. : Granny talk : .

Granny was mentioning to me today how she never lets the past bother her. She remembers them, yes, but doesn't brood over them. Says it's very unhealthy and there are so many things to look forward to in the future. I suppose that is why she is still a gutsy person at 73 years old. And my partner when it comes to checking out new activities around Kuching. :)

Yes, I like the lady with the gold necklace. I love gold and part of it has to do with the fact that in Malaysia and many asian countries, gold is an investment. Ladies can always buy gold with their savings and then use those gold jewellery for money to do other things. When I was a young girl, I remember my mother buying bangles and necklaces, and then when we had to buy textbooks for school, she took these to the pawnshop for money to buy those textbooks. It was difficult for me to see that. There was never enough money to buy necessities.

I wish I can get into my daughters' heads and find out what they are thinking. Actaully, they are more like me than they would like to think. Wena is so so very much like me in my younger days. I was always for the under-dogs and still am but in a more sedate way. I work against the injustice in less obvious ways, perhaps because of the fact that I am more careful now with my rantings and ravings.

Well, school begins today for me and life will be quite hectic. Of course, nothing is ready in my classroom and I have to walk at least 15 minutes to get to my classroom from my office, and I cannot drive (sigh...). Oh well, it will be good exercise unless it rains or snows.

. : New Look : .

Well, another new look. Mum, okay with it? Got it from Blogfrocks. I like the lady with the gold necklace. It's so Mum! :)

. : Generation Gap : .

Reading Mum's post again, it hits me again at the perceptions that one hears from one generation to another. Who is to say who is right and who is wrong? I suppose at the end of the day, one must be willing to hear both sides of the story rather than only one version.

I can understand Mum's frustration speaking to us whipper-snappers. Thinking we know everything under the sun. That we know best. That we can manage on our own. That we can make our own mature judgement. Us young ones.

It's hard to express one's thoughts and feelings to another person, be it from the same generation or not. I find that one needs patience to get the message or idea across. Wouldn't it be great if we could actually understand immediately what the other party is talking about? What they're getting at? What are they're conclusions?

I wish I could get into my Mum's head. Must be interesting just to find out what goes through her mind when she's talking to me. Would make me understand her better. Her thoughts. Her feelings. Her experiences. Her humour. Well, I have to settle for chats online, phonecalls, emails and, of course, her blog.

. : Insight to Mother : .

Here is an insight to my mother's personality from Cainer, especially after her last posting.

Monica is mysterious and enigmatic; deep, perceptive, powerful, passionate and terribly, terribly sexy! The sentence above must be true because Monica is a Scorpio and Scorpios as we all know are infamous for their interest in... well now, here's a funny thing. Despite what they say, Scorpios are not actually quite as wild and wicked as they are painted. Monica has, it must be said, a very hypnotic appeal but what's truly mesmerising about Monica is not her pout but her perspicacity. Monica has an uncanny, almost spooky to see right through you. She can make you feel naked and exposed just by casting one meaningful glance in your direction. What she is looking at though, when she peers below the surface, is not your underwear but your underlying intention! "Where are you coming from? What are you up to? Can you be trusted? Are you going to tell the truth?" These are the questions that Monica subconsciously fires out as soon as she sees you. Her inner radar never fails to provide her with the right answer. She is sensitive beyond measure, and it is partly to protect her own sensitivity that she scrutinises people so thoroughly.

There is another reason why Monica is so keen to see into your soul: she needs to know how sensitive you are. She knows from long, bitter experience that not many people can take the kind of candour that she cannot help but dispense. Monica is not a person to mince her words, hold back her opinions or shy away from taboo topics. She doesn't want to cause offence, nor does she want to waste her time, so she picks her confidantes carefully. All of which brings us back to where we began. If you are sensitive enough to appreciate Monica's special qualities you will consider that there is something exceptionally sexy about her and she will feel the same way about you. So perhaps Monica is living proof that it is true what they say about Scorpios after all.

Can't wait for her to see the shock on her face. Hee hee! The younger generation definitely likes to tease (or rather SHOCK!) the older one. LOL!

