Of Dreams and Yearnings

i was at a farmer's market pushing an empty shopping cart. that must be from Food Inc. The producers recommended that we shop at local farmer's markets rather than at large supermarket chains.

there were samples for tasting in the bread aisles. i tried the babka and it was mildly sweet. that must be from looking through the bread section in McCall's Cooking School manual before i went to bed.

i looked in all the bread bins but there were no babkas left. somebody said they must be sold out. that must be from work. anything that goes on sale on friday is sold out by sunday.

someone came up to me from behind and grasped my shoulders. i didn't know who it was but i let her hug me and touch her cheek to mine. i felt the familiar softness of my mom's skin. i smelled the gentle perfume of her night time lotion. i felt my chest squeezed by how much i miss her. this must be from reading a text message from her the day before.

i don't know who this person is but she feels just like Mama so i let her hold me.

i turned around and it was her. Mama. between sobs and tears she tells me that everyone is back. we walk arm in arm down the street. my twenty-nine year old sister at age twenty came towards us. her husband and daughter doesn't exist and her cheeks had the blush that only innocence can give.

the men of our family waited by the car. it's a familiar scene. it's one of those nights when we're just returning from a special dinner somewhere. everybody is satiated and longing for bed but reluctant to bring the evening to an end. we jostle into the backseat, hear the engine hum to life and doze to my parents' quite conversation on the drive home.

this distant memory of a childhood ritual somehow made it into my dream last night.

Furniture

I assembled some furniture this week. Three five-tiered bookcases and a two-tiered shoe rack, to be exact. It's amazing how liberating such a simple task can make you feel.

I attacked the first bookcase with much anxiety and an overdose of attention to detail. I read and reread the instructions. I checked and cross-checked the diagrams to make sure I had all the pieces in the right position and that I used the right screws. My throat was dry and my heart palpitated as if I was going on stage. It's ridiculous how afraid I am of making mistakes.

The second bookcase was less of a challenge. I was familiar with all the pieces and how they fit together. I tried different maneuvers to see if the task could be made easier. It was a right decision in some instances, wrong in others. No matter. I told myself that perfection is for God. We humans settle for a lot less.

The third bookcase was a breeze. I hardly glanced at the instruction sheet. The wrong maneuvers were avoided, the right ones were repeated. My fingertips were sore and red. My pyjamas were covered in wood dust and wood chips. The bookcases seemed to be leaning against one another.

No matter.

I have assembled three bookcases all on my own. Now I feel as if there's no limit to what I can do with my little orange screw driver.

The Dream

I had a dream about some family friends that was as disturbing as it was mind-boggling.

In the dream, the father was mercilessly kicking the wife, who had her arms around her daughter in a protective hug. She resolutely stared at the floor, grimacing with each blow but not making any attempt to run away from the attack. Her stance had the certainty that the assault would end soon. All she had to do was to weather it. It will be over soon.

I stood at a distance as one witnessing a dirty family secret finally being exposed.

That family I saw in that dream resembled nothing of the family that I know in real life. The father is most loving and the mother has the vocal disposition of someone who shall and will never stand passively in the face of violence against herself or her child. The dream was completely false and I know that.

Yet it disturbs me so much. I felt as if I’d been divulged a secret through that dream. Although it was completely false, I felt as if it was inspired by some measure of truth. I can normally trace every aspect of my dream to some occurrence I had witnessed or experienced during the day, even the ones that didn’t make any sense.

Had I witnessed something that hinted of abuse within the family? A discrete shove, a secret glare of disapproval or a quick ducking behind someone’s back after a wrong doing? Is there a truth to that dream that’s hiding somewhere in the recesses of my mind? Are there pieces of a puzzle that are waiting to be put together?

Perhaps this is just a matter of my brain firing off the wrong signals in the wrong sequence. Perhaps there is a truth to that dream that evades me. Perhaps its truth is too ugly and my defence mechanisms kick in whenever I come close to uncovering it.

So much time, so little to do

I'm missing some people so terribly I'm rendered inarticulate, blog-wise.

My days have suddenly been flooded with time and space again. No amount of cooking, cleaning, organizing, facebooking, sleeping and praying can fill the hours graciously allotted to me each day. At the risk of sounding like a nerd, I will say that I can't wait for school to start again.

