Progress!

I had a craving today. To eat dinner!

And I polished off 2/3 of a plate of cantonese style fried kuay teow (as compared to yesterday: a few stalks of kai lan and a piece of sizzling tofu).

Hang on though, I feel some gas building up...

They say it gets better after this

So far this week:

• Have suffered gastric pains so acute, I was left curling up on the couch wishing I could just shrivel up and die. If gastric pains can render me so incapable, I cannot imagine how I am going to go through labour. Thank gawd for epidural.

• Passed enough stink bombs in the house to contaminate it for a whole month.

• Hubby has a new affinity for the couch since it's been his new bed for the past week or so.

• Racked up the electricity bill since hubby has been having a field day with the air-conditioning and watching DVDs till the cows come home on his new bed on the living room couch.

• Onion is my new enemy.

• The way my muscles are slacking off, another week of hormone-induced muscle slacking will result in me not being able to fit into my snug pants anymore.

• Cannot tolerate my 6-heaping teaspons of milo per mug rule anymore. Four flat teaspoons is more than sufficient. Less is even better.

• Sweet potatoes are my friends.

• Being trapped in an area with strong food smells makes me feel nauseous.

• Did I mention gas?

Merry Christmas, everyone!!

Here poochie, poochie, poochie!

All those maternity books, they lie!!

Am just into my 10th week and all the maternity books that I've read have said that if this is my first pregnancy, I am not supposed to show. My foot I'm not supposed to show. It's taking all my willpower and whatever lax muscle skill I have to try and suck it in but it's not working! the stubborn bulge still pooches out.

My loose pants are starting to feel snug and my snug pants are tight. I can't button my jeans up without feeling like I'm trying to squeeze a watermelon into my waistband.

And I have absolutely no appetite. Ask me what I want to eat and I just stare at you as if you've asked me the equivalent of a calculus problem. "Huh?" I don't care. I don't feel like eating. I don't want to eat. I don't want to think of food. I'm just eating for the sake of sustenance. I'm eating because if I don't eat I will suffer a worse fate: gastric pains.

And I feel like burning my maternity books. No pooch my ass.

It's a blob!

All right, I suppose announcing it this early on my blog would go against all pantang and superstitions about telling people you're pregnant before the third month. Well, screw it. If I don't talk about it here, I can hardly talk about it anywhere else since blogging has taken over my daily written journal entries.

So, I officially have a parasite growing in me and it should be about 8 weeks old. We've still got a ways to go. A long way to go.

A week ago the doc scanned my non-existent bump and I could not make anything out on the screen. Other than what looked like scratchings or etchings on a black background, all I could see was a blob in a black hole.

And then he upped the volume. Lo and behold! There was an audible heartbeat and it was going like there was no tomorrow. "146 beats per second," announced the doc. Wow, I thought. "That's damn fast!" I exclaimed. "Yes, the baby's heartbeat beats at around twice the rate of the mother's," he confirmed.

That's nature for you.

It's mindboggling.

My other half, chef extroadinaire

On Tuesday evening, Rizal decided to roast us a chicken for dinner. A la Jamie Oliver.

It was delicious, other than the fact that he was a bit too generous with the salt. The rosemary and thyme gave off a distinct and delicious aroma, infusing potatoes, onions and carrot with character. Rizal couldn't help gushing about how juicy and fragrant the lemon was after it was parboiled and pierced just before he stuffed it into the chicken.

It's a good thing my hubby is so enthusiastic about cooking. I don't mind someone else doing the cooking. I like helping to eat. I'm not a half bad cook myself, it's just that I'm too lazy most of the time to get my butt off the couch and do the preparations needed to cook a dish, or two.

Not so Rizal. He loves the whole process of cooking. Or I think he does. I've never seen him happier other than when he's gaming or salsa-ing. Grocery shopping with a mission fuels him.

Like I said, I'm lucky someone else in the family can cook. If we were to wait for me to whip up a dish, we could wait till the cows come home. Sigh, luckily he's been patient with me and not demanding at all.

