That Crazy Mother

Note: Read in Jest, please.

For those who have not been through it, this post might scare you a little. It's not my intention but it's just that....the reality of it....stark and dark and painful. However, for those who have been through it, then you'll be chortling.

Motherhood. Giving birth and facing the biggest challenge(s) in your life....it comes in a small package, is loud and demanding, and worst of all....they don't come with instructions! It's not fair because women are so good with instructions and all that...and this, this....this THING does not come with a 300-page manual. I lodged a complaint with my maker but they chucked it out.

First your body is contorted to accommodate a living being for nine whole months. Not nine hours, but nine whole months you're lugging this bowling ball in your stomach. The bowling ball loves swimming, crashing into your ribs, poking your kidney and rolling around doing gymnastics, by the way. As the months wear on, it could feel a lot like three or four bowling balls. How do you, I mean....really, expect us to walk, talk, shit, be happy, be human, smile, grin and dance, eat, pee, communicate like mere mortals when we're in that state for such a long time? It's ridiculous!

And you can't even walk like a human being because something threatens to explode out of 'there' when you walk so you're reduced to a penguin. And others complain that we whine and cry and that we're being unreasonable and all that! It's like looking death in your face but then it never comes and claim you. He keeps staring at you with that awful grin.

And then when the nine months is over, a truck runs over your stomach, time and time again, wrecking every muscle possible within that region. Each wave shreds your muscles into pieces...bones stretched to their limits and you wish it could all be over and you can't possible be desirable after this. But that's not the main concern - you don't even know if you're going to be alive after the whole ordeal. If you're alive, you'd probably wish you were dead.

If you make it out of there alive and if ever....EVER your husband or partner dare make suggestive moves towards you in the future, you're inclined to chop the d*ck off like it was an anaconda, you swear screaming! You're never gonna make love ever....EVER! EVER! EEEVVVVVVEEEEERRRRRRRRRR!!!! Again.

Fine. Some people are smarter - they go for the epidural thing.

The worst is over, right? Noooo......no way. Faaaaarr from it, darwling.

Yes, the first time you meet your new baby, the overwhelming feeling of love may make you feel like the sex was worth it after all. Those little fingers....aw. Those little toes....aw. Sniff, sniff. Then it screams bloody murder in your face like you just tried to remove its eyes from its sockets in a language that you don't friggin' understand!!! Speak English, baby, English. Or Hokkien or Cantonese or Mandarin! Or try my Korean....I've watched enough KBS to understand a little bit! I'll drop you if you speak Bahasa to me.

But no. The baby speaks in WAHlinese....as in WAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! continously.

Miriam Stoppard can go to hell because it doesn't prepare you for the panic and anxiety! You try to change the baby and you try not to break the lil' fella. Does the baby appreciate the changing? Nope. If it's a boy, he'd probably pee in your face! I swear....it happens....happened to me all the time. I tasted urine and I smile about it. That's motherhood for you - stupid job, isn't it? :-) Who in his or her right mind can smile when you have to taste urine? Idiots.

You spend the next few weeks learning about this creature that popped out of your deflated tummy (which you abhor every single waking moment) in your husband/partner's clothes. It's not flattering but who needs to be flattered at a time like this, right? You have your baby and everything!

So, you give everything up! It's fine if you don't eat. It's fine if you don't drink. It's fine if you don't sleep. It's fine if you don't get the chance to go toilet. It's fine if you don't wash your hair. It's fine when there's a week's worth of grime on your face.

Everything's fine until it's not fine.

Post-Partum Depression is so strong and feared because mommies (who are built with an insanely stupid mechanism that makes us sacrifice everything in the name of love) kill their babies because of PPD.

You become sick of yourself, the wailing, the sleeplessness, the food, the house (you've been stuck there for weeks) and you've probably forgotten how to speak English because you've learned how to speak WAHlinese. When your friends call you, you tell them that your breasts are exploding. They think you've migrated to another planet with that WAHlinese-speaking joker.

So, you get things together somehow and you're doing this thing really well by now. Instead of being shredded into pieces on the inside, now motherhood f*cking splits your heart!

