Hello,

My name is Jaws. I’m about two months old and as you can see, I’m blessed with an off-white coat with ink-dipped ears. My eyes are painted in light blue and I think it’s the shade that best represents the Malaysian cloudy sky. Forgive the ugly picture as it was taken before my Dettol bath.

My owner likes to tell me how fortunate I am to be alive, but I think she just likes to remind me of how I have only seven lives left (I fell from the roof and was stuck in a very, very, very deep and hollow drain for a day). She also likes to rub my cheeks and chest to make me purr like a machinegun. But she can’t keep me for long as she will be in Singapore for four days and she has her hands full with a blind dog and a fat cat.

I’d appreciate it if you’d take me home (otherwise I would be sent to PAWS). My owner says that she would even throw in a scratching pole if you do! So please email her at thunderedcat@gmail.com if you’d like to give me a chance.

Love,
The kitten currently known as Jaws

P/S: Click here to see more pre-Dettol bath pictures of me!

A picture taken at a restaurant and it has nothing to do with food.

It was my dad’s birthday and I didn’t get him anything except a hug. For my Singapore trip this weekend, I gave him some ringgit to be converted and to make me feel worse, he conveniently slipped in an extra S$150 for me to spend. Maybe he was politely hinting for a nice Singaporean bargain present.

[I wrote a bloody (literally) long paragraph here about how I found a kitten in my roof gutter and how I had to go prostrate on the ground with my arm in a very deep and hollow drain, but deleted it]

So anyway, the kitten’s lower lip is detached from its lower jaw and like most strays, it is suffering from cat flu and needs to be on antibiotics. My sister and I took it to the vet to get its lower lip stitched back and dewormed. I’m just thankful it didn’t die... I’m also looking for someone to adopt it, as long as you wouldn’t mind a kitten with a funny looking jaw. Will post up pictures as soon as I can. He (the kitten) is about 2 months old, cream body and Siamese-looking with light blue eyes. My sister wanted to call him Jaws.

Moving on, I was recently tagged by Pat (thank you, I love answering silly questionnaires). Ok, here are 6 weird facts about myself:

1. I love airplane food because they come in neat packages, containers and foils even if it is not very pleasing to the taste bud.
2. During the time when pen-pals were ‘in’, I used tell them I’m 1.72meters tall.
3. In primary school, my friends and I were so bored with class and as tic-tac-toe became predictable, we tore our exercise books to eat paper.
4. I wanted to be a mermaid and an astronaut. Actually, I still do.
5. In the confines of my car and with the windows rolled up, I sing to Britney and Avril because it’s easy.
6. I collect cheap boxer shorts. A recent addition is a black one with Homer’s Duff bottles and cans. My favourite is the glow-in-the-dark Gap boxers but it’s so pathetically loose now because I wore it too often. I also remember getting funny looks from other women for rummaging through the men’s underwear section like I’m looking for gold. But anyways, I think it’s good practice. Haha.

[click to enlarge]

Something I made at work that is not work related, but because I'm so inspired by Martha Stewart. Next, I will try stitching and I will be making my own snow globes and perhaps give them away as gifts. And maybe make those frangipani lights. And maybe finally get to make that orange fish fillet.

I've been scouting for floaty pens online too. Oh, I feel so industrious.

Some random pictures from this week so far:






The red chandelier was from The Attic where we had the screening for Kit Ong's The Flowers Beneath My Skin. The rest were from the Monosylabik poster show on Tuesday night. The last shot of Junkit's taken by Cheryl, it's among my favourites that night so I decided to put it up. No, I didn't shoot pictures of my poster.

I've never seen so many snobs in my life since high school.
But maybe like me, they were just shy.


You could sing a murderer to sleep
And water holds its form for You

(Some stuff I made in between work and laziness)

Over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling rather down. There are many other things I’d rather talk about than myself and there are times I’d rather not talk at all. When I’m in the company of friends, I felt most alone and when I’m alone, I felt as though I’ve found a best friend. There seems to be a voice between every cricket song and a silent hum in the stillness. Can quietness be this loud?

