A bridge unbroken.......

Photo by Shannon Brooke

I did a bad thing last night....again.

Unintentionally. I didn't expect it to be what it had turned out to be but it did. It's like a snowball rolling down a mountain.

I had a fight again with my old man. It's a shameful thing. I hate what I'm feeling right now. I did apologize and hug him last night but I went to bed with a heavy feeling in my chest knowing that I just ripped out a bandage on an old wound.

It started simple enough.

I walked in and there he was telling me to stop using my electric oven because the electricity bill shot up too high. Had he stopped there, it would still be ok but in his annoying fashion, he kept on nagging, giving me a speech about how he had to pay for so many things and my activities in the kitchen were burdening him. Believe me, if I just stood there and stay quiet, he would really go on for a whole hour even or more on the same topic. Yes, he's THAT talkative.

With the stress at work and my total dislike for his 'speech', I was very annoyed that he didn't just show me the bill and asked me to pay. In fact, I had always intended to pay my bit but I have pretty vague idea about when do bills arrive in this house. I hate meandering speech. I've always been the straight-to-the-point type.

I suddenly snapped. Saying something along the line of 'just show me the bill', 'easier to talk with figures' and 'what's the point of nagging'. The last word made him blow his top. He walked away to take the bills threatening to slap my face for being horribly rude.

I inherited the worst part of my old man's characteristics. His temper. It's not something I'm proud of. I have struggled all throughout my life to control mine. I'm a much calmer person now and I am known at my workplace as the one who treats others kind and fair but in the wrong moments, the deep dark ugly demon would raise its head. Strangely, my old man and one of my brothers who has bad temper too don't seem to see theirs as a problem. Maybe because they're male and ours is a patriarchal male-dominated society? Men can get away with it easily.

Then the war of words started to ensue with us both shouting ugly things about and to each other. My old man challenged me to list out what I despised in him. I refused to go down that road again. I did that before, years ago and it almost severed my blood ties with him. Seeing me quiet, he saw that as defeat on my part. Now THAT annoyed me.

My big brother stepped in to calm us both and after some persuasion, he succeeded in getting us to cool down. I apologized to my dear old man and hugged him saying I was truly sorry.

The worst thing about the whole ugly episode is we were fighting in front of the full view of my two young nephews. I just set a bad example for my beloved nephews.

What struck me most about the effect the ugly incident had on the little ones was the look on my nephew's face when I smiled at him with dear dad standing near by. The little boy looked at me and then his grandpa and then me and then grandpa. I knew at that moment that he was thinking about last night.

Ok. For my love of the young ones' future, I am promising myself today that I will NOT to the best of my ability, pick up a fight with my father again. His blessings and trust mean so much more to me more than he will ever know.


I want the bridge to remain unbroken.........

Extreme Frugality......how cool is that?

I just love the Internet!

Yesterday, totally by chance, while browsing for 'cookies recipes', I arrived at Gourmet.com which is the online version of an old magazine that has been in existence as far back as the 1940s.

Being the curious reader that I am, my eyes started to wander around the page and saw the title (click) 'Extreme Frugality' on the sidebar. The economy being what it is and my own 'tight' financial situation, this title certainly is something that I couldn't miss.

What I saw upon clicking was a thought-provoking series of household-financial diary of writer W.Hodding Carter who chronicled his effort to bring his family to live within means starting from within their home.

W.Hodding Carter's diary on living within means at Gourmet.com

The reality is many people spend like they earn $120,000 a year when they in fact earn only around $41,000. Mr. Carter is, of course, talking about a typical American family where credit cards contribute billions of dollars to the total consumer debt.

The consumer spending in my country certainly is different. An average Malaysian family wouldn't spend triple times of what they earn. However, for us, we are kind of forced to live beyond our means simply because our disposable income does not match the current standard of living. That is where the lure of credit card comes in with banks lowering the eligibility limits to apply one.

