once upon a norza

I seldom do this and it happened to be a boring day so I did this 2 days ago.

Favourites.
colour: pink and brown combination
food: i can't make up my mind currently
song: currently..."The Mating Game" by bitter:sweet
movie: Yugpurush
day of the week: Saturday
season: durian season
ice cream: anything choc or strawberry

Currents.
mood: sleepy
taste: meiji black choc
clothes: pink stripes shirt with brown pants
desktop: something from forestprintsdesign
toenail colour: a bit purplish due to the cold
time:1538
surroundings: at work. with the boss talking and laughing his a$$ off with my other colleagues
annoyances: thinking of food right now and the cafe is closed liao
thoughts: buying that macbook pro when i become a sahm..hah!

Firsts.
best friend: reny
crush: a primary skoolmate..can't remember his name. because he got the most stylish hair with gel and everything!
movie: on tv? or in the cinema?
lie: can't remember
music: sesame street

Lasts.
cigarette: it's been quite sometime since i breathed in any cigarette smoke...fortunately
drink: plain water
car ride: does taxis count?
crush: crushed ice...ice kacang...
movie: Underworld Evolution on dvd
phone call: during lunch just now. with him. yeehaaa!
CD played: Il Divo *thx lela!*

Have you ever..
dated one of your best friend: yah..and she said yes.
broken the law: u never download mp3 meh?
been arrested: nope
been on TV: yep...was in the skool band and we got to particpate in ndp. was just a tiny dot on teevee...but mum can recognise me with that alto-sax...struggling to march properly with that. lol!
kissed someone you don't know: yah...lil babies.

Miscelleanous.
5 items you're wearing: tudong, shirt, pants, socks and shoes
4 things you did today: watched an episode of Lost season 1, reading Discover mag, chatted with kak zee whom i met on the mrt today and multitasking at work
3 sounds you can hear right now: the server buzzing
1 thing you do when you're bored: annoy everyone

Client: Can you come down to the office to teach her how to update her website since she won't be needing your services anymore?
me: It's just a matter of loggin into her acct and ftp'ing all the files to the server. If she's not sure how to access her ftp, then she can email me. But if she requires special lesson to teach her how to do photo-editing or web-editing, that's NOT in the package.
Client: then in that case, can you help maintain her website yearly...for $30?
me: huh? $30? That's like updating for one page only.
Client: The most we can give is $50. Updates will be just 4-5x...we hope you can help us.
me: Maybe you can ask someone else who can maintain it for that kind of amount.

Is the freelance market really going this LOW?

I've been thinking a lot these few days. And I discovered a few things. Things are not what they seem to be at times and they give me a headache sometimes. So much until the thin line of vein (i call it the stress vein) popped out on my forehead. The last time I had this was when I was in school, mulling over the final year project. I have 2 obvious options. I can either let myself being 'sucked' in or be a rebel. Or maybe a 3rd option. Just ignore everything and get on with my life, pretending nothing happened.

But being me, I can't just sit on a problem. I need to solve it fast and get it done and over with. And being me, I'm trying as hard as I can to make everyone happy. But I ask myself this; "Is this all worth it?"

I was actually googling for 'bukhr' when I saw a Singaporean selling bukhr from Dubai. Out of curiosity, I clicked on her blog and saw one of her entries about how her mum-in-law faced her own problems. Her usual routine would be doing her prayers, read the Quran, zikr and du'a. And she continued life as usual considering an even more complicated situation she's in.

At the end of the day, I'm responsible for whatever major life-changing decisions I'm going to make. I wish life has an [Undo] button. May God help me.

A good read from rantauan. I think this is sooo 80s. Some of the decors have been changed for a modern taste but fake flowers and fancy curtains are still Malay fav. I would definitely prefer a bare room with as lil things as possible...the minimalistic way. It makes more sense since it's easier for a growing kid to move around the house. So do you have any of these in your homes? :D

LIVING ROOMS OF THE MALAYS by Alfian

It has been said that one of the Malays’ most extravagant symptom of thriftlessness lies in interior decoration. Indeed, this holds true for many Malay houses, where curtains are considered threadbare if they do not appear with three layers and all blank spaces should be blotted out with the voluptuous colours of plastic flowers. With this rudimentary inventory, I hope to also offer a document of the layout of a Malay living room, sorely overlooked in many interior design magazines which tend to valorise those cannibalistic self-orientalising furnishings (antique rosewood, decapitated Buddha ornament, ikat fabrics) which are pale and pompous resemblances of an ‘indigenous’ style. Perhaps what I hope to do, ultimately, is to create a sketch of the ‘aesthetic’ of the Malay living room.

1) The kerusi Pak Awang—literally, ‘Pak Awang’s sofa set’. The biggest piece of this set consists of a long wooden chair, with slats, fitted with six rectangular cushions. The other two chairs are single-seaters of two-cushions each—a backrest and a seat. Cushion covers are washable, usually velvety, with floral motifs. Popular colours are purple or brown. When I was small I liked lying on the floor to look at the doughy cushions being squeezed between the slats by the weight of someone sitting above—it vaguely suggested to me a kind of almost-bursting fecundity.

