the first time i saw the movie was featured in oprah show, i vowed to myself to watch the movie. last night, i got the chance to watch on hbo. it's a movie of an overweight latino girl (hmmm the adjective reminds me of myself). anyway, i'm not going to talk abt the movie.
i gained 3kgs and according to my niece asha the medic student, it's caused by depression. i guess she's right...what with the endless camps and papers to be marked, and the aftermath of the breakup, i turned to comfort food. i vowed to lose some weight for my convo on the 9th aug, but i lost only a kg. it doesnt help when i happen to love baking and baked chocolate mud cake, durian mousse cake, chocolate banana cake and god knows what else in the course of 2 weeks. it doesnt help either when nasi lemak is more appealing than a banana and an orange (which is supposed to be my mid-morning snack). i was off-course for awhile when my sister came back, since i've the tendency to eat more when family members are around. but i resumed my walk yesterday and this morning despite my sleepiness i dragged myself to walk again...*sigh*. wonder if i can lose another kg b4 the convo....
i've to go and take my convo robe fr the ips on the 4th. geez...they even have a special counter that we have to go thru' - the debt clearance counter...we're going to have a rehearsal on saturday...
Friday, July 28, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Getting there
my ex missed call me twice yesterday. i dont know why he's doing this, but it's really @#@$%ing me off. anyway, he succeeded in communicating with me. and told me why he called. he was looking for a redemption and hoping that i would forgive him. hmmph...i said i cant. after what he did to me, i just cant.
nina told me that i've to learn how to forgive. yes i know, to forgive is divine, but at the moment i dont feel charitable. what i feel right now is wrath towards him. that's the surface of my sea of emotions, the mask that i wear. but i know that underneath it, some twenty thousand leagues under the sea is just deep deep anguish that i do not wish to feel and hope to ignore. this is the hardest part of the process - to endure. it's even harder when all my frens r in kl while i'm here. but then i still survive.
nina told me that i've to learn how to forgive. yes i know, to forgive is divine, but at the moment i dont feel charitable. what i feel right now is wrath towards him. that's the surface of my sea of emotions, the mask that i wear. but i know that underneath it, some twenty thousand leagues under the sea is just deep deep anguish that i do not wish to feel and hope to ignore. this is the hardest part of the process - to endure. it's even harder when all my frens r in kl while i'm here. but then i still survive.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Entertaining Myself with Pulp Fiction
my seri puteri fren, anne, sent me 3 books for me to read. this is very kind of her, in a way this is her way of helping me to deal with my post-breakup phase. when we were at school, we were voracious readers. we read a lot of romances actually...so there were a lot of jude deverauxs, julie garwoods and judith mcnaughts.
anyway, back to the present time. she knows that i detest pulp fiction and only extol the virtues of reading pure literary text. so she sent me this note"hi nora, the books are meant for mindless entertainment (memandangkan kau ni lit major...silly chick lit stuff like these may not be your cup of tea)". there's confessions of a shopaholic - i finished the book yesterday. yes, at first i was gritting my teeth. trying to control myself from lashing against the book. or worse, toss it away. but i told myself that this is, like anne said, "mindless entertainment", so i kept on reading...all the while thinking of rebecca as a compulsive shopper (hence, a shopaholic) and a liar too (i thot of my ex). well, the novel is ok lah... (ok anne, i'm trying not to give any negative comments). am reading the 2nd novel....
anyway, back to the present time. she knows that i detest pulp fiction and only extol the virtues of reading pure literary text. so she sent me this note"hi nora, the books are meant for mindless entertainment (memandangkan kau ni lit major...silly chick lit stuff like these may not be your cup of tea)". there's confessions of a shopaholic - i finished the book yesterday. yes, at first i was gritting my teeth. trying to control myself from lashing against the book. or worse, toss it away. but i told myself that this is, like anne said, "mindless entertainment", so i kept on reading...all the while thinking of rebecca as a compulsive shopper (hence, a shopaholic) and a liar too (i thot of my ex). well, the novel is ok lah... (ok anne, i'm trying not to give any negative comments). am reading the 2nd novel....
