Of nose hockey and royal flush.

Papa’s friend a doctor, as a freshie in medical school, he submitted to worse torment and is none the worst. If it was his son that came squealing home after the comparatively mild dose at the residential school, he would give the boy a belting and chase him back to school..

“Yeah” said papa who did journalism at the same university. 

Papa: Ragging is good for the soul. It toughens you up and it takes the air and grace out of you, cuts down to sizes, makes you realize you are not all that grand to have been chosen to enter university or college or residential school.

Doc: Nowadays freshie hardly merit the name of ragging, wash clothes and bed sheets? Buy ciggaretts for their seniors or write out lectures notes. We in our time had to wash drains and lavatories and then get ‘washed’ in turn in these, the most dreaded method being the ‘royal flush’. Talk of obscene words, for my batch and I it was more than words. We get educated and learnt what life is all about that way and move on, a little less green.

Papa: Imagine, there are boys from residential school running home to mama just because they were made to stand on a table and break a few plates and had pieces of crumpled papers thrown at them.

Doc: What would they have thought of old time specials, like dribbling a piece of soap with their nose as hockey stick, crawling and lying flat in obeisance, doing the pumps till they collapse, going through the most ridiculous posture and performances, forming the front line in hostel panty-raids and later climbing a flag post to hang the trophy there.

And these two gentlemen looking back and viewed all these as fun and in their second year they gave what they took and more to the new first year.

The girls got it too, took and gave as zestful as the boys. Seniors dreamt up some weird ideas for them.

Mama: There was this guy from medic, had these cadavers (dead bodies for dissecting). He cuts off one finger and slipped it into my roomate’s handbag. She didn’t even scream when she took the thing out and hold it in her hand. She took it sportingly, fell for the guy and married him.

Doc: What do you say to that Nina?

The question is directed to me……The fact is I enjoyed being ragged in college that was because I was only made to sing, dance, lifted up my long skirt to show my ankles at a beauty parade, accept and reject boys freshie’s proposals, get signatures from the seniors, learn to say I love you in nine languages, and yell support for the university at rugby matches in between chanting army versions of nursery rhymes and school song.

No royal flush, no nose hockey, no crawling, no pumping, no climbing, nothing cruel or humiliating, nothing too idiotic.  Certainly no dead man’s finger in my hand bag.

I fail to see the fun in that particular ‘joke’ but a chap who goes round putting dead fingers in a girl’s handbag is hardly my idea of a dream mate…..

The time for larks is when they have found their bearing and can give as good as they get, for larks are true larks only among equal….

It was once HOME SWEET HOME....

Papa and Mama sold their terrace house in RS Ipoh to our next door neighbour who’s been eyeing for the house since we moved to SA nearly 6 years ago.

Then they bought a new house – a semi-detached single in SP Ipoh. I thought it’s going to be a farewell once the property was sold but I guess they never get tired of Ipoh or maybe when they retire they are going back to Ipoh for good.

There goes the house in RS where I've been staying during my growing up years (since I was eight).

 I had the middle room while Along occcuppied the third. After a month we switched rooms so that I could be nearer to Bibik’s. Afiq who was then 2 was still sleeping with my parents.

There was a wild guava tree at the back compound of our home where papa built a tree house. (Those memories came rushing  back on my mind like seawaves as I looked at the pix of MB Resort tree house by the beach in Tioman) We spent days and nights on the tree house which held lots of secrets Along and I shared.

RS is where I call home sweet, sweet home, where I came back for term breaks during my S*T*F and pre_uni years.

We held lots of birthday parties, the birth of my youngest brother Eiman, countless Aidil Fitris and Aidil Adhas, New year celebs, thaksgiving, and the death of our 3 cats (Hamdan, Syed and Halim).

Hamdan was run down by papa when he was reversing his car. Poor thing...we buried him at the backyard. Syed was poisoned by my Indian neighbour (his 12 yr old son). It was actually a revenge. On that fateful day  Syed bounced and gobbled up Bala’s pet bird ferociously while he was holding the poor bird in his hand.. Syed came home one day with lots of bubbles in his mouth and died a few hours later. And Halim died of old age….

