Pine 38

Last night H surprised me when he took Hannah and me to this café cum bistro somewhere in Shah Alam. It’s a bit pricey but the food is good and comes in large portion. The ambiance promotes relaxation and peace which I welcome after a long hot tiring day. I was telling H how the lamb looks good. H said that they are known for that dish and he said the place was featured a couple of times in a number of newspapers. It serves western food and local delights and what makes it unique is that it injected a few traditional home dishes such as lempeng kelapa. We, Penangites call it roti nyok. It brought me back to the two-bedroom quarters in Glugor where every Sunday dad will make “roti nyok” and we will eat it with mom’s (the night before) “sambal tumis”. Hmm…yummy! M salivating as we speak! We ordered that as an appetizer and I had Spaghetti carbonara as my main course. And it comes with bacon shreds! Yummy! Chicken of course!
I noticed one thing unique about the place was that it was decorated with paintings of women with well-endowed physiques. Similar to those of Botero, Rubens and Matulavics. The subject theme was similar but those found in the bistro, the subjects were more decently clad and it was with an Asian influence. It’s unique! That alone has made my night interesting because it stands out from the rest of the places that I’ve been to eat. Furthermore it’s in Shah Alam, another unique characteristic. I told H about it and he said they talked about the paintings as well in the featured article and yes he said the theme of the paintings is large women. It seems that the owner is a fan of the artist. I was googling in the net in search of the artist but to no avail. I found Botero, Rubens and Matulavics. But I think those at the Bistro are from a local artist because if I’m not mistaken, in one of the paintings, the subject was clad in a kebaya. Fascinating eh?!. This is the spices in my life- appreciating the art of discovery!anad in this case the discovery is art;) Ok..i’m going to enjoy the rest of my weekend. I hope you do too. Have a great weekend everyone.

A good day

Yesterday was a good day for me. I remembered when I was leaving home, I told myself silently that I’ll make sure that nothing or no one would bring me down that day. A silent prayer made with a lot of hope I reached home rather early. It was a day before Hannah’s birthday. I told myself that today I will get my friend back and I will have fun and that it’ll be a great day. I made a couple of useless phone calls and then I decided to check my email. There it was, the much awaited letter! oh..God only knows how understated that statement is! “Much awaited” just don’t do justice to the horrifying times and the wait that I had to go through. You need to take that words multiply it by 100 of sleepless nights and then divide that by all the recurring nightmares that I was having the put that to a power of a 1000 for all the worries that manifested as a result of the wait and lack of sleep! Geez!. I remembered at H’s mom house, I had the same dream for three consecutive nights. I dreamt that I’d open my email and be confronted by a blank screen. All my messages have been deleted! The same for three nights! How spooky I know! Ok ok back to the letter. I got a confirmation of registration to Uni of Auckland! Cool eh! It has always been my first choice and I thank god for this. I called H and he was more ecstatic than me. I could hear it in his voice.
Surprisingly, I didn’t jump up and down or scream nonsensical sounding words or profanities for that matter. I printed it out the letter and made some more useless phone calls then off I go. Across the mountains and over the seas I seek for clarification! Ok looney! I needed to be a bit dramatic to justify all the depression and mood swings I had for the past six *&%*^%$& months! See no profanities just some signs and symbols that I felt like pressing. Anyway, after getting my clarification, I dropped by at Alex’s place and as normal, I didn’t a Kramer entrance and was a bit shocked and stopped dead on my tracks when I saw here entertaining this stranger. Hmm...come to think of it, she seems to be entertaining a lot of strangers lately. Weird! I stopped and she looked at me and then we were transported to an old Chaplin movie. No sound. Just me doing my little dance (no..not the chicken little dance yet. I was saving that for Hannah)in front of her and she smiled and laughed then she muttered silently the word congratulations and I bid her farewell. I felt as if I was walking on air. I still wasn’t filled with a whole of happiness just a big wave of relief swept inside of me and it created a welcoming numbness that has put me in mini trance like state. Until some heartless creature decided that it’ll be a good idea to rip all this welcoming numbness . In a split second I felt pain and sadness. I hate those feelings. I tried to find the welcoming numbness but I couldn’t. It was just pain and sadness. It felt as if I was losing a good friend. I prayed hard for some divine intervention and before long, it came. So by around 5pm, I started to feel the numbness back and happiness was creeping through. It was the best feeling. It was very calming and I know that if I were to sleep then it would have been a good and sound sleep. God knows how I long for a sound sleep. Now the possibility is bright. Anyway, no time for that now, too many things to be done. Hannah celebrations and party packs to prepare. I picked up Hannah around 9pm and the first thing I did when I saw her at the door of the nursery was told her that we are going and that I’ve got my letter. Then without any queue, both of us started doing the Chicken Little dance in front of all the other kiddies. After that both of us laughed. Then a little boy from the mini crowd raised his hand said “I want to follow too”. He’s so cute..He was the one who gave me a rubber octopus! I was so honored. A rubber octopus! That’s the biggest honor in kiddies land!
H and I finished shopping at 12midnight. Thank you Tesco for considering us – the busy, time-deprived poor parents. Slightly after midnight we sang happy Birthday to Hannah and then transformed a corner of our apartment into a mini production line to prepare fifty party packs! We finished doing that around 1am. Then I needed to prepare my things for the next day. By the time I laid down to sleep, it was already 2am. But it was a good day. I’m at peace with myself now. Happy Birthday baby! She won’t let me call her baby anymore, at least not in front of people. She kept reminding me that she’s a big girl now. You will always be that little girl I saw for the very first time covered in gooey on my tummy. Always!I love you baby! Happy seventh birthday my darling Hannah.