there are things to blog about, but by the time i have the time, it’s night time, and the thing i want to blog about, well, it’s not something i’d like to write about at night.

it’s rather… incredible-tale-ish in nature. erm.

meanwhile, don’t forget to watch chef s.o.s tonight. at least we’re not in there to embarrass ourselves. or look ten pounds fatter. face OR butt.

ok, going off now, to parkway.

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you know… it’s one thing to copy ideas (go ahead! take them!), but another thing to copy copywriting.

yes, there’s the word ‘copy’ in copywriting, but that doesn’t mean you can lift one’s carefully-thought-out choice, structure, and arrangement of words, and pass it off as yours.

if there’s one thing we hate, is our efforts in writing being lazily swiped from under our noses.

and please, don’t tell us that the same copywriting can be found everywhere on the net, or that everyone in this country has come up with the same common lines to market a particularly uncommon product, or that nothing is ‘original’ aaanyway. coz that’s just pushing coincidence waaay too far.

and even then, to plagiarise badly?

now that’s just… SimplyMelayu.

:S

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every time someone asks when i’m due (which is what they’re always asking now), it makes me feel like crying.

can someone please make tomorrow be 1st of april??

ps: and to the person with many names/emails, don’t try to lie to get the information you want. you’ve asked one too many questions, and you’re right, it IS damn frustrating! all the way from 2004 (yes, i still have your emails with all your irritating queries), you have been bugging me about my wedding preparations, my baby preparations, my relationship, my friends, bugging us to meet you, etc, right down to my freaking hair colour! come on, enough is enough! you ask once or twice – fine. but repeatedly? who’s the “ignorant” one here? go find your own resources, i’m NOT humouring YOU anymore, and i don’t owe you any favours. don’t expect people to spoonfeed you all the time, and don’t mess with a sick and pregnant lady – i’ll claw your eyes out if i hear one more peep out of you.

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question: how many times do you celebrate your 30th birthday?

answer: why, 30 times, of course! :p

enough, no more! we have a 31st birthday to celebrate at the end of THIS year, ok. :S

thanks again eh, even though dah basi macam nasi dalam periuk satu bulan.

speaking of 30, i just collected my new I/C yesterday. why DO we need to change I/Cs at 30 anyway? i think it’s a new policy coz those born in the early 70s like kak nina hasn’t heard of this change-I/C-at-30 rule. no fair! they get to look forever 17 (or whatever age they last made their I/Cs were lah).

i’d done mine as soon as i received the notification, or risked looking waaay unrecognisable nearer the end of this pregnancy, or even post-pregnancy, and look forever fat.

the result? a lopsided, creepy-looking smile, thanks to the unprofessional, home-taken, digitally-photographed picture. bah.

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Man with Womb = Woman

Bat with Womb = Wombat?

(ah, the things an idle mind produces…)

somebody, help me!

*counts the seconds till holidays begin*

ok let me think of something to distract myself.

to-do list says: ‘buy xmas gift for $10 to exchange at year-end party’.

how come during hari raya nobody has a party to exchange small envelopes with money ah? ok ok, nevermind.

was thinking of conjuring a gift hamper courtesy of items from those $2-dollar shops, like Daiso. hmm, clothes pegs… Magic sponge… mini manicure set… large bag of twisties… how much is that already? ok, let’s throw in a seat cushion. i sure could do with one myself here. butt is definitely sore from all this sitting in front of the computer. and coming up with loser $10 gift hampers.

can i just give a small envelope with money?

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it is an established fact that more often than not, it is the gormless s’porean caller who gets picked to go on radio to answer the most idiot-proof of all quizzes and win prizes.

this morning on ninety-one point three FM:

DJ introduces Gormless Caller (GC) and explains that to win a prize, he has to sing the next line to a song.

Studio Guest (SG), a local singer wielding a guitar, says she will sing a suzanne vega song since she will be performing in s’pore next month.