I remember the time when you have to earn MYR60K a year to get a credit card. Reasonable. That would be someone with a MYR5k monthly salary. That was a long time ago and I was a wee kid. Now, you only have to earn MYR1.5K a month to apply for one. I even have friends with even LOWER salaries who have credit cards. Crazy!

Anyway, it is interesting to read Mr. Carter's real-life adventure of growing his own garden, using firewood and rearing chickens to save on grocery and bills.

Talking about bills, I paid off my July bills last night via Internet banking. Within minutes, my bank balance was slashed to half. Phew! However, I applaud the convenience of Internet transaction as it really opens up one's eyes when one actually sees the figures of one's bank balance as opposed to carrying cash around. With cash, I hardly realized my spending and suddenly the MYR100 note has turned into one MYR10 note within a week.

Scary thought......hmmm....

So, here's to Extreme Frugality!

My lack of posts and image hosting problems again!

Yes.

My blog is lacking posts this month. I know. Not that I have no stories to tell. Just that I'm frustrated by the problems with my image hosting service.

When I started, I wanted to make sure that all my posts would be accompanied by pictures. After all, a picture speaks a thousand words. However, my main image host Webshots keeps giving me error messages everytime I try to upload a photo. I don't know why.

Sure, I do have an account with Photobuckets and even MySpace. However, I like the ease-of-use aspect of Webshots where you can select the size of images you want to link to your page without you having to tweak any code. It will preview the size and generate the code for you just by clicking.

The pictures from the few latest posts are either directly uploaded to Blogger or occasionally linked to my MySpace photo album.

I hope the problem will be resolved soon.

She's putting the perfect curse on herself

I'm stuck in yet another desperate situation at work.

Another member left the Section and she was the one we recruited before the last QC operator left. The most annoying thing about it is she left without a word to me or any of us. That cunning manipulative B**CH!!!

Frankly, I did have some suspicions about her when she kept giving clashing excuses for her absence or 'emergency leaves' or medical leaves.

1. She had a car but many times when she needed to go out, she'd say her fiance would come and take her because she didn't have transport.

2. She was absent one day without any information to me despite me having already told everyone in our Section to do so in any event of emergency. Her salary was put on-hold and with a grin on her face, she asked me to sign her unpaid leave application form just so she could get her salary. There wasn't a trace of guilt on her face. I told her to apologize to me first if she wanted my signature endorsement. That incident basically gave me a clear picture of the kind of person she was.

3. She once claimed of having a neck pain which normally resulted from lack of iodine in the diet but after our clerk enquired with the industrial nurse, the clinic staff said there was nothing wrong with her. If any, it was nothing more than normal swollen gum at the back molar. She went on and managed to get her medical leaves from an outside doctor regardless.

4. Then, she asked for another leave because she 'needed to send her cousin to register for college down South'. I had the urge to ask, "doesn't your cousin have parents or brother and sister?". What business would a cousin have sending a cousin to register for college? Whose car
would that be to transport the college girl's belongings there? I let her off but my suspicion was mounting.

5. She texted me for the last time saying she missed her bus and that she didn't have a car. My colleague said her fiance used the car. Oh, so the fiance could use the car when she needed it to go to work YET he could let her have the car to tag along sending her cousin to register for college? What a load of BS!

Needless to say, she was never seen again after the last BS text to me. Now, I'm struggling to juggle the bulk load of unfinished job I assigned to her with my own management assignments. OMG. Not again!

I have always treated my members nice and kind but I will never give second chances for betrayal. I treat people good and I expect them to return that. Never mess with my trust!

I remember the last time a girl left my Section without a word leaving behind her unfinished assignments which I had to settle within TWO days before presenting them to SONY members. I 'cursed' her real bad, wishing for something to happen to her to teach her a real lesson. I was taken aback when a colleague told me months later that the girl was kicked out of the house by her parents for falling pregnant out of wedlock. I didn't wish for something THAT bad but I'm glad she finally learned what it feels like being abandoned when you need help the most.

This latest girl who ran away? I know she's getting married. Let's see. Marriage. Abandonment. Lying. Cheating. Betrayal of trust. Leaving without a word. She really is putting the perfect curse on herself. Hah!

