Happy Birthday My Sweetheart!!!

Phew..! What a week... This past week has been a whirlwind for me. Monday - went to Marion's house to make sushi and print birthday invitations. Sushi session was hilarious! Good fun there. Pass invitations out, invite people by phone. Tuesday - went to Kambah Adventure park with Ana and the kids. Everybody went on the flying fox! It was freezing cold but we had fun... Chapek, said Ana. Bought lunch at Kingsley - fried chicken. Came back, Rosh was already home from his trip to Indonesia. Bla,bla,bla... cooked lunch (since he told me he was supposed to arrived later in the evening I did not buy him anything for lunch). He did not get any souvenirs for us because he was 'swamped' with too much work and travelling. Yeah right...! I know he did a lot of work but it has nothing to do with his studying! Wednesday, Rosh took us out for dinner at Thai Spices in Westfield Woden. I think that's the best place to get Thai food here. The food is superb! Thursday, took the car and went to Mawson with Ana to get some meat and stuff from the Asian Store. Later we went to Hyperdome Tuggeranong to pick up Ana's ring. Friday went out with Corinne to buy birthday cakes and goodies for the kids. Later, pick up the chairs and tables from Corinne's house. Marion came over with chairs, deep fryer plus cooking utensils and helped blowing the balloons. Corrine said that UKWho should be blowing all the balloons because he has lots of hot air! Hahaha.... Ana and Ariffin sent their chairs. Kak Kamina the DA's wife sent over the food warmers and more chairs. Things were shaping up pretty well. I was quite worried as I've a total of 32 adults and 36 kids on the guest list. Arggghhh....!!! What have I put myself into...? I must be mad! And I had to do everything by myself. Start arranging the chairs and balloons. Put up all the decorations and goodies. Cooked dinner and the sauce for tomorrow. Mopped the floor, scrubbed the kitchen and toilets etc.... He was nowhere to be seen. Slept at 1.30am and felt dead tired. Woke up at 7am. Vacuumed the house, fix breakfast, cleaned up the kids yada, yada, yada.... He complained that there would be too many people and the house is going to be messy and dirty. As if he has been doing all the dirty work. Bla, bla, bla... non stop. He managed to find fault with everything. Then out of nowhere he called me up to the living room to ask me something. "So what do you plan to do for the party? I mean the games and stuff for the kids? What are the adults going to do then? I don't want this party to be a cockup..." OMG!!! I don't believe it! He has the audacity to ask me what am I going to do so that the party will not be a disaster...? Hello... who has been running around sorting out things that he should be doing...? Who does he think he is? My supervisor? But I'm still able to stay cool and I told him I'll be handling the 'adults', Marion and Corinne will be in charge of the games and kids. I asked him why didn't he helped me out in preparing the party? He said since I was the one so 'eager' to have this big blowout so I should do it. He already gave the money so... and he already lost 1 whole day worth of work because he had to entertain the guest too. Grrr.....!!! Lucky this is the last time I'm going to do anything with him as a family. Argghhh!!! Can't wait to get out of his face... Kak Sal and Kak Yati arrived at 11am. They helped making the sandwiches. Marion and Kye came soon after. We discussed the games that we're going to organise. We'll have 4 main games (throw the hoop on the monkey, pin the nose on the clown, a scavenger hunt and statues) and the climax is the Pinata'. Marion said she'll add more games if needed or if there were extra time. Kak Sal and Kak Yati said they'll handle all kitchen work and I'll just have to handle the guest. The menu for the day was - Fried Macaroni, Sweet Chilli Tuna Sandwich, Cucur Badak, Samosa (both ordered from Kak Sal) and Chicken Gojones. We have 3 cakes, the birthday cake and 2 chocolate cakes (all courtesy of Woolworth, hehehe...) People started to arrive around 2pm. Started the games at 2.30pm. Marion is a natural with kids. She had all of them around her little finger. Thank god for her! Corinne was great too. The house was getting packed and everybody mingled around. Conversations and food flowed smoothly. The kids were having a blast from where I was looking. Danish can't stop grinning like a Cheshire cat and squealing with delight. "Mak all my friends are here. I'm going to play games with them and with cool prizes!" The party was going great! 2 thumbs up fo all my party helpers. Then the moment came... time to smash the Pinata'! Everybody had a go at it and when it finally smashed open... Wham! The kids were all over the place trying to get all the toys and goodies. After that we have the cake cutting 'ceremony' and the party goes on. All this while, the 'actual' Birthday Boy was sleeping soundly in the bedroom from 11am and didn't wake up until when the party was almost over. He woke up s 4.15pm and joined the party. Better late than never! By 5 pm the house is almost empty. Marion and Corrine helped to clear all the 'mess'. What would I do without these 2 angels... By 7 pm the party was officially over. I was dead on my feet and had migraine but exteremely happy because everything went exceptionally well considering all the obstacles that I have to went through, but with help from friends (and all those years in BAKAT was a good practice, hahaha...) the party was a smash! Alhamdulilah.... Happy Birthday Aish, my love, hopefully more happy times like this will come our way....

My COMICal Romance...

My first love was with Alfred E. Neuman, the boy with misaligned eyes, a gap-toothed smile and the perennial question "What, me worry?"...I was head over heels in love with... MAD magazine (http://www.dccomics.com/mad/?action=about, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Magazine) My father used to collect MAD magazines and bound them together into these thick volumes. I don't know where they're now, but I used to spend hours and hours flicking through the pages for Antonio Prohías's wordless "Spy vs. Spy", Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side of..." which often satirized the suburban lifestyle, capitalism and the generation gap. Then there was Don Martin gags. Don Martin, billed as "Mad's Maddest Artist", drew gag cartoons, generally one page but sometimes longer, featuring lumpen characters with apparently hinged feet. Martin's absurd sight gags were frequently punctuated by an array of bizarre onomatopoeic sound effects such as GLORK, PATWANG-FWEEE, or GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA, coined by Martin himself (or ghost writer Don Edwing). A MAD look at... by Sergio Aragonés (Groo.. does it ring a bell now?) is notable for its silence. He uses virtually no words; speech balloons, when they occur at all, will merely feature a drawing of whatever is being discussed. And lastly... the Mad fold-ins by Al Jaffee.

A question would be asked, often of a topical nature, which apparently was illustrated by a picture taking up the bulk of the page. But when the page was folded inwards, the inner and outer fourth of the picture combined to reveal a surprising answer in both picture and words. MAD is still around but I like the older version better. Maybe I've become too jaded or that I like Ol' Skool style. MAD sparks my interest in comics. I used to collect comics (X-Men, Gen13, Spawn etc and I have some collectors issues - aluminium and gold foil covers) but I've stopped due to unforeseen circumstances. Might resume in the future... I love to draw but alas I can only do good copies. I can't transfer my ideas down to paper. I call myself a poseur, but actually you can make good money doing this.... ie Greg Land incident. However, I know I have the gift of gab but it would be nice if I could draw or illustrate something with it to make it stand out more. Then I'd die happy..... hahaha...