GC has not heard of suzanne vega, guitars, or music. it is a miracle he managed to dial the number of the said radio station in the first place. he probably meant to order a pizza or KFC buddy meal for himself.

SG proceeds to sing the first line, “My name is Luca…”

GC clams up.

SG begins to understand the gormless nature of radio callers in general and decides to be generous by continuing second line of song, “I live on the second ____.”

GC is still decidedly clueless.

DJ and SG try to cajole an answer out of GC with numerous clues. “It rhymes with door… more… four… etc. Let’s say you live on the ninth…?”

GC attempts.

“… storey?”

:S

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DON’T tell me you didn’t bawl your eyes out during yesterday’s episode of grey’s anatomy!

i had tissues all around me at the end.

i only get all emotional and weepy when i watch made-up shows like this on tv. in real life? no way.

of course, it helps that it was mcdreamy and he was crying, and looking all distraught and dishevelled and… ok ok, i KNOW, it’s a made-up show! sheesh.

so will meredith die or revive? the spoilers are out there, and i’m itching to read or watch the next episodes online, but there’s something exciting about waiting in anticipation for the next episode to come on tv at the scheduled time next week.

delayed gratification is a virtue.

(but i’m sure there are some of you itching to spill the spoilers here, right? heh.)

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it’s less than three weeks before his second birthday, and we’re in two minds as to whether to organise something or not for the occasion.

big or small, a do will definitely take up a considerably amount of energy and effort! of course, i’d love to do something nice for him, coz mommy LOVES birthdays.

but she’s been a little slack, and a lot of places she’s considered are already fully booked. (and remember that lovely multi purpose hall nearby? malay weddings galore the whole month, baby!)

and then there’s the current ‘climate’ of uncertainty shrouding the family where the birthday boy’s opa is concerned. even now with the foot problem out of the way (it’s a stump now, though i’ve never seen it myself – am too chicken to even have a peek!), he’s now not eating, not opening his eyes, and calling out to, err, ‘people of the past’, so to speak.

do we still go on with a celebration then, for our clueless kid’s sake? it’s kinda weird, but i don’t know. i still feel compelled to do something for the little one. if anything, it’ll bring some cheer to everyone. we could all use a bit of cake!

i mean, life goes on, right? or does that sound… callous and selfish? *scratches head*

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got this from is, and because it’s friday and my mind is not in a right state to finish my notes whose deadline is today and am feeling sentimental due to a mixture of female hormones and impending mid-life crisis, here goes…

(note: some questions have been purposefully left unanswered due to their potentially contentious or scandalous nature.)

1. Who eats more?
- izad, of course. like, duh! no one can argue with this. it’s a genetic thing, i think. his brothers all eat a lot too, it’s almost frightening. especially when fried chicken and prawns are involved. and he can also eat rice in its full glory as breakfast, ie. nasi rawon and the likes, which is just crazy in my books. cik abang oi, awak kerje keras di ladang, ke?

2. Who said “I love you” first?
- LOL! next…

3. Who is the morning person?
- izad. he says he thinks (and erm, performs) better in the mornings. i’m a pig when it comes to waking up in the morning, with personal records of staying in bed till past 11am. so since the little one is usually first to wake up in the morning, i’ll give a HEEEYUUGGE nudge to my bed partner, who will – eventually – trudge to the kitchen to prepare the desired beverage of choice for the little dictator of a boy or play ‘shoot gun’ with him. or switch on the damn telly.

4. Who sings better?
- izad! and he’s not too bad either. hehe.

5. Who’s older?
- izad, again, (hey, there seems to be a pattern here…) by about four months.

6. Who’s smarter?
- :p. ok, in terms of who went to the better schools and who’s got the right “papers”… let’s just say, i’ve always been lucky in that department, with ‘luck’ being the operative word here. (brains can only go so far, right? especially fluffy pink ones like mine.) as for who has the answer to almost EVERYTHING, including driving routes of the entire singapore and other seemingly trivial pursuits, then he’s got it – street smarts. bah.

