Waiting outside the doctors office is not exactly my cup of tea. Not anyone else I'd presume but who knows people out there nowadays. They could have the weirdest infatuations. People rustling in and out, the name 'calling', the people-staring as if everyone else is insane but themselves, the narrow space between walls, the near distance between you and the next guy, the mixed smell of illness and its cure, and the race of the wheelchairs. A sight I would like to keep and savor only until later when I have to formally use a punch-card and face all of the above on a daily basis.Later. Way Later.
But since becoming a medical student (currently planting grapes) I can't help myself but to observe people all around me, aaannd maybe be a bit judgmental (maybe not ' a bit') Figuring what their stories could be as I bet each and every one of them has one worth telling.
Especially in hospitals. It would be mysterious,interesting and intriguing. An itch dying to be scratched. But not enough for me to get up and ask them straight on *zips mouth* .
So imagine when your mom decides to sit at a table already occupied by lonely strangers during our visit to the cafeteria *buries face* and *cough2* interviews them.
Each one of them *shrinks* (yes, there were more than one)
Funnily enough(not really) during the visit how my narcoleptic personality had resurfaced once again as I slept, not once, but twice while a)waiting for ma's turn to see the doc (at the waiting area) and b)waiting for ayah to pick us up .The first being due to lack of sleep (unless u consider 7rhs long *disbelief face*) and the latter because I just had a heavy lunch and it was darn hot outside! *offended* (neglecting the fact I was sitting outside in BROAD daylight, slumped on my chair while people passed by probably waving hi to my uvula while it waved back) .
So while I was being tortured bored out of my mind, I managed to finish enjoy a few pages of the book I'm currently reading (which somehow seems ages to finish ) I bought it during Big Bad Wolf Book-fare last time in Serdang with Hanim and found it under the 'Best Selling' section. It's a book that will be able to make you smile and laugh out loud while reading it *cross my heart* although it isn't normally the type of book I feel the need to finish within the day. Not because it's not interesting enough, but because it's...well...a Memoir ?! -_- and random being at that with various stories of Old America and how it was to grow up along WITH America in the 19th century. I love memoirs, my fav is by Frank McCourt although that was the ONLY memoir I've read. (Unless you count Neensy, H's, Hanis Zalikha's blog ) A memoir to me is a journal written with caution, and with that every word counts making me have to,or want to, read word by word. Rom-Coms on the other hand,is more of a scanning and skimming process. I just skip the unnecessary description of how blue the blue sky is and what not while jumping straight to what's important, the dialogue and the monologue.
I haven't finished the book yet but I wanted to share bits and pieces of it with you. Bill Bryson unfolds the childhood stories of himself while growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. He shares us about the amazingly life-changing witty inventions of America to amazingly silly 'out-of-the-world' ones. From currency and atom bombs to mail delivery, grocery shopping, cars, games, gadgets, Disneyland and even candies that throughout the years have transformed, improved and finally brough us to current USA. Stories that we can relate sedikit-sebanyak and see how much America has evolved and finally see it affecting us here in the East. How much they have changed and grown indulges not only on the positive side but also shows us a negative light, but this is only in my opinion.
For instance,quoted from the book:
"Sex in 1950's wasn't easy. Within marriage, with the man on top and woman gritting her teeth, it was just about legal, but almost anything else was forbidden in America in those days. Nearly every state had laws prohibiting any form of sex that was deemed remotely deviant; oral and anal sex of course; homosexuality obviously; even normal polite sex between consenting unmarried couples. In Indiana you could be sent to prison for fourteen years for aiding any person under twenty-one years of age to 'commit masturbation'. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese on Indiana declared at about the same time that sex outside marriage was not only sinful, messy, and re-productively chancy, but also promoted Communism."
As a Muslim, I very much agree about the sinful part ,but the other half to me of which I agree with the tone of the author,is just plane silly (Communism?). What happens in a married couples life, stays hidden behind doors. They pretty much can do whatever the want with/to each other (besides anal sex). If America stayed the way it used to be with the long skirts and pony tails, they could of actually been 'saved' and we, the followers could too. But as centuries past and Prophets extinct, Bibles tampered with, the worst enemy of mankind has emerged with no one to retaliate against it, yet. The worst enemies are without doubt, Ourselves. Us who invent fashion and trends, technology and gadgets, music and drama.All this are mere distractions that derails us from our true path to salvation. All that are destined to drag our morale down and pull us down to hell with it.
Nauzubillah~
Anyhooowww.....
On a lighter note *wipes sweat* there are many parts of the book that are too cute and too amusing. I LOLed when I read this waiting for Ma's no. to turn up.
I.e, quoted from the book,
At Bishop's, where they had a large and highly regarded assortment of penny candies by the cash register, you could also get a comparatively delicious licorice treat known, with exquisite sensitivity, as nigger babies- though no one actually uses that term anymore except my grandmother. Occasionally, when visiting from her hometown of Winfield and dining with us at Bishop's, she would slip me a quarter and tell me to go and get some candy for the two of us to share later.
"And don't forget to get some NIGGER BABIES!" she would shout, to my intense mortification, across half an acre of crowded dining room, causing a hundred or so diners to look up.
Five minutes later as I returned with the purchase, pressed furtively to outside walls in vain attempt to escape detection, she would spy me and cry out: "Oh, there you are, Billy. Did you remember to get some NIGGER BABIES? Because I sure do love those ...NIGGER BABIES!"
"Grandma," I would whisper fiercely, " you shouldn't say that."
"Shouldn't say what?-- NIGGER BABIES?"
"Yes, they're called 'licorice babies.'"
" 'Nigger babies' is a bit offensive," my mom would explain.
"Oh, sorry," my grandmother would say, marvelling at the delicacy of city people. Then the next time we went to Bishop's, she would say. "Billy here's a quarter. Go get us some of those-- whaddaya call 'em -- LICORICE NIGGER!"
Kehkehke..
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