Memory Fails Me...Again!!

I was eating a burger when I got a sudden flash of a McDonald's outlet I frequented when I was studying in Dunedin, NZ. I remembered the layout, like where the counter was and where I usually sat, but for the love of God I couldn't remember where it was in relation to the house that I rented on George Street!! Maybe it was to the north, but I couldn't remember anything past the Dairy Queen, where a roomate of mine went to but Penthouse and Playboy once. I wasn't even sure if there was actually a street leading straight up.

If I turned left, I would see a nice, expensive-looking motel and across from it was the Botanic Garden where I spent quite a few of my weekends. I loved the old graveyard up there, the Northern Cemetery. It was like being in an old English horror flick: the cracked tombstones, the fallen branches and rotten leaves, the greyness and quiteness of the surrounding, the sudden sounds of big black birds flying off the old trees. But it was also calming and comforting...like listening to Tommy Page's songs while being wrapped in a thick duvan during the cold winter nights.




The cemetery was opened in 1872 for the people of Dunedin, and approximately 17700 people was buried there. If you go by the address, it was eerily situated in Lovelock Avenue. Many of Dunedin's and New Zealand's early settlers and founding residents, such as entrepreneur William Larnach (of Larnach Castle), Charles Speight (of the drinks Speights) and poet, legislator and journalist Thomas Bracken. The first burial occurred on 2/12/ 1872 when a little girl named Ada Massey was laid to rest in Plot 1 of Block 45. The last plot was sold in 1937. A variety of people were buried here because we could see some elaborated tombstones which, undoubtedly, housed the rich and famous. There were some without tombstones, and these were seen in the hard to get area, like the slopes. They probably belonged to the 'classless' people of New Zealand. Well, even in death social caste played its role.

I remembered New World supermarket being close by. Dunedin city was so small and trusting that they allow you to push the shopping cart home...just leave the address and they'd pick it up the next day!! But I can't remember anything beyond the supermarket...

Surprisingly though, I remembered the taste of the fish & chips at another Dairy Queen near Dunedin College of Education. Eating those hot chips from oily paper bags in the middle of winter was pure heaven, especially when I didn't have much money in my pocket...

One or A Hundred??

I was watching the ending of 2005’s The Wedding Date this morning, starring Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney, when it crossed my mind whether it’s better to be with a guy who has been with a hundred women in his past or to be the first with a guy. Errmm…

In the story, Debra had to return home to attend her younger half-sister’s wedding. She hired an escort, Mulroney, because she wanted to fool everyone that she was so over her previous boyfriend, a local bloke. Along the way she began to feel something for Mulroney, and vice versa. Later she found out that the ex broke up with her because he had sex, about a million times, with Debra’s sister, the one getting married to another man (the commodore of Pirates of the Caribbean). And the ex was still in love with the sister. But all ended well, with the ex being chased away, the wedding went on as planned and Debra being madly in love with the male prostitute cum escort.

At first thought, most of us would prefer being the first which, hopefully, entails being the only one in our man’s life. But, at the back of head there’s always this thought that maybe, just maybe, he holds this secret desire to experiment with other women. You know, just to find out what they are like, to fulfill some hidden desire, or simply to put an end to those curious thoughts. And being a mere male whose life is dominated by his libido, he could intentionally or otherwise, fall victim to his primitive needs.

And to have a man who has been with a hundred women choosing you to settle down with, that’s a great compliment. Imagine, none of the hundred women managed to make him love them. But you…arghh… you are special. One in a hundred…literally.

Assuming he had safe sex with those women that is. With everything from herpes to AIDS roaming freely nowadays, if I were single, I would probably take forever to decide and end up a spinster…

The Real Unsung Heroes

When I googled my name yesterday, I found out that I was one of the unsung heroes because I survived cancer. This has been bothering me since after I completed treatment actually, you know, the way I was called a hero just because I withstood six cycles of chemo and numerous Neupogen shots and 15 rounds of radiotheraphy, and a mastectomy and a 12-hour reconstructive surgery. Arghh...not to forget, the 9 months of being completely hairless...well, almost.

