Deal Breakers

Because it's Monday, and I'm cranky, and haters are gonna hate, only in this instance I'm the hater.

1. Typing "d" or "e" for "the".

You give the gods of Not Writing Like a Lunatic TWO EXTRA LETTERS and they will grant you literacy, being taken seriously, and puppies and rainbows. TWO LETTERS. It will not kill you to type like you actually give a shit and have a brain.

Related: "dis" for "this" and other types of this abbrev-speak.

2. Referring to one's husband as "hubby".

This is a complete and utter (metaphorical) boner kill for me. It literally gives me the heebie jeebies. Like if you say it in front of me and happen to be observant: you will actually see a subtle cringe and uncontrollable shudder go through my body (subtle because I'm a POLITE hater, and I'm made to understand that vomiting in public isn't very lady-like).

If I were to promise my future husband anything, anything in the entire world and mean it with all my heart and every fibre of my being, other than to love him forever and all that of course, it would be to NEVER EVER call him hubby, even under pain of death.

Related: being called "babe" (by guys - fine if by girls). I have a weird allergic reaction to most pet names actually. If I was a guy and dating myself I would be terrified to call me anything other than my own name. Which is actually my second name. I don't go by my first name. Yes okay fine after typing all this out I realize I may have name issues.

3. Putting empty ice trays into the freezer.

Why? Why?! I just don't understand why anyone would want to expend the extra effort of putting the ice trays BACK in the freezer if they're empty. Surely it would be less straining just to leave them out on the counter so that someone else can undertake the Herculean effort of filling the trays with water and putting them into the freezer?!

4. Entitled Malay Male Douchebags.

This means you, sexist chauvinist with your logic-defying double standards about how it's fine for YOU to do certain things, but not okay for your demure, ayu wives to do it (polygamy, partying, happy endings etc). This means you, smarmy and perverted probably-UMNO-voting future-Datuk stereotype. You are the epitome of everything that is corrupt and wrong in Malaysian society, and you don't even know it. These people usually "bro" each other unironically and cheat on their wives.


This post was brought to you by menstrual hormones and Monday.

Iman's Dos and Don'ts to Stay Sane While Preparing for a Wedding

A helpful guide from a worry-prone bride

1. DO delegate as much as you can to your parents, if they offer the help, even if neither of them are in the country in which said wedding is taking place.

Because they love it. Or at least, my parents seem to love it. My dad waxed lyrical about different types of flowers the other day (I myself only know 3 types: roses, orchids and lillies) and CGI-drew my seating plan and outdoor tents. So I have a 3D computerized seating plan. I may be one of only a few people in the world who can boast this.

Since I graduated five years ago (goddammit I'm old), I have done the following by myself and with minimal to no assistance from my parents: moved to KL, went to job interviews, got job offers, decided which job to take (repeat process for new job), managed own money and opened own bank accounts, found own place to live, paid own bills, sorted out own car loan, paid own road tax and insurance (though I admit I almost gave up at this point to run crying back to my Dad that I needed his help to negotiate the paperwork). Basically I have been a fully fledged, fully independent adult since I was 22 years old.

But with this wedding... I have no idea whether my parents secretly miss babying me and feeling super involved in my Life Decision-Making, but they've pretty much become my de facto wedding planners/helicopter parents, and I am SUPER OKAY WITH THAT. They call the shots, deal with the vendors, scold people on my behalf. It's amazing. It's like being a kid again. Except, you know, it's for a wedding, where I'll become someone's wife.

2. DON'T diet.

I'm really just saying this because I'm not really dieting and feel the need to justify it. It's probably better to be healthy and energetic in the run-up to your wedding and not have your hair fall out from malnutrition. Right? (Say yes so I can justify not dieting say yes)

3. DO find (hopefully healthy) hobbies to partake in so you have more to your life than wedding planning.

Like Yoga! And reading! And... okay that's actually all I've been doing in the spare time that I have that is not being taken up by looking for vendors for various things and drawing up magnificent spreadsheets of budgets and invitation lists.

4. DON'T offer up invitations when you're out and about and feeling a tad too social.

Really. I wake up on Sunday mornings and have to try to remember which other random acquiantance I bumped into the night before who offered their congratulations, and just seemed so happy for me and goose that they procured an invitation to the wedding.

5. DON'T agree to be staffed on a transaction for which crunch time will be during your marriage leave.

Or if this happens, DO try to drop hints to everyone that you'll be pretty much MIA during your wedding month, because I have more than 40 days of leave, dammit, and I really think I deserve to take a time out now.

6. DO try to stagger your wedding spending so as not to feel, and subsequently freak out at, the giant gaping hole in your bank account where your hard-earned (mostly) money used to be.

7. DO try not to fight with your fiance.

Because most of your fights will be about silly things, like why he hasn't responded to your email asking which of the 5 cake designs you spent hours trawling the internet for and attached to the email he wants for the reception. Which to you is a completely valid concern into which much thought must be put, but to him is like... just cake. (There is really no such thing as "just cake", but I'm trying to be open-minded here and accept that people may have strange and radical views on this, that I may never understand.)

If you have fights about serious things though (religion, babies, post-marriage lifestyle, polygamy) run, don't walk, FAR FAR AWAY and don't look back.

8.  DO compromise on wedding decisions.

Like if your fiance REALLY doesn't want Taylor Swift's Love Story played at your wedding because he hates cheesy pop music and thinks that that song is the epitome of all that is wrong with how girls are conditioned to think about Love happening in the form of a White Knight Savior... it's okay. Even if you think that he is reading way too much into a POP SONG, it's okay. After all, you get to choose the cake. ALL THE CAKES.

