Tak Sempat Mengucapkan Selamat Tinggal... T_T

Hello. Kepada anda yang pernah ada akaun Friendster dan tidak pernah mendeletenya walaupun sudah lama tak log in ke sana, saya percaya, anda mesti memahami situasi saya sekarang. 

Yah, setelah lama mengaktifkan diri dalam facebook, saya sudah tidak lagi melawat laman friedster berkurun lamanya. Dan pada bulan September yang lepas, apabila saya cuba log masuk ke dalam laman friendster, saya telah dikejutkan dengan avatar baru dan semua gambar-gambar lama yang telah saya muat naik (upload) ke dalam friendster telah hilang semuanya.  T_T Habis semua gambar kenangan dengan kawan-kawan first year semua dah tak ada. Nasib la ada gambar yang sempat upload kat facebook. Kalau tak, langsung takde kenangan first year kat facebook.

Bukan itu je, blog friendster aku yang bertajuk Undiscoveredluv tu pun dah kena buang. Huwaaa... Walaupun blog itu tak aktif, tapi blog tu macam kenangan terindah masa lampau. Blog itu merupakan permulaan aku untuk mengekspresikan diri dalam alam maya.

Hmm, kenapa pula Friendster ni nak diubah jadi laman game online eh? Kenapa Tagged yang tak la famous sangat tu masih dapat bertahan sampai ke hari ini? Huwaaa~

Tagged account

Tak percaya, ini akaun Tagged saya yang masih aktif sampai sekarang walaupun saya jarang log masuk.

Gambar itu menerangkan betapa lama saya tidak mengupdate akaun ini. Hmmm. Tu la akibat terlampau banyak join laman online sosial (Hi-5, Tagged, Friendster, Facebook, Twitter, etc). (-_-")

Memory with former students.

Tapi... Yang penting gambar ni masih selamat. :)

Thank God.

My Happiest Moment

When was the last time you smiled - without expecting a smile in return,

laughed without caring about people around you, 

or expressed your excitement without letting other people's reaction affect what you felt?

 image grabbed from here

When was the last time you smile not for the camera, but your smile was a moment that was captured naturally by it?

image grabbed from here

When was the last time you externalized what you really felt inside?

One question that could sum all these questions up is,

when was the happiest moment of your life?

I will answer this post in a form of a photo, a solid proof of my happiest moment. That's the good thing about a photo, although it could not freeze the time, it could immortalize THE moment, and at least when we look back at that particular photo, we could reminisce that beautiful 10-20 seconds of happiness and bring back all that joyous feeling.

In my older post questioning about my happiest moment, I shared that it was hard for the adult me to find the happiest moment in my adult life, but when I flipped through the album of the childhood pictures, it was as easy as googling for me to spot my happy moments. Yes, childhood moments were the best. (who dare to disagree?) We were easy to please back then. We expressed what we felt, without holding back our feelings. We could laugh and cry whenever we felt like it.

Among all my childhood pictures, I chose this photo below to represent... 

MY HAPPIEST MOMENT!

They say a picture tells a thousand words. I agree, but let me complete the sentence 'a picture tells a thousand words, but it only has one truth', and the truth behind this picture is that the smile, the excitement, and all the expressions were genuine. Everyone was spontaneous. This picture is not about the photography technique, the artistic approach or camera angle whatsoever. It is all about 'capturing the moment'. A special moment for a 3-year-old birthday girl (which was of course, the little me), captured by my father with his old camera.

Whenever I looked at this picture, I could reminisce about what happened during that moment. From my facial expression, you can tell that I was overjoyed by the burning candles on my birthday cake. Isn't it blissful to be a kid? You felt as if you hit the jackpot just by looking at the burning candles on a birthday cake, anticipating for the moment to blow them. :)

 

But as they say the happiest moment only lasted for a very short time, yeah the saying was truly right. 

Because at the end of the happy birthday song, my happiest moment ended when this happened. 

(-_-")

Yeah. So much for my happy ending, huh. 

i have no property, no knowledge, no expensive gift to share but....

i have this prayer which was given by a dear best friend (you know who you are) to share with all of you. In times like these, prayer serves to comfort me and give me hope for better days.

Prayer to St Joseph

Oh, St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, 

so prompt before the throne of God. 

I place in you all my interest and desires. 

Oh, St. Joseph, do help me by your powerful intercession, 

and obtain for me from your divine Son and spiritual blessings, 

through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So that, having engaged 

here below your heavenly power, I may offer my thanksgiving 

and homage to the most loving of Fathers. Oh, St Joseph,

I never weary contemplating you and Jesus asleep in your arms, 

I dare not approach while He reposes near your heart. 

Press Him in my name and kiss His fine head for me and 

ask Him to return the kiss wen I draw my dying breath. 

St Joseph, patron of departing souls - Pray for us. 

 Image grabbed from here.

