ever want to live life seriously? This one’s for you, Beng. (Beng is ofcourse not his real name but his name from ‘Kampung Life’. Mine is ‘Lin Fa’).

The Wedding

2006-03-02T13:52:00.000+08:00

Narrrling and I, we finally tied the knot officially and for the 3rd time recently on February 11th, 2006. Yes, for those who are wondering why for the third time, it's because if you remember, the first time was when we signed the official papers in Putrajaya on May 25th last year, then we signed the 2nd set of official papers in Den Hague on 12th Sept at the end of summer last year and then this time the final dance and wine party at the Cyberlodge View bundled with the traditional Chinese Tea Ceremony. That's it. It's official. So the question now is... You mean i'm a married woman? You mean i'm finally OFF that blardy shelf? You know, i'm still trying to accept this simple fact that i'm married although i've signed piles of paper in two different countries and then drank lots of wine toasted to the happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Walraven all night long on Feb 11th. And Mrs. Walrrr.. what? Where did that come from.. Oh my God..i married a gweilo!

To tell the honest truth, while i was growing up, i always thought i was going to be Mrs. Low or Mrs Lim, depending on which guy or which Hong Kong film star i was having a fancy on. It never crossed my mind for more than half a second that i was going to end up to be a Mrs. Walraven. And mind you, it took me some time to learn this, but you don't pronounce it as Mrs. Wal-RAY-ven. The right way to say it is no other way but the dutch way, so it's Mrs. Wal-RAH-ven with a bit of dutch intonation which is hard to explain over a blog.

Our wedding party on Feb 11th, i must say, was one hell of an eventful one. To be politically right, i'd say it was an interesting wedding. Let me ask you a question. How many of you have actually went to a wedding where you ate half your meal in a garden and then the other half in a ballroom? Well, for those fortunate enough to attend my wedding, they've seen it, done that. You see, Narrrling and i had great dreams for our wedding. We attempted a beautiful mid-summer night's fairy-tale dream wedding theme at Cyberview Lodge's award winning APEC garden. It was beautiful. We hired special wedding decorators to build gazebos and flower arches decorated with candles and fairy lights, tables were sprinkled with rose petals and mini hearts. The specially hired jazz band and jazz singer was singing love songs hand picked by Narrrling and I. It was to be a night of wine and dine under the candlelight and stars... and suddenly *Boom! Boom! Booomm!*, the sky lighted up for 2 seconds... In unity, all the guests of my wedding dinner looked up into the sky... It was lightning and thunder trying to send us a message... We all looked down from the sky, turned to each other, shrugged and laughed it off nervously.. trying to dismiss it as a false alarm.. Sure, thunder and lightning sometimes just strike for no reason... especially in good weathered nights... and then *BOOM! BOOM! Boooomm!*... we all looked up again.. and *BOOM! BOOM! BOOMMM!*

With a controlled radiant smile, i turned to the banquet manager who was by then, trotting quickly up to me.. Yes, we HAVE to move. My heart fell but there was no choice. I turned to my emcees and my wedding co-ordinator (cum best friend) and gave them a nod. They understood me perfectly well. Each sprang from their seat. The musicians were asked to stop after this song. The emcees got ready to get on stage again. By then, my personal make-up & dressing consultant came to me and said, it's time to go change from my wedding dress to the dinner dress... I held Narrrling's hand, with my personal make up artist holding my skirt, we walked out of the most beautiful garden wedding i've ever seen in my life...

It took us about 15 minutes to change into a different dress, hair and all.. When we walked back, with no hesitation, we walked straight to the ballroom. Thunder and lightning continued in the skies but there was no rain.

When we entered the ballroom, all the guests were seated again, and suprisingly, looked like they've been there the whole night, with most of them getting about their own business again of getting food and mingling about. The only hint that gives away the fact that we've just moved an entire wedding from the garden outside to this ballroom was that the musicians were at the corner of the room, setting up their instruments again and the beautiful flower arches, mist fans, gazebos, fairy lights and candles could not be moved and therefore had to be left in the garden outside to receive the on-coming rain... Ofcourse, since unlike the garden, we did not spend our life savings in having it professionally decorated, what remains of the wedding became a very simple one of mere tables and chairs and food and whatever decorations that came with the Cindai ballroom of the Cyberview Lodge. My heart dropped a moment upon entering the ballroom. But then, Narrrling reminded me that this is our wedding, a celebration of us starting our lives together and has nothing to do with candles and decorations. We should appreciate the meaning of this ocassion and now how the ocassion turned out to be. Narrrling's words sometimes are rather deep i know but at that point, i understood him perfectly well. Hand in hand, we walked on and greeted our guests and spent the rest of the night, laughing and mingling with our guests.

In the course of the night, we had some really meaningful speeches and toasts given by loved ones, we had more music by our musicians, photographs, food and I think a lot of our guests really did enjoy themselves. There were little hiccups like the sound system guys we hired screwing up a couple of times by playing the wrong song while we were cutting the wedding cake or re-starting a video presentation in a middle of a speech but i guess these are only things Narrrling and I would notice because after all, we played it a thousand times in our minds before the wedding on how it would look if it was perfect so small glitches like this seemed more obvious to us. But i think in general, when i spoke to some of my friends who attended our wedding later, they hardly noticed these little trip of mistakes.

It was a night also that i realised some of the good friends that i have around me. Some even made me wonder what i've done for them in this lifetime to deserve having them so dedicatedly working on my wedding. It was a night that yet again proves that my friends are the best anyone can ask for and my family makes me the luckiest girl in the world. It was an eventful and unforgetful night for sure, especially when everytime we look outside, we saw a beautifully decorated but deserted garden, clear skies and the rain never came.

Narrrling says, nevermind, as long as we still have each other.

What's the Worst that can Happen?

2006-03-02T13:50:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Of late, Narrrling and I have been playing this new game of ours, “What’s the worse thing that can happen on our wedding?”

Some weeks ago, I started off with, “I will trip over my dress and fall down the staircase during the Bride & Groom’s grand entrance”..

Narrrling then topped me with saying, “Halfway through the night it starts to rain and everyone gets soaked in the rain running for shelter ”

To that I said, “Your ex comes riding into the garden with her newly bought superbike and asks you to Hop in!”

Narrrling says, “All our guests have to leave halfway due to food poisoning!”

“Lightning strikes during our garden wedding and all our guests die except us!”

And we go on and on and on trying to outdo each other with our 1001 ways of how our wedding can go wrong. And maybe because of all these excess competition, I dream of them at night too. Last night, I dreamt of snakes slithering around our lovely garden wedding.. Last week, I dreamt of walking into my wedding and was totally shocked when I saw that instead of roundtables, the hotel staff arranged all the tables and chairs in theatre style and I had to drag around that elaborate wedding dress of mine, chasing down hotel staff, screaming at them to put things right.

Halfway sleeping last night, Narrrling shook me awake and told me to sleep on my side. I must have been screaming at the hotel staffs too loudly. Either that or I was snoring too loudly. Haven’t asked him which one it is yet, but this wedding thing is finally getting to me.

I woke up this morning with a format in my head. The format of how the reception’s guest list should look like. It’s crazy I know but I think sometimes my mind continues to work when I’m sleeping because many times I find myself waking up with ideas and a list of ‘to do’ items that I’ve previously overlooked. I remember I use to go to sleep and wake up with ideas on how to solve Maths problems. It’s true, huh, what some people say about sleeping on your problems. Nowadays my mind even continues to work on the non-problems and the overlooked items. Sometimes I think behind this bimbotic wake mind of mine, there is a guru sitting in the back, solving problems for me secretly because I am totally unaware of the problem solving process. Strange isn’t it?

Back to the wedding, I can’t wait for the honeymoon when life’s normal again and I don’t dream about snakes and rainfall every night. People say brides often get cold feet before their wedding. Honestly, I have no doubts marrying Narrrling, but I am getting REALLY worried that a major screw up will happen and it’s not funny. I still remember once I was the emcee for my best friends wedding. At the end of the dinner, instead of saying goodbye, I started inviting the bride & groom to come on stage to cut the cake.. My co-emcee nudged me and I stopped halfway realizing that it’s time to say goodbye. What the hell overcame me? Wedding screw ups, I even took part in them myself some time ago…

So I really wonder, what kind of screw up awaits me?

B to B

2006-03-02T13:49:00.000+08:00

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Some people say, “There is a Scarlett O’Hara in every girl". In my interpretation, it means that there is a bit of evil in every girl, no matter how nice or how innocent they appear to be on the outside. And honestly, Scarlett O’Hara is my heroine of all times. So watch the extreme bright light FLASH in front of Miki-C, and *poof* she transforms from B to B, from Bimbo, to Bitch!

Some people just can’t take the hint. Here’s an update on Ms Private Parts for those who’s been missing her. Since I’ve moved on from the team 5 whole months ago, I actually felt relieved that I didn’t have to invite Ms Private Parts to my wedding. She is now an EX team member, somebody from my past that I’d like to quickly forget by shifting my thoughts every time to flowers and rainbows and little puppies.

Yet she messaged me a while ago out of the blue under the pretense of asking me about my wedding arrangements. I quickly told her that I’ve been really busy making wedding preparations and my main problem was that my invitation list was too BIG and I was going to have to CUT DOWN on my invitation list. To that, she happily replied and gave me suggestions on who and who to slash off my list and ended it by saying that she assumes she’s invited and I’m NOT allowed to strike her from my list. Great! I’m sure my BUFFET wedding dinner must have sounded greatly attractive to her. Now I have to assign Lady Luthien to stop her from eating the trays! I was just talking to Lady Luthien today and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I can take Ms Private Part’s car and run over Narrrling’s ex? If I do the task well, I kill 2 birds with 1 stone. What a lovely thought…

Then there are the wedding piranhas. When you are organizing a wedding, BEWARE! Because once you’ve paid a downpayment (keyword here is 'downpayment'), you’ve fallen trapped in their ongoing incremental profit plan..

The bridal studio.. “Oh sorry ah, your package entitles you to choose dresses only from this section. Not nice? Well, you can upgrade your package and choose dresses from the VIP section upstairs. But you will have to top up another 2k for that.”

So what do I do? Close my eyes and pick an ugly dress or pay more money to get one of those beautiful dresses upstairs?

The musicians we hired for our wedding… “Oh, sorry ah, for the pianist, we only have a small keyboard. I must tell you first that the quality of the sound is compromised. If you want us to bring a real piano, it’s extra charges. And usually the sound system provided by the hotel is not good. Well, we can bring our mixer, monitor and amplifier to set up the sound system for the band but this will be another 3k.”

What the..!! Do we spend a few thousand to hire a bunch of musicians that no one can hear because the hotel’s sound system is unreliable, or do we top up a couple of thousand more on top of the initial few thousand to get perfect presentation of sound? And even more frustrating, why didn’t they tell us all these from the very beginning?

Then the biggest open-mouthed piranha of all. The wedding venue management, namely CYBERVIEW LODGE RESORT.

“Sorry ah, the oysters are actually frozen oysters and not fresh oysters. You want fresh ones? Add money.”

“Sorry ah, the ice carving we’re giving you is actually this low quality ice that has air bubbles all over the carving. Usually we let our couples upgrade to Crystal Ice. So if you want, add money.”

“ Sorry ah, we don’t include playing background music in the room where you are doing your tea ceremony. If you want background music, add money.”

“ Sorry ah, I know the hotel has 2 projector screens but if you want to use both of them, add money.”

“ Sorry ah, the hotel is going to provide you ice roman pillars as decoration but these roman pillars need flowers on top. If you want the flowers, add money…”

Dealing with these people is like doing boxing with your mother while she is still breastfeeding you. Blow by blow, they hit you and yet you can’t hit them back because they KNOW you need them more than they need you. Downpayment is made. What can you do? Just pray hard that mommy doesn’t get angry at me and spit in my food. In my case, my wedding guest’s food.

There are certainly ups and downs in organizing a wedding. Today, since I’ve done the B to B transformation, I’m letting you in on the darker side. Maybe another day when I’m back to being the starry eyed bride-to-be, I’ll have doubts about Ms Private Parts. Maybe she’s not after the food after all…. but after the men. Gosh.. that’s even worse…

The Story of Big Bertha

2006-03-02T13:48:00.001+08:00

Friday, December 30, 2005

Narrrling and I took our wedding photographs yesterday. Boy, have I prepared myself for this session in the last few months. I’ve practically gone off solid food and lived on diet shakes and teas for this. You see, I had a lot of worries for this session because previously I’ve had many bad experiences with make-up artists who fail to see the faults of my face and does the wrong thing to make it even worse. When it comes to make up artists, amateurs and professionals really make a big difference and if someone wanted to prove their skills, doing a job on my face will do it. What with the small eyes, blunt nose and crooked lips? You’d better know your stuffs before you attempt my face. Yesterday I got lucky, the make-up artist was good! Even Narrrling, who’s never a fan of heavy make up said so. So the make up artist was good, the dresses I chose remained beautiful as ever. Then what’s the problem? Well, the simple fact that the bride herself remains fat…. And that is my only worry for now.

Narrrling and I met up with the hotel and the wedding decorator last weekend and everything seems to be going just fine and falling into place. Last night, one of my wedding emcee took a lot of self initiative to organize a meeting with his co-emcee and called me to start the ball rolling between them. For your information, I have engaged two gay men, who also happen to be one of my closest friends to be my wedding emcees. They are talented, quick witted and dashing, which is why I think my wedding will be fun. Honestly, I think I’m very lucky to find a group of wonderful and responsible friends helping me make this wedding a success.. I also think, the wedding is going to be a beautiful one, with the wedding decorator being one of the best in town. Yet, my problem remains. The bride herself is fat.. Oh my oh my oh my… what am I going to do?

Yesterday, there was a point where 3 men being the photographer, his assistant and Narrrling was standing at a park where we were doing outdoor shoots, bending over my butt, trying to sort out the zip of my wedding dress that has derailed due to the extreme bride’s fat pressure applied to it. People driving by were honking and the jerks on motorcycles were doing wolf whistles. I didn’t hear them because all I was thinking about then was whether the grey panties I was wearing were the new ones or the old battered ones with washed out colors. Since Narrrling later mentioned that my panties were light blue instead of dark grey, I guess it was the latter. Great..

But fat or not fat, the photo session was fun. Narrrling, being the rebellious gweilo, challenged the photographer’s artistic vibes numerous times and once demanded for a bright green background when I was wearing a deep red dress.. Narrrling says it gives it a very Shanghai look? Hmm.. I wonder where he got that idea that bright apple green and deep red is Shanghainese. After a couple of challenges, the photographer started suggesting bizarre things as well, such as me wearing a nice sweet dress but sitting with my feet propped high up on a chair looking like I’m some sort of Big Bertha in disguise in a sweet white dress. I thought it was only a matter of time before he handed me a cigar for another rebellious artistic vibe… Some shots, he asked Narrrling to carry Big Bertha and when he did, the photographer took what must seem like a million years to Narrrling before he finally snapped the photo.... Big Bertha just played along as the fuel of artistic vibes between the two continues. It our wedding photos turn out bizarre, it’ll be fun to watch…

Watch this space and who knows, I might post some of them up when I get it…. By the way, Happy New Year to all! … from the president’s office of the Bimboz’ club …

Sue

2006-03-02T13:48:00.000+08:00

Friday, December 23, 2005

You know that time has flown by when you bump into the girl you use to sit with everyday in the schoolbus, at the children’s department store shopping for children’s clothes. You see, when we became friends somewhat 18 years ago, we use to visit the children’s section too, but that was to buy clothes for ourselves. But today, she was shopping for her beautiful baby Erin and I was shopping for my favorite Bimbo’s club apprentices, Timothy and Chloe. I tend to start them early if possible and that resulted to me buying Chloe a pink dress with a separate butterfly wand and hairclip, and a pink checkered shirt with a teeny weeny pair of sports shoes for Timothy. Watch the bimbo/himbo in the making. I intend to start them early.

