Wake up in your birthday suit

I am really bad in remembering anyone’s birthday. So far, I could only remember 5 other birthdays apart from mine. After the incident of me missing my mum’s birthday I made a vow that I will try to remember every birthday that incur from April onwards.

So I decided to celebrate in advance of two birthdays coming up in April this week. I’ve bought the present for one of them and gave it to the person as an early birthday gift, in case I forgot. Hopefully, I won’t miss any after this.

An advance birthday wish to those whose oing to celebrate their birthday in April.

Work

What would you feel when :

1) Your boss has started to complain that he’s tired of fighting a losing battle for your contract?

2) Somebody who is not that competent doubt your capability to do things when you know that the key to be efficient is by prioritizing your tasks?

3) People tend to delegate their tasks to you and label it as doing favors instead?

4) You smell that something really fishy is going on and everybody knows about it but you?

5) You won’t trust somebody as far as you could throw the person

Touched by an Angel

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love's lightwe dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

Maya Angelou

Post Mortem

Since the two wars seem to have to come to an end, I suppose it’d be good if we could do some post mortem on the wars. Please be informed that the posting is based on my 16 years old psychological analysis. So please bear with my asinine comment on these two wars that thank to god had finally ended. Perhaps, in both cases it is forgiven but definitely not forgotten.

War 1 – Cold War

Cause of War

My posting “on human”.

Pre – war

Someone read it and got off track.


War

Received malicious e-mail and silent treatment came up next. I made lots of phone calls to the sisterhood support group to deter myself from running amok and tried to kill this person with a stapler. Lost a few good night sleeps and ended up being a zombie at work. Almost hit the person’s head with a heavy 4” file but decided not to after realizing that I don’t have enough money to pay for the medical expenses and to hire a lawyer.

Post War

Cleared the air and things back to normal, I suppose.

Lessons learnt from the war

Silent treatment could kill
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me


War 2 – Great War

Cause of War

Out of tiredness because of lack of sleep I said something really nasty to my favourite someone. Darn!

Pre – war

My fave someone hung up even before I even finished talking.

War

The worst treatment of all: The silent treatment, which I really have no idea on how to handle it let alone to go through it. My phone calls and SMS-es were not answered and it certainly gave me a very good reason to lose my sleep. Man, I really am not good in handling crisis.

Post War

I had to endure the sarcastic remarks due to the nasty words that had been uttered which I suppose would etched in my brain for the rest of my life. Things seem to be back to normal though it is certainly poignant to think that this person will no longer be around.

Lessons learnt from the war

Always bite your tongue
Never pick an argument with a Capricorn if you are a Sagittarian LOL

I need a smart drug

This is another entry about my complaint on life. If you happen to be following negative free life then please stop reading my blog. I definitely wouldn’t want to be held responsible if you have such symptoms like nosebleed, hemorrhage and hallucination. Please read at your own risk.

I had a very dreadful week last week, the worst so far I might say. I had been thought to be showing someone in a bad light though it was without a doubt not my intention whatsoever. I had to endure a cold war, which I undoubtedly loathe. I didn’t sleep well for a few nights and I added a few spoonful of salt to the disaster by rubbing someone in a very wrong way. It was definitely the Great War between both of us. Just imagine what I had to go through! If I were to be given an alternative between living with these two wars in my head and cleaning up Zoo Negara for a week, I would have opted for the second choice without any hesitation though I might want to quit if I happen to be instructed to clean up the lion’s cage.

It has been a week since I slowly recovering from the cold war but I am still helpless in the Great War though I have tried mostly everything to clear the air. I thought that I might put up a public apology in all the mainstream newspaper but I certainly can’t afford to do so. Besides, I am not sure whether the person reads newspaper daily and it’d be a waste if the person never comes across it. One thing for sure, I’d definitely lose my sleep until I finally get to put an end to the war that I never thought might occur after all those things that happened to me earlier that week. Come to think of it, I might as well eligible to become a drama queen after all the things that happened to me.

