Time for another overdue update between sleeping and Blogger being down...

Part 1 : Of Sneezes and Saffron

The four of us drove down to my grandma's place on friday ( 2 July) . Quite a few of my aunts and uncles were already there. Not only was it sERRIOUSly hot, there was no water in that area of the state as well - and as expected, hardcore sneeze attacks came along pretty soon cos of all the dust and mangy dirty cats around the place. Unpleasant. Boring too as none of my cousins were there yet. At least caught up on some proper Thai food.

1 day short of being completely bedbound and semi-comatose for an entire year, my maternal grandmother passed away around 1.30 am sunday morning. Almost everyone stayed up well into the next day helping with the planning for the numerous ceremonies to come. By noon busloads more of relatives, a small procession stage, tents and monks in many many shades of orange had appeared. After some last rites/blessings thingy ran by a coupla priests and a "specialist" involving most of the family she was put into a coffin and put up under the shade outside in a typical lying-in state arrangement after being injected with formaldehyde. THe formaldehyde will probably come in handy as the numerologists later decided that she would be cremated the coming Thursday after a 3 day wake and a couple more ceremonies.

Hence, in an uncharacteristically merciful act my mom let my dad and i fly home sunday night so we wouldn't get in the way of all the arrangements and rituals aANd because the house was kinda packed too. We'd be flying back in wednesday afternoon for another ceremony before the cremation and another bunch of ceremonies. Hopefully driving back friday.

A merciful release for my grandmother - she had been suffering from crippling athritis, rheumatism and the like for the last 11 years to the point of near total incapacitation.

Part 2 : Banana Leaf Madness

On monday, managed to meet up with charlotte, lionel and soha. Started with the first two dropping by my house to wait for soha to finish teaching at BBBS. Ended up with them staying for 2 hours-ish and laughing at my old photos. Poppycock. Later picked up Soha and at at a banana leaf place somewhere near UM. Went mental to the point of being full for the next 24 hours. Nasty, nasty things must have went on in my stomach. After that we just dropped soha off and chilled at casa de kinky until they were nice enough to agree to a drink at 1 Utama so i could scamper off later and meet my dad for a 9.30 show that he preemptively booked me for almost a week ago- Spider Man 2. It was quite okay...about as good as the first.

Part 3: C'mon, something other than Warcraft?

Spent the better part of the morning clearing out my room of junk , reorganizing the upstairs bookshelves and redoing the mess of wiring in my room. Later had dinner at 1 utama with zkerng and we joined the guys ( more like got there first) at silver surfer for a much missed cybercafe warcraft marathon. There was like..10 of us - total all out swearing, cursing madnesssss. Got slighty less hectic with the pussy hero map. Played like , from 10 to 2 and then had our customary post-mortem discussion at the mamak followed by cocktalking and reminiscing. Nobody was really eager to drive back cos it was raining like cock. Oh yeah - speaking of driving - first time i drove out of BU since LAST summer. Didn't bang anything or get lost in the rain- go me!

Still waiting with baited breath for the e-mail or snail mail that'll say that i either need to resit a paper or two, or god forbid, completely failed my bitch of a course. Those were supposed to be passed out from the 2nd onwards - well its already the 7th, so i'm still keepin my fingers crossed. If i don't get it next week i'm calling anyway to make sure they didn't screw up my address....haha i'd be completely over the moon if i don't hear anything from them till the end of the month which means i passed clean.....i can only hope....