OF BY-LINES & BLOGGING

I am happy to announce firstly to myself and then to the rest of the world that....

I'm finally a published free-lance writer of the only Malay local newpaper and get this: there is an actual by-line in my full, maiden, given name...Ah yes, the same name that I had to look up in my birth certificate years ago when I thought I was adopted. This name has done me justice.

Anyway, I'm probably going to be paid peanuts for a job that was not so much for a monkey as it was for a MAMA GORI..but who cares!!! I am published, I am published...(repeat after the tune, 'you cannot catch me, you cannot catch me, nanny nanny poo poo, you cannot catch me')

Who cares even if my article was sandwiched between the obituaries, advertisements by the Singapore Muslim Casket and a large recruitment ad placed by the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore! Now, you hazard a guess as to what I actually wrote :)

No wonder I did not see 'it' the first time around when I bought that newspaper at nine in the morning. I was primed earlier by the correspondent who actually commissioned the job to me that this Sunday, 13th August, my article would be published. However, when I saw Lebanon on the front cover and a mini trailer of how Datuk K's ex-wife received a windfall, I relegated all hope of being published this weekend, to the wind.

But isn't it all the more sweeter? My blogging and writing life has come full circle. Not even Siti, Datuk K, his ex-wife or a Middle-Eastern War, could oust my maiden article from a spot in the weekend paper. Hah! Never mind that it was the 'page 20, 'Al-fateha' spot. I may never be as accomplished as Bom, a bilingual ex-journalist friend or anywhere close to well-loved Mokciknab, a self-confessed has-been TV journalist.

But today, Mama Gori rejoices in her infant steps on a journey of a million miles. That and my discovery that there are cloth training-diapers for my 5 year-old who is still bed-wetting and a divine reminder that death is the only certainty. (I'm morbid ah, everytime write about death! But no choice what, death happened again in the social circle today. But still thankful, of course, that only 3 families decided to place their ads in today's obituaries. At least that confirmed me a spot. Thanks guys!)