auntie i-mei

perhaps i will become those ah ee types. Okay let me rephrase that, “domestic goddess”? you know those aunties and grandmas that seem to know how to make nyonya kuih from scratch, “pak” bak chang those yummy seasonal pork dumplings, and bake and whip up all sorts of delicacies. Today I cooked some tomato-ey pork dish that I tried to reproduce from the memory of tasting it, boiled some barley and fried some (pre-made by grandma) curry puffs. Oodles of fun. when I have my own home I intend to try new things to cook,bake and prepare all the time…

what it takes

cry me a river
fly me to the moon
when that is said and done
it'll be all too soon
walk a mile in my new shoes
pointing me ahead
I’ve got the purples I’ve got the blues
On my head they tread
Soul is heavy jazzed up life
Is spinning me around
Twirl till I pick my spot
All I have is me I found
Me myself my plucky I
Me you think I’m sucky
Why I’ll have you know I’ll spring right up
I’m more than just a yappy pup
somewhere I know I’ve got what it takes

just next to the blues

'Have you got any soul?’ a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I’ve got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a little balance, but I can’t seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn’t be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues.

this excerpt is from nick hornby's high fidelity. it is greatly amusing, poignant, and genius all at once. The narrator here owns a record shop and is in the middle of woman initiated emotional turmoil, the kind men choose to shrug off and accept nonchalantly, or at least pretend too. Hence the remarkable ambiguity and duality of reference to soul. But I’m overstating. The thing about a paragraph like this is it speaks to you in your own mother tongue, it takes its own significance according to your baggage, your internal set-up, your history,or simply your fascination with words …

blah

Once you’ve gone of the path of the straight and narrow it is difficult to get back, in my case after being disheartened about writing,and not keeping up with my daily blogging, it gets increasingly difficult to pick up where I left off. So here I am, 10 days after my last post. No one has asked me why I didn’t blog, no one has asked me to blog. Along the way, things cropped up, and I lacked the much needed encouragement to blog again, if even in the form of “when are you gonna update?”no following. Yet I persist.

ink

Unfurl from within the seams
Carve something from the broken dreams
Lush intent grappling against past’s dent
An eddy of lost hopes and winter’s lament
Mask my imperfection my empty claims
Glaze upon the page the same
Blank except for nitty nothings
Unwitty somethings grasped for
Slighted I row on without my oar
Hitch up my wings maybe I’ll soar
Perchance I’ll collide into a wild boar
Emboldened by chastened ash
Pull out a needle stitch up the gash
I will yet whip soufflé from leftover mash
Pour in the substance flatten the fluff
Austen will have the last laugh

we interrupt this programme to ..whine

ahem. nobody comments on my blog. isit that boring? or do people not even visit. shrugs. sigh. oh well...

a solitary drive

isn't it simply liberating? simply gunning your engine and shifting into gear, you step on the accelerator and off you go, you’re going places. Screw the traffic, shut it all out, imagine a classical symphony playing and the cars around you will surely slow down, at least to you it’ll seem so. Even if you turn on the radio, whoever it is miles away, you’re alone with yourself. Sing if you like, funny how you seem to know the lyrics to the most ridiculous songs. Sing your heart out and your journey home or wherever it is will be novel…

neo-existentialism?

The mere idea that everything exists in its form the way we know it in its particular set of atoms arranged in its particular embodiment and how fragile this balance is, is rather mind boggling. Me, i've never been the sort to question the intricacies of time and space, separate dimensions or parallel planes of occurrences, or how biomolecular structures are easily tinkered with, with the right motive, like how in “the triangle” the navy experimented with making ships invisible. Intriguing indeed, but way beyond my analytical, deductive capacity. Perhaps I’m too simple that way, I’m too accepting and naïve…

p/s watch the trailer for the triangle here..you can still catch it on astro this month on star movies. it's really good.

if only

today my colleague came up to me, spread a newspaper page on the hood of one of the cars in the showroom then took out his almost identical lottery ticket. he missed the million dollar jackpot by 32 tickets. seemed like a random number though, unlikely that he would’ve picked the winning 6 (or isit 7 ) digit number. He’s upset though to be so close..yet..Got me thinking, what if I had a million dollars. Well, I’d finish up my degree in nus, and invest bout 100k, the rest I’d give my folks for business or whatever else they want..

updated

finally updated my post bout my round island trip ..here

my sunday's fading awayyy

for some reason i'm not in a literary mood today. i wasn't even in a scrapping mood til sarah came to me looking all bored and i knew i couldn't just let her do her own thing on a sunday night folks not being in and all, so we got to scrapping. and when it was time to clear up i felt like i wanted to go on. So today I’ve been in a lazy couch potato mood. Sundays are too short I tell ya. Sarah’s bunking in my room tonight and she’s interrupting my train of thought so bye..

and the social life continues..

