Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Disturbing Folktales

I think, by now, we've all heard of how certain fairytales were tamed down so that they can be told for children. In the original version of Sleeping Beauty, for instance, the beautiful princess was actually raped by a hunter. She then got pregnant IN HER SLEEP, and so on and so forth.

Recently, I watched a film recount of a folk tale that I used to read when I was younger. Of course, I had no idea what it meant back then. It was just a story, but when i watched it the other day, I was actually surprised at all the elements in the story.

I'm not sure if it's of a certain neighbouring country's or of local origin, but safe to say, it came from the Malay Archipelago. Here's how the story goes:

One day, a hunter pees on a keladi leaf in the woods. Soon after, a wild boar comes by and drinks the pee, and she gets pregnant! A few months later, she gives birth to a baby girl who grows up into a beautiful young woman, coveted by many men, all whom she rejects.

One day, while resting with her faithful pet dog, her handkerchief falls into some sort of hole, which she can't get into to retrieve. She says out loud: "Anyone who can retrieve my handkerchief will get to marry me!". And guess what? Her dog goes down and gets it for her! And so she marries her dog.

And gets pregnant and gives birth to a boy. She doesn't tell the boy that the dog is his father. So one day, while the boy was hunting (with the dog), he spots a wild boar (none other than the very same boar that drank the pee and gave birth to his mom, no less) and wants to kill it and bring her heart home to mommy dearest.

The dog, knowing that this is his wife's mom, stops him from killing his own grandma. The kid is furious (bear in mind, he's like 6 or 7 at the time) and kills the dog instead, brings its heart home, cooks it and gives it to his mother who readily eats it up. She notices that the dog/hubby is not around so she asks her son where it is.

Her son tells what happened. She gets really really angry and chases him away, but not before throwing a large rock at him that leaves a scar on his head.

To make a long story short, he grows up not knowing his mother and she, for some reason, stays as young and beautiful as ever. They meet and fall in love and only when they're in love does she see the scar and realise that it's her son. Of course, the stupid obstinate boy will not listen and insists on marrying his own mother.

Through some trickery on her part, she basically avoids marrying him.

But the point I'm getting to here - Drinking pee and getting pregnant from it, bestiality, incest? Man, people sure did use to get around, huh?

Friday, December 24, 2010

*Sigh*

So many things I wanna write about here, but I can't just yet sebab... entah tak tau kenapa. haha.

Mengada-ngada kan update? :)

Friday, December 10, 2010

You've gotta be kidding me!

Taken from The Star:

KUCHING: A 64-year-old bomoh who raped three sisters to “cure their sickness and restore their virginity” managed to get a reduction in his 69-year jail sentence after an appeal in the High Court here.

Justice Rhodzariah Bujang agreed to reduce the term to 40 years, taking into consideration Jamir @ Jawang Samah’s age.

But, the 12 strokes of rotan stays.

“The offence is serious. The caning sentence stays but in view of the accused’s age, and given that the total sentence is 69 years, I therefore reduce each sentence to 10 years,” said Justice Rhodzariah yesterday.

She ordered the sentences to run consecutively so Jamir has to serve 40 years in total.

The 16-year-old victim was first raped in February when she sought “health, beauty and a nice voice” from the bomoh.

After a few sessions, the girl brought her younger sisters, aged 13 and 14, for “treatment to restore their virginity and tighten their private parts”.

The matter came to light after the 14-year-old told her friend about the rape and the friend’s family urged her to lodge a police report.

Jamir denied the allegation when he was arrested on March 7, but changed his plea after the three victims testified in court.

Despite the accused’s mitigation of old age and bad health, Sessions Court judge Timothy Finlayson Joel ruled there was no exemption on caning under Section 376 (1) of the Penal Code for raping underage girls.

The bomoh was sentenced to 16 years’ jail and 17 years’ jail respectively for two counts of raping the first victim; 18 years’ jail each for raping the other two victims, and three strokes of the rotan for each of the four charges


Did his age or health matter to him when he committed those acts? No. So why should it matter now?

And as for the little idiots who went to him - Bodohnye kauuu!

This whole case is friggin ridiculous, seriously.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Blogcks

Lately, I've noticed how hard it is for me to string a decent sentence together. It's annoying and frustrating. When it comes to work, I'm fine (I think, I mean, my clients don't seem to be complaining). Give me a job to do and I'll do my level best to write you that copy and send it in before the deadline.

But give me a simple blog post to write and my head goes blank and my fingers stay still. Or rather, they type and delete, type and delete type and delete type delete type delete.....(you get the picture)

What is wrong with me? Blogging used to be almost effortless, cuz I love(d?) writing for myself. Now when i re-read my entries, I think "pathetic". Bodoh ah.

