Getting a Kick in Taking what's not OURS!

Now that December is here, all the Christmas street decorations are up and what a sight to behold indeed. This reminds me of a 60ft inflatable snowman that vanished from a shop roof overnight in November 2012. Officials at Wicklow town issued a public appeal for the safe return of ‘Snowy’.  Snowy was one of the centre pieces of Victorian Wicklow but it disappeared less than 48 hours after the launch of the Christmas festival. A few days later, the Gardai (Police) got an anonymous call to say that Snowy was in Wicklow Fitzwilliam Square. It was a much deflated Snowy that was recovered alongside a note which said ‘sorry’. In another unrelated event, a drunk was caught stealing an inflatable reindeer and walking with it about town.

Then there was this other report that a college graduate, had sent a box of 80 toilet rolls to repay the school for loot taken from a dormitory. Eastern New Mexico University says it received the gift box and a written apology. The box contained five packs of 16 rolls of two-ply, septic-safe tissue for a total of 80 rolls.

I honestly do not know whether to be amused or horrified

Call it a prank or a theft but sometimes we just cannot resist flicking a few cute and irresistible ‘souvenirs’. Some guests do it because it offers “mere access to a great product that’s hard to get.” If we think about it, most of us are culprits ourselves some point in time even though we are well able to purchase them if we had wanted to.

Examples abound: Flight passengers are known to smuggle out cutlery. I know a friend who even smuggled out a pillow from an aeroplane. Others steal floor mats from rented cars. Diners throw in sachets of sugar and tubs of marmalade into their Louis Vuitton  bags.

It is common knowledge that hotel guests steal towels, shampoo bottles, bathrobes and slippers. By stuffing the suitcase with as many hotel ‘goodies’ as possible they justify paying hefty hotel prices. While most hotels do not mind parting with their toiletries or stationery, there is a fine line when it comes to towels and such.

Apparently one woman in Nigeria was sentenced to three months in prison for stealing two towels from the Transcorp Hilton Abjua Hotel. Someone also wheeled out of reception a grand piano and someone’s pet dog.

TripAdvisor’s travel survey conducted in June-July 2013 reveals that 65% of global travellers and 69% of Malaysians admit to taking something from a hotel following their stay. Toiletries are the most popular pilfered items. 59% global hoteliers report that their guests often take a variety of items when they leave.

Apparently the reasons for stealing can be rather convoluted: some do it for fame, some for social justice (think Robin  Hood), some for the thrill of transgression, some as a dare and some even for a desire to be caught!

Actually, if we like to take the little tubes home, all we need to do is to ask, and far often than not, the management will give us the little tubes and even complimentary sachets of coffee and tea notwithstanding.

While some take things that do not belong to them, there are others who return what do not belong to them.

Sometime in May this year, three roommates in New York bought an old and smelly sofa from a charity shop for USD $20 only to discover approximately USD $40000 in cash stashed inside. Finders keepers would have been their justification should they choose to split the loot among themselves. But they chose to return it to the rightful owner and each was rewarded with USD $1K which was still a bit of a windfall to a student especially.

In another incident in Las Vegas, a taxi driver returned USD$300K that was left in the back seat of his taxi, to the rightful owner.

Unfortunately these are isolated incidents rather than the norm and we can say that most of us have lost our prized possessions and have never got them back.

SOURCE: http://www.nst.com.my/node/57779

Wearing My Heart on My Sleeve

With Michael Harding as he autographed his first book, Staring at Lakes

I love to read. Correction – I love to read books that are engaging. Not too short that all the significant bits are glossed over and not too long where after arriving at page 459, the end is no where near, and I have forgotten who is who in the plot. Certainly at this time of my life I am not going to read a book because I have to (as in book clubs and reading lists) but because I want to.

So having heard the news that ‘Hanging with the Elephant’ by Michael Harding has hit the bookshops, I rushed down to Limerick to get two copies – two because the bookshop was offering a deal of ‘buy the second book at half the price’ . Since I could not resist a good offer and I knew of other like-minded people who would appreciate it as a gift, I made the cashier a happier woman that day.

I enjoy memoirs. Having said that,  any drama, musical or film that is based on a true story will certainly hold my attention. In fact I once thought that Forrest Gump was real because I enjoyed the movie that much.

Harding’s style is fluid and I like it that there is no linear path to follow. This is perfectly logical as the mind is overwhelmed with thoughts of the past, present and future that are intricately intertwined and to trace and speak about them as if they are carefully arranged in an orderly manner is to do them great injustice. We are near enough to see the soul of the man and yet not that near as to rob him of his essence. We can read his thoughts and devour the book but yet we leave him intact at the end

of it.

Some say that writers are the custodians of memories but yet when I think of writing my own memoir, the greatest challenge is: would I dare to wear my heart on my sleeve? Would I dare to call a spade a spade and lay bare the traumas of my soul? Would my readers, especially if they can recognise themselves in the memoir be generous towards my writing or would they take me to court over something that I have written which displeases them? My perception of truth could be totally different from theirs.