7. Whose temper is worse?
- ah, finally i can say, hana! the one who raises her voice to glass-shattering heights when things go beyond her level of patience and keeps the little one in check. who then turns to his daddy, who has the zen quality of the one-thousandth patient in a packed polyclinic on a monday morning. yin & yang, you say?

8. Who does the laundry?
- both. he does his, and i do mine. coz mine requires one to press the ‘delicate’ button on the washing machine, while his is just the ‘regular’, and we both basically chuck everything in the dryer (except my really delicate delicates, which i hang to dry). obviously, mine is a more complicated process, so i’d rather deal with it myself, while his is a no-brainer which he is happy to deal with himself.

9. Who does the dishes?
- sigh. this i hate to say, but hana. why? why?? why???
(oh yeah. coz i don’t cook. ha ha.)

10. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed?
- hana! well, i used to insist on sleeping on the left when i was pregnant with aniq, for some reason. but it’s back to the right side, coz his irritating alarm clock is on the left, and as i’ve mentioned, i’m not a morning person, so if i were to sleep on the left, that buzzing iLuv would long have been a dead pile of smashed-up plastic.

11. Whose feet are bigger?
- his! size 11. now what do they say about men with big feet…..?

12. Whose hair is longer?
- mine, coz his looks foppish like a gay hugh grant when it’s long and floppy. (i would know coz i’ve seen it when he had that hairstyle in sec school ha ha!)

13. Who’s better with the computer?
- hmm… ok, i think OVERALL, he’s better, in terms of hardware, you know, where to poke the wires and stuff. plus, he used to do computer troubleshooting (or something) in a previous job.

14. Do you have pets?
- no, we’re struggling to raise one child as it is. and we’re just not the animal sort, i guess. heck, we’re not even plant people. the various potted plants we’d adopted have died unceremoniously under our charge. i think i used to own a pet turtle when i was small but err, i think that died too. thankfully, the little one is made of stronger stuff.

15. Who pays the bills?
- half-half, for the house, the car, and aniq’s insurances. h/p bills are separate, and the rest, i pretend not to be aware of. well, i AM the self-appointed savings person between us! (or at least whatever’s left after my shopping expenses…)

16. Who cooks dinner?
- mum! or the makcik at the food court. or the nyonya at the fast-food outlet. we rarely use our kitchen unless we’re too lazy to venture out, and izad would then conjure up a sandwich or macaroni goreng, depending on what’s available in the fridge at the moment.

17. Who drives when you are together?
- him, coz as mentioned in #6, he knows practically all the roads in singapore while i prefer to be in the passenger seat and act all tai-tai. (plus it gives him a chance to ‘bond’ with the car he pays half for, since i ‘bond’ with it enough five out of seven days a week.) oh, speaking of which, have i mentioned that driving a chunky ‘family’ car makes you feel VERY unsexy and matronly?? at least with babycolt, i could at least ‘pretend’ it’s a swinging singles’ car (nevermind the child seat at the back), but now it’s like, “hah, look at that lady driver, she’s obviously a slow, old, fat, frumpy mother of ten kids, hurhur, let’s overtake her.” ok ok, i’m exaggerating, and totally off-track…

18. Who pays when you go out to dinner?
- him, most of the time, unless he doesn’t have the time to meet Mr ATM, so then it’ll be me.

19. Who’s the most stubborn?
- him. NO, him, i say! REALLY!! HIM!! :p

20. Who is the first one to admit when they’re wrong?
- i’m never wrong. REALLY, i say!!

21. Whose family do you see more?
- mine, coz we fetch aniq from my mum’s after work every day. but i like meeting his on the occasions that we do, and so does aniq.

