Week Long Celebration

Today is Mae's birthday.

Birthdays in our household last for a week or more. Hers started on Sunday when we had Japanese with her folks and siblings who just happened to be in town. Today, we had Thai for lunch. Tomorrow will be dinner somewhere else. Maybe a late-night supper in town too, who knows. :) On the weekend, we can have Paan Mein.

It's our thing. We stopped doing the present thing cos it stresses us out too much. Instead, we eat. It's the most wonderful thing in the world - stuffing our faces!

Tonight I'm thinking tartlets. Thirty-three of them. Yeah.

One In A Million Live!

Yah. I'm like a frickin' fanboy. Mae loves the show too. And it just so happens that we got tickets for the finals tonight. We're rooting for Faizal because the dude can rock! He's also, in our opinion, the only real talent left in the show.

So, send "IN FAIZAL" to 32728 to vote him in. :P

BTW, pardon my manners but I have been busy of late. Will get around to replying your comments.

Lipstick Forever

Mae and I are very open to the idea of cosmetic enhancements. By "open", I mean that we'd neither freak out at the thought of nor scoff at the concept of man-made improvements on ourselves.

So anyway, today Mae calls me. It's the middle of a working day and she is hanging out with my sisters and they end up at a Salon. When it come to a day out with the Grisly Sisters, I can always expect some outlandish cockamie scheme.

"Honey, this place does lips too," she titters excitedly, "For a thousand bucks, I never have to put lipstick again."

The brain registered "thousand bucks" and "lipstick", and the lips responded appropriately, "No."

"But why?"

The brain was quick on this one too. "It's gonna look real freaky," the lips said, "when you turn into an old bag of shit, and still look like you just put on fresh lipstick."

Heheh.

The Adventures of Blinky

"Honey," there was an urgency in Mae's voice, "we need to bring Jesse to the doctor." Under normal circumstances, I would be worried. But this was Mae, Mistress of Melodrama, to whom, life was extra large.

Anyway, it turns out that Jesse's been blinking excessively. And by excessively, I mean furiously - with forceful clamping eyelid action and stuff. Moth-in-law thinks it's too much TV. Roma thinks its worms. Mae thinks the boy might need specs. Me, I'm thinking of having Paan Mein this weekend. HEh! Okay, okay, so I have no theory, but I do have a story...

(cue flashback harpsichord music)

The year was 1978. Yoke Lin had begun to notice how her son blinks furiously for no apparent reason. It was as though the muscles that controlled his eyelids were on overdrive. Some days he'd blink so hard and fast there would be a flurry of tear spatter and flying eyelashes in the airspace surrounding his face. And he blinked so fast, so much so that his view of the world was like that of revellers at a rave party - strob lights and all.

When a succession of consultations at various eye specialists in town yielded no results, Yoke Lin resorted to the paranormal - praying to the gods and attending seances. However, that didn't work either. Nothing did. It was a mother's nightmare to see her boy suffering and to have no recourse for it.

And then one day, Mahatma Windhi came to town.

Mahatma Windhi was a thin, lanky Southern Indian gentleman, learned in the ways of holistic healing. His skin was as black as night, his hair as white as day and his teeth, as yellow as the first piss of the morning after a night of... erm... not pissing. His face was craggy as the earth yet his demeanour was as calm as the heavens. His years of hardship and apprenticeship in the Tibetan mountains with the second cousin of the Dalai Lama's personal assistance's neighbour from across the street, had brought him to this point in his life. A pivotal moment in both his and the boy's life. The boy and him were destined to cross path, as the stars in the Himalayas had spelt out to him: C-R-O-S-S-P-A-... well, you get the idea.

A gloomy, rainy afternoon as Windhi sat, cross-legged on the concrete floor of his Pre-War Victorian shophouse earnestly scratching his... erm... balsamic noggin, he felt a strong compulsion to look up to the main door. So he did. There at the doorway stood a distressed woman, her dress billowing in the strong winds and her face wet from the rain. Behind her, stood a little boy. Mahatma Windhi squinted to make out the silhouttes, furrowing the brows of his weather-beaten face as he studied the two persons at his doorway. And then he saw it - the boy was clearly wide awake, yet he was having a bad case of the REMs flickering his eyelids at the speed of sound.

Having seated them down, the old man listened to the lamentations of a heartbroken mother. When she had explained her concerns to him, Master Windhi unfolded his loin cloth and brought out a long sharp stainless steel rod, the diameter of those high-class toothpicks and three times as long. He brought it to a candle and watched the flames dance across the shiny metal stick. He then stuck it into a small pewter jar and brought it out again encrusted in a black gunk of herbal concoctions.

"Heduhde eodhoeb hduedendsjuw huehu," he said, speaking in an ancient Sanskrit tongue. Although the boy had no inkling of what was said, he knew that he was being told to open his eyes as though conveyed by some kind of telepathic message. Weill, it was either that or it was because the old master had thrusted his thumb into the boy's startled eye to fold up his eyelids. Then, in a swift stroke the steel rod connected, as Mahatma Windhi deftly applied the herbal gook into the boys eyes.

The helpless child screamed in terror at the violent intrusion into his eyes, writhing and wriggling in his frightened mother's arms. Until he realised that it didn't hurt one bit and that he was being a little shit about it. By then, Windhi had already done both eyes and was now wrapping up some medicinal herbs (which looked suspiciously like bird feed) in a little piece of brown paper. "One day, two times," said the master as he stuffed the folded paper into Yoke Lin's hand.

