I LIVE!!!!!!!
Heh.
I can give you the short version of it here.
Went to Ireland for four nights and came back on Christmas Eve...
And right at 0000 Christmas Day I got hit by appendicitis (after being poisoned by the 3rd muffin!)
Which landed me in the hospital in the next city for 3 days *ouch!*
And then my parents found out (yeah...big hoohah...)
Where they had me thrown under involuntary [house arrest!] at my aunt's place all the way to Colchester, Essex (an hour's drive from Hatfield here)
Because I can't go anywhere for the next four days - no stepping outta the house at all
And now that I'm back today on New Year's Day (yea!)
I got strict orders from back home to stay put in my place and no going out till after CNY
Because apparently I've facing my lowest point of the year according to some chinese fengshui-luck book
And the less I go out, the less bad luck I get to face (heh?? o.O;;;)
And oh...did I mention I saw a broken-down Irish monastery FULL of those 'people' walking around
And even my aunt's place has her 'house residents' talking away at 2am in the morning in my room while I was there? XD;;;
Or you can read the long, detailed version of it here.
The Ireland Trip of Shoppin' And Drinkin'!
The Ireland trip's okay - had loads of fun window-shopping - and you wouldn't believe it - I actually bought a DRESS. *heards glass breaking and thunder rolls*
Relax, it's not the end of the world yet, and it's a stop to the dress-less spell of roughly 8 years. It's a nifty dress at only 20 Euro, and apparently made in Italy (no brand though - but the fabric felt good), and the two friends who came with me were estatic to have broken the 'spell'. Oh well.
The next few days was spent touring around Dublin City (I'll tried to compress the pix...as I've failed to compress the rest!), the countryside (the REAL Ireland), and...
...drinking. At Ireland's legendary Temple Bar, right in the heart of Temple Bar.
Yeap, that's right, it's not typo. The whole joint of pubs and bars is called Temple Bar, and the most famous bar in that joint, is the original Temple Bar itself. Quite traditionally done, the iced Bailey's good (OH YEAAAAAA I drank 3 shots WOOHOO!), and I fell in love with the live Irish music. ABSOLUTELY LUV IT HERE - not to the agreement of the rest though, they prefer the modern bar @ Porterhouse who sells really wicked Strawberry Beer. YEAP, beer made out of fermented strawberry. Tested a pint (And my first time drinking beer too!), and the first few sips were nice, but halfway thru, it's not that nice anymore.
(Highly doubt even Dante himself would agree to drinking strawberry beer. :P)
But more on that next time round. Including the super-creepy monastery full of dead saints and monks walkin' around. I KID YOU NOT.
On the way back
I ate the first muffin in Ireland a day before flying.
I ate the second and half of the third muffin on the day we're coming back...
...coupled with a rushed dinner of Burger King at King's Cross...
...and whaddaya know, my stomach started complaining and then gave me the worst Christmas ever.
Bloody muffin' Christmas
Right after coming back from the nearby church at about nearing 1am ('coz we're all bored and K who's Christian wanted to attend this night service), my gut started feeling uneasy. Popped 2 charcoal pills, and
1/2 hour later I'm in pain and throwing up.
The next thing I can remember, I'm screamin' like hell as I do back home when shit like this happened, K and W were in my room going frantic, after every screaming climax, I'll throw up a lot in my room/toilet (which almost turned my room into a disaster zone, and my toilet is half-destroyed), someone called the Resident Assistant who after seeing my bad condition called Security to go get the ambulance...
...from the next town about 20 minutes away @ Welywn Garden City who came as soon as they could to get me there...and K came along for the ride...
...where the hours after are a blur. I actually can't remember it clearly, due to too much painkillers being pumped into me (AGAIN!!!) and some bloody sedative that a nurse gave me after (according to K:)
1) I half-grabbed, half-scratched the first doc who saw me
2) I screamed my head off in the emergency hall or wherever I was, in pain every 5 minutes after a dose of some mild painkiller
3) K voluntarily offered her arm for me to scratch when she saw me mightily struggling in the bed, beating stuff up/grabbing bars/scratching anything nearby - and that through my 'madness' I somehow didn't hurt her or anything (I think it's more like, I can't hear her and I don't know what really happened throughout that time).