It's time for you to go back to work but you don't want to leave home because there's WAHlinese there. You think he's going to absolutely die without you; and you will absolutely die without him. EIGHT WHOLE HOURS without speaking WAHlinese??? Not possible. But you have to because you can't stand being there speaking WAHlinese the whole day. Then you go a little nuts - you can't go but you can't stay. If you go, you'll go crazy. If you stay, you'll go crazy.

Then before you know it, you're crazy.

Crazy, that's sometimes how I think of myself but here's something to be said about motherhood and it's this.....it sucks the LIFE out of you but whatever motherhood takes from you, it's paid forward for times when WAHlinese can finally talk and tell you it loves you. Whatever it took from you, in its place are precious memories and moments that you live to defend fiercely.

You cry now and get paid double in love, concern, companionship, understanding, and a rewarding friendship.

Oh, I know, it's not as if WAHlinese and you never fight. YOU FIGHT! But the gifts of motherhood is yours and yours alone and no one can ever take it away from you. You'll probably never stop feeling anxious for the rest of your life again. You worry and worry and worry and worry. They could be fifty-seven and you f*cking worry if they're having a balanced diet, I'm telling you!

If you raise the WAHlinese right, when you watch them grow, become a human being in their own right....that's the reward. Your heart swell when it fills with pride. Even if they're not making millions a year, that's OK. Money is not the only yardstick - to me, it's not even a yardstick. As long as he/she lives a long, happy, healthy life doing the right things that makes him/her happy, that's the reward.

To me, that's the reward. And you learn how to have sex with the stupid anaconda again.

Asians want to be lighter and Westeners wanna be black

I just don't get it! Asians have been formulating magical potions since forever to make us look fairer and there they are, trying to become blacker. The world sure is a twisted place, huh? Not that I am unhappy being slightly tanned but for Lindsay Lohan, she'd better stop going for those tanning sessions or bronzing up her skin whichever way she is doing it or she'll end up looking like a piece of coal with legs.

She looks totally FUGLY to me....

17 Again (Movie)

There's nothing awfully new to the plot but as cliche as it is, it works....AGAIN.

Mike O'Donell is a strapping young man who was at the top of his game...his life, at 17, playing basketball. He had the future rolling out nicely ahead of him. And then his girlfriend tells him that she's pregnant in the middle of an important game and being a responsible person, he ditches the game and marries her.

Well, not on the same day but you get the drift.

Deep down inside, Mike feels that he missed out on childhood and he should have a better one. He had such a bright future and there he was, a loser. All because pregnant and he she got herself pregnant and now he had to marry her.

That A-hole.

All in all, it's a very interesting way to work an old plot. Being my age, we've practically seen all there is to be seen about stories like this but I watched this because there was Zac Efron and I liked the trailer.

The acting
Apart from some parts whereby he looked a little cock-eyed, Zac is amazing as a young-again father. If there is talk about how he can only force tears into his eyes while goggling his bloody Vanessa, I would be the first to raise my hand and object.

He CAN bloody well act and he's funny too! There was one part whereby Zac was slapped red on both sides of his cheeks so many times by so many people that I actually hurt FOR HIM.

I hope filming didn't take too long and nobody else NGed the stupid scene. Poor guy.

Father and Son
I liked the father and son (Mike's son played by Streling Knight) plot. Now that he's 17 again and he can go where his kids go, Mike (who uses the name Mark as a disguise) literally stalks his kids.

His son has potential in basketball but lacks confidence. He's cute but he won't talk to girls and lets other people be nasty to him. Basically, he's a loser with a capital L.O.S.E.R. But he's not. So, this father, being in his clique now, decides to give his son the boost that he needs.

Father and Daughter
I thought Michelle Trachtenberg who took on the role of Maggie shouldn't be casted in the beginning. How can someone who looks like Zac Efron have a daughter that is not STUNNING?

She's not ugly but she's not Zac Efron's daughter, you know what I mean. But as the story unfolded, I changed my mind a little. She's quite good except for the one scene whereby she was supposed to cry when her boyfriend dumped her.

Lousy.

But then she suddenly (unknowingly) falls in love with her father and goes all catty over her own dad....gosh! I have to give credit to Efron for that. Amazing job!



Zac and Leslie Mann
I sincerely hoped and prayed that they wouldn't kiss. It's different from when Hugh Dancy kissed Melanie Griffith in TEMPO but in this....the age gap is ridiculous. Even if I didn't have to see it, it grosses me out to read it! I mean, it would be like ME kissing Zac Efron and it's menacingly......wait...hhhhmmmmm...... *giggle*

Sorry....where was I?

