Brains Wrung Dry

It was a weekend that is best described by KS:

"I feel like the top of my skull was carved open, my brains taken out, spun around and placed back again."

It was an intensive weekend of planning for the youth ministry in my church where KS is serving and I tagged along. Right from Friday night, we shot to a Sepang hotel to get holed up for the entire weekend just squeezing out brains out. I was the only one who wasn't serving in this ministry and had to work doubly hard in firstly understanding what the discussions were about and then digesting it before trying to come up with suggestions.

On Sunday, I was so tired and stressed when it suddenly occured to me that, Hey! Why am I getting so stressed over all the planning when I'm only HELPING, for cryin' out loud! So then I decided to join the Pastor's wife who was looking after their kids and watched Barbie's Swan Lake.

But it was a good time of understanding on what the church's youth culture is like and the dedication and commitment these leaders have behind it. To be honest, I'd be scared stiff to join them as it is intense and has a very high level of commitment. Makes me take a look at my own ministry and realise that gee, WHAT have I put into my own CG?

Studio Ghibli

I borrowed a 10 VCD set from a friend all from the Ghibli Studio. I first heard of him after watching Spirited Away. If you haven't watched it, go watch it. The first time I did, it was strange and I didn't enjoy it as much. After a couple of weeks, we got our hands on the DVD and watched it again. I'm now hooked.

This 10 boxed set movie is a collection of his old cartoons. Famous ones are Princess Mononoke and Totoro. Most of them make you feel very weird and gloomy and to a certain extent, depressing. Particularly the Tombstone of the Fireflies. That is so SAD!

The soundtrack for each movie has a unique strain of hauntingly beautiful melodies. Perfect for that stare-out-of-the-window-when-it-is-raining minutes.

KS and I were excitedly talking about it just before lunch and I urged him to go get the soundtrack at lunch. Oh, why can't the day go a bit faster today??

Reactions

What I had reckoned would be a general reaction to the news of the death of the First Lady was totally wrong when I heard some ridiculous and heartless responses:

"Oh! So do we get a holiday?"

(After some spam was distributed about Monday being declared a holiday to mark the death) "Yay! Public holiday on Monday!" "Eh, someone has died and you're celebrating?!" "I'm not the one who died mah" came the reply.

I suppose the reason why I'm more affected was because for 2 years now, my entire church has been praying for her recovery. We've always remembered her in our prayers off and on.

I can't believe someone from the Press asked the PM, "So how are you feeling now?". What did he expect for an answer?? His reponse? "We'll see".

Sad Day for Malaysia

The nation goes into grief as it is announced that PM Pak Lah's wife Endon has passed away this morning at 7:55am after battling with breast cancer for years. Pak Lah has always made his love for his wife apparent and had spent the last few days being with her as much as he could.

I'll tell you why Toilets

Okay, I admit, there was something that bothered me to the point that I kept dreaming of toilets. I was having an infection and was living in denial.

It came to a point that I started to have blood in my urine on Friday and that frigthened the crap out of me. So I obediently went to the doctor, one week after the symptoms started. The doctor was of course aghast that I chose to suffer in silence and proceeded to give me a good scolding with loads of medication.

The antibiotics worked and a foul tasting liquid which was supposed to help me but made me feel like throwing up. Later, I was told that I could actually dillute it instead of drinking it straight from the bottle. Yucks! The doctor should have told me that to save my suffering!

Anyway, by yesterday, the last day of my antibiotics course, I was feeling wuzzy and queasy. Later I found out that the antibiotics that I took had that side effect on "some people". Great. Again, another little detail the doctor missed out.

So I took an MC yesterday and tried to sleep all the dizziness off. Thank God my parents were around so they looked after me. Hence, my silence over the last couple of days. I'm still not a 100% but much better and taking a stronger dose of antibiotics. Great.

Toilet Fireplace

Last night's toilet dream was grander than the toilets dreamt for the last 3 nights. This time, I was in my old school and was trying to use the toilets but they had shut it for some filming (don't ask me why a crew was shooting in a school toilet). So I had to go upstairs where there was a special toilet reserved for the Sultanah when she was a student there. Somehow, her tastes were very much Queen Elizabethen as there was a fireplace (in this weather!), an elaborate carpet with a reclining couch with loads of details on it. Think Versache. (Must be that Becky Leogardo lady, who sells beauty products and advertises her face on her billboards, we were talking about the other day).