The sedative is gooooood at shutting me up (which explains why everything becomes a blur!), but it does not stop the pain and the vomitting. I remembered hazily going for x-rays and some bloody ultrasound scan, but I don't remember the blood test (but according to the doc, I did). The next thing I knew, some nurse stuffed something up my butt, which promptly stopped the pain, the vomitting, and immediately put me to slumberland...
...where I woke up at 8am on Christmas Day, half-aching from all that vomitting and tired from all that screamin'. K, R and A got on the taxi all the way from Hatfield to see me (and paid a beastly GBP20!!), and due to the lack of sleep (being awake all night), I told them to go back while I get summore sleep...
...and the next thing I knew, my relatives from Colchester were there. Aunt was making a fuss already (aiih), she CALLED Mom, who promptly told DAD. (uh oh).
That's where I got lectures from both of them the next day - Mom was busy telling me off for eating muffins (I like, WHY? The first muffin didn't give me any problems!), and I (finally) heard my Dad scold loudly (but shortly) on the phone for not taking care of myself - heh, it's been 3 months since I last heard him yell, and he just sounded quite displeased, because he said he couldn't sleep the whole night worrying about me. (aiih).
I told them not to worry. Everything'll be fine!
...but Murphy and his bleedin' Law doesn't agree.
Three docs examined me, and the third one, who after had me run the 2nd blood test, told me my liver blood is fine, but there's signs of infection near the area - which led him to his diagnosis that I'm having appendicitis, and I need to go for surgery ASAP.
I had to call back Mom/Dad to tell them the news. Mom was frightened (my Dad more so, since it'll be my 2nd operation this year, and 6 months after the first one), but said to go on ahead, since the 3rd doctor already found out about the internal infection, as well as getting a few times' fever at night - which are all signs of appendicitis.
So I undergo one on Boxing Day evening. Told the anasthesist to give me a stronger painkiller-cum-sedative, and the good boy promptly obeyed - to the point I had an old nurse yelling her head off calling my name for 15 minutes to sober me up from the heavy med dose after the operation. According to my aunt who says according to the surgeon(s), I really had an inflamed appendicitis, and they needed to cut it before it swells even bigger.
After that operation, I spent another day at the hospital (since I can barely walk that far without feeling the ache), got sometimes lousy and sometimes good treatment from the various nurses on their shifts (it's a goverment hospital, after all), and the next day, I'm readily discharged without the need to pay for the operation nor the medicine (that's the National Health Service for you! Pretty good thing, actually.)
BUT thing's didn't go that rosy from there.
House Arrest at Essex
I likened it to a house arrest because for the next few days, I'm practically locked in my aunt's house 24/7. I'm not even allowed to step out of the house!
But actually, it's Dad's order that I spent the next few days recuperating at my aunt's place. Let's call her Ah Kwai Yee (AKY) in here.
The whole four days after coming to Colchester, was spent only on two things - eating, and watching TV.
Eating was not that enjoyable - not due to the fact that I'm on a restricted diet post-op, but that AKY's a lousy cook. No, seriously. I can even cook better tasting soup than she did - for when she said her medicinal soup is sweet, it's practically TASTELESS. Hell, even her husband Uncle David agreed. (I've eaten his pork-chop-cutlets with rice, and they're AAAWWEESSOOMME).
Not only that, AKY has OCD - she'll ask me the same damn thing about what can I eat for 3 times in a minute. I told her I can't eat eggs, beans, nuts, prawns, any form of seashell, duck, etc. and she'll forget it the next minute, and she'll KEEP insisting on eating them. I thank whoever's up there for giving me patience to tolerate her.
