Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Money Money Money

This morning there was an article in newspaper about one lady who had just passed away, she inherited a lot of money and since she had no spouse or children, there is a hunt to look for her nearest relatives, her aunts. She was fifty over years old, that makes her aunts…much older. They might have children though, the newspaper said the only clue they have is an old photograph of the lady and her two aunts, when she was, guess from the pictures, maybe eleven to twelve? The tricky thing is obvious, that would make a lot of people suddenly find themselves related to them. We are talking about hundreds of millions here, so it’s a lot of motive for gold digger or even ordinary fellows to take the opportunity. Anyway, looking at the picture, she looked like three quarter of Singapore population or even the entire world of Chinese. They say Chinese are look-alike, with award like that, even an angmoh would try to acknowledge themselves as relatives, if money was enough reason for them. Well, a lot of it.

Myself, I also don’t mind, of course, to find that I am actually related, to someone, somehow or whatever, who gives me a windfall out of nowhere, although I oppose strongly and accuse everyone of being stupid for believing the internet scam of some inheritance from distant relatives or some Nigerian scam.
But around this time of the year, especially, the tax month, when IRAS people try to take a piece of my hardwork away, I wish I had so much money that even I have to pay a lot of tax, I do have a lot of money to pay the tax from my money so I don’t need to worry about money bla bla bless…

Dreaming to be rich is almost everyone’s dream, although most people are not aiming for the money, but the pleasure it can gives. Every Wednesday and Saturday, I guess, there is a long row of queue in Mart outside my block until my block of people wanting to buy lottery, or similarly, people hitting the jackpot in the casino.
Sometimes I look at them and daydream, if I can make a machine that absorb these people’s wants, dreams, hope and pray, I can create an energy source that’s never going to run out. It’s so amazing that I bet there are more prayers in casinos than churches.
Sometimes I am tempted to think about taking a chances in lottery, apparently my friends also think the same, although we never had enough will to really step and buy them and joining hope with the others in the queue.

Although I’m not, and might not have a chance to be a millionaire (how would I if I don’t buy lottery) I sometimes think of what I’m going to do if I have a windfall, let’s say a million. I always stuck in three priority things, I wonder,
First is I want to have a pleasant property, a very nice place to live that I can decorate as I want, put as many things as I like, have specialized room for different activities, and enough places for me to own pet dogs, big and small ones, and oops, some box filled with liquid for us and us only to swim, maybe a gigantic water splash and spiral.
Second, travel around the world.
Third, a chance to bring everyone in my core family for a holiday together.

To my horror, one million sounds like not enough for those. Dang!
But don’t worry, try pass it to me, I would manage.

By the way, is there a chance that I’m related to that lady, far far away niece maybe?


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Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
- Henry James

Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
- Rita Rudner

I told the Inland Revenue I didn't owe them a penny because I lived near the seaside.
- Ken Dodd

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
- Spike Milligan

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
- Spike Milligan

I have enough money to last the rest of my life, unless I buy something.
- Jackie Mason

Money can't buy you friends, but you get a better class of enemy.
- Spike Milligan

There will always be death and taxes; however, death doesn't get worse every year.
- Anonymous

They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money.
- Al Capone - protesting the IRS claiming large sums of unpaid back tax.

"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."
- Seen on a bumper sticker

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Bibir Jontor

Bibir atas gue lagi jontor. Entah kenapa, beberapa hari yang lalu tepatnya, gue berasa bibir atas bagian tengah gue kering, jadi gue pake2in banyak pelembab. Tapi besoknya, mulai deh bibir itu jadi jontor. Sexy kagak, nyeremin iya. Emang sih gak gitu keliatan jelas, karena ukuran normalnya emang biasa2 aja , tapi gue berasa dong, gue yang punya!
Tadinya masih cuek, ampe ngaca dan baru kelihatan kalo bibirnya itu kayak disuntik apa sih namanya botox, detox atau apa toh, kayaknya ada istilahnya deh, tapi apapun istilahnya itu ini pasti bakal dikira jenis perawatan yang ala puskesmas, yang subsidi abis dari pemerintah, jadi kagak bermutu dan kagak sexy.

Herannya, gue gak tau penyebabnya, dibilang alergi, gue gak makan apa-apa yang aneh, biarpun bolong2, gue mulai usahain makan vitamin, gue juga gak habis berjemur atau pergi ke tempat yang cuacanya ekstrim. Pokoknya, apa yang gue makan dan lakukan tuh hamper sama dengan empat juta penduduk laennya disini.

