Whited Sepulchre

Last year in April, after a great deal of self-righteous hand wringing and foaming at the mouth,  France  banned this.

It had been estimated that only 367 Muslim women in France (from a survey by DCRI, the French Secret Servive) wore the burqa.  This Gallic ban was followed by Holland and attempts by other Judaeo-Christian nations like Canada and Australia.  Of course Egypt and Turkey (under Ataturk) had done so earlier.

When I was working at Leicester Infirmary some years ago, a Russian colleague complained about 'these women in their black bin bags' and this view was seconded by the other Asian (meaning Indian) ladies.  Then Esther, my good friend from Antigua (in the Caribbean) calmly protested,  "Why can't you leave them alone?  What have they ever done to you?"  Dear Esther always spoke her own mind and her words left a hushed, maybe ashamed (and certainly resentful) effect in the rest room.

Recently, at the  Autumn/Winter 2012 London Fashion Festival, a version of this taboo apparel  became a fashion statement.   This came from Sibling Designers run by Cozette McCreery, Sid Bryan and Joe Bales.

What do Sarkozy and other pious Western leaders make of the above fashion?  Will they consider this as a security risk, an affront to women's freedom?  (After all, the guerilla's balaklava, just like the burqa, deliberately conceals identity).

White Racists from the English Defence League

 Or will they support it as a human right for fashionistas to display and sell?

If that's the case I think these 'abominable' Muslim items of apparel should not be scorned or banned as they will provide inspiration for European Fashion Houses:

  Or is the sauce for Muslim women not sauce for Europe's Fashion Designers?

And what's the difference between the garment worn by Dolores Hart (the first actress to kiss Elvis Presley - and yes, she's also the one on the right) ............

....... and this?

Dolores Hart now lives in a nunnery - the other lady is very much with the world.

The Girl in Red

We got back to KL on Monday before the expiry of my Singapore Social Visit Pass.  On the same day, Lely was transferred to St Luke's Community Hospital for rehabilitative treatment.

I do not mollycoddle people - you get no gooey-gushy words of solace from me. I give firstly and always my doa and then my most heartfelt effort to maintain a pragmatic perspective on the situation.

When Lely became depressed, a very natural reaction from such a trauma, my words of comfort could only take this form.  "Lely, you had only a 50-50 chance of surviving your operation.  You could have died on the operating table or ended up as a vegetable.  But you're still with us today with most of your faculties intact albeit in need of tough rehabilitation.  Allah must have a reason for giving you this second chance and you and we must  make sure you fulfil and justify this gift."

Lely's progress from Monday January 16 has been nothing short of a miracle.  With physiotherapy, her left side is beginning to show signs of activity.  In the coming difficult, long and frustrating months she shall never be alone. Family and friends came to her bedside from Hong Kong (her brother Jeff), Rohaya flew in from Perth immediately and went straight to the hospital at 2am on Tuesday. We could only get away from Leicester on Tuesday and got to NUH on Wednesday afternoon. Shyama stopped over from Jakarta just like Lely's former boss Fred Kilgore.  From JB came Mahzan and Sabrina and her old classmate Ashari.  On 1 February, the two young mums Maria and Hidayah flew in from KL for a day-trip.  A few days later her old classmate Din came to visit, also from KL.

There was of course her mother Mary and all the extended family, young and elderly.  Lely's colleagues and friends were frequent visitors giving her an incredible amount of support.  So Lely, in your uphill climb you will never be stranded on your own.  These friends  ......

..... and so many others will keep you company all the way.

I wrote  this letter today which Oi Bek will read to you when she visits during the weekend.

".......remember girl, when you are undergoing this rehabilitative care, you are not like a baby learning to move.  A baby begins with nothing.  You have a rich cache of an active and vibrant life to start from.  You are like the bird who was injured while in flight and now you are being helped to fly again.  Remember how some of James Herriot's 'friends' were brought back to their old selves?  So persevere - take your life in both hands, nurture and appreciate the chance and accept all the challenges.  There's a new Lely waiting to come out.  There's still a lot for you to do and achieve.

Remember what Iain said?  YOU ARE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND!  And there are also all your other best friends to nudge you along.

The road is lonely, long and deep
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.    (Robert Frost)

Be stubborn and keep the wing/wings flapping.

The Gift of Life

Firstly, thank you for all the kind comments, for the prayers and the hope.

I wrote this about two weeks ago but could not manage the time and the opportunity to do so in the blog.

"At times like these we realize how fragile life is - how tomorrow can bring untold pain and sorrow and how each day has to be treated as sacred and precious.

At times like these we need to ponder on the complex and intricate design that God made of us and for us - a creation that can never ever be replicated by man.  This is God's gift that we often abuse and take for granted.  We look at the blue sky, the white clouds, the green grass and trees, the colours of the flowers and birds and we take a deep breath and give a silent prayer for what we see.

