I had the first blast
of not knowing what to say
to You
I enjoyed
that You
are no better than
Me
There's nothing much to say
really
but this Me
keeps jumping up and down
having a blast
of looking into you.
Panic
is staring at Me.
Hello.
The New Job.
A lot of you, my friends, have been asking me - hows the new job like? At this point of time, this marvellous oil drawing of mine explains it best..
In the new job, there're a lot of excitement, hope, interest, challenges, perhaps a serene ending, but not without a confusing and overwhelming start, ghost stories, new faces, new friends, and shadows of imbalanced expectations.
Haha - Tu la sapa suruh sms berkilo2... heheh.
Whatever it is, as Sarimah cutely puts it (everytime), chai-freaking-yok!
First Day at School: I've got bangs, bebeh!
The thing I remember most about my first day at school, darjah 1 at SRK Guru Nanak, was a picture that my father took of me in front of our ghost-laden house on Jalan Abdul Manaf, Ipoh. I was in a dark blue pinnafore, pony-tailed, and worked some serious bangs with even a seriouser look. It was an annoyed look, but cant remember lah what I was annoyed about. Everything was perfect, new.
We berjiran with an old couple, which I called Opah and Atok London. They’re known as the London couple because Atok speaks English like a Londoner. Opah, not so much. She wore a true Perak accent that I found amusing, cos Mak & Abah dont speak like that at all. On that day, Atok came out by the side of our shared pagar and commented (something like this la), ” Wah professor hari ni segak la nak pegi sekolah. You must study well okay! Ha ha ha!” (Well, he laughs a lot, this deep, sonorous laugh that’s contagious to his cucu, Abang Manap, and to my Abah too). He made it a habit calling me professor, my adik-adik - Wan:"doctor", Eli: "engineer", and the youngest, A'e : I cant remember, maybe he was too young to be assigned a career, hehe. But as magical as his laugh was, his words are even more. I think I am on my way to become a PhD doctor, Wan just passed his medic exam and is now Dr. Syafwan, Eli works with machines, though not really an engineer, and A'e, currently undecided (baru lepas matrix ni).
Abah must have sent me to school on my first day, but after that, I followed Mak to school on foot. It was a 15 minutes walk (one way) and Mak tried to hold my hand when she can cos the roads, though we used jalan taman perumahan a lot, were still visited by speedy cars. My first day to school was also my Mak’s first day to school. She transferred from her school in Tapah to the same school as I was enrolled in. She’s a teacher, you see.
I recalled that scene from Harry Potter the first movie, when all new students was selected into the “Houses”. “Griffindor!” the hat shouted. During my time, it was “Yellow!” or “Red!”. I was assigned the yellow house but later cried to my class teacher wanting it to be changed to blue. My friend from kindergarten (perhaps the only one whom continued her journey with me at SRK Guru Nanak) named Syarifah Nurul Akmam was in either yellow or green. But I know there was somebody in the class that got into blue, and I wanted to be with her so bad. This migration from yellow to blue proved to be a disappointing move 6 years down the road, where at the peak of my fame and glory as the senior in Standard 6, Blue House was sucking ass big time. And most obviously yellow won, with all my other cliques members championing it!
Post-election Kota Bharu, Evergreen Kota Bharu
I Voted.
My first experience voting is something that I will remember my whole life. I walked to the polling station, holding a really big umbrella that invoked giggles and tease of the pakcik-pakcik, who were holding kopi session by the roadside. The sky was rather dark, and I kept feeling the rectangular shape of my identity card in the back pocket, fearing I might have forgotten it.
As I stepped out of my gate, this is what I see. The polling station was located at the end of this road, on the left.
I accidently took this picture. See the sky? It was pregnant with water. Just about to rain.
This is our Dewan Orang Ramai, comfortably taken by the BN as a strategic venue to place Puteri-Puteri UMNO, may I add, very cute ones, at the table. See that pink shirt? What you can't see is the PAS booth right across the road, modelling their best breed of young men, also, able to melt those Puteris' hearts. These two, according to my Abah, were bickering dengan manja sekali at each other that morning, when all the elderlies were not there (all went to vote first thing in the morning). Comel nye rasa nak picit-picit pipi tu! Pinang karang! Aww!
