Let’s be honest.

This blog thing just isn’t working out. Lofty goals about wanting to make this a sure-fire journal have all but disappeared.

I’m doing too many things at one go and this blog was always first on the list to get the axe.

On the plus side though, it doesn’t mean I’m not writing anymore. I actually am, and doing it on a better platform, I’d say. *chuffed*

Some of you who are reading this already know about the new move, but those who don’t and are curious enough to want to know what in hell I’m talking about, leave a comment here with your email addy and I’ll get back to you.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Peace.

“A woman is at her most beautiful as she is about to put on her hijab, at that very moment when she pulls the cloth over her head and the fabric cups the elongation of her face.

She is at her most beautiful then because she is removing herself from the superficial and temporal, and elevating herself to a higher degree – one of pure worship.“

We were caught in traffic along Jalan TAR, en route back to the apartment. In front of the old Odeon cinema that now houses a myriad of little shops.

As we sat stationary in traffic, H said “Dont look. Kesian (pity) that Indian man on the pavement, urinating in full view of everyone.”

I looked.

There he was, this old Indian chap, obvious drunkard, looked maybe 60 years or so, really dark skin, white hair, moustache and beard, attracting everyone’s attention with his unsavoury activity.

What was pitiful was not so much the fact that he was urinating in public and indifferent to all the stares he was getting, but how he was carrying out the action.

His tattered jeans were dropped halfway down his legs, he had no shoes on, and a steady stream of liquid the colour of dirty gold trickled forth, while his eyes were shut tight and mouth stood agape. Bizarrely, his facial expression was one of almost pure rapture as he urinated on himself, standing in his own golden pool. The bottoms of his jeans soaked up the liquid like a thirsty camel.

It was a very hard thing to look at, obviously.

People either avoided looking or stared in shock then quickly rushed off. That’s understandable.

What I couldn’t accept was this young Malay couple, walking hand in hand, pointing at him and laughing their heads off. Even as I sat in the air-conditioned car with windows shut tight, I could hear the young man’s guffaws. His female counterpart, seemingly in a demure fashion, giggled into the edges of her tudung (headscarf) which was brought over her mouth. It’s unbecoming for a young woman to laugh out loud, you see. They continued to revel in being entertained by the Indian man’s activities, and even other passers-by looked at them rather disapprovingly.

It made me so angry. I glared at them for as long as our car was alongside them. They looked back. After a while, the girl bowed her head, seemingly embarrassed. Good, she should be. But the young man – oh no, he was boldly defiant. You know, the kind that look back at you and then raises his head towards me, like, so what aunty?

I just kept glaring. As the lights turned green, my parting shot to him was to just shake my head at his cockiness and bad behaviour. I did catch a slight twitch of uneasiness on his part, but this was quickly muted by what I knew was him muttering a whole string of lovely phrases in my honour.

It’s bad enough that we won’t do anything to help that Indian man out, myself included, so the least we can do is to not vilify him when we are far from perfect ourselves. Just walk away. No need to take it any further.

Sure, we may not partake in the activity of urinating on ourselves, but cruelty and taking pot shots at another’s imperfections aren’t very endearing traits either.

“Dah-haa, dah-haa” => Mummy, I want that.

“Dah, dah, DAH!” => Gimme that NOW!!

“aaaaaaAAKKK!!” => Sod off!!

“SAT-errr, SAT-err” => He uses this when he’s trying to list or name objects. Apparently, it stems from “satu”, i thought he was trying to pronounce his name.

“TEttoooo!!” => Thank you.

“Da DAAAAA!!” => Daddy la, what else.

But if you ask him to say Daddy/Dada (rather than when he wants to say it on his own), he’ll reply “MummaaaaAAA!!” with an impish grin. And of course, he won’t say “Mummy/Mama” when asked.

“Bubbah” => Barney

“Qaq!! QAQ!!” => Deep throat version for ‘cat’ or ‘car’. Think he should be able to pick up Arabic easily.

“Buhbaaaaaa!!” => Bye bye

Stay tuned for more linguaseth examples.

The subject of where to send MS to school once he’s of school-going age has always played in my mind, from the time he was still a shapeless fleshling in my belly.