Which explains why she couldn't really take care herself, health-wise. She's been coughing for 3 weeks now, and I've discovered the reason why - she ate the green beans with barley (when I said I CANNOT eat beans!! and that she CANNOT!! eat them herself because green beans make the cough worse!), and started coughing madly the next day. AND I don't know if she's plain daft or dumb, but she thought eating ORANGES can cure the cough. GOD, I told her off for eating them, "Even my own MOM forbid me to eat a single fruit when I get a cough!"
(she finally listened, and lay off eating oranges for now.)
That's the eating part. Now, the watching-TV part is gooooood, after being TV-less for the past 3 months.
AKY's got Sky TV (the UK version of our Astro - they've got much more channels, but half of them are worthless). I finally caught some episodes of CSI:NY and CSI:Miami (damn, but Horatio IS good XD), saw Miyazaki's The Cat Returns twice (I LUV the Baron!!! He's SO DARN GORGEOUS!!!), Phantom of the Opera (the adaptation of the musical version - Phantom is gooood but over-dramatized and the rest of the plot is literally nothing - I've had enough of the Christine-Raoul scenes), Pan's Labyrinth (full Spanish version with subtitles and high-quality), Sister Act 2, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and other bits of random show that's on that day (e.g. The Road to El Dorado, Sinbad, etc.).
So actually, it's not that boring. I'll considered it fruitful, since I get to catch up on news and all (especially the Gaza bombings).
But nothing comes close to the first night I heard 'them' talking.
A Brief Encounter with the Third Kind
Okay, let me explain a bit more on this. Perhaps not many of you are aware that I have this ability (because I try not to talk about it - it's scary for me sometimes, IMHO), and if so, I'll tell it briefly here.
According to my Mom, the first time I could see them, was the night my grandmother (father's side) 'returned' - that 7th-night-tradition thing where the dead will come back a week after the funeral, and the second time on the 49th night. I think I'm like what, 5 years old or something, and that I came out from my parent's bedroom, telling them that Grandma was in there looking for them. They were actually scared stiffless but when they entered the room, but they couldn't find anybody.
Ever since then though, as I grew older, I saw less, but I can feel their presence real enough - wherever I enter a place and feel the overwhelming pressure, AND most importantly, the electric/icy-cold shock going through me, then I know that 'they' are around.
Sometimes I saw glimpses of them - too faint to make out their details, but they're nevertheless there. The dude at the haunted house in Bangsar was one of it - he's huge and all darkness, and I CANNOT believe my Dad had stood under him calmly unaware. The other one...was some god-figure (according to Mom/Ah Yee) whom I saw when I was five, and I saw him AGAIN recently in the SAME place in the SAME shop at Cheras - that incense shop in Taman Midah, to be precise. HE is scary - all red and HUGE and really towering over everyone else in the shop, in that SAME SPOT. My oblivious Dad actually walked through him. I THINK the cat in the shop saw but didn't bother - she was staring at the same spot that I was staring, but kitty goes back sleeping while I was trying to get my Mom to "hurry up, we need to get out NOW...."
THAT happened during the Ireland trip. GOD, if I had known that place is SO full of it, I'm never entering there at all. AND the place is like, centuries OLD. I can feel my blood rushing from my face as I walked to the centre, the pressure is GREAT, the cold is killing, and the electric/super-icy-cold shock almost made myself go numb the longer I stood there. Thank God it's only for 5 minutes. Any longer, I think I'll be crawling out of that place.
That day onwards, I swore not to enter any bleedin' centuries-old buildings in the UK. Ever. It's gonna be so full of 'them' there. I think I've had enough share of that in Ireland already.
BUT the 'residents' are different - and that's a mighty good thing.
My own house has two of them - a young girl, and an older boy. I think they're siblings or something. But I do heard them 'walking' (more like, shuffling) in my room occassionally, and which explains the tricks they liked to play sometimes while I sleep (which is no fun - pulling my leg to give me a shock, and after that laughing while running away? C'mon, I need ma sleep.)