Exams, assignments, deadline pressure, stress and quick, inadequate lunches - YUM.

Summer dear, I'm thoroughly done with you.

My Twilight Years Abound

I finally managed to force myself to watch 'Twilight'.

For the entire duration of the movie, only two thoughts recurred to me. The first was that this was just another teenage-vampire-love story. The second was that the reason I can't relate to the media frenzy that it's caused may be strongly related to my distance from my high school days. I feel so old.

Summer Project

Sprout your ornaments!

What you need:
1. A decorative pot of your choice
2. Any bean of your choice - you can even make your own mix of sproutable beans!
3. Water - preferably in a spray bottle for easy application

How:
1. Spread beans in a thin layer at the bottom of your pot - just about enough to cover the base of the pot.
2. Soak the beans over night in water - they will expand up to twice their original size. You will need roughly once cup of water for one table spoon of green beans. Adjust the amount of water according to the size of beans you are using.
3. Drain the water and spread the beans evenly in the pot. Place the pot where there is enough sunlight for the beans to sprout.
4. Spritz the beans with water periodically and toss them gently around to make sure they are evenly coated in water - do NOT drown them. Ever.
Note: if the beans start to smell funky or if fungus start to appear, simply rinse the beans in cold water and be gentle so as not to damage their sprouts. Once they are fully grown as seen in the picture, you can water them regularly once a day.

Time required : You should be able to see green leaves as shown in the picture in approximately two weeks's, depending on the type of beans you use.

Going off on tangents a la Sebald

It's one of those nights again.

My body's dead tired but my mind refuses to stop. Odd thoughts visit me when the lights are out and there's nothing for my eyes to focus on.

For some reason the memory of my long-deceased friend comes back to me. While I replayed bits of what I can remember of him, my mind goes off on a tangent. I tried to decipher the reason I am suddenly thinking of him. Maybe it isn't so sudden. The day has been filled with the news of a famous pop icon's death. Maybe that's what's gotten me to thinking of him. Amongst those that I've lost, his was the hardest one for me to deal with. Perhaps it's because he was especially close to me compared to the others. The fact that he was my age was certainly a factor. It seemed like a great injustice for his life to have ended while mine was still laid out before me. But I will not go there. Allah knows best and from Him come the best decisions.

The loved ones I have lost were almost all in their golden years or had been suffering from some illness or the other. Their deaths were expected, even presaged by the incessant visits by relatives and friends who would not have otherwise presented themselves so gravely under normal circumstances. Amongst my earliest memories of witnessing the coming of death took place in my hometown of Kota Bharu. The daughter of one of my mother's cousins was in her final days after a battle with kidney disease. I must have been six or seven years of age. I remember listening to the somber tones of people talking about her condition, giving a wide berth to the reality of what laid right before them. The dying one's sister described the difficulties of feeding her with an apathetic helplessness I couldn't understand. My mother suggested cooking some porridge, the kind we often make when someone was too sick to consume anything else. They talked for a while on how it was important for her to get the daily required intake of food and how best to achieve that. Porridge was the answer- it's easy to digest and easy to prepare.

I remember feeling confused. Was she not dying? Is it not inevitable at this point? Were we not there to say our farewells, pray for her soul and comfort her family? I couldn't understand why they were carrying on the conversation as if she might regain her health in a week or two. The talk was curiously optimistic, as if to keep at bay the grief that was sure to come. In the meantime she laid there, her chest feebly rising and falling while her eyes roamed the room half-open, staring at a future visible only to her dying gaze.

I remember looking for some ominous sign of the coming of the angel of death. Perhaps something dramatic that I would be able to tell my friends in our callow explorations of such weighty topics as death, divorce, evil spirits and the significance of birthmarks. I watched the bleak walls, the worn curtains dancing on the windows, the pale green linoleum floor and the furniture that were all pushed against the walls to make floor space for whoever came to visit. It was as if the sickness had spread its arms amidst the clutter in the house to make way for death, the same way a bodyguard parts a crowd to make way for a celebrity to pass through.

News of her death came several days later, alongside the news that my aunt's train was stranded on the tracks and that the coronation of the new Sultan of Kelantan is postponed indefinitely due to the rains that portended another wet monsoon, much to my pleasure.

