A Writer’s Papyrus

“Dying! Dying!” Kyle sobbed as he thrashed through the forest undergrowth as fast as his two chubby legs could carry him.

Startled, I looked up from the recipe book I had been consulting to prepare a special meal for dinner because it was Kyle’s second birthday. The kitchen was a mess. The marble-topped island at the centre was covered with eggs, flour, mixing bowls and wooden spoons. On one wall, the oven was roaring away to the whirring of the electrical mixer.

The kitchen door banged open and Kyle stumbled into the room just as I was wiping my hands on my apron. Kyle flung his arms around my legs burying his tear-streaked face into my legs, mumbling incoherently. He had wrapped his arms my legs with such a death grip that it took quite an effort from my part to pry his arms open. Practically scaling my legs into my arms, Kyle then held my face with his two grimy hands and peered gravely into my face. It always amazed me how serious this little boy could look at times.

“Magic ‘shrooms dying, Mummy!” He exclaimed earnestly. “Come see!”

The amazing development of his speech was the other thing that had surprised us. At just two, Kyle could speak a myriad of words. In fact, since the day he was born, we knew that there was something very special about Kyle.

I released Kyle and he tugged at my hand to follow him. Kyle ran as I walked briskly beside him. He led me back through the familiar path in the forest that we would often walk. All around us were ancient oak trees worshipping the sun with their gnarled branches. The air was cool and sticky and the moss beneath our feet was still wet from the morning dew.

Kyle released my hand, ran to the based of a particularly large oak tree and dropped to his knees. As I knelt beside him, he pointed to the some mushrooms which were indeed dying. I plucked a sample and wrapped it in my apron.

“Come on, Kyle,” I said. “We have to go tell grandpa.”

Kyle’s grandpa was a self-professed magician. Many of the townsfolk thought he was a loony old man with grand delusions, so we lived in the mountains in a small cabin at the centre of a meadow surrounded by oak trees as old as time itself.

Magic was real, just as the dragons and unicorns were real. It was the advancement of technology that was making people forget. Of course, with the mysterious deaths of the unicorns, the power of magic in the world was weakening. The dying magic mushrooms were one of the first signs of that.

To be continued…

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If you know anything about cars, then this probably seems like a pretty basic question. Unfortunately, I didn’t, so I went to look it up.

At the front of the car, between the headlights, there is a grille which serves three functions.

1. It allows air to flow into the radiator to help cool the car engine.
2. It prevents road debris and other harmful elements from entering the engine compartment, which can obviously damage the engine.
3. It offers the car a distinctive aesthetic element and serves as a means for the manufacturer of the vehicle to brand the car.

Cars also have a grille insert that helps to prevent the second function.

Some car owners prefer to add their own personal touch to their cars. That is where billet grilles come in. Billet grilles are simply custom grille inserts that can either cover or replace the cars original grille. They can be made from aluminium, stainless steel or ABS plastic.

Billet grilles have an additional benefit other than aesthetic appeal. Because they are cut from a solid piece of raw material, they are sturdier than those that are cast or forged (which is often the case with the factory-installed grilles that cars arrive with).

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She had been wandering aimlessly in the strange forest of red trees ever since the strange dancing girl had disappeared. Her feet were sore from walking and her stomach was rumbling from hunger. When was her last meal? She could not even remember.

She wanted to stop but she was afraid. It felt as if the strange red trees were watching her menacingly, just waiting for her to fall asleep before they came to prey upon her. If she stayed awake and kept moving, she would be okay. They would not come near while she was conscious.

Absentmindedly, she started kneading the knuckles of her right hand into her back. A few moments ago it had started aching for some unknown reason. She kept on walking. In every direction, it looked the same – trees and more trees. She could be walking in circles and she would not know.

Her head started to tingle. She felt dizzy. The image of her brother appeared in her head. He was in a cool, dark cave – he was hurt! No. Not him, the Serpent. She closed her eyes to steady her thoughts. Was it real? Or was she imagining it? Yes, it was real. She could feel her brother’s mind connecting with hers. He needed help!

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A writer friend of mine once said, “I suffer for my art.”  As much as I want to write, there are times when I fear her words are true.  The best of my writing have arisen from the moments of my greatest pain.  

Recently, I watched “Becoming Jane”, a tale about the life of Jane Austen focussing on the period before she became the great novelist that she is.  If there is truth to the storyline about her love affair with the penniless budding lawyer Tom Lefroy, then it would seem the great works of her writing were inspired by the tragedy of her love life. 

Then there was that war movie with Sandra Bullock and Chris O’Donnell depicting the life of Ernest Hemmingway before he became the great writer that he was.  After being spurned by love, he became a bitter man who later wrote some of the greatest works in history (if you’re interested to watch this movie, roll out your home theater carpet and look for the DVD title “In Love and War”).

