Currently Playing: Anne Nalick - 2am.
“…just breathe.”
(because there are times when I just forget how to.)
—————
It’s Ummi’s day off from cooking today, so the sibs and I decided on
having the kitchen ours for the taking. Wids complained I was giving
her all the menial tasks, but to be fair, there wasn’t that much else
to do anyway. We made the basic kuey teow goreng, nothing special. It
had to be done with some improvisations because we weren’t too sure on
how to go about it exactly, so we took our own guesses and liberties to at least make it look
right. Sadly, it came out a little tasteless. Nothing lime and chilli
sauce can’t fix though, so lunch wasn’t a bad experience altogether.
Besides, there’s something about sitting down to a meal right after
peeling your apron off. A great deal of satisfaction makes the food
taste better than it actually does.
—————
One of those thoughts that streak by occasionally:
Just because she’s weak, likes to be taken care of, to be pampered, to
be adored, to be treated with a degree of caution, does not mean she
wants to be babied around all the time.
And just because she’s strong, independent, opinionated, has a forceful
mind of her own, or she’s on an ambitious direction, does not mean that
she wants to go about it alone all the time.
Both these women are too often misunderstood in the ways they want to be loved.
—————
Dare I say it? West Ham is my new favourite team of the weekend. Hahaha…It’s not the results, I promise! It’s how they went against all odds and fought back. I always love a good comeback. =)
—————
A memory:
Last month when Ummi was sending me to the hospital for my second
admission, I remember something she had said as she drove. I had
grumbled about being admitted yet again, and was on the verge of
breaking down because of it. All I wanted was my health back. To be
able to run and laugh and breathe without sputtering.
She told me to be grateful for the fact that I had such an easy access
to health care when there were many who weren’t as lucky. She told me
during her student days, she used to make rounds at the hospital
she was posted at and heard so many sad stories. She told me about how
she would hear of poor patients from out of state who needed advanced
medical treatment and had to be brought to KL, maybe all the way from a
rural area in northern Kedah, and this was when there was no connecting
highway, no North-South Expressway, nothing. There was one patient who
had to make a day’s journey with her mother. Upon reaching the
hospital, they had to wait further for the GL to be released, and all
this for a third class treatment because that was all they could
afford. They left behind a family of 8 or 9, the dad having to work and
to take care of the younger children. In his wife’s absence, the man
took the opportunity to abandon the family and went on to take a second
wife. Can you blame me for being so anti-male sometimes?
The story above is true, and it was a common case back then. As my
mother drove on, she sarcastically said: “You can’t get a better story
than that for a Malay drama. The Malaysian TV industry should be
opening up the eyes of society to these truths, these realities, but
what we have today are pathetic tales centred around the rich and their
petty problems, their feuds, and their corporate companies.”
You want a good story? There’s plenty to find, but you need to stop
looking for them in the wrong places. I am waiting for the day when
Malay dramas stop being so cheesy, and when I won’t be able to see the
ending from a mile away. It’d be great to have a story showing the
strength of survival without having it portrayed too melodramatically.
Some grit would be nice, for a change.
But I digress.
The point is, sometimes we know we take things for granted, and we
remind ourselves not to. I just doubt we will really ever know how much
we do. I certainly didn’t until that day in the car. It makes you stop for once, and really think things through.
Enough said here.
