We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.
~Franklin Pierce Adams

There are few teachers that actually teach you something beyond math and Physics.

You have so many unspoken of teachers who deserve accolades. The ones who teach you about life in general, beyond the shelter of the school.

I had a teacher in high school, her name was Latha Jagadish.

She was a pretty strong woman, articulate, witty, fun. Years later, one of the things she said back in the day, one of many, I assure you, whilst lamenting over my generations reliance on empty calories, is "How can you all drink those things! Theyre just...FLAVOURED WATER!", comes back to me. She said a lot of wise things, that lady, I wish I had paid more attention, particularly in physics. But thats a lament for another day.

Now its all about 'flavoured water'!

...she was talking about milo, coffee, tea, coke..etc, you get the gist.

Somewhere in my mid to late uni years, I suddenly started making the switch from being a rabid addict to coffee to, wonder of all wonders, tea. Its a little joy of mine to drink tea, which at the end of teh day is more beneficial than the average coffee cup.

Sure, occasionally I indulge in an overpriced iced coffee with a ridiculous name that is supposed to sound sophisticated but is really the sound of their cash registers going "suuuuuuuuuuuucker".

But I digress.

Its still flavoured water, at the end of the day.

Of course, she had a lot of other quote worthy statements. I miss you, Miss Jag, wherever you are, for all your memorable Jagaisms.

although we adore men individually, we all agree that as a group theyre rather stupid

"all the nights we stayed up talking. listening to 80's songs. and quoting lines from all those movies that we know. it still brings a smile to my face. i guess what it comes down to is that being grown up isn't half as fun as growin up. these are the best days of our lives. the only thing that matters is just following your heart..and eventually youll finally get it right.."
-ataris

I am ready to do a lot of things in life, and Im truly blessed for a lot of people in my life.

I am young, educated, articulate, blah bleah blah. In no nonsense terms, I am young enough to do anything I want to do but old enough to know I'll regret it in a few years (or hours). But nevetheless, I've always felt like I could do anything I put my mind to. Unless I couldnt. If that makes sense.

I thought I was ready for anything that life threw at me.

Ah, but no, not quite.

My dad turned a year older yesterday. Thank and Praise God.

As you grow up, its hard to imagine a world in which your parents are old and weak. Growing up, you believed they could conquer the world. You believed their kisses were enough to make your pain go away, and their mere prescence enough to make everything bad nonexistent. Until ithe day you do grow up, and the carers become the ones being cared for, and ones who used to cry in their parents arms become the ones comforting their parents.

I miss the days when I believed my parents were invincible.

Mainly because when I was younger, they were healthy and strong and radiant enough to be.

Age caught up on them.

It didnt happen all at once of course. The signs of aging never do.

It creeps up gradually on them and on the child. At first its just that you realise youre a bit taller than your mom, or somehow the same height or even taller than youre dad. You literally can see eye to eye.

The roles reverse and before you know it, the woman who used to give you cough syrup is the one youre trying to make take it, and the father who used to swing you around in play is the one who needs just a little bit extra help cllimbing that last stair. They dont really know the answers to everything anymore, and is it your imagination, or are their voices starting to sound desperately much much older than you last remembered...?

I blink and my parents look young again.

But I blink again, and no, theyre really not.

But thats all perfectly okay.

I am okay with a world in which my parents are older. Dont get me wrong. I love being able to help out, being able to buy them little things here and there, big things when I can etc etc. I lvoe being able to have grown up conversations with my dad and being treated like a baby by my mother. Its great, finally being able to be old enough to enjoy my parents and realise that when I was younger, they really did only do what they thought was best at the time.

So Im ready to take care of my parents.

What Im not ready for, what I'm just not equipped or prepared or willing to accept, what would in essence be the only thing that could break me at this point in time, is a world without them, for a world without my crazy wonderful out of this world mother and my wise articulate hilarious father.

I am ready for a lot of things.

But God willing, no, please, not that.

Not just yet.

I still have to give them grandchildren, in any case.

And you all know that won't be for a long time coming...=D

Sometimes we don't know we're dreaming; we can't even fathom that we're asleep

"Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a quieter way to lie."
- The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult

It wasnt a stroke.

Had it been a stroke, my mother's actions of dragging him to the hospital would have certainly caused death, as his blood vessels would have popped from the extremely high blood pressure. He was over fatigued and hadnt taken his medicine and Im told he was convulsing and when I was told that, I just didnt want to hear any more details. He was confined but now he's not. He had an MRI scan and went through a thorough examination. He was extremely fatigued.

But.

He's perfectly okay.

My dad is okay.

Thank you for the prayers.

I can breathe now.

a so-called deficit in your childhood can be an asset as you get older.

Anything I ever learned comes down to something pretty simple: Don’t anticipate life; meet it. When you try to anticipate, you’re being an idiot, because nobody’s got the brain to outwit nature. I’m talking here about patience, about believing in yourself. I’m talking here about having courage to wait. You will get what you deserve.
Unknown

You could say I am a writer, a poet, a speaker, a reader. I play with words and soak them in, the power of the written word driving my moods and making or breaking my day. I can spend hours reading about anything and everything under the sun.

Yet I studied accounting and information systems in university, and am currently earning my keep by doing accounts, which has nothing to do with words and everything to do with numbers.

