> bit about the woman i love

my mother was really young when my dad left her. he left her nothing except five wounded hearts. me, two elder sisters and two kid brothers.. being a second wife was tough and being single again was really - really tough.... ' mak tua ' never liked mother for being pretty and soft hearted. mak tua and company never liked us for being part of them.....without my dad, it all became worst...

with nothing, my mother started her unpromising life with ten ringgit that mak tua 'painfully' parted with from money donated by people who knew him. ten ringgit for the six of us....what year were we at that time?...ahh it was at 1978...kalau jimat that ten ringgit can last two to three days lah.

being young and pretty were my mother advantages, she was the perfect company for dad's business and political functions. she was pampered and loved more than mak tua. was she good at cooking? i don't remember, maybe she didn't cook at all. i was too young to remember.

but that all changed after dad left us. she had to work as a cashier at a school canteen and was lucky enough to be promoted as the ' tukang masak's' assistant which earned her a few extra ringgit.

with the help of two sisters in the family, mother started a small home based 'nasi lemak' business. all went well. i helped her sell the 'nasi lemak' in school. the business was so good that it made the school canteen owner so unhappy...... alas .. i was caught! the schoolguard confiscated all of my 'nasi lemak'. i was nine at that time and it was really one hell of a shocking experience.

the headmaster gave me a warning and asked me to ask the canteen to help sell the 'nasi lemak' ... no more black market 'nasi lemak'.

my 'nasi lemak' retail price was dua 'kupang' per packet, lima 'duit' commission to the rich canteen owner. that was what i told my mother ... at least the business can still go on.

one week past and business was good. she was happy. but .. one day .. the 'nasi lemak' sale suddenly became bad. i was told it was because my nasi lemak was dirty. they found a cockroach in one of my 'nasi lemak'....!!!

business then became really bad and this time they found another type of insect inside one of many packets. the same pattern went on and on and on and mother got the hint. the business was stopped with - tears.

mother worked hard, i would say ten times harder than any woman her age in the kampung but the money was never enough. i was forced to transfer to a school nearer to my house as she couldn't afford to pay my school bus fees. her vision of me getting a better education at a better school thus vanished....

> retrospective

+ today is supposedly my big day

once in a while something happens that forces me to take a long look at myself, reevaluate my life and started to doubt all of the things that happened to me in the past few months. once in a while happened this morning......if you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself lucky.

i tried to shake free of those memories, wondering why they'd re-surfaced with such clarity... was it because i am now wise enough to realize how unusual it was to like someone so quickly....or simply because i felt guilty......i don't know.

lately, it seemed i didn't know a lot of things......there were people who claimed to hv all the answers, or at least the answer to the big questions of life..but some of the answers may seen difficult to believe..there was something about the assurance with which they spoke that seemed self justifying.. but if there is one person who could answer any question, my question would be this -

' how far should a person go in the name of love? '

i could pose the question to hundred people and get a hundred different answers...most were obvious, a person should sacrifice or accept or forgive or even fight if need be...the list can go on and on...and i knew that all these answers were valid, but it cant help me.......something just were beyond understanding...
thinking back, i recalled events i wished i could change, tears i wished had never been shed, time that could have been better spent and frustration i should have shrugged off.

life, it seemed was full of regret, and i yearned to turn back the clock so i could amend my mistakes... and as i considered the question of how far the person should go in the name of love, i knew what my answer would be..........' sometimes it meant a person should lie....'

> meant to be a post here

i am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.

it’s been a while since the last posts but there have been many good reasons for the hiatus. lately i’ve been quite busy and i cannot be unhappy about the fact that offline activities are taking more and more of my time these days. i still got a few pending tasks regarding the theme, the concept or other crazy things , but i can’t say when i will go back to work on those projects...guess its ok to play lazy once in a while - brain cells got to rest right? so....i got on the Internet checked e-mail - pretend to look busy...you got what i meant....,then browse several websites, want to shop for a couple of things i couldn't find in the store - didn’t find them online either...no matter what i still want that white converse!

then logged on to blogspot... but i didn’t start writing. not right away. i checked stats.
i visited blogs that linked to me.....happy to see jazz and diver are totally in love - now i'm dying to eat nasi minyak...aiz was excited with her billingham trip - she's in billingham by now - miss her already, husni is so happy with his recent project - congratulations b......spena finally became part of underwater community - successfully make me jealous..., neome sharing her love+life evolution, cat bat is in a mission impossible..everything is possible girl - cheer up, gomba with never ending most scary ghost story....

now it’s getting late, time to go for a hair cut and hopefully can jump back to the pav in time for a 7.30 show .....and i still have no idea what to say...and yet look at the words i’ve written. i don’t have a MD in bluffing for nothing, do i? the truth is, not much is going on right now, at least no much that seems worth blogging about. there’s no drama for now, no angst, not one memorable exchange with a random stranger or bizarre dream. things are just… mellow. it may not make for an exciting blog post, but i’ll take it. and count my blessings because i know that’s not the case with everyone out there ...but there is more space to fill this week.....

