Thank you, Praba! And Clariee. =) Yay. Now I can finally go and read Harry Potter. I don't care if reading off the computer screen is gonna spoil my eyes. They're already spolit, anyway.
byrOn: Of course I'm disappointed la. I didn't expect them to be squealers. I'm sure you didn't either.
It's Aqil's birthday! I would find some nice image and put it up la. But he doesn't like to read my blog anyway. =/ Or so he says? Haha. I spent a lot of time yesterday making a card for him. It's the best I could do, since I couldn't think of what to buy. And a nice cake. I wanna learn to bake like Karen! =)
It's been raining a lot lately. And the area around my house generally seems to be a breeding ground for slugs. Gross slimey little things. The thing is right, after it rains, they come out of hiding and start crawling around the pavement. Of course, humans, the dominant species, will inevitably squish those little critters by accident. As testament to the fact, the pavement is "decorated" with an occasional slug or two, be it still alive and crawling, or squashed flat. So, every morning, as I walk uphill to the 29 bus stop, I try to avoid stepping on one. That's beside the point. Today I noticed that after a few days, those slugs that were squashed previously, are now permanent decorations on the sidewalk.
It reminded me of my not too long ago childhood in Nepal. We have the four seasons, somewhat. And during June, it's always the monsoon season. We've even had floods and my family lives in the city, darn it! Imagine if I lived in those hilly, mountainous regions [which Ren thought I did. She was shocked to hear we actually have computers and such in Nepal.]. So relating to the previous paragraph, more rain equates to a rise in the number of slimy looking slugs suddenly appearing. Except I don't know if they should be called slugs because they were more like snails really. Unlike the ones I see in Sg, they're kinda large, with that eyes sticking out. But they didn't have any shells. But anyway, the thing is, when these little things start to colonise our garden and driveway, my aunt would encourage my cousins and I to murder them.
Haha.. we could always find these snails/slugs because they left a slimy disgusting trail behind. And when we did find one, we'd run to the house and come back with salt. By sprinkling a few pinches of salt onto the snail/slug, it would seem to speed up and try to escape. At the same time, its usually colourless slimy trail would become whitish and thicker, almost as if it was disappearing. Thinking back, i find it quite interesting because come to think of it, we wouldn't find the snail/slug later when we came back. Did it just get melted away or something? Haha. If it really did melt away, which seems theoretically impossible, then every monsoon season of mine in Nepal was quite sadistic.
But there were times when nature got back at me. I loved going to my cousins' house. though we lived near the city centre, their house was further to the outskirts. The place used to be kinda
ulu with houses few and far between. It's near the side of a cliff. Walk a few minutes, we would reach some terraced cliff side. We were always told it was dangerous but being naughty little kids, we'd somehow find a way to climb down the cliff to get to the river. Kids from the village at the valley would bathe in the river, even during winter, when the waters could be freezing cold, but not quite frozen.
Halfway down the cliff, there's a dirt road and it's usually full of potholes. Needless to say, during the monsoon season, random puddles of water were a common sight at the place. My cousins and I would play around there, exploring the area. There was this concrete kind of platform from where you could see the whole valley. It was just simple innocent fun.
After splashing around in all the puddles all, I would happily trudge home through the muddy roads by myself in yellow rubber boots [think PCK]. More often than not, each time I got home, took off my boots and rolled up my pants, there would be a few suckers. Literally. A few leeches always somehow manage to get into my boots and start sucking the life out of me. Annoyingly, you really won't feel the suckers because their saliva contains an anaesthesia that will cause a loss of sensation where the leech intends to bite. My grandmother would then start nagging about how many times she told me not to play in the water. It's dirty la.. You'll fall sick la. And of course, leeches. She would then strip me down to make sure there weren't leeches on the rest of my body. After which, she'd take out a matchbox, strike a match and start burning the leeches off one by one.
Pretty interesting childhood if I do say so myself. There's still more stories. But I think I've wrote enough. I intend on sleeping early tonight and plan to study over the weekend. Edwin's coming over though. On his way now, I think. Like that, the weekend surely go out one.
