Simply Felicious

I have never understood why people say "I’m sorry" at funerals to the family and friends of the deceased. It isn’t as though they’ve done anything that deserves an apology. However as with everything else, over the years I’m slowly becoming familar with society’s seemingly weird rites and rituals. The true reality behind those words however didn’t hit me until the three days ago, in a most unfortunate circumstance.

When Barath told me online that one my best friend’s mother had passed away from a long, arduous battle with cancer, my initial reaction was shock which was rapidly replaced by grief. A grief so heavy that all I proceeded to do for the next ten minutes was to sob inconsolably. A thousand thoughts passed through my mind. I cried for her loss, for her grief and for that moment it was as though her mother was mine. Empathy, I think, is the word Dr. Phil (and a score of other TV psychologists) would call it.

I cried because I was afraid for her, cried because of my worry for her, I cried because this was also one of my biggest fears. I cried because I couldn’t be there for her and show her my love and share with her my own grief or help her to mourn her mother. I couldn’t do all those things and to add to that, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she must have been going through.

When I spoke to her on the phone, all I found myself saying was ‘I’m sorry." Those words again and yet, at that moment I knew why I was saying them . When someone says they’re sorry in situations like these, it isn’t because it’s part of a social norm or out of awkwardness. It stems from helplessness. There is nothing you can do that is going to truly lighten the emotional burden of someone who is experiencing the loss of a loved one.

When you really mean it, you know that ’sorry’ doesn’t just mean "I’m sorry for your loss." It means a whole host of things. "I’m sorry that I can’t be there for you in the way I know you need me to be. I’m sorry that I can’t operate an emotional transfer of grief so that you need not feel crushed under the burden of your grief. I’m sorry that all I can do is be here for you, and nothing else. I am sorry because I am powerless when it comes to taking away your pain or even easing it, all I can do is ensure that you know that you’re not alone in this." In our helplessness, all of this is embodied by the only two words we can afford to say - I’m sorry.

And even that can seem so inadequate. Unfortunately, true emotional pain can’t be eased by epidurals, numbed by anasthesia or erased by well-wished words. We have to live in and through the pain in order to truly get through it. Numbing emotional pain permanently is something science has not managed to acheive, and maybe there is a blessing in this.

The Bible says that it is in our weakest moments that God is strongest. When we truly feel our humanity, it is then that we need God’s divine strength not only to help us walk but to carry us through the storm. Emotional pain such as this is hardest to overcome, but God promises us that through it all, He is there; the epicenter of peace in the eye of the storm. He doesn’t take the pain away but He ensures us that as alone as we feel, we will also discover His faithfulness through it and His will at the end of it. If there is anyone who will walk with us through the pain - it is Him. And if what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, than I can truly attest that He who makes us stronger is God himself. We have never, and will never be able to make it out on our own.

I love you Mel, Marlene & Marc. And I am sorry, for all of the above reasons. I am sorry that I can’t be strong for you but then again, that’s why God is waiting in the wings. Be strong in Him, love, and He will carry all of you through.

Have a good week guys.

Currently Reading: Angels - Marian Keyes

To those of you who are wondering whether I made it through the 40 Hour Famine - I did =D I even forgot to count down the hours because I was at the supermarket when it came to noon but as soon as Kelvin reminded me I popped open a basket of strawberries and immediately felt ill after the first two. I spent the next few hours feeling slightly ‘pukey’ after everything little thing I put into my mouth - very very odd, especially for me. After a few hours I successfully managed to keep a ham and cheese sandwich down and then it was all good. =D

Until I fell sick.

The entire weekend of chugging down mango & orange juice (a combination which always manages to make me fall sick but which I insist on drinking anyway) made my nose burn and inflamed my throat. Didn’t really help that everyone at uni, from lackey to lecturer, was sick.

And so after wrestling with the childproof cap on my Vicks cough syrup for twenty minutes ( I only managed to open it purely by accident), I retired to bed at the worst possible granny hour of 9.30 pm with a tissue box, a 1.5L bottle of water, an assortment of painkillers,lozenges and nose sprays by my bedside. And a bottle of Minyak Cap Kapak (Axe Brand Oil) for good measure.

And thereby hangs a tale…Barath is positive I fell sick because of the fast. I maintain it’s the juice and your regular Coronovirus (damn those joes!).

We watched Grey’s Anatomy last night and it featured the second episode of the two part special Code Black; basically two idiots were screwing around with a bazooka (a bazooka for cow’s sake!!) and one guy managed to shoot himself with it and now he has an explosive in his stomach and to make a long story short, our hero Meredith has her hand on the bomb in his stomach and if she makes any sudden movements it would explode and take the entire hospital with it.

