I'm Not Asleep, My Eyes Are Just Closed

Note: Not that anybody noticed, but due to several problems with a fried modem, a computer virus, an unstable phone line and trips to kampungs with no internet access, several of my posts have been uploaded belatedly. So dates will have no correlation to actual events. You can only be patient with Malaysian drivers for so long before you feel like punching them in the face, scream obscenities about their parentage and bash their monstrous four-wheel drives in with a sledgehammer. Yes, I know a third of you out there have lesen kopi , while the other third passed because the JPJ officers couldn’t be arsed that day, but that doesn’t disqualify you from having a brain and utilising it. If several cars come screaming down on you on the highway then overtake you on the inside lane while giving you dirty looks means that travelling at 80km/h on the fast lane in a 110km/h zone is the quickest way to get somebody to ram you in the back. Just because you pay your road tax doesn’t mean you can ...

My mother is pleased that I have lost some weight since the last time she saw me. Trust me, I'm not that thin but at least my family has stopped calling me Michelin Man. (Yes, my family is very cruel). My mother is also pleased that I dress in a more 'ladylike' fashion now, because I arrived at the airport wearing a pink, flowery shirt-dress. It’s only now that she’s discovering that that outfit was the only thing I brought home with me that would fit her ideas of lawa. Things would be perfect if my eczema hadn’t flared up again and I wasn’t spending raya with the skin on my face and hands red, angry and itching. My mother sighs, “ Kesian anak mama ni. Dah kurus, tapi muka comot .” First day of Raya at my grandmother’s house was rather muted, mainly because most of my cousins were not due to arrive till later. My grandmother is mostly grumpy, barking orders at her daughters. My mother manages 3 days before she has a bust-up with her own mother. At least my grandmother’s s...

I haven’t been to a mosque in a while, but I’m back in Malaysia and its Ramadhan now, so I’ll try to be good, eh? My younger sister is home as well so at least I’ve got someone besides my dad to go with. My mum doesn’t go – she says she farts too much and it would be too troublesome to make her way in and out of the prayer ranks to take her wudhu again. “We have to go to the mosque in Section 14 instead of our normal one,” my sister, KJ, says. “Why?” “Because they’ve bulldozed the one near here to build a shopping mall.” “WHAT?! Surely that wouldn’t be allowed? That mosque is always packed.” “Just kidding,” KJ sniggers. “It’s being renovated.” I shake my head and say something about menipu masa bulan puasa . “I miss the old mosque, though,” KJ adds. “I knew people there. All the regular makciks and neneks were my friends. We nod at each other in the wudhu room.” “Yeah, and I’m sure you give each other backslaps and say ‘Yo, bitches! Wassssssuuuup?” KJ smirks. “How come you always ...

Music When The Night Feels My Song – Bedouin Soundclash Raya songs – Various artists . Dear God! Why do raya songs have to be so maudlin and depressing? Why are these people permanently di perantauan and not in their own homes? Why do they keep mooching about the past? Lighten up and stuff your face with ketupat , why don’t you? Uhhh, that’s it really. Haven’t been listening to the radio much lately. Movies Lucky Number Slevin – This movie, chock-full of quality film stars like Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and Bruce Willis, wasn’t the box office smash its producers hoped for, which is a shame because I quite like it. It centres on Josh Hartnett turning up in a new town to visit a friend, only to be mistaken for his missing friend by two local gangsters. His friend owes each gangster a whole load of money and in order to save his life, Hartnett has to murder two people. But all is not as it seems as Bruce Willis, a notorious hitman absent from the city for many years, is whisperi...

It has been eleven days and Cancer Man has remained quiet. Maybe because it took three days before Flatmate gave any response to his flowers, and the response was a dry thank you note and strict avoidance of anymore waves and smiles. Flatmate still thinks the letter and flowers are a tad creepy, but I can't help feeling a little sorry for Cancer Man. He probably thinks he got silly over a young bird and now the bird's not being so friendly anymore because she thinks he's a freaky, pervy old man. I guess it just shows that no matter how old you get, you can still make a fool of yourself. "Could it not just be that the flowers were just a grateful gesture to someone who made him smile on a really bad day? I asked. Flatmate pondered on that a while. "No,"she said at last."It was the last two paragraphs of the letter that made me think otherwise. All that stuff about the impossible dream between two people with such a huge age gap and my 'lustrous hair a...

Phewh! What with all the excitement of the past month, I've forgotten about my monthly list. Not that anyone would miss it, but I like to do it for completeness sake. This month, I've been listening to: Twelve Stops and Home (Album) - THE FEELING . I bought the album initially because there two songs on it that I liked plus it was on sale, but wasn't too enamoured with the album as a whole. Now, two months after I've bought this album, it has grown on me and I can put it on daily. It's happy, summery, guitar music and still well worth putting on even if summer's on its way out. America - RAZORLIGHT . Quiet, subtle music that seeps into your consciousness. Nice. Empire - KASABIAN . I'm ok with the odd Kasabian single but this one I really like. Plus if you have a bloke in your English band called Serge Pizzorno, you gotta be cool. Pump It - BLACK EYED PEAS . Yes, sirree, I will. El Matador - LOS FABULOSES CADILLACS . I heard this song from the Grosse Point Bl...

Romance is not dead. At least not in the older generation. I could just die from laughing. Not from derision, no, those days are long gone, but from amusement and a sense of triumph. But this is not my story. Let me start from the beginning. When my friend and I moved into this apartment complex, we didn't know anyone. We still don't. We meet our neighbours in the car park and hallway and nod and smile to each other and that's about it. So we have come up with our own names for them and speculate on what they do for their living and how they relate to the people who live with them, if they do have flatmates. The fact that our apartment is on the ground floor and our living room doors open up to the grass verge and the car park outside made it easier to spy on our neighbours when they came home or come out to throw out the trash. We're nosy like that. Our favourite neighbour is someone who we call Cancer Man. He doesn't really have cancer (at least not that we are aw...