Happy 20th Anniversary ELS!

This month, November, ELS Malaysia celebrates its 20th anniversary. 20 years and still going strong. Far out! Check out the video ELS made in conjunction with its 20th anniversary.

P.S. Hyf’'s and my part rocked! :p

Being Stepped Over?

Langkah Bendul – In the Malay culture, it is considered a “langkah bendul” when a younger sister gets married before her elder sister. It is also tradition for the younger sister and her newlywed husband to present the elder sister with gifts as a sign of respect and hope that the older sister will find her own match soon.

You’re probably wondering why I’ve suddenly decided to give you an insight into the Malay culture. Not only Malay culture, but Malay WEDDING culture at that. Here’s the story…

My younger sister, Ernie, recently announced that she’s going to be bringing home a guy to officially meet the family. A guy whom, if all goes well, she plans on getting engaged to and marrying soon afterwards. A WEDDING! SUCH HAPPY NEWS! I am happy for her, and for a while, all I could think of was “GIFTS! GIFTS! GIFTS!” since a “langkah bendul” will happen.

All was great until I decided to go over to my parents’ house after work  because I’d been too busy this past weekend to stop by. The first thing my mom said to me as soon as I walked in the door was, “Kalau adik kamu kahwin, nanti kamu dilangkah bendul. Kamu takpe?”, which, in English, meant, “When your younger sister gets married, you’ll be stepped over (langkah bendul). You okay with that?” My answer to that was, “Takpe. Biarlah die kahwin. Lagipun nanti Ira dapat hadiah. Heheheh,” which meant, “It’s okay. Let her get married. Besides, I’ll get presents. Hehehe.” You know what my mom’s answer to that was? She said, “Bagus. Biarlah die kahwin. Kalau nak tunggu kamu, sampai bile die nak tunggu,” which meant, “Good. Let her get married. If she has to wait for you to get married first, who knows how long she’ll be waiting.”

GEEEEEEZZZZ MOM!!! Are you on a mission to see the destruction of my mere and humble existence?!

Okay, so it sucks that there’s a high probability that my younger sister who’s 3 years my junior might get married before I do. But if it’s true love, who am I, the most hopeless romantic I know, to stop it? Let true love run its course. I’m genuinely happy that she has found someone worth bringing home to officially meet the family. I really am. But does my mom have to be so condescending and hurtful? I am only 26 years old GODDAMMIT!

Do I annoy you? Really? How much do I annoy you? Am I annoying you now? Are you really annoyed? Will you tell me if you’re annoyed? Will you? Will you? Am I really annoying?

Have you ever met anyone who annoyed you so much that their presence could change your mood from utterly upbeat to horribly horrifying? Someone who, no matter what he did, annoyed the crap out of you?

Unfortunately, I have. Recently, in fact. The funny thing is that I’ve known the guy for about 5 years. Granted, I’ve only known him online all the while before this, but still. I’ve met a lot of people online, and almost all of them have turned out to be decent people. Some of them even became some of my closest friends, like Zuni and Corporate Chick, so it was really weird when this particular guy just bugged the hell out of me. Him online? Decent guy. Got along with him fine. Him in person? Kill me. Kill me now!

This guy, let’s just call him Annoying Man in honor of his superhuman power to annoy me beyond mere annoyance, had SOOOOO many annoying characteristics. Let’s highlight a few of the major ones…

