Happy Finger Puppet of DEATH

Tonight after dining with B&M near my office, while we walked towards the taxi stand to grab a ride home, I saw an elderly Sikh gentleman feeding some community cats. My friend who lives in the block where my office is had told me before of an Indian man who has been faithfully feeding the stray cats on the area, so I decided to cross the road and say hello.

I admired the cats, asked for his name and his number. He told me he'd been feeding the cats for over 20 years, while he was working with an organisation which was next to the building where I worked. Now as a retiree, he returned to the former place of his work twice a day - at 5:30 AM and 9 PM - to feed these stray cats that didn't really belong to anyone.

He told me: "Once a day is not enough. I feed the cats on this side of the road, and then I cross the road to feed those other cats. They all run out to me when they hear my scooter. Look, do you see them waiting?"

I look across the road, and there's a slim tortoiseshell sitting patiently by a road divider, watching him as he scoops out kibble onto newspaper to feed her brethren.

I don't really know if I feel happy or sad. I know I feel grateful, and at the same time apprehensive about what will happen to the cats when the gentleman is no longer able to feed them. I might move away, things might change. It's a little bit like nostalgia, this sense of appreciation and sadness.

I get his name and number before I cross the road to pet the tri-coloured cat. She won't let me touch her, but she rubs herself ecstatically against the road divider that instructs drivers to turn left into the parking facility.

B&M are very understanding about the whole deal, having waited for me the entire duration. 

"It was interesting to watch," they ventured, when I apologized about, taking so long.  

I had a couple of funny dreams last night - the one I remembered first was of a haunted rock. And not any rock either - it had a naturally-occurring squiggle in it that if you looked at hard enough, KINDA looked like a Doraemon illustration. It was like trying to decipher the image of Jesus in a tortilla.

So anyway, this palm-sized rock would get visitors who would squint at it and ooh and ahh when they finally made out the crooked suggestion of Doraemon. Somehow all this visits imparted some sort of sentience on the rock, and one day, it decided it would go around and do its OWN visitations, dammit. Also, it decided to grow to the height of a full grown person.

Cut to scenes of people eating dinner at home and looking up to see a GIANT, CROOKED DORAEMON FACE staring in through the window. THE END.

On Sunday, someone told me I had a "...beautiful mind." It kinda made my day : )

Wally this morning, while trying to push my somnolent body to the side: "You're heavier than a dead cow!"

 Wally, on seeing seeing an impossibly cute corgi puppeh from http://corgiaddict.com/. "Wah, God really knows how to make em!"

Ever since Kathy moved to NZ, we've been staying in touch over GChat. Sometimes we have very funny conversations. Here's a peek into such a conversation dated 21 July 2010.


Kathy: how was the straightening of you yesterday? (She's talking about my visit to the chiropractor)

me: Very crunchy. Sounded like the chiro was crushing peanut shells in my back

Kathy: eek ! is it painful?

me: Not really. But uncomfortable at times

Kathy: poor monsty! you suffer so! poor thing !

me: Suffer for straightness, which other people take for granted!

Kathy: yes! indeed !

me: But I take it because I have been promised a half inch of height at the end of it all. HEIGHT!

Kathy: hahaa ! HEIGHT ! oh i take that for granted too !

me: That's why we are such good friends! What I have, you don't! namely shortness and crookedness of back!

Kathy: but you are compact ! you have greater dollar value to each square inch ! my square inches are cheap in comparison when spread across my entire kathytron

me: Hahahahhaha! I have higher density of value! I love that!

I've been having really intense dreams the last two months. For the first couple of weeks I woke up exhausted every morning, as if I'd really spent the entire night scaling cliffs, running from zombies, or flying across oceans on wings.

Once in a while I get bouts like this, but never for this long. People ask me if it's because I'm stressed out, but I'm not. I can't actually tie it to anything happening in my real life. It's as if my brain just decided, "Hey! Let's screen a different blockbuster movie every night! Maybe even two or three!"

I was hoping to make this a little less of a dream journal, because I always wonder what people think when they read those entries. I must come across as such a kook. But if this crazy dream jag keeps up, I guess I have no choice. I still remember the most interesting/weird ones, so I'll probably write them out in the next couple of days.

Also! I have a whole backlog of holiday posts to write about my month-long Mexico/Cuba trip. Suffice to say it was AWESOME. I'll probably backdate those, but leave a new current post to direct readers to them as I post them up.

OK! Dinner now. Wally and I have been trying to have at least one meal a week at home, and tonight is eat-at-home night. I'm still not used to being home before dark!