9. DO give out your wedding cards early.

Because everyone and their mother (figuratively, although I'm sure if we're talking globally, many mothers are remarrying) seems to be getting married in these next few months. I still don't know if it was some supersonic message that only men between the ages of 27 and 33 can hear that told them to get married in 2012 or early 2013. I didn't hear any such message. Other than this super strong one from my ovaries, which I'm ignoring, I mean. (I'm kidding, Alman, don't freak out.)

A Reading List

Yeah I'm not even going to pretend that this is about food. Here I present a reading list, for no particular reason other than I felt like writing a list, and have read a lot of books.


1. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

In terms of quotability, I actually like Slaughterhouse Five more than Cat's Cradle ("Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" is one of the most beautiful lines in the entire world) but Cat's Cradle is so weird and dark and fantastic and unrelentingly critical that it's one of my favourite books. I love the incongruity of such a ridiculous plot (midgets and dictators and the bizarre religion called Bokononism and a man-made substance that's the equivalent of the atomic bomb) and the themes it deals with. Religion is lampooned, science is chewed out, and humanity is just totally and completely fucked, but it's all so funny and so easy to read that you sort of just go along with it and at the end of the book you're like wait.... what?
 
A Sample:

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness.

And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.

"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.

"Certainly," said man.

"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.

And He went away.

2. Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales


Although I have a total soft spot for sappy, weepy movies (I once sobbed my way through an entire box of tissues watching E.T., and while The Notebook doesn't make me cry anymore, that's only because it lost its effect after the first 100 viewings) I REALLY CAN'T STAND sappy, cloying novels. I don't like Nicholas Sparks, I don't like Mitch Albom, and words cannot express how much I dislike Paulo Coelho, the seemingly inexhaustible generator of boring preachy books and annoying platitudes that everyone quotes on their twitter timelines and which make me want to unfollow them.
 
But Oscar Wilde is usually so witty and hilarious and cynical that he gets a free pass to write so unabashedly and earnestly about love, sacrifice and Christianity in his fairy tales. They're beautiful and tragic and heartwrenching, and there are no happy endings. There's a kind of poetic irony in how someone deemed morally corrupt by the society in which he lived could write something so pure. Take that, homophobes! See the beauty the gay man can create!
 
And though it's not one of his fairy tales, a special mention for the preface to Dorian Gray. I quoted the shit of out of that preface when I was writing my millions of college application essays and millions of drafts of my UCAS personal statement:

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Every time I read it I remember what it was like to be young and idealistic, sitting in front of a desktop computer at 3 in the morning, trying so hard to inject my worthiness-to-attend-your-noble-institution into one piece of paper. It seemed like the most courageous thing to my 18 year old self to want to dive under the surface, get up close and personal with the symbol, and be totally unafraid to learn the truth.
 
A Sample:

"Dear little Swallow," said the Prince, "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there."

So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys were lying in one another's arms to try and keep themselves warm. "How hungry we are!" they said. "You must not lie here," shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.

3. The Lover's Dictionary by David Leviathan

Love! One of my favourite literary topics ever! But not a lot of people can write about love without making me want to throw up. I have a limited tolerance of romantical bullshit, which I would like to think comes from the fact that although I am a Disney Cartoon kid and have been weaned on stories of charming princes and true love and happily-ever-afters, I don't think love is just the happily-ever-after, or the grand gestures or rainbows and roses and kittens and babies that accompany it. It's the reality of the relationship, which can be at times wonderful and terrible and amazing and annoying, but is always the ups AND downs and little things AND huge milestones.
 
The Lover's Dictionary totally nailed what love is. Little snapshots of an everyday relationship defined in every day terms, and mixed up and in alphabetical and not chronological order. I doggy-eared pretty much every definition in it. It's way more my kind of romantic than any sonnet.
 
A Sample:

Lover, n.

Oh, how I hated this word. So pretentious, like it was always being translated from the French. The tint and taint of illicit, illegitimate affections. Dictionary meaning: a person having a love affair. Impermanent. Unfamilial. Inextricably linked to sex.

I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover, I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved.

There is no word for the recipient of the love. There is only a word for the giver. There is the assumption that lovers come in pairs.

When I say, Be my lover, I don't mean, Let's have an affair. I don't mean, Sleep with me. I don't mean, Be my secret.

I want us to go back down to that root.

I want you to be the one who loves me.

I want to be the one who loves you.

4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
 
So it's not exactly original to include To Kill a Mockingbird on a list of favourite books: it's required grade school reading for most people, but I never read it as part of any curriculum, I never dissected it to pieces in a classroom, and I never learned about racial politics in the Southern US, so when I finished it, I remember feeling punched in the gut from the enormity of it all.

It was probably the first book I'd read that dealt with a serious topic. I was old enough to vaguely know about racism, but not old enough to have recognized it in my life or to have read about it. And I felt so enraged with the injustice of what happened to Tom Robinson, so disappointed with the townspeople, and so humbled that Boo Radley, who had been judged unfairly throughout the book, was one of its heroes. Like most bookworms, I learned about life through books - I re-read this one to remember what it was like to be surprised by injustice. 
 