But every cloud has a silver lining. Eventually.

Book

I have vowed before not to step into Kinokuniya or Borders until I finish all the books that have been stacked for almost forever. But after all the terrible things that happened last week I had to calm myself down by having some retail therapy session with my girlfriends. Thus, I ended up buying second hand books, which always is a value for your money and a few others from Kinokuniya. Sigh

One of the books that I bought is Generation A Collection of Contemporary Malaysian Ideas by Amir Muhammad, Kam Raslan and Sheryll Stothard. The book is strikingly orange which I suppose was a very good choice since it was the color that made me wanted to pick it up. It sort of walking down the memory lane when you read this book since the essays were written based on the current events and observations done in 1994 – 1997. If you happened to be born during the 60’s and 70’s you could make up for your lack of knowledge on the current issues at that particular time where you were sort of dealing with your raging hormones and could never care more for the world except when New Kid’s On The Block decided to disband or when everybody have seen Trainspotting but you. Please read it and support local publications.

Family

I had no idea that I missed my mum’s birthday, by 3 days. My nephews and niece told her that I’d be coming back to celebrate the special occasion which had resulted her doing all the preparation to cook my favorite dish. So to not disappoint her though I felt like wanting to strangle my nephews and niece for making up such story, I rushed to get the bus ticket, was soaking wet in a very heavy rain on my way back to the office and was late to Puduraya that night. And I thought the bad thing would stop coming afterwards. I had been chased by a dog while walking in a pitch-dark lane on my way home while my mum taking her own sweet time to open up the gate. This is what happened when you trust your mum so much even when she said that you have the best art project in school when you know that she had been lying through her teeth. She told me that the dog had been shot by the Enforcement Officer after all the complaints that had been lodged against the owner. The very next morning she told me that she forgot that they were only able to shoot its offsprings but not the mother. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

We had a small party, a very delicious chocolate cake written with happy birthday dear mum that brought some tears to her eyes and lots of satay. Yummy! Kojeh felt terrible since this was the first time that she ever forgot mum’s birthday and she decided to buy lots of satay to make up for this. A smart move I reckon. No pressure on me because I always got confused between 14 March and 14 April and mum knows about it long before.

Mum decided to have another operation on her eye. She asked me whether I would be willing to take care of her. I told her that I totally agree to do so but with a few conditions: she shall let me wander around town and I could always go to the washroom without having to inform her first. She was ok with it, without any hesitations. Darn! I should have asked for a home theatre!



Beggarly Heart

When the heart is hard and parched up,

come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,

come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from

beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,

break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one,

thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder

Rabindranath Tagore

Let's work like a Trojan!

The devil finds work for idle hands

So we had the most anticipated team meeting last week, well at least for me and a few other people who thought that they could have sometime off from work by attending the meeting. It merely was to clarify about the scope of every team and the organization chart. It was supposed to give the team a better picture of what everybody else does and why they do it etc. As for me, I have more team to administer and it would means that I might need to strain every nerve to get my job done in time. Just imagine me as one the Orcs (a cleaner and prettier version, mind you) who does all Saruman’s dirty job but at the end of the day he’s still a grumpy old man who has a mid-life crisis and decides to put some grey highlight on his hair.

One thing about meeting is that it’d never start or finish on time. I happened to have one of the days where I had to be as busy as a bee. I was late for the meeting and had to stand with the rest of the gang. I happened to be standing next to this person who has a very special ability which all of us need to instill, sleeping while standing. He managed to fall asleep while standing without anybody realizing it when I suddenly felt that water had been dropping onto my shoe. I turned to my side and realized that his eyes were closed and water from his mug had been dropping out. I woke him up in a flash and he blurted out that he thought the mug was empty. Way to go man!