Say for nine mornings for anything you may desire. It has never known to fail, so be sure you really want what you ask.

How Old are You, Mentally?

"A person earns my respect due to their mental age, not their physical age."

=lameleftygirl (12th May 2011), Words of Lamehood=

Thus, I never expect people to respect me just because I am physically older than them. 

No.

I used to be a fan of Jojo, a popular singer who is physically 2 years younger than me. Then, someone (I forgot who was it but I do remember the comment) told me, "Why do you want to be her fan? She's younger than us, you know." 

By younger, the connotation there was to mean childish, and that 'older' people like us should go and admire singers who are older and legendary like Beyonce or Michael Jackson (God bless his soul) instead. Then I wondered, what is wrong with admiring a singer who is younger than you? 

Which brings me to a chain of new questions. 

What is wrong with agreeing to a younger person's view? 

What is wrong with accepting a younger person's suggestion?

What is wrong with listening to a younger people's advice?

Will it hurt our ego? Perhaps it would, but to hell with ego. 

If we care so much about ego, then we are still very much immature. 

(and yeah I am scolding myself now for being ego in certain things in life) 

Sometimes older people can be wrong too, despite all the 'asam garam kehidupan' that they/we/you/he/she (stop pointing fingers lol) tasted throughout their/our/your/his/her lives.

You can experience a lot , or in fact everything, but then if you never instill the lesson that you learned during that experience, then the experience did not mean a thing at all.

[ Fast fact: I am mentally physically and mentally 16 ;) ]

Impression and Intimidation

First day of class could mean two things.

First impression and intimidation.

I guess most of us would try hard to give the best impression on the first day of class so that we would not suffer for the rest of the semester. We would want to fit in, and be labeled as the ones with good adjectives and characteristics, such as the outspoken one, the smart one, the thinker and a few more positive roles. Most of these labels are used to camouflage our insecurity and our intimidation.

Many would try to get the lecturer's attention, but only a few would succeed. 

 

Although I had gone through many first days in my of my life, such as first day in kindy, first day of school, first day of work, first day of *insert whatever I forgot to include*, I still suck at giving a good first impression. The awkwardness due to my role as a klutz or the blur one, has never left me. I usually only get noticed on the later classes . And usually, that attention came when I least expected it.

I remember one lecturer, she was teaching literature, and she never really noticed me because a friend and I who attended her class were the quiet ones. We never speak out; we only answer when prompted, and more often than not, our answers were not really impressive. But that all ended after our test paper was given back to us. Before getting back my test paper, me and a few course mates discussed our answer, and I was dismayed when I found out that my answer were different from theirs. Gosh. I was expecting a failed paper.

All of a sudden, I heard the lecturer calling my name and asked "Who's Maureen Chua?"

I was dumbfounded. Why did she call my name?

"She has a very good answer for this question."

(She didn't exactly said it this way but the gist were there.)

God, you know how that compliment put a smile on my face whenever I recall this incident.She even asked my permission to lend my answer sheet to my other classmates, which of course I agreed to because I never really expect that I would keep this paper safely like now.

From this moment onwards, this lecturer never forgets me. I didn't realize those answers that I jotted down hesitantly could get me a recognition from a lecturer. Ironic.

Sheesh... Apparently, I am  too carried away cause I am not sure what was the connection between my first paragraph with my later paragraphs at this post but I guess, I just wanted to tell that first impression is somewhat overrated. In my opinion, first impression could help you only if you maintained it, but if you can never keep up with the personality or role that you are trying to portray yourself with during the first day, then it is better not to give any impression at all. Even if you did not score well in giving a good first impression, you can still have the chance to compensate that first impression with 2nd impression, or even the 3rd one.

The feeling of intimidation, on the other hand, if it gets the best of you, then you will never get to let your real self shine. If you turn that intimidated feeling and manipulate it, it somewhat can become a motivation.

Oh shit, what am I crapping, I need to get my book right now and get rid of this intimidation.

Passionate Peyton & My Passiveness to Pursue

 Interframe: I'm not sure if it was because of the holiday or what but suddenly I'm obsessed with drawing, cooking, and taking photos. I used to like that three things but not as obsessed as now. Gosh gosh gosh. I'm sure it was because of the holidays...


I used to be a One Tree Hill freak during my high school days. I love the casts because the they fitted the characters perfectly. Anything to do with OTH would make me go gaga during those days, even the theme song, 'I don't want to be' by Gavin DeGraw.

The casts of One Tree Hill

Peyton Sawyer is the girl with blonde curls... Isn't she stylish and pretty?;)

Among the colourful characters in these series, there was one female character that caught my attention because she's unique among them. Her name is Peyton Sawyer. It was her passion for arts and her love for drawing that caught my attention, because I have that same passion, it was just that it was a long time since I last drew anything complete. The things that I drew or sketched during my boredom attack would be incomplete or merely some rough sketch that did not make any sense.  