A Sample:

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

5. The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
 
Okay, so the premise is almost like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but the author said he didn't know that at the time (which I actually do believe, because the Benjamin Button was a short story that really only blew up after Hollywood turned it into a movie), and I didn't know it at the time either. And even though the premise is so original, it really isn't the reason I like this book: it's because Andrew Sean Greer writes beauuuutiful prose. It's poetic and languid and haunting and poignant. Of course it helps that he's talking about unrequited love and all that, but really he could writing about a fly, and if he did it in the same style, it'd still be one of my favourite books.
 
A Sample:

It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love.

6. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Also gorgeous prose. I analysed the movie and read the book for an English literature class that was cross-referenced as a film class AND a feminist studies class (it was like the trifecta of interesting academic subjects) and somewhere between the fifth attempt to play and pause a speech in the movie at the right moment so I could write about the scene in my mid-term essay and the middle of the book, I fell in love. This book is beautiful.

A Sample:

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.

7. This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper  
Reminiscent of Nick Hornby, who writes classic Guy's Guy literature, but better. Also straddles the line between writing like a Bro and being sensitive and hilarious, which ultimately makes him not a Bro.

I bought this in an airport in Singapore and read it on a flight back to KL. It's about dysfunctional families and broken relationships and mid-life crises, which speaks to me more than it should considering my family is pretty vanilla, my relationship is great and I'm (hopefully) a decade or more away from a mid-life crisis, and I don't know if it was the hormones or the exhaustion or missing Alman or Tropper's writing but I bawled like a baby on the plane reading it, which is really one of my major criteria for whether a book speaks to me or not. Does it makes me blubber? If yes, proceed to Go and collect $200.
 
A Sample:
 
Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.




8. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss's style is similar to her husband's (Jonathan Safran Foer) (like an eerie literary equivalent of when couples who have been going for too long start to look alike), but I don't like Foer and I like Krauss, primarily because of this book, and its main characters, a lonely old Jewish man and a precocious young Jewish girl. It makes me think about growing old, and what happens after the love of your life has died, and families, and legacies, which inevitably leads to feeling really melancholy and hugging Alman a lot.

A Sample:

2. WHAT I AM NOT
My brother and I used to play a game. I'd point to a chair. "THIS IS NOT A CHAIR," I'd say. Bird would point to the table. "THIS IS NOT A TABLE." "THIS IS NOT A WALL," I'd say. "THAT IS NOT A CEILING." We'd go on like that. "IT IS NOT RAINING OUT." "MY SHOE IS NOT UNTIED!" Bird would yell. I'd point to my elbow. "THIS IS NOT A SCRAPE." Bird would lift his knee. "THIS IS ALSO NOT A SCRAPE!" "THAT IS NOT A KETTLE!" "NOT A CUP!" "NOT A SPOON!" "NOT DIRTY DISHES!" We denied whole rooms, years, weathers. Once, at the peak of our shouting, Bird took a deep breath. At the top of his lungs, he shrieked: "I! HAVE NOT! BEEN! UNHAPPY! MY WHOLE! LIFE!" "But you're only seven," I said.

9. Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

I don't dislike any of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, but THIS is my favourite. It's basically all my favourite ingredients in one book: the City Watch (justice, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, right and wrong, black and white), feminism, class-ism and racism (which is actually specie-ism in the novel, but you can't fool me Mr Pratchett, I can see what you did there!), religion, faith and atheism, freedom and liberty, and lots and LOTS of humour. Oh, and its a murder mystery too.

And if you just read the synopsis - you won't even anticipate any of this. And that is why he is a genius and I spent the better part of an entire year reading all his books.
 
A Sample:

Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.
It was its tendency to bend at the knees.

10. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
 
I saved the best for last: this is THE most hilariously insightful book in the world. And I'm not even exaggerating. Even though I tend towards hyperbole. 

I remember the first time I picked it up off the library shelf at school, and how tickled I was when I read the first page, which says that the planet Earth "has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
 
It wasn't telling me anything that I didn't already know, but it was still like an imaginary cartoon lightbulb switched on above my head. That is totally true! We ARE generally unhappy! And it IS odd that it's all because of paper! And with this re-epiphany came the idea of money being unhappy, which was so ridiculous it made me laugh out loud. So basically Douglas Adams is the master of looking at life from a different perspective, and making you laugh about it, and for that I credit him some of qualities that I value most in myself (I mean I sure hope they're actually there in me somewhere or I've been living a deluded little life): my open-mindedness, my tendency to question everything, and my sense of humour.
 
It has come to the point where I have actually memorised entire portions of the book, and I am STILL so tickled by it.
 
A Sample:
 
The history of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?

The Ramadhan List

Things I Have Been Occupying Myself With During Ramadhan In a Desperate and Increasingly Futile Attempt to Not Think About Food During the Day

1. Books

I now have four books left before I finish Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (which was also my goal for 2012, so I am apparently ahead of schedule on this). 

But what will I do after that?! What if he passes away soon (I'm not being unrealistically morbid, he has Alzheimers and strongly supports assisted suicide) and I belatedly realise that I should have taken my time reading them instead of whizzing through like a madwoman on a mission? What if I never read another good book again?!

There is something strangely comforting about always knowing what the step (book) in your journey (book list) is. It's the kind of comfort that you take for granted right up until you graduate college and realize you have no idea what to do next. 