Now, the first night at my aunt's place, in the wee hours in the morning, I heard the 'residents' talking in the room I was staying in - AKY's room, actually (Uncle David sleeps in another room). And I say 'residents' because one is a lady in her mid-thirties (she sounded that age) and the other is a male (who has that deep masculine voice of a fit guy in his twenties). The lady was talking at the other side of the bed near the window (I heard the sound from that direction), while the guy was talking right next to me. I blearily opened my eyes a few times but by then the voices died off, and after half-consciously knowing who I'm dealing with, I just shrugged it off and go back to sleep - not bothering them. Coz if you don't bother them, they wouldn't bother you.
And my aunt ACTUALLY KNEW they existed - when she asked me the next morning if I heard anything. I said, "Yeah I heard a lady and a guy talking" and she got frightened outta her wits - because during certain times, she said she heard them too. And she started asking lots of questions and I tried NOT to answer all of them (because the 'residents' will ALWAYS be listening), but I tried to console her by saying the 'residents' are harmless, and in fact, they actually take care of the owner and the house!
I think she finds me bull-shitting her, so she asked her husband the next night.
Uncle David nodded his head and said, "Yep, seen her, even." AKY's eyes grew SO wide. And Uncle David turned to me and said, "Old woman. Right?"
I said, "Ee..ya. But she's not really that old, actually. More like a lady in her mid-thirties." Uncle David then went on to say he saw her at the end of his bed one night, while he's half-asleep or something.
AKY could NOT sleep for the next few nights after hearing what we've said. She said she'd hugged the Bible wherever she heard strange noises go bump into the night, and I said, "Arrggh, give it up already. It's not like they're gonna eat you or anything!"
But for safety purposes (and Mom BELIEVED that I must have offended some saint or some dude walking in that Irish monastery to get that horrid bad luck on Christmas Day), we did a short ritual to try to appease the spirits and take my bad luck away. It DOES NOT HELP MATTERS when AKY does not know how to pray (she's forgotten all the rituals after marrying her husband and getting into Christianity), so I had to do most of the rites e.g. what to get and what to offer, what things are required, where to put them, how to pray, etc. while she follows what I did.
The next few nights after the praying ritual, I slept quite well without hearing them yakking away - I only heard the lady cursed sharply once (I heard a loud feminine, "ACCK!!") as she hit something near the window (God knows what...), but that's because after the first night, I dug out that Chinese paper-charm-thingy and my bi you amulet and placed them next to my bed for extra protection. I suspect she's hit upon some barrier or something...
But hey, it's gotten quite peaceful, at least! But AKY stiiiiill couldn't sleep despite that. Haih.
For now though, I make sure I know what place I'm entering FIRST before going in. Can't offend another one now, there's no nearby temple to remove the next curse!!~~ X-o-X
And I'm back today on New Year's Day (finally!).
New Year's Day
I got strict orders from back home (Mom/Dad) to stay in Hatfield and don't go everywhere (I think they're afraid I'll be coming down to London to party or something). Because apparently, I've facing my lowest luck-point of the year according to some chinese fengshui-luck book - and the less I go out, the less bad luck I get to face (like, WTH?)
And yeap, the restricted diet rule'll go on till February or sumthink - there's that 100-day period to observe for not eating the stuff I'm mentioned earlier. And no walking around too much for fear of breaking the wound or getting into another 'accident'.
And...yeah, gonna lay off the Bailey's awhile (and I've JUST gotten a new bottle before the Ireland trip. Argh.). AKY threatened to complain to Mom about me 'drinking alcohol', but I already explained to Mom earlier today (before AKY can report me!) that Baileys is NOT alcohol - they're Irish cream! CREAAAMM, NOT WIINNNEE, and NOT BEEEERRR. (They're considered liquour for the reason that the alcohol content was 17% but hey, compared to wine, Bailey's don't make people drunk even after that many shots of it - and Bailey's go well with milkshake and coffee. Yuuuuuuuuummm.)
That's that for now. It's been a long entry.
Hope it's been a better year end for most of ya than mine. And let's hope it gets better for this year 2009, yeah? Happy New Year to everyone, and WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!~
-L
I can give you the short version of it here.
