Sometimes you find a reason for all this new-fangled stuff after all

Tonight, just after downloading Google Notifier and Gmail+Growl, I notice an email come in at 3am that I would otherwise have missed.

A friend's mum is being admitted to hospital for dizziness and sudden weakness of limbs and she requests for prayer.

And suddenly, all that frivolous downloading becomes somehow significant.

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Quasi-kopi at the railway station

2:20am. Just got home from a late night kopi at the railway station. Actually I didn't even have kopi. All I had was a gigantic glass of green tea that filled my bladder to bursting.

It was nice to sit under the sky and chat. The area surrounding the railway station feels like Malaysia. Not surprisingly, since the land it is built on is Malaysian land. It is kinda nice to have a bit of Malaysia down your block. It also serves a very good mee siam for $2.00. I used to be able to buy a pack for $1.50 and feed a family of three with it. Not anymore though, but it is still the best mee siam I know.

The Ramly burger is a new addition, but it is possibly the only place in Singapore where you can get a Ramly burger all year round. Ramly burgers usually travel with Pasar Malaams (night markets) and so are hard to pin down. Just don't go to the railways station before 4pm or so because they are only open in the evenings.

But I didn't get anything to eat this time. Just conversation and green tea, which was more than enough for me. Except that I think I am getting hungry!

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H's wedding in photos

Okay, it's time for photos. I realised this trip that H and I haven't been in the same country for over ten years now. She visited me when I was in Arkansas; I visited her in St. Louis; then she visited me in Singapore; I visited her in Sydney; and like this, a decade has come and gone. It is kinda neat that I don't even notice it though. Time, distance, new accents, professions, boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends.. all just negligible blips. :)

Bridal paraphernalia


Bridal shoes


Flowers for the bride. Pretty eh? My friend Scrabby did them.


Bridemaids' dress


Kissing on a cake

Wedding day


That's me lacing up the bride. I was still wearing my sports watch.


Arrgh! Rain! Holding up the bride's train and hitching up my skirt. I have no grace.


Watching... and getting a tear streak in my make-up.


I got to be a witness!


The precious red-headed flower girl.

Some photos of food.


Shabu-shabu. Gosh.. the beef! the tofu! and onions too!


Scallops.

And to round up, a photo of the happy couple


On the morning of the wedding day.
See photos below

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My friend Hm

My friend Hm got married last week. It was supposed to be an outdoor spring wedding at a resort overlooking a magnificent beach front, but it rained: freezing cold rain drops coupled with a gusty wind that chilled your bones. But it didn't really matter anyway, since the atrium it was held in had magnificent ceiling-to-floor windows and hard wood floors that boosted the natural acoustics. With everyone crowded into the small space, it felt cozy, inclusive and intimate.

And besides, who cares about the view when every eye is on the bride? She was radiant -- happy like a child, not at all conscious of herself, enjoying every moment, and unbelievably gorgeous. After the dinner, the bride and the groom opened the dance floor with a beautifully executed Latin dance. Because the groom looked so serious and deadpan (I think he was concentrating very hard on his steps!), it was the perfect foil to his partner's natural charm and flamboyance. She's hot stuff!

(More later. Now have to work.)

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My friends bring out the sotong in me

When I was in school, one of my nicknames was "sotong", the name for cuttlefish in Malay. Sotong is synonymous with not being on the ball, hence the saying, "blur as sotong". In fact, when they drew a caricature of me in school, they put a prominent question mark on top of my head to emphasize my sotong-ness.

Hanging out with my school friends this last week brought it out in me again. It is interesting how different people bring out different aspects of your personality because I've almost forgotten how blur I actually am. When I am at work and with colleagues, they think I am the model of efficiency and fountain of information. When I am on holiday with Smole, we fight about who gets to read the map and figure out what's going on. When I am with my old school friends, suddenly I become a true blue blur sotong.

And the sotong-ness has carried over somewhat because I am still out of it. I threw out my contacts solution with the contacts still in them twice this week -- once into the toilet and once out of the window; I spilled tea all over myself and the carpet and the chair yesterday; I even flopped magnificently at boiling hard boiled eggs! What's up???

I have a theory. Just as in the Taoist concept of yin and yang, where opposites complement and bring out the best in each other, I am blur because my old school friends are so remarkably talented, and that eliminates any kind of female rivalry, and so we can get along and be good buddies. That's my theory anyway. ;)

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A wedding under the stars

J. Oliver got married this weekend.

She was the most pro-active dater I've ever known. She approached
dating the way she approached just about everything else in her life
-- with down-to-earth pragmatism. What is the use of sitting around
and whining about being lonely? "GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND MEET NEW
PEOPLE!" she would say to me, and generously offer to me the use of
her subscription-based online dating service.

I still remember sitting opposite her and listening to her recount
story after story of horrible first dates. I would cringe and
silently pat myself on the back for being the type that sits on the
couch and whines. (She would kill me if she read this.) Well, she
didn't meet anyone interesting, so she let the subscription for a
month run out.

She had her heart broken once too, but she wouldn't say anything to
anyone about it. We sat on the sidelines and watched her fall in
love, and watched when he rode off on a motorbike with a piece of her
heart. All of us wanted to ride after him with a pitchfork aimed at
his heart. That's what friends are for, but she didn't say anything,
so we just watched and waited.

She became a biker chick, then a sexy babe with curly tresses, then
back to biker chick, then to a dowdy housewife look, then back to sexy
babe with curly tresses, but she was still the same girl through it
all. We kept on raving about curry puffs, eating mee pok, swearing at
the system, dreaming about NGOs, making appointments to run, and doing
what we can while we wait for life to happen.

And it happened for her last weekend, underneath a canopy of orchids,
with vows that bring tears because of everything the words mean.

Gosh I am so happy for her.

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Old friends are like wine

Friday, 11:30pm. I turn the corner and there you are, clutching a green Heineken bag full of marking, eyes tired from lack of sleep. We have been friends for over fifteen years now. I smile when I see you.

“I was just messaging you. Wanted to come up to give you back your money.”

As I reach for my wallet and take out $110, you tell me that you’ve been awake since 3am and that you have marked non-stop to 6pm, stopping only for breakfast and lunch.

“No wonder you’re so tired,” I say sympathetically, “Where are you heading to?”

“Back home,” you say, and I say, “I’ll walk you,” and we both start walking to the train station, talking along the way.

“I have a pain in my mouth,” you say, “I think it is a wisdom tooth, but it can’t be ‘cos there is no more space for it.” You stick your index finger into your mouth, poking at your gum and say, “Air yis sore air..” You stop in the middle of the pavement with your finger in your mouth so you can feel the sore spot better.

I think for a moment, and say, “It doesn’t matter than you don’t have space you know. Have you taken an X-ray?” You say, “No? It doesn’t matter? Oh dear! I hope it isn’t a wisdom tooth..”

We look at each other, and immediately we say together, “No, no, we don’t mean that. We hope it is only a wisdom tooth. What else can it be?”

We walk a bit in silence. “You have dental woes, you know?” I say to you.

“No lah, I’ve only had a root canal.”

“A root canal! Whatever! People who have had root canals are like people who given birth.”

“Erm. I think there are more people who have given birth.”

We smile, laughing away the tiredness of a week.

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