Moving with the Flow

After day 5

2011-10-21T10:00:00.001+08:00

Alhamdulillah, Ammi is breathing on her own finally! That means her oxygen level is on a very safe level and her heart has stood by her.

She’s off the sedatives as well, which sadly means she can now feel the feeding tube and the catheter. It can be very uncomfortable and painful! It was heart breaking to see her writhing in pain on the bed. Furthermore her hands has to be restrained for fear of her pulling off the tubes as she’s not fully alert yet. She’s not allowed to eat and drink yet and she kept asking for a drink, her mouth must be really dry right now! This is much more painful than seeing her asleep for the past few days : (

Day 6, she was transferred out of critical care and into the high dependency cardiology unit. Breathing very heavily. Very confused and disoriented. She kept asking for coffee, of all things!! And she’s not even a coffee drinker! Later on she asked my cousin if there’s a well downstairs! lolz.

Day 7, she’s much more alert and her senses which were put to sleep for so many days finally came back to present. Today she knew she’s in hospital and she didn’t touch her feeding or oxygen tube or the catheter. She did asked for coffee again though heheh, tomorrow I might give her a few drops when the nurses are not looking. Or maybe I’ll give her tea instead. I must ask around first, to make sure a few drops of coffee or tea are not dangerous for her!

I keep my relatives updated on FB daily, so that I don’t have to answer the same lengthy question to a dozen people. I know I’m being a brat, people ask because they care. Stress does weird things to my personality!

I try to post positive updates about Ammi because that’s what everyone wants to hear! But of course I can’t deny the fact from myself that her heart is 80% bad. I just want to see her comfortable in her bed. I pray that Allah makes everything easy for her. I don’t harbour hopes of her getting back on her feet and going back to normal. After a heart attack, parts of the heart die and can never come back to life again. Having said that, if Allah wills it, I will never deny His miracle!

Days 8 to 12, she have been recuperating very slowly but surely. Able to eat small portions of very soft food by now. Doctor is worried about water in her lungs so her liquid intake by mouth has to be limited. Shifted to normal ward, except for the feeding and oxygen tube in her nose there are no other wires and tubes attached to her! What a relief! By now she looks as good as before, which is truly Allah’s miracle. She started throwing tantrums wanting to go home and getting a proper bath. The nurses have only been able to sponge her all these days as the various tubes can’t be stretched to the bathroom. She keeps saying she wants to wash her hair! When she realised her wishes are not being fulfilled, she said her children are abandoning her at the hospital lolz. She sounded really cute! Makes me want to care for her like a baby. I finally gave her tea, which she has been asking for for the past few days. As with any liquid we give her, it has to be mixed with a thickener, to prevent her from choking. Day 12 they took off the oxygen tube, her breathing has improved. I reminded the nurses to give her a proper bath the next morning.

Day 13, I didn’t visit her today. Was feeling totally drained out, but thank Allah for the many siblings I have who are always with her. I was actually feeling good, that she will finally have her bath today!!

Day 14, she was sleeping when I walked in and she slept through the day. Doctor said her blood sugar is not good, she looks weak and on drips again. The nurse told me she wasn’t able to eat comfortably as she keeps coughing out. Which means her food is going into her airways. She has a throat x-ray tomorrow, feeding by mouth is stopped till the doctor is absolutely sure it’s safe. Poor Ammi, she have been asking for a warm cup of chai the whole time I was with her. I left early as I still wasn’t feeling well.

In the midst of all this, my in-laws mention about shifting into our place. Not sure how to warmly welcome them when I’m at the hospital half the time. Parents in-law are not here yet but their grandson has settled in a few days back. I can only pray for understanding between all of us, specially when I’m busy with mom right now. And between all these worries, 2 days back I also found out I’m pregnant!?!?! AFTER 10 LONG YEARS?? Too many things to take in right now. I shall let the shock?surprise? sink in before I can talk about it.

Day 5 in ICU

2011-10-11T09:19:00.001+08:00

Today is the 5th day Ammi has been in the ICU. So much unpredictability and anxiety, wondering what will happen next. I spend the days looking at the screen which shows her heart beat, blood pressure, breathing and pulse. Apparently stress has caught up with me and returned me to blogging!

Ammi is 82 with history of high BP, diabetes, high cholestrol and slight heart problems. She can’t see well but she have been very independent in terms of caring for herself like walking, bathing and eating.

Ammi was at my sister’s place when she had the heart attack. I believe it was a silent attack as it’s normally the case with diabetic patients. She was rushed to the emergency room at Changi Hospital when my sister found her unconscious and all pale in bed. Got the news first thing the morning, but wasn’t able to see Ammi as they were fixing her up with tubes and wires! One procedure after another. Late afternoon they let us take a peep at her, just the sight of her surrounded by the ventilator and the numerous machines made me feel hopeless.

So day 1, heart specialist told me the medical team managed to unblock one of the 3 heart vessels which were blocked. Kidneys were not so good as well, due to the heart medications. Bleeding in the urine. Heart is only 15 to 20% good. BP refuses to go up to normal, had to put her on another machine to help with that. Low oxygen level in the blood, needed breathing support. Doctor said no surgery due to her age. The doctor looked glum, everything looked really glum.

Day 2, no improvements. BP stabilised by the machine and various medications. Internal infection, had fever and on antibiotics.

Day 3, same condition but they lessened her medication dosage for the BP. No fever but continues to be on antibiotics.

Day 4, late evening they took her off the BP machine. BP looks stable, but dips low every now and then. Till today she’s still on sedatives. She has to sleep so that her heart can rest.

Day 5, more blood tests to be carried out this morning to check on her oxygen level. If tests are good, she can be off the ventilator. Getting ready to go check on her now and felt like letting things off my chest. I don’t exactly look forward to seeing her lying down cold and motionless.

Every day, her ward is packed with her kids, siblings and relatives. Everyone tries to wake her up, not knowing that she’s on sedatives. Explaining to everyone is kind of tiring, most people don’t understand. I know I’m being unreasonable but I’d rather everyone just pray for the best for her. Yesterday Ammi moved a bit in her sleep and this kind aunty came out shouting and telling everyone that she moved, she’s okay now!! While she was doing her happy dance, I was silently wishing the kind aunty would vanish from the ward. I know I’m being unreasonable AND mean.

I feel like I’m preparing to go the battle ground, so heavy hearted but I can’t wait to see Ammi. So off I go! Prepared for the worst but hoping for the best I guess.

Keep us in your prayers folks!

A little update

2011-07-27T18:17:00.001+08:00

It’s been 2 long years of being a SAHM! Despite that, nothing productive on the blogging front from me. Have not been reading either. Urrrmmm, temporarily lost interest in alphabets maybe? Have been using other parts of my brains though, the part which makes me sew and create crafts. And yah, have not baked either. Been a little OCD about cleanliness around the house too which means more nagging at senior and junior Sheikhs. I still don’t believe in making my bed every morning but now I’m getting a tad particular about tidiness and organised storage. Wonder what’s all that about. Anyone? At first I thought I had Anhedonia, and then I realised it’s totally not possible because I have not lost interest in food LOLZ

Right now I’m ~~a few~~ many kilos heavier than before and fairer (protected from the harmful rays of the sun, cooped up at home)

I do not have a car to drive anymore. We sold it off. Mr Sheikh is getting a mini van! I sorely miss driving Lancer! Not too confident about driving a manual mini van right now, but inshaAllah I shall practice!

Mr Sheikh is due for a knee surgery. Within a month most probably, just got the MRI done. Deteriorating parts apparently.

Sameer is sooo grown up, I want to shrink him and hide him back in my womb! I realised that when I had to care for him like a baby while he had a cast on his hand. I mean there he was, my baby but a really huge one! And often I find him taking care of me instead of the other way round!

I want to do something really amazing in this short life but haven’t got the idea yet. First I need to venture out of my comfort zone and face some fears. Ya Allah, please strike your magic wand at me but it has to be near my brain cuz things look pretty messed up there. Thank you.

Mom is in great health, 3 brothers are at loggerheads, 3 sisters are far away in Pakistan, one more sister is lost in her own world. Thank you Allah, for mom’s good health and the many siblings to call my own. Sometimes I feel like crying and laughing at the same time but I guess I better laugh. I don’t want to grow old earlier than I should!

I saved the best news for last. Brace yourself.

Mr Sheikh will not keep parrots caged anymore! To my surprise, he actually set the yellow parrot free last week!!!! I was so happy, for the parrot and for a feather-free and bird-litter-free home!

A little insight into my new blog title

2011-05-19T14:54:00.001+08:00

I wanted to talk about my new blog title in my previous post but I forgot! That’s how forgetful I am. And this absentmindedness got worst after a couple of anesthesias in life. Okay I don’t know how true that is but I did got more forgetful after a surgery few years back!

Of the various lessons I learnt in life, one of the important lesson was to learn to go with the flow of life. I discovered that listening to my intuition makes life so much easier and forgivable! With all the noise that we live in, it would be necessary to block out the unnecessary noise around us so that we can tap into our hearts for the right directions. I guess these feelings do come with age and maturity because I don’t remember having such strong, meaningful feelings when I was younger. Now, I’ve never been sure how we feel with the heart but I guess listening to the heart doesn’t mean the organ itself but wherever (in the brain?) the feelings of love, care, gratitude, wisdom and peace are stored. I read in Dr Christiane Northrup’s Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom that every organ in our bodies are constantly communicating with our brains, a stressed organ send messages to our mind and that’s how we end up in the state of mind that is stressed. Does make sense to me! But we live in a world full of distractions, we seldom have the luxury of peace and tranquility to listen to our bodies or nature!

I decided to change my blog title as I feel more at peace with life now than say, 6-7 years ago. Recently “What a life” began to sound tiring to me!! I went back to read my old, old posts last night and I was brought back to the highs and lows I felt all those years. The things I wrote and the comments from all of you, brought tears to my eyes! Though it felt like I was reading someone else, familiar yet strange! Experience have made me a better person in numerous ways and yet at times I can’t help but feel a certain sense of loss. Loss of innocence maybe? The way I used to believe every single word people tell me and the trust I had in people around me. The length I would go to for the people I love and never expecting anything in return. I want to be honest to myself, if not to anyone else. I truly miss being that person sometimes. I know being gullible is not exactly the most wonderful trait but it has it’s own charm you know! Life used to be pretty straight forward, not much thoughts went into wondering about people’s ulterior motives. Bliss! But of course life taught me a thing or 2 to change all that.

I believe that changes are good. Things happen for some very good reasons. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of going with the flow. Interfering with nature doesn’t really provide permanent solutions. Might as well be patient, stop worrying, enjoy a cup of tea and let nature take it’s course.

That sounds so lazy right? hahahah… I can’t help it. I’m a village lass at heart

More than one billion people don’t have access to clean water, digest that!

2011-05-02T18:29:00.001+08:00

Blog theme changed!! Now let’s pray that I update regularly. That would be a great change!

Going green on the blog as you can see. Wasn’t anything intentional but I guess sometimes our choices do reflect our believes and thoughts. I’m not an active “save the world” sort of person but I try to incorporate the habit of not wasting water and electricity in my daily life wherever I can. I do fear that the world will run out of natural resources in future but mostly I think it’s selfish of us to waste something just because we have it at our convenience. To know that more than a billion people don’t have access to clean water, it would be cruel of me to waste it right? I know the water that I save won’t reach them but to use more than necessary would render me greedy. Greed = bad. Remember??

Been busy with my crafting this past month, when the mood strikes I have to do it otherwise I end up doing absolutely nothing! Spot the adorable mushroom and cupcake brooches! Will upload more pictures when I’m done!

Cloth and straw is best for me it seems

2011-04-12T17:35:00.001+08:00

Branded goods and me don’t go hand in hand. The one branded item I ever owned was a Guess watch which I bought for myself when I got my first ever pay. It was love at first sight. I saw the watch on display, and I conquered it.

Unfortunately it died on me in less than 2 years and all the watch repair shops I visited told me to accept the fate of my watch. I stopped watch-ing after that. That’s how true my love was. I don’t think it would stop my soul from leaving my body if my time is up but yeah I really loved that watch like a lot, lot and I still think it’s a classic!

Recently I thought of giving myself a treat and was seriously considering Fara’s Kate Spade wallets but guess what arrived in the form of a gift from a contact in Myanmar? A handmade cloth/straw wallet!

With this on hand, I no longer have a good excuse to splurge on a Kate Spade wallet right now!

Yes God I hear you, You want me to live simple. Cloth and straw it is for now.

Cloth and straw can’t possibly last very long right? A few months maybe? Muahahaha.

April the month of fools

2011-04-04T10:46:00.003+08:00

4th month of 2011!
Whoever said time flies was obviously from a different century. I think I’ve said something like that in one of my past post so shall not repeat again.

Life has been great or rather I have learnt to make life great. I feel liberated
I heard losing or going without your cell phone can make you feel liberated too. Until you need to find a payphone Lolzzz

Ok that was lame but it’s good to be back here typing my thoughts. My laptop has been given a new life recently and the software is all updated so I’m feeling kind of happy to be able to use the new windows live writer, hence the update!

Currently I’m on one of those sewing marathon, which is one of the many phases I go through throughout the course of my life. I’ve sewn like 18 sets of suits in the past month!! No reading, less TV and less going out. Strangely I’ve enjoyed being cooped up in the room with my sewing machines, fabric pieces and thread. Sometimes I think I need a life. But at other times I think that’s life. I love the feeling of accomplishment after each piece of fabric is all stitched up.

But like I said it’s a phase. When the reading phase hits me, I’ll want to inhale the smell of books. I’ll get all excited when nearing the library entrance and then I’ll go to the nearest book shelf and take a deeeeep breath. After that pick up a book, flip the pages and inhale deeply again. Hahaha, that’s how bad it gets!

The best news is that I went to play basketball with Sameer!! In my slippers and all hehehehe… it was fun dribbling and shooting again after errrrr 17 long years?? Just to fill you guys in, I was a very serious netball player in high school. A really mean ~~reserve~~ goal keeper mind you. Back to the present, I really want to get back to the basketball court more often! If you’re wondering why not netball, it’s because Sameer’s current activity in school is basketball. I don’t think he would be interested to entertain me with netball.

Shall end with a couple of recent pictures I found in my LG

Those are fishing boats at Changi Village. A spontaneous visit after completing some errands in the vicinity. I love the serenity!

Saw this cute cat at East Coast beach recently. I found the cat’s outfit simply adorable!! At first I thought it was a puppy what with the leash and the dress but it turned out to be fluffy, white cat! Please excuse the background

I'm doing away with titles

2011-02-11T00:57:00.001+08:00

I think the idea of having to come up with a title for random thoughts is putting me off blogging. Yes, I blame the title for now :) Shall think of more reasons as I neglect my blog in future.

As usual, been busy with mundane and boring stuff in life! The most exciting stuff which happened to me this year was urrmmmmm, ermmmmmm....

You get the gist.

The things I do daily are as random as my thoughts. In fact, I find my whole life kind of really big, fat random lately!! You know, purposeless and reasonless. Random stuff I did this year : sewing projects, brooch making, wedding gifts projects, catering project (a very tiny one, which I always get for the Chinese New Year), trim my hair, tidied up the kitchen balcony, re-organised my kitchen storage, attended to my 3 nephews while their mom was away in Pakistan for 2 weeks (make that 20 days), and now back to sewing.

Jack of all trades, master of none. And I'm proud to announce that I'm the breathing, living example of that idiom. I feel incomplete and lacking at times but I think back about my close shave with Down's syndrome when I was conceived and I'm grateful again! My mom had me when she was way over 40 years of age!

Well, I don't blame my mom. She was in a remote village in the mountains of Pakistan with no access to birth control. I still feel euphoric even now knowing that I was born somewhere near Tarbela dam. Who would have thought I'd be in Hougang Ave 9, Singapore right now typing English words from a laptop! Yoooohoooooooooooo!

12.58am. Sleepless in Singapore again. Tomorrow is Friday, no it's Friday right now! I'm happy for Sameer and everyone else who looks forward to Fridays.

Enjoy the weekend and do your part in saving the earth. The weather and the natural disasters are signalling us to do so!

Adious for now

A peek at my neglected blog

2010-12-31T03:24:00.001+08:00

2 am and sleep evades me.

Well, at least that made me turn to this neglected blog na?

Honestly, sometimes words fail me. I can't bring myself to type a single word! Let's not blame the writer's block :P

I think it's a good thing to speak less, so I listen and observe more these days. But the problem with listening is that gossip tend to make it's way into whatever I'm listening to. I swear I was never into gossip until I started listening more. What is a human being to do!

School starts this Tuesday. 6 weeks of school holidays gone in a flash. We have not been able to do as much as we would have liked to because Mr Sheikh ran out of annual leave. Nevertheless, Sameer and me managed to have our little outings around Singapore. Enjoyed every moment of our time together! I'm glad that I've learnt to treat him as an individual instead of "just a child". I know I know I'm guilty of subjecting Sameer to this attitude which stemmed from how my family members dealt with me as a kid. I sure didn't enjoy being "just a child"! I wanted to be heard and acknowledged! I wanted me and my feelings to matter! Almost 10 years now and I'm still learning to be a better mom.

It's 2.43am now. Yeah that's how long it took me to compose all of the above :D

I know I'm a genius like that.

New year resolution? What's that?

One thing is for sure, I'm going to love more this year! It worries me that people are immensely self-absorbed these days. It's good that we're concerned about ourselves first but I wonder what kind of message our kids are getting? Oh well, let them kids deal with their own future! I believe I won't live long enough to witness all the ~~disastrous~~ wondrous things the future will bring. Said like a true self-centered current generation.

3.09am now. No it's not what you think, I can't possibly be that dim witted ppl!! I was at FB, replying some comment :P

Time to sign off I guess, I truly have no words to explain my feelings. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Friday morning rants

2010-11-05T01:22:00.001+08:00

Not only have I not blogged for 2 months, I haven't touched my sewing machine for 2 months as well and that is not all. Last I read a book was 3 months ago! You would have thought something really enormous happened in my life and took up all those months. Surprise surprise, nothing happened!

I'm not surprised with myself though, my habits and hobbies get misplaced all the time. I just can't tell when these things return to normal or if they ever return at all! I've always suspected I'm not normal, these teeny weeny incidents over the years just reaffirm my suspicions.

12.47am right now. Mr Sheikh is on night duty at the hospital. Eerie stuff comes to mind right? heeeeeheeeeheeeehee

I've been watching a lot of movies these past few weeks. All sorts of movies, on all sorts of media. DVDs, downloaded, online, TV. I think I might have neglected Sameer's studies while my eyes were glued to the tv/laptop screen. I'm sure there will be a meet-the-parents session sometimes this month in his school, what will I answer the teacher if Sameer's results are bad? Heck, what will I answer Mr Sheikh? My homemaker job is at stake people!!!! I'm so gonna get sacked!

Anyways, I'm looking forward to Eidul Adha. Time to meet everyone again in one place. I miss meeting people. Being cooped up at home is no fun at all. Yeah yeah I know I should be going out more but you know how time consuming it can get waiting for washing machine cycles to complete. On a serious note, what I really miss is meeting new people. People who don't judge me based on how I stole his/her pencil in primary school or what kind of unfashionable clothes I wore as a teenager. You know what I mean? When you meet someone new, they embrace you for who you are at the moment. The person that you are NOW. I know I'm not the same person I was some years back and I wish people would stop measuring me by what they knew of me. I really feel that I can't FIT into their outdated measurement of myself! My character has evolved, it's bigger and bolder! The audience (read: anyone with an inkling of interest in me) should evolve with me.

Yeah so that is how I feel. Thanks for listening.

(Note to self: The audience has evolved too, quit judging them)

Now that I've jotted it down and re-read the first few lines of my post, do you also think that I have not been able to blog because I have not been reading? I definitely see a link there. Help me solve the mystery.

But wait, how does sewing fit into the picture? The mystery just got deeper.

It's been a busy month

2010-09-07T10:09:00.001+08:00

Ramadan is almost over! I hope the past few weeks went well for everyone and we're so blessed to have showers of rain every now and then, Alhamdulillah!

It's been a busy month for us I must say, there's always much to do for the month itself and the oncoming Eid preparations. Sameer is as usual excited about completing 30 days of fasting. He's all grown up now and displays much maturity in his lifestyle and habits. He goes to bed early as he's afraid lack of sleep might tire him out during the day. He even takes a short nap after sehri before he goes off to school. I used to have a hard time getting him to sleep during the previous Ramadans! Good to see him being responsible for his well-being and health. Even as I type now, he's fast asleep because it's school holidays for him this week!

This is random but I still want to jot it down. I was sitting down observing my hands and muttering about how ugly my hands have become what with the scars and dry skin. I know I'm such a whiner and I wasn't expecting my little one to say anything but he went like, "Ammi, you must always be grateful that at least you have hands and you can make use of your hands!". Stumped. Okay son, I will never whine again specially when you are around :P

I finally baked some cookies yesterday and Mr Sheikh finished painting the living room which badly needed a fresh coat of paint. By the way this is the first time he volunteered to paint! Maybe he doesn't want to end up taking care of a bedridden wife with spine problems LOL. So yeah things are quite relaxed with me this year, makes me want to cry!!!! He even insisted on choosing the carpet and other furnishings, which is soooooo unlike him! I'm quite surprised really, took me a decade to see this side of him. I was actually quite convinced such a side did not exist in him. I love surprises :P

Sameer and me were in a cab last Friday and this Chinese cabby related to me his experience living and working in Pakistan. He practically sang praises of the food and friends he had while posted in Karachi for a year. Yesterday we were in another cab and there were some news of bombings in Pakistan on the radio. The Chinese cabby started talking about how bad all Pakistanis are. He said he used to work for an arrogant Pakistani many years back and based on that experience he hates all Pakistanis. In the back seat, Sameer and me exchanged glances and smiled because of the stark contrast Pakistanis were perceived by 2 different cabbies. He then mentioned his "Pakistani" boss's name. He said that Mohan was such an unfair and stingy boss. Hahahaha.

Nothing else of much interest happened in our boring lives, the usual grill goes on daily. Visited Ammi last night, her legs are getting weaker by the day. On a brighter note, the rest of her is much more energetic than last week. I pray that Ammi has a pain-free old age! Ameen.

Mornings and gifts

2010-08-05T23:04:00.001+08:00

I love mornings. Except for the waking up part, I love everything else about mornings. The clean, cool and fresh atmosphere early in the morning and then the warmth of the sunlight later on. The brand new start and the well-rested feeling, even if it's just a few hours' sleep. Sending Mr Sheikh and Sameer off to work/school and having the whole house to myself. A simple, quiet breakfast. I appreciate and enjoy my solitude. It's so much in contrast to the mornings I used to have as a child.

In my parents' home, I used to wake up to a madhouse every morning! Brothers getting ready for work, major bathroom hogging, frenzied searches for clothes/belts/socks, last minute ironing and small quarrels here and there. In the kitchen, mom and sisters busy preparing elaborate Pakistani breakfast. Watchful dad observing from the living room and picking on everyone and everything. Sounds like so much commotions na? There was nothing peaceful about those mornings! There are days when I actually miss that kind of ruckus. I remember it fondly though I have no desire to go through it all over again.

It's kind of sad that siblings drift so far apart as they grow older and have their own families. I hardly get to meet all my siblings in one place anymore. Not even on Eid. Would things have been different if dad was still around? I think things would have been different if I were the eldest sister. Would love to pull everyone by the ears and make them obey me! Too bad I'm the youngest and no one listens to me.

It's been a decade since I left my parents' home. Distance makes the heart grow fonder they say. True, true.

I tried convincing Mr Sheikh a number of times about the perks of living apart. Fonder hearts, less squabbles, more love, more excitements. But then he's not as smart as me.

