This afternoon I'm at home with family in Johor Bahru. The noonday sun is unrelenting. We sip mugs of homemade fruit enzyme extract in vain attempts to abate the sweltering heat. Hitam, the black cat resents his fur. Lying on my father's ancient vespa parked in our shady porch gives no respite, instead he nimbly jumps onto the car roof.
From his vantage point he can observe the going-ons in the strange abode he calls home. The old man who fries his fish seems more busy than usual. Today an urge to paint has seized him, the taciturn artist, he of the many ideas. Out of the wooden room he built to store all his strange contraptions, he brings a metal machine. With a tangle of wires and a loud whirring, a storm of wood chips tinier than a grain of rice fly up, scatter with the wind, land on the tarmac in a heap. A girl sweeps it out to the yard. The man fiddles with more tools and soon, he has made a rough-hewn palate.
Shadows fall across the Volkswagen and the cat leaves his refuge spot to trot inside. It's time for his meal and the woman will give him his usual if he saunters into the kitchen and calls. He sates his thirst at the fish bowl they leave for his convenience. Bored, black sinew stretches, flexes and leaps onto the table.
Pastels litter its top. Pristine paper, white as snow, lies in wait. The old man's keen eyes look at the girl seated across him, his flesh and blood, how can he reduce to paper that olive skin, soulful eyes, even that broken nose which she inherited from him. So my father the artist sketches me.
Day turns to dusk and the cat listens knowingly, looks intently. Mournful strains of the cello fill the air. My father is playing "The Moon Over the Ruined Castle". We sit around and tell stories of the past, a forgotten era of pig-rearing relatives, rural landscapes, and a unique teardrop-shaped rice-cake which no-one else know how to make save my grandmother.
Dusk brings swarms of mosquitoes which we alternately swat and ignore. Night falls and I'm lulled by the sounds of traffic, crickets, and the familiar noises of the boy-turned-man next door; twenty years later these noises seem unaltered, as though i've never left.
Soon, sunrise will break through the wooden slats. What will tomorrow bring? My mother's relatives may visit and father has promised to take me to an art shop. I'm waiting. Wishing. Missing. This land, these memories, you can never leave it far behind.
Check out this amazing proposal that this illustrator put together for his fiancee.... you have to go see it, he really outdid himself.
Max Wanger T-Shirt. Are you kidding, a t-shirt of my favorite image by my favorite photographer? No greater sweetness... seriously. You must know who Max Wanger is, his iconic wedding/engagement photography is well-documented all over the web. 
This Listography Journal. Because I'm a compulsive, unrepentant, wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-write-it-down list addict.
Cats Let Nothing Darken Their Roar 2010 Calender by Noa Bembibre which is, to me, the perfect marriage of typography, practicality, and brilliant design. Gets me every time. 
Grey's Anatomy, Season 6
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