Keepsake for my girl

My eldest girl turned 14 yesterday. I can't believe I've been a mom for 14 years now. This year, I give her a little keepsake. Something that she can keep and remember me by forever. I don't know whether it's age that does that to me, or experience, but suddenly I have this urge to start this tradition. As a friend said once, "there is no guarantee that we'd still be alive next week", so while I live, I'll do something the kids will appreciate later.

An aquamarine pendant, and a white-gold-coated silver necklace seems like a suitable gift for my girl. It is supposed to be good for health and self-confidence. I can only wish that the future will be good for her, and that she will have strength to walk through her life come what may, for I know that I can't never wish for an easy life for her. Happy birthday my girl.

Freedom can be tiring

These past few weeks, I've had to deal with the apartment issues (from terminating the tenants who hadn't paid the rents for a few months to preparing it so that it is clean and homely enough to welcome the new tenants). At first it felt quite wonderful to be able to play 'the boss' and decided on many things on my own. But the joy wore out after a while. The thing is, the job, as it unfolds, is quite taxing, not because of the big things, but the little things like deciding on the colours of the wall and the curtains. Serious. Even deciding between shades of blue to paint the wall can be quite tough. My indecisive nature doesn't help either. Anyway, I realized from this experience that I rather be doing thing as a team than on my own. All this while I have the hubby as a team mate, so I decide that he's just the best team mate I could ever ask for.

On being judgemental

Religious people are judgemental. No? Yes? Maybe? But lately I seem to come across so-called religious people who are very judgemental I'm starting to wonder seriously if religions make them so, or is it just them. Christians, Muslims, whatever religions- this seems to be a universal thing. The church goers who talk about God's salvation every chance they have, the people who never miss solat 5 times a day- I really couldn't connect them to the personality of judging other people, quite harshly at that! But that's what they do, sadly. Maybe when one thinks one is doing everything the religion demands of oneself, one is already perfect. Perfect enough to be given the licence to judge...

Too bad. No one is perfect. Thus, no one has the right to judge especially when that judgement is meant to destruct. I never claim to be religious but I do believe in "let him who is without sin cast the first stone".

Thursday Blues

My monday blues are always delayed to Thursdays, I notice. It's just that I never really did think of it until today. Waking up feeling like there's a big lump on my chest, I blamed it on the stressful two weeks of preparing to get ISO certification at the office, chapter writings and domestic duties (that proved to be quite heavy when the hubby is not around). I sat on my computer, uttering a silent thanks because today hubby is around to take the kids to school. It means a lot to me because it gives me the much-needed extra 2 hours to look for journal articles for my chapters, or to just play with some ideas...I felt hungry but found that I couldn't stomach any food. Ended up drinking a mug of 3-in-1 tea.

At 9am I was at the office preparing to get some materials photocopied for my students. The first class was to be at 11am and from past experience I know that they always come without the textbook. I went to my favourite photocopier at Kingfisher Park, which turned out to be not as favourable today. The new worker told me she needed an hour to get the 30 sets times 10 pages done despite the obvious non-existence of other customers. Usually they could do it in half an hour.

Unsure what to do to kill the time, I walked around the place. The pain in my chest grew worst, and I felt the start of a headache. "Could I be having a heart attack?", I wondered. Suddenly I had a flash of imagination of myself fainting in class, in front of new students, on the first day of class. "This cannot be", I whispered to myself. The embarrassment would be too great to bear.

By some coincidence, I ended up in front of a clinic- just opened and patientless at that. I let myself in and before I knew it, I was being attended to by a doctor. I told him about the pain on my chest. He did some exam, asked about my medical history, and decided that it wasn't a heart attack but a bad case of wind. He prescribed me some medicine for wind and asked me to go have my breakfast. Phew, false alarm.

Later when I thought about it, I decided that it's the blues that always come on Thursdays. On Mondays I am normally most rejuvenated, thanks to the weekends, and because by some weird coincidence, my Monday classes always consist of cheerful, good students (could they be rejuvenated like me too?!). By Thursday the energy has depleted and the blues come...and it's no wonder I felt like I was having a heart attack!