22. Who named your pet?
- not applicable. but i did come up with aniq’s name!

23. Who kissed who first?
- :X

24. Who asked who out?
- he asked me out. a few times actually, which i rejected, until the final time when i said ok, and the rest is history, hehe. hey, patience IS his virtue, remember? (refer to #7.)

26. Who’s more sensitive?
- me lah. girl, mah. mintak beli roti, abis dia tak beli, i merajuk lah. suruh buang sampah, abis dia lupa, mengamok ah. etc.

27. Who’s taller?
- have you SEEN me in all my vertically-challenged glory??

28. Who has more friends?
- well… hmm, we tend to go out with mine more than his. but then again, i’m the more ‘sanggup’ one when it comes to planning outings and such, he’s more of the home-body while i’m the kaki jalan. so effectively, most of my friends are his. his are mostly guys, so not so fun (coz most are also married, hehe).

29. Who’s the more romantic of the two?
- neither lah. this coming from the wife who buys her own anniversary gift and claims it from the husband, lol!

30. Who wears the pants in the relationship?
- both. :p

ps: in between this, i actually finished and submitted my notes. woohoo for deadlines (and verbal diarrhoea)! i work best under pressure.

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it’s that time of the year again… to plan december leaves!

time to caaarrreeefulllyyy engineer and maximise whatever pathetic balance of leaves left for the year, and minimise the total time spent in the ghost-town office that month.

now, let’s all flip to the last page of the calendar, shall we?

07/12/07, friday: eve of birthday. good time to arrange for some kind (any kind! frisk me for all i care!) of medical appointment, which equals to an MC, which saves me one day of leave.

10/12/07, monday: aniq’s birthday. aren’t they always encouraging us to spend time with our children and families? yes, yes, must take leave to ‘celebrate’ this special occassion. even if it’s just to sleep in longer and let the birthday boy run amok around the house.

11/12/07, tuesday: eve of payday. that means there should be some $ in the kitty for that MCR concert, no? ok, KIV that. it *would* be nice for a little time-out for mummy and daddy. hmm.

21/12/07, friday: woah, another hari raya! always good to rest after all that, err, kambing action and mutton rendangs.

24/12/07, monday: well, why stop at hari raya? let’s get jolly and celebrate the eve of xmas too! (and no, husband, i am SO not up for that long drive to m’sia, nevermind that we have a bigger boot space now for aniq and me to golek-golek around in.) (wait, didn’t we plan to go on a REAL holiday this year? bah. stupid bank account.)

31/12/07, monday: new year’s eve. ah, what the heck, who wants to come to work on the eve of new year, AND a monday at that? sheesh.

*counts* hey, five days in all! not bad, and i still have a balance of, err, 3.5 days, which would probably be squandered away this month alone. (forget about bringing over to next year, life is short, baybeh, spend it all while you can!)

oh and in between that, there are always child care leaves, courses, and unnecessary meetings to be arranged.

so, ho ho ho, and merry leave-taking, everybodeee!

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this is a True Story.

overheard in another section of department:

X: WHAT THE…?! NINJA TURTLE?? THEY NAMED THEIR CHILD NINJA TURTLE?? YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING!
(expletives and exclamations slightly exaggerated for dramatic purposes, but you got the Ninja Turtle right.)

Y + others: HUH?! are you sure??

X: YAH!! NINJA TURTLE!!

Y + others: *scramble to look at evidence on record*

etc.

they see all kinds of names everyday, these people, and hehe, this must have taken the cake.

or rather, the pepperoni pizza. :p

i wonder what’s his (i’m assuming it’s an unfortunate male child who will grow up being constantly bullied at the playground, become traumatised and mentally scarred for life, and end up a social outcast, forevermore hiding under his “shell”, so to speak) surname – lee? tay? bala? singh? bin mohd?? (to that last, as my mum would say, “selisih kan!”)

some quipped that the actual turtles’ names were much better (and sensible) choices, you know, michaelangelo, donatello, raphael, and errr… (ok, i have a thirty-year-old memory, so help me out here.)