Peyton Sawyer's style

Below are Peyton Sawyer's work of arts which I grabbed from this website - Peyton's Art. 

Although it wasn't Hilarie Burton herself who actually drew it, I was inspired by the character she played. She invested her time and money in what she liked to do. I wish I am willing to do that. Her work of arts, her drawings, if you noticed, are her mediums of expressing herself. She wasn't drawing just for the sake of drawing but to express what she had in her mind.

 

 

 

 

 I like the style of her drawings, the dark comic kinda essence in it. It's so cool and so herrrr... 

And because of Peyton's character, I am excited and motivated to resurface my love for drawing at the moment. These few weeks, I had tried drawing the faces of the kids I observed during the day, and during night time I would try to draw the faces of my friends [which do not resemble their faces at all -_-" ]

The holy picture that I drew in order to save money on buying one. (-_-")

I realized that I was very passive in pursuing my love for drawing before, and I only draw when I wanted to save money or save time. Yeah, I was cheapskate to that extend. I remember there were only two complete pictures I drew during my stay in USM hostel; one was a picture of Jesus, and the other was a picture of my friend Susanna. Well, I drew the face of Jesus because I realized I didn't have any holy picture with me to paste in my room, so I drew the picture myself to save money on buying holy pictures (please don't condemn me huhu) and well... I drew a picture of Susanna because I thought of presenting it as a gift to her during her birthday (so that I need not to spend any money on presents, please don't condemn me)..  And I ended up keeping that drawing myself because I didn't want to give her a drawing which didn't look like her at all. It didn't do justice to her real pretty face. Unlike those who are passionate about arts, I didn't spend enough time on drawing,  nor spending money to buy the materials and tools for producing artwork. I would just use the 2nd best material or just borrow some of the stuffs from my sister.  (-_-")

The so-called portrait of Susanna. Maybe I should call it her caricature instead. A caricature which doesn't look like her at all. Hadey!!

But now I am beginning to spend money on my hobbies (hopefully I won't stop halfway like before). Currently, I have bought sketch book, drawing book, 6B and 8B pencils to improve my childish drawings.  All of them cost about RM10 if not mistaken. (O.. what an improvement on spending for hobbies) Just hope that I would be productive during these remaining holidays. May time moves slowly...

Happy Raya Aidilfitri in advance for those who are celebrating it. I just sooo love holidays. :)

It Happened Yesterday...

  I was riding in a Rapid bus. After an argument (as usual) with my sista, I felt tears in my eyes, and I didn't want it to roll down my face (especially in front of the other passengers), so I tried to look away, distracting my attention away from my emotion and tried to focus on the passengers that recently walked into the bus.

( I know people would think I'm congek a.k.a crybaby, but I will correct them by saying I am emotional instead.. :P.)

So I observed a father and daughter who recently came into the bus, and both of them looked extremely happy. There was no doubt they were enjoying each other company very much. The little girl looked like she was around 6, and the father looked like he was thirty something.

After they were seated, what I saw made me failed to hold my tears. 

They were communicating in sign language.

The father was mute. 

The little girl gestured the sign language to tell something to her father and smiled happily and the father replied back in a sign language. I had no doubt both of them were communicating nice things to each other; perhaps what they would do at their destination later.

I imagine this is the front view of them. I was observing them from their back actually.

Gosh I felt hot tears streaming down my face and quickly wiped it. My plan to hold these tears had failed. But this scene that I was looking at somewhat hit me hard. These father and daughter had every nice thing to say to each other yet the impairment caused them not to be able to say them out in words, so they depended on sign language instead, and here, I was able to say nice things to people around me yet I chose to speak hurtful, mean words instead. It was one on the spot moral lesson.

But still I wondered, when will I ever put into practice this lesson God had shown before my eyes?

Koleksi Lampau

Dulu-dulu aku suka baca Gila-Gila. Hampir setiap bulan beli majalah lawak ni. Kakak pulak beli majalah Ujang. So rasa best time tu, kami dapat exchange sesama sendiri untuk baca benda-benda berfaedah *sila jangan batuk* macam ni.

contoh cover majalah...

Sebab time tu rasa best dan cool jadi pelukis kartun atau komik, aku pun ada menyimpan cita-cita nak jadi pelukis komik lawak. Rasa best apa, boleh ekspresikan pandangan melalui kedua-dua lukisan dan perkataan.

Jadi, pada suatu hari, semasa aku masih 17 tahun ker 18 tahun aku dah lupa dah, aku pun ambik kertas dan cuba buat satu comic strip sendiri...

Alamatnya, keluarlah comic strip seperti kat bawah.

Please click to enlarge

Sekarang bila aku belek-belek fail aku dan ternampak balik comic strip ni, aku tersedar. Patut la cita-cita lampau aku nak jadi pelukis komik ni tak kesampaian.