I’ve often been accused of being too kiasu about the whole thing. Maybe I am being a little overly enthusiastic about it, but I do believe that my concerns are warranted.

Malaysia, for a fact, has perhaps one of the most ridiculous educational infrastructures in place for a developing country.

I’m not even referring to the dime-a-dozen local colleges & tertiary institutions (I’m a local grad myself, by the way, so this isn’t a discriminating standpoint) which roll out thousands of graduates each year in every possible discipline known to man; but merely to the first tier of education – primary school.

Let’s face it – the system of education in place now isn’t like how it used to be during our growing up years, let alone our parents’ (I hold the view that post-Merdeka, our parents’ generation had perhaps the most well-rounded education. It shows – even in their old age.).

The only options available for H and me to send MS to school when he reaches school-going age would be (in random order):-

(1)    An international school;
(2)    A private school with a local syllabus;
(3)    A private school with an integrated syllabus (like those Islamic schools which teach everything in English but also provide all the necessary religious guidance for children of that impressionable age);
(4)    A Chinese school;
(5)    A government school (SRK).

If I’ve left any other possibility out, please do me a favour by enlightening me. I hope none of my friends who read this will take offence to what I say here, as the views are merely my own, and each of you would have had your own set of considerations as to why you chose a particular route.

Given a choice, an international school would be my first choice. But obviously, because of the huge financial costs involved (especially since it’s expected that once you send your kid to international school, you are also acknowledging the fact that your child’s entire education right until the time he graduates from university will be foreign-based, and most likely personally funded by you as he isn’t going to get any aid from local loans or scholarships unless he’s really exceptional).

It is my belief that an international school would be best for MS because at the root, you just can’t go wrong with exposing your child to other children from other parts of the world, to their cultures and practices, and exposing them to yours. It’s my observation that children who go to international schools have an aura of confidence about them, and are at ease around others. The syllabus is also very well-rounded, and focuses more on building a child’s life skills rather than being exam-oriented. I observed this with the children of fellow Malaysian expats in Egypt who sent their children to either American or British schools. At such a young age, schooling should be fun, stimulating whilst at the same time being educational. But well, because of the high financial cost, it isn’t an option, unless H is earning megax1000 big bucks or is an expat somewhere and MS’ education is covered.

I will not consider private schools which teach a local syllabus because I’ve witnessed too many examples of the rich-kid-syndrome or the not-so-rich-kid being affected by others with the rich-kid syndrome. Even if the teachers were good, I don’t think I want to expose MS to that type of environment or elitist mentality.

A private school with an Islamic integrated syllabus is more appealing to me than the regular private school, because I like the idea of MS being taught the necessary foundations of his faith in an environment which is more diverse, ie not a typical sekolah agama where all students are of the same race. I just don’t like the idea of confining his thinking to just Malay Muslims. Instead of that, I’d rather have an ustaz come and teach him at home (with mommy hovering in the background just to make sure that the ustaz doesn’t put any funny ideas in MS’ head!). Plus at an IIS, everything is taught in English so can’t go wrong there. The only aspect which I don’t find attractive about these IIS is the tendency towards Arabisation. I want MS to learn about his faith and that Muslims come in all colours and cut across all cultures.

A Chinese school is one prospect I’ve been exploring for a while now, and I’ve gotten mixed reactions from friends and family on this. Some Malay friends & family members have balked at the idea, some others have shared as to how their nephews & nieces who went to Chinese schools became so straight-laced as a result of the teaching style that they just didn’t know how to have fun anymore. Some others volunteered that the workload in Chinese schools was just too heavy and was hard on the child (this coming from a Chinese herself). My gentle retort to that would be to question how different would that be from the way we’re already shuttling kids from a normal school to tuition, to Kumon, to music class, all in a day? Often by the time the kid gets home, he just crashes out or refuses to even think about doing anymore schoolwork. Who could blame him? Plus, the idea that MS will be able to read and write in Mandarin, the tongue of the new world, in addition to English and BM is very attractive.

Then there are the government schools. Let’s be frank. There aren’t many good ones to go around, and for the few that are good, almost every right-minded Malaysian citizen who wants a good local education for his/her child is fighting tooth and nail and using every available cable there is to enrol their child into that school.