But often we neglect to give thanks for the body that we live in - how each breath we take, every drop of water we drink, every morsel of food we consume begins  an amazing cycle of life that runs through our lungs, the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the brain and all our innards - feeding and giving sustenance to our being on this earth.


Even the skilful hands of the surgeon that operated on Lely's brain and brought her back from the brink of death was God's own work.

Lely's stroke was not caused by high blood pressure but by a very rare congenital affliction called AVM  ( Arteriovenous Malformation), a tangled web of arteries and veins in the brain where a lot of blood is pushed through a concentrated area building up a pressure  and causing a stroke, aneurism and haemorrhage. 

Each year, 1 in 100,000 is diagnosed with AVM .  This year Lely became that 1 in 100,000.  She is one of those people I know who does not get  much of a fair deal in life.  But she's strong and she's a fighter.  In fact all her life she had been fighting against the odds."

We are now putting up in Lely's flat, helping to look after her beloved cat Moccha.

One evening I said to Moccha,  "Will you pray for your good friend Lely?"

I was told how Moccha sat sedately on the bed intently watching me at prayer and she moved her head up and down to synchronise with my movements.  After my 'Salam'  she moved and got down from the bed.

Allahu Akbar.  Allah  is everywhere.

For Love of Lely

Tomorrow we will depart for Singapore because this beautiful young woman, this loving girl we regard as the daughter we never had, suffered a stroke on Monday morning.  An operation removed the blood clot in her brain and she's now in an induced coma.

Lely, this lively, cheerful ray of light took these photographs  of the yellow bittern ......

........ in her latest posting of 13 Jan in her Photoblog :
http://www.photoblog.com/pickledherring

Lely or Aminah could never turn her back on the helpless and needy, especially animals and birds.

Iain and I and all of God's creatures that she saved and loved pray that Allah will restore her to us - to her mother and brother  and to all those who love and have been loved by Lely.

Finally, thank you Oi Bek for making all our travel arrangements and the rest of the Rainbow Band for being there.

  Hang on kid. We shall share these days again Lely, InsyaAllah.  You have promises to keep.

Datin Kicap

That's my latest title from Lely just because I did not do a good job of wrapping up two bottles of Habhal's Kicap Cap Kipas Udang.  They broke inside the suitcase and made a trail of thick inky liquid dripping from the suitcase as Iain picked it up from the carousel.  Intermittent little drips persisted all the way from Terminal 4 to the Central Bus Station at Terminal 3.

I managed to clean up the kicap spill on the outside but the mess inside the case was too much to bear.  Here's a teeny sample of what it did to my CD jackets.
 

But there's no point in crying over spilt kicap.  As Oi Bek suggested,  Lely will have to cart 2 more bottles of the precious stuff when she comes over in Spring!!

Hidayah my niece was just as sympathetic as Lely.  She asked if my belacan and chili got drowned in the kicap!

As for Hidayah's brother Mahzan, when he read my previous posting  KUL to LHR  he was  "secretly hoping" that he would get an e-mail from me  "from Lahore".  You see we have a dark travel track record.  We presented the previous year's bus ticket on the Nasional Ekspres from KL to Batu Pahat and  got uppity when the ticket clerk refused to accept it - but we received an indulgent smile later when we apologised and  realised  how idiotic we had been.  Then we went to KLIA to fly to New Zealand not realising it was one day too early! 

Some years ago the Hasry Bus from Singapore to Batu Pahat failed to pick us up after the Immigration check at JB.  We wrote such a stinking letter and got them to pay compensation to a local (BP) orphanage.  Besides, they also nicked my CPF umbrella which was left in the bus; a free gift from the Singapore garmen, so good one what.  This time, Mahzan and the others were hoping we would lose our direction or be abandoned again,  and end up in Lahore instead.

Well , all of the above, except Oi Bek, will be struck off my list of Sayang di Sayang  and henceforth will only be offered a meal of rice and kicap when they turn up under my roof.  As for the kicap, they will have to BYO  (Bring Your Own), like wine.  So there!!

It's 1400 hours now and my body clock is recording  2200 hours - made worse by the pangs of pain from the  loss of my kicap.

Before I huddle under the duvet on this bright and sunny and cold afternoon, here's an image of what two English young male neanderthals left behind on the MAS seat after they pushed their way to be first off the plane at LHR  (London Heathrow - for the benefit of nerdy nephew).

I hate to think what London will look like after the Olympics.  But they will of course blame it on the foreigners.

Halfway through the journey, the spouse had to tell them to quieten down as this was a night flight and people were trying to sleep.  One of them boasted  about how he finished off  two tumblers of beer, one of wine and two orange juice during one meal.  And at each meal he would be regurgitating his insides with 3-4 vile burps. Ugghh!!

And down in cargo, my two bottles of kicap were sloshing about in my suitcase.

