Mother Tongue

English is not my mother tongue, but I do think that I've mastered it to an extent of a native speaker (if only that would happen with French and Spanish too!). The reason for the title of this blog is the book that I'm almost done with; Mother Tongue: The story of the English Language by Bill Bryson.

He is probably my favourite non-fiction author. He speaks to me when I read his books, and the subjects that he covers are of course, my favourite things like travelling and languages and culture. All of this written in a wonderful sense humorous light, laughing at himself and others when faced with strange circumstances, and pretty good sarcasm!

We all need to learn so much about each other, and appreciate the differences (if not appreciate the custom itself). Being judgmental and ignorant will get us nowhere. We may think that the smartly dressed man in a queue at the bank is there for business, and the other man who wears a navy blue jumper with a dirty yellow overalls seem like a questionable character. And then bam! The smart man takes out a gun, yelling and screaming at everyone to "get down or I'll shoot!" And the dirt guy would come to everybody's rescue.

That was a bad example. I actually wanted to say something about respecting a culture different to our own. Say it's Christmas (well it is Christmas), and you don't celebrate it, but everyone else around you does. If they want to play Secret Santa at work, join 'em! And when it's Hari Raya, bring some satay and peanut sauce to work, and ask them to try your food. It's not complicated.

There is a bozo named O'Reilly who works for Fox News (a horrible right-wing news network). I feel that he is a narrow-minded fascist, who has no respect for anyone who does not share his values (which are not great anyway). On the news, he was complaining about the Eidul-Fitri celebration in American schools, and comparing it with Halloween. Because the lunar calendar is different from the Gregorian calendar, of course the date for Eid is different every year. Therefore, things related to Eid should not be displayed in schools like Halloween, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Easter.

More on this later. I need to get ready for work.. :)

Needs another push..

My good friend Sofie a.k.a. Santafire sent me a message today asking me to 'like' her page on Facebook, and asked me when my next blog is coming. I'm so bad at this, I promised myself that I will write everyday, and I haven't written for 2 weeks. Very very naughty!

There isn't much interesting happenings for the past couple of weeks apart from being cold, and stressed at work, and (pause, trying to button my work jacket).. what the hell is this??!! Have I grown so fat over 1 month of eating junk food?! Oh, it's not my jacket. It is Ulrika's. Pheww (and yes, she is one size smaller than me!).. Now I really need to go on that diet. My excessive coffee drinking has got to stop, swap that with oolong tea which tastes very light and clean.

Augustus is going on that 3-day diet I gave him, and promised me that he would be thin by the time I go home next year. Haha, we'll see about that. I intend to lose about 5-7 kilos. I think that will be just fine. And doing yoga has definitely kept me stretchy, I can touch the floor when I bend forward! Yeay! Perhaps I should keep a journal for this particular diet and see how much I actually lost instead of just relying on the buttons on my jeans.

I'm going to go and light the fireplace now. It's cooold! Maybe I should be in the fireplace, burn some of those awful calories.

Frost

When I left work last night, I had to scrape my windscreen as the temperature dropped below zero. I also had to wait for the de-mister to to de-mist my windows so I can see where I was going. The red car parked opposite my Jerry looked as if it just came out of a giant freezer. Not a great look on a car I promise you. Ooh, and I just remembered to make an appointment for Jerry to be serviced. Hold it, hold it.... booked! to drop him Thursday morning and probably pick him up early evening.

The weather, it is nice and bright right now, but freezing cold! My house has been kept warm and I hope that my gas bills for the next couple of months won't make me suicidal. It's been alright actually, but that is because of the summer, when you obviously don't need heating.

My frozen poppies, the hills across the river was
somewhat white this morning

the feeder waiting for the birds, that reminds me,
maybe i should go get more fat suet balls

See the ice on my barbecue and fence?

I'm waiting for the little birdie to come to the feeder just outside the house so I can take a picture of it. The feeder has been quite popular as the birds look for food to sustain themselves. There isn't much left in the wild as everything starts to freeze as you can see from the photos.

