Asbo on tomato planting

Reading the news this morning, I was quite amused by this news article. Basically, a retired grandmother who has grown two tomato plants in the entrance foyer of her council flat has been given an Asbo warning (anti-social behaviour) and was given strict orders by the council to remove her plants due to fire satefy precaution (and also someone in the same flat had complained).

You can only shake your head in disbelief and amazement at the kind of news the nanny state in this country has produced.

That prompted me to think about the kinds of 'potential' hazards in Malaysia that only we Malaysians can accept as normal and live with. During durian season, we see all kinds of temporary fruit stalls springing up along the road and even the highway set up from a range of materials including wood, plastic gazebo, curtain, cardboard, zinc or even straight from the boot of a car. You name it and they can do it. Or, how about that temporary mamak stall that is just round the corner from your house which has been there for yonks and it looks like it's going to fall apart anytime? Not to mention the wobbly tables with chairs that have legs that look about to snap if you put too much weight on them?



Living in a foreign country is the best kind of opportunity for one to look back at the relaxed and easy-going attitude that Malaysians in general have.

Sometimes people can be so petty. It's a common disease of humankind, not being able to rejoice in others' achievement and some people go to great lengths just to be a 'killjoy'. Only the other day I found out that in the UK, if you are planning to refurbish your home, or add an extension, or build a garage, you first need to get permission from the council, and then you need to let your entire street know what you are planning to do and if enough people are not happy with it, you don't get to build it. Funny isn't it? I suppose in a way it's to protect the residents in case someone decides to add an extension as big as Buckingham Palace, which would therefore block the road and so would slightly inconvenience the neighbourhood. But how likely is that to happen? And not only that, whatever you are intending to build, it must not cross the line of the front part of your house, in other words, you can only build beside or behind, but not out to the front because all the houses along the same street has the same 'line'. Odd, you think?

Don't get me started on the three different kinds of wheelie bins we have got at home !!

Random thoughts and updates

I figured it's been too long i have not updated my blog so i had to write something.. anything. So i've decided to go with just random, out-of-order happenings to date.

This morning i woke up with a start, thinking that it was Monday and that I was VERY late for work (i know, very sad). I glanced over to my bedside table and was assured to read 'Sunday', 8.53am on the screen of my Blackberry. Phew.

Had a lazy morning lying in bed and reading. Rang my mum and was told the parcel i had sent for Father's Day almost three weeks ago still hasn't arrived. Hmmm perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to include my used mobile phone in the parcel for my mum... maybe an even worse idea to label the parcel 'toy' when clearly, a mobile phone isn't a toy and whoever is going to open it for custom check will realise that too. SIGH never mind... let's hope it will turn up soon.

Was out hanging the laundry this morning and was pleasantly surprise to catch a glimpse of the 6 Red Arrows planes flying past in a formation of a triangle, perhaps rehearsing for the upcoming Bournemouth Airshow. It's a shame the show always takes place at a time I am not able to catch it. It's definitely an exhilarating and exciting experience and Fely can tell you that for sure as she's just been to one not long ago up on Biggins Hill in Greater London.

Have been suffering from a funny form of rash since last Sunday. We were having a bbq last Sunday and steve's dad decided to set up a hammock from a box that has been lying around in the garden for two years. So as soon as it was set up, I laid myself down on the hammock without thinking twice and that night, I started itching on the face and developed swollen lips that lasted till the next day. Since then i've been having an on and off rash that looks like hundreds and thousands of mosquitoes have bit me at the same time. The most bizarre thing is they go away as quickly as they come. Weird.

Can a person truly survive on virtual friendship... ie through fb and not ever meeting physically? I think so. I have been pleasantly surprised many times now on fb, the amount of support and love we all give each other on fb. I know it sounds sad (VERY SAD) when i check on fb and smile at the comments that my friends give me, and feel assured at the support my friends give me, and coo and ooo at the pictures my friends posted. Like Betty and Viola mentioned, they never really got to know the REAL me during the MPIK years (perhaps it's not such a bad thing, beatrice might tell you, haha)... And I used to think, yeahh I should have paid more effort in getting to know more people, people like Betty, Viola, Cherry, and even Ashley coz they are all so sweet (in their own way, of course)... but lately I thought to myself, we are creating deeper and more meaning friendships now, each and everyone of us. And the fact that we have known each other (at any level at all) and know what we are like, makes it so much easier to strengthen that foundation we already had.

However, what makes me sad sometimes is how people who used to be close to us before, now find that they have no time for us even through the convenience of fb or the great Internet simply because they devote their whole being to the newest part of their lives. I guess you can't blame them, but I wouldn't give anything up for I have now on fb, with friends that i never knew i had before :)