Truly Home

Knowing me I don't post this regularly but I just remembered something of what I was watching on the tele and the gist of it is as follows:

When doing floral arrangements, after we are done, we tend to add one too many flowers into it on intentions of making it "perfect". Instead this decorator removed a stalk from it citing how his grandmother feels there should be room for butterflies to fly in between.

Picture courtesy from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dornickdesigns/2725228609/

I somehow extrapolated this to life in general on how it should not be overcrowded and trying to be made picture perfect. After all running after so many superficial things ruins life's beauty and happiness until we tend not to pause a moment to allow the good things that are to happen to actually happen. Imperfections are what that make life beautiful and non-monotonous to say the least.

On a more cheerful note and not to be dampened by the rain now or the frosty mutterings going about in the country; is a truly beautiful moment of being in our country. One of our Chinese neighbours gave away her excess homegrown produce of bayam and kangkung to all of us (being different in race and creed). It was not something shocking to us living here for the past decade or so to witness such things which are of norm here in this quaint neighbourhood. There was no nonsense of being untouchable or uneatable since ... forever, we just know life that way. Our Malay neigbour today passed us a bag full of cookies and savouries before they left for their kampung. The same of which all of us do in time for our ethnic festivities.

If only things can go back to the way they used to be in other places, life would be so much better and newspapers much pleasant to read. After all we who never did change in the first place, never knew of it.

Just Passing ...

Anyway since my posts recently have lost a lot of informational content and more self wallowing pity, it is high time to spruce things up while I have the time (which I technically don't have).

First of all, wishing all those who enjoy festivities a:

Courtesy of http://ecard.home.net.my/images/hariraya/aidilfitri3.jpg

Next for those who are up with dealing people as I had been recently, the following inspirational quotes from http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/people.html can be of help:

You must look into other people as well as at them.

Lord Chesterfield

A good deed is never lost: he who sows courtesy reaps friendship; and he who plants kindness gathers love.

Basil

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

Lord Chesterfield

To rejoice in another's prosperity, is to give content to your own lot: to mitigate another's grief, is to alleviate or dispel your own.

Thomas Edwards

Hear the meaning within the word.

William Shakespeare

Charity, good behaviour, amiable speech, unselfishness — these by the chief sage have been declared the elements of popularity.

Burmese Proverb

Kind words are the music of the world.

F. W. Faber

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Denis Diderot

Arguing with a fool proves there are two.

Doris M. Smith

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few;
and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.

George Washington

Look to be treated by others
as you have treated others.

Publius Syrus

Success in life, in anything,
depends upon the number of persons
that one can make himself agreeable to.

Thomas Carlyle

Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life.

Jean Paul Richter

Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half of the evil they say of others.

J. Petit Senn

The more you say, the less people remember.

François Fénelon

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

William Thackeray

The soul of conversation is sympathy.

Thomas Campbell

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.

George Eliot

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

William Ellery Channing

If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

In many things it is not well to say, "Know thyself"; it is better to say, "Know others."

Menander

The less people speak of their greatness,
the more we think of it.

Lord Bacon

He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man.

Johann Casper Lavater

A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence; which costs us nothing.

John Tillotson

It requires less character to discover the faults of others than is does to tolerate them.

J. Petit Senn

Well, that is about it for now and happy holidays!

The Suprising End to the Never-Ending Laundry

I was very much surprised on how I managed to squeeze weeks of laundry into two plastic bags and sort it out for good (at least 95% of it).

Thankfully I did it two hours earlier than I normally would as the cab arrived half-an-hour and I spent the other hour and half complaining to a friend about an ex-friend and eating. Typically, the usual mad rush was not there. In the bus station, I met a friend's friend who now is a friend and talked away about an hour and half while eating KFC. Then, the bus came and I had a great surprise to meet yet another friend and made a new friend who gave me a chocolate bar. The only fly in the ointment was the person sitting next to me with a slightly noxious smell, but thankfully I slept well and arrived earlier than I expected back home.

So, it was reasonably nice 12 hours I had and I feel this just goes to show that it is not emptyness that had been left behind but more room to move around and forward.

Cool, eh?

Pretty Terrible Things

According to one person that I thought I knew claimed the above which I think includes the following since the person wished not to elaborate:

1) Being resourceful
2) Concerned about the safety of others
3) Being non-discriminative
4) Having some common sense (I am repeating 1 again)

I am bemused by this absurd paraphrasing while I get back to sorting out my never-ending laundry. And the sad and funny part of this whole melodrama is that I am not melodramatic or sad. I am just indifferent.

Rising Costs and Raisins of Reality

Increasing oil prices finally got to me this time around when I got my bus tickets. A whopping 30% increase?! Which makes you blink, slap your forehead and in the end reach your wallet and give up your precious dollars.

On better note, I think I am finally done with unnecessary baggage and feel less choked. Reality hits you hard even in tiny bits but sometimes it is for a reason or many. Feeling relieved, free, nothing crappy to worry about are one of such things. When you barely have enough hours in a day to worry about yourselves, there is no warrant to worry about people who could not care less.

Return to Reality

After gauging on food and books for the whole week, I at least feel better now. Typically, it means the usual psychotic amount of work is going to start soon. The holidays are given just so that we don't die by mistake and we can recharge our batteries to discharge them effectively for the coming months which indeed are grim and scary looking.

I feel that I have a plan but then again reviewing my past records on plans .... Umm lets just say that best laid plans need not only be thwarted by obscure things like luck and by the smallest of things; big things: like being carefree (other words: lazy) and unnatural contentedness are sure fire holes as well.

But then again, you can never be sure without trying and this is what I am going to do. I at least minutely improve each time so let us see how this goes ...

I am not all sunshine yet but it takes a little while to get there after what I have been through these past weeks ...

Post 300 Rant

With evaporation of the jubilant feeling after 300, with all the work consuming me ... I was at the end a living zombie with caffeine toxicity and with don't-know-what-else maladies. Feeling crappy and mundane on the whole.

Some had their funny-bone tickled by me, probably they had just brains of cuttle-bone. There was the idiotic fellow in the bus station blithering in a language he thought I could not understand on how we booked the tickets beforehand without paying. Oh you self-consumed snake, if you knew that we live in a place where access to the nearest ticket counter sets us 30 minutes back, you would know to keep your orifice shut. Plus all you had to do was ask the person at the counter not spout venom at people who were already late for their bus. It was his only silver lining, if not I would have given him a taste of my acidity. pH 0 that is ...

Though thinking back, my RM55 had probably gone to waste since I was squashed like a sardine in the bus back home: my seat could not recline while the seat in front of me hyper-reclined. PERFECT.

On reaching back, I was so tired that I spent and am still spending the days sleeping to rid of the tiredness of the past weeks. Minus the fact that I nearly killed myself eating too much yesterday, there is pretty much negativity flowing from me.

Hoping for sunnier skies at least today to stop sounding hysterical and undead.