Whirl Wind

My life is such a blur these days... I honestly don't know where my time goes. Every day is just a mad rush to get things done. I'm a working mother of two with an equally busy husband (who comes home after work and promptly falls asleep in front of the TV, leaving me to wrestle with the kids over bed-times and last bottle feedings and diaper changes and ironing of clothes for the next day and last-minute dish washings)... ummm but I digress. As I am prone to do. Haha.

Anywho, since the landslide last week and the subsequent declaration that my building was "unsafe", I have been shipped off to Bangi to set up office in my bank's training centre there. It's just behind Un*ten and the daily commute is fantastic! Even though it's like 25km from my house and I have to pass through two toll booths (bwargkh don't even get me started on the tolls!!!!), the half hour journey is just great 'cos there's no traffic jam!! I luv it I luv it I luv it! A colleague of mine car pools with me in the mornings and chips in for petrol (thanks, Mary!). The parking there is free (yay!!) and my office looks over the golf course behind Un*ten. A few days ago we got to watch some poor bloke wade in the pond thingy and fish out sunken golf balls. And we've recently discovered that Alam*nda is just 10 minutes away....

Yes it was all rainbows and roses for the first few days, even more so 'cos half of my department is stationed in KL (including my boss.. :-D). However, after a while the novelty of working in the sticks is starting to wear off. My poor lovely husband sends the kids to KJ every day on the way to work and picks them up after, so I get less quality time with them. The extra expenses (toll, petrol, lunches) incurred is really getting to me, too. We're trying to negotiate some kind of travelling claim but the prospects don't look too bright. Latest news is.. well, we might be there 'till January. Gak!!

It's all I can do at the end of the day to get my kids snugly into bed, finish my chores and collapse into bed. But what to do.. rezeki halal perlu dicari, put bread on the table and all that. I have the weekends, right? Guess I've just gotta stick to my guns and face it. Insya-Allah, it'll work itself out in the end.

The Ground Beneath My Feet

First of all, my deepest sympathies to all who lost their family, friends and valuables in the recent landslide at Bkt Ant*rabangsa. Al-fatihah..

You know something is seriously wrong when the ground beneath your feet moves faster than you do. Yours truly is also a landslide victim, albeit one on a smaller scale than the BA one where the only casualties were 11 cars parked in an unfortunate spot. Still, whether there were lives lot or not, the landslide which happened right outside my office window really shook me.

There we were, happily banging away at our respective key-boards at 5pm and anticipating going-home time in an hour or so, when we received an IM flashed across our computer screens.. something like this: "Slope along Jln So-and-so is unstable. Please move your cars." Not even a minute or two later, there was this loud SNAP sound (probably the divider breaking), a louder whoosh followed by a sickening crunch and a small tremor which was felt throughout our building. Someone shouted "Bukit dah jatuh!". I thought it was a joke until everyone rushed up to the windows and someone else screamed. I squeezed my way to a window and what I saw really turned my blood cold... a huge stream of soil, rocks and debris flowed from the top of the retainment wall down to the parking lot below, crushing the cars beneath. Earlier in the week, D*KL had cordoned off the parking bays at the top of the retainment wall after the ground sunk a few inches. But apparently no one warned those who used the parking lot below between the two buildings.

People started grabbing their belongings and running out of the building. In the confusion, I managed to save my work, switch off my PC, text message my husband, grab my handbag and even retrieve a tupperware of strawberry tart that I'd stashed in the fridge. I held hands with one of the kakak from my department all through the lift ride up and manged to walk calmly to the emergency evacuation area. We had to walk past the fallen area.. almost half the road was gone! A friend from another department called me to check on me (thanks Alina). The security personnel were urging us down the hil to safer ground and I just went with the flow. I did not know that there were so many people in the 3 buildings! Suddenly I realised that I didn't have a way to go home as my husband would only finish work at 6pm, and given the horrific traffic jam already happening below he didn't have a chance in hell of getting there by 8pm. I quickly called another kakak from my office who managed to get me a ride to the LRT station in her friend's car.

In the LRT, I texted my dad and called my mom to teman me because I was feeling weird and n shock. Who knows what would have happened to me in that state, right? I would've probably missed my stop and gotten lost. At the interchange, I called my BFF when I boarded the monorail to Bkt *. She entertained me with various gossip all the way to P*villion where hubs was already waiting for me. To cheer me up, he took me for a nice, comforting KFC meal. Comfort food, indeed.

Later that night, I got a text from my boss telling me that our SM had granted my department a free holiday the next day as we didn't have a designated offsite office. Yippee!! All through the night and the next day I received countless calls and texts from concerned friends and family. My grandma called me three times, she was so worried and excited! Haha.

This morning I reported to the first building which was declared out of the danger zone. My building and building #2 was declared temporarily closed for a tentative 2 weeks-1 month! I went to my office to collect my belongings and saw the stream of mud had flowed down to the entrance of my building. 2 weeks indeed. Hmph.

I'm being relocated to Bangi tomorrow. Jauhnyaaaaaaa...

Home Sweet Home

Yes yes I'm still alive and blogging. Practically a month has gone by since my last post, yeah? Been pretty busy ever since all my family members successfully recovered from the flu bug. God, that was a horrible episode. Hope the bug doesn't come by visiting any time soon again, thank you very much.

