Missing M

I was sitting next to my mother (pictured above next to her favourite painting at home), wearing a huge red ribbon-like headband Blair Waldorf would have easily been spotted in. We were both on the sofa, talking and sipping teh with this hardbound book on my lap.

As it turned out, the book was of our family tree and I was pointing out people I recognised and those who are no longer alive, probbing her with questions. Then it came to this moment where my hands began scrolling  down the parchment paper where I should have been rightfully labelled and I said, “And this would me your daughter, me…” and guess what? I couldn’t find me. Me, the eldest daughter of Kalsom Binte Bari, the first grandaughter of Yah Binte Manap, wife to Ery Asrul Roslin, was nowhere to be found in the family tree. Amirah Fatin was not even amongst the roots and weeds, not even camouflaged against the hard brown trunk.

Then I woke up, with Van she nibbling on my toes.

I hate revealing dreams like this. Either it’s my unconscious or God talking to me and it’s never easy coming to terms when I have it all translated.

I am the worst married daughter. She’s the one woman who trudged through life with me – wiped my snot when I didn’t know how, took me to the doctors when my belly button was bursting out like a loch ness peeping out of my belly, bought me the first prettiest red dress from Mothercare and pranced about with me in front of the Pisa in matching mother-daughter outfits, entertaining all of my shenanigans – laughing, giggling, soothing me when my first crush wouldn’t even look at me, crying tears of joy when I told her I finally found someone to spend the rest of my life with. And all I can give to her now after all those years is a weekly lunch and occasional how-are-you calls?!

I do not want to miss her. I believe in the universally accepted wisdom that “Syurga ade di bawah tapak kaki ibu” and that this eeky yucky feeling I have now is a circumstance which I have complete control of. And I’ve found a solution to making everything feel right again.

3 hours + $16 cab fare  = meeting mom = avoiding anak durhaka hell = need not meet tanggang

Starting today.

Happy Birthday Desserts at 1 Caramel

vanilla bean rice pudding in chilled cherry soup. topped with crunchy polenta, plums and sliced cherries.

coconut panacotta, with mango puree and white choc granite. black olive caramel fondant on the side.

Way due pictures but it’s been a while since I had such orgasmic desserts, and 1 Caramel serves them, and it’s my moral obligation to at least let the world know of its existence. A chic cafe tucked on Handy Road, it also has a variety of cakes you won’t be able to make up your mind which one to choose. I’m glad I chose this place for a quickie celebration (haha recession so I couldn’t afford a full blown fancy dinner)!

Random

Somewhere in between everything, I find time to sit and think.

I’m still in recuperation from raya weekends where I nearly dropped dead from all the drama worthy of a Moore documentary but thanks to my husband who constantly reminded me that raya is all about having fun, seeking forgiveness, being compassionate and the perfect opportunity to let bygones be bygones – I could come up for air and unchoke myself from the mess.

I have an interesting bit of news to share though, my dear friend is getting married and I’ll be hosting her event, in this foreign langage I’ve been forcibly made to adopt as my mother tongue – Malay. It’s daunting, but a privilege nonetheless cause who knows a Suria scout might be lurking in the hordes of makciks makciks and put me on my road to stardom, the kind of stardom that’ll bar me from Geylang and kedai kopis, but fantasies aside I wished I had a cassette tape, some kind of an audio book called How To Host A Wedding In Malay: Learn in 15 Minutes because that would be damn helpful. Someone out there who thought of this idea, please make it come true because YOU will be my hero.

Googling up doesn’t help the situation too cause apparently there are no templates whatsoever for me to plagiarize from and neither are there Youtube vids for me to replay and replay and study from. And the staggering low rate of Malay weddings I’ve been to in the past year, or make that in my lifetime, means I have no on the field experience either.

Why am I the chosen one?

What do I do now? Yelps.

Meowsy eid!

From iftar till sahur

Introductions are in order.

Meet Ezan, the extreme left girl who looks like she’s about to morph into something I can’t figure out yet. Despite the fact that we were in the same sec school for four years, it took another us another six before we met at a chance encounter and became good  friends. She’s wacky, clumsy, spontaneous, has a lot of arm hair and she’s already sporting the bride’s blush (or the look of a mortified bride) cause come Halloween this year, she’ll be wedded to the guitarist – Dat.

Dat looks a bit stoinked in here, cause I think he secretly hates being photographed but am too nice to tell camwhorers like me off. So he just looks stoinky in pictures. Other than fishing his weekends away, he likes to make movies especially spooky pocong serials in Malaysian islands that only retirees would go to. Dat’s also one half of a twin, the other being Zamier who has a few cats. I’ve met Jumper, his cat, but last I heard it hasn’t returned home.