To the right of the room, opposite the fireplace and couch, there were wooden chairs lined up against the walls. Of course, they were not really chairs as right in the middle of it, there was the toilet bowl. It had arm rests and of course, no partitians whatsoever.

So there I was, again, in urgent need to go so I sat on the first chair which was lodged in a corner, hoping that it wasn't too visible. Before I could pull my pants down, someone from the filming crew came in and cautiously took a clock from the mantelpiece muttering, "I hope the Queen doesn't mind if I borrowed this for the shoot". Of course she saw me.

After so much stress of trying to pull down my pants to take a pee, I woke up and did my now familiar routine, go to the toilet. Thereafter, I couldn't fall back sleep since it was an hour before I had to get up.

I ain't drinking any water tonight.

Believing in your Product

Normally, when you do any sort of selling, you would firstly need to convince yourself in the product, right?

So far in my first job, I didn't quite believe in selling a product worth half a million but I did sell one before I left that job. Now, I'm selling some collectibles which to me, are nice to look at but something I won't collect on my own since I don't have much of hobby in it.

Anyways, so here I am, on MSN with a customer who suddenly asks, "Do you think it is worthwhile for me to get another complete set?". A complete set is worth more than RM7k. I can simply just say, "Yes! It's absolutely worth it! You MUST get it and not let this chance pass!".

Instead, I find myself lamely saying things like, "When you collect something, the value really depends on how you, as a collector, views it". Now how obscure could I get?

I'd better start brainwashing myself to start loving my new product in my new place soon.

Aedes

The papers talk about super aedes lurking in our very midsts. The radio announced the death toll from Aedes is 76 so far this year with more than 1000 cases alone reported THIS WEEK. And what do I have?

Proudly standing out on my left arm from elbow to fingertips is 9 bites while on my right, I have 7 bites, all from one night. Either that or I'm coming down with some kind of pox.

Oh, and another night of toilet dreams.

Toilets

For the last 2 days I have had dreams with regards to toilets. Particularly, toilet bowls with no walls and that I HAVE to use them. Yesterday's dream was with strangers with 3 toilet bowls lined up against the walls along a corridor. Last night's one had one of my IT Dept guys in the toilet with me while I was sitting on the throne. Gee, I know I'm having some constipation but this is getting a bit too far.

Maybe it's because I've been complaining to my colleague to fix one of our office toilet doors that has fallen apart due to white ants. I'd wedge the door and still use the toilet and it seems I'm the only one doing this as others will use the other 3 stalls. Ah well, when you have an exclusive toilet, why not?

But I think it'll be more fun to blame Jan for she ALWAYS dreams about toilets. At the height of the Matrix, she dreamt that she'd travel to the "real world" via toilet bowls. It runs in the family.

Satay Stick

I have a cell group member whose foot was always a fascination to me as it had a "hole" at the bottom of it. Of course in the first few months of knowing him, I didn't dare to ask until one day we were sharing about body scars when I asked him about it.

His story is this. When he was in his primary school, he used to play with this bunch of boys and they'd leap over this fence to get to the other side (of what I can't remember). Anyways, once there was construction going on at that area and a mound of sand was piled below this fence, ready to be mixed into cement. They would happily jump into the sand and run off along their way. One day, this friend of mine saw a satay stick nearby and decided to plant it hidden in the sand so that the next unsuspecting chap would leap to a painful landing.

I guess I don't need to explain further but the moral of the story is, if you want to plant a trap for someone else, don't fall into it yourself! Which reminds me of the time my sis planted a dead cockroach in the room and asked me to go in there to retrieve a book, in hope that I would step on it barefooted. I saw it, side-stepped it and couldn't find the book so she went into the room to look for the book and stepped on the cockroach herself. Her shrieks could be heard throughout the neighbourhood. (It doesn't matter that later I stepped on it when my brother asked me to go in to rock Jan to sleep in that room. I'm still amazed that Jan didn't wake up screaming along with my screams.)

No lah, the moral is, don't lah be so evil. The stick broke into three parts and one part was still embedded in his foot when he got home. His grandmother prayed over it and voila! It came out by itself after a few hours!

I still cringe every time I look at the base of his foot.