Living with Sarah

I got an SMS from my sister this afternoon. It said "Hani Mohsin died of stroke". I'm now so used to receiving pranks, I decided to brush it away. After all, I watch this guy on "Roda Impian" every evening with Sarah. It's a good show to expose her to spelling and reading Malay words. In fact, we watched the show last night and he was in pretty good health. I then decided to check the gossip website and saw that there already pages of postings on that. It confirmed the news with a few forumers even citing reading it on online newspapers. Innalillahi wainnalillahirajiun... He really is dead. And so young, only 41 years old. And what made me sad was that he died while catching a flight north with his 9 year old daughter, apparently for a holiday. If that is not tragic enough, then pray tell me what else can be that tragic. Oh, there's another death in the news today about the Pahang princess (old one) who got stabbed by her own son and died. Royalty and fi...

Watched this movie last weekend on HBO. I expected a comedy of slapstick where this young, ambitious woman struggles with the huge task of raising 3 kids - the usual comic spills of food on expensive clothes while clumsily getting ready for work with 3 brats getting in the way. Well, there were such instances in Raising Helen , however, it was surprisingly touching and unexpectedly good. The movie reminded me of a German movie I watched months back on more or less the same plot - how a woman "inherited" kids after her sister died in a car accident. I'm not going to really talk about the movie, more on the emotions derived from it. One - hubby actually turned to me and said, "Now I understand how you feel, to have lost your independence after the birth of our child". For the past 5 years I have been kind of "trapped" in this role of being a mother - no more late night teh tarik sessions with friends at Bangsar stalls, no more mid-night movie shows... A...

Sarah missed school for 3 days last week - alternate days. She also missed school last Wednesday. As she's still in pre-school, I was not very strict. Better to just let it be then forcing her to go to school. She gave several reasons - tired, sleepy, not well... Then she told us that her classmate, a boy named Norhan, always scolds her. Whatever her reasons, I personally believe it's merely laziness. I think she has reached that cycle in her school life - the laziness stage. I think she will be a little bit lazy for the next few weeks, then things will start to pick up again - when she finds something interesting at school. So, I'm just letting it be. But one thing about her, she really knows how to make her Mommy relents to her. Wednesday morning, I lied down beside her waiting her to finish up drinking her milk. She dozed up a bit. It was still early so I just let her sleep for a while. Then I heard sniffing sounds. I switched off the fan thinking she was cold. But the s...

The only words to sum up this book is - mixed feelings. I can't really say I've enjoyed reading it, but I can't really say it didn't stir any emotions because it really did. It's simply - mixed!. I picked up Never Let Me Go after seeing it was listed under must-read books. And after Kafka on the Shore, I'm a sucker for Japanese writers. It was written by Kazuo Ishiguro - the author of The Remains of the Day, which I actually have not read. The style of writing is a bit dreary in the sense that the character, Kathy H, would be telling her story and actually touch about something and say she would elaborate it in a short while. After 2-3 "incidents" of this, I actually got sick of that style of story-telling. I mean, just tell. You don't have to tell me you will tell me about it soon. But then again, Kathy H is a clone, so maybe that's the way her mind works. In the end, the whole story is a bit disturbing. It made me wonder whether there really...

Remember how Sarah's teacher said she's a poor reader? Ok, we picked up Sarah's report card about 2 weeks ago. Met Nancy, Sarah's teacher. It was all candies and roses for Sarah - she got number 5 out of 19 children. That is way, way beyond my expectatation. The feedback from the teacher was that she's good in every ways just that her handwriting is so slanted the teacher doesn't know what else to do, and she reads her Ladybird books so softly the teacher couldn't hear her. We know how good she reads now as at home and she usually read at the top of her voice. But she's a shy girl, so we were not really complaining. But then we saw the reading chart and Sarah's name has no stars on it, not even Book 1A. So, back home we coached Sarah to read - must read clearly and loudly. And the result? A few days later she came back with these big red stars drawn on her hand along with some cartoon stamps. Apparently she read Books 1A and 1B on one go and she...