How do I know that I'm a Michael Jackson fan?

Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009

The biggest news last month has got to be the passing of one of the world's most loved superstars the King of Pop Michael Jackson.

When a colleague informed me the news, I seriously thought it was one of those jokes people made of him. As the day went on, it started to dawn on me that the news was real this time.

What finally made me want to write about MJ's passing on my blog is when I came across another blog where the author said that with his sudden death, there was also an influx of people claiming to be MJ's fans. Add to that, MJ's CDs sold out in some music stores in this country! The author then questioned whether those people claimed to be his fans just to 'be part of it'. It made me question myself, am I a genuine MJ fan?

So, how do I know that I'm a genuine Michael Jackson fan?

Here's my list:

1. I knew him before Thriller.

2. When I was still a kid in primary school with limited understanding of English, I was already able to sing One Day In Your Life.

3. I could easily cry singing One day In Your Life which I used to sing back to back with Sheena Easton's For Your Eyes Only.

4. I remember being able to pronounce 'boogie' which was the only word I could decipher from Blame It on the Boogie. I would run around phonetically singing it my way :-)

5. I remember the melody of the chorus to Don't Stop Till You Get Enough. I didn't understand a word he was singing of course :-)

6. I even sat in front of the TV with a piece of paper and a pencil when watching Grammys and American Music Award to total up MJ's many award wins for the Thriller album.

7. I waited for days for the world premiere of the music video Bad. Me and my brother made sure that we 'booked' the TV so we wouldn't miss anything. Yes! We watched the entire video with the short movie in the beginning and all.

8. I was actually able to memorize the acapella 'gangsta' adlibs that Michael did with the dancers at the end of the Bad video.

9. People go ga ga over MJ's moonwalking but his dance move that I yearn to learn the most is the Michael Jackson's 'pirrouette' where he would spin around like his feet were surgically attached to skate boots.

10. Many times, when I'm sitting, concentrating on my work etc, I found myself singing Man In the Mirror, the lyrics of which still inspire me to believe that any change one wishes for the world must start with the person him/herself.

11. I have one of his CDs, Bad. Bought it in the UK while I was studying there. Ok, I'm not a very good fan now that I have only 1 CD. Hey, at least I have the CD years before his passing so that technically takes me out of that group of people who bought MJ stuff coz he died.

12. When Jarvis Cocker of Brit band PULP invaded MJ's performance at the Brit Award 1996, I was of course backing up Michael when my buddy and I argued about it. She supported Cocker. Me? I took MJ's side of course :-)

* Jarvis has put the whole episode behind him now and praises MJ for being a musical genius who tragically didn't live up to his 80s heyday.

13. Play any MJ's videos up to Dangerous album, I'll watch them. His work after Dangerous honestly is not as exciting BUT play any of his concert videos, I'll watch them and still go ga ga over his dance pirrouettes, moonwalks, his adlibs of "hee hee" and what seems to sound like "jamone(?)", the Smooth Criminal leaning tower spring back move (genius!) and the guitars (more about this later).

14. When MJ had to go to court, I would always take his side. Hey, one is only guilty when proven guilty and they couldn't prove anything. Besides, people who are willing to take millions of dollars of settlement after claiming of being molested aren't 'victims' to me. Money can't buy dignity. It can buy greed and opportunity.

15. I believe MJ was innocent.

16. I am sad that nobody wanted to talk about what a charitable person MJ was.

17. I still watch all the tributes every channel gave him. No boredom.

18. I know the songs he duetted with Paul McCartney, Rockwell and Saeidah Garrett (his own backup singer)

19. I of course know the THREE metal guitarists he worked with. Eddie Van Halen, Steve Stevens and Slash. It showed how open-minded Michael was and that was why he was the ultimate superstar who managed to cross so many boundaries musically, artistically and socially.

Goodbye Michael.
Thanks for the inspiration and being a big musical part of my childhood.
My personal wish is that you left with the faith and peace you longed for.
Only the Almighty knows.