Confessions of a City Slicker

For the next nine days, the Taoist community here will be going vegetarian in conjunction with the Nine Emperor Festival.

I’m delighted, not because of the array of creative vegetarian food that will be dished out in every street corner. Nah, vegetarian food can never satisfy a hard core carnivore like your truly’s taste for meat. Roar!!!

What I’m really happy about is the weather that is always associated with this festival. It’s gonna be a wet, wet, wet nine days and this year, I’m spending the bulk of it away from work.

Oh bliss! This is a weather that is made in heaven for nothing more than the Zs. I don’t know about most folks, but my system automatically shuts down the minute it rains.

Ha ha…you guys know how much I love my bed. If this weather keeps up, I will be chained to it during the long Raya holidays LOL…

I love the rain. It makes me feel all mellow, lazy, contented, even romantic sometimes when I will curl up under my covers with a romance novel.

Man, I’ll be right at home in England where it rains most of the time. Not so much anymore, according to some English people I know.

So enjoy your vegetarian feast for the folks celebrating this festival. I’ll be enjoying my snooze.

That’s how long it took me to sew one line of beads for my belly dance costume. This means one line a night. Gosh, where did all the time go?

I’m certainly more expert in it now. No more sewing on and picking them out but two hours is too long. I wonder if I’ll ever finish and there is still the skirt to accessorize.

OK, OK, don’t panic. Phew!!!!

I must take advantage of the long stretch of holidays during Raya to make as much progress as possible.

One of the girls in my class just learned the skill on Saturday and come Wednesday, she already has 1 1/2 cup finished!

Oh well, to be fair, I have more ground to cover because I wear a bigger cup ^_^

Looks like Friendster’s team has not ironed out all the bugs after the blog migration yet.

I believe we are using Wordpress templates now. Wordpress is deemed to be more for advance bloggers because of its ability to integrate more widgets.

If you notice, some of my older posts are in italics. I also noticed duplicate posts in my list.

Oh well, I’m too lazy to go correct all of those. Besides, as long as no posts are accidentally “lost”, well, that’s OK.

The template will not display properly when I view my blog, but refreshing it solves the problem. I don’t know if other people viewing my blog also experience the same thing.

The one that takes the cake is that today, the email notifications that people have left comments on my blog during the past few weeks finally came in all at once. How many weeks of delay was that?

Bravo, Friendster Team! :-p

Since my last post on having kids, I got a few calls from people asking me if that’s how I really feel, to put it mildly.

Aw c’mon peeps, it’s not like it’s some deep dark secret or something. I’ve always made my preference of pets over kids very obvious.

But don’t you want kids of your own? How can your life be complete without your own family? You might regret it later on in life, you know, when the opportunity has passed you by, blah, blah, blah…well, I zoned out of the rest of their arguments after that.

We’ve been over this repeatedly in the past, so there’s no point going another round.

Let my eggs dry up for all I care. It’s not that I’m ever gonna use them.

I just can’t understand them. WHAT exactly is this desire to get married, have kids (not exactly in that particular order) and raise a family, anyway? Is life not complete without all that?

So I suppose a woman can be the most wonderful and filial daughter who takes good care of her parents.

Or she heads a global corporation as the CEO.

Or she shows compassion for the sick as a nurse.

Or she brings relief to the less fortunate in war torn countries.

Or she fights alongside her brothers to defend her country.

But all those don’t matter, do they?

Noooooooo….a woman’s worth is ultimately measured by her ability to push out a wrinkly, screaming baby into the world.

Isn’t it about time we throw this type of archaic mindset out the window?

If you look at it from that point of view, what does that make a woman? An incubator, that’s what, a breeding machine.

We are so much more than that.

The world has changed a lot since our Great Grandmother’s time. Life for a woman isn’t all about raising a family any more.

So many doors have opened to women since then and I’ll be a fool if I don’t open and explore all of them.

