MPH will love me this year

Finally, finally FINALLY I bought the Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Yeah, it has taken me close to 10 years!
Don't understand why it took me so freaking long!

Now if I can finally start on Anna Karenina. Heh. Even I laughed out loud at the thought

Stairway to nowhere

Photo taken at Klebang, Malacca.  

Poetry of the week.

You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet: and it would be
Like sleeping and yet waking, all at once.

The words are George Elliots'. Roses are blogger's own. 

Disgust

I actually agree with Dr Mahathir's latest statement. 

Malaysia is indeed  seeing more gutter politics. 

To say that I am upset with the turn of event in national politics is the understatement of the year. I was certainly close to tears when news of Eli's departure from office became known. 

What shameful, disgracing and underhanded way to bring down a capable politican.  As a Malaysian, Opposition supporter and a woman, I have nothing but admiration and the highest praise for Elizabeth Wong. Her blog and goodbye message HERE. 

If this is the kind of  politics that Najib is orchestrating,  then he has just guaranteed the Opposition's victory at the next general election.   

I had thought that with recent developments, I was ready to  throw in the towel and not  have anything to do with local politics and the pitiful state it has degenerated into.  But then, that would mean that the fight and sacrifices of the brave men and women against the Establishment would have been in vain.

And that surely must never be. 

Ok ok, enough of all doom and gloom. Nah, picture of meow.

For the real Groucho Marx  

Stream of (Un)conciousness

I attended a writing workshop last Friday till very late. Surprised myself at how well read I am if I do say so myself. 

Yet that is one love affair that was left to wither at the sacrificial alter of "other more important stuff", usually directly related to sleep, keeping a job and vanity writing such as this. 

Photography shared similar destiny. How I miss the SLR and the assortment of lenses. I swear I will get it back. My Preciouss. But then I know people with far better talent than me. 

On talent, I must be one of the very few that has been imbued with absolutely no gifts of any sort. The brother inherited the entire family quota of musical acumen. Guess that is why I have always found musicians so fascinating. But they are so out of my league. Not pretty enough to be taken seriously, and no talent to impress anybody. Geeks make lousy groupies. 

Hope you had a better valentine's day. The highlight of my day was eating eu char koay dipped in half boiled eggs for breakfast. Don't knock it till you've tried it. But yeah, it was a dismal day. 

Spent the rest of the day number crunching till I wished a plane would crash into my apartment building to save me the trouble from having to kill myself. There are other reasons for that as well. 

What else could make a sorrowful valentine worse, you snort? 

A compulsory annual dinner with a movie theme! (repeat above wish of crashing plane) 

New, friendless and penniless, I snubbed the costume shops, purposely bought a green tie instead of a red one and went to the ball as an alternate universe Hermione Granger from Slytherin. My red and naturally frizzy hair ensured that the people at the ball knew exactly who I was. 

I was impressed with the enthusiasm of some of my new workmates. One guy came in a gorilla suit. Another in green body paint and a tattered t-shirt. There were dozens of Men in black, Cleopatras, Jack Sparrows and Neos. 

As as per tradition, I won nothing at the lucky draw. Not the Wii, not the PS3, not the 42 inch LCD TV, not even a pathetic glaucometer. All that positive visualisation came to squat. I am gonna contact that lady who wrote The Secret and ask for my money back. No wait. I downloaded that. Never mind. 

The weeks have been rough. Right now, I am just gonna concentrate on surviving one day at a time. 

Little Whinging

I miss Marge. 

Miss Congeniality. Miss Optimism. Someone I missplaced. 

Her dentured smile. The tapping of her walker.  Her soft voice going,"Why doncha?" fired in the same breath as "Whats' stopping ya?" 

I miss happy. I do.  With all my heart.  

Time Out, please

There comes a time when what nothing feels right, you don't feel worthy of being wanted, you are weary of the world and its disappointments, and all you want to do is just sleep and sleep and sleep.

Commenting on Not Commenting

As a woman from Perak, I should say something about the fiasco that is the collapse of the state government. But I won't. Of course I am disappointed that BN is now back in power. Even more upset with the party hoppers but then Pakatan got themselves into this trouble anyway by courting dubious personalities.   

And I am not going to comment on whether the Sultan acted ultra vires or not as after all, I always took the view that the provision of discretionary powers is not the wisest ideas and now that the rulers are acting on them, and in this case favouring one political party over the other - we are only to blame over this mess.  So padan muka. 

I am  all for a republic but I know I won't get to see it in my lifetime.  

Again another point of view

Politics and religion - so fascinating, destructive and a faux paux at any polite gathering. 

Finally somebody has attempted to answered the question of what is Hudud from the readings of the Quran itself.

Hudud is a very touchy subject which has causes me at least one argument of the vicious kind. Discuss with caution. But then none is as blind as those who would not see, right? This goes both ways.  So share the love but don't la so gung-ho. 

