Winning Entry

My love for writing was mainly spawned off by inspirations of my personal experiences.

Not everyone can be a good writer. I'm not saying I am a good one, nor a bad one. But I realised that it takes a whole load of wit and humour to put across a personal encounter and make it sound more endearing and funny than it originally was.

I would have to give it up to Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and The City for inspiring the mannerisms of my writing style. Ok, not exactly her, but the writer of the show itself, Amy B. Harris.

An insight of her interview and how she developed her writing, click here.

I do wait for the time when I finally would have my own column.

It'd be a dream come true.

But for now, winning entries in TNPPostwoman would self-suffice.

Thus, presenting, my winning entry of the Newpaper Postwoman.

Yes, its Sex and The City-related. :D

"Being a huge fan of Sex and The City, I was appalled by the fact that Parker was dubiously named “Unsexiest Woman Alive” by Maxim.

Forget about bad fashion line, look at even Kate Moss by Topshop which received a lot of flak. Yet Moss still maintains as one of the best-dressed women in Britain hence a bad clothing line does not exactly equate to being unsexy.

Parker may not be the most good-looking actress around but she exudes class and personality in almost anything she wears from head to toe, be it bohemian or cocktail-wear. She is one true fashion icon who could easily overshadow Anne Hathaway in Devil Wears Prada anytime, of course, with the help of Patricia Field. But then again, which well-dressed celebrity do not have any fashion consultant?

It is truly amazing that Maxim readers prefer Amy Winehouse to Parker. I vote Winehouse anytime for being the Unsexiest Woman alive. In my opinion, bad reputation precedes the dressing factor in being unsexy. The dramatic kohl and overdone beehive hair with all those tattoos just add to the unglamorous reality that she is just another drug abuser who happens to make good music."

Ps: The above entry won the writer a pathetic $50 Borders voucher. But her most memorable entry was her published comments on TNPPostman where Torres was the subject.

Depressing Things That Keep Coming

MISSING:
BUMBLEBEE
(again)

Last seen/played with on Thursday morning, 26 June 2008

• Likes being covered under pillows, especially big cushions like above.
• Toilet-trained.
• Fussy about food; does not eat turtle pellets, only eats ikan bilis, carnivorous.
• Did a prison break before; was found trying to make a U-turn outside neighbour's house.
• Likes to drink water the unconventional way; tries to drink from splashes of water instead of gulping down in whole.
• Moves by dragging its shell against the floor.
• Moves very fast for a terrapin. Yes, it runs.
• Always being bullied/bitten by Jazz (terrapin twice its size).

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DH: So, what's your plans tomorrow?
Me: Nope, nothing on tomorrow.
DH: Yeah, me too...
Me: Well, we could go out, only that we're both in different countries...

A long-distance relationship.

Necessary, unavoidable, but always having its downsides.

She, With The Real Scar

There was anxiety in me, being wheeled into a room of 3 other elderly patients. It would be the first hospitalization for me, and my first experience first-hand with the medical staff. As I bore with the pain that poked through the pelvic region as the nurses transferred me from the A&E bed to the ward's bed, I felt unsure of the kind of experience I was going to go through.

I never quite understood the difference of a B1 and a B2 ward. I had heard of so many complaints of inefficient nurses in the subsidised wards of Changi General Hospital. I thought a B1 ward would be similar, despite the much lower subsidy rates.

.............................................................................................................................................

"Good morning, sayang. Do you want to have a bath before your breakfast or eat first and wait for the doctor to make his rounds?"

Despite the informal address, Shireen never really smiled while waking me up to take my blood pressure in the morning. But I knew there was genuine warmth and sincerity in her voice.

"Hmm, I'll mandi first lah."

"You want a scrub or you want to try sitting on the chair? You dah boleh bangun tak (can get up already or not)?" She was concerned whether I could withstand the pain of getting out of the bed, knowing I was squirming with pain everytime they transferred me to the X-Ray table.

"I want to duduk. I want to try mandi on my own..."

She wheeled me immediately the toilet wheelchair, the one with the hole in the middle of the seat (for ease of business).

"Careful... Yes, you get her on the chair like this, and then you put her leg like that with the towel, you just hold it as I wheel her into the toilet..." giving instructions to another nurse who was helping me hold up my fractured leg and pushed me to the shower room.

...............................................................................................................................................

I pressed the call button and waited for any nurse to "rescue" me and help me get dressed. The moment might have seemed forever as I was clutching myself to the towel although it wasn't exactly that long before Shireen opened the door.

"Dah abis (Done already), sayang? Got someone here to see you. Its Ustad Sallim Jasman..." she trailed off as she buttoned my blouse for me.

"Oh yah, Tok Wan...," knowing well why he came to see me so early in the morning.

"You're related to him eh?"

"Hmm, yah, he's my granduncle."

"Oh, he was supposed to be my Tok Kadi (Muslim marital priest) for my wedding. But my tunang (fiance) died of a motorcycle accident 2 weeks before our wedding. That's why I keep telling you, God loves you, He's given you another chance to live, unlike my tunang..."

A poignant silence filled the air. I couldn't say anything. If I had remembered correctly, I just looked at her and smiled.

She never broke down, she never looked at me in the eye. And that was when I knew she could never quite muster a smile. Yet, the expressionless face that greeted me was probably crying her heart out every single time she was alone.

If I could count on the movers and shakers of my world, she'd have to be one of them. Shireen, the one with the real scar.