I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

It was like a reckoning, a premonition if you may (I was tutoring Zimmie with his Romeo and Juliet the other night and now I've got stuff like premonition, fate, and other malarkey I don't otherwise believe in all wrapped around my head), that I would have two weeks of flues (thankfully incapacitated for only two days of the fourteen) before the third week would sprout out the motherfucker of all fucking, fucking illnesses i.e. the asthma attack.

So despite being one four different kinds of pills from three different clinics, one type of which is a steroid base thing that I'm supposed to swallow all six of with my breakfast (that I can hardly eat anyway) and makes my heart race like wild horses at the same time makes my limbs all shaky and tired.

Plus, I missed out on Baby Mimi-the-cutest-kebonut-intheworld-intheWORLD's function last Sunday.

But I refuse to be swallowed by the jaws of self-pity (although pity now and then is nice when your lungs hurt), and to battle it henceforth (plus to give my lungs a bit of exercise), I've been watching 'Extras' - this fucking marvelous BBC TV show starring Ricky Gervais (of 'The Office' face - Brit version, natch).

Watching him, and mostly, watching his utterly idiotic best friend Maggie (the true star of the show, in my opinion), the latter who possesses a natural charm of getting what she almost wants at the beginning of the show and then screwing it up royally by putting her foot in her clueless mouth. Each time she manages to make me cringe into a ball of crumped limbs yet giggle non-stop until my lungs get pissed at me and starts hacking out the most annoying kinds of coughs (the kind when you start hacking and your brain literally hurts).

Plus, the guest stars (Robert DeNiro, Samuel L. Jackson, Kate Winslet, Orlando Bloom, Ben Stiller, hell, even Harry Potter)? Rock.

Big, massive thanks to the Hazel for introducing me to this big cheer-upper.

Another good sideline in ignoring the fact that your lungs are wheezing for air (and henceforth successfully blocking the issue that maybe, just maybe, quitting smoking might stop all this asthma crap) is the book Emma has insisted on my reading: The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. An excellent, plus profoundly, plus hilariously good read.

Oh, I do get by with a little help from my friends.

Who Needs Happy Drugs When There's Soto Rosmini?

On the drive back home from... somewhere, The Buzz and I were ecstatic to find a Soto Rosmini opening not too far from where we live!

You must understand, from a person living in the boondocks, what a pure unadulterated lift it is to find that you don't have to travel miles just for a taste of your favorite soto. Which makes Soto Rosmini one of the two things I'm inordinately thankful for this month.

And I have to be thankful. This year definitely making the top of the list of the all-time suckiest year ranking (not to mention the all-time most visits to the hospital), it moves you enough to sit your ass down and realize maybe it's time to stop thinking about why your life sucks and start thinking about why your life doesn't suck. So despite all the trips to the hospitals and the surgeries and whatnot, it's time to be thankful for a few things.

Like survival. Of your loved ones. The joy of baby Aman Zarina and the likewise joy of baby Adam. And nearby soto, definitely.

Oh, and how I started a post on soto and ended up with gratitude for the world is beyond me too. Think I'm just a little emo this month.

SHOUT-OUT!!!

.... to Finbo.

It'll all be okay.

What's Going to Work? Teamwork!

I don't know how it happened, but my humble abode in Mentiri, in terms of animals mostly renowned for feeding stray cats, has become a home to five pets.

The first, Mr. Norris, our flowerhorn fish, a gift to my mother from E and family, and attention hogger and water splasher when late with his meals. The second, Mr. T, our turtle, and although maybe hygiene declares it complete wrong, swims with The Bear in late afternoon kiddie pool activities. The third, Barbarella, our blue fighting fish that really does nothing but look pretty.

Two kittens have joined us, and not continuing in the vein of names from 70's and 80's TV icons and action stars, a white one named Pippa (named by the Bear) and a black-and-brown named Dian (smuggled in from Miri via Fid, who had three other kittens there, all named after the tenants of the house).

When I see them all together sometimes I think about Wonderpets (for those of you not in the know i.e. for those of you who aren't forced to watch Playhouse Disney Channel, it's an animated kid's show about a turtle, chick and hamster who don capes and saves other little pets), except for Mr. Norris obviously because he's a bit of a showy bastard, and think about taking a picture of them with capes on, except maybe that borders on animal cruelty.