Well, they did and turns out, they hid it so it was bearable. It's going to sound odd but Zac Efron had chemistry with Leslie Mann but Leslie Mann did NOT have chemistry with Zac Efron. Makes sense? Oh, whatever.

Overall This is a shrine in the form of a movie built for Zac Efron (sans Vanessa Hudgens). If Efron set out to sever the link between him and all High School Musical stuff with this movie, he's got 30% of it done. That's because there's still the crucial element of BASKETBALL which Efron totally nailed both in High School Musical AND 17 Again. Can't blame a guy for being good at it.

I still think he should just dump Vanessa.

You must have noticed that I did not mention anything about Matthew Perry, huh? Well, it's intentional because Matthew Perry in 17 again is forgetable. He wasn't in the movie.....and his presence was never felt. Sorry....

Being a ghostwriter and more

Added some articles to my website www.marshamaung.me. Here they are.

The Qualities Of A Freelance Ghost Writer
http://marshamaung.me/freelancewriting/qualities-freelance-ghost-writer.html

How to Figure Out What You Want When You Don't Know What That Is
http://marshamaung.me/life/how-to-figure-out-what-you-want-don%27t-know-what-that-is.html

For those looking for a chance to experiment or practise your writing, here's what you can do: Join a contest!

The WritersWeekly.com Summer 2009 24-Hour Short Story Contest is now accepting entrants! Each contest is limited to 500 entrants. Contests usually fill up (it's tons of fun!), so don't delay if you want to participate.

1st Place: $300
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Entry fee is $5. You can see the complete list of 85 prizes and sign up here: http://www.writersweekly.com/misc/contest.html

What I Did With My Kamasutra Dolls

WARNING: For kid below the age of 25, please read this with your parents.

*** *** ***

I went to Singapore for a travel writing project some time back and I took some really nice photos which I didn't want to share because most of the stuff I gather there should belong to the client but then, some things, like this one....I think it's fine.

I went to this place called Asylum on Ann Siang Road and it's a really funky place where it sells some of the most awesome things I've seen. In fact, you can't find them here.

More on the Asylum here (I assure you, this is not an ad. Asylum's Cheryl, if you're reading this, I accept kind donations.)

Like these dolls here....what is this? This is called Kamasutra Dolls. Designed for the lonely and experimental, I think. They have a huge variety of them, blond, different colored unsexy checkered bathrobes, with glasses, with mustache to suit your fancy.



My favorite, I think, apart from the glasses guy, is this one. He has a damn cool tattoo! Check it out!



Isn't it awesome?! Dragon tattoo!

As a prelude, I got them to do this first lah....decent people don't go straight into it, right? There must be some kind of prelude, so....they do this lor....



Aisay....very hard to do this holding my cell phone with one hand. So, I have to put the dolls down. I have to hurry too because the people behind the counter is starting to stare at me.



TADA!!!! hehehehe....like?

'Nice' Sucks

Nice is such a horrible, horrible word. Nothing happens to nice. Like....they remain where they are a decade down the road. They don't change or do anything at all. Nice is a little prehistoric.

I don't want to be nice. Nice people are taken advantage of. Nice people suck it up when they should just step out of their shell. Nice people cry silently in the background and nobody cares. Nice people hurt when other people hurt. Nice people suck.

Comparatively, mean people are fantastic because they know what they want. They see something that they want, they won't think twice about shoving nice people out of the way. Nice people step aside and let them go ahead, anyway. No shoving is necessary but mean people shove you....just for fun, and nice people don't say anything.

Fun people are also exciting to be because they're the life of a party. Fun people like nice people because nice people laugh even when fun people make lousy jokes. Fun people are enemies of mean people. And nice people always try to calm both down because fun people can swing the other direction as well....they end up having fun taking revenge.

Nice people are boring too.
Nice people are stagnant.
Nice people don't have lives.
Nice people look the other way when someone slips up.
Nice people give the poor food.
Nice people clothes innocent children when their own kids need CNY clothes.
Nice people end up listening to a friend crying on the phone at 3.57am in the morning.
Nice people can't get anywhere.
Nice people end up losers.

Nice people don't have nice lives. Mean people, on the other hand, have everything.