1a) Examples Why I Will Miss Terry Pratchett:

• “Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.” 
• “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.” 
• “There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?"
• “Mr Horsefry was a youngish man, not simply running to fat but vaulting, leaping and diving towards obesity. He had acquired at thirty an impressive selection of chins, and now they wobbled with angry pride.*  

*It is wrong to judge by appearances. Despite his expression, which was that of a piglet having a bright idea, and his mode of speech, which might put you in mind of a small, breathless, neurotic but ridiculously expensive dog, Mr Horsefry might well have been a kind, generous and pious man. In the same way, the man climbing out of your window in a stripy jumper, a mask and a great hurry might merely be lost on the way to a fancy-dress party, and the man in the wig and robes at the focus of the courtroom might only be a transvestite who wandered in out of the rain. Snap judgements can be so unfair.”

Just reading random quotes like that makes me want to roll around the floor being highly amused, if not laughing.

2. Doing Research For My New Apartment &
3. Looking At Recipes Online

This is going to sound crazy, but for a good few months I completely and totally forgot that getting married would also mean living with Alman (like JUST with! Only us! No housemates!) in a new apartment. Which also means that I can decorate the entire house, as opposed to just one room! That I will truly be lord and master of my own kitchen, the part of the house that Alman probably cares the least about decorating but that I care about the most (along with the bedrooms, bathrooms, living room and dining room)! It means I can have a ginormous wardrobe and dressing area, and I will magically become super organized with my clothing and various accessories that are currently strewn about my bedroom in various boxes, nooks, crannies and piles! I will magically become super diligent about doing dishes, will colour coordinate my currently-not-bought-yet kitchenware, and finally put up my cupcake posters in the kitchen! This almost more exciting than doing honeymoon research, which I got bored of after a while.

I also seem to be addicted to looking at recipes online. Everything looks amazing when you're hungry, and even the most minutely detailed complicated recipes seem like they would be worth the effort when they probably aren't to a normal, non-starving food-crazed person.

If you are also so inclined to look at photos of furniture and food, I recommend Apartment 24

4. Deciding Where to Break Fast

Somewhat related to #3. Entails researching restaurants online and storing their phone numbers on my berry so I can make quick calls to reserve tables in case of emergencies. For someone who doesn't plan dinner ahead during the rest of the year, this behaviour is highly unusual and manifests only during this month.

5. Writing On This Blog

I really should get back to work now.

Too Much Information

I had to re-edit a personal profile that will be flashed up on our internal work network for everyone in my increasingly large company to see, and our HR department wanted me to add in my personal interests/hobbies. Notwithstanding that it’s not anyone’s goddamn business what I do in my free time… I feel like a little put out my profile sounded totally boring. I couldn't think of anything to write other than my “interests include reading and baking.”

It doesn’t really capture the fact that when I say my interests include reading, I really mean that one of my life goals is to own a library like the one The Beast gifted Belle with in Beauty and the Beast (that is totally the way to make me love a dude forever, FYI, even if he has hair all over his face and claws for fingers), and bookcase stairs make me swoon, and that I feel disoriented and despair of life in general when I don’t have a book to finish reading (and when I start reading a book I feel like I have a goal and sense of purpose again). And when it says my interests include baking, it doesn’t really capture the fact that I actually just like making cakes and cookies, but that I don’t really eat my own stuff and instead pawn them off to other people as little tokens of affection because I am like retardedly emotionally unexpressive. And that I really enjoy eating more than baking. And that I don't really have any other sustained hobbies because I have a habit of starting things and then not really finishing them, even though they're good for me (like running and swimming) and even though I may love it (like yoga). Actually these failed hobbies mainly relate to exercise, mainly because it's difficult to read while exercising (I've tried, and my book and I almost flew off the treadmill).

But then again do I really need people at work to know this about me? Probably not. I’d rather they think I was boring.

Hari Raya Briyani; Home

It's not even Ramadhan yet and I got teary booking my flights to Brunei for Hari Raya. All because this is my last Hari Raya as an unmarried person.

*commence weepiness*

And next year I have to split up my Raya time between TWO families! And I won't get to go to Brunei the whole time and just pig out and be babied because I'll officially be part of someone else's family! Okay, so not like a total stranger someone else, and it's not like I don't know Alman's family, but still! I'll be part of another person's family?!?!?! And I have to pretend to be well-behaved (err wait did I say pretend? That was a typo) and I have to be good and demure and wifely and what if I don't salam people properly and what if I can't make sufficient small talk and what if I don't understand Alman's relatives when they speak Malay and what if they think I'm snobby because I don't understand and what if I miss my family because I'm not with them on Hari Raya, and since my family is already so scattered all over the world what if my parents feel sad that I'm not there on the first day, because I'm part of someone else's family on the first day?! THAT IS CRAZINESS! THIS IS CRAZY!

I have a feeling I'm going to be crying right into my overloaded plate of homecooked nasi briyani come Hari Raya morning from the overwhelmity of it all.

For some reason thinking about Hari Raya is the only time I really feel like STOP THE PRESSES GUYS I'M GETTING MARRIED?! Everything else seems easy. Living together? Check. Setting up a house together? Will do. Total monogamy forever? No problem. Split up Hari Raya? HOLD ON THERE WHAT IS THIS CRAZY TALK.

And now I'm getting all teary again.

Boys to Men

Expelling the ghosts of my dating past and shaking those pesky relationship skeletons from the closet before I get married. In no particular order:

Primary school: I develop a hopeless crush on a blond-haired blue-eyed French boy in my second grade class. And by hopeless crush I mean I feel intense rage and competitiveness when we battle it out for best marks in our weekly spelling and math tests and pretty much make it clear that I hate his stupid shiny-haired big brain. I've always been attracted to the smart ones. I've also always been really great at expressing my feelings.