But Zamier doesn’t have as many cats as Linda, also known as Baby Love, Linda Sepet and Linda Satu Metre, who has a grand total of nine pussies. That’s a lot for anyone to handle. But all nine know how to poop in the toilet so she doesn’t spend as much money on cat litter as I do and therefore able to afford the Ray Ban shades she’s seen in. She’s got to be the most adventurous, well-travelled, kind and spontaneous single girl I’ve ever met. She listens to all my nonsense too which is why she’s sporting those shades (Linda, you won’t look like real back-up singer if you don’t wear those).

I love those shades  actually, very fashionable like Bebe Soto who is obviously looking fashionable and Chinese in the pictures because she is Chinese. She’s also the youngest amongst us and oh my, she has the greatest online shopping URLs. She ate with her perfectly manicured fingers during iftar that night too, a great sign of social integration, so I suppose she must really love Jepp, her Muslim-Malay boyfriend on the left.

Jepp used to work at a Mee Soto shop and maybe that’s why he likes Bebe Soto. He is funny and atrociously crappy – the two biggest reasons why he always revs up parties! I also recently found out he has that voice perfect for hardcore rock/metal songs although his articulation is debatably inarticulate. He drives a van filled with his work tools – not my cat van van cause that’s illegal and he could get caned for that – but a real van like a vehicle.

And the only person left now is my husband, the one with the coke bottle. He’s the best co-host I’ve worked with as he tops up guests’ drinks, gives them towels to shower without me telling him to do so. I could go on and on why I like him but if you ask me and maybe you already have, it’s kinda rhetorical and  probably a better idea to save all that content for a separate blog entry title Why I married my husband and am still married to him.

And because I’m lazy and it’s really too warm a weather to think of a suave way to end these introductions, I’m gonna pose another rhetorical – can there be anything sweeter in the world than the company of your goodest friends?

More here.

Supperclub sighting

People literally dancing on the floor and very much in need of a chest wax.

A niece’s relationship with her sisters

It can be astonishing – the untypicality of family. I remember sitting at the park of my childhood playground, whiney, tiny and sweaty, with my aunts trying their very best to make sure I’d finish up my bowl of food. They were dancing, singing, prancing about, giving me honeyed promises, making monkey noises just so I’d open my mouth for another suap instead of crying and sulking.

I never finished my bird’s portion of a meal and they’d sigh unwillingly in the end and said, “Budak ni eh!” In my five-year-old-mind though, I wondered who these girls really were – with bougainvilleas in their hair and tiny shorts – they looked crazy but I knew I wanna be one of them when I’m big.

My aunts are indeed factually crazy, my gramps too would insist undoubtedly that they are. I say this with much affection though, without the craziness, the what-the-f moments, they wouldn’t be family. I’ve since then grown from that kid who wouldn’t eat to the kid who would cook for them to eat, but it’s with little surprise that nothing much has changed.

To start with, I don’t even call my aunts makciks - a term so distasteful to them, they’d aged faster with such a title. They would only answer me if I called them Kak or by their nicknames, and I’m on a first name basis with the uncles they’re married to. We don’t salam when we meet. We share clothes, bathe together, talk about boys and crushes and poke fun at one another’s bedhair. We gossip. And we laugh like hyenas whenever and wherever we want to.

They neither busy themselves with kueh-making during Raya nor wear the kurungs on the first day (I had to force them to last year just so we could have a nice family photo). All four of them have moles on the left side of the nose. They love to karaoke and entered beauty competitions and won when younger. They love durians. They hate cooking and lizards and it was not until recently after the arrival of Vanshe that they hated cats too.

It’s hard to paint razor sharp portraits of my aunt’s individual personalities, the strong  bonds that I have with them and the eccentricities I’ve recognised as that warm familiar sense of having family close by. And on days like today when I’ve bills and too much things going on in my head, they bring me back to that childhood park we once were at, and suddenly in a flash, I’m happy being that little girl who wouldn’t eat.

To abstain or not to

Fasting has officially begun and so has my (apparent) quest to losing weight. This year, finally after four years of pranking and fake excuses (I’ve gastric, I’m having my period, I’m too skinny), I am resolute on not failing.  I will not succumb to the impatient cookies in the fridge, calling out my name, my full name. I will fast and I will pray. This will be my revived attempt at becoming a practising Muslim where I’ll try to abstain from anti-Islamic vices.

But a part of me wonders, will all the effort be worth it when I’ve just downed red wine nights before Islam’s holiest month?

A Muslim, as it written somewhere in the Koran, will be rid of the haram contents 40 days after consumption and repentance for that’s how long it takes to cleanse one’s body before his/her prayers and fasting are accepted by God.

But what if I am not pure but have decided to start praying and fast? Will my acts be accepted and help me gain points to heaven or are they futile just because I am physically unclean? Let’s put it this way – if Jakim exists in this country, I’d sadly be on their to-be-whipped-and-stoned list but a door’s been knocked down, and suddenly the heart says yes, I should start do something religious – anything religious before I forget my faith.

