Superstitions of Malaysia

When I was a kid, I was told a lot of superstitions aka pantang larang. 'Pantang' means absolutely cannot and 'larang' means not allowed. Did I get that right? Gosh, my Malay is so bad.

Do I believe in superstitions now? I think yes, to a certain point. There are some that I think are completely silly and there are some that I have drilled into my head. And Malaysia has so many races and I live in Borneo, where there are more than 20 different races.

But some of my superstitions might be wrongly understood la hehe. These are the ones I grew up with.

1.There is something called ketulahan here, and it basically means jinxing. Ok, I believe this superstition very much ok! Last year, a friend of mine was bragging that he had never failed a biology exam, and the next exam, he failed. Something similar to this is called 'keapunan' (did I spell that right?). If you want to eat something but can't, you have to at least have a teensy bit (like swiping your finger on the rim of the rice cooker if you can't eat rice). If you don't, something bad will happen to you like getting bitten by ants or falling down.

2. Young unmarried girls must not sing while cooking because if they do, they will get married to an old man.  I think this superstition exists because people are scared that spit will get into the food, right? Or maybe old men are attracted to the voices because their eyesight aren't good anymore haha.

3. People should not sit on pillows, or they will get warts (?) on their butts. Its not warts exactly but I don't know what it is called in English. Truth be told, I'm not sure what its called in Malay either. I think this superstition exists because parents want their children not to sit on their pretty cushions. Since children in the olden days always play around in dirt and rivers, their butts would be very dirty and if they sit on it, and then at night, they sleep on it, its quite dirty right? So, parents made it up lol.

3A. Number 4 is bad luck because in chinese, the pronunciation is similar to death.  Which is unfortunate for me cause I was born on the fourth day of October so I always get 04 as a number when I have m class T-shirt made. Apparently in Korea, its the same thing. 'Sa' is four in korean which also means death.

5. If you accidentally bit your tongue or the insides of your cheeks, someone, somewhere, is talking crap about you. This isn't something that I really believe, but whenever I do bite my tongue, I always think, WHO IS IT?! *shifty eyed

 6.If you make an animal suffer, the weather will turn bad. I found out about this when I was keeping a pet grasshopper when I was very young and I had to break his legs so he couldn't get away. Cruel, I know. As I was about to do the dirty deed, my brother stopped me, saying he wanted to go jogging lol.

Since that day, I've always been careful on how I treat animals. Yeah, not cause of animal abuse awareness or anything, but a superstition!

7. This one is scary!!! On saturday's, my cousins and I were never allowed to play hide and seek or go around at night because spirit's might kidnap us. Usually our conversations would go like this.

"What are we going to do today? Let's play hide and seek?? Awww, its saturday right actually.... Nevermind, let's just play in the room."

How scary would it be to be waiting in your hiding place and you look behind and.... ahhhh, its so stressful just thinking about it!

8. Just like how 4 is a bad luck number, 8 is a good luck number! 8 in chinese is ba and it has the same meaning as wealth or prosper. So, when you buy lottery tickets, make sure to have 8 somewhere in there lol.

I have no eights in my birthday, nor any eights in my name haiya... now I can't rely on destiny and fate to make me rich! *pout

Well, that's all the superstition I can think of now. Western superstitions like don't walk under a ladder and don't open an umbrella inside or don't step on cracks aren't really thought of around here. But there's one that piqued my interest, which is when a couple gets married, the groom isn't allowed to see the bride in her dress before the wedding day. Its a special, peculiar superstition to me and I really like the idea of it!

Procrastination Post

There's this song that has been stuck in my head and it is so addicting!

 

Anyone else?

I first heard about this song when Sarah told me and then others started raving about it as well. So, I got curious and checked it out. Damn regretful... T___T

It just stays in your head and repeats itself again and again and again. If I don't listen to this song when I want to, I'll get very frustrated, kinda like doing an add maths question haha.

And what's up with youtube buffering the videos so slow lately? And then when I try to rewind the vid it starts buffering from the very beginning. It is very annoying.

Today after my Add Maths tuition, I went to 1Borneo to buy a book!

THIS IS SO FUNNY!!!

I've read the first one and that made me laugh like mad. Its so entertaining and its short and to the point. And also, this book was 20% off. Yes, double win!

 

Didn't make you laugh??!

I hope I don't get sued for copyright but this is all over the internet so what's one more.

I hope that the author, Boey makes a gazillion of these books so I can read them till I'm like, 100 (more or less). I can relate to some of these things cause its about a childhood in Malaysia and well me=Malaysian.

But I lost the first book that I bought months ago and I wanna find ittttttt why do I keep losing things I love!