Of course, it would be her!! Why else wouldn’t it be? I mean there’s at least 10 other interns in that OR and the only person who could logically try to save them all from imminent death is … (drumroll) Meredith Grey. To increase the ratings and make us grip our seats and sweat blood in our panic and wonder "HOW THE HELL ARE THEY GONNA GET OUT OF THIS?!?", that particular OR happens to be situated right above the main oxygen line. And as Meredith stands there faced with the doom of her impending death, the only things she thinks about is that she can’t remember her last kiss with the gorgeous ever-delectable but married Dr. Shepherd =S Touching, I’m sure.

Which of course brought us ( and by ‘us’ I mean us, the audience left making holes in our couches and losing blood) to the discussion; if we knew we were going to die tomorrow - what would we do today? It’s amazing the kind of things we would do if we knew that this was it - no turning back but no consequences either. We’re dying anyway - might as well go out with a bang.

My wish wouldn’t be so dramatic - without a thought in my head, I would fly home to be with my family and I would eat a honking big egg sandwich because I normally don’t eat eggs but who cares about breaking out when you’re dying the next day? Plus I’d guilt people into doing everything I say because everyone knows you can’t refuse a dying person’s last requests…

What would you do? I’m not intending to start a forum but I’m guessing it can’t be as easy to know what you’re going to do if you knew one day was all you had left on earth. Humor me..PLEASE! =(

And with that, I very unhappily, must sign off and force myself to go to an Immunology lecture with Professor-I’m-Stuck-In-The-15th-Century-and-only-believe-in-OHPs. Oh well, at least it’s not in the very dilapidated Death By Chalkdust Lecture Theatre.

=S

Listening to: Lonely - Shannon Noll

And so I am exactly 24 hours through the famine; I have another 16 to go. Woohoo. We’re allowed water and juice and I thought that was good but when the hunger pangs really start you realise that juice ain’t gonna cut it - plus I haven’t stopped peeing since morning and I have drunk enough juice to last me two lifetimes and a bit more.

I get waves of nausea now and then because my stomach is craving for more than just liquids and I can almost swear I hear it squeal when I remind it that it has a few more hours to go..I almost thought it was going to go vocal in Mass but it didn’t..lol..but other than that it’s all good.

I have lost count of the many different cravings for specific foods that I got throughout the day; sushi,toast,chocolate, roast duck,wantons - I spotted a packet of Tim Tams on my friend’s bed and I almost went ballistic with greed. It wasn’t even "I want sushi", it was "I want the salmon skin roll with a dollop of soya sauce," or "I want the roast Peking duck with steamed rice, sliced cucumber and Jasmine tea" or "Spicy Chicken Tikka Masala with briyani rice and mango lassi.." Can you see how you can commit perfectly sane people by this train of thought? As the hours passed, the cravings got more insistent and less complex; I would have been perfectly happy with a cracker or one slice of plain wholemeal bread. But by the grace of God I’ve managed to resist. And it has made me realise that in the moment of neccessity, your brain ignores the complicated stuff and yearns for just the basic essentials.

I’ve also found that in order to keep my mind off the hunger, I’ve been relentlessly completing assignment after assignment =)

Everyone has been so beautifully supportive of me and I honestly would not have been as motivated to continue otherwise; hugs all round. Thanks for all the donations and the comments you guys left on my blog and your general wishes of good luck; it means a lot when you know someone is helping you to root for a good cause Also a great big good luck to everyone else around the world (especially HELP-UC) who are also participating in the 40 Hour Famine this weekend and in weekends to come.

So before I start to sound like I’m accepting a Grammy Award (I have a different speech prepared for that, *winks* ) allow me to echo along with someone else to strived to achieve what he believed.

"Be the change you want to see." Mahatma Gandhi

Here’s to the last 15.5 hours…

Listening to: Summertime - Renee Olstead

Currently Reading: Everyone Worth Knowing - Lauren Wiesberger

I’ve been slaving over my tutorials; our Biochemistry lecturer insists on drawing out every structure, every mechanism, EVERY damned RNA molecule - messily!! Sometimes I don’t know why I even bother enrolling in a course that gets so technical - it truly takes the fun bits out of Science. And my current Immunology lecturer must have been teaching since the 15th century; he even probably thinks he’s still in it- he walked in today and used the overhead projector for the entire lecture - apparently he doesn’t believe in Power Point =S

I’m doing the 40 Hour Famine this year where we go without food for 40 hours to raise money for the Third World Countries especially East Timor and Southern Africa. It starts tonight at 8 pm and goes till Sunday noon. I’m approaching this with some trepidation, I have never done any kind of fast that lasted for more than 6 hours, and that was bad enough =S However I just feel that this is one of those things that you really gotta experience just to open your eyes to the way the rest of the world lives; in a part of the world where there aren’t even bare neccessities much less an unlimited access to food that we take for granted.