The real unsung heroes are the people who stood beside me regardless of stuff I had to go through, like the pretending they didn't smell the puke in my hair (1st chemo, when I still had hair), being OK walking around with a pale, sickly lady...always ready to catch in case I fell down, buying tons of stuffs they read somewhere would help me bear the pain and depression.

The REAL UNSUNG HERO NO 1 would have to be my husband, who was then merely a fiance who had miles to run if my condition so detested him. Instead, he held the plastic bag out when I vomitted my guts out. He even married me when I only had 1cm-hair on my head and one breast, and the prospect of never being able to have children!! How's that for a hero!!! Not to mention the countless hospital trips he had to make, spending the nights on the hard hospital chairs, placed facing each other so he could stretch his legs, day after day. Any other man would have ran off. And any other future-mother-in-law would have encouraged the son to flee the earth...but not his mom.

Tthe next HEROES would have to be 2 of my collegues, Norazila and Noralida. They visited often, and they brought stuffs...and in return, they got nothing!! In fact, I even offended Norazila once, refusing her visit by making some stupid excuse about visiting relatives when in fact I was having a rest at home, and she found out about this. It's kind of difficult to explain that sometimes I just didn't want to see anybody but at other times, I craved company. I was a wreck then, not knowing how to feel, how I should feel, about everything. And Norazila got the bad end of it...just one time thank god. Noralida was a good support with her visits and countless phone calls, asking how I was, asking the details of my treatment like she was really interested.

Another HERO is my father, whom despite his own high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, visited me at the hospital everyday. I had to lie to him about going for CAT scans or MRIs during visiting hours so he couldn't come.

So you see, these are the unsung heroes. Nobody really cared how much they had done, nobody had ever wanted to know. Most just took it that they did what they did because it was their resposibilities as fiance, friends and father. But that is NOT TRUE. They did what they did because that's who they are: people who care about people, people with honest, sincere hearts, people who are, in every sense of the word, HEROES.

NOT pregnant!!!

What a disappointment!! I was so upset this morning when my menses suddenly decided to show up early. Then I caught the sight of my 2-year-old on her bike laughing happily and it al went away. Bless her. Nevermind...I'll try again.

Please let me be pregnant!!!!

I can't wait for next week, when my period is due. I hope it doesn't come because I so want another child right now. I had some brown spotting yesterday, which i hope is implantation bleeding because the timing was right. It's too soon for a pregnancy test but everyday is a torture. If I'm not, then I can be a bitch for a day or two and scream mercilessly at some poor students who fail to pass up some homework. If I am..then I'm blessed with another miracle.

The first one is an endless miracle. I conceived when the doctors told me I could not because chemo might have killed off the ovums and besides, my uterus is retroverted for reasons unknown. They also told me that if by some luck my ovums survived, I should not get pregnant because of the high risk of recurrence. I was even given a letter for a termination, should I desired to terminate the pregnancy. But of course, being my usual stubborn self, I excitedly went through the ordeal and gave birth to an amazing baby girl whom I would never trade for anything in the world.

Now I'm getting greedy and I want more.

If you are in my position, it's kind of a dillema because there is a 50% chance of me passing the darn mutated gene to my children, regardless of gender. The prof who did my DNA testing told me that I have three choices.
1. Be content with the one that I have now and don't have anymore children
2. Adopt
3. To hell with science and have as many babies as I want and leave it to GOD.

I choose no 3. The way I see it, I need to have more children BECAUSE of the darn gene.
1. If I don't live a long life, which my doctors seem to believe, I DO NOT want my daughter to feel alone because she has no siblings to turn to. My husband can always remarry and have more children but my daughter may not feel as she could with brothers and sisters of the same parents.
2. I inherit cancer of the ovaries too so I need to conceive NOW, while both are still in working order.
3. If my daughter carrries the gene, I do not want her to suffer alone because she has no siblings. I may not be around if we are looking at 10-15 years down the road, although I pray to God to let me raise my daughter first.

So now you understand why I absolutely have to get pregnant NOW. But I may not...because my oncologist told me that the single ovum that resulted in my daughter might be the only one that survived the high dose chemo I went through...