But the feeling of bumping into my best friend cum childhood friend in the children’s department store does indeed give me a strange feeling. Have time flown by so quickly? Just yesterday, we met on the school bus wearing dark blue school pinafores, and instantly felt we shared a common problem together.. We felt we were fat. From a common baby fat problem we shared at the age of early puberty, our friendship blossomed into being Miki & Sue, the inseparables. Back then, Sue use to be chauffeured by her dad to my place even though it was just a stone’s throw away. On the days I was going to her place, I rode my fashionable Black Thunder BMX. Then our joint effort to lose weight, we would go jogging at the lake nearby. Most of the time, we jogged 10%, walked 25% and yakked the rest of the time away. When we got home, we gave people the impression that we worked really hard exercising the whole afternoon when actually we talked about losing weight more than we actually did anything to lose weight. So I guess it was not a surprise that this weight topic stuck around as we grew older. And today, the first thing Sue said to me when we bumped into each other were, “Hey, you lost weight!”

I remember when we were teenagers and I had a brand new camera as a birthday present, we started going for our very own sessions of vanity shots. We would dress up, wear make up, gel up our hair, then take the public bus for 2 hours to arrive at various destinations in town to take photographs of each other. One of our personal favorites back then was the Lake Gardens. If it was not sessions of vanity shots, it was visits to the newly opened shopping center near our homes, a place boasting to be the longest shopping complex in South East Asia… namely, Subang Parade. We would spend hours dressing up and getting ready to go while the walk to Subang Parade was actually just less than 10 minutes. Back then, going to Subang Parade was a grande affair.

Then we graduated from secondary school and went our separate ways in pursuing higher education. That was the time we discovered this thing called, ‘Hi-Tea buffet’ offered in hotels. It was a heaven for 2 fat girls like us. One by one, we raided all the hotels in KL, feeling no guilt sweeping their platters empty. As usual, we talked all the time about ways of loosing weight while we downed a couple of ice-cream scoops and cakes.

After a while, we both started working, both started having relationships of our own and though we permanently discontinued our fake jogging sessions and saw each other a lot lesser nowadays, everytime we met, we talked non stop for as long as we can remain seated. I think Sue is the one person in this world whom I feel like we will never run out of topics to talk about. If we were stranded at an island by ourselves with one coconut tree in existance, we would be able to entertain ourselves away by just yakking on the whole day and night. Our times together are the kind where the rest of the world cease to exist while we were on topics of our men, our job, our pets, our family, our friends, and last but not least, our weight.

Today, Sue is happily married with a baby of 6 weeks old, I am organizing my own wedding in February next year. Nowadays, Sue always say, “Who would have thought you will end up marrying a gweilo” and I would say, “Who would think you’ll have a baby earlier than me?”.. Time has surely flown by, isn’t it?..

Merry Christmas everyone! Quoting the Datin of Datindiaries, “Spend this festive season with your loved ones. It really is the only way to celebrate.”

And merry Christmas to you too, Sue! If it weren’t for u, my life would have been a lot more duller and i would have continued riding around the neighbourhood in my BMX with my 3 white mice in my bicycle basket as company.. Love ya, Sue!

Give me back my Fingers!

2006-03-02T13:47:00.000+08:00

Friday, December 16, 2005

I am finally a complete woman/girl. Loud as I am, bragging about being the ultimate bimbo all the time, there is always one thing I never admitted. That in my 29 years of life, I have never really been a complete woman. What can I do? Being a complete woman requires so much self-control, it’s impossible! Truly impossible! How can I not bite them off?

Because of the wedding coming up, of late, I’ve had no choice but to face this problem of mine. People say if you’re not a complete woman, your wedding photographs turn out ugly for sure. So to avoid monstrous wedding pictures, I’ve decided to take a back route into solving this problem. My mantra is, if you don’t have hair, go for hair transplant, if you don’t have breasts, go for breast transplant and (in my case, it’s not that I don’t have them, but I just keep biting them off) if you don’t have nails, go to the manicure parlor and get yourself one of those glamorous acrylic nail extension treatments. And that was exactly what I did 2 days ago. Right now, 2 days into the experience, I feel like a cripple like I’ve lost my fingers forever.

I cannot tell you how I feel having to yank those %&*%&@!! darn nails 50 times out of my keyboard everyday. I cannot explain how I feel not being able to buckle my own bra in the morning behind me because those darn nails keep getting in the way. Normal things like sending an sms has become the most challenging task in the world because the whole tip of my 10 fingers has been consumed by this thing they call French tips. Everything I attempt to touch with the flat of my finger, the extended nail touches something else on top of it. If I pressed 2nd floor on the elevator, if the buttons are close enough, suddenly the 3rd floor is activated as well. So that doesn’t really help when I’m trying to type my passwords, when the nail and the finger both tries to type at the same time.

Ugggh… how can people have nails??? I can’t even dig my nose if I wanted to(NOTE: If i wanted to.. not that i do, ok)... To prove this, I jabbed my finger into my nostril. Before my finger even reached the part where the gold is hidden, my nails are already hitting the roof. I jabbed my finger into my ears and they can’t even go in! What the hell is this business about having finger nails? What can I do with them besides using them to scratch my backside?!!

The View from the Top of the Fence

2006-03-02T13:46:00.000+08:00

Monday, November 28, 2005

The last time I wrote, it was about saying goodbye to my grandmother. This time around, I sit here on the same old cream colored couch in my living room, with memories of burying my grandmother last week still fresh in my head.

Officially, my grandmother’s funeral took 3 days long, following the traditional procedures of a Taoist funeral. Yet, it was one strange funeral. That’s right, I must say, strange things have been happening at home over the last days of my grandmother and up till now, I still can’t figure out if those were positive or negative events. Some were so bizarre; they left me speechless for a while.

You see, my father’s family, consisting of 7 other siblings and my grandparents, were brought up as devout Taoists. As Taoists, they pray to several Gods such as the Kuan Yin(Goddess of Mercy), the Kwan Gong(God of war) and the Di Tzu Gong(God of Earth). As a child, I too followed Taoist prayers till my teenage years at least. Then came the religious revelations. Some of my family members started having opinions of their own regarding this thing about religion and eventually became Christians. In my own family, my sister began this wave of religious change, followed by my brother and eventually, my mother. My dad stuck firm to his Taoist roots, and myself, always the one who tries to please everybody, sat still on the fence. Over the years, my family members have tried to persuade me one way or another to budge but I refused to move from my comfortable position on the fence.. Some people say, if I sit too long on the fence, some time in my after life, the fence wires will start to prick my ass. Well, I don’t know about that but we’ll see.

But the story I’m telling today, is about 2 clans formed at my grandmother’s dying bedside. My grandmother herself, has always been a Taoist practitioner all her life, though sometimes I think, I’m unsure if it’s because she was a true believer of the Taoist Gods or because back in those days, there was almost no other acceptable religious choices for a Chinese. If you are a Chinese born in the 1910s, you’ve got to be either a Buddhist or a Taoist. Yet, a few days before my grandmother passed away 2 weeks ago, I received a phone call from my sister telling me that my grandmother was baptized while lying on her hospital bed by a Pastor called in by my uncle. Yes, the Christian kind of baptism. According to my uncle, when they asked her if she accepts Jesus Christ as her new Lord, she indicated a ‘Yes’. I’m not sure how that was possible because when she was in the hospital, she was most of the time unconscious and when she was conscious, she could barely open her eyes, what more speak. But then, these facts are considered non arguments isn’t it, because if the Lord wants to wake my grandmother up at that very point so that she can accept Christ, I guess it can happen. I mean, isn’t this the kind of miracles we hear about all the time?

So there, news suddenly got out that my grandmother is now a baptized Christian. Some family members were overjoyed, while some were furious to the state of tears. My sister says, “It’s like giving grandma a choice. It’s really up to her and God now.”… I told this to Narrrling and Narrrling says, my sister was finding a road in the middle so that everybody could sleep that night. Very smart of her.

Then after a couple of days, came the news of my grandmother passing on. Now, what kind of funeral was appropriate? My dad, being one of the oldest and most influential in the family, made ann executive decision to have a Taoist funeral, which many gladly supported, while I’m sure many were secretly disappointed. So there we were, 8 families with children and grandchildren of their own, gathering in a small village called Chemor, 30 minutes up north of Ipoh for this sad, sad occasion. Yet, not all participated in the funeral… A few mostly sat at the side, watching the whole Taoist funeral proceedings like spectators, though they are direct descendants of my grandmother.. While the rest, followed every detail required of them in a Taoist funeral. Fence sitters like me, followed some and didn’t follow some. Honestly, I don’t know what is worse. The ones who follow the procedures completely, the ones who don’t follow at all or fence sitters like me, who seem to go against one religion at one moment, and then abide by it the next moment. I guess it really depends on where you stand, isn't it?

There was one ritual whereby each and every one of my grandmother’s children had to come out to the center to perform a ritual. So here comes the 1st child, 2nd child, .. skip skip.. 5th child, 6th child..skip skip… I mean, it looks kinda strange, especially in the next moment, the Taoist funeral master chants that my grandma had 8 children…

The Christian side of the family ofcourse doesn’t give up just like that. On the 2nd morning of the funeral, some church members from home turned up at the funeral. The Taoist side of the family felt threatened, though kept very quiet. They were worried that the church members would start singing Christian songs by the coffin. I was sure they didn’t sing any songs because that would be too obvious but I wasn’t sure if they didn’t say a prayer to the Lord by my grandmother’s coffin. Money collected from the church as funeral offerings were also not contributed into the Taoist funeral. Reasons are obvious though I’m not sure what happened to the money in the end, whether returned to the church as a donation or returned to the people who were kind enough to make an offering to my grandmother’s funeral.

It was incidents like these that made my grandmother’s funeral a rather bizarre event. What made it even more bizarre was, during the funeral, there was this white guy (gweilo) who followed the Taoist funeral procedures with his Chinese wife. Thinking about it now, it’s strange to see some direct descendants and family members sitting at the side with arms folded staring at the Taoist rituals while in the center amongst a group of Chinese mourners, there is a blonde hair blue eyed gweilo kneeling on the floor, holding some joss sticks facing the coffin. This gweilo, due to language constraints made some minor blunders here and there, though they did nothing but lifted the moods of the mourners… I mean, it is not a surprise that the Taoist funeral master from that small village was no fluent English speaker. So when he passed Narrrling a basket of fruits and asked him to offer it towards the direction of my grandmother’s coffin, Narrrling thought he had to pick a fruit and gladly took an apple out of the basket… The Taoist master totally caught by suprise, quickly grabbed the apple and returned it back to the basket. An uncle standing nearby quickly walked to Narrling and told him what he was supposed to do.. I was kneeling with the girls. By then, there were irrepressible giggles all around me. Then they gave Narrrling a bowl of rice wine and asked him to pour it on the ground in front of him. Narrrling seeing that it was wine, was more than happy to drink it. Again, the suprised funeral master had to stop him and gestured him to pour it away on the ground.. To this, Narrrling quickly did as gestured…. Another round of giggle fits erupted around me…

Narrrling and I are real time fence sitters. Many I think would condemn us for it but honestly, following some of these funeral proceedings to me is just like a form of respect. Not towards the Gods behind it but towards the rest of my family who believes in it. I truly do not believe that the paper houses and paper cars we burn will go to my grandmother wherever she is resting now whether the Taoist heaven or the Christian heaven, but I do believe that supporting the burning of paper houses, paper servants, paper money, will ease the mind of those who believes in it. I mean, it’s a funeral and we’re all mourners sitting on the same boat. Why make life so difficult for each other? It's just different strokes, isn't it?

How do I say my last goodbyes?

2006-03-02T13:44:00.001+08:00

Monday, November 14, 2005

Tonight, the doctor told my parents to take my grandmother home because there’s nothing they can do for her anymore. With this, the family has decided to send her back to the humble village of Chemor, about 50 kilometers north of Ipoh. Tomorrow, I was to go to the hospital to see off the ambulance that will carry my grandmother home, where she will live out the rest of her days, where my grandfather was buried. The doctor says that if she is very lucky, she will live for another month. Tomorrow could be possibly the last time I’ll ever see my grandmother alive. How do I make myself fully take in the fact that after tomorrow, this person I’ve taken for granted all my life might cease to exist? Normally people pass on and we have no choice but to accept the fact that they are gone. But tomorrow, she’ll still be there, right in front of me, though weak and frail but she’s alive and exists. She’s still my grandmother. How can I possibly believe that very soon she will be gone? How do I say my last goodbyes?

Narrrling says, passing on might be not be a bad thing for my grandmother. All the people in her generation, her husband, her siblings, her friends have all passed on to the next life but yet, she is still here with us, taking care of us right till the very last moments before she had her stroke. It has been our blessing through and through to have had her for so long but maybe it’s right for her now to want to be with the rest of the people who were closest to her in her own life. Maybe it’s right for her now to want happiness of her own in the afterlife.

Grandma, it’s so difficult to say this.. but… goodbye for now.. We’ll see you again..

Size does Matter

2006-03-02T13:44:00.000+08:00

Monday, November 07, 2005

It is confirmed. The Malaysian waters are void of ANY big sea creatures and is instead turning into a huge oceanic nudibranch wonderland. For those who are unaware, nudibranches according to Wikipedia are sea slugs or jelly bodied snails about the size of 4mm. Yes, mini life forms in the big ocean.

You see, Narrrling and i, we went diving again last weekend, and this time, in paradise itself, namely the beautiful Sipadan islands off Borneo. Being the shallow and kiasu divers that we are, we are still harping on and on about this “Size Does Matter” concept, constantly day dreaming about seeing big things underwater. Us, who have been fed with too much national geographic documentaries about the giant octopus and the great whites, we had high hopes that Sipadan was the answer to these fantasies. Days before we left for our trip, I was day-dreaming about swimming with barracudas the size of my bar stool and sharks the size of my car… Nudibranches? Hey, get real.. they didn’t even cross our minds. What do you want to do with some 4mm sea slug when a huge manta ray comes swinging gracefully your way under the big blue?

You know, they say those who reject certain things will end up getting most of it in the end. Just like me who use to tell everyone I will never date a white guy and will marry a gorgeous looking film star, ended up being the queen of SPG when I married a gweilo with no sign of film star looks(although Narrrling would like to think he somewhat has a striking resemblance to Mike Delfino of Desperate Housewives). So in our trip, it was no suprise that Sipadan became our very own nudibranch warehouse. Every corner we turned, every time we made a stop, there was a nudibranch peeping up at us. I mean, no offence, they’re cute little things. But we were looking for the mantas and the whale sharks.. We were big time divers who wanted to see BIG things.So what happened to the vivid fantasy where we, donned in our cool dive gears, bravely gave chase into a dark cave 30 meters under the sea after sighting a giant squid?

The strangest thing is, other divers love these little nudibranches. They crowd around them, oogling and taking pictures of them for a looong time before they move to the next nudibranch stop for more pictures. None of them seem to mind at all not seeing a single big shark throughout the entire dive trip. Narrrling and I, sometimes I feel, are like the uncultured divers. It’s like walking through the Louvre demanding to see the big paintings with most colors and strokes while dismissing the small masterpieces. Yet we both know the problem lies with ourselves but we still spent a tremendous amount of time poking fun at other divers for reading books like “1001 nudibranches”. By the end of the dive trip, we were both so sour that we were discussing about 1001 ways of battered deep frying and cooking these darn nudibranches.

But I must say that all in all, big sharks or none, nudibranches and all, it was a trip to paradise and back. Sipadan is truly a place in heaven with water so blue and green it matches the colors of heaven.. Its captivating beauty makes one remember that life indeed has a lot more to offer and paradise is never too far away ..

