Madness Makes My World Go Round

Remind Yourself of the Happiness to Forget the Sorrow

2012-01-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

Tonight,

out of the blue,

I discovered videos that Claire had taken using Mr Panasonic,

and as I watched it,

I felt the fun aura at FM house.

I wanted to watch a funny video.

Tango video. :P

Watched it, laughed, and then clicked on another video.

Then suddenly,

I watched videos of HER.

And guess what.

I didn't expect it but...

That previous senior, sisterly love came back.

Just like that.

Funny.

How many days I spent complaining about what she had done.
Even today...

And yet, the power of the video...
Just like that...

I saw the video of her serenading us with Christmas song.

I wanted to be angry, but the anger...

The fire of anger kinda blown off.

Hard, yet

Easy.

Forgiven?

Sisters forgive one another,

but still, they advise one another.

In order to make that clear,

Maureen,

hereby will remove my complaint post about her,

so I would not be reminded of it anymore.

Forgive.

But never forget to advise.

Oh yeah, when is that again? Next sem? :P

Make It Happen~

2012-01-01T18:32:00.000-08:00

For this year, as I grow older, these are the lists of what I want to make sure it happens this year...

Physically, I want...

1) To trim my eyebrow, so it won't be as thick as now. (But thick eyebrows are good to make me look stern, don't they?)

2) To update my closet more often. (which means, more shopping to be done woo hoo~!)

3) To accessorize more.(which also means more shopping)

Mentally, I want...

1) To read at least 10 fiction books by the end of this year to improve my English. (Kacang kan? :P)

2) To be more fluent in native languages like Melanau (from different dialects), Kenyah, and also Iban.

3) More stern, more courageous, and stand up for myself and my loved ones. That includes confidence. (Amen...)

Spiritually, I want...

1) To be more forgiving. (erm, did I type wrongly here? :P)

2) To be more attentive in Mass. ( FYI, it took me 3 Masses to attend in one weekend for me to finally get the Gospel huhuh...)

3) To read Bible more often... (Amen)

So, this is it. I hope I can make them all come true, each and everyday from this day onwards.

Tak Sempat Mengucapkan Selamat Tinggal... T_T

2011-11-19T02:33:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-22T07:08:00.000-07:00

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....

2011-10-11T06:18:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-09-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-08-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-08-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-07-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

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 ~~con~~vacation. Apart from that, the rest are just minor things.

The History of a Practising Prankster

2011-07-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-06-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-06-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

"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. :)

My Current Addiction

2011-06-16T08:49:00.000-07:00

The last time I had this fanatic syndrome was during my high school years, when I was crazy about Blue. I almost forgot how it felt like to be a fanatic till I ~~met~~ watched them dance on Showdown 8tv!

Elecoldxhot (go to their Facebook fanpage at here. )

YES! THEM!

The five of them who made up Elecoldxhot:

1) Chriz Ooi (leader)

2) Dennis Yin (Tae Yang's lookalike lol)

3) Billy Yap

4)Joe Ang

5) Joe Lin

There are two Joe's and I hope I got their surnames right. ;P

For those who are watching Showdown on 8tv every Wednesday night (9.30 pm), you probably know who they are. For those who don't, let me tell you who they are. They are my current addiction (haha tidak menjawab soalan). And they are the reason why my cellphone Digi and Celcom credits are zero-ing even during this not-so-social period of my life. Okay, serious. For those who don't know Elecoldxhot, they are one of the best dance crews in Malaysia.

From what I've ~~stalked~~ observed, they had joined a lot of dance competitions before, including Astro Battleground. To know more about Elecoldxhot from the members itself, just go to their facebook fanpage here. ;)

Let me tell you my own electric-moment ~~love~~ fanatic-at-first-sight story with them.

Every night when I am at home, I kept switching the TV channel from one to another channel. It was a Tuesday night. I guess that time I had just finished watching Keeping Up With Kardashians (which is another addiction of mine lol) and I turned to 8tv. That hour, 8tv was showing the repeat show of Showdown 2o11 and because I had nothing else to watch, I just watched it. At first, I was impressed with HMC Phlow's dance moves, and wanted to turn to another channel, but when the host (Hafiz) said that Borneo Crew is going to perform soon, I just waited for them to perform but before their turn it was Elecoldxhot's turn. And guess what, after I watched Elecoldxhot's performance, I was so impressed and without a doubt, I knew for sure that they were going to win the best performance of the night, and I was right. ;)

Elecoldxhot week 3 performance - the theme was replicate and represent.

It was the first time I set my eyes on Elecoldxhot when watching this performance from them, I became a regular audience of this show from that moment onwards.

Honestly, I never been so fanatic or impressed with any local groups, stars or celebrities until I watched them on TV. Seriously, they are going to be the next big thing in Malaysia. ;)

So don't forget to vote for Elecoldxhot by typing SD ECX to 33399.

Elecoldxhot during week 6. Photo grabbed from here.

I rather be broke than to be heartbroken if this deserving crew not winning this competition. So I will constantly vote for them. For Elecoldxhot fans out there, you know what you gotta do. ;)

The Art of Criticizing

2011-06-10T00:38:00.000-07:00

How many of us like to be criticized?

How many of us like to criticize?

I bet the number of those saying 'yes' to the second question would be higher than the former.

Because, as human, it is easier to find fault in others than to admit to others that we are imperfect though we are aware of how imperfect we are.

I am one of those who constantly get criticisms from others, and don't get me wrong, I do appreciate criticism from people, but there are certain types of criticism that I despised. I admit I like to criticize too, but now I only do it to give positive criticism (a criticism to motivate) and for the negative criticism, I only do it as "counter attack" (meaning, I only do it when people did it to me first *wink2* ).

For me, criticism has two effects on those being criticized, whether it:

a) make you aware of your own imperfection and motivate you to improve myself

b) discourage you to do something you like cause the critics make you felt as if you do not deserve to be where you are.

There was once, someone criticized my baking ability (for heaven's sake, I only tried baking once so how can you evaluate my baking skill based on my first try?), saying that I should stick to only cooking and not try baking. I was like OUCH. I mean, I know I am not good in baking but hello~ I made the horrible cupcakes without using the proper baking utensils and I didn't follow the real recipes. So I knew there should be room for improvement. Unless I was using all the utensils and followed the recipes properly, then your criticism might just be appropriate.

So my response to the 'someone' who criticized me was

"The more you are trying to ask me not to do it, the more I want to do it."

And I dislike a criticism which asked me to stop trying something because that just might lead me to have a negative thought on you:

" Are you insecure that if I am motivated and trying to improve myself and finally succeeded, then you would feel like you're left behind cause you're not a good baker (ahem that hurts right)? Hmm.. *wonder* "

So guys and girls, when you are criticizing, please criticize to improve instead of discourage. If someone did a mistake that they REALIZED, there is no need for you to remind them and make them feel bad about it, or the worst part of it is to ask them stop doing something that they like just because they are not good at it.