Sigh, actually the point of this blog post is to procrastinate from reading hsitory. Its just so boring to read about the past! Why can't we read about the future or the present. Why is there nothing in that textbook about Christopher Columbus or about the big horse statue that went into the Troy city place?

Actually, I've about it sometime in my childhood.

Its when the Greek wanted to enter Troy using a very sly method. They pretended to sail away and left this big wooden horse. So the Troys (Trojans? Troys? Meh, potahtoh potaytoh) pulled that big wooden horse into their city. Then, when night came and everyone was asleep, a troop of greek soldiers came out from that horse and attacked everyone in their sleep.

Its quite a funny story to me. But I remember when I read about it at the age of 5/6/7 and thought that the greeks were geniuses for doing that.

Right? Its like when you're in a fight in school and you pretend to surrender and just when the other kid walks away, you kick them in the ass. Yeap, just like that.

OR, in a girly drama-ey fight in school, you pretend to be mature and make up with that bitch but sabotage them behind their backs.

Gah! What am I doing! I'm supposed to be taking a break from history and yet I'm talking about history! And this history isn't even going to come out in my exam!

Ok nothing more about history

Other than that.....

Meow has been such a darling that my name for him this week is Darling! I love him so much! He hasn't bitten me for quite a while and he's always so quiet but lovable! I like quiet animals lol.

Right now he's sleeping by the door cause he got tired of waiting for me to open it. Heee, I'm so happy to have such a nice kitty!

Though I think he thinks of himself as a human. Ah well. Come Darling! Time for cuddly wuddley!!

:D

Ok time to go back to studying. *pops bubble of fantasy and procrastination

When I Was A Kid #4 #5

#4

When I was a kid, I always seemed to see movies where kids in other countries studied outside, like on the grass and singing and having fun.

I really really wished that I could do that someday then.

Then today, my class didn't have a classroom so we all studied physics outside in front of the teacher's office. There was no grass or anything though but still, it was outside.

Expectation : My classmates giving ideas on the subject, someone playing guitar, butterflies flying around and a soft cool breeze blowing in my face and me laughing and feeling great.

Reality : Hot air blowing in my face, classmates (including me) complaining about how hot it is, noisy students walking around and me losing weight just sitting there cause its so hot.

So.... NEVER AGAIN.

#5

When I was a kid, I read this article that Malaysia wouldn't be peaceful forever. Back then, I thought that NOTHING would change ever so I thought that it was a ridiculous article.

I remember feeling sad and scared though because as a kid, everything on the internet, tv and newspapers were always true because Daddy read them everyday. Whatever Daddy did and said was smart because he was the smartest person ever to 7 year old me.

Now, my home, Sabah, is invaded in Lahad Datu.

And I'm feeling scared like I did 10 years ago. :(

When I Was A Kid #3

When I was a kid there was a point in my life when I didn't have Astros, a TV channel company.

So all I had to watch was TV1, TV2, TV3 and TV7.

So that was when I was educated on Indonesian, Philippine and Chinese TV shows. I remember that that was the highlight of my days.

This was also the point in my life when I had no books, phone, or computer. Just a small TV.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if my parents were having money crisis back then. I was 11.

Anyway, everyday there would be 2 whole hours of the same infomercials. And everyday without fail, I'd be there watching it from start to finish expecting it to be different from the day before.

I was a stupid kid.

When I Was A Kid

Ok I'm gonna start writing these posts called when I was a kid. Basically it tells stories of when I was growing up.

I suddenly had this idea because I bought this really funny book that tells cute and funny stories of when the author was a kid.

So it begins! :D

When I was a kid, I was really stupid. I didn't understand about death I think so I guess that's why I end up doing things that could get me killed.

One night I was playing with coins. Other kids play with coins by stacking them or counting but I play with them by putting them in my mouth. I remember that I thought that they were delicious.

That night, I swallowed a coin. Thank God that I knew enough to tell my parents about it.

So they took me for an xray and true enough, there was a coin stuck on my throat.

Then we went to the doctor andthey vacuumed it out. I got to eat lots of ice cream after that and I wondered what I did to male me deserve the reward.

#2
When I was a kid, I used to stay at my mom's teacher's lounge after school sometimes. It was nice because it had air conditioning.

One day, I tried doing some gymnastics because I thought that it was cool. The only thing I could achieve however was putting my right foot on my waist. That was good enough for me.

So I ran to the staffroom to show my mom. "Mummy!! I got a talent!!"

And showed my trick. In front of all the teachers. And I felt so damn proud of myself.

I can't do it anymore though.