Yoke Lin thanked the old man, paid him and pulled her son to leave. As they stepped out of the shophouse, the skies cleared before them. Both mother and child stood in awe of the amazing display of freaky weather before them. Perhaps it was going to be okay after all. Perhaps...

(cue out-of-flashback harpsichord music)

Naaaaaaah! That didn't work either.

Until today, nobody's figured out why I was blinking so much as a kid. I eventually outgrew it on my own. I also had perfect eyesight until I turned 30 when an event would lead me to realise that my eyesight was failing. But that's another story for another day. Heh.

Now, I'll have to figure out why my boy is blinking like nobody's business. Perhaps, like me, he'll be fine. But to be safe, I'll still take him to the doc over the weekend. Meantime, any clues will help. Stories, will help too. :)

The Rolls Royce of Chocolates

It's occurred to me that I haven't blogged about food in ages. You'd think I haven't been eating. That, of course, is a myth that would be savagely dispelled should you ever bump into me - all hulking 85kgs of me.

So food it is. And here's one of my favourite reasons for keeping fat!




If you've never eaten Royce Chocolates, then I'm afraid you haven't really eaten chocolates. Brought to you by the very same people that gave you an exciting World War II, Royce is Japanese. While the best chocolates are touted to be from Belgium or Vienna, Royce holds its own. After all, anyone responsible for the Walkman, Hayao Miyazaki, sashimi, cha soba, Iron Chef Rokusaburo Michiba and Ultraman Taro can surely give us good chocolates.




The first thing you'll notice when you're about to savour your Royce, is that the Japanese really know how to make a big deal out of their packaging You bring home your Royce in a padded foil pack and a cooling gel. This is so your chocolates do not melt on you.




Inside, your box of Royce comes with a little plastic spatula and a brochure that pretty much lets you know how incomplete you life is, since there are a host of Royce products you have never tasted - among them their Nutty Bar, Chocolate Coated Potato Chips, and more. Unfortunately it's in Japanese. All that genius in creating the perfect chocolate and they never think to translate their brochure. *sigh*




Finally, after unravelling endless layers of packaging - 5 in all - you get to the... erm... climactic end of your journey. Inside you'll find 20 pcs of 30mm x 20mm soft chocolate cubes, heavily dusted in cocoa powder. Soft! The damn things are soft despite being in the fridge for hours. Imagine that. OMG!!!!!!! Somebody kill me now cos I've run out!!!!! Arggghhhhhh!!!!




Please. Do yourself a favour now. Go down to Isetan in KLCC and buy yourself a box of Royce today. It's RM35 a box, but it's worth every cent. You will love yourself for it. Women will want to have your children. Men will leave their wives to be with you. It's THAT good. I promise.

Daddy's Boy

August had been a particularly difficult month at work. Much like May, June and July had been. Close to how March and April had been. And pretty much the way January and February had been. And just when things are bad, there is always room for them to get worst.

So when Mae called a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't expecting much. Probably another errand she wanted me to run, I thought, mildly resentfully. (only mildly, mind you *ahem*)

"Honey," she was all excited, "your son just called you Daddy!"

"Aiks! But I wasn't even there," I said. As far as I was concerned, it doesn't really count if the boy doesn't understand that "Daddy" meant me. "But he does!!!" Mae protested.

Turns out that Jesse was monkeying around our bookshelf when he stumbled upon an old photo of him as a wee little baby lying on my chest. He showed it to Mommy and as he pointed me out, he said, "Daddy!"

It's taken a long while but yes, my boy's finally gotten it. "Daddy!" He's been saying it loud and proud, knowing consciously at last, that the word meant me.

*sniff*

he ain't ugly, he's my daddy

No Emotional Scarring

I was going up to the apartment yesterday when I bumped into my neighbour. "He's quite something, that boy of yours," she tells me grinning from ear to ear. "Oh?" I looked at her quizzically, "Whatever do you mean?"

"Well, he's taking the lift on his own these days isn't he?"

Mrs. Chua had been playing with her young daughter at the lift lobby when she saw my little hero dart out of the lift on his own. It seems Jesse has become quite the legend in our apartment building since his little adventure. And I suppose it won't be too preposterous to assume that our neighbours must be thinking the worst of us. "What horrifyingly callous parents the poor boy must have. Let hunt them down and burn them at the stake!!"

In a feeble attempt to salvage our dwindling reputation, I sheepishly asked, "So he must have been crying his eyes out, then?"

"Actually, he was running around laughing his head off!"

It seems Mae had been grossly misinformed. Here I was, concerned about any emotional scarring the kid might have and there he was, the little snot, having the time of his life at his first taste of freedom. Maybe I should beat some sense into him. Hehehhh...

Happy Belated Merdeka

I had fully intended to write a happy little story for Vincent's Project Happy Malaysia but then I got lazy and before I knew it, Merdeka Day had come and gone.

We didn't do much. Slept early the night before and woke up late. Also lazed in bed a little. Missed the countdown and also the morning parade on TV.

By 3pm, I was beginning to feel a tinge of guilt for letting our national day slip by just like that, when suddenly, I was swept by an overwhelming sense of patriotism. Coincidentally, at that precise moment, the guy at the supermarket check-out counter gave us a tiny Jalur Gemilang - Free! With Every Purchase Above RM50 On A Single Receipt While Stocks Last. As I held the national flag in the palm of my hands, I knew then what I had to do. I took it home, gave it to Jesse and we had a little parade of our own. (See, video!)



By the way, despite all its shortcomings, I love Malaysia. Any country that lets me sleep as long as I want to; buy groceries whenever I feel like it; and lets me parade my kid about indiscriminately; is my kinda place.