Dear Abang,
Happy birthday! In December 2007, you scored your 100th goal for the club in all competitions. Yesterday, it was a century of goals in the premier league. Not to mention a lovely assist earlier for Rooney.
The next few weeks will be challenging for every team but somehow United’s been lucky in terms of injuries this time around. Hope you’ll take care and avoid getting hurt, especially during the busy year-end period. There’s Spurs on Dec. 1st in the Carling Cup and then on the 5th to West Ham in the league. Can kow tim lah, those two.

Much love,

Adik

Hey, don’t worry about the other half… I’d court you if I were a guy, serious. Think a guy would be blessed to have you as his wife… the dork don’t know what he’s missing!

Only a person who knows you well enough can say things like that, even after they’ve found out your faults and bad habits. Heh. Thanks, Cin!

I’ve not been to my mum’s ancestral home for about five years. During that time, the front part of the house has deteriorated further and now is not fit to be used. The old rambutan tree at the side is no longer there. It used to be this huge tree with deep red fruits and a colony of the fiery semut api used to inhabit it, making it impossible to climb or even sit under it. The back part of the house though is now where my uncle and his family live. It is pretty decent, actually.

The sound of the train coming by alerted my kid cousin but he has stopped going to the door to take a peek. The novelty has been replaced by routine. That is life I guess. You get used to things.

One day is still my limit of being around kids below 10.

From here:

The physical act of writing a novel takes a long time. Yes, we all know of the authors who can crank out a perfectly publishable novel of 60, or 80, or 100,000 words in just under six weeks. But there are two things to note. First, most of those hyperkinetic authors are not newbie novelists; they’re people who have been writing long enough that certain aspects of novel writing are encoded into their brain’s muscle memory. Second, if you’re a would-be novelist, you’ll probably never be one of those people anyway.

No, I’m not intending to insult you. Most currently published authors don’t write that quickly either. I know successful, working authors who are happy to get 250 words of fiction a day, because that’s 90,000 words a year: A full-sized novel. But consider that there are any number of writers who have trouble getting out that much out a year, because — surprise! — a novel is usually more than just sitting down and cranking out a word count. There are those little things like plot, and character, and pacing, and dialogue and so on and so forth. All of those things take time to develop.

Note also that while you’re doing all of this as a budding novelist, you are also most likely doing all the other things in your life that constitute your life: A day job, spouse and family, hobbies and friends, reading and television and video games and even (wait for it) sleep. It all adds up — and it all subtracts from the amount of time you have to write.

What all this means is that writing those three or four novels an average writer has to burn through before they write a publishable novel will likely take years.

That’s one of the reasons the blogger had on his list when someone asked why many novelists make their debuts in their 30’s. Heh. Makes me feel so much better.

As I was chucking out old letters, postcards and accumulated paper junk from the 1990’s, I found this:

I forgot who drew this. Despite the frayed edges, the visible proof of being pasted on various walls and the fading colours, I can still remember that 10 days when I was not quite 14. Nine guys and us three – Eddy, Lin and me. Plus Ms. Zarina and other bit players. A stubbed toe, a cute doctor at the sickbay, the people we met and hung out with. How I got home burnt and my skin like the colour of undiluted kopi that mum almost didn’t recognise me. Definitely one of the best times of my life.