I suddenly believe I'm not old enough to be married for a decade.

Sameer is going to celebrate National day in school tomorrow. Out comes the red shirt. No, not the Thailand red shirts. Red as in the color red from the Singapore flag. I remember looking forward to the National day souvenirs when I was in primary school. We get stuff like stationery, tidbits and once we even had creamed cake! Seems like a very long time ago. Gone are the days when I used to look forward to receiving cheap gifts. Not that I don't appreciate cheap gifts anymore, it's just that receiving something expensive comes with this special feeling which I'm very sure can't match up to the receiving-cheap-gifts feeling. Waisey I buy cheap gifts for myself all the time, so I guess they have kind of lost the novelty hehehe.

Talking of gifts, the first ever gift I receive from Mr Sheikh was a bottle of Versace Red Jeans perfume. Much much later, like a few months, I found out it was an imitation. Trust the man of my life to make feel that special.

I honestly can't remember the last gift he gave me. Has it been THAT long?? Maybe I've not been paying enough attention. He did buy a packet of Mango pudding last week. Anyways, the important thing is that I'm no longer obliged to buy gifts for him now that I'm not working. It would be funny to buy him a gift with his own money right? Yeah it would be funny indeed.

I guess by now you must have realised that the mornings and gifts in my post title are totally unrelated. It's not easy to come up with a title when all I do is ramble random stuff from A to Z.

Still working on improving myself.

Collecting seashells

2010-07-21T15:33:00.001+08:00

18 Jul 2010

Dropped Mr Sheikh at his workplace and off we went to the East Coast beach. I initially planned to reach earlier to catch the sunrise but Mr Sheikh happened to be on morning shift so we gave the sunrise a miss.

Sameer has a presentation coming up in school where he has to talk about his favourite outing. He have chosen to talk about the beach and wants to show the seashells as part of his "show and tell". And that is why we really ended up at the beach on a Sunday morning, to collect seashells!

I brought Sameer for breakfast at my favourite stall in Marine Terrace before walking to the beach. It was a nice, nostalgic walk through the neighbourhood where I partly grew up. While many things around the place have changed, some remain the same as I remember them! A couple of shops are still run by the same shopkeepers and the familiar faces made me kind of excited. Of course no one remembered me. I had to go up to them and mention my dad's famous name to be recognised!!

I know you would find this irrational but I parked the car at the carpark near the block where I used to stay. Just to show Sameer a glimpse of my childhood I guess. We then walked to the beach via the overhead bridge. No prizes for the correct guess but yeah that's the route I used to take to get to the beach every evening. I know I sound like someone who badly misses her childhood. Don't worry, I'm not dying :P

We went to see the turtles at the pond first before going on our hunt for seashells. Naughty turtles played hide and seek with us until we got tired and moved on!

As you can see the seashells are kind of scarce. We covered quite a long stretch of the beach but didn't find anything exciting. Most of the seashells were either too tiny or were crushed and broken! Next time you are at the beach, please remember not to crush seashells! It's mean!

The recent oil spill has not thoroughly cleared and now another one!! This is truly alarming. But at least this oil leak has been timely contained, see the cap on the bottle?

One fish found dead as a result of the cooking oil spill. What a waste, the fish would have looked good on a plate.

The water didn't look that inviting, with it's murky color and the lingering smell of diesel (or whatever fuel they use in ships).

Can't help but notice that lonely figure, probably just broke up with his girlfriend.

I know, years of watching Hindi movies has this kind of effect.

Will I get sued for posting random pictures of strange people?

Ok this is the last one. This guy must have got kicked out of the house for not listening to his wife heheh.

We were beachcombing for seashells for about 2 hours or so before it started raining cats and dogs. Walked back to the car and were headed straight home when I realised I'll be driving past the Geylang Serai market. That is how grocery shopping became part of our little outing, much to Sameer's disappointment. Sorry darling but a woman has to do what she has to do!

Here are the fruits of our labour! I used to collect more impressive ones, I guess along with everything else in the world even the seashells are deteriorating in quality!

Future concerns

2010-07-15T10:57:00.001+08:00

My neighbour doesn't work. He invested in properties in Australia and he lives off the rental $$$$!! I believe one should have at least 2-3 sources of income. A permanent job, a side business/job and a property investment sound good. I know it's easy for someone who's at home whole day long to come up with such things! Excuse me.

If I had huge amounts of savings stashed away in the bank I would seriously consider my advice. Simply because I want to retire early (I know right now I seem retired too, but it's not permanent) and I want to be financially independent in my old age. I have all kind of negative pictures of myself 20 years down the road, but no I shall not allow my mind to indulge in such thoughts. Positive thoughts attract positive situations. Yes.

I personally know kids who find it a burden to care and provide for their old parents. I also know some old parents who are outright fussy and over-demanding towards their struggling kids. If you ask me I would say these people are not as bad as their situations make them seem to be. They are just stuck in circumstances which could have been prevented. I know financial planning is not everything, but at least money can buy an old woman some medical care and an admission into a decent old folks' home right? Having taken care of the finances, all I need to do is to manage my emotions while battling old age ailments. Not an easy task.

Is it me or did you notice that Asians tend to feel old too early, too soon? On top of that, it doesn't help that we harbour high hopes of being cared for by our kids. Let's face it together, filial piety is getting closer and closer to extinction. People say a set of parents can happily care for 10 kids but the 10 kids later on have problems caring for the old parents. One obvious reason for that is that old people are not as adorable as babies. Ok, not funny. Specially when old age is looming ahead of us, I know. It would be, of course, a huge blessing to be showered with love all our lives. As I mentioned earlier, though we might end up toothless and senile, we could never match the cute-ness of babies. Our kids might not always have the time and energy to pamper us. Must be prepared not to get emotional about it!

After all said and worried, who knows what the future will bring! It's ok to give it a thought, but constantly worrying about it is a big NO NO.

Still I can't help but imagine some of the possible things that could happen to me:

1) I won't get to grow old. Die young. Mr Sheikh refuses to have anyone else in his life. Joins me in heaven some days/weeks/months/years later.

2) I won't get to grow old. Die young. Mr Sheikh overjoyed to have been given a second chance to take on a new wife.

3) Mr Sheikh won't get to grow old. Die young. Sameer desperately matchmakes me with every other uncle in the neighbourhood so that he can have a breather.

4) We both grow old together. Sameer let us live with him.

5) We both grow old together. Sameer suggests the latest old folks' home to us.

Honestly speaking, I'm too afraid to imagine the worst cases! Hehehe

Naturally I would love to grow old together with Mr Sheikh and enjoy a healthy, independent life with him till death do us part! InshaAllah!

Go fly kites

2010-07-07T23:12:00.001+08:00

I remember a time when a divorced woman used to feel ashamed of her status and was often looked down upon by family members and friends. In our status conscious but narrow minded society, a married woman was treated with more respect than a divorcee. I'm glad things have changed for the better.

Here's a portion of my conversation with a good old friend who's a great single parent and for whom I have a very deep respect .

Friend: I'm on leave today! I know this is kind of last minute but do you want to meet up at Tampines Mall later? We can do some catching up and I've been wanting to show you my new car and I want to see your car!

Me: I would love to!!! Unfortunately my husband has the car today and he might have some plans for us later on so I'm not sure if I can meet you today.

Friend: Oh too bad! You know what, I feel so lucky! I have the car alllll to myself and I make my own plans hehehehe (I know I was hearing things, but it sounded like a very evil laughter at that time)

We hung up after some more catching up and I was like WHAT? Am I supposed to feel unlucky because I'm married?!? Seems like everyone, EVERYONE (the divorced, the old spinsters, the disabled, the homeless, the childless etc) is feeling luckier than everyone else nowadays. Must be the power of positive thinking.

But then again, on-top-of-the world feelings are often followed by it's-just-not-my-day feelings. Said like a true depressive. I must be the lucky few who strive to live out of illusions and delusions hahahaha. See, even I'm beginning to think positive!!

Sameer is having an eye infection today, he will probably be home for the next 2 days! Did I mention he laughs a lot? He finds something to laugh about all the time! I remember doing that with my friends too! It's so exciting that my son is taking after me! My friends and me used to watch people and make up funny stories about them based on their appearances, facial expressions etc. I know it sounds really mean but we didn't really mean to be mean, you know what I mean? When we enter a room or a train or a bus, we would literally do a fast scan of everyone inside and pick on one or two poor souls to help us laugh! How very mean!!! We console ourselves by saying that hey maybe people pick on us behind our backs too!

So lately Sameer has been on a tremendous laughing bout. He laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. Sometimes he laughs at something new, sometimes he laughs over and over again at the same old joke. Sometimes I laugh with him, at him and sometimes I have to sternly advise him to control his laughter.

Yeah it's that bad.

What do you do on a boring, windy evening? Go fly kites. Ok I know it's not funny :P

Besides laughing his head off, Sameer also took an interest in flying kites. Urrmmm, actually he asked me for a kite like a year ago but I only got it for him last month!! Better late than never I guess :D

We made our way to the nearby field and Sameer managed to fly the kite while running with it. The wind decided to stop blowing while we were there.

Absence of wind, I was ok with that. But guess what I chanced upon???

Leaves with chicken pox!!!! EWwwww!

Maybe these leaves are by nature like that! :D

Anyways, now that we have the kites we would probably be seen flying (read: running with) kites often around Hougang and Sengkang area. Do keep a lookout! Or better still, join us and help us amateurs get our kites flying!

Saturday night

2010-07-04T01:00:00.001+08:00

I don't easily accept changes. I normally need some time for changes to sink into me and get myself adapted to them. The same way I deal with new people. I observe and study. Familiarise myself. Test the waters, and finally accept. Depending on the nature of change, the whole process could take days, weeks, months or even years. I believe there are times when the change in concern doesn't stick around long enough for me. Before I know it, there's a whole new change to digest!

I wonder what were the last thoughts of all my loved ones who are no more. I'm sure they never thought of not seeing tomorrow. They must have made plans. Small plans, big plans. Short term plans, long term plans. Dinner with friends. Grocery. Haircut. Family trip. New car. Bigger family. Hopes. Dreams. And everything ended with them. Just like that. The exact same thing could happen to you and me. What would our last thoughts be like? Our plans or wishes will never be known to anyone. It won't even matter. Our loved ones will mourn for a while and carry on with life.

It's true when people say, it's OUR life. We make our life happen. We realise the dreams. Execute our plans. Take actions. Get things going. No one else, no matter how much they love or care for us, can make our life. Full stop.

My eyes chanced upon a book on cannibals in the library yesterday. Browsed a bit and wondered what made them cannibals. Most of the famous cannibals grew up fantasizing about eating human flesh. Upbringing? Nature? Genes? Mental disorder? What purpose do they serve on earth? Other than shocking the world with the gory details in their interviews from the electric chair of course.

I know my post title and the content don't match. Saturday night sounds like so much fun right? I wonder who made Saturday night "happening". Oh well, I'm the rebel. I hate the norms. I hate falling for all things idealistic (sometimes I do). Life can't be defined by comparison. What I have, what others have. And I know people who religiously live their lives according to what others have. God help them. And God help me. I have made the staunchest of matriarchs give up on age old traditions out of sheer exasperation. In any case, I'm sure they saw my logic. I admit when it comes to actions, I'm not the most rational person at times but I believe logic keeps me from being totally irrational. Whatever that means :P

My Maths teacher, Mr Tan used to tell us students that Maths is a logical subject. As long as you have logic, you can do well in Maths.

I have been doubting the logical person in me ever since he made that remark, because I have always flunked Maths! Mr Tan, if you ever chanced upon this post, please know that your summary of Maths and logic left a huge impact on my life, though never in the subject you taught me. I still hate numbers.

Ok, I can no longer keep it.

I admit I'm a world cup widow. That's the real reason why I'm typing away for my neglected blog at 1.00am. The world cup widow's guide says one of the better ways to spend the 90 minutes is by doing a chocolate facial. Yah right, and then spend another 90 minutes getting the chocolate off my pillows and towel? No thanks.

It's not that I don't want to blog regularly, I just don't get the inspirations like this one often enough, errr regular enough. I have yet to discover what triggers me to write. I had a pretty normal day today. Had breakfast, surfed the net, visited mom, had Malay food for lunch, made and ate donuts for tea and watched a movie. Can't detect anything abnormal about my day. So lets not force it, here's to more random posts! Cheers! ;)

Almost 2 weeks into the holidays

2010-06-10T22:56:00.001+08:00

And we have done mostly visiting!

Visit mom, visit brother, visit friends, visit in-laws.

And yeah, a trip to JB last Tuesday.

Sameer is not complaining as he's busy exploring his dad's iphone games. I'm not complaining either as I have dozens of suits to sew. That makes Mr Sheikh a happy man, imagine the amount of savings he makes when we don't go out. No, he's not complaining at all.

And everyone lived happily ever after.

Until we're all bored I guess hehehe.

I have a few activities planned for this week but I'm not going to list anything down for I know how fickle and whimsical I can be. Actually the same goes for Mr Sheikh too.You can include our weather too, it's been raining not only cats and dogs but dragons as well! A sure damper to any outdoor activity. We were supposed to go fly kites today but it was raining the whole afternoon and evening!

Been spending most of our evenings watching movies at home. I think the 3 of us are happy to have that kind of time together for now. Laughing together and discussing the movie characters and plots later on, gosh sometimes I wonder if I'm being too relaxed with Sameer watching violence with us adults! We saw How to Train your Dragon, Badmash Company, Karthik Calling Karthik, IP Man (chinese) and Losers over the past few evenings. Hmmmm, I guess since we watched the movies together, parental guidance was in place specially for IP Man and Losers which had some degree of violence.

Now I better prepare to get into bed so that I can have an early start to my sewing tomorrow morning!

That's a lot of lalangs (imperata cylindrica), on our way to the supermarket :D

I still get all excited when I see a lush field scattered with various plants and flowers! I used to point out to Sameer the wonders of nature when he was really young. I loved watching his amazement at the shy Mimosa plants, the tiny wild flowers and explained to him how all of them got where they are!

We also came across a few snails and a dead baby frog in that grassy patch! Ewwww!

27th May 2010

2010-05-27T18:57:00.001+08:00

Not only am I shamelessly unable to post frequently, I am now unable to come up with a simple title for my post as well. And I used to think that I would have all the time in the world when I'm a SAHM! Okay, it's not like the housework and the 2 men in my life keep me occupied 24/7 but I have discovered that there are dozens of distractions within the four walls of a home! And I'm one person who gets way too easily distracted. There are always the important phone calls, sms-es, researching cum catching up with friends on the net, Korean dramas and good books to distract me from the tasks at hand. Like yesterday, I got started on my sewing project really early only to be distracted by the Korean drama which starts at 8.30am. I know, I know I should have hid the TV cable but there're always calls and messages to attend to and being the weird being that I am, I crave a good book to read while buried under a pile of clothes! Thankfully the sewing is progressing ~~not so~~ smoothly despite my whims. I have 2 engagement gifts decoration project coming up, I have to get hold of myself or rather my roaming attention. If I were a man, my wife would have tossed me out within the first week of our marriage! No, in fact she wouldn't have married me at all!

This afternoon I went for the Meet-the-parents session in Sameer's school. His marks were okay, he's an average like myself. Form teacher had no complaints regarding his conduct in class, well-behaved student like myself hehehe. One and single problem with him is: easily distracted. JUST LIKE MYSELF. Now I have to go back to what was going on in my mind when I was in Primary 3 and figure out how to help Sameer get over his roaming attention! Your suggestions are most welcomed. And oh, I'm going to pretend the holidays are not here yet. I have not prepared on how to fill Sameer's 4 weeks at home, other than the trips to the libraries! I have been wanting to go to the Marine Parade library, I saw the new building while driving past. It looks huge, all glassy and impressive! I know the building has nothing to do with the books. In any case, I do want take a stroll down that neighbourhood where I used to spend a good portion of my growing years!

Here's one unforgettable memory of how the first time I wanted to put my dormant kindness into action and was refused!! On that fateful day, I spotted a frail old lady making her way down the steps of the overhead bridge in front of Parkway. Observing that she was holding a heavy-looking bag, I decided to approach her in all kindness and extend my over-flowing help even though I was not going in the same direction as her. I couldn't bear the thought of her stumbling and rolling down the steep stairs with her bag following behind! Guess what, she flatly and rudely refused my help! Just like that. I didn't know what to make out of it then, now I feel that she was either fiercely independent or she was carrying stacks of cash in that suspiciously-heavy-looking bag!!!

While I'm being random, let me just add on that this was the very same bridge where I saw my teacher, Mr Lee, practically hopping down the steps with an exaggerated feminine flair while giggling and holding hands with another guy. At that vulnerable age, it was HORRIFYING! A small part of my world collapsed at the bridge and I learnt the meaning of "double life". Such a small, innocent world it used to be! Sigghhh.

Back to the present, I have to get back to some sewing right now. Here's a sneak preview of my recent obsession.

I woke up one day and found aprons extremely cute and adorable! And I HAD to sew some! :)

If I had a pen, I would be doodling now

2010-04-15T18:43:00.001+08:00

I have nothing to blog about right now but I’m still typing away intensely, hoping that things will start to flow out as I hit the keys. I have no idea what kind of logic is that but at least it got me to the second sentence right? And maybe to the end of a long post? Hopefully.

I got a job offer recently but unfortunately or fortunately Mr Sheikh has now decided that I'm not too bad a SAHM, hence he has flatly refused my resignation from his employment. By declaring my importance and capability in running his home, he have awaken the snob in me. I was thinking I shouldn’t let go of this chance to ask for more benefits but being the non-ambitious person that I am, I’m feeling rather satisfied as it is. The one thing I still haven’t got my hands on is his credit card but that’s not a wise idea. Not in my case at least!

I hear the rain outside my room window but it’s sad that I don’t ‘feel’ the rain anymore like I used to when I was younger. First of all, the air in Singapore remains humid and stagnant despite the heavy downpour. There is nothing cold about the rain anymore! I bet even the rheumatics are comfortably warm and pain-free in our rainy weather! Secondly, I don’t get to feel a single drop of rain on my skin because I’m either inside the house or if I’m outside, I’m obliged to take shelter like most civilised citizens do. I think I will need to ‘forget’ my umbrella one of these days and get a good soak! Must make a mental note to wear darker colours on days when it might rain.

I’m feeling kind of stuck at this sentence but I’m not relenting!

If I was writing a composition I would be doodling by now, but here I am letting the laptop hamper my creativity. By the way, the most creative I ever got was to create a walk-in wardrobe using a bamboo pole and some old curtains. That happened over 15 years ago and I still like the idea! Maybe I’ll construct a slightly more sophisticated and updated version if my cupboard ever collapse! Which, I’m quite certain, is not likely to happen.

I haven’t had the chance to drive our car for the past 3 weeks, but that is not the issue. I might be driving over the coming weekend and I’m just a tad worried my foot might suffer from memory loss and fail to differentiate the brake and the accelerating pedal. Or maybe my hand might accidently shift the gear into reverse while the car is moving forward! Does anyone else have such fears? Just before I drive off I normally conduct a serious moment of prayer where I beg the Almighty to keep all living things out of my way. Ok to be honest I go more like “Ya Allah please don’t let me kill anyone today”.

Now that I’m talking (typing) about it, I realise that my single short prayer in the car seem more fervent than the numerous lengthy prayers at home. This is the reason why I like looking at bigger pictures of myself. There is so much room for self-improvement!

I’m actually quite happy that I reached this far in my post, time to stop the incessant typing and enjoy the stuffy, rainy weather.

Yay! I have a food blog!

2010-03-30T21:19:00.001+08:00

It’s official people! I am now a proud owner of my very own food blog! I never imagined I could do it, but then again it’s yet to be seen if I can do it depending on how often I update right?

I must have spent half of my net surfing time oogling and drooling at food blogs! Time to start my own. I will probably post stuff that I prepare daily in my kitchen and occasionally new recipes which I try out and turn out well :D

I guess I should transfer my one and only recipes post on this blog over to the food blog to make it look like I’ve been updating :P

Wish me all the best people!

Of birds and plants

2010-03-25T22:42:00.001+08:00

I’m experiencing this gnawing feeling the whole day today. I don’t know what that means but it’s one of those days when you don’t feel good no matter what you do and something keep floating around at the back of your mind but can never be pinpointed at. Very vexing, I can only hope that whatever chomping at my skull would just show up or go away!

Leaving the gnaws aside, I unashamedly admit I’ve been up to nothing that interesting or time consuming that I wasn’t able to blog. As usual I run out of words! I shall let my thoughts flow as I type now. Live.

I’m trying to improvise on my Quran recitation. Time was always an issue before but not anymore now! Came across this website which has recitations and hopefully will help me improve and correct my pronounciations. Though I finished learning the Quran almost 2 decades ago, I never got around to polishing what I learnt. InshaAllah, I hope I will be able to accomplish that while I’m still free!

I’ve also decided to plant again :D I know I took an oath to avoid murdering more greens but these plants which Mr Sheikh got for me looked very resilient and capable of surviving my black fingers hence I decided to have a shot at taking them under my care. So far, so good!

Allow me to introduce…….

Miss Screwpine (Urrmmm, sorry that sounded almost vulgar!! Lol)

Miss Curry leaves

Mr Lime leaves (Don’t ask me why it’s a Mr, Miss just didn’t seem right for limes!)

It might have sprang to your attention that I’m caring for plants which can be used in cooking. I’m looking over and watering them daily, I think it’s only fair that they give me something back right? Albeit a few leaves! I’m such a miser at times!!!

I never got around to properly introduce the latest parrot Mr Sheikh is in love with, a yellow Indian Ringneck affectionately called Shaan. I hope this one finds it’s freedom real soon too! Because I believe birds should be free and because it’s high pitched noisy sounds and the constant littering of bird food can be a real pain in the A**!!! Ask Sameer, the poor boy experienced it firsthand Lol!

I know anyone would think twice and even thrice before calling me a bride but hey check this book cover out! When I saw the title I was like, That’s me, That’s me! :P :P :P

I guess all the Mrs Sheikhs in the world would feel that way too.

A peek into my head

2010-03-07T23:27:00.001+08:00

February flew past, March going on fast too. Time can fly but it apparently can’t make a landing.

If life was a reel I wonder how many rolls of films my life would have.

I saw the full moon shining on us earlier while taking an evening walk with Sameer. I thanked Allah swt aloud for giving us the beautiful moon and giving us the sight to enjoy His beautiful creations. Hearing me, Sameer too decided to thank Allah for a bunch of things and went on to ask for miracles like “please make my Abba stop smoking starting tomorrow and make me slim and fit in 2 weeks’ time”. LOL

Being in the basketball team in school have made him slightly more health conscious nowadays.

I have recently started to believe in the law of attraction. Positive thoughts will attract positive situations. Positive thoughts will attract positive situations. Positive thoughts will attract positive situations. Positive thoughts will attract positive situations. Positive thoughts will attract positive situations. Positive thoughts will attract positive situations.

I have also, amazingly, developed a strong sense of responsibility towards my elder siblings. Me and responsible? This is thoroughly depressing. The world is indeed coming to an end.

I keep thinking about my childhood. I want to talk and laugh about the things I did while growing up but where do I catch hold of all those wonderful people who were such a huge part of my childhood? They are either no more or out of touch. Anyways it would be funny if I pick up the phone and call a cousin in Mississauga to reminisce about the cherry tree episode.

Last week I was having a cup of coffee at the Geylang Serai hawker centre and looking down at the road between the market and Joo Chiat Complex. My late sister Rubina and I used to cross that road daily some 20 years ago when she was attending sewing classes at the shophouse near the bus stop. I couldn’t stop my throat from constricting at those memories. I could almost “see” the image of us holding hands and running across the road while I was lost in my thoughts! Road crossing memories for god’s sake! Age catching up on me? :D

Hate is such a powerful word. I didn’t know better when I was younger. I will never use it on anyone, ever.