Sebab lawak aku ni tak cukup general dan lebih bersifat 'inside jokes dengan family'...

Are You a Gradzilla?

FYI:  Gradzilla = graduate + zilla (an affix for monster). 

Photos grabbed from google image

I hope I'm not gonna be a gradzilla for my coming convocation.

This is the closest to gradzilla image that I could search online.

How do I describe a gradzilla?

1) Worry too much

2) Demand too many things 

3) Over-perfectionist and over-reactive over little imperfection

4) Acting like a spoiled brat and all the attention must be on him/her, him/her, him/her! (eg: like what we can watch in mtv's supersweet sixteenth birthday)

Someone I know (ahem) used to have a few signs of gradzilla and the gradzilla did not only ruined her own mood for worrying too much but our mood as well. We went all the way for her convocation at tooot, I had to endure lectures from my principal for taking holidays during my upper 6, etc etc, but then all we got when we arrived there were more lectures, demands, and complains from her. From pictures, of course all we could we see was nice, bright, and sunny, but what we had actually gone through, I hope we would not have it during my convocation *touch wood*.

Okay I have no grudges against this gradzilla but it's just that I want to compare what she did and what I'm gonna do during my own convocation in my post this time. No offense, *insert name*, but your convocation was one of the best example of a gradzilla that I could find. :P 

Well, during the preparation, the gradzilla had a very nice custom made kebaya outfit (which costs a lot but was only used less than 5 times), so I think it's not worth it, since I wasn't born with silver spoon in my mouth. Since I had a lot of  upcoming expenses that have to be taken care of, I should buy something more practical, something that can be used over and over again like a formal long sleeve blouse and a formal pants, or slacks we call it. But of course, those formal attires must be a nice one, nicer than my usual formal attires.

Secondly, she had fresh flowers from parents. I forgot already whether it was due to her demand or it was given by my parents willingly but guess what, I won't ask or demand flowers or any gifts (unless they themselves offered ahem) from my parents. First, flowers aren't that practical and so hard to take care of especially in a big crowd during the convocation (pity the ones who had to carry the flowers) and guess what, I would choose a Teddy bear over flowers any day.. ;) *hint hint* But then again, gifts should be given as a free-will and not compulsory so come what may.

Thirdly, the gradzilla went on ordering people around as if she had one extra special authority during her convocation and we had to adhere to her orders obediently. (-_-") It wasn't one very good experience to be one of the 'servants' you know, but then she was the first to graduate in our family so that was one of the reasons why we would do anything just to please her.

But then again, at the end of the day, after all the things are over, we would sit and look at the perfect picture that had been taken. If it wasn't for that gradzilla who had surveyed meticulously for the right photo studio, the picture won't be as nice. If it wasn't for that gradzilla who had planned for all the nice things, our parents would have nothing to boast about. (ahem)

I guess, each one of us should have that little gradzilla inside us so that it would drive us for perfection during an important occasion, but at the same time, don't practice your gradzilla-ness on everyone, especially your own family members. You can be a gradzilla when you are a client because you want to demand for perfection and maybe being a gradzilla was the only way they would give their best service to you, but when you practice your gradzilla-ness on your family, you could be ruining the best memory that they are supposed to have. Your convocation, isn't only your convocation, according to Mel. It's your parents' and family's convocation too.

Money Talk

Today I am going to talk about something which is so relevant to all of us, that is money. Money had always been an issue to us humans, whether we have too little of it, or too much of it. It's always gonna be a problem.

They say... money can't buy your happiness.

I say... 'but, money can decrease your sadness.'

They say... more money, more problem.

I say... 'no money, no life...'

They say... money is the roots of all evil.

I say... 'I agree... but many people do good deeds with money, such as donation, dana, etc.' Oprah is one very good example, don't you think so?

If you and I think carefully, actually money is not the problem. Money is just an object. When you let money control you instead of you control the money, it's from there that the problems exist. Humans, as hypocrite as we are, we blame money for everything when in actual, the greed, stinginess, insecurity and materialistic behaviour inside us which create problems out of money for us. If we put our priority well, we won't have money issues. If we put money as priority, we will easily be insecure when we run out of it. 

I hope that I can practice what I am posting now. I myself had a weird relationship with money. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. But then I realized, money isn't the problem at all. It's the way I handle them. 

I hope I can practice what Jesus said. "Don't worry about what you eat or what you drink. Even the stray birds are fed, what more to say you as the children of God." Erm I know this is not the exact saying but the gist are there. Hehe. I am not sure too from which chapter it is taken. (-_-") 

But the thing is, don't let yourself be the slave of money, instead let money be your slave. Ok?

Wake Me Up When September Starts...

After this coming September, another picture will be added on top of my baby picture.

I am still not excited for my convocation. Maybe because I am slow in receiving that excited vibration or maybe because I just don't want to disappoint myself if I planned so much and they don't work out.

