Pickles n' Tickles by JJ

IT was five days before 30th birthday when I received a news alert that read 'Michael Jackson had died!'. Such an earth-shatteringly shocking news it was, and yet all I did was toss the phone away, and focus on driving without a thought on the greatest entertainer who ever lived. At a different time, I would've immediately gone online to verify the news, and kept tabs of the tragedy and mourned for the man who had yearned to heal the world. But it was barely a normal instant when I got that text message because my Grandma, who had defined my world had died just a few hours from MJ on June 25, 2009. I was also driving when my brother rang to ask if I was okay before he calmly released the news of Grandma's passing earlier that day. He told me to drive back carefully before hanging up. I clutched the mobile phone close to me and drove with a numb mind. A woman most important in my life had died, and I wasn't there by her side. I...

RECENTLY a friend has pledged to donate a hundred rosaries (prayer beads) for the St. Anne's Feast in Port Klang. So guess what ? A few of us within the beading group of friends were roped in to help to make them, and of course, I'm glad to spend some quiet time with plenty of beads. I'm responsible for 10% of the lot, and that means 10 rosaries. Now, that's not a big sum you may think, but the first one I made a couple of days ago took me about three hours to complete, although I did improve on the time after the second...and the third. Rosary beads can be linked together with cord, wire or chain, which is the most popular style among users. The technique involved for a chain rosary is basic looping. Snipping, looping and connecting, that is. Easy and straight-forward. F rom experience, I must say doing it is quite a test (all 100 rosaries are chain style). Siting still for hours, bending  and snipping, and then fixing the...

Cuffs WERE you laughing or crying when you read the newpapers recently ? Perhaps you were just too dumbfounded to react to the news of the  Obedient Wives Club  launch . Let me tell ya, I was a couldron of mixed feelings to the boiling point but I managed to laugh out loud while digesting what I read. The gist of the story is that the club members are motivated by the belief that social ills and domestic violence can be curbed if a wife keeps her husband satiated in bed. In short, be sexy and alluring to keep your man roped to you so he doesn't go looking for it elsewhere. The exact idea is to serve the husband 'better than a first-class prostitute' because gone are the days of a good mother and cook. No good sex = prostitution, domestic violence, human trafficking and abandoned babies.  I mean, seriously. What kind of a twisted hypothesis is that ? The simple truth is tying a man to the bed posts isn't going to stop him from st...

EVERY person is looking at achieving something. Achievement is liberation I suppose, and yesterday I was reminded of it when I saw someone, whose appearance resembled a common migrant worker in this country, reading through some books at the MPH book sale in One Utama. It was a man, probably in his mid 30s, clad in a striped shirt, a pair of oversized brown trousers and slippers. His skin was tan, not naturally, but maybe due to outdoor activities for too long. His hands looked rough and hard, and the hair, although not unkempt, seemed like he had put some effort into keeping it in place. He stood out from the rest of them at the sale area. So I, who was lurking around the vampire literature corner, moved over to see what he was so focused on.  The book was the Secret ! Oblivious to his surrounding or to the girl who was openly staring at him by then, the man continued reading from page to page. I shouldn't have been surprised at his readin...