Arbor Vitae

It was very belated indeed - 2 months and 3 weeks to be exact.

I haven’t celebrated CNY back home for longer then I care to remember. Something always came up - work, schedule clashes, over-priced airfares, rent to be paid and belongings to be shifted.

As I bought an absurdly misshapen turnip and contemplated if I could scrounge up enough cash for some sliced raw salmon, it really hit me.

I haven’t seen Mom for a year and 10 months and I can never tell how she’s doing over the phone. She always assures us that she’s fine, just like we always assure her that we’re fine - exam stress, stomach flus and recalcitrant coursemates aside.

My grandad has developed glaucoma in the time I’ve been away - I can’t wait to see him but will he be able to see me during my next, yet-to-be-determined visit home?

Grandma asks when I’m coming home on a weekly basis. She still clips ads out of the Sin Chew Jit Poh employment pages, hoping that I’ll settle down in KL if I can get a job there.

Since I saw him last, a family friend has discovered he is in the final stages of lung cancer. He has a wife and two boys and a nice job and a house and a life. Needless to say he doesn’t smoke or drink. Life can be such a b**** sometimes.

My godparents seem to have aged perceptibly everytime they greet me at the airport. They would have aged whether I was there or not, but seeing them in these abrupt fits and starts is a reality check of the starkest kind. Would it be less of a shock if I’d seen them age imperceptibly everyday over the last 6 years?

There are some friends that I haven’t seen since I left Msia. Who knows what’s real and what’s not anymore? Things that hardly mattered back then seem to be taking up an awful lot of our time and energy now - spouses and career changes and upgrading cars and buying a house.

Things change and people change and I’ve changed - so where does that leave us?

But metaphorical questions aside, as my sister and I unwrapped the gaily- decorated-long-overdue box of Malaysian pre-packaged yee sang, I realise I have no choice in the matter.

And as I grate that misshapen lump of a turnip into shreds, to be mixed in with the boxed ingredients, I realise I’m stuck here.

As I carefully unfold the tiny red and green envelopes of salt and five-spice, to be sprinkled over the yee sang, I am reminded of how underneath it all, I am more homesick than I care to admit.

And as we eat the salmon-less, un-tossed, 3-month-overdue concoction made out of a misshapen grated turnip and ingredients that came out of cardboard box, I realise that for better or worse, this is home for now, temporary or permanent.

According to the new conservative tenets back home that is:

http://www.malaysia-today.net/Blog-e/2006/04/malaysias-lawyers-opposition-slam.htm

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5854

I must confess, I have held hands with a member of the opposite sex in public.

Like, more then twice.

Outdoors.

In broad daylight.

Under my mom’s very nose.

In front of hundreds - some of whom have known me since I was toddler this high.

And, travesty of travesties, at the local pasar malam.

*GASPS OF UTTER DISBELIEF ALL ROUND*

Worse, he was a caucasian.

Oh those hairy, barbaric, uncontrollable beasts that they are - ravaging the hand-hood of dewy, virginal, Bambi-esquely innocent, pure-as-freshly-snowed-snow females, one hand at a time.

I would laugh myself into hysterics if only the consequences for the unlucky pair were not so dire.

If I had any tears left to shed, or sighs as yet un-sighed, or dissonance left unvoiced, I would, and more, but I’m spent.

And I also happen to be fresh out of patience and tolerance and plain-ole-immunity against bullcrap.

Now, back to the real world and things that matter and lives that have to be lived. 

the only thing i see in your eyes is a smaller, distorted reflection of myself.

no warmth.

no impulsiveness.

no fire.

no spark.

no response.

nothing.

My friend’s critique of an (almost) aggressively gorgeous babe:

"I’m pretty, I’m pretty, I’m so damn pretty and there’s nothing you can do about it!

And just so you know, I’m PRETTY!"

*laughs self into hysterics*

1am:

bleeding tired. transfusions of jasmine tea i smuggled in from Msia don’t seem to be working.

2am:

still bleeding tired. start seeing things from the corner of my eye.

3am:

the space bar seems to be moving on its own.

oh.

ok, no it’s not.

i’ve been leaning on the keyboards without realising, that’s all.

let’s hear it for exhaustion.

4am:

there’s a pink hippo sitting on my computer.

methinks it’s time for bed. :p

I think I’ve missed my true calling in life.

But after a recent wake-up call, I am finally ready to fulfil my destiny

…as a Human Put-Outer.

What’s that you say? Well here’s a clue: <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Muggles’_Guide_to_Harry_Potter/Magic/Put-Outer>

I’ve managed to put out the streetlight at the bus stop where I get off 4 times in the past 11 days.

Each time the poor street lamp went dim, flickered and then finally gave up the ghost in a sputtering finish.

GAH.

At the rate I’m going, they might as well have utilised my services when Dumbledore needed to extinguish the streetlights on Privet Drive in Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone.

Either I’ve been incredibly unlucky with street lamps and I don’t deserve to have my way home illuminated by anything other than moonlight.

Or I could have an aura hideous enough to crack lightbulbs, even industrial-sized ones.

*GRINS*

oh food is good

if only i could

eat and never gain a pound or an inch

but the pasta and the chips

go straight to my hips

and the cookies which are yummy

contribute to the girth of my tummy

food dogs my steps

it whispers my name

and sometimes it just drives me plain insane

i can’t run away

by my side it stays

on the streets or on the computer screen

i may cram my face

in real-life with utter bliss

only to go online and see my KL friends

pigging out in Matisse!

IMHO this is the freakiest film of the year.

It’s not The Hills Have Eyes.

It’s not When A Stranger Calls.

It’s not Final Destination # 679.

It’s Eight Dogs Buried Six Freakin’ Feet Below In The Snow.

Even the trailer was enough to turn me into a snivelling mess.

I’m definitely not the most-hard core horror fan out there and…well…..I’m actually an absolute milk-and-water wuss/ cluckety-cluck chicken, happy?!

But blood and viscous innards and scream-out-loud terror aside, nothing scares/ disturbs me more than animal cruelty.

A child who is abused bleeds and suffers and is broken at the hands of a monster again and again. But should the day come, you would pray that they will have a chance to speak out against their abuser.

Animals cannot speak or beg for help or pick their tormentor out of a police line-up. But they bleed and suffer and break all the same.

And leaving eight Huskies chained up outdoors in the middle of the blizzard of the century is not good.

Yeah, yeah, so it’s a film (and a ‘warm-and-fuzzy’ family flick by Disney at that), but this is the most perturbed I’ve felt in a while.

And it’s not like all I’ve ever watched are music videos by Malaysia’s ‘Four Little Treasures’ Si Qian Jing OK?

I found the rape scene in Monster confronting, the yoking of Nicole Kidman in Dogville disturbing and all the blood and gore in Kill Bill 1 & 2 just this side of hilarious.

But animal abuse, real or pretend, gets me everytime.

Sigh.

I guess Eight Below has touched a raw nerve lying just a little too close to the surface, and a little too close to home for my comfort.

http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/index.php/2006/03/24/brisbane-woman-charged-with-sizzler-poisoning/

Sizzler:

Fresher.

Yummier.

Poisoner.