Unless they did not realize it, then your intervention is much appreciated.

It's okay to criticize,

but remember..... do it in a nice way.

Thank you.

Of Honesty and Hypocrisy

2011-06-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

When you say 'I don't care what happens'

People will say 'you're selfish and ignorant.'

"When you say 'no comment',

People will say 'you are scared to take a stand.'

When you say 'No, this so wrong. He/she should not do this, I disagree with this,'

People will say 'You're damn judgmental.'

When you say 'Chill, relax, let him/her do what she wants. It's his/her life,'

People will say 'You're damn open-minded, you are an apostate, you're strayed, just like this damn person.'

Don't you notice that no matter which stand you take, people will make negative assumption about it?

(Words of lamehood, 2011)

Well, the social issue that I was referring to was the confession made by Adindaevans who confessed in her blog that she is no longer a virgin. This issue was talked about because Adindaevans is just fourteen.

The reaction of Malaysians regarding this issue was of course - typical, there are so many people who bashed her, made fun of her, etc. Some backed her up, some made excuses for her.

I was surprised that people were acting like this thing was new and unbelievable when in reality this free sex issues happened among teenagers waaayyy longer before this girl made that confession.

Back when I was in high school, I heard a lot of cases like these happening to my schoolmates, some to the extend of getting pregnant, but only now you guys started to make a fuss about it?

What? Did Malaysians not know that things like this happened among teenagers for so long already? It was as if this issue was less important before because of the minimal attention than it is now.

On second thought, maybe the blessing in disguise for the fuss about this issue is that the education system and the family institution will take a more serious action in tackling and handling this issue when people start looking and watching.

Some Malaysians said that they are ashamed of her and at the same time judging her. Okay, so you are ashamed that the Malaysian teenagers are acting this way, but then, you are not ashamed to judge, to take the place of God, which do not belong to you?

Don't you have any humility in you?

At first, I could not care less about this issue, but to see the way people judge her, I felt so angry at these 'holier than thou' people. People like these exist everywhere. In fact, these people are the cause that social issues are getting worst. They are the person who made the youths felt that they are not worthy to turn over a new leaf. For you people who like to judge but do not have any eligibility (because obviously you did not graduate from law school to become a judge), guess what, your action of judging only lead to more harm than good. Do you think people will turn over a new leaf when you tell them

"You are not good. You are bringing shame to the country, etc, etc. Tak tau malu, etc."

Your act of judging will only make them more defensive and rebellious.

And here's another question.

When people asked this girl to keep to herself about losing her virginity,

I wonder,

Does it make someone more virtuous by keeping quiet when losing virginity than the person who lose virginity but confess about it?

Losing virginity is still the same, and keeping quiet about it doesn't make you any better than this girl we are talking about.

And nope, don't get me wrong, I am not justifying her action, nor am I condemning her, but I am questioning those people who bashed and slammed her. My focus here is on the people who wanted to become the jury, or the judge, when in fact, they are not in the place or position to be so.

For those who like to judge - Start investigating your own sister, brother, kids. Just because they didn't confess or blog about it doesn't mean that they are still virgins.

You better think about it. #sarcasm#

Bittersweet Taste

2011-05-28T07:09:00.000-07:00


Do you notice that the picture above looks like a scary smiley face? XD

No, I am not talking about the taste of the horrible cupcakes above. ~~They were disaster, but on my defense, they were edible. XD~~

Do you know that feeling of, you don't like to do something, but since you are asked to do that thing by someone you love, then you finally force yourself to love doing that thing because that thing was supposed to be sure thing, but after days of feeling unsure yet prepared to do that thing, you finally know that the thing is not a sure thing?

And the probability of making it a sure thing is very thin?

What would you feel? Relieved? Disappointed? Cheated?

Okay, maybe you don't get the thing I was crapping about in the first paragraph since it was almost like a monologue to myself. Let me be a little clearer. If you read my previous post, Kalau Aku Boleh Lambung Syiling Destiny, you would know that I was supposed to take on a temporary job that I do not like, uhuk temporary teacher uhuk. But then, since my mom said it is at an all boys primary school and I would be teaching the lower primary students, I was okay and quite excited with it.

Thus, I brought my formal attires back home, and bought a pair of formal shoes just in case. At first, I was skeptical. I had a habit of hard to believe something until I encounter it. Maybe you would say I have trust issues but then I did not want to be too sure about something so that I would not be disappointed later. For example, like the master application that I am applying now. When I bade farewell to my course mates, my course mates told me "Hey, we're gonna meet again, during the master." But I was still... skeptical. It's not like we already promised a place there.

But then, if the case is reversed, where you were promised a place, and you kept asking that if it is a sure thing and people kept assuring you that "Of course, it's a sure thing since the headmaster said he wanted to choose you for his school." So I tried to be more optimistic and sure, and tried to be prepared, though not really prepared. :P

But then, yesterday I just got a news, I don't know how to describe it, whether it was a bad news or good news, when my mom told me that the officer at the education department at my town told the headmaster that they will choose the temporary teacher instead of the headmaster himself and they told him they already had another candidate for that position that I was promised to last time. So, my mom asked me if I still wanted to apply teaching temporarily for other school. I was like... " I am not ready to teach at another school. I prefer to teach at SK Sacr*d H****. And if I applied but then I got offered at another school, I rather don't want to take it." Wow, you must think I sounded like a perasan diva, trying to be choosy, when I am supposed to be in the position of accepting any offers right now.

Err, on my defense, I am doing good for the other school, you know. First, I don't like teaching that much, so I can't be flexible at it. I prefer teaching at primary schools, and to teach at a school where at least I am familiar with the atmosphere (I've been to the headmaster's office once, or twice. :P) I don't want to experience the torture of adapting to an atmosphere for the sake of doing something I don't like. If it was something that I like, it would be a different story, but then, this sacrifice is not worth it, even for the money.

So, it's either all or nothing. If I am going to teach at the first school I was promised, I would take the job, but if I could not get the position at the school that I wanted, instead of torturing myself teaching at the school that I am not familiar with, I choose to continue my position as the homemaker and try my best to be as productive as possible by doing some gardening, cooking, and if God-willing, baking. I still want to be able to choose no matter what. Though I am in no position to be choosy now.

So that's what I am feeling now. Bittersweet. I am happy because I do not need to do what I don't like to do but at the same time, I am disappointed I am gonna lose a lot on experience, lose my chance to compensate my dissatisfaction towards my previous teaching skill, lose my chance to earn money which I could use for my convocation, and my chance of putting something good to see on resume. And ironically, I am quite sad that I would lose my chance to be called "Cikgu" once more. It was quite a long time since I last heard people refer me that way. Funny I don't like to teach but I like it when people call me that.