The thing is by giving me more team to administer it is suppose to lighten the burden that the other witch have to endure before. But even before the meeting ended, the witch had already made a point to me that she’d want me to assist her in administering her team which only consists of 10 people compared to mine which would be more than 30 people. I suppose if she insists on me to do so to the VP then the devil will definitely finds work for idle hands.


What a nuisance

I keep hearing these phrases for the past 2 weeks. We have plans for you; at the moment you’ll be responsible to fulfill the team’s needs. You don’t have to worry about your position and just continue whatever things you have been doing before.

Well, I don’t really worry whether I’d be a permanent staff for the time being since I know where I stand in this particular situation. But I just can’t understand what plan is there for me since nobody wants to elaborate on it. You know, it gives the same effect on your self esteem like when your mom says that you look just fine when you are having the bad hair day and based on the high level of trust on her, you go to school and try to act normal while everybody stares and try to convince themselves that you are not a zombie from The Land of the Dead and you hair just look like that because you are run out of hair mousse.

Book

A million thanks to Glenn for sending in the book through Habri“ Soe Hok Gie – Catatan Seorang Demonstran (Notes of a Demonstrator)”. This book has been the inspiration of the film Gie by Miles Films, which is now available on DVD in Indonesia. In spite of the fact that there’s a picture of Nicolas Saputra at the front cover (which I believe would make lots of girls want to have the book), there’s also a very meaningful line at the back of the book, “lebih baik diasingkan daripada menyerah pada kemunafikan (loosely translated as it’s better to be isolated than to conform to stupidity” which shows how sharp was his thinking. This book really is recommended to those who like me, still need to understand what patriotism means and trying to inspire their own self. Please be reminded that the book and the DVD are only available in Indonesia.


Peter Pan - tak bisakah

hatiku bimbang namun tetap pikirkanmu

selalu slalu dalam hatikuku melangkah sejauh apapun itu

selalu kau di dalam hatiku
kuberjalan berjalan memutar waktu

berharap temukan sisa hatimu

mengertilah kuingin engkau begitu

mengerti kau di dalam hatiku
tak bisakah kau menungguku

hingga nanti tetap menunggu

tak bisakah kau menuntunku

menemani dalam hidupku
tak ada kau mencari hidupku

kemana kau tau isi hatiku

kutunggu sejenak aku disitu

jalanku jalan menemukanmu

On Human

Moving On

We human really are complex and because we are so complex we started to build up lots of shopping complexes just to show how complex we are. The best example of a very complex shopping complex is Berjaya Times Square. It's too big and not enough directories!Oh back to the issue on human.We have lots of feelings, lots of wanting and needs, etc. Some of us make decision based on logics and calculations that might have been presented in spreadsheets while a few of us just follow their gut feeling. At some phase of our life something bizarre might happened and we just can’t make any decisions and at this point we are stuck in between and afraid to move on.

I found out about a few people that I know of are afraid to move on after they failed in their love life and still hoping that they might been given the chance to have back their love and things will be normal or even better for themselves. One of these persons that I know of is the type of person that keeps things to himself. Don’t ask me how I know about him wanting to get back to his ex-girlfriend because I just know it. It really is sad to learn that he refuses to move on and denies other people’s chances to be a part of his new chapter in life. I just don’t understand why but perhaps things might be even better if he just leave the excess baggage and move on. IMHO, those that lost their family members but refuse to move on is slightly better than this type of people since their lost is irreplaceable.

Moral Values

I had an interesting conversation on value the other day. This particular person is so afraid that demonstration on the Danish cartoon would be held again at the building that I work in that she had a terrible dream about it the night before. Although she is a local but it seems like she has a shallow knowledge about how demonstration works in Malaysia. She thought that every demonstration would end up with people throwing objects towards the police and riots would begin. Typical thought I would say.