The view from our window

Pain in the heart

2006-03-02T13:42:00.001+08:00

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Last weekend proved to be one of the most traumatic weekends I’ve had for a very long time and I swear my heart was broken over and over again through the course of events that took place. There were many times I tried my best to hold back tears with no success while other times, I succeeded with putting on a strong expression. Yet, I wasn’t even the one most affected by this traumatic experience. I was only an onlooker.

Last weekend, my 10-month-old nephew was hospitalized for pneumonia at the temperature close to 40 degrees. You must know that my nephew, at 10 months has yet learnt to utter a single word and yet at times of great pain and fear, he screamed, “Ma ma! Ma ma!” for help. My sister could only stand by the side and watch while 4 nurses held her precious son down to put a needle into his hand over and over again, over and over again. They couldn’t find his veins for the injections. His hands were too small. At one point, the doctor turned to my sister and told her, “I’m sorry, we have no choice but to put the needle in blindly because it is impossible to find his veins.” With this, the doctor asked my sister to leave the room. That few steps to leave the room was the most painful steps my sister has ever taken in her life.

From outside, my sister could only hear her son’s screams for her. Do you know how it feels as a mother to have your son held down in the next room going through such pain while you stood outside just helplessly listening to him crying out for you? Do you know how it feels to BE held down helplessly by 4 strange figures while the only support and pillar of strength you have just went away? As an onlooker, I could do nothing but watch in pain and cry. I cried for my sister who is going through extreme pain in the heart and I cried for my nephew who has miracly learnt to scream for Ma Ma at times of desperation, pain and fear.

Timothy’s twin sister at home became quiet and reserved the day Timothy went away to the hospital. Where is this other boy she crawls after everyday? Where is this other boy who spend hours with her whacking an orange plastic bag to make some weird snazzy noises? Timothy is still in the hospital today after 1 week but his temperature has gone down from 40 degrees to a normal 36.7 degrees. According to the doctor, if his coughing fits subside over the next few days, he can go home again. I can’t wait for the day the twins see each other again. And for the whole family to put this entire episode of nightmares behind us. Timothy, do get well soon. We love you sooooo much.

Me and My Big Boss

2006-03-02T13:42:00.000+08:00

Sunday, October 02, 2005

As I was having dinner tonight in front of the TV all by myself, I was thinking about my weird encounters with my big boss recently. My big boss is my manager’s boss and i think, for most people's cases, we are sheltered from the big boss by our own managers. I mean, if you think of it, how often do you talk to your manager’s boss? Though the case for me might be slightly different because my manager sits all the way in Houston, and his manager, the one I call the big boss an Englishman, travels to Malaysia more often to oversee the business over here. And everytime he comes to Malaysia, he resumes the seat reserved for him, where else but the seat right next to me. Let’s call him :P.

I’ve joined this job for close to 1.5 months now and :P’s been in and out of Malaysia several times. Each time he’s here for a couple of days and was always busy so we’ve hardly exchanged anything more than a few polite words of “Good morning” and “Good bye”.

Then came his recent trip here, mainly to launch my new department, followed by a department lunch where we all went for a hearty meal of dim sum at an expensive Chinese restaurant near our office. Now comes a part which I’m sure you’ve experienced yourself before. When I got to the Chinese restaurant, I noticed that one of the first thing everyone tried to do was run for a seat on other tables where :P was not on it. When other tables were filled, the aim then was NOT having to sit next to him. I saw with my own eyes, my colleagues scrambling for seats as far away from him as possible. Best if right opposite where it’s too inconvenient to talk because noise from the restaurant would then drown your voice anyway. Sometimes I think, poor bosses. Nobody ever wants to sit with them, but yet at the end of the meal, they always have to foot the bill for the food eaten by people who didn’t want to sit with them in the first place. Actually, I was walking towards the table with a more senior guy and I expected him to resume the spot next to :P so they can have more of their kind of man to man talk. Very sad to say that this time my judgement totally failed me and even Mr. Senior Colleague decided to choose the seat away from him. Sigh.. so the last seat left for me was the one next to :P.

That I must say was the very first time I started having little conversations with :P. Just as his reputation promised to be, he’s a very gentle, nice, soft-spoken and intelligent old man. Since I wasn’t very good at talking about topics like long term technical changes vs short term organizational changes and it’s financial implications towards the bear market..bla..bla..bla, I asked him about how Hurricane Rita has affected the Houston office, whether he liked Malaysian food as compared to food in London, and all the time, I was making a very conscious effort avoiding topics of makeup, hair, shoes and bags, a.k.a topics close to home. Overall, I must say it wasn’t a super intelligent conversation we had but it was pleasant enough and I hid well under the camouflage of the fact that it’s a social event outside the office so we shouldn’t talk about work. There was a part where he asked me what kind of book I was reading. My big mouth nearly blurted, “Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl” by Tracy Quan. Luckily I managed to stop myself and instead, just gave a general answer about Horror and Mystery books.

Then after lunch, he asked to have a chat with me. Ofcourse, when he approached my table, I was virtually chatting with a fellow colleague in the next building. Damn! It always happens to me. I work hard the whole day and the moment I choose to relax for 5 minutes, the big boss comes by and sees me slacking off. Immediately, I shut all my windows and walked off with him to the pantry for a small chat. He just wanted to have a little chat with me, making sure that everything was ok since I’ve just joined for a month plus and I’m sitting here all alone with my manager so far away. I’m sure you’ve been through this as well. Honestly, I didn’t have any concerns. But to keep some conversation going, I just thought up something there and then, and said, “Oh, why are these jobs being moved from Netherlands to KL? Is this a cost cutting exercise?".. bla..bla..bla.. just to create some topics to talk about so that it just doesn’t end with him asking me a question and me saying, “NOPE. No concern.” So the poor guy had to explain to me organizational changes happening in the company and why it is happening, assuring me that it won’t affect me negatively though I should expect to see this and that coming my way in the future. Honestly, there wasn’t a thing he said to me that I didn’t know already. Then he asked me if I had any other concerns.. Uggh.. looks like I had to be more creative.. Then I voiced out about my views of how my handover is going and how I think it can be improved..bla..bla..bla.. Another effort to keep the conversation going because whatever I wanted to improve with my pre-decessor, I could handle it myself without needing to tell him, isn’t it? So we went on like this for a while, he did a lot of explanations along the way. Poor guy but at least at the end of the conversation, he would have felt that he did his part, helping this new girl Miki-C fit into the team. Miki-C on the other hand, just didn’t want to make things awkward by saying, “No concern. Thanks. Let’s get back to work.”..

After the conversation, I went back to my place and very vainly, wanted to see how I looked like, trying to imagine how he saw me during the conversation. EEEeekk! Of all days, TODAY I had a piece of humongous green vegetable stuck to my front teeth!!! All my hopes of creating even a normal impression to :P is dashed. How do you keep a straight face talking to a staff about organizational changes when she has a gigantic piece of bright green vegetable stuck to her front teeth?

Then came the final showdown. On the last moments before :P left the office to fly back to the Netherlands, I was also packing up to catch the company bus home. The bus was leaving in 1 minute and my stupid stupid laptop was taking ages to shut down. :P was going around saying his goodbyes, see you in November and I too, bid him goodbye and take care, while secretly glaring at my laptop, cursing it to hurry up. When my laptop was finally shut down completely, I stuffed it into my bag and ran out. When I reached the elevator area, :P was there waiting for an elevator.

I saw that the elevator was still many floors beneath and there wasn’t time for me to wait so I decided to take the staircase. As :P saw me, he smiled and started to say something. Since I REALLY didn’t have the time to spare, I just mumbled to him, “I’m trying to catch a bus! I’ll take the staircase!” and ran towards the stair exit. I must have mumbled in urgency and :P did not hear me so here comes the embarrassing part. He must have thought it was an emergency and suddenly, he started to run as well! I burst into the stairway running down the staircase and after 2 seconds he burst through the stairway door as well, running down the staircase after me! It was a really difficult decision I had there. At that point, when time was precious, do I stop and explain to him that I was just running after the bus and there’s no emergency? Or do I just run on and let the poor old man run so many flights of stairs for nothing? That was a tough moment. Since he was a reasonably fit old man in his 60s, he caught up with me when I deliberately slowed down a little. Still walking fast, I then explained to him I was catching my bus, to which he answerd, “Ohhh!”… I didn’t have time to blush nor to think of what to make out of that very situation because my mind was focused on that damn bus. And since I had to talk and explain and run at the same time, my bimbo mind must have used up its full capacity and lost count of how many floors I ran down. In a slower trot, he still followed me from behind but he definitely saw it when I burst into the stairway exit of the 1st floor and realized that there is still one more floor down to go. I then burst in through the stairway exit of 1st floor again and continued my run down the stair case… I tell you.. What must he think of me??

When we both reached ground floor, I looked out of the building and saw that the bus was not even there yet. Phew.. I relaxed a bit and slowed down for him.. Still flushed from the run and the encounter, I tried to patch up and make a bit of a conversation, “So your flight is tonight, huh? Are you able to sleep on the bus most of the time?”…My bimbo brains have really used up its full capacity.

He answered, “You mean the plane?”… I put my foot in my mouth so often, it must make his head spin!

Sigh.. here I was dreaming about making the big boss my best friend? Ok even if not best friends, at least a better first impression? Uggh.. This time i failed completely. I'll need to jump through fire hoops and do acrobatic stunts at work in the future to make him forget this incident..Great start to a great career, Miki-C!

Strange Desires

2006-03-02T13:40:00.000+08:00

Thursday, September 22, 2005

I have meant to blog about my 2-week business trip to the Netherlands recently. Everything I saw and experienced new this time around back in Europe, I kept a note of it at the back of my head. Everyday, I told myself to put something down so that I’ll remember what I wanted to blog about but I never got around to it, as I was trying my best to squeeze in some fun in between the heavy work schedule and meetings. Some of the fun involved a stolen weekend holiday to London that included tons of shopping, Les Miserables, Tom Cruise and a flight back to NL missed, followed by a very stressful night as I had a meeting with a vendor early the following morning in another country. Now that my 2 weeks in Europe is over and I’m sitting back here yet again on the same old cream colored couch in my living room, I am sorry to say that I have forgotten almost all that I have wanted to blog about. Though I promise I’ll try to jog my memory this weekend to try recalling some of those stories.

This is my 3rd time around to Europe in the last 12 months but the significant factor that makes this trip very much different from the last two is that, this is a business trip. The kind of trip where upon return, it becomes a taboo to talk about the stolen weekends in London and the following weekend of fun in Brugge, Belgium. When asked, you talk mostly about how the meetings went and whether the weather was cold and never about that cute pink wallet you bought in Selfridges nor the piano books you managed to get at half price in Bond Street. Basically, needed to put up a non-bimbo disguise to cater to the professional working environment.

Talking about work, a strange wave has been passing through my bimbotic head recently, and it feels really alien. After the switch of jobs a month ago, I don’t know why but I can actually feel myself growing more and more ambitious. I mean, I’ve been brain dead for 2 years at least in my previous job surfing the internet the whole day with nothing to do most of the time.. And now suddenly I feel totally alive again because I see a ladder. I see a path to climb. I see opportunities.

I use to hate department social gatherings and I use to dodge the bosses like I was dodging a loan shark who was trying to collect money from me. Hated all the small conversations I had to make with the intimidating foreigner bosses, having to talk in that ever prim, proper and non-bimbotic way. I hated it.

In this new job, I am placed to sit right beside my big(x2) boss and strangely, I am not complaining. Initially I hated the idea and tried to get out of it, but after a while, I thought to myself, this is more of an opportunity than a loss. Great! Make the mistake of putting me beside the boss and he will be my best friend. Just wait and see.

Then today, I did something out of my bimbotic character again. We were having a party at the pantry, launching a new office wing. One of the activities were for us to pick up a mug, read the name on it and then walk around looking for the person who owns it to present the mug to him/her. Ignoring that rule, ofcourse the bimbo queen was hovering over the pile of mugs busy looking for her own mug instead. That was when big(x3) boss came up behind me, not sure if jokingly but he said, “Pssst…Have you spotted your mug? If you see Kim’s mug, let me know ok?”

Well, I had no idea who Kim was and neither have I seen his/her mug. After a while, I gave up even looking for my own mug. Later that day, right before I left for home, I made my usual routine visit to the toilet before the long drive home. Don’t ask me how or why but lo and behold, there was a mug sitting in the toilet cubicle I was in. And surprise surprise, Kim’s mug was sitting right there waiting for me. I guess I could have left it there like I usually would because I know Kim would probably have came back and collected it from the toilet (strange place to pick up your mug though). So this is where the out of character part of me came out. Very automatically, I picked up the mug and put it into my bag and in my head, tomorrow I was going to bring this mug to the big(x3) boss. While I was driving home just now, it suddenly crossed my mind that I did something very out of character. In the last 2 years, you’d have to step over my dead body if you wanted me to talk to big(x1) boss.. Now I’m intentionally keeping a mug to create opportunities to be noticed by big(x3)boss? My goodness, Miki-C, what is the world becoming to?

So yeah, ever since I’ve started this job, I seem to have little weird streaks of myself breaking through from within, like logging onto the network the moment I got home to check emails and working very hard the whole day at my cubicle holding in my pee unconsciously cos no time to go toilet. Honestly, I am still exploring this side of me and is a little confused if I should continue to pursue my lifetime ambitions of lazing around painting my toenails and fight this inner desire of actually trying to become something at work, or really give it a go and make something out of it. The feeling is so strange, it almost makes me feel like a cross dresser, like I was always something but now suddenly, I want to be something/someone else. Weird.

The very beautiful town of Brugge by night

My Bag of Coins

2006-03-02T13:38:00.000+08:00

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Forrest Gump says, “Life is like a box of chocolates”. My version is, “Life is a bag of coins”. Well, equating life to a bag of gold coins really has nothing to do with me being Chinese and honestly I don’t even remember how and when this idea came about but I know that I’ve believed in this idea for as long as I can remember. I believe that we are all given a bag of coins from the day we are born.

Every time we have something good happen in our lives, we’re purchasing it with a coin from our bag. So if life was great in every area when we were young, it means that we’ve used a lot of our coins to purchase a wonderful childhood, and therefore might not have enough when we grow older. This goes to explain why some of the friends we use to envy when we were young, grow older to have less ideal lives, making us thank our lucky stars after all that we are not them. My bag of coins theory also explains why some people who have gone through a very bad childhood, goes on to have a better and better life as they grow older, because they were skimping on their coins during their childhood, and only started to use them as they grow older. For those whom you think life has been perfect for them since forever, if you look closer, you will always find a lacking area. They’re merely saving on one area to purchase for another.

Then let’s look at my very own bag of coins. I must have spent a lot of them on my childhood though I’m not completely sure if the happiness that constantly surrounds my home was purchased by my own or my parent’s bag of coins. According to my dad when he was young, he use to ride a bicycle for 15 miles everyday just to get to school. After school, he spends 5 hours cutting grass in the fields to earn his own pocket money. At night, he shares a very humble meal with 7 of his other siblings and back in those days, having meat on the table was a real novelty. And every night, the last hours of his day are always spent studying diligently under candlelight. Well ok, my dad's stories sounds suspiciously a lot like the stories we see on Indian dramas and might have been exaggerated or fabricated to motivate us kids to study hard but i do know that his life during childhood wasn't a bed or roses either. So, let's just settle with 5 miles and maybe 3 hours of cutting grass, ok? But still, compared to people in our generation, cutting grass after work? That's insane. After school, we went for piano class followed by a 2 hour beauty sleep. Therefore, I have a feeling that for the last 30 years at least, my family might have been riding on the bag of coins my dad have been saving up throughout his childhood, depending on how much he exaggerated.