Yes, this is the tempat keramat, completely ready with the yellow SPR/CSI tape around. I voted in one of those rooms behind the blue sign.
This is how I vote.
While eating my mother's rendang today, I mentioned to her:
"Mak, Su bersyukur sangat dilahirkan kat Malaysia ni. Dapat makan rendang yang sangat best. Kot2 lahir kat Philippines ke kan tak merasa rendang Mak ni?"
Down the Memory Lane.
There is one thing that I regret the most in this world. I had once behaved like a vain, self-absorbed bitch that I am certain costs me a friend. I didnt mean how I behaved, but one day someone else did the same to me, and I feel like slapping that person out of her pretense.
Whoa. Shoulda slapped my pretty little face first.
I had a friend. She used to be my everything. We share small things and big things and supported each other through our little asrama-life and it was fun. She was fun, beautiful, and real.
We'd be laughing like madwomen till 2 am on weekends, and eat maggi with cool water and would later be punished by wardens to sit by the fence, cold, in whatever shorts/ scissored t shirts that we were wearing. We'd be wondering together whether our prayers were accepted cos we do a lotta "jahat" things, which are not really jahat I dont think so.. Okay, maybe we hug our boyfriends, so what? hehe.. its not like theres no sluttier gals around that might have slept around.. :-) Uu...
But one day, after about 8 years separated from each other, I met her. My regrettable inability to say no to another friend who also asked me out had led us to go out together, all three of us.
And at that moment, I was someone else. Let me tell you whom I pretended to be. I was this tak sedar diri bitch who spoke with a freaking accent and talk about things like man,.. like I had a PhD on every matter! This friend never wants to do anything with me after that memorable meeting.
Who was that? I didnt like that girl at all.
My point of writing this is to get it out of my system.
So I won't do it ever again.
So that if she reads this (I doubt it), she'd have the heart to forgive me. (Yeah, she can slap me too if she likes).
So that I remember how much I dont like being pretentious. It's killing me.
So Sarimah can learn a thing or two about life.. hehee.. no lah, she's way too real to be pretentious.. She's like kurang upaya or something in terms of being pretentious. Simply not able to pretend like a bitch.
Cos maybe she already is.
Haha.
Excitement I was compelled to share.
When your friend is super excited about her wedding, you gotta be super duper magnanimously more excited than her. It's called bitch-support. If she calls you using the department store's phone asking for opinion on THE wedding fabric that in the end she won't give a damn about, you just go and give the damn advice anyway, and eat that ice-cream.
Français Comme Je l'ai Connu.
Eh bien, le moment que vous lisez cet entry, vous voyez que mon français n'est pas parfait. Alors, c'est bien naturel à cause de ne me pas l'utiliser depuis trois années. Mais, récemment, quel qu'un m'appeler pour un intervue et a demandé que je présente un petit recourse en français pour 2 minutes. Comme un speech, si vous voulez.
Je suis pas nerveuse, parce que on peut auta karek avec français orale et personne le réalisera. Et c'est plus fun aussi parce que SARIMAH ne vas pas comprendre ce que je dis et vas penser que ça c'est un grand entry qui se discuter à propos d'elle. Quelle joie de vivre!
Il est bien un majeure challenge d'écrire ça petite histoire, pourriez-vous imaginer de parler à propos des rélations internationales au public? Je dois mentionner comment la séparation the Nicolas Sarkozy de sa femme effecter la politique française.. et aussi peut être de Pak Lah avec sa nouvelle femme, Jean Abdullah? Très scandaleux, je vous dis.
Non, mes amis.. Il faut discuter probablement des sujets comme désarmament, la réforme de l'ONU, ou bien le sujet que je déteste de tout mon coeur, l'ASEAN.
Il sera un task dûr pour moi.. En plus avec le français qui ne peut pas m'installer au moins à la porte de l'ONU. Mais ce que j'ai, c'est de la faith, beaucoup d'elle. On verra!
V-Day Treat.
