Just like old times

She's one of the bellydance girls. Then as must happen, she got married and moved away. She's now back for a short visit and was just twitching for a girls' night in, just like old times.

I had the home to myself for the evening. A few quick phone calls and a dinner-party-hafla was good to go.

Women friendship never fails to amaze me. The company is always easy and amicable, the conversation is always frank and the sentiment is always supportive. Everyone has stories to share, and every story is poignant - things that happened, things about to happen.

And when filling in on each others' lives was fully explored and reached its natural denouement - at least for the time being - the dinner party dissolved into a bellydance hafla.
Just like old times.

Michael Jackson's This is it

I am not a consistent fan of the late Michael Jackson's music. I also did not expect him to be carried off in such untimely fashion either. I expected him to be around for a long time yet, and once every few years, he would come out with a hauntingly beautiful song that would call to me.

When This is it was released, I did not rush to see it. Many months later, stuck on a long trans-Atlantic flight, I finally saw the movie. I was struck again by Jackson's awesome command of stagecraft, exacting the minutest detail in musical arrangement, dance routine, entry cue, etc. that made him legend.

It also struck me that, three weeks before his comeback 50-concert tour, Jackson might have looked very thin and overworked. But at no point could anyone have thought he'd go to sleep that night and never wake again.

Many Jackson songs were featured in the movie; most of them would bring back good memories.

The one I won't ever forget is this.

On wifedom

Historically, the woman was never considered a person; she was a barter for territory, a means for procreation, a worker to take care of his home, his children, his family, his creature comforts.

The legal status of the woman has much improved in most progressive societies, but...

Unfortunately, married life today is not yet truly equal. ..."his" marriage continues to be better than "hers". The data on marital satisfaction, garnered from surveys, interviews, and personal assessments, indicate that husbands have a more positive view of marriage than their wives, and that wives fall behind husbands on numerous measures of marital satisfaction. One consistent finding is that single men do worse than married men on almost all measures of mental (e.g. suicide, depression, nervous breakdown), whereas single women do better than married women on these same measures. All agree that wives experience greater stress than husbands from their career/family obligations, and that women put more time into caring for children, aged parents, and sick relatives.

... divorce produces a 27 percent decline in women's standard of living and 10 percent increase in that of men. This represents an almost 40 percent gap between what ex-wives and ex-husbands experience financially in the aftermath of a divorce.

A history of the wife,
Marilyn Yalom, 2001

Now I am truly depressed.

We like it as is...

The young couple used to rent in a nearby condo where they had a view of this older condo with its timeless quiet charm and grace of simplicity and spaciousness. They immediately bought a unit and moved in when an unit became available.

Once settled in, they started to agitate for upgrading of the common areas which they deemed as deplorable and in dire need of updating.

I stand in the lobby and entrance of the condo, and see an open airy ground floor that serves as the reception area that leads to the various indoor facitilies (gym, squash courts etc), the common function room, the management office, and the lifts. The surrounding landscaped grounds boasts the obligatory tennis courts, swimming pool, koi pond and children's playground.

The newcomers want the entire reception area glasssed off to update the look, and swipe card access to increase security. Or else the condo will quickly lose its value because it is not keeping up with the new condos, they hissed at the naysayers in the last two Annual General Meetings.

Well, the majority of the residents voted for the necessary upkeep and sprucing up of the common areas. We voted to keep the open and airy feel of the existing reception/lobby areas. The majority of us will likely vote the same way again in the upcoming AGM because we really like our place as it is. The newcomers will complain about our non-cooperation and nearsightedness for another year.

And I will wonder again - for the umpteenth time - why didn't they just buy into one of the newly built condos that have all the newest gadgets and features they want?

You got fine!

Call me picky and prickly, but I must protest against the way some of our front line staff talk to their customers.

I know I am returning the DVD rentals late. I know there is a late penalty to pay. So, please, couldn't the silly twat just ask for the payment in neutral fashion by saying, "There is a late payment fee of $XX"?

Instead, she said, "You must pay a fine of $XX for returning this late"!

It never fails to amaze me that businesses lose their customers and never even know why.

Gentle dancing

A lifetime of injuries from sports and dance is catching up with me.

I live with recurring muscle aches and joint pains for years now. I keep downgrading my dance activities with the aim to prolong the dance shelf life I have left.

I put bellydance on hold for now, because I cannot do both hula and bellydance. It puts too much strain on my knees.

I enjoy the less demanding folk dance sessions with the aunties at the cc. The repertoire covers cha cha routines from the 70s, Taiwanese alishan tribal, and circle folk dance which covers the israeli and greek hora, arabic dabke and the folk circle dances of Eastern Europe.

