It's Cwismas!

I'm at Steve's house for Christmas. Didn't want parents to go around telling church people that I have a boyfriend (in 2003 I brought David back; people are still asking me about the "Mat Salleh boyfriend" two years later), so anybody who asks is going to be told I'm staying "with a pastor". Which is more or less correct [cough cough].

Steve's mother's cat is fantastic. It's only 6 months old but it's enormous even for a regular-sized adult cat. I think our typical shorthair mongrel in Malaysia would take one look and slink off. He's something called a Norwegian forest cat. They're like the St. Bernards of cats or something, huge feet with fur between the pads like a snowshoe hare. Ultra cute.

Anyway...I'm not the kind who typically likes to quote the Bible a lot, scared of sounding too holy (which is stupid of me), but it's Christmas, and there's this paragraph from Paul of Tarsus' letter to the church in Ephesus which I like a lot:

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.

The "two" he talks about are (AFAIK) Jews and Greeks, but you can think nowadays of so many polarities among people - ethnic, political, national, sexual, economic, educational - that are confoundingly hard to reconcile two individuals across.

Any time you have more than one human being in a situation, there will division, there will hostility, somewhere, regardless of how much goodwill there is otherwise. We're all designed to fight each other. Humans are competitive, bearing the seed of evil, Darwinian. Even relationships as close as sister against brother, son against father, friend against friend, lover against lover, are full of hostility, overt or submerged. There are so many solutions proposed for peace at various levels of human interaction, but the only universal one is love.

He is our peace, who has destroyed the dividing wall... Merry Christmas everybody, and to my non-Christian friends, Happy Arbitrary Westernised Midwinter Festival. A public holiday is a public holiday mah =)

Miss Mousie stand-up

Some funny moments from my family's recent car trip to Penang:

Pa: The password for the other computer is Mum's birthday.
FMF: If you forget it, really jialat right? [Coxford Singlish Dictionary spells it "chia lat"...scroll down]
Pa: Well, it's my birthday too.
(My parents happen to have the same birthday...makes life easier.)

'There was this young lady who went to a temple to pray. One of the monks noticed she wasn't wearing any panties, but he didn't want to let her know he saw.

'So he started shaking the rattle Charborbohchengkor! Charborbohchengkor! (Girl not wearing pants! in Hokkien)

'The second monk tapped on the wooden xylophone Ti-ta-lok? Ti-ta-lok? (Where?)

'The third monk used the cymbals to clash Ban-ban kua! Ban-ban kua! (Look slowly!) '

Chopsticks and nitwits

Seriously sometimes I think The Star's editors (with the exception of my Auntie Mei Shen) have, as my father would say "rocks in their head". Today they managed to print an article about the hypocrisy of fashion designers who claim to be inspired by women's "power, confidence or intelligence" but "send bony zombies down the runway" right after one about Donatella Versace, which featured several photos exemplifying said emaciated models. (Linked to Givhan's article on Washington Post site since I can't find it on The Star's site.

Not only that, a few pages later there was an article about eating disorders.

I really hope that was meant to be irony, but harbour the apprehension that it's just a case of the person responsible being either a)careless or b)as dumb as a post.

Bang head against wall

So...the UW Madison grad school has been dragging its feet in giving my visa paperwork to the program coordinator for my future department (Comparative Biomedical Sciences). They finally gave it to the coordinator on Friday, but she couldn't FedEx it at the time since she didn't have my phone number. GROAN.

Yet another time zone issue - when the email reached my account it was 4:27am here, meaning 2:27pm Madison time, which is office hours, but the dead of the night in Malaysia.

I'm not terribly worried about not getting my US visa in time for my 20 December flight date, as it only takes 1 day at the embassy in KL, but having so little time for contingencies is making me nervous as a rabbit. I only hope the coordinator is nice enough to go to the office on Saturday to send my stuff, instead of waiting till Monday. I really don't want to be applying for a visa 2 days before I fly.

This post doesn't really have a point, just lepaskan geram only. I really don't want it to degenerate into one of the multitudinous boring "story of my life" blogs, even though my only readers are personal friends and acquaintances anyway. Hi, guys.

Angguk-Angguk Geleng-Geleng

Nod your head, shake you head
Bow your head, follow along
Yeah yeah, me me, left right, just follow...
(ok i lazy to translate whole thing, Babelfish it if you can't read Malay)

Angguk-angguk geleng-geleng
tunduk-tunduk ikut tunjuk
Iya iya saya saya kiri kanan ikut saja
Kita tunduk pabila diketuk biarkan
terhantuk tak usah dipujuk
Relakan dipatuk ingat pesan atuk
Sabar sabar sabar sabar!

Tak apa tak kisah tak rugi tak mati tak
ambil peduli
Berserah dan pasrah biar dada
didabik adat pasang turun naik
Didera dijajah terus kita dipenjara
Jadi hamba jadi kuli jadi batu diam
diri
Kita tunggu kita lihat kita nanti kita
perhati
Jangan merungut biar bertangguh diam
akur kita mesti patuh

Acuh tak acuh endah tak endah buat
lawak bodoh selamba
Biar kita melopong biar kita menganga
biar mereka buat apa mereka suka
biar
Jangan melawan jangan membantah
janganlah degil kena ikut perintah
Kena banyak diam biar apa orang
kata kita tawa dalam duka
Kecut takut kalut kolot terkunci mulut
terkatup tertutup
Kalah sabung menang sorak senduk
nasi tinggal kerak

(ulang chorus)
Dik mari dik... ye kak... nama adik
siapa? ... Mia
Adik tahu nyanyi tak?... Tahu... Ah
mari ikut kakak nyanyi sama-sama...

Angguk-angguk geleng-geleng tunduktunduk
ikut tunjuk

Angguk-angguk geleng-geleng tunduktunduk
ikut tunjuk

Iya iya saya saya kiri kanan ikut saja

Iya iya saya saya kiri kanan ikut saja


Tolak tambah kali ganda hitung kira
skala nisbah
Maju mundur tinggi rendah berapa
jumlah nilai bangsa

(Kak sekupang ke, dua kupang ke,
tiga kupang?)

Sawah sebendang
ladang sebidang
tanah sekangkang
pohon sebatang
Kerana wang semua
hilang hanya sehelai sepinggang
Yang jenin yang lebai
yang pandir yang luncai
Yang angannya tinggi
yang dibuai mimpi
yang sawah terjual maruah tergadai

(kamu mahu lagi?)

(Ahli Fiqir ......)

Sabar Sabar Sabar Sabar Sabar Sabar

No kitties allowed

Saw this sign at the Bentong GH. I thought the photographic image of two fluffy little kittens in that context was super funny. Why not - pet therapy. (For the illiterate, it says "Dumping cats on the hospital grounds is forbidden.)