Early College: Meet a dark haired French Persian engineer during my second day of college. He laughs at Friends episodes in accented laughter (it totally exists: I'd do an impression, but I can't do any impressions other than, for some reason, Minnesotan) and is so genuinely, earnestly nice. He's also into commitment, and unfortunately, I'm not that into him. I feel a rush of euphoria when we break up and immediately put on Walking On Sunshine after he leaves. He never speaks to me again.

Early College: Can't for the life of me remember how I met this one, but unfortunately, that was the entire problem with our relationship. He was tall and geeky, bland and unmemorable. All I remember are fleeting images: a ski jacket, roses on Valentines Day, the way his glasses misted up with tears when I said I wanted to break up. I was a heartless turd.

Kindergarten/Reception: He was a chubby little English boy named Tom and my best friend. He was literally the He-Man to my She-Ra, the Michaelangelo to my April O'Neal, and the Tin Man to my Dorothy (I really have no explanation as to why we used to pretend we were in Wizard of Oz). I wrote 'Iman + Tom' in all my storybooks and all over my bedroom wall, much to the irritation of my parents, who really should have been delighted that I was learning to write in the first place. He moved back to England before first grade, and I was devastated. 

Primary school: Another academic rival. He drew me intricately detailed aliens and predators on illustrated love notes, and I never mustered up the nerve to tell him that I've never seen the Alien movies and while I admire the effort that goes into drawing the spaceship from Independence Day, I don't quite know what to do with the drawing after. I will always remember him fondly as the boy who still liked me even though I had frizzy hair and more facial acne than face.

Middle school: He was way, way too old for me. I can't remember how I met him, I can't remember if he was attached. I've blocked out pretty much everything out about him except for the fact that you liked Sheffield Wednesday (WHO likes Sheffield Wednesday anyway?) and he should really have been dating people his own age. Douche. 

High school: He was a high school jock and I was the complete opposite of a cheerleader. I would be nerdy Taylor Swift to his football hero in the Love Story video (did I just reference a Taylor Swift video?! Yes - yes I did. These are the high school years after all). We had nothing in common and nothing to talk about. He was popular and I wasn't. He was a good brother to my sisters, and ignored all the signs that pointed to the fact that I wasn't really into him.

High school: He was much older. He had dark sparkling eyes, a deep belly laugh and told me he was in love with me. It wasn't love - he seemed so much older but looking back he must have been a kid then, and I was even younger - but I shouldn't have agreed to date him and then changed my mind. He passed away in a car accident. He really did have the happiest eyes I've ever seen.

Middle school: He was the class clown, and I was in public school. He teased me incessantly, made my life a living hell, insulted me constantly, and we were teenagers: of course it meant that he liked me. He made me laugh, and I remember the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach right before I told him that I wanted to break up. He wasn't  laughing then, and we don't talk now.

High school: He was my first real relationship. He was older and fascinating because of it, but he was also ditzy, and so ultimately, not fascinating enough. I fell out of puppy love, and broke his heart and wasn't sorry. I missed hanging out with his friends more than I missed him. I should have been nicer.

High school: He was my best friend. We spent hours and hours talking on the phone; hours and hours dissecting poetry together (seriously, because we were cool like that). He was the first person who showed me it was possible to have higher standards in relationships and to expect more things - a deeper connection, a shared sense of humour, the ability to keep a healthy debate going (and we had MANY) without it venturing into a full-blown fight. The sad thing is that I wasn't attracted to him, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

High school: He was South American, sarcastic and sharp-tongued, which was a defense mechanism for his weight. He had spiky hair, pink cheeks and a Fender guitar. And after I dumped him, he tried to hit on my sister. 

Mid-College: He was the best friend of the guy I liked. I knew what was happening while it was happening but I never thought he'd articulate it and make it real, but, unfortunately, he did. He told me he felt strongly about me, and just like that, our friendship was never the same.

Mid-College: He was the one who broke my heart, who promised so much, and delivered so little, who was insecure, immature, and unsure. I thought that we were taking care of each other, but I was the one who took care of him. I can draw a line in our relationship, and I would draw it in the middle of the second year, when I realized that I cared about him more than he cared about me. And while I can view the period before that with a detached fondness, like watching a movie starring strangers I don't know, strangers who were so young and optimistic and naive, who met at a fraternity party, she with flowers in her hair, he with his baseball cap and ruddy cheeks, who were overtaken by the rush of infatuation, how he became the most important part of her support system and she was so far away from home, how they were happy; I don't think of the second half at all. It has been poisoned by what he did at the end, and if I think about it, or if I touch it, I'll be poisoned too, and his sickness will infect me. He was selfish and pathetic, and I'll never forgive him, because that would make what he did forgivable.

And this isn't even an exhaustive list! (Guys I dated vaguely but really don't care about don't make the list. Also, I have a terrible memory.)

26

Found lying in my unposted archives. I can't believe I was 26 when I wrote this. I'm now halfway to 28! To say time flies would be a gross understatement of how fast it moves and how long I have apparently neglected my blog.

__________________________________________________

What is this nonsense?! This is not a food post! Yes, I know, non-existent warden of my kinda-food-blog, but it is the nearing the end of the year, which means I'm getting nostalgic, reflective, and downright sappy about life, because in a few weeks, it'll be a WHOLE NEW YEAR. AND it'll be my birthday. AND next year I'll be married (and I've heard that one must be an adult to do that, so therefore I must be an adult now). AND I just read a book called Dear Me: A Letter To My Sixteen Year Old Self, although I am quite a religious reader of fiction only, and it made me think about what I was like at 16, which I then realised is a mind-boggling TEN YEARS AGO. And the combination of the nostalgia and the holy-shit-ten-years-ago?! manifested itself in... a rambling letter to my 16 year old self (what up 16 year old me). Hopefully in ten years 36 year old me (what up to you too) will write a letter to 26 year old me (cannot what up you, because you are me now).

