Letter seventy-two - Day ninety-six of your vacation

Dearest J,

I just came home.  As I close the door behind me and walked in with my luggage the cool air in our home enveloped me as if saying - "Hey, you're home, welcome back."

The stillness (but still cool) of the air and the beige wash of the furniture shout to me suddenly...I think this is what I will work hard for, ?!  I will work and sweat for just this, coming home from the noise, cars, weather, tolls, hotels and the works - to step into my own cool air at home, no one around, just me and the mute cat.

And I can be stripped of things and just lie there, not say a thing, sing any note, I can just breathe in the stillness of this home.

I am glad you got me into this, am glad you have chosen this one.  I want to own this place.  I really want to.

You like my taste in all the furnishing, though they are minimal, they complete the picture.

Yesterday was a survival experience for me.  I woke up early to get ready to carpool at Charles to go Lumut, my throat was all time scratchy and uncomfortable.  I decided I would pop into the 24-hour hospital down the road again to get some medicine.  I was prescribed with strong antibiotics for the cold, something for the cough and something for the throat inflammation.

I arrived at Charles' first, on time.  No one else was there yet, so Charles let me in and I popped all the bills down my system, empty-stomach system.  Not a good move at all.

I told the boys I needed to take the front seat after we started the journey, late.   At the first gas stop I floated from the car to the toilet and threw up in the first sink I saw, bright red gargle solution spewed from me into the grey sink...and water, and more water.

Ok, now I know.  I cannot stomach the strong medicine first and eat later.  Cushioning first.  I bought some bread and sugar drink and went back into the car, on cloud nine literally.

The sound check felt like an out of body experience, my tongue was asleep and I felt light.


We goofed around after the sound check while we walked back to the our lodging, Best Western Hotel, a few steps from the `multi-purpose-hall' where the 1600 pax dinner was held.

Vincent, Charles and Wei Li saunter back to our hotel from the back of the ware-house looking massive dinner hall.

The show went well however, I came back to myself after a hot shower and some food.  I managed to have fun with the band, dancers and the audience.  It was a big big dinner.  The Siti Nurhaliza song in our second set got response from the right side of stage, Teresa Teng songs got claps from the Chinese on the left side of stage.  The Sinatra classics got some attention from the ONE Caucasian table - BMW management table from KL I think.

I asked the boys to take the master room because two of them would share.  All the rooms in this apartment has attached bath so everyone was  happy.

That's Vincent's sign of relief that we were provided with decent and clean lodging.  Not to mention how big the apartment was.

Love you lots, 

B

high & low

I have not been to India before, it's a destination on my to-visit list. Where I live now, it feels like a mini-Little-India in town, although the actual Little India is a couple of main roads away in Masjid India, Semua House and all that jazz.

My study room window overlooks a narrow road named Suppiah Pillay where it's scattered with two road-side food stalls, a shabby car workshop (where a slow moving breast-feeding black dog resides), a roti-man snack food distributor and other businesses, don't know what. In the near distance is the elevated highway that links Jalan Ipoh to Jalan Duta where the highway can take you to wherever you wanna go, Bangsar, down town to Bukit Bintang, Jalan Kuching, Petaling Jaya, TTDI, Puchong...you name it.

When it's not scorching hot outside, I like to have my window open to let in a slice of the outside life. You can smell the burning incense from all the way up on 21st floor, faint Indian music from a radio somewhere, dogs barking...and if you are lucky you even smell someone's dinner.

I like all of these because it's a sign of life, it's a friendly place buzzing with life. Though when am driving home from somewhere there's always annoying double or triple parking right at the entrance of the flat. J told me to see it as a sigh of this place being very `happening'. ....hehe, after all, it's named Viva.

The shop lots down on the ground & first floor are taking shape extremely slowly, there was a buzz of renovation activities for about a week and then now it's all closed up and not a buzz of work. I hope the vendors come in soon else we are just here with 7-Eleven and this corner pub of mostly talk dark handsome Indian blokes with beer bellies. Though the pub serves fantabulous pasta and its kitchen closes pretty late (or early morning).

