Tag 2

1. Anda rasa anda hot?
At the moment, no because its 6 o'clock in the morning and the weather is cool, just the way I like it.

Yes, I'm deliberately missing the point.


2. Upload gambar kegemaran anda.



3. Kenapa anda suka gambar ini?
All the troublemakers (namely Adam, Yusof, Betty Jane and Momo) are sleeping. Its a momento of times when peace and quiet occurs at my house.

4. Bila kali terakhir anda makan pizza?
In Tawau, with my family, in conjunction with Adam's 17th birthday. Adam ate 7 slices of pizza, two bowls of soup, and 3 breadsticks. He is only slightly bulkier than me. It's a family ability, being able to make food disappear without a trace.

5. Lagu terakhir yang anda dengar.
Joy by Yuki. (Yuki wa sugoku kawaii yo!) I like this song, it makes me happy and smiley. I listen to it every morning to start my day.

6. Apa yang sedang anda buat selain daripada selesaikan tag ini?
Procrastinating everything else that I should be doing at this time.

7. Selain nama anda sendiri, apakah lagi nama yang anda suka orang panggil anda?
Everyone just calls me by my real name, but I'm starting to identify to my blogger name.

8. Tag lagi 5 orang (tak bleh tag orang yang sama tau)
Do I have to?

Off-Campus Life

This is my first semester living off campus and outside a college. After spending 3 years in a penitentiary -- I mean, college -- there is a big difference noted in living on my own.

First and most noticeable is the absence of the incessant and annoying college announcements and 'ulang suara's. What an epitome of 'Enjoy the Silence'. I can now enjoy my well deserved sleep-in every weekend without being periodically woken up by formal pleas, and later, threatening orders, to attend some college event or other.

The other most noticeable difference is that we are now free to leave our innumerable pairs of shoes scattered before the front door without fear of disciplinary action. It's impossible to have them organized for more than 1 hour anyway seeing as our house contains 8 adult women, all of whom do care about our self-image.(Me excluded because I have only 3 pairs of shoes at best. Most of the time I just wear the same pair of sneakers till they fall apart)

Besides the shoes, we are also free to hang our clothes, pants, and even underwear wherever we want to. No more stupid rule that everything has to be in an exact specific place for the sake of 5S -- namely susah, sengal, shit, sewel, and stupid. In extension, we do not need to hang our clothes out to dry at the communal laundry room for those without morals to browse through and pick at their leisure.

Best of all about living on our own is no curfew. We now have the complete freedom of leaving and returning whenever our heart so pleases. I can come back at 2 am if I want, and no Pak Guard will accost me. Even though I have yet to find reason to come back at 2 am, it's nice to know that I can if I want to.

However, some things stand unchanged. Since the building I live in is so close to campus, many other tenants are also students. Therefore, the thing I hate the most about living in a college plagues me still -- having loud gossiping groups of girls as neighbors. I don't know whether there is some unwritten code of conduct that states girls must gossip loudly and squeal and scream at late night hours, or whether there is some female genetic marker that compels them to do so. It annoys me so much I regularly convert to something similar to a raging old hermit who has just had his property trespassed upon, muttering to myself about young people nowadays and their apparent lack of ability to exist in a society. Talk about ironic.

Wait, I'm going off topic, aren't I? Where was I...

At any rate, I like living independently. I like not having to move my stuff every semester. I like having my own bathroom. I like being able to cook. I like my balcony and it's view of the playground where children play in the afternoons. I like sitting at my balcony with a steaming mug of coffee and just watch the cars pass and the clouds scud by, or read a book, or talk to Pepper. Balconies are good things.

Sometimes, it's the little pleasures that make life worth living.

P/S Yes, I lack sleep.

One Woman's Meat is Another Woman's Poison

Each person is entitled to their own opinion. Each person may choose to live their life accordingly. We should not judge other people for their choices.

I know this, I know this.

I do not believe in using relationships as a crutch. I believe we should be able to live our life happily as an individual. I believe we should not be defined by the relationships we are in or are not in.

Well, that's me, isn't it?

I should not judge a person just because she is unable to be happy as a single person. I should not judge her just because she jumps from relationship to relationship to avoid being alone. I should not judge her as weak because she takes crap from men who leave her then moves on to the next for more crap. I should not judge her as loose because she ignores the boundaries of interaction while enjoying each short seemingly meaningless relationship.

You shouldn't judge her, you hear?!

If the presence of a man in her life is imperative to her happiness, then to each her own.

To each her own.

I Not Stupid

I get full marks and A's for my English assignments. I speak English with an American accent. My writing style is eloquent and subdued. And all these things happen due to the fact that I am Caucasian. Mystery solved.

Or is it?

The truth is, I'm only part Caucasian. The other parts are Bugis, Arab, Irish, and God knows what else. I'm good at neither Bugis Language nor Arab Language nor Irish, French or whatever else I am descended from. Nobody seems to find that the least bit odd.

I'm not a Malay but I got A's for my Bahasa Melayu work. And even if you argue that in school its Bahasa Malaysia, not Bahasa Melayu, I wasn't even a Malaysian yet when I got an A1 for it for SPM. I speak perfect Malay in both Sabahan and Semenanjung slangs. But nobody questions that.

