What Kind of Coffee are You?

Posted on 30 May 2006 @ 14:28 in Being Silly

What Kind of Coffee are You?

You’re a Classic Cup ‘O’ Joe!
Take this quiz!

… you’re a favourite with everyone.

Yeah, right … NOT!

Boo!

Posted on 28 May 2006 @ 11:21 in Being Silly, Stress Busters

Boo is my favourite character from the movie Monsters, Inc.

Boo is also the nickname given by members of the Flickr PandasUnlimited group for the main staple in the diet of adult giant pandas.

What am I talking about?

Bamboo! Or boo, for short. Not Boo from Monsters, Inc, tho.

Oh, PU member yahlen has remarked that Tai looks like Boo. Tai also likes boo. No, wait, he likes Ma’s milk better, altho she’s beginning to wean him off it, so he’s having a mixed diet of Ma’s milk and boo. No, not Boo, but boo.

A Panda Love Story

Posted on 27 May 2006 @ 00:28 in Stress Busters

somesai, leader of our Flickr PandasUnlimited group, is currently on holiday in Egypt. justDM, our resident DI wizard, took a picture of Tai (taken by somesai) and a picture of Su Lin (taken by Cuquis), added in a scenic background, and posted it at the group’s Flickr site.

justDM added a caption below the picture, as well as a note inside the picture from Su Lin, while squarerootofcute added a note from Tai. Together, the words tell a story of how much all of us (humans and pandas) are missing somesai.

It’s been a week since he last seen his favourite personal photographer. Little Tai Shan together with cousin Su Lin decided 2 do a manhunt search.
Su Lin (left):	“So where’s somesai? U sure she’s not @ the Great Wall!?!?”
Tai (right):	“My mom said Somesai is in de-nial about not taking my picture. Egypt is where de Nile is.”

*Chet rolling on floor hooting with laughter*

A Boy named Phoebe

Posted on 26 May 2006 @ 12:44 in Friends, Travels

During the summer of 1988, my friend Susan had gone on a caravan holiday along the Norfolk coastline with her partner and their son. She later told me that she’d met a fellow caravan holiday-maker one morning.

“That woman told me she’d met my daughter,” I remember Susan telling me. “I told her I don’t have a daughter, but a son.”

After comparing physical descriptions of her son with the girl the woman had met, they decided it was the same child. Susan told the woman the child’s a boy with long, white blonde hair, so she could’ve mistaken him for a girl.

“But your son told me his name is Phoebe,” the woman then told Susan.

Fast forward 18 years, and I got to meet “Phoebe” (real name - Luke) who was home from university for the Easter break last month. He’s now a very tall, very skinny 20-year-old studying Geography in Scotland. He turned 20 the day after my unplanned visit, and the timing was such that if I had called the next day, I would not have had the chance to see him after all these years.

When I told Susan and Luke the Phoebe story, neither of them remembered it. After a while, she did start to remember it, and she even began to realise why it was that he told the woman his name was Phoebe. Turns out when Susan was young, her mother used to call her Phoebe.

“And it could be that my mother might’ve called him Phoebe when he was young,” she told me.

Well, with his long, white blonde hair, it was no wonder the woman believed Luke when he told her his name was Phoebe. See for yourself …

Luke / Phoebe with mum Susan behind him, circa 1988

Luke and Susan the day before he turned 20 (April 2006)

And one of the two of us that same evening

One of those nights

Posted on 24 May 2006 @ 02:20 in Janis Ian, Personal

Most nights, if I’m still up at this hour, it’s because I don’t want to sleep (go figure). Tonight, I’m still up because I can’t sleep. I have nights like this and tonight’s one of them.

I had gone to bed at about 11:45 p.m. and within seconds, knew I wasn’t going to fall asleep. So instead of willing sleep to come, I decided to get up and do some work.

I finished resizing and uploading Rowy and Lynda’s photos of the UK LRC to the online gallery that I maintain for Janis. Lots of interesting photos there, go take a look!

I also finally updated my electronic journal. Well, I updated some of it. What I do is write (or to use the current word, “journal” ) in my Dana and then upload it to my home computer. From there, I copy the entries into a software I use called The Journal. Looking at the very first entry there, it looks like I’ve been using it since 2002, altho I started keeping a paper diary more than 30 years ago.