Went to Ireland for four nights and came back on Christmas Eve...
And right at 0000 Christmas Day I got hit by appendicitis (after being poisoned by the 3rd muffin!)
Which landed me in the hospital in the next city for 3 days *ouch!*
And then my parents found out (yeah...big hoohah...)
Where they had me thrown under involuntary [house arrest!] at my aunt's place all the way to Colchester, Essex (an hour's drive from Hatfield here)
Because I can't go anywhere for the next four days - no stepping outta the house at all
And now that I'm back today on New Year's Day (yea!)
I got strict orders from back home to stay put in my place and no going out till after CNY
Because apparently I've facing my lowest point of the year according to some chinese fengshui-luck book
And the less I go out, the less bad luck I get to face (heh?? o.O;;;)
And oh...did I mention I saw a broken-down Irish monastery FULL of those 'people' walking around
And even my aunt's place has her 'house residents' talking away at 2am in the morning in my room while I was there? XD;;;
Or you can read the long, detailed version of it here.
The Ireland Trip of Shoppin' And Drinkin'!
The Ireland trip's okay - had loads of fun window-shopping - and you wouldn't believe it - I actually bought a DRESS. *heards glass breaking and thunder rolls*
Relax, it's not the end of the world yet, and it's a stop to the dress-less spell of roughly 8 years. It's a nifty dress at only 20 Euro, and apparently made in Italy (no brand though - but the fabric felt good), and the two friends who came with me were estatic to have broken the 'spell'. Oh well.
The next few days was spent touring around Dublin City (I'll tried to compress the pix...as I've failed to compress the rest!), the countryside (the REAL Ireland), and...
...drinking. At Ireland's legendary Temple Bar, right in the heart of Temple Bar.
Yeap, that's right, it's not typo. The whole joint of pubs and bars is called Temple Bar, and the most famous bar in that joint, is the original Temple Bar itself. Quite traditionally done, the iced Bailey's good (OH YEAAAAAA I drank 3 shots WOOHOO!), and I fell in love with the live Irish music. ABSOLUTELY LUV IT HERE - not to the agreement of the rest though, they prefer the modern bar @ Porterhouse who sells really wicked Strawberry Beer. YEAP, beer made out of fermented strawberry. Tested a pint (And my first time drinking beer too!), and the first few sips were nice, but halfway thru, it's not that nice anymore.
(Highly doubt even Dante himself would agree to drinking strawberry beer. :P)
But more on that next time round. Including the super-creepy monastery full of dead saints and monks walkin' around. I KID YOU NOT.
On the way back
I ate the first muffin in Ireland a day before flying.
I ate the second and half of the third muffin on the day we're coming back...
...coupled with a rushed dinner of Burger King at King's Cross...
...and whaddaya know, my stomach started complaining and then gave me the worst Christmas ever.
Bloody muffin' Christmas
Right after coming back from the nearby church at about nearing 1am ('coz we're all bored and K who's Christian wanted to attend this night service), my gut started feeling uneasy. Popped 2 charcoal pills, and
1/2 hour later I'm in pain and throwing up.
The next thing I can remember, I'm screamin' like hell as I do back home when shit like this happened, K and W were in my room going frantic, after every screaming climax, I'll throw up a lot in my room/toilet (which almost turned my room into a disaster zone, and my toilet is half-destroyed), someone called the Resident Assistant who after seeing my bad condition called Security to go get the ambulance...
...from the next town about 20 minutes away @ Welywn Garden City who came as soon as they could to get me there...and K came along for the ride...
...where the hours after are a blur. I actually can't remember it clearly, due to too much painkillers being pumped into me (AGAIN!!!) and some bloody sedative that a nurse gave me after (according to K:)
1) I half-grabbed, half-scratched the first doc who saw me
2) I screamed my head off in the emergency hall or wherever I was, in pain every 5 minutes after a dose of some mild painkiller
3) K voluntarily offered her arm for me to scratch when she saw me mightily struggling in the bed, beating stuff up/grabbing bars/scratching anything nearby - and that through my 'madness' I somehow didn't hurt her or anything (I think it's more like, I can't hear her and I don't know what really happened throughout that time).
