Tertipu!

When I was 15, the school I was in at the time had just started activating their co-curricular programme. They had a journalism club, which went on to publish our first student-made yearbook.

Back then, after finding my class pictures, I would inevitable gravitate towards the creative section. You know, where students submitted their art and writings and whatnot.

I remember vividly reading this poem that a senior of mine had supposedly written. I thought it was beautiful, and haunting at the same time, and I must've read it close to a thousand times. I was in total awe of said senior and I wondered how someone so young (she was 16 at the time) had so much talent. I guess I could say that she inspired the urge in me to start writing.

Up until a few minutes ago, I really did believe she was that talented. As luck would have had it, I was watching a vlog of the making of an indie movie, and they were reading out a note that they had found tucked in a tree.

I'd recognise the first line anywhere!

It turned out that the girl I had been in awe of had plagiarised Sonnet 17 of one Pablo Neruda. I was lied to!

Sonnet 17 by Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Of Michael and Maids

I woke up today and found out the news that the biggest pop star in the world has passed away. He apparently had a heart attack. He was 50. He was the first pop star I ever had a crush on as a little girl, and he was a legend, before he screwed up his life with a few huge mistakes. May he rest in peace.

Today's The Star wrote about how Jakarta was stopping the export of maids due to the influx of abuse complaints by those already here. The government recently announced that they wanted to enforce that maids get one day of rest a month.

I happen to have mixed feelings about this. I have had a few experiences, as a child, with maids. Some were trustworthy and really very good. One of them complained to my mother that a neighbour's maid was trying to persuade her to run off and work with another employer. My mom, obviously, was furious that this busybody was trying to disrupt our peaceful lives. Our maid, at that time, was obviously one of the more trustworthy ones. We still keep in contact with some of our old maids, they did good all those years while I was growing up.

The not-so-trustworthy ones, we had cases of also. One tried to come on to my dad. Another was sneaking out to meet construction workers from her own country, for some reason, forgetting the fact that she had a husband and kids at home.

So I've had my share of good and bad maids. On one hand, I worry that with this enforcement, the maids will meet more people outside and get influenced into doing something bad. Some of them are very young girls, barely touching adulthood and have never experienced life outside of their own villages.

On the other hand, of course, I am very aware that these people are humans. They're not slaves. They don't deserve to be beaten up, or locked in. They don't deserve to sit on the floor with no food while the family has a huge dinner (my husband says he saw this in a restaurant once). They deserve equal treatment. They're employees. If we can come to work and be nice to our employees in the office, why is it so difficult to do the same with the one at home?

So the enforcement is really a double-edged sword.

As for those people who decided to abuse their maids, shame on them. Maybe THEIR employers should do the same to them so they'd know how it feels.

These people are miles and miles away from home. They left their families behind in order to provide for them. They're sacrificing so much so that their loved ones would have a better life. Is it too much to ask to treat them nicely so that they at least decrease their loneliness in this strange foreign country?

Girl Admits to Have Asked for the 56 Stars on her Face

Okay, I have to let this out before I say anything more, but, seriously, what a brat!

For those of you who don't know the news, a teenage girl went to a tattoo parlour to have stars tattooed on her face. 56 of them. Obviously, she looks like a freak, went home and her father hits the ceiling.

What does she do? She freaks out and tells everyone that she fell asleep during the process and woke up with those 56 stars on her face. She claimed that she had only asked for three and vowed to sue the tattooist for inflicting the hideous stars onto her face.

The tattooist, of course, in self defence, claimed that she HAD asked for all 56 stars and was wide awake during the whole process, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Since she was an unsatisfied customer, he offered to pay for half of the cost of the surgery to get those stars removed.

Guess what? The girl just came out with a statement, admitting that, she, indeed, asked for 56 stars and not 3. The reason she lied was because her father freaked out.

Obviously, the tattooist withdrew the offer to pay for removal of those infamous stars.

Padan muka, and seriously la, learn to take responsibility for your own stupidity, please. Menyusahkan orang lain aje.

In case you feel like reading the rest of the article and seeing the picture of the little idiot, click here.

Pengsan

Sebab cantikkk!! I went here and almost hyperventilated sebab the shoes are gorgeoussssss!! I want them alllll.. ALLL. Tapi that's seriously not possible sebab gaji baru dapat for one week only.. :(

So I'm gonna have to settle with one je.. I can't wait to pick them up! :)

But they're GORGEOUSSS!!

The high-heeled shoes lah, yang lain2 tu tak pasti ye?

Ok, gotta go pengsan now..

Gambar pagi raya haritu.