You could say Im a singer, a dancer, a choreographer, a performer. I grew up on stage, from the time I first sang solo on stage for my graduating kindergarten class (shut up, I used to be cute!) to my last proper performance ages ago in university. I wasnt gifted but hey, I tried.

And yet I have slowly weaned myself off the high of the stage, performing when necessary but happiest being behind the scenes and directing. I'm much better directing, writing scripts, producing, choreographing. A performer, Im certainly not.

But I can always say I try.

You could say I'm a Catholic, and proud to be one. I attend teachings when I can, I go to Mass regularly, I serve in my current church whenever I can, I try to encourage my family and friends to attend with me.

And yet when you smell vices off me, or feel my anger when I'm emotional, its hard not to claim me as a sinner and not very Catholic at all.

But its easier to be bad than it is to be good, and in my own way, I do try.

One thing I've always been certain of though is, with the truth stripped raw and when it comes down to it, I am beyond a shadow of doubt, a total daddy's girl.

Of course I love my mother too. But ah, when my father speaks, I listen. (Sorry, mom!)

He says jump, Ill say how high. He says dont do this, and I won't. His word is almost law to me. He says do accounting, I did accounting. He said work in accounts, I work in accounts. Now he does mission work, I want to do mission work. He and I are eerily similar, and in many ways, members of the family often claim that for good and for bad (the temper, particularly), I am the female version of my father. I cant hope to ever be exactly like my dad. I admire my father so much, I love him terribly amd when I hear the comparisons, Im pleased.

Im quite tickled pink, really.

Even if my coloring doesnt really allow me to be pink. But you get what I mean.

So, you can tell then, how my heart stopped at 10.45 am today when my mother called to tell me my father had a stroke.

A stroke.

That doesnt happen to my father, now does it? My father? My daddy?

Forgetting where I was and that I was at work and my boss was behind me, completely reverting from the 21 year old supposedly composed rigid accounts person I am, I burst into tears.

I think I quite frightened my colleagues.

*sigh*

Prayers are demanded, dear readers.

Im more comfortable around people with flaws as I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

"when i was four years old they tried to test my i.q.
they showed me a picture of 3 oranges and a pear
they said, which one is different? it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong" -Tori Amos ' my i.q.'


Did you know its less than two months to Christmas?



Not Clausmas, okay, not that commercialized version of the celebration of the birth of my Savior, but Christmas. Its coming and I can feel its tingle.


I don't blog about my faith very much, which is a crying shame, because its very much a part of my life. I am a baptised Catholic and I feel my most at peace in the sanctuary the Mass offers, in the stillness of the Mass. I rant to God a lot, and I vent, and I rage, but I thank, and I praise, and I worship.

My faith is something I treasure, and if that makes me different, or simply one amongst the multitude, then..I'm okay with that. Either way, its a part of me and Im sure it will be for a long time coming. Im enjoying serving in my local church and community. I have a lot to make up for. Yuck, that just made what Im doing seem less somehow and ugly. But it doesnt make it any less true.

It was amusing the other day when I was totally lost about how to do something at work and a colleague looked at me and I asked pleadingly"what should I do?'' and they said,'just do what you do best!" and I asked what and they replied, "be pretty!"

I waited for the laugh, for thepunchline,and when it didnt come, thats when I realised they were serious. Huh. Me, 'pretty? Hahaha, thats a laugh and a half, and while likemy work, I have my good days where Im somewhat pleasant to the eye, and lately I get complimented for things beyond the so called brains loads more these days (and allegedweight loss)....it just doesnt fit.

The thirteen year old in me is flabbergasted, I tell you.

Maybe because Im back in Brunei, where my adolescence took place, so the setting just seemed surreal somehow. By the time I got to uni, I was much lessawkward,the boys didnt seem to mind the extra weight, I was more interested in my appearanceand my photo ops were legendary and I liked my minis and my rebonding but here in this place, sometimes I feel thirteen all over again.

Another point Im considering is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and since most of my beholders remember the thirteen year old with every 'flaw' you could find (you know, the skin problem, the extra weight, the bushy eyebrows, the unrulyhair, the lack of fashion sense, name the flaw, I had it!), its not really that much of a compliment, since even a monkey in a dress could look prettier than me at thirteen.

I was such a boy.

Thank God for the miracles of rebonding and so on. If I lived in the stone age, I think Id look pretty much like the perfect stone man. Heh.

But its been good as I can tell who the people who cared about me at a deeper level are now. Theyre the ones who don't react so much when they see me. They embrace melike we hadnt separated for so long and they ask how I am today, not query my appearance in disbelief and wonder how it happened. Bitches.

It should be an ego boost, but my ego is massive enough already (haha) even without it all and when taking into account the other things Im awesome at that *doesnt* involve the superficial high of outer beauty.

Not that my inner beauty is very pretty, hahahahaha. But my dears thats a story for another day.

I mean, I know my strengths. And while its nice to hear the compliments, theyre almost superfluous, and at the end of the day, I'd rather be known for other things, is all, and I don't need makeup or clothes or great hair to make or break the definition of what makes me...me.

But I wont lie that it feels strangely gratifying on the days when I feel mentally spent.

In other news, man, have I had 'off' days at work! But Im getting the hang of things and getting more confident, and if there was ever such a thing as an on day, then today was definitely one of them.