i didn’t dig further to investigate, coz records are just records, it doesn’t say much about the parents’ background (though mother had probably just given birth at IMH, or OD-ed on laughing gas/epidural when she named him, or both). but yeah, we thought there definitely was “something wrong up there”. it’s a miracle that the parents possessed the clear faculties to even submit their child’s records to the said department in the first place.

then again, maybe it was a family member’s last dying wish to name the child Ninja Turtle. like, err, their dead son whose favourite cartoon was of the four sewer heroes. or the father had lost a gambling bet to his drinking kakis just before the child was born, and in his drunken stupor, he honoured the bet, which was to name his newborn child Ninja Turtle. or the parents’ first date was to watch TMNT: The Movie, and they felt it a romantic gesture to name their firstborn after the show’s protagonists.

or clearly, i’m also losing my clear faculties by thinking too much into this.

and now i feel like a pepperoni pizza…

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tofik.
hardy.
pendi.

*chuckles*

korang-korang yang lain tu, pi balik kampung chai chee na nyanyi lagu getai macam pompan-pompan papaya tu sudah, ok.

takpe lah budak-budak kita tak pandai maths, selalu masok drc, suka kawin muda abih cerai, dan lain lain lagi gejala popular masyarakat kita.

termasok kutu-kutu bawak blok yang suka main gitar sampai larut malam nyanyi lagu rawk jiwang.

asal ada SOUL, beb.

:p

ps: thank gawd that show with the two tarts is over. now i can rest in peace without their flat stomachs and cleavages in sheer dressing gowns causing me mental agony while i wait for ‘grey’s anatomy’ to start at 11pm. brrr.

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we’d just wasted three hours of our lives this morning, waiting… and waiting… and, yes, waiting…

usually, if it’s just me, i’d make a quick visit to the 24-hour private clinic nearby, which invariably has either one or even zero patient before me pre-lunchtime hour, so it’s always a painless five-minute quickie with the doctor on duty.

but today, both of us were down with the sniffles, and he *insisted* we go to the nearby polyclinic together since it’s, well, free. :S

hokaaay, i thought. well, technically, i couldn’t really think, seeing how i was suffering a blocked nose and ear and violently sneezing my eyes out.

we made it out of the door by 8.45am, and arrived just before 9am, BUT! a throng of people, sick or otherwise (it WAS a rainy, monday morning after all) had already made their way into the clinic and more were lined outside.

i was reminded again why i urghh-so-hate public healthcare, and if only it weren’t freaking free (for persons like the husband and myself), i’d never step into this waiting-room ‘hell’. :S

after registration, we took our time for a prata breakfast, toiletries shopping, and returned to find that it STILL wasn’t our turn. i’d even perfected my game of miniature golf on my mobile by the time #2284 blinked above the consultation room door.

so much for the real-time webcam queue watch to supposedly help people find out how many are waiting in line in these polyclinics.

and the information on the website is REAAAALLY useful too.

eg. “When are the Polyclinics less crowded?”

“We encourage you to avoid visiting polyclinics during peak periods (red zones) in order to minimize your overall visit time.”

and it proceeds to display a chart with the ENTIRE monday, from 8am to 4.15pm, highlighted in, you guessed it, RED. hah!

mondays or otherwise, if you gotta go, you gotta go, right? and you do it in the morning to get it over and done with, so you can have the rest of the day to recover. and i sure wouldn’t wanna travel all the way to the other side of the island just because it’s half as crowded there. (besides, wouldn’t your employers be ‘suspicious’ if you do that?)

so, the moral is, go to work on mondays, even though you’re almost dying, coz chances are, you’ll die waiting in the queues at the polyclinics anyway.

ps: and for all my ‘effort’ and unrelenting ‘patience’, the doctor gave me, no – OFFERED me two days of mc, thanks to my swollen nasal passage and other ‘ailments’. thank you, doctor! it was well worth the $8.70 consultation fee (as printed on my invoice, of which i was to pay a total of $0) that the gahmen is paying you.

