After17 years as a housewife, I am hanging up my apron to join the work brigade with regular office hours. Well, it was good while it lasted. I enjoyed being a housewife, though some people could not hack this type of life. I enjoyed the writing-from-home life too. But, it’s time for a new chapter.

This change has to be reflected in this blog. It can’t be Life’s Like That – the ramblings of a desperate housewife anymore. It’s now called Life’s Like That @ Cambridge. The language centre I’m running is a franchise business – Cambridge English for Life but to include this in the blog title would be a mouthful, hence just Cambridge.

As a result of this new venture, necessarily there has to be a change in lifestyle.

• Now I have to wake up early everyday to go to the office. My ‘early’ is your ‘late’ so I won’t tell you how early is early. But I have to be in the office at 10.00 am from Tuesdays to Saturdays. Commuting to work takes approximately 30 to 45 minutes depending on the traffic condition.
• Now I can’t cook everyday like I used to. The kids are already missing mum’s cooking but there’s no choice. I have to cater food unless I want to be stressed up even more by cooking before I leave for work. Home-cooked food has to be reserved for Sundays, Mondays and public holidays.
• Now there is less leisure time to read the newspapers and watch TV and just lepaking around. After getting home from work, there are still chores to be done – washing the toilets, doing the laundry, clearing up this and that, doing a bit of revision with no. 4 when it comes to exam time. I have forgotten how hard working  career women are and have renewed my respect for them.
• Now the kids must do more chores. They have to help out more around the house, especially the two younger ones. The teenagers are in college and have less time at their disposal.
• Now no. 1 has to shoulder some of the chauffeuring duties or as he puts it, “a part-time mother.”
• Now I have to put on my sweetest telephone voice. My voice has never been sweet – especially on the phone and I usually sound like I’ve just got out of bed or I’ve just ran a 5-kilometre marathon. My colleague from another centre said I sounded so tired on the phone. Haha, that’s just me, my dear. Now for the sake of attracting students, I shall have to put on my perkiest voice to sound as if I’ve just struck the jackpot in a contest.
• Now there’s less time for writing. But this may be a good thing to force me to be more productive in the limited time I have. I don’t intend to stop writing yet. Just taking a breather from it. After I’ve settled down a little at Cambridge, it’s back to the keyboard.

We had our official opening on Sunday. Here are some pictures of the event. More pix here. Thanks to Rick for the photos.

Blog readers, thank you for your forbearance with this inactive blog. As you know I’d been pretty busy getting the manuscript for my children’s guidebook done. Well, it was done and submitted BUT I have to rework it to add more information. Thankfully, my new deadline is end of the year, so there’s time yet.

These past few weeks I’ve been busy with something else: getting ready a language centre which I will be running. You don’t have to be a prophet to predict that now there’ll be even less time for me to blog. However, I will try my best to include updates at least twice a month.

Now for more info on this new venture. It is a franchise called Cambridge English for Life. There are courses for very young learners of 3 and 4 right up to working adults. The new centre is located in Setia Alam. Postcode wise it is in Shah Alam but location wise it is in Klang (on the way to Meru.)

Our official opening is this Sunday, 18 October at 2.30 – 5.00 pm. There’ll be a colouring contest for children aged 7 to 12 and high tea. If you are in the area, do drop by. Email me at tehlydia@yahoo.com for directions.

Finally, I am done with my manuscript for my children’s guide book. What a relief! I had been burning the midnight oil for the past few weeks in order to meet the deadline. It’s not the end yet, of course. I will have to revisit the manuscript after it has been edited by my editor but the bulk of the work is out of the way.

I am so glad that I won the Samsung laptop or I would still be slogging away on the book. Murphy’s Law being what it is, my telephone cable had to snap during the Hari Raya break which meant that I was without Internet for one week. Telekom came to restore the line yesterday. While the line was down, I had to hog cafes with wifi in order to do my online research. Last Saturday was the longest session I ever had : 7 hours without budging from my seat except to take toilet breaks. Total spent: RM15 for brunch, coffee and tea. Quite reasonable. (If I had gone to Starbucks, just one cup of coffee or tea would’ve set me back by RM10.) Fortunately the eatery was not busy or the waiters would’ve stared daggers at me for overstaying my welcome.

After sleeping just five hours last night, I was acting like a zombie in the morning.  At six-something in the evening, while working at my laptop in the kitchen, I felt the table swaying. Now that couldn’t be due to lack of sleep as I had caught up on sleep in the daytime. I thought my legs were shaking the table as one knee was propped up against it. (That’s one advantage of working from home. You can sit anyhow you like.) I moved my leg away from the table. The table was still shaking.

