pre-menstrual diatribe

i receive a goodie pack in the post with christmas stickers, gift tags, calendar, and personalized address stickers, in addition to a heart-rending request to my first name for a donation.

this is like another envelope marked, statement enclosed, thereby ensuring i open it. it contains a thanksgiving statement(!!*#) as well as the bleed-'em-dry plea.

sometimes nickels accessorize the entreaties, because only a cad would keep the nickel and not give more in return. i am an embittered cad who callously removes the coins and discards the paper.

all this organized, unashamed soliciting gets my goat. who are they to presume upon my charity, or my gullibility, or my guilty conscience, or even my amiability? or, in truth, upon my laziness, my ineptitude, and my loose change?

my message to the sponsors: fuhget it. when i give, i make my own considered choice and give directly. when i want gift tags, or address stickers, i get my own and pay for them. and if i like your stuff, i will keep it and use it, and i won't feel bad.

wedding hongbao

there is a newspaper article today about wedding financing, the singaporean chinese way. briefly, there is a going rate for the cash gift you bring to the dinner reception, and woe betide the couple who do not receive sufficient lucre to cover the cost of their reception. also, woe betide the hapless guest who gives a gift instead of cash.

having a going rate for giftings is offensive. it's almost a contract for payment. a donation. not a wedding gift.

what society considers wedding extravaganzas to be de rigeur? what parents insist on palatial banquets? what breed of young men and women commit to expenditures they need to be bailed out of? what kind of misguided idiots actually string profit and wedding together in a sentence?

good grief.

christmas cantata

church is very ambitious this year. a cantata! so:

1. J1 and J2, hanging out with the youth worship band, are drafted to sing tenor and sop, respectively. there is an unbelieving twinkle in their eyes as they practise. indeed the predominant expression on the faces of the youth draftees is disbelief or dazedness.

2. i, a life-long alto, am promoted to sop, on account of there being sufficient altos. they need sopranos who can read notes. i can read. the tricky bit is singing what i read.

3. HOM now spends his sundays after service avoiding the choir, to preempt conscription.

all i say is, it takes courage, faith and a certain guilelessness to dare put up a cantata with such a disparate gaggle as us.

the book of psalms - a (gentle) rant

a beautiful rendering of deeply lived experiences, yes. descriptive of many a spiritual struggle and triumph, yes. a natural response of a grateful or suffering people, yes. the confident song of a man beloved of his God, yes.

i wonder why we have psalms for responsive reading though. it's as random as taking it from the book of job, or paul's letters to timothy, in the sense that these are all individual accounts of privations and defeats and victories and revelations. i would read them to know my God better, but psalms are not any more or less extrapolatable than paul's epistles or the gospels or the prophets.

in fact, the sensible book to read publicly and regularly is the book of proverbs, because the proverbs were written to guide the living we presumably do after church. or we could read all the books of the bible, so that we knew what was in it. just not exclusively the psalms, because i don't get the logic.

a boat in the storm

moving every couple of years takes its toll. what have we gained, i wonder, from such vagrancy?

- much solitariness

- no hometown stability

- memories of many goodbyes, &

- pain of starting over.

there are perks...

- friends in unexpected corners

- many churches we can call home

- enjoyment, and endurance, beyond the usual, &

- no moment of boredom.

it's been a lovely ride. i have been allowed to be wife and mom to a degree of luxury, and known richness of heart and spirit i could not have imagined when i joined my fortunes with HOM's well on twenty years ago now.

but for now, just a bit of me, the cowardly bit, would ask for just a little stability, until the J's have done with school here, if God be willing.

i will say of the LORD, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom i trust. -ps 91:2

a tribute to the acer

HOM lives from project to project. the current one, agonizingly dragged out over the past several months, is an attempt to nurse the old laptop back to health.

we have ever briefer periods of temporary remission and now a comatose state out of which he beguiles moments of lucidity. how long, he asks, would you cpr a man? as long as there is hope of resuscitation, i murmur.

and so the heroic measures continue. he deletes, and re-installs, re-boots, and hopes, and repeats the cycle. if you ask me, it's agonal.

history of communication exhibit

it occurs to me that HOM and i belong to the last generation that can personally relate to the history on display.

we used to switch channels by turning a stiff noisy knob. there was one house in the neighbourhood whose black telephone we all used. we have seen the thick cably innards of the 286. we printed on dotmatrix. transistors used to be state of our art. once there was no internet.