I think everyone should take care of their immediate family members. Like my dad used to do. If everyone is responsible and cares for their own, then we worry less about the rest of the world. Which is not the case nowadays.

I can’t think when there’s music in the background. In short, music zombifies me.

It’s Monday tomorrow and I’m not having any blues. Which is such a wonderful feeling.

Swinging but not single

2010-02-23T13:17:00.001+08:00

I’ve always been fascinated with swings (no, I don’t believe I was a monkey or Jane in my previous life). Especially one that hangs from a tree branch (a strong and sturdy branch that is). I used to resourcefully fix such swings along with my friends when I was in NWFP. No chances of pulling such stunts in our garden city here, so I’ve been hoping that someday I would be able to have a swinging seat in my home. Unfortunately our HDB flats are not that spacious to allow such fixtures in the living room. I do take pleasure in secretly taking a swing or 2 at the children’s playground when no one’s watching. Better still, swing to my heart’s content in the late evenings when the kids are all safe at home!

Just looking at the above picture makes me drool! It’s perfectly ok if you can’t understand my feelings. Swings are for lazy individuals :D

Still on the topic of lazy people, check this very cool seat out, I would never leave my home if I had that! Or this for that matter! The traditional Indian versions are somewhat like this, but that would take up a hell lot of space in the house right? The hanging versions on the other hand, I fear would not hang sturdy from our flimsy looking flats ceilings! I wouldn’t want neighbours from the floor above us dropping into our laps! Lol.

The lack of posts means that I’ve again retreated into my bookworm phase. Cocooned by various books, ideas, inspirations, thoughts, resolutions and whatnot. No wonder my post is about swings! I’ve also been dreaming of beaches and hammocks hahaha. The height of laziness! I know I’m making myself sound like the ultimate lazy housewife but hey I’m not that bad :D Here’s proof of my creativity in the kitchen, enjoy the visual delights!

Fruit trifle for our wedding anniversary, I find desserts absolutely romantic and sexy! ;)

A pinky strawberry birthday cake and cupcakes for Mr Sheikh’s Dadi’s birthday. I know there’s a lot of pink going on in my baking. Can’t help it!

Brownies topped with cream cheese for Sameer’s birthday.

Possibility of turning loony

2010-02-05T13:59:00.001+08:00

4 out of my 10 siblings have/had psychological disorders of various degrees ranging from mild to serious. 2 of them have already passed on some years back. Some cousins from paternal side and a few aunties from maternal side suffer the same fate too. I don't know if it's bad genes or just bad luck.

This issue has been playing on my mind lately. I wonder if I'm a potential candidate for these mental disorders too. I do get stressed up easily and sometimes I think too much but I'm sure I'm not the only one in the universe guilty of that. Oh, a certain family member once made a comment that Sameer might end up with mental issues too as he could have inherited the "mad" genes from my side of the family. Yeah, that was really really piercingly hurting! But I guess all of us have to live with such cruel comments every now and then. It took me a moment to recover from the sharp pain and then I told the person that it's better to be mad than to be a hypocrite like yourself! Sweeeeeet. Seeing the shocked expression on the face of the person made me feel a whole lot better! Hehehe, petty revenge!

Anyways, I wonder how different it would be for me since I'm so aware of mental health, unlike my other siblings who have been affected? Will I be able to save myself from falling into the condition? Would I see it coming or get any signals and symptoms? I'm not someone who looks far ahead and plan the future but I admit after seeing the number of cases in my family, I have good reasons to be alarmed! Not that I'm eagerly anticipating such a tragedy to befall but I pray hard that I'll able to help myself if something unfortunate does happen to me. It's not a very nice thought to live with, but hey I'm not thinking about it 24/7! No, I'm not yet loony :P

I ~~would like to~~ believe that, like the rest of the majority of the world population, I'm a fairly strong individual, emotionally and mentally. In my 32 years of life, I have gone through some very ugly patches which caused me great deal of stress and I came out sane every time, Alhamdulillah. Poverty, loneliness, deaths of loved ones, distance from loved ones, hatred from loved ones, betrayal from loved ones and most painful of all, the pain of loved ones. Nothing beats the pain which is caused by those dear and near to us! I remember those moments when the future seemed so bleak and the only light at the end of the tunnel was that of an oncoming train. The ugliest of all the moments was when I had wished for death! Astaghfirullah. Hopefully I'm armed with a better emotional quotient now that I'm older and wiser, would never wish for those moments ever again!

I admire those who can detach themselves emotionally as and when they wish to. I know for sure that I don't have the worst of problems and I want to be always thankful for that. I also want to type happy posts for my blog but sometimes I need to vent out my unhappy thoughts, so please bear with me :D

I value my health and sanity, but why do I at times do things which can endanger them? Like I just had vanilla ice-cream when I'm having a cough or I keep thinking of a certain issue when I should just let it go. Does everyone do such contradictory and irrational stuff too or is it just me? Sometimes I feel I need a wake up call to catalyze my self-discipline. And sometimes I do realise I'm doing something which will not benefit me in the long run but I still go ahead and do it. Like typing and posting this post. My blog readers are probably going to steer clear of me or constantly look out for any signs of insanity in me after reading this. It's like giving the world a black and white proof that yeah she wrote it herself that she's a possible nut case!!

Frankly speaking, if you would just ignore the medical history I mentioned above and take me seriously for a minute, I think everyone needs to be a little crazy at times to lighten our life up (plus if we really turn loony someday it won’t be so noticeable lol) . Where’s the fun if we walk around all starched up all our life! Speaking of which, last night Mr Sheikh came across, according to him, the perfect song which reminds him of me. It makes me feel better that he’s working in the Institute of Mental Health. At least he would always be there for me during working hours LOL

You don't know me

2010-02-01T20:45:00.009+08:00

If you don't know these things about me (in precisely as possible chronological order, though the memory might fail here and there)

1) The whole of me once dropped on a HUGE pile of warm buffalo dung when I was a baby. (hmmmn, maybe I've mentioned this before and it's not so little-known-fact :) Someone must have picked me up and washed me clean I guess. I know I should be suspicious as I got this info from my siblings. For all I know, they probably made this story up out of spite!
But for a long time I felt bad for myself.

2) I refused to use the toilet in the airplane when we first flew from Pakistan to Singapore. At that time I thought my poop would land on someone's head in whichever place the plane was flying over. Worse still, I was afraid I might slip and fall into the toilet bowl and fly down with the poop. Oh well, I was after all a village child who had never seen the modern toilet.

3) In Kindergarten, I hid a portable radio in my school bag and switched it on during class. Everyone wondered where the music was coming from but no one suspected me. I can only think of 2 reasons for this. One, it was too noisy for the teacher to follow the sound to my school bag. Two, teacher can't imagine innocent me was capable of such mischief and thus didn't think of me as a possible suspect.

4) I once bit a fan while throwing tantrums. Don't ask me why or what happened. I can only remember biting the metal stand of the fan and then feeling stupid.

5) On Teacher's day, instead of the traditional rose stalk, I unknowingly bought some cheap yellow flowers for my form teacher. I know most people would say it's the thought that counts but those flowers that I bought are mostly used for Chinese prayers. Of course I didn't know at that time, I was extremely happy when the florist handed me a hugeee bouquet of yellow blooms with the 2 bucks that I gave her and was even more happier to see the surprised look on my teacher's face. More reasons to believe that ignorance is bliss!

6) If you thought that was bad, you are probably going to stop thinking anything nice about me after this. Another year I picked up a stray stalk of rose, which must have dropped from someone else's flower bouquet, from the floor and presented the single stalk to my language teacher. Now before you judge me, I did that because I forgot it was Teacher's day and I badly wanted to give something to this teacher. And when I saw the rose lying on the floor before my very eyes, I felt that it landed there solely for the purpose of me picking it up.

7) I chased a classmate into the boys' toilet while playing a game of "catching". I know it sounds so unlady-like but hey chasing is a competitive game and I did win! :P

8) My besties and me formed our own group which went by the name of "The Lizards". Before you ask, the group had neither purpose nor aim. We just wanted a group with a cool name, like those music bands you know. We even wrote our group name on the canteen staircase wall just to be extra cool :D

9) My first crush was Shashi Kapoor LOL. I don't know how it happened, must have came from watching old Hindi movies playing on Malaysian channels. By the way, I took the time to search for a decent looking picture of him on the net just so that no one would think I was insane to have a crush on that old man.

10) I first tried smoking when I was 11. I hope Sameer is not reading this. Thankfully I didn't get addicted to nicotine and though I smoked a few more sticks in life after that, it was solely for the purpose of practicing blowing smoke rings.

Just to keep you in the loop, I still can't blow smoke rings.

A blonde moment and some soul-searching thoughts

2010-01-24T02:51:00.002+08:00

I like being intelligent. Recently (err…. ohkaay not quite recently) I discovered that I’m not all that intelligent. You won’t believe what I’m about to tell you next! I was working on something on the PC and while planning some stuff in my head I needed to check the calendar. Picture this : I have this table calendar which sits beside my PC monitor. For the next 5 minutes or so, I tried to get the cursor to move from my PC screen to click on a date on the calendar! I even knocked, banged and cleaned my mouse thinking that something was wrong with the mouse. But no, something was obviously wrong with me! Apparently technology have not allowed the cursor to be pointed at something OUTSIDE the PC screen yet! Duffy duffy duffy me!

Ok, the blonde moment was just that, a moment. And it’s now over. Really! I refuse to believe that I can get THAT blonde at times!

Lately I have been reflecting on something I read in an Islamic book many years back. Something about envy and jealousy. It basically said that (aside from the obvious; boasting, showing off etc) we should refrain from saying things or revealing information about ourselves which might stir feelings of envy in others. Envy is indeed one of those useless feelings (like anger and fear), which causes more harm than good. Come to think of it, when a person is feeling envious I’m sure all feelings of being grateful or thankful are temporarily blocked!

Let’s say you are in the midst of gushing proudly over your new condo apartment or your job promotion or your new iPhone. Who but the guy who just lost his job hears you (and your loud gushes). Forget the flutters, imagine the roar of envy which might explode in his heart! I know it sounds insane that we should contain our excitements or achievements but I feel it makes perfect sense to keep everything low-profiled. For one, you don’t attract unnecessary attention. Which means people would just let you live in peace. Which is really a fantastic thing! No nasty gossip and rumours about you. On top of that, no jobless guy would ever consider you an object of envy much less find any reason to cast an evil eye on your achievements. Which means you can carry on working hard on achieving more and more! :D

Ok I know nothing is that simple in life. Sometimes a mere sight of something desirable can stir envy in a person’s heart. A beautiful face, an affectionate couple, a framed degree certificate on your wall or even the lush greenery in your garden. You never know who is observing and envying you or that which belongs to you!!!

Anyways, the moral of my blabber is that we should try our best not to envy anyone and not to evoke the same in anyone towards ourselves. Imagine the number of grateful hearts out there if we can eliminate envy! Well, we can try! Live simple, appear simple and most importantly look at your blessings rather than that of others’. People often make negative comments about me having only one child. I didn’t know how to deal with those weird comments before but now I only say what’s in my heart and that is, many thanks to Allah for the one child! I’m so grateful for Sameer that the thought of asking for more never occurred to me! Hmmmm, looks like I’m moving in the right direction hehehe. ENVY, however you are, you have no place in my life!!!

M-U-N-D-A-N-E post

2010-01-12T20:17:00.001+08:00

First of all, a warm welcome into 2010. Everything is going as it should, on the right track and in order. Thankfully! Though I have much free time on my hands, I can’t seem to bring myself to update my blog. I can’t even string together a single cohesive sentence most of the time! It seems like such a task to come up with a topic to write about and if I don’t think of a topic I’ll just end up writing about mundane stuff which I’m sure will bore everyone to tears. Which is exactly what I’m going to do right now :D

Sameer finally had the much needed haircut today after school. As usual before the school re-opens, I expect a long queue of students at the barber’s. Not much of fun I tell you, waiting with a bunch of loud, noisy students. Which is the reason why Sameer went to school with unruly hair for one whole week! The Malay barber has been keeping Sameer’s durian-like hair (which grows in every other direction, literally!) neat and tame for the past 6 years. He knows exactly how to handle Sameer’s hair and the session ends with a lollipop in Sameer’s hand and only five bucks for a job well done! Errr, I don’t know where this is going, it sounds like I’m preparing a thank you speech for the barber! Duh! Thanks to mundane writings.

Overheard recently:

Mr Sheikh to me: You drive like a gangster (or was it monster?) nowadays!

I have developed an indifference to driving lately. I’d rather relax in the passenger seat while Mr Sheikh drives. I’m hoping that my horrible driving will make Mr Sheikh think twice before insisting that I take the wheels while HE relaxes in the passenger seat. I’m sure by now he has made up his mind on what a horrible driver his wife is! :D

More mundane stuff

I reshuffled the furniture in Sameer’s room and now thinking of giving the walls a fresh coat of paint. Come to think of it, it’s been 4-5 years since I last painted his room! What’s holding me back is the thought of moving all that bulky furniture around to prepare for painting! It would have been fun if I had someone to do all the dirty work for me heheheh.

I did sew a new set of curtain for his windows though, or should I call them cutetain since they hang only halfway down the window? The reason I chose to have the cutetain (aside from the fact that it’s easier and faster to sew!) is that I wanted as much light as possible to pour into the room from the upper half of the window and at the same time block the scorching noon sun from melting the PC and the TV which I have now placed near the window. Once I’m done with painting, I might decorate the curtain with pockets and boy stuff to liven things up. Right now, aside from the design, the plain-ness of the material reminds me of a hospital room!!

Because we’re such multi-racial, multi-cultural people, we had naan with dhal, keema and sambal goreng (Indonesian spicy dish of beancurd, fermented soya, french beans and beef slices) for dinner last night. Cross-culture rocks!

Can’t think of anymore mundane stuff right now and no more pictures to show. Till I come up with something more imaginative and intelligent, have a great week ahead! ;)

Ending notes

2009-12-30T22:51:00.001+08:00

It’s been a great year, as have all the years in my life. I know there have been countless times when I had groaned and moaned more than necessary. Well, I can only say those were times when I was at my ungrateful best. After all it’s only human to whine and complain. And I heard more so if you are Singaporean hehehe :D

On the personal front, I have grown so much emotionally, spiritually and not to mention (don’t laugh) physically over the years (though the development seem to be horizontal mostly lolz). It’s funny how I was considered matured as a teenager and now after hitting 30s I feel that there is still so much maturity and wisdom to attain in the coming years. There is still so much more of life that I have yet to discover and I hope I shall have the discipline to put into practice whatever I learn in this unpredictable life. Easier said than done, of course!

My work life ended as of July 2009. I’m blessed that Mr Sheikh was able to financially cope on his own and allowed me to stay home to be a lady of leisure (I’m just trying to be extra grateful here :P). I have no idea how long that leisure will last though, I have some half-baked plans to work from home but nothing concrete enough yet. I have to mention that I have thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed the past few months I spent at home and with Sameer (and of course waiting on Mr Sheikh!). Without any “work responsibilities” and “booking available annual leave slot” tensions, I’ve been able to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. The luxury of having all the time in the world! Have to admit I miss having my own income though and that time management becomes an issue when I’m not able to fill my waking hours with enough laundry and cleaning hehehehe :D

As I mentioned earlier, we can’t help but whine!

Random snippets from 2009

This used to be my hot seat in the office! ;)

We bought our first car in March 2009, Alhamdulillah! As per my lifelong (day)dream, I was itching to get my hands on a sleeek, sexy, black car but we were told by the car dealer that we had to wait a few months for that color and naturally Mr Sheikh couldn’t wait that long so we settled for this white hunk instead (I have no idea what is the gender of cars but I insist on male.) In case you are wondering what happened to my lifelong dream of having the black car, well I just went with the flow and learnt to love white (as what almost always happens in the twists and turns of our lives :D )

After much coaching from me starting from July, I’m proud to announce that Sameer received his Best Progress award last month (more proof that I’m an effective SAHM muahahaha, Mr Sheikh please increase my allowance!!!!!). That’s Sameer and his vice principal by the way.

We celebrated Mr Sheikh’s birthday on 19th Dec with his immediate family members. I made plans to surprise him by secretly inviting his family over for a dinner get-together but instead he surprised me by doing just that himself! Birthday boy insisted on having briyani and here’s what I managed to come up with:

Chicken Kurma.

Kofta briyani, my very first attempt. Thank God the meatballs didn’t break!

Raita of some sort :D

Fruit Trifle

No, the parrot was not to be left out of the spotlight or the pictures on Mr Sheikh’s special day.

I love the fact that kids celebrate their birthdays whenever there’s a birthday cake! I think that’s what make kids so special. Not only do they eat the cake and the cream but they insist on cutting the cake and feeling all happy and excited about it. Truly, to be innocently happy is the best time to be happy!!!

I don’t normally get all nostalgic about the passing of time but lately I’ve been wanting to capture every moment of our lives (yeah I know I’m aging :P). My mom was hospitalised twice recently for some stomach ulcers and she’s been looking all weak and fragile now. I grew up watching her run a whole household of 12 family members!! Walked me to and from school daily, did grocery every morning instead of weekly/monthly like we do now and basically managed 10 kids of various characters, ages and stages single handedly!

And guess when was the last time she was hospitalised before this?

When she gave birth to me back in 1977 in Attock (I know I’m giving my age away but it’s ok :P)

Seeing her hale and healthy has become a habit and now it just doesn’t feel right that she’s not looking as good as before.

We need you to keep us whole, I love you and hang on there Ammi!

At the rate I update my blog and with a day more to go before 2009 ends, my next post will only make an appearance next year! So till then, happy new year to all my friends and readers! Let’s pray really hard for a better world and future for our children! InshaAllah!

Short and sweet

2009-12-28T22:56:00.001+08:00

That best describes our 2 short trips to the neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia this holidays :D

13 Dec 09

Sameer and me finally stepped into Kota Tinggi for the very first time (everyone else in the group travelling with us seemed to have been here several times!)

Monkeys greeting us on our way up the road leading to the falls.

The weather was great initially but it got really warm later on! I still have my deeeep tan!

The water was chilling! Unfortunately I found the rocks to be to very slimy and slippery and I didn’t dare to make my way towards the fall. I saw a few people crawling on all fours but the hinds were kind of unsightly you know hehehe… Mr Sheikh was too busy enjoying the water splashing on his smooth head that he forgot to assist Sameer and me. So we made our way to the lower part of the stream where they had a man-made play area for kids. The water spilled down into a pool of some sort in this area and kids can swim and play around with their floats. Lower down they even had a slide! As usual, no one captured any pictures of the fun parts because we were busy having FUN!!!

15 Dec 09

Last minute plans by Mr Sheikh to join his cousin’s and brother’s family for another short trip, this time to the Batam Island.

Sameer was absolutely excited to be travelling on the ferry!

Our cottages at the KTM Resorts.

Each cottage had 2 bedrooms and a dining area.

As you can see in the picture above there was just way way too much wood and brown inside the cottage!! After spending 2 nights in the cottage, I’m staying away from everything brown for a while :P

The balcony facing the shrubs and the sea. Wonderful! I loved the idea of waking up to the sea breeze :D

The next day was spent at the water park known as Ocarina and as always we forgot all about snapping pictures while splashing around the pool.

In the evening, we ladies went for a spa while the guys struggled with the kids heheheh. The 2 hours of pampering were totally relaxing, and the only sound I could hear was that of the waves! I couldn’t ask for more! The waves and me go a long wayyyy. I grew up near the East Coast area and I have this silly attachment to waves :D The waves at the East Coast used to see me daily for 5 years!

That’s the very important note from Mr Sheikh to our tenant before we left for Batam. And for what? All for the love of the parrot! :P

Random stuff

2009-12-09T17:59:00.002+08:00

Our 6 years old desktop finally died on us last week! We’ve spent years doing our things on that darling, repaired it a dozen times, upgraded where possible, reinstalled when nothing else worked and numerous recoveries later it just could not take it anymore!

Thankfully Mr Sheikh decided to get the laptop after much contemplation, so I’m able to stay connected to the net. No I didn’t have to entice him, he got it out of his own free will. We got the Acer Aspire which was going at Mr Sheikh’s budget and I heard the laptop is not too bad. I guess a new journey starts with this baby as of this week :) I have no clue whether we’re having a funeral for the desktop or try CPR one last time. It would be good to get it repaired and running for Sameer’s use.

Anyways, I’ve been dying to show everyone my infamous avocado seed!

Here it is, finally downloaded from the mobile phone :D

I had 2 drafts in Live Writer waiting to be edited and published in my desktop and sadly both are now unrecoverable! So much for wanting to keep my blog updated :( And I just realised a while ago that I could have saved my drafts to my blog!!

Apart from going for a swim and various outings with cousins, Sameer had nothing exciting done this school holidays. Yeah you can blame me and Mr Sheikh for that. Mr Sheikh has been extremely busy and will remain so till next week. Let’s hope he will be in the mood to have some fun once he’s available. It’s not that we can’t have fun without him, it’s just that it’s fun to have fun when he’s around.

To foot the bills and handle other money matters :D

This is what we had for lunch today, lazy spaghetti.

Whipped an avocado smoothie for dessert. No, I don’t usually serve desserts after lunch but today I had to get rid of an over-ripe avocado.

Check out the “No cholesterol” sign on this avocado! How is that possible? I often see similar signs on eggs too. I need to do a research on how they get rid of the cholesterol in fruits and eggs.

Reading hazards

2009-11-21T03:06:00.001+08:00

Lately I’ve been giving in to strong urges to curl up (and various other positions which allows me to read) in bed and read one book after another. I’m happy to say that it’s been a progressive week on the reading front. And I totally blame the cold, stormy weather. I’ve made a total of 3 trips to the library this week alone and now I’ve already run out of books, hence the post :)

I can’t believe I had a childish quarrel with Mr Sheikh just because I wasn’t able to get to the library on time earlier this evening. Too much reading does this to me. I get transported out of my life and then I start behaving strange. I wonder what Mr Sheikh thinks of me at moments like this heheheh.

When I’m on the reading spree, the house is most often unkempt and meals are simple. At times like this, all those 30-minutes-meal recipes do come in handy. I don’t watch Rachel Ray for nothing you know! Oh come on, I’m not that bad, I still get the laundry done on time and even if I don’t I have the rain to blame! Muahahaha. Poor Sameer has also been forced to read because I can’t be entertaining him with chatter or other activities when I’m totally absorbed in my book. I do bathe and brush my teeth in the morning when I wake up, in case you are wondering :D

Today I was rewarded with a splitting headache after days and days of staring at hundreds and thousands of pages filled with millions of words. So it was good that I ran out of books (must remember to be nice to Mr Sheikh later) and managed to shoo my headache away with a short nap in the late afternoon and I’m one person who’s not prone to napping! Goes to show how hazardous reading can be.

My pc is being difficult and I’m unable to download pictures from my mobile phone for now. That’s one reason why I have not resorted to doing picture stories to keep this blog updated. I hope I resolve the problem soon! Just to keep you in the loop, I’ve done all sort of begging known to modern men to get Mr Sheikh to buy me us a laptop. No results YET. Maybe begging is not the right approach. Ohkay I shall start enticing him tomorrow. If you have any brilliant ideas on how to entice a man to get a laptop, do drop me a comment :P

Oh, among other authors I’ve been reading Eloise James for her wittiness. I was craving for some medieval romance :)

I also had more than 3 brownies this week though it has nothing to do with medieval romance. It’s the weather.

It’s 3.05am right now and I think it’s high time I get myself into bed if I were to wake up early tomorrow.