In Penang I met up with an old friend from college. She updated me with things she’s been doing and all that she plans to do. It made me miss the blithe days I had in college, when life was simpler and when things made sense. It was also a bitter reminder that the world only spins one way and every book has its ending. The day closes without your consent and life can go on without you. But maybe life was also in the crack of smile I forced the other day when I didn’t feel much like smiling. Maybe life was in the tub of ice-cream I bought for my mother and sister when I was broke. Maybe when I was least myself, I’m most alive.

Ok, enough of abstractions. Here are some interesting dolls I found in Penang, although personally I'm not fond of dolls.





So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten,
Sons are like birds flying always over the mountain.
- Sam Beam

I went to a young adult camp last weekend to relax but it was anything but relaxing. There were four sessions packed in two days and each session lasted two hours. I had to doodle to keep myself awake (as seen above). Anyway, I don’t like talking about camp.

Visited a rabbit/deer/donkey farm on Sunday, but the animals were in a very sad state—which is not an unusual sight since many countries exploit animals for tourism. But still, it doesn’t justify. I found two very sick rabbits (due to over-handling and stress) lying on the ground with sand in its eyes and mouth:
A healthy bunny inspecting the soon-to-be-dead bunny:
Here’s a very friendly and jealous donkey (he pushed his friends away from me so I only take pictures of him). I wanted to stroke his head but he kept twitching and then I realized he’s infested with ticks and flies. And then there’s the deer with horrible skin problems.

I'm pretty much brain-dead over the past few days and to make it worse, I'm suffering from a backache. I’m supposed to finish two reviews but my mind won’t register, my fingers won’t start typing and my body won’t obey. Everything seems so numb these days. I don’t know if this weekend’s break would be great either. The only thing I have looking up for me is my new roll of slide film for my holga.

My home modem died so I have to do this at work.

Today is a holiday. Have some fun.

[Belle & Sebastian - Sukie in the Graveyard]

We picked her bones up with chopsticks and placed them into the porcelain jar yesterday. It was weird seeing her remains all burnt up and looking like sand and debris. It’s so dead. It’s like a hermit crab that left its shell empty in search of a bigger shell… life no longer inhabits it.

I also bought some pink and white orchids from the market. I don’t really know why I wanted them, but I felt better after I placed them in the house. That’s my cat being a busybody.

The other night, my cousins and I were swapping stories over the huge pot of flaming ‘hell money’ (literally). We shared about what we used to do together when we were younger, all the fun games we used to play and pranks we pulled on others. When it was getting late, we sprawled ourselves on our grandma’s mattress, giggling about boyfriends and funny pictures. Unknowingly, our grandma’s demise bridged the great divide age made for us. After many awkward years, we shared a common experience again.

I came in for work this morning to find the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD on my desk and it picked me up. I'm also glad that the new Flatfish website I illustrated is up, thanks to the bearded geeks behind all that programming. I guess I will be fine.

And thank you, my geographically distant friend, for ringing me up. It meant a lot. Ok, goodnight.

She was born to a small Teochew village in China in the beginning of autumn 1930. Less than a year later, her parents traded four seasons for the tropics when they brought her to Malaya. She grew up in a shop-house above a multi-purpose grocery store in Kuala Lumpur where she met her first love. His family owned the shop downstairs as well as a chain of other shops scattered around town. Back then, Kuala Lumpur was a growing city with many Chinese business men. Many have no choice but to walk, some rode the trishaw, others cycled and only three families owned a car. His family was one of them.

During the Japanese occupation, she hid in a gunnysack in the grocery shop as Japanese soldiers search each floor, capturing the men and killing the women. One pregnant lady had her stomach sliced through cleanly with a bayonet, leaving her child free-falling between her legs, umbilical chord still attached. A loud thud hit the wooden flooring above followed by what sounded like someone emptying out a bag of watermelons. Some smashed to the ground while others rolled.