MJ passes on

When news of the king of pop's demise reached me, I was initially amused. My first thought was, 'Is this another hoax?' Of all the bizarre and oftentimes ridiculous pieces of news that surface, this is not much different. After the news was confirmed and recapped more times than I care to mention within the hour, I began to feel sad. Not so much for his death, but

more for the tragic life that he has had in the public eye. From dangling his baby from a hotel balcony to his ranch being repossessed by banks, every bit of detail about his life seems to slide on a scale of peculiarity. And the media (and the public) never fails to lash on to story and bleed them for what they're worth. When news program after news program featured his demise as their headline as a 'tribute', all I saw was a damaged life that began with so much promise and potential. I felt sad - not for his death but for the life that he'd had to endure in the public eye.

Until I sat down on the pink runway in a clothing warehouse cum model agency downtown on Canada Day. My friend who is a seasoned bargain hunter was busy bargain hunting while another friend and myself spent the time trying to puzzle out the rational behind the irrationally pink runway that ran down the middle of the warehouse. The store's proprietor blasted loud MJ hits in conjunction (I'm assuming) with the singer's departure from this world. When 'Heal the World' came on the loudspeakers it hit me as to why I should feel sad about the singer's death. I was never into the MJ mania although I was a fan of his ingenuity and creativity. Listeing to 'Heal the World' reminded me (naturally) of 'Black or White', 'What About Us' and the likes. Those songs were more than just entertaining. They carried a universal message about love and peace that were reminiscent of the 60's cultural movement and have been somewhat neglected in virtually every musical genre except maybe in gospel music. And to boot, virtually every one of his singles became worldwide hits and unwittingly dispersed their message into the subconscious of millions around the world.

It was at that point that I thought, 'Yup, his death is a loss to us all.'

Writers' block

-noun

a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.

Summer gardening project 01

Overgrow your sprouts!

Spring is here

It's only natural that the weather started getting sunnier right after I've bought myself a lighter jacket for these winter-spring transmission period. I managed to utilize the knock-off military-green jacket for a whole day before I started feeling sweaty and realized that my deodorant-free days are over for this year. Au revoir winter!

I've gotten so used to layering for so many months that to step out of the house with a single layer of clothing leaves me feeling almost naked. To think that in the midst of winter, when it takes me a full fifteen minutes to get dressed, I was longing for the days when I can leave the house without being weighed down by thermal underwear and coats and gloves and scarves. Now that they're here, I've realized that I have developed a sort of inferiority complex about my body. If felt good to hide behind all that fabric and appear as one enormous bulk of cotton and flannel and wool. The clothes that I wear underneath my coat has become my second skin and I can't bear to let others see it.

It is for this reason that I pray for the temperature to drop so that I can put on my coat again and hide while I go out in the open. It is for this reason that I am grateful to see some other beings similarly bundled up despite the mild weather, even if they are people of old age and probably can't stand anything below 30 degrees.

I still am looking forward to stepping out in flip flops and a single layer cotton kameez. I just need some time to get used to the idea again.

Current Addictions

Things that can keep me hooked for hours:

1. Facebooking (of course)
2. Recipe search on Allrecipes
3. Videos of my niece
4. Youtube videos. This week's fad: Baby videos and Baratsandbereta
5. Reading people's painfully attention-seeking wallposts on Facebook.
6. Sorting through my email accounts
7. Shoeboxblog
8. Freecell
9. Facebook's Word Twist in Ladder Mode

Of Tardiness

I missed my bus to work last Saturday and had to pay $9.60 for a cab. That's $9.60 more than what I normally pay for my bus fair.

Today I set my watch five minutes ahead of time in order to trick myself into being punctual. It worked. I managed to make it to the bus terminal well before the bus did. I even managed to grab a cup of coffee for the bus ride.

As the bus took off through downtown I settled in my seat with the warm feeling of having achieved something significant. Along the way I saw the apartment that I was going to move into in a few months' time. I hadn't noticed this before although I've taken the bus to work for the past two weeks. Funny. All the same I thought, 'How convenient. I'll have to make a note of the bus stop and the schedule.' I peered through the bus window to look at the street name and noticed that we were on a different route.