Dear Sixteen Year Old Iman,

I remember what it was like to be you. You're awkward, worried, geeky and unconfident. You desperately want to get out of Brunei. You are constantly disappointed with yourself. You have major insecurity issues. You know you want something better and bigger and more significant, but you can't articulate what it is that you want. When 26 year old Iman remembers what it was like to be 16 year old Iman, she feels like crying, and let me tell you, at 26, you don't turn on the waterworks on very often at all (except for really important things, like Disney cartoons). The good news is: it gets better! The bad news is: not something I want to tell you, because you need to go through it, and sometimes ignorance is bliss. The bad news I WILL share: the next few years will be Arsenal's best, I don't know what happened after that (metaphorically speaking, because obviously I DO know what happens), so enjoy it while you can.

Other things you should know:

- I don't know when it happens, because I didn't realize, but: your acne-plagued skin, will, one day, no longer be acne-plagued. Your hair will, one day, no longer look like it is equal parts mortal enemy of conditioner and product of electric shock therapy. You will always dislike your nose (we did not get a nose job like you wanted), but you will, one day, stop giving a shit what people think about it. You will, one day, be considered conventionally attractive, even though your first instinct will always be to think the person saying that is fucking with you. And if they were, 26 year old Iman would actually (and has been known to) cuss out or flip off someone who WOULD fuck with her, which she is way more proud of than being thought of as conventionally attractive.

- You can do way better than the people you are dating right now. I AM SO TOTALLY NOT JOKING ABOUT THIS. Please dump you-know-who right now. (Don't worry, he will get over it, and also, he never will start that band and become a rock star, so no loss. In case you were wondering, although I know you aren't.)

- You will have your heart broken, and it will suck. But you will get over it with much less pain and grief than break-up songs will have you imagine, and after a few years, you'll actually struggle to remember what the hell it felt like, because all you can remember is that you must have felt some sort of emotion at the time, because last you checked you aren't a robot, but now, you feel nothing. (Nothing is good.)

- Your siblings will grow up, your parents will age. It will happen so fast. Kiss Ali as much as you can, because he is/was hands down the most adorable baby in the world, but he won't be a baby for long.

- Learn to become a feminist, it will be the best thing you can do for yourself.

- Don't feel bad about being one of the few kids at school who doesn't have a Nokia cell phone. In 10 years, these fruit companies will invent smartphones that will make Nokias look like those brick handphones Umi used to have in the 80s.

- You still won't have it all figured out at twenty-six. Maybe no one ever does figure anything out. (Am still waiting for a letter from 96 year old Iman to confirm or deny this.) But life is good, and too fleeting to spend too much time or effort trying to map things out.

- Keep re-reading The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy at sporadic intervals, because, one day, that will be how you first bond with the man who will become your husband. (I still can't believe it either.)

My Life in Lists

About weddings:
 
Number of days until I become a married woman: 169
 
Number of times I have freaked out about the impending end of my singlehood: None. Strangely or thankfully, hitching my anchor to Alman's boat (or something like that, I'm not a nautical person) is probably the easiest part about getting married.
 
Number of times I have freaked out about wedding planning: Mutiple. I feel like popular TV and rom coms have instilled in me a false sense of expectancy about how much drama I should be feeling. Like shouldn't I be all Bridezilla, alternating between weeping over mismatched tablecloths, vengefully sending out invitations to my douchebag exes (I have a lot. Of exes, and also douchebag exes), sneakily comparing notes and sabotaging my childhood friend's wedding that is planned for the weekend before mine (this is actually happening! The childhood friend's wedding, I mean, not the sabotage)? Oh wait, there hasn't been any drama yet because I haven't sorted out my invitations and tablecloths yet. For now I mostly just panic about not having enough shit done and worrying that my wedding will be too sappy.
 
Number of dresses I have: 3, and they are all gorgeous.
 
Number of venues I've booked: 2 out of 3, and therein lies one of the sources of my panic attacks.
 
Number of minutes in a day I think about how to do my hair in these gorgeous dresses: Too much. My employers would weep if they knew.
 
Things I am secretly hoping will happen on my wedding day(s):
1. Someone will give me a kitten as a wedding present (a girl can dream)
2. I become, overnight, gloriously photogenic and my wedding photos all look fantastic (I tend to freeze in front of cameras and either grin too widely or make ugly faces, it's a disease)
3. Alman cries (with happiness, I mean. On the inside doesn't count. We want to see emotional happy tears, dammit!)

Random things I like:
My new Miu Miu bow bag
I could stroke it all day. I won't, because that would look creepy, but I COULD, because it is gorgeous chocolate brown leather. When I put it on my desk at work I can sometimes catch whiffs of the leather smell as I work. It reminds me why I work the hours I do. (I will be less materialistic when I have a kitten.)

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
Holy shit, was I obsessed. I bulldozed my way through the five books in three months while watching Season 2 of the series, and am now waiting impatiently for Book 6, which is coming in... a few years. Shoot me, Georgie, this is torture. At least I have all the fan boards online to discuss conspiracy theories and trade George R.R. Martin-isms with. After reading five books in a row, you can't help but notice his favourite phrases: What is this mummer's farce? I must needs drink my Dornish red wine, it is known (but also you know nothing, Jon Snow).

