“Silence and solitude are universally recognized spiritual practices, and there are good reasons for this. Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.”

and that’s how it feels like exactly, rupturing out of my mouth – exhausting.

i’d dived into liz gilbert’s ‘eat pray love’ with little expectations that it would create even the tiniest affect on me, yet it surprised me with the little nuggets of wit, wisdom, and colourful descriptions that she served among the pages of her constant neuroses, self-absorbed whines, and incessant prattle on self-discovery.

(i’m still midway through the book, so i don’t know how she ends up. well, other than being extremely rich, with an A-list hollywood star to act as her in the movie to boot.)

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bedtime conversations sometimes meander into the mystical (oftentimes murky, in my case), realms of the theological…

A: “Tuhan… Tuhan is… everywhere?”
M: “yes, EVERYWHERE!”
A: “Tuhan is here? in the room? on my bed?”
M: “yesss, he’s EVERYWHERE, aniq.”
A: “everywhere? inside the body? inside my heart also?”
M: *pause – i never thought he would think of his heart, or his body for that matters, as a physical residence, but…* “YES, of course he’s inside your heart, to protect you. that’s why you don’t need to be scared when you sleep! see, you are not alone, because he’s always watching you. you just say Bismillahirahmanirahim and don’t worry, no bad dreams, no nightmares. just say that before you sleep. (and must wash feet also.)”
A: *thinks* “then, Tuhan got watch tv or not?”
M: “no lahhh, how can he watch tv? he has to watch everyone. EVERYONE, aniq! how is he going to watch you, and auni, and mummy, and daddy, and your friends, and everybody if he’s watching tv??”
A: “ohhh. then can teach me how to say again… bis-mi-yah…?”

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seriously. humour me.

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my recent foray into fb has been… amusing, to say the least. if anything, i get to revive an almost-forgotten art of (online) flirting – NOT.

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Pebbles Auni, originally uploaded by izadd.

am missing her today, coz it’s the first day back at work after the long CNY holiday and she’d usually be the first feet to pitter-patter over to our room and lay her head on my side of the bed, followed by her brother, but today i was out before either of them woke up, so something felt… amiss.

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is it too late for new year resolutions? it’s still january, so technically, the year is pretty new and the table calendar in front of me is yet unmarked and crisp as a karipap.

not a firm believer of resolutions that often get forgotten by the, hmm, third month (on average, based on purely observational records), so you know, don’t take me seriously (except #3). so here goes:

1) live a healthy lifestyle – so all those years of scoffing at the gahmen’s calls to lead a healthy lifestyle and snorting down cheeseburgers and fries like there’s no tomorrow, it’s all bitten me – hard – on my (expanded) arse. i won’t be so delusional as to say that i’m OBESE OR ANYTHING OMG, but it’s more like a… ‘relative’ thing, you know? as in, i am now (in delicate terms) ‘meatier’ than i ‘relatively’ was, say, a year ago, or heck, even just six months ago. so how did that happen? how did all those carelessly consumed calories suddenly make its appearance so markedly known? tummy, arms, thighs, hips… oh the atrocity! the treachery!

ok, so i expect many of you at this point would point out, “oh, but nice what, meatier… more to hold, more to love, blablabla”. sure – IF I WERE KFC CHICKEN BREASTS. i wanna be lean ayam kampung, dammit. marinated in kunyit and ketumbar and deep-fried… mmmm… but i digress.

i cite several factors for this hysterics-inducing epiphany:

a) age: = slower metabolic rate

b) birth of children: nature’s way of saying “your body’s done its job of mating and reproducing, that’s enough attracting of the opposite sex now, time for it to go into frumpy-mode and focus on tending to your young.” THANKS NATURE.)

c) end of breastfeeding: the whole year i was on TBF, i was invincible. input means output, producing milk was a workout by itself, which didn’t require any physical exertion other than pulling my shirt up. remember that episode on desperate housewives, where lynette’s female employee broke down when her 5-yr-old stopped wanting to be nursed and she lamented that breastfeeding was the only way she could stay thin? well, yeah, coz it worked for me that way. now, i can’t possibly b/f the kids till they’re of legal age, can i?

