JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

A few minutes ago I was gobbling down probably my last bowl of Hokkien Mee this year in my own kitchen, cooked in less than 5 minutes thanks to a company called Ibumee. Yesterday the Sim family gathered (again) at Prontip Thai Restaurant for the cheap-but-not-so-nice Thai buffet, which the cook deliberately added lots of coconut milk into everything in order to make you eat less. On Saturday Mum, Dad, my sister and me went to Chili’s to celebrate my sister’s birthday, the monstrous servings meant 4 of us only spent RM150+ including taxes. Back to Friday me, Jieyang and Soon Khen went to the latter’s sister’s restaurant opposite Cititel for Japanese food, which is only so-so but made worthwhile with the 20% discount.
The food-filled weekend is very typical nearing departure each time, a fact worsened by my slimmed down figure after spending one year in Taiwan. "If you don’t fatten up now, when will you fatten up?"; "Heh, so nice eh? Enjoy the food and fatten up here, and go back and slim down." Lots of my female cousins and friends are peckering me for ’slimming down tips’, which I do not practise any. In fact, sometimes I have supper as late as 11pm at night (in Taiwan), or even second dinners. I eat regularly, and I did not bring a calorie calculator wherever I go. I studied, but the pressure isn’t enough to compress me to such figure. So I guess it must be hormones, and the genes embedded so long ago that destined Jun Yi to be another sequel to the story of the ugly duckling.
I did manage to fatten up, a little, upon coming back - that’s the bad part about coming home for the holidays. I was strolling with Mum and Dad at the lobby of G Hotel after our dinner at Chili’s. The lobby was festooned with tour groups and youngsters probably from iNTI or wherever. I walked across the full-length mirror, took a glance, and walk away again. Shocked to discover a stranger in the mirror, I took a backward glance to discover it’s myself, slightly ballooned up in the belly part. This is not what I saw myself to be when I did the same thing in my dorm mirror two months ago. A bittersweet memory flashed back into my mind - on July 21st 2007, after completing check-in at Taipei Int’l Airport (and arguing with the China Airlines staff about allowing me to go onboard because the aircraft is ’slightly overbooked’), I went through Customs and Immigration. The queue is longer than the Great Wall of China, as usual, and soon the lady officer signalled me to come forward. She took a quick look at my photo in the passport before flipping to the pages where my visas are stuck. Mid-way through it she took another glance at me, and flipped back to the photo page. "You get anyhow tormented or tortured in Taiwan?". Not knowing how to react, I did my usual "h’m" procedure.
I was 76% asleep last night when something rang suddenly inside my mind. I suddenly realized I have quite an amount of problems to tackle when I return - my SCOPE stuff, choir paperwork, and my scholarship application. The relaxing atmosphere of late had turned Jun Yi into a lackadaisical creature managing to do nothing for the entire afternoon. After assuring myself that things will eventually solve itself out, I manage to fall asleep listening the cat’s meow in the back alley. I don’t feel as homesick as I was during my first holiday back home. The feeling is less painful now, and I hope to be optimistic though I am sure things won’t still be a bed of roses.
My many thanks to Soon Khen and Jieyang for the great times, Seong Ling and Zi Yi, Ying Jing, Sheng Yu for the hug, Ling Wei, Ping Hui for the afternoon at McD, Zhi Ming for the one and only badminton meet, and so many others who really coloured the holidays for me. Tham Min taught me these 4 magic words - "Give. Take. Put down. Move forward." Perhaps it’s best for everybody to live in the moment than to grasp what we had.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 1:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.