She mentioned to me that somebody from the office saw me with a group of bystander during the demonstration by the opposition political party a few weeks ago in front of my office building. I told her that I had been asked to join in but I believe it really is against my values. I never believe in anything about demonstration, not only about the purpose but also things that happens during the demonstration itself. I explained to this person that if Prophet Muhammad were still alive, he wouldn’t even care to have any demonstrations to show his protest against the cartoon. He would fight to instill the right Islamic values and only then we could become a strong community that could become all these obstacles.

Upon hearing this, she said to me that looking at the way I am and the finger showing incident to one of the witches before she is glad to know that it seems like I have an acceptable moral values and should be in the right track in life.

Again, this goes to prove the point that looks could be deceiving to some people and still the statement didn’t make any impact on my life.


Comments!

So I decided to write something about the comments left by the kind readers who left their messages on my comment box. Alas, I was not successful in getting any phone numbers from the single guys out there. Sob!Sob!

Bob, the network design guy from my office left this message :
Im so disappointed that im not in your blogroll....OUINNNNNNN

Congratulations Bob because you are the first colleague to leave your message on my blog. As a token of appreciation I have included your blog in my blogroll together with David, Nico and Francois.Yipppeeeee!

Oreo from http://excitingobservations.blogspot.com/
waa... that must have come after a period of self reflection

True indeed, I had spent the last two months of self-reflection in front of the mirror and I realized that I started to have crow's feet since I love to laugh a lot. So starting from today I shall minimize my laugh in order to stop the wrinkles from building up rapidly. If it starts to become worst then I shall l stop laughing altogether and will just show the placard that written Ha!Ha!Ha! It’s damn funny man!

Jules from http://x-eyedvision.blogspot.com/
my penjual vcd haram asked me "u sure you don't want a plastic bag?" after buying brokeback. why ah?

Jules, it’s so typical of Malaysian to just accept the plastic bag given after buying anything, let it from the penjual VCD haram or the fishmonger though we have about 10 plastic bags in hand with one of them might only have one cd in it. Perhaps, he was just perplexed to learn that you have refused to accept the plastic bag not like others. Way to go Jules! Save Mother Nature! Plastic bag not cool! or maybe he wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t want people to know that you bought cerita main belakang from him? Sort of keeping your reputation untarnished I suppose?

Where’s my food?

I had to manage a team who had their training in my office for 3 days in a row. I had to make sure that everybody happy which was not a very pleasant task. On the very last day of the training, I had ordered food enough for everyone and distributed the food accordingly. There were 2 participants who had to go out to settle something and I kept their food inside the fridge while waiting for them to come back. I happened to leave the pantry to make a phone call for 5 minutes and when I went back I found the 2 participants were perplexed right in front of the pantry entrance. I found out that their food went missing. Somebody then asked me whether I wrote down my name on the food wrapper and I bluntly replied no. So the answer given to me was: well, no wonder you lost your food since there was no name written on it! I knew it was my fault for not writing my name on it. But logically, with name or no name it’s not yours. Why would you want to take it in the first place?

LRT

It has been months since I last traveled by LRT on Sunday morning. Nothing much changed, I suppose after seeing an older man had to raise his voice to another young man to give up his seat on the LRT for an older woman. I believe that most of us would have seen the same scenario before. What have we become? Do we, Malaysians, have lost our courtesy and compassion towards others? The worst scenario that I have seen so far was a woman who had to hold her young baby with one arm while the other one was clinging to the pole during the morning peak hours. Nobody offered her a seat. Just imagine if you yourself had to endure the same scenario? Some of you might have lost the temper and screamed as loud as you can to get the seat. Well, I know I would. Do we need to have a moral police in the LRT who will make sure that the seats are given to those most in need?

Books

To all the bookworms out there, don’t forget to mark your calendar for the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair, which is going to be held in Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) on 24 March to 2 April 2006. Take a step forward to instill the reading habits and hopefully we won’t be in the lazy reader list any more.

