WHAT A NIGHT

Mim arrived home just before midnight after a celebratory dinner with her 3-person project team. With her superb negotiating skills and the team's fingertip knowledge of all the facts and figures of their proposal, they had managed to wrest the contract from the hands of the rumoured sure-winner.

It was indeed a coup of sorts, with the high-powered government team having shown no indication as to which was their preferred solution. Even so they had employed every strategy to try to wear down Mim's team into agreeing to various, sometimes absurd concessions.

Mim felt truly exhausted when she arrived home. Apparently everyone had gone to bed, including Saiful, her husband. She stopped by her sleeping sons' bedroom and gave each of them a kiss on their foreheads. Saiful, or Epol as his family called him, was gently snoring. Mim looked at him with feelings of guilt about having neglected her family especially since being assigned to this project 2 months ago.

She laid her head on the pillow, meaning to rest awhile before showering. Although tired, her mind was still reeling through the events of the day. She thought about how professional civil servants of today are, with stamina to boot. They had negotiated well into the night and at the end of it, the secretary had the major points minuted and ready to be signed by both parties.

Thinking she might as well scan the minutes into her PC and e-mailing a copy to her boss, she went to the adjoining study, set up the scanner and started her email. Before long it was completed, and as she was about to attach the minutes, she felt a cold eerie feeling down the back of her neck.

Suspecting the chills, she abandoned her work and returned to the bedroom only to find one of her sons sleeping in her bed. She woke him up asking why he wasn't in his own room. He mumbled something about being disturbed by a woman all dressed in white.

Fearing for her other son, she practically ran to their room and was shocked to see a "woman" at her sons' PC. "SO YOU ARE THE GHOST DISTURBING MY SON! GET OUTTA HERE!!!", she screamed while executing a neat tae-kwan-do kick into it's face. But off course the kick just went through the face.

Just then, Epol appeared at the door demanding why Mim was screaming. "It's a ghost! That woman is a ghost" she shouted "I kicked it but it is still there!"

"Mim, mengucap Mim, there is no ghost"

"There is, I'm telling you there is"

"Mim, Mim WAKE UP. Stop kicking me.... why are you kicking me???"


"Astghafirullah, La ilaha ilallah.... Gosh, what a nightmare"

"Why are you in your work clothes? Haven't you showered yet, done your prayers? Look at the time, it's 2 am!!!"

Epol got up to do his ablutions for tahajjud prayers, thinking that if his late mother Mak Minah was still alive, she would have a thing or two to say to him about his wife's frequent late nights the past two months.


For Mim however, WHAT A NIGHT!




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