I’m not about to invest nine months of my life to carrying a big baby bump and waddling around like a duck. In fact, babies are a lifetime investment because you have to raise the kid, put him/her through school then college in addition to the other daily investments. The ROI for this kind of long term investment is pretty uncertain. Give me a retirement plan any time.

The fact that I refuse to make use of my uterus does not make me any less of a woman. I refuse to be measured by that kind of yard stick.

I will determine my own worth by my own yard stick. If I don’t measure up to the norms, well I couldn’t care less. The norms are irrelevant.

It seems the stork has been working overtime in my office because three of my colleagues are expecting.

Their due dates are calculated to be within weeks of each other. This is going to be a very muhibbah affair because the new arrivals will be of different races.

Of course being the only female left in the office who is not expecting, they are curious to know when it’s gonna be my turn.

“Sure,” I said.

“Let me know your due dates and around that time I will go get myself a nice widdle doggie woggie or widdle kitty cat, then we can all go through motherhood together loh,” I smiled.

Seriously, me and kids, we don’t suit.

I mean, kids are cute and adorable and all that jazz, as long as they are not mine. There is no sound more annoying in this world than the sound of screaming kids.

Maternal instincts? You’re looking at the wrong place if you’re trying to find any here. I ain’t got any.

Well, maybe only where big brown eyes and a waggly tail is concerned.

And if a woman’s reproductive system is not so important to ensure her well being, I would have gotten rid of mine long ago.

At my recent BW session, my therapist commented on how dry my skin was down there. It was so dry that I had a bleeder, and it was not at a section that she had waxed. It was because my skin was so dry that it cracked when pulled.

Gasp! How did that happen? I noticed that it was also a part that frequently suffered injuries when I was waxing DIY.

She asked me if I use feminine wash.

Like duh! Of course I use it. During every shower, in fact. One can’t be too careful with the conditions down there, right? I mean, keeping conditions down there healthy is one of the most important thing to a woman’s well being.

Besides, I like the cooling freshness the my feminine wash gives me. Kinda like the cooling gel that they give me after my BW sessions.

Oh I know that there is an ecology of it’s own down there and the hygiene part is taken care of. But I didn’t know that some feminine washes are too acidic that it completely throws the delicate Ph balance of the ecology down there out of whack. The acidity level is important to ensure that the organisms down there stay healthy and are able to do their jobs.

So this causes the dryness of skin. She didn’t know this herself and it was one of her clients who told her.

A normal basic wipe down and quick rinse is all that is required.

OK, OK I’ll be a good girl from now on and do just that. I’ll be missing the cooling freshness from my showers, but anything to ensure my well being, right

Their invitation card called their marriage “An Epic Blockbuster”.

I couldn’t agree more as Auntie Suzzanne and Uncle Tony, aka the Seremban Sweethearts, two wonderful people whom I had been so blesseed to know celebrated their 60th Wedding Anniversary.

The evening started off with them renewing their vows. The priest who presided over the ceremony opened by commenting that “A wedding is just a day but a marriage is a lifetime”. What they have achieved is definitely a milestone worth commemorating.

It certainly isn’t easy to stay married to someone for 60 long years. I pored over the internet searching for ideas of what to give them but what little information I found was way off target. There were many gift ideas but nothing that is unique for a 60th wedding ceremony. This is a subject that people don’t seem to know a lot about.

From this we can safely conclude that marriages these days don’t last as long any more. Even if they do, finding a couple who are still so devoted to each other and loving is a rare gem.

I first got to know Auntie when I joined the church choir. When she heard that it would be my first year celebrating Christmas as a Catholic and I don’t have a family to celebrate with, she immediately invited me and a few others to her house so that we can experience what it’s like celebrating Christmas with a family. We have been fast friends ever since.

Auntie and Uncle are people who just resonates with love for everyone. They will open their hearts and home to just anybody. In fact, if you do happen to visit their house, you can feel the warmth of a loving home immediately.