Then comes my love life. Aaah.. that is one area I have no doubts. I’ve definitely been skimping them damn coins in this area because up till Narrrling, I must have never used a single one of them on my love life. Now thinking back, maybe for everytime I get shouted at in public by the asshole I was with for 4 years, I have somehow secretly earned 1 bonus gold coin and for everytime the asshole tells me I am stupid and fat, I earn 2 bonus gold coins and not forgetting the time he left the shopping complex without me because I was in a long queue, the time he left the restaurant without me because I ate too slowly, the time he shouted at me in front of his friends because I spilled sauce on the carpet and all the other mental and emotional torture.... All those coins I’ve saved up makes me doubly appreciate the Narrrling I have now who is constantly gentle and patient because those were surely hard-earned coins. And sometimes when I see Narrrling now, I almost feel like the 4 years of emotional torture I had to go through previously was worth it.

My bag of coins. I constantly wonder if my bag of coins is running out or refilling fast. At certain times when things happen, at the back of my mind, I can hear that jingling sound of coins that reminds me that if I’m not careful, it’ll run out. My bag of coin reminds me to live life moderately and that if something bad happens to me today, it means I’ve saved up something good for tomorrow and if I die without using them all, my children will inherit them someday.

And how about you? How have you been spending your bag of coins?

Little wonders

2006-03-02T13:37:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

I had dinner with a group of ex colleagues last night. The kind of ex-colleagues who have over the years, evolved into the kind of ex colleagues that no matter how long ago our last meetup was, there is never a silent nor cold moment whenever we get together again. And everytime we meet up, there is always a certain trend in our conversations. We spend the first hour catching up, “How’s married life?” “How’s your son?” “How’s your business doing?” “Which guy are you seeing now?”. After we’ve reached a certain level feeling satisfied that we’re reasonably up to date with each other’s lives again, we start the ritual bitching about our mutual ex colleagues. There’s the girl who wears her uncle’s pants, the one who took drinking water from the company for personal consumption at home, the boss who talked too much, the womanizer who went to Hong Kong and although we’ve talked about these same characters a million times over our meetups in the last 5 years, we never get tired of them. This goes on to explain that sometimes, it’s great to have weirdos among us in our everyday lives, they give us topics to talk about until we’re 70.

Then yesterday, we also came to the topic of children. Out of the blue, Nana asked me, “Now that you’re married, do you want to have children?” Without thinking twice, I said, “Oh Yes, of course”.

Later that night, I went home and pondered upon this topic. Narrrling and I, the furthest we’ve gone down this topic was cracking jokes about how we intend to harvest and sell the human parts of our kid to medical institutions to make ourselves richer. Narrrling somehow has the impression that his child will always be perfect. Last night I asked him, what if he’s a monster? What if he is violent and offends everyone and anyone within 1 metre’s radius of him? The same response I got from Narrrling, just like all the other times, “Then I’ll sell his kidneys to Assunta Hospital!”. Normally I would have continued with the liver to Pantai Hospital but this time, I refused to go down that direction. I mean, I know I want to have children but does Narrrling really want that too?

On more serious days, I remember a couple of times, I asked him the same question and most of the time, he’ll say, “Sure, anything you want, darling.” I have observed Narrrling a couple of times with kids. There are some guys whom you can tell immediately is a natural with kids. Kids love them instantly and within 2 minutes, you have 1 of them hanging from his shoulder, and another 1 hanging from his waist, both probably laughing hysterically. Narrrling unfortunately, is not someone like that. I’ve seen him a couple of times with my sister’s babies on his lap. He looked awkward like he was afraid of crushing their bones if he moved the wrong way. His attempt to play with the baby was putting his humongous index finger in front of the 8 month old baby’s eyes, almost like he was checking if they could focus or do a cock eye. The moment they cry, oh yeah, the moment they cry, Narrrling looked like he was in deeper agony than the babies themselves. When you finally ease the baby away from his arms, you’re almost unsure if you’re saving the baby or saving Narrrling. You know what I mean?

I guess this leaves me to ponder about what exactly make people think they are ready to have children? Is children a mere progression in life? The Chinese seems to think that for some bizarre reasons, their blood and name should be passed on to the next generation. But modern folks like us, do we really care? Since we don’t care about blood and name, why do we want to have children? Honestly, I don’t know why but I still want one someday. I wonder why too.

Unwilling Party

2006-03-02T13:36:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

An Unwilling Party’s Extreme Bitch Blog. Only meant for the non-judgemental.

A few months ago, I was very unwillingly dragged into the Organizing Committee of the Company Annual Dinner... I’ve first tried to reject the ‘honor’ of being in the organizing committee by feigning travel around the time of the Annual dinner. When time came nearer to the dinner and my travel didn’t seem to be happening, I was then utmost unfortunately roped in again with no excuses. You see, sometimes, these things are not an option. The chairman of the committee was my manager and it is almost a social and career obligation to participate in any activities my manager commits herself into.

So along with the status of being in the honorary committee of the annual dinner, there came the tasks of cutting 1400 mailing labels with a pair of scissors, sticking them onto 1400 envelopes, slotting 1400 invitation cards into envelopes, sorting them into alphabetical order, delivering them to our privileged colleagues who didn’t need to be in the committee, sorting out the ones who are coming and the ones who are not, the vegetarians, the spouses, the guests..etc..I think you get the picture. Ofcourse, to make things better, in these scenarios, there’s always the extremely willing committee member, “Ms Itchy Private Parts”, who self proclaims herself the boss, to stand over you to supervise. When the rest of the hard laborers are trying to slot all the cards into the envelopes as soon as possible so that they don’t have to go home after midnight, Ms Private Parts is ofcourse doing QC jobs. She inspects the envelopes one by one to ensure that the cards are slot in the right direction and the flap of the envelope is tucked into the envelope. You know, while the rest of us are praying to God to grow 2 more pairs of hands so that we can finish all the labor work as soon as possible, it might make a difference if there’s an extra pair of helping hands, even if they are FAT and lard laden. (Excuse me for my cruel comments, being fat myself, all my life I’ve always been extra nice and sensitive to the feelings of other plus sized individuals but this time, I make an exception because in my own opinion I strongly feel that there are certain individuals out there who takes advantage of it and therefore does NOT deserve the goodness showered upon them.)

Then comes the night of the dinner. Using skin colored first-aid bands to cover all the blisters from my fingers from cutting too much mailing labels and after using make up to cover the dark eye rings from the late nights of sticking mailing labels and sorting out the vegetarians, spouses, vendors/guests, and those-who-wants-to-bring-a-partner-but-do-not-want-to-pay, comes the ‘Let’s-pretend-to-be-Glamorous-Night’. Lard Laden Itchy Private Parts is ofcourse on a double dose of supervisory mode. Underneath my low cut ivory white dress and under my secretly taped breasts to get that cleavage effect, my blood was boiling.

I don’t know exactly what the thoughts of the others are and honestly, I don’t even know if others in the committee were roped in willingly or extremely unwillingly like myself, but from a very unwilling party’s point of view, I wonder why we’re paid such high salaries and given managerial titles to replicate a factory line to output thousands of invitation cards and then run about the night like a headless chicken with taped up breasts and at the same time, trying to look all glam and fancy.

By now, there must be some whose thoughts are, “Why are you so unwilling to help? It’s just one dinner.” So here’s the history. This is only ONE annual dinner. A couple of months ago, there was the Celebration Dinner when the company achieved a certain status. Then there was the Social Committee department dinner, then there was the Treasure Hunt, then there was the Christmas Dinner, then there was the Farewell Dinner, then there was the Chinese New Year Dinner... When I applied for this job, there weren’t any fine prints that told me I have to be involved in the organizing of EVERY damn social event that happens in the company JUST because I have a hyperactive manager who thinks she can take on the world. And perhaps, participating in the committee of such events might be better if there were no fat lard hanging around making snide comments and pointing fingers at everything we do. Enough already. If you want to avoid finding blogs like this on the web one day telling the whole world what a fat lard your sidekick cum best friend is, and how ‘great’ and ‘wonderful’ life was while working with you, find some truly willing volunteers next time. And DON'T push it.

Glamorous Scuba Divers

2006-03-02T13:35:00.000+08:00

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

You know, Lady Luthien was talking about constantly trying to be someone we are not. Last weekend, I think I too tried very hard to be someone I am not, and that is, to be in the same elite league as the glamorous scuba divers.

Narrrling and I got our scuba diving license last year and since we’re both such ultra lazy people, when other people were diving 5 times a day, capitalizing on the dive boats that went out to the sea every other hour, we only joined them a maximum of 2 times a day. The rest of the time, we spent them lazing on the beach, cracking lame jokes about the other kiasu divers. Then after a couple of examination dives followed by leisure dives, we both went happily home to where we come from and never went diving again until last weekend. You see, the bimbo has her ambitions too and to a certain extent, is a wannabe. So this time, she wanted to be a certified ‘Advanced diver’ and therefore, dragged Narrrling along for the advanced certification dives. Now you have to remember that it’s been more than a year since the bimbo and her Narrrling went for their last dive, which also happened to be the same trip they took their beginner’s cerfitication (a cooler name for it would be the Open Water Certification). So, disaster strikes ofcourse.

My newly appointed dive instructor, a very nice girl who upon the first meeting, didn’t suspect at all what was coming her way, greeted Narrrling and me onto the dive boat with smiles and utmost warmth. I guess she only started suspecting, when after giving us 15 minutes to change and settle down, she asked us to set up our own equipment. So there I was, standing in front of my dive equipments, staring and staring. Trying not to look like a total idiot, I picked up an equipment with my hand and studied it for a while. Then I looked at the oxygen tank and studied it for another while, trying very hard to remember where I join them. I looked at Narrrling, he had a serious look on his face and a no-nonsense, “I know what I’m doing” expression, he was picking up something, fixing it obviously on the wrong spot. Frowns, picks up another piece and tries fixing that piece instead. Oh crap, he is obviously as lost as I am, only difference is that he’s got some kind of manliness to protect. I turned to my instructor and gave her a blank look. Upon realizing that I don’t know jack shit what to do with the equipments, she appointed this hunk to come help me with it. As the Hunk was setting up my equipment, I caught Narrrling’s eyes darting my direction back and forth, quickly taking in what the Hunk was doing to my equipments. After a while, both Hunk and Narrrling got our equipments up.

Splash! Within minutes, we both jumped into the water with the instructor and the rest of the leisure divers. Instructor shouts out a command to us, “Ready? Descend!”… I saw Narrrling and my Instructor slowly sinking beneath the water surface and I did the same.. Just release air from my jacket and I will sink…I release, release, release, release all the air.. uh huh.. release, release, release all the air…Wait a minute I was supposed to sink! Nope… the air of my jacket might have gone out totally but the fats of my body takes charge and kept me afloat… So stubbornly, my fats kept me perked on the surface of the water. From underwater, my instructor seeing that I was not going anywhere, re-surfaced and told me we’ll have to try another method. Great! Another better method, I thought. So she yanked me along with her as she went underwater. Wonderful. My first “ADVANCED” certification, I had to be yanked all the way down underwater. What the hell happened to the graceful and sophisticated sinking underwater in a cool floating Matrix pose?

When I finally reached the bottom, according to physics, the air in my body shrinks, therefore, my floating capability decreases and thus, when my instructor finally let go of me, instead of charging like a bull back to the surface, I stayed where I was. Instead, another problem surfaced. How the hell do you control where you’re going? I looked around at the other leisure divers.. The Hunk looked like a sexy topless merman swimming around to say hello to his new found underwater friends. Narrrling tried his very best to keep cool, the expression on his face was relaxed.. but his eyes were wild and it takes a lifetime partner to be able to spot that... Myself, I was thrashing about trying to stay in one position as I was bouncing up and down, off the sea floor. Upon seeing my underwater ‘grace’, my instructor took out her underwater notepad and scribbled on it, “REMEMBER! Breathing in deep you will ascend, breathing out deep you will descend. Control your breathing!”

After a bit of a struggle and a few more fierce scribbles on her notepad, I finally managed to swim behind my instructor, not letting her out of my sight for dear life. That was how we swam for a while, exploring corals and fishes, and I was slowly beginning to calm down. Just when I started to think I was back in connection with my old diving days, I suddenly realized that I was being taken further and further away from my instructor by one strange underwater force. Was it the current? No, because I wasn’t moving horizontally, I was moving vertically! It’s my fats! Alas! I was floating up to the surface all by myself!! When I realized my fats were trying to take charge again, I tried my best to swim downwards, I kicked and I kicked and I kicked but the image of my instructor got smaller and smaller before my eyes.. The problem was, we were moving towards the shallower end of the water, and the air in my body started expanding, causing me to have better buoyancy, thus the drama of charging back up to the surface. Upon realizing that I was gone from behind her, the instructor did a 360 degrees turn around to find me. Nowhere in sight! I saw her sudden quick moves from the surface of the water, panicking. Then she looked up and there i was, the bimbo floating, back at the surface of the water, looking down sheepishly at her. Sigggghhh… So my instructor had to resurface yet again, and yanked me under once more..

On my 2nd dive, my instructor strapped some major heavy duty weights on my body, to ensure I sink! So this time, with minimal yanking, I got down to the bottom. Just like the first time, I followed my instructor around closely with dear life and my instructor, having learned a lesson from the previous dive, turned around and checked on me every few seconds to make sure that I was still there. At one point, we spotted a turtle and I don’t know what it is with divers but seeing a turtle seems to be a major underwater novelty. All the divers crowded around the turtle, under their masks and bubbles, ooh-ing and aah-ing at it. And me, I was just struggling to maintain my position, when suddenly I felt it again. I was floating upwards AGAIN!! This time, I realized a little earlier and started swimming downwards as hard as I can. I used my hands and my legs and swam and swam as hard as I can, reaching for the bottom. It was then that the Hunk took his attention away from the turtle and looked up. And above him, he sees this silly girl in a scuba diving suit, frantically moving her arms and legs back and forth, back and forth, in her attempt to swim downwards, while miserably floating higher and higher up. The Hunk then reached out, caught hold of one of my hands, and with a sweep of strength, pulled me all the way down to the bottom effortlessly. Do you know that feeling? The feeling of being in the moment of utmost desperation and someone comes along and effortlessly puts you in the right path again? And not forgetting it’s a hunk? I guess the feeling would have been rather heavenly if I wasn’t caught in such a compromised position but yet, from inside to outside, I was ever so grateful to him for saving me from the embarrassment that follows if I was spotted yet once again at the surface of the water in the middle of a dive. And the feeling inside me when I felt the strength of his hands pulling me down to safety, it was sensational. It was like getting a life buoy when you are drowning, or being caught in a pair of strong arms when you are falling. The Hunk quietly rescues me and we both continued to ooh and aah at the turtle for the next few minutes. When we got out of the dive, we did not mention a word of it.

So over the next day, the dives continued, and I continued with my silly ways. Once I said to my instructor, “I think I have problems neutralizing”… My instructor gave me a puzzled look for a while and then suddenly upon realizing, she went, “OH, you mean EQUALIZING?”…

On the last dive before we went home, came my last drama. At the end of the dive, all of us took our turns to climb onto a small boat that resembles a ‘sampan’ with a motor. This small boat will then take us back to the bigger boat, where we’ve been living and eating for the last few days. How we do it, is that we’ll have to unload our scuba diving equipments onto the boat, then fin-kick ourselves up high enough to climb over the side of the sampan. I’ve always had problems doing this because I guess my legs are just weak and I can never kick myself up high enough. So this last time, I thought to myself, “Hunk is sitting on the sampan, staring down at me. I must do it this time. MUST DO IT! My last chance to prove i can do something!” Everyone who’s already on the boat counted for me, “ONE, TWO, THREE, KICK!!” So I kicked as hard as I can and pushed myself up with my hands on the side of the boat. Suddenly, I felt something ease off one of my feet. Shitttt! I kicked so hard, I kicked off one of my fins! So there goes my expensive fin from Europe, slowly sinking down to the bottom of the sea. My cheerleading crowd on the sampan, upon seeing that I’ve suddenly stopped kicking, asked me, “What’s wrong?”…

I looked at them and said, “I kicked off my fin..”…

Upon hearing this, the Hunk grabbed his diving mask, pulled it over his face and very heroically, Splash! Dove into the sea after my fin! I held on to the side of the boat and looked over the water at where he dove in and feeling yet again, that sensational feeling. The hunk re-surfaced with my fin in his hands. When he swam merman style over to me and and handed me my fin, he asked me, “Do you need help getting into the boat now that you’re one fin short?”…

I said sheepishly, “I think so..”

