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Instant souvenirs from Chennai, India. It is good to have her back.
It is the country's 50/44th year of freedom and our prime minister is beginning to sound exasperated at the lack of flag-flying. But he might like to know that my expatriate neighbour, an English teacher from the States, flies the flag come every 31st August on his porch gate.
(Selamat Hari Merdeka, Mr. Schopper!)
While it is growingly less hoorah to live in this place, with flaws and chipped ends increasing in obviousness, and gnawing at one's ends, and decreasing a person's patience (and everything else), I think I will throw off the cloak of heaviness for a day (or two- well, at least until the fireworks) because tomorrow will be the 50/44th year that we have survived and stuck as a nation. Survived 1997 (in more ways than one), extremist natures, bird flu, raving men in Parliament, raving men on kapchais, daily traffic congestion (we owe each other a group hug for this one), price hikes, leery folks in uniforms, tardy trains and pieced-up buses, and the rest of the lot.
But I won't begin to complain, because then I'd run out of space.
Instead I will make a list (oh, efficiency!) of things that make this home a home:
1. I love Malaysia because it is truly like no other because we have so many different races living under one roof in harmony and peace.
(Ha ha.)
1. Nasi lemak
2. Impunctuality a nation-wide affliction
3. Incessant public holidays
4. Hodgepodge of cultural celebrations
5. Shopping malls that get bigger, better, and bigger
6. The durian
7. Wonky national cars (I drive one)
8. Mamak stalls
9. AirAsia
10. Roadside eateries next to drains which serve good food
11. Malaysia Boleh!
12. Tacky government ads
13. Rambutans
14. Subang Jaya
15. Inane radio shows and inane radio personalities that drive you nuts in morning traffic
16. The suffix -lah
17. Inefficiency (hah!)
18. Rain. Copious amounts of rain.
19. Sunshine. Copious amounts of sunshine.
20. Contradictions
Happy Merdeka, Malaysia.
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Plenty of to-do lists await my picking up. I have made them up in my spare time, whiling away between lessons and non, trying to make it as exhaustive as possible. Some days I feel that my life's goal to inner contentment and fulfilment is to reach the pinnacles of efficiency. And I'm not even working for management or book-keeping. Or am I running tight ships of any sort.
There were days cold, tight ship-runners ridiculed me for my lack of quota where efficiency is concerned. They made me feel like small peanuts, like trodden gravel, like trimmed-off bread crusts. For sure the ability to be the E-word isn't engineered in my being, thus making me feel lesser and wanting. And I have learnt that in life, sometimes, good intentions aren't enough. People want to see work. People want to talk tasks. People want and need something to measure you by. You heart isn't going to weigh much.
I want to tell them to go forget about E-ness and go and really live, whatever that could mean. One could start by burning the trademark meticulously scribbled daily/hourly planners that one totes in their pocket and let dictate their lives*. Sometimes you can do so much, and yet, in the end, you find you have done really nothing at all. Except fulfil the commandments of efficiency.
I don't know why I am going on about this E-word.
I am becoming a boring person. And to think of it, I haven't even been posting as regularly as before. It's harder to write lately, for whatever reason.
It has been a less than stellar week month. And laundry left alone to pile can cause nose-crumpling whiffs. Unresolved matters and refusal of acknowledgement that there are issues can cause massive nestings and infestations of nasty and vile stuff. It feels ugly. You don't like what you see. And you begin to not see them anymore. And you run your life in cycles. Like hamsters on wheels (not the best analogy, I must say), you are moving furiously, but you are not getting anywhere.
I haven't been true to myself lately. I haven't been honest. There is ugliness I need to begin seeing again, and to handle rightly.
Why then such a picture (above) for things like the E-word, infestations and ugliness? It reminds me that it is good to smile. And maybe laugh a little. It reminds me of how long it has been since we've last gone to visit and play with them, because we have been busy in our own fashion. It reminds me well that the heart still matters and still weighs its share. Because we can only do so much, so little for them - our hands are too small to really give, the time we spend with them too small a fraction, the energy and funds we use doesn't make much of a dent. If we measure by efforts, it is paltry. It is empty if it doesn't have heart/love/mercy in it. So we have nothing really to offer but our hearts - and sometimes that is more than what our hands can do.
*Planners are good stuff to have (I keep one too), but not having one within arm's reach can sometimes be liberating. Or it can cause you to be double-booked. Or tripled. No.
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From Tokyo to Los Angeles. And a new addition to the drawer for me :) Read about the effort and sweat it took her to get me this shot. Teh tarik wouldn't suffice in that case. I'll throw in a thosai too, with the complimentary coconut chutney. You folks are insane for indulging me this much. This one made the prerequisite sign the night before her flight. And I reminded her to eat more dhal and to watch out for cow cakes.
Last night I dreamt I was packing my bags. My hands were busy placing things into a luggage bag and the last thing I did was to roll up my sleeping bag. We were going somewhere.
But when I woke up, I had nowhere to go and no bags packed.
Last weekend we had our merdeka stint. We started late, hadn't enough chairs, two acts were no-shows, the mics were cheap and barely audible and paper missiles and rockets were stuck on a wall. The floor was chalked, the lights shoddily papered, and toilet flushes could be heard in between poems on pain and road rage. Mic stands became tipsy, people laughed, sang out of tune and hands clapped. And there was no national flag in sight.
It was awesome :)
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This weekend.
It rained so well yesterday. While walking to the car I imagined going home to a hot mug of coffee out in the garden.
In the past week I have learnt that we live in a world on dire need of grace. And I have learnt that I myself need more of it, to ensure life and people do not eat you away and to show that grace isn't a wimp's philosophy. Although it would be so much easier not to. There are days I imagine roaming a foreign city alone, where people don't know me, and I don't know them, and there really isn't much to care for except occasional bad hats and not ending up sleeping on park benches. A friend's idea of the same nature is to leave and go do farming at some countryside.
I want to snap at someone for his condescending attitude and for making me feel awful three times a week. I dread walking into his class, I dread to know what new forms of stupidity I have obtained and what forms of stupidity I haven't realised I have possessed. I actually pray before going for your classes, that the hour will be relatively painless. I want to walk out and never see you ever, and you can take your little poems, the ones you think so highly of, back. And they aren't even yours. I don't think they're that great. Oh they could be, if only you didn't make the learning of it so squalid and miserable.
Things like these make you wonder why- why them, why me, why everything.
This is just why we need to live grace and choose to live that way. I am still learning how to.
And something for us to remember.
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Just got this from a friend who is currently somewhere in Japan, and looking like she's having whales of fun ;) Thank you for doing Tokyo!
(That almost rhymes. In an amazingly bad way.)
Apparently she chose the one that is most jap-looking. I almost envisioned Nobita from that silly cartoon I grew up reading in the loo.
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