> man-thing

i overheard a group of women were talking and arguing about their exes.... some of them complaining how bad their exes were....and at the same time... elevating a few man they knew whom minor of them agreed is the perfect example of ' the man ' or a ' real man '! ....and that made me ponder about what exactly women mean when they say,
' NOW, THAT'S A REAL MAN! '

so i decided to ask you, ladies+gentlemen, what you thought a 'real man' is? i could have learn something here..

ciao!
ps; there will be a blogging break until after sunday. i have to get lost in saigon to look for the happy!

> melancholy me

well, it's kind of a long story.... and people tend not to believe it, even though i lived through it.... it's not because cupid's still working on me, because cupid's never gonna be done with that.... it's not because of anything i've done or not done.....shuz! there for a nano-second i thought may be...may be, i'm cursed by someone sometimes and will never be blessed with a partner.... ? because of my past sins? but...i like to think that god has a greater plan for me, i don't know what, god works mysteriously, remember...hope it's something worth waiting...amin.
many-time i tried to put my self into.. errr more likely to force my self into a relationship.....but love and luck were not on my side, blame it on me.....i wasn't mentally ready then...too many things to do, so much freedom-fun to sacrifice for a relationship!

i think even if cupid had sent a woman dressed in a latest oscar de la renta's knocking on my door with a note that this is the gal i'm supposed to marry, i doubt if i would ever believe it..... though i've always wanted to be part of ' copula ' society, i spent years not knowing what i truly want and what would be good for me in terms of relationships. it's just the last few month there was a lot of transformation in me that i am probably in a place emotionally to be able to handle a long term relationship.

past that....
i never thought about finding ' permanence ' or my ' soul mate '....until recently, but here's the real trick, how to find the right one? not gonna be easy though....i always imagining to meet someone who share the same passion-interest i did....life is for living right? sure every one had responsibilities and didn't mind those...i enjoyed my work, earned a fare living..., owned a place and paid my bills on time but i didn’t want a life where those things constituted all there was...i wanted to experience life with my loved one, do stuff we both like together....no change that

so until cupid finally sends that someone my way and god feels she's appropriate for me.....single it is.

> evil-knievil

i couldn't resist doing this evil-knievil test.... unfortunately i'm not cunning enough to post the link, or at least not at this time of the evening, sorry.

guess what? my result was that i am 28 percents evil! a bit of evil lurks in my heart but i hide it well lah.......

and apparently i am the most dangerous kind of evil...the rare-one of a kind...so beware hehehehehahahahaha evil style

> the soul’s best friend

after many years, it still amazes me how people can still be puzzled, suspicious and critical of how comfortable i am with solitude.
does solitude convey negative visions of loneliness and isolation....?

that’s so understandable.....we are social beings and we derive a large portion of our happiness from our connections to and relationships with others. our lives is spent in search of forming, and then nurturing linkages.....girlfriend+boyfriend, husband+wife, perhaps wife+lover vice-versa....
and being alone is generally viewed with derision or pity and typically equated with loneliness......... yes?

but strangely..., when i was dating someone decades ago, i was often lonelier than now...trust me when i said that being alone is better than a doubtful relationship!

many times have i been told, ' you shouldn't be alone ! '
once any of these linkages, or couplings, ends for whatever reason, the pressure is substantial to be ' with ' some-one or several some-ones.

' you mean you went to a movie and dinner by yourself, pity... ? ' this is asked as though it were against the rules to behave in this manner as though it was odd to enjoy these things by myself, ...well...not that i don't have friends..i am fortunate enough to have many good friends, some close ones with fantastic character...love to see them,to talk to them, to ' do stuff ' with them....

it just that...sometimes, i love to just be alone. It's not a garbo-esque kind of thing. it's not melo-dramatic.... it's just….well....., easier........ i don’t have to have a meeting to decide when to go somewhere - 10 points!... or where i want to go....i just go - another 10 points!. ...do ' stuff ' i like from am to am - 50 points!...living and dreaming my own dreams - lots of points!..sometimes i can just sit and watch the world go by... yes... it can be idleness but it can also be ultimately very fulfilling.....

solitude can be every bit as exhilarating as companionship sometimes.......but of course.....i had to find companionship before i figured that out