“Ok. Then don’t mind me if I push you up, ok?”

Understanding what he meant, I said in a small voice, “No, ofcourse not.”

So once again, my cheerleading crowd on the sampan shouts, “ONE, TWO, THREE!”.

I kicked myself up with one leg and one fin as hard as I can, and behind me, both hands on my butt, I felt a strong upward shove…. Sigh..

So this is the story of my chase for glory to be an ADVANCED scuba diver. Very, very glamorous indeed…

The Land of Silence

2006-03-02T13:34:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Back to the land of silence. My 2nd day of work at my new job. Did I tell you I finally landed myself a new job? Well, it's not really new because i'm still working in the same company, just a different department and different responsibilities.But yeah, I finally made it! Woo Hoo! I am finally reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, leaving behind a part of my life that was previously in total darkness. For those who have followed my blogs, you’ll know that for the last 2 years, in broad day light for 8 hours everyday during work, I’ve been groping around in the dark, trying to find some kind of direction or something that’ll motivate me to continue living and trying extremely hard not to kill myself simply out of boredom or simply for some excitement in life. You know, when time crawls by sooooo slowly to reach that 5 o’clock everyday, sometimes you wonder what the meaning of life really is. So I’m really glad I’m able to close that chapter now. I’ve moved on.

Back to the land of silence and that is present day, present time. And why do I call it the land of silence? Because I’ve jumped from boredom land to loneliness land. I report to a 50 year old guy ALL THE WAY in Houston and the pre-decessor of my job, is a 51 year old man ALL THE WAY in the Netherlands who’s handing over his job to me due to early retirement. This thing about retiring early, I sure hope it has nothing to do with the job, not forgetting the fact that both my manager and my pre-decessor has a full head of white hair though both are only in their early 50s. Have you heard of the Cantonese show called, “The white haired bride”?.. Maybe come next February during my wedding, that’s what I’ll be too, “Miki-C the white haired bride”.. Ah, but I’m a little brighter than that. Bimbos like me are very advanced. We just use hair dye. So, I won’t complain about my job for now because so far, I’ve been able to entertain myself with some new challenges in my new job, although no one around me here can be bothered if I am doing work or picking my nose or catching imaginary flies. In fact, there’s nobody around here. Haha..

You know, some Chinese are very superstitious. They see certain happenings in life as an omen to the future. Well, walking to my new cubicle on my first day of work yesterday, I was greeted with a huge dead fly sitting on my table. And since I wasn’t going to start my career with a dead fly as a friend (that I was obliged to name Frankie) and there was no tissue or waste paper basket immediately accessible, I used the tip of two fingers to remove the dead fly from my table to the vacant table next to me. (Oh my, I am so unethical..) Why not let someone else be greeted by Frankie on his/her first day of work too. ….

Guess what? I just took 2 seconds to peep into my future neighbor’s cubicle and Frankie is still there! Good ol’ loyal Frankie.. Though I wasn’t very happy with Frankie yesterday when I forgot about the whole incident of removing him with my fingers and started biting my fingernails! Poor Frankie, not only did I fail to give him a proper burial but I also tried to eat/taste him. Narrrling, did I taste funny when you kissed me last night? Sorry, I think that was Frankie.

Anyway, sitting here all alone on the land of silence with one dead fly in the next cubicle, I have no complains because everything that seems bad or evil seems to be behind me now. The days of idling with nothing to do, the days of torturous audio from Ms Itchy Bitchy Private Parts, and even the smoky Haze is now over and gone. Talking about the haze last week, Narrrling said it’s so bad, he couldn’t smell his own fart. I guess that means REALLY bad.

Cursed pancakes

2006-03-02T13:33:00.000+08:00

Monday, August 08, 2005

I think I’m cursed. Some people are cursed with bad luck and some others are cursed with having bad relationships. Me, I think I’m cursed with having to go to work. Yes. I’m cursed with having to go to work 5 days a week, 20 days a month and 245 days a year after deducting my annual leave of a pathetic 15 days. You must be thinking, “Hey, I’m sure there are some days you take off for sick leave? So it’s not really 245 days a year, is it?”.

To the Smart Alecs, my answer is “Yes, I might take some days off for sick leave but for those days I take, I pay for it dearly.”

I started having gastric pains early yesterday. All my life, I’ve never really had a record for having gastric pains but when they do attack, they seem to have a need to jack it up a bit to make up for the lost times. Since I am a novice gastric victim, I initially thought the mild pain in my upper abdomen was caused by the lack of food. When Narrrling suggested we drive to the nearby “Paddington House of Pancakes” for a late evening tea session, I thought maybe some food would put a stop to the pains. So being my usual self, I helped myself with pancakes, strawberries, bacon, scrambled eggs... anything my weak tummy could take. After the meal, the pain worsened. The pancakes though delicious in the mouth, upon entering my stomach, seem to have turned ugly and tripled the gastric sensations. When I got home, the pain was so extreme that I spent most of the rest of my evening rolling and thrashing around in bed. When I was not doing that, I was retching and vomiting in the toilet, pancakes that have somehow quickly transformed into loads and loads of strange colored liquid. Since then, I never dared to eat anything for the rest of the evening except for painkillers and gastric pills.

When I got up this morning, my first thought was, “Do I go to work?”. I felt weak from the lack of sleep and thrashing around yesterday. When I touched my upper abdomen, a dull pain was still felt though it was not as bad as the day before. What if I ate something later and it got worse like yesterday again? At the same time, there was really nothing pressing at work that I needed to deliver today. So I decided to send off an sms to my manager to inform her I’ll be on sick leave. After 1 hour, I didn’t get a reply from my manager, which I found was strange. So I sent another sms to my team member, Ms Itchy private parts. (Note: If you’re new to my stories and is not aware of who Ms Itchy Private Parts is, kindly click here to learn more about her ‘wonderful’ ways.)

I waited another hour plus and didn’t get a reply from her too. Found it really strange and finally decided to log into my office computer to send them a mail. Alas, today my pc went cranky and I was prompted about passwords I never created and domains I’ve never heard of. When I finally got onto my MS Outlook, it was close to 11am. I wrote a mail to my manager, cc-ing Ms Private Parts, asking them if they received my sms-es and telling them about my gastric situation and that I was going to be on MC today. Since gastric is always seen as a minor problem that usually don’t keep you from coming to work, I added a part about me not being able to eat or sleep the whole of yesterday due to the pains.

It was then that Narrrling told me he forgot to pay the phone bill, which is why our phones are barred and probably why my sms-es DID NOT GO OUT THIS MORNING! SHIT! Does this mean that my manager thought I just happily didn’t turn up at work without informing anyone? It was at that moment too, I got a mail from my manager. Sounding very cold, she said, “No, didn’t get your sms. Take care”.

I felt bad when I got the mail. Did she think I was lying about sending the sms-es? Did she think I woke up late and decided to feign MC? Then the best part. Ms Itchy Private Parts, ensuring that my manager was also cc-ed, wrote me a mail in a very ‘I beg to differ’ tone, and she said, “Nope. I didn’t get your sms neither. How was the pancakes from the Paddington House of pancakes yesterday?”

Thanks to my forever lucky stars. Apparently Ms Itchy Private Parts saw me at the pancake house. Wonderful. So now, my manager does not only think I lied about the sms-es, I also lied about my condition. In my note I said I couldn’t eat or sleep the previous day(cos I vomited all the food I ate anyway!) but obviously I was caught happily eating pancakes in the pancake house the day before. She probably thought, I went wild partying the whole of last night, woke up late this morning at 11am, then quickly sent them a mail lying about having sent earlier sms-es and lying about having some sort of gastric pains that isn’t there. I am SOOOOooo upset!!! Ms Itchy Private parts gets glory once more for exposing the truth they only THINK is true First of all, I really DO have gastric. Second of all, I really DID send the sms-es! But what can I do? If I explain that my phone was barred because Narrrling didn’t pay the bills and that I vomited all the pancakes after that, they will only sound like silly excuses, and a very lame me, trying to rescue the situation. Ting ting ting! Ms Itchy Private Part wins once again…

I gave Narrrling a hard time for forgetting to pay the phone bills and also went to see a doctor to get some proper gastric medications. But what I really want to do is go to the office and stuff some pancakes down somebody’s throat. Then I thought, maybe I should have just bloody gone to work today! Which is why I say, I am cursed!

Where is Home?

2006-03-02T13:32:00.000+08:00

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Some people love changes in life and see change as a challenge and means to make life more exciting and colorful. Unfortunately, that’s not me. I hate changes. In other words, I’m a scaredy cat and with all my might, I resist change. All my life, I nestled safely in the comforts of my home, under the roof of mommy and daddy. I never studied too far away from home, I never stayed away from home too long. I knew, that whatever I did wrong, whatever mistakes I made outside, there was always a home where mommy and daddy will make things right and a room decorated so pretty in pink, it will never fail to welcome me back into its heart everytime. My pink room was where I grew up, my sanctuary, where every corner, curve and scribble on the wall, marked a time in my life.

And Mommy and Daddy, just like the pink room, seem to have been enslaved to my life from the time I was born. Send Miki to ballet class. Miki wants to learn violin now. Buy Miki a new violin. Miki needs to drive to school. Daddy, you drive the old car. Give Miki your car. Iron Miki’s clothes. Re-new Miki’s road-tax and insurance. Miki’s on diet, cook her diet food for dinner. We all eat diet food with her for the next 2 months. Miki’s car is dirty. Send it to wash. Buy Miki a new car. My mother is a nurse and she’s worked at the same stingy medical institution for the past 40 years. She does not earn too much and yet, when Miki wants a new car, she gets one.

Honestly, I don’t know what I’m getting at. I just know that last week, I’ve never cried so much in my life. I turned up at work almost every day with thick, swollen eyes. I was longing for something I could never have again. I was longing for the comforts of my home with mommy and daddy in it. And i know, this combination will never ever be mine again.

Time has come for me to take the biggest step in my life. Moving out. This might sound unfair to Narrrling but recently, I’ve been getting more often than ever, this nudge at the back of my mind that says, “I wish I didn’t go and get myself married!! Life at status quo was so perfect!! Why did I have to go and change it?”… I know most brides can’t wait to be rid of their old boats to step onto the brand new yacht. Narrrling has thrown everything out of his guest room and turned it into a walk-in closet for me, carpeted, with mirrors on every wall, just the way I like it but yet somehow, I prefer my old mess in the pink room. I prefer getting yelled at occasionally by mommy for it being in such a mess. I prefer coming back one day with a cardboard left by daddy in the middle of my wardrobe mess on the floor that has the huge red prints, “PIG STY or RUBBISH DUMP?”…. For every item I threw last week, I shed a tear. For every item I packed into my bag, I cried because to me, that was where they all belong. That was their home.

Yet life goes on and I understand that this is only a natural progression in life. I know it’s silly to cry so much over this but yet for someone like me, it’s like taking away a part of me, pulling away by force, an arm and a leg. The night before I was to move out, my dad said, “Only bring the things you need. Don’t have to move everything.”…It was like I was just going for a business trip. On the night I drove away with all my belongings, I tried my best not to cry but when I stole a glimpse at mom, I knew she was trying very hard to do the same. The moment I drove out of the house, I cried all the way from Subang Jaya to Damansara Heights. Narrrling greeted me with open arms at the door. Seeing me cry, he said, “You are not a little girl anymore. You are going to start a new life with me.. Everything will be ok..”

I guess that was the point I realized that there’s really no more turning back. Daddy, I guess I’ll really have to move everything this time. But I promise I’ll be happy. And promise me you'll both be happy too.

IT Diaries: The Darker side of Rome

2006-03-02T13:31:00.000+08:00

Saturday, July 09, 2005

After a total of at least 15 days abroad, I’m finally back in the comfort of home. After a long nap to make up for the 13 hours of flight and 6 hours of jet lag, here I am again, reflecting back on the last few days of my holiday in Roma, Italia.

Maybe I am growing old. They say that the older you grow, the more emotional you become about little things in life because it totally surprised myself that when I was in Rome, I saw not just the grandeur and beauty of the place that use to house the Roman empire a few thousand years ago but also the decay and poverty of the city and people, which actually affected me a little bit more.

Since this is a bimbo’s blog, I am not about to rant on and on about the history of Rome nor the beautiful architectures in the city because if you wanted to know about these, probably thousands of other websites can tell you better... But through a bimbo’s eyes, this is what I see.

Art?
The first thing that caught my attention when I touched down in Rome was the extent of ‘art’ found in the streets. My of my, these are truly the descendants of Da Vincci. I feel and see the freedom of art everywhere I go. Some people call these great works in the streets, an unconventional appreciation of art. Since I’ve never been able to tell the difference between Donatello or Michaelangelo and honestly I’m not even sure if Donatello was a famous painter or butcher or even Italian for that matter, I prefer to call these things on the streets, ‘vandalism’. To the whole world, Rome is perceived as one of the most romantic cities in the world. To me, yes, I find the historical structures grand and impressive but any other structures built or created remotely recently is almost compulsory to be with some kind of grafitti or mere scribbles and this includes walls, trains, signboards, vans, and any kind of public properties you can imagine. Some of the scribbles are so bad, you can’t even look out of the window of your train to see if you’ve arrived at the right station.

The strangest thing is people here seem to think that the wall to wall scribbles are perfectly fine. No city council seems to bother with wiping them off, no authorities is bothered with nabbing these mischieves and lastly, the victims of vandalism, the people of the city themselves, seem to have gotten so used to them, they don’t even see it anymore.

Once I’ve seen on tv this lady says that metal kitchen tops are simply gorgeous though they get scratched easily but that’s part of the charm. Does the city of Rome think the same? Grafitti from wall to wall is part of the charm of the city as well? I don’t think so. It really does frustrate me that people who lives amongst such beauty does not only fail to appreciate them but instead plays a role in destroying their very own heirloom passed down from thousands of years ago.

'No Fame'
There are always two groups of people, the kind who thinks that beggars are in the streets either because they belong to a syndicate or the beggars are pure lazy and does not bother to try earning a living for themselves. The second group would be the kind who takes pity on beggars and will always try to help in any little ways possible.

For myself, I can’t quite grasp which group I belong to because my feelings does a flip-flop from side to side about 10 to 20 times every time I walk down a regular street in Rome because there are just so many of them! Some were old ladies begging in the most pitiful voice following you quite a distance, and literally begging for help, some are young men just kneeling on the ground with a sign in front of them that says, “No Fame”. As much as I am bimbo, it doesn’t take a genius to know that “No Fame” here doesn’t mean, “No Glory”. In Italian, I’ve figured out that “No Fame” in English, means, “No Food”. Some of the beggars downright puzzle me. Once I saw a 200lbs man sitting by the side of the streets begging?