Certainly 40 hours isn’t even a dent in the grand scheme of things. I can pretty much assure you that I will definitely be counting down the hours to Sunday noon when I can look forward to a huge meal. Real life isn’t like that, most of these people don’t even know if they’ll be having their next meal, much less where it is coming from and that is a truly terrifying thought. I can’t even begin to pretend to imagine what it must be like to live like that as I sit down to eat these while I chew on a mini Boost before my next lecture. It really does put things in a whole new perspective. We moan and groan about way too many things that are truly petty in the light of what really matters.

So I guess this is my way of trying to get a taste of what it must be like to go without food willingly for one and a half days in order to get a grip on what it must be like for people who have no choice but to go without food for most parts of their lives. Those who have to watch their children starve and blame themselves for not being able to fulfill the most basic of parental duties - to feed your children and be able to watch them grow.

What I’m attempting to do is not even in the same galaxy as the real thing but I suppose it’s a start. Wish me luck =)

If you want more information of the 40 Hour Famine go here

Till then have a good weekend my sayangs…

Listening to: Black Velvet — Alannah Myles

Had my first mocha frapuccino in almost a year from Starbucks and I have to admit, I’ve been dreaming about it since the first Adelaide Starbucks ( I know !!) opened up about two weeks ago…I forced myself to walk allll the way down Rundle Mall and back (and believe me guys, the entire street is called Rundle Mall, it’s not just some plaza I walked through) just so I could fell less guilty about it but I did enjoy every sip of it — sigh — till the next one I enjoy next year..

I know lots of people say that just the very thought of Starbucks is beyond commercial and I have to admit that partly the reason it’s so expensive it because it’s extremely commercial. However, you ALSO have to admit that a place that makes mocha fraps THAT good have to have something going on with them..

I mean at the end of it all, they’re just ground beans with the occasional blended ice..big deal. The adrenaline you get from that is also obtainable through natural means. I wouldn’t normally shell out blinking $4.50 for a coffee, and this was a Tall — a very misleading size since everywhere else it would be called a ‘Regular’… Tall brings to my mind the Petronas Twin Towers, the Starbucks version of the great and mighty ‘Tall’ is my version of a felled tree stump. Coffee that little but that expensive should be able to percolate naturally in my system from here onwards. 

However I figure that if you have to shell out that much for a blinking coffee, then it better be some effing damned very good coffee.

And that mocha frap was really that good. To me anyway. So I suppose if there’s something you want to buy or do or wear or drink =) , then you shouldn’t be so concerned about what society’s take on it is; at the end of it all, if you’re happy then no one should begrudge you that.

Be it that skirt you’d love to buy but that the fashionastas say is hideous; that guy you wanna get to know but that your friends say is nastay; that waistline that forces you to feel self-conscious in anything but a pair of pants that flair like a tent; that job you want but that people say you’re never gonna get; that car you’ve been eyeing but that you’re not getting because no one says you’re cool enough to carry it off; your hair that never seems to shine like those damned shampoo models, that coffee everyone says is overpriced but that you love to treat yourself occasionally with… hey your life is your own and I’ll say it again - no one should begrudge you your happiness. Not even yourself. =)

On another note..

I have to do some promo for them although no one asked me to; I am a self-proclaimed loudmouth. Keep your eyes open for 16 Gallons (formerly known as 6 Stroke iii) … they performed Sunday night at La Bodega’s open mic night and they might just be the first people from Gombak to open people’s eyes to the fact that Gombak is just about the wickedest place this side of town So if I figure out a way to load their live performance (or if someone can do it for me!!) or find a way to direct to you to it — you just might believe me.

I will leave it at that but you know which space to watch if you wanna find out more.