The house we lived in shared lots of happy memories, shrieks and laughter, of wonderful playful days with other kids in the neighborhood, childhood arguments and tears that we shed on uneventful moment during our 13 yrs life journey in Ipoh.

Initially, we (my siblings and I) thought mama and papa would keep the house and sought other means to acquire another house somewhere in Penang but we realize we are only shareholders of their dreams whereas they are makers of their own dreams come true.

According to Ma the new house in SP has a bigger lawn.

Mama: The compound is bigger. Ada la tempat for the kids to play and run around.

Me: Budak mana pulak nak lari-lari kat rumah kita Ma? Your kids are all grown up dah tua2.  Takkan Mama expect kami main hambat-hambat lagi?

She smiled… but I knew in her heart, she meant grandchildren since Billi is the only one..

Billi

Billi

 I dare not say more


          

Marital fighting

I remembered reading an article “Fight Your Way To Marital Happiness” written by Mr. Marcell Seidler an Austrian-born Australian psychotherapist while I was a student in Sydney.

I must translate the article for my Mak Ngah and I am convinced that her rheumatism is due to years of being the traditional angel wife to my Pak Ngah.

Mr Seidler speaks of the archetype Australian boor who sits in the pub drinking with his cronies while his wife cooks and mind his children at home. Well substitute ‘Malaysian coffeeshop’ and you have Pak Ngah. But does Mak Ngah grumble this ‘neglect of her as a person’. Not she. I doubts if she even think herself as a person.

Mak Long is made of sterner stuff though older she married later for tales of her temper frightened off prospective mother in laws.Then Pak Long equally notorious for his rages, insisted for the village shrew’s hand and no other and they been married 35 years now and she is still untamed.

In our family, when someone wants to describe something indescribably terrible or noisy or chaotic we says: It’s like Pak long and Mak Long fighting. In fact when they get going nothing in the house is safe, crockery and other breakable items. You pass their wimdow assorted unguided missiles may come flying at you.

And the Bahasa Melayu vocab that assails my ears, I got it quite so comprehensive and picturesque from no other source than Pak Long and Mak Long.

Both have colossal memories. Pak Long can trace Mak Long failures right back to the time the first burnt meal she served him and she can recite his sins, dating back to the time he flung said burnt meal out of the window.

Mak Su has a different fighting technique. Hers is the silent suffering stance. I had always wondered why Pak Su kept getting those midnite screaming fits that no medicine man could abracadabra away

Martyrdom is a form of aggression and can be very destructive.

Kak Aisyah a cousin. She is the sweetest, saintliest lady a man could ever wish for...... and everyone said how lucky Abg Mamat was to marry her. She would always give him the patience on a monument look whenever he is at fault and everyone was flabbergasted when he left her for a widow who regularly chases him round the garden with a frying pan.

Would you sleepy eyes?

It is the taming of a shrew for some husband.

Am I? 
A shrew.....

The........

I heard a very faint whisper as I pulled up my sleeping bag.

"Hon, you farted."

I was too sleepy, so all I could muster was, "When?" and went back to sleep.

He didn't reply. Instead, I felt him tucking the edges of my sleeping bag with a comforter as I curled back to sleep. Is this the man who talks about the stars, the galaxies and the universe and the wide  world in the Ultimate …… -and he can wake me up in the middle of the night in this never end desert boundries  just to tell me that I farted?

It was only a FART….

Naturally, next morning,  I was in the bath and I let out some air before I entered the shower.  @#%%%%% !!  The odour was... oh God, putrid, rotten  was an understatement. Quite honestly, I've never let out anything so vile. It smells like a rotting dead skunk that was left on my ar** for 2 days.

I slapped my forehead and thought...Gosh!. No wonder he woke me up! If this was the smell I let out last nite... oh OH  NOooooo..."

 I was constipated since two days ago, so yesterday I took two   laxatives in the afternoon. The directive was for me to take them before I go to bed. I guess there was a chemical reaction in my stomach that resulted in the the ccumulation of the offensive and  poisonous gases. I don't really know but that's what I think happened... The odour  was  unnatural that I had to look in the mirror to actually believe that it was me who farted in the bathroom.

Moral of the story: Please read AND follow directions when taking laxatives.