Next thought which crossed my mind: Woah, lizard, take it easy, will you. Why are you shaking the table so (this thought directed at the scoundrel of a lizard which has taken up residence at my dining table – under the Lazy Suzan). But then it can’t be the lizard. It’s not that strong. Must be some other animal – a rat perhaps? Urrgh.

Then I felt my chair swaying. It can’t be due to lack of sleep – I caught a nap (two in fact – one to make up for lost sleep and another to celebrate the completion of my book). Oh no! It’s an earthquake!

“Hey! Did you feel the earth shake?” I yelled at the kids upstairs. No. 3 was blur like a sotong. No. 2 said, “Yeah, I felt it but I thought I was feeling dizzy after staring at the computer for too long.”

Later after picking up no. 1 from college, I asked if he felt the tremor. He did but he thought he had a bout of dizziness due to working too hard (haha!).

I suspected an earthquake had hit some place in Indonesia. True enough, it was an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter Scale in Padang, Sumatra. At moment, online reports said the casualty is 20+ lives. Terrible, but this figure will probably climb in the next few days.

No. 2 wrote this short, sweet article about no. 4 in Starmag’s Generation Gap column, published yesterday.

The Sibling Connection (The Star, 13 September 2009)

WHAT is the sweetest thing in life? Is it waking up in the morning and finding an “I love you” note beside you on the bed? Is it going to bed after hours in front of the PC and finding a drawing of a huge Smiley face wishing you “Good night, XOXO”? Or is it coming home after a long tiring day in college and being greeted with a bear hug?

Yes, I get all that from my sweet little sister.

I want to always be able to hug her, pinch her soft chubby cheeks, kiss her and carry her like a baby. But I also want to be able to talk about “deeper” stuff with her, instead of just asking, “Who did you go to recess with?”

I want my sister to remain innocent, to say the cutest things like, “The cuttlefish will cut your stomach!” But I want her to grow up, so I can finally have someone to share my clothes with. Well, I shouldn’t worry too much. She is growing up and there’s nothing I can do to stop that.

My sister says she wishes that we were twins. She already is a carbon copy of me. A mirror image, my Dolly. She looks like I did when I was her age. She has the same favourite colours as me. She does her hair the way I do mine. She listens to the music I like and watches the TV shows I watch. She even copies the fancy way I write.

The perfect sister? Pretty much so. Even when I do get upset with her, it’s never for long. Once I was angry and refused to speak to her. She wrote me a note saying, “I am sorry, sister”. How could I possibly stay angry? And people still wonder why I love her so much.

I want to protect her from the harsh realities of life: Sometimes people won’t like you for who you are, they don’t want to be your friend. Sometimes you’ll experience failure and disappointment, heartache and bitterness.

She has to experience all that herself. Still, I know I will always be there for her. If she wants me, that is. She might, she might not. Bonds can fade. Hopefully, not ours.

I will treasure the moments I have with her because not everyone gets a angel for a sister. The 10 years between us is not a gap. It’s a bridge that connects two separate souls.

Different but same

By Lydia Teh

Food, festivals, family and fun are the factors that make us wholly Malaysian.

ONE plus one equals one or 1 + 1 = 1. Mathematically this is wrong but according to the biblical concept of marriage, it is right. Husband and wife are to cleave to each other as one.

Though they are male and female with different characteristics, temperament and whatever emotional baggage they bring with them to the marriage, they are one.

‘The ties that bind us go beyond food, though that is arguably one of the strongest ties. Take the sarong. This humble piece of cloth is worn by people of all races. It is the ultimate attire for chilling out at home.’ Lydia Teh (centre)

Using the same analogy, Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others are one under the 1Malaysia concept: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. Though they are of different races and cultural backgrounds, they are one.

1Malaysia is a new slogan but is the concept new? I read that Yasmin Ahmad said something to the effect of “Dat fella copy me-lah.” I can see where she was coming from.

Her commercials and movies promote bangsa Malaysia and they are so unpretentious and down-to-earth that even children can enjoy them.

Sad to say, her passing has left a void unless one of her protégés rises to the challenge as she did to become a worthy successor of P. Ramlee.

Think about it: aren’t we already practising 1Malaysia to a small extent? Let me enumerate some of the ways since we’re so fixated with numbers.