Uncle Scrooge's Money

I wonder how it feels like to be filthy rich and have everything at my feet. Imagine, not having to consider the babysitter’s fee or the baby diapers and formulas when buying that obscenely expensive pair of stilettos. Not that it’s practical for me to wear a pair considering that I have to climb up three flight of stairs at least three times a day to get to class, and occasionally chase after the naughty students who love to make you run around like some kindergarten kids at the playground. But to just buy things because I fancy them, and not necessarily because they are useful to me...I really don’t mind having that vault of money Scrooge McDuck of Disney flaunts around at the intro of Duck Tales.

I know someone who was not born wealthy but made it good career wise. Even better, she married a man who’s on his way to become even wealthier than he is now. From the $50 baju kurung she used to wear, none that she owns now costs less than $150 - all silk and satin and crepe. The shoes and the handbags…everything has to be of the same colour! Sometimes I laugh at her poorly coordinated attire. Imagine fluorescent green shoes, handbag and baju kurung all at one go. From a certain angle, she kind of look like a banana tree!! At other times it was all yellow, or all blue. Worse still, they are all in the same shade!!! And don’t let me start on the sequins and Swarovskis…she strongly believes that the more the merrier- even for school, in the heat, among dusty, smelly pre-pubescent adolescents who despise taking baths.

But then again, could that be jealousy talking? Of course not! I’d never want to be mistaken for a frog…

Taxi Driver From Hell!!

My hubby works outstation and at the moment I don’t drive, so I have to get to work by public transport. The bus is extremely unreliable, and I carry too many things to climb up those unfriendly stairs and search for the exact change to insert in the similarly unfriendly money slot, because it doesn’t return the balance no matter how much. So, I opted for a taxi, and apart from the afternoon heat that melted down my MAC and Maybelline even before I reached school, everything was fairly satisfactory. That was until a couple of months ago when an Indian taxi driver freaked me out to the moon.
One day, I was waiting for the taxi as usual, around 11.45 a.m. I flagged down one and it stopped. The driver was in his late 30s, with thick curly hair dampened with so much coconut oil I was sure I could set his hair on fire and fry some banana fritters! The taxi smelled kind of funny too, like old sweat and worn-out leather. He immediately struck up a conversation, which was pretty normal as I too, sometimes, liked to talk to strangers I was sure I'd never meet again. The topic was harmless at the beginning, weather, current politics, price hike. Then he began to talk about his wife, which he claimed was not serving him well, in bed and out of it.
“When we marry, she like sex. Then she had a baby and say she don’t like sex anymore. Everyday, baby only. I sleeping in living room. Now baby in standard 4. Still no sex. 10 years already!”
Ouuchh…
What am I supposed to say? So I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t about to comment on some stranger’s sex life, especially when he held the steering and could, to his heart’s content, drive me to hell! But like most Asians, Malaysians especially, who considered silence as a sign of consent, continued with the sad story of how sexually deprived he was. Thank God, my school wasn’t that far and soon I was safe in the school compound.
The next day however, by some strange (bad) luck, I flagged him down again. And the tales of sex deprivation continued. On the third day, he started asking me about my sex life, which I said was highly satisfactory and if he didn’t believe me, he could always drop by the District Police Headquarters opposite my school and asked for Inspector Rahman, my supposedly husband.
“Your husband police?”
“Sure”. I was impressed with myself. He sure wouldn’t spin me anymore tales after this. Wrongg!!!

On the fourth day, I flagged a taxi and it was him again. I began to think that this was no coincidence. And the probe on my sex life continues…with some subtle suggestions that he could offer more than any police officers could because policemen come home tired while he was extremely virile after 10 years of having none of it. On the fifth day, I purposely came out a little earlier, and managed to get a different taxi. But he got smart too. One day, I noticed him waiting for me under a nearby tree. And when all failed, I told my husband. He chartered me a taxi, driven by a man in his late 50s and a friend of my father’s. Uncle Jamal picked me up at my house and made sure I was safe in the school compound before he left. Kind of funny considering that I’m in my 30s. But, problem solved!!

Except that my forgetfulness is making Uncle Jamal miserable. Twice, I forgot to tell him that I was on sick leave and wouldn’t be needing a ride to work. There he was, waiting for me for at least 15 minutes before he called to ask if I needed a taxi. And my phone was on silent mode because I was enjoying a drug-induced sleep and didn’t want to be disturbed.

Oh well…