The Loss of an iCon

First Apple I ever used was the LCIII way back in 1993. Thereafter, there was a period shortly after when I used legit (and crappy) Apple clones. Of course, those weren't Steve Job's fault since he was absent from the company at the time.

Anyway, 18 years on and having gone through iMacs, iBooks, MacBooks, PowerMacs, an iPhone and an iPad, you kinda feel "invested" into the life and times of Steve Jobs.

So yeah, today Steve Jobs passes on. Looking at that pic from apple.com gives me a weird and unnatural feeling of, quite possibly irrational, loss for someone I didn't even know personally. But if you use a lot of Apple products, you might know what that feels like.

Goodbye Steve.

Maddie Saves the Day

It was a day like any other. Mom had had an idyllic morning but somewhere in the deep recesses of her gut, was a feeling that all was not quite right. She brushed it aside as gas (hehe!) and went on about her chores.

It was almost lunch and on this day, Mom decided she would fry a fish. Despite the main course being a dead fish, lunch was coming along swimmingly. Then, Mom decided to add in a garnish of Chinese parley from the fridge and so she reached out to open the kitchen door when she realised it was locked.

We do our frying in a wet kitchen just a door outside the rest of the apartment. Whenever Mom cooked, she'd close the door to prevent smoke fumes from entering our home. This time, however, she had accidentally locked herself in the wet kitchen.

"Maddie," Mom called out to her 2-year-old granddaughter, "open the door for Mah-Mah!"

Maddie was in the living room watching TV, but our obedient little girl dropped everything and went to Mah-Mah's rescue. But alas, her tiny little hands still hadn't gotten the hang of doorknobs. The door remained shut and poor little Maddie started crying in futility.

That's when the gravity of Mom's predicament hit her. She was locked in the wet kitchen with no key, no phone and no way of getting out. Maddie, on the other hand, was in the living room with everything but no means of using them.

At 12:30pm, I received a call from my Mother-In-Law. She had picked up Jesse from school that day and had sent him home only to be greeted by Mom's situation. I scrambled to leave, darting out of the office. I was almost at my car when the phone rang again.

"Everything's okay now," MIL said in a sigh of relief, "everything's okay."

Mom has a habit of leaving the front door open, to let in fresh air. I used to heckle her for it, citing that there's no such thing as fresh air in the Klang Valley. Thankfully, this time around, she chose to ignore my words. On this day, she also chose to leave her house keys on the low cabinet within Maddie's reach.

"Maddie," Mom called out. By this time, Maddie had regained her composure and had resume watching TV as if nothing had happened. "Maddie, take Mah-Mah's key and give it to Koko!"

And outside, Maddie's Koko, Jesse was calling out in unison.

My clever little girl shuffled over to the cabinet, reached out for Mah-Mah's keys and retrieved it. Mom, looking through the window from the wet kitchen cheered with joy! Outside, MIL and Jesse rejoiced.

As Maddie made her way to the front door, suddenly her favourite song came on TV. And although Mah-Mah's instructions were explicit, there were more important things in life for our little girl. Like a good song on TV. And so, she paused for a moment to watch it before carrying on with her task. (*sigh* I only wished I were there to witness this precious moment.)

And so, Maddie got the keys safely to MIL and Jesse who let themselves in and subsequently let Mom out of the kitchen.

Strange thing though; according to MIL, the door was never locked. And try as I might, I just can't see how Mom locked herself in. Perhaps there's something unseen at work here. WooOoOOoo...

Singing for Love

Yeah. This is me blogging again. :) And it's an old story too, something I meant to note down for posterity but then life got in the way. *sigh*

Anyway, it was Father's Day awhile back. And like all Sunday mornings, the kids get up first. Maddie was pottering around the room entertaining herself like she always does on the weekends.

I climbed out of bed and propped myself on the floor right in front of her.

"Give Daddy a kiss, Sweetpea," I said as lifted her chin a little to gaze into her eyes.

"Doman!" she snaps in her little baby-version of "don't want" and quickly turns to leave.

"Aww c'mon Baby, just a teeny-weeny little kiss, ok?" I tried again.

"Doman," she asserts. Maddie don't do touches and hugs and kisses.

At that point I felt a little vulnerable, I gotta admit. It was Father's Day and my little girl refused to acknowledge my place in her world. It kinda hurt a little bit. My little girl had brought her Daddy down to his knees. *sniff*

"But it's Daddy's Day, today," I pleaded.

But her tiny heart of stone knew only one answer. "Doman".

Then I has a brainwave. I started singing Barney. "I love you, you love me, we are happy family..." When I got to the part, "with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you," I emphasised it more than a little, and quite automatically, Maddie stepped up to me, hugged me and kissed me square on the lips.

And just like that, it was a nice day once again.

Hot 'Nuff For Ya?

The weather in the last couple of days has been crazy hot. The nights are so hot it's almost impossible to sleep. (I say "almost" cos there isn't any force on earth that can actually stop me from sleeping. Heh.) It's so hot you can take a shower and come out sweating.

And, as if that isn't bad enough, my room aircond's broken. It's not altogether cold, and the damn air fin thing that directs the air has a mind of it's own. I adjust it on the controller to direct the cool air right onto me, and in a couple of hours the freaking thing just decides I have had enough, and moves right back up, pointing the air to God knows where.

