I feel like Chicken tonite.
One of my favourite home-cooked dish is Soto Ayam. In cases where the nasi himpit or lontong is not available, mee soto will do as well. And if even mee is not available, just the soup will do. That’s how much of a soto sucker I am.
Uh-OH. The monster is baaaccccckkkk…..
The thing about soto is, you can never get a nice bowl the way you and I like it from shops. They’re never quite the same. The best type to eat is the one cooked at home. Now I don’t care whose home it is, I just know it will taste better this way. That’s why even my close friends don’t even know that I’m a hantu soto, because I never order it when I’m outside.
Fortunately for me, my MIL cooked a nice pot of soto today. I think her soto is as good as my own mom’s, so I am really glad. I’m nursing a sore throat, but do I care that it is hot and greasy and throat-damaging?
Don’t be silly.
So as soon as the dish is cooked, and my MIL will jemput (invite) me to eat (I know, I know, the concept is ridiculous but the truth is, in a Malay house, family members get ‘invited’ by each other to eat all the time. For example, I will ‘invite’ my in-laws to eat dinner, every day, even though I do not actually really bother to hear their answer since I have my ears full with food.)
I do digress.
Anyway, I think I sprinted to the kitchen (I know, it is unbelievable) and did my mee soto ritual of loading up on the chicken skin and chicken backside/ parson’s nose, to be polite (everyone knows this part is mine), drown the dry stuff with the beautiful soup, top it with half a kilo of bawang goreng (fried shallots) and begedil (must have, or else i don’t consider it soto). And the grand finale, the ladle-ful of chilli on top. Yummy.
I always overdo the chilli. I like to eat soto till I’m sweatin’ all over, breathing fumes out of my orifices mouth and nose and panting while slurping up the soup.
I know, I know. Not a pretty sight at all.
When I was pregnant, I think the only craving I had was for soto ayam and I kept on wanting to eat the one from Adam Road, yet the craving wasn’t appeased. It was only when my MIL found the time to cook a big pot for me and Ooyah that I was satisfied.
So I had soto tonight, and I know I will suffer the fate of frequent sessions with the loo, but it’s worth it.
On top of that, husband came back with REAL NICE ayam percik from the pasar malam at boon lay interchange…more chicken for me! I’m a chicken girl! (Moby, if you’re having a RamliRamly craving you might want to drop by boon lay. But the burger isn’t any good, or maybe I bought it from the wrong stall. Or if you crave for the Real Ramli, you can also drop by the same interchange.)
All this talk about chicken and ramli and soto is making me very hungry again. Round 2…
You my laiver.
I stayed up till 5am this morning, till my head started to ache, managed to sleep for 2 hours, even though my mind didn’t stop working cos I kept on muttering all the phonology jargon while falling in and out of sleep. The first paper went okay, Alhamdulillah. I was glad to be out of the exam hall. 1 down, 3 more to go.
After a quick lunch with Kak S at banquet which was about 1-ish, I felt that I had enough energy in me to study awhile in the library across my house. I knew that if I got home I would just sleep, so maybe could squeeze in 2 hours of study for my Sociolinguistics paper tomorrow. Like real ahhh.
Of course the study tables in the library were ALL occupied. Some just hogged the tables for four and claimed the seats are all taken. I managed to find a seat on the first floor of the library. Only after about 1 hour of study, I realized why no one refused to sit there: the place was NOISY! Secondary school kids in their various stinky uniforms were laughing and screaming and growling at the top of their voices. The people who sat near me too were making noise! A pair of guys, I think prolly doing elementary economics in a part-time school or something (cos they look rather aged, hehehe, cakap orang!) were CALLING people on their hps and explaining concepts to their friends! LOUDLY!
Ahhh! Tuiiiii!!!!! Monopolist price wars lor…will go up lor. Ya, they will make 5 lollers, your profit shi 1 loller oni. Yaahhh TUIIII!!!! No. 2 shi na ge kaler, tui mahhh? Yo…becos there’s no credible track mahhh. Na ge shi ni lai-ver de. (rival lah!Aku ingat apa kebender ntahhh) ‘A’ shi ni lai-ver lai le, becos ha, you cannot base decision in wat lai-ver do mahhh. TUIIIII!!!!!!!! Shuo yi, ah, shi simultaneous move lai de….NI BU TONG, WO YE SHI BU TONGGGGG AHHHHHH!!!!
Shi wo de lai-ver lor.
Keadaan di atas dapat kita golongkan sebagai peralihan kod yang ‘unmarked’ iaitu penggunaan bahasa pancangan (embedded language) yang tidak dirancang dan dilakukan secara tidak disedari. Ternyata bahasa matriks subjek dalam transkripsi ini ialah bahasa Mandarin kerana struktur ayat yang digunakan olehnya ialah struktur sintaks bahasa mandarin manakala bahasa Inggeris ialah bahasa pancangan yang berlaku pada peringkat inter-ayat.
Apa yang kau merepek ni syaitannnnnnn…..
