Wonderings

January 19, 2026.Reading time 6 minutes.

I’ve been wondering if I want to continue writing or take a break or give it up altogether. I know why I started my Golly Molly Aiyoh. It ticked one of the three boxes that I had read somewhere that people ‘needed’ in life. The box it ticked was ‘something to do.’ The other two […]

Trains, not buses

December 1, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I like trains. Buses, not so much. I’ve taken buses most of my life. To school in Alor Setar and whilst I was in university. For four years, I did a four-state hike of Selangor-Kuala Lumpur-Penang-Kedah. I travelled every three weeks, on a Friday, from Bangi to Kajang to Pudu Raya to Butterworth to Alor […]

Online, they or them

November 24, 2025.Reading time 7 minutes.

Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s not. And, I’ve wondered if it was/is I or me or ‘they’ or ‘them’ that make it not easy. To start with, it’s not easy to buy presents. For siblings. As they get older, they don’t want/need too many things. And, I don’t want to add to their clutter […]

Lift pain

November 10, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

One of my phobias happened. Twice, in under two weeks. I got stuck in my condo lift, and I don’t like confined spaces. I live on the 30th floor. The first time, the lift stopped on level 25. My destination was level 7. Fortunately, the lift door stayed open. I immediately got out and walked […]

‘What to do’

October 6, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

‘What to do’ is my perennial lament. I have wondered this aloud many times. Usually for matters that are outside my scope of comprehension, beyond my control or just … don’t know. And, they can be stuff that happen at the micro, personal level or the macro, national or global level. Anyway, I say this […]

Smelly smells

September 29, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

My husband and I now have clean, running water. We even joked that the water from the kitchen tap is too fast. The water from the rain shower head is not as gushing as we expected. The pancake shower head, as we call it, was the contraption that we both had wanted for a long […]

Low on information

September 1, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I’m now wearing a wrist splint. The cast came off at my last visit to my orthopaedic doctor. Is that progress? I’m not sure. I was told my wrist fracture was healing but there was osteoporosis around my metacarpals, the bones that are in my palm and give it its shape[1]. Anyways, at just over […]

A needed rant

August 25, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I need to rant about my medical insurance saga. Briefly, I had to sign an Offer of Conditional Acceptance (OCA) before my insurance company would accept the ‘endorsement’ or an amendment to an existing insurance contract, which in my case was my decision to increase my Med Saver. A Med Saver is a deductible. OCA […]

Insurance saga

August 18, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I wrote about my shooting-through-the roof insurance premium in 2024. The saga sadly continues. In July, my insurance company sent out emails asking if I, its customer, wanted to save on insurance premiums. I said, yes. How? Deductibles, it said. The email, paraphrased, read as follows. ‘The higher the deductible the more you can save. […]

Taxes, aging, death…

August 11, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

Nothing is certain but death and taxes. Aging is also certain. If we don’t get hit by a bus or die instantly from a heart attack. Thanks to modern medicine, prolongation of life, the process of living longer is more certain than not. No so certain is the quality longer life offers. Aging is inevitable. […]