Friday, December 3, 2010

The Day We Turned T.h.r.e.e

Time flies, seriously. Yesterday was our 3rd anniversary. It feels a whole lot shorter than that you know? The day itself is almost a blur, but I remember how my bridesmaid ran away with my flowers and how we were so exhausted by the end of the day, tapi i still had to take off my gazillion inches of makeup. Macam nak pengsan.

I tell you, never do whole day affairs. I mean, nikah in the morning and then reception at night? Not to mention the photoshoots and makeup process, and then removing and then re-makeup-ing in between. It saps up all of your energy. Plus, as bride and groom, you don't get to eat much. Yeah, I know there are some of you out there who are thinking
"Fsck it. It's my wedding, I can eat as much as I want to!"

That's what I thought too, trust me. And then the big day comes along and you (or I, at least) hardly touch your (my) food cuz of the cameras flashing in your face and the gazillion people looking at you. haha. And then later on bila dah malam, exhausted and your tummy is grumbling, you want to start regretting the fact that you didn't eat, but you're too tired to do that either. lol.

I also remember how I felt the next morning, while we had breakfast (sent to the room), realising that it's my first breakfast ever as someone's wife. And then the first time we found time to solat jemaah, afterwards rasa nak nangis. haha.

Anyway, newlyweds, we sure aren't no more.

ok,that was a really really long digression.

So yesterday, Epol took leave just for the occasion.

We had a late breakfast





Then we went to redbox and sang our voices out for three hours! I thought the morning package was only 2 hours, but boy was I wrong.

And then we had a movie marathon, A Tangled Tale and Harry Potter - both were pretty awesome so go watch!

And then dinner at Bubba Gump.


Tembam. I know. Shadap.





Bucket of Boat Trash



Rib



Alabama Smoothie. This may not look like much but it's delightfully sinful!



It was an awesome day, with my best friend ever ever ever :)








Thursday, December 2, 2010

Cik

Cik (a name we call our grandma - well, technically, she's our grandaunt but we think of her as a second grandma to us, she's been taking care of all of us for so long) was admitted to the hospital three days ago.

On Sunday, she suddenly ran a high fever, and, worried, they sent her to the emergency unit of PPUM. Her blood-sugar level was super high, and they had to keep her monitored. She arrived at around 7++ on Sunday, and on Monday when I came at 12, she was still down there. They only put her into a proper ward that evening, around 5pm.

As it turned out, she had gotten hypothermia a few times over the last few days. Taking diagnosis into her own hands, she decided to stop injecting her insulin, since everytime she took it, the hypothermia would come.

Little did she know that the real cause of the hypothermia was the fact that, although she regularly took her insulin, she did not eat properly. Tak lalu, katanya.
That's why the hypothermia attacked.

After deciding to stop taking her insulin, she also decided to suck on some sugar cubes to prevent the hypo. Six, to be exact. When anyone else with diabetes would only bite off a small chunk off the edge, she sucked on 6 sugar cubes.

And so, without insulin, and with the help of the six sugar cubes, her blood-sugar level shot up sky-high, bringing her body temperature with it. She was incoherent, she couldn't recognise anyone, and was almost comatose.

And that was how she ended up in the hospital. Haih.. I told her to make sure that the next time she made such conclusions, she should ask someone knowledgeable about it so that something like this won't happen again. Dahla tangan kanan dia patah.

I dunno. She looks like she's recovering now, but I'm really worried about her.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Girls' Day Out

Today was a pretty special day for my sisters and I.

After almost four months of recovery, mama is finally healthy enough to keluar jalan-jalan with us. Yay! Therefore, we decided to have a full girls' day out. Hehe. Walaupun technically two of us aren't really all that girly no more, tapi nak jugak panggil girls' day out.

As usual, I'm a lazybum, so even though I've got an awesome HD camera on my phone, I still failed to take any photos.

So anyway, it started out with a visit to the hospital - my grandma was admitted two days ago due to high blood-sugar levels (that's a story for another post, if I actually get around to writing it), where we made her (my grandma) giggle with our antics. Like seriously, when we arrived she had this really sad look on her face, and then everything was serious for a while, but when her lunch came, we were arguing over who could feed her the best and laughing at each other, and she was giggling sambil makan. Selera pulak tu, siap habis licin semua. We made sure she was comfy, and then Yaya complained that she was hungry, so we left.

The next stop was The Curve where we had ayam penyet, and then jalan-jalan and run errands and by petang, Yaya was craving for meatballs pulak so off to IKEA we went.

Lepas tu balik.

Yes, it sounds boring, but when you haven't spent time with your mom outside of the house in a while, even jalan-jalan is loads of fun.

Plus, I got a pretty shawl out of it.

So yeah, a perfect GDO.