I stood there in the bathroom after shower, not wanting to go face the others especially him. I felt so embarassed. In the end I braced myself, and went for breakfast as normal. Spoke nothing of last night incident. I suppose if we were to live the rest six months of our job assignment in this kinda nomadic mode, I wish there shouldn’t be any more moments like this.

At 10.00am  at work, I received this note on my table:

"I tetap sayang u walaupun kentot u membunuh ribuan dgn hanya satu das."


Hey....it's not funny.

Kiss my hand to say mama

Ted: I was informed Malaysian do not kiss.

Me: You were wrongly informed. We do but not in public.

He looked relieve and a little speculative.

Me: Be careful even with your private kisses, you could be seriously misunderstood.

Yes, there is a cultural difference  in the meaning of a kiss, a touch? A kiss on the lips is nothing very special in the West.

It merely says: Thank you that was a delightful evening, you are sweet.

Jane: I’d worry if the guy didn’t kiss me. I’d think I was ugly or had bad breath or something.

But to a traditional Malaysian girl a kiss like this is A Happening depending on how she feels about the man, most probably she would  react with a scream or a swooning look. Either way he may end up doing a cross coutry run with her uncles or brothers hot on his heel. Anyway the Western friendly kiss seems unlikely ever to catch on, whatever else does.

Said Ted. He was in Malaysia last year and stayed with a Malaysian couple. They took him to see the sight, threated him almost all the local cuisine. Bar the heat and a bit of stomach upset due to the sambal otherwise he had a marvelous time. They seem westernized enough and there was no cultural gap. Saying goodbye at the airport, he pumps  hubby’s hand and bend to kiss the wife and she leaps into the air like a Boeing.

Ted: Since you studied and frequenting the West often how you feel about the western friendly kiss.

Me: The same when I started out. It’s just not me.

I was a bridesmaid to  a good friend during her wedding and when it was time to exchange kisses I quickly went up to the groom to give him the peckiest of  pecks, hardly touching him, this was wiser than waiting for him to pounce.

Ted: Do you suppose I can hold a girl’s hand without having the entire countryside avalanching on me?

Me: Better not risk it unless you are very sure of the time, the place  and the girl.

Ted: How do you guys out there ever get to first base with the girls?

Me: They use body and eye langusge. The rules only forbid the use of hands.

Ted:I better watch a Malaysian Cassanova at work.I might get an education

Me: And what does a kiss on the hand say in your language?

Ted: Lady, I salute your charm.

Me: Sorry. In Malaysian language it says… Mamma I’m your filial son.

Hahahaha…. 

The twist of fate...

Past fiction….

I looked up and saw pain in his eyes. Averting my gaze while sipping his coffee, he told me what had transpired since we parted nearly 10 yrs ago. I listened intently of the path of fate that had entertwined in between our lives.

We were at Al Bustan Rotana and were facing each other putting our life storie down in our cards. All the things we went through together and then separately in our own lives; but by some strange twist of fate we met here at this stop. FATED....  .

Love's so strange 
Playin' hide and seek, with hearts 
And always hurtin' 

And we're the fools 

Standin' close enough to touch 

Those burnin' memories 

And if I hold you 

For the sake of all those times 

love made us lose our minds 

Could I ever let you go 

Oh, no...we made it 

Left each other, on the way 

To another love 

Looks like we made it 

Or I thought so, till today 

Until you were there 

everywhere 

And all I could taste was love 

the way we made it 

(Looks Like We Made It ~ Barry Manilow)

Are we still holding on to old memories which suddenly came rushing back with no mercy?

Having gone through marital misery made me a cynic. I felt really sorry for him and quickly put that nagging feeling at the back of my mind as I felt what he needed most was an understanding not mere judgment.

Me: So what is happening now?

I asked trying very hard not to probe. From past personal experience I will only take information when offered. A hurt and betrayed person needed support and understanding, not interrogation. Too much probing will results in clamming and withdrawal further into the shell.

He: I am looking for a house to stay as we sold the house as part of the  divorce settlement.

Me: You are not going back to Mal?

He nodded.

We didn't stay long at the cafe because I have to hrry back to the hotel and M to whatever new life he has in front of him.

For me to be in a relationship the second time around with an ex, will have the benchmark raised higher.

