perspectives

i had a long talk with my mil on the weekend. i can’t help comparing how conversations with my ma and my mil usually go.

my ma: hurry up and start having children. remember your age, you’re quite old already. (in her own words: cepat2 punya anak mi lah. ingat umur, tua mako itu.)

my mil: you’re young. you’re very, very, very young. people here don’t really get established in life until they’re in their thirties. they don’t usually think about kids until 31, 32. 

funny how two ladies around the same age have such different way of thinking, huh?

coming where i came from, i somehow have this thought in the back of my head that life as you know it will end once you hit 30 so you should accomplish everything you want to accomplish by then. you should be married, you should have a kid or two, you should have an established career doing something you want to do for the rest of your life, you should pick a place to settle down. because really, after 30, there isn’t time to do anything else but raise your family.

it’s not something i come up with myself, it’s just what i see around me. i guess that’s why i dread turning 30 so much. it has nothing to do with getting older, about not being able to say ‘i’m in my twenties’ anymore; it’s because i don’t think i’ve done much and i don’t feel settled. it’s because i still want to do things and haven’t found my home yet. if i haven’t done all that by the time i turn 30, would that mean i’ve lost my chance? like, this is it? really? how bloody depressing.

thank goodness i have a mil like mine. it’s nice to know not everybody around you think you’re insane just because you’re different than the majority.

ps. i’d like to have it in writing that  i think my ma is awesome and lovely and amazing and not as backward thinking as some in her generation. she can’t help it if she wants grandkids.

rome vs. ålesund

things i love in rome:

• noise. we woke up to the noise of heavy traffic and fell asleep to the same noise. on the weekend, people were out on the streets, talking loudly until the wee hours.
• crowds. there were people everywhere. shops were full. foothpaths were crowded. busses were packed. restaurants, cafes, snackbars filled with customers.
• queues.
• the food. the oh-so-glorious food.
• social life. the roads aren’t empty once the clock hit  6pm.
• aggressive and impatient people.
• the sound of cars honking like mad.
• chinese restaurants everywhere. sushi everywhere.
• delis in supermarkets. reminds me of delis in supermarkets in australia.
• the yummy hot chocolate.
• the chaotic traffic.
• the many, many, many, maaaaaany places to eat out.
• how similar it feels to indo.

things i miss from ålesund:

• relatively homeless-free streets.
• the low humidity (my hair went absolutely bonker as a result of the high humidity there. frizz, not curls. yuck!)
• understanding what people around me say.
• tv shows in english. they dub everything over there. we watched sky news and cnn the whole time we were there.
• tasteful, soft, fluffy breads. all the hundreds types of them. my brown bread.
• water from the tap that actually tastes good.
• the no-tip-necessary system.

needless to say, i love rome.

me and my boots

we just came back from one fabulous week in rome.

we’re going to need a bit time to recuperate. my poor boots are completely tired and i’m a little bit exhausted as well. from all the walking around, you see.

anyways… plenty of stories from rome to tell. shall be back to blogging in a couple of days. i hope

i… don’t understand

so they increased interest rate by .25 per cent today. making norway the first in europe who did it after the global financial crisis. niiiiice.

same day, they reported that unemploymen rate’s gone up.

surely i’m the only one who thinks this is weird? as in, it doesn’t make sense? as in, where’s the logic behind it? as in, who are the idiots running this bloody country???

how can you increase interest rate when more and more people are unemployed? i understand that they say norway hasn’t been hit as hard by the global financial crisis as most other countries; no problem when it comes to consumer spending and the rise in unemployment is much lower than expected but still.

they can’t do anything to help the unemployed? they don’t want to create opportunities so these people can go back to work? they just going to dismiss this and say, well, the majority of us have no problem so why should we take you, people who’s lost their job, into consideration?

i’m not sure if i have the numbers right so don’t quote me but from memory:

• 40 people from my workplace will lost their job.
• the hospital is also cutting down. 30-40 hospital beds are going out. less work, obviously less workers.
• another 70 people is about to be out of job because they’re closing down an abattoir.

this is just locally. in a city with around 42 000 population.

yes, yes. increase the rent. we’ll be fine. we’ll look after ourselves. not like you ever do, ignorant people in high places. i mean, really. the idiocy of it all is mind-boggling.

and let’s see how fast the banks increase their rents. they said they’d wait. ha! fat chance. took them forever to lower the rent to start with. and nowhere near the rate they should. bet they’ll be implementing the rise in no time.

i’ve had it with this place. just… had it!

