Oh baby baby, how was I supposed to know.
The boys waving at random people coming down the escalator. Some looked over their shoulders to see who they were waving at, some assumed they were waving at someone else and ignored them, some tentatively waved back and then looked closer to realise that, yes, they don’t know these four guys. Right here is one of the reasons why I love the boys. And why I married my husband. Not that they/he make a habit of waving at strangers. Maybe they should.
When I was in primary school, I used to look at the drawings of some of the other (artistically-talented) kids and think how beautiful their trees looked with splashes of different greens and yellows mixed in. My trees were always the one flat shade of green, and even though I soon learned to mix it up a little – lighter on top and darker at the bottom, for example – it would be a few more years before I realised those kids weren’t adding colours to make their trees more beautiful – even though they were – it was because real leaves on trees are made up of different shades of greens and yellows.
Have you ever seen a turtle swimming in the ocean? I’ve seen them over a dozen times while scuba diving and almost every single time, I’ve stopped to stare. It doesn’t matter that I’ve seen one before or that my diving buddy is going to abandon me if I stay any longer, there is just something really, really beautiful about turtles in the ocean. The way they look as they swim leisurely by, the way the light reflects off their colours, the patterns on their skin seen through crystal clear waters on a beautiful day… I know I’m gushing but I’m just trying to capture that delicious thrill and awe I feel everytime I see a turtle in the sea up close.
There was this one time in Sipadan, and that is one of my favourite turtle memories, when a huge, gorgeous green sea turtle, like the one in the picture, came swimming towards us from the surface. The weather and waters were to-die-for that day and we saw the not-so-little chap coming from a fair distance. As it neared us, I stopped moving. It was going to come right by me and I didn’t even want to breathe because I didn’t want my bubbles to scare it away. It came so close I swear I could have reached out and touched it, but I didn’t. I looked it in the right eye and tried to remember every detail so I could absorb the moment and forever lock it in my brain… and then it was engulfed in a flood of bubbles, from Y who was just below it. (But it did not swim away.)
All of this to try and share a little bit about my fascination with turtles, and to explain why I signed up for the WWF: Egg=Life Campaign. I don’t usually put banners on my site – this is my first – but when I thought about that turtle in Sipadan and the many others like it, I had to do something.
(Picture taken from National Geographic.)
After the public holiday and National Day parade that accompany Merdeka, Malaysia Day is usually acknowledged simply in passing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s always baffled me why we celebrate our independence with such aplomb but give little more than a cursory nod to the day Malaysia was formed. Isn’t this the day we officially became one nation? Or is that not so important?
This year, a very special group of people decided to come together to commemorate the day we became Malaysia. Calling their movement Fast for the Nation, Peace for Malaysia, they are inviting everyone who cares to join them. I hope you take the time to check out their website and maybe, in your own way, remember this day with them in spirit if not in person. I know I’ll be doing that.
I also want to say Thank You to this amazing, passionate group of Malaysians because it is people like them, not politicians with their flowery speeches that preach unity for the cameras and something completely opposite behind closed doors, that bolster my hope and make me proud to be their country(wo)man.
Find myself sitting in Starbucks watching hubby and C demonstrate what diarrhoea looks like with their Frappuccinos and straws. I was mortified. They were so loud. And they laughed even louder. It’s a good thing I was facing outwards, looking onto the street. I’m sure nobody saw me hoping with fingers crossed that none of the dozen people around us were paying attention. Then I looked at hubby hollering with laughter and he looked so happy that I forgot how grossed out I was.
For someone who loves sports, plays music and is fairly coordinated, unless I’m playing Halo or Winning Eleven or one of those impossible X-Box games because they involve six different buttons each with its own function (how am I supposed to remember all that in the heat of battle?), I have terrible timing.
Every once in a while, I have an urge to shop. Those urges used to take place once a semester when I was in university, sometimes even once a year. But lately, I’ve noticed they’re increasing in frequency. Which is still something I’m getting used to because I’ve never been the girly-girl.
That’s not why my timing sucks, though. My timing sucks because these urges always come right after sale season. Without fail. When things are on sale, I’ll look at all the shops with their big “30% off” signs and tell myself, “I really should buy something.” But I never do. Because I don’t feel like it.
And then a week, maybe two, after all the sales are over, I’ll find myself hankering to shop, looking at pretty things online, planning additions to my wardrobe… but it’s so silly because by then everything is back to its original, pricey state. I even read InStyle magazine today and looked at all the £400 shoes for crying out loud.
I know sports and music have nothing to do with the timing of my spending urges but I was just thinking how ironic it is that a person who gets rhythm and understands the importance of playing the right thing at the right time just can’t get her brain to sync properly with a shopping sales cycle.
I keep a list of thoughts and topics that come to me or that I might want to explore later on in my writing, and one of the things that’s been sitting there for quite a long time is this phrase, “Some things cannot be unsaid.”
I’m not going to share the incident that prompted that thought because it involves other people, but I was just scanning the list the other night and I couldn’t help thinking of all the things that have happened in the country recently that “cannot be unsaid.”
Or can they? Can the cow’s head temple demo be “unsaid”? Perhaps, if it had been followed up with the appropriate responses by the guilty parties or the authorities. But it seems what’s happening instead is a series of incidents – I would say mistakes, even – that are cementing that damage. Things that perhaps will forever be used to define certain people and that will always be remembered – truly, things that “cannot be unsaid.”
That is not what I want to talk about, though. I’m tired of being disappointed, of being stunned beyond words (and not in a good way), of feeling sorry. So all last night and today, I’ve been trying to remember positive things that cannot be unsaid, words of encouragement perhaps that people have shared and that have stuck with me, maybe words that I have gone back to during difficult times.
The problem is, I can’t think of anything. Which is rather depressing. And then I thought, maybe it was a fool’s errand anyway. I mean, if what someone said was so great, why would anybody have to un-say it? Miserable as it may sound, maybe it’s the bad stuff that sticks clearest in our minds – or just mine. The good stuff, well, I remember good stuff, but nothing life-changing. Nothing that creates quite the impact bad stuff does.
And that was the end of my attempt to be positive. I guess some things really cannot be unsaid and those things, unfortunately, are almost always the bad and the ugly. The words never go away and most of the time, the doers don’t even care or realise what they have done. It’s up to us to move on.
I was on The Breakfast Show one morning last week. It was a blink and you’ll miss it appearance and – in my opinion – totally didn’t justify rising at 7.15am and waiting around for a good hour and a half for ten minutes in front of the camera. (This is probably one of a thousand reasons why I can never be a movie star.) Plus, they put so much makeup on me even my colleagues couldn’t stop staring. I told them anytime I wanted to scare myself I just had to take out my compact mirror and I was only half joking.
Luckily, I wasn’t on telly alone. Matthias Gelber, Joyce representing skincare brand Origins and yours truly representing HELLO! magazine were on the show to talk about Be The Change, an upcoming environmental awareness event we are putting together come 27 September. Matthias, who has been awarded the title of Greenest Person on the Planet, will be speaking and there’s also going to be a photo exhibition/competition.
Details can be found here so if you’re a photography buff, are interested to learn more about the environment or simply curious, do check it out. We’ve got some really fantastic prizes to give away, so much so that I’m actually a little jealous I’m not eligible to participate. Also, if you can, do pop by. Matthias really knows his stuff so his talk should be an interesting one.