I have almost half a year’s worth of journal entries in the Dana, and have just updated The Journal to February 2006. More work to do.

Looking at the UK LRC pictures reminded me of the first time I saw Janis “live” (in Singapore in late February 2005) and the second time I saw her (at the UK LRC followed by the Brighton concert in April 2006). That’s almost 14 months apart. Here are the pictures we took together on all three occasions.

Singapore, 26 February 2005

Mill Laine Barns, 16 April 2006

Brighton, 17 April 2006

Oh, and this photo of us comparing the size of our hands:

A man (and his voice) from my past

Posted on 22 May 2006 @ 17:31 in Memories

As part of her UK tour last month, Janis Ian was interviewed by various local radio shows there. One of them was The DLT Show.

DLT stands for Dave Lee Travis, a name which brought back mega memories for me, and which will forever be associated with the May 13 race riots in Malaysia.

The whole country had been under curfew in the aftermath of the riots. To keep us occupied, TV Malaysia started broadcasting a variety of programmes that had never been shown on air before. One such show was Beat Club, a pop music show made in Germany and featuring an English deejay by the name of Dave Lee Travis and a female co-presenter called Valerie (I still remember their names after all these years).

My sister, brother and I were over the moon with the show as we were pop music fans. And when Cliff Richard came on, my sister screamed. He’d been a favourite of hers for many years and it was the first time she was seeing him “live” anywhere. Since the whole country was on curfew at the time, there was no traffic on the road and the house, plus the neighbourhood, was very quiet. My sister’s scream, the loudest sound to be heard, earned her a scolding from my uncle who reprimanded her for “bringing attention to the house” .

A few years back, I found Dave Lee Travis on the BBC World Service and listened to him for a while, after which I lost track of him again. Until recently, when he featured Janis Ian on his show. And yes, I heard it, thanks to the Internet - lots of radio stations, including BBC Three Counties which hosts his show, these days stream their shows online for anyone to listen to anywhere in the world, so long as you have an Internet connection.

Just to hear her voice

Posted on 22 May 2006 @ 12:33 in Family

One morning somewhere in the middle of my trip last month, I felt the need to hear my sister’s voice and to know, from hearing her voice, that she was alright. Things were too quiet, with no news from home. I know - I was on holiday and they wouldn’t bother me if things were alright, but with my family, it didn’t work that way all the time, but more on this later.

So I called my sister but I couldn’t very well tell her I just wanted to hear her voice, so when the call went through and I found myself hearing her say “hello?” over the phone, I asked “Hi, so you’re going to visit mother this coming Saturday?” No “hello, how are you?” but something more direct, more practical, more acceptable to ask.

I used to get that way about needing to hear mother’s voice to make sure she was alright when I was at university in Norwich. I felt maybe the family was keeping something from me, so I would call just to hear mother’s voice and be reassured that she was alright.

This need to hear mother’s voice (and recently, to hear my sister’s voice) has a history dating back to Chinese New Year 1987.

Every CNY Eve, my brother would travel back from Singapore to spend CNY with us. The first morning of CNY that year (my first away from home), I’d called home and after wishing my mother Happy Chinese New Year, asked to speak with my brother. She said he had gone out with some friends. I did find that a little strange - that, plus the fact that the call was answered by my sister who was usually back at her in-laws’ place during CNY - but did not really think too much of it.

A few days later, I received mum’s weekly letter and in it, learned that actually my brother had had an accident while travelling back from Singapore, had broken his leg and was in hospital at the time I called. Mum said she didn’t tell me at the time because she didn’t want me to worry. Like as if I would worry any less hearing about it later. But that was so like my family, and especially my mother - to want me not to worry.

Of course, hearing someone’s voice doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of the family is okay, but in both cases, I got to hear the voice of the person I was most worried about.

In any case, what I went through with not being told about my brother’s accident certainly can’t ever compare with what a university friend, AC from Singapore, experienced. He went home one summer to learn that his father had passed away a few months previously and no one in the family called to let him know at the time it happened.

By the way, my niece, who left us on 31 March, would’ve turned 21 today. 21 is the legal “coming of age” in Malaysia, so not turning 21 for her means she’ll always be a little girl in our hearts. Not that she would ever be anything else to her parents.