Miscellaneous reflections and thoughts:
I cannot stomach full bodied caffeinated coffee anymore. One weak decaf flat white please!! Yes, that's right. I want a bit of coffee in my sugared milk. I am not ashamed.
I am losing my patience with Omar more often now. It always fills me with regret that I snapped at him when I was feeding him and he refuses to open his mouth, or when he dips his hands into the cat's water bowl for the third time in the last half hour. When I watch him fall asleep beside me, I remember he is just a little baby boy and even though I ask him all the time "Are you a baby or are you a big boy?" I know that he will be, for a little while, a baby in a growing boy's body. I remember now as a little kid, just a few years older than Omar, old enough to understand things adults say whether or not they mean to say it, my aunts and uncles would say my mother and I could not get along and I always felt a bit rotten because I did not want to think myself as a bad little girl. But at the same time, it was always easier to antagonize my mother instead of listening to what she wanted to do. I get annoyed when people ask me if Omar is in his terrible twos, not because he's not yet two, but because of the implication that he will be terrible when he turns two. I used to think no corporal punishment, then I decided it depends on the kid. Now I think it is probably less damaging to ask for Omar's hand and babap than to say words like "naughty boy!" in order to teach him right from wrong. May Allah grant me patience and guidance in helping my boy grow up well.
Turning 30 feels amiss. Don't get me wrong, I had a nice and maybe even wonderful birthday-- with a Billy Joel concert somewhere, and mille crepe cake, and Shaz, and lobster. But I feel like there is a string of unfinished businesses that I should have taken care of before turning 30. (Maybe my thesis was one of them. But more on this later)
I feel less and less empathy for people who share excessively on facebook. You may know that I do not have facebook, but in my times of boredom or nursing Omar and having run out of things to read in the news, recaps & mommy blogs, or done with crossword puzzles and scrolling down Whatshouldwecallgradschool.com, I guiltily hijack my sister's account and scroll down her newsfeed. It will be peppered with the usual suspects posting the usual things, which run from selling miracle weightloss items, pics of the kids, inane status updates, pics of the kids, current affairs comments, pics of the kids, pics of things they are eating taken in poor lighting, etc etc. And I don't know why I keep going there, just to see and to loathe. These are people, who in real life, I probably don't mind. But their FB counterparts makes me less able to relate to them in real life. Don't ask me why I keep reading the newsfeeds. Ok, at some point I think I go there just for self-fulfilling prophetic reasons. I expect them to be a certain way, then I roll my eyes when I see that they are. And the Likes, and comments. Oh the Likes and comments. Maybe I'm the one with the problem.
I really really want to go back to being pescatarian. But... roast chicken. And any kind of lamb. Sigh.
Sometimes you really really want something, and you pray hard for it and you can almost taste it. Then you forget about it. Then you get it! And you're like, Wow! And then that's that. It's on to the next thing you want. I guess I am talking about rezeki. Specifically, a string of good fortune in terms of my PhD career as I am nearing the end of it. Like an abstract accepted for a talk at an international conference, and a travel grant to go to it, then another grant to write some papers. I remember wanting these things so badly, and praying for them, asking my mom to pray for them and BELIEVING I would get them. Then as I forgot about wanting them while busy doing other things, I find out I got them. One by one. MasyaAllah. Alhamdulillah. There is a brief sense of euphoria, like I wanted to shout to the world (well my world, which consists of mom, husband, bestfriend) and then when I was done it felt like I should be quiet now. And think hard about how much I've received, and how little I have given. It is a bit surreal. And this is, in the larger scheme of things, quite tiny achievements. I wonder how people who can really say their ship has sailed in feel (first million for the millionaire, first TIME magazine cover for the famous person etc). Is it just the same thing? Euphoria and then. Do they start waiting for the next ship?
You know how they say money makes the world go round? Lately I think, no. It's stupid people that make the world go round. When I say stupid, I do not mean unintelligent. I mean people who deny rational thought. And this can be me too, at times. If you wonder why people can get rich selling phones for thousands of ringgit, that everyone knows will become obsolete in less than two years, it is because people can be stupid. Why people get rich selling hundred ringgit tudungs, line up even to buy these pieces of cloth that were supposed to cover their heads in an act of modesty but instead become symbols of status and reasons to buy more shelf storage, it is because people can be stupid. I suppose if we did not have stupid people, a lot of businesses would flounder and the economy would be stagnant. I mean, how exciting can it be to buy food and necessities? (Actually, I love grocery shopping and am truly excited when purchasing cookware I think can be handed down to my future grandkids.) Sometimes I say it quite fondly, that people are stupid. But other times, when I think of how destructive it can become-- like people having their family go into debt to support their gadget, car, tudung upgrading lifestyle, or worse, people buying into a movie franchise based on car racing and then getting influenced to doing the same in their Myvis and ending up killing a young family, then I get angry. What a lot of people seem to forget is that being stupid is not a crime, until your stupid actions hurt someone.
I feel a true sense of happiness when I watch Omar finish his food.
I am a bit jealous that Kate Middleton now has a pair of boy-girl siblings, but at the same time I know I am not ready for another kid.