Her marriage to the shopkeeper’s son was anything but happy. Besides being a heavy drinker and a womanizer, he was also diabetic. Every morning, she would fix him a shot of insulin on his thigh before he set off to work. After much ‘entertaining’ business, he would return home pissed drunk and totally incapable of holding a normal conversation without raising his voice. She was not too patient either, as a teacher, raising her voice was part of her job requirement. When she was too tired of his misdemeanour, she became her own private eye and found him with an arm around another woman. Armed with her sewing scissors, she reached for the woman’s hair. But that was only to scare her husband, who then sheepishly followed her home.

She was always fighting something. She fought for her husband when he was too tired to fight for her, she fought for her four children when he died and left them with only $2000, she fought for her son when he was mentally ill, she fought for her own mother when she became bed-ridden and she fought for her own life when she was diagnosed with her first cancer. But on Saturday morning, she was too tired to fight for herself. After feeding her water from a syringe, I saw her chest rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall and slowing down and down and down and finally still.

And then there were tears in her eyes. She finally found the peace she was fighting for.

My family gave her a Buddhist funeral although she accepted Jesus without their knowledge. So last night we burnt her a mansion with four maids, two Mercedes, a mahjong set, an Astrg dish (decoder, remote control and flat-screen TV included), a handphone (without 3G, that would be too complicated for her), gold and silver mountains and loads of cash. It was engulfed in a flame that was almost 10’ high and then fell into a million pieces from the sky like glowing golden snowflakes, disappearing as they reach the ground. I hope my memory of her will not be like that, burning fast dying young. I want it to last as long as I live because that is the only living part of her left with me.

And I miss her so much.


This is one of my favourite pictures of her


She loved sewing


At a school, with a very spiffy bag


Four years after she became my grandma, Thailand

---
I’d like to thank those who visited, called and smsed. I’m sorry that I didn’t reply some of your messages, but I really appreciate your thoughts and kind words.

How could you love me the same way you love him?
All my decaying teeth hanging limp
A tongue wedged between a truth and a lie
When push comes to shove
You are a volcano waiting to explode
Holy Ghost, everything goes
Holy Ghost, everything goes

(missing the ark, could there be grace for a drowning man’s wave?)

Over the past few weeks this month I’ve been stressed out so much, it’s hard to find my head. Like a dark storm cloud collecting and holding up so much rain and travelling heavy, I’m almost ready to let all my weight fall and flood the ground.

Will be participating in the Monosylabik poster show, but I’m a bit uninspired at the moment. No, I think I’m just bored. I just don’t feel ‘lucky’—if that makes any sense. Maybe it’s pms.

Besides all the gloomy news, Jo gave birth to a baby girl and I think that’s probably the highlight of the month/year for me. I’m starting to read J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye but I have not finished some bestsellers and some well-known titles I picked up a year ago:

1. The Da Vinci Code
2. Memoirs of a Geisha
3. Tuesdays with Morrie
4. One the Road
5. Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
(The first two I was bored, the third and fourth I was too busy and the last one I knew the ending)

So what does that say about me?

There’s a bowl of tom yam waiting for me downstairs and I’ll be visiting the children’s home soon. Here’s how the children’s library looks like (check out the former furry member of K.I.S.S.):

Was walking back from lunch on Friday and I passed an old man with an open briefcase.
He sold me a $7 smoking pipe.
Photoshopped smoke here.

[Denison Witmer - Little Flowers]

These days the rain frequents the ground every late afternoon. It’s nice, except that I wish I wasn’t working every time it rained. I wish that when it rained, it wouldn’t dry itself up so fast and leave the ground cracking and lusting for more. I wish that the sun would come out gently and not be so harsh. I wish I have a black and white polka dotted umbrella... or that red HSBC umbrella I saw the other night.

I don’t want to wear you like an oversized yellow raincoat—purposeful but fashionably dysfunctional. I don’t want to blush when it rains or when the neatly packed plastic raincoat slips out from my bag. I want you to be the umbrella I never had. You will shelter me and I will hold on to you and remain in you.

[Cat Power – Where is My Love]