So the next project we'll be working on together is Christmas dinner with/for the friends. What we're planning: stir-fried corn, jacket potatoes, portobello or field mushrooms with cheese on a tomato base, seafood couscous, a la Jamie Oliver again. And of course, turkey but that will be bought. We hope the rest of the group should be able to come up with salads, drinks and desserts. Or maybe we could whip up some Christmas punch?

It would be a dinner to look forward to.

All the world conspires against you getting what you want

I had a terrible craving for fish head noodles last Monday. I had no time to drive all the way to my favourite fish head noodle shop in Taman Tun for lunch. By Wednesday I was still craving said FHN. I had a break after my appointment and decided to drive over to the shop before heading back to the office. It was 2pm. The shop was CLOSED!!!

It's not a dinner place, so I wouldn't get a chance to have FHN for dinner. So I asked a friend if he knew anywhere that had passable FHN for dinner. He pointed out a place which is notoriosly difficult to get to because of the rush hour traffic. Forget it.

On Friday after work, I was circling around my area on the way home before heading to a dinner appointment. Eureka!! A shop which had FHN popped out at me. I parked the car and almost skipped all the way to the shop. I got there, but ARGH!!! was told by the girls that the boss had not arrived yet, therefore the stall wasn't ready to sell any FHN. ARGH!

It goes to show, if you really want something bad enough, you may not get it at all. But then again, maybe it's just me.

Reading the subtitles

I was surfing Astro and stopped on 8TV the other night. It was a programme called "Rodger Dodger". It was in English with BM subtitles.

A group of yuppies were discussing the role of men and women, and whether they needed each other. Or something to that effect. The talk moved on to sex and whether women really needed men or not in this act. As I watched the conversation unfold, whenever the protagonist mentioned "vagina" or "clitoris", the words would be bleeped out of oblivion. So you'd see the characters mouths moving but you wouldn't hear the word uttered. Sigh...nothing new since we all know how taboo it is in this day and age in this country to talk about sex and genitalia or anything related to either.

What the censors at Astro failed to do was bleep out the subtitles as well. So while the characters are "air-talking" about vaginas and clitorises (is that the plural?), any viewer with brains the size of a peanut could figure out for themselves what they were saying by reading the subtitles. In the BM version, of course, which worked out to be "vagina" and "klitoris" since knowing how taboo we all are about sex, I doubt if we could find the equivalent of the female anatomy translated in BM. We're talking about proper BM and not slang or coarse words.

I digress. If the censor's job is to censor what they or the government think is taboo, how did bleeping out the uttered word but leaving the subtitles intact serve as doing their job?

So I suppose, if there were any other reason at all to drive our literacy rate up, it would be to tell our kids, "Hey, even if they censor it on the TV, if you're literate, you can understand what they say by reading the subtitles. So go finish conjugating those vowels."

Watching this could actually affect what you eat or don't eat

During the credit roll to Happy Feet:

"You know, I was just thinking; after your sister watches this, she may swear off fish and become a vegan."

"You know, I think that could just happen!"

Taking responsibility for our actions

I received a call from a friend one day at four in the morning. Disoriented and half-asleep, I thought she might have called me by mistake so I hit the 'busy' button. The next thing I knew, I received a text from her telling me that she'd discovered her husband was cheating on her and to call her when I could.

I took my mobile with me and called her right away from the living room. I knew exactly what she was going through and how talking to someone can make a difference.

Her husband's transgression was unforgivable but he claimed no physical contact other than holding hands. What is it with men? Can they be so dense that they think just having dinner is not infidelity? It is when your spouse doesn't know how many dinners you've had together or if you find yourself in a kitty corner with your dinner partner. Or is it that it has to be sex before they claim unfaithfulness? Or that giving the all-universal line: "I didn't think" will absolve them from any blame? "I was stupid" is another favourite line with perpetrators. As if being stupid and not thinking can possibly take away the indescribable pain your wife suffers from finding out about your affair. Here's another good one: she was convenient. Can you believe the callousness with which men treat our feelings and trust?

Any spouse who thinks that having dinners and intimate long chats or holding hands with any person other than their partner does not amount to infidelity or an affair should be shot. And hung out to dry. There is such a thing as emotional infidelity. It all boils down to this: if you are hiding it from your partner, then you are being unfaithful. Having dinner, intimate conversations, sharing private jokes, intimate or even 'legal' physical contact, having crush-like thoughts such as, "she would love this pair of earrings"; they all count.