Why am I only good at English Language because I am (part) Caucasian?

People fail to acknowledge that I am good at English Language because I worked for it. I read so much I'm almost blind, goddammit. For once, I wish to be congratulated for my effort. Not dismissed as another lucky bastard with an American mother.

Not only is my effort ignored, my siblings are made out as idiots. They don't perform as well as I do in English Language. Amelia even got a B for her English in UPSR. People see her as the stupid daughter -- she's got the American mother but no A in English and no American accent.

I have plenty of Malaysian friends who have great English -- some even better than mine; the amazing Teacher Nina, Anwar Majeed, Greg Hansen, Siti Masturah, Nazyrul -- all without Caucasian parents. And Nazyrul even has an American accent. How can that be, you ask? Because they worked for it. Why are they the smart ones? Why am I not included?

My point is: Yes, my mother is American. Yes, I happen to have an American accent. But I never would have been able to speak English as freely as I do, or write the way I do, if I haven't put in as much work as I have. Or if I haven't read as many books as I have (I mean, really, my glasses are as thick as a biology textbook). Or if I haven't spent as much time doing writing exercises, rereading and cringing at my work.

The moral of the story: The English Language is not a miracle of birth. Just like everything else in this world, it comes with hard work.

Rant over.

No White Dress for Me?

My 10-year-old brother, Yusof, joined his school kompang team at the beginning of this year and since then he has been banging out his kompang beat on everything hittable from the bathroom door to tables and -- if he is being particularly annoying -- my back.

One day while riding home (me, from work; my siblings, from school) he was at it again on the car door. Not being able to move away from his incessant drumming, I started to become agitated.

"Enough with the banging," I said exasperatedly. "Nobody is getting married here,"

"He's practicing for your wedding!" said Adam, always eager to torment me.

"Yeah," my dad, no better than Adam, pitched in excitedly. "It's only about 2 more years -- once you're done studying and start working,"

I cringed -- Adam noticed. And so for the rest of the ride home, they made jokes and snide comments on my allegedly soon-to-be-held marriage. Maybe it was because of the taunting, but I even surprised myself at how much the idea of getting married revolted me.

I have to confess, like every other girl, I've dreamed and fantasized about getting married happily. Yet somehow, when the idea seems so real and plausible, I find myself shying away -- no -- hightailing as fast and far away as my scrawny butt can manage.

In my fantasies, I don't need to give my imaginary husband a personality. It's just me fulfilling the duties of a wife; -- and here comes another confession -- the conventional kind whom is content to stay home and cook, clean, and read to the children (with the sole exception of instead of watching soap operas in my free time, I spend time with my playstation). However, in reality, husbands are more than a present ethereal entity. I have to choose one. And the choices that present themselves don’t exactly get my hormones stirring. Men -- the ones I know -- are largely uninteresting, unmotivated, dependent, clingy, jealous creatures.

Hey, I don't want to be right. Believe me. But I'm not going to fool myself into believing that I'm wrong either.

Boots and Walking

Practical Training -- a time and place where I finally understood the true meaning of boredom, so much that even now my brain has yet to fully recover from the resulting blankness. There would be no need to mention blogging as I couldn't even start to think of anything to blog about.

One memory does come back to me somewhat clearly -- my daily morning rounds around the construction site. I could almost see it now; the skeletal structures of the unfinished buildings, the monstrous machinery, and the wide expanse of mud that I had to squelch and clomp through every morning. In my mind, I already am back there. Odd though it was, I felt a tiny sense of satisfaction at achieving both squelching and clomping as I walked -- a paradox if I ever knew one.

First of all, I was squelching because my foot would sink under the viscous mud as soon as I shifted weight on it. Secondly, I was clomping because I was wearing safety boots that were too big for my Cinderella feet. I've never cared much for glass slippers and high heels, but those clod-hoppers were too much in another kind of extreme. Size 5 or 6 safety boots -- women's sizes -- are rare to begin with. When I finally managed to find a pair that was size 5, imagine my frustration at finding that they were still too big! I have to wear two pairs of very thick socks just to keep me feet from slipping out of the boots as I walk let alone squelch-clomp.

Maybe I'll launch my own label for women's apparel on a construction site, I often thought half-heartedly. It's a good idea even if I do say so myself, but I don't have the zeal to pursue a venture into the fashion arena. Even though construction apparel is mainly about safety, somehow the same for women just screamed 'FASHION' and I know I could never make it work. Not even close. Now if I had Pepper to help….

For a while, I entertained myself with visions of myself squelch-clomping very fashionably amidst brawny, sweaty, sexy Timberlake models wearing safety helmets and overalls (with no shirt) while holding hammers.

A particularly loud squelch-clomp brought me crashing -- well, squelching -- back to reality. I looked down and saw my jeans splattered with mud up to the knees. Normally I wouldn't care at all, but after that particular trip into fantasy land, mud finally got to me like to got to all normal girls.

Well, at least now I have something to blog about, I thought as I squelch-clomped moodily back on my way.