Discworld by Terry Pratchett
So I tired of it for a while (reading 28 Discworld books almost consecutively can do that to you, apparently) but I am now back and on track and set to finish this series before 2013 rolls around. I find it totally amazing how fictional characters populating an imaginary flat world carried by four giant elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle floating through space can be richer and more colourful than some PEOPLE I meet in real life. Reality fail.

Online shopping
Etsy! Fashion Valet! ASOS! (Not Net-a-porter yet though - that's a whole different price range that my online self fears to venture into because if things don't fit me and I've spent that much money on it, I think I'd cry.) Nothing beats working late at night and taking a 5 minute break to window shop without even moving your ass from your swivel chair! Okay so it's sometimes a 20 minute break. Okay and it's not window shopping, its actual shopping.

Random things I don't like:

My stupid oven which keeps switching itself off. I've taken to just standing there by the switchbox thing, broom in hand, just daring the flip thing to switch itself off. And then it does, and then I use the broom to switch it back on and then commences a flip war. Which I am fighting... with an inanimate switchbox. I really hate my oven I tell you. Just to spite it, these are the brown butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I made with Yan, NOT with my oven. This was using Yan's nicely behaved oven.

People who come around behind my desk and peer at my laptop. If you're not my boss, you're not allowed to do this. I mean I can't really disallow from doing it per se, but I sure can bitch about you after.

Sleeping with my eyelash extensions. I miss being able to wear a sleeping mask or being able to squash my face into Alman's neck (it looks less weird than it sounds). Damn you eyelash extensions! I know I can't quit you because I am super lazy and not having to wear and remove mascara has probably freed up 15 minutes of my day every day.

 

I really need to get back to work.

IT HAS HAPPENED.

So. I am affianced. Betrothed! Promised to another! Committed to love, cherish and support my dear Goosey in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, through Manchester United and Arsenal games, for better (Arsenal winning) or worse (Manchester United winning)... after we get through the Planning of the Wedding, of course (which, I suspect, may leave us much more on the poorer and worse for the wear side of richer or poorer, better or worse).

As a hopeless romantic (seriously: hopeless, because I actually have tried to be logical and boring about these things, but to no avail; such is the extent of the brainwashing afflicted on my malleable mind by the Disney corporation and their princesses and respective true loves) I've been wondering what My Engagement would be like since I found out engagements existed, and really all for the story, because it becomes a part of your relationship and marriage. It's the story I'm going to tell my kids and grandkids, how carefully Ayah/Atok planned to get Umi/Baba to marry him, how Umi/Baba said yes and almost threw away the ring because she didn't see it, how Ayah/Atok didn't reallyyyy cry but no matter, everyone knows he was crying on the inside (don't try to deny it, I know it's true Goosey).

So. I got proposed to in Paris, on the Pont des Arts bridge on the river Seine, amidst padlocks attached onto the bridge by lovers and families all over the world, with the Notre Dame in front of us, and a lit up Eiffel Tower behind us, drinking from plastic champagne flutes (no champagne but hey! Style is about the clinking of flutes, albeit plastic ones, is it not) and Bon Iver playing on the iPad 2. We were about to affix a padlock on the bridge, with our names and date on it; he was all you know this is a big commitment, right, this means we have to get married; I was all, yeah yeah I know; he was all no, seriously; I was all are you serious; he was all will you make me the happiest man alive, but the irony is right then I was the happiest girl alive. Then I cried (I maintain, however, that he cried on the inside) and was too choked up to articulate the word "yes" so had to nod to indicate agreement (this is interesting because of the verbosity to which I am usually prone) and then we put the padlock on the bridge, the ring from the keychain on my finger, and then went to pee because the combination of the excitement and the plastic champagne flutes was just too much for me to handle. And then of course, we went to celebrate. By ourselves. Because we really don't need anybody else to have fun. So although I LOVE our engagement story, and I LOVE the beautiful ring, and I LOVE the fact that Goosey cried on the inside after he proposed, the BEST THING OF ALL is that I am going to marry my best friend in the entire world, and life is going to be such a fun adventure, because it always is when we're together, and now we're going to be together for the rest of our lives.

Andddd that's the story I'm going to tell my kids. At which point in time I am sure their primary question is going to be "What the hell is an iPad 2?"

Chili Crab and Mantao; No Signboard

Things that have happened since my last blog post:
1. Work
2. Massive food poisoning at a certain hotel that shall remain unnamed where the company had a weeklong training session for work
3. Work
4. Singapore for work
5. Good news at work
6. Ran my first 5km (Yay! This is a Big Fucking Deal for someone who was (past tense!) as averse to exercise as I was.)
7. Work
8. Singapore for work
9. Work

Things that I have learned since my last blog post:
1. Food poisoning will strip you of all your dignity and remind you that food, particularly bad food, can make your body feel things that you cannot begin to fathom. Have you ever burst into tears on the toilet because of a molotov cocktail of pain: combination diarrhoea, stomach cramps, fever and headache, and then passed out on your way out of the bathroom because your stomach was trying to explode and your pain thresholds just didn't want to take that shit (pun intended) anymore and preferred unconsciousness? I have. Before I descend into TMI levels (yes, there is actually More Information to this story, and you should be glad I am not telling it), I shall summarize by saying those were a very undignified few days for me. And also Goosey, when he somehow got food poisoning too (copycat syndrome or sympathy pains? I still don't know).
2. The Singapore-KL MAS flights after 6pm all stink of body odour. But curiously, the Silkair flights smell daisy fresh.
3. That's it. (I haven't learned much.)