Realistically for H and me, the most plausible option would be to send MS to a government school. The fears in taking that step however, are manifold, and I am sure most of you who are parents of schoolgoing children are acutely aware of these problems, which I reproduce below (feel free to add on if I’ve missed any):-

(1)    Hodge-podge syllabus which makes no sense at all – I’m still dead against teaching Maths & Science in English because that maketh not a person proficient in the language. Just improve the English language syllabus and get good teachers to teach the kids good English from Standard One! Is that so hard?

(2)    Teaching them Arabic in primary school. What good will that do? It’s not as though they will use Arabic in their daily lives in Malaysia. If it’s in the IIS it’s different, because the child will be exposed to a broader range of Islamic studies, some of which may require a basic understanding of Arabic. But in a government school – what’s the benefit? They may as well teach Mandarin & Tamil, at least that will encourage deeper interaction between these young Malaysians.

(3)    The overwhelming Malay majority in government schools, which is steadily increasing each day as more and more non-Malays opt out of the government school system – mainly because of the “Islamification” of these schools. I am all for educating our little ones on faith, but I don’t see why we should force it down their throats at such a young age, especially when Malaysians aren’t made up of one homogenous group. I had a conversation with a non-Malay friend a few months back, and she said this was precisely the reason why she didn’t want to send her kid to a government school – because the Islamization aspect was too strong. I don’t blame her.

(4)    Then even once you find the right government schools with credible teachers, you need to consider the student make-up. For example, if you send your kid to a primary school in an upper middle-class neighborhood, they will still be exposed to kids having the ‘rich-kid-syndrome’, sometimes more so than even in a private school. Similarly, if you send your kid to a primary school in a regular neighborhood, the teachers (and often as a result, the students too) take a lackadaisical approach towards education, and the kids often don’t put much emphasis in studying unless if the parents stuff them with tuition, etc. Gone are the days when government schools had a good mix from all classes of society and in all colours.

I hark for those days that I fear will never return, and so my dilemma remains on where to send my son to school. I was told that I need to register him once he turns 2 years old (for government schools at least), so all I have left is about 6-7 months to come to a decision.

Any thoughts on this, friends?

I’ve just celebrated my 2nd mother’s day. Well, it actually felt like it was the first one, because I wasn’t feeling particularly celebratory when the first one was upon me while we were still in Egypt.

I almost forgot this year’s mother’s day too, if not for the poster in the elevator, focusing on the hotel’s mother’s day promotion. H, MS and me thought we may as well kill two birds and so took mom out as well. Headed to Sheraton Subang for the high tea, but in truth, it was rather ordinary.

Anyway, I don’t feel like I need to be revered on that day. Sure, it’s nice to have a day when people remember mothers and all their sacrifices and contributions, but hey, that’s part and parcel of the roles we each play on this earth.

I’d much rather prefer it if my H were to acknowledge my role daily – no roses, cakes or expensive meals needed, just a thank you for the little things I do, and the occasional appreciative glance. I must say that I am blessed, because I do get all that from him, and more. All the more so now, after MS came into the picture. I often just go with the flow and do what I feel is within my scope of duties and responsibilties as a Muslim wife and mother, but he will embarrass me with his gushes of gratefulness and appreciation.

I’m not complaining, in fact I rather enjoy it – and perhaps that’s the reason why I don’t see the need to have the whole mother’s day shebang. So much so that I didn’t even realise that it was upon me.

BEsides, a lot of places are charging more than an arm and a leg for a mother’s day meal. Daylight robbery!! We’re getting bloody ridiculous in this respect. Everything’s being commercialised to a nauseating extent that it becomes hard to find the meaning behind the whole event. Just take them Ramadan buffets as a prime example. I wonder how much this year’s buffets will cost.

I’m not going to waste my money on overpriced Ramadan buffets – the only time I will grudgingly have to consider attending any of them is when it’s more to meet up with friends. I mean, how much can my poor stomach take in during the fasting month anyway?

I believe however, that I did eat H’s money’s worth for the mother’s day buffet.

Here we go, block again.

Actually no, it isn’t so much of a block as it is lack of time and limited resources.