So yeah, it was sweet, but bitter at the same time. But then, if I am going to be a homemaker for my rest of my stay in Sibu, I am going to make sure that I make full use of my holiday by being as productive as possible. This home will never be the same again when I leave for Penang later, I promise you that.

Kacang Panjang Goreng @ Fried Long Bean (The Fifteen Minute Dish)

2011-05-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

Interframe: This is the 2nd episode of The Mad Suri Rumah Series, a new series which showed you how a blur girl survived her days as the newly appointed homemaker.

Hello ladies (and maybe some men who accidentally run into this blog)! I am back again. With simple ways of preparing dishes of course. As you can see from the title above, you must know what type of cooking that I am gonna share with all of you right?

So yesterday, I kinda had a rush hour cooking going on at the kitchen because I started cooking at 12 something in the noon. It was because when I just started to hit the kitchen at around 10 am, suddenly my father told me this "We need to go out to pay the bills." I was like "What?" It was just the right time to start cooking and heating some of the ready-made dishes by mom, but then I had to go out. (-_-")

So I decided to fry the long bean for Mama and myself (since Papa already had his healthier dishes prepared by Mama which just needed to be heated) because it is one of simple dish which consume just a short time to prepare. Yeah, ladies, veggies again. Hehe.

Let me list down the ingredients. ;)

1) long beans
2) garlic
3) chili
4) anchovies
5) salt

Yeah, another simple dish with a really short list of ingredients too.


lesung batu dengan segala bahan-bahan untuk menggoreng.

1) Bahan- bahan yang telah tertulis di atas adalah seperti dalam gambar di atas ini. Jangan lupa, lesung batu ialah alatan yang penting untuk menyediakan masakan ini. ;)

2) Kacang panjang dipotong seperti di atas. Jangan terlalu panjang, jangan terlalu pendek. 2/3 kepanjangan dan kedalaman mulut anda.

3) Dengan menggunakan lesung batu, sila tumbuk bawang putih, lada dan ikan bilis yang disediakan tadi. Kuantiti bawang putih, lada dan ikan bilis ini bergantung kepada saiz hidangan kacang panjang anda ya, ladies...

4) Tumbuk sehingga jadi macam ini. Ok, sudah siap kan. Jadi mari kita beralih kepada kuali pula.

5) Panaskan kuali anda. Masukkan minyak secukup saiz hidangan anda. Jangan letak terlampau banyak kerana kacang panjang ni tak menyerap minyak sangat macam cangkuk manis.

6) Bila dah rasa kuali cukup panas dengan meletakkan tangan anda beberapa inci daripada permukaan kuali seperti di atas, anda sudah boleh masukkan campuran hasil tumbukan tadi ke dalam kuali.

7) Ok, apabila dah masukkan campuran tadi, pastikan api tu kecil supaya tak nak hangus ok.

8) Apabila campuran tu dah wangi, tibalah masanya untuk memasukkan kacang panjang ke dalam kuali ini. Sebaik sahaja kacang panjang dimasukkan , besarkan api anda. Dan kacau kacang panjang tu seperti gambar di bawah.

9) Kacau sekejap, lepas tu kecilkan api. Masukkan garam secukup rasa, bergantung pada saiz hidangan anda. Macam saiz hidangan ni, saya masukkan dua cubit garam jer. Kacang panjang ni tak sedap kalau overcooked. Kita kena pastikan hidangan ni rangup, tu lah sebabnya biarkan api besar sekejap, kacau sekejap, pastu kecilkan api, and lepas tu dah boleh tutup api.

10) Yea, kacang panjang goreng yang digoreng tadi sudah siap dihidang dan sedia untuk dibaham.

Okay that's all. I'm gonna watch American Idol liao. :D

See you on the next episode of The Mad Suri Rumah Series. If I am motivated enough to continue ;D

Do You Smell What The 'Suri Rumah Amatur' is Cooking?

2011-05-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

Interframe: Anda sedang membaca The Mad Suri Rumah series. Ini episod pertama. Nantikan episod seterusnya pada.... ikut mood penulis la beb.

You know, my hometown dish that I missed the most when I was in Penang was this simple dish - Cangkuk Manis. And my favourite Cangkuk Manis was the one prepared by my mother. Since it is my favourite dish, it was the first veggie dish that I knew how to cook too. XD Yeah, I started to prepare my very first Cangkuk Manis when I was 18. XD Before that, all I knew how to prepare was fried egg, hot dogs, nuggets, and fried rice. I didn't know how to prepare veggie dish at all that moment, until I fall head over heels in love with this dish~!


cangkuk manis yummy - i like it prepared with egg. :) picture taken from here.

Cangkuk Manis, although it was a really simple dish, if you prepare it with different style, it wouldn't be as yummy. Seriously. I remembered a time I almost cried just because my grandmother prepared Cangkuk Manis with shallot. You must think I'm over-dramatic for reacting that way, but then this is one dish I had a soft spot for.

Girls, housewives, puan-puan, anak-anak dara, shallots is a BIG NO in preparing cangkuk manis. Some people may prefer it but trust me, if you want to eat Cangkuk Manis at its best, use only garlic and only garlic. And guess what, today I am going to share with you my mama's style of preparing cangkuk manis. Actually, she was inspired to prepare cangkuk manis this way after eating the cangkuk manis prepared by my father's friend who is a cook at central market. Okay, enough with the history. Let us start banging the wok and start cooking.

First, let us list down the ingredients needed. (just a short list, ya'll)

1) Cangkuk manis/ Cekur manis (but of course~!)

2) Garlic

3) egg

4) salt

Ok, permit me to use Malay language for this next segment hahah cause the steps are easier described using BM (for me) and my verb vocabulary range in English is limited. (-_-")

1) Ok, pertama sekali, fokus pada sayur cangkuk manis anda. Dah cuci? (Cek) So, langkah pertama selepas anda mencuci sayur cangkuk manis ini ialah koyakkan daunnya. Koyakkan menjadi cebisan yang kecil-kecil ya. Lebih kecil lebih bagus. Tapi jangan sampai nak kisarkan pulak. (-_-")

2) Ya, dah jadi cebisan kecil macam ni cukuplah. Walaupun masih basah sikit (sebab anda koyakkan selepas mencuci sayur ni), dan ada jus-jus berwarna hijau keluar lepas anda koyakkan cangkuk manis tu, jangan buangkan air tu. Sayang. Biar saja jus kehijauan itu di sana.

3) Next, fokus kepada bawang putih. Yea, bawang putih. Bukan bawang merah or bawang besar. BAWANG PUTIH. Sungguh penting peranan bawang putih di sini. Kalau anda ibaratkan sayur cangkuk manis sebagai watak utama, kiranya bawang putih ni supporting actor la kot. Anda harus buangkan kulit bawang putih itu.