Udah itu, mulai berasa gatel, enak sih digaruk2, tapi kayak orang bego, trus suka berasa berdenyut-denyut dan mati rasa juga. Tampangnya jadi kayak dilipstickin, karena warnanya jadi muerah dan tebal. Trus kemaren dan hari ini saking keringnya jadi pecah kayak petinju digebok orang. Karena berasa ketarik, jadi susah ketawa, kalo ketawa langsung brodol. Kemaren ama hari ini aja udah brodol berapa kali gara2 ‘terpaksa’ ketawa. Habis, aneh kan kalo ketawa bibirnya gak gerak dan merenggang?
Herannya tuh bibir bawahnya normal, gak kepengaruh dan oke-oke aja. Mungkin ntar sorean gue ke kantor deh, buat ngebuang waktu ngantor hehehe, cuman malu juga.
Ngapain, kata dokter. Nih, bibir. Emang kenapa. Jontor. Lha, segitu tuh jontor toh?


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Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
- Murphy’s Law

I’d like to borrow his body for just 48 hours. There are three guys I’d like to beat up and four women I’d like to make love to.
- Jim Murray

Monday, March 12, 2007

Voila

Voila! There are big things and small things I haven’t backed up yet. Gotta flash back bit and bits.


The Move

So, it’s official. Mid of March, my elder brother’s family will move to Doha to reunite with him. It’s quite a sad thing in some selfish way, but of course I’m happy for him. Hope Jovan and Xin-xin with their parents can visit me or I visit them often in the future. It’s quite unlikely for me to be able to visit them though, First, my leaves this year is not enough for my needs. Second, it costs thousands to fly to Doha. Third, there is no diveable area around there. Forth, in summer, forty-over degree can practically kills me.

My Mom will go with them for the first month to help them settling down. Afterward, I ask her to come and stay with me, since my Dad is almost always here, I don’t want her to stay alone in Jakarta. She can of course visit my other brothers often, but in Jakarta, it’s difficult for her to move around without the ability to drive. Here, she can go everywhere and even picking up some computer and English course like what she always wants.

How it affects me except in emotional way of this moving, perhaps I won’t visit Jakarta that often anymore. Maybe the next meeting point for reunion would be here, although we have to seriously working on with the space. As long as we have the will, there will be a way, tokh?


The Freaking Lizard

I wrote before about my fear of lizard. But here we go, you see, they are ugly, with rubbery skin, bulging eyes and scary tongue. Beside the physical appearance, the have nasty habit of cutting their own tail, and the tail has nasty habit too to jump around. Hiiiy, jumping body parts! I think the lizard also don’t want to see my leg jumping around! So, spare my feeling, please. Other than that, cicak=lizard is stupid, because they always hide in the window or door frame, as the result, they would get squeezed to death. Or they could die from heart attack or whatever the hell I know, my brother found one ‘sleep’ next to him in human-like position, like flipped around. Maybe the main reason I hate cicak. Maybe because of two fine days, my cat killed them and left it around and it stuck to my feet. Horrible. Really really horrible. I prefer spider, maybe snake, or maybe even, komodo dragon.

Fortunately, my house here is free of cicak. I don’t have their source of food, mosquito. But once in a while we will have a visitor. There was a sighting of one small cicak in my house few weeks ago. It bothered me, I’m scared of stepping onto them, or squeezing them into the door frame or thinking about their tail jumping around or them dropping off on my shoulder. It’s gravity, I don’t know how they have those sticky hand and feet, but I know gravity works.

Then one afternoon, the cicak went into my bedroom. I went berserk and tried to chase it away with ‘hush hush’ and waved the broom like mad but to no avail. My mother in law came to investigate the noise, lucky, she is not afraid of them. So she whacked the cicak with the broom. Ouch, the other thing I scared the most is penyok living things. Huek, I could die seeing those. Then, of course the cicak ran to me. I had to climb the table, I hardly find myself out of control especially because of animal, but I didn’t feel the need to shame this time. So the cicak was smart enough to hide between side table and the bed frame, but the effect was worse. It was cornered, and she now could whack it with all her might. After a while, she said the cicak had gone limp. I actually felt sorry for it, and she would use something to drag it out.

The description below is graphic; it’s a warning for reader with weak stomach.

The limp cicak was dragged out with a piece of thin 3mm diameter circular wood I gave to her, yes, I’m accessories to a brutal murder, I couldn’t help to think that the wood would poke the lizard everywhere before she could find a point to drag it out. It was dark in there, I didn’t witness anything, but my mind tortured me enough. I tried not to think of Satay Cicak. Then when she managed to drag it out, it still tried to run but very slowly, and she of course whacked it again with the broom.

Oh my God…,. Hayah, it’s too much to bear lah, but I really admire people who are okay with cicak, we need more of them in this world.

So, that is one of my shameless day in front of a person I should have impressed. But to all cicak, I hate you because I pity the hard life you are, the way you are killed everywhere, I know you might help to prevent dengue, but please don’t come to my house and don’t breed too much.