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am suddenly looking forward to The Big Day, because a lot of things have been sorted out over the weekend, thankfully.

- kuihs sorted! well… 80% of which are nuts and crackers, though, hehe. we, along with what seemed like three-quarters of the entire malay community, had stormed into the Camel warehouse at defu lane over the weekend, as they were selling nuts and chips and other snacks at low, low prices. fabulous! so if you visit the izadnhanas over hari raya, you will be crunching and munching on nothing but nuts and chips, ok? be warned.

- air-tight containers sorted! because we’re having nuts and chips mah. none of those flimsy, wimpy kinds for the lazy-handed visitors. nevermind that they’re from Giant and not CK Tangs, no time! no time!

- curtains sorted! finally, SOMEBODY did something about the curtain rod in the living room which was tethering at the edge of a loose screw, and has been threatening to drop on someone’s head at any unsuspecting moment. it had kindly waited long enough until it got fixed by the curtain guy. and after three years, we finally made a new pair of curtains, ha ha. also, we got around to replacing that disintegrating bamboo curtain at the kitchen entrance that we’d bought from chatuchak, which had suffered much trauma from a toddler and other visiting children. it’s served us well, i must say, well worth the bahts we’d spent.

- bajus sorted! well… mine anyway. it had to be MINE first, then the husband’s and child’s, of course. as rini said, “dorang takpe, janji mak mesti jambu”. or something to that effect lah. looks like we’re going to have to brave the geylang madhouse ONE MORE TIME to search for their bajus. not sure if we’ll be perfectly colour-coordinated this time round, but, err, we’ll try. :p

last raya, merah menyala. hee.

- bedsheets sorted! this has ALWAYS been a tradition with my mum and me, especially when i was still staying with her. we’re quite anal about our bedsheets during raya – no one is allowed to crease it, not even the husbands! we get super excited when we buy a new bedsheet set, and will ensure there’s matching valance, pillowcases, etc. one of those mother-daughter quirks, i guess.

- accessories (somewhat) sorted! managed to sneak around vivocity and grab whatever i could, as the husband was sent to look for a decent pair of shoes for the lil bub. (white nikes! with baju kurung?? sheesh.) i’m going to forget about finding matching shoes or handbags for myself, i am so tak kuasa ok. anyway, i’ll be hard-pressed to find cute, glamourous little sequinned handbags that could fit diapers, extra toddler clothes, wet wipes, tissues, snacks, etc.

- messy hair sorted! had a quickie during lunch. (esah, malam ni ko nye turn potong ngan desmond, kan??)

- puasa sorted! haha, ok, almost. had to miss three days for medication, and hopefully nothing else goes wrong this week. phew.

let’s see, what else is there??

i’m sure i have a few more tasks to do. the washing machine and dryer will be working overtime for the next few days. the list for raya packets will need to be done (and what a loooong list i foresee this to be, haha!). and zakat, i think izad intends to do online this year. (has anyone done it this way? macam tak authentic gitu eh…)

why oh why do we mortals slave when it comes to raya celebrations every year?! i know most of the above are all so… unnecessary, even wasteful, and hardly reflects the true spirit of aidilfitri. i used to love the visiting people part, but then i WAS a kid, and raya meant something quite different then.

while i still enjoy the visiting as an adult, it’s… different since i got married. i don’t get to tag along with my mum to visit the relatives i traditionally go to every raya since i was young(er). and more so lately since the dad’s ill and can’t move around much. it was a little disconcerting having to visit all these relatives i barely knew on the first day of raya when i first got married, and well, i’m getting used to it. it just feels… sad sometimes, being an adult.

but nevermind, i think as new parents, we just have to keep looking forward to this special occasion, create our own family traditions, and make raya meaningful (and fun) for our little ones now.

just like our parents did when we were little ones.

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