Meet Dawg

This is my new sleep companion. Very huggable - that's why I love him!

Family time

This night, sometime while sitting on the carpet in the Hindu temple and listening to the new moon prayers in my elaborate Indian outfit, I realized that there is an essential part of me missing. As much as I enjoy taking a break, as much as I don’t mind being a good girl, and as much as I am comfortable smiling politely, hugging and kissing on the cheeks inexhaustible streams of vaguely familiar aunties and grannies, I need a little insanity time. I miss misbehaving and being silly with my friends. I just need to find a balance between a monkey and a good girl in me.

Festive season

I came back to Malaysia in the middle of the festive season. Deepavali, which is the Hindu festival of lights, is followed by Hari Raya Aidilfitri, which marks the end of Ramadan. It reminded me of how much Malaysians love holidays. Yet, like with anything good, if you have too much of it, it loses its beauty. The same way, I have never really enjoyed the eternal tropical summer.

The best part is that DeepaRaya (as they call it here) is not the last festive season this year! Like the rest of the world, Malaysia will be celebrating (by not working as long as there is anything to celebrate) Christmas and New Year. And then, the next year will start with Chinese New Year, which will be another week of holidays and firecrackers. I remember since my working days in KL that nearly every other week was marked by some event important enough to give people a free day – it may be a royal birthday, or a city day, or whatever else to make a week just a little shorter. No surprise that most companies here have a 6-day working week (although, it is actually due to the long Friday prayer, not the abundance of festivals to celebrate).

To be caught in the midst of DeepaRaya is a little overwhelming, even with my tough Scottish party experience. The last few days, I have spent going with my in-laws from one dinner reception or open house to another. Last night we managed to attend 4, plus a dinner at home.

Yet, the festivals are only starting. This dinner madness will go on for 3 weeks. As much as I love food in Malaysia, having to eat at least something in every house is a little hard for a girl with a small stomach. They say that Romans were having their dinners for hours. What made them last was a long peacock feather, which they used once in a while to create space in their stomachs for the next dish. I’m afraid I need to catch and pluck a peacock so that I can spend nights dreaming of something good, rather than digesting my 5 dinners.

Jammed

I wanted to save time today and drive around KL to run my one hundred errands. I also thought that I could manage without a driver once. The result was a disaster!
Not only did I take every wrong exit I could find and lost my way 5 times, but I also got stuck in the most merciless pre-holiday jam. I have already spent 3 hours jammed in the car, so I am not looking forward to the trip back home. But the cherry on the icing is the little detail - until this morning, I had not touched a steering wheel in 1,5 years!

“It is only with the heart that one can see right, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mac me!

No-no, it is not about how much I miss Scotland (although, I do miss it a lot). It is about my new, shiny, beautiful, sexy MacBook. Yes, I am a new Mac-convert. And that would be half the news; the best part is that I finally have my very own laptop again! My old dear PC broke a few months ago, right in the middle of my dissertation. If it were not for my kind flatmate Al, I would have never made it to the Masters.

This weekend, however, I got back my imaginary cyber-world in a super-sleek Mac-shell. Well, to be fair, I still like MS Windows. I don’t think I’ll ever hate it – the first true love is forever…

PS. This is also my first Mac-blog-posting, and it is #101.

Arrival

Malaysia is a great holiday location, but what a difference it is when you come back to Malaysia to start a proper grown-up life after a fun year as a student in Scotland. To add to the grey (hazy) skies, warmth and humidity, and absence of kilts and decent whisky, my list of disappointments grows day by day. They have lost my luggage in Dubai! All the most important things I chose to take with me after a year abroad. As if this was not enough – I have also lost my passport. What a great start! I am actually in such a silly situation that I can only laugh at myself.

In-flight entertainment

Airplane music is often curious and sometimes even good. On my last journey with Emirates I found Joze Gonzales in their list of recent releases and this was an inviting sign to go through the rest of the list. This was how I found “Birds” – the album, which I listened to from the first to the last note in one go. And that was how I discovered my new favourite (a girl for a change) - Bic Runga. She is a songwriter from New Zealand – beautiful, melancholy, and with such a touching voice. I have never felt so related to music before, as if I found a sole twin. There is a girl in this world who knows everything about me, without even knowing that I exist.