1. Hari Raya is coming. My family and I will be visiting our next door neighbours to share in the joy of the festival.

If we want to feast on rendang and ketupat, we have to go on the first or second day when there’s plenty to eat. But we’re not gluttons. If we could only visit after the good food is depleted, we’d be just as happy with cookies and syrup, though our stomachs might growl for rendang.

But we don’t just share food with each other (we give them Mandarin oranges and groundnuts during Chinese New Year). We share dust and water too. When they renovated their kitchen, dust floated into our kitchen via ventilation holes.

I didn’t cook when the drilling was intense. The last time I checked, dust is not an edible seasoning.

When our house was being repainted and we needed more water power to operate the high-pressure water machine to spray off old paint, our neighbours came to the rescue by letting us tap into their water supply for free.

2. When we go out to eat at the mamak stall, we can see diners of all races tucking into their roti canai and teh tarik. This is the most muhibbah institution in Malaysia.

Where else can you see Malays, Chinese and Indians under one roof (or roofless sometimes) intent on fulfilling one of life’s basic needs? KFC and McDonalds? But they serve Western food.

Mamak has the Malaysian identity chopped all over it. We are united in our love for ghee-laden food and milk-saturated tea. “United we stand, divided we fall” should be paraphrased as “Ghee-nited we stand, tea-vided we fall.”

3. The ties that bind us Malaysians go beyond food, though that is arguably one of the strongest ties. Take the sarong. This humble piece of cloth is worn by people of all races. It is the ultimate attire for chilling out at home.

Its “natural air-con” and simplicity of design makes it versatile. It can be used as a baby sling or a cradle.

I was rocked to sleep on a sarong cradle when I was a baby. My children had a rocking good time too when they visited grandma.

4. There’s a reason why there are so many beggars and charities asking for donations in public places. The generosity of Malaysians overflows its cup. People give, to these and deserving cases highlighted in the media. Malaysians are truly generous.

Despite being 1Malaysians, there will be facets of our lifestyle that are different from each other. That’s unity in diversity for you.

Take food for instance. We enjoy festive goodies such as kuih bangkit and kuit kapit at both Hari Raya and Chinese New Year but lemang will always be associated with Hari Raya and yee sang with Chinese New Year.

Whether Malays, Chinese or Indians, there will be cultural differences on how we eat (what can I say, our national pastime is eating), how we wed, how we bury our dead or how we celebrate a newborn.

Babies are born pure, like white sheets of paper to be painted on. If a Chinese mother threatens her young one to eat his food or the Ah Neh Neh (colloquial for Indian) will catch him, the boy will grow up fearing dark-skinned people.

If a Malay father warns his daughter not to mix with the Chinese or she might get cheated, the girl will eye with distrust those with mata sepet (slit eyes.) Children are colour-blind. It is the adults who teach them otherwise.

The onus is on our young ones to raise another generation to become more integrated: to eat with each other, to give generously of their friendship and concern, to wear Baju Malaysia (which incorporates different elements of each ethnic group’s traditional wear).

In short, to become as well-mixed as rojak, yet maintaining the distinctive flavours that make us different.

Allow me to end with a poem that is a favourite among readers of Honk! If You’re Malaysian, judging from the frequency with which it is quoted in blogosphere:

“Regarding our inherent make-up, is one race more likely to act in a certain way than another? A friend of mine puts it this way:

Kalau tidak malas, bukan Melayu,
Kalau tidak tipu, bukan Cina,
Kalau tidak minum, bukan India.
(If you’re not lazy, you’re not Malay,
If you don’t cheat, you’re not Chinese,
If you don’t drink, you’re not Indian.)

To my friend I say:

I’m Chinese but I’m no cheat,
My friend’s Indian but he’s no drunk,
Another is Malay but he’s no slob,
Chinese, Indian, Malay or Others,
We are who we make ourselves to be,
Not the stereotypes we’re made out to be.
But if we don’t buck the trend,
We’ll forever be stamped.”

Forty-something Lydia Teh is the author of ‘Honk! If You Are Malaysian’. She likes to eat roti canai when money is tight which isn’t surprising as her latest book is ‘Stretching Your Dollar$ and $ense – More than 300 money-saving tips for anyone and everyone’.

BEHIND THE SCENES

The above picture was taken in The Star’s photo studio with Star employees. From left : Sheela Chandran (in case you’re wondering, she’s Chinese Indian and writes for Star Two, Kamarul is a photographer, Nathan is from the photo department and Lim from Editorial Admin.) What a muhibbah bunch. There was plenty of camaraderie at the photo shoot too. The photograph is by Raja Faisal.