Because of this, they are always having guests over or expecting some to show up soon. You can see just how popular they are when you attend mass with them. Getting out of church after mass is over is always a slow process as people of all ages stop by to greet them.

Uncle said something really meaningful during his speech that night:

“Love does not happen by chance or at first sight. It does not happen when your eyes meet across a crowded dance floor. It needs time to take root and grow into a mighty tree that can weather any storm.”

I think that is their secret recipe for a successful marriage.

Here are some pictures from this very special evening.

Cake cutting ceremony

Awwww....so sweet!

Close up of the cake

Smoke getting in her eyes can't stop this powerful soprano from seranading us with her beautiful voice

I waited the whole night to take a picture with them

The theme for the dinner was 1940s oriental glamor so there were lots of ladies in cheongsams and anything with a mandarin collar and gentlemen in traditional Chinese shirts. There was even a guy who was dressed like a martial arts sifu hehehehe…….

A guest asked me if I’m from Taiwan. I look like a Taiwanese meh?

I finally laid the first bead on my belly dance costume bra top last night. In fact, I managed to complete one whole line, only to take them all off.

Sigh, wasted two hours of work.

Why?

Maybe because I’m a perfectionist. I couldn’t stand seeing that the line wasn’t straight and there were holes in between the beads, even if they will not be that noticeable. I took out my previous costume and noticed that beads weren’t that straight either, but for me, what I had accomplished was totally unacceptable.

My previous costume used a red bra with almost similar colored beads, so the incongruence was not that obvious.

I get the feeling I’ll make a big hole on the bra first before I manage to complete the project, but what can I do? There is no tailor available who is willing to do it for me and even if there is, they charge an obscene figure. And that is not taking into account the amount of beads that will be used.

So I have no choice but to DIY. I bought the beads last weekend, and they are not exactly cheap. Stupid me bought them from the wrong place. E managed to get hers for half the amount I paid for them.

I’m gonna start again tonight, but with a different approach.

If you folks happen to see me with eye bags and thicker glasses after this, you know the reason.

This exquisite specimen of feline beauty hangs around my apartment building, because the residents here simply can’t resist her. In fact, she’s been known to come knocking on our backdoors to ask for food.

She has a pure white coat with the most gorgeous blue eyes. Sometimes they are the color of the clear blue sky, sometimes, a little darker.

I’ll meet her occassionally when I come home from gym and spend some time playing with her. Sometimes, her kittens will be with her. Her two kittens, one a pure white like her but with green eyes and the other one with orange patches, are shy, but if coaxed will come near enough for a pat.

They are not her only babies. She has given birth to several litters already and seems to be pregnant again. Darn! I was waiting for the right time to get her “fixed” but looks like I’ll have to wait for a little while longer.

There was a time previously when her entire litter died. The security guards found the dead kittens and had them removed. She spent weeks looking for them. We could hear her pitiful meowing in the evenings as she searched for her babies. It was heartbreaking. She will run to me, wide eyed, when I see her during those few weeks as if to tell me she had lost her babies.

Now it seems my little blue eyed girl has an owner. Lately she and her two other babies have been sporting a collar each.

As usual, when I met her this morning, she rubbed herself against my car before coming over to have her chin tickled.

No photos of this beauty to share yet because she’s camera shy. Later on when I manage to get a good shot, I’ll share the pics.

So I finally had the opportunity to go try out this quaint little Italian cafè that some gal pals have been raving about, especially their supposedly heavenly crème brulèe.

Sorry, girls, but I can’t say I liked it as much as you girls. It tastes more like hoon kuih than crème brulèe. There was not enough vanila and the custard was a little too hard to get that melt in your mouth texture that I like. I’ll take Ice Ice Baby’s version any day.

Our version is still superior

Having said that, the other food in the menu is not bad and portions are huge. I liked that they come and shave cheese on my pasta instead of giving me the usual tub of Permesan. But too bad, the guy doing the shaving refuses to give me the whole block of cheese saying that it will ruin the taste of the dish >..<