Do you wonder why that happens?
Someone you thought you knew very well, got close too, and after a while that someone is just such a bitch to you you feel like asking "Whats up your butt?"

I want to free myself but I don't know if I can.
I'm always so annoyed now.

I love going back to my hometown. I love my grandmothers’ house – even though I have never gone through a visit without stepping on a cockroach.

Everything from the cooking, the musty smell of old pillows, to the noisy babble of my cousins, and the old fuzzy TV with only four channels.
I love it.

This year was even better as my youngest aunt was getting married on the third day of Raya.
We’re pretty traditional and old fashioned. The wedding wasn’t held at some big fancy hotel – we had tents and tables and chairs lined up the road outside my grandmothers house. It’s the normal way to have your wedding back there.

I still have relatives who live in wooden stilt houses. They even have goats and chickens in their front yard. As much as I like goats.. I don’t really like their poop. And they poop a lot. I don’t know if you’re just suppose to step all over the poop but I.. I don’t like to. Its difficult to look happy and graceful while you hop around tiny patches of unpooped land in pretty Raya shoes.

But I must say, with immense pride, I have seen a goat give birth to a billy. I didn’t notice her or anything. I happened to look in that direction, on the EXACT moment all that gunk and bits of other things came sloshing out – along with the baby.

It happened really fast that after a bit I wasn’t sure if I even saw it. I mean, in National Geographic and the legs poke out first, not a whole big water ride.

Opposite my grandmothers house is a field. It used to be so wild and dense I thought it was part of a jungle. Now the lady who stays in the house with my grandmother tends to it. She grows corns and vegetables and papayas, mangos and a whole load of other stuff.

She seems so old and frail but I think there’s more strength in one of her arms then my whole body.

She’d be hacking and shoveling away in the morning. And hacks and shovels at night. Yes at night, in the dark.

She’s good at that sort of thing; her corns are GIGANTIC.

Its funny to know that she passionately dislikes housework. My grandmother doesn’t eat her cooking because she absolutely CANNOT cook.

She doesn’t even know how to cook rice properly! Rice!!

Back to the wedding.
My cousins and I had to help a lot, since the wedding is held in the house after all. The ones left to help were around my age, or younger; the older ones haven’t arrived yet or were overseas.
We vacuumed, decorated, fixed the audio thingy, watched the stupid pengantin videos to choose cheesy wedding songs, dished out dishes and put eggs in the bunga telur ( while the younger boys busied themselves by eating broken hardboiled eggs).

One of our tasks was to make a payung betik. I know I’ve got the name wrong, but I am so extremely sure there was the word ‘betik’ in it. To translate it crudely in English, Papaya umbrella.

Its those long colourful coconut-tree looking things you hold up while walking next to the bride and groom.

We didn’t know how to make it. So my grandaunt said “Get a papaya from the field and poke the sticks in”
As all the grandchildren were city children and townies, we stared at her. Payung betik’s weren’t LITERALLY made from papaya’s.

“I thought you used sponges…?” someone asked.

My grandaunt then replied “Well we don’t have any spare sponges. In the olden days we used unripe papaya’s.”

So we stabbed papaya’s.

Sap dripping out

I think she made that up because when my aunts came in to check on us, they were all “Why are you poking the papaya’s?!”

My cousins making the Payung Betik

My aunts were busy in the kitchen too. They wanted to make an extraordinary and exotic creation that would WOW the guests.

Robert Newman is a genius.
He's one of the funniest people out there.

He managed to make a relatively boring topic, History Of Oil, one of the funniest, most outstanding documentaries I've seen in months.

Alright, the title is enough to make you lose interest. *I* didnt want to watch it.
But I did; upon the suggestion of my dad, I watched it whilst I waited for my profiteroles to rise.

It takes about half an hour, tops, to load the video.
Load it whie you check-reply your mails or do whatever else you do.

You won't lose out, that I assure you.

Click here to load video

Whatever I am doing.. it is so damn obvious its to avoid doing that other thing I am SUPPOSED to do.

I had gone for many many days not updating... and now I'm doing it everyday.

Its so obvious; I'm ashamed.


BUT. Today I baked brownies and gave away my fav jeans to my cousin cause my butt is now far too big for it and shes a skinny stick.
I am telling the world this because since I am making a post, I will give news.

However useless/stupid/boring it is.

And I bought flowers because I felt like being romantic and wishy washy today.
I've been reading Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibilty and Jane Eyre, to name the few;  and they've just made me crave for flowers.
I think I bought wild daisies or something - from the market; because the florist would charge me for unnecessary crepe paper and ribbons.
Huge stalks and large flowering bunches. Lots and lots of leaves. The lady hurriedly wrapped it in newspaper, because it looked like rain.
I've aranged it in a vast glass vase. 
Its lovely, in an unkempt way.

I've also been doing a lot of cleaning. My brother did a terrible job of vaccuming and when I had to mop, there was still a lot of dust and rubbish on the marble floor.
It was no use moping because all the crumbs and bits stick to your feet and you'd just leave a trail of rubbish and smudges at your wake. So I used a few clean rags to walk on, so I don't dirty everything all over again.
I did things the hard way with the stubborn stains; and went down on my knees and scrubbed. 
Its quite wonderful how absorbed you can be on scrubbing floors.
It was almost like meditating.

I like my flowers alot.