to our children these are antediluvian, who were raised on the remote control and mouse and who learnt to power point as they learnt to wield the pencil, who cannot contemplate a pre-networked world.

today HOM and i look and remember and marvel. tomorrow, perhaps, the J's will look and be amused and relieved.

mars & venus, or perhaps just me & him

finally we manage an offspring free museum visit, which immediately frees us to see whatever, eat whenever, speak uninhibitedly, and actually enter a museum without facing vociferous objection.

i am fascinated by: the skeletons the gems the crystals and the hope diamond

HOM is fascinated by: the computers the airplanes and the rockets

actually i am a little disappointed in the enormous gems. perhaps it's contempt from surfeit. the stones are so behemoth that they lose their chief attraction for me, which has always been their elusive twinkly quality. a star twinkles. a luminous elephant gives indigestion.

a middle-aged date

pack the kids to school

look up metro

look up free parking

look up cheap parking

look up food

program gps

and off we go!

vindication

well i never! having paid much good money to mr ali at the driving school, i am greatly relieved that he has indeed worked a minor miracle on J2. this is as close as you can get to inserting raw stuff into a machine and collecting the nicely finished product at the other end.

a couple more try-outs with her, i think, and i will be able to let her loose on HOM. HOM does not handle nascent drivers very tactfully and much grief is sometimes generated.

point of reflection: how do you recognize an embryonic driver?

answer: when the car does not pass pedestrians.

cold comfort farm - stella gibbons (1932)

modern young lady with great good sense meets accursed countryside complete with foggy gloom and efficiently shakes it into shape and cheer. shades of (a young) mary poppins/ jeeves/ simon templar versus the moors of wuthering heights/ jane eyre/ silas marner with the cloister and the hearth thrown in.

this has got to be the most delicious confection of wickedly understated wit that i have had the absolute pleasure of reading in years.

content: 5/5 (i love parodies)

style: incomparable

bucket list

mental capacity assessment - living will - advance medical directive - curative treatment - palliation - life sustaining care - life prolonging care - substituted judgment - best interest judgment

it is ironic that dying, which is the most private of all our actions, must be so hotly debated and inspires such public defence. surely the longer road of life to death's door and beyond carries greater import, and permits more appropriate participation, than the shape or size of this one aperture.

art imitates life

the education bestowed upon flora poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; - stella gibbons

i suspect this is a painfully prophetic description of what will have been bestowed upon J1 and J2 by the time we are done too.

heartsink 2&3

is when the power does a double encore. it is not easy for one's heart to soar at the sight of the excavator.

sleepless in langley

so i stumble downstairs at four in the morning when the power returns in order to start the wash before that pile of laundry spontaneously begets lauderettes.

heartsink

is when the power has been out for five hours and you finally see the lights of the service vehicle chugging in pitch darkness from frontyard to frontyard and realization dawns that they are checking everybody's cablebox to find the answer too.

ezio - handel

benefit of taxi duty on saturday afternoon: i get a long drive home in heavy traffic and no one to stop me from listening to the week's opera offering on the radio.

and today there is actually a happy ending to all that drama! i think this is my first non-comic opera that does not end with the hero and heroine perishing in all their melismatic glory. very satisfying, although, as usual, i have no idea what language it is in.

thankfulness

there are two maple trees at the corner where harvey turns into waverly. i remember the smaller tree from last fall, when it stood stunningly and impudently redder than its elder amid the other trees. today the leaves of the bigger tree have turned copper, a prelude to crimson.

yesss. the mugginess of summer is making way for my favorite season. the long week has become the weekend. my cough is responding to the budesonide. HOM returns today from his trip. a school of blackbirds decides to frolic in my backyard. and a little red robin streaks through it.

anatomy of bronchitis

this is how it feels to be consumed, i think - when every breath is dragged out by head-pounding effort, and yet the expense so little relieves the frightening tightness. i have inhaled so much that my fingers are in fixed tremor, and very unprofessionally i do not recall how many puffs i have had.

when i don't speak, i discover, i feel better. so i slink along, a silently tremulous, hacking ghost. a tremulous ghost with a bad headache.