First and foremost, we've finally moved! My parent's "innocent" hints got to be a bit too much ("Babah tanya what are your moving plans? Lama² tinggal rumah tu tak elok pulak...."). The winner: "Bila u pindah nanti I'm turning your room into a surau/reading room. Let me just measure for the carpets..." Okay already. So we got a lori sewa (an adventure in itself), packed up our stuff and shipped out right after Deepavali.

I'm glad to report that the kids took to the new house immediately. The best thing was that Eez started sleeping in his own room ALONE from the first night without a fuss! Of course, the TV my hubs put in there didn't hurt. We had set up his bed with new underwater-themed sheets from I*kea (Eez is fish-mad) and his fav Elmo blanket, arranged his books on the shelves and he immediately settled in. We were a bit apprehensive (and sad, on my part) to let him sleep alone in a new room in a new house so soon, but he just calmly told us to close the light and shut the door! But he did allow us to put the baby monitor on in his room. It was a bit of a struggle to get him to switch the TV off at first but now he's an absolute angel at bed times. I turn the TV off, he gets into bed with Friend and the Power Rangers figurine of the day, has a bottle of milk (yep, still a baby at heart), permits me to kiss and tuck him in and falls asleep by himself. Of course, I check on him about 20 times before I go to bed myself!

It's great to be living on our own again. Sure, the morning rush to drop the kids off and get to work is a bit mad, but we've become used to it by now. Everything in the fridge is ours, we have total command of the remote control and we can eat what we want! At the moment our downstairs area is completely devoid of furniture except for a patio set which temporarily serves as our dining table and two carpets. And we still have to buy curtains and a washing machine (currently we send our clothes to Laundry KJ. Haha.). But don't worry, I will have you guys over for makan-makan soon, only let me buy kitchen appliances first!

Cheers!

Tis the Season for Tissues and Ibuprofen

Yep.. it's that time of year when practically everyone whips out their tissues and sniff, sneeze and cough away. The time when bosses start tearing their hair out when staff attendance is low ("Boss.. saya MC. Demam."). The time when you complain in a pitiful voice that your head feels like it's in the clouds, your throat tastes of cotton, your joints ache and your nose runs like a faucet and the other person says knowingly, "Yeah.. tengah musim ni. My sibling/friend/parent/colleague also has it."

I finally succumbed to the flu today after son#2 and my dad were struck down by it during the past week. First came the sniffles yesterday. I manfully popped a couple of P*nadols, clamped a tissue to my nose and went to work. By the end of the day my nose was permanently red and threatening to peel due to the constant dabbing with a tissue. When I woke up this morning, my head was heavy but I didn't have a fever (tested myself with kids' Safety 1st thermometer - only 36.9 degrees). I dallied in getting ready until my mom told me to go to work because "dah banyak sangat cuti dah!". Errr.. well I do get 30 days annual leave and I've only been on MC 5 days this year! Went to the office, had breakfast, swallowed 2 P*nadols and started work. Sneeze sneeze cough cough dribble. Repeat every 5 minutes. The sub-zero temperatures brought on by the air-conditioning did not help at all.

Finally, by 11am I'd had enough. I was practically comatose at my desk. I finished up my report, emailed it to my UH and got permission from my manager to go home. Yeehaa! Got my MC from the panel doctor with about 5 different types of medicine. After a quick lunch with BFF and friends, I headed home for the safe haven of my bed. #2 was taking a nap when I arrived, thank God, so I managed to escape to my bedroom undetected. #1 was awake upstairs and wanted to play. I said in my most pitiful voice, "Mom's sick. Mom nak tido." He looked at me suspiciously and said, "Sick? Ubat?" I immediately showed him my little bag of drugs. Satisfied, he nodded and granted me permission into my room.

I contemplated taking my medicine before I decided to take them. I had flu pills, fever pills, the vile cough syrup and lozenges. Now, I have a natural aversion to pills since I discovered I had an allergy to certain types of pain-killers. A few years back I suffered from particularly bad cramps and was prescribed Voltaren. Little the 80's cartoon. After one dose my eyes puffed up and I had to take another day off to wait for them to subside. After I had #1, my doctor gave me Synflex. This time, my entire face puffed up and I looked like I'd been crying for a week. Ever since, the strongest painkiller I've taken is Ponstan. Anyway, I swallowed the evil little bitter-nak-mampus flu pills and cough syrup and crashed into bed. Within minutes, I was out. During my coma-like sleep I was vaguely aware of hubs coming home and working on the lap-top beside me, my mom coming in looking for pyjamas for the kids and #1 coming in a few times to whisper excitedly that "Mom's sick!", "Mom sleeping!" and "Wook! Mom's ubat!". Whether he was talking to himself or someone else, I'll never know.

I woke up 4 hours later feeling like I'd swallowed my pillow during my sleep. I hate drug-induced sleep. You wake up feeling like crap. I dragged myself out of bed and forced myself to take a shower since I vaguely remembered sweating profusely at some point in the afternoon. After a nice nasi ayam dinner which I could hardly taste, I felt somewhat human again. #1 has taken to giving me impromptu hugs and pecks on the cheek, his way of comforting his poor sick old mom, which is nice.

I will be a good girl and take my meds again before bed tonight. I have to go to work tomorrow since it's the company's Hari Raya open house and I've promised the kakaks at the office that I'd drive them to PWTC where it's being held. Let's hope my tastebuds have revived by then kalau tak rugi je all the yummy food!