I finally had the time to wrap all my books with the plastic wrap yesterday. It is one the habit that stays strong in me. The habit started with my mum who would always wrapped my books when I was young and when I became the school librarian the habit was already instilled in me. Officially I now have 11 books that I haven’t read! Wish I could take a month of just to finish these books!

It Itself Becomes Sign

The one to whom's unveiled the mystery of love

Exists no longer, but is annihilated in love.

Place before the sun a burning candle,

See how it's shining disappears before those lights:

The candle exists no longer, is transfigured into Light.

There are no more signs of it; it itself becomes a Sign.

Rumi - Odes

wazup kekure?

Tired and yawning every 20 seconds, but still I determine to update my blog.LOL.

I have heard enough lately. From compliments, statements, complaints, orders and not forgetting my routine: lending my shoulder for someone to cry on. I have started to think that I would soon be bananas if it continues to be like this for another week!

I was assigned to organize a farewell lunch party for a staff who is leaving the country soon. The best part was: I had been notified after lunch hour on Friday, which means that I had only about 4 hours to get a caterer and at the same time to collect some money to buy the gifts. The thought of having to shop on someone else’s expense was really alluring and I was motivated to accept the assignment with an open heart when things started to go wrong. First, nobody was willing to cater for us since it was such a short notice and besides I didn’t have a lot of budget to land myself the best caterer in town. Then a caterer was so certain that they could cater my party when suddenly they realized that the office is located at one of the busiest road in town! Finally, at 5.57pm I managed to get myself a caterer and finalized the menu in 10minutes. Yeay!

I had such a great time though actually I didn’t enjoy most of the minutes looking for the appropriate gift. I asked the person, what does he wants for the gifts and he said I don’t know. I was relieved to know that there is someone else out there that also doesn’t know what he wants. He asked me to ask from his friends, in case they have any ideas what he wants. It was such a dreadful decision since no one knows what he wants. Apart from that I was a bit stressful since I had to sort of prove to the other secretaries and administrators that I have a good eye. But after two shopping malls, the nastiest shopping trip began to be an acquired taste.

At last, I begged a very beautiful piece of keris as my first gift at Royal Selangor in KLCC. I didn’t know what to write on the plaque and ended up opting for Selamat Maju Jaya. Yes, I know it’s a bit like primary school motto during the graduation day but what the heck. At least I despised the idea of writing something really cheesy like we’ll miss you though none of us would really mean it. Bluwek! For the second gift, I decided to get him something more personal, which was the cufflinks. Well, I never had any experience in buying the cufflinks let alone knowing which one is easier to use whether the square or the oval. As a damsel in distress, I called up my ever-helpful cubicle neighbour, David to ask for his opinion. Merci to Monsieur David and a few great gals who were willing to wait on me while choosing the cufflinks. I finally managed to make up my mind after having to choose 1 out of 25 design. I had to spend 1 hour just to narrow down my choices from 25 to 1. Who said that shopping must be fun? It was fun for me having the satisfaction to shop with someone else’s money, but the terrible part would be to think whether the person would love the gift that you choose for them.

And came the big day! I almost stabbed the staff with a fork when he asked me whether the food would be enough as he was so confident that lots of people would turned up for the party. The truth was lots of people had to decline the invitation as they had some tenders and meetings going on at that time. Luckily, we had more than enough food and the other secretaries and administrators loved the gifts. Compliments were flooding in and yes I was blushing when a small number of people said that the party was very well organized. Hehehehe. But then I owe Nico an apology for I thought that he likes Air Bandung, which I had mistaken with Air Sirap. Yes, I know it really is odd to mix up between this two. What to do, for some reason lately I had slowly become a retard. Hehehehe. Perhaps, I should spend more time in the mamak’s kitchen so I’d be able to identify all the drinks.

For the past one week I had been thinking about what I want and I decided that it should be in several categories. So, these are what I want in:

Life

So far, I don’t really see what myself would be in another 2 years. Perhaps I would just go with the flow though my favourite companion has already planned everything, literally, for his life. What I really want is just a simple kind of life, maybe similar to what I’m having now but with the capabilities to shop without having to dig deep into my pocket. And yes, definitely more shoes, books and DVD.