But fat man or not, my overactive imagination can’t help but to make up a thousand possibilities of why they are right where they are and I guess it also doesn’t take a genius to gather that the scenarios in my head aren’t those with rainbows, roses and puppy dogs. Then I thought to myself, maybe I didn’t manage my own expectations too well. In Holland, no offence, but even the milkman has another house in the woods up north and the postman I heard has some chalets by the beach and offered Narrrling and I some free stays. Since Rome was the capital of Italy and since I saw so many Italian movies and Chinese series that totally and completely romanticized the city, I guess I didn’t expect to see this side of this beautiful city.

There are many small peddlers on the streets as well. Most of them are manned by non-Italians, or at least I assume they are not Italians because some came across to me as Africans and some Chinese and some Indians. The lesson I learnt this time is unless you’re really interested to buy something from them, if not, never show an interest. Once you have shown an interest, they could follow you down a street asking you how much you’re willing to pay for the item, practically begging you to continue with the bargaining process. In the course of walking, they would bring the price so low down that you can see the desperation in their eyes. It almost made me feel that if I didn’t buy the item from them, they would be with no food for the rest of the week and having an overactive imagination thoughts of the old grandmother, sick wife and 5 hungry children started flowing into my mind.. Probably I’m just a softie, sheltered from the true hardships of life because I find it very heart wrenching to hear desperation in their voices or from any voice for that matter. Yup, so that’s how the bimbo ends up with 3 new bags, one from Guci and 2 from Fehdi.

With attitude
Coming from a country that makes songs out of smiles and smiling, I was also a bit surprised at the ‘warm’ hospitality tourists in general receive and this time, it’s from your regular and ‘friendly’ Italiano. If you see hoards of tourist crossing the road, you honk at them as angrily as possible because they’re crossing the road on a zebra crossing when you are about to drive past it. If you’re a hotel bus driver, you shout at the tourist in your bus if he wants to be dropped off somewhere along the route you’re about to take anyway. If you’re a waiter in a restaurant, when asked, you throw the menu on the table with a loud smack and walks off without a word. If you’re a check out counter girl, you snatch the wrong receipt from the customer’s hand because she picked it up and thought it was hers. In the 5 days I was in Rome, I witnessed so many of these incidents. Then I thought, it kind of all fits, doesn’t it? Graffitti, poverty, desperation, grouchy citizens.. ?

Don’t get me wrong, I still think Rome is a beautiful place and if you’ve never visited the place, you should definitely book yourself on the next flight. I even managed to capture some amateur photographs of the Rome I thought was beautiful. Definitely, I’ve had my share of great times and good food too. Pasta with truffles, gelato, parchiutto de parma, pizza al funghi… Rome is truly a place to be if you’d like to gain weight. For people like me who wants to lose weight, bad news… gained a couple of kilos yet again, confirmed by the evil electronic weighing machine in the bathroom… Uggh.. back to cabbage soup next week..

As for the darker side of Rome, oh well, maybe I’m just spoilt. Since I’m on a holiday, I expected sunshine from the sky and glowing radiance from the people. What was I expecting, right?

IT Diaries: Strange Italian dreams

2006-03-02T13:30:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Woke up this morning in a strange bed in the heart of Rome. The first thoughts that came to mind was the strangely long and detailed dream i had last night. I dreamt that i was an italian woman, married to one of the most powerful mafias in the country. Now i'm worried because i was afraid that my husband was about to find out about my past and was very afraid that he'll leave me once he finds out. Even worse, he might decide to use some of his 'influences' to wipe out my past, which will cost him a part of his reputation. My entire dream was about me, drifting from friend to friend, asking for advice. In my dream, I felt a great sense of love and loyalty towards my husband and yet fear and worry that he'll find out.

It's strange how some of these dreams can have so much details. The settings in my dream was entirely people, things and places i've never met or encountered in real life. Strange dreams indeed but i know some people say our brains keep images at the back of our minds when we watch TV or see pictures. But to such details?

I woke up wondering if my brains have been working overtime on this Italian thing or some wandering soul decided to mess up my brains a little in that dinky hotel room. I don't know if i consider myself lucky or unlucky that i'm moving to another hotel tonight. In a way, i am extremely curious to find out if i'll have a dream continuing from last night. I'd so much like to know what happened to her in the end, because for a few hours last night, i truely felt i was her.

NL Diaries: Last stories from Holland

2006-03-02T13:29:00.000+08:00

Sunday, July 03, 2005

I’ve been in Holland for more than a week now. Tomorrow, Narrrling and I will be jetting off to Italy for another week or so. As a closure to this chapter in Holland, I must say there are a few things I’d like to pen down so that in the future if ever I have the need to recall the highlights of this holiday, I’d remember them by reading this blog. So forgive my lazy writing style in this one as this is truly meant to be a diary more than the usual exhibition of writings.

Bikini galore
As mentioned in my earlier blogs, it’s truly bikini heaven here. After at least 5 long visits of scouting the shelves, hunting, trying, queuing and grabbing, I finally managed to get myself at least 4 pieces of swim garments and 3 other for bimbotic friends of mine. Honestly, as much as I am a self-proclaimed bimbo, I never thought I’d get so excited over bikinis on sale. Before I met Narrrling, I didn't even dared to wear them. So if I made a simple cause and action deduction, I wonder if I can blame Narrrling for this bimbo phenomenon. I thought I have always been too fat to wear bikinis?

..of wheels and bicycles
The highlight of this holiday revolves a lot around cycling. I’ve seen a lot on tv where the hero effortlessly transports the heroine around, sitting also effortlessly at the back of his bicycle. If it was an Indian movie, they would be singing something that sounds like, “Piar…” while doing some sexy snake arms hand movements…. If it was an Italian movie, the hero would be shouting at the top of his voice, “La vita e bella!”… If it was a Chinese movie, Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung would be humming some romantic melodies from some Theresa Teng tunes. For me, although the scenery was beautiful and I almost felt like I wanted to hum some romantic Barry Manilow songs, but there is always a constant worry that if I didn’t hold on tight enough, I’ll roll off the bicycle into one of those deep canals and Narrrling would happily peddle on without knowing that the big sack of potatoes he’s transporting behind him is somewhere drowning, trying to thread water helplessly. To improve holidays of this kind in the future, I think I’ll need to learn how to cycle and swim.

The language barrier
Have I ever mentioned to you that my in laws only speak Dutch? Although I work in a Dutch company, the only words I learnt from my mass of Dutch colleagues were some Dutch foul words and some pleasant words that men typically like to use on girls, for eg. “Lekker Wijf” = “Hot/Yummy Chick” and “Kut” = “Cunt”. My in laws are awfully nice people so I’m not sure if they’d appreciate my knowledge of the Dutch language thus far. So in most of my times here, I’ve confined myself to that sweet smile I’ve reserved specially for them, which mostly means, “Sorry, don’t understand”. This can get quite frustrating sometimes, for eg. Mother in law bursts into room and says something that sounds greatly urgent and runs off, does it mean there’s a fire? A dyke has burst and the country’s declared national emergency? The Spanish are attacking again after four hundred years? Do I run after her or was she suggesting I take the necessities before running after her? Narrrling is nowhere in sight to translate so what do I do? Most of the time I run after her to see what’s happening. Ohh.. Come see the wedding dress of my sister in law. That’s what she was saying. Then there’s also, the door is stuck! I couldn’t open it. Father in law keeps giving me instructions in dutch from the other side of the door, how to open it. So to me, it’s gibberish, gibberish, gibberish. Father in law very concerned about me being stuck in the toilet and me very eager to get out but we can’t help each other. Thanks also to my lucky stars, I always land myself in the most goofy situations ever. Sometimes because his parents are so nice to me, I’d like to say something nice in return but how do you expect Narrrling, a 35 year old tough guy to express some mushy stuffs? Right here as I am typing this, mother in law just walked in with some jewelries and showed them to me. I’m not sure if she wants me to have them or she just wants to show them to me, but I just said, “Mooi, mooi” = “Nice, nice”. Yeah, that’s all I know how to say for now. “Ja = Yes”, “Nee = No” and “Mooi = Nice”. The 3 Dutch words I used to survive through the whole week.

A Dutch wedding

My sister in law got married yesterday on the 2nd of July 2005. I come from a culture who’s very used to the rowdy wedding scenarios where the groom bargains his way into the bride’s room on the wedding day to pick her up, the guests of the dinner shouts at the top of their lungs, “Yaaammm Seeeeng!” to toast the bride and groom. I mean, ofcourse I am not ashamed of that because I think it’s fun in a way but as a starry eyed girl who’s received lots of external influence from western television and movies, I can’t help but dream of having a beautiful wedding with candlelights, white drapes and exotic cuisine dishes. For the first time yesterday, I experienced one of these weddings myself. The wedding was a beautiful one, starting with a wedding march at a beautiful castle-like mansion by the countryside, followed by a boat cruise down a peaceful river with close friends and families. The boat takes us to a restaurant to attend a reception to receive some casual friends and colleagues of the bride and groom, and finally dinner together with a small party of the closest friends and family. It was a total of 12 hours of entertainment for us and for me, a total of 12 whopping hours hearing ‘yadda yaddi yadda’ in dutch. Honestly, It was a really different experience for me, being in a foreign land, being kissed and hugged by at least 50 of the bride and groom’s family members who also congratulated Narrrling and I for our recent marriage, listening to everyone in the room speak dutch simultaneously(yadda, yaddi, yadda), eating dutch finger food like ‘kroket’ and ‘bitter balls’, hearing my mother in law say “Something something Miki, Something something Miki” to her 75 year old sister, then burst out laughing and hugging me followed by 3 kisses on my cheek. The great mysteries of having dutch speaking in laws. I guess I’ll never know what they said about me.

Things that caught my attention
In my past week of trying not just to live among the Dutch but also to live their lifestyle, I’ve came across a few incidents that totally caught my attention.

Wounded
Once Narrrling and I were driving down a busy, fast moving highway. Cars were moving at the minimal speed of 110. I was busy looking out of the window trying to absorb every little detail that passed before my eyes when I suddenly saw far ahead, a car parked down the side of the road and a casually dressed lady running down the highway, looking very concerned and eager to get to whatever she was running towards. After all, it was a busy highway so I was super curious to find out what she was risking her life for but I couldn’t see anything. Narrrling, who always has better eyes and maybe being dutch knew better what to look out for, to my amazement, told me, “There’s a wounded pigeon on the floor of the highway”. Wow! That is pretty amazing, people would actually risk their lives, running down a busy highway to save a wounded pigeon? I was thinking, from where I came from, people might risk their lives running down a busy highway, to pick up the pigeon for an extra dish for dinner. Or if it’s not worth the danger, just drive over it to stop the slow painful death.

Graduation

Driving through some small villages in southern Holland, I caught sight of some houses who’s hung the NL flags from their windows. Well, hanging the NL flag is no big deal but what I found strange was besides the usual NL flag, there was also a school bag, school shoes and some books attached to the end of the flagpole. According to Narrrling, it’s a sign that someone from the house have just graduated from school. Interesting. Maybe next time when I graduate from swimming, I’ll dry my bikinis over the Malaysian flag under that same disguise.

Dutch sauna
Many of you have probably heard stories of dutch saunas before. Yeah, everyone is expected to go in naked, walk about naked, swim naked in a pool, sit in some Jacuzzis naked with 10 other strangers, float on salt water naked with your private parts exposed to everyone who walks past, who’s probably also naked, lie in a steam bath naked, take a hot foot dip naked, eat naked, lie around naked and so on and so forth. For the perverts, it’s heaven. For the dutch, it’s normal. This isn’t my first time in a dutch sauna. In fact, coming back to Holland this time, I looked forward immensely to coming back to a sauna. In a sauna, I feel such liberation that I am able to walk around bare naked without my private parts being used to feed some erotic fantasies. No one oogled at my breasts, no one walked around with a big hard on and basically, no one can be bothered if my breasts were big or small, or if my butt was skateboard size or surfboard size. Everyone was just relaxed and I thought to myself, this is truly one of the luxuries of life, spending the whole day pampering only what God has given you and nothing else.

NL Diaries: Sack of potatoes

2006-03-02T13:28:00.000+08:00

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Sunday morning, my 3rd day in a foreign land. The quiet and peaceful neighbourhood of Maasluiss, a small town in the southwest of the Netherlands and north of Belgium, woke up to the maximum decibel screams of an Asian girl in their backyard. “Waaaaaahhhhh!”….

Then a soothing (close to pleading) voice of a fellow dutchie saying, “You have to take some risks, darling… You can do it.. Come on.. be brave, girl.. TRY again!”…

Then the Asian girl goes again… “aaa.. aaa… aaarggh… Waaaarggghhhh…!! I can’t! I GIVE UP!!!”
I mean, you can’t blame me for waking up the whole neighbourhood. The last time I ever rode a bicycle was when I was 10 and I was riding around town trying to intimidate everyone on my fashionable BMX, the thunderbolt edition. And as the dutchies are famous for riding the bicycles everywhere they go, I thought my relationship with bicycles could be re-lived. Well, unfortunately not. After seeing that the furthest I went without hitting a wall or toppling sideways was about 3 metres, Narrrling finally let out a loud sigh and offered to let me sit at the back of his bicycle before I drove myself into a canal.”Asian girl drowns in canal while learning how to ride a bicycle”. Not exactly glamorous neither.

So there I was, riding among flowers and trees, canals and bridges, looking like a princess behind this dutch man who’s trying his best not to pant out loud and yet somehow find the breath to tell stories and history of the buildings we pass. Sometimes we passed some windows and looking at my own reflection, I sort of felt a bit guilty. I mean, even if Narrrling was working as a delivery boy, there won’t be a sack of potatoes that heavy to carry around.

Narrrling drove me about for 45 minutes or so, showing me his beloved home town. I must agree it is a truly beautiful town with people always ready to smile to an Asian girl sitting clumsily behind a bicycle and birds always ready to chirp a song or two when we drove by. Flowers were blooming in all the colours of heaven and the weather was cool and breezy. Simply perfect.

At the end of the trip, Narrrling had small circular creases all around his originally nicely ironed shirt as I was using his shirt as a balance gripper whenever we made dangerous swerves and turns. I also had squarish patterned imprints on my big butt from sitting on the hard metal piece behind the bicycle. But I must say it was a wonderful Sunday morning spent cruising around town.

NL Diaries: Bikini frenzy!

2006-03-02T13:27:00.000+08:00

Sunday, June 26, 2005

2nd day in the land of the dykes and windmills. By the way, it seems that no one here has ever heard of the story where a boy saved the whole country by stuffing his thumb into a hole of a leaking dyke. I guess if that ever took place, they would have made a movie out of it by now, the story all played up with the boy having a lover as well. The same time he was standing there with his finger in the hole, his lover is waiting for him at the train station and they were to elope that same day. Failing to do so, the girl will have to return to her poor village and be married to the tycoon’s disabled son, who’ll probably fit the great looks of Uriah Heep in Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield. So there he stands, deciding whether to rejoin his lover at the train station or stand there responsible to stop the dyke from leaking. While he was thinking, a single tear drop runs down his cheek…..

Ok, enough of exhibiting my script writing talents, let’s get back to the real world here. And today, it’s bikini world! I remember Metria mentioned in her blog recently that she was being utterly unreasonable to Mr. D for some strange PMS reasons? Really? Let me tell you what is REALLY unreasonable. Planting your husband behind a loooong queue of women anticipating to try on their bikinis in a middle of a ladies’ lingerie store. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I needed to scout the shelves for great buys and yet find the fastest route into the changing rooms. (By the way, to Narrrling’s deepest regrets, we managed to find an air-conditioned store, about 60kms away from home.)

After flipping through practically every 2 piece, pink, white, blue, striped, floral, halter top, bra top, tube top, I finally narrowed down about 20 pieces I wanted to try. And since I could only try 5 pieces at a time, I almost shove another 5 pieces to Narrrling so that he can get his own tag and join me in the changing room… It took me a few seconds to realize that it probably won’t work. First of all, the lady guarding the changing room will notice that he won’t fit into them, plus it will then look too much like a replay of the “Itchy private parts girl asking me to get medication for her” episode. So I had to part with a few pieces, especially those which I think won’t compliment my fat butt and mini-breasts too much.