The sedative is gooooood at shutting me up (which explains why everything becomes a blur!), but it does not stop the pain and the vomitting. I remembered hazily going for x-rays and some bloody ultrasound scan, but I don't remember the blood test (but according to the doc, I did). The next thing I knew, some nurse stuffed something up my butt, which promptly stopped the pain, the vomitting, and immediately put me to slumberland...
...where I woke up at 8am on Christmas Day, half-aching from all that vomitting and tired from all that screamin'. K, R and A got on the taxi all the way from Hatfield to see me (and paid a beastly GBP20!!), and due to the lack of sleep (being awake all night), I told them to go back while I get summore sleep...
...and the next thing I knew, my relatives from Colchester were there. Aunt was making a fuss already (aiih), she CALLED Mom, who promptly told DAD. (uh oh).
That's where I got lectures from both of them the next day - Mom was busy telling me off for eating muffins (I like, WHY? The first muffin didn't give me any problems!), and I (finally) heard my Dad scold loudly (but shortly) on the phone for not taking care of myself - heh, it's been 3 months since I last heard him yell, and he just sounded quite displeased, because he said he couldn't sleep the whole night worrying about me. (aiih).
I told them not to worry. Everything'll be fine!
...but Murphy and his bleedin' Law doesn't agree.
Three docs examined me, and the third one, who after had me run the 2nd blood test, told me my liver blood is fine, but there's signs of infection near the area - which led him to his diagnosis that I'm having appendicitis, and I need to go for surgery ASAP.
I had to call back Mom/Dad to tell them the news. Mom was frightened (my Dad more so, since it'll be my 2nd operation this year, and 6 months after the first one), but said to go on ahead, since the 3rd doctor already found out about the internal infection, as well as getting a few times' fever at night - which are all signs of appendicitis.
So I undergo one on Boxing Day evening. Told the anasthesist to give me a stronger painkiller-cum-sedative, and the good boy promptly obeyed - to the point I had an old nurse yelling her head off calling my name for 15 minutes to sober me up from the heavy med dose after the operation. According to my aunt who says according to the surgeon(s), I really had an inflamed appendicitis, and they needed to cut it before it swells even bigger.
After that operation, I spent another day at the hospital (since I can barely walk that far without feeling the ache), got sometimes lousy and sometimes good treatment from the various nurses on their shifts (it's a goverment hospital, after all), and the next day, I'm readily discharged without the need to pay for the operation nor the medicine (that's the National Health Service for you! Pretty good thing, actually.)
BUT thing's didn't go that rosy from there.
House Arrest at Essex
I likened it to a house arrest because for the next few days, I'm practically locked in my aunt's house 24/7. I'm not even allowed to step out of the house!
But actually, it's Dad's order that I spent the next few days recuperating at my aunt's place. Let's call her Ah Kwai Yee (AKY) in here.
The whole four days after coming to Colchester, was spent only on two things - eating, and watching TV.
Eating was not that enjoyable - not due to the fact that I'm on a restricted diet post-op, but that AKY's a lousy cook. No, seriously. I can even cook better tasting soup than she did - for when she said her medicinal soup is sweet, it's practically TASTELESS. Hell, even her husband Uncle David agreed. (I've eaten his pork-chop-cutlets with rice, and they're AAAWWEESSOOMME).
Not only that, AKY has OCD - she'll ask me the same damn thing about what can I eat for 3 times in a minute. I told her I can't eat eggs, beans, nuts, prawns, any form of seashell, duck, etc. and she'll forget it the next minute, and she'll KEEP insisting on eating them. I thank whoever's up there for giving me patience to tolerate her.