That's when I realized that I was on the wrong bus.

Hello...or perhaps not.

I'm not overly friendly with all of my classmates. I'm not a social butterfly.

I'm friendly with maybe five percent of them.

I can start a random conversation with about seventy five percent of them.

The remaining twenty percent I simply can't relate to.

I speak from experience. I was once thrown into a group discussion with a portion of that twenty percent. My naively enthusiastic 'So, what do you guys think?' was met with downcast eyes and mumbled responses. I was at a lost for the first five minutes of the discussion. Despite their individually buoyant personalities, they turn reticent when it comes to one-on-one interaction.

I was driven to wonder, 'Do these people think they're still in high school?'

When they were in high school, did they actually listen when their mothers tell them not to talk to strangers? They certainly don't look the type.

I had the misfortune of running into these recalcitrant barely-eighteen-year-olds in the bus on my way home from work today.

I saw one of them looking at me with a nervous glance when I boarded the bus. All the seats were taken and I was left with the one right across the aisle from the conversationally-handicapped-stubble-chinned. Much to my chagrin, the person seated next to this one was another member of that tight-lipped 20-percentile.

What an awkward situation. The moment passed for either one of us to civilly acknowledge the other's presence. No one said anything while I tried to imagine a way to break the silence. Finally I decided we were all party to this snobbishness; them even more so since they had the advantage of each other's company.

Even though I maintain a resolute gaze forward, our proximity in the bus enabled me to observe their behaviour without the intention to observe their behaviour. It was similar to watching synchronized diving, except there is no water and the participants were bundled up in winter wear instead of clad in skimpy briefs.

They simultaneously (perhaps even instinctively) brought out their respective iPods/iPhones/escapist gizmotechs and began to (perhaps arbitrarily) tinker with them. Next came the foot-tapping and nervous finger drumming on knees or handle bars, depending on where they're seated. They did a terrible job at masking the awkwardness of the situation by looking around the bus. There's not much to look at in the bus accept for ad campaigns to get children excited about homework or to stop them from being abused (perhaps by forcing them to do homework).

This situation is either too ridiculous or too awkward. Good thing the collar of my coat goes all the way up to my nose. It gets hard to repress a smile in the cold. I've learned that pursing your lips doesn't help. It just makes you look like your trying not to yawn. There's nothing wrong with repressing a yawn except you look twice as ridiculous compared to when you're trying to repress a smile.

Meanwhile the silent duo was studiously examining their gadgets again. They must have detected the threat of a friendly greeting.

Whatev, people. Whatev.

Another useless bit of information about myself

...that is useless even to me.

I've recently discovered my dislike for walking in the dark. Note that I do not say that I'm afraid of the dark. I'm not. I just don't like to move about in the dark.

Alongside my eye-sight-debilitating habit of reading in bed, I've gotten into the habit of turning on my reading light prior to turning off the ceiling light.

During the few occasions that I was so tired that I was rendered partially dysfunctional, I'd perform the switch-on-switch-off routine in reverse order. Hence the discovery.

It takes only five steps to get to my bed from the light switch. It takes only about half a second for me to realize that I've made a mistake in my light switching routine and that it's no big deal.

But in that short distance and brief period, while my eyes adjusted to the light and shapes start to become clearer in the darkness, I never fail to see a big, solid, looming figure standing in front of me. Just for a split second. The sensation is similar to that of blacking out. You know, when your eyes are wide open but all you see is black?

This occurrence is alarming enough that my mouth would open for a beginning of what might develop into a dramatic gasp but it was brief enough that by the first intake of air, I was already walking to my bed and reaching for the reading light switch.

There. This bit of information is so inane that I can't even think of a conclusion that would cleverly warrant this entry.

Hobi lama

...resepi baru :D

Let me in!!!

I was locked out of my house today. For about of 15 minutes.

My front door lock has always been cranky but it decided to test my limits by refusing to unlock altogether today. The icing on the cake came when I couldn't get my landlord on his cell phone.

I had just returned from attending an opening of a cafe galleria with a friend. The bright sunlight that saw my departure earlier today had waned and temperature was dropping below zero in anticipation of dusk.

