mooncake

This time of the year,I'll try to remember to light the lantern coz it brings to mind the reminiscence of my mom and how when she was recovering from her delivery of me in a hospital in Pudu,she looked out of the window and saw children playing with their lanterns and families nibbling on mooncakes whilst she had to eat bland hospital food.What a superwoman females of that era were.Brought up in a single parent household by a tough peasant woman ,being the second eldest she took the role of fierce protector of her younger siblings. Po po mined tin in the blazing sun and sold kuih muih ,never giving up on her children.Her only vice was she smoked her water based cigarettes,the percusor of the vape.
Tough,hardened and burnt by the scorching sun,she brought up her family of five.
     Mom used to tell me how she had a pet rabbit and when she lost it ,she went looking for it until she saw something wriggling under the bed.Stretching her hand in,she had a shock of her life,the tail was getting longer and longer.It was a python.She killed it with a cangkul.That's the migrant women-tough as nails .

Have things changed much as I just read a case of a mother in a rural area in China killing all her children due to poverty or mothers abandoning their only son.How heart breaking that there is still no social security for poor households!With the fastest trains,and the tallest skyscraperrs,has life become better for the peasants as told by Pearl S Buck in The Good Earth.

With wind and rain,how many blossoms have fallen?

When I came back from a brief holiday,the trailing pink potted periwinkles had shrunk and shrivelled with yellow leaves and parched soil. I nursed it back to health,spraying lightly with  a sprayer ,adding humus and now it has bloomed continuously with trails of pink blossoms.
But the bleeding heart was another plant that suffered a lot with burnt leaves and curling stems. I plucked and stripped the vine bare,waited for the sprouting leaves,and now she rewards me with clusters of white blossoms with a dark ,vivid red stamen.
With wind and rain ,how many blossoms have fallen?

The thing with healing of plants is we can only do so much,nature has its own way.In destroying the pests,I went overboard and killled the pests and the plant together with it.In my impatience to see her bloom,I smothered her with too much care,overwatering and excessive fertilizers and she died,her leaves dropped and she literally rotted.So now I do my best but leave it to nature to decide.There's a time for resting and a time for harvesting.

A neat turn of the phrase

Whilst flipping through a book on the history of our time in terms of cultural events,a description was made of an invention by a Japanese Daisuke Inoue and how his invention pushed the meaning of tolerance to a whole new level especially those off key idols wannabe and those living in apartments with paper thin walls.That was why ear plugs were invented as a defence shield against auditory assaults.

It takes a village to raise a child

It takes a village to raise a child.Phew ,now those years of childcare are over ......On Saturday,I woke up at five am,swept the balcony,watered my plants and sat back to enjoy the whiff of orange blossoms(with incense of tulasi lit to drive away any zika mozzies who might think of feasting on me)Light drizzling rain,a strong wind pushing wisps of dark clouds across a dark sky,slight breeze chilly against my skin-I can now sit back and stop to smell the roses.As I reflected,life has been kind to me.I have reasonable health and the luxury of going for a massage when the joints ache from all that housework and cooking,I enjoy reading and painting and time for myself to indulge in reading and testing recipes.I have a son who thinks I'm too stingy to wear street market Q and Q watches and shoes which wear out in no time. He is reasonably healthy albeit on the heavyweight side.I am contented.