Yes, this sleek and shiny Samsung R470 is mine! If I have superpower, I would’ve circled the earth ten times in glee. Thank you very much to Samsung who deems me worthy to win this cool laptop for my use. For years I have been wanting to own one and after entering several contests which promise laptops and coming away empty handed, now at last, this super-duper computer is mine to call my own. Now I don’t have to listen to the loud whirring of our desktop. The more browsers are open, the louder it complains. I won’t have this problem with the R470. Read the superb review in The Star today. I am looking forward to putting it to good use.

This win would not have been possible without the support of my readers who helped by giving their comments on my Imagi.nation blog entries. I promised a main prize of RM50 voucher + 1 copy of Stretching your dollar$ and $ense and two books as consolation prizes. As I have nabbed the prize of my desire, I want to thank all those commenters who have encouraged and supported my effort by giving them a prize each. Here are the winners who will each receive a copy of Stretching your dollar$ and $ense :

1. Elaine
2. Clareng
3. Synical
4. Shin
5. Ilene
6. Firethorn
7. Spearhead
8. WP
9. Foongpc

Drumroll to the main winner – picked by random draw :

CLARENG who will receive a RM50 cash voucher in addition to the book. (Please let me know whether you prefer Jusco, Tesco, Giant, MPH or Popular vouchers.)

And a special prize to this young lady who has been faithfully commenting on my blog though my postings have been sporadic and pathetic. She’s my no. 1 cheerleader at the moment :

ELAINE who will receive a Samsung foldable travel bag in addition to the book.

Congratulations to all winners. Please email your address to tehlydia@yahoo.com so I can mail you the prize. If you want to pick up your prize personally, I will be at the Bookfest this Saturday, 29 August 2009 for a book talk between 5.00 to 6.00 pm at the KLCC.

My apologies for this late announcement. I couldn’t do it any earlier as the Samsung prize-winning luncheon was only held last Saturday and I only got my R470 yesterday.  A big thank you to Sue Tan and her team at Samsung for their hard work. Thanks a bunch, Samsung, for sponsoring the prizes. Besides my laptop, they gave away a home theatre system, a netbook, a DVD player and MP3s among others. (All top 20 bloggers get their pebble MP3.)

I’m sorry there’s a delay in winner announcement to the Samsung Imagi.nation contest. You will know why later. But results will be out this coming week.

Thanks to all those who have commented on my Samsung Imagi.nation posts. Appreciate your help very much. I will announce the results next week after the Samsung winners are made known. Be patient for just a few more days.

Can’t blog much because I’m working on my book manuscript which is due in September. On top of that I have another biggie that will tie me up for the next few months. Details later.

Have a happy weekend.

I’m teaching some primary school kids in a language institute. Some of the things they say are quite funny.

- Usually they would ask me what is my race during the first class. When asked to guess, some said, “Chinese”, some “Malay”, and one said, “English”. Perhaps I should’ve answered, “Malaysian.”

- On a day when I used a pale lipstick, one of them said, “Teacher, you look like a zombie.”

- When they found out my age, they said “Teacher, you’re so old!” In fact I’m older than most of their parents. The good thing was that most of them guessed my age to be 5-15 years younger.

- One of them piped out of the blue, “Teacher, what is a condom?” I said, “Go home and ask your parents.” Another asked, “Is it a condominium?” I asked the first boy where he learnt the word from. “Internet,” he said. When I asked him if he knew the meaning, he said he didn’t but later he told his friends, “I know what is a condom. When a man doesn’t want to have a baby, he use it.” These are some of the things the children learn in an English classy i

Here’s the last entry.

Computers help me enjoy life to the fullest from A to Z, from morn till night. Computers enable:

Aeroplanes to fly me to Crete and Kowloon, aerospace advances for me to see pictures of the moon.

Banking to be transacted at the speed of light, anytime morning or night.

Communication with family, friends and strangers; chatting, emailing and social
networking with Facebookers.

Documents to be electronically filed; making retrieval a job for juveniles.

Education via e-learning so easy to attain; entertainment technology gives me music, mega-movies, and the ‘rain in Spain’.

Food producing and processing to be modernised; satisfying my gastronomic craving for food healthy and nice.

Government red-tape to be snipped and shortened; so that waiting need not be a great big yawn.

Healthcare advances to treat diseases rare or rife; making me healthier to enjoy life.

Internet access to provide instant info at my fingertips; anytime, anywhere when there’s a need.

Justice systems to be streamlined to run smoothly; so that law and order is maintained in the country.

Kitchen and household gadgets like microwave oven and washing machine, to give me time for activities that’ll make me grin.