Sunday, July 09, 2006
The Birthday Girl: A Recapitulation of the Wonder Years
okay so i turned 33 today. when i woke up i received several smses from my tesl buddies fai n mozie n linda. thanx gals! went to school with my durian mousse cake and slightly cair lemon cheesecake. the durian mousse cake was a hit in the staffroom...hmmm...nobody could resist the durian smell. received more birthday wishes from students n teachers alike. but couldnt bask in the glory of the day bcoz i had to handle the 2nd phase of the pmr camp.
yes, i've come a long way. being the youngest, it didnt help at all when your siblings just spoilt u rotten with sweets n soft toys...n ur mother fed u nestum n raw egg yolk (euuwww!!! i ate that??). yes, i'm a part of the generation called the baby boomers, when comfort n abundant food began to exist in the malaysian society. when i was growing up, big plastic cassette was the trend when we wanted to listen to music. cant remember wat it was called, but i grew up listening to Boney M n the Bee Gees. when i was 5, my parents sent me to St Theresa's Kindergarten. while the rest of the girls' pinafore hung loosely to their bodies, mine was a perfect fit. i remember the breaks of tiny cookies n grape cordial drinks... then i went to SS1, i was either the top or the 2nd in the class...
then, i was offered to study in sek. seri puteri KL, where the seniors terrified me more than the teachers. yes, hostel life was tough at first, esp. when u've never been away fr home n u were told to cry a bucket full of tears to get a senior's signature. but it was fun after that, i got used to the life in a boarding school. it was fun watching scary movies under the black velvety sky on friday nites....n fun going shopping wearing our yellow baju rasmi (we used to think it looked better than tkc's green ones). at this time, the boy group to rule the day was NKOTB but i wasnt a big fan of them... but anyhow, i used to hear that the 80s has the best songs. i'm even listening to some of them now... like Heart's Alone.... or A-ha's Take on Me,... Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World which is the soundtrack for Real Genius, Spandau Ballet's True which i think epitomises the 80s, n Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time. the best movies in the 80s? Top Gun...the girls went crazy over tom cruise. he shot to stardom bcoz of that movie. i even wrote a story that was almost similar to top gun for my 1119 essay. the scariest movie at that time... must be the nightmare on elm street. the funniest? the police academy.
then, after spm, i got the federal scholarship to do b.ed tesl in ppp/itm n later ukm, where i got to know more than a hundred personalities. this is the time when i became a young adult, going to class n when the classes were over, it's shopping time with frens. we even negotiated with the ever so obliging n sporting lecturers so that we could have the fridays free so weekends started early. there's an eating place which is fondly called as The Junction by the ppp students bcoz it's located next to a junction...the name stuck until now...the place is crowded with students...n there're even certain stalls frequented by a levels students, tesl students, n mucia students. oh yeah i forgot...i MUST tell this story...i'm sure my tesl frens remember this clearly...the libray is known to be the place where u skodeng or cuci mata...n of all of its chairs, there's one that one must avoid or else face the consequences of being sniggered at. there's this 1 chair, when u sit on it, would emit a farting sound. yes, a farting sound... so just imagine a guy trying to act suave in front of a girl n sat on the chair...yup...very funny indeed...
life in ukm was quite hard...we had to leave our having-fun-days-in-ppp behind. it was assignments, assignments, as well as climbing the 96 stairs to our kamsis to n fro...to go to class...there were times when there's no water...so we had to wake up at 5 in the morning to bathe in the faculty building....bad bad experience... classes were ok, we were in jeans most of the times, the most interesting lectures n tutorials for me would be literature classes, n the most hated ones - everything to do with linguistics - morphology,syntax n semantics, phonetics n phonology - so when mr imran ho (now dr imran ho) gave his most-of the-time very incomprehensible lecture, i would come out of the lecture hall with very clean n blank exam pad...couldnt get wat he was saying since i was gawking most of the time...may be bayam understood him, she was the top linguistics student. my fav lecturer who became my mentor is mr hazidi abd hamid. he s very funny, n regaled us with his funny n interesting stories when he was a student in the UK. he was also, incidentally, the only lecturer i know to fall asleep during our weekly literature lecture in the hall... i could hear him snoring gently. he denied it of course. he became my academic exercise supervisor n told me to read jostein gaarder n kazuo ishiguro (i read both) n i thank him for opening a whole new world for me - that the mind can absorb so much through reading. i guess that was when i thought of doing my masters in literature.
