Happy New Year

Another hour and a half before the clock strike new year.

1.30 AM

2010

It's the New Year.

Went outside to see if the eclipse has happened. No eclipse. But moon was full. Bathing everything in silvery cold light. Throwing dark menacing shadows all around. Funny how the shadows scare me so now. Unlike six years ago when I first moved in. The silver light was the same but the shadows grew.

1.30 PM

Twelve hours into the new year.

I haven't finished this entry.

Today is 11th. Eleven days into 2010.

How do one say 2010?

Well, coming off 2009 I would naturally say two thousand ten.

I read on Yahoo, that some guys who called themselves the National Association of Good Grammar (NAGG) decreed that 2010 should officially be pronounced "twenty ten" and the subsequent years should be pronounced twenty eleven, twenty twelve etc. The '20" should have been pronounced "twenty" all along because every year in the 20th century was pronounced "nineteen something". "Twenty" follows "nineteen". "Two thousand" doesn't follow "nineteen".

That's LOGICAL, claimed NAGG.

However, a noted linguist, Professor George Lakoff of UC Berkeley said it is not wrong to say "two thousand ten" because 'twenty ten" is not the right way due to cognitive reference points, standard of speech and the anachronistic recognition over the notion that grammar can be right or wrong as people and cultures evolve.

Thus, the master linguist and the grammar police agree that "Twenty-ten" is going to take over because it is the shortest and easiest to understand.

NOTE!

People and cultures EVOLVE !!!

Hence the field of pragmatics is getting more prominent.

And here we are in a deep polemic over the word Allah.

Some time in 2008, I attended an interfaith dialogue held in KL. At the end of the dialogue, someone asked how many Christians in the audience would say "There's no other god but Allah". A good many did but one person didn't.

Ring: Pessary

On Monday I attended an appointment at neurophysiology unit in HKL for a test to rule out Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Despite the appointment given, I had to wait for the whole hour before I was attended to. It took two hospital assistants to operate one machine. I guess that made such test rather costly.

I had planned to travel directly from HKL to Kuantan for my visit to the gynae on Tuesday. However, I realized a credit card was not in its usual place in my purse. Then I remembered I made a payment at the deposit machine back home and I didn't retrieve it from the slot. Gosh!! And that was one week ago. I didn't store any number to call, so I had to go back home.

Turned out, the card was actually stuck in the machine and the bank has already frozen it because I did not made any inquiry.

Lesson learned: store the hot number in the mobile.

Early Tuesday morning I drove to Kuantan and reached the hospital just in time for the appointment at 11.00 am. Still, I didn't get to see the doctor until almost 1.00 pm. 

The appointment was a follow up for the MEA procedure I underwent in March. The appointment was supposed to be last September but I totally forgot about it. I put the reminder in my mobile and the battery went flat on the day of the appointment. So much for technology!

Well, the procedure worked. I no longer have the same complaint. The only one left was the prolonged coughing I have been having, giving me problem with leaking bladder. The gynae said at my age, it is common for some muscles to start weakening and since previous urodynamics test done prior to MEA ruled out sensitive bladder so the gynae suggested pessary ring to address the problem.

The gynae made intelligent guess about the ring size based on my age and body size. She asked for the biggest size. They don't have it in stock. The gynae went on to use a smaller ring and offered a houseman to try her hands at fixing it in.

The gynae warned of possible bleeding and discomfort. That was enough to make the experience painful ... imagined mostly.

However it turned out the ring wouldn't fit. So the pain was not imagined after all.

The attending nurse didn't believe it when the gynae asked her to bring the smallest ring.

I was told to come back to the clinic at any time without appointment should the ring pop out or on occurance of any other unexpected problem.

I dared not make the 2 hours drive home so I put up at my daughter's place in Pelindung. The rest of the afternoon and the whole night, the ring rubbed me silly and it felt like being 'f***ed' from inside sending me exploding every now and then. I felt slightly feverish the whole night and decided to go back to the clinic.

I called up the clinic in the morning and was advised to come the next day because it was an OT day for many of the doctors. I spent the whole day resting and surfing the net. 3G is available in Kuantan and my daughter has a 3G wireless broadband modem which makes surfing the net easy. I was able to view some interesting videos, something I was not able to do at home due to my small broadband and slow modem.

Managed to download an old song by Titiek Puspa 'Minah Gadis Dusun' for practice. Hope I made it through the audition on 20th of the month for AKSHAH, a two yearly event organised by my alumni graced by HRH the Sultan of Pahang. Yup! Another performance for the royal scheduled for February next year.

Tok Guru Ngaji

This photo was taken on last EidulAdha. The lady is my old teacher - Tok Guru Ngaji - who taught me to read the Quran when I was 11 years old. Accept for bending back, she looks the same after 38 years. I lost count of how many children she has. Her eldest is five years my junior and her youngest is many years younger than my own.

I left my village at the age of 12. Went to a boarding school in Kuantan, went on into teacher training college in Melaka, posted to schools in Kelantan, Perak and N9. Went on to further my study in England and finally came back home to settle down while getting married and divorced, and raising up two children in between.

It's been seven years since I came home and every year I would meet my old Tok Guru Ngaji who never failed to visit my parents every eid.

I came to know that my Tok Guru Ngaji suffered post natal blues towards her later birth givings. Perhaps the stress of too many children and her late husband, a self employed man who preferred to spend his time with his 'Dikir Barat' group. Because she gave birth almost every year, she seemed to be perpetually in the condition. The villagers came to accept her in her confused state. One of her sons married a teacher and stayed with her. She still goes out to peddle her garden produce and local cakes she made to the estate workers in the neighbourhood.

A dear, kind hearted lady.

My Tok Guru Ngaji.

Purple Flowers in Kool

Spent the whole of last week helping Epit do the lawn. The flowers have been neglected for almost two years now. The fountains we built have dried out filled with dried bamboo leaves. Even the bamboo dried out in the flower pot and last raya Epit lugged the heavy pot to the rubbish hole but for the expensive pot, it was left on the bank and new sprouts started showing when the rain started.

When we first celebrated raya in the house, we went all out to do up the lawn which included two self-made  fountains and a piece of trellis work put up by the fountain to hide the unfinished garage.

Then I planted this purple flower and when all else withered through my neglect over the past couple of years ... it hang on and still give me the pleasure of its beauty. And I don't even know what is it called.