Less demanding, yes. Less dangerous, no. Because somehow there is always the odd one who will lose her sense of direction with the turns and spins and collide with the dancer next to her.

The strange thing is you know it two seconds before the collision will happen. And you try to avoid the full impact of a moving body slamming into you by jumping out of the way. Which is how I end up with aches and pains in muscles and joints - jumping out of the way whether my body and limbs are aligned or not.

How can such a gentle dance with a bunch of sweet old people be so dangerous?

I want to know...

does this man's standing up for this man's lascivious behaviour make sense to anybody?

From Turkey with love

It's been two and a half years since we were in Turkey. Two and a half years since the man got a chance to be around the carpet shops at the kapali carsi.

His carpet merchants waited the right amount of time before they started to tempt him again with their collection of beautiful antique rugs. They started sending him pictures of their latest acquisition by email.

Of course, the man fell for several of them. At last count, he bought four pieces from the dozen that they showed him.

I love the resourceful way they take their pictures. Like this 2-meter long tent band. They laid out the tent band on the pavement, then hung one of their brothers out the window of their 3rd storey shop so that they could take a picture of the masterpiece in its entirety.
The tent band will drape around the top part of the walls in the living room.

The home is well on its way to becoming a nomad's tent, inside and out.

The man cannot help himself. He loves these guys :)

Anjelica with the smiley "c"

We never give housekeeping staff any thought.

We check into the hotel, get into our impeccably tidy room, sleep off the fatigue, and after pulling ourselves together the next day, leave the room to do the tourist thing in town. At day's end, we drag our weary bodies back into the tidied and picked up room and start the whole process again.

We never see the housekeeper whose job it is to make the bed, vacuum the carpet, replace the used bath towels, replenish the toiletries so that we always come back to a room that's spick and span.

So it was recently, with the invisible housekeeper tidying up my room unfailingly, turning a well appointed room into a perfect comfortable retreat at the end of the day.

Then, on the third day, I noticed a folded note propped up against the table lamp. The words, "Have a good day. Housekeeper Anjelica" were carefully written in a childish scrawl, and the letter "c" was stylised into a smiley emoticon. It brought a smile to my face and a cheer to my spirit.

I scribbled on the back of her note, "Thank you. You have a great day too. (my name)" and left it in the same spot for her.

I came back and found her new note: "Thank you. Housekeeper Anjelica" with the letter "c" smiley.

As I readied to check out the next day, I walked down the corridor looking for Anjelica. A housekeeper told me Anjelica had the day off. I did the next best thing I could to reach out to her. I wrote on the reverse side of her note, "Anjelica, thank you for making my stay special. (my name)" and dropped it off with a tip in a sealed envelope at the front desk.

I hope I will meet her someday, somewhere - Anjelica with the smiley "c".

Not missing her

She is an old schoolmate. We've known each other just about all our lives.

We are not anything alike. I am sure we get on each other's nerves often. But as we are wont to do with people whom we have known all our lives, we overlook all incidents over time.

So she continues to ask insolent questions. In response, I sometimes answer her with a measure of rebuke, other times I tell her bluntly it's not any of her business.

And her insensitivity grows.

Right before my recent trip to the US, she blithely asked that I say hello to the ex since I would be in California and to tell him she remembered him fondly. My straightforward response was that the ex no longer lived in California, and even if he did, I would not be looking him up.

Right after my return, she nonchalantly asked if I had "resolved" everything in California. I gave her a piece of advice about her insistent inconsiderate remarks, and then gave her a piece of my mind.

I have not heard back from her in over a week now. Maybe, with luck, I won't ever again.

And I find I'm not missing her at all.

January/February

were the months

Princeton, February 2010

- My time was split between two favourite places - Singapore and the US.

- New York was still in the grips of snow blizzard. It felt like a record setting amount of snow was being dumped on us.

- I visited my cousin and her family whom I had not seen in 10 years. I am proud and happy to see them comfortably settled in the new homeland after first arriving there 23 years ago as post graduate students.

- It goes without saying that the time spent with the old friends in Bakersfield who unreservedly rolled out the welcome mat will always be remembered with gratitude.

- The man has finally got his own reasons for making regular and frequent trips stateside. Strong enough pull factor to make him get around his dread of the long flight.

- It was good to come back for the second half of the Chinese New Year. It was especially fortuitous to be able to get together friends and family for dinner to close out the new year.

The year is starting out right in every way.