I am losing my patience with Omar more often now. It always fills me with regret that I snapped at him when I was feeding him and he refuses to open his mouth, or when he dips his hands into the cat's water bowl for the third time in the last half hour. When I watch him fall asleep beside me, I remember he is just a little baby boy and even though I ask him all the time "Are you a baby or are you a big boy?" I know that he will be, for a little while, a baby in a growing boy's body. I remember now as a little kid, just a few years older than Omar, old enough to understand things adults say whether or not they mean to say it, my aunts and uncles would say my mother and I could not get along and I always felt a bit rotten because I did not want to think myself as a bad little girl. But at the same time, it was always easier to antagonize my mother instead of listening to what she wanted to do. I get annoyed when people ask me if Omar is in his terrible twos, not because he's not yet two, but because of the implication that he will be terrible when he turns two. I used to think no corporal punishment, then I decided it depends on the kid. Now I think it is probably less damaging to ask for Omar's hand and babap than to say words like "naughty boy!" in order to teach him right from wrong. May Allah grant me patience and guidance in helping my boy grow up well.
Turning 30 feels amiss. Don't get me wrong, I had a nice and maybe even wonderful birthday-- with a Billy Joel concert somewhere, and mille crepe cake, and Shaz, and lobster. But I feel like there is a string of unfinished businesses that I should have taken care of before turning 30. (Maybe my thesis was one of them. But more on this later)
I feel less and less empathy for people who share excessively on facebook. You may know that I do not have facebook, but in my times of boredom or nursing Omar and having run out of things to read in the news, recaps & mommy blogs, or done with crossword puzzles and scrolling down Whatshouldwecallgradschool.com, I guiltily hijack my sister's account and scroll down her newsfeed. It will be peppered with the usual suspects posting the usual things, which run from selling miracle weightloss items, pics of the kids, inane status updates, pics of the kids, current affairs comments, pics of the kids, pics of things they are eating taken in poor lighting, etc etc. And I don't know why I keep going there, just to see and to loathe. These are people, who in real life, I probably don't mind. But their FB counterparts makes me less able to relate to them in real life. Don't ask me why I keep reading the newsfeeds. Ok, at some point I think I go there just for self-fulfilling prophetic reasons. I expect them to be a certain way, then I roll my eyes when I see that they are. And the Likes, and comments. Oh the Likes and comments. Maybe I'm the one with the problem.
I really really want to go back to being pescatarian. But... roast chicken. And any kind of lamb. Sigh.
Sometimes you really really want something, and you pray hard for it and you can almost taste it. Then you forget about it. Then you get it! And you're like, Wow! And then that's that. It's on to the next thing you want. I guess I am talking about rezeki. Specifically, a string of good fortune in terms of my PhD career as I am nearing the end of it. Like an abstract accepted for a talk at an international conference, and a travel grant to go to it, then another grant to write some papers. I remember wanting these things so badly, and praying for them, asking my mom to pray for them and BELIEVING I would get them. Then as I forgot about wanting them while busy doing other things, I find out I got them. One by one. MasyaAllah. Alhamdulillah. There is a brief sense of euphoria, like I wanted to shout to the world (well my world, which consists of mom, husband, bestfriend) and then when I was done it felt like I should be quiet now. And think hard about how much I've received, and how little I have given. It is a bit surreal. And this is, in the larger scheme of things, quite tiny achievements. I wonder how people who can really say their ship has sailed in feel (first million for the millionaire, first TIME magazine cover for the famous person etc). Is it just the same thing? Euphoria and then. Do they start waiting for the next ship?
You know how they say money makes the world go round? Lately I think, no. It's stupid people that make the world go round. When I say stupid, I do not mean unintelligent. I mean people who deny rational thought. And this can be me too, at times. If you wonder why people can get rich selling phones for thousands of ringgit, that everyone knows will become obsolete in less than two years, it is because people can be stupid. Why people get rich selling hundred ringgit tudungs, line up even to buy these pieces of cloth that were supposed to cover their heads in an act of modesty but instead become symbols of status and reasons to buy more shelf storage, it is because people can be stupid. I suppose if we did not have stupid people, a lot of businesses would flounder and the economy would be stagnant. I mean, how exciting can it be to buy food and necessities? (Actually, I love grocery shopping and am truly excited when purchasing cookware I think can be handed down to my future grandkids.) Sometimes I say it quite fondly, that people are stupid. But other times, when I think of how destructive it can become-- like people having their family go into debt to support their gadget, car, tudung upgrading lifestyle, or worse, people buying into a movie franchise based on car racing and then getting influenced to doing the same in their Myvis and ending up killing a young family, then I get angry. What a lot of people seem to forget is that being stupid is not a crime, until your stupid actions hurt someone.
I feel a true sense of happiness when I watch Omar finish his food.
I am a bit jealous that Kate Middleton now has a pair of boy-girl siblings, but at the same time I know I am not ready for another kid.
I am really curious to find out how Omar looks like as an adult. So much so I almost downloaded a virus app that said "How I look like in 20 years". That's stupid people for you.
This blog is becoming obsolete.
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