Unlike what some people of my generation might assume, Pak Awang is not the name of a famous furniture maker. The sofa’s name is derived from a black-and-white 60’s Malay sitcom called ‘Pak Awang Temberang’ (Pak Awang’s Antics), which starred the child siblings Rahimah Rahim and Rahman Rahim. The show was such a hit that its furniture inspired mass copying trends in Malay homes.

(It should be noted though that in middle-class Malay houses, the furniture of choice is Italian-style, with ornate flourishes.)

2) Cornices--Of which a popular one is that from which a chandelier will sprout as if from an inverted whale-spout.

3) A patio swing—Often in the form of a hemispheric rattan cradle, filled with cushions, often found in a patio-less house with children, or at least a lightweight woman prone to daydreaming.

4) Crocheted elements—In addition to the anti-macassar, which is used to protect the cushion backrests against hair-grease (the word macassar itself comes from macassar oil, which was once used during Victorian times for scalp treatment), the Malay house often makes extensive use of crochet in its furnishings. And thus it is common to find anti-macassars extending their roles as anti-dust-collection and anti-spills and anti-just-old-plain-and-boring, in the form of covers for the coffee table, television, hi-fi system, speakers, as well as mats for vases and other ornaments. The discreet will choose white as their colour of choice for their crochet improvisations, but the adventurous might opt for bandung pink, or tumeric.

5) Giant wall-mounted wooden fork and spoon—The origins of how this particular ornament began colonising Malay homes (especially in the eighties, when it reached its vogueish heights in HDB homes) has always puzzled me, since it is a Malay custom to eat with hands. Failing to be culturally symbolic by a long haul, one can only make the conjecture that its presence is purely ornamental, with perhaps a faint homage to the Malay artisan’s mastery in woodcarving. It is also entirely plausible that an extremely charismatic salesman first introduced the idea that it was fashionable to decorate one’s house with oversized eating implements.

6) Fake flowers—Those hybrids of fantasy and pragmatism—any species can be mimicked by wire, plastic and cloth, and more importantly, they do not wither. There are no popular species however, preferred in Malay houses—varieties can range from fountains of roses to signposts of sunflowers, or even those that advertise their counterfeit nature: petals veined by glitter or roses of dubious blues. There was once on television when I saw a Malay house so suffocated by flowers that it brought a new meaning to the term ‘baju butterfly’, that rectangular-cut batik garment worn by Malay women at home. Indeed, I imagined the inhabitants of the garden-maisonette drifting around among the odourless efflorescence like matriarchal butterflies.

7) Curtains—These are often elaborate, consisting of features like scallops, trimmings, tassels. Anything less and the curtain, that instrument for providing privacy, is considered naked in itself.

8) A carpet weaving of the Ka’abah—This is often placed on the wall, with the Ka’abah as its centrepiece, God’s residence on earth and the locus where Muslims all over the world direct their prayers to. The Ka’abah is often depicted as the centre of a whirlpool of pilgrims, and the requirements of perspective often solves the problem of aniconism in Islam (that which discourages the representation of human and animal form)—the pilgrims are often no more than tiny knots of fibre.

9) Cuckoo clock—again, the fact that the cuckoo clock involves considerable craftsmanship with wood might explain its ubiquity in Malay houses, despite its incorrigibly European origins. Another theory proposes that the cuckoo clock satisfies a certain instinct for bird-rearing.

10) Arabic calligraphy, or ‘Khat’—these usually consist of the names of God and his Messenger—‘Allah’ and ‘Muhammad’. The calligraphy can be found painted on plates, embroidered on cloth, sequinned on velvet, and there are some who believe they might have talismanic properties—to ward off evil, or to create an environment congenial to passing angels. A more practical reason is that the calligraphy invites its beholder to recite the exalted names—although some of the calligraphy has reached such a level of aesthetic abstraction they are no longer legible.

11) Under the coffee table—One will expect to find magazines like Gila-Gila, a humour monthly, entertainment rags like URTV and Hiburan, and Variasari, that irrefutably unique magazine which carried stories of mystery illnesses, heirlooms of shamanistic healing rings from ancestors who were once albino crocodiles, and rosewater-bathed weddings performed in the spirit plane. There would also invariably be an album, whose cover would be that of a faded waterfall, a sunset, or dahlias.

12) In the display cabinet—while the Chinese display cabinet usually consists of dolls, golden pineapples, fortune cats and effigies of the Three Prosperities, the Malay one showcases Sports Day trophies, Langkawi souvenirs, ceramic vases received from weddings, a miniature replica of a jong (a light sailcraft), and other woodcarvings, of which my favourite shows a father, mother and baby elephant trooping placidly in a row, tail-to-trunk.

And what's up with people covering their tv sets, radio, and furniture sets with a piece of cloth? Fortunately my mil only covers the tables. lol!

From rantauan:

I was just thinking of this. An ustadzah in SPore once said,
"Dirumah semua nya bertudung. Telebisen ada tudung, radio ada tudung, kipas angin pun ada tudung, meja jangan cakap lagi....tapi tuan rumah tak bertudung. " The audience ketawa berdekah dekah.