variations of dinner at home

dinner with company - fully clothed males, iced water, hot dessert

regular dinner - sloppy casual, byo drinks, decent conversation

reading dinner - sloppy, byo books, companionable silence

i have a niggling sensation of maternal guilt at how happily i embrace reading dinners whenever HOM is away on a trip. the story books appear together with the dishes and linger after the food part is over. does this make me a bad mother?

giving up the ghost

back in the day, the euphemism was pass away. today it has become necessary to euphemise that.

the only place a person dies these days is in a formal obituary, and then not every time. everywhere else he passes on. if it were me, i would prefer to die. there is a dignity in unambiguously and accurately expiring.

for that matter, when did expiry date become expiration date? is it pure verbosity, or a cultural distaste for short and blunt?

how to read

what is it? - what?

is it valid? - why? how? good?

what is my response?

to paraphrase grammar, logic, rhetoric.

today i realize that reading will take place over the rest of my life, with no syllabus and no schedule, just many good books some of which i hope to be able to read.

in the land of second chances - george shaffner (2006)

i can't get past his theology. but that does not stop this from being a funny, fuzzy, nice little modern fable that keeps me up past my bedtime, which is no mean feat.

i am captive from the moment i read the jacket, and as i go on i hear the midwest drawl, and the black accent, and the colonel sanders twang. i am transported to a different world - a kinder, full of esprit de corps sort of place, and the ending fits and warms the heart even though, like i say, i can't get past his theology.

this, i realize, is the first male writer of fiction that i've read in a really long while. vive la femme!

so many books, so little time - sara nelson (2003)

the premise catches my imagination - the chronicle of a year of reading. she reads avidly, he reads cookbooks - i can relate. two or more books at a time - me too. she describes falling in love with a book - i know that feeling when a book draws you in and you stand at the stove cooking and reading simultaneously.

sara nelson, i think, is an almost-kindred spirit.

what holds the book back is the awkwardness of her hand. the comic touch is a tad heavy, and her choice of words is iffy. my gold standard for brash american comedy is jenny mccarthy, i think.

i am not finishing this one.

missing you

i love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light... i love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life.

i am blessed that the wild loves of youth have quietened to a gentler tenderer regard.

ps16:6. not because i deserve the good, but because i have received much grace.

vanity

top cme news this week on my medscape: smoking, high bp, diabetes may lead to dementia; smoking may increase risk of tb; quads strength linked to lower risk of symptomatic knee oa.

why does research seem like so much rehash these days? have we run out of practices to alter? paradigms to shift? startling stuff to discover?

tamoxifen use in ER-positive breast cancer increases risk of ER-negative breast cancer... is a little bit new, i guess, but also a little bit old.

psa screening does not improve survival... uh-huh. dat what we been a-sayin'.

allhat... dash diet... old wine in new skin... duh.

seems to me when we bought the evidence based stuff hook line and sinker and threw out everything else we gave the researchers plenty more studies to milk out of the old cow.

9/11 service

my first, and a reminder of God's bigness and my smallness.

job38:1 who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? in realizing that God is sovereign it becomes rather silly to ask too many whys.

what i don't get, however, is the way people like to talk about the sacrifice of those who died. the deaths were senseless and tragic, but those who died were victims - wrong place, wrong time, no choice. to label them martyrs diminishes the actions of others who have chosen to pay the price of their convictions.

unscratchable itch

feel dashed irritated when people eliminate their initial pronouns. may be forgivable when scratched out in bad handwriting but quite awful typed out. feels like decapitated chicken.

wonder why they do it - sloth? over-friendliness? misinformed style?

backtoschool frenzy

i go to staples to buy school supplies. to my horror, half the school district is of the same mind.

this is payback time, surely. after weeks of being courted with splendid deals on paper and stationery in the final part of summer vacation, i turn up today, armed with a teacher-mandated list for items that not only do not seem to be on sale, but which are equally coveted by my fellow shoppers.

and how. and the price tags! i am left with no option but to pay a small ransom because the alternative is to dawdle and have someone else make off with my items, thereby risking my having to drive to office depot (where the other half of the school district is shopping) to begin all over again.