Change is the only constant in life and love is NOT a guarantee. Practicality overrides any emotional highs. As it is, I was no longer a young person full of romantic idealism.

Instead I have turned into a romance cynic.

We shall become the good friends we once were supporting one another. We both must have been hurting too bad in our respective lives to make way for any new dimension. Once bitten twice shy. Twice bitten, nobody wants to try. Not with your best friend.

You can fool some people sometimes but you can't fool all the people all the time. Definitely we will never want to be fools in love. Not for the second time in our miserable lives.

I have Billi utmost priority but at the same time…… 

Hey do you miss me..?. 

PhD..??

My cousin Asilla just got her PhD, the first to do so in our family (amongst my batch of siblings and cousins) and she is holding a kenduri kesyukuran (thanks giving ceremony) next week.

And I wondered will I ever get a PhD? Will I even pursue to get a master's degree?? Will I ever get anything??? What the hell have I been doing????
Hmmm…

I remember way back then when life was easy as pie we used to hang out   for hours doing nothing except discussing silly things with friends and one of those silly talks involved what kind of titles we'll be getting when we got older.

Me: how about being a  Datin Siti.
Siti: No la, Puan Sri  lagi best.
Me: You have to marry a Datuk or Tan Sri.

Shikin: Ok la tu.
Me: I'd rather be Dr Nina or Datuk Dr Nina and maybe Professor Tan Sri Dr. Nina Ok tak? 

Ten years passed and I'm still a long way away to getting that 'Dr' in front of my name, and don't even consider the Datuk or Tan Sri. My ambiton of being a cardiologist was in the dust. And I have to settle with an UNSW Engineering Degree  and I often wonder will I be bold enough to battle for that “Ir” title to be put before my name soon. Will it increase my value as a human resource? I don't know yet.

I have two cousins and they are, both about the same age, both are mothers. But while one pursued a career in education, the other stayed home even though she has a degree from an American university and has a future in banking. And I thought, "Hey, my cousin, the housewife, achieved something too."

It ticks me into thinking…….   .

How do you measure a person's achievement? Isn't the General Manager of RSB corp as successful as each of the yearly Ibu Mithali recipients who nurtured and invested their time and money on human commodity instead of property?

Do all the Datuks and Tan Sris deserve more recognition than the Teacher of the Year who gave all his energy to ensure the next generation is well -learned?

Does a singer/actor deserves more respect than the people who picked your garbage three times a week so that your house doesn't smell when you're watching them on TV?

Well I guess, the answer lies within you.

Someone asked, “Are you happy being an engineer?”

From my observation, generally girls don’t really know what they want in their career compared to guys. Most guys know  what they want and when it comes to making money, they are more determined and they would work hard for it.

Girls on the other hand, work because they like the money or because parents/spouse need an extra income or like me, I have nothing better to do hahahaha….. If given the option, more girls would love to be a home maker (if you happen to be a feminist, you don't have to read this).

When I just came back from down under, I wanted to do something technical. In Malaysia, typically you will either end up in manufacturing or oil & gas industry, which will put you either in an industrial, remote/rural, offshore, desert, virgin jungle areas.  My dad told me to speak to his old colleague, who told me that less than 10% of engineering graduates did not end up being engineers but opted for a more money making corporate jobs. I join the majority but keep my option open.

Work is not that difficult – everything is do-able. It’s just a matter of execution. For me, the challenge is not the work, but more of time constraint. Long working hours is a norm. The thing that I don’t like about the job is I was at the bottom of the food chain. At the beginning it was okay, but after nearly a year I was done! I don’t think I was given fair chance to glow. I left because I couldn’t feel any sense of achievement then.

 Next I join the minority. Initially I work in the central office but I was already with Leodi at that point, my consideration was more of what  will happen to our relationship. Since I know which site I shall be assigned to, it was much easier for us to team up and plan our future and our first assignment together was in Tg.

It is a social suicide for me but being in a good and compatible team we worked our ways successfully around the SEA region for more than two years now.