Best
Things About Flying to Singapore So Often
1. Hotel gyms. Why yes please, I would like my treadmill served with ice cold water, ice cold aircon, fluffy face towels and personal TV, thank you.
2. Deep fried buns! Accompanied by chili crab of course (I am not as insane as to just eat the buns without the crab. Though I totally would if I knew no one would judge me), but the buns are the underappreciated supporting actor star of the No Signboard show. Why can I not seem to find this in KL? Does Singapore trump KL, or have I not been hanging around in the right mantao appreciating circles? I am a shameless fan of unhealthy, deep fried golden balls of dough to dip into various sauces. Like KFC biscuits... Mmmm KFC biscuits. Someone recently asked me what I missed the most about the US and I said KFC biscuits, because Asia is lame and only has soft buns (just deep fry it, goddammit) and he thought I was joking. I wasn't.

3. That's it. I am on my way to Singapore right now (see, lest you think I am exaggerating when I say work and Singapore have taken over my life (what, me exaggerate and grandiloquize? Never!) I am so totally not that I am proving my own point right now) and it's just getting tiring.

I Love Baking

Hooray! Hooray! My gloriously feminine and shockingly pink baking apron arrived in the mail today!

Little bit suppressed 1950's housewife, little bit Barbie Stepford wife, little bit Bree from Desperate Housewives (who is, by the way, my favourite character on the show for the entire two seasons that I could be bothered to follow their increasingly absurd storylines), and a whole lot more interesting than baking in my regular clothes which inevitably get soaked and splashed and stained... I present to you my new kitchen armour. Sadly, there is no baking accessory that can keep me from getting flour in my ears and batter on my hair, which always happens when I bake, for the same inexplicable reasons I get food all over my clothes when I eat, but I think it would be a lot more bearable having flour ears and batter hair if I were wearing this.



I do bake on and off and when I feel the rare urge to get domestic, but I've decided (Umi, you would be so proud) to make a concerted effort to cook more. Also, I found these amaaaaazing things which may or not have fueled my decision to onward my quest to domestic goddessism.

1. iPodch recipe apps. They are GENIUS. GENIUS! So simple to use, to easy to scroll through the millions upon bajillions of recipes, with ratings and fellow cooking buddy reviews (call me an elitist, but I don't use any recipes with less than 100 reviews and less than a 4-star rating) and the AllRecipe app even has a recipe spinner! That you can shake and that will reveal what magical food item you should make! Like an 8-ball, for your tummy.


2. Robot Salt & Pepper Shakers: all the shaking fun of regular salt and pepper shakers (if you're the kind of person who finds fun in shaking out salt and pepper; I don't judge, whatever floats your boat man) but in robot form! I don't particularly like robots, but I DO like animating and giving personalities and names to otherwise inanimate objects. Saltrino 5000 and Robotimus 6000. At. Your. Flavouring. Service. *robot voice*

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/cf87/

3. Ninjabread Men Cookie Cutters! A cookie cutter so cute, not even the resident Ninja Man in my life could fail to appreciate it (although he doesn't like cookies, and even ninja-shaped cookies may not entice him to develop a sweet tooth. So... hmmm. In any case, these are awesome. I could even burn my cookies black and it wouldn't look like a mistake. It would look like a ninja suit. [I don't know what ninja outfits are called, but I'm sure there's a name for them.])

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e55a/

4. Not Boring Toaster. With capacity to produce toast bearing messages, like "Bite Me", that may prove useful to bleary-eyed zombies waking up in the morning with giant hangovers and too little sleep. You know, in case brain of the bleary-eyed zombie has not started functioning and bleary-eyed zombie doesn't know what else to do with his or her toast. I haven't quite deciphered what secret message the crazy-eyed toast face is trying to convey, but I can imagine trying to decipher said message would be quite entertaining while one sips coffee and generally tries to wake up. Existentialist message: "We're ALL Crazy Like Toast Face"? Ode to Laziness: "You Are Loco Like Your Toast Face For Waking Up So Early This Morning"? Sympathetic Understanding for the over-worked corporate drone: "You Think YOUR Job Drives You Crazy? Toast Face Looks Like This ALL The Time!"? The possibilities, and secret messages, are endless.


http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e76f/images/

5. Virginia Woolf Tea Towel. Though my kitchen makes do with a regular, non-literary inspired kain buruk, one could always use a bit of pizzazz by way of bookishness in one's kitchen. It would also be ironic that a key feminist text is emblazoned on a teatowel which belongs in a kitchen. Much like a woman would be expected to belong, if you weren't a feminist and still held such outdated beliefs. Trippy.

http://www.theliterarygiftcompany.com/virginia-woolf-a-room-of-ones-own-teatowel-1355-p.asp

6. I totally saved the best for last. I will be getting my hands on these suckers one day (hopefully soon, but not in the next few weeks, for I have gone overboard with the internet purchases and must rest my credit card and the weary company mailman who keeps delivering boxes of random internet purchases to my desk at work). YUMBOT CUPCAKE HOLDERS! Regular paper cupcake liners are a thing of the PAST. The robots have come to take over my baked goods, and I, for one, welcome our new cupcake overlords. Could be quite distressing eating their little cupcake brains, unless you are robot savvy like me and know that robots don't have brains and therefore eating the cupcakes in their heads won't actually hurt them. Would also not be distressing at all if you weren't like me and didn't try to anthropomorphize anything that is cute.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e559/