d) the office: a deskbound job means you’re sedentary for at least 8 hrs a day, 5 days a week. the few minutes you stand up to walk is to get lunch, or to go to the pantry for snacks. (unless, like me, you hoard snacks in your drawer under your desk, which HEY requires absolutely no standing/walking AT ALL.)

e) spouse: who loves eating. ‘nuff said.

which leads me to The Action Plan.

i) exercise more: yes, the one thing that i dread most (apart from cooking). the one thing i avoided like the plague throughout my years since school. the one thing that makes my muscles quiver in fear. but as Mr Nike once said, “just do it, dammit!” and turned it into a (less objectionable) slogan that many an athlete has lived by, do it i did. it’s been a month since my discovery of the painful pleasure (a masochist talking here) that is ‘working out’. now, like i said, it’s ONLY been a month, so no, i have not exactly jumped in the deep end of the pool that is the GYM (i confess i have a deep-seated fear-mixed-with-embarassment of ‘abang-abang body’ who are omnipresent in there). so for now, it’s easing these rarely-utilised muscles in doable stuff like low-impacts, pilates and yoga which i quite like, surprisingly. i don’t expect to turn into jo/jo sinclair or even half of her well-defined buttock, but at least, you know, i’m in control (a control freak talking here).

ii) eat less: i used to be this bird-pecker of a girl, you know, the kind who eats to live, too shy to actually buy food at the school canteen, too lazy to lunch at work. but eversince (b) and (c) above, it’s become quite a habit, this eating-actual-meals thing. see, i have this theory. you know how animals, like wolves and sharks and vultures, they go on feeding frenzies when they have to compete for food? well it’s kinda like that as a family grows in numbers. whenever there’s food meant for us, ie. mummy and/or daddy, along come the little children, like wolves and sharks and vultures. “WAH!” says the big one. “MAMAM!” says the little one. and together, they form a tag team to steal bits of our food WHILE WE EAT. it is indeed a rare occasion to have our food untouched by either of them, except when the dish is extremely spicy, so what we do, is gobble up as much as we can, as fast as we can… ok so, no connection, this theory. the point is, i’d turned from a bird-pecker to a wolf-shark-vulture mutant. i’ve never been that much of a foodie, unlike (e) above, so it should be pretty easy to cut down on evil stuff like processed meats and carbs. i think.

2) harnessing my Wild Things, a.k.a The Children – i think i may have made too many compromises lately where the lil ones are concerned. the boy since he turned four is becoming a little worrying. it’s SO HARD not to get mad at him everyday over some silly little thing. the girl, well she’s at that extremely-cute age so although i get mad at her over silly little things too, it’s easier to forgive simply for the fact that she’s not two yet and when she says “awi ami” (that’s “sorry mummy” in tod-speak), it makes you chuckle. but the boy… argh! it’s just SO HARD, raising Wild Things.

3) NOT get pregnant again (or evuh) – arising from #2. because, seriously, i am, at this point, highly doubtful of my parenting skills, and bringing forth more Wild Things from my womb unto the earth would be irresponsible, not to mention detrimental to my mental health and personal well-being.

4) read more books – i may actually have listed this in every new year resolution, and i think i did pretty ok last year (hey the Twilight series count). don’t ask me why this is still important in this age of blogs, internet and short-attention-span. i’ll tell you it’s for the purely selfish reason of the tactile experience.

5) write more – coz i need these kind of posts to purge myself of all the toxic build-ups in my brain.

and i could probably go on, but that would not be a good idea because #6 would have been ‘go to bed earlier’, and i’ve already broken that one on 26 counts since the dawn of 2010.

little wolf-shark-vulture Wild Thing: we are SO not sharing this ice-cream with mummy lest all the calories go to her thighs, BOO HOO HOO.