Bikinis nowadays are getting smaller and skimpier by the year. I won’t be surprised when someday some wacko designer will simply design some floral nipple stickers and label them the latest summer swimwear. By then you’ll find bikinis in stationery stores, alongside the children stickers and stamps. So those thoughts were good enough excuses for me to try harder filling my shopping bags with a couple more practical bikinis of today and Narrrling, being himself is such a darling, who doesn’t need emotional blackmail to stand behind a loooong queue for me. Though a couple of times I found him staring at the ground, shifting foot from side to side, he almost looked like a naturel when it comes to standing in line, holding a few bikinis in hand for me while I grab more. Thanks, Narrrling… You’re a super duper hubby.

NL Diaries: Why people get heat strokes in summer.

2006-03-02T13:25:00.000+08:00

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Landed at the Schipol Airport, Netherlands at 6.15am this morning. My in-laws, (Narrrling’s family) greeted us at the arrival gates with an intimidating looking human sized, “JUST MARRIED” sign with at least 3 dozen of oversized balloons tied all around it. Here you go. I was expecting nothing less. The bimbo queen receives her royalty style welcoming even in foreign lands far yonder. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure if I should run straight into their arms or hop onto a trolley and wheel myself quickly out of the airport with one foot, riding it like a skateboard. But alas, family duties are more important. After all, my reputation in the Netherlands is only still in the making, not quite established yet so can still afford a blow here and there. After all, riding a trolley like a skateboard out of the airport isn’t exactly the most glamorous thing to do either. Anyway, I’ll just make sure my in laws get a 'bigger welcome' when they come to Malaysia next year.

2nd time around in the Netherlands. The last time in September, I was mostly doing 3 things, gaping, staring and freezing. This time around, I was surprised at how hot it was. I use to wonder how people get heat strokes in summer. After all, we spend at least 8 hours a day, sitting in a nice cool office, wearing a thick winter-like jacket because for some reason, office ventilation always treat us working class people like some sort of frozen meat. (If not frozen will go bad). For the non working class people, they can always turn on the air-conditioner at home… Ok, even the poorest of all, could walk into a shopping complex in the heat of the day to escape the temperature outside..

So here’s what I found out. Accuse me of being a ‘frog under a shell’ all these while, but what I found out is, the air-conditioner is a rare commodity in most of the European countries! Yes, if the weather outside was 36 degrees, shopping complexes are stuffy and hot and people drive around in their nice BMWs with the windows down. People outside walk around topless and nobody works because guess what? Offices are not air-conditioned neither! Another major culture difference, over here, offices don’t want frozen meat, they prefer barbequed or steamed meat.

So there I was, struggling with at least 200 other women in a small department store, grabbing bikinis on sale from the shelves. And there I was stuffing my fat butt and mini-breasts into the cute little two pieces when I thought I was going to get a heat stroke. My mind hummed the song by Mastika, “I feel the earth! Move! Under my feet!”…. Wonderful. Tomorrow’s headlines(in Dutch) will be, “Asian girl dies in changing room while stuffing herself into a bikini under the extreme stuffy summer heat”. To avoid having that happen, I gave myself a dramatic Scarlett O’Hara’s “Tomorrow is another day” and walked sadly out of that hot, sweaty, steamy, stuffy bikini store on sale. What to do, famous people like me should always have our priorities right. Reputation first, bikinis second...

Your fault!

2006-03-02T13:24:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Ok, mushy stuffs aside. Next on the program is bitch blog.

In our working lives, we all have nice caring colleagues whom we lunch with everyday, yak with everyday and share most of our working lives' up and downs together with. In this category of my life, there is Metria, Chantella, Lady Luthien and a long time ago, there was Poulotte and MelonCrap too.

Then there is another panel of colleagues we prefer never to cross paths with.

There's the womaniser whom we've seen at action, breaking one heart after another. God be with the vulnerable ladies who cross paths with him.

There's one we highly suspect is mentally unstable because she covers up her tissue box to prevent others from stealing her tissue paper and goes crazy when others happen to throw rubbish into her dustbin even though it's just a piece of paper.

There is one who corner victims everyday to yak about things of her own interest for an incredibly long time. I got caught twice.. The first time was a conversation of 30 minutes standing at the corridor of the office talking about how to make yoghurt. The second time took place late last week outside the ladies toilet talking about migrating to Australia.

Then there is the significant pack of hungry wolves who lurks around scavenging for gossips to feed their very own personal BBC (Big Boys Channel) network. Yes, don't be too suprised. Sometimes men outdo women in gossiping.

And finally one of my personal "favourite", the members of the "Complaining and Self-Victimizing" club. The kind who perpetually thinks that everything is everyone else's fault. And me being constantly guided by the lucky star, the president of the club sits behind me. If she was late for work, it's because the lady at the toll was too slow or the car in front of her slowed down suddenly causing her to have to take another route to work. If she can't finish her work, it's because she's suffering from a headache because last night, a neighbour was being inconsiderate making noises at night. If her career was not going anywhere, it's because her manager stole her glory. If she has too much on her plate, it's because others are not doing enough work. If she's hungry, it's because you didn't share your food with her. If she has to suffer an itch in her private parts, it's because you refuse to go down to the company clinic to get the cream for her. Ok.. don't stare now.. it's true.. because it just happened...

This all started 2 days ago when she suddenly wheeled herself over to my cubicle in her roller office chair asking me, "Is your period here yet?"...

I said, "Yup, last week.."

Then she said, "Oh, so fast ah.. I thought our period always come at the same time.. Mine just came today.." So the conversation continued to how bad her period pains are and how heavy the flow is and how it affects her work.

The following day, she wheeled herself to my cubicle again and said, "I just went down to the clinic to get some cream".. Apparently she had some itch problems due to her heavy period flow. Very sympathetically as a caring neighbour, i tried to listen attentively, trying to understand the discomfort she's going through, once in a while offering some words of comfort, although involuntarily i had to sit through a lot of visual description of her problem in detail.

Today, she wheeled herself over to me again and asked for a favour. Apparently, she forgot to bring her cream today. Therefore, I was to go down to the office clinic and tell the doctor i have the same problem so that i can get prescribed the same cream, to be passed on to her. Initially i thought she was joking.. When i realised she was serious, i stared at her and went, "Huh? Err.. can't you go down and ask for the cream yourself?"

"NO! The nurse will scold me for forgetting to bring the cream!"

Honestly, there was no way in heaven or hell was i going to go downstairs to the office clinic to tell the nurse, who sits a few metres away from the rest of my colleagues, that i have an itch in my private parts, just to get her some kind of cream she forgot to bring. So there... The situation right now is that she's not talking to me for the rest of the day after telling me off cooly. She said, "The last time May(this other colleague of ours) didn't bring her medication, i went down to get the medicine for her!"... Then she noisily stood up and pushed her chair back to her cubicle.. She left me thinking, May probably just had a flu...

But oh well, i guess it's my fault again..

Nothing's changed

2006-03-02T13:23:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

It is lunchtime here now. Bimbos like me spend it mostly on munching protein diet food of chicken and tomatoes while surfing up on things. My usual routine, go to http://www.thestar.com.my/ to catch up on local news, go to http://www.maybank2u.com.my/ to see if my bank’s savings account balance have somewhat miraculously increased, go to msn messenger to see if my hubby has time to entertain me. Hmmm?... what’s so strange about the last sentence again? Was it the fact that a bimbo actually reads the papers? Was it about me checking up on the bank balance everyday? Or was it the simple word, “hubby”. Whoa! Wait a minute! I have a hubby now? Since when? That’s right! Must be during that time last week while I was dreaming. But it wasn’t a dream, was it? It’s for real! I’m married! Yeah, memory lapses like these have been happening over and over again in my head for the past week. I guess it takes a while to finally have the idea sink in that I am finally married after almost 29 years of being single.

Many have asked me how’s life as a married woman. Some expect me to say, “Oh, I’ve risen to ninth heaven and I float everywhere I go now because the feeling of being married makes me feel totally divine.”

While the less optimistic group expected me to say, “You know what? That son of a %#%#* finally revealed his horns now that we’re married. He expects me to wash his underwear every night under a running tap with my bare hands. After that I have to wash, vacuum and wax his car outside in the dark.”

So it often springs a surprise when I say, “Nothing. Nothing’s changed at all.” Our lives still seem to be the same. Last weekend was spent playing ‘Psychonauts’, a new addictive X-box game we bought recently. In the midst of killing the Lungfish, the Censors, the Tigers, the wailing bombs, I bet I didn’t even have brain space to remember my own name. Neither did we spend all day and all night locked up in our bedroom doing what rabbits like to do because it is finally legal. I guess the only difference is that now I’m sure to have someone I love by my side for the rest of my life and not forgetting a layer of concrete over the garden.

Our registration in Putrajaya took place last Wednesday on the 25th of May 2005 and I hope this blog will be kept alive, long enough to record my feelings now for my future children or even grandchildren to see.. It wasn’t a romance of stranded damsel in towers nor rescuing gallant knight of shiny armours. It wasn’t a fairy tale of a handsome prince and beautiful slave girl. But it was a special kind of simple love that seems so natural, as if it has always been like this and will always remain like this. So nothing. Nothing’s changed at all.

Do I?

2006-03-02T13:21:00.000+08:00

Friday, May 06, 2005

Wild grasses never die. Just when you start feeling that your garden is beautiful and perfect, hints of wild grass pops up at hidden corners when you least expect it. When you spot it, it totally throws you off your chair, making you wonder if the piece of happiness and perfectness you’ve been sitting on all these while was imaginary or self-fulfilled. Then you start to remember and question. Remember the incidents, question your garden, question yourself.

Do I pretend I’m not seeing it in order to salvage whatever that’s still mine in my garden? Do I make a big fuss about the ‘signs’ and risk a major fire breaking out? If I put out the fire then, will it be too late? Do I chase after something that I know might break me into a million pieces if I never reach it? Do I still want a piece of garden that will never be perfect, because time and again, it allows wild grasses to grow? Do I have to swing and trapeze and cycle on a single wheel to get to where I want to be? Is there really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Marriage D'Amour No More

2006-03-02T13:19:00.000+08:00

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

When I was young, I had great dreams that I was going to one day play a grand piano worth millions in front of an audience of thousands. There was going to be a huge spotlight shone on my beautiful ivory white piano and me. I would be wearing a long flowing white dress, and there I am, beautiful, talented, captivating…. Miki-C, the piano legend.

Up till today, I probably play 5 kinds of musical instruments at least? Unfortunately I am a typical jack-of-all-trades but master of none. I was always the fastest in my class to pick up the basics, but I was also the fastest to lose interest. And the moment I lost interest, my development slows and everyone else in the class would eventually become better than me. When that happens, I move on to the next kind of class. So in my 28+ years of life, I’ve taken art classes, piano classes, violin classes, organ classes, trombone classes, flute classes, swimming classes, speech classes, dancing classes, French classes, drama classes, singing classes, tennis classes.. and the list goes on… Yeah, if you speak French to me, I’ll survive past the initial exchanges. Anything beyond that, I must say, sorry, I don’t understand anymore because I moved on to dancing classes. I probably say I mastered the basics of everything I learned but I never became superb at any of them.

However, among all that I’ve lost interest, I wish I didn’t give up piano. Up till today, I still long for the title of ‘Miki-C the piano legend’ and I long to impress people with my superior talents in musical performance, be it my colleagues, my friends or even my future husband. Call me an attention seeker but every time I see a grand piano in a shopping complex or a hotel lobby, I wish I could sneak up to it and play a song to drop some passerby jaws.. But the hard truth is, nowadays, my skills are so rusty, I can’t even play a proper song without making mistakes, except my all time favourite, the song, “Marriage D’Amour” by Richard Clayderman. I learned to play that song when I was 10 and since then, it’s become my one and only impromptu performance song and nothing else. Ask me to play anytime and “Marriage D’Amour” it is.. I probably can play it blind-folded.

But nowadays, playing “Marriage D’Amour” isn’t the most fashionable song to do in public anymore. “Marriage D’Amour” was something from the 80s and nowadays you’ll only hear it on cracking sound systems in old cranky hotels. Sigh.. There goes my one and only song played to perfection... Goodbye, Richard..

So I guess I’ve got no choice now but to move on to the next stop. Narrrling has just suggested we do Aikido together.. Let’s hope my previous ballet lessons won’t interfere with my future Aikido lessons. Don’t want a kick-ass kick to turn out looking like a pointed toe graceful kick..

Red, Blue or Black?

2006-03-02T13:18:00.000+08:00

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Again, it is one of those days where time crawls by. I must have looked at the clock 35 times since lunch. 4.07pm. I have 2 more hours to go. That means, 2 hours of staring intensely at my pc pretending to be absorbed in work and pretending that it might potentially make impressive organizational changes and reap great benefits for the company, 2 hours of switching back and forth from bridal tips web surfing to an intimidating looking excel spreadsheet every time someone walks pass behind me, 2 hours of looking at my clock, 2 hours of agony. At times like these, I wish my left and right hand bimbos were back here again.

Chantella’s been so busy with her new job lately that she’s put aside bimbosity for a while (at least during office hours)… Metria’s been so free lately that she’s now focusing on living the complete bimboful life. Since I can’t afford it, I can only head down Chantella’s path by getting a new job. Just sent in an application today for internal transfer. Too bad the new department doesn’t have a lady boss. I would have tried to recruit her into my club.

Very recently, I was given the privilege to attend a staff assessment where they evaluate your potential to climb the ladder. If you pass it, a certain higher status is yours. If you fail, consequences befall you. To me, it is almost like pinning the red ribbons on the thoroughbreds, the blue ribbons on the slow runners, the black ribbons on the crippled (en route to the butcher).

In this assessment, the staff is asked to choose 1 out of 4 topics, given 40 minutes to prepare and following to that, the staff is expected to present a proposal on the chosen topic for 5 minutes, following on to a 1 hour plus challenge of Q & A based on what was presented in the first 5 minutes.

Must say that the topics I got weren’t exactly quite the ones I was familiar with. Eg. How to choose the right hair colour/ How to choose the perfect dress to suit your body/ What not to say on your first date..etc..

So instead of talking about what was closest to heart, for close to 1.5 hours, I had to talk about really serious matters like nuclear bombs in Korea, peace treaties among ASEAN countries to form another NATO, buying weapons from Russia, investing in technology to create better military strategies.. etc..

My strategy was to talk and talk and talk from all angles possible, giving the assessors no chance to ask questions or in other words, answer before they ask me. When I talked about peace treaties, I told them from all angles how it could be formed, why it is formed, who should be involved, why it has not been formed yet and its limitations and exceptions. When I talked about buying weapons, I talk about the other possibilities, like maybe selling to one and buying from another for a cheaper price. Ofcourse there are lots of loopholes to my proposals but if they’d like to challenge me, it’d take them hours to go through every hole. My assessors were 2 young and pretty ladies and I guess they were surprised I chose this topic in the first place.. And I know I took a big risk. I might have chosen a different topic if my assessors were both very senior looking men/ladies who might have immediately seen through my plans and bulleted me through my Kevlar, especially the fact that you need plutonium to create atom bombs and there was no way Malaysia was going to replicate the North Korean situation without bringing it to the world’s attention. Well, they say in these assessments there was no right or wrong but I didn’t want to have too many difficult questions if possible.

Results are not out yet. I’m still waiting for them to pass on the colored ribbons. They could pronounce me a successful bimbo in disguise, or a true bimbo after all… Whichever it is, it might not be too far from the truth..