Or maybe I am already in Penang that I thought I had the rights to be slow in planning.

Or maybe because I was so worried about financial state for my coming postgraduate studies.

Anyway, here's my unchecked check-list.

1) Photo shoot, haven't decide where, which studio.  (  )

2) Clothes and shoes for convocation, haven't buy. (  )

3) Hairdo (  ) [yeah, I  had to do something with my messy hair this coming convocation. Gotta change my hairstyle again lo...]


All this can't go on because of no 4...


4) Budget (  ) No budget yet. (-_-")


Well, anyway, the most important thing is that, my family are gonna be happy with their coming convacation. Apart from that, the rest are just minor things.

The History of a Practising Prankster

I LOVE to play prank. I used to play a lot of pranks on people and  sometimes even on my pets. I am not sure if this hobby had something to do with the fact that I was born on 11th April (which was dubbed as double fool day by my sista) but I guess my family loooove to prank people, especially me and my siblings. 

I remember one April Fool's Day, when my eldest sister Michele was still  12, she played a prank on her friend by presenting him with lizard's dropping wrapped in a bunch of papers. (-_-") Her friend was really disgusted. Score!

And my second sister Melissa was very good at shocking people and also keeping a straight face when making up stories. She always tricked me by popping in front of me out of nowhere with her long hair covering her face - gosh I always jumped out of my skin whenever she did that. Besides that prank, she tricked a lot of her friends too. One memorable prank that she played on her friend was the one where she made up stories about herself trying drugs before, and her friend somewhat believed her. (-_-") He believed her to the extend that when she confessed that she was actually lying, he wouldn't believe her confession. Backfired prank huh? lol. 

My mother was also quite a prankster. She played a prank on me when I was still in Form 6 by asking me to try a pansuh that she received from her colleague. "It's chicken pansuh" She told me. I was skeptical of her statement but since there's no harm in eating something your own mother brought home, I just tried it. I was clear it was not chicken, but it did not taste like fish either. 

"It's actually snake's meat," She told me, smiling. (-_-")

Besides this light prank, there was one time, circa 2002, my parents and my cousin Mary played a prank on my cousin, Agnes. My cousin Agnes is my adult cousin who was already a mommy that time. Agnes's family and our family wanted to go back to Dalat, so for security, Agnes placed her family car at our home (because we had gates and they didn't). So Agnes, her husband and children went back to Dalat by water transport, which was a speedboat. Since our family were using car to go back to Dalat, Agnes placed some of her things in our car for us which we promised to pass to her that very evening when we reached Dalat. 

We went on with the road trip as planned, but when we reached Mukah, which was about one hour from Dalat, we stopped at Mary's house (PS: Mary is Agnes's older sister), and from there the idea to play a prank on Agnes came up. Mom called Agnes up and told her that we didn't go on a road trip as planned, we were still at Sibu and would only go to Dalat the next evening. So that very moment, Agnes was very angry and disappointed so she called her sister Mary up (who was my mom's partner in crime in this prank) and Agnes told and shared all her disappointments and rage with Mary. After Mary hung up the phone, we all broke into laughter~!

When we reached Dalat that evening, Agnes's husband saw us and was very surprised. He, looking tired, told us that Agnes was very angry and asked him to buy back all the things that she put in our car at the shops. When Agnes found out that it was actually a prank, and her things arrived safely at Dalat with us, she was quite angry but not as angry as before. She just said that "Eee, this prank is just too much! Don't do it again."

Okay. Enough about my family's prank. Let me tell you guys about my own prankster experience.

Yeah this was how Madam Meenon looked like. Sorry for my horrible drawing. (-_-")

When I was about 8 years old, I played a prank on Sharon, my cousin, who was also my  closest playmate during my childhood. We always played downstairs at my old house. One fine day, I was extremely bored, so I decided to play a trick on her. While we were playing, I told Sharon to wait for me downstairs while I ran  upstairs, went to my parents' bedroom and quickly dressed up in my mom's old dress. I wrapped a towel around my head just like a headscarf and wore a pair of sunglasses which I took from my parents' dressing table. Then from upstairs, I shouted my cousin's name and asked her to join me upstairs. Slowly, Sharon climbed the stairs and then she saw me in all those funny clothes.

I quickly approached her and tell her "Hi, I'm Madam Meenon, Maureen's not here." Sharon was speechless. Until now, I think she actually believed me or maybe she thought that Madam Meenon was my alter ego lol. So that moment onwards, she would call me Madam Meenon whenever she sees me in funny clothes and glasses.

When I got older, my prank got nastier. I was about eleven or twelve that time. I shared the same room with my sister Melissa while my eldest sister shared the same room with our cousin Pamela. Pamela is our cousin from Dalat who used to live with us to help out with the house chores. So one day, when Pamela was  showering, I entered their room when nobody was there and hid under their bed (PS, their bed were combined together). When Pamela came in the room alone to change her clothes after showering, I put out my left hand from under the bed and frightened her. Thank God she did not scream and her reaction was merely  "ISH... Baby padu..!" in quite an annoyed tone.