Til next time amigos.

P/S: Yes, I've had a few months' hiatus for several reasons and non-reasons, but instead of apologizing like an idiot, I'm just going to pretend it never happened.

For The Buzz and The Finbo

To my two compadres The Buzz and Finbo, on that slow drive back to Mentiri from Muara, chilling to P. Ramlee songs.

Definitely a moment on my 'Good Times' list.

Tribute to The Bride

Mrs. Aidy, we've been through loads together. Me, you and Finbo grew up together, went out together, dressed up together, danced together, sang together, watched movies together, cried together, partied together, yelled at each other, forgave one another over the span of so-bloody-long. But we always knew we'd be there for each other, no matter how far we strayed away, or how many friends we made or fought with, it always came back down to the fact that when the fun starts thinning and 11pm is considered a late bedtime and it's very very possible that we would be asleep before midnight on a Saturday night, we would be there to grow old with each other.

And now you're married - it was a topic of endless expositions from when we were teenagers and now the aisle has been walked. Despite the fact that the wedding is done, it still seems a bit unreal to me!

But you were a beautiful bride, and a pretty damn cool one too:

Best wishes to Mr. and Mrs. Justin :)

"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain"

I have been on a reading marathon. The sad kind. Where I started with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to gear me up for the movie, then moved on to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which I loved, by the way, and got really upset about in the end not for any reason to do with the ending just the fact that it had, in fact, ended, and there is no more Harry Potter to be expected so it was sort of like losing a friend; I know I'm putting myself at the risk of sounding like some kind of young-adult-angst-driven-sap but what the hell), then moved on to Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer, the third in a trio which Hazel very kindly bought for me, then thought what the hell I'll read the first in the trio and went to Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, then had my thumb up my ass and thought well the hell with it and reread Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (one of my fave books of all time - if you haven't read it, then get it and bloody read it), finished that, thought damn, what to do now, and reread Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (risking myself again to the power of two hundred).

So now, for the first time in a month, I've got nothing to read while I have my smoke break.

Very, very soon, I'm going to be picking up Pride and Prejudice. Just you wait.

Note: subject title above as quoted by Louisa May Alcott, the chick we may thank for 'Little Women'.

My Mother, She Is A Spartan

So I haven't been posting in a gajillion years, no matter.

Something happened to my family and I last month, and it was serious enough to render me speechless and wordless. I don't have words for it, and so I'm not sharing the full extent of it, although apparently all this blogging kerfuffle has a lot to do with sharing, but that course of action would require the candidness of a bigger and probably better person that is, quite literally, polar opposites from me. Well, that, and the fact that I ain't no expert in the language of medical, er, things and therefore will not attempt to try and word it out at the risk of sounding like a complete idiot.

So my extreme apologies to my readers (er, I do have readers, right?) out there for the Hiatus That Came With No Warning, as what happened came with no warning.

So allow me to dispel with a few shout-outs and then I'll be on my merry way:

A big, huge thank you to all those who were great enough to show us moral support, never forgetting to include a certain incredible Auntie who went out of her way to make my mother comfortable.

A big thank you to the staff at Ward 9 and SICU.

A great big thank you to Dr. Ng. I know we're just a family out of a million other families that he has helped, but yowza, we owe you one. In fact, we owe you more than that.

And lastly, a big, huge, ginormous, stupendous, splendiferous thank you to the Man with the Plan, the Man of Our Eternal Hour, the Dude Who's Too Cool For School: Dr Selvam, you so rock. You know you do.

And after all that is said and (not quite) done, the only words of wisdom I can impart on you is this: riding in the back of an ambulance with the sirens on and watching traffic part like the red sea is hella fun!

My mother, she is a Spartan.

Anchorage by Michelle Shocked

I heard this on my way to work at lunchtime in my sister Emma's car.

She admits her husband has a quirky taste in music that she herself has gotten roped into (Leonard Cohen, anybody?) and, after spending lunch in RIPAS singing it with Bobby and Zimmie, insisted that I hear it too.

And I must say! I dig it!

Big shout-out to my lovely currently-bulbous sister and my brother-in-law with his quirky tastes for introducing a little folk rock into my life.