‘your wife’s an idiot’

‘hey, husband! i went to the car earlier to see if it was frozen or not, right. i couldn’t open the door so i turned the heater on (we have a portable car heater) to melt the ice a bit. just now, i went out to see if it was thawed. i still couldn’t opened the door. which was weird because it wasn’t completely frozen to start with. then i realised… (pause for dramatic effect) the door is locked. that’s why i couldn’t open the door. because it was locked. not because it was frozen. your wife is an idiot. nyahahaha…’

sigh… i really am such a loser.

winter???

so we’ve gone back an hour today.

the weather is getting better and better. lots of sunny, warm days.

WHERE IS MY SNOW???

quote of the week

if x is coming to talk to us, we’re going to need an interpreter. it’s absolutely impossible to understand what he says.

a friend commenting on someone from some other place in norway and his dialect.

if even a native feel this way, what hope do i have? honestly.

ps. it turned out just fine. i understood everything he said but my goodness, he sure does have some strong, funny accent.

oh, the horrors!!!

i woke up late on sunday. went to the living room and saw this on the living room floor:

here’s a closer look

feathers! my guess is from a bird one of the girls have killed. and most probably eaten. yikes!

i don’t know how they could sneaked in a bird with both of us in the house. MOH reckons they did the killing and eating outside and probably just had the feathers stuck to their fur. but… look at that! that is quite a lot of feathers. all those black dots on the first photo are feathers.

if they have taken a dead bird in (i hope not), that means they ate the poor thing inside. now, they usually eat everything (i once found a beak at our front door. a beak, i tell you! they ate everything but the beak) and i sure hope they did too this one time. i do not want to wake up one day and found a rotting leftover of that poor bird.

my girls are killers. i’m so ashamed

faking it

i laughed a lot.

i laughed until my stomach ached.

i laughed until i got stitch on my side.

i laughed until my cheeks hurt.

i laughed until i cried.

i laughed until i fell down to the floor. then i continued laughing while rolling around on the floor.

i laughed hysterically.

i laughed for minutes.

i laughed and laughed and laughed until people started to laugh with me eventhough they didn’t know what they were laughing at.

i laughed online. every sentence i wrote ended in ‘hahaha’ or ‘hehehe’ or smiley face. i still do it today but not as much as before.

i laughed and screamed, ’stop, stop. please. i’m going to pee in my pants!’

i laughed like that again and again.

yes, i wrote ‘laughed’ not ‘laugh’. past tense. because i don’t laugh anymore. not real laughter. these days, i’m all about fake laughs and fake smiles. i’m getting pretty good at this faking business.

last week, i laughed after seeing baileys sleeping in this very funny way. it lasted about half-a-minute. it wasn’t completely fake, but it wasn’t completely genuine either. she was funny but i think the laughing part was more of a show. to myself. to convince myself that i still know how to do it.

i want to laugh happy laughters. i want to laugh uncontrollably. i want to laugh high-pitched crazy laughters. i want people to tell me to stop laughing like a crazy woman. but there is no reason to laugh. nothing makes me laugh these days.

i wish there was. you have no idea how much energy it takes to fake your emotions. it is so very tiring. and i’m exhausted. just… exhausted.

taking stingy to the next level

i have being called stingy my whole life. i always say thrifty but the general consensus by people who know me is that i’m so careful with money, i’m borderline stingy. i don’t have problem using money for presents, for example, but when it comes to myself, i hardly ever buy things that i want; i usually just buy things i need.

MOH: are you going to get the vaccination for h1n1?

me: maybe.

MOH: norway has got their vaccine. lots of them.

me: i know you don’t want to get it.

MOH: no.

me: well, then we’ll see if it works or not. you’re not protected, i will be.

MOH: so you’ll have it?

me: i don’t know. probably. i’ll ask my mummy. but you know, since they bought it with our tax money, we’ve paid for it already. might as well get it.

MOH: you know you have to pay for it?

me: what?

MOH: you have to pay to get it.

me: what a rip off. didn’t they use our tax money to buy them? then they want us to pay to get it? huh! forget it. i don’t want it anymore.

MOH: my god, you’re stingy.

think about it. do i really need the vaccine? the way it is now, they don’t know, do they. what with the virus mutating itself or whatever other funny medical business.

and really, this is not about being stingy. in a way, it’s a principal thing. i mean, they did use my tax money to buy the vaccine, why the bloody hell do i have to pay for it again? and if it’s absolutely necessary for us to have them, i’m sure we’ll get them for free. eventually.

come to think of it, norway is the one who’s stingy.