One difference between the values of the younger and older generations is the fact that we grew up in different times. For example, I was born in the late forties and my daughters were born in the mid and late seventies. When I went to school in Sarawak, Malaysia, I was educated in English, and Sarawak was still a British colony. When my daughters went to school in Sarawak, education was in Bahasa Malaysia although both my daughters went to a private school where English was the language of instruction. The history books we read in school were different. My history books had the British as the heroes and the rebels as the enemies. In the history books of my daughters, the heroes were the enemies in my history book. Such a turnaround would create a divide in our ways of thinking.

Another divide between parents and children is the fact that no matter how hard up children are, it does not compare to the hard times experienced by the parents. I would not want my daughters to experience the difficult times I went through during my college years in Texas. Yikes, imagine all those cockroaches in the apartment I shared with a student from China. It was really cheap but disgusting!

I myself grew up, admiring the British and wanting to go to UK for university studies. At that time, China was "bad," in my books. I denied anything
Chinese about myself, then I grew a little older, came to the U.S., read more books, talked a lot more, and now I realize that I am made up of more than just one group. Instead, I am the result of all that happened to me. I visited Beijing and Shanghai in October 2000 and went to stand at the Great Wall of China. Wow! That was awesome. How can I explain to my mother how I feel now? I cannot even talk to her in good Chinese or articulate my feelings to her. I believe that it is so wonderful to be able to communicate with my two daughters in English so that we can actually say things to each other that we can understand. So, hopefully, this will improve and get better.

Rowena, I had Helen Ato who was my classmate in Form 6 at St. Joseph visiting me this past weekend. We talked, talked, talked, too much.

I like the new look but it looks too western. I also like the garden view but I do not like the green background. I like the clear background or a blue background. Try another new look since you are into this. I will update my blog later. I am really busy today. So, maybe later this week, I will be able to do something.

How did you get the pics up here? Will they use up too much space? How much does your cousin charge to have a blog on his server? I may want to have one for my classmates and their pictures.

. : New Look : .

Mum, you like or not? :) The other one I was considering was this or this. Or would you want a garden view? Let me know which one you like.

Old layout was dull dull dull. And, too many other blogs have the same layout.

. : Blogging Nonyas : .

Spam? Off already and besides, you have to also unclick yourself off those mailing lists. :) Living in the US, you'll get more spam than I do, dearest Mumsie-poo.

Guess what I found?

My sister and I in one of our bedrooms in Miri. Girlie girlie room :)

On the back verandah in Bintulu. I luv that little pool! Didn't like the peeping tom neighbour though. :p

Gosh, now this blog is becoming a mother/daughters thing. I suppose it is okay but I am getting too much spam from all those things that Rowena kept signing me up for. Classes will begin for me soon, in less than two weeks on August 25, and I am not ready for it. I still want to play although I have to come to the office every day.

Note from Wena to Mum : change ur comments from Haloscan (which is getting pretty unstable) to Backlog. Hopefully it works now. MUAK!

Just had a chat with wena, my elder daughter and she told me that others are eagerly waiting to read my next posting. Yikes! I am not sure that I like to know that others want to read my postings. One of my constant thoughts relates to how young Chinese girls educated in English and brought up in Malaysia often have questions about how they fit in the societies in which they find themselves. I myself question my own identity all the time. My thoughts are in English, and in my virtual world, it does not matter what color I am. But every morning when I get up, I have to look in the mirror and, to my surprise, I look like an old Asian lady. Wow! Something must have happened overnight and I metamorphosed into what I saw in the mirror! At the same time, I like the traditions associated with the Malaysian and nonya cultures. I especially love the food and the kuih; e.g., the pineapple tarts. When I was pregnant with Jasmine, I had a craving for pineapple tarts. So, my mother and I made almost five hundred pieces of them although they were all small ones. My mother is a good cook but she does not want to make all those small nonya cookies any more.

I now work in a small town in the U.S. and there are very few asian, african-american, hispanic or native american people around. There are more native americans than the other ethnicity because there is a casino, just three miles east of the town. The university has almost 20,000 students and the town has about 30,000 (I could be wrong here but I have no time to check this right now). You can check on the data at http://www.usg.edu/galileo/internet/census/demograp.html. I live close to an even small town, population about 500! My farm is in the middle of fields that grow corn, alfafa, soy beans, etc for the black and white dairy cows. Sometimes you can smell the manure that the farmers use to fertilise the fields. Well, enough of this rambling as wena says.

Life is not easy and especially when dealing with those in the younger generation. I always wonder why people are so different. I still have no answer.