Logically speaking, it would be a greater sin to not fast or pray, both of which are pillars of the religion. Whether or not God will take into consideration my prayers and fasting shouldn’t influence my decision to start doing so and I suppose who knows what God is thinking and has in store for me? It’s better to believe in the forgiving nature of God than to lose faith in his goodness right?

So dear cookies, you will have to wait.

I still have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this but am too hungry to articulate everything into words.

I know, the cookies will still have to wait.

Marital battles

I’ve been talking about date nights, fun parties and honeymoons but what comes along with the whole saccharine package has, I just realised never been discussed here before, are fights. Like how I used to pull my sister’s hair when she wouldn’t play with me or with my mum who curfewed me from having a good night out, both ery and me fight as expected of healthy relationships.

And though I wouldn’t consider us as newlyweds, we still do fight about the small petty things.

Things we fight about but have enough sense to resolve them within 30 seconds to 24 hours:

The unwashed dishes and various kitchen sink arguments

Forgetting to buy batteries for the toothbrushes

Not taking the initiative to buy dinner/lunch/breakfast

Not making the bed

Using the wrong towels

Not changing the doona covers

Sure I agree these aren’t exactly World War issues but these are things that trigger the Dr. Miranda Bailey bitch persona in me especially after a slogged out shift at work. I don’t think I can help it at times to unfairly point out his flaws/mistakes, and him sometimes at mine. This reminded me of the time we did our individual couple assessments at Apkim’s marriage course – we fairly did well according to the counsellor but the most pressing issue was that both of us agreed that we must maintain the harmony in a relationship at ALL costs.

This became an issue. When we have problems or am unhappy with the way the other person behaves, the counsellor advised, then we should voice them out, even at the costs of breaking the harmony in the relationship. We have the right to tell each other off. We have the right to quarrel if it means better peace eventually. We should not make excuses of each other’s bad conduct.

Key is to find the right words, fight fair and this can be the hardest bit. Sometimes I wish I could just pull his hair or slam my door on him (as I did with my mum when she imposed a 10pm curfew on me. ) But me and ery, we don’t live in a Japanese occupation, we are adults and honestly I prefer to end fights early. I believe in the old adage of not going to bed mad. Always always go to bed and have awesome make-up sex at the end any fight.

Sounds too Dr. Philly? Welcome to marriage, hell and reality.

My stressed out I just wanna eat a burger face*

His stressed out I just wanna drink face*

* Both pictures were taken after not buying anything after a three-hour stroll through Harajuku.

Ticking that box

I often find myself ticking the Attending box for facebook invites to parties/gatherings but sometimes, honestly, I know maybe I should be more realistic and click on Maybe Attending. What not with my state of poverty and lack of suitable party clothes.

But with all that excuses and between juggling the cat, husband and household chores, I’m beginning to get back into the socialising mood, feeling more inclined to get myself sucked out of my mellowed dinner and movies routine. It’s about time.

First up was the National Day weekend – we headed up to Zouk for Mambo night. If you haven’t been to one, I’d say you’d have to lose your virginity at one to know what it’s all about and you either hate or love the whole concept of Mambo. In a nutshell, a bunch of people dance along with choreographed moves to the tunes of ridiculously out of this orbit songs, the cheesiest of the crop. Think Bananarama and Depeche Mode. If only I had been reeled into this uniquely Singaporean dance realm in my spotty youth, I think I would have enjoyed it more.

But we did have fun and it was good to do something out of the box, my box at least, but then again I think I’ve had enough Mambo for the rest of my life.

Next up was the durian party at Hostel Amigos – another workplace collaborative (yes, how do the come up with such weird gatherings?). Someone from work had a contact, a Malaysian ahpek who does home deliveries. I’m sure he was taken aback when ordered 50 kilos – all of which were eaten on the roof of the hostel owned by one of my workmates who made that itch of owning one a dream come true. A mad mad venture, but who wouldn’t want to have a hostel of his/her own especially when you can bump into cute Finnish backpackers…?

Back to the durians – our 5o kilo worth of happiness costs us 15 bucks each. Along with that, the aphek peeled up the durians and even boxed them up for us. And every durian was a good durian making it all worth the money too.

That night, we were full. Happy full with ’stenchy’ durian breaths that I imagine, if we were to yawn together at one go, we’d sure scare an entire European nation (and all the cute Finnish backpackers who’d whisk me away to their land where we can eat cloudberries all day long.)

Sometimes I forget I’m married. I think that’s why he put up a picture of us as the lappie’s wallpaper.

So Attending, Maybe Attending, Attending – give everything a go. Don’t coop yourself up, enjoy it with friends and family!