Its so easy to play up our prejudices.  Yet we know so little first hand. To the average man on the street, the intricacies of Hudud have predominantly been the baby of the ulamas of PAS and stalwarts of DAP, with the issue ping-ponging between parties.  

And election time, the same bogeyman is resurrected to scare the non-muslims  - the chopping of hands, the whipping and the rules of evidence for rape.  But is this Hudud? 

Anyway - one view as below: 

http://syedsoutsidethebox.blogspot.com/2009/02/hudud-real-mccoy.html                                                                                                                                             

A theory and an irrelevant poster

Age does not beget wisdom. Only regret masked in layers of justifications. Excuses if you will. It talks you out of things that would set you soaring, doomsaying of how you would crash and burn. (If Icarus only listened to his wizened father, he’s most probably survive his flight and we’d never hear of him. Case in point.)  

In most cases - face it, its not wisdom talking. Its fear, inculcated from years of conditioning, heartbreak and failure. It’s the air-bagging of the heart from more collisions of the unsavoury sort.

Youth is no folly. And as the axiom goes, indeed wasted on the young. It’s the decrepit and the jaded that need the exuberance of the reckless.

Yet is the middle aged or rather the neo-middle aged that suffers more from the rot then our actual greying population. 25 is the new 45. And 35 is the granny on the sidewalk who reminisces of when life was much better in her good old days of Thundercats and Datsuns.

Never has a generation been so insightful and articulate, yet so unbelievably stressed.

Roti kawin, butter kaya. What’s one without the other?

And it took my dad to illustrate what tight asses we have become. He took his first ride on the Solero Shot when he was 60. I am still too worried that I would puke on the guy next to me / get a headache / get stuck on the way down/ die. Kelly’s mom went paragliding in her 50s too.

Funny how you need to be a pensioner to unlearn adulthood and be a child again. One end of the age spectrum you didn’t know what mortality is, on the other and - only too conscious of it.

Does that explain why older apeks are now on the prowl for more lurve and Pfizer making indecent profits?

Hello? Do I know you, uncle? Tolong pegi main jauh jauh. (eh, who mentioned Chua Soi Lek?!) 

Modern living eats up innocence too early me thinks. In my estimation it starts to disappear by the age of 6 these days. These precocious tots can already process complex problems like who is Malay and Chinese and Indian and who to sit next to in class. Better be the same pork eater, beef eater or vegetarian. Ten year old prodigies could even tell you which to wipe out first in the event a snake also saunters by.  

I was not so smart during my tadika days. It was tough enough to get my head around why I can’t use the boy’s toilets.  Forget about telling the difference between Telegu, Tamil, Ceylonese, Malayalee dan lain lain.

Still couldn’t figure it out, 20 odd years post-tadika.  

Being the kopi susu kid, I am always the odd one out anyway yet treated somewhat with awe. In the backwaters of Jerantut Pahang, the offspring of an interracial marriage is rare and somewhat of an anomaly. Like an albino rhino or a one legged frog.  But much hotter looking.

I’d move swiftly on from the brief Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah episode there, but I sense a Maggi Assam Laksa in the vacinity.  

Important things

Iz gramma. She cute. 

Still on the subject of broken hearts

I found this ditty

An Epitaph To A Broken Heart.
Graham Jones

Take heed a tortured heart to heal
Scarred and bruised like orange peel
Worn, now empty cast aside
Like so much flotsam on the tide

It beats a lonely tune for one
Devoid of feeling, cold and numb
Its melody, now a requiem
That rides the wind of distant fen

Empty cold its essence gone
No spark or magic to keep it strong
Battered by the tears of time
No longer hers and barely mine

Deprived of hope, its plea's unheard
Its grief unshared, a wounded bird
Turned inside out, and torn apart
An epitaph to a broken heart. 

Do plants have it better?

Someone told me that writing is cathartic. 

I am gonna try that for a bit and see if there is any truth in that. 

It’s been a rough week with disappointments, heartbreaks and tears. I am seriously thinking of gunning to come back as a tree in my next life. But someone was saying that trees have feeling too. 

And they grow fungus. 

Here is a bit of useless information on heartbreak. According to a relationship poll of over 8,000 women conducted by WomanSavers.com, over 57% of women have thought of having a same sex affair. Well I can understand that. I mean if a chick has got her heart stomped into the ground by guys for the umpteenth time, its time to think out of the box. 

Off with his head. Whichever one. I don't care. 

Apparently music is good to release pent up emotions. That comes with a proviso though. During a post break up rebound date once upon a time ago, the restaurant’s acapella group had to sing the love song my ex used to serenade me. After a dash to the ladies, a few rolls of toilet tissue and one tell-tale drippy nose later, I was pretty glad to return to my table to find my date still there and not an empty chair with a note to go see a therapist. 

So you have been warned. 

Little did I know

by Banksy