Light at the End of the Tunnel

2006-03-02T13:17:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

I have meant to blog about my job since a very long time ago. But everytime I think about blogging about it, I wonder how exactly honest I can be with myself as I often worry about being recognized by certain someones in the office, who will not hesitate to circulate the stories around , just so that they can sit back and watch a bit of action. Ok, let’s give this topic a try and I’ll try my best to go easy on the censorship.

Many people who don’t know me very well, would envy what I’m doing now. I’m a manager in a multinational company known to be able to withstand economy quakes of all richter scales, a company known to reward its employees with good remuneration packages, and hiring only the cream of the crop, mostly their own scholars. And yet it puzzles me why that in this same place, I recruited the most bimbos into my club. And Chantella and Metria are living examples of my recruits.

Given a glamorous title and an intimidating job description when I first joined, I spent the first few months picking up exactly what I had to do. After that, life was like a breeze. Doing my work for the first time might be a challenge, 2nd time might still be a personal interest but when it came to 3rd and 4th, it became totally mundane and boring. At the same time, I had an immense amount of freedom and free time. In the beginning, I enjoyed the freedom, glorifying myself for being able to live the true bimbo life at last, enjoying the luxury of delivering work quickly with no sweat, lots of time to plan holidays, read papers, surf up on diet plans, recruit bimbos…. but after 2 years of breezing, I guess I am finally getting tired of doing almost nothing at all for at least 8 hours a day. After all, how many diet plans can one find on the internet? Enough is enough.

As much as I want to remain a bimbo, as long as I am still in the rat race, I’d at least like to be working on something that keeps my brain going and not forgetting keep time running fast in the office. I hate looking at that little time indicator at the bottom right of my monitor finding it not to have changed at all. I guess being stuck with a non-challenging job that requires me to be productive only 20% of the time really does make me feel like life is meaningless. Very frustrating indeed.

I use to be a Project Manager in my previous company. Although I’m not sure if I was ever a good PM, but at least I found my life more profound and deep and meaningful. My life was colourful and I had a heartbeat.

Now, my life is a balance between finding entertainment on the web and appearing to look busy at the same time. Yet, pay can be lucrative, status might be good and most important of all, I am still deemed as a performer by my boss, though grudgingly because she knows the ‘great’ amount of work I have on my plate. So how exactly do I embrace myself to move on? I need more courage than normal to take the risk of letting go of this familiar routine a.k.a comfort zone to join a possible roller coaster ride.

I’ve been getting depressed thinking about my job for a while now because I couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I finally took the courage to inform my boss that I am looking out for other positions within the organization. Very grudgingly again, my boss has to allow one of her grudgingly performing staff to move on. Now I finally see the light so wish the bimbo luck, cos sometimes, bimbos want to climb the corporate ladder too.

God's Gift to Men

2006-03-02T13:15:00.000+08:00

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Ahem… everyone must wonder why Poulotte specifically pointed me out for Pole dancing classes. Wait, is Miki-C the famous legendary pole dancing Seductress? Yeah, baby.. Do you know what my other name is? It’s M for Matahari and I am the Superior, Sexy, Seductive, Sensual pole dancing queen…. Not!

I remember going to this local club called Barfly a couple of years ago. Every night at 11pm, a group of dancers with bodies from heaven will step onto the bar and do their thing around the poles, grinding their sexy behinds, pouting their full lips, the men were in nirvana. Not just the men, even I was captivated by how these girls promote themselves instantly from bar girl to God’s gift to men. When they shake their sexy rears in your face, you tend to forget your mother’s name. It was then that I made a promise with my bimbotic self. Miki-C, you shall throw out all those high and mighty royal values, you shall one day dance on a pole and show ‘em all…. but after I lose 10kg.

So I sat around waiting for the 10kgs to go, and at the same time longing for the pole everytime I went to Barfly, longed to join the line of superior being. Then God answered my prayers. He flew me all the way across to the other side of the world to a little club in the middle of the Netherlands. I was on one of those extended holidays with Narrrling. When I walked into the club, the first thing I noticed was, Hey, a pole.. A lonely pole standing in the middle of the room!

Immediately, my analytical mind went to work and came up with a list of cause and effects, pros and cons. I thought, first of all, I am in the middle of Europe, halfway across the world. If I screwed up, no one will see. But ofcourse, there’s always Narrrling, but chances of him dumping me because I screwed up at a dancing pole sounded unrealistic. So what have I got to lose? NOTHING! Then I decided, ok, it is NOW or NEVER! Forget about the 10kgs! But the DJ was playing some slow jazzy music, very un-barfly kind of music. So I waited.. Told Narrrling what I was up to and even he got a bit nervous. So we both waited..

Then suddenly, the music changed and the perrrrfect pole dancing music came on.. Upon 2 seconds of hearing the sweet sounds of Beyonce’s Naughty Girl, I ran to the pole and tried to make history.. I grabbed the pole and swung myself around it.. I tried grinding my hips around it.. I tried to stroke the pole and in my head, used my best to imagine I was one of those hot steamy Goddesses of Barfly.. but alas.. I felt a tad too uncomfortable.. After a very long minute of trying to make something out of the pole, I realized.. something seems to be wrong.. Some people were just giving me strange stares..

I released my grip on the pole and turned around to look at Narrrling, and to my complete surprise, I saw a tall, leggy, sexily attired girl standing behind me, with both hands on her hips, glaring at me.. It was then that I realized! SHIT! They changed the music for a performance!!! Immediately, I half walked and half ran back to Narrrling, with an uncomfortable smile on my face.. the moment I was 3 feet away from the pole, the sexy girl behind me grabbed the pole and swung into motion… Then, everyone look relieved, as if glad i wasn't the one performing tonight...

That night, I had to force myself not to leave the club immediately in embarrassment, and walking around, I was almost 200% sure that everyone had a smirk on their face when they saw me.. I asked Narrrling how I did and he still said I was good and the sexy girl was too skinny and not very skilled in pole dancing.. I was better it seems.. Narrrling, I guess is one of those who’ll tell humongous lies to protect their loved ones.. But I’m not going to audition for American Pole Dancing idol for sure.

So to cut a long story short, Poulotte, I don’t think I can do pole dancing anymore. Maybe it’s the 10kgs but I just don’t think I’m cut out for it. Till now, I still think to myself, thank God that night I didn’t get so hung up in my own performance that I started stripping.. Phew!

Wild, Wild grass of yesterday..

2006-03-02T13:12:00.000+08:00

Monday, February 28, 2005

Last night, I stumbled upon a photo of her again in his PC. Sometimes I wonder why it seems impossible to avoid her. This walk down lavender valley was supposed to be perfect with no wild grasses of yesterday. Yet, I keep finding them every time I explore a new corner of this beautiful valley. I was looking at photographs of how his place looked like before my time. Before my time? That was a time in space when the lavender valley was a totally different garden. A patch of history that till today still makes little appearances in what is supposed to be MY lavender valley. MY world. MY time. My, my and mine. Yet, is it really?

I stared at her picture for a while and she stared back at me, as if questioning me, “Why are you here? Don’t you know this PC still has MY name on it? He hasn’t even removed my name on this pc. This is still my garden.”

I replied to her, “This is not! You’re the past now. And I’m NOT threatened by you.”

Yet I know, deep down inside, I was weak. I knew I was threatened. I’ve seen wild grasses at work. They have roots planted so deep that at anytime, they threaten to break out onto the surface of the earth again, eliminating all other life forms, overtaking the entire garden. Reviving history..

Then I thought to myself, she even looks nice in this picture. Why does ex-girlfriends always have this effect on us? The citadel of self-confidence we took years to build collapses in a mere few seconds. Ex-girlfriends always seem to have bigger eyes, better complexion, and longer legs. They’re somehow always more accomplished, brighter and smarter.. And us ourselves, we are always goofy, silly, and on top of that, a million other faults within ourselves. Then I wonder, is this really an issue of a superior ex-girlfriend or an issue of lack of self-confidence? Perhaps it is the latter.

Zooming back into present tense, my walk down lavender valley has been beautiful and according to him, I am beautiful too. We have a beautiful relationship of love, mutual-support and understanding which sometimes I feel at times of high self-confidence, even those big eyes and intellectual achievements won’t scratch the surface of ‘us’.

Perhaps we all need to let go and forget the past. Dr. Mahathir needs to let go and stop thinking that there are still communists lurking around our peninsular forests.

She needs to let go, find her own life and start a new garden of her own. After all, she was the one who first decided to leave this garden she's inhabited for 7 years. Why come back ever?

And I, i need to help my little garden along to a new life in my time, my world, my lavender valley... If you promise you'll never look back, i promise i'll always walk ahead with you.

This One's for Narrrling...

2006-03-02T13:10:00.000+08:00

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Narrrling and I, we’ll probably fall into the same character group if we were to complete the Myers-Brigg survey together because we both seem to be rather poor at making firm decisions. Although we started talking about what we wanted to do on Valentine’s day since early January, nothing concrete was planned. So after some rounds of head scratching and debates and tug of wars between dinner venues, finally Narrrling said, “I’ll cook dinner”. And since I have a reputation famous for burning arms, cutting fingers, exploding stoves, splattering oil..etc.., Narrrling has all along, been assigned, the official cook at home. I have long taken for granted that Narrrling cooks, which is why I thought Valentine’s day this year was going to be like any other day of the year. I set my expectations at its lowest.

When I arrived at Narrrling’s place for Valentine’s dinner that night, the first thing I saw was the dinner table. It came as quite a surprise to me. Although I’ve long known that Narrrling is a naturally creative guy and good cook, I didn’t expect the efforts put into decorating the dinner table and the main course. Rose petals that are probably worth a dollar each, splattered on the table in an artistic simmer. A single stalk of rose placed carefully on top of a card with a romantic message. Delicious looking gourmet dinner served elegantly on sparkling white plates… It was then that I realized, when you go into an experience with totally no expectations whatsoever, you start to notice the details.

Maybe this isn’t going to be my best Valentine’s celebration ever. There was no trip to the moon, no expensive dinner with romantic quartets playing at the side, and no 30 minute fireworks display but I must say, I observed the best quality of beef in the steak, my favourite cake specially bought from Bayou (a 10km detour from Narrling’s office to home) and my favourite drink of Orange Juice mixed with Sprite served in an elegant glass on the table. All these, carefully thought through with love.

So this one’s for you, Narrrling. Expectations or none, from now on, I will always try to cherish every little thing you do for me. Thank you. And I like the Valentine’s gift. An electronic pocket dictionary… Ahem..

The gourmet dinner

The main course

Love Note

Hang the Red Lantern

2006-03-02T13:09:00.000+08:00

Friday, February 11, 2005

Toong toong toong chang! Toong toong toong Chang!

Any Chinese or Malaysian for that matter will know what the line above means. The kind of music beat we hear in every mall, every radio station, every restaurant at this time of the year. Even Narrrling the dutch blondie would recognize it. That’s right. It’s Chinese New Year!

Myself, being a 100% pure ‘thoroughbred’ Malaysian Chinese, grew up taking for granted, the full Chinese New Year package. Heavy spring cleaning before CNY, though the last few years we were smart enough to hire day maids. Then decorating our home with red packets, red lanterns, red firework wannabes and the sorts to frighten away the imaginary monster that was suppose to come ravage our homes on the first day of CNY. On CNY, my dad would cook at least 10 dishes every meal and my aunts and uncles from far and yonder would gather at my family’s house where we have great feasts and laughs.

But this year, CNY is different. My parents have gone visiting to the land down under. What’s left at home are 3 kids in a sorry CNY state. Me, Narrrling and my elder brother. (Yes, thanks for the concern. We finally managed to fix his pc after a week).

I mean, my brother and I are not hard workers especially when it comes to cleaning a big house with many rooms. We’ve long grown to appreciate and even worship our day maid who comes in twice a week to turn every room spick and span looking like a hotel room after she leaves. Well, a series of unfortunate events indeed. My maid has decided to take after my parents and fly off for a pro-longed holiday in Bali. Then the washing machine went crazy and decided to shrink every pants and shirt we have before going on strike. My attempt in cooking a decent meal ended with burning away half the stove. Some rat decided to promote himself into the CNY monster and invaded my home.

On reunion night, a very nice aunt charitably took in 3 lost kids. So my elder brother, Narrrling and myself gleefully turned up at her doorsteps on CNY eve, grateful to have some normal home cooked food at last!! Although Narrrling has mastered the taste for most Chinese food, he was not ready for dinner that night. Pork intestine soup. Sea cucumber in dark sauce. Sweet dessert with Pak Gor and Red beans. So that night, something strange happened to me. Everytime I thought I finished my bowl of soup, it was full again after a couple of seconds. I now realize it must have been Narrrling and his invisible Ninja soup swap moves.

After dinner, we sat around the living room and talked. As most of my relatives were purely Chinese speaking, Narrrling was then subjected to killing his boredom with watching television, which ofcourse, is tuned to ‘Wah Lai Toi’, the local Chinese station. Then my 89 year old grandmother came around distributing ang pows, and coming upon Narrrling, decided to call him Ah Gou. Narrrling’s first Chinese name. My cousin looked at me sympathetically and said, “Yeah, she calls my boyfriend(who’s called Michael), Ah Leong”….

On the first day of Chinese New Year, again, the 3 lost kids drove around early in the morning looking for some good CNY food. Finding that all the shops are closed, we ended up at a ‘mamak’, having Indian food. That night, since neither me nor my brother can cook, we relied on the dutch man to cook our dinner. So he cooked Macaroni and cheese. How 'Chinese' of us.

Without our parents around, our lives are truly different. We spend the first day of CNY eating ‘roti canai’ and Macaroni. Narrrling has to venture to pork intestine soup and, my brother and I have shirts and pants that are at least 1 size smaller. Mom and dad, this one’s for you. Chinese New Year at home is truly different without you.

The Multi-racial Racist Group

2006-03-02T13:04:00.000+08:00

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

So Metria has just left the company and Chantella is joining a new team and will be reporting to the next building, what’s left? Me, myself and alone.

For the last months/years, Chantella and Metria has always been my answer to office politics, mean boyfriends, nasty colleagues, unjust bosses, weakening self confidence.. etc.. When colleagues are mean or is boring me to death with conversations about their refrigerator manuals, who do I ask to the rescue? Chantella and Metria. When I come to work hungry, who do I call to plan about what to eat for lunch? Chantella and Metria. When there’s a new cutie/hottie in the office, who do I call first to check him out? Chantella and Metria. Who do I call when I want to plot some evil plans against that evil colleague who sits near me? Chantella and Metria. When Narrrling makes me upset and all I want is to ramble on and on about it for half an hour, who do I call? Chantella and Metria. These two girls have always been my answer,my fall back plan, my accomplice, basically, more than half of my life in Cyberjaya. Although I’ve recruited many more bimbos in the company, Chantella and Metria, I have to say, are the president’s left and right hand bimbos.

Now that they’re both gone, I sometimes wonder, how the road ahead will look like? Will I recruit more bimbos? Will I be cursed to do 7 day cabbage soup diets over and over again in the office because I have no proper lunch partner? Will I perhaps, find a new job and try to get away with being cast off as the pitiful loner by saying, “I’m busy! im eating in! Hello? Isn’t it obvious??”

Metria and Chantella, I will truly miss you girls. We are truly the children of Malaysia, the first and ever muhibah bimbo office gang formed. No one will ever understand how we always pretend to be racist against each other nor understand why we giggle when we call each other, “Tudung bitch”, “Indian Slut” and “Mata Sepet Chinese”. Then there are also the secret names we give to our mean colleagues so we can talk about them openly without attracting attention. Our long lunches, our secret meetings pretending to be discussing about survey analysis when all we want is to bitch about 'Sonya' (again, secret code name for a certain someone in the office). I truly had a lot of fun.

May you girls take the teachings of the Bimbo’s club far and wide into foreign lands and new territories. Take care my dears..