Sameer, Me and the never-to-be-Avocado plant

2009-11-15T07:45:00.001+08:00

Some weeks back Sameer and I attempted to grow an avocado plant (in Singapore). We excitedly planned to take pictures of the progress and patiently waited for the seed to grow roots in the water. Weeks passed and it was still like taking forever to see any visible shoots! I admit I was more excited than my 8 years old son! And guess what? The shoots never made it to the surface of the seed and it has turned all rotten looking!

I love gardening but have always been a failure with the greens. The last time I tried caring for the screw pine and curry-leaf plant, I ended up killing them both after a few months! I then decided not to keep anymore plants at home to avoid murdering more greens with my hands! Sigh….the avocado seed is yet another testament to my black fingers! But at least it wasn’t a breathing, living plant yet you know, so I’m not feeling that bad. Plus avocadoes do need Mexican weather to grow, right?

Now that I’m home with all the time in the world (sometimes I do!) and since Sameer will be introduced to Science in school next year, I decided to do that little avocado plant activity with him hence the (non-existent) avocado plant story :D After all, his studies and exam results are now my sole responsibility (among other things). His academic success (among other things) lies perpendicularly to my success as a SAHM in Mr Sheikh’s eyes.

Jokes aside, I love the hands-on teaching concept! From the age of 2 to 5 years old, most of Sameer’s knowledge of vocabulary, colors, numbers, textures etc came from observing and touching whatever he could get his hands on in the wet market/supermarket. Trust me, markets are THE place to get a kid explore sights, sounds and smells (yah I know ewww) what with all the hustle and bustle of activities and the endless variety of things to see and touch! Sameer was such a visual learner (as are all males LOL). He grasped fast with visual teaching aides and hands-on sessions (yeah that definitely sounds very male!). And boy did he love colors! His coloring books were filled with colorful people, animals, robots, airplanes, cars etc. Which got me worried for a while. I thought he wasn’t being normal you know, shading the picture of an elephant in 10 different colors. Like wasn’t it obvious to him after our numerous zoo trips that an elephant was supposed to be either grey or black? We had a little talk and he insisted that he loved everything in his books to be colorful. I left it at that while he was still in kindergarten and thankfully he grew out of his multi-colored human beings and animals :D

There was another phase he went through where he would paste every single artwork done by him on his room walls! Sometimes I even felt that he sketched and colored more so that he could cover all four walls of his room! I still have the tape/glue marks on the walls which I can’t be bothered with. It’s good that my boy took pride in his work but I also remember having to come up with all kind of explanations which I hoped would enlighten the nosy aunties for the dirty walls hehehe. Believe me when I say the older generation can’t comprehend why we young parents are so “relaxed” with our kids and allow them to stick papers all over their room walls!

I knew I would eventually get to this : School holidays are looming ahead!

I neeeed to plan our daily activities for 6 weeks! Though deep down in every cell of my body I know we will mostly end up lazing around at home :D

Which is not necessarily a bad thing I would say. Lazing around is a form of bonding activity after all. So I just need to balance up the days with a few outings and other educational and physical activities. Sounds easy enough!

Being the spur-of-the-moment kind of people, let’s see how we surprise ourselves :D

Life redefined

2009-10-22T00:50:00.001+08:00

A cousin asked me if I have anyone in particular whom I specially turn to in life, to confide in, share my worries with or to blast out at when in tension. Being the mostly private person that I am, I answered cautiously that as a teen I used to be really close to my brothers and late sister.

Of course he noticed the past tense! More prodding, then how about now? Are you close to anyone NOW?

Having turned 32 recently and feeling obligated to let the young adult gather information about life, I resigned myself to the interrogation. I went on to answer him rather openly that my brothers got married when I was 13 years old and my sister passed away when I was 16. I didn’t feel the need to get close to anyone after them as I strongly felt it’s an even lonelier feeling to miss someone than not to have anyone to miss at all. To end my heavy confession on a light note, I added on that nowadays I just blast at anyone who pry and come nosing about my business if need to let out any frustrations :P

He’s a 19 years old young adult. He found it appalling that I hold no one in confidence the way he does. He’s probably in a state of disbelief and now under the impression that people like me are loners, losers and anti-socials.

I had the same notions when I was a green-horned teen. I used to believe that people I trust will always be there for me whenever I needed them. To catch me when I fall, to get me out of trouble, to sooth my wounds, to wipe my tears, to take away the pain. I gradually realized that nothing much in life is permanent (it’s funny how the things that I hated most never failed me! Namely zits and pms). I had to let my brothers go (as in I don’t get to be in their company 24/7), because after marriage it was only right that they concentrated on their families. I had to let my sister go because death is part of everyone’s life. To think that they will always be with me was my fallacy. I don’t hold such expectations anymore now. I have learnt to expect nothing from people around me and enjoy the occasional surprise when someone is kind to me hehehe. But how would he understand all these things right? He still has 13 years to go before he turns as cynical as me :P

Anyways, having had that conversation set me thinking about the drastic changes I have seen in my own self over the years. Changes on a subconscious level of awareness of course. I admit that I no longer hold any clear definitions of things. It scares me on one hand and on the other hand that’s the cycle of life. I remember my not-so-distant youth which was filled with blind trust, puppy love(s?), unrealistic ideals, fat huge dreams and unwavering believes.

Not that all the above do not linger in my mind anymore, I would say the mechanisms have changed. Now that the notions cease to exist, I have learnt that I can hate and love at the same time. I can see the right and still am able to understand the wrong. I loathe black but can’t stop myself from questioning if white is really white. Where did the boundaries go? Life experiences are such wonderful teachers! Pfffftt!

What I really want to say is that the meaning of things such as trust, love, and belief changes with every new experience in life.

As for the ever changing people in life, after much intelligent thoughts, I have decided that people DO NOT change over the years. Our personality traits just become richer over the years. People close to us begin to see other sides of our nature. With every passing day, we let our guards down slowly and we let people around us view us as we really are and were from the start. The wholesome us! We are not changing, we’re in fact giving others a complete piece of ourselves. With that, I have now ended the torment I have been through for the past few months. I had the (mis?)fortune to glimpse the evil side of someone really dear to me. For a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to stomach the fact that people I love could possibly change overnight and are capable of such evil actions (yet another fallacy which wasn’t taken into account until now). Presently I have enlightened myself that, (I wouldn’t go as far as saying that we are born with evil streaks but rather) we develop good and evil aspects in our growing personality from the time we were able to process thoughts in our young minds. And it took me 7 years to finally witness the complete, wholesome person that I thought I knew so well.

To cut the long story short, almost every possible emotion in life needs to be redefined over the passing time. Don’t cry if someone in your life is a “changed person”, that person has probably given you the best of himself/herself (for the better or worse, depending on how you see it)

I missed blogging!

2009-10-05T23:44:00.001+08:00

My last post was dated 27th July!!! It’s been a long. time. I. know.

My dear friends, I was (am?) having a serious writer’s block! I mean really serious, you know the constipated kind?! Every time I typed a sentence I would feel the need to delete it and form another sentence again and delete again. You get the gist right.. so for those of you who’ve wondered, other than the slight writing malfunction in my brain, I’ve been gooood!

Currently blogging as a SAHM and enjoying the long stay at home :D What else can I say? I simply love being lazy. I might have mentioned this before, as a teenager my ambition in life was to be a stay-at-home-wife (the mom part comes later na, my immediate concern was being a wife who gets to stay at home :P ) Anyways, I hope I’ll be an efficient SAHM so that Mr Sheikh might consider employing me permanently hehehehhe. I wanted to add employ me permanently with a good benefits package, excellent career prospects and promotions but that would be like asking for too much na? :P

Since Eid is celebrated right up to a month here, I’ve been busy entertaining and visiting. It gets really tiring having to get all dressed, travel to every corner of Sg till late night or prepare the home to receive guests and hold polite conversations almost every weekend! Well ok, it’s not too bad this Eid as I no longer have to worry about work and I hardly get to meet people on weekdays. So yeah I would have to admit all the entertaining and visiting is in fact quite enjoyable this year (the tiring part still stands ok! ;)

At this stage of my half-written post, I can feel my writer’s block slowly creeping in again as I have deleted a few sentences by now. Hence before I get the urge to delete the whole painstakingly-written post, I HAVE to click the publish button now!!!!!! Yeah, emergency publishing :P

Enjoy the week people, till I download some pics and do my picture story posts. They are soooo much easier on my writing constipation!

10 honest things about Nisa, honestly!

2009-07-27T13:25:00.001+08:00

Got tagged by Nadia just when I started to slack in blogging yet again! Thanks Nadia, for the nudge :D

This is how the Honest Tag works: tell your readers 10 things about you that they may or may not know, but are true. Tag ten people and be sure to let them know they’ve been tagged (a quick comment on their blog will do). Don’t forget to link back to the blogger who tagged you.

This is not that difficult as I can actually choose the 10 good things about myself and be honest about it. Thank God! :P

Here’s the list:

1) I prefer wearing traditional salwar kameez than any other clothing. I do wear pant suits, long dresses and skirts to office, but I feel the salwar kameez has such a modest and practical concept, design wise. Love it!

2) My first ever mobile phone was one of those bulky black Ericsson phones. (Back then it wasn’t Sony Ericsson yet) And I remember my monthly bill used to be around S$100 (much to my dad’s disapproval). The only people who would call me were my nieces and Mr Sheikh :D

3) Kids love me (and I love them back too if they are well behaved) . No, I’m sure it’s not because I’m as cute as them but I prefer to think they can sense and relate to the kid in me :P

4) I can go without the main meals but I can’t resist desserts. A victim of sweet tooth. In fact, I just had some ice-cream before I started on this post.

5) I get mad easily but forgive just as easily (probably due to the high sugar content in me :P) Jokes aside, I think forgiving is a healthy habit. Some years back I decided to forgive someone for the most hurting mistake ever imaginable and I’ve now learnt to be a more laid-back person. I’ve said this before, there are lot of things in our daily lives that just don’t matter. Things that are not worth the heartache we put ourselves through because at the end of the day its between us and our Creator.

6) I’m not a very social person. I do not make friends easily but the few friends that I do make are gems.

7) I had an arranged marriage! Back then, my friends, colleagues and boss were so shocked that they kept asking me for many months before my wedding if I was alright hehehehe. I think I shall blog more about this some time ;)

8) I’m unable to view Pakistani men romantically. They remind me too much of my brothers, specially when they speak Urdu/Punjabi and you know it’s impossible to have any romantic thoughts about a man when his words and actions evoke all the sisterly feelings in me lolz.

9) I’m a serious procrastinator and it doesn’t help that I get distracted easily when I do get down to doing something. Sometimes I wonder if I should seek professional help for this worthless habit :D I typed all the above sometimes last week and I just got down to doing no. 9 today and I wonder if I will finish no. 10 in the next few minutes or days.

10) I’m very bad with road directions. I really should have a GPS navigation system in my car (hint hint). Typical female you say? Nopes, it’s just me. For the past donkey years before I got my driving license and when I was still being driven around (in car, cabs or bikes), the routes have never been of much interest to me. Instead of looking at the roads and the surroundings, I used to close my eyes (and daydream) till I reach my destination.

That’s 10 facts about me and as always, I shall tag the few friends that I have :D

http://morgenprinzessin.blogspot.com/

http://jussaemon.blogspot.com/

http://blissfulmommyhood.blogspot.com/

Brownies and Strawberry cake

2009-07-16T23:16:00.001+08:00

Ladies, this post is for you. I never imagined my blog would have recipes. Anyways, I can’t recall the source of the recipes as I’ve been collecting recipes since I was in high school! You know there’s a saying which goes like a woman collects more recipes than she can try in her lifetime or something like that hehehe… and yeah it’s a very true saying in my case :D

Chocolate Brownies

You can top the baked brownies with a store bought chocolate fudge or simply melted chocolate.

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1/3 cup self-rising flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8x8 or 9x9 inch baking pan.

In a medium bowl, beat together the butter and sugar. Add eggs, and mix well. Combine the flour and cocoa; stir into the sugar mixture. Mix in walnuts if desired. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are firm. Cool before cutting into squares.

Strawberry Cake

I didn’t follow any specific recipe for this, just modified a basic butter cake recipe. Flavoured it with strawberry emulco, added swirls of melted chocolate into the batter and topped it with fresh strawberry slices. Below is the basic butter cake recipe which I usually slander and assault when modifying :D You can do that to your favorite cake recipe too, really.

3 cups sugar

250gm butter

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan. Mix together the flour and baking powder; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.

Beat in the flour mixture little by little, mixing just until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 60 to 75 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

As for the Cheese and Macaroni, if you know me well you would know I’m the queen of cheats in the kitchen :D I used penne (or any other pasta for that matter) as I didn’t have elbow macaroni on hand. For the sauce I use the normal spaghetti sauce from the jar, add in some chilli paste or red chillies as we like it spicy, grated cheddar cheese and cooked minced meat (you can add anything you like). Toss the pasta into this mixture and into the baking dish. Top with more grated cheese and into the oven it goes! Wana, I’m sure your cheese and mac is much more sophisticated than this :P

I sure hope you ladies would find my ~~cheating~~ cooking hints and recipes useful!

How to kill your husband and other handy household hints

2009-07-16T22:33:00.001+08:00

There is no need to panic after reading my post title. No, being cooped up at home for 5 days and recovering from the lower back pain is not making me lose my marbles.

This was one of the books which caught my attention at the library the other day when their system was down. Can’t recall what the book is all about but the title itself was definitely eye catching! The household hints part kind of gave me an idea on what to fill my post with today, as for killing your husband, that’s definitely not an advisable thing to do I would say. I know most of us ladies would be more than happy to get some hints on how to drive our husbands mad :D

Unfortunately I know of no such handy hints, I can only come up with a few important kitchen/cleaning tips which I learnt over the last decade (that’s how long I’ve been married)

I have never done this before you know, showing the world a part of my house and that too the inside of my freezer! I guess I have learnt to be more sharing too.

The few things below are nitty-gritty stuff and considerations which made my life a whole lot easier and breezier as a SAHM and a working mom (and temporarily a SAHM again now). The challenges of cleaning and cooking for a self-confessed lazy bum! Sometimes I simply adore myself :P

1) Always flatten your food when storing in the freezer. As you can see I flatten almost anything from chicken to minced meat and to the various pastes. It makes thawing so much faster and thus cutting your prep or waiting time. Even my frozen briyani gets nice and warm within 2 minutes in the microwave. Time is precious! (Urmm, I guess it was when I was working and now I’m just impatient! I have grown into those bred-in-the-concrete-jungle impatient zombies!)

2) Deep fry some minced garlic till fragrant and once cool, keep it together with the oil in a container and store in the fridge for daily use. This one hint is really handy and I just came across it like 1 year ago. I use the fried garlic or sometimes just the oil (which is really fragrant) for all kind of stir-fries and quick meals such as fried rice, noodles and salads. In fact, I manage to eliminate the peeling, chopping, washing-the-chopping-board and sauteing time (which is quite some time) when I have this mixture on hand! I guess this won’t be a handy hint for those who can’t stand garlic but for me, I use garlic in almost anything!

3) Invest in at least 2 good quality non-stick pans. You can whip up any dish on high fire within minutes and not worry about it getting burnt and sticking to the pan/pot. Washing is easy and yes again, less time in the kitchen for us :D

4) If you don’t have a maid and you are not staying with your parents, please invest in some sophisticated mop or vacuum. It doesn’t end there, you also need to store these items somewhere within easy reach. The logic is that if the cleaning equipment is cool and dandy, chances are you’ll be more inspired to pick it up and get started. And if they are within easy reach, you won’t have any excuse to put off the cleaning chores. It’s allll in the mind I tell you, you just need to play some mind-games with your own mind! (which is kind of sad, but hey whatever floats your boat!)

5) If you are lazy like me but are decent enough to want to maintain a clean, hygienic home, please avoid unnecessary clutter around your living space. The less things you need to pick up or remove from the floor, the easier it is to carry out your cleaning job. Decoration shelves, wall frames, vases, miniatures etc are all items that collect dust and need to be shifted around when you are cleaning. Which means more effort and time. Which (when the realization sinks in) directly send lazy signals to the mind and makes you not want to lift a finger, I mean really I don’t blame the mind. Who in the right mind would want to do all that additional dusting, wiping and shifting? Not me!!!

I would love to post some pictures of my ~~pratically empty~~ home, but right now its already 10pm and my sony ericsson would not be able to capture a decent shot due to the poor lighting. Another day perhaps :D

Ok, I confess.

This morning I got 2 part-time helpers to spring clean my home after over 2 weeks of neglect.

There, I said it! Phewww!

And you were wondering why I’m going on and on about household stuff, hahahahha!

Temporary disability – Day 5

2009-07-15T15:51:00.001+08:00

I managed to drive over to my brother’s place and my MIL’s place last night! Being cooped up at home for 4 days in a row was driving me absolutely nuts! (yeah I know that’s my favorite line lately, please bear with it!) However when I got back home 2 hours later my lower back was aching and I badly needed to stretch on the bed. Thank God I woke up more or less normal this morning. I have to put on the elastic back support belt though. My spine feels less fragile with the added support and well, it just feels comfortable and secure to have that cushiony belt hugging my spine tight :D

Since I was beginning to feel better yesterday morning, I spent the whole morning baking! I alternated between sitting and standing when I was whisking and washing away. And of course with Sameer’s help, he was my kitchen aid for the day hehehe… fetching ingredients from the fridge and stuff like that. At this point of my dull life, all that baking and creating yummy dishes seems to be the only peak of excitement , so here are the “excitements” in pictures!

Cheese and Macaroni for lunch

Brownies topped with chocolate fudge (my nephews have been asking me for this for ages and I needed to break my back to finally find the time to bake for them! huh!)

Strawberry cake with fudgy chocolate swirls. Sinfully Yummy! I need to repent for baking and eating this AND making my family members eat it too! Tauba tauba.

A slice of that cake. I just need to add a dallop of vanilla ice-cream to this! So much for my repentance lolz

Right now, Sameer has already left for school and I hope I can keep myself busy instead of getting lazy and then feeling down about being useless!

* 20 minutes later *

I actually just got off the bed after resting my back and going to publish my post now :D

Temporary disability – Day 3

2009-07-13T20:52:00.001+08:00

It sure feels like 3 weeks or longer! I’ve been high on drugs (fully prescribed I assure you) and in bed or on the living room sofa most of the time and when Mr Sheikh is out at work I sneak into the study room to check my emails, read news and try to get my brain revving!

Yesterday I watched 3 movies in a day (including 1 Tamil movie!) and even chanced upon an interesting Uzbek/Pushto/Tajik/Persian song on Youtube (people on Youtube can’t seem to decide on the origin though)

Today Sameer had school and I was all alone at home the whole day. Without him to run around the house to get things for me, I felt even more disabled. Since I move at the speed of a snail, I had to keep my mobile phone with me using the lanyard (Mr Sheikh and other family members get panic attacks if I don’t answer the phone after 3 rings). So yeah imagine, me in a home dress with the lanyard around my neck doing things like washing dishes and running the washing machine cycle…. hahahha. I managed to fold and hang the laundry. I hope tomorrow I will be able to cook!

Frankly I was tempted to burst into tears this evening, feeling utterly useless and frustrated that I’m unable to carry out simple everyday tasks at the normal speed. I guess more reasons to be thankful to Allah for the good health I’ve been enjoying.

Well, another thing to be grateful for is that my brother sent us a box of mangoes and the sweet juicy mangoes kind of helped with my journey to the washroom ( I’m trying not to get gross here). Having enough roughage in the diet actually saved me from great misery associated with troublesome tailbones when depositing. So Pakistani mangoes, thank you for your timely arrival to my plate :D

That’s the headboard of our bed. Obviously the torn side is MY side. All that groping and grabbing I had to do (now don’t get any other ideas :P) when I need to wake up or change position has taken a toll on the plastic covering. Once I’m fully recovered, I will have to get rid of the whole protective sheet of the headboard.

The day before I got injured I went to the library but was unable to borrow any books due to the library’s system breakdown and now I’m disable AND without any books to read! Seriously, maybe this is the time to re-read the dusty hadith books sitting on my bookshelf. These English translated books were gifts from my late father and my father-in-law. So if you see a-hadith-a-day post tomorrow, you know what happened :D

Important things I did this week:

2009-07-11T22:42:00.001+08:00

1) Scrubbed my kitchen balcony which was stained with bird droppings and had yellow and green feathers sticking all over (thanks to Mr Sheikh and his bird-craze) How could I have not mentioned on this blog that both birds ran away! MUAHAHAHHAHA!! I’m delirious they found their freedom!

2) Updated my resume and looking out for suitable positions. I know I’m not supposed to be choosy but I’m really hoping for a job around my area but then again with the current economic situation I will probably grab the first offer which comes my way :D So lets pray for the best!

3) ………………………………….

I was supposed to be doing more but this morning I sprained my back and am unable to walk or stand for long :(

My baking and sewing plans have now been shoved onto the shelves for the time being till I recover. All I did was bend down a little bit to place a cup on the coffee table and taadaaa, I was not the same person after that. I think my old tailbone injury returned to haunt me after 4 years!! I had a bad fall back then when I landed on my butt really hard and gave myself a cute-sounding condition known as coccydynia (which is really not a cute condition to be in trust me). I’m now on some fantastic painkillers which are making me feel all floaty and relaxed :D

In conclusion, I need to go out and work! This is what happens to me when I’m at home for too long lolz.

Alhamdulillah, feeling slightly better now. I hope this is all over in another day or 2. This may sound drastic but I feel paralyzed as my weak tailbone is not able to support the upper half of my body. I’m not supposed to sit for too long and should be away from the pc hehehe… I’ve been resting the whole day and it’s driving me nuts hence this quick update.

Enjoy the weekend while I nurse my tailbone (of all the things in the world) and recuperate :D

Break-ing news

2009-07-07T11:09:00.001+08:00

4th July 2009

We finally made the extra short trip to Desaru! On Saturday we drove up to the coastal resort for a day trip as Mr Sheikh was unable to apply for annual leave (I, on the other hand, had all the time in the world for a world trip :P) Approximately 1.5 hours’ drive from Singapore, minus the traffic congestions as we left early at 5.30am.

We enjoyed a breath-taking view of the sunrise for the longest time as we drove on the highway among the hills and trees. It was scorching hot even in the morning when we reached the beach. Vast, sandy beach, very peaceful and quiet. I loved stepping on the sand the most. It was really fine and had that powdery feel to it, no pebbles whatsoever. The waves were kind of scary in comparison to the gentle waves in Singapore :D I had to take a few moments just standing, soaking my feet and facing the ocean before I finally took the plunge. Not much pictures as we were busy having fun in the clear waters.

If we were not constrained by the time, I would have loved to bring Sameer visit the fruit farm or watch fireflies at night. I think it would have been more relaxing if we had spent at least a night at the resort as the drive to and fro was a little tiring. All the frolicking in the water left us exhausted at the end of the day. So much for an unwinding break! Nevertheless, it was quite an adventure. We have never drove that far into Malaysia before. And no, I didn’t take the wheels at all for this trip. Malaysian traffic intimidates me!

That’s it for my short break, till the next holiday I guess :D

Life at home

2009-07-03T15:43:00.001+08:00

The first few days at home have been great!! :D

I’m enjoying every single moment of being free from work duties and responsibilities. No rushing around, no crowded buses and no hectic evenings! I wish I can boast about how late I get out of the bed every morning (or afternoon), but my mental alarm clock still wakes me up before 7am! Well, it has always been that way since I was a kid, early to bed early to rise.

When I was running my errands at the neighborhood mall on the first day, it felt like any other weekend. Except that there were lots of aunties and uncles going about doing their things at a leisurely pace, taking it easy in their retirement I suppose lolz.