I like sitting inside the Indian restaurant just by the side of the flat and looking out to the street, having warm dahl with plain Thosai and watching the guy at the Appam counter scratching & tugging at his pants while making a fresh one.

Back inside my flat, I do a daily wind-chasing routine. At different times of the day the wind direction and speed changes so I leave different windows and doors open and close at different times of the day. I have seen heavy storms and hot humid days thro these huge windows. To mute the heat & traffic noise from outside, I bring the curtains down and put some my crazy 2-HP air conditioner in the hall. When the sun goes down I draw the curtain to open the home to the `NYC' city landscape outside, bringing in fresh evening breeze for my hit-the-sack view.

Will see how long it takes before I get over my intoxication of this place, hopefully it takes forever...

Viva la Diva :)

My new bookcase, HOME for my books & scores!!

I moved in on the 10th. Unpacked in 3 days, thanks to having very determined friends (in the form of Nell, Peter & Seeming n Sim) with one track-mind: help Janet unpack.

The clothes I gave up before I moved went to about three huge garbage bags, collected/bought/given/etc to several girl friends.

The packing experience started out bad, because I was extremely slow in the work, until I commissioned a troupe of very focused ladies to assist in the enormous task. The troupe made up of Nell n Zal. They worked fast, in just a few hours they helped me pack about 80% of my old flat.

Anyway, back to the present...I lost a bit of weight during my packing & moving period, leading into CNY.

Weigh myself this morning, it was 45.2kg. I happily announced to friends today at my first Yoga class that I'm going back to normal health. This evening at round midnight I stood on the weighing machine again, 44.1kg.

I was hoping that my appetite for cooking would come soon as I set up my new home/kitchen in my new pad - wrong. However I do have a much better stocked kitchen, however tiny it is, I have bread, peanut butter, cheese, eggs, pasta, sauces, soups in cans, herbs, instant noodles, chips, CNY cookies...but since my parents left for Taiping, I managed only made one proper meal - bean & eggs soup & Marmite rice.

Other meals consist of (so far) soft boiled eggs with toasts, egg sandwiches, instant noodles...peanut butter & bread, and junk food, with lots of Ribena.

Ok, I enjoy doing laundry in the extremely (obviously too huge for me) huge washing machine and hanging them to dry. So far I ran the machine by myself twice and both times an hour after I put the clothes out in the wet kitchen to dry, the stormed came, I just laughed.

Loving the new life on Mac. It's really a new life. Nuff said.

The Streamyx seems to actually work in the new location, I actually get to surf YouTube, and can view pictures on FB, blogs...etc. And I can blog with pictures!!

My parents seemed to enjoy the pad during their stay this CNY. It's big enough for everyone to have their comfort zone - my dad lounges around the hall, unsure of what to do, then he saunters to the pool downstairs to talk to strangers then to the lift lobby to look at the security guards, my mom pretty much `lounges' whole day in kitchen and about 10% of her stay here she spent in front of the TV (the only reason why we bought a TV), 5% she spent out shopping with us, my brother spends half the time in my guest room and the other half out in the city. Me? I was staying afloat during the CNY, I don't seem to function well in my own work where there's people around, must be too used to having nobody around when I work.

There was work to do during CNY, I had a number of new songs to tackle for a wedding gig during CNY. Singing with a 10-piece band is really, really, cool. I would really die for more gigs like that one.

Going out is another cool thing here, people usually frown at an address in Jalan Ipoh - a congested & noisy place to live in. I get to most places faster than my old address, with the various highways being very accessible from here.

There are of course things that I would bitch about, about this new pad...guess I'll do that in a separate post, on a later date Soon.

On the music agenda, which is also the work agenda - there are a few on-hand exciting little projects taking place.

So life is very good. Here, at Viva :)