HANI's Honey

Thursday, April 3, 2003

09:32 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

I am not sick. I think.

I don't know my body is being so peculiar.

Admittedly, Tariq is sick, and whenever either one of us gets sick, the other one follows soon after. So most likely, I've caught his "upper throat infection."

The weird thing is that I do not feel ill during the day. Only at night, after dinner. I wake up in the morning and feel perfectly fine.

Possibly, I should go to the doctor. Yet, I hate general practitioners in this country. They're just snake-oil salesmen, peddling legal drugs. Any excuse to sell whatever's in their cabinet without going to jail.

I hate asking to be taken to the doctors. As a child, too often, the first reaction when I announce I'm sick, is disbelief.

I remember complaining of severe earache at age nine, and Auntie Jillah accusing me of lying, rather vehemently. It I hadn't been suffering the pain for a week already, and it was hurting so badly, I would have just backed down, and taken the pain. She was shouting at me so strongly.

Thankfully, Mom eventually believed me. It turned out, I had fungus growing in my ear, and we had left it so late, that the damned fungus had pierced through my eardrum. I had lost ten per cent of my hearing on my left ear.

That was really the worst case. More often than not, I would complain of fever, the maid would put her hand on my forehead, and say she felt nothing. Honestly, a thermometer would have given a more objective judgment. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, we don't keep one around.

So, I just grew up following the example of the adults. I tend to deny I'm sick.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030403a

Thursday, April 3, 2003

01:00 a.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

This little froggy fell into the pot

I have a very, very sick habit. Whenever I'm being scolded, or I'm crying, I smile.

It used to make my mother so mad. She'd be like, "Why are you smiling? Stop smiling! This is serious!"

I make ugly, stupid, funny faces when I'm not serious. When I'm serious, angry, upset, or just plain unhappy, I smile. It's a strange habit, if not outright sick.

I remember a time, when I was fourteen, and pretty much under the care of our maid (she preferred to be called housekeeper) who had been with us since before I was born. I was just about to eat a chicken sandwich the maid had given me, when Adik (younger sister) bounded in, just come home from boarding school. Adik grabbed my sandwich and took a bit from it. She then spat it out.

"The chicken in this thing is raw!" she complained.

I just ate the rest of the sandwich. Adik started demanding that I complain, asking me how I could let the maid treat me like that. I just shrugged.

While Adik is like the frog who gets tossed into boiling water and immediately jumps out, I'm like that frog that gets put into a pot and slowly boiled to death, without ever realizing what happened. I don't seem to have the ability to notice when I'm miserable, until it reaches a very bad level.

Without this blog, I'd be swallowing all the misery in the world, without ever questioning myself, or noticing the changes in my environment. Had the frog kept a little online journal, and kept track of the water temperature, maybe it would have jumped out of the pot in time.

At least, that's what I'm hoping HANI's Honey will do for me.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030403

Wednesday, April 2, 2003

12:35 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Phone does not work

It completely when hay-wire on me last night, and this morning, has completely shut down.

I think Suresh is right, and it's the battery that needs replacing.

I lightly dropped the damned thing onto my bed, and it clattered inside. Battery has never done that before. It freaky. Unfortunately, Daddy gone off to Sabah, so can't borrow his battery to test theory out.

Anyone with a Nokia 3310 or 3315 willing to meet up with me to test my stupid false-hope giving phone still really works?

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030402

Tuesday, April 1, 2003

04:33 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Phone Works!!!

The minute I turned the phone back on, I received an sms from my father.

According to the text message, he's gone off to Sabah for four days, and inconsiderately and cruelly, has left the car with a friend. So for the first time since Mom moved back to Malaysia, both parents have gone off to other places.

I feel rather abandoned.

My first reaction towards Dad's message was to curse the idiot. He obviously did not pay attention when I told him I dropped my cellphone in the swimming pool, and the possibility that the damned cellphone won't work.

I've decided that I shouldn't curse him. Yes, he's obviously not showing signs of being clever. He has Tariq's number, and should have been better off sms-ing him, but he doesn't think of things like that. So, I'll just roll my eyes at my cuckoo old man.

Apologies for dissing him. Remnants of negative emotions toward him linger still and are as impossible to get rid off as that last small speck of dust in a room that has been spring-cleaned.

I feel so goddamned not in control of my life today.