Too often memories die with their owner. Our brain cells can only remember that much, so we forget the stories our parents had told us and wish there is some form of record that we can go back to. My father left me a pen and my mother her portrait. Both of which I treasure. But how lovely it would have been if my parents had left me their memoirs.

                                                           Map of South East Asia

My father was just a teenager when he left China in the 1900 for Malaysia. I can imagine how perilous the journey at sea would have been or how hungry he was that he had to sneak into the cargo area to scavenge for anything edible. What was it like when he first felt the scorching heat and the heavy humidity on his skin when he landed in the new country he would call home for the rest of his life?

My parents

In those days marriages were arranged. What was it like for my mother to have married a man she had never met before? How did she survive living in poverty in a wooden shack in the jungle surrounded by tigers and other wild beasts? She did tell me that she saw tiger paw prints surrounding the house. Although they narrated these stories to their children, it is strange how we remember bits and pieces but never the whole. Stranger still when different children remember different bits and pieces. And there is no one to tell us if our memories are fictional or real.

At one stage or another, some of us have toyed with the idea of writing something about ourselves and getting it printed. In the meantime, we keep journal entries that are privy to our eyes alone. We even keep public and private blogs. We write articles, poems and short stories and make someone else the protagonist.

It is always safer to create a character to speak for us, to provide the voice for what we think or feel. We hide behind the security that the stories we write are based on our experiences but we are not the story per se. Another nagging worry is would anyone be interested in our lives and are we not being presumptuous that there is a whole community out there just dying to know our story? After all, we are just living everyday lives and we have neither walked on the moon nor discovered penicillin.

Maybe I would wait until I am 60 to write my memoir. Maybe I never will. But in the meantime, I would wait for Michael Harding to come to the nearest city so I could get my book autographed.

This is as good as it gets.

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/node/53320

STATUS UPDATE: FEELING LOVED

Facebook has enhanced its status update product, which allows users to share what they are doing or how they are feeling in a structured and visual way. This is the most basic kind of sharing because it only requires the use of words or emoticons to express ourselves, our thoughts and opinions.

We have feeling excited, bored, happy, amused, sick and many more. I have not counted them but there must be hundreds of them and my personal favourite is feeling loved.

To me, it is the small things that make us feel loved and I found lots of small things at a recent festival that we went to.

I love animals in general and could not resist being up close and personal with the four-legged kind. It is not everyday that one could sneak up to a Friesian cow and look at her lovely eyelashes or give a horse some sugar lumps. Rural Ireland has its charms and against spectacular scenery, there are woolly sheep grazing and  Friesian cows unabashedly chewing their cud. 

So I look forward to farming related festivals especially the annual National Ploughing Championships.  The only problem is the weather as there could be practically four seasons in an ordinary Irish day. Even if the sun is out, there could be strong winds and it is safer to bring along an umbrella, just in case.

I need not have feared because we started out with the sun shining brightly as we made our way to Stradbally in County Laois recently. As the festival ground was a distance from the car park, we had to stand on a trailer that was towed by a tractor. The feeling of being ‘herded’ into the fair made me feel more connected than ever with the animals in the field.

There were over 1400 exhibitors and well over 200,000 visitors. After all it is Europe’s largest outdoor exhibition and agricultural trade show. In order to attract customers most of the stalls have loads of food and drink samples and freebies. A bit of cheese here and a small cup of spaghetti there could really fill one up and I am not talking about the free buns, cakes and cookies. They were giving out free car ice-scrapers as well even though winter has not yet arrived. Very generous indeed.

There was a band stand and just watching endearing old couples waltzing and jiving made me go all soft inside : farmers with their flat caps and tweed jackets and senior ladies in long skirts, red lipstick and pearls. Everyone came to revel in the festive mood – the young, the old, the babies, the disabled – and there were facilities for all.

A reflection of a society that cares.

Out of curiosity, I sauntered towards the Irish beekeeper’s stand. It was interesting to observe a glass casing which showcased live bees and the honeycomb. The joy of being educated about nature’s secrets! A tall man painstakingly explained to me what the bees were doing and added ‘If you wait a little longer and look closely enough, you can see the Queen bee.’ Feigning innocence I quipped, ‘And should I be looking out for the one that wears the crown?’ to which he responded with a loud guffaw.

When I spotted a life-sized cardboard Friesian cow with a cut out where the face should be, I could not resist resting my chin there. It was great fun watching mascots walking around in animal suits and swishing their tails and baring their teeth. I could not resist taking ‘selfies’ with them either.

A great necessity at any trade show is the toilet. Not particularly fond of visiting public toilets, I asked the person-in-charge whether it was clean. So he did me a personal service and cleaned it for me and even sprayed a huge cloud of air-freshener.

“There you are, a great strawberry fragrance for you and mind yourself now…” he said.

It is indeed the little things that make your mood – the good weather, the tractor-trailer experience, the freebies, the dancing free-spirit, the banter, the childlike antics of being a cardboard cow or hugging a mascot and the clean toilet created especially for you.

Status Update: Feeling loved.

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/node/48611