Which explains why she couldn't really take care herself, health-wise. She's been coughing for 3 weeks now, and I've discovered the reason why - she ate the green beans with barley (when I said I CANNOT eat beans!! and that she CANNOT!! eat them herself because green beans make the cough worse!), and started coughing madly the next day. AND I don't know if she's plain daft or dumb, but she thought eating ORANGES can cure the cough. GOD, I told her off for eating them, "Even my own MOM forbid me to eat a single fruit when I get a cough!"
(she finally listened, and lay off eating oranges for now.)
That's the eating part. Now, the watching-TV part is gooooood, after being TV-less for the past 3 months.
AKY's got Sky TV (the UK version of our Astro - they've got much more channels, but half of them are worthless). I finally caught some episodes of CSI:NY and CSI:Miami (damn, but Horatio IS good XD), saw Miyazaki's The Cat Returns twice (I LUV the Baron!!! He's SO DARN GORGEOUS!!!), Phantom of the Opera (the adaptation of the musical version - Phantom is gooood but over-dramatized and the rest of the plot is literally nothing - I've had enough of the Christine-Raoul scenes), Pan's Labyrinth (full Spanish version with subtitles and high-quality), Sister Act 2, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and other bits of random show that's on that day (e.g. The Road to El Dorado, Sinbad, etc.).
So actually, it's not that boring. I'll considered it fruitful, since I get to catch up on news and all (especially the Gaza bombings).
But nothing comes close to the first night I heard 'them' talking.
A Brief Encounter with the Third Kind
Okay, let me explain a bit more on this. Perhaps not many of you are aware that I have this ability (because I try not to talk about it - it's scary for me sometimes, IMHO), and if so, I'll tell it briefly here.
According to my Mom, the first time I could see them, was the night my grandmother (father's side) 'returned' - that 7th-night-tradition thing where the dead will come back a week after the funeral, and the second time on the 49th night. I think I'm like what, 5 years old or something, and that I came out from my parent's bedroom, telling them that Grandma was in there looking for them. They were actually scared stiffless but when they entered the room, but they couldn't find anybody.
Ever since then though, as I grew older, I saw less, but I can feel their presence real enough - wherever I enter a place and feel the overwhelming pressure, AND most importantly, the electric/icy-cold shock going through me, then I know that 'they' are around.
Sometimes I saw glimpses of them - too faint to make out their details, but they're nevertheless there. The dude at the haunted house in Bangsar was one of it - he's huge and all darkness, and I CANNOT believe my Dad had stood under him calmly unaware. The other one...was some god-figure (according to Mom/Ah Yee) whom I saw when I was five, and I saw him AGAIN recently in the SAME place in the SAME shop at Cheras - that incense shop in Taman Midah, to be precise. HE is scary - all red and HUGE and really towering over everyone else in the shop, in that SAME SPOT. My oblivious Dad actually walked through him. I THINK the cat in the shop saw but didn't bother - she was staring at the same spot that I was staring, but kitty goes back sleeping while I was trying to get my Mom to "hurry up, we need to get out NOW...."
THAT happened during the Ireland trip. GOD, if I had known that place is SO full of it, I'm never entering there at all. AND the place is like, centuries OLD. I can feel my blood rushing from my face as I walked to the centre, the pressure is GREAT, the cold is killing, and the electric/super-icy-cold shock almost made myself go numb the longer I stood there. Thank God it's only for 5 minutes. Any longer, I think I'll be crawling out of that place.
That day onwards, I swore not to enter any bleedin' centuries-old buildings in the UK. Ever. It's gonna be so full of 'them' there. I think I've had enough share of that in Ireland already.
BUT the 'residents' are different - and that's a mighty good thing.
My own house has two of them - a young girl, and an older boy. I think they're siblings or something. But I do heard them 'walking' (more like, shuffling) in my room occassionally, and which explains the tricks they liked to play sometimes while I sleep (which is no fun - pulling my leg to give me a shock, and after that laughing while running away? C'mon, I need ma sleep.)