Tariq fell sick this morning. I went to visit him by taxi. He's feeling miserable. His fever was so high when I left him, and I couldn't do anything for him. I spent most of the time worrying about my cellphone, which at the time, I wasn't sure was working or not. In the end, I called a taxi to head home, because Tariq was definitely too sick to send me home, and I don't have a car to go anywhere if I had to save my life.

Here's a bit of amusing news. The taxi driver that arrived to Tariq's house recognized me. And remembered my address.

I've been using taxis too much, obviously....

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030401a

Tuesday, April 1, 2003

10:47 a.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Lacking college connectivity

Since I don't have the driver's number anymore (it being in the SIM card that is without a phone), I couldn't call the driver to come pick me up. Not that I think he'd be able to come in time.

So I called a cab an hour early, and trundled off to college by my lonesome self.

Being in college without a cellphone is worse than being at home without a cellphone. At least, at home, I could lie to myself that I still had the landline, and I could still contact people (not that I remember their numbers).

In college, I have no cellphone, and I have no numbers (except my boy's, who is sick right now, and my father's, who is unsympathetic). I feel lonelier than before.

The last time I lost my cellphone, I at least had friends in college, so I could distract myself with their company. I still felt connected, at least to a few people. Now, I am friendless, and unable to contact actual friends at all.

It freaks me out, it does.

You may scoff at me, for being so dependent on my cellphone. It just is the way it is.

I feel so strange, not having the weight of the cellphone on me. It would be like running around without my wallet.

So, to distract myself, I am on the internet, writing long, nonsensical entries, since I am now lame and lonely.

Bad things just don't want to happen singly with me.

Ironically, it's April Fool's Day. God, how I wish someone would pop up and shout, "April Fool!" and hand me my phone, working again. Oh, and a healthy boyfriend.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030401

Monday, March 31, 2003

07:47 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

My phone sank into a pool

So of course I had to follow his example and screw up my own cellphone.

Of course, I had to do it better.

Oh yeah. I put my cellphone in my pocket, and sat beside my swimming pool. The damned cellphone had to of course fall out, and sink to the bottom of the swimming pool.

I chlorinated my Old Navy tracks, not three months old yet, to rescue the damned cellphone. Reading the label of my pants, it says "Only non-chlorine bleach."

Tested the SIM card on Tariq's phone, so at least I still have my number and everybody's numbers. Now, we're just waiting for my cellphone to dry and see if I still have a cellphone.

Let's hope I still have pants too.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030331a

Monday, March 31, 2003

12:43 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

without a topic, use metaphor

I feel like I am sailing through a strange fog that never ends, and I just cannot see anything through it that can be formed into a topic.

I see hints of forms and shapes. Problems with Tariq and his mother. My studies. My hopes and dreams. My opinions.

They're all blurred up and hidden by the strange fog that I am sailing through at a slow and steady pace.

The problem with sailing through a fog, no matter how slow and steady the pace is, is that you might hit an iceberg that you didn't see. Then I would sink faster than the Titanic did.

I think I'm feeling aimless. Where is my vision? Where are my dreams? What of my goals? Where and what they are seem to be hidden in the fog, even further away from me than the topics of my blog.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030331

Sunday, March 30, 2003

07:13 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Hani's Non-Existent Productivity

I promised my elder sister I'd paint her old apartment. That's not done.

I haven't done a single statistics exercise.

I haven't done any aerobics in nearly a week.

I haven't studied despite mid-semester nearing.

The most annoying thing is that I'm tired.

Despite a distinct lack of productivity.

What am I to do with myself?

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030330

Friday, March 28, 2003

02:32 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Standard Time

Lonely

I don't find it difficult to make friends, and I know most of the English-fluent people in college.

But it's difficult to maintain friends when I'm repeating old semesters while friends move on to new semesters. Everyone's schedules are so different, and so I rarely see old friends, except if we bump into each other outside class.

More often than not, they'd be working on their class project, or studying for the next test. There's just not enough time to re-bond between classes.

My old solution was to make new friends. Every semester, and every half semester, my college enrolls new students. Yet, I'm just so tired of making new friends that I lose.

So, I sit here, in college, feeling somewhat lonely.

Never mind that my loneliness is of my own making.

We'll make friends next semester, when I feel a little more assured that I won't fail whole semesters again. I've got better things to do than mope around.

Be honest.
Link to the start of entry: #20030328