Work

I definitely want a higher pay but with lesser responsibility! Better still if I could have the pay without ever having to come to work. Not forget to mention, my own room so I could just keep the door close if I don’t want to speak to anybody or too busy to have a chat, new chair with a brighter colour, new laptop with DVD burner so I could burn lots of DVD for my personal collection as well as supplying them to my friends, more food in the pantry together with a plasma TV in the conference room so we could watch the soccer match in case we have to work extra hours during the World Cup. I surely want to have a flexible working hours and no dress code. Well, don’t criticize me for being lazy to iron the shirt everyday, at least I make some effort to iron my shirt while trying hard not to burn my shirt while ironing!

Man

I sort of have a cockamamie idea about what type of man that I’d like to date. So after a few days thinking I finally identified the type. He must be willing to accept the fact that I am a weirdo. Well at least be grateful that I’m not a real bimbo whatsoever and should be able to read and reply my SMS no matter how silly it is. One of the great examples is: look at the moon! It really is beautiful. Can you see the witch flying with the broom? I just saw one who looked like a gremlin with lots of blings!.

If he could recite a few lines from Neruda or Rumi than it’d be a bonus point for him! Must love Tom Holt and Spongebob Squarepants! If he could sing Spongebob’s theme song then he definitely have better chances to be in the lead. One more plus point, should at least know how to cook a few main course and desserts. Better still if he could prepare rendang daging just like my mum’s and bread pudding. So, anybody with these criteria please leave your name and phone no at the comment box!

Friend

Just love me! That’s all I want from you. And please, don’t forget my birthday.

Movies

I have seen 4 movies in the past two weeks. The movies were Pink Panther, 9 Naga, Big Momma’s house and heirloom. It really was hilarious to see Jean Reno doing the slapsticks with Steven Martin in this movie. Beyonce looked stunning in her glamorous outfit, as usual. A definite no no for those who loathe slapsticks since the movie is definitely full of it.

What could I say about 9 naga? It had a really good storytelling which most Malaysian’s filmmakers seems to not have. Though it was quite slow and a bit philosophical, still I felt that it was worth every penny. Big Momma’s house 2 is definitely for those who scorn at Jean Reno for doing slapsticks in Pink Panther. Regardless of the fact that I was 15 minutes late for the movie, I know I could never like the movie no matter what since it was so predictable. For those who almost fainted after seeing heirloom’s trailer on TV, here’s some good news for you. The movie was not as scary as it seems to be. So please, feel free to watch it without having to hide beneath the jacket or closing your eyes for most of the movie.

Music

I must confess that I love all the songs in Puteri Gunung Ledang’s the musical. Based on that, my friend and I went to Istana Budaya to buy the CD’s as well as the poster, which is now hung in my cubicle that works as my stress reliever. Hahahaha. I suppose lots of girls will play the songs from the album before they go to sleep every night since Stephen- Rahman Hughes voice is definitely the music to your ear. My personal favourite would be Tinta Dewa since IMHO it has a very good music arrangement and the catchy tunes would definitely makes the music etch in your mind for a while.


Books

Lots of unread books in stock. No more trips to Kino and Borders!

My baby you - Marc Anthony

as i look into your eyes

i see all the reasons why my life's worth a thousand skies
you're the simplest love i've known
and the purest one i'll own know you'll never be alone
my baby you
are the reason i could fly
and 'cause of you i don't have to wonder
why baby you
there's no more just getting by
you're the reason i feel so alive
though these words i say are true
they still fail to capture you
as mere words can only do
how do i explain that smile
and how it turns my world around
keeping my feet on the ground
i will soothe you if you fall
i'll be right there if you call
you're my greatest love of all
arianna i feel so alive