I made chicken briyani today and here’s a picture to show off :P That’s Sindhi briyani by the way and it turned out really really spicy.

Yeah you got it right!! You will see more such posts while I’m at home, please bear with titles such as “what I cooked today” and “my exciting trip to the supermarket” hehehe…

Sameer and his grandparents are missing each other I guess since he doesn’t go to their place on weekdays anymore now that I’m home. He probably hates the idea of me staying at home as he has to do MORE Maths exercises, read more and revise his surahs in the morning before he gets ready for school in the afternoon. I don’t blame him if he’s praying hard for me to land a job soon hahaha. While he was at school from 12 noon to 6 pm yesterday, I dragged mom out for a short trip to Geylang. We got the car in March and this is the first time she sat in my car! I plan to bring her visit her siblings and cousins, hopefully she will be up to it. Tomorrow we’re driving in to Malaysia, destination still undecided hahaha….. I shall reveal if it’s KL, Desaru, Malacca or Kota Tinggi after I get back. Till then, enjoy the weekend! ;)

I'm officially jobless

2009-06-30T21:08:00.005+08:00

as of 1st July 2009 and that is tomorrow!

So the hush-hush reshuffling plans turned into a complete company closure. To cut the story short, smart businessmen had to do their things. I totally understand. I kind of saw it coming and was mentally prepared. Even started looking out for new jobs. But man, it was hard to clean up my work station and say goodbye to the people I've been working with for the past 2 years! The aunty who always rushed to prepare my cup every morning because I was the first one to step into the office, the uncle who gave me thumbs up after cleaning the washrooms, colleagues whom I worked side by side and had a few hundred lunches with, the production guys who never failed to make me laugh every time I walk past the production floor. I'm so going to miss them all and THAT's what making me sad! There won't be another morning like the past mornings :(

I will get over it I know.

But for now, it's time to look forward to that break that I've been wanting to take but was too busy with reports and deadlines. I shall give myself a week to laze around before I start getting busy with job applications. Yeah right, laze around is not exactly what I will end up doing. Right now I have like dozens of issues in my mind which I think are screaming for my attention! Home, Sameer and mom just to name a few.

Let's see what I can accomplish over the weeks to come. I'm not the planning sort of person, things just happen with me! Which is actually fun (and very messy) I have to admit. The surprises and the unexpected stuff add thrill to my otherwise boring life :P

Keep me in your prayers folks! I wonder what my next post will bring :D
Ahhh my thrilling life!

Depressing post

2009-06-26T17:14:00.001+08:00

Nothing new I guess. Read on if you have nothing better to do :D

This fateful Friday, instead of being ecstatic I’m feeling totally down. Today, the thought of the impending weekend brings me no happiness, no cheers, no excitement. I can’t see any difference between Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Aisa din bhi dekhna baki tha?

Issues pulling me downnn in no particular order:

(I meant to say that the issues are in no particular order, pulling me down is still in one direction and that is downn!)

1) My company has some hush-hush re-shuffling plans and I have no idea which department, branch or company I’ll be dumped in. The uncertainty is causing me some anxiousness. Alright make that lots of anxiousness.

2) Sameer is slacking big time in his studies. Every time I go through his assessment books, I question my motherhood skills. And I can’t help reflecting back on what a hard-working, independant kid I used to be at his age!!!!! (bad bad very bad of me I know)

3) My mom’s ill health. I wish I can force her to shift in with me so I can care for her. Desi moms!! She can’t imagine living with her daughter, her sons are still alive she says. But mom, I’m your daughter and I don’t particularly like the idea of your daughter-in-laws having to takleef utha for you when I’m still alive!

4) I haven’t had a proper, romantic date with my husband for the past 6 months. Instead I keep getting dinner and movie offers from various Toms, Dicks and Harries. That makes me more depressed because the only guy (my husband) whom I want to go out with doesn’t seem to have the time to go out with me. On the brighter side at least the Toms, Dicks and Harries find me interesting enough to ask me out despite the fact that I’m taken. (Ain please read this)

5) Nurulain officially labeled me as boring in her blog. Now the news will spread all over the whole blogworld!!

6) My thinning hair and thickening waist line. My resolution to maintain a healthy lifestyle is just not happening! I need a grip! I need my dad and his whip!! (hey that rhymes!)

7) Last month I bought another pair of sandal and I realised now I have 3 pairs of IDENTICAL sandals in 3 DIFFERENT colors! Am I turning into some footwear freak??

8) Micheal Jackson is no more. I know it shouldn’t affect me, but hey I knew the chap since I was 5!! Frankly speaking when I’m feeling down even a dead rat on the road makes me feel sad. (Noooo pleaseeee…. I’m not comparing MJ with a dead rat! I’m just explaining to you guys how my state of depression works)

9) My savings are dipping to very dangerous low levels. No, it’s not because of the 3 pairs of identical sandals in 3 different colors but some other high maintenance indulgences.

10) For the 13756th time, I want to tell the world that I totally don’t see a light (or was it rainbow?) at the end of the tunnel. Why are people so optimistic about the future? It’s beyond beyond me! Isn’t it obvious we’re doomed? Even the paradise-like Maldives is drowning! It’s time to seriously wake up people!!

Reasons for my absence

2009-06-19T15:54:00.001+08:00

1) In the effort to keep me abreast and competent, my boss made me attend 2 courses in a span of 2 months.

2) It’s school holidays again here in Singapore and I have a monkey (sometimes 2) who need(s) to be kept occupied.

3) Been busy helping my sis-in-law promote her hand-made fluffy pillows. These are perfect for the couch potatoes :D If you are interested and even if you are not a couch potato, drop me a line!

Conserving memories Part 2

2009-06-19T15:30:00.001+08:00

According to my elder cousins and other relatives, I was a pretty quiet kid as a child. That's not surprising at all because I had extremely clear boundaries and limitations (dictated by Adolf himself) to stay within as a daughter, sister, friend and student. Yes that’s how great a disciplinarian my dad was, he covered all aspects of my life lol. No he wasn't that free, but whatever little time he had away from business, dad diligently ensured we did not stray into western culture or got swept off by waves of peer pressure and drown in modern vices. Our home environment had an old school, royal setting and I'm definitely not talking about the decor!

For instance, we didn’t just strike a conversation with dad like most kids do, we didn’t just go like “hey dad, can I have 20 bucks for my history text book”. In our home, we waited for the right time and approached our father respectfully with the right tone of voice. I can’t describe the right tone for you, but those who have heard me at home and then outside home you would have an inkling of the various tones I’m capable of.

Anyways just imagine this; we used to linger for a good 15 to 20 minutes to build up our courage and analyze dad’s mood and another 10 more minutes of nudging (moral support?) from siblings before we cleared our throats and vomitted out the appropriate words which we thought would sit nicely with dad to ensure his approval for whatever we were requesting for. I tell you, we must have been the most docile kids in the whole of Singapore back then!

As for the outcome of our ordeals, I mean requests, I have to say Dad seldom disappointed us because experience had taught us well, at the risk of being admonished, to only request for things which we were pretty pretty sure he would approve of. Truly, we so good at creating zero chance of disappointment for ourselves, hehehe. Jokes aside, Dad was an extremely generous man for all the causes he supported. Despite his vast business, our family led a less than average lifestyle. Instead of enjoying luxuries, his profits were used to support a few orphans in Indonesia, daily expenses of the poor and needy families back in our village in Pakistan and even here in Singapore. I truly admire his low profile nature and the fact that he’s a living example of a human being who didn’t let his left hand knew what his right hand gave. I’m sure he’s reaping the rewards in Jannah even as I type now. I’m proud of you dad and yeah now that you know how impish I’ve been all these years please continue to pray for me :D

In all honesty, none of his reprimands had any significant effect on me and neither did his strict rules stopped me from doing the things I wanted to do. The basic instincts of a being and the need to survive her youth, made me learn the art of maneuvering my way around his rules and prohibitions. The only thing that left a lasting impression on me and my personality were his deeds. I remember meeting an elderly lady who broke down in tears when she talked about how my dad’s help pulled her family through the toughest part of their lives. Even as a kid and a teenager, I wanted to be able to help people the way my dad did. I wanted to make those tiny differences which can lift someone from hardship to a slightly more breathable situation. Not out of pity but because I know I can afford to extend that little help, because I believe the Almighty blessed me with something extra (for whatever reason) and in return I should share my blessings.

I admit I have not been the greatest of human being all this while, juggling to be a better person and to survive amidst the chaos and pandemonium of the contemporary urban society. As I slowly evoke the memories of my childhood, I remember the simplicity and the wholesomeness of life back then. I want to be there again. I want to grow old into those great people I used to know many years ago.

Maybe I will.

Right now, I’m just freezing in the office and going to have my lunch at 3.31pm while my son is on school holidays and daily dumped at his grandma’s place. This is definitely not life friends. Not the kind of life I want at all!

My first post on my first blog

2009-05-11T01:01:00.003+08:00

February 24 2006

my first blog ever

this is the very first time i'm blogging, actually been wanting to do so for quite some time. its a gud way to pour out my thots i think. rather than letting all my intelligent thots sit inside , might as well do this.
So lets get started, i'm being very lazy today. fighting to keep my eyes open, slept late last nite and woke up early. my adorable son, the apple of my eye is out in school doing his things, sometimes i wonder if kids think of their parents as much as we think of them. well i guess i know the answer, when i was younger i didnt think much of my parents either wtf. and its only now i realise how much they've done for me. how much their existance matters to me. nah no regrets, i hav no desire watsoeva to re-live my childhood again! the fact tat i've realised their love and care for me is enuff for me rite now. sometimes i really miss my huge family, my bros and siss. miss the good old days. i was the baby of the family. always had my way with things and them being da elder sibs always gav in to me. wat a stark contrast to my life today! sighhh..... it wud hav been nice if someone had warned me back then abt the passing speed of good times! here i am tdy, sitting all alone in good times and bad times despite having 8 siblings, darnnnn, life juz doesnt get any easier..... how misinformed i was!

3:55 PM

I've long forgotten this blog of mine on MySpace. A private space where I used to pour my frustrations out. Came across it just now after such a long time and I can barely recognise the person who wrote all those private thoughts! lolz.
3 years have changed a lot of things. I shall consider myself fortunate, others don't even have that much time. Some lives change in seconds.

Conserving memories Part 1

2009-05-08T17:11:00.001+08:00

Some parts of our memories fade away as time passes. I read somewhere the reasons for this could be possibly due to failure to retrieve the memory or the memory wasn’t stored at all to start with (of course there are many other complicated theories as well which are, well, too complicated for me). So much like computers aren’t we? Sometimes a cousin or a friend would speak of something we did together as kids/teenagers and for the life of me, I'm not able to recall that particular memory! I’m still in my early 30s, and I went through anesthesia only once. Repeated failure to retrieve memories of the past have made me want to jot down all the things I can still recall of my life. I hope to maintain consistency in posting this so called, memory module of mine. Let’s pray I will still be excited about reminiscing the past after the first post. Seriously. That’s how short my interest span is.

My beginning of course started with the two important people in my life, my parents.

My late Dad: Businessman and chai addict. Considered his life to be incomplete if he missed his 3 doses of tea a day. Heavy user of Singtel IDD services to keep in touch with family and friends all over the globe. I remember his yearly gifts from Singtel (branded gifts, mind you), in appreciation of his overwhelming support for their IDD services. As a youngster I imagined his name on the top row of Singtel's Heavy Weights Customers (Residential category) list. Funny though, Singtel couldn't convince him enough to own a cell phone. A true blue Pakistani who went about his life in Singapore proudly in his white salwar kameez. In his hey days, he ruled the family Adolf-style. He mellowed down quite a bit by the time I was a teenager (as much as I hate to admit it, being the youngest in the family has its own perks. Sometimes.) Anyhow, now that I mentioned about him mellowing down, aside from the fact that he was aging, to a certain extent it must have been due to the fact that I was the only English educated child in the family. Secretly he must have feared, as the oldies commonly believed, that being educated categorized me among those kids who ran away from home if things were not going our way. The more I think about this new found revelation, the more it makes sense to me now. One of the reasons why I need to read my self more often :) But yeah now that I’m a parent myself, I’m somewhat sorry I was the cause of constant worry and fear for a steel man like dad. As a child I didn’t have the wisdom or sense to read people. I remember this steel man had humongous fear of surgeries. That fearful person inside the steel man refused to stay in hospital even for a night when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. To avoid a surgery, he painfully made his way to Pakistan to find a herbal cure for his cancer. He passed away among his loved ones in Pakistan at the age of 77.

My Mom: Live and let live kind of person. Obedient wife to ~~Adolf~~ my dad, gentle mother to us kids, hardly complaints, contented with whatever she’s blessed with, never imposes on anyone. So how does she get her kids to listen to her? By being the innocent soul that she is. From the time I began recognizing emotions till now, there has not been an occasion where I'm able to bring myself to announce bad news to her. I'd rather vanish from the surface of the earth than see her troubled or in pain. Yes friends, I have swallowed hundreds or maybe thousands of sorrowful tears and suppressed sobs in solitude just so that mom doesn’t come across them. ~~Such is the extent of my filialness~~. Cross-cultured, easily manipulated, favorite aunt to her nephews and nieces (obviously because she doesn’t impose) and how can I forget her simplicity? She’s someone who would hesitate to take a cab alone for fear of being murdered by the cabbie in some isolated lonely road. God knows how this fear came about (must be from those exaggerating aunties relating world news to my mom) but yes that’s how simple my mom is. Having spent a good 20 years of her married life in dad's village, she is totally against living in Pakistan :) After numerous tries, my Pakistan-based brother have given up any attempts to move her to Karachi. So there, beneath that gentle soul hides a steel woman :P

That’s bits and pieces of my memory I have of my parents as I grew up, from a child into an adult. There’s so much more, but for now I'm happy I have documented this much about the 2 beloved human beings who made me what I am today, albeit unintentionally :D

I don't know why but I feel I'm going to be grateful reading even this much when I hit 40 and suffering from amnesia!

Learning languages

2009-04-27T13:32:00.001+08:00

No one spoke English in our home when I was growing up. Dad had this strict rule about "Punjabi only" in the house. I remember getting stern lectures the few times he caught my sister and me conversing in Malay/English (we were gossiping I think). We used to get fuming mad at many of his strict rules, but now I'm extremely glad he had this language rule. I can't imagine life without Punjabi. The jokes, the vulgarities and the curses can't possibly sound as fine in any other lingo (with the exception of the Hokkien dialect) as they do in Punjabi!

We grew up in a Malay dominated neighbourhood, the Geylang Serai. We siblings used to go around bluffing the neighbourhood kids that we're conversing in Arabic when we were actually speaking Punjabi! The Malay kids didn't know better initially but thanks to the Bollywood movies craze, they got wiser and started to recognise words such as 'nahi' and 'paani'. Soon we got busted! Nopes, no one threw shoes at us though!

While Nancy Drew expanded my vocabulary and helped me score for my written English papers, my spoken English was enriched by sitcoms, dramas and cartoon shows on TV. Remember Growing Pains, Knight Rider, Falcon Crest, Magnum PI, Beauty and the Beast, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Who's the Boss, Perfect Strangers, Smurfs, Carebears, HE-Man and Transformers? (gosh it's been ages since I last saw these shows! Waiting for the release of Transformers 2 in June, hehehe) Having no other source of English in life, I heavily relied on these shows on TV. The downside was that I picked up the 'western' accent as well which resulted in kids making fun of me when I was asked to read aloud in Lit class. Eventually I kind of learnt to switch between English and Singlish to be accepted by the various groups of people. The things I had to do to blend into the crowd!

Currently Sameer is going through the same experience but with the Malay language. He hardly gets to hear or speak Malay at home. I observed that he speaks the kind of Malay we read in story books lolzz.... and I realised yeah, he reads more than he speaks/hears the Malay language. Which, I feel, is a good thing because his Malay sounds clean and untainted by the slangs and what-nots. But I know for sure that's not going to stay because he's constantly picking up new phrases and words from his classmates. And last week he told me there's an Indian boy in his class who speaks Urdu too. Guess what Sameer shared with me? According to him both of them speak Urdu to talk bad about other classmates! I didn't have much to say to that. It's something we multi-linguals often do! :D

Need to speak more in Urdu to him though. He understands Urdu well but we seldom speak at home as English dominates our household, hence the lack of fluency. Anyhows, his exams are round the corner and considering his previous exam results I badly need to take some time off to coach and help him revise his school work! The boy is getting too playful and slacking to his heart's content! Why oh why are boys so lazy?? I never had a tutor and my parents didn't have any knowledge of my homework or exam schedule and yet I managed to pull through PSLE, 'O' Levels and dip. with more than acceptable results! Are we making our kids too dependant or is it just boys??

Life in pictures

2009-04-17T14:12:00.001+08:00

I see this painted 'bull's eye' (fried egg) every morning when I walk to my office building from the bus stop. I wonder if it serves as some construction marking or some worker painted it for fun while carrying out construction work near the steps.

This is how breathtakingly beautiful the sky was when I got off the bus this morning. Maybe it's this pretty every morning, it's just me who looks down at painted eggs on the ground and misses out the sky! And these are called cirrus clouds? I've forgotten my high school geography. Never mind, there's always google.

I made this jelly for my cousin's engagement. I'm sooo in love with brown/turquoise blue combo! And then top it up with a splash of something red or hot pink, everything seems to come alive! I'm loving colors now more than ever before, having spent a good part of my life being faithful and loyal to black/brown/gray.

Chocolate cheesecake, waiting to be savoured ;) This one was the no-bake version. I think I prefer the baked cheesecakes, they have a milder taste and feel lighter (so can eat more! :D).

Since he started his weekly swimming classes, Sameer has developed more than 1 of shade of skin color. We label the shades as milk coffee, milo and tea. Lolz

I googled her name

2009-04-16T23:21:00.005+08:00

Today I googled my late sister's name. For what, I don't know.
Hah, was I hoping to read some news about her or something?
My mind must be really tired! :D
We hardly talk about her anymore in the family.
I guess we just want to avoid mom's tears.
I took a look at her picture when she was still so full of life.
Now history.
Wiped out from the face of the earth. Just like that.
Someday I'm going to be history too. I wonder if anyone would google me too lolz.
Not that it would matter.
How often we stray from the truth. Daily, every minute.
Worrying and crying over things that won't even matter at the end.
Life is happening right now, right here under our noses (literally!) and we make a fuss over the tiniest issues.
Whatever for?
None of the issues would even matter in the end.
Just like how 7604 days of my sister's life didn't matter when she exhaled her last breath.
She's now long forgotten. Occasionally her memories bring about a drop of tear or a smile to her immediate family members.
And that's that.
Nothing she said or did matters anymore.
It shouldn't have mattered back then either.
I hope I remember this at all times so that I can start to live the only life that I'm blessed with.
So many things in life won't even matter in the end. Too many.

Staying sane

2009-04-14T16:50:00.002+08:00

Dear Nisa,

I have checked with Mr Ken from solution business previously and he
mentioned that his superior will liarse with the my boss Mr Rick regarding the costing.

Thanks & regards,
Tim
Sales Support Engineer

li-arse??? seriously... hahahahahhaha

______________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Mike,

We will arrange our driver to collect back the motor. Please packing it properly to make sure the condition were ok when we received.

When the date confirm we will inform you to prepare the necessary document.

Regards,

Aneela

Soooo cute! Fancy arranging the driver! Lolz

______________________________________________________________________________________

I'm not laughing at the grammatical errors or anything. Just wanted to share some emails which make me laugh when I'm really up to my nose with work in the office. I'd say, keep them coming! There's nothing like a good laugh to loosen those tensed muscles and minds. To tell you the truth, I often speak Singlish to make myself understood/accepted.

Now, lets get back to work :D

Random

2009-04-14T10:48:00.001+08:00

Office has been busy like never before! Financial year end closing, preparing reports, documentations for ISO audit, arranging training courses for staff, paperwork, paperwork, more paperwork, emails and phonecalls! At times like this I wish I was staying at home! I just realised that I have not reported sick since the year started, I'm surrrprisedd! What a wonderful employee I have become over the years! But weirdly, I welcome this busy-ness, specially since things on the family front are not that rosy :( The past always haunts. I know I have made some decisions and I'm supposed to stick to those decisions no matter what. But some things (like shit) happens and I question myself allllll overrrrrr againnnnn! It's such a waste of time and emotional energy. No wonder some people turn stone hearted. To protect themselves and maintain sanity I suppose. Oh well like they say the heart is the only instrument that works even when it's broken. Though the heart has everything to do with life, sadly it has nothing to do with all the mishaps in life. And so history repeats itself, with me rationalizing things with myself and telling myself that the grass is not greener on the other side. At the rate I get swayed by emotions, maybe I should get a green grass background on my work station as a constant reminder hehehe... sounds good though. Sometimes the weirdest of things work for me!

What else is new? We decided against selling our apartment. I love this place too much, the early memories of our married life, having Sameer and buying our first home is something which I hold dear. Yeah all that usual female bittersweet stuff :P

Last term was soccer, this term Sameer has swimming classes in school. He enjoys sports! On the eve of his first swimming class, he voluntarily crept into bed and under his blanket at 9pm sharp! Without me having to ask him to do so! And he woke me up at 5.30 am to ask me if he's late for swimming! (which starts at 9.00am and he has to be in school only at 8.40am!!) LOL.

I was listening to someone who was updating my mom on who's pregnant and who's giving birth this year and then this person ended the sentence with "Faizun is the only one who refuses to get pregnant!" I swear I've told this big mouthed someone about my health condition. So mean of her! Made my mom upset for no reason. Over the years I have taken all kinds of pain not to let mom have any knowledge of my problems and look what this big mouthed did in a split second. I shall not sigh. Some people simply refuse to accept things as they are, insists on having their own suspicious version of "why-Nisa-is-not-pregnant" story. I wish someday her pea-sized brain will comprehend that not every woman is blessed with the fertility possessed by her and her clan. Urgghhh why do I even let a******* like her get to me?!

Talking of pregnancy, babies are popping up everywhere! Relatives and friends have given birth or are giving birth soon. So far I've heard of like 5 news of newborns and personally visited 3 the previous month alone! lolz. Hence I've decided to try my hands at putting together a diaper cake. Here's my first attempt which took me hours of fixing and dismantling the diaper structure! Yes Jus, I know I owe Tufeil a diaper cake too :P Soon, soon!

Looks kind of messy to me, I need to work on the color combination and arrangement I guess :D

Believe it or not, I've been typing this post since yesterday morning and now its 10.48am. 24 hours and still not published! Lolz. I have more to write but I guess I'll save it for another post :D

This and that

2009-02-09T12:30:00.001+08:00

My fingers are itching to type something out and so here I am. I've been occupied with home and office work to the point of self-neglect! Being busy is good I suppose, but sometimes I need to be idle. Like now :D

I've been on some home improvement mission around my home. Feeling proud of myself for dismantling the old storage shelving, re-fitting the metal bars by getting them cut to the right size at the hardware store, fixing the new shelves, sawing the wood and re-arranging the storage room ALL BY MYSELF! Got a new bed for Sameer and re-arranged his room as well. And guess what? After all my hard work Mr Sheikh announced that we should get a new apartment, a smaller one for easy maintenance! Urggghhh! If he had told me earlier I wouldn't have gone through all that trouble na?

Anyways, Sameer celebrated his 8th birthday yesterday. Mashallah, he has grown up into an independent young boy who travels to and fro school all by himself since he turned 7, fixes his own breakfast when I'm at work, buys emergency grocery for me, clears the rubbish daily, soaks/scrubs his own white school shoes, helps me with dinner preparation and makes his own bed among many other things.