When my key wouldn't turn, I felt the the usual mounting of irritation in my guts. When my fingers began to go numb and started pulsing, I began to panic. None of my housemates were home, it was getting cold and dark and I hadn't done my Asr prayer.

After trying for a whole ten minutes, I finally decided to call my landlords. It was Sunday evening and even though Paul and Anna have been indescribably nice to me, I can't help imagining how I would be ruining their Sunday evening with this single call.

I was spared the discomfort of inconveniencing my landlords when my call was picked up by their voice mail. Have you heard of how the final try is always the one that yields success? Well, the same applies to random acts of kindness.

Just as I was leaving a voice message, my neighbour across the street came and asked if I needed some help. He'd noticed that I was at the door when he came home and saw that I was still there ten minutes later. (this observation somewhat implies that he might have been watching me, which opens up a host of other possible scenarios but, what the heck. I need help with the door).

At this point I was near tears on account of the cold and, by consequences, my throbbing fingers, especially my right thumb. He kindly asked for my keys, inquiring as to whether or not I was trying the right one. He proceeded to try the lock. After several tries, voila!, the key turned. I was so grateful that all I was able to say was 'Thank you SOOO much', a phrase which I proceeded to repeat five or six times as he quickly descended the front porch and returned to his house (almost seemingly desperate to get away, now that I think of it. Nevermind).
Now I'm trying to decide what I should bake to send over to my kind neighbours as a token of thanks. Somehow the gravity of the situation seems to have abated. I should hurry up and decide before I completely forget how miserable I was when the old man came to my rescue.

I think some banana bread would be nice.

Rain

Getting soaked from the rain is fun until you step into a dry place.

The Coming of Spring

I never thought I'd ever be so happy to see snow dissipate into swirling pools of ice cold water.

Papercuts

I've come to realize that the number of paper cuts one receives is proportionate to one's age.

The older one gets, the more responsibilities one shoulders, the more paperwork one produces to manage those responsibilities, the more paper cuts one receives in sorting out those paperwork.

Oh, joy.

Nothing works better as a wake-up call to adulthood than a financial crisis; or the absence of parental-financial support.

I'm finding a lot of hair on my garments that do not belong to me.

2009

I haven't been blog-surfing for the past two days because I know what I'd find. We've marked this day on the Gregorian calendar as momentous and, as a result, people are often compelled to mark it's arrival, and sometimes, even it's departure. The most common and painfully clichéd totem would be the countdown of the best/worst/most this-and-that moments through out the year. This genre of compressed historical countdown is probably the most overplayed and it's over-usage, to me, renders even the most uber-icon as banal.

The second most common would probably be the new-year's-resolution marker or, for the less courageous, a revamping of the previous year's resolutions. Oprah got a head start on this one in this month's O magazine where she 'opened up' about her fall off the healthy-wagon. She plays the whole issue around how to get back on and keep your rump from falling off again. The scenario's quite similar with when she first decided to 'take control' of her health. Yup, very original.

I was very tempted to set a marker of my own but I've given up on the new year's resolution several years ago. For one thing I go by the Hijri calendar so January 1st has less impact on me than it does for other people. The other thing is, I find that there aren't any tangible difference from the day December 31st 2008 and the day of January 1st 2009 except for the change in the year. The weather varies as it always does, the sun rises just as beautifully, the air still fills my lungs and the clock still ticks one second at a time. Worst of all, probably, is the fact that the current economic crisis is still threatening to simulate the Great Depression of the 1920's. From the way merry-makers were partying on new year's eve you'd think that the crisis would miraculously fix itself at the stroke of midnight and we'd be able to defy gravity for one day, at least.

The question came to me when I was watching the news coverage of the fireworks celebration around the world. 'What exactly ARE we celebrating?' The best answer that my dad and I can come with was that we were celebrating the change of a digit. Everything else seems to be the same. Except for maybe a little less cash from buying booze with nothing to show except a murderous hangover.

Perhaps what gets people so excited about the change in that last digit is the fact that it signifies a fresh start and the hope of something better or improved, the result of which is not readily tangible and may only come in time. Perhaps the significance of the new year is what we make of it in our minds. In that case, then, I can choose to mark the new year at any time of the year.