And who can forget JK Rowling, a single Mum who started writing the Harry Potter series to pay the bills.  What started out as a practical idea for supplemental income seems to have worked out rather well.  I find her truly inspiring because of her ability to capture her audience with a terrific storyline concept.

While I don’t have any tragic love affairs to inspire me to write, I’m still hoping to emulate JK Rowling’s success as a writer.  I’m taking heart in the fact that although one can be a great writer by having the talent to write, one can also write a great work by having a great idea.  Though my talent might be somewhat lacking, I’m still hoping for a great idea to craft the next best-selling series.

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No longer twinkling, the eyes of the old man turned blood red until they appeared like two rubies in his eye sockets. From where he stood, it looked as if the old man’s eyes were bleeding. The red sky rumbled ominously overhead as electric-red lights darted across from cloud to cloud. Cumulo-nimbus clouds parted and a bolt of red lightning descended from the heavens towards him.

The serpent on his back hissed and leapt up out of his skin. It towered over him and spread its hood to deflect the lightning bolt. As the lightning diffused its energy through the serpent, the scent of burnt flesh filled his nostrils. The serpent was hurt. It had protected him from the blast of lightning. Even though he had felt nothing of the blast, he knew the serpent was in grave danger.

As the smoke cleared, he noticed that the old man appeared winded. The effort of drawing the lightning from the skies must have been too much for him. The guards were still standing at a distance from him, eyeing the serpent with fear. Now was his chance! Leaping into action, he darted towards the dense protection of the looming red trees.

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The Myers-Briggs personality test classifies an individual according to four letters:

Extroverted or Introverted
Sensing or iNtuitive
Thinking or Feeling
Judging or Perceiving

Although you can take a free online test to determine the strength of your preferences, the difficulty lies in the fact that we tend to be a little subjective when answering questions.  We often answer questions based on what we would like to be rather than what we would normally do.  A more accurate test result can be achieved by being typed by an accredited Myers-Briggs typist, which normally costs about AUD$400 or so.

Lucky for me, my cousin’s accredited.

So what do the letters mean?

Are you an E or an I?  This simply refers to where you derive your energies from - externally or internally?  Extraverted people think out loud, they love crowds, they are the life of the party and they thrive in crowded environments.  Intraverted people think inside their heads.  They prefer talking one-on-one.  At a party, they normally stick to the people they know.  They need their own personal private time.

Are you an S or an N?  This refers to how you depict your environment.  To determine which you are, think of the last restaurant that you had dinner at and write down some words to describe it.  Sensing people use their five senses - they generally describe a restaurant according to what they notice with their five senses.  For instance, they might talk about the size of the room, the layout of the reception, the lights, and various other objects.  Intuitive people usually talk about the ambience of the restaurant. The words they use to describe the restaurant tend to be more abstract, like “cosy”, “warm”, “airy”.

Are you a T or an F?  This refers to how you think.  To determine which you are, imagine you are on the Titanic and you have been asked to allocate people to life boats.  Some people have to be left behind because there aren’t enough life boats.  How do you decide who stays and who goes?  Thinkers tend to be more logical and practical. They make decisions based on logic which can occasionally seem rather cold.  For instance, on the Titanic, they might decide that the elderly and infirmed should stay behind because they are old and sick.  Feelers, on the other hand, would have a tough time deciding who should stay and who should go because they usually want to save everyone.  By the time a feeler has decided who gets a lifeboat, the Titanic would have sunk.

Are you a J or a P?  Judging personalities need closure.  They like to structure their time and are generally quite orderly.  They usually make lists of things to do.  They dislike it when others are late.  Perceiving personalities don’t need closure.  They consider time to be flexible and often take an appointment time to be a suggestion of roughly when to meet rather than an agreed meeting time.

Now you know why you find some people insanely annoying.

The interesting point to note about the Myers-Briggs personality type is that it explains why arguments arise between individuals and why a person might enjoy one job and hate another.  For instance, it explains why I never enjoyed dentistry even though my personality type INFJ generally take on careers in health.  The F part of me enjoys helping people, but the N part of me dislikes the monotony of dentistry.  Had I been a sensing person, the S and F combined would have made dentistry the ideal profession for me.

Given enough examination, the Myers-Briggs personality typing can explain a lot about your preferences and decisions made in life.

Now that I know INFJs make good writers, perhaps I shouldn’t pack up my pen just yet…

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During my recent visit to Melbourne, my cousin, who is a certified Myers-Briggs typist, helped me determine my personality profile.  The Myers-Briggs personality profile is based on Jung Typology.  I’ve done the Jung Typology test a couple of times before getting different results on two different occasions.  I can’t remember the results from the first occasion, but I do remember that I got a different reading to my second sitting.  It didn’t really make much sense to me back then, so I never really gave it much thought. 