Sorry, not having such a nice day today because my keyboard sucks!

The Anonymous Lawyer (Book)

The Anonymous Lawyer is a book written by Jerry Blachman some years back and I've just picked the book randomly out of a book sale. It's a very refreshing piece of work because it's written mainly in the form of blog posts and emails.

The beginning of the book, I found them amusing because the Anon Lawyer was hiding his identity and making up names for the people he encounters in his work place....most of the time exagerating the shit out of things! :-) The writer inserts reality via email exchanges with his niece and readers of his blog.

Towards the middle, he softened up a little bit on the criticisms and story-making and you start to feel a little better about reading the accounts of a lawyer who taunts people about their looks, their abilities and their judgment. I actually smiled when he found some time to play with his son.

And then he crumbles. Well, he got too excited about making it to the post of CHAIRMAN and it brought him down. I wished that he slept with his Bombshell partner-in-crime and I wished that things panned out for him. That's the sucker for happy endings in me for you....I have the audacity to feel sorry for the Anon Lawyer despite his indescribably dishonest ways and outwardly ludicrous personality.

Well, in the end, he's just a lunatic who deserves to lose everything he's ever worked for. But it doesn't stop me from wondering where he went from there, you know.

Anyway, the Anon Lawyer book may have ended but his blog lives on. For your information, the Anon Lawyer continues to be maintained today.

The Confessions of a Shopaholic (Review)

I don't like to shop very much, frankly speaking and I've got this aversion for credit cards too so, I didn't think I was going to like Confessions of a Shopaholic very much. But I kind of liked it. Between 1 to 5, I'd give it a 3.5 rating for entertaining me. No, actually a 2.5 for the movie and an extra 0.5 for Hugh Dancy and Isla Fisher each. :-)



The book was much better although I didn't quite get it either. It's about a young girl who finds shopping therapeutic (yawn!) and she just can't help herself whenever she walks past these stores. Hence, she dragged up quite a bill and owed the bank more than she can ever dream of earning in a month.

She wants to write for a fashion mag but there's no opening there for her so she ends up working for, albeit as a stepping stone, the sister company....a boring financial magazine. TA DA! Someone with huge debt working for a financial magazine.

But the good news is that the boss is a dashing man who had a thing for her blunt outlook about finances and money (mostly based on her experience in shopping and using her credit card). And he's handsome as well. :-) sorry....



But it's something the handsome hunk of a boss doesn't have to know, of course.



Isla Fisher is funny as hell but there were some parts which I felt was carried a little too far. Like she was forcing too much slapstick into the cutesy character. The character is supposed to be innocent and naive but she made the character look more like Charlie Chaplin.

Oh, I enjoyed her performance and she gave me lots of laughs but I just thought that, based on the fact that I read the book, it should have been a lot less slapstick.



Too much slapstick doesn't meant that I can't enjoy an incredibly adorable and funny scene like the one above. She just went completely bananas with her dancing. According to Dancy, he did not foul up any of the scenes while filming this despite how funny Isla Fisher was. I think they just covered it up well. How can anyone stand there and not laugh out loud when she's doing those stupid dance moves???!!



I liked the green scarf. It's a symbol of the girl who knew absolutely nothing about share market, stocks exchange and all that financial talk but shared information with readers in a very genuine and down-to-earth fashion. This scarf is also a scarf that her boss helped fund (before she was hired) when she went for the interview.



I know it's supposed to be a comedy and not romantic comedy per se but I just wished there was more chemistry between Hugh Dancy and Isla Fisher. There were very few scenes that gave them that chance. Every time they are together, she's doing something hilarious and there are not many opportunities given to them to develop their love story. So, the love story part....urgh....very empty. Almost non-existent.

Which led to the predictable outcome of a deadwood kissing scene. Hugh Dancy kissed the pants off of Maria Bello in 'The Jane Austen Book Club' (which I will talk about later) who is 8 years his senior! Read again....eight years his SENIOR. If he can create chemistry with Maria Bello and not Isla Fisher, then there's something wrong with the script, no?

Yes, at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with the actors, nothing wrong with the premise, nothing wrong with the storyline (maybe a little) but everything's wrong with the script.

I blame the lousy scriptwriting.

