Friday, September 29, 2006

Amah, Poh Poh, and Akak.

Amah has finally moved back into her musty smelling loft with low-hanging cobwebs and smoked ceilings (due to the joss stick she burns). I mean, she's preferring blurry cable TV over crystal-clear satellite TV, man! How desperate can she be? I tried talking her out of it with her before she left to only receive blatant smiles and tear-jerking moments along with soft refusals and empty promises to come back when she's free. C'mon... she's always free. "Whatever it is, the house still belongs to me and it needs a tenant," she ends the conversation, wiping her tears. It's either another one of her superstitions that leaving houses empty for a long time signifies leaving the house to rot or that she really misses her fuzzy TV. Weird. Well, at least, she's happy now, sitting at home in, catching another one of her soaps and falling asleep eventually. It'd be a while before she actually decides to visit, despite the fact that we only live a couple of kilometres apart.
Amah, talking with Grace over the webcam...

On the other hand, poh poh's been keeping herself busy lately with her sudden sewing addiction. Not sure if I'd actually call it an addiction but she's pretty content with herself after successfully completing sewing something. To me, it's a good way of utilising her time and keeping busy instead of just sitting at home, thinking about our dear departed kong kong. In return, I get custom made pants and pyjamas pants. Yeah, she's been sewing pyjamas pants for most of the male members of the family. She's using the cloth brought back by mom from her factory and making them into simple pyjamas pants for everyone. I've heard mom mention that I was the only lucky person who got two pairs of trousers while everyone else got one. Lucky me, I guess. Poh poh even had mine washed and ironed before bringing them to me, unlike everyone else's. Plus, I even got to request for normal short pants. It was the perfect opportunity for me to save on pants seeing that the ones I got either has holes on the ass area or washed for so many times that their torned and the material, almost see through. Guess I've got to go say my 'thank you' later.

I've not mention this before but akak's going back to her hometown. She's going back to her home at Jawa Tengah for a month to celebrate the Hari Raya festivities with her family. The last time she went home was 2 years back, if i'm not mistaken, that was for a month also. The air tickets have been purchased and she's already starting to pack her bags. There's still 20 more days before her departure and she's pretty excited about it, I can tell. It's just that we're hoping that she'll come back home. You know, all those stories about Indonesian maids taking off for their holidays and never coming back again really freaks us out. She has proven to us that she's trustworthy the last time and now we're just praying that she doesn't disappoint us. I think she's alright. Well, her going back only means one thing - more house chores for me! I'll have to do the dishes, laundry, cleaning, dusting, and even scrubbing toilets. Hey, the last time when she was away, I lost weight doing all the house chores. But then, I had Grace's help. Now, I'm going to have to settle everything myself. *sighs*. Thankfully, I've inherited mom's compulsive overeating desire to see everything sparkling clean. I swear it runs in the blood! Well, looking forward to shedding off some pounds.

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