the 90s saw the emergence of alternative music n the cranberries. my tesl batch had a band called kojo gilo... they actually bought electric guitars for their band n performed Zombie to us - with flair i think, after hours of jamming in kajang. i'm not really interested in alternative, by this time, i'm into hip hop n R&B so i had many many albums by boyz 2 men, all 4 one, babyface, keith sweat, r kelly, blackstreet, tlc, swv, silk, color me badd...bla bla bla...
then in 97 i graduated...wearing orange coloured robes!! geez...the teslians were loud enough...but did we have to wear the orange coloured robes? then the hundred of us parted ways...most of us became teachers or lecturers while some began to work elsewhere...i was posted to tok jiring, n it did me good. it was here that i1st wore tudung. but after teaching for 3 years i realised that i needed more...i missed the learning, the life of the scholar. so i applied to further my studies in UM, n i also applied for a scholarship. i got both. yes, literature is very interesting but it's very very tough... to be able to study literature, u've to be able to open ur mind bcoz discussions can be controversial n sensitive at times. we discussed politics, religions, sexual politics, cultures...it is here that i learnt to be critical minded, thanx to those scholarly discussions under the supervision of very good lecturers.
when my 2 years of sabbatical leave finished in nov 2003, i was reposted to sultan sulaiman - the school where all my siblings went (except for my eldest bro who was a true mckkian through n through). yes the students r colourful, they make me angry, they also make me laugh....
which brings me back to the present. in salman rushdie's midnight's children, saleem sinai claims that he is the sum of all the experience n the people in his life, i m also shaped by all these memories. a hotchpotch. a melange.happy birthday to myself.
yes, i've come a long way. being the youngest, it didnt help at all when your siblings just spoilt u rotten with sweets n soft toys...n ur mother fed u nestum n raw egg yolk (euuwww!!! i ate that??). yes, i'm a part of the generation called the baby boomers, when comfort n abundant food began to exist in the malaysian society. when i was growing up, big plastic cassette was the trend when we wanted to listen to music. cant remember wat it was called, but i grew up listening to Boney M n the Bee Gees. when i was 5, my parents sent me to St Theresa's Kindergarten. while the rest of the girls' pinafore hung loosely to their bodies, mine was a perfect fit. i remember the breaks of tiny cookies n grape cordial drinks... then i went to SS1, i was either the top or the 2nd in the class...
then, i was offered to study in sek. seri puteri KL, where the seniors terrified me more than the teachers. yes, hostel life was tough at first, esp. when u've never been away fr home n u were told to cry a bucket full of tears to get a senior's signature. but it was fun after that, i got used to the life in a boarding school. it was fun watching scary movies under the black velvety sky on friday nites....n fun going shopping wearing our yellow baju rasmi (we used to think it looked better than tkc's green ones). at this time, the boy group to rule the day was NKOTB but i wasnt a big fan of them... but anyhow, i used to hear that the 80s has the best songs. i'm even listening to some of them now... like Heart's Alone.... or A-ha's Take on Me,... Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World which is the soundtrack for Real Genius, Spandau Ballet's True which i think epitomises the 80s, n Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time. the best movies in the 80s? Top Gun...the girls went crazy over tom cruise. he shot to stardom bcoz of that movie. i even wrote a story that was almost similar to top gun for my 1119 essay. the scariest movie at that time... must be the nightmare on elm street. the funniest? the police academy.
then, after spm, i got the federal scholarship to do b.ed tesl in ppp/itm n later ukm, where i got to know more than a hundred personalities. this is the time when i became a young adult, going to class n when the classes were over, it's shopping time with frens. we even negotiated with the ever so obliging n sporting lecturers so that we could have the fridays free so weekends started early. there's an eating place which is fondly called as The Junction by the ppp students bcoz it's located next to a junction...the name stuck until now...the place is crowded with students...n there're even certain stalls frequented by a levels students, tesl students, n mucia students. oh yeah i forgot...i MUST tell this story...i'm sure my tesl frens remember this clearly...the libray is known to be the place where u skodeng or cuci mata...n of all of its chairs, there's one that one must avoid or else face the consequences of being sniggered at. there's this 1 chair, when u sit on it, would emit a farting sound. yes, a farting sound... so just imagine a guy trying to act suave in front of a girl n sat on the chair...yup...very funny indeed...