See, one of the reasons for my downhill blogging trend is because of the advent of F@cebook and now recently, Twitt3r.

When you only have a limited number of hours in a day to do all that needs doing, cleaning, washing, writing, calling, .. you get the picture, you often look for the most expeditious way to do things. And fortunately or otherwise, that’s what F@cebook and Twitt3r give me.

Often when I have thoughts or ideas which whizz past my mind’s eye, the quickest way to ‘publish’ it without much contemplation is to put it on my F@cebook and Twitt3r statuses. So I get to say what I want to say down pat in under 200+ characters or so (less for Twitt3r) – but this results in bad English abbreviations, just for the sake of publishing. Erk.

The downside to this of course, is that by the time I’m sitting in front of my laptop staring at the new blog post page, I have no input.

Same thing happening right this minute. I thought I had an idea to write about, then by the time I rambled the above, the idea is gone.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so idealistic about this blog.

Whatever I feel like writing and saying, even if it’s just a 2-liner, I’ll do it. And then use the tech function that allows me to export posts from here into my F@cebook, so I kill 2 birds. Worth a shot.

He stood barely 5-feet tall. A sticky mop of matted black hair that hadn’t been washed in years. Oh you know, that look which rastafarians have hijacked as their own.

A long-sleeved shirt which once was perhaps white or beige but now black as soot hung limp from the bones of his shoulders. His ribs snuck out from behind the unbuttoned shirt, scowling against his burnt, shiny chest. Long, black trousers swept across the muddy and wet gravel surface of the road. One old slipper to protect the left foot, the right foot at the mercy of the elements.

He hobbled in a wayward curve, then stopped, retraced his steps and then hobbled along again – each time adding a little variation to his path – a little left turn here, circle back, then another left turn again, pause, then two steps back. As he did his little silent dance, his audience of curious yet repulsed patrons at the surrounding food stalls took in his every move.

Ugh, he’s filthy. He should be off the streets. Gives a bad name to the city, these vagrants. Must have gambled off his livelihood and family, serves him right. There must be at least 50 different types of infectious diseases in that living dead. Oh god, what if he urinates and defecates near these food stalls at night? That’s it – I’m not eating here anymore. Just look at him, uh repulsive – what on earth is he doing with his fingers in that mud puddle? Oh no, he’s coming closer – look away, look away!

With a vile grin that showcased rotting teeth and blackened gum stumps, laboured heavy breathing that smelled like rotting flesh, he hovered above them next to the table, swaying from side to side, hands moving in synchrony but fists clenched tight.

They didn’t dare lift their heads by even so much as an inch. The food on the plates was gone. The drinks almost finished too. The seated audience looked silly now, staring down at the plastic pink table cloth like that, all in unison, shifting restlessly on their broken little plastic chairs.

Then, in the span of a blink, a black hand dashed towards the table. The gush of air accompanying the burst of action reeked of urine and pus. A young woman seated at the table retched spontaneously and almost regurgitated her meal. Other patrons jumped out off their seats as if a naked leper had landed right-smack in front of them.

He looked at them with eyes glazed like a dead man’s, shifting his gaze from one patron to another. The young woman wasn’t even looking at him now, her face invaded by beads of sweat. The other patrons stood ramrod still, not even daring to exhale the air trapped in their lungs.

Then slowly and purposefully, with the grace of one who wined and dined at social events, he sat down on one of the empty chairs, picked up a leftover piece of cucumber from a plate and delicately inserted it into his mouth with fleshless fingers tipped with muddy fingernails.

As he chewed the little morsel with head bowed, the petrified spectators slowly withdrew into the background. One by one, they silently thrust money into the hands of the nonchalant stall owner, and tiptoed away.

He knew they were leaving. The stench of disgust mixed with fear was fast dissipating.

It didn’t matter. His job was done.

As he raised from the table, taking in a sip from the melted ice in one of the plastic cups left behind, the stall owner gave him a knowing little nod, barely obvious to the unobserving eye. He returned the gesture with a wink, and hobbled away.

Trudging along the pavement and across the road, past uneasy diverted glances from passers-by, he carefully climbed down a grassy slope and headed for his hidden enclave under the bridge.

