Heaven on Earth

As much as I love the city and its toxic fumes and never sleeping technicolored lights, the jungle does something funny to me.

Some people ask me, how do you do it? Well they mean, you look like a pampered city girl, why would you go into the jungle, get muddy,trek, sweat n suffer. And some friends I quote, say that, "Holidays are only holidays when it comes with a big comfy bed".

I was always a nature person. I remembered my father teaching me how to climb coconut trees and rambutan trees whenever we went back to Mersing, my grandfather's place, which was considered "jungle" enough for me. I used to pick up tiny flowers, watch the trail of ants with enthusiasm, and wow over new discoveries that I found lying in the scrubs. While my cousins would pluck the flowers for Masak-masak adventures, I was out there smelling the roses, and advocating that roses belongs on their stems, not in out make believe kuali.

 But I must admit, that walking inside a 130 million years old virgin rainforest, is a whole different feeling. It brings serenity, tranquility and yet exhilaration of what you might discover next. Your heart breaks along with the thousands of species living in the jungle as you watch logging tracks being formed and homes being taken up by trucks and tractors. Your heart skips a beat when you witness the priceless phenomenon of more than 150 Hornbills soaring in the sky together. You trek in the depths and ignore your irrational fear and mental protests of leeches just to see a blooming rare flower. You take every step with caution, noting that this land you are stepping on, is someone else's home. You squeal with delight just by coming across prints of animals living in the jungle, both prey and predators co-existing together in harmony, sharing the same source of hot springs. You wonder how a home which houses thousands of species, which is equivalent to human "races" can co-exist in an area for millions of years, and we, a country of less than 10 races, is constantly fighting to gain racial supremity, and can't learn to give and take. You wonder why humans would choose to destroy an area which is so close to our idea of what "heaven" is.

The rainforest is a place where miracles are alive. So if you think you need some miracle in your life, you might want to take a few days, breathe the freshest air in our region's largest carbon sink, and you could just amaze yourself with how much you could fall in love with it after all.

Little Fluffs of heaven

The obssession is back. Yesterday, Chatty K texted me, "Guess what's in my car?" I started flabbergasting and felt sweat trickle down my back.

No it wasn't a cute puppy. No it wasn't SLASH, though it could have been since he was in town for concert last night. I did consider Jeevan in a snide way, because she said "what" and not "who". The only time Chatty K would refer to a person as an object is Jeevan. Sorry, no offense dude..

I was right, her brunch trip to see her french chef friend, meant french macaroons!. Glorious crispy fluffs of heaven. So Chatty K resumes to spoil my day by changing her mind every few seconds to whether she would come by and pass me my macaroons. And then she proceeds to test my patience by informing me that she has "shared" my macaroons with some people and popped a few in her mouth. She then insults the macaroons! Biatch... by saying they weren't that great.

9.30pm was hard to wait for. She finally pulled up, and I skipped towards her like Merry Lou and gasped at what she was holding. It wasn't 1, or 2, or even 5 macaroons. It was 12! The macaroons had feet ( tiny jagged edges), I smiled.. I took a bite, crispy yet light as air on the outside, sweet and tangy and soft on the inside. No eggy taste, perfectly shaped dome, pretty feet, ganache made with real vanilla beans! I was in heaven.

SO here's the thing. I gave up making macaroons about months ago. After my almost 40 odd failed attempts, I grew tired of scraping them sticky failures off my pan, wasting baking paper, and i told myself. They were JUST cookies, I can live without them. I was bitter because there is not one thing i cannot learn how to cook. And this little buggers, wouldn't even rise and look anything like how they were meant to look like.

After my salivating affair with Fred's macaroons last night, and Fred generously offering to give me a class on how to make perfect french macaroons, I'm back with a reignited passion more than ever for these bite size fluffs of heaven.

Moon oh Moon...

Where is unhappiness?

 Even if you are out of this world I say..

Take the Moon for instance,

It is sad, It is unhappy,

Why you may ask?

The moon is the unhappiest of all,

Simply because it hates the sun. 

It hates the big blazing hot sun, 

It hates that the "sun" is power and might,

It hates the smooth light emiting surface of the sun,

It hates the craters that are instead, on its face.

It hates the fact that when there's sun, there cannot be moon,

But most of all,

It hates that the one thing it hates the most, 

Is the only reason why, its existence is made known.

Because without its worst enemy,

Lending light to it,

We will never see the moon,

And never know that it watches over us, 

As we sleep at night. 

(I changed little bits and pieces but Thank you Bernard, I loved this...)

The Pain of the Street

One of my favorite books of all time is "The Busy Life of Bees", but not for the obvious reasons of why this book was a best seller. I remembered a side-kick character in the book, May Boatwright who was a frail woman with the greatest intentions in the world. She was seen as sick, with a mental disorder, manic depressive, and unstable. She carried the weight of the world's sufferings on her shoulder. She felt every pain, agony, and suffering her peers felt. She would sing when she was depressed, and had her very own "wailing wall" to pay tribute to the people who have suffered in this torrential world. She was considered, abnormal. She eventually took her life as she could not bear the pain that was surrounding the world.