The Big Family

It’s not often, but on my visit to Jakarta, reunion dinner night, my first uncle invited everyone to go to his house. So the siblings, my mother and her three brothers (like me!) are to gather together with all the family they bring. The concept is quite unusual, something I don’t imagine will hear from my this uncle. He said that since we witness many unfortunate events happened to our relatives, we should treasure the time and gather together when we could. I agree with him. Since my grandparents are not around anymore, he as the eldest initiated the formal gathering.

It’s the first time we had reunion dinner outside the family, with bigger family as far as I can remember.

From the four siblings, there were as many as 40-50 kins. Their spouses, their children, the chidren’s spouse and their grandchildren. It’s amazing and I’ve hardly seen my uncle happier than that day. Every other uncles too, who used to frown and frightened us around, now we are bigger than them. He he.

Because every married cousins or siblings of mine all already have kids or expecting, I thought I would be the target, as usual. But surprisingly, no. It’s my youngest brother who brought along his two-months old baby, Nadia. Nadia has dark complexion and so ‘unisex’ face, the parents had tried to dress her so nicely. Pink shirt, flowery pants and even a pink hair band with big pink butterfly and big pink flower, bla bla, they still asked, Is it a boy or a girl? Gubrak.

So I guess, nobody can never escape from those type of question. Eh, maybe that’s why older relatives are so nosy, maybe it’s their revenge from what they had gone through?


The Class.

We went to our DM second class, which we learned about The Physics of Diving. It was crazy, the three old heads had to once again do some physic calculations, learned about pressure, atmospheric and gauge, bla bla, bli bli, and solved the essays. It’s more difficult for us because we didn’t study them in English in the past. So it was quite a head cracking lesson that day. Further more, the book I should have read and will have to, the Encyclopedia, I hadn’t touched until that day after the class. I hardly realized that it exists. It’s a book with not many drawings, very small fonts, and talking about the history, physics and physiology etc that have respiratory and cardiovascular drawing and even about Boyle’s law, Charles’s law, Dalton’s law and all we ever want to be is to become a better diver.

The book is contagious, everytime I read it, I will collapse into very very deep sleep. If you want to see three thirty and thirty plus adults cracking their head to solve the some simple math, you know where to find us.


The New Year

Even though when I reached Singapore, New Year has reached its eighth day, it’s not over until it’s over. We had lunch celebration in the office. We learned about one culture from Singapore, that they have this kind of food, with carrot, some kind of rubbery bihun, peanuts, miscellaneous thingy all mixed together with maybe vinegar or some sort of oil. If I get it right, everybody would gather together, holding a chopstick, and mixed all the thing together, up and down, up and down while saying good wishes. Sometimes it comes with shouting, Yammmmmmmmmmmm something. Me and my husband had the same reaction, although we were in different party the first time we heard it. So everyone would shout as loud as they could, the louder and the higher the chopstick, the better. We thought there was a riot or a war, honestly, it almost scared the crap out of me.

My friend told me, this is Lo He process, I don’t know how to pronounciate it. We didn’t shout as our department lost the head, the boss was joining another boss. So we just united our chopstick and played high up and down. Obviously, they were all very skillful, I couldn’t catch the speed and my chopstick fell from my hand and mixed together with the food, being tossed here and there, and suddenly, ‘Hey, whose chopstick is this!?!

I tried to hide but I was the only one holding one stick.

After that, as usual, orange party. Orange everywhere, the tradition is to give orange. Our office had four box of oranges, but no takers. Because the oranges were hard and not nice. They should ask my colleague to distribute the oranges, but instead I was the one because I picked up the call, wrong place and wrong time. Because I couldn’t carry all the oranges, I had to use the traditional bamboo basket, oh, my dignity.


So, those are my rojak stories.
I do realize I want to be somebody in always high spirit, although once in a while I’m down parachuting, I hope I always climb up shamelessly. : )


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Pain is the sensation caused when weakness leaves the body.
- USMC

Always behave like a duck - keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.
- Jacob Braude

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

...

It has been hectic week for me. Exhausting, stressful, enjoyable, sad, they were all come together.

But mostly, these last few days, sad news is all around. Brother’s father in law just passed away, this is the third deaths of relatives this year. Although I’m not close to them, but it still affects me,
This morning also found out that my former lecture in UI had passed away. He was still young, he was kind, friendly and helpful during my university time. I hope he rests in peace and his family can stand together during the difficult times. How life is so fragile!

Yesterday, the tremor of Sumatra earthquake was felt in most part of Singapore. My office is located in high-rise building, but I was away. Second time, I didn’t feel a thing, but others felt it. Blame me, I didn’t feel anything related to earthquake, even when almost everybody had run out of the building, I’m too thick-skinned maybe. But if we feel earth quake tremor, while the epicenter is in Sumatra, then it must be bad there, and it is. Another news was the plane accident of Garuda, still unsure what happen and how is the casualties.

Gnaw! Whatta tired mind!




Life…don’t talk to me about life.
- Douglas Adams