So I’ll bid you adieu and wish you all the green stoplights you want on your way to work (or uni) today =)

Listening to: So Beautiful - Pete Murray

Currently Reading: Rachel’s Holiday - Marian Keyes (if you like Sophie Kinsella you will luurve Miss Keyes)

Adelaide’s been experiencing the best weather it’s seen since winter began about 3 months ago…honestly with tops of 18/19 degrees how can they expect anyone to stay indoors and work on drafts for muscular dystrophy…which is what my Genetics lecturer obviously assumes we have the energy to do on a day like this. Therefore with every intention of sitting down and finishing it yesterday - I got as far as sitting down and opening my computer and turning on my WMP when Kelvin calls. "We’re going down to the beach in 15 minutes, wanna come?"

I stare out my window and the brightest ray of the most beautiful sun I have ever seen streams through my window and adds to the temptation; I stare back down at my computer and the one line of the draft I have written and I mutter weakly…"I have a draft to finish…"

And Kel delivers the finishing blow, "You have Sunday to do it." I look out the window and realise that I do, and by all that is holy, I am not going to sit indoors and deny my skin of the only sun Australia has seen in 3 months.

We ended up driving down to Glenelg after a brief, accidental, tour of Adelaide’s Golf Driving Range south of the beach =) I use the term ‘accidental tour’ loosely, other people seem to call it ‘getting lost’.

We ultimately got there and happily squashed amidst the entire Australian population that had apparently also decided to go down to the beach. We bought greasy fish and chips (poor Kel and Tina had to conveniently forget the fact that they had just returned from a 2 hour workout at the gym) and plunked down on the beach and tried to avoid eye contact with the sea gulls while we ate.  At least, I think they were gulls; some of them were massive enough to be small eagles =S

We watched parents stressfully running after excited naked kids who adamantly refused to get dressed after their dip in the ocean and instead only wanted to ‘catch’ the birds or at least see how close they had to get before they scared them away. We watched people walk a variety of dogs by the pier; some big enough to kill you if they sat on you, others so small that if the little eagles on the beach wanted to eat them, they wouldn’t be enough to even qualify as an entire meal, maybe just an entree. Why, why, why would people think that Chihuahuas are cute, are they even real dogs??

Moving on…

We watched as a couple balanced precariously on the ledge while they mugged for the camera and I hoped (briefly) that they would fall slip - I mean, somone who would do that for a picture, deserved to die a little scare. Stand on the safe sand of the beach like normal people and take all the photos you want, you think your parents want you coming home in a mess of broken bones and a note from your doctor because all you wanted to do was to look daring and dangerous against the backdrop of the sky?

After finishing our lunch, we took a walk along the jetty and stood under the sun, chatting easily, as only 3 people who have known each other for a year and a half, can do. Tina and Kel stole a few moments of hand holding (cute!!) and I allowed them their couple moments while I stared down at the sea and watched a few people drifting aimlessly there on their surfboards waiting for the next big wave to come along. I wonder how long they had to wait because the water was so calm that the biggest wave they would have gotten would have been as mild as a ripple.

We gossiped about everything and anything out there on the jetty, made lame jokes, discussed the extreme relationships between the people who were on the jetty i.e. two teenage guys holding the hands of a little girl between them: one of the guys got his girlfriend pregnant, came out to his parents, adopted the child and is now living with his current male partner and his illegitimate daughter - this theory is courtesy of Kel; I think in the end we decided that they were all just siblings taking their baby sister out for a stroll =)

And other junk like that…

We walked down to Copenhagen and got ice-creams and unlimited toppings (peanuts galore!!). Nish joined us and then we just strolled around under the sun and checked out the guys (I did anyway) in their sun-bleached hair, surfer shorts and tanned legs. It was a good day, a very good day — I am so glad that Kel and Tee managed to drag me out of the house yesterday, muackks…

And so this morning, I managed to not only sit down and get started, I finished my draft..(yay!! mad dance around the room)..

So in the end, all work and no play makes Jane a dull girl and it proves that even with a day’s romp to the beach, it managed to provide me with enough focus to finish my assignment…therefore some work and some play on the beach not only makes Jane a less dull girl, it may also make her a more tanned one.. =)

Adios…

P.S. Australian Idol starts tonight…woohoo

Listening to: King of Pain (Accoustic Version) - Alanis Morrisette

Currently Reading: Rachel’s Holiday: Marian Keyes

This Friday is turning out to be one of the best since uni started…last week. It didn’t start off so well, we’ve been having a problem with the showers lately and the last thing you need when you finally manage to drag yourself out of bed at a 6.45 am and to the bathroom is to find that instead of a steady stream of high pressured hot water to greet you, you are met with a sputter of bleek, lukewarm to cold ‘maybe I’ll turn hot the second you turn off the shower" water.