Started off the morning with things he enjoys of course, a session of games on Xbox, and then a trip to the games arcade followed by lunch at Swensens. They surprised him with a candle-lit ice-cream bowl.

Instead of heading home, we ventured to the end of Punggol and guess what we came across?

Lots and lots of bare land and nature in it's original form! I was so fascinated with the fact that we were driving on not a man-made road but a natural sandy path! I mean how often can we do that in this concrete jungle?

The grass and leaves were rather brown in color as the weather has been scorching hot lately. Autumn-looking na?

That's the dirty looking beach, I doubt anyone would want to take a dip!

At any rate, the sight of nature is always breathtakingly beautiful. Not a single sky-scrapper in sight, that was the awesome part.

Lots of fishing activities going on here.

So it was a fun day of celebration and discovery for us, I enjoyed the time together and I'm ever thankful for such moments of love and peace.

We dropped in on my in-laws before heading home. Sameer ended the day with his Iqra class, which is held weekly at our home. I was fortunate to have my brother coach me in Quran recitations but Alhamdulillah, for Sameer we have a fellow Pakistani who is willing to teach kids at home.

Tomorrow is my late sister's 15th death anniversary, still feels like yesterday when we said a final goodbye to her. Anyways more about her on another post. For now I'm grateful to be blessed with so many things I never asked for!

365th day of 2008

2009-01-06T08:53:00.002+08:00

I drafted this on 31st Dec 08 but my office server decided to shut down just when I felt like posting after a long time (gals, you can't blame me!)

Anyways, I've updated the post now that we're already into the 6th day of 2009!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It has been a wonderful journey of making mistakes, learning the hard way, frustrations, relief, tears, laughter, joy, more tears, acceptance, coping, going with the flow, more tears, breakdowns, awakenings, perfect moments, more tears, friendship, revelations, trust, faith, more tears and now it’s the end, of this chapter at least.

The beginning of a new chapter, no I do not make resolutions. Oh well maybe secretly I do because I do not want the whole world to know what a failure I am at keeping them! :D

It’s also the end of holidays for Sameer, and guess what I just realized? I have not wash his white school shoes even after the 6 weeks’ school break! LOL. But I’m not panicking because he has 2 pair of new shoes which he can use first hehehe… ok now don’t be too fast to judge me, seriously I’m not such a bad parent, just can’t bring myself to do things I hate doing (scrubbing white shoes reminds me of my own school days!)

Sameer shall go back to school this Friday, and I’ll be on leave to be there for him :D See I’m not that bad na? :P

On the job front, I’ve heard that bonuses are not likely to happen to us. I’m sorry Mr Sheikh I can’t share the expenses for the short holiday we planned, urrmmm I shall be the dutiful meek wife and tag behind you this time hehehe…

Cant think of anything else to share right now, here are some pics from the various lunch/dinner outings we had over the weekends.

Happy new year everyone!

Dramatic shots in newly furnished Pizza Hut, Compass Point.

Sameer seen here gobbling up his pizza.

My pepper chicken spaghetti.

Lunch at Alaturka Turkish Restaurant

The traditional mint tea. We finished a pot!

This restaurant was fully decorated with artifacts from Turkey, so much so that we felt we've been transported out of Singapore! Great ambience I would say.

Mr Sheikh's Mussaka.

My Beyti Kebab.

Sameer had Chicken Pides (this flikr site have more pics of the dishes)

Food was delicious, but since we're not familiar with Turkish cuisine I guess we are not able to determine the authenticity :D

Important Update

Last night, I scrubbed 2 pairs of Sameer's white shoes. I'm so proud of myself :D

Scattergories Fun

2008-12-16T11:06:00.002+08:00

*Forcing my way out of hibernation*

Thanks Nadia & Ain, for dragging me out of my comfortable silence :P
For those who know me, my name starts with F. Nisa comes second :D

RULES: IT’S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS!
TAG 10 PEOPLE INCLUDING THE ONE THAT SENT THIS TO YOU.

- USE THE 1ST LETTER OF YOUR NAME TO ANSWER EACH OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS.
- THEY HAVE TO BE REAL PLACES, NAMES,THINGS. NOTHING MADE UP!
- TRY TO USE DIFFERENT ANSWERS IF THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU HAD THE SAME 1ST INITIAL.
- YOU CAN’T USE YOUR NAME FOR THE BOY/GIRL NAME QUESTION.

1. What is your name: Faizunnisa

2. A 4 Letter word: Free

3. A Boys Name: Fareed

4. A Girls Name: Fareeya

5. An Occupation: Farmer

6. A Color: Fuchsia

7. Something you wear: Fragrance

8. A Beverage: Fusion Milo :P

9. A Food: Fish & Chips

10. Something found in the bathroom: Facial Foam

11. A place: Fairyland

12. A Reason for being late: Fashionable to be late

13. Something you shout: Friday! Its Friday!

I’M GOING TO TAG the few people that I know :

Nadia

Sue

Where does my money go?

2008-11-21T10:51:00.001+08:00

I started earning money right after my “O” Levels. Not because I needed to but because I wanted to be, so to speak, “independent” and “live on my own money” (little did I realize back then that the food I ate, accommodation and the electricity/water bills were still being paid by dad and it didn’t occurred to my naïve self that these are the major expenses in a self-reliant adult’s life)

So I was a tutor to 3 kids at the age of 17. I used to splurge my meager earnings on toys and games for my nieces and nephews. Oh yeah, I was (and still would be if my monthly pay wasn’t hogged by bills and household expenses) a generous aunt :P

After a few months I left tutoring for an interesting job in the general hospital (you could say I wasn’t a dedicated and passionate teacher hehehe). The theatre sterile surgical supplies unit in the hospital was going hi-tech… the surgical instruments utilized by the operation theatre were to be captured in the new computerized inventory system. Given my interest in computers at that time, it was indeed an experience for me. In a department dominated by nursing staff, I felt particularly important as almost all the nurses had phobias of keyboards and barcode scanning devices. Given their irrational fear of computers, it cease to amaze me how one nursing manager managed to wipe out the whole inventory system from the server! Anyways, while completing my diploma, I stuck around for 5 whole years there because I felt they needed me so much! Yah right. Not to divert from the topic of this post, how much did I save in the 5 years? About $900. That’s all.

I was single all this while, I dissipated my income on clothes, shoes, handbags, dining out, nephews and nieces (again!) and a whole lot of other stuff which I really can’t recall and can’t imagine right now!

After marriage and having Sameer, I started working in a publishing company. Now this was when I began to learn the meaning of financial responsibility. New clothes, shoes or handbags for myself were once-a-year treat. Dining out was only reserved for special occasions. After handing out monthly payments for the domestic help, home installment, traveling and household expenses I was left with almost zilch. And the funny thing was that whenever I managed to save, some financial emergency would crop out of nowhere!

It’s been 14 years (plus minus) since I started on the quest to earn my own keep. My earnings were mostly utilized on my personal needs and luxuries. Some of which were utterly unnecessary. I could have saved that money. Or I could have donated it to someone’s second meal for the day. I’m ashamed to admit that it was only a year and half ago that I realized the importance of savings. Raised in a strict Pakistani household, I was brought up to believe that women do not need to fret about finances. Maybe that’s the reason why I never saw the need to save. I overlooked the fact that as a couple with a growing son, living in a city like Singapore, both partners need to have savings to improve the quality of our future together. Alhamdulillah, when Sameer was 3-6 years old, I was fortunate to be able to take a break from work and stayed at home with him. No matter how much I would love to be always there for Sameer to attend to his needs, it would be inconsiderate of me to ignore the financial burden Mr Sheikh had to carry while I was home.

So people, here I am sitting in the office, and typing a post for the blog :P Well, it’s Friday! The unofficial off day for most of us *wink wink*.How I look forward to the weekends! Just the prospect of sleeping late and doing things with my loved ones makes my heart sparkle (if there’s such a thing). Sometimes I do wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, to love people that much, but I can’t help myself.

I guess that’s enough of love for one post. A parting note to all girls and ladies out there, start saving! Even if it’s just a few dollars, do it! Start somewhere! And if you are blessed with a good business sense, make your savings grow! Live like there’re no cushions to break your falls. Live like there’re no hands to hold you up. Your savings are like ointments and bandages for emergencies. Trust me on this! Okayyy fine I don’t blame you if you don’t (I would have doubts too if I were you, why would I trust someone who talks about ointments and bandages in financial matters LOL). Well, all I can say is how can anyone ever ever go wrong with a tad of personal savings in the bank? Right? RIGHT??

It’s school holidays again!

2008-11-17T11:51:00.002+08:00

I know this post sounds familiar. Well, I have this irritating tendency to go through the same old concerns over and over again. I don’t learn well do I? Guilty as charged.

Now that Sameer is going to be home (or rather at his granny’s home) doing nothing except for watching TV and playing games/toys 24/7, I’ll be constantly thinking of things to keep him occupied with. And it’s not just him alone who will be keeping Dadima company (read: on her toes) during the school breaks, his cousin Naazimah too is joining forces with him to keep the granny’s house alive and bustling with various activities (screaming, shouting, jumping, running around the house, quarreling etc) Oh my, I sooooo do not envy my mom-in-law at times like this LOL

Well, maybe she enjoys the racket after all. Her’s has always been a noisy household as far as I can recall!

Anyways, I’ve applied for annual leave on some Mondays and Fridays to stretch the weekend to spend more time with Sameer and to do things together. Last Saturday we went to check out the newly opened swimming complex in Sengkang.

It was good that they had something more exciting for the kids than the usual boring competition pools. Sorry forgot to snap pics in my excitement :P

Slides, water bucket at the kid’s pool and the jacuzzi (though the water was freezing cold!) are among the various perks in this complex.

No hefty entrance fees and conveniently located within my vicinity. Cheap, convenient and fun.

Note to all ladies: No hunky, brawny lifeguards.

Note to the swimming complex management: Please note the above note. Thank you.

Okay on a serious note, I had great fun with Sameer splashing around in this humid weather of ours and certainly going back soon within the next one month if we are bored witless during the weekend :D

Eidul Adha celebrations are going to be full-fledged as well. My dad-in-law has been planning to carry out the qurbani himself for his share of sheep. If all goes well, Sameer is going to accompany his dada and I need to search for some informative materials for Sameer to allow him to have a better understanding of the sacrifice. Don’t want to shock the poor boy right!

Can’t think of anything else more interesting/educational to do with Sameer than the usual trips to the libraries, zoological gardens etc. Any suggestions?? But yeah considering the bird-craze that have hit Mr Sheikh, we might be visiting the bird park in Jurong. :D

Now if I had more cash on hand, I would have opted to enroll Sameer and myself for some horse-riding classes or something in some resort :P Inshallah, shall save up and enroll in future! (Better not too distant into the future though, it would be irksome to be taking riding lessons with arthritis and all that).

But for now, Sameer will have to do with a dummy horse! Heheh...

A donkey!

Thinking aloud

2008-11-06T16:31:00.001+08:00

Been wanting to update but the unfinished posts often end up in my drafts folder. Why unfinished? Because my train of thought was interrupted. And I can’t continue writing when the inspiration has left me :P

Life has been kind (maybe that’s the reason why I’m uninspired :P), everything has been going well Alhamdulillah. Sameer’s exams are over, tomorrow is the Parents-Teacher meeting session. Unfortunately, I’m not able to attend due to work, at times like this Mr Sheikh shall do his part ;) And he will of course. I wonder what the teacher will have to say about this boy of mine!

Sameer has always been, predictably, a bright student but then again there's no harm in preparing myself for some surprises as well. Oh he’s still just as bright, only in different ways. His mischievous smile has been extremely bright lately. Let’s see what his teacher will reveal tomorrow!

Wedding bells (figuratively speaking) have been ringing almost weekly for the past 3 weeks. The basket of sequined clothes to be hand-washed have piled up considerably. The wedding season have made me really wish people would consider less extravagant weddings. You know maybe just a nikaah ceremony and then a simple lunch/dinner afterwards with close family and friends. Those with extra money to spare can always splurge it on an extended honeymoon or something. I wish Sameer would consider my humble suggestion in future :D

You see, it’s no secret. Everyone knows how much some people bitch about the wedding they last attended. Positive remarks from such guests are a scarcity. The abundant negative comments range from the quality of food served and right down to the size of the bride’s wedding ring/necklace. I know I wouldn’t want such guests at a function I organized with love and paid handsomely for. I would rather channel my hard-earned money to the orphans in Afghanistan or something. So yeah, do consider holding something as joyous as a wedding with people, be it relatives or friends, who really wish you well and are sincerely delighted to be part of your small celebration.

Anyways, I’m excited to be wearing my 3-inch heels to work today after a very long time. Long time? No! It's been almost a decade! The last time I got into something that high was before I had Sameer! No high heels during pregnancy and afterwards I probably got intimidated by the height and fear of falling down :D

I know high heels are not the healthiest of footwear for the posture, but I like the added height. Sheds some weight off me as well as allow others to look up to me, literally LOL.

And contrary to popular belief, heels do not make me feel sexy or powerful. I wear heels solely for the heightened sense of height! What else?? :D

Tomorrow is Friday, maybe I'll be inspired to post more ;)

Another bird in the family

2008-10-23T16:55:00.002+08:00

This time its an Indian Ringneck parakeet.

The cockatiel is taking a backseat (back cage?) for now, because this green bird is much more outgoing, talkative and such an attention seeker!

Seen here, mingling with the extended family members at a gathering. He wasn't even afraid to go for the cookie bottles!

These birds have become Mr Sheikh's darlings overnight, he even declares his love for Bobby and Heera on his Facebook profile! Urgghh, of all the creatures to compete with! Well ok I'm in no competition with anyone/anything but I need some time to get used to this right? Imagine, over the 8 years together the amount of attention I get now has been divided into 4! Bear with my whines for now!

I have to admit though , they do look really adorable! But I shall continue to silently fight for their freedom, after all birds are meant to be free and flying in the vast blue skies :D

Don't worry Bobby and Heera, someday you will fly again (though I cant imagine how you guys going to survive in the skies without the skills of the free birds!) Bleak future.

I got tagged

2008-10-16T14:18:00.002+08:00

Nadia wondered about me on her blog:

Juggling a career, home, and husband, Nisa still finds time to blog and sew! She’s like a super woman who somehow finds time to work everything out. She’s a Pakistani living in Singapore, with an Indian husband and an adorable son. I wonder whether she has plans to settle in a different country. I wonder how a weekend is like in her household, and hear her personally say, “What a life!“

Dear sister Nadia, I have a very long way to go before I can be a super woman! Mashallah, I have seen other working mothers who are doing so much more than I can ever do.

I have to admit though my accomplishments and failures (shame on me!) are very much determined by my moods. Now I don't know if that's good or bad but that’s how life has been going on for me (and for those who are fated to be around me for life) :D
As far as my moods are concerned, here's a general summary:
Happy = Can't blog but can do everything else including sewing and cooking
Sad/depressed = Can blog but can't do anything else (right now while typing this post, I’m feeling down about some issue at work :D)
Downright depressed = Can't do anything at all
Angry/over-stressed = Can scrub and clean the whole house but can't (or rather refuse to) do anything else
Pushed-into-a-corner = Can achieve the un-imaginable.

Now that I have listed everything out, I think I can do without the downright depressed mood, hehehe… plus I need to be more ambitious. Ok make that I need to be ambitious, period. Do I need to say more about me wanting to settle in a different country? Those stuff is for ambitious people, I believe!

As far as weekends are concerned in this household of mine, everything happens on the spur of the moment, very much spontaneously. We hardly plan things (much to the chagrin of well-organized and systematic people). We prefer to laze around the house more than anything else. There’s no place like home when you have to spend like half your week outside the home! Sameer catches up with his cartoons and kid’s programs on TV, plays badminton or cycle with the neighbor’s son or simply spends time with his collection of toys which include cars and robots. (Nex t year onwards, I will enroll him for the weekend religious classes at the local mosque, Inshallah). Though I have to add he does enjoy all these activities even on his school days, before and after school! Not that I stop him from slacking every now and then. That’s what childhood is all about after all, being worry-free and enjoying the simplest things in life.

As for Mr Sheikh, working in the healthcare sector comes with the disadvantage of no guaranteed weekend off every time. Some weekends he has to go back to work due to the shifts. That allows me and Sameer to have each other all to ourselves :D But when he is home, he does his best to laze around the apartment shuttling between the pc, tv, dining table, bird cage and bed. Talk about a homely, relaxed life!

Me, I’m on top of the world whenever I have the time to do things I’m unable to do on weekdays which include lazing in bed till noon, watching movies, reading, painting, meeting up with loved ones and all the small pleasures in life like sipping coffee with Mr Sheikh on a Sunday morning, sharing an ice-cream cone or even scrubbing Sameer in the bath! I’m easily contented!!! (read un-ambitious :P)

(I don’t want to talk about the social functions we’re invited to every other weekend, it’s such a humdrum)

Now of course every weekend is not the same, some days are more exciting than others. Some days really hit the bore index to the max. As human beings go, the three of us go through our highs and lows in terms of disposition and spirits. Importantly, we understand each other and the nature of commitments each of us have outside the home. Letting go and holding on is a useful art in any relationship (just like flying kites!).

There’s a lot of breathing space in my 4-room apartment. To ensure we miss each other enough at the end of the day! ;)

Well yeah, nothing is perfect in this world and neither is my family. We quarrel, we make up, we move on. That’s how relationships function. So yeah Nadia, all of us can say that again, what a life!

Happy Friday everyone!

2008-10-10T15:43:00.005+08:00

It's Friday again! :D
Another round of Eid visiting this evening and tomorrow. A wedding and an engagement in between.

Would you believe me I'm still in the midst of sewing a salwar kameez for tomorrow's wedding & engagement? No, I'm not the sort who acquire a new suit for each and every occasion, but the fact is I have not sewn anything suitable for an occasion such as a wedding for the past few years. Make that an Indian wedding. You know how glamourous and glittery Indian/Paki weddings are na?
Gawd I know I'm making myself sound like some vain airhead who's overly concerned about the right amount of glitz in her suit :P
(I can't help but mention again how thankful I am to Allah for my aversion to gold ornaments)

Seriously, I have not gotten a decent salwar kameez for myself for the past one year or so. I'm so anal about stitching plain suits which can be worn daily to office because experience have taught me that anything with sequins and shines ends up hanging in the closet for months if not years! And I don't look forward to looking like one of the aunties in the wedding hall with my plain suits! So last night I managed to sew the kameez, minus the sleeves. Salwar, its your turn tonight! Or tomorrow morning, whichever time slot puts me in the sewing mood :D
Fine, enough about bimbotic worries. :P

Now lets talk about Sunday.
The Sun shall be down.
The day shall be slow.
The gentle wind, lullaby to soothe me into a dreamless slumber.
Curtains fluttering....... damn, I need to wash my curtains!!!
And bedsheet and comforter too! Sameer's school shoes as well!

See... I cant even dream of having a lazy Sunday without being bolted back to the reality of household chores!

Oh well, despite my exaggerated description of a nightmarish weekends, I do ensure that I catch up with at least a little of my dreamy slumber over the weekends :D
Life is not all that bad afterall. It CANNOT be!!! I will not let it be!

Enjoy your weekend people! Take the time to catch up with your loved ones, and don't forget/don't be shy/don't hesitate to really look at their faces and memorise the love in their eyes. ~~Today~~ Friday is already slipping out of hands, ~~tomorrow~~ Monday might or might not come. ~~Now~~ The weekend is all we have :)

Monday morning

2008-10-06T11:44:00.001+08:00

Yes, I survived the Eid visiting marathon and lived to tell the tale LOL

It was a joy, meeting up with relatives we haven’t seen for a year hehehe… Chalo at least I have learnt to look at the brighter side. Many years ago, I would have blogged about how boring and tiring Eid visiting is.

And yeah it’s unbelievable but true that Sameer hardly knows any of my cousins or uncles/aunties. So Eid is a good time to show him who’s who in my family. Anti-socials like me specially have to put in the extra effort so that our next generation don’t completely lose track of the family tree, complete with the branches, roots, twigs and what not!

How people change by the years! The kids seem to have grown up abruptly, young adults with a personality and not to mention style of their own. The uncles and aunties seem to have grown older (I measure “old age” with the amount of white hair and wrinkles) and frailer by the year (frailer as in they are not as loud and fierce as before). Some say things like lets hope we meet again next year. Thinking of that now, I feel a shudder running down my spine. The erraticism of life. Who knows who won’t be around!

I miss the days when Eid visiting was just about wearing new clothes and shoes and collecting money! Am not sure which turn in life changed all my perspectives. Ok lah, I admit I still test, compare and rank each and everyone’s pineapple tarts :P

So far, the best tart is still my auntie’s, followed by granny-in-law’s. :D

I detest eating tarts which taste like flour paste in the mouth! Bakers who are miserly with pineapple fillings should refrain from baking tarts. A tart should be perfect or I’d rather live in a world with no tarts at all!

That’s strangely, very opinionated of me :P Why do I keep surprising myself this morning?

My world have always been grey. I hardly find anything black or white. Pineapple tarts made me see black and white! OMG :P

So life is back to normal now. Shuttling between work and home. Is that even normal? I find life more and more robotic lately. Emotionless human beings, making their way through life to stay in sync with the standards set by the world. Very depressing subject, I better stop here :D

Eid Mubarak

2008-10-03T10:36:00.002+08:00

Ramadan came and went. Eid too came and went. It was a hectic fasting month (as I have numerously mentioned :P) followed by hectic Eid preparations! My usual preparations for Eid are getting new clothes/shoes (specially for Sameer), cleaning the house and preparing/buying cookies/cakes. Yeah most aunties would probably gasp at my simple home, not to mention the lack of accessories and the absence of gaudy curtains hehhehe….

But that’s how I like my home to be. CLEAN and SIMPLE. Most importantly, it takes me lesser time and effort to clean. Long term maintenance is an important factor to me. :D

Coincidentally 1^st Oct also marks the 5^th year since my dad passed away. Honestly it doesn’t feel like 5 years. As I go about living life in all it’s busy-ness, I constantly think of the things he would have said to me if he was still with us. He seems to be always present with me. His words, his anger, his humor. Albeit, we never had the greatest father-daughter relationship ever but he was and still is THE MAN in my life. Sadly, I only began to realize that after he was long gone. Sounds familiar? Humans!

He was an extremely disciplined man who didn’t know the meaning of taking a rest. Always on the go. Not a man who will allow his sleep or laziness hinder his business opportunities. Well yeah he did miss out on us, his kids. As a child, I felt he didn’t love me enough. The bond was just not there. As a teenager, I kept my distance from him as revenge. (Teenagers are mean and horrible!) After marriage, I had a very polite, formal relationship with him. A year before his passing away, he went back to Pakistan for some herbal treatment of his stomach ulcer. I’m kind of glad for him that he passed away in his homeland. Because , there is NO PLACE like home! I hope when my time comes, I will end up in my homeland too. :)

So on this joyous Eid, while trying to be happy with and for everyone, I kept my sadness to myself. It feels like years since I felt carefree, and I know he was the only reason for my carefreeness. He always took control of things and made things right for me. I can't remember shouldering any major burden in life until he left of course.

There’s no time for regrets, no doubts about it :) As I move on in life, I know I will be hanging on to the values and beliefs that he had imparted to me. I just hope that I will do him proud.

Moving on to lighter subject, its Friday today! :D

But this weekend comes with a challenge of it’s own. Eid visiting! Most years I skip the not-so-close cousins or relations. But I make it a point to visit elderly relatives from both my side of the family and hubby's. Which sums up to a whole lot, believe me!

Nevertheless, ambitious us have planned a marathon. After work today we’re going to start with the elders living the farthest ie, Jurong. And this Eid visiting marathon shall go on till Sunday. Lets see how much we can endure LOL.