Why is it abnormal to feel the pain that the world feels? Why is it normal to be detached from the world's sufferings. Just because it has nothing to do with our personal life, does that really mean that we are over reacting when we feel rage towards injustice, and agony to watch children and people suffer at the hands of inequality? Success is measured by money and fame, and not good deeds. What a sick world this place is.

In many ways, May Boatwright was my favorite character because I understood how she felt. The helplessness of not being able to do more for the ones who were suffering. The physical pain that felt so real, so deep when you can do nothing to help another person cope with their struggle. As K* was telling me about her social outreach yesterday with the street kids of KL, I wondered, how do I sleep at night knowing that there's nothing that I am doing to help these children. How do the nation of this country go on enjoying their daily comforts of a clean warm bed, knowing they're children out there, living for the day, living for the moment. Well, I didn't sleep that night, nor the night after, at least not in peace..

I want to let you in on a little secret. Amidst our hustle and bustled lives, we walk past people in need every day without even realising the ones in pain, are extending an arm to beg for a thread of our charity, or a second chance. In the heart of KL, where socialites and yuppies feed their weekly need to party, lies a group of kids who have been surviving the only way they know how, being at the mercy of drug syndicates. These kids come from broken homes, some kids don't even remember where they came from. Some kids are preparing for motherhood, fostering a new generation the only way they know how, to continue living in abandoned projects, burrowing holes in the grounds to keep away from local authorities and larger syndicates who might force them into more venomous trades than they are already in. These kids are not only matted by dirt, they have lines on their face, any teenager should not have. They will eventually become what we call "social garbage". They are Malaysians.

For the many people out there who do not know know of this. It might come as an initial shock, but this will eventually become another one of the world's woes that they would shrug off their conscience. For the people who work in the social work line, they say, what's being done for them, is all that can be done for now. For other people who are aware of these predicaments, they say, but the kids are incorrigible and are too damaged to be saved. For the social welfare and local authorities who are weeding out the kids and sending them to rehabilitation centres and social welfare home where their stay has an expiry, they say, there's too many out there, we're doing our best, we lack resources, all in the name of just arresting (note: not rescuing) them to fill in their quotas.

As we, the everyday people, think about prince charmings, that new bright shiny car, our future houses with white picket fences, and the deciding on the right time to churn out more children to live in this world, we never really stop to think twice do we? What about giving second chances? There's nothing wrong with wanting material stuff and yet allocating some space in your life to make a difference in someone else's who is in need.

So here I am, feeling a fraction of what May Boatwright felt, using this blog as my wailing wall, and singing along to sad tunes on the radio while I drive so that I can relieve some sort of pain. Am i weird to feel the pain of strangers unrelated to me? Maybe.. For what's worth, I'd rather live a life caring, than a life ignoring....

Tell them I was Happy, And my Heart was Broken, All my Scars are Opened..

People say that happy times will come and go, but betrayals are there to stay.. They lay dormant in the nook and crannies of the cracks of your mended heart and slitter out to infect you with pain and sorrow whenever you are vulnerable.

I guess in everyone's lifetime, we have been betrayed before, in one way or another, whether it is a betrayal of a friend, or betrayal of trust by your parents, or the betrayal of a loved one whom you call your own, the scar is there and the truth is, the greater the magnitude of the betrayal, the more often the occurrence of future betrayals.

It's a sick cycle isn't it? What I think is that it can also lead back to the theory that sometimes when we are overly careful, we might be unconsciously plotting our own downfall. It's like being overly careful when you slice a tomato with an extremely sharp knife. As you take caution in every slice, fear populates your mind that you might hurt yourself.  The fear that populates your mind takes up all the space in your mind, and you let your defenses down, because you are crippled by the fear of slashing a finger. Soon, thats all you can think about, the fear, and slacken your grip on the actual intention, which is to be careful in the first place. Before you know it, your worst fear happens, you've been cut, without even realising it.

In my opinion, thats how it is with surviving betrayals. For people who have gone through multiple betrayals, the fear of going through another is so crippling that they either try to hard to ensure it doesn't end up that way again, or throw in the towel and hope for the best. They can do everything in their might to make different choices than the previous choices taken to avoid betrayal, but the fear is still there. The same, good ole fear.

When I used to trained bantered victims of Gender Based Violence on Coping Strategies for Abuse, I went by one single question. Is it really alright to tuck your unhappiness in a box and store it away? My answer is yes, but whats more important is the reason you are tucking the bad memories away for. Do you tuck it away, to try forget it ever happened, or do you tuck it away as a past chapter of your life, but with full acknowledgement that you are at ease with this bad memory that has happened to you?