Weaving and crossing over a body of slumped drug addicts high in their fixes, he took out a key from his tattered trousers and unlocked a metal filing cabinet which stood taller than him.

He then began the routine of removing the make-up, matted wig and tattered clothes, followed by a cleansing of his face, arms and feet with some soap and water kept in bottles which lined the bottom shelf of the cabinet. After drying himself with a clean small towel, he put on his cotton checkered shirt, pressed beige trousers and brown leather loafers which were all neatly arranged on another shelf.

Oh, better not forget to gargle the mouth too. His old teeth were rotting, and if not for the fact that they now served him a purpose, he’d be off to the dentist in a flash to have them removed and replaced with nice dentures.

As he sprayed on some cologne and looked at his age-worn but clean face in the cracked mirror hanging in the cabinet, he couldn’t suppress a chuckle.

It’s amazing what drastic courses of action some employers would take to ensure that their employees get into the office early, he observed, as he stepped over the addicts still in their drowsy stupors and headed for his clients’ offices to collect his earnings.

In the hope of finding some writing material worth rehashing as new blogposts (yes, my brain is that blocked right now), I combed through some of my old blogs.

And boy, I certainly had quite a few. At last count, no less than 7 different blogs – one after another.

Just goes to show how flighty and fickle I was (still am), but more interestingly, how my thought processes worked so very differently then.

It was rather bizarre reading some of the posts – I could be so verbose and convoluted in some of the posts that even I can’t understand what I wrote back then. I seemed to have a better ability with descriptive writing then though. Sigh.

The other thing worth sighing about is how I was able to just write without having to constantly look over my cyber shoulder and self-censor. I just let it all out and boy, that’s how the ideas and writing just oozed out.

This is the hazard of making one’s blog public and identifiable to the writer in real life.

So many topics which would otherwise be fair game have been chucked because of the need to keep the skeletons where they’re supposed to be.

The only solution I can see to this at this juncture – is to set up a private blog elsewhere, which doesn’t relate back to me, hahaha.

My God my writing SO sucks right now. Help.

These past few weeks have been tough. The weather has been erratic – searing heat from late morning to late noon, and then followed by torrential downpours which often leads to massive traffic jams for the masses trying to head home after work. MS has had numerous bouts of flu, coughs, colds, fevers, etc as a result and mommy obviously, is drained. Here’s hoping that these frequent bouts of illnesses will help boost his immunity in due course.

I’m wondering now whether I was a tad bit ambitious in thinking that I can manage to pull off a study course when time isn’t on my hands.

MS has been going to daycare for almost a month now, and in all that time, the free hours I have in the morning and in the afternoon are always consumed by other more pressing matters, like errands, household chores, family requests, dealing with a bleeding slow internet connection, etc. Honestly, by the time I’m done with cleaning the apartment from top to toe, washing MS’ clothes, ironing H’s work shirts, cleaning Tigger’s litter box, doing the grocery & laundry runs, etc – it’s time to pick MS up from daycare.

It’s not just the lack of time, it’s the lack of inspiration & ideas too. I seem so brain dead these days. By the time MS is off to bed around 9pm, I’m exhausted myself, and even if I don’t sleep, there isn’t much that I can achieve in terms of intellectual thought or assignments. Even reading during those few hours before I hit the sack myself is becoming an increasingly difficult task – can’t even stay focused on what I’m reading for more than 2 minutes, so often I will be stuck on the same page of a book for about a week before I manage to bring myself to the next page.

It’s frustrating, to say the least.

I should have an established routine by now, but somehow that keeps eluding me. Some may say that I shouldn’t go for routine, that it’s monotonous – but I’m a creature of habit. Routine calms me. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally break into spontaneity (that tends to happen quite often too), but in general, over the course of time, routine works to keep me on the straight and narrow.

I read some of my fellow bloggers’ blogs and I get frustrated – where do their ideas pour in from? Why is it becoming so hard for me now? I keep a journal and all, but even my journal has nothing worth sharing. It’s become nothing more but a day-to-day account of my little life. That’s fine, but I was hoping that I’d have little bits of exciting life observances to share. As yet, nadda. Grrr.

Well I’m not giving up. The ideas may not be coming in but I can still ramble about daily musings & frustrations.

And this is one.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!