#?*!

the nature of the telemarketer's cold call has changed. this used to be effective strategy:

• ring ring. caller id shows an incomprehensible tag. (bright voice): may i speak with the lady of the house? me (in flat accusing tone): are you selling something? (bright voice): oh no ma'am. i would just like to tell you about this offer... me (rudely interrupting): that's all right. i'd rather not hear about it. off you go. or,
• ring ring. ditto above. (bright voice): may i speak with the man of the house? me (flatly): why? (bright voice): i'd like to speak with the man of the house please. we have an offer we want to tell him about. when shall i call again? me (coldly): that's all right. you needn't call again.

this is no longer useful. they have replaced those bright voices with recorded messages that start running when you innocently answer the 'phone, so although you may wax lyrical in all manner of colorful language and spew forth as explosively as your spirit desires, you'd better not do so because only the children will hear you.

mark14

mary of bethany: sister of lazarus, woman of the world.

what she does: breaks an alabaster jar of pure nard over Jesus.

why: deep gratitude, along with awareness of deep poverty. the pauper's only possible response to the sublime is to surrender what there is of worth, not because it is worthy, but for want of something better.

my response is not, what beautiful thing can i do for my lord today? it is this - in my brokenness which has been touched by unbelievable grace, how do i say thank you?

mars and venus

in an unusual fit of love and devotion, i accompany HOM to the hardware store, wherein our differences emerge.

HOM looks at:

• the big drills the hand-drills the drillbits the batteries the power supplies the fixed stuff the portable stuff as well as other dinky stuff

I look at:

• the vacuum cleaners, and
• the courtesy bench, to which i cunningly sidle.

miss manners

ill breeding knows no borders.

today i meet an impatient black car as we all try to pour ourselves onto the freeway. he's trying to pass the car ahead on the ramp. actually, that's the enclosed, one-and-a-half-car width ramp that leads onto the four lane freeway. there's no space on the left, so he tries the right, and then we're on to the biggie anyway.

it reminds me of the obstacle course at the asian supermarket. many asian children refuse to follow stereotype, and are not sweet docile creatures at all. they are in fact blindly, frenetically, and loudly mobile, particularly in public spots, forcing disenchanted or unrelated adults to pass them as quickly and as bloodlessly as possible. their minders, of course, see them as bundles of life-renewing creative energy.

which brings me to my favorite dictum to modern parents of non-adhd children: seen, not heard, get it?

a few more encounters like these, and one will be driven to speaking in punctuation marks.

extreme labels

i find myself wondering why parents would bestow amazing* names upon their hapless and unsuspecting offspring. for e.g.: ggwendolyn (and do you sound the double-g?), or kiwi (bird or fruit, dearie?), or brothers track (& field?) and trig (a.k.a. geom, perhaps).

could it be that in a desire to be freshly unique they forget that, short of some pretty drastic action, the child has to live with his albatross well into the years to come?

*by amazing i mean a name that causes the listener to pull up short and respond (privately) in parentheses.

why i am still on facebook/obituary

1. it's the only contact i have with some people.

then again, we had email, snail mail, and the telephone before i had fb. also, enough long lost friends have been found. i don't exactly miss those who are still undiscovered in cyberspace.

perhaps it's time to quit a fundamentally superficial self-aggrandizing overhyped social advertizing tool.

why i am fed-up with facebook

1. i don't want to play what cardiac dysrythmia are you, or what degree of bored are you.

2. i don't get the thrill of poking, or jabbing, or punching.

3. i prefer the real deal to pretty pictures of flowers and kisses.

4. i don't want to know what color underwear anyone is wearing today.

escapism

what makes a good swordfighting show?

fundamentals:

• effortless flying through the air. which is why the samurai genre, the karate shows, wong fei hoong a la jet li, bruce lee, star wars and middle earth will never cut it.
• a clear good/evil divide, with good the final victor. no ambiguity, ambivalence or angst.

the characters:

1. a good looking supremely skilled hero. please, no anti-hero type who scores because of his innate goodness, or cunning, or serendipity. and no average joe either. this guy must eventually be unbeatable.

2. a beautiful, equally skilled heroine who becomes hero's partner in love and life.

3. the villain(s), who must be superlatively evil and just a shade less adept than the hero, thereby setting up the denouement where the hero will ultimately triumph.

4. a couple of swordsmen/women missing limbs or eyes who nevertheless rise above their disability to attain great mastery, on either side of the good/evil divide.

• forty episodes minimum.

for the record, these are my all time favorites:

hero: andy lau (yang guo)

heroines: idy chan (little dragon girl), michelle yim (one-armed nun)

villain: that ouyang fellow in the first condor story