Been writing more poems nowadays. Perhaps cos it's shorter, though not necessarily simpler. Not that I dont have time - I'm on an indefinite vacation and Lord knows how much time I have to waste/fill.
Whatever.
Here goes another.
V-day, remember?
Masakan Baru.
Berapa lama
Masa
yang akan kita ambil
untuk
Mencernakan
Huruf-huruf yang menyebut
M-E-L-A-Y-U
C-I-N-A
I-N-D-I-A
J-A-W-A
B-E-N-G-A-L-I
I-B-A-N
K-A-D-A-Z-A-N
A-S-L-I
B-A-J-A-U
Masakkanlah huruf-huruf itu
menjadi suatu hidangan yang baru
mungkin bunyinya
BA-BAN-LA-LI-WA-CI-DI-AS-LI-ZAN-IN-JAU-DA-BEN-KA-NA-ME-JA-I-GA-A-YU
Lagukan kesemuanya sekali!
Rasailah nikmat harmoni rasa itu
Aku yakin
setiap ciri bahannya akan masih mampu
kau nilaikan satu persatu
Tapi yang lebih penting
Haruslah
yang baru itu dicari maknanya yang baru
ditolak-tolakkanlah sifat benci
dipanggil-pangilkanlah muafakat!
Kerna sesuatu yang indah
umpama Malaysia itu
Bukankah hasil tangan semua?
Lalu usah biarkan
Fikiran rosak membunuh
kecantikannya.
Ayuhlah!
Of Singledom, Freedom, and Papedom..
No matter how cool I look in my 20-ringgit-Paris Hilton-style-big ass-shade, I'd pretend to be cooler than that when the matter pops up (time and again and time and again).
"Mak ni, tengok orang sana sini bermenantu, teringin jugak nak buat kenduri kat rumah ni"
Hell.
Killer sentence follows,
"Mak pun dah sakit-sakit, tak tau la lama lagi ke tak nak jadi mak enkorang ni"
The implication is clear. I better get my ass on the pelamin soon, or she'll do something crazy to make me do it.
See, I'm 25. Not 35. And y'all 25-yr-old boys and girls are making me look 5 years older than I am by merely sending your wedding cards to my home (where my mother lives). Stop, for Heaven's sake. I'd appreciate sms invitation or email or some technologically advanced methods like Friendster or Facebook!
But you know, we (the yet-to-be-married hot ladies) can't be running away or sulking our hearts out when our mothers, aunts and grandmas do this to us, or if you have a friend like Sarimah who would still send that damn card to your home regardless. Ladies, UNITE! We've to reason, explain, and share what we plan to do in life so they'll see that while we want to have our own family one day, we're at the moment consumed with our worldly affairs and lust.
More than 5 of my girlfriends have had problems whereby their boyfriends are not approved by the Lord of the Darjat Rings reigning their family. Some ladies I talked to are hungry for money than the other word with the same sound but different spelling. Some others terbalik, but have no intention to get married. While that is scary shit (I still love you beb, u know who you are), there are other cases where you find your lady friends hooking up with their true love, who happens to consume his marriage every night and yet vilifies their wives so that their girlfriends pity them.
Then weirder ideas came into being like,
"Syu, aku rasa aku nak anak bf aku, even tho dia tak kawin ngan aku sebab bini dia tu garang. Ko rasa bayi tabung uji okay tk?"
Kill me now, I still dont know if bayi tabung uji can take the male donor's name or not.
My point is, when the time comes, it'll come. People are already messed up as they are and I have no intention to just masuk line sana sini for the sake of a marriage. Sometimes I just cant quite understand how things are so simplified by the older generations as if we're cats and don't really care who that we're marrying. Sometimes I think that people like me are just shunning it off for fear of losing our freedom.
I wish mothers see marriage as a papedom in a full course meal at a mamak place; it sure adds up the taste of that fiery melange of curry and nasi beriyani, and I will want its supply to last as long as the beriyani remains in my plate, but it will never be the center of my attention, at least not for now.
May the Eye of Mommy-Sauron be fixed on my brothers! God-speed!