how thrilling. i had yet another social event today. close friend back in kl for the weekend, social butterfly me drove home after work changed and went out again. another old classmate joined us and we had a lovely time just yakking and teasing each other and making each other laugh until our stomachs hurt. It is exciting seeing your old friends grow up, the transition from going to school together and then now exchanging business cards and these are those that you can easily connect with again even after being somewhat out of their lives for a short while…

my sarah

on Tuesday I hung out with my sister, sarah. She’s my baby sister but she’s getting TALL. I don’t doubt that soon she’ll be my height or taller. Thing is she’s 9 years younger than me. I love her to bits, I always have. The other day my brother said, “one day when she’s all grown up she’s gonna appreciate all that you do for her, even the nagging and the tuition,” (that she absolutely dreads). I don’t need her to appreciate me I just really hope she knows that I do all that I do because i LOVE her.

main course bagan, dessert batu ferringhi, torrential downpour on the house

this may sound sad but i don't have much of a social life. sometimes even when i'm free to go out meet friends i either don't really wanna spend money(me! backlash from too much spending in singapore and having to earn it now) or cherish my free time too much i'd rather do all the things i always wanna do, like read, write, blog, scrap, hang with sister, hang with folks, etc, or sometimes i think i shouldn't go out so i'm at home in case I’m needed or my friends all away. But tonight, I have plans=)

waves upon the shore..

And all you are is everything I was
more for I was mere shadow
A mimic of what was thought agreeable
A mask a mash of all that’s feeble
And now I gaze from height so low
Gallows shallow mellow hollow
Melt your discontent stir it up with rage
Take it with a year or two til the memories age
Postlude will bask the remnants the husk will fell away
The seed of what was good and true might dance along in May
Your fleeting avatar might haunt me still no more
And yet rise like waves upon the shore..

M is for mei and a host of other words...

May I make my monogram more memorable by mentioning it more than me and mine might deem a must, if only as a mere mince of mollycoddling to a mindless idea that may or mayn’t matter to one many miles detached. But maid to majesty,
Maharaja to mail-order minion, malapropism is most common to men. Let me assure my mates that I mean no malice, this maladjusted malarkey and maladroit madness ain’t as malevolent as it seems. My manic media will meet its margin and mei might once again melt into melodramatic mixes of microcosms of mimicking life in manuscript.

a birthday

What are birthdays of people you once made a festival of when now it’s just a phone call if even that. And if that is all you can do within your current circumstances geographical or situational, should you still show you remember? And suppose you do remember, which you always will, even if you try not to for some self-protective reason, which is ironic since you were the one to inflict such complicated awkwardness, suppose you do, should you then make a festival of remembering or make it like a solemn courtesy when inherent well wishes are bound to surface…

..in pursuit of a writing life...

A weekend gone without scrapping is a wasted one. For me at least. And I feel incomplete especially when I have so many pending scrap projects, like the mini scrapbook for my ah ma whom I have made it a point to visit in kuantan on her birthday come oct 31st. well at least I have selected the materials, chosen the pictures and printed them, so that counts as part of the project.Besides, I’m down with the flu so rest is essential and during my weekend I have also gone marketing for the week and whipped up two new dishes…



the above post is a 100 word post. i am now devoting this blog of mine to a daily 100 word routine in efforts to blog daily and train myself to be succinct. when i feel particularly wordy and expressive i shall unleash such torrents of words here other blog

feel free to comment and even suggest topics for me to yarn about in a mere 100 words.

a holiday

i don't feel like msn today. at all.
i wonder why. my brother keeps popping into my room saying, HI MEI MEI!!! after the seventeeth time he says i look down and asks what's bugging me. i didnt realize there was anything in particular bugging me. i mean, it's a holiday!
oh yeah to digress a little, it's merdeka day today and sadly all i seem to feel about it for now is yay it's a public holiday. i mean i appreciate my nation's independence and all and i'm rather patriotic but why sound it out today of all days why not just be patriotic all the time? funny my most patriotic merdeka days were when i was in singapore. malaysia night was great fun in raffles hall. we were so keen to remember our roots as malaysians and share that with fellow malaysians singing our patriotic songs and displaying our nation's cultures, funny when you're away maybe you want so much to hold on to that which you came from and makes you you. anyways, happy merdeka day.
maybe i'm a little off today (though not significantly) because i had a disturbing dream again. it's like the same dream in variations, of me packing up to leave raffles hall, NUS, Singapore. it's always different. and it's always disturbing when i wake up and remember. i dunno why. and everytime in the dreams i'm never done with my packing, rushing madly when my plane leaves hours away. in last night's one the darn lights wouldn't go on, it was so dark and i had so much stuff to pack and/or get rid off and he was lying on my bed. not helping. suddenly my folks appeared. and i thought darn im no done packing i have to go now. then dad said we're leaving tomorrow at 930pm. funny. in each version of the dream raffles hall changes. the people change, the buildings change, the feeling changes. even as it continues to change right now, i always remember it the way it was for me before i left...

for sherry

don't take it from me since what i say means nothing..this is from paul arden, author of international bestseller IT'S NOT HOW GOOD YOU ARE, IT'S HOW GOOD YOU WANT TO BE, former creative director at SAATCHI & SAATCHI and a legend of British advertising.



this square thingy is a meme square. idea plucked from here Meme Square
thanks ming=)

on a separate note.

updates in store..

more hospital tales.

road trip...balik pulau, durians and laksa.

spice gardens.

cameron highlands.

people.

brace yourself...

shout outs to all you patient folks.