So as you can see, for the last hour I ended up doing a transcription of his LOUD conversation. Kira macam revise jugak ah eh. Alright what. I then packed my stuff, swore to write to the NLB management about their MISMANAGEMENT, and off I went to a kaya toast place behind the library. It’s called Kopi Alley. Real deserted. A pity the seats are, literally 15cm by 15cm square stools (really uncomfortable for my 1m by 1m butt), or else I would have sat there to study.
My nice thick kaya toast and tea.
So now, it is 830. I woke up around maghrib and STILL haven’t done anything tonight. Sigh. Apa dah nak jadi dengan aku niiiiiii………
Hmm.
Something outdated I think, but husband decided to try this out.
See la. I’m supposed to be studying right?
Post Exam Activities
In light of the current pressing situation, it is very crucial for the person subjected to excruciating brain-calisthenics to relax the deteriorated cranium organ by visualizing the post-brutality period.
Post Exam Activities I Fantasize About while Reading The Notes that I Fail to Comprehend.
1. Sleep till I get so hungry that I eventually have to get out of bed. Or I can order in McDonalds.
2. Rent from Video EZ all the movies ever made and watch ‘em every night till the dvd player explodes.
3. Go for extravagant lunches and high teas all over Singapore, JB and Batam.
4. Meet up with friends over frothy latte and scones and laugh till my abs develop a 6-pack.
5. Sit at olio dome/ pacific coffee company/ coffee club/ whichever place that serves coffee and crumpets and nibblets and ice cream reading trashy chick lit while waiting for hubby to knock of work, after which we’ll spend the night out.
6. Play The Sims all day and all night while I’m home waiting for the husband.
6. Indulge in everything that is unintellectual for I would have abused my brain all this time studying. Therefore, need 3 months to recuperate before another academic trashing.
Oh yes. Did I mention that my vacation will start on 2nd May and end around 9th August? That’s like…3 whole months you know. Sigh. That’s life I guess. So little things to do, so much time…..sigh sigh sigh. (I hear Husband,Moby, Pinky and Anne muttering something under their breath. Hi back to you!)
There. Now, on to Things that I Shall Do after My Funds have been Depleted by those Activities.
1. Get a driving license and get that car. Or vice versa.
2. Sign up for knitting lessons so that I have something to do when I retire in 5 years’ time.
3. Sign up for whatever craft/painting lessons I can find for the same reason above.
Hmm. Now am I forgetting something here?
Of course not Ooyah. How can I forget you? Of course you are part of my holiday activities to make up for all the lost time. I know that I don’t express in my blogs how much I love you and how much you mean to me and how I will die if I don’t see you for a day and how I choke inside when I’m away at school and how I think of you every nanosecond of my existence. You see, Ooyah, I love you enough not to have to document pictorial evidence and prove to everyone and convince myself that I’m a good mother. That’s what mothers are about, right baby? And I’m glad the mommies I know around here are not plagued by such imbecilic insecurities. Kudos, mommies. Remember: motherhood does not require us to fill a work review form where we list down what we have done for ‘em cuties. AND it’s not the readers that award you the bonus. It’s THE HUSBAND.
Haha. No lah husband. Kidding only.
By the way, (my FIRST EVER) Mothers’ Day is around the corner, innit?
Exam frenzy.
My first paper is this coming Monday OH MY GOD it’s sooner than I think…
Monday: fonetik & fonologi
Tuesday: sosiolinguistik
next Monday: Literary Canon
next Tuesday: Singapore Lit
Preparation status: Finished printing out past year fonetik papers. Staring at papers and feeling heart palpitating violently while trying to convince self that deep down inside, i know this one. But I don’t.
Terms like rumus fonotaktik. Whaddaf…
I can do this. Let me map out my cramming plan. Please ignore this entry because it is gonna be my timetable.
Thursday: tomorrow morn, go to school to clarify something with a lecturer. NO, I am not going trying to get into good books or curry favour or whatchamacallit unlike somebody i know who LITERALLY threw herself onto the (poor) lecturer’s table, kaplunking her (ugly) butt for the rest of our classmates to see…I don’t have to resort to such underhand means to get my grades, thank you. But this pitiful person, do this type of low-down thing also cannot get A. Sad eh? Kesian siak….
ANYWAY, back to my REVISION PLANNNNNN (I do digress when talking about such A-holes).
Tomorrow noon-early evening: meet husband at raffles city to get Ibu’s gift
evening: start with fonetik, then read a few chapters of sosio.
will sleep from aft maghrib onwards, wake at ten-ish, and stay up till 6-7am. Haha.
Friday: daytime; read at least 3 chapters of sosio (dialek, bahasa, teori) Haha.
maybe go celebrate ibu’s birthday at night
stay up all night to do fonetik
Saturday: daytime; do sosio (3 more chaps?)
evening; gallivant (nearby place oni lahhhh)
night; do sosio
Sunday: CRAM LAST MIN FONETIK INFO
Monday morn: THE day. Zombie-fy and stay awake.
Monday noon-5pm: CRAM SOSIO INFO
I don’t feel too good inside. What have I been doing all this while? The government is paying me to be…ermm…scholarly and what have I been doing? I’ve been slacking my ass off. But not really what. I’ve been doing the blardy assignments and presentations, that’s what.