4) Seterusnya, telur ayam. Yea, telur ayam pun tak kurang pentingnya, setaraf dengan bawang putih itu tadi. Ok semua. Untuk pastikan cangkuk manis yang anda goreng tu sedap, adalah penting untuk memastikan nisbah sayur dengan telur sama rata, 1:1 barulah sedap ok. Kalau tak cukup rasa telur, errrk, tak best.

5) Jadi di sini, anda kena pukul telur tu sehingga menjadi seperti gambar di atas.

6) Ok jom beralih kepada kuali pula. Panaskan kuali anda dengan api yang kecil. Apabila dah terasa haba sikit, masukkan minyak. Minyak kena masukkan dengan banyak sikit yea. Kalau tak cukup minyak dan cangkuk manis tu kering-kering, tak sedap rasanya. Anda kena ingat sayur cangkuk manis ni menyerap minyak, so masukkan minyak banyak sikit pun takpe. (PS: lauk ini hanya sesuai untuk golongan kanak-kanak, remaja dan orang dewasa yang tidak perlu risaukan kolestrol)

Imej adalah blur disebabkan kehadiran haba yang terlampau (?)

7) Letakkan tapak tangan anda beberapa inci daripada kuali untuk menguji kehadiran haba. Kalau dah rasa macam kuali tu dah panas, masukkan bawang putih dan goreng bawang putih itu. Ingat, kena kecilkan api supaya bawang putih itu tidak akan hangus sampai kehitaman. Kalau sekadar jadi coklat and kuning tu, boleh lagi dimaafkan. :P

8) Pabila bau wangi bawang putih sudah mengisi atmosfera dapur anda, anda sudah tau tibalah masanya untuk memasukkan sayur cangkuk manis ke dalam. Campakkan sayur cangkuk manis tu ke dalam kuali. Ingat, kena besarkan api anda supaya sedap. Bekas yang anda letakkan cangkuk manis tu tadi ada saki baki air berwarna hijau kan, ah.. jangan buangkan air tu dulu. Ok, fokus menggaul cangkuk manis anda dalam kuali. Pabila rasa dah semua minyak meliputi permukaan daun cangkuk manis anda tu, anda sudah tau bahawa ini tiba masanya untuk masukkan telur yang anda sudah kacau tadi.

9) Ok, so lepas anda masukkan telur, apa yang anda akan tengok berupa visual di atas. Teruskan menggaul dan jangan lupa masukkan garam secukup rasa yea! Ok, so semasa anda masukkan telur tadi, bekas yang anda letak telur tu mesti ada saki baki sedikit telur tu kan? Ya, so sekarang, tuang lebihan jus hijau baki sayur cangkuk manis tadi ke dalam bekas yang ada lebihan telur tu tadi. Tuangkan campuran ke dalam sayur cangkuk manis yang anda sedang goreng tu supaya sayur cangkuk manis tu ada kuah sikit. Jangan terover sampai jadi sup ya.

10) Ok, jadi inilah hasil cangkuk manis yang saya masak tempoh hari. Macam tu lah caranya yea kawan-kawan. Serious sedap. (serious sedap merujuk kepada cara masakan dan bukan kepada hasil masakan saya tempoh hari kerana saya letak terlebih garam HUHU! Spoiled!) Di pasar, ada pihak yang letakkan gula untuk memberi kemanisan kepada sayur cangkuk manis, tapi saya lebih prefer kemanisannya yang semula jadi. Itulah sebabnya kita kena koyakkan daunnya untuk mengekstrak kemanisannya.

Ok that's all for today's episode. Opocot, dah pukul 10.07! Kena pergi dapur dulu. Chao!

Lame words about life..

2011-05-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

Have you ever experienced that moment... that moment after you went through some events in your life, and you made a conclusion about each experience?

And the conclusion sometimes turn out to be some meaningful random thoughts which are worth keeping for? (at least for myself).

I guess, sometimes I experienced that. Or most of the times. Especially when I am emotional.

I would make a conclusion about certain things and then I will put up the words at the corner this blog and label them as 'words of lamehood by lameleftygirl'.

And I would change these 'so-called wise words' every week or every month.

Well, to me, life is like a series of experiments. Everytime after I experienced something, I would make a either an inference, hypothesis and conclusion out of it.

I used to type down my random thoughts and saved them in my laptop, but after my hard disk was spoiled, I could not trust my laptop, external hard disk without any back up anymore. So here I would like to introduce all of you to my new baby blog (aww agugugugu kuchi kuchi baby eh?)

which I named as

"WORDS OF LAMEHOOD".

(yeah lame name I know )

And yeah, this is where I keep my random lame thoughts.
Or the remaining of it which I can still remember after my hard disk died. T_T

So if you guys have time, do check it out yea.

That's all.

Aku tak boleh salahkan mereka...

2011-04-21T02:13:00.000-07:00

kerana benda-benda macam ni tidak tertulis dalam kamus. Mungkin junior-junior aku ni semua memang rajin menelaah pelajaran, mereka hanya memenuhi otak mereka dengan ilmu daripada buku ilmiah. Tetapi, kadang-kadang, benda yang remeh dan non-ilmiah seperti ni pun penting juga. Jangan ada salah faham , jangan ada miscommunication nanti.

Situasi bermula di sini.

Aku baru habis mandi dan masih on the way ke bilik. Tengah lalu bilik jiran-jiran junior tu sebelum sampai ke bilik aku sendiri, terdengarlah perbincangan 'ilmiah' diaorang. Satu perkara tentang jiran-jiran junior aku ini, mereka kalau part perbincangan 'ilmiah' tu memang la bercakap dengan suara yang lantang. Time aku lalu tu pun sempat la dengar perbualan diaorang sekejap. (Disclaimer: aku bukan menyibuk hal orang ah, diorang yang berbual lantang tu, aku dengar je lah)

"Yang LOL tu apa benda eh?" seorang junior bertanya.

"Yang tu lots of love." jawab seorang junior lagi, sambil bercerita lagi.

Waduh, biasanya statement macam ni akan buat aku LOL tapi entah kenapa time tu aku rasa emoticon yang sesuai adalah seperti ini.(-_-") Kalau betul definisi LOL macam tu, kan aku dah kena tamparan banyak wanita sebab aku banyak guna LOL time mengomen kat status lelaki di facebook. Adui.

Sesampainya aku di depan pintu bilik aku, aku terdengar lagi satu soalan bonus.

"Yang ROFL tu yang ape pulak, yang kadang-kadang diorang selalu pakai tuh?"

Tiada jawapan.

Okay, aku tak dapat dan tak boleh nak salahkan mereka sebab benda ni tidak tertulis dalam kamus. Masa aku masih Tingkatan 4 dulu, aku, sama seperti mereka, pun tidak tau LOL tu apa time aku tengah chatting dengan seorang budak England. Tapi akhirnya, aku dah mula memenuhi ilmu short form dan ilmu akronim ni lepas aku bergiat dalam bidang chatting, friendster, facebooking dan twitter. Orang yang rajin sms pun wajib ada pengetahuan ini untuk menjimatkan ruang dan masa.

