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.....