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“Even if she’s no beauty, dear God pls give her a good brain.”

who would’ve thought that an off-the-cuff, half-baked thought, in the middle of the night, typed out in the haze of slumber, in the confines of a text bar for 140 characters, would spark such controversy.

the scene: mother nursing her baby girl who was falling asleep in the comfort of a suckled bosom, her lids drooping heavily, drifting away to dreamland, sweet and innocent, right down to her tiny toenails.

looking at her, her big round head and funny-looking hair (what we call “mad scientist hair”, especially when it’s all wiry with sweat), her little button nose (in malay, you’d call it “pesek” or flat) and her perpetually drooling lips, her barely there eyebrows and lashes – the mother swells with nothing short of pride that this little being in her arm is “JUST SO CUTE!” that she repeats it like a broken record every day to her husband for affirmation, and receives it with a nod of agreement and a fatherly grin each time.

coz let’s face it, in every parent’s (very) biased world, their child/ren ARE the cutest.

but rationale being a bitch, they know that to say it out loud often enough to anyone else would appear presumptuous to the point of obnoxious.

and well, we wouldn’t want THAT, would we, now?

so mother downplays it.

yeah, baby doesn’t have curly locks of hair. she doesn’t have fluttery doll-like lashes. her nose isn’t sharp, neither is her chin. she doesn’t have a dimple in her cheek. and so, through absolutely no fault on her part, she has little of the features associated with your quintessential beauty.

which is all well and fine, coz that’s all part of your DNA, baby. god knows mummy herself looked funny as a baby (with pictures to prove).

the thing that really matters, is that she is adorable to me, to no end. couldn’t you guess from the infinite number of photos and anecdotes streamed through our various platforms of communication?

but at this point, and mostly in the future, it is a mother’s utmost wish that this girl will worry little about the superficial, and hone her more worthy God-given faculty of the mind and intelligence, to make the right choices and decisions, to better herself and acquire everything she will ever need in life through that. as PCK would say, though in quite a different context, “use your blain!”

and all that, my friends, was what mother meant to convey, albeit pathetically, in a 140 character tweet. (yes, i over-think things, that’s my dysfunction. annoying as hell, i know.)

but if you even bothered reading between the lines in the first place, if you knew me well enough, as i would expect you, a non-stranger, to – you would never, EVER, for a moment think that i would intentionally ‘insult’ my child through a compressed one-liner to convey my innermost thoughts.

then again, i guess i never should’ve attempted in the first place, coz the fact that you think i’d even do such a thing, is an insult in itself.

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ok, so just how do you define a ‘blogshop’, eh?
thoughts please!

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i blame my WAGs-wannabe friends (hah! wannabe! wasn’t that a spice girls’ song? zigezig ahh…) for inspiring this.

nevermind the bad press about her, and i don’t really care much about her excessive collection of designer dresses, bags, and shoes (though they are, admittedly, amazing).

what i do like, or at least what’s portrayed in the media, is her clear devotion to her children, while looking RIDICULOUSLY FABULOUS, with nary a hair out of place. i mean, this woman seems to go almost everywhere with her kids, bringing them herself to something as domestic as soccer practice, without a nanny in sight, and appears to manage them admirably well too. sure, there are probably bodyguards hovering around… though, hmm, come to think of it, maybe she pays them to make sure her boys don’t misbehave in public. :p

in any case, she’s quite a force to be reckoned with, methinks. coz it surely can’t be easy handling three boys (that’s another point, i love that she has all boys instead of prissy mini-me versions of her – makes her look even more ‘fierce’, somehow!), while looking like the million dollars that she’s worth, and cameras flashing at their every move.

and in the spirit of the event that's taking place this sunday (*wink wink*), here's something i made up for my WAGs-wannabe friends, who harbour secret crushes on her... lol!