I managed to scribble some henna drawings on one side of my left hand on Eid eve :D

Here’s wishing all Muslims a joyous Eid/Selamat Hari Raya!

It's all about food again!

2008-09-24T08:58:00.001+08:00

I realised that my posts in the fasting month have all been about food! :)

Goes to show there's nothing more exciting than food in Ramadan. Well ok it's not that, it's just that I can't think of anything else more interesting or beneficial enough to write about. Household chores and boss have been keeping me well occupied and I really don't want go on a tirade about my unhappiness in this holy month! But alas, we're only human! :D

I finally got my pakoras, after much sufferings and pain :P Last Friday I did some decorative paint for my brother's wall (will post pics in another post cuz I haven't had the time to go back and add the finishing touches) and got a traditional Pakistani feast in reward (even though I didn't even complete the wall :P).

I don't know what is it about pakoras and samosas, but in the month of Ramadan Pakistanis all over the world eat these spicy finger food in abundance! I was telling Wana that Pakistan should be on the world Guinness record for producing the highest volume of pakoras and samosas in a month! But then again, maybe the new generation of Pakistanis have already switched to healthier food nowadays :)

Fruit Chaat, prepared by dear brother apnay hathon sey! My brother is growing old, seriously. Otherwise he would never be caught with a knife and a chopping board LOL.

That is a whole pot of beef briyani, my bhabi can whip up this dish anytime, any day, even at short notice and it always turns out delicious! Even my fried rice takes more effort than what she puts in for this huge pot! Shame on me!

That's Haleem (beef and pulses stew) for sehri. Healthy food prepared by me :D

I tried cracking my brain but I really can't think of anything more boring to type, so I shall end my post here. I've got so much to do before Eid, and even though I appear cool about it deep within I hallucinate! The stress of Eid in Singapore, oh gawdd! Ok let me rephrase that, the stress of Eid if you own a home!

Fruit Trifle

2008-09-11T15:52:00.001+08:00

I made this beginning of the week as an emergency back-up for those days when I wake up late for sehri or am too tired to prepare anything. What better dessert to prepare in the fasting month than this fruit trifle. It's laden with energy and very cooling for the throat, perfect for thirsty and hungry people. :D

The cake of your choice goes right at the bottom, I prefer fruity flavored cakes to further enhance the fruitiness of it all! Ya I know it looks kind of ugly :P For better looking trifles, you might want to try using swiss roll slices in transparent cups. They look gorgeous!

Next, pour the cooled custard. This one is banana flavored. I've tried blueberry, raspberry, vanilla, strawberry and honeydew flavors, and all taste good!

The canned fruit cocktail goes next, thoroughly drained. My Bhabi uses fresh fruits, I'm not blessed with her patience though to peel and dice fresh fruits (she even peels each and every grape and slice them!!). Plus I make a huge container each time, to last for a few days so canned fruits would keep better than fresh ones.

The mashed fruit jelly is the last layer, again any flavor of your choice. Store the trifle in the fridge, and enjoy your chilled dessert anytime!

As you can see my trifle is almost finished! Shall make something chocolaty next time! ;)

Saw this in Bengawan Solo cake shop. Errrr... Malay speaking readers, read the names of the kuihs please. WTH??? Have they run out of names? LOL

Non-Malay speaking readers, please don't ask me anything about this. Thank you.

This was dinner

2008-09-10T08:19:00.002+08:00

9 solid days flew past by me, just like that! The phrase 'time flies' needs to be rephrased, because time doesn't fly anymore. It whizzes past us and leave us spinning! Too much? Hehe... ok I needed to exaggerate to emphasize on my point. And the point is I'm feeling flabbergasted with all the huff and puff of rushing around, chasing time, whipping up instant dinners and feeling guilty for not being able to perform tarawihs on some nights! Yesterday, I even used my lunch break to do grocery! But I'm glad I can present satisfying and somewhat healthy meals (I try!!!!) for Mr Sheikh and Sameer. Insha'allah, Sameer will fast for the whole of Ramadhan!

Chocolate dipped strawberries for dessert. Errrmm, ok not so healthy but hey it's ok to indulge once in a while na? :P And I'm feeling very optimistic today, after consuming chocolate last night :) So yeah go ahead, go take some chocolate, it's beneficial for the nerves :P

Wantons with chicken and cream cheese filling, I got the idea from this sister's blog.

It was really heavenly! Melted cream cheese and chicken bits seasoned with black pepper, salt, garlic powder and a pinch of oregano. Yummy and easy to make!

Croissonts sandwiches. Filled with leftover wanton filling plus chicken franks and capsicum. Topped with crunchy cherry tomatoes and fresh lettuce.

I sound like some cookbook author, tempting my readers with all these graphic and seductive food descriptive :P Anyways, will try to remember to snap photos of upcoming dinners (provided they look presentable enough) prepared by me :D

And yeah I managed to sew a blouse and a suit of salwar kameez for myself over the weekend! Lets hope this coming weekend, I will be equally, if not more, productive!

Ramadan Mubarak!

2008-09-01T07:34:00.003+08:00

Just stepped into the office on the first day of Ramadan. It's going to be a hectic month, waking up at 4.30am every morning and preparing for Sehri. Then rushing home in the evening to prepare for iftar! I was feeling so miserable on my way to work, lack of sleep and feeling under the weather. (but really I think I was feeling that way because I felt I'm the only who's going to be doing all the mad rush as Mr Sheikh can be most un-cooperative when things get busy!)
Dragged myself out of the house and took the bus to work, dwelling in self-pity. A few stops later, a blind man boarded the bus all on his own, folded his cane and took a seat nearest to the exit. Looking at him, I knew I had so much to be thankful for. Thank you Allah for the reminder!

Truth to be told, I kind of enjoy the rush and race for time, for I know the sawab I will be reaping, Inshallah!
And I did spent the weekend preparing freezable dishes like keema, fried beef and dhaal which I can serve both fussy Mr Sheikhs in the wee hours of the morning. And yeah I left a chicken to marinate in the freezer, can you imagine how marinated it would be? :D
I even prepared samosas! Yeah full swing preparations for busy days ahead. I'm hoping to save my energy for tarawihs in the evenings.
Let's hope all goes well for the next 30 days! To all Muslim brothers and sisters, Ramadan Mubarak!

What's in a name

2008-08-28T15:11:00.002+08:00

I didn't know my name was so hi-tech or should I say outdated??

This contraption above is a Mechanical calculator. And it's called Nisa AK 5! I felt so tickled when I came across it, never imagined my name to be associated with a mechanical calculator! Of all the things in the world! LOL

Talking of names, I have till date not been able to determine the meaning of my name, Faizunnisa (pronounced fay zun nisaa). None of the baby names books or web sites I have explored have any record of this name. Is it too outdated? Or just too exclusive? Or it's not baby enough to make it to the baby names books? :P

My name was chosen by my paternal grandma and her name was (is?)Zehrunnisa. Now an uneducated, homely lady who have been confined in the northern areas of Pakistan all her life can't possibly be aware of name meanings na? I last saw her when I was 5 years old and she passed away when I was about 13 years old. So no chances of getting any info from the person this name came from. For all I know, there's no meaning to my name! I must have been named just to match grandma's name!

The only thing I'm sure of is that Nisa means woman.

Sameer recently asked me about his name. He phrased it very interestingly, "Ammi, why didn't you name me Adnan or Irfan or something else? Why Sameer?"

So came the moment in life when I had to explain myself to my son on on the choice of name given to him. (I have always known parenthood is such a HUGE responsibility, parents are answerable for EVERYTHING!)

Patiently, I explained to him the meaning of his name which means entertaining companion. I had to convince him that he's my companion, always entertaining me and making me happy. Then I pointed out to him how nicely it rhymes with his father's name, Nazeer. I also told him it makes me really happy that the two very important guys in my life have similar sounding names. He was smiling from ear to ear by the time I was done explaining! LOLZ

As for myself, I had a tough childhood with my name. When I was in primary school, I was called Faizun (pronounced very badly at that! ) One teacher, Mrs Goh tried to call me by my full name and she went like Fainunnisia. Lol

The worst was yet to come. On the first day in secondary school, my form teacher decided to call me Faiz! (very male name I tell you!) So yeah I lived with that for 4 years! Thank God, after that I made sure I introduced myself as Nisa wherever I went!

Koi baat nahi, after all what's in a name right? A rose by any other name smells just as good :P

I got tagged

2008-08-25T08:20:00.003+08:00

This is the second time I'm getting tagged in my whole blog life, this time by Nadia

I am to state 7 weird facts about myself. What is weird to me might not be weird to someone else, but I secretly kind of envy weirdos. I think eccentrics allow themselves to stand out among the monotonous crowd.

While I'm happy to report that I do not suffer from any sort of obsessive compulsive disorders, I have been living with other weird things such as:

1. I slightly feel suffocated, nauseous and panicky in overly crowded places.

2. I don't watch horror flicks. My imagination gets out of hand when I'm alone. In the past 15 years or so, I have stayed away from all things horror including “haunted houses” or “ghost rides” at amusement parks or listening to ghost tales. When my imagination goes wild I can’t even glance at the mirror for fear of something appearing in the reflection!

3. I hardly comb my hair because my hair doesn’t tangle. If I happen to lay my eyes on my hair brush, which is like not very often, I just run it through my hair then.

4. I have no qualms about eating out alone on weekdays. But I will never dine out on weekends, it’s too sad to be alone when everyone else is with someone.

5. I have been mistaken for a Malay, Chinese, Eurasian and Arab but NEVER ever ever Pakistani (which is what I really am).

6. I have black dots (pigmentations?) on my white eyeball, my son have it too. .

7. I loathe, I repeat I loathe wearing gold ornaments! My husband is an extremely fortunate man.

I am supposed to tag 7 people at the end of this post, but since I do not know that much people and those that I do know already have been tagged with this particular topic, the 7 weird facts tag shall end with me :D

Sameer and his dad got themselves a cockatiel!

2008-08-21T08:17:00.002+08:00

Would you believe it, father and son have a special bonding time of like 1-2 hours a day which they set aside to bond with the bird? Huh, and they never had such considerations for me, wife and mother, cook and laundry maid of 8 years!!!

Jealousy aside, the bird is really smart and cute! Whenever we approach the gate of our home, it would start whistling. And when I'm hanging laundry in the balcony, he would whistle non-stop to get my attention. I like the way he would rock himself on the swinging thingy inside the the bird cage. It’s a male (obviously, deliberately chosen gender by Mr Sheikh to increase male dominance in my household!) and Sameer till date have not been able to decide on the name hence the birdy is temporarily called Boy.

So Boy was only a few weeks old when we went to adopt him, and paid good money for his ownership. Thank God they don’t have taxes or licence fees for these birds!

He eats some birdy seedy stuff and drinks plain water (which is specially mixed with some birdy vitamins by Mr Sheikh personally before the water container is presented to Boy! And he never bought any vitamins for me in my whole life, even when I was suffering from anaemia after giving birth to his son!)

The bird cage was diligently decorated with colorful plastic fruits and ropes immediately after hours of research on the net brought to Mr Sheikh’s attention that cockatiels love colorful environments.

Recently, it also came to Mr Sheikh’s attention that feeding crushed black pepper seeds to Boy would help him achieve a melodious voice in future, so I currently have to deal with crushed black pepper seeds littered all over my kitchen daily. And it’s not just black pepper seeds, everything else that goes into the bird’s food container is also generously shared with my kitchen floor, which includes corn cobs and bird eye chilli!

Now before you come to any conclusions, I'm not your typical jealous female but I'm very much against imprisoning animals which are by nature meant to be free. I mean look at the bird! It's meant to fly, glide and soar into the vast blue skies! Not caged inside a miserable colorful cage and it's wings clipped! (Not to mention abused to nibble on a 7 years old boy's dead skin cells) I fought my case and lost. Now I can only pray both senior and junior Mr Sheikhs would come to their senses and accept the fact that I'm right. And they would start showering all their attention on me :D

And I might as well add everyone lived happily ever after. URGhhh,

I have learnt....

2008-08-20T13:11:00.001+08:00

Was browsing through my old folders in some long-forgotten thumbdrive and came across these pictures.

A chance to compose a picture story again for the blog which has been screaming for an update, here goes! :)

It's been more than 8 years since I got hitched! Yeah we all know time flies and all that stuff but what have I learnt in all these 8 years? So much! Marriage and it's turbulence have molded me into a better human being I would say.

Gone are the days when I used to think I would conveniently pack up and leave if things didn't work out. Some years into marriage I began to see the various reasons why people don't pack up and walk away, even those in not-very-desirable marriages.

It sure takes a hell lot (pardon the loud expressions) of forgiveness, patience and sacrifice to ensure the waves don't wash away that delicate love in our marriage.

In the glory of my naiveness, I must have looked forward to the wedding just so that I can have my hands and feet fully hennaed! LOL. Well, ignorance WAS bliss I tell you!!!

As time went by, I learnt that most flowers come with thorns. It's the law of nature. Shallow me never did realise that when I was living in the comfort of my parent's home!

I've learnt that everyday can't possibly be a romantic day in a marriage. Love is not the kindest of emotions, with it comes hurt and pain (sounds like that famous "with power comes responsibility" dialogue in Spiderman :D) Which is why love is supposed to be cherished blessing. I've also learnt that most newly wed couples are under the impression that they have been blessed with "true" love until things go sour hehehe.... in reality there is no "true" love, only lots of hard work, mutual understanding, compromise and cooperation.

I was hardly 23 when I entered the world of fragile relationships. I've learnt to care about the things and people he loves. Despite men holding the title of leaders (which I think is very archaic! I demand an update of fatwa!!), I've learnt that when it comes to the gentler aspects of emotions, we women have to lead. To show our men the meaning of selflessness, tenderness and devotion. I've learnt that sometimes I need to tiptoe my way around while threading the fragile ties called relationships, not only that which is between me and my partner but also those which extend beyond to his family members and close friends.

Some days, I felt exactly this!! Alone and misunderstood. Before I got married I innocently thought I will never be alone again ever in my life! I learnt that it's important to be independent in a marriage. It's just not wise for 2 entities to suffocate each other.

I've also learnt that it's not practical to be shy when it comes to asking for money from your partner. His money is really your money!!! Believe it!

Anyhows, the most important lesson I have learnt is to be at peace with the choices and consequences I have made in the past. Look forward to many more challenges (read quarrels and arguments) in the years ahead. Looking back doesn't serve any purpose at all.

Talking about looking, I happened to glance at our footwear lying on the floor near the door, the sight of even these look so right together! Mashallah. :D

There is nothing more I want to ask for (actually I still want to own a black, sleek Jaguar if Allah permits it) in life. If I die tomorrow, I would die smiling. (But if I own a black sleek Jaguar, I would probably die crying for it na? Gosh why do I have to unnecessarily make myself so righteous?? Urghhh)

Now, what in the world were you up to on this date?? :D Me? I was getting hitched! And do you have any idea why hitch is another word for marry? Check this out, one of the many meanings of hitch: hitch, a knot that can be easily untied, used for temporarily securing a line to something.

Our romantic escapade

2008-07-31T13:16:00.002+08:00

We talked about it often over the months but never got down to planning it. However, last Thursday, hubby and me, on the spur of the moment, decided to hop onto the morning ferry to Batam Island on Friday. But then that's how things are with me, always on the spur of the moment!

So come Friday morning, after sending Sameer to MIL's place, off we went into the golden sunset (HAHAHAHA!) and sailed through the sparkling sea onto the serene island of Batam. (UARGGGHHHH!)

Well, Batam is a fast developing little island, I wish they would retain it's simplicity instead of turning the island into another concrete jungle. I can't help but notice how Singaporish the developed areas of Batam looked!

Since it was an impromtu getaway, nothing was pre-booked. Considering that the weekend hasn't really started, we were confident we would get the ferry tickets and a hotel room without any hiccups.

Anyhows, I've got some pics of our rushed and short trip. Scrollllll!

That's the hotel lobby, Goodway Hotel, which was recommended by most Singaporeans all over the net. Since this was my first time staying overnight in Batam, I had no idea whatsoever on where to stay! The rooms were clean but could have been cleaner considering we paid over SDG 100 for one night! My mistake for not booking the room online before leaving!

The first thing we saw upon opening our room door, beautiful balcony. Lush greenery, perfect for our relaxing holiday :D

That's the hotel from outside. We were stuck opposite the hotel when it started raining heavily.

After dumping our minimal luggage (which consisted of my toiletries, a towel, a scarf and a top for me to change the next day all packed in my sling bag hehehe), we ventured out to Mega Mall to grab some lunch. Ended up spending hours shopping and guess who did the most shopping? ME.....

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hubby did all the shopping while I kept on the lookout for stuff which would appeal to me! And they had nothing which I can't get in Sg!

Yeah baby, there goes the A&W float into his mouth. Singaporeans miss A&W!

Managed to play with these cute little turtles too.

The famous J.CO Donuts. Light but too sweet.

Can you read the words on the cup? Something about chemical romance of coffee and donuts. Go ahead, strain your eyes!

That's the mosque hubby went to pray in, it seems like most mosques are painted yellow here. There was a guy who took care of the shoes on the shoe racks. And after prayers he got tips from guys who came out to get their shoes. I hope he went in to pray after we left.

That's Nagoya Hill, another huge shopping mall in Batam. We did a lot of walking around, walked everywhere instead of taking cabs (over-priced for tourist-looking ppl like us)

Inside Nagoya Hill.

Attacking pizza at Gadeno Pizza. Some newly opened restaurant in Nagoya.

Tomat = Tomato Ketchup, Sambal = Chilli Sauce

Avacado float. It tasted sweet and smooth while I was happily slurping it away, but the after-taste was URGHHHH. I had a bitter taste in my mouth! AVACADOES!!!

I did'nt know my man was THAT hungry!

I dunno what possessed him to pick up the knife like that but I made him pose for this pic :D After I was done, I had to remind him not to destroy the restaurant's wooden table.

On our way back to Harbourbay ferry terminal, this family on an over-loaded bike rode beside our cab. See the boy peeping at us? I was afraid he might alert his dad or brothers about me clicking away their pic but thankfully his dad zoomed off soon after my SE cam was done! Lol.

And yeah after all the walking and shopping on the first day, we also went for a massage and spa at the Sports Massage Centre. I was too tired and so looking forward for the masseuse to lay her expert hands on my aching body that I totally forgot to snap pics of the place! :D Guess how much for both of us? SGD 55 only! And the massage/spa lasted for like over 2 hours. Certainly worth every penny!

Overall, the trip was a relaxing short break for us, just a lot of "us" time. We walked hand in hand, talked about everything and nothing, ate, slept late and basically got in touch with the person we married :D Hope to do this again in future! And yeah next time, Sameer is going with us! Though I hate going for holidays during the school break/public holidays. Everything is like over-priced and the holiday destinations are often over-crowded! Lets see kya hoga agey agey.

The Random Pictures Post

2008-07-28T15:33:00.001+08:00

So from now on, I'm going to have this random pics post. I have lots of pictures which I just can't seem to place anywhere appropriate and anyways lets just admit that I'm hardly consistent with my postings :D The writer's block which I consistently suffer from seem to be more serious than most people think. Maybe the medical people should do further research on this, I'm positively sure they under estimated the criticality of this condition many years ago. It needs a new diagnosis, as of NOW, right here from this blog!

Anyhows, here goes the roaming lense of my Sony Ericsson. (like real only! :P)

Does that remind you of your favourite french fries? Yeah, it does na? It's actually a huge box of strips of sponge :D Can be found in my work place.

This little hen was caught on the run in Jalan Kayu. It was hiding under the huge drain beside Cafeela when my camera caught it. We suspected she ran away from home after a squabble with the cock. All men are the same!!!

Guess what? I tried making jemput-jemput (banana balls)! That's a huge bowl of mashed bananas and yeah 4 bananas survived to tell the tale it seems HAHHAAHA...

I'm sad to report that my attempt at making the Malay snacks , Jemput-jemput failed miserably therefore no pictures of the end result were ever captured. Anyone can give me a solid recipe? My Indian husband, my Paki self and my Indo-Pak son love jemput-jemput :D

This was taken while waiting for hubby at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. They have glass decorations hanging from equally glassy looking ceiling. I leave it to your imagination folks.

This hunk of a car was looking so cool I had to capture it on my SE. Yeah that sheepish looking car peeping from the side is my FIL's car which I parked beside this hunk. Too bad I did'nt have time to wait to see the owner of the car.

That's it for now folks. More pictures to come in the near future! Do stay tuned :D

The world is grey

2008-07-17T07:37:00.001+08:00

I was reading this short post of Jussaemon and it set me thinking about the times when I was wishing for a clearer picture too.

For the past one year or so, I’ve been so bothered about the number of lies an average person is subjected to live with (yes darlings, don't be under the impression that your life is lies-free, you can achieve to be smoke-free, fat-free, sugar-free or whatever-free but not lies-free!).

So many things hidden from us to protect us, to make us see things in different light, to prejudice us against something/someone, to save relationships, to change our opinions, to alter the course of our actions etc etc…..

It's human nature to believe what we WANT to believe, will we ever know the actual truth? Does it even matter? Obviously not. Our family members lie to us, so do our friends and colleagues. An extra word here and there, a few omissions.... and facts are changed for some reasons, selfish or otherwise, we will never know!

It's so easy to use words to influence someone’s mind. I swear it's so simple! Distort the truth, twist the reality…. And you get what you want to achieve! Tada!

Some are white lies while others are plain vicious. And we live our whole life believing all these lies as long as it suits us. Then one fine day we realize things are not what they seem to be. There’s so much deceit. So many lies. You can feel it in your bones! Did you ever notice how somehow the pieces in your life don't seem to fit? I did!

And there’s nothing I can do now because I have no idea where’s the beginning and where’s the end of all these lies.

It's just mind-boggling because things that I’ve always believed in are, I realized now, not the whole truth. So many lies I’ve been holding on to as truth. It's almost facts to me. But no, those were just make-believes. It’s a web where you cant distinguish the truth from the fiction. It's making me feel so uneasy, so suspicious of everyone.

Maybe Jack Nicholson was right, maybe not all of us can handle the truth? I'm wondering maybe, just maybe, this is God’s way of making life less painful for us? We will never know….. because the truth is not here…. It's somewhere out there doing I dunno what!

I also wonder if some people are just easier to be fooled than others, maybe naiveness has a richter scale too. So the not-so-naive (measuring 5 on the RC) take advantage of this weakness to effortlessly fool the oh-so-naive (measuring 7 on the RC) with lies. And they in turn get fooled by the not-naive-at-all (measuring 1 on the RC) group of people. And it goes on and on....

Anyway, I really would like to think that everything happens for the best! There's no way I will be able to live the rest of my life being suspicious of everyone and everything. If the Almighty feels that I need to be protected from some truth, then so be it. Everything that is hidden will eventually surface na? By the time that happens, He would have already prepared me to handle the truth! :D

Allah knows best.

Aunties and babies

2008-07-07T11:37:00.006+08:00

Mention babies and everything lovable comes to mind. Adorable, sweet, pure, cute, chubby, angelic, soft and tiny. Babies are all that and more. I’m not supposed to be sighing but why oh why do babies have to grow??
So that people are forced to produce more babies? Hehhe… I suppose. Logical explanation.

Its no secret, the whole process of pregnancy and childbirth is one huge miracle in a woman’s life. Most women feel complete and fulfilled after childbirth, and couples feel their marital bond somehow strengthened. Having children certainly do change our perpectives and priorities in life.