Okay, untuk pengetahuan adik-adik junior sekalian, biar aku, sebagai akak senior yang prihatin akan menyediakan satu rujukan untuk akronim-akronim yang adik tak pasti tu kat sini. Mana la tau, kot-kot nanti ada lelaki komen LOL kat status adik, habis adik perasan ingat dia syok kat adik la kan. Sebelum tragedi perasaan perasan perasantan macam tu terjadi, baik akak menolong di sini. Lebih baik mencegah daripada mengubati, kan?

TRANSLASI UNTUK AKRONIM YANG TIDAK TERDAPAT DALAM KAMUS ~~MAHUPUN DICTIONARY~~

LOL = Laughing out Loud (ini bukan lots of love. Ulang suara, bukan ye adik-adik)

ROFL= Rolling on the Floor Laughing

LMAO = Laughing My Ass Off

IMHO = In my Humble Opinion

BRB = Be Right Back

Ha.. kan dah tau dah. Hehe. Jangan salah aplikasi dan terkantoi pula.

Kalau bertanya pun, biar kat sumber yang betul. Yang tanya kat adik seorang tu yang memandai jawab lots of love tu yang aku tak boleh blah. XD

LOL X 10 kali!!!

Updated: Terima kasih diucapkan kepada saudara Wilson dan saudari Step sebab cakap pasal dictionary yang ada bagi penerangan untuk akronim-akronim di atas. *wink2*. Jika anda nak cari maksud akronim-akronim dalam Bahasa Inggeris yang anda kureng faham, anda boleh melayari urbandictionary atau dictionary.com untuk mengetahui maksud akronim tersebut.. ;)

KALAU AKU BOLEH LAMBUNG SYILING DESTINY...

2011-04-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

Interframe: Sari berita utama. SK St Mary (bekas sekolah rendah yours truly) telah keluar berita dalam The Borneo Post berikutan satu insiden. Nak tahu dengan lebih lanjut, sila klik link ini. Tak sangka kan? Huhu.

Orang kata, jangan tolak rezeki. Well... Itulah kata-kata hikmat pertama yang muncul dalam fikiranku ketika menerima panggilan dari Mama untuk memberitahuku tentang tawaran kerja untuk menjadi guru ganti selama kira-kira dua bulan. Di Sibu. Di sebuah sekolah rendah, yang mana murid-muridnya terdiri daripada lelaki semuanya. (Disclaimer: Nama sekolah dirahsiakan supaya tiada paparazzi mengekori saya sekiranya saya confirm untuk mengajar di sana kelak)

Tapi, berkata tentang rezeki, mestikah benda yang lebih lumayan tu lebih BERrezeki?

Biasanya dalam konteks masyarakat masa kini, ramai akan mengiyakan soalan di atas. Especially kalau rezeki tu datang dalam bentuk pekerjaan sementara. Sebab tu kerja sementara, tak minat pun tak apa. Janji lumayan. Sebab bukannya kamu akan buat kerja tu seumur hidup la kan?

Dan dalam kes aku, rezeki selalu datang tanpa diduga. Rezeki datang ketika aku belum bersedia. Rezeki datang ketika aku dah ada pelan. Masa aku belum ada pelan, macam takde satu habuk pun tawaran kerja. Tapi pabila aku dah ada sedikit perancangan, Rezeki pula sibuk nak datang nak bagi aku dilemma.

Sengaja membuatku terpaksa membuat pilihan antara dia (rezeki) ataupun dengan keinginan hati.

Ok, berbalik kepada cerita tadi.

Mula-mula aku dengar suara excited mama melalui handphone miniku, aku mulai bimbang. Mesti ada sesuatu ni. Ah.. Jangan pula.. Bukan itu.. Bukan itu..

Dan apabila beliau akhirnya memberitahu hal tersebut kepadaku, aku dah agak dah... Memang itu dia.

TAWARAN UNTUK MENJADI GURU GANTI LAGI.

Tiada mana-mana berita yang dapat menggembirakan Mama lebih daripada berita kekosongan untuk jawatan guru di mana-mana sekolah di Sibu. Serius tiada.

Guru ganti? Fikirku.

Di bawah merupakan subtitle perbualanku dengan Mama.

PERBUALAN PERTAMA:

Aku: Eeeee, Ma... saya akan berada di Sibu untuk satu bulan ja. Mana dapat jadi guru ganti. Huhu.

Mama: Ai, jangan risau. Jadi guru ganti selama lebih kurang dua bulan je. Tu pun di sekolah *insert nama*. Guru besar dia bagitau kat saya ada kekosongan sebab gurunya nak bersalin. Guru besar tu sendiri yang nak awak jadi pengganti cikgu tu..

Aku: .....

Mama: Lagipun kalau guna sijil Form 6, gaji awak lumayan tau. At least RM 1000 ++. Itupun masih belum termasuk allowance lagi.

Aku: Eeeee, tapi saya dah janji dengan Mel nak jadi assistant untuk research dia kat Penang. (yesh, akhirnya dapat cari alasan muahahahha)

Mama: Takpa, nanti saya bagitau kat Mel.

Aku: Tapi, aku tak tau la Mama. Aku lebih berminat nak kerja dengan NGO yang ada kat Penang ni.

Mama: Ala.. Dua bulan ja. Lepas dua bulan tu, bolehlah awak buat kerja awak kat Penang tu. Dua bulan awak kat sini dulu.

Aku: Erm... Bagi saya masa untuk fikir dulu ye.. Saya kena survey dulu kerja kat sini.

Mama: Ok. Tapi lebih baik confirm cepat ah. Sebab guru besar tu suruh kami isi borang permohonan jadi guru ganti untuk awak.

Aku: Okay. (-_-")

Line mati.

Aku buntu. Mencari cara untuk membuat keputusan hidup mati ni.

Cara pertama aku memikirkan dilemma ini adalah dengan meng-update status di Facebook. (Ahem) Biasanya status ni berunsur kabur, tidak ada statement yang spesifik dan bermula dengan frasa "Dear God..."

Cara kedua, aku mengenang keadaan dulu. Fikir balik macam mana keadaannya aku menjadi guru sandaran selama 6 bulan di sekolah lamaku, St Mary dulu. Ada saat manis, ada saat pahit. Ada suka, ada duka. Ahhhh... Masih tak dapat buat keputusan.