Engineering job is more challenging and require more thinking and   you are not  time constraint  (but  in some cases you do, but rarely working till the wee hours for 7 days a week in a month). The thing is the nature of the job itself is different. Engineering job involves a lot of calculation and technicalities. And since each project is high risk, there is A LOT of consideration and calculated moves carefully put into it before it can be executed. The thing that I like about it is I can see my final product. If a report is produced, I see my name there. In my previous job, you play your role, and your boss becomes the presenter and you don’t see your name on the final report. Competition is not as crazy as my previous job – previously I have 10 peers and most are fighting for promotion. Right now, I may have one or two, even then we don’t fight for promotion as we know,  when we are ready we will get there. If technically we are not strong enough, we know not to fight for any promotion as the responsibility held in our head is waaaaay tooooo big.

My coming assignment will be the ME region. As expected, it will be a social suicide too. But work-wise, it will be good. I will learn a lot of interesting and challenging things. I will get to see variety of work for me. I get to lead, I get to be led, I get to meet not only Malaysian, and to be honest, I am going to enjoy it. Having said that though, I know  its not  easy  working  in this environment for a long time  because sometimes I can’t stand leading technicians – it is not an easy task but I have my ways bending and sculpturing  them.

 The thing about engineering is as you go up the seniority ladder, the bigger  the responsibilities  you hold and I know  that I will be the  next big thing Malaysia could ever produce .

Wish me luck….

What Humanity Really means.

I wanted to blog  this during the fasting month but was too exhausted by the end of each day  (being temporary homemaker, minding two kids and a sick grandma…).

The Japanese are well known for many admirable things.

…………………………………………………..........................

The earthquake and tsunami that walloped Japan left much of its coastline ravaged, but left one thing intact: the Japanese reputation for honesty.

In the five months since the disaster struck, people have turned in thousands of wallets found in the debris, containing $48 million in cash.

More than 5,700 safes that washed ashore along Japan's tsunami-ravaged coast have also been hauled to police centers by volunteers and search and rescue crews. Inside those safes officials found $30 million in cash. One safe alone, contained the equivalent of $1 million. 

The National Police Agency says nearly all the valuables found in the three hardest hit prefectures, have been returned to their owners. 

"In most cases, the keyholes on these safes were filled with mud," said Koetsu Saiki with the Miyagi Prefectural Police. "We had to start by cutting apart the metal doors with grinders and other tools." 

Determining who the safes belonged to, proved to be the easy part. Saiki says most kept bankbooks or land rights documents inside the boxes, containing their names and address. Tracking the owners down, was much more challenging. 
Total of $78 Million Was Returned to Owners in Wake of Japan Catastrophe 

"The fact that these safes were washed away, meant the homes were washed away too," he said. "We had to first determine if the owners were alive, then find where they had evacuated to." 

Saiki says Miyagi police fanned out across the region, searching for names of residents posted at evacuation centers, digging through missing person reports at town halls, sorting through change of address forms at the post office, to see if the owner had moved away. When they couldn't find the documents, police called listed cell phone numbers, met with mayors or village leaders to see if they recognized the names. 

The number of safes continued to increase as the clearing of tsunami debris led to more discoveries. Police stations struggling to find space for them housed the valuables in parking garages and meeting rooms. 

Saiki says 20 percent of the 2,450 safes found in Miyagi turned out to be empty. But, the remaining 250 boxes contained much more than cash. Some included bars of gold, antiques, even crafted boxes containing a child's umbilical cord, a common memento of child birth. Police had to delicately comb through the keepsakes, since many of the items were damaged, after being soaked in seawater and mud for days or weeks. 

The stashing of cash in safes isn't a unique problem in Japan, where many people prefer to keep their money at home, but Saiki says the number of boxes is especially high in the coastal region where fishermen make up a large part of the population. Fisheries companies prefer cash transactions, and keep employee salaries in safes, he said. 

The number of lost items recovered has declined with every month, but Saiki says his department continues to receive a handful of safes a week. 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/honest-japanese-return-78-million-cash-found-quake/story?id=14322940

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 There's no Finders’ Keepers mentality there. If it's not yours, then you need to return it to its rightful owner. These finders  may have been victim of the same catastrophe but not for  a split second having ideas of keeping and using the money for their own benefits.
  
Maybe to them, this is not a big thing. But to me, who have seen the selfishness of mankind daily...it is a respectable  character. I am so  impressed.