I was never the child-friendly sort of a person as a teenager. In fact I hated kids! But I changed for the better the day my niece Shakira was brought home from the hospital. I still feel light-headed thinking about the feelings that went through me that day. I was totally mesmerised by her tiny little frame. Everything about her was so fragile, it was almost terrifying! It took me one whole day to built up my guts before I finally planted a kiss on her soft pink cheeks, oh my God!
I doubt I will ever forget my first close-up encounter with a baby! Can't blame me, I’m the youngest in the family. To have someone younger than me was a special historical moment.

After that, six more nephews and nieces made their entrance into my life. Finally I knew what it was like to have younger siblings in the house. Preparing formulas and washing poo became my part-time job and I loved every moment of it!
The sad part is that all those cute little angels are now way too grown up! Taller than me in height and conversing like adults. Talk about drastic transformations!
I really don't want to admit this but marriage kind of took me away from my nephews and nieces, specially in the first few months. I guess I was over-whelmed with new relations and a new life. Juggling work and a husband seemed taxing at that time (yeah I knew very little about juggling back then!) .
Anyways, I got real busy when I had a baby of my own. My gynae, who was in firm belief it was impossible for me to conceive, called him my miracle baby!
My boy is now 7 years old! Mashallah, he’s all grown up and independent. I used to miss him as a baby, now I’m actually looking forward to seeing him grow and grow and grow. Even relatives and friends are noticing him growing fast and with it comes the ever-famous question, "when are you having a second child?"
Would you believe some even come up with suggestions like "why don't you try for a girl now?" Lol

If all these matters were within my control, I won't be listening to "why don't you try for a girl now?" crap.
Having a child is an issue between a husband and a wife, family planning or not! It has always astounded me the way people go around shooting such uncomfortable questions in public, in weddings, in gatherings! I hear the same old question all the time from the same people. Ok yeah I can understand they mean well, in fact some say very encouraging stuff which I really appreciate.
But had hoti hai yaar! I have feelings too, I do feel at a loss whenever I’m asked that question. I do feel shitty that my son is going to grow up all alone. If I had the power to get pregnant at my whims and fancies and additional power to decide on the sex of my baby I would have used it long time ago. It does make me wonder what exactly do people expect in reply from me? Giving polite replies and telling them to pray for me is the best escape. But lately I'm not up to being nice and polite, I just state the facts. I make it plain and clear I have a medical condition due to which it’s difficult for me to conceive. I don’t know if I shock people by doing that but a woman has to do what she has to do. ;)
I truly feel for all those ladies who are still facing these insensitive questions from day 1 of marriage.
Dear aunties, I may be wrong in condemning your way of showing concern for us but those questions are of no help at all. It hurts to be reminded constantly of something we are unable to have for the moment. If you ask me, the added stress is probably the leading cause of infertility! Ok maybe that's stretching it too far hehehe but hey gimme a break! Stop wondering if I'm on family planning or just too plain lazy to have more kids. It was never my plan to stop at one, the Almighty decides and I'm so so very grateful for this little bundle of joy (and growing bigger over the years) that I do not want to ask for more. I fear any greediness on my part would affect the blessings which have already been bestowed upon me. I believe no one knows better than Him. Blessings come in many forms, not just in the form that our heart desires.

Just the other day, a middle-aged lady I shared a table with at the hawker centre went like "Your son is 7 yrs old? why don't you try for another one now, maybe a girl?"
Duh???
Lucky her, I was in a good mood.

Anger without enthusiasm

2008-07-05T19:04:00.005+08:00

You know what’s depression? Its anger without enthusiasm.

So the next time you feel like you’re slipping into a depression, get enthusiastic! Go scream and shout at someone, fling whatever object you can get your hands on, but please ensure that the person you’re going to abuse is understanding enough!

I used to think depression is some major emotional disorder. Well, extreme and prolonged depression such as dysthymia, unipolar and bipolar disorders are dangerous and need professional help but the milder, short ones most people go through is part of life. Not that it’s advisable to suppress your feelings but sometimes you need a period of time to ponder over your anger or resentment or hurt or or disappointment or whatever.

Lets face it, we all go through depression at one time or another. In fact we think more deeply when we are down. Depressives tend to think more critically about themselves and the world. And the feeling of discontentment in them can lead to creative achievements. It has been said most of the world’s greatest thinkers, writers and artists struggled with depression in their lives. Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Wolfgang Mozart and Vincent Van Gogh, all suffered from major mental disorders in later parts of their life.

I’m not too sure about the scientific explanation but it has something to do with the part of the brain we think with, the neurochemicals, the structure and what not! Somehow all the creative people I know go through mood swings including myself! And yes we end up sounding cynical most of the time but that’s the way we see reality as. Though I have to admit I moderate my negative views and thoughts as much as possible and only voice out the positive ones :D

For example someone consoles himself and hopefully says “there’s light at the end of the tunnel”. A person like me would say yes, there’s light at the end of the tunnel to make him feel better and give him hope because I believe a person like him needs that hope, true or otherwise. But deep inside my mind, I would also be preparing myself for the light at the end of the tunnel to be the headlight of an approaching train!

What is hope? A dream, a wish or an expectation? I prefer to place my stakes on reality and the ugliness of the world. Maybe because I fear disappointment. What difference does it make? To be cynical in the beginning or to deal with disappointments later on? It all boils down to our ability to make the best out of the situation we’re faced with. Not that I don’t have hopes and dreams, I do but I prefer to keep them in check and deal with the present.

Perhaps this man can explain better, read on:

“Both perspectives, pessimism and existentialism, wouldn't necessarily see depression as a malady existing in a person's head. A pessimist and existentialist might, in fact, agree that the world itself is screwed up, that social norms are themselves pathological, that feelings of despair, anxiety, loss, and pointlessness may be typical in people who are exceptionally intelligent and observant. A person who is "depressed" may thus, on this view, see things others don't see, have keen insight into the waywardness of modern culture, have a refined sense of the good and the beautiful. Drugging a person would therefore dim his vision, desensitize his perception, kill the penchant to search for meanings.” By Tim Ruggiero

Sometimes I seriously want to fully agree with the depressive side of me, often the accuracy with which I judge myself and the world is so horrifying that I prefer to turn to optimism. To live in a so-called beautiful world is indeed a better alternative. At the end of the day I believe in balancing my thoughts and believes and I’m most happy fusing my extreme thoughts to attain an equilibrium. Like I always say, in my mind the world and its people are all gray. No one is so wrong or right, my way or your way its all about personal choices. Eventually, we have to live with the equations we created or forced to create.

Well, Allah knows best!

Do you see this pile of clothings for ironing? It's the cause of some form of depression too. For me at least. Every weekend, I shudder at the thought of preparing school and work uniforms for Sameer and hubby. Imagine the number of chemical combustion of neurochemicals taking place in my brain with each and every shudder. If I had let the pessimistic side of me to over-power my optimism, my mental state would have been tremendously shaken by now. Therefore, always be enthusiastic about everything you do. With this note, I'm going to get down to work now. Ironing or scrubbing toilets, enthusiasm is the key to gratification in life! :D

Nature and it's beauty

2008-07-04T16:10:00.002+08:00

The sight of this caught my attention.

From far, it looked like someone had scattered white tissues all over the bushes and grass. That looks like a LOT of tissue man!! LOL

But as I walked nearer, I realised those white fluffy stuff is actually white flowers shed from the tree above!!!

Is there such a thing? Does a tree shed flowers? Anyway, it's one of those sights to behold! Blooms falling and carpeting the ground to walk on! That too in Singapore, in Hougang! :D

This was dinner

2008-06-27T15:13:00.003+08:00

That sorry looking dish was actually my attempt at tofu balls with peanut sauce (instant one of course) with lots of fresh strips of cucumber and some bean sprouts.

Easy peasy dish for dinner last night, but tasted fine enough to me and Sameer, thanks to the delicious peanut sauce which must have made all the difference. If the manufacturer of the sauce wants to pay me, I shall take the trouble to take note of the brand and let everyone know. Till then, I can't recall :D

If you're wondering why the sudden interest in food blogging, ahem, me and Sameer have developed a, I would say, a very keen interest in cooking shows on TV. Specially those on Travel & Living channel. Thus the recent fascination in cooking and food blogging. And no it didn't just came about overnight, it was a very gradual enthusiasm which, obviously, could not be contained after years of watching Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Kylie Kwong, Curtis Stone, David Rocco and Bob Blumer whipping up scrumptious treats over and over again before our very own eyes.

.....why do I feel like this is the only reason I'm having the blogging fever again after weeks of lull?

This was dinner

2008-06-26T16:06:00.002+08:00

Yesterday evening I took paracetamol before I left office as I was having joint pain due to my flu. By the time I reached home, I was feeling so energised that I decided to do grocery, drop everything home and then went on to fetch Sameer from school and rush back home again to prepare chapati and chicken curry for dinner plus run 2 loads of laundry! And after clearing the dishes and hanging laundry, I still wasn't tired. Imagine!

No wonder some folks swear by Panadol! But no, I do not encourage paracetamol abuse unless of course you really need to have it for the occasional pains and aches.

Here's my evening (partially) in pictures, minus the laundry of course :D

Coriander and green chillies waiting to be dumped into simmering chicken curry. I love the fresh aroma of these 2 greens!

Sameer insisted on helping with the flattening of the chapati but I couldn't let him cuz though I wasn't tired, I wasn't up to sweeping flour off all over the kitchen! With flour all over my hands, I managed to capture this lopsided shot :D

As you can see I use brown paper as the base to roll out the dough. Use and throw :D

No wiping kitchen tops or washing anything extra hehehe....... I'm a self-confessed lazy cook!

Finally, curry and chapati ready to be served. Famished Sameer and me didn't wait long to dig into the piping hot dishes. To tell you the truth, it's been a few days since we ate anything freshly cooked :))

See what I mean? We were really famished! Sameer's right hand keep making it's way to his mouth even as I told him to be still for a second!

This was lunch

2008-06-26T15:03:00.002+08:00

Leftover minced beef + boiled penne + garlic and olive oil + oregano flakes + grated cheese = my lunch (on Monday)

I have a feeling I will be having more minced beef dishes in the coming week as I still have 2 portions of minced beef sitting in the freezer. :D

I got tagged

2008-06-26T14:52:00.002+08:00

The Flame of Friendship.

A symbol of spirit of unity.

The burning icon of love.

Undying picture of hope.

The hot symbol of oneness.

The Flame of Friendship.

And now it’s your turn to flame yourself! Meet new friends. Discover friendship. Make bonds.
Copy this post starting from the PICTURE ABOVE to the end and add your blog on the list below.
Let’s start FLAMING!

+ The People Who Accepted The Flame of Friendship +

Tiklaton: We are the witness
Janeth Vicy’s Life Journey
My Precious
Jean’s Live it Up…
Sharz - Pangit’s Journey In The States
JAM-Life:Thoughts & Inspirations
The Sweet Life
Me and Mine
D’ Cooking Mudra
A Mother’s Stuff
Housewife @ Work
Laila’s Thoughts & Tips
Purple Tulips’ Walking Through
Jussaemon's Ups and Downs of a Mixed Marriage

What a life!

OOOPSS!! Don’t forget to invite your friends!
{END COPY HERE}

So much for all the holiday plans.... and

2008-06-26T14:47:00.002+08:00

This was how the June school holidays started off for Sameer.

Sameer waiting with me for an available bed in the ward.

Well, I know it doesn't look like something a boy would love to do during his school break but he was kind of stuck with me and my admission into the hospital for a minor surgery (saucerisation of abscess on my lower back) which entailed me 2 weeks' worth of hospitalisation leave. Which basically means he got to have me for company, and vice versa, for 2 whole weeks! Nothing exciting for him, but boy was I glad I wasn't left all alone at home when hubby was at work!

The last time I was warded was when I delivered Sameer back in 2001! Back then at least my hubby was with me all the way. This time, I was all alone in the operation theatre. With nothing but a surgical gown and a blanket to cover me, it was damn cold and lonely! Lying down on the bed, all I could see were the white ceiling and walls and the occasional masked nurses and surgeons who kept appearing out of nowhere asking me for my name and ID for verification. The anesthetic, an Indian guy, made the effort to speak in Hindi to me and coaxed me to calm my breathing down as I was being put to sleep. It was sweet of him, reminded me of my dad's voice as I drifted into a very deep sleep while they cut me open! It did cross my mind if I would ever wake up again lolz.

Of all the needles, I hate this the most! It unnerves me to walk around with a needle stuck in my vein! The doctor even spilled like half a tube of my blood on the white sheets while fixing this to my hand! Red blotches of blood on white sheets... Ewwww! I wanted to faint!

Sameer playing with my lenses while I got ready for my surgery.. hehehe

Recovery was sheer boredom! I was well and yet not well enough to participate in any vigorous activity. The lingering after-effects of anesthesia left me zombified for the first week. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it though! :D

Read, sleep, eat, watch tv, read again, sleep again, eat again and on and on it went. Blissss!

2nd week was more productive. Managed to bring Sameer out at least, even if it was just to the library! Sameer and his bigger, older replica, my hubby were gems throughout all these 2 weeks! Thank you guys! At least now I'm convinced all the years of cleaning, cooking and washing for the 2 of you were well worth the effort! :D

I see School holidays on the calendar!

2008-05-16T17:07:00.002+08:00

What a dragging week this week has been! Probably because I wanted to fast-forward the days towards the upcoming long weekend, hehehe. It's just an extra day but if you know me (or any other Singaporean working mom) you would understand the value of it!

School holidays are just a week away and I'm still cracking my brain on ideas to fill Sameer's one month up! Though I know he loves doing nothing stressful (bless him! He's so much like my lazy self) like watching TV , playing games, eating, cycling etc :D But it just doesn't seem right to let him do that for 31 days na? Even as I type now I'm having visions of Sameer with cobwebs in his brain when the holidays are over!

Well, I have one art camp in mind right now, which I've already registered him for in the first week of holidays. It's just a one day sort of arts and activities camp but at least that will trigger some interest and zest (hopefully) for him to engage himself in something beneficial for the rest of his holidays instead of just watching TV and playing games on the net or Xbox!

What a boring life kids have these days! Ok maybe not boring for them but hey I grew up climbing trees and swimming in the floods!! My playgrounds were fields of paddy, groundnuts and corn! I had REAL adventures like being chased by angry farmers and rattle snakes, eating wild mushrooms (ok that was dangerous but I didn't know better!), chewing sweet gummy saps excreted from tree barks, dancing under a shower of ice cubes, collecting cotton from cotton trees, stealing fresh figs from the only fig tree in the village (this one was not good either :D, I was a mean kid who bullied the fig tree owner who was really a kind old lady always chasing us out of her lawn lol though at that time, she reminded me of a white-haired witch! I can even recall her name, everyone called her Sabjani Maa), taking care of my dad's garden where my duty was to ensure no one steals from it (once I caught an old lady stealing a papaya. Ask me how did an old lady managed to reach for the fruit? She stole it while she was on the roof of her hut and my dad's papaya tree grew parallel to her mud hut LOL), roaming around the village visiting snake charmers andddddd the list never ends!!!!!!

Now I'm really missing my childhood in NWFP :(

Hell! I'm even craving for the taste of fresh figs in my mouth!

If I was a genius

2008-05-16T16:10:00.002+08:00

My blog mate thought this would make an interesting blog topic. Here's the plan. Both of us are going to write about the above topic and save our posts as drafts. Then, a phone call to publish our posts to our blogs simultaneously.

Oh come on, I know this sounds silly but do I have a choice? I always end up with wacky friends!!! :P

So here I am, squeezing the hell out of my left side of the brain, trying to come up with something that would make sense.

I have not known any geniuses personally in my life. My limited exposure to the term genius comes from the local newspaper articles. :D

So someone who has been accepted into some top university at the age of 8 or 12 is a genius?

After a diminutive research on the term genius, this is what I came up with:

genius /dinys/ n. -iuses 1 a person of great intelligence and ability: Albert Einstein was a genius in physics.

Thesaurus: genius 1 a brilliant intellect, prodigy 2 a natural talent, gift for doing s.t. Ant. an idiot.

1. somebody with outstanding talent: somebody with exceptional ability, especially somebody whose intellectual or creative achievements gain worldwide recognition

2. outstanding talent: exceptional intellectual or creative ability

3. somebody with specific skill: a person with great specialized skill
a genius with computers

(Notice the words in red? According to the above, the antonym for a genius is an idiot LOLZ. I guess that places the rest of us normal beings in between the 2 LOLZ. Sorry, can't help laughing at this!)

So geniuses are naturals at being intelligent. Now if you ask the down-to-earth part of me, I would say I have no desire whatsoever to be a genius. I can't even begin to imagine why I would want to be one or what I would do if I was one.

Call me dull, but just what's so exciting about Einstein? Other than his scientific intelligence, he was probably a failure in other aspects of life LOLZ. Ok sorry Mr Genius, quit rolling in your grave, I'm just being logical.

IF I WAS A GENIUS, I would selfishly use my intelligence to

- concoct an anti-illness and anti-sadness potion. (pharmaceutical genius)

- formulate the "always attentive and loving to me" psychological formula for the husband. (psychotic genius muahahahahaha)

- be the president of Pakistan (political genius) On second thoughts, a genius should not unnecessarily risk her life. :P

- implement the "carry out my duties" lifestyle habit in each and every human being. (I have no idea how a genius would do that but I'm beginning to seriously believe human beings are way too busy fighting for their rights and as a result neglecting their duties)

- devise the self cleaning home system, which would include vacuuming, mopping, laundry, ironing, dishes etc. (engineering/electrical genius) I think I like this, the system should also be programmable to cater to individual needs . I have never liked the idea of ordering people around to clear my mess!

- mastermind the PERFECT big time bank robbery AND get away with it HAHAHAHA

I don't know why I stated the last (Ohmygod, is there a criminal lurking inside me?), but come to think of it how many big time criminals got away with their big time crime? If there are any, they must be geniuses,

or the law system in their country must be must be suffering from serious defects!

These are just a few things I can think of right now. The list can go on and on. And I just realised I'm a genius too. Sometimes back I was chatting with an MSN contact of mine who typed the happy smiley this way (:

It looked kind of weird because my happy smiley is typed this way :)

See the difference? So I asked my contact, are you left-handed? She was caught by surprise and asked me how I figured that out! Hehehehe..... from then on there was no looking back, I made ALL my contacts, new and old, type their smileys so that I can determine which hand they work with!

So ladies and gentlemen, I'm the genius who devised the technique to check if your MSN contact is left or right handed. Just ask them to type a smiley! :D

Errrrrrr... do I need to apply for some kind of copyright license for my technique??

Disclaimer: Please do not be under the impression that non-geniuses are not capable of carrying out the above. After all, the term genius is just what it is, a term. Making differences big or small takes effort. Life is, after all, a series of trade-offs. You win some, you lose some. ;)

Tourists for the day

2008-04-29T10:15:00.002+08:00

We did so much sight-seeing that day, I felt like a tourist! Nothing was planned, we hopped on from one place to another because we had the car for the weekend and here's the day in pictures! We had a lot of fun and I hope we get to spend more such days together soon!

23 Mar 2008

Innocently happy

2008-04-25T13:51:00.002+08:00

I cannot quite recall what was my age back then. 12? 13?That was the age when, for the first time ever in my life and I mean FIRST first time ever, my birthday was celebrated.

I know you must be curious to know how it felt like hehehe.... I sure felt silly!!!! Standing consciously while the whole class looked on me and sang the birthday song in unison. It was my first birthday "celebration" and I had no idea what I was supposed to do! Do I stand still and smile? Or clap and sing along with the rest? I doubt I even said thank you after that. Talk about social misfits! LOLZ.

Yeah so I come from a family where birthday celebrations are of no significance whatsoever. From past experiences, I have known most people to suffer from mild shocks upon hearing that piece of statement. Every child's birthday is a reason for a family get-together here in Singapore. It's the time to make the kid feel special. A small feast (even if it's just fried bee hoon, fish balls and chicken wings!), a birthday cake, candles, balloons, a birthday song, games and gifts.

Ask me, did I ever feel left out? Honestly? No. :D

As a child I was happy to be part of others' birthday celebrations. Truly, I enjoyed the cakes and games and goodies. :))

My late father was constantly on our cases, reminding us in his harsh tone not to fall prey to peer pressure. He wanted us to stand tall for who we were and be happy with what we had. Of course as a child, I didn't quite get the message. But I was relatively used to being different in many ways, in fact I was (and still am) almost comfortable in being different, thus there was never a time when I felt the need to whine over the absence of a birthday merriment. Now if you are curious to know as to why birthdays are not celebrated in my family, please don't ask me. Ask my dad. :P Well ok, lets just say my dad was a no-frills person. He would rather give the extra $$$$ to the poor than spent it on kids-who-are-more-often-than-not-ungrateful. And I can't agree more with him, now that I'm a grown-up myself. Sue me if you can't bring yourself to agree with my dad/me.

Will post more on my "being different" childhood stories some other day.

It was my niece's birthday some days ago. Come rain or shine it seems like it's compulsory to celebrate a birthday for these latest brood. And me, being me, I love indulging my son and nephews/nieces. After all, childhood is the time when people start building memories. It always makes me smile to myself when I see kids playing and laughing. It makes me want to capture those moments on camera. Unfortunately I can't do that as I might be putting myself in danger of being sued for clicking pictures of random kids on the streets! Hehehe.... so here are some family shots of happy kids.

Feb 2008 - Sameer's birthday

Birthday girl, posing for the camera. Girls!!! :D

Indeed, the best time to be happy is when you are innocently happy.

Reminder to self - Take deep breaths often, be a more relaxed mother, laugh more, joke often, be crazy and create the most wonderful childhood memories for Sameer. Inshallah.

A Tipsy Turvy Morning

2008-04-11T11:12:00.002+08:00

I'm feeling so light-headed this morning.

No I'm not suffering from a hangover and I'm not pregnant. But yeah I do have a history of anemia. Nothing major.

Earlier I made a trip to the pantry to wash my cup and one of the production guys was like hey, last night you did overtime ah?

Me: What overtime?

Guy: You look like you are going to drop, look so fragile

LOLZ

Trust these guys to notice SUCH things AND come up with the THAT kind of conclusions :P

Wonder what else they notice when the ladies make their way to the washroom/pantry which is located at the other end of the production floor hehehe...

As I made my way across the production floor, I came across this metal box with a Benz logo soldered to it LOLZ, how creative of the welders!

Besides being tipsy, I'm bored and restless today. What do I do? I post in my blog.

At least my fingers are doing something!

It's Friday I know :D No plans for the weekend but still I need that 2 days' break. I miss doing nothing.

There it goes again! Even as I'm typing all these, my vision is experiencing some tremors hehehe...

I really wanted to post something sensible and thought-provoking. You know like something phenomenal :P But oh well, I'm fated to be a senseless blogger with mundane contents. I shall live with it.

For now.

A beautiful day

2008-04-10T10:42:00.005+08:00

Today I'm feeling so high. I can't seem to stop smiling.

Why?

No reason. Just like that. Aewaen. I'm feeling good about everything in life. Maybe because I have grown into a more grateful person over the years. It's good to be breathing and be able to do all the things I want to do. Yeah I know some days I complain of my very bleak vision of the future but hey I'm just being realistic! I see reality as it is! :P

This is the sight which greeted me when I came to work this morning. Fallen leaves everywhere! Beauty of nature!

But today and I hope many more days, months and years to come, I shall be thankful and appreciative of what I'm blessed with. This post shall remind me to do exactly that!

I'm posting this with the Windows Live Writer which I downloaded yesterday. :D

Yeah I finally upgraded my Explorer as well as Messenger!! hehe... better late than never :P And I'm beginning to suspect my enthusiasm for blogging must be due to the new software I have on hand. Sighhh.........my short interest span! I remembered seriously worrying about it when I got married. I used to wonder if I would move on after my interest span ends and leave my dear husband behind lolzzz