Now, the first night at my aunt's place, in the wee hours in the morning, I heard the 'residents' talking in the room I was staying in - AKY's room, actually (Uncle David sleeps in another room). And I say 'residents' because one is a lady in her mid-thirties (she sounded that age) and the other is a male (who has that deep masculine voice of a fit guy in his twenties). The lady was talking at the other side of the bed near the window (I heard the sound from that direction), while the guy was talking right next to me. I blearily opened my eyes a few times but by then the voices died off, and after half-consciously knowing who I'm dealing with, I just shrugged it off and go back to sleep - not bothering them. Coz if you don't bother them, they wouldn't bother you.
And my aunt ACTUALLY KNEW they existed - when she asked me the next morning if I heard anything. I said, "Yeah I heard a lady and a guy talking" and she got frightened outta her wits - because during certain times, she said she heard them too. And she started asking lots of questions and I tried NOT to answer all of them (because the 'residents' will ALWAYS be listening), but I tried to console her by saying the 'residents' are harmless, and in fact, they actually take care of the owner and the house!
I think she finds me bull-shitting her, so she asked her husband the next night.
Uncle David nodded his head and said, "Yep, seen her, even." AKY's eyes grew SO wide. And Uncle David turned to me and said, "Old woman. Right?"
I said, "Ee..ya. But she's not really that old, actually. More like a lady in her mid-thirties." Uncle David then went on to say he saw her at the end of his bed one night, while he's half-asleep or something.
AKY could NOT sleep for the next few nights after hearing what we've said. She said she'd hugged the Bible wherever she heard strange noises go bump into the night, and I said, "Arrggh, give it up already. It's not like they're gonna eat you or anything!"
But for safety purposes (and Mom BELIEVED that I must have offended some saint or some dude walking in that Irish monastery to get that horrid bad luck on Christmas Day), we did a short ritual to try to appease the spirits and take my bad luck away. It DOES NOT HELP MATTERS when AKY does not know how to pray (she's forgotten all the rituals after marrying her husband and getting into Christianity), so I had to do most of the rites e.g. what to get and what to offer, what things are required, where to put them, how to pray, etc. while she follows what I did.
The next few nights after the praying ritual, I slept quite well without hearing them yakking away - I only heard the lady cursed sharply once (I heard a loud feminine, "ACCK!!") as she hit something near the window (God knows what...), but that's because after the first night, I dug out that Chinese paper-charm-thingy and my bi you amulet and placed them next to my bed for extra protection. I suspect she's hit upon some barrier or something...
But hey, it's gotten quite peaceful, at least! But AKY stiiiiill couldn't sleep despite that. Haih.
For now though, I make sure I know what place I'm entering FIRST before going in. Can't offend another one now, there's no nearby temple to remove the next curse!!~~ X-o-X
And I'm back today on New Year's Day (finally!).
New Year's Day
I got strict orders from back home (Mom/Dad) to stay in Hatfield and don't go everywhere (I think they're afraid I'll be coming down to London to party or something). Because apparently, I've facing my lowest luck-point of the year according to some chinese fengshui-luck book - and the less I go out, the less bad luck I get to face (like, WTH?)
And yeap, the restricted diet rule'll go on till February or sumthink - there's that 100-day period to observe for not eating the stuff I'm mentioned earlier. And no walking around too much for fear of breaking the wound or getting into another 'accident'.
And...yeah, gonna lay off the Bailey's awhile (and I've JUST gotten a new bottle before the Ireland trip. Argh.). AKY threatened to complain to Mom about me 'drinking alcohol', but I already explained to Mom earlier today (before AKY can report me!) that Baileys is NOT alcohol - they're Irish cream! CREAAAMM, NOT WIINNNEE, and NOT BEEEERRR. (They're considered liquour for the reason that the alcohol content was 17% but hey, compared to wine, Bailey's don't make people drunk even after that many shots of it - and Bailey's go well with milkshake and coffee. Yuuuuuuuuummm.)
That's that for now. It's been a long entry.
Hope it's been a better year end for most of ya than mine. And let's hope it gets better for this year 2009, yeah? Happy New Year to everyone, and WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!~
-L