Spring cleaning time!!!

I hate spring cleaning mainly because I hate cleaning. I’m allergic to dust. Five seconds into dusting the unopened old boxes, I’d be sneezing away like a mad woman. I also hate spring cleaning because it would mean digging the long forgotten things and there are possibilities of recalling old memories. For instance, when I was re-arranging blankets in an old cupboard at my mom’s house before I got married, I found some old bush jackets that belonged to my late father.

He used to wear those when he as working as a manager and lived about 50 km away from us. I was only 7 then and couldn’t understand why my father had to live in another house so far away, but was afraid to ask my mom. She told us that my father had to stay there because it’s too far for him to commute. Yet, I remained confused. As a child you’ll always have the feeling that people would stay away from you if they don’t like you. I was miserable for that whole year and couldn’t remember any happy memory when I was in Standard 1.

Anyway, I had to do some spring cleaning at home after I got back from JB this week. The realization and inspiration came when I couldn’t find the matching pillow case for my bed sheet. The closet was filled with my clothes, garbage, blankets, garbage, pillowcases, garbage, bed sheets, garbage, shopping bags and more garbage. The garbage were things that nobody would expect to find in a closet like modem cables, proposal files, slippers, plastic bags, Christmas decorative lights (what?), batteries and pewter.

My way of doing spring cleaning is very simple. Brought everything out of the cupboard and threw them on the floor. Had a good overall look at the stuff lying on the floor while making an initial list of things to throw away, relocate and give away. Well, 60 percent was garbage and I was not surprised. The last spring cleaning was in 2002 after a break-in.

After sifting through the garbage I found a silver bracelet that I bought in Jalan TAR during one of my retail therapy sessions. I must have brought it sometime in 2003 during a very critical project phase where the whole project team had daily dosage of retail therapy. We bought everything from scarves to trinkets to handphones.

There was also a torn briefcase which I used in early 2003. This one also came from the same career chapter as the silver bracelet. I found meeting minutes, system architectural designs and problem reports in the briefcase, and also a half eaten karipap. WHAT? KARIPAP? From early 2003??? Gosh, I almost puke there and then. But then again, I started having mixed feelings like the first time people discovered Egyptian mummies: amazed and disgusted at the same time. The karipap was still wrapped in two plastic bags; I must have bought it from the Makcik near Taman Kinrara’s 7-eleven. What amazed me was that the karipap was well preserved; the pastry looked as fresh as if it was just being fried that morning. However, I didn’t have the heart to look closely at the filling that has turned blackish or even tried to smell it. It was 5 years old, for heaven’s sake, it qualified to be sent to a food museum, if there’s any in this country!

What amazed me even more was that I suddenly remembered how the karipap got there in that torn briefcase - half eaten. During those days, the company President always called for Project Status Meeting at 8a.m and the project office was in Jalan Raja Laut, KL. So, obviously I didn’t have time to eat breakfast. I usually resorted to buying some kuih from that Makcik at Taman Kinrara whose stall was about 300 meters from the daycare and had breakfast in the car while braving the guaranteed congested Sungei Besi highway. That morning, as I was eating that fateful karipap, my project manager called to inform that I was supposed to present something during the status meeting. I was so gabra because I totally forgot about it and didn’t prepare any slide for the presentation. So, I shoved the half eaten karipap into the briefcase, stopped at the Shell station, booted up my Thinkpad and prepared the slides. My proton Iswara was such a multipurpose vehicle; I ate, slept and did my work in it. On that same day, I was hurrying to go somewhere and the next thing I realized was that the briefcase was torn. When I got home that day I just threw it inside my closet and decided to just use the Thinkpad bag to store my documents – and totally forgot about that half eaten karipap.

But then again, how was I supposed to remember about that karipap because it didn’t produce any stinking smell nor did it attract any rat or ant. It just sat there and preserved itself hoping that someday, someone might discover it and it was I the chosen one to stare at it disbelievingly and full of disgust on that Thaipusam day. Hahahaha.

Oh yeah, for your listening pleasure, check out these new songs I recently uploaded to my Multiply:
Betty Banafe's fabulous Arabic Songs
and
my favorite songs from Datuk Siti's latest pop album.
Enjoy!!