So guess which one greeted me this morning? I had half a mind to stomp downstairs, bathrobe and all, and drag my landlord upstairs to fix the heating controls or whatever it was that needed to be adjusted to get some decently heated water through the pipes. Seeing as how I wouldn’t quite be able to acheive that without coming across as some mentally challenged biatch, I had to restrict my rage to glaring icily at the shower head and proceed to take a very rushed, very unsatisfying cold shower.

I lit the new aromatherapy candle I bought from Dusk two weeks ago and although it took awhile for the citrusy tang to come floating through the room, by the time I began sipping my coffee, I was in a much better mood. The 10 degree weather outside however, wasn’t as agreeable. It was cold and gloomy without so much as a ray of sunshine in sight. Normally this would be my ideal weather; I would quite happily crawl into bed with my PJs and read under the covers till sunset. However having uni and everything meant I had to actually bundle up and venture outside and use my mental faculties…why people accept so much of us in the winter is beyond me.

However there is a perk; Friday (in addition to being the last day to the weekend) is the one day I finish at noon, the earliest in my entire timetable. Once I trudged through a tutorial (which is a plus since our tutor looks like an 24 year old Harry Potter - cute!) and a lecture (not so hot; imagine John Malkovich); that was it. Pure blissful freedom.

Went to Myer’s food court with Nish for lunch and ate to the point of explosion. Of course, it being a Friday and we being girls, we had also originally intended to hunt down some good cheesecake for dessert. There was a Gloria Jeans’ right beside the food court but we decided that we would walk up to the one on Rundle Mall and if by the time we got there and our food had digested, we would have dessert then.

As usual any reservations or willpower we might have had after lunch evaporated the second we saw the most beautiful mixed berry cheesecake in the glass window display. It had a beautiful crumbly biscuit base, followed a beautiful cream cheese layer, topped with a coating of strawberry glaze with mixed berries and frosted with the most delicious white chocolate frosting. It was in one word, simply, beautiful.

There was no question as to whether we would we be having dessert or not. We plunked out butts down and blissfully, silently and methodically consumed that slice of cheesecake, layer by layer. No single soldier has ever used his weapon as efficiently as we used our forks to demolish that cake. We didn’t even speak for fear of ruining the sanctity of the moment. The only sounds we made were those of pure guilt-free appreciation.

Finally all that was left with a smidgen of the slice that had since collapsed from its upright position on the plate and we were now leaning heavily on the table with our left hands cupping our cheeks and our right hand holding our forks - simply incapable of doing anything more. All I was doing was lazily picking up stray pieces of cake with my fork, trying to savour the last bit of cake. One of those stray pieces was a berry from the glaze, that once I chewed tasted flat, and then, tasted oddly chewed. Puzzled, I placed my fork down and I asked Nish, "Did you chew a piece of berry and put it back on the plate?" And she stares back at me and says, "I left mine at the very edge." We both looked down at the plate and there were no chewed pieces of berry on the plate, the only one that was there was now lodged in one of my teeth.

In between bursts of giggles, I managed to spit the remaining bits of berry unto a napkin and then we both collapsed on the table and laughed till tears came. Nish picks up a napkin to wipe down the table and as she smooths it open with her palm, she utters an, "Oh" and I look back at the napkin to realise that it was the exact same one that I had used to ‘deposit’ the chewed berry, now smeared across the tissue and across her hand. It was like that berry refused to leave no matter how many times we tried to put it aside.

This time we laughed so hard that I’m surprised now that we didn’t snort cheesecake out through our nostrils. And there we are in Gloria Jeans’ in the throes of hysterical laughter while waiters and patrons alike look at us in mild annoyance and concern. The entire episode took about fifteen minutes with about an extra ten minutes of just collapsing with laughter everytime we thought about it again. When the head waiter came to clear our table pointedly, we decided that it was time to go. We exited with as much pride as we could muster.

I realise now that to anyone else who wasn’t there, it couldn’t possibly be as funny as we found it; I wouldn’t be shocked to realise that this story could possibly cause disgust and plain contempt. But I had not laughed that hard in a long time and like they say, laughter is the best medicine and my abdomen did the most exercise it has ever done in years, heaving up and down in laughter.

And now I sit at my desk accounting my description of a near-perfect Friday - simply beautiful. Now all I have to do is get back to my Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy draft that’s due in on MOnday..grroan..

Anyhoo, here’s to hoping you guys have a good weekend and get a healthy dose of the giggles..eat well babies.

God bless.

=)