Melancholy

For one...

I was watching a movie last night. Amongst plot of the story, it showed the relationship between the husband and wife couple. That they were so open, frank, friendly with one another that if people saw them out, poeple would have thought that they were great friends. They were each individuals in their own right and way and yet being married didn't alter or have to change their individualness, originality but there they were living their lives with one another.

I don't know whether it comes with age, that as you get on in a marriage you are comfortable with one another to be complacent? Is that the right word? Anyway, what do I know... but it was nice to watch. Then again I guess it must be nice to have someone with you in marital bliss till in your old age. What do some call it...? Companionship...? That's what my mother's friends are always harping to me about each time they see me and corner me into talking about getting married again (strange that it's her friends who are harping and not a tweet from my mother herself..., hmmm). Me being Superwoman says "bah, humbug!, what crap, there is no necessity for marriage". On the otherhand Me being Domestic Goddess says "yes, it would be nice..."

Well, those who know my mother, know that she'd not agree to marriage of any kind. My sister is still single. And my mother did mentioned sometime last year, that there was no need for marriage just live with each other, being pessimistic as she is, she was being just that when my sis told her that she was going to get married at the end of last year and I asked my mother to shut up. My sis eventually broke-up with that lovely guy,.. sigh.. Oh hell, my mother doesn't want us with any guy actually, she just wants us to live with her for the rest of our lives.

Back to me, the reason why I say that it would be nice is because I do want my own privacy and home. Privacy to be with the man that I love, or to entertain friends, to be in my own home decorated the way I want it to be decorated (all white and gray,...depressing aren't I?), organised they way I like it to be, smoke if I want to.. and the list goes on of course. Sometimes I wonder when..

Hell! I am 38 years old. But then again what the hell, eh?

I must be in a crappy mood today

World Book Day

Read in the papers today that some book company is celebrating World Book Day, but it didn't state the date of the supposed World Book Day.

Anyway, it got me reminiscing. I do not know whether anyone out there remembers the famed Jaya Supermarket at Section 14, there used to be an MPH on the first floor and Katy's Toys used to be on the second floor, if I remember correctly; and this was years, years ago when I was 8 or 9 years old that would be in 1980-1981.

Every Sunday (or Saturday) was spent at Jaya Supermarket because Cold Storage was there and that's where the family did the weekly grocery shoppoing/marketing. Of course this was preceeded by a walk on all floors, walking ambly through Katy's Toys which I never bought anything because I was not into toys, then down to MPH. I was my recurring fantasy that I would one day get locked up inside MPH when the stores have all closed and my family had suprisingly forgotten about me. Fantasy! How I wanted to stay in that bookshop!

My favourite read, while standing, in that bookshop was TinTin, Asterix not so much. But the books I always bought (meaning my mother buying, of course) was The Famous Five. By the time I was 8, I had finished all the series of Secret Seven, Famous Five and Hardy Boys. By 9, I had started on Agatha Christie, greedily consuming Hercule Poirot and Ms Marple. I was never one for Mills & Boons junk or those Sweet Valley High rubbish.

I gradually went on to having my own National Geographic subscription in my early teens, in college I started on Somerset Maugham (my favourite still), then scouring the second-hand bookshops for him and Herman Melville because it's kind of difficult getting your hands on their books. My particular interest is books printed and bound in the 1950's as they come thread-bound (not all, but you can find them, again, in second-hand dusty, cramped, asthma-inducing shops). It's strange that it was only in my late twenties that I read the classics.

Have A Little Faith

I can't remember when the last time it was that i entered church. Must have been for someone's wedding. It's as though it is the only time that I do enter a church. Such a Catholic I am. Sunday School and weekly mass was never strained/imposed upon me as a child and as such I think I grew up to being almost an free-thinker.

My contention here is that, a religion, should not be imposed on a child, that they should, upon reaching puberty or when they grown-up enough to understand, be given the opportunity to read the various books available on religion and they then deduce the best faith for them to be into. Of course, the concept of God must be instilled when still a child and the moral values and principals of a good human being be taught to them.

I had a friend who once told me that if she were given a choice, she would not be in the religion that she is in now. Then again, her religion is not one to be trifled with. There are some friends of mine who wholly do not agree on my concept of choice but I stress that importance of understanding a religion, any religion, is only by reading about the said religion. There has to be logic (even practicality to restraints, when looked at over a broad view) to all religions, if not each religion would not have millions of followers all over the world.

Death

Death today.

How apt I thought, with the weather being as it is. Rain since 6am. Time creeping ever so slowly that I think I am in a time warp.

How I understand death is that it is inevitable, it is either sooner or later, one way or other, apparent in ever human's life. So, how come is it that some people don't understand this "concept" and want to hold on forever? Sometimes I do understand that as family members, you'd want to do everything you can to pro-long a person's life but seriously and more practically, you know life must come to an end.

I never understood the reasoning and torturous show of compassion by placing someone (especially for the elderly folks or terminally ill) in a hospital, allowing the doctors and nurses to have a full scale permitted experiment of finding out what the heck is wrong with the person what with needles and tubes running in and out and all over the person. Torturous maximus. The person is already in pain and here we are adding to it!

All calls for the person to say that he/she wants to go home, has to be heeded. A person should die in the comfort of their own home, surrounded by familiarity, not the strobing lights of a hospital ceiling.

As much as I understand death.. I hate Death. Such an oxymoron.

Quote For The Day

"They were gay, chatty and even hilarious (such is the natural gift that woman have for deception)."

- William Somerset Maugham

Since...

Since my last posting, I have been to Kodaikanal and Goa in India, again. I love Kodaikanal, cool, cool and cool and Goa was hot, hot and hot.

And this year with a new resolution after Chinese New Year to not be melancholy, I travelled to Bali. With friends!!

I told myself that I would never go to Bali for reasons that it is over-rated, over populated with tourists and such; but it was the country-side that I loved, the endless small roads through villages, hills that you soak in the difference in language (on the signboards), the culture (during their religious activities), the arts (at their dance shows), the architecture (their homes and numerous shrines).

Even though I went with friends, knowing me and how I am, I ditched them at every opportunity I could to walk, amble along by myself, seeing things that they would not see the way I see it. I will visit again, maybe next year, and just head for the north area where it's less populated. We'll see..