Baby..baby..baby Ooooh!

I just can’t get enough of this cute little thing… Bieber’s Baby baby song is befitting for now.

Mind your English

Colin Firth was Mr Darcy in both Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones Diary, who charmed, in that endearing stuffy English way. Not the ‘genre’ (of men) who would appeal to me as a partner, but his English-ness suits him and the Darcy character in which he is able to fit in like his second skin made him all the more attractive (in that role).

I watched Firth again in King’s Speech and for the lack of better word, he was adorable as the King who had speech impediment and had to go through therapy sessions for it. The descendant of Richard III, whose ‘winter of discontent made glorious by this summer son of York‘ controlled two years of my college life, Firth filled in this role as amazingly as he did with Darcy.

All my literature teachers for both O and A levels were British men, and probably because of them I have an innate repulsion for their breed. Mr C was an awesome teacher but he didn’t take morning showers and wore different colored socks to work. Sometimes we could see his boxers peeking from the back oh his pants and sometimes they were the same color as the day before. And don’t get me started on his BO. In my family’s language he epitomized ‘kemproh‘ so on attractiveness scale, he was a 2 (out of 10). Mr B was an old man. He started us with Richard III. But he came to work on Mondays reeking of alcohol and sometimes displayed suspicious dementia-like symptoms. He didn’t seem to notice that most of the time in his class I was either asleep or doing homework for other subjects. The last of the lot, Mr R was an egoistic tyrant. He screamed as he pleased, made dark Brit jokes which none of us understood and barked at Malay boys in the college who skipped Friday prayers when he didn’t see them heading for the mosque along with him. He’s blond and couldn’t take our blond jokes and when he was trying too hard to be funny, he was lame. What all of them did well was to pass me well for my literature papers and for that I was grateful.

Now, if only a Firth was one of those who taught me back then, perhaps I could see beyond English stuffiness and enjoy my classes back then better.

Something for free

The massage lady at Zouk Spa at Desa Sri Hartamas yesterday said to me that she thinks I must be a happy person. I told her she’s right. I am generally very happy with with life, on the whole, although I do grouch about things like bad drivers and expensive Malaysian milk and fruits. But I don’t let those things get into me thoroughly I suppose. I just bitch about it and then turn it into a joke (much to the chagrin of many local friends, but what to do? The drivers are bad here, ok :D) and then let it go. So anyway, I asked her (the massage lady) how did she come to the conclusion that I am a happy person? She said ” Your blood flow is very good… when people are happy, their blood flow very well and all their internal energy flow in the right direction. And because of that, happy people rarely get bad illnesses”

So the cliché is right after all. Laugh. Laughter makes you happy. And when you are happy, you are healthy. Hence laughter is indeed the best medicine.

Think happy thoughts now, people 🙂

Walk like the Egyptians

” In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for liberation; it must become the motivating force for liberating action. Nor does the discovery by the oppressed that they exist in dialectical relationship to the oppressor, as his antithesis–that without them the oppressor could not exist– in itself constitute liberation. The oppressed can overcome the contradiction in which they are caught only when this perception enlists them in the struggle to free themselves”

~~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of The Oppressed

I have a friend, who is a wife and a mother of 3 in an oppressive marriage, which is forbidden in the faith of Islam. And although Islam gives her the liberation to walk out of the marriage, she won’t, thinking that she couldn’t. She knows she is being oppressed, but she has been conditioned/conditioned herself to think that she will not be able to survive without her oppressor, in this case her husband. Based on what Paulo said above, I think she has not yet perceived that the world is an open place for her, without any limitations as each and every one of us has been equipped with, by the one above.

But I am confident that one day, she will realise it. It took Egypt 30 years to overthrow Mubarak, creating a surreal domino effect in the Arab world that is not only exciting but alarming as well (the events unfolding uncannily match whatever prophecies I have been reading about the coming of Mahdi). But just like the Arab world, I pray that one day she empowers herself and walk out of her bad marriage, just like the Egyptians….

Face off

Tito having a face off moment with a stray kitten which wandered into our garden. I think the neighbourhood cat community must have been gossiping about Tito, calling her an old grumpy granny or something. And she lives up to that reputation perfectly…

Monday Blues

3 Cs

According to my husband, who once lived and worked in Mexico for several years, Churros is the Mexican’s version of our Char Kuey. It’s their tea time snack, just like we have our Char Kuey dipped in sambals.

I prefer Churros to Char Kuey though… I have sweet tooth and I love desserts. And Churros are usually eaten plain or dipped in chocolate or caramel sauce. In my case here, my Sunday Churros treat, I asked for Churros in BOTH chocolate and caramel drizzle.

Terrible. I know.

What I didn’t know…

I had a meeting with a fellow aikidoka yesterday for matters beyond our art. He is my  client for some translation work needed by his company. We’ve not been training in the same dojo for almost a year since we both started training at different dojos at different timings.

So after our work meeting, we caught up and he updated me with a piece of shocking news. That one of my favourite classmates from that dojo, an elderly man of 73 had passed on late last year. Uncle Michael was my favourite sparring partner. He was patient with my lack of understanding, he was gentle with his techniques and he was always, always full of wise words, churned out in a very calming manner. He played the Spanish guitar during our gatherings and he shared with us many stories, just like many good ol grandfathers do. So needless to say, when told of his passing, I was shocked. I learnt that sometime towards the end of last year, he had complained of severe stomachache and he thought it was just food poisoning. He was taken to the hospital and warded, where doctors found out it was not food poisoning but stomach cancer instead. His 73 year old body couldn’t fight it and it spread fast, taking his life not long after.

Although the meeting went well, and the catching up session was nice and all, I went home feeling out of my element.

Rest in peace Uncle Michael. You died months after you got your shodan. Congratulations for your black belt… you’ll be missed, truly.

Excuse me, I’m ill

And the worse part is that, no one can actually tell yet if I’m really a boy or a girl. And they confidently named me Mia. What if I’m actually a boy? I’ll be the laughing stock in the neighbourhood with a sexy name like that… 😦

Loktang

She (or perhaps he as we are still not quite 100% sure yet) has this really peculiar habit. She has these sporadic moments where she would actually go into a trance like bulldozing-biting spree, where she would obsessively bite anything in her way, heads on not unlike a bulldozer at work. When I first caught her doing it, the first thing that came to my mind was ‘loktang tengah menurun’… I don’t quite know how to explain that in English.

Initially it was a bit scary, then it turned funny… After a while we got used to it and just transport her into a bowl of kitten biscuits. At the very least, even in her ‘loktang’ moments, biting some nutritious snacks along the way won’t do any harm at all, we reckon.