Tortured

It's a Monday and my eyes are bulging out their sockets. I can't think about anything apart from the characters that keeps coming back into my head. I'm writing a story while writing for my clients and it's making life hell for me.

The other day, I was writing and writing and writing and writing....I couldn't stop because I wanted to know what would happen to those characters that I just penned alive. It's really weird because believe it or not, it's like a movie unfolding for me too even though I am writing them out. I think it's one of the abilities of a writer or a storyteller....to see it as it rolls out. Except that you keep having to hit the 'delete' and 'backspace' once in a while when you get too excited. And it makes me very impatient when I make a typo. Movies don't have typos.

On Saturday, I was on the roll and was writing well past three in the morning. I was insanely obsessed with the female character in the story and started messaging some of my friends (yes, at that ungodly hour) asking them if they're awake. I wanted to know the kind of characteristics that they look for in a girl because I want to make the girl attractive and sexy.

She's the polar opposite of me, I think.

A little cocky....too cocky. Well, some friends said that they found confident people sexy so I made her confident but I think she's a little overboard. She knows she is darn beautiful, she's darn talented and is absurdly inconsiderate sometimes. That can't be a good thing, so, I went back and made her less cocky. Then she sounded pathetic so I went back and made her less pathetic.

Sigh....

The guy was easier because I KNOW the kind of guy I think that would make the perfect man for this storyline and as for looks, I modeled him after Hugh Dancy, my latest fancy.



I think he looks dreamy and very sexy too at the same time. So, yeah, to me (at least), this guy looks like Hugh Dancy. Gotta love the hair.... :-) (OK, I'll shut the f*ck up about hair already)

Crazy. Absolutely nuts, I know.

I really need to keep awake but if I drink another cup of coffee, I think I'm going to start pissing coffee. Or crap coffee.

Australia: The Movie

I love romantic comedies or just comedies. It makes me happy. When I blog more about the movies I watch, you'll see why! :-) So, it's kind of strange by my standards to find me watching something like AUSTRALIA. I mean, AUSTRALIA?

Fine. I'll choke it up. It's Hugh Jackman, awright? Sheesh.....

But I love Nicole Kidman too - so, give me some credit here. It wasn't ENTIRELY a hormone-based decision.

So, I start watching and get enthralled with Jackman on a horse (he said he banged his balls a lot while filming this show....ouch!). Is it any surprise at all that I find Nicole Kidman so alluringly regal and beautiful in this movie, no? She was. And she's cute too.

My favorite scene with Kidman in it was when she said she could help get the cows together like a man and that she could do it too. And when she did, there she was sitting high on a horse shouting, 'Move along now! Move along! Roar, roar, ROOOAAARRR!' That was absolutely hilarious.

Kidman's chemistry with Jackman is, of course, unquestionable but she had this thing with the little kid too, Nullah.

But then again, Nicole Kidman is the kind of actress who would have incredible chemistry with a block of wood, so...that's not a big deal. The kid, however, need some working on but he did fabulous, nonetheless.

Now on to the star of my many wet dreams, Hugh Jackman. I don't know what it is about Hugh Jackman that makes a boring movie alright (OK, the body might have something to do with it but it's not ALL of it) and I'll admit that they dragged it a little too far with the long stretches of scenery, pregnant pauses, slotting of scenes that should have ended up on the cutting room floor....well, it was draggy.

But with Hugh Jackman in it, I'll yawn past those moments for him.

I'll chop off four toes for him.

The bedroom scene was what I was waiting for and it was so tastefully and sexily done that I wasn't disappointed at all. It wasn't lust-inducing (as one would expect - go get porn if that's what you want) but this is the kind of scene that made you go 'aaawwwwww....shucks!' so yeah, it was fantastically done. How can it not be fantastic when you have two beautiful people with beautiful bodies having a go at it, huh?



This is an epic movie....a very strong and powerful....one with a message. The war scene whereby Hugh Jackman thought Nicole Kidman was dead....it completely broke my heart, that scene! I was sobbing like a four-year-old into the blanky that I was holding....a sorry sight.

I would have preferred another ending, actually, but well...the writers had to write it that way because aborigines had to be aborigines, I guess. They have their lives to live and Nullah was one....born with mystical powers and instincts. No motherly love can contain that because it's just the way they are. But I wish there was a way that he could've stayed.

Well, at least these two ended up together. Otherwise, I would bomb Australia.