Blogging to Live

I had been talking lately with this bank officer from Ambank in Perlis who’s working on my car buyer’s car loan (he passed me the number to help push for approval), and guess what? The guy is actually SMS-chatting me up!

A few days ago, when I asked him if at least we could find out if the loan is a go or not, he replied:

“I would approve him myself for you, but I’m just a small fry maa!”

Know any loan officers who are THAT friendly? This is certainly a first for me. All the officers I’ve known thus far have been as solemn as nuns on Good Friday (or other Christian occasions worthy of silent, sober contemplation).

Yesterday night, he SMSed me:

“I will brief you tomorrow what to do. BTW, if I may ask, what do you do in KL?”

A little taken aback, but I answer.

“I was a journalist until last month. Why?”

A few seconds later, this came:

“Your English is fine (fine? like wine?). Usually, i get broken English replies. Mag?”

I didn’t reply.

SeKAAli wanna talk dirty. As my friend Alex would say, hailat*.

I would do a lot of things to get my car sold? But flirting with 40-something bank officers is not one of them, sorry.

One has limits.

*Cantonese for “vagina dislodging”, a crude expression to signify bad news. Kinda like, “the sky is falling!”

If there is one thing I’m truly anxious about moving to the States, is whether or not I can still make new friends.

According to The Hubby, we’ve gotten some invites for dim sum and dinners from some of his colleagues and also some old Malaysian colleagues who have also made the move there.

I think it’s really nice of them to welcome us there, but I can’t stop thinking about what we’ll talk about. The wives, who are not working, will probably share tips about grocery prices there, or the best routes to supermarkets or childcare advice. Since I JUST got into this whole housewife, jobless in Seattle thing, I’ll just be sitting and listening. And those of you who know me know that I LOVE to talk.

But when it comes to really bonding with someone, I have trouble. No, it’s not that I think I have enough friends that I am physically unable to MAKE anymore, or that I’m stuffy about meeting new people. Rather, I lack social skills integrating new people into my life.

I mean, most of my friends are all over five years old. Now I have to make a completely new set. Isn’t it weird, to suddenly bitch about your in-laws or kids or sex life with people you’ve only known for a few months? Is it possible to make intimate friends with people one has only known for weeks or even months?

I really_don’t_know. Perhaps this wall I’ve built is solid rock only an ocean of time can dissolve.

Or perhaps a few glasses of good wine.

In any case, I still have this blog. And you, my dear readers.

Which is the real irony, since I don’t even know HALF, if not more, of you!

Caught Perhaps, Love with the girls yesterday. It was okay. Didn’t really like the cinematography (felt it was a little Chicago-wannabe and a little too artistic) but the music was nice. I’m not one for soppy love stories, and definitely not one with a too-perfect male lead who is more obsessed than he is in love with the female lead, who reminds me of Sylvia Chang when she was younger.

I suspect a lot of people will disagree but there it is. Definitely NOT this chick’s flick.

In other news, I am meeting up with three old MGS classmates that I have not seen, literally, for decades, next Tues. One is a Pilates instructor. One works with a human rights NGO. One is an English lecturer.

How we’ve all come up in this here world!

What on earth.

I was just checking out the all new Blog Stats in this here WordPress blog and this is what I saw:

These are terms people used to find your blog:

How to deal with difficult and egotistical people (1)
Son’s hand in his tamil mom’s blouse (1)

Try Googling these sentences. My blog entries with mentioned words come up like four or five returns down.

Shocking, yes. But also offended and very amused.

Someone asked me why I never bother to wish anybody Merry Christmas or Happy New Year on my blog.

I mean, that’s like the laziest, most unthoughtful and presumptuous way to send someone greetings. First, not like ANYBODY even reads my blog, except for griefers and trolls and ex-boyfriends who wanna see how fat I’ve gotten.

Secondly, greetings are about heart. Even e-cards are nowhere as cheap as blogging your well wishes!

And I don’t feel like wishing anybody anything this year anyway. My house is in boxes. My husband is hundreds of light years away. So I will need to be a little promiscuous, get me some Jacky love tomorrow with my girlfriends, and some Harith love this Sunday.

Okay, have a Happy 2006. I’m wishing you well on the inside.

Excerpt of a conversation with my mom yesterday:

“You better ‘chup sang’* Fer**”

“Why?”

“Well, you are no longer gainfully employed now. You’re just a housewife. You better watch yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe she*** might think you’re not deserving of your good fortune. Not earning it.”

“Hah? She was also not working last time what.”

“Yea, but she was pretty. You’re fat. So becareful.”

*Cantonese for “buck up”
**Short for “Jennifer”
***Madam Milly

Apparently, slogging away at home taking care of one’s kids and cooking and cleaning isn’t enough.

One has to also look pretty doing it.

Whose rules are these?

As impertinent as the reasons may sound, my dear old-fashioned mother may be right. Sometimes, the vibe I seem to get from Madam Milly is that I don’t deserve my husband. Maybe I never did, because I have a big nose, a ‘monkey mouth’ and am 50kgs overweight.

