There was a time when I really looked forward to Deepavali. In the beginning, it would mean a long balik kampung trip a week before the big day. My dad would put in a week-long leave, and we would pack tons of clothes and take the journey to Taiping in his old Toyota. It was before the North-South Highway was opened in its entirety. We would be taking all the long, windy roads, passing through small villages, towns that seem to be in the middle of nowhere, old and seemingly abandoned palm oil estates. We would usually stop for lunch at Tapah, where I would usually pester my dad to buy me a toy car before we got in the car and continued our journey to Taiping.

I liked the house in Taiping. It was formerly a mining estate, and there was a really big dredging ship rotting away not far from where my grandfather lived. It was a wooden house, long and wide. The house was so long, in fact, that there was another family living at the back of the house. They were a Christian family, and they had two kids. I still remember their names, Jerome and Priscilla. I was always in their house, save for lunch, dinner and bath-times. I would just go up to the back side, knock on their door and spend the whole day there. We were one big family. We shared everything together. There were times where I would take naps at their house, and they would do the same in my grandfather’s house.

Continued here.

The house is painted, the floors are mopped (both of them), the fans cleaned, the bathrooms washed… and somehow, the work just keeps on coming. Everyday, there is something big to be done. Tomorrow is a weekday, which means that I would come downstairs to be greeted by a note written by my mother, listing the housework that has to be done before she comes back from work. It’s tiring as hell, but it’s a surefire way to get a work-out. Washing three bathrooms non-stop in a period of 2 hours isn’t exactly a walk in the park, you know.

I guess the only thing to do now is to wait for Deepavali. For the good food, the good company, the laughs, the movies on TV. Oh yeah, I forgot. I have Shadow of the Colossus waiting for me. How could I forget that? Ooh, and those hot, oven-fresh biscuits.

Silly me.

“And they lived happily ever after.” Nice to hear. It signifies that all is right at the end, that the rest of their lives are destined to be full and contented. But what happens after that? When the euphoria has ended, and you suddenly find yourself with the prospect of living the rest of your life with the person you gave your heart to? I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t an intimidating thought. When I see all these couples walking around, holding hands, or getting close and intimate with each other, one thought would eventually enter my mind, sooner or later: “How long would that last?” If I had someone with me, how long would I have the good fortune to be with her? How long will we be with each other, before we go on separately with our lives, whatever the reason may be?

I suddenly found myself being a driver two days ago, taking my mum to see yet another relative who is related to us through some vague, complicated manner. He was admitted in IJN, and apparently he had been there for about a month before we found out about it. So, after negotiating through lunch-hour Saturday traffic, en route to Jalan Masjid India for the first in a series of long, drawn-out Deepavali shopping sessions, we found overselves in his room on the 5th floor of IJN.

Continued here.

Huh.

Well, this is interesting. I’m sure some of you might be wondering what the hell happened to my blog, after my last post in which I so passionately wrote about my new vigour for writing. Well, I was shocked to find out what happened too, and I wonder if my readers thought that is just another case biting off more than I can chew, which is so typical of me. Well, no, that’s not the case.

My webhost had a virus attack.

Well, a trojan attack, actually. It seems that “some asshole on my webhost installed a script on my webhost and it was almost instantly attacked by a trojan,” according to my webmaster. Or something like that. Ah, okay. But it left my site in a mess. I have to rebuild a lot of it. And since I’m not in the mood of spending 14 straight hours setting everything up and going through the Wordpress Wiki, reading everything carefully and modifying the PHP code slowly, it sort of explains why the work is so slow. As of today, it’s still not yet finished.

Honestly, that’s what happened. I’m not making it up.

But I can’t go on using that as an excuse to stop writing now, can I? No, of course not. Which is why I set up this Blogsome account. As a temporary lodging. Like the title of this post. This is where I’ll post my updates until the new site is up and running again. So I can’t slack off from writing.

See, I told you I’m not lazy.

Anyway, just in case anyone new happens to stop by here and wonder what the hell I’m talking about, visit this site about a fortnight from now: Click here.

Signing off for now. Ta.