My cousin gave me a better insight into the theory behind Jung Typology and I now know my true type.  Everyone has only one type which is represented by four letters.  Taken at different times of our lives, we can find that our test results can vary,  however, our correct type is the behaviour we would normally exhibit when we are most relaxed. 

The Myers-Briggs personality test believes that we all have a preference in any given situation, however, circumstances and society can affect our decisions.  We often behave differently in a work environment for obvious reasons compared to when we are relaxing with friends.  The Myers-Briggs states that everyone has a preference although we can consciously learn to do things that deviate from our preferences.

This is the example my cousin gave me:

 If you were to clasp your hands together with fingers intertwined, you will find that you will have the thumb of one hand over the other - that is your preference.  If you were to clasp your hands with the opposite thumb on top, you would find the sensation a little odd.  That’s exactly what happens during our day to day lives.

When you take the test, you have to answer according to what you would normally do when you are most relaxed and that will be your true personality type.  Having a better understanding of the angle of the questioning, I retook the test again and these are the results I got:

Your Type is  INFJ

Introverted     Intuitive     Feeling     Judging

               Strength of Preferences %

        78                     38             50              22

INFJ type description by D.Keirsey
INFJ type description by J. Butt and M.M. Heiss
INFJ Career Choices Jung Career Indicator™ Sphere: Related Content

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My SIL and I went mad in Target picking up all the new variants of Kit Kat available.  They had a Strawberry Kit Kat, which I quite liked. That was a surprise in itself since I don’t normally favour fruity variants as I mentioned in the previous post.

The Strawberry Kit Kat was part of a Breast Cancer awareness program in conjunction with the Breast Cancer Foundation.

Then there was a Mint variant which wasn’t too bad since I don’t particularly like Mint chocolates either:

And a Chocolate Overload which was simply the normal Kit Kat but with chocolate wafer biscuits instead. I thought this was also pretty ordinary.

The Kit Kat Temptations were definitely worth noting though. The Caramel Fudge appears to have been around for a while since it didn’t bear the “new” sticker.

The Cafe Latte variant was also new. The Brand Manager for Kit Kat must have been pretty busy to have launched so many new variants at one go…

Out of the two, I preferred the Caramel Fudge. Here’s a shot of the inside:

They also had a Cookie Dough variant which was a little too sweet. Perhaps it wasn’t really a fair comparison since I tried it in the Kit Kat Chunky but unfortunately I couldn’t locate the regular bar.

I don’t think the caramel and cookie dough layers would have been so thick in the finger bar.

Now why can’t they release these variants in Malaysia, instead of the crappy stuff like Lemon Kit Kat?

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Whenever I go back to Melbourne, I love wandering down the chocolate aisle at the supermarket because the desperately deprived chocoholic monster in me is just dying to see what new chocolatey releases have been launched.  On my recent trip back, I was not disappointed by what I saw.

Toblerone launched a “fruit and nut” variant which the hubby (who favours “fruit and nut”) has given a big thumbs up to.

Nestle launched a new range of chocolates under the “Heaven” brand.  They had four variants - Chocolate Truffle, Raspberry Creme, Chocolate Caramel and a Mint variant which I didn’t get to try.

The Raspberry Creme didn’t really appeal to my tastebuds.  Since I’ve never been one to favour the fruity flavours, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s just me.  However, if the Chocolate Truffle is anything to go by, I think I’m still a little disappointed with Nestle.  I liked the Chocolate Caramel best.  Although the texture is very smooth, the chocolate flavour still can’t beat Cadbury.  What does it taste like?  Nestle chocolate.

Check out this rather corny statement on the packaging:

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Who am I kidding? I’m not a writer. I’m hopeless. To be a writer, you either need to be great with words or have a great idea.

And I have neither.

After several events, it is also dawning upon me that perhaps the better writer in my relationship is the hubby - not me. Perhaps I should just stick to what I know best and work on being the best mother Gavin could ever have. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. I even have a new project in mind. I’ll make him a cubby house and decorate it with an animal inflatable or two (inspired by our recent trip to the zoo). It can be some safari campout.

It’s funny that I can have lots of great ideas – or rather they seem like such great ideas in my head though I can never quite translate them to paper. Well, at least someone should benefit from my “great” ideas.

Yes, I know. I live vicariously through my son. Some may even question who the cubby house is for – the little kid or the big kid. Well, I don’t care. If I can’t be a writer, I’ll settle for being one cool Mum.

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