Nice … not nice

December 22, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

December is my favourite month of the year. Second only to March, which is my birthday month. Growing up, the final term school holidays was in December. Seven weeks of freedom, starting in middle November. The whole of December was ‘cuti time.’ As a working adult, December was when office parties and get-togethers were held, […]

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 […]

Vehicle spotting

November 3, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I am not the most observant person going. I remember my mum asking me if I had seen this or that person wearing this or that, usually jewellery or something fancy or new, and nine out of ten times, I wouldn’t have/didn’t. She was flabbergasted at my ‘ability’ to not notice people and/or what was […]

Sirens and security

October 27, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I live in the city centre. I hear them all the time. Night and day. I thought I’ve heard it all. Not quite. Last week, the sounds and frequency of sirens went up many notches. They intruded my airspace as if they were on a timer. I did not clock them but they screamed regularly. […]

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. […]

What to believe …

June 30, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I was told by a long-time friend that Christmas carols weren’t allowed to be sung during the Obama administration. This was just one of the many nuggets of information that was pronounced with conviction during our conversation which included events that have happened and are happening in the world. Serious stuff like war, beliefs, and […]

News detox

June 23, 2025.Reading time 6 minutes.

I had sort of a news detox without realising it. For about two weeks when sister number 3 visited, I didn’t listen to BFM, a local business radio station, from Monday to Friday. I didn’t do searches on YouTube for my regular dose of politics cum economics podcasts. I also didn’t watch the late night […]