After feeling satisfied with my prank, I planned another prank - now on both Pamela and Michele. Muahaha!

One fine night, I pretended to have a fight with Melissa. Then, I pretended to be really upset and announced to the whole family that I would sleep earlier that night, and locked the door to our room. Actually, I had informed Melissa beforehand that I would lock our bedroom's door for this prank. So after pretending to sleep, I tiptoed to Michele and Pamela's room and let my bedroom's door stayed locked so that nobody would be suspicious. I hid under their bed. There was a gap between their bed and it was that gap that I planned to carry out my prank. Muahaha..!

So, my plan for the prank was this:

This was more or less how my fingers looked like that time.

 I stick the plasticine on my fingernails so that they would look scary. I planned to scare both of them by popping up my hand through the gap between their beds from underneath. Muahahaha. But then, not all prank would go smoothly as planned. While waiting for both of them to come to their bedroom, I fell asleep under their beds.

In the middle of the night, I was suddenly awake. I realized that I fell asleep and I heard both Michele and Pamela were still having a conversation on the bed with the lights off (you know, the before sleeping conversation). So in the middle of their conversation, I popped up my hand from  the gap between their beds and trying to make a scary sound but since I just woke up, my supposedly scary voice was hoarse instead. 

"What??" Both of them were kinda shocked. To my disappointment, they didn't scream  loudly like how I imagined they would. 

"She did it again!" Pamela said and both of them asked me to go back to my room and sleep. I went back to my room obediently, and although the outcome of the prank was not as good as I imagined it would be, at least  the outcome of the prank was quite a consolation.

During my university years, the pranks that I played were merely like hiding somebody's branded bag uhuk Joe uhuk, hacking someone's facebook status uhuk Mark uhuk, pretending to quarrel with Melissa during April Fool and uhuk Step uhuk Ebeth uhuk believed it lol. These were the pranks that I played and  I still think that they weren't enough.

But pranks do have a few rules. One, we cannot simply play pranks on people without knowing their health condition, whether they had histeria, heart attack or something. Two, we have to find a suitable prank for different people, according to their personality, their history etc. Maybe on my future post, I would share with y'all about the rules and regulation (sounds formal, right? adui!) of playing a prank on people.

Wow this sudden craving for pranks made me miss Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd episodes. I wish I could have a camera to record all the pranks I played before. MUAHAHAHA.

 So be ready people.. Till the prankster strikes again...! ;)

An Enjoyable Night at Enjoy Cafe

Interframe: Although we do not meet often, me and my besties Amanda, Stephanie and Peter still bonded with each other during a night outing we have everytime we are back at Sibu. This night outing is like some sort of tradition for us to update each other and spend quality time together. Yo... I hope we can always keep in touch like this though we are far apart from each other, guys~!

Whenever my besties and I wanted to hang out, the golden question (soalan cepu emas) that popped from Steph's mouth would be "Where to eat?" cause she was the one driving. Lol. The rest of us would scratch our heads looking for inspirations and searching for suggestions to find a suitable dining place at Sibu. Thanks Steph for driving us during our every hanging out session. *wink2*

That night (which was just last night), because we were not very hungry, we wanted to look for a place where we could eat some light meal (eg: snacks). So Peter came up with a suggestion - Enjoy Cafe~!

Enjoy Cafe & Restaurant is located at the Rejang Medical Centre area, Pedada Road, where a lot of dining places are located too, such as Uncle Dom's, Sushie Tie, etc.

Enjoy Cafe & Restaurant looked kinda exclusive from the outside, I thought it is a cafe with a bar concept.

 When we entered, 

TA DAA~!

It looked somewhat like family restaurant too. 

The ambience inside this cafe gave us the feeling of privacy
- just what we needed.

The view of the bar from where I was seated.

My drink - iced lemon tea. The taste was just like the average lemon tea, not as special as the price though. :P

Steph's honey lemon green tea - forgot to ask her how it tasted but I guess just the average too.

Amanda's peppermint tea, its taste was nice, according to her. ;)

Peter's watermelon juice, is served in a very cute glass lol. 

Each one of us ordered a snack from the snack section inside the menu, and the four of us picked these lucky four chosen snacks. 

Salad calamari - ordered by Peter, it was crispy and tasty.

Fried tauhu (not the exact name in the menu though lol) ordered by Stephanie. It was nice. :) I guess Steph is tauhu fan... ;)

Salad cha kue ordered by Amanda. Again, not the exact name of the dish based on the menu. It was crispy, plus there's onion and pork inside. ;)

I forgot what was the name of this snack already..  (-_-") but there's pork inside. It was damn crispy too. :)

So far, so good. We were satisfied with the food, the portion and the price. And one thing for sure, this would not be our last visit here. Wait for our comeback, Enjoy Cafe~!