Cara ketiga, aku fb mesej senior aku yang kerja di NGO yang aku minat tu. Mintak tolong dia untuk tanya kekosongan bagi pihakku. Kalau ada kekosongan untuk part time atau kerja sementara untuk 3 bulan, aku ON jer. Kalau tiada, aku pilih tawaran Mama. Ha, pandai tak? (sempat aku memuji diriku di dalam hati)

Cara keempat, aku bercerita dengan kawan baikku, Hawa, time pergi dinner. Di jejantas RST dan di meja makan Ismail Ikan Bakarlah tempat aku memberitahu Hawa tentang perasaan dilemma yang mengganggu jiwaku ini. Kata Hawa, bertuah saya dapat tawaran macam tu. (ini lebih kurang apa yang dikatakan oleh beliau. Hehe. Sori kalau ada unsur tokok tambah hoho) Tapi entahlah, aku tak rasa aku sesuai untuk kerja ajar-mengajar ni.

Cara kelima, call Mama balik. Tanya dia balik dengan sure apa mata pelajaran yang perlu diajar. Dan benda-benda serius yang lain.

PERBUALAN KEDUA:

Mama: Oh, ajar Matematik Tahun 1 dan Tahun 2. Pastu ajar Pendidikan Moral. (macam best ja dengar subjek-subjek tu)

Aku: Ma.. bila kena confirm? Saya confirm hari Jumaat boleh?

Mama: Ok. Tapi kenapa kena fikir?

Aku: Ala.. Sebab esok baru senior saya dapat bagitau saya sama ada NGO tu ada kekosongan ke tak.. Dan lepas esok baru saya dapat bagitau awak saya dapat mengajar ke tak.

Mama: Ok. Tapi kerja lah kat sini. Guru besar tu baik. Kalau awak reject offer ni, nanti malulah saya.

Aku: Awak suruhla orang lain. Ada banyak orang mau kerja itu.

Mama: Ala. Dia mau awak. Sebab guru besar tu kenalan mama. (PS: Dalam mencari kerja, connection tu penting, lecturer saya pernah kata)

Aku: Ok. Tapi awak tau la, mesti saya ada masalah nak biasakan diri. Saya mesti susah nak bergaul dengan guru lain.

Mama: Jangan awak risau. Guru-guru di mission school biasanya tak sombong dan sangat friendly. (Tapi kenapa kakak sulung pula sentiasa komplen pasal cikgu yang poyo kat SMK St A******, Sarikei?)

Aku: Ha.. satu lagi. Transport tu bagaimana? Papa kan guna kereta... Dan.. Dan... Saya kan memang pengecut kalau pasal nak memandu kereta.

Mama: Ala, dekat je sekolah Sacred Heart tu. Awak guna jalan terminal Sibu gi sana, ok apa.. Papa cakap awak boleh guna kereta tu time mengajar. Papa awak kata, gaji awak sebagai guru ganti pun lebih lumayan daripada gaji colleague dia yang dah kerja berapa tahun.

Aku: (-_-") (dah habis stok alasan, so takde pilihan maka keluar statement tak boleh blah) Aku tak suka mengajar... Huwaa~

Mama: Hmm.. Dah bagus dah guru besar tu offer. Nanti apa saya nak cakap kalau awak tak nak? Dia memang dah beriya-iya nak awak jadi guru ganti tu. Mana saya berani nak tegur dia lagi lepas peristiwa ni? (lebih kurang macam ni statementnya)

Aku: Eeeee.. Awak memang selalu begini. Oklah. Oklah. Nanti saya mesej senior saya, suruh dia tak payah survey kekosongan untuk saya. Kamurang yang di Sibu sila isi borang permohonan untuk saya lah.

Mama: (seriously aku boleh DENGAR senyuman Mama) Ok. Ok. Kan. Baik awak buat kerja ni dulu. Dengar kata family.

Aku: Okay. okay. Baiklah.

Aku mesej senior aku, cancel plan nak survey kekosongan di NGO yang diminati itu.

Eh. Bila fikir balik, kenapa aku dah start worry tentang benda ni sedangkan aku belum lagi duduk periksa untuk first paper FINAL?

Haiz.. (-_-")

Aku harap aku buat keputusan yang betul.

Lambung syiling.

Kepala (otak) atau bunga (hati) ?

Kepala.

(-_-")

Yea, dan keputusan itulah yang saya ambik.

What is the thing that tempt you the most during exam season? ;)

2011-04-20T05:07:00.001-07:00

What is the thing that tempt you the most during exam season? ;)

Answer here

No Excuses

2011-04-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

"Wah, of course you can score lo, your course is so easy... Mine so hard! And your school probably is more lenient than mine"

(Annoying Anonymous, 2008/2009/2010)

Have you ever come across people like these?

When you talked about academic with this kind of person, things like these tend to be blurted out, where when this person encountered failure, instead of admitting his or her own faults for not being more dedicated or more motivated, that person blamed the lecturer or the dean for being too strict. Or even the course and subject itself for being so hard to be learned or very hard to score.

Whenever this person heard that a friend or a stranger scored high marks in their paper or courses, instead of showing admiration or being impressed with that successful person, this person will just say

"Oh, his/her school more lenient ma.. Easier to score ma.. Lecturers so sporting. Not like us. If I study that course, I will score like him/her or scored even better!"

You...!

Shut up and listen up..!

One thing that YOU need to realize.

Any course, regardless of how easy and how hard it is,
at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing.

EFFORTS.

If you have guided efforts, you can score no matter how hard that subject is.

And if you don't have efforts, you cannot score no matter how easy that subject is.
(unless you're sitting for a kindergarten test with your university level knowledge)

In my Mandarin class, I used to think that me, being quite familiar with the Mandarin language since my high school years compared to my other classmates who were just introduced to this language, I thought that I could score the mid term test easily, thus giving less attention and efforts to this particular subject.

But when I saw the result... DUSH! I scored rather badly. And my classmate/friend who was not familiar with Mandarin and was just introduced to this language recently in this class, scored higher than me.

SO, the Moral from here is that, being familiar with something does not ensure you to score in that paper. Cause the way your answers are evaluated are not based on what you gained in your brain, but it is about what you can give from your brain.

You know what I mean?

No matter how good you are able to understand and absorb that knowledge, if you cannot present it well either in written or orally, you can never score.

But of course, first of all, you have to understand the knowledge.

So...

Stop giving excuses for your failure. That's just so annoying and irritating. Start to recognize your own weaknesses and improve it.

Last but not least, good luck in your exams guys and girls.

God bless!

;)

5 Things I HATE about him, him & him

2011-04-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

It's ironic, but people who is easily annoyed is usually the annoying person himself.

=words of lamehood by lameleftygirl - inspired just this morning=

Am I being sarcastic to myself? Maybe. Maybe not.

I am a person who can tolerate with a lot of people, and I am not proud of this because that means that I am not straightforward enough. Whenever I felt annoyed, I keep it to myself, secretly wishing and praying to God that this annoying person would change somehow. Or at least be more conscious of their behaviour.

But then, this kind of toleration I only applied when I am with girls.

