Insomnia

Woke up at 5am this morning and couldn't sleep... it's kind of weird because I only had like 4 hours sleep yesterday and the night before. Maybe it's jet lag from Bandar Utama to Bangsar. Thursday night was spent revamping the ksk website, and though it's nothing near our flashy Tsemtulku.com site, I'm quite proud of my work kskcommunity.org! Friday night was spent with Rinpoche, an amazing experience as always and ended in the wee hours of the morning.

Then I had to wake up before 10am yesterday to have a photo shoot with some kind donors of an all women's sporting group, Dboleh's team 'wind', towards an SIPJ project. We then decided to go to visit Sheila, the receipt of the donation. Sheila is an autistic girl whom SIPJ is sponsoring for a few months. When we first met her, she was very unkempt and had no social skills due to neglect. After 2 months, she has blossomed and we were very happy to receive donations towards her care. It costs RM1400 per month for board and lodging as well as special coaching.

After that, Susan had to go for a land blessing and Sean and I went to distribute food for KSK. Traffic in town was atrocious, with roads closed off for the election rallies. While waiting in the stagnant traffic and then being told by the traffic cops that I was in the wrong lane so I couldn't turn right (I wasn't in the wrong lane), I had my first real regret that I had not registered to vote!

Anyway, I tried not to have negative thoughts since I was supposed to be emanating positive energy while doing community service. It was my first time driving the Pudu Market route on my own, and for company I had Madam Han Nee, a retired lady, and Sean, my 10 year old. It was really three generations in one car. When we arrived at Pudu Market, we didn't find many of our usual clients except for one who ranted and raved at Mdm Lim, fortunately from a distance.

We finished around 8 and after depositing Mdm Lim at Central Market, Sean and I went to see my mum at Crown Princess Hotel. She arrived today with her sisters and the St. George's Girls' School alumni group to perform for a charity event today.

By the time I reached my mum, she'd already had dinner so Sean and I grabbed a quick bite and headed home. I should be sleeping til the cows come home but somehow I wasn't sleepy. So here I am.

Maybe I'll read something trashy - that usually puts me to sleep.

If not now, when?

Now! Now! Now! Yes - it's finally out.. the long awaited 1st ever KMP produced Coffee Table Book.. also known as "If not now, when?". This perfectly titled perfect book was conceptualised eons ago.. by one of the dinosaurs of KMP, Andee, who typed out Rinpoche's smses with two fingers. Jamie, Joe and i attempted to bring this one step further by compiling these quotes into a book of digital Dharma.. but as the smses went to his students, they were quite deep and we were not sure other people would understand them. The idea then evolved into getting quotes from Rinpoche's Dharma teachings, which had been published.

Then Shirley came up with a proposal to do a coffee table book of Rinpoche's quotes, which made Jamie and I scream Eureka! Shirley contributed a huge pile of lengthy quotes which Jamie and I added to our previous list of quotes. We then systematically went through and edited them down to bite-size morsels. Then we had the gargantuan task of choosing which quotes would be more easily illustrated. And which quotes to include! We loved every one of them, which made the whittling process even more difficult. We also fretted about an appropriate title, then Shirley came up with 'If not now, when?' which we all loved, loved, loved! And i still do. What better question should we all ask ourselves? And Joy and Justin's interpretation of the title on the cover design is fab.

Joy and Justin, our graphic designers extraordinaire, also came up with the wonderful graphics within. JJ, our 23 year old chicken, was the production manager and aged visibly by the end of the production phase.

Final artwork became not-really-final as we kept finding mistakes at each proofreading session. Were we blind?? Why didn't we see them the last round. And this was just the editors beating ourselves us! We won't even mention what the long suffering designers thought of us. Finally, JJ decided to take it off our grubby little hands and sent it off to the printers.

Anyway, finally, finally, finally - it's out! It's great! Rinpoche loves it! Andee, who is extremely critical about books, loves it! We love it! And we hope the whole world will too! If not now, when?????!

Manjushri graces Sean's altar

Doesn't Sean's altar look fabulous... Rinpoche blessed the Manjushri thangka we bought at the exhibition and I promptly rearranged Sean's room so his altar went against the wall and Andee helped hang the thangka up.

Another blast from the past

Today, I met up with Catherine Durham - someone I hadn't seen for about 20 years.. another old Queenswoodian, who's been living in the South of France and working as a yoga teacher and massage therapists for billionaires on their yachts in the Mediterranean. In her other life, she travels the world and is about to go to Cambodia to teach English for a couple of months.

It was lovely to catch up and I brought Karen along since she was also an old Q. We had a splendid tapas lunch with a bottle of white... I discovered how many of our friends were divorced - and updated her on my state of things to which she just nodded, unfazed. Maybe Queenswood does that to you - nothing shocks us! Catherine was very sweet and treated us to lunch so I invited her to stay when she next passes through on her way back to Europe.

After lunch, I took Karen to pick up something in Bangsar and dropped by at Eric Choong's. It was lovely to see Ee Ling and her gorgeous little baby there. Unfortunately, Eric was ill so he wasn't around. Karen tried on a beautiful purple dress and Catherine said it was a looooong time before she could wear purple (purple was the colour of our school uniform)!



Catherine, Karen and I


Catherine and I

Sean gets a gift from Tsem Rinpoche

Ever caring, ever generous Tsem Rinpoche gave Sean a DVD today. His personal assistant, Beng Kooi, played Santa Claus today and dropped over the gift. Sean is his usual serious self?! Watch the video! hahaha...