[The Journey]

by Mary Oliver (Dream Work, Grove Atlantic)

On the day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,

And there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.

[when all i'm asking for is a clean slate]

Every now and then you come to some big hurdle in your relationships. Sometimes it's a lingering issue that has yet to be resolved. Till it explodes into one big volcanic eruption. And sometimes even after that explosion, there is still no resolution. Or the resolution is not satisfactory, or ends up benefiting only one party. Simply because someone expects you to be practical, even when ur sanity is at stake. It sucks. But I guess like mum said, only you can bring yourself true happiness. So if I really believe that something should be done, I shall just do it myself. Meanwhile, patience.

[more than halfway through]

Ramadan is zooming past..again. Seems like just a few days ago that I was worried about the first day of fasting...will I survive the day? Haha. Yep and soon only 13 more days to "survive". Things have been going well so far. I think I'm doing a pretty good job...rushing home after work to try to cook at least one dish for buka ("open"/break fast) or sahor (morning meal). Thanks to prof who "officially" gave me 30 mins off work so that I could go home slightly earlier even tho I had no official circular from HR to show him. I gave myself "unofficial" 5 to 10 mins more on certain days..lol. Or shouldn't I be annoucing that? Hehe. Nvm lah..then again lunch hour is 1 hour...so it's not like I'm cutting back on work hours by much.

It would be easier of course if I had more help in the kitchen. 1 hour isn't very much time to cook...alone. But yeah, we've gotten by...and as much as I rant about not liking to cook I do enjoy feeding my family (what more the multiplied rewards of feeding a fasting person)...and I also can't bear to eat the same old food dad buys back every other day...I need variety people! Variety! I guess he lacks creativity lol. Well at least he's cooperative in buying food on days I can't cook. My only complain...my sis ain't spending enough time buka-ing at home with the (already tiny) family. So much so we couldn't even celebrate her birthday with her, on time at least. Sigh. Plus I have no company to go for terawih...sucks being squashed up in the mosque alone haha. Oh well, on the bright side, at least I've been picking up the Quran to read at home. Slow and steady..haha.

The clock is also ticking...to my conference...and the scarier part..meeting the future in-laws...all alone in their home ground. Yikes! I'm one hell of a brave woman if I survive it. Just gotta put on my charms. Haha...*wink wink* ;)

[1.2m is just loose change]

What's a govt that can't spare 1.2 million on building a school for the intellectually challenged? Money-minded I say. Hope I don't get shot for saying this. But seriously, when you earn a million or more a day just by killing people with ERP charges, what is 1.2 million for a school? Or what is 1.2 million when you can build 2 huge gambling dens albeit the protest of the society just so that it will reap you huge tourism profits? Money-minded.

As reluctant as I was in attending the acapella concert yesterday (would rather spend time at home during Ramadan), it indeed touched my heart to see the effort going towards raising money for autistic and mild-intellectually disabled kids from Grace Ochard School yesterday. The video they played was heartbreaking yet heartening at the same time. What some people would consider as unproductive members of the society - well these kids were really making an effort to learn skills in the hope that one day they might make it out to society (a few of them already do, like one who helps out in a Secret Recipe kitchen). Furthermore, they need these life skills so that they can live independently when they no longer can be cared for by their aging parents one day. As MB put it, these are really the heros - who don't use their handicap as an excuse but instead continue to fight on. And apart from the determined young minds, hats off to the teachers too for devoting their lives to helping these kids - it must be one challenging task.

The "emotional blackmail" they used using "When You Believe" (Mariah Carey & Whitney Houston) as background music worked indeed cos right after the video I almost teared and I rushed out to donate. Hehe. It was a worthy cause and perhaps I was meant to go there to be inspired. Plus the acapella groups were good too heh. So if any of you would like to do your bit to shape special lives, please visit this website.

[scrabble scramble]

Believe it or not I finally went for a Scrabble tournament. Another tick of my list of things to do this year. And though I lost 3 out of 4 games (beginner lah...hehe)..I was still high at the end of the day. So high till I didn't mind waking MB up at 7am his time to go on and on about how my first two games were. Poor guy. Haha.

I expressed interest in the staff team 2 years ago but only this year the leader called us to tell us abt competitions. I was one of the newbies..never played in a competition before (does Inter Faculty Games count? Cos I got a silver for that when representing USP as an undergrad hehe). And talk about last min...K only told me on Thur that I shld play for the Public Service Games scrabble competition on Saturday...talk about being unprepared!!

My team mate MR actually knew many of the opponents since she's been to competitions before..like wow. The competitive Scrabble scene...amazing. There I was picturing a bunch of ppl only with my (mediocre) skills from my Literati days (Yahoo's version of the game). But these ppl are like HARDCORE. They memorise unheard of words...list after list...two letter words..three letter words...Z words...Q words..u name it, they know it. Yikes. I hadn't even memorised my short list when K gave me the 2007 list of updated words accepted by Collin's dictionary. Help my poor lil brain! Oh and surprisingly, there were many MEN and Malays (ok not being sexist or racist here..but just thought men would be more interested in like...chess..haha. and abt the Malay part..well...I guess I was just surprised to see they weren't a tiny minority.)

We had friendly opponents...I told my first opponent to be nice to me cos it was my first time...but he wasn't. sob sob. lol. (was hoping since MR knew him..he'd listen to her to be nice to me lol). Second game was really close and really a heartbreak...I was leading all the way with 2 bingo words then I opened up the board for my opponent to score 40 points on his 2nd last word. Ouch. So close..... My margin kept improving and that was really motivating. Won on the final game with a relatively easy opponent..I think they were there really just to have fun (or maybe just so that their organisation cld say they sent participants lol). My opponent was so heck care that she was just making tiny 3 letter words and not caring about winning (can't blame her..by that time we were all pretty tired and having headaches cos of the noise during breaks and well..we did have to use our brains on an early Sat morn haha). Actually we were both quite heck care till we were like taking our own sweet time, daring the other to challenge our words..no loss mah..we were only playing for the consolation prize haha. Anyway that was a pretty easy win for my team...and I guess that was what got us the consolation prize in our category ("losers" category lol). Yay anyway! :P

MR made me get up to get the prize..bleah..bullied for being the youngest in the team. I think I was one of the youngest in the whole competition in fact. So yeah, imagine playing against a bunch of Scrabble experts/veterans...it was scary at first, but really worth the experience. I'm really glad I went for it after wanting to try it for so long. Plus I came home with a (extremely yellow) CSC towel and t-shirt..even tho I'm not a civil servant...haha. It was pretty motivating when K emailed the whole team to congratulate us on our lil win..he even added good job since 2 out of 3 of us were beginners. Wee! Maybe next year we'll come home with a medal ;)

basking in our lil glory :)