But when it comes to guys, it's a different story. I don't really care, especially if the guy is a stranger. Sometimes I am blunt when it comes to guys. Ice queen. The way I talk to guys and the way I talk to girls, if you noticed, it's a little different. With girls, my jokes are kinda filtered and lebih lemah lembut (except for when I joke with my sista) but when I joke with guys, I never hesitate to go to the extend of teasing them harshly or becoming more laser.

Maybe I have grudges against guys. Thanks to my high school experience. Truth to be told, I never really have guy friends during my high school except for three to four guy friends. That was why, my mother would tease me with even any little my guy friends that I had (even with some guys whom obviously are not into girls, ya know what I mean) because maybe she would be worried that I will stay single. Well, mama, see, now in university, I have guy friends, but still, I'm single hahah. The theory about the more guy friends you have, the more probability for prospective partner cannot be applied because the more guy friends you have, the more comfortable you are, and you don't look at them in romantic sort but in a family way. It's not in the quality or quantity, mama, it's in the chemistry, biology and most importantly, destiny.

Ok, maybe you will ask, why suddenly this topic?

Well, I lost the 30 day blogging challenge, but there's one topic from the 30 day list that I think is worth sharing.

Which was 5 things that annoy me from the opposite sex..

It's not hard for me to list down these five things because:

1st, I have bad experience. Really bad experience with guys.

2nd, due to this experience, I guess I've become sexist sometimes. (keyword: SOMETIMES. Now guys, don't you even think of running away from me)

1) I HATE GUYS WHO...

is easily perasan. (how do we call perasan in English by the way?) Usually this kind of guy is so full of himself. "Yeah, I'm the best! I deserve the best girl!" Ptuih. Look at the mirror. This kind of guy, he felt great when pretty girls admire him, but when ugly girl admire him, he felt somewhat disgusted what the heck.

I kinda had this experience back in high school. If you think I'm ugly now, I was uglier back then. I don't even look like a guy, I looked more like a bapok that time.

It was during my form 1. I was a really quiet person in class. Why? First of all, majority of my classmates speaks Mandarin. Me? Hokkien, English, and broken Mandarin. So instead of embarrassing myself of speaking broken Mandarin, I opted to remain silent in the class.

So there was this guy, who was my classmate for a very long time, he was very popular in this class. Everybody laughed at his jokes. I was one of them. The thing is, just because I laughed at his jokes, people around me thought that I liked him. (-_-") Please la... I was somewhat annoyed, why people would make that assumption about me, why people accused that I liked him when there were many others who laughed at his jokes. WTH! But then, I was a quiet girl, so I just didn't bother about it. But the problem was, from what I'd observed, he was bothered. I knew why. Maybe if I was a more popular, prettier and a smarter girl, he would not really be bothered about it. Instead, he would feel good about himself. But since I'm ugly, I'm unpopular, I'm *insert any cruel adjective inside*, he felt rather embarrassed instead of felt "wow, somebody admired me." He felt... disgusted.

All my high school life, I tried to not cross my path with him. I felt awkward. I wished I could just spill on his face and say "Sorry, you've misunderstood. I never had feelings for you. I just like your jokes and that's all." But of course, I didn't do it. Instead of hating him (because majority people liked him), I hated myself. I hated myself for causing this misunderstanding.

For five years my high school life was shadowed by this hurtful experience and I didn't add him in facebook until now. So guys, moral of the story: kalau nak perasan ada orang minat kau pun, jangan nak memilih atau memandang rendah kat peminat kau. Cause belum tentu lagi orang tu minat kat KAU! PAHAM! Percuma ja high skul life aku kena ruined gara-gara lelaki perasan camni. HUH!

2) I HATE GUYS WHO...

is judgmental. Just because he's kononnya perfect, he wanted to lecture you on every single thing. *yawn* Like, oh, 'girls should not do this. Girls should not do that.' Yeah, I know, you are just being caring and protective, but why the word 'girls'? So if guys do that same thing, it's okay la? Double standard. Heh! And furthermore, this kind of guy will ask you stupid questions like 'Do you drink?' which means that they wanted to risik-risik whether you have the ciri-ciri isteri idaman. One thing boy, if you REALLY like someone, you would observe it on your own instead of interviewing the girl that you like. Girls like to be noticed, not to be interrogated. And one thing, just because someone drinks, does that make her a bad person? And one more thing, when you really liked or loved someone, why can't you handle some little imperfection about her? You're not all that perfect yourself! Enough said.

3) I HATE GUYS WHO...

is a sweet talker. This kind of guy made you blush, but at the end of the day, sometimes you felt cheated. The way he acted later wasn't like what you've expected from what he'd shown you before. One word for them "Action speaks louder than words." If you really meant what you say, show it. Don't just make more promises that you cannot keep or keep up with.

4) I HATE GUYS WHO...

is a control freak. My former student, Mary (bukan nama sebenar) has this kind of boyfriend. Tell you what, Mary is just only 14, but her boyfriend wanted to control her every single move. For example, Mary wasn't allowed to hang out with her besties, what the heck. Tell you what, this same boyfriend was caught cheating with Mary's own friend last time. I hope I can influence my former student to dump this kind of guy.

5) I HATE GUYS WHO...

is desperate and horny. Pleading us to be his girlfriends through the phones? (-_-") But apart all that, I'm still his friend cause he's special case. Not like all that other normal kind of guys mentioned above. HMMPH!

That's all for now. Reminiscing all these hurtful stuff just ruined my early morning.

But maybe the timing's just right cause I will have to go for confession after this.

Have a nice Thursday.

I don't blog about my own birthday because...

2011-04-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

I know somebody did it for me already. :)

(CLICK HERE)

(and because I'm still struggling with my assignment now huhu)

The Sweet Taste of Miss Ajuntha's Candies..

2011-04-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

"I know I never really tell you all about this, but you all are really good, and I enjoyed teaching this class."

That was more or less what Ms Ajuntha (bukan nama sebenar) told us during our last LHP 456 class today. Our class started with Ms Ajuntha teaching a lesson on impromptu speech. Our last lesson. The word last could mean freedom from classes, but it could also mean the farewell to great teacher, great classmates and great memories. How ambiguous the effect it had on us.

After she finished the unit on impromptu speech, she passed around to us the candies that she promised to make for us. Its taste was sweet, as sweet as the memories we had during our class. Sometimes I did complained why did I made myself busy by joining this course, but at the end of the day, I think that this course left a big impact on me, and it left me with memories as sweet as Ms Ajuntha's candies. I was really glad I took it. There were many lessons that I've learnt, in and outside of the learning syllabus, from this class.

