The Sentraal Station has reopened! Hoiyeah!

I am in charge of the company’s newspaper, I also write for several other techie-newsletters - dry boring nerdy staff no one cares to read. And my Facebook entries are always too lengthy for my own good - personal bare-all no one at FB cares to know.  So, just because I haven’t blogged for a while doesn’t mean that I don’t write anymore.  But I don’t, you know write write.  Blogging is not just any type of writing. So, not blogging means not writing – if you know what I mean.

I blog to tell a story, to vent, to laugh at myself - anonymously.  It was easier to be myself when I could hide behind Edna (from The Incredibles).  Now this sounds like an oxymoron statement.  But it is true, I am myself when I am Edna.  It helps that I look like her too.

I started blooging when I was put in a cold room.  I had the whole floor to myself in a location so remote it had no postcode (I think).  There was nobody else there and no work whatsoever was assigned to me.   The boss whose advances I rejected, would only come by once in a few months, just checking to see if I have turned into compost yet and that was it.   I would check in in the morning, turned on the radio and stared at the walls in between playing Dynomite and pumping breast milk for my son, the Sun. Dot was about 2 years old then.

I was as super-bored as bored could be and a friend introduced me to Kak Teh’s blog.  For a while, I was merely a bloghooker.  Going from one site to the other.  But blogs had a tendency to grow on you.  Reading them was almost like reading someone’s diary – you ended up feeling like you really know the blogger.  You cried with them and would be just as happy when they were.   And soon the itch to respond started to gnaw at me.  It wasn’t enough anymore to just read.  Some entries made me feel like reaching out, just to say, ‘hey I understand’, or, ‘when the same thing happened, I did something else’ or just ‘hahaha’.  And when the itch became something that had to be scratched raw, in 2005, I registered for a blogspot account. 

And how I thrived on it.

It opened up so many windows into the lives of so many nice people in various countries.  Their stories sobered me up – how could I complain about my occasional sniffles when a fellow-blogger was braving through cancer?  How could I complain about boredom in the cold room when some other blogger was in-between jobs and could not even make ends meet? 

Through blogs I realised over and over again, that my life may not be perfect but it was perfect for me.

I met some bloggers offline. Went to London and must look for Kak Teh & Tuang AG, had many meals with K.Jasmin, Anedra and Maya, went on blind dates with AuntyN, Shidah, Mak Andeh, Nefertiti, Dr Buble and Hana Kirana - oh the first meeting was already like meeting old friends.  Some blogships just last and last (it was last year, I think, years since blogging went out of style, I went to San Francisco and met up with Ely. She turned out to be just as how I imagined she would be – bubbly, warm, beautiful and a friend).

I was always blogging.  Some days, I would have two postings!

In 2010, I wrote an entry lamenting about Facebook.  I had only nine entries in that year, and nine again in 2011.  There were only three entries in the year after that.  There was one posting in 2013 and one more in 2014.  From a record of two postings per day, I was reduced to only one per year.  Since then, the blog just died a natural death.

I have always missed Sentraal Station and the crowd I met there.  They were all strangers really – but not quite.  This revival of the Station is wonderful wonderful wonderful.  But I still cant get used to the blogger’s FB names and faces.  I still cant remember Blab’s full name or Arena - maybe i don't need to. And Joe Perantau and Jokontan will always be the Joes to me – no matter their full name.  Ijun started me on James Blunt, and I will never forgive him for popping lizard’s eggs in his mouth like one would a candy or stepping on lizards just to hear them go pop. And how thrilling it was to get a comment from the likes of Pak Bustaman.

Some updates since my last entry:

• Dot is now in Standard 6.  Sun is 10 years old, and they have younger sisters now – Tiga and Dora. 
• I am now working in KL, not at No-Postcode Boondocks anymore.
• I still don’t drive (envious of you, Nazrah!).
• Yamtuan is still my teh-tarik buddy.
• I have donned on the head scarf (remember talking about it with Anedra) and realized that the obstacle was really just me.
• I still believe that I have books to be written (Tuang AG, you have no idea how much it means to me to be introduced around as ‘someone with books in her head just waiting to be written’. Thank you for making me believe.)
• I have not written the trilogies in my head yet (envious of you, Dr Buble!). 

Cant wait to get hooked again!!