And the husbands fobbing off the affair as their wives' faults because there were problems in the marriage? They should be castrated, humiliated and then tortured some more. The last time I heard, men (and women alike) are responsible for their own actions. Whatever it was that was going awry with the marriage, both husband and wife contribute to it.

Most women usually accept their husbands back into their lives after an affair. Usually they do it because of the kids. Sometimes, the thought of being alone is scary. Sometimes it's just weariness; if you have no kids, the thought of going out there into singlehood, hooking up with another guy, only to have the same thing happen to you again, is just too much to bear. Might as well stick to the current guy; if it ever happens again, you are more prepared and you've already given him fair warning. The second time around, you will make absolutely sure that he suffers. And anyway, what insurance is there that the next guy you end up marrying won't cheat on you either?

And yes, an affair jades you. Trust is a thing where once broken, is almost impossible to mend. That crack, however small and expertly glossed over, is still there. You no longer believe that men are to be given the benefit of the doubt. They don't deserve that benefit. I know many women, myself included, who have been in and encounter many situations which could potentially lead to "emotional/physical entanglements" or affairs. But I do believe that women in general are stronger in character and therefore are able to avoid tendencies to stray, no matter how difficult their domestic issues might be.

When caught, some husbands may promise the world to ensure their wives don't leave. But at this point, it's only words. Saying it won't happen again is not enough, is never enough. The words need to be follwed-up thoroughly with action. Nothing can guarantee that it won't happen again, least of all promises. After all, couples promise to love and honour each other when they say their marriage vows and look what can happen even after those vows have been said.

Picking up and surviving after an affair is never easy. Rebuilding the trust and earning it falls on the perpetrator. The one who had the affair has to prove that this marriage is worth saving. Of course, the wronged has their fair share of work cut out for them too.

My friend gave in after a day's contemplation and returned to her husband. I think it was a wise move. I think her husband still loves her despite her feeling that he doesn't. At the very least, he has the family to think of and I think he is the kind of person who will not let his family fall apart so easily and therefore will work to prove his worth. She has stated her terms and he has given in to all her requests and knows what he has to do in order to regain her trust.

I am just glad that the anguish is now somewhat diminished from her voice and that she sounds much better now than she did when I first spoke to her. She doesn't speak in fit and starts, punctuated by stifled crying. She sounds and seems more like her old self. I admire that she made it extremely clear to her husband what she needs in no uncertain terms (even drawing up a legal contract) and that she is making some major changes in her life to ensure that things work out. I think she is much stronger than she thought she was (in the end, we all are, when we find ourselves faced with situations like this) and this episode has made her even stronger, but sadly has also jaded her. I don't think it was her fault that this happened. But I do believe that there came a point in time when there was a lack of communication in their marriage and this served as fuel to the affair. I believe her husband was weak and succumbed to temptation. I also believe he liked the attention that the other woman was lavishing on him and so he lapped it up.

In the end and at the risk of sounding like a male-basher, I believe that men are just weak. They crave attention, they have humongous egos, they do the stupidest things without thinking or with no regard of the consequences. Some even hold little regard for their other halves.

Yes, we're only human but we should be responsible for our actions especially when what we do affects the people who are closest to us.

Call me jaded but I have seen too many infidelity cases to reserve judgement on men. They all have the potential to be scum. I see it in the workplace, I hear of it from friends, I have seen it happen to others, I've had some measure of experience myself. I reserve my high regard for the opposite sex until their lot proves that they really deserve it.

Almost as bad as "The dog ate my homework"

My ear surgery had to be postponed a day. The following conversation ensued when my ENT specialist did a quick check-up prior to surgery on the day I was supposed to be admitted.

Dr. Soni: Oh dear, your ear still looks a bit moist. Have you been putting the ear drops three times a day like I told you to?

Me: Actually, no.

Dr. Soni: Why not?

Me: Err...my cat stole the ear drops.

I kid you not. He really did. Right off the side of my pillow on my bed and straight down the stairs to only where he knew. The offending bottle of ear drops didn't show up till a few days later somewhere in the living room.