Still, it's wonderful to be home.   The temperature here is 4C.

MH 002 - KUL to LHR

These condiments will be going to the other home on Tuesday 10 January.

We made the same journey exactly a year ago  - back to the bracing cold.

At our age, we do not know  how much longer can we pursue this nomadic lifestyle.

Robert Frost in his poem -The Road Not Taken -  had to decide between two diverging roads  but of course AsH had to make her life more difficult by having to pick on three.

One road marks the depth of one's  soul - which points to Semenanjung Tanah Melayu .......

.........Arwah Pa'Tua Haji Majid wrote this letter to his brother Hamid three days before my father passed away.  The bond that held two brothers together  is replicated in my bond to the Semenanjung.

The other road leads to Singapore which still holds the heart's joy .........

...........especially the house that my father built at Pasir Panjang.

 And tomorrow  AsH  will be taking the third road for England, where the mind  thrives and blooms like these daffodils at Victoria Park in March.

But I'm not complaining.  I believe very much in R. Frost's  Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening  where ..........

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

And so ta ra me duck !  ........ see you later next week, InsyaAllah. 

Orang jauh tak lupa dari kenangan  - to all my sayang di sayang.

Culinary Cusp of 2011 and 2012

When the Buchanans meet the Rainbow Band, they always travel on their stomachs.  We were informed of Singaporeans'  three major interests;  eating, shopping and surfing on the net.  And during that week in Singapore we put the first  SIN into action.

On our last trip into Singapore, our foray for mee rebus turned out to be a failure.   The gravy was either too stodgy or too insipid.

But Lely compensated for that distress.  With  her own hands, the hands that rocked the camera for  fantastic nature photographs...... 
(http://www.photoblog.com/pickledherring )
she cooked us two fabulous meals.  There was asam pedas ikan merah, crunchy fried French beans, crispy fried ikan selar kuning and her oommphy  sambal blacan.  On another day the menu consisted of  curry ikan tenggiri, a repeat hot favourite of sambal blacan and French beans and a special succulent omelette padded with lots of onions and red/green chillies.  I always knew this maknyonya had brains  ....... where food is concerned.  There was one snag.  First thing in the morning she made us take a health drink of cider vinegar and honey - yecchh!

Ruqxana brought with her to Lely's flat, three durians. She was diddled into paying too much for the 'king of fruits' by a couple of rogue durian traders from Johor.  After a solid meal ( cooked by Ruq) of homemade roti canai, dhal and fish curry,  we decided to call it a night, especially Irene who was ready to get  home to her bed.  As for the durians: oh no, the stomachs could not handle it, especially at 2200 hours!
It ended this way:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Saturday  New Year's Eve 

Lely, the health-conscious one, who demolished almost a whole durian the night before, had arranged a visit to her acupuncturist .......

.....to help the spouse with his back problem and her own arthriticky right arm.  It worked for both of them - as usual - because Mr Lim Tong Hong is a a competent acupuncturist.  With that kind of backup they had sufficiently strong (and hungry) guts to attend Oi Bek's special New Year's Eve  belanja   of lunch.

This was our reply to her gracious invitation from 12 December


Dear Miss Soh,

Mr and Mrs D.I. Buchanan thank you for the very kind invitation.  Now that our ticket to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur has been confirmed we do not envisage any problem in getting to Royal Plaza Hotel at Scotts.   Certainly we shall try our best to look presentable.  Uncle shall have a haircut and I'll buy him a new sarong.  Teech shall dig up her slinky black dress in the suitcase under the bed.

There'a a little query - do you have to invite all the others?  They might misbehave and hence tarnish our reputation?

Love from us both.


P.S Thank you Bek for everything.  

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Bek Soh wrote:


Hi Everyone,

You are invited to lunch on New Year’s eve at Royal Plaza Hotel at Scotts – Carousel coffee shop (Former Holiday Inn Hotel at Scotts – Halal certified)

We were all very well-behaved, ate only what we could handle - just a teeny-weeny bit of most of the delicacies and left with a happy tummy and a grateful thank you  to Oi Bek and her Rishad.


Sunday January 1, 2012

Jai picked us up at 0900 hours for a tosay breakfast at  Pasar Tek Kah next to Kandang Kerbau Hospital.

The spouse looked a little ragged - just a bit too much of la dolce vita. The other three are beaming with smiles.  They get that way when lovely food is placed in front of them.

But there was an attempt at a little scam prior to this.

What are they up to in front of that quadrilingual pawn shop and who is Lely pointing at?  I was on the other side of the road.  Were they scheming to pawn my little gold ring or Jai's VW Golf?  But they backed off when I threatened  to post some of their nerdy photos on my blog.

That was a great 2011/2012 celebration. 

Thank goodness we found this at Jai's block - a fitness corner for the elderly.

However there's still the search for the best mee rebus south of the Causeway.  That will be another story.