And, as if THAT isn't bad enough, my fridge is broken too. Something's wrong with the freezer. It keeps the food cold enough so that it doesn't go bad, but it isn't cold enough to make ice. Hell will freeze over before the ice tray in my freezer does. In a time when I need ice most of all.

So yeah, nothing's working. Except my hot water shower.

I swear there's a conspiracy amongst my household appliances to kill me.

Tech Savvy

Last night, I came home with a nice little Disney Princess doll for Maddie. It's one of those cute little things that sings. This one sang a song in the tune of "I'm a little teapot". I figured, since my little girl is into singing now, she'd get a big kick out of it.

She did. For all of 2 minutes.

After that she ditches the damn thing, heads straight for the iPad instead, launching the YouTube app and playing some videos of nursery rhymes instead. *sigh*

Jesse is also big on YouTube. These days he's learning the words to Queen's "We Will Rock You".

Back in my day, the only piece of tech I got was a Viewmaster. It was one of those toys that looked into like a binoculars, with a cardboard disc that had slides on it. You clicked on the lever, and it took you through some 10 to 12 slides. And that, impressed the shit out of me. "Look Mommy, I'm watching a movie!" Never mind that it didn't have sound and the pictures didn't move. It was magic as far as I was concerned.

Our kids are tech savvy. 

Meanwhile, Mae still can't locate the YouTube app on the iPad. Heheheh.

It's okay Hun. One day when the world is decimated by a nuclear holocaust, and the world is relegated back to the dark ages, your rudimentary survival skills will see us through. Then you can show us who's boss.

Loopymeals Returns

The Valentine of 2010 shall forever be a day of infamy. It was the day after Haloscan shut down for good and all the comments on this blog was unceremoniously dumped into Echo. Echo was fine as a comment system, but it lacked the elegant simplicity that Haloscan gave to blogs and commenters around the world. (It also cost USD10 a month which was frickin' daylight robbery!)

It took me awhile to ponder the fate of my comments. Do I pay the 10 bucks a month? Or risk losing my comments into the bottomless bowel of capitalism? I decided I could live with neither, and thus began my quest for an answer.

In the wee hours of a February morning that same year, I chanced upon the answer in Goat World. It was a miracle. But poring through the sacred text that was to bring my comments back home, I was quickly overwhelmed by the complex ritual I had to perform to such effect. The simple fool that I am, I was not meant for such a mammoth task.

And so I slipped into depression. I stopped blogging (at least not regularly). How could I go on, when the answer was right before me, yet I had no foreseeable way of undertaking it?

With a heart heavy laden with disappointment and dejection, I set out on a pilgrimage of self-discovery and meditation, and descended into a state of nothingness. I awoke in a prison in Bhutan where, after a scuffle with inmates in which I emerged victorious, it was made known to me of my assimilation into the clandestine and mysterious organization, the League of Shadows. Under the tutelage of it dubious yet charismatic leader, Ra's Al Ghul, I transcended the trappings of my ordinary life and found my thirst for truth and justice. Today, I return as Batman.

Heh. The real story is boring as heck, so I thought you might enjoy a little drama.

Anyways, all the comments and blog postings are back in one place, as it should be. It was a painstaking process that took me most of my weekend, but all 8,352 comments have been rescued! *sniff* I've also finally done some tweaking with the template. So I'm happy again. And a happy blogger is a busy blogger. Perhaps. Let's wait and see.

out with the old, in with the new
To Ellen Shapiro, you are awesome. I ♥ you much much!

New & Improved

Ok. Not necessarily. But this is a new template on the blog.

I was tinkering with the template and trying to figure out how to tweak some stuff when everything just went south. So instead of trying to crack my head over how to restore everything, I decided to just click one of them free templates they give you on Blogger. So here we are.

I'll take me forever to tweak this template. Look at how long it took me to start blogging again, and that should give you some indication how long this next enterprise will take.

And yeah, I lost all the old comments you left for me. It breaks my heart cos I really liked that you took the time to stop by and log in a few words. *sigh*

Stupid crap Echo comment system. Anyone knows how to migrate my old Haloscan/JS-Kit/Echo comments to Blogger? I'll buy you a nice dinner. :D

Don't Cry

Maddie is all of 23 months now. She's talking a lot these days, except the times when she actually wants something in which case she just wails her head off. *sigh* But yeah, she's picking up words and phrases and she parrots whatever we say to her.

But the cutest part of it is, she sometimes offers herself words of comfort, just like we would do whenever she was upset or afraid.

There was this episode when Mommy was leaving for work and poor little Maddie was being especially sticky. Mae tries to sneak out undetected, but unfortunately, the wife isn't quite cut out for such clandestine operations. Picture a buffalo stampede through your front door. Heh.

And so Maddie catches wind of Mommy less-than-graceful exit, and starts crying for Mommy. And in moments like this, I have a place in her world once again. I pick her up and she buries her face in my neck, sobbing her little heart out. And right there in between sobs and sniffles my cute, sweet little baby consoles herself. "Don't cry, Baby, don't cry".

Awwww.

"Don't you cry tonight. There's a heaven above you, Baby. Don't you cry tonight."