It's funny that I had this want of learning sewing(!!!) suddenly just because I saw pretty pretty cloth materials in Spotlight yesterday. And it's not just me. Adek has been baking cakes for us almost every weekend now..chocolate chip muffins with raisins, melted choc cakes with icecream *drools* and I'm expecting more nice sweet things to come this weekend.

Anyway I can always learn from Emak since she can sew and has her own list of 'clientele'. But I've tried learning the ropes from her many many years back and of course, I didn't 'graduate'. Blame it on my laziness. I even asked Emak to sew a pencilcase for my Home Economics assignment when I was in secondary school. So whenever I ask her whether she can teach me sewing, she would firmly decline and replied I should learn it from somebody else. :P

So I think that learning how to sew will save me $$$ and I can make my own blouses in future. And I think it will be a valuable skill that I can impart to Aisyah...well, if she's interested lah (unlike me last time!) lol.

i've also made a resolution to myself to make sure that my emak-in-law's son is well taken care of. I'm going to start cooking those 'serious dishes' (and not just spaghetti) like ayam masak merah (one of his favs), asampedas ikan pari (my fav!), nasi rawan (my fav also! lol), clean up the house more cleaner next week, and lessen the time spent in front of the pc. I'm guilty of that!

And I'll start tomorrow. We'll see.

I'm so so hungry now that I could eat a cow! and so sleepy too. i slept during my colleague's sharing session yesterday on his trip. Can't help it because most of the pictures show barren land, some goats and passerbys. The only time I didn't sleep was when he showed some food pics (which looks really really nice). It doesn't help when my teammates know I'm sleeping and let me sleep for a few minutes. They said, "You look just too comfortable sleeping". lol! The new guy in our team is a talk cock sing song type so he has gotten used to our talkcock sessions. A, my partner-in-crime, has come back from her genting holidays so the room is livelier (and noisier) now. Our ex-colleague has called us that she will be taking a half-day off tomorrow to have lunch with the both of us to pass us some stuffs she got from Turkey. I bet they must be Turkish delights. I remembered a pal from Turkey once posted some Turkish Delight and they were very very sweet I could only eat just one. The recipe looks quite hard to do though.

Happy Birthday, love~ ;)

I think I'm the one who actually like Dr Seuss' books more than Aisyah because I've bought (again!!) 4 more books (Hop on Pop; One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish; And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street; Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?)

But I also bought them because I know she likes them. Aisyah has a preference over certain books. She personally likes Dr Seuss *apart from her lil board books* very much by the way she responds when I read them. She reads with me with her 'tchaatchaa', 'aaahhs' and whatnots. Whenever I read something from Dr Seuss *without looking at the book*, she looks at the stack of books we have on the shelves. She will drop her toys when I have a book in my hands. If I do not respond quickly enough to continue reading, she will yell and bang her fist on the book as if telling me, 'Ibu, pls continue reading!'.

I would really like her to like reading because it is a good habit. I used to read a lot but with lack of time and/or energy to pay attention to a novel, I can leave a book unfinished for days, even months, at a time. It’s simply a lot harder for me to do these days, with home life and work and such. And when I do read one, I would inevitably fall asleep. The good thing is I don't need sleeping pills for imsomnia...heh.

Ok, so I'm going to STOP being depressed. A revelation just hits me square on my face yesterday. Besides when I'm depressed, it really really shows on my face and I look like sh*t! My head keeps spinning...I think about the things I haven’t accomplished and that only makes it worse. But can we apparently suffer from excessive thinking? I analyse and reanalyse and then re-reanalyse what I already re-analysed. Which brings me back to the analysis I started with until to the point there is nothing left to analyse except to think why I started thinking in the first place and hence the analysis of finding that origin.

Oh, the next photoshoot week will be happening again from 19 to 22 June. More details will be posted here in a couple of days time. Just need to tie some loose strings with the studio. :)

I've been terribly busy for the past week. and nope, it's not for scrapbooking. :P the last time I did a scrapwork is last friday. I managed to rush the final 2 pieces for the a-may-zing race. *yay!* We managed to complete the race as the last team..haha. trihok *my race partner* did 2 scrapworks on a then/now comparison of herself and a piece on 5 random funny moments of her daughter while I did these.

Something about what occupies my mind most and why. This one is a nobrainner that I should do a piece on Aisyah because she's the one i'm thinking *most* of the time!

And the last piece is on Elvis Presley. It's supposed to be a tribute to a loved one but I don't remember much about anyone. My grandparents died when I was small and none of the dead relatives are close to me either. So I chose Elvis since someone already chose P Ramlee. haha.

Back about being busy, I've been busy with work and updating my portfolio for viewing. It's good because all these work is a distraction for me from being too depressed though I can't help but missing Aisyah every single second.

Anyway here are a few sample shots taken in 2 separate phootshoots.

The photoshoots were better than expected. I had fun because everyone was so easy to work with and I'm sure everyone had their own share of fun too. I might organise another one in the next 2-3 weeks.