Libraries both brick and mortar and online too, to offer reading materials to make my knowledge accrue.

Manufacturers to automate production; offering quality products for my consumption.

News and views to be delivered instantly; whether celebratory or catastrophic they be.

Online transactions to become a cinch, banking and shopping can be done without a cringe.

Publishing to be done faster, giving me more literary gems like Harry Potter.

Quality assurance to be precise, rejecting inferior goods that will mar my life.

Retailing to be made easy and time-saving, just scan the bar-code, and I’d be paying.

Security systems to be high-tech, my family and property to protect.

Travel arrangements to be streamlined, telecommunications to open up the lines.

Utilities such as electricity and water to efficiently flow, to make my life comfortable and aglow.

Video games to keep the kids entertained, so that I have downtime to keep sane.

Weather forecasts to be more precise, so I can keep my laundry dry and nice.

X-rated shows to be downloaded in secret, and watched quietly in the closet.

You-tube to instruct or entertain, on whatever subject I want to fill my brain.

Zodiac predictions to be more veracious, so I can avoid events capricious and live life luxurious.

This is the fourth entry.

I no longer work as a secretary. I’m a writer now. The computer is a secretary’s best friend but to a writer, it’s her right hand. Without the computer, I would be so incapacitated as a writer, like working with only one hand. Okay, it’s a bad analogy but it’s 12-something and I have to post this up as it’s the last day of the contest!!

My brain is too befuddled after working on a 1,000 word article for a Merdeka special and my brain cells can’t churn up any more funny stuff. So, I’ll just be straight and staid.

- With computers, I can work from home without having to see my editor or even talk to her. All I need is internet connection. And my editor can keep sane without having me bugging her on the phone all the time (if she goes crazy over email harassing, that’s another matter.)

- I can gather information without having to step out of my house. No need to make trips to the library, no need to rant and rave when I discover that the library does not have the information I seek because they don’t have the budget to buy new books.

- I can conduct interviews over the email without having to travel long distances to meet the interviewee. Of course, some interviews have to be conducted face to face, but these are rare and reserved for people who are too important for email interviews.

- When I need to write about movies and tv shows, I don’t have to see the show over and over again or rent DVDs when I miss an episode. Information is at my fingertips via the computer.

So, of course, the computer advances my life as a writer by making things easier for me and saving me time and legwork. What it can’t do is to add another zero to my royalty cheque.

Here’s number 3.

In a world without computers, when manual typewriters reign in offices:

“Ms. Teh, what is this? There are so many mistakes in this letter!” Mr. Hong threw two sheets of paper onto my desk. I squirmed uncomfortably. The letter was smudged with correction tape (where you have to hold a piece of white tape over the letter you’ve typed wrongly and retype the wrong letter so that it would white-out the mistake.

Mr. Hong jabbed the carbon copy with his pudgy finger. “What’s this? Paper eaten by cockroaches, is it?”

On the carbon copy, I’d applied the eraser too vigorously and there were a couple of holes in the pink tissue. “Cockroach!” I pointed to the floor near Mr. Hong’s feet. He took a few steps backward, looking around fearfully.

“Coward,” I muttered beneath my breath.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I’ll type it out again,” I said.

“Good. Make it perfect,” he said as he strode off.

Ten years later…

Mr. Hong threw two sheets of papers onto my desk. “Ms. Teh, this letter is perfectly typed. You get an A+ for this but I’m not happy with this carbon copy. What are all these white dots?”

My electric typewriter was a wonder compared with the manual typewriter. There was auto correction: all I had to do was to tab the backspace key and the mistake would be erased automatically. Yahoo! But carbon copies still had to be corrected manually with the liquid paper and the oft-corrected copy did look like white polka dots splashed across the pink tissue.

“They look like polka dots,” Mr. Hong spoke my thoughts out loud. “I could cut these out to use as ribbons for my daughter.”

“Cheapo,” I muttered under my breath.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I’ll type it out again,” I said.

“Good. Make it perfect,” he said as he strode off.

Twenty years later…

Mr. Hong placed some documents on my desk. “Ms. Teh, this is excellent work. If you keep this up, I can assure you of a fat increment at the end of the year.”

I beamed at his broad back as he walked away. I hope the increment would be as fat as his behind. I leafed through the contract which he had signed. All the pages were pristinely typed, all mistakes having been corrected on the computer screen before the document was printed out. I hummed Abba’s Money Money Money as I patted my computer lovingly. The computer is a secretary’s best friend.