Daily (w)rite

I am feeling helpless and isolated. Writing is a thing of the past.

Reason?

I do not have broadband!

I have to sneak in time between potting plants and putting on cushion covers to rush down to the Coffee Bean across the road to do whatever little freelance writing work I can still do.

I have been approving comments and not replying to the ones so generously left on my blog, I apologize to each and every one of you who has commented in the past week or two.

Thanks for visiting, caring, and leaving those comments. Those really cheer me up!

I have been running from pillar to post doing all kinds of things these past two weeks, and the lack of broadband means that there is no late-night browsing or blogging. I did not know I will miss it so, but I do. And I miss each and every one of you

Here is to getting back on broadband by next week!

I am sure only I could have written such an unprovocative title: the art of being provocative does not come easily to me.

I read on a fellow-blogger’s post today that being provocative is a great way to win an audience: get a controversy going, encourage discussion, spark debates.

While I agree at one level, the rest of me does not.

I’d rather read delightful, delicious posts like this one: Wonka is my reality or like the one that made me smile so many times within the space of minutes: F is for Frustration and Fridge Freakouts

I’d rather write posts like this one: Writing about winter sunshine, peeling orange

Or like this one: Life, death, and finding immortality through writing

I can’t help it, I like savoring a post, I like to twirl my mind around the aftertaste it leaves. I like blogs that touch me, not rouse me.

So, I will leave debating to those who are better suited to it. For me, I love writing, and I love reading, and having an argument is essential for neither.

Having a huge audience is a different matter altogether. But if you are reading this, I do have some audience, don’t I now?

Enough said.

My dad in law has passed on last night. I am rushing home now, logging this in from the Singapore Airport. I will be here only intermittently from now on, till the 2nd week of March. I will miss you all.

When I wrote the post on the relationship between writing and pain, I knew I would have to go through what I am now, the surgery was planned quite some time ago.

I have a scar on my face, the result of an excision, and boy, it hurts! The scar throbs every time I look down, and I haven’t yet figured out a way to not look down when I’m writing.

Hopefully it will all get better soon, but till then, writing every word is a pain, literally! A bit like Harry Potter’s throbbing scar, I keep telling myself, only the darn thing throbs all the time. My husband looks at the stitches in rapt fascination, cos you can see them clearly under the redness and the transparent bit of plaster. Sometimes I feel he wishes he had it instead, boys and scars have a fascinating relationship:).

But it was an experience really, this whole excision thing, painless other than a few anesthetic injections, and the near headache I got from trying not to look at the glaring operation lights. But I could feel the blood trickling down my face, the doc working fast and easy with a thin thread to do the stitching, and I could smell the burning when the laser switched on.

The whole idea of broken skin is familiar, because I have been accident-prone the past year, small cuts, burns, broken bones. But deliberate cutting of flesh is something else. And so is the sight of blood-soaked cotton on the floor when I was asked to get up from the operating bed.

It is a bit hard for me to think of all the acres of tattoos decorating human bodies all over the world, how people undergo repeated pain in order to deliberately mark their bodies.

And harder still is the thought of all those people who go under the knife time and time again to change their looks: citizens of the glam world I understand, for them looks are livelihood, but what about suburban housewives who go through months of pain to transform themselves, getting addicted in the process?

What about people who get off on pain? Interesting thought, that, one that is a complete mystery to me.

Aargh, there goes my scar again, throb, throb, pull, pull,…….time to go back to some patient roof-staring till the pain subsides, and I can continue writing!

When you need to decide between the better of two evils, which do you choose and how?

For me, I put off my decision-making till the last minute possible, (I do give myself a logical and feasible deadline till which to put off, though) think over it, dream about it and sleep over it…..then let instinct take over. That is because I mostly have the luxury of time. I realize not many people have that. I have always had a lot of respect for decisive people, those who look a problem in the eye and decide to do something about it.

I wonder what people do when faced with difficult decisions. Probably says a real lot about who they are as people.

Yesterday my father-in-law moved into intensive care all of a sudden, and is still in a critical situation. I am thousands of miles away from the family, in Singapore.

Unfortunately, my husband also had just then taken a flight to Chicago from Hong Kong, a long 14-hour flight.

I called Chicago United Airlines, desperate.

A computer answered me, which is normal. It understood human voice, and when I said Help, Agent, it directed me to an agent. So far, so good.

I finally managed to get thru to a human being.

But I realized, this one was not much better than a robot. She sounded like a dragon lady, silently put me on indefinite holds without telling me she was checking or whatever, was unfailingly rude, and finally told me her computer did not have any data regarding my husband…she needed the ticket number to confirm his existence on the plane.

I called again, armed with the ticket number.

Second dragon lady, just as winsome as the first one, who again put me on various silent holds without telling me what was going on. She finally came up with: He is on the flight, but we do not have the means to pass him a message on the flight. Can pass it once he has landed.

No matter how I requested, I was told that a message cannot be passed on board the flight.

The supervisor who came on line was a little better trained (actually uttered the words I am sorry for the difficult situation you are in etc.,) but said the pilot can only be contacted if there is an emergency threat to the plane: FAA regulations and all that.

But he promised that the message would definitely be delivered once my husband landed in Chicago.

I was disappointed. But I thought, fair enough, they are doing their job, thanked them and hung up.

I waited up till 2am in the morning so I could call my husband, and after a few dozen calls finally found him. He had not got any message so far, so I told him about his dad, and he hung up so he could call his family.

I talked to him now, a few hours later, and realized no one from the United Airlines ever gave him any message.

So much for United Airlines.

For all their snobbish, holier-than-thou and patronizing attitudes, none of the agents did their job.

Welcome to the real United States, I told myself.

I had so far only met very nice, compassionate and extremely competent American expats, and my view of America and Americans had been largely shaped by them.

But with this one experience over the phone (during which I paid full international call charges between Singapore and Chicago for over an hour), I began to have a completely new and different view of the country and its people.

I don’t think individuals realize how much their actions count in the image of their country.

For now, I have this much to say: So much for the United States of America!

Some days, you write. Other days, you simply cannot.

Today is one of those days, when I have a dozen things on my mind, most of them not so cheerful.

After years of writing, I have come to accept that some days you write, other days you don’t, and that is how things are. Today is just one of those “other” days.