Us, after finishing our snacks. Our happy faces were the proof that we were satisfied with the servings.. ;)

 

Blessing in Disguise?

Interframe: I got confused with English tenses a lot. Here's a page which might be useful. (Hey did i use/used the right tense for this sentence? Hmmm..)

 Although I left the university for about two months already, the sleep-late-wake-up-late lifestyle of a university student kinda stuck with me. Thanks to the online activity and late night shows on tv, I never fail to wake up later than 8.30 am every single day. Sometimes I went to the extent of waking up at 10 am if my sleep was interrupted earlier.

Besides waking up late, I never miss my afternoon nap.

That was why, yesterday, during my afternoon nap in the living room, I could hear my mother and grandma gossiping about me in Melanau. [I don't know why, but this is my parents' and grandmother's habit. They speak in Melanau among themselves but when they speak to us (the children), they switched to Hokkien.]

"How can she still feel sleepy when she woke up so late?" Mom wondered aloud. "I woke up a lot earlier, went to work, yet did not take a nap."

"She slept very late last night," Grandma responded. "Not just last night, every night. Don't know what she was doing so late at night."

Grandma's bedroom is located at downstairs, so she knew how late I stayed awake every night though she was asleep. Grandma had a habit to wake up in the middle of the night to visit the toilet, and everytime she wakes up, she would see me still wide awake at the living room, sitting in front of my laptop, busy online.(Ahem)

"Not a good habit at all," Mom and Grandma both agreed about my negative habit.

"Makel angai tan," Mom added, which means 'very lazy' in Melanau.

Because I was too sleepy that time, I had no energy to be defensive or to justify my sleep late habit. So I just let it go.

That very night, which was last night, as usual, I carried on with my sleep late habit. I was still wide awake at 11 pm something. I never sleep earlier than 12 am, so 11 pm was kinda early for me, but for my parents and grandmother, it is considered late. Very late.

As usual, my Grandma woke up in the middle of her sleep, but instead of walking to the toilet, she walked towards me and asked me to read the name of the pills that she brought to me.

"What pills are these?" She asked me while showing me the pack of yellow coloured pills.

There were no indications on the pills' package so I told grandma I didn't know what type of pills they were. Then she walked back into her bedroom.

A few seconds later, I heard a LOUD CRASH, it sounded like the table fan was falling.

I quickly ran into her bedroom, saw her collapsed on the table, thus causing the table fan to fall off the table.

"Ah Ma, what happened?" I was so shocked, the question was almost a whisper. She was conscious, but then, she was very weak. She could not stand up.

I was so panic. 

While I put both my hands to support both her arms, suddenly she was kinda... unconscious.

"Ah Ma?" My panicmeter was rising.I shook her shoulders but she wasn't responding.

"AH MA! PAPA! MAMA!" I was shouting from downstairs but my efforts was in vain. So instead of calling my parents, I resorted to calling Ah Ma again and again.

After calling Ah Ma a few times, she was conscious again. PHEW~

"I'm having stomach ache. I think it must be because of the pineapple. I wanted to find the medicine, but couldn't find it. Very painful," she said weakly.  Although those were not comforting words, I was relieved because Ah Ma was finally conscious. I asked Ah Ma to rest on her bed while I ran off to my parents' bedroom, asking them for assistance to find the right medicine for Grandma.

Finally, Ah Ma ate her medicine, she was feeling better, and I slept with her that night.

This afternoon, I had my nap again, as usual, but  quite unusual, nobody gossip/scolded me anymore. Maybe, they realized, this sleep late lifestyle is not that negative after all. At least, I could function like a night security guard... Err.. Not that I want this thing to happen twice *touch wood*. Just a precaution.

Wake Up Call

Interframe: I should remind myself not to order teh chi during a night outing cause I will end up becoming a zombie who can't sleep. Arggh, scratch that, that teh chi was damn nice, it's worth to stay awake for teh chi that nice! XD

Last night, which was like 4 hours ago, I just came back from an outing with my three besties. We were catching up with each others' lives. Two of them, Amanda and Stephanie, were in their final semester and will graduate this December, the other one, Peter, will graduate next year. Me? I was the only graduate there, just without my scroll yet, since my convocation is only going to happen this coming September. But I was the one least worried and without a plan for my future yet though the future is NOW. I was still in the dreamland. I didn't go looking for a job with the excuse that I am still waiting for the reply from my master application. 

There were many reasons why I wanted to continue master. One reason was that, I still could not let go my university life. Secondly, it was due to the condition given by my mother, saying that if I wanted to stay in Penang, I should not stay because of work, but because of study. Thirdly, it was because I knew deep down inside me that with my achievement now, I am still far from getting my dream job unless I could have all the requirements needed for my dream job. So those were the options given to me, and I chose to continue.