(to sing to the tune of Beyonce’s ‘If I Were A Girl’)

If I were Posh Spice
Even just for a day
I’d roll out of bed in the morning
And throw on my skinniest jeans and go
Eat out with the girls
And chase after kids
I’d shop with who I wanted
And I’d never see those credit card bills
Because my Becks will pay up for me

If I were Posh Spice
I think I could understand
How it feels to love Hermès
My Louboutins and all those brands
I’d wear just high heels
Though I know how it hurts
And I’d have my boobs inflated
A tan that’s never faded
And to-die-for hair that’s perfectly coiffed

It’s a little too late for a Spice Girls comeback
Say it’s just a mistake
To sing in a girl band
If you thought I’d grow frumpy
You thought wrong

But you’re not Posh Spice
You don’t understand (yea you don’t understand)
How it feels to love Hermès
Someday you’ll wish you had a richer man
You don’t like soccer
You don’t care how it’s played
Until you have your boobs inflated
A tan that’s never faded
And to-die-for hair that’s perfectly coiffed…

see you girls on sunday!

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when you’re in the confines of an empty car with the radio airplay on repeat mode, your meandering mind tends to come up with some strange observations.

one being, that women these days are, in general, not a very happy lot, particularly with their male counterparts, as the evidence below will show.

1) beyonce declares that if she were a boy, she’d drink beer with the guys, and chase after girls, and kick it with who she wants, which is what her fictitional half does. (coz surely her real-life spouse, jay-z, doesn’t do that… right?)

2) katy perry gripes about how her supposed groom-to-be changes his mind like a girl changes clothes, and PMS like a bitch, drilling her infectious one-moment-hot-one-moment-cold refrain into his brain, and yours.

3) pink who just lost her husband (to divorce, not death), but so what, she’s still a rock star dammit, she’s got her rock moves (and loads of cash) so who needs him?!

4) britney proclaims, in all her usual articulate self, that her fella’s nothin’ but a womanizer, womanizer, oh a womanizer.

it’s a revolution, i tell you – women with the power to diss their men… and getting away with it (with royalties to boot)!

now, the men, on the other hand, are a bunch of lovelorn wussies these days. let’s see:

1) david archuleta whines about a crush. on a *girl*. (yaawn. i’m still rooting for him to lean the clay aiken way, give it time.)

2) neyo pines for bossy, independent babes who pay their own bills. (read: he’s a cheap date.)

3) t.i. offers his shawty whatever she wants. you know, the kinds of things you and me wants – bags, jets, stacks of rubberband banks. (hehe, i is rapping yo.)

4) some sick irish lads who refuse to move from a corner of a street just to wait for some girl. (how will they pee and shave and shower? not a great idea to woo a girl with a bursting bladder, grizzly beard, and B.O, i would say.)

then, to further reinforce how women have evolved into man-eating, power-crazy, power-hungry species, are the increasing emergence of shows such as:

1) sex & the city, or better known as SATC (THE show which probably set the wheels in motion for our generation’s iWoman-hear-me-roar-in-my-jimmychoos revolution.)
2) lipstick jungle (top honchos in the media, publishing, and fashion worlds, juggling demanding careers with neglected children, errant spouses, steamy affairs, etc.)
3) cashmere mafia (ditto above. with better casting.)
4) desperate housewives (which should really be changed to desperate husbands, coz the wives? not so desperate anymore.)

and in our local context, with girls making up the top psle students these days, it won’t be long before mediacorp catches on and comes up with our very own shows featuring high-powered women who’ve scrupulously climbed the corporate ladder or have superior hold over their spouses in the prime bukit timah suburbs. suggestions for show titles:

1) manicured CEOs in merlion city (shortform, MCMC)
2) stiletto singapura
3) kebaya mafia, and
4) don’t call me tai-tai

and to end this fluff entry, i leave you with katy perry’s other famous song, ‘i kissed a girl’, which sends a signal that girls are so self-sufficient and dissatisfied with the other gender these days that they’re eventually replacing men with other women in the equation. uh-oh.

Us girls we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist so touchable
Too good to deny it
Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent

*disclaimer: the above entry is merely a frivolous jibe at the opposite sex in general, and in no way intends to show disrespect or create ill-will towards our ‘better halves’, whom we need to throw the rubbish, make hot tea, and change the diapers… kidding! :p

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