life in ukm was quite hard...we had to leave our having-fun-days-in-ppp behind. it was assignments, assignments, as well as climbing the 96 stairs to our kamsis to n fro...to go to class...there were times when there's no water...so we had to wake up at 5 in the morning to bathe in the faculty building....bad bad experience... classes were ok, we were in jeans most of the times, the most interesting lectures n tutorials for me would be literature classes, n the most hated ones - everything to do with linguistics - morphology,syntax n semantics, phonetics n phonology - so when mr imran ho (now dr imran ho) gave his most-of the-time very incomprehensible lecture, i would come out of the lecture hall with very clean n blank exam pad...couldnt get wat he was saying since i was gawking most of the time...may be bayam understood him, she was the top linguistics student. my fav lecturer who became my mentor is mr hazidi abd hamid. he s very funny, n regaled us with his funny n interesting stories when he was a student in the UK. he was also, incidentally, the only lecturer i know to fall asleep during our weekly literature lecture in the hall... i could hear him snoring gently. he denied it of course. he became my academic exercise supervisor n told me to read jostein gaarder n kazuo ishiguro (i read both) n i thank him for opening a whole new world for me - that the mind can absorb so much through reading. i guess that was when i thought of doing my masters in literature.
the 90s saw the emergence of alternative music n the cranberries. my tesl batch had a band called kojo gilo... they actually bought electric guitars for their band n performed Zombie to us - with flair i think, after hours of jamming in kajang. i'm not really interested in alternative, by this time, i'm into hip hop n R&B so i had many many albums by boyz 2 men, all 4 one, babyface, keith sweat, r kelly, blackstreet, tlc, swv, silk, color me badd...bla bla bla...
then in 97 i graduated...wearing orange coloured robes!! geez...the teslians were loud enough...but did we have to wear the orange coloured robes? then the hundred of us parted ways...most of us became teachers or lecturers while some began to work elsewhere...i was posted to tok jiring, n it did me good. it was here that i1st wore tudung. but after teaching for 3 years i realised that i needed more...i missed the learning, the life of the scholar. so i applied to further my studies in UM, n i also applied for a scholarship. i got both. yes, literature is very interesting but it's very very tough... to be able to study literature, u've to be able to open ur mind bcoz discussions can be controversial n sensitive at times. we discussed politics, religions, sexual politics, cultures...it is here that i learnt to be critical minded, thanx to those scholarly discussions under the supervision of very good lecturers.
when my 2 years of sabbatical leave finished in nov 2003, i was reposted to sultan sulaiman - the school where all my siblings went (except for my eldest bro who was a true mckkian through n through). yes the students r colourful, they make me angry, they also make me laugh....
which brings me back to the present. in salman rushdie's midnight's children, saleem sinai claims that he is the sum of all the experience n the people in his life, i m also shaped by all these memories. a hotchpotch. a melange.happy birthday to myself.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
facing 33 tomorrow
it's the eve of my 33rd birthday today. i'm not really excited about hitting another year. probably bcoz i've undergone some very tough times this year. so what does the 33 bring me? i dont know. but so far, being 32 aint bad. at the end of my 32nd year, i discovered a lot of things - a lying ex-bf, and that i can survive without such a jerk, that to finish my masters is a sweet victory since it was a 5 year-struggle, that i ve friends whom i can depend on, and that i can make a difference.
i welcome the 33rd birthday, hoping that the next year ahead will make me a stronger woman, as i said, able to make a difference, and in control of her happiness.
i welcome the 33rd birthday, hoping that the next year ahead will make me a stronger woman, as i said, able to make a difference, and in control of her happiness.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Nora's Poem: A Tale of A Wanderer
A wanderer never stops her journey,
Walking through a maze of blur shapes
I am trudging my weary feet,
To an unknown destination.
Worn till hopes are cracked to dust.
The wind howls,
Articulating the pain.
Tears course through the lifeless
Veins of earth.
The quest is too long
The treasure too elusive.
I’m bent by every failure,
Till I drop to my knees and weep bitterly.
Je suis fatiguee′.
Je suis fatiguee′.
Walking through a maze of blur shapes
I am trudging my weary feet,
To an unknown destination.
Worn till hopes are cracked to dust.
The wind howls,
Articulating the pain.
Tears course through the lifeless
Veins of earth.
The quest is too long
The treasure too elusive.
I’m bent by every failure,
Till I drop to my knees and weep bitterly.
Je suis fatiguee′.
Je suis fatiguee′.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)