To tell the truth, I had so many ambitions till I need to have 7 lifetimes if I wanted to fulfill them all. But ambitions without efforts are meaningless. And if I didn't earn anything, I would be further away from achieving any of my ambition. (-_-") Oh my, why is life so hard and complicated, though just thinking about it.

But when my bestie Steph told me her plan to work after graduate and also invest in silver, I was amazed and kinda think; maybe I should try to invest too. I mean, in the process of chasing your dreams, you need money to survive right? So maybe I can invest in something like gold? (Since my grandma knew so much about gold hmm) Maybe should use some of my saving to buy gold and wait for a few years then sell them back? Rather than having my money being saved in a bank and waiting for that small interest distribution each year. Even trust fund like ASN is not that promising.

Maybe I should think more seriously about my future... Cause the future is NOW. 

Invest in gold? Here's a link which might give you guys tips on how to invest in gold. 

What can I earn, and what can I give back to my family and the community? 

Better stop JUST THINKING about it but START TO THINK SERIOUSLY AND PLAN ABOUT IT.

Like they say, early birds catches the worm. So I better wake up now while I can still hear the call.

SECRETS FOR SALE!

"They say, a picture tells a thousand words.

But have they ever wondered, in that 1000 words, how many of the thousand are true?"

=Words of Lamehood=

Honestly, I am just a so-so fan of Singaporean drama. Only a few of Singaporean dramas could capture my attention, such as Little Nyonya, Holland Village and The Hotel. Why? Erm maybe because majority of the Singaporean drama usually revolve around money issue, family and all that cliche stuff. *Yawn*

So when my eldest sister recommended 'Secrets for Sale' drama series to me, I was skeptical to watch it. My sister told me it was very nice. I was like, "Ok, but I prefer watching movies over drama, cause I am kinda lazy to follow up the next episodes." I was hinting to her to take back those DVD that she offered to me - but she didn't get the hint (or maybe she did it on purpose :P). So I gave this drama series a chance and I started to watch them one night, and yeah, I am glad that I did. 

I finished the 13(?) episodes in just 2 and a half day. It was very addictive.

Just like the theme in this series which revolve around honesty, trust and prejudice, I shouldn't judge this drama merely based on my own prejudice ideas about Singaporean dramas. After I watched it, I think that I really like the dialogues and the characters in this drama, especially Ren Yi's character, which was the character played by Christopher Lee.

 

This is the theme song in this movie, which I began to like. :) Catch Christopher Lee, Jesseca Liu and the other famous Singaporean stars in this series. :D

A LITTLE synopsis about this drama. 

The story started with Jia Qi (played by Jesseca Liu) and her sister's family on vacation at Malacca. Jia Qi's brother in-law received a phone call, thus he went off while his wife, Jia Qi's sister followed silently behind, because she suspected her husband was having an affair with another woman, thus leaving Jia Qi with their two little boys. Out of the blue, someone took the two boys away, and all the family members disappeared except for Jia Qi. 

The story was fast forwarded three years later; depicting Jia Qi's occupation as a private investigator (PI). During one of her task, she dropped her DSLR camera (ouch!) on someone's car, and that someone happened to be Ren Yi (Christopher Lee). First meeting, and they had very bad first impression of each other.

Ren Yi and Jia Qi met for the first time in the first episode.  Not a very good first meeting though.

photo source: here

Due to Ren Yi's jobless state and his very good photography skill (he was an award winning photographer but due to an unfortunate circumstance, he was maligned and he couldn't work in any related fields due to his bad reputation), he was finally hired by Jia Qi to work for her PI firm. He was given a three months probation period, mainly because Jia Qi could not really trust him at first.

Despite the ongoing arguments between the two, they actually had chemistry, and subsequently they were impressed with each other once they knew each other better but both were very ego and could not accept the reality when they realized they had feelings for each other. But this story did not only revolve around these two and their romance but much, much more than that.

Jia Qi and Stanley in one of the later scenes. 

 Photo source: here

Plus, the appearance of Stanley (played by Thomas Ong) in the picture, as Jia Qi's long time sweetheart, made the storyline became more and more interesting.

Secrets for Sale - Pictures are not always the best evidence as one can frame others through an angle, for example, like the photo above. XD

Photo source: here

This story is one story which could play with my emotions where I was laughing like crazy at the beginning and cried silently towards the end of the series. If you think you can control your emotions very well, I challenge you to watch this.

One of the lessons that I inferred from this story is that sometimes evidence is not the only way to seek for the truth but it is your instinct which plays a greater role in identifying the truth. And another thing I learned from this series is that no matter how long you know a person, that person is not necessarily trustworthy. Sometimes, the person whom you never suspects could be the culprit causing all the troubles to you.

Okay, before I spoil the surprise, I better stop right now.

To know more about this series, check this page out. :)