Let's hope this would be my last winter, as I do hate winter. It's bleak and grey and depressing.

Genius/Insanity: a fine line

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line." ~ Oscar Levant

The title of this blog is very likely going to be engraved on my possible iPod. Yes, I intend to buy the new iPod nano in of course, RED! The colour red is always associated with positive things like passion, fire and festivities. Sometimes it is also seen in a negative light, like the devil. Hmm..

But let's talk about the positives. The [RED] campaign to fight AIDS founded by Bono that aims for AIDS free generation by 2015 www.joinred.com. Chinese lucky colour (that's why they wear red on their wedding day and Chinese New Year). These are reasons my blog is red, apart from it being my favourite colour since forever, and the fact that my rumah sukan (sports team) had always been red since I was in primary school, and we totally rocked the Sports' Day of 2001. Definitely good times!

I've actually lost my train of thought. And have no idea what I was rumbling about. But hey, this is a random rumblings blog. More insane than a genius after all. (sob..sob..)

 

Scratchesssss

This morning, I desperately wanted to clean the garden and I did. Have the landlord coming next week! Well, not really, I've been meaning to do it for quite some time and only finally went to my neighbours to borrow his shears. I started sweeping the sides of the house and start getting rid of the climbing roses. Let's hope my landlord won't kill me for sawing the roses down, I just couldn't take it anymore!!

p/s: Just for the record, I wrote this blog on Friday but posted it only on Saturday because I didn't finish it.

Day off..

Having a weekday off is an awesome thing. You get to do your grocery shopping when it is less busy, go to the bank when it is open, go to the cinema when you can get two tickets for the price of one - in short, everything is doable and takes shorter time just because everybody else is at work! Yeay!

My favourite is of course, grocery shopping. And my favourite store, is Morrisons. It is the best. I've grown up loving it (grocery shopping, and I suppose Morrisons too) because my parents pretty much let me pick up what I want at the store, as long as I eat and finish what I picked up.

Now that I am an adult and living on my own, I can pick up whatever the heck I want. Two cartons of CocaCola, three bags of lightly salted crisps, two boxes of fish fingers, and so on. Yes it is a list of junk food, and yes, I eat them a lot. But who is going to say anything? NO, because I am an adult, and being an adult is cool (except for paying taxes and car insurance).

The Song

As I am writing this blog, a good friend, Azizan Januin is singing a song about going home. It is truly wonderful, reminded me of our younger days, when he played me a song during Hari Putera Puteri back in SMESH. Thank you, for being a wonderful friend and for letting me know that you would always be there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AliYh7oWIU

At the same time I have no idea what Gladys is doing. Either she is mesmerised, or, playing with her cats. LOL.

First words (again!)

This is probably the third or fourth blog I've created in the past few years. My consistency is appalling. Sometimes I think, it's not that I have so much to do. Yes, I am a bum pretending to be working hard and not have time to write. I love writing, I love everything about it. The romance and drama of words, how they are used to make us feel better (or worse) about ourselves and everything that surrounds us. Not to mention the spelling, which is ever so confusing.

I'm in the middle of reading Bill Bryson's 'Mother Tongue' (which is of course, English), and I find it so interesting how the modern English language become what it is today. Why people in different parts of the UK speak so differently, and sometimes are not able to understand each other. A taxi driver in Windermere picked me up to take me home, and asked me where I was from. So when I told him that I was from Malaysia and he said that, "It's amazing how I can understand you perfectly, and you're from the other side of the world. I cannot understand the Glaswegian accent, and they're only about 200 miles from where I was born!" (Let's face it, Glaswegians are IMPOSSIBLE to understand even if English is your first language). I'm digressing.

The romance of words. Words make you laugh, make you cry and melt your heart. Without words, a friend  cannot console another friend; a lover cannot express his feelings (I suppose there are other ways, haha); politicians cannot win (without twisting words); and you will not be reading this blog today.