1. His tendency to blurt out random words in French, a language none of my friends, family members, or myself knew. A few foreign words here and there is not a problem since I, myself, am an ESL teacher, but this guy does it ALL THE FRIGGING TIME! It’s the equivalent of me saying this to a person who doesn’t speak Malay: “Yeah, yeah! Let’s go to that place! Tempat tu seronok gile!” People who don’t speak Malay, did you understand what I just said? NO!!!!! And this happened like 5 times a day!!!
2. His ability to talk about money… and nothing else. Zuni commented that Annoying Man seemed to be quiet most of the time… except when he’s talking about money. “We closed a deal with our client for this much money,” “I bought the place for that much money,” and “They’re paying me this much every month,” are the kind of things you hear coming out of Annoying Man’s mouth when he’s not jabbering in French. You know what I think though? I think he was all talk and that he didn’t actually have as much money as he made it seem like he had.
3. His manners… or lack of it.
   He had his shoes on the first time he stepped into my house. I told him off for it and explained the Asian custom of taking off the shoes when you enter a house, coz let’s face it, we Asians do everything on the floor. We sit, eat, pray, and even sleep on the floor. Fast forward to a few days later, he walked around my house with his shoes on AGAIN! Not only that, when I dropped by my parents’ house (my parents were out of town) to drop off my brother, I told him to come inside the living room and use the internet if he wanted to coz I had to get some stuff from the house, he WENT UPSTAIRS UNINVITED! I got so angry! Who the hell goes upstairs in a stranger’s home uninvited?! People with no manners, that’s who!
4. His inability to accept his faults, mistakes, or anything that sheds a negative light on him.
   Sometimes it’s hard to understand what he’s saying because he doesn’t pronounce his “H”. So one day he was saying, “Yeah, you have to eat the batteries. Then it’ll work.” We were all baffled. We were like, “What? Eat the batteries?” It was another 5 minutes before we figured out that he was trying to say “HEAT”. When I tried to get him to pronounce it properly, he said “That’s how we French talk.” So what? IT’S EFFING WRONG! Just frigging admit it already. Gah!
5. More of his annoyingness!
   Last month we went on a 26km cycling tour in Cambodia. He kept falling behind and had on this constantly pissed off face the whole entire bike ride. (Did I mention he had on a constantly pissed off face each and every morning when we’re walking around temples as well?)  His reason? “They gave me a shit bike! This bike is fucked up! I can’t change gears!” …………… SIEM RIEP IS A STRETCH OF FLAT LAND! THERE IS NO NEED TO CHANGE BIKE GEARS!I didn’t change my gear the entire bike ride, AND my bike seat was so hard that within 5 minutes on it my ass was already aching, but did you hear me complain? NO!

You know, this particular guy bugs me SOOOOO much that if I keep going, I’ll have an uber long list. Because of this, I’m gonna stop here. I hope someone can shove his boastfulness, his rudeness, and his annoyingness up his rude, pompous ass!

Quotable Quotes

“This certainly could finally explain why a man that ugly would dump a princess so beautiful for another woman who looks like a foot.”

-Perez Hilton on rumors that Prince Charles is gay-

LOL!!!!!

Songs of Past Romance

LIST UPDATED!

It’s so weird how every time you have a new guy to drool over, there’s always a song being played over and over again on the radio that gets to you. Sometimes the lyrics of a song is too similar to your own tale of love that you think that, by some weird fate or alignment of the stars, the song was made especially for you. Sometimes a song just reminds you of your muse, despite the fact that the song is not even a love song. And sometimes you just randomly pick a song and decide that this is the theme song for your new crush, regardless of what the song is.

When I look over my shamefully long list of long forgotten romances, I realize that I still think of them whenever those songs happen to be playing on the radio. Here are a few of my past theme songs…

1. 1st boyfriend - “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer (ironic, since we never kissed)
2. Ganu - “Since You’ve Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson (the lyrics spoke to me.. It was all pretend)
3. Love of My Life - “Kenangan Terindah” by Samsons (aku yang lemah tanpamu.. so he said.. LIES!!)
4. Beach Bum - “Sempurna” by Andra and the Backbone (first song we really listened to at the start of the relationship)
5. Fat Bastard – “Jingle Bitch” by Phoebe Buffet (FRIENDS) – some lyrics may have been changed to better suit the situation.
6. Immature - “I’m Already Gone” by Kelly Clarkson (we were always meant to say goodbye)

Current Status: Single
Current Theme Song: “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars
Current Muse: ……..

Please Rephrase

A student in my writing class wanted to write that he woke up from a terrible nightmare drenched in sweat.

This is what he wrote…

“When I woke up that morning, I got wet…”

Hehehe. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen this month. I had to tell him why he had to rephrase his sentence. AWKWARD :p

 

Quotable Quotes

“Isn’t that the thing that killed romance?”

- Bianca Stratford
10 Things I Hate About You
on Feminism-