And blog a bit.
I Like You.
Everytime I visit Lam Lee’s website, the sleazy rahmlee song drives me bonkers.
So I hippity-hopped over to SONIFIC SONGSPOT (that’s where he got his jazz song), and got a song specially dedicated to him.
I like you, Lam Lee.
Feeling poetic.
One of the modules I’m doing right now, Reading of Literary Canon, requires us to read extensively some of the great works and writers in Malay Literature, one of which is Chairil Anwar.
I remember reading Chairil’s poems back in secondary school (by accident; definitely NOT prescribed by my slacker cikgu who STILL teaches in the same sec school!) and I’ve always thought to myself, this is exactly how I feel.
The one poem that I still feel strongly for, the very famous poem that is representative of Chairil, is AKU.
AKU
Kalau sampai waktuku
‘Ku mau tak seorang ‘kan merayu
Tidak juga kau
Tak perlu sedu sedan itu
Aku ini binatang jalang
Dari kumpulannya terbuang
Biar peluru menembus kulitku
Aku tetap meradang menerjang
Luka dan bisa kubawa berlari
Berlari
Hingga hilang pedih peri
Dan aku akan lebih tidak perduli
Aku mau hidup seribu tahun lagi
Maret 1943
And this one, never fails to bring this overwhelming feeling of surrender, near-hopelessness. It encapsulates how I feel at times, maybe how ALL of us feel in dire times.
DOA
kepada pemeluk teguh
Tuhanku
Dalam termangu
Aku masih menyebut namaMu
Biar susah sungguh
mengingat Kau penuh seluruh
cayaMu panas suci
tinggal kerdip lilin di kelam sunyi
Tuhanku
aku hilang bentuk
remuk Tuhanku
aku mengembara di negeri asing
Tuhanku
di pintuMu aku mengetuk
aku tidak bisa berpaling
13 November 1943
If this poem sounds familiar to you, it could be that it’s been made into a song sung by Aishah (also known as Lagu Maghrib) 
Enjoy.
Don’t Wank(o) my coffee joint
I’m addicted to the last (is it the last?) legal drug widely available. Caffeine. I must have 2 shots injected. Into my latte lah.
In school, I will go to Hotshot cafe to get my coffee fix. After school, I’d go to CBTL and get a few more shots. On weekends, I will drag Husband or family to some coffee place to get my coffee fix. On days that I don’t, I’m snappy or woozy. Sometimes both.
Husband hates coffee. I suspect he hates it because I love it so much. He doesn’t understand why and how I can go to a coffee joint and just…drink coffee. (Actually there’s always some sorta cake to go with it.)
But now CBTL is no longer in Jurong Point. They tore it down and an ah-lian clothes store called WANKO will replace it. I know. WANKO. Trust ‘em you-know-whos to come up with ‘intelligent’ names like that for their shops. I would love to meet with the proprietor of this chain of shops, Cheng Chung Man, Johnny, and ask him: Johnny, how did you get the inspiration to name the shop WANKO?
To which, Cheng Chung Man, Johnny, will say (with a distinct hongky accent), “Aiyahhh….this one long ago story one. I got ang moh friends ah. They alway tell me, Johnny ah, wank your johnny!” Then they laugh. I donch know why they laugh, but I just laugh. It’s veeeeeeeery funny one. So they start calling me, Wanker. I donch know why, because I tell them, no, my name not Wang, so you cannot call me Wang-ge. You must call me Man-ge. But they still call me Wanker but I think, ok lor. Quite nice the name. So, when I open this shop, to remember my friendship with them, I call my shop, Wanko. More stylo, right? Like ‘’sty-LO, j-LO, wank-O”. That why lah.”
(Methinks my caffeine level is getting dangerously low.)
Oh, by the way, you can visit here to get your supply of ‘upscale, modern’ apparel for the contemporary PRC woman.
Anyway, I hate Wanko. When it’s open, and when I walk past it where CBTL used to be, I will give the staff and clothes there my meannest jeling. Because of the Wanko shop, I have to get my daily evening dose at MC CAFE. The coffee there is bad. I say bad because I don’t see the damn difference between their latte and their cappucino. And I have something against cafes which serve caffe latte in a cappucino cup. So sometimes I even go to delifrance because their coffee is somewhat better.
Thankfully, I have one or two packs of ground coffee from which I use in my coffee press. Black coffee it is then. Better than nothing, right? Especially these many nights I’ve been staying awake to do my ass-ignments, I need my drug.
I really hope they open starbucks or coffee club or my fave, TCC in JP. Or maybe Husband, you can buy me the Miele built-in espresso maker? It is a worthy investment, really. You I spend $5-6 a day on good coffee. That adds up to $180 a month. And I will buy the obligatory cake, so let’s say….$300 a month. The machine costs $5600 only what. So technically, in about 18-19 months, your expenditure on coffee will actually be able to cover the price of the machine. Therefore, YOU I will save a lot of money you know.
Can ah…. cheap price to pay for my sanity (and yours) right?