-Edited with www.picnik.com

Customers!

*Taken from (The Customer is) Not Always Right

Entropy Strikes Again
Movie Theater | Illinois, USA

(A woman came up to the concession counter with a tub of popcorn.)

Me: “Yes, can I help you?”

Woman: “WHY IS THIS POPCORN COLD?!”

Me: “It is? That’s weird, it shouldn’t be. I just made several batches, so I can get you another one.”

(The popcorn was ice cold, which was odd considering it usually stayed warm for a few hours.)

Me: “Just wondering, when did you buy this popcorn?”

Woman: “Yesterday.”

Me: “…”

LOL. I stumbled upon this website yesterday and it's FUNNY.

Anyway, I read the entry above and remembered that my sister's boyfriend, who works with the Ministry of Health once told me that a disgruntled customer sent in a complaint about a food product that was full of mould. Upon questioning, he admitted that he bought it 2 years ago and that it had been in the freezer ever since. *sigh*.

Love-Hate

Know how some people always say that love and hate are on two sides of the same coin?
Well, guess what....



...now they're on the same t-shirt. :p hehe

In love...

With munchkin cats... They're so cute, kaki pendek and chubby2... I want one!

btw, picture is courtesy of Lolcats

...

As I was blog-hopping today, I came across this blog of a woman who had lost her child two years ago. The baby was sick with some disease that didn't seem curable and the parents were faced with the devastating decision of keeping her intubated or letting nature run its course. I suppose, unable to take the sight of their baby going through so much pain, they decided on the latter.

Her husband's account of the baby's passing was overwhelming and I couldn't help but shed a tear for this little family's pain.

Imagine becoming a mother and not being able to bathe your baby girl until the day she has passed on just because she's been sick and intubated since birth.

Imagine watching your precious little bundle sick and almost constantly in pain throughout her short 150 days of life.

I admire this family's courage and strength in the way they handled their crisis and I can only hope that if I was ever faced with something equally devastating, I'd be just as strong.

I'm thankful, everyday for what I have, my loving family, my husband, those friends who've stuck by me through thick and thin.

To Viruspadu and family, I wish you all well and I'm very sure your little angel is watching out for all of you from heaven. Al-Fatihah.

Public Tiff, 2008 Style!

Okay, okay, I realise that it's the facebook era now, and nobody goes on friendster anymore. My husband even deleted his account (but he's not on facebook, he just despises online communities :p). I stil retained mine, for reasons unknown even to me, but i check it like once every two weeks instead of as frequently as I used to.

So anyway, when I log on to whatever online community that I have an account in, I like checking for updates on the people on my list of friends. I saw a very sarcastic-looking shoutout on said person's page and I decided to just click on this person to see what was going on.
Lo and Behold! A Bona Fide lover's tiff, on the friendster comment boards, no less.

I suppose it's their prerogative to fight wherever they want, I mean couples have tiffs in public all the time, aye? (Although I secretly believe that no one plans to have public arguments, it just explodes and somehow errupts all over the place) This is different though. Why? Well, maybe because when one posts a comment/testimonial, one KNOWS that everybody has access to it. ANY Tom, Dick or Harry (Jessica, Anne or Mary? LOL) is able to read the damn thing.

As if that wasn't enough to make someone feel like gagging, a busybody (I can verify that she's like that in real life) decides to add fuel to the fire by egging one of the parties on. Seriously, if you're a friend, you try to make things better, not worse.

Personally, I find it narcissistic and exhibitionistic of them, but if they like it that way, then I suppose more power to 'em!

Then again, I'm being harsh. Maybe they ran out of credit and were completely broke, so they couldn't call or text each other and thus, HAD to resort to this. Whatever the case may be, I wish them well and I hope they get over those differences (and maybe kick that busybody in the ass?) for their sake as much as for everyone else's! :p

I love my country...

...but it scares me sometimes...

Specifically, the people scare me. The politics, the racism (it's there, people just don't want to acknowledge it), the HATE... Yes, I'm perfectly aware that other countries aren't much better, thank you, but I find all the goings-on of late really disturbing, considering I've been living in this country and watching life go by through rose-tinted glasses. I realise now that things aren't always as they seem.

I came across an entry, while blog-hopping, about a boy who blogged (on friendster, no less) about how much he hated Malaysia and how much the US was much better than this country. He talked about racism and how people are so sexist. Sadly (or otherwise), I missed the opportunity to really see everything he wrote about since his blog got removed due to the sensitive content. His friendster profile was ladden with hate comments from people no better than him. Curiosity got the best of me and I googled his name to see if I could actually read some stuff he wrote, and I found some blogs which quoted him. I won't bother writing them down here since they're probably old news anyway, but I find it sad that I can actually see validity in some of his points.

