Suaku Goes Skiing - Part 1

What do you do when it starts to get REALLY cold and snows a lot?
Go skiing of course!

Nevermind that you have to sit in a car and drive until your ka chng sng to reach the mountain. (There's the nice rustic snowscape to ogle at after all)



Nevermind that the weather is -14 degrees celcius (yes, MINUS fourteen!).



Most of all, nevermind that you hail from a small, tropical, sunny (read: HOT) island on the equator (where a very COLD day is 21 degrees celcius) and have never actually SKIIED in your entire life.

In the gung-ho spirit of the new year - die die must try!
With hot spiced wine packed in thermos flask; with enough food to feed 20 people packed in car; with puffer jacket that's more Michelin man than snow bunny, the snow suaku decides to go skiing!!

NEW SNOW, NEW YEAR

Well well whaddya know. It's 2008.

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone, and no this blog aint dead, just dormant. Needed to take a blogiday....a long one.

Last week, for the first time ever in my life, I watched snow fall.
It was so thrilling to me I just sat and bed, looked out my window and watched, just watched. For at least half and hour.
It was beautiful, silent.

Have always seen snow already there on the ground, but never actually seen it snow.

What amazed me more was that snowflakes are actually PATTERNED. Yup. Beautiful tiny icy stars, every one different.
I always thought pictorial depictions of snowflakes were imagined by artists.

Until I lifted one with my black-gloved fingertip.
They really do look like inctricate lace stars made of ice.

It's a good omen I feel, this first snow.

What do I hope for 2008? I'm still thinking about it :)

Happy Birthday lil brother! :)

Living out of focus

In the past week, I've been plotting my escape from the land of magandas.
See, my Turkish is improving and I've learnt this very useful word which describes, oh about 90% of Turks encountered so far.
I'll leave U to Google it.

I need to go home for a while to recharge, regain my sanity, think about what I want to do, hug my parents, play with my dog.

In the last week, I met some expat women and signed up for the IWI...International Women of Istanbul.
Some think it's a tai tai's association for bored rich housewives with a car, driver and young kids in tow.
(All of which I don't have.)
Others like me just want to be able to have a conversation with another human being without using hand signs and feeling frustrated.
Christy, a perky blonde American who's the membership secretary, asked me if I wanted to organise some events or outings to attract a younger crowd. Sure why not. Tennis, golf and playing bridge sure ain't my cup of tea.

It's Ramadan, but strangely here in the Bull, people seem to be stuffing their faces more than ever.
Restaurants are more packed, day or night. In supermarkets, frenzied shoppers are grabbing food off the aisles.
And oh yes, the smoking continues.

I just can't understand the general mentality.
Everything's mixed up, upside down, and often downright stupid.

Case in point:

Last Thursday, my Filipina cleaning lady Rosie was taking a bus home. It was about 5pm, bus was full. 20 minutes into the journey, the bus suddenly swerves, rams into a car, skids to the side of the road and flips on its side. The driver of the car was seriously hurt. Passengers are screaming and crying.
What does the bus driver do? A MUNICIPAL (read government) employee.
He crawls out of the bus, AND RUNS AWAY.
Doesn't try to help. Doesn't call for an ambulance. Just RUNS AWAY.

Like HELLO, you are employed by the government, your bosses know you're driving THIS bus on THIS route and you RUN AWAY from the scene of an accident?
And where's the personal sense of responsiblity?

In the past months, people having been telling me, "celebrate the cultural differences", accept, adapt.
Well, no matter how hard I try, I can't celebrate idiocy. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

The late, great Bukowski speaks for me.

Be Kind by Charles Bukowski

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.

one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.

but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.

not their fault?

whose fault?
mine?

I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.

age is no crime

but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life

among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives

is.

Smudge

Ever had a moment when someone expresses EXACTLY what you feel?


It’s difficult to turn back into a rainbow when you’re bathing in ink. - Maarten

Fatigue: inflicting pain on the body so that the mind will be tricked that it is not hurting. - Hansel



Love you both.

Broken teacups

Random thought of the day:

How to save a marriage. Have a fling with the young Richard Gere lookalike who's there sipping his latte, waiting for you.

------------------------

A decade ago, I learnt to be cruel. In a way I never thought I could be.
Looking back, it was a catharsis that I needed.

My soul's run out of batteries.
Pain keeps the shell shuffling along.
How far can I go, running on empty?
Self...please take over and SAVE ME.


When you break a teacup, if you're careful and keep all the pieces, you can glue it back together again.
But no matter how well you do it, or how much superglue you use, you can still see the cracks.

Humanity

There's something so morbid, humiliating, depressing and so surreal about having to wrap up your own placenta in a plastic cup, cling film and foil.

U feel as though it's a scene right out of a William Burroughs novel.

A flash of a crack whore's nightmare. Almost gory-ly funny in that twisted Tarantino-esque way.

Then you suddenly realise that it's happening to YOU right now in real time. That's a bloody chunk of your own human flesh that you are wrapping up in the middle of your kitchen in the dead of night.

There's nothing worse...except the moment U gawk in horror at the blood covered mass that just came out of you.
Bloody, veiny, spongy......damn it looks like chicken liver. What the fuck is it?!
You call your doctor in a panic. He tells you to bag it for him to examine the next morning.
No matter how many seasons of CSI you've watched, nothing quite prepares you for bagging your own flesh.

Miscarriage. What a fucking stupid euphemism, makes it sound like you took the wrong train.

Everyone tells U it's normal, it's common. It's Nature's way, it's in God's plan.

WELL FUCK THAT.

So what if it happened to a thousand other people?
It's my loss and my pain and it's all new to me.
So DON'T FUCKING TELL ME IT'S NORMAL.

Some days I'm so angry. I want to destroy everything, kill everyone, beat the shit out of people who make me so miserable.

Other days I'm just so tired of fighting. Don't want to try anymore. Just want to fade into the cool darkness of night, stay there, hibernate, hide.

Anxiety lies where peace should prevail.

Requiem

On my birthday two days ago, I lost my baby.

It was 8 weeks old.

I had some slight bleeding on Monday, so on Tuesday on my birthday I went to the Gynae.
He could not find a heartbeat.

Yesterday we checked again, and he confirmed our baby is dead.

JF and I are devastated.

Everything has been incredibly difficult since we came to this country.
And now this.......I feel like someone just punched me in the face.

Don't know what to do. Tomorrow I will have an operation under GA to remove the baby.
I'm scared.

To quote Hansel, my dear friend from his blog...."There is still the daylight to overcome."