But look at my kids. I think they’re the most beautiful children in the world. That’s all that matters. Plus they must be useful to the world when they grow up, of course.

The least rational, bitchiest part of me thinks that vain women should never have sons because they’d expect their sons to marry beautiful women as well. 

And they definitely should never have daughters because gee-ee-zuz, we need another vainpot like we need another tall building.

I do need to lose weight, that’s for sure. But I sure as hell ain’t gonna like it.

ps. On further thought, I asked myself, did I marry a man who loves me for what I am? For what I ALREADY am? I wasn’t exactly Kate Moss when I met him. Does he expect me to become Kate Moss, just because I don’t hold a paying job anymore and hence, have tons of time to fix myself up?

Yea, I’ll ditch the kids in daycare and get right on that.

This afternoon, after a crazy morning, I decided to take the kids down, with the maid and Madam Milly, to the common area for them to work their legs a little and for me to just relax.

After a while, the lady who ran the saloon came over to tell us that a neighbour of ours had passed away from ovarian cancer. She was only 52.

I’d known Wendy only passingly. She co-owned the restaurant downstairs, where I had Raeven’s third birthday party. I always had the impression that she was a nice, church-going lady. My mother had line-dancing classes with her. Didn’t even know she was wearing a wig all this while (because of all the chemo), and that her cancer had relapsed.

I used to obsess over death, especially when it afflicts those I know, no matter how passingly. Today, I realised that I have hardened somewhat. I no longer feel the intense need to cry for the inevitable tragedy that is promised to all of us from the day we are born. I used to shed many a tear for those left behind as well. Today, I was oddly calm.

I know it’s not a good thing. But it has happened. This lady is now the third person I know, lost to cancer in the last five years. I have become jaded with disease and death.

As jaded as I was, I was not prepared for what Madam Milly, who was NOT jaded at all, had to say. Which was totally inappropriate, to say the least. The saloon lady WAS a close friend of Wendy’s.

“Her husband is still young and handsome. Can’t expect him to remain single…”

Yea, I know. Not sure if she even knows that they were close, and how insensitive that was.

The lady was just buried yesterday for God’s sake.

Just hope this kind of apathy is not genetic.

When people found out that we were moving overseas, the most common question I get asked, as the wife, is, “Are you excited?”

Some ask sincerely as they want to vicariously experience what it’s like to make such a big change in one’s life.

Some ask – well, in a way you know you’re not supposed to answer in a positive manner because you can see from their faces that they think you don’t deserve such luck.

For both, I answer as honestly as I can, because while I am 30% excited, I am 50% scared (and 20% just tired from all the planning and packing).

Scared that adjustment to life in an entirely different country and culture might not settle as easily as we’d wish it to. Scared that my husband might not like his job and we’d all have to move back. Scared that my kids will be uprooted so easily by the American culture when their own Malaysian Chinese roots have not even taken a good grip yet. And that my husband and I can do nothing but struggle to hold them back before they get swept away into ‘living the American dream’ when we’re not even Americans!

A lot of people also ask then, why we are moving there. The first – and only good reason we can think of now – is education. With my salary and my husband’s, we definitely cannot save RM500k a child to send them to uni when it’s time for them to go. At least, in a country like the USA, if given the chance to stay permanently, that will at least be taken care of without having to cost both ours arms and legs. Or our retirement fund.

Ironically, when we move to the US, we will be making less money. Contrary to what people must be thinking, we will only be bringing home 1/2 the bacon, with me not working. I think this is a good thing, though. It will, at the very least, make us more careful, conscious human beings.

Is that enough to make such a move? I think so.

Why would YOU move to a more developed country, if given the chance, except to make more money?

My colleagues at GameAxis threw me a belated farewell-cum-Christmas party today at the office. It was heartwarming. I got two cards: one farewell and one for Xmas, each with such lovely messages inside.

Almost cried but held fast. If Raeven wasn’t there with me, I would’ve most likely sobbed my heart out.

Thanks, guys. Was really lovely. Definitely going to be with me for a long, LONG time.

Also, this evening, my old friends from MGS Ipoh threw me a farewell dinner at Mum’s Place in Damansara Perdana. We spent three hours reminiscing, bitching and laughing until the staff of the place gave us disgusted yet amused looks.

“Just follow the noise,” said one of the waiters when my friend Lilian was late coming in.

Good times I will definitely miss. Planning a girls’ movie night next week. So lucky to have such good friends that I’ve known since I was a child, who are so willing to share my last few weeks here with me.

“…And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of
pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
(Kahil Gibran)

I will miss all of you.

I’m talking about expectations.

Isn’t it odd, that the closer you are with someone, the higher your expectations are from that person?

And the more unreasonable they become?

Take your spouse, for example. You always expect him to be more understanding, to be more sensitive. Or your kids. Most Asian mothers berate their kids for not doing better in school instead of encouraging them.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago, and it occured to both of us, how we can become so unreasonable when it comes to those we love. And that we would never expect so much from people we call our friends.

And much less strangers.

Why do we afford such a courtesy to people we don’t even care about? And why do we make our loved ones work so hard to gain our respect when we can give it so freely to others?

Food for thought.