No, before anyone accuses me of it, I am not overly westernized nor have i forgotten my roots. This boy ( I call him a boy because despite his points, he can't seem to get past all the emotions of his probably sad childhood and write maturely about them. What a shame.) as I said, has some good points, in SOME of his posts, particularly the ones I got to read. He does need to take an English language course, but i digress. I do believe that whatever views he has/had they are/were personal to HIM. Other people took his views too personally and found the need to insult the heck out of him, thus, proving themselves to be even worse than this boy they despised so much.

Let him be, for goodness's sake. Let him say whatever he wants. If you really love your country as much as you say you do, then prove it by improving yourselves instead of condemning others who probably have their reasons for saying things the way this guy did. Why stoop to such levels beneath you? You harass him on his profile and send him death threats - so this is considered a Malaysian thing to do? It's considered Islamic and proper and rightful? You go so far as to accuse him of not even being Muslim, so declaring someone else apostate is a very Muslim thing to do, have I got it right?

Blogs are a way for us to vent our feelings, let out some of that pent up emotions that we hold inside. People complain all the time about not being given the freedom of speech in their own blogs, but then when these very same people come across some content of some other person's blog that doesn't suit their fancy, they forget their complaints and be the very people they whined about in the first place. Please, look in the mirror and grow up.

Did you know...

that a study by Peterson and Roscoe (1991) found egocentrism in female college freshmen to be at a level higher than is typically found in some high school students?

For those of you who don't know what egocentrism is and want to find out just a bit more, (I'm a bit lazy to type everything out here since I'm doing this between assignments, which is how i found this article, btw. Bagus tak saya? Ber-blog pasal assignment. hoho) click here.

That would explain the level of egocentrism apparent in many of my female juniors. EVERYTHING is so clear to me now - NO WONDER so many of these girls are so rude and arrogant.

Let me explain what some of these juniors (pre-degree, no less! although most of the degree students share the exact same traits) have done. One very glaring incident of their stupid-mindedness happened during our post-practicum course.

Our lecturer, after observing our torture and hard work (really?) for the past 3 months decided to treat us all to breakfast on the very last day of the course. She put out the buffet table outside. Now, if you were a junior at a university and you came one day and saw that there was a delicious spread of food outside a hall obviously occupied by seniors, would you

1. tell yourself that the food probably belongs to them
2. think "waitaminute, my university is too cheapskate to provide food for EVERYBODY. There must be some kind of function going on that doesn't involve ME"
3. help yourself to the food, with seconds to boot.

If you answered no. 3, then congratulations, you are now on the same par with my tesl juniors! Pat yourself in the back and then get someone to punch your lights out because you are now officially an asshole.

Tip of the iceberg, this one. If any TESL juniors are reading this and you are not one of those bitches who think you own the faculty, I apologise, but please, on my behalf, give those girls a kick in the ass on the behalf of your seniors aye? Thanks

Let me clarify. I am not one who imposes my seniority on people. In fact, I despise seniors who walk around and demand juniors to bend down and lick their boots just because the happen to be older. However, I do NOT remember being such a bitch when I was a junior. While I never fanned my seniors' backsides, I also respected them and never stepped out of line because I know they've been through more and have been around longer.

Tapi, budak2 sial ni, ingat diorang tu bagus sangat. (hah, bila aku mula cakap melayu, ko tau la kesabaran aku dah tahap sini- sambil letak tangan paras kening). Seriously la, ko tu baru setahun jagung kuar sekolah nak berlagak sakan macam ko tu Permaisuri Agong pehal? Ko tau tak Permaisuri Agong yang lepas tu pon sangup menari poco2 dengan student UiTM? Tau tak? Kalau ko perasan sebab bapak ko tu lawyer ke, doctor ke, baik takyah la. Bapak ko kan, bukan ko? Kalau kaa tahap gaban sebab usaha sendiri takpe gak ni harap nak ride on the coattails of your parents? pigi dahhh. Aku lempang sekali berbekas jugak muka ko, sama macam orang lain so jangan la rasa macam ko bagus sangat. You've obviously been disillusioned all these years so let me give you a reality check. You're not that special.

The Funny thing is...

You almost did. But then you upped and threw it all to the wind. It blew it my way so I'm grateful for that. In a way, I should thank you.

So anyway, this is what would happen if my husband ever EVER got his hands on a PSP of his very own (which he has been DROOLING after).




















Image courtesy of Ctrl+Alt+Del
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