After the eating session, Ms Ajuntha asked all of us to sit in a circle. We obediently and excitedly seated ourselves in circle as we know what she was up to. Some sharing among us, I expected - and I was right. We were asked to share our future plan after the semester, because majority of us were final year students. There were many who had the same plan like I do, which was to continue with Master studies, such as Hafizah and her boyfriend Eizham (bukan nama sebenar), Yee Heng (bukan nama sebenar), Abel (bukan nama sebenar), and another guy whom I didn't remember his name, oops. There were many who also planned to look for jobs once they graduated. For the 2nd year and first year, they shared what they were gonna do during the coming four months holidays. WOo hOo~!

Actually, this sharing was divided into two parts -1st part about future plan (more to our professional side) and the 2nd part (which is more to our personal side). People were more anxious to know about the 2nd part of our sharing, which of course, mainly revolves around our status, single, taken or complicated lol. Some are taken already, some are single, and some are actively searching lol!

When it was finally my turn, I told about my plan to go back to Sarawak for one month.

Suddenly Ms Ajuntha asked all of them....

"Do you know where she came from?"

And they all answered "Sarawak."

"I mean specifically.. Maybe if you don't mind, you can share with them, cause she told me about Dalat and it was interesting.."she continued.

I was touched that my LHP teacher thought that my story on Dalat during my LHP interview was interesting, so I told them that I am from Sibu and my parents are from Dalat. They all were familiar with Dalat through the literature story "How Dalat got its name". Thanks to the writer, people knew about it and thought that the place was interesting lol.

I told them about me being a Chinese-Melanau mixed-blood girl, due to my origination from Dalat, and they all asked me to speak a phrase in Melanau. All I can think of that time was

"Ngadan ako Maureen Chua" which means "My name is Maureen Chua."

After that, they all asked me to proceed with the second part which is jeng jeng jeng "Your status". Automatically, I made a statement "I think I'm gonna be single forever since I'm a feminist." It was kinda a statement berani mati cause I don't wanna get caught eating my own words in life later.

Ms Ajuntha was like "What if you found Mr Right?"

I looked at my teacher and said " Hmm... It's hard to find Mr Right right now" without caring that they were many guys in my class hearing that statement lol. Or perhaps I prefer Mr Left (-_-").

"You know love happens.." Ms Ajuntha added, and I realized that my teacher is a romantic person actually hehe.

Honestly, I don't know. I am not looking for love. If it happens, it happened. If it doesn't, I won't look for it.

And I noticed that this LHP class had turned into a sort of formal pillow talk lol.

In exchange for the sweet candies, my class presented Ms Ajuntha with farewell card that we secretly signed and Ferrero Rocher chocolates as farewell gift. It was a really sweet experience. :)

And the sweet taste of the candies lingered in my mouth. It was the first time I tasted it, but I won't forget the taste.

Winning Makes My World Go Round~!

2011-04-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

I should had blogged about this long time ago but because I was truly demotivated to blog, I didn't. And now after completing my LHP 456 interview, which happens to be the last of the assessment too (hooray!), I must now thank Nuffnang & Digi angels for giving me a wonderful smartphone, Blackberry Torch 9800, besides letting me enjoy the pleasure of winning something. Not to forget, a lot of credits to my gangsta sista Mel Chua for helping me to take it from the Nuffnang office in KL (imagine all the hassles she had gone through just to find the office and take this phone lol). And last but not least, there is someone who is more important that I should thank above all.

Maybe I did tell people around me that when I joined this contest, I didn't put in much efforts and didn't think of winning. But in actual, I really wanted to win it, it was just that, as usual, I was not confident in winning it.

And maybe I did tell that this winning was all based on my luck, without efforts. But it wasn't the whole truth. I forgot to mention something.

Something important which I had taken for granted since I'm too engrossed on deluding myself with the thoughts that I'm lucky.

It was prayer that I've forgotten to mention when I won this. I prayed. Almost everyday when I had my 3 pm Divine Mercy prayer, I prayed to win this contest.

But I forgot. (-_-")

And actually, during that time, my intention of winning this smart phone was not for myself, but for my mother. I remembered Mama saying that at her age (which is not young anymore, ahem!), she was still using the basic handphone which she took good care of, and me, I already lost two phones with better features than hers. Lol. I felt guilty, and felt bad for her at the same time. I mean, here I am losing phone here and there, while some others in my family members have to take good care of their belongings no matter how old or basic the model is. And at that time, I wanted to win this for Mama so badly since I already had my Xperia (which I felt guilty too for owning it when the rest of my family including my sister who already worked didn't indulge in smart phones and great gadgets like I do, hmmmph).

Thus, I prayed Divine Mercy diligently, voicing out intention to win this phone for my mother. I'm not a good daughter, I'm rebellious, I think I'm a black sheep of the family because I always do things against her wishes, and there's nothing other thing I can do for her, except for winning this for her.

And I was really ~~lucky~~ blessed that my prayer was answered.

And when I finally knew I won this, it felt surreal. I was happy! I felt that I was the luckiest person on earth! And I was so deluded thinking I was lucky till I forgot that it was due to my diligent prayers that I won this.

When I was at home that time, I remembered my initial intention to win this phone for Mama and then during one fine afternoon, while I was looking for her white hair a.k.a uban in the living room, I told her this:

Me: Ma, this phone that I won, though I haven't get it, when I finally got it, do you want it?

Mama: Why? (Surprised)

Me: Because actually mama, I promised Jesus that I wanted to win this phone for you, because I know that you think that your phone are not as modern, but lauya hahahhahaa. Anyway, I already have a smart phone, and I think maybe this phone could be great for you so that you can use nice phones like your colleagues since you're the headmistress, should use the better phones than them. :P You already worked for so long, don't kalah with other teachers. Hoho.

Mama: (Smiling maybe amused at my sudden intention which is not always, you know ahaha) Aiya, not need la. I don't know how to use canggih-canggih things. You use that phone yourself la. I already have a phone.

Me: Really??

Mama: Really. I already have this phone. I don't need and I don't know how to use that kind of phone.

Me: Okay, like that thank you lo. At least I don't feel so bad since I already got permission from you. That means that I didn't break my promise with Jesus.. *wink2*

So, BB torch 9800 is actually a symbol of God's blessing to me. In everything you do, don't depend on luck, but you depend on God.

So, ~~good luck~~ God bless, everyone!

Crossroads Puzzles

2011-03-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

I do not want to be the slave of my job - I want to be the master of my career.

(part 1)

words of lamehood by lameleftygirl2 (2011)

When I was still a kid, I always knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to be an artist, writer, movie director, comic book artist, etc. I had so many ambitions. Sometimes, I would have temporary ambitions such as dreaming of becoming an actress (lol this dream was due to too much of Bollywood dramas), singer (this one was inspired by American Idol ugh you should've heard me sing XD you would rather vote for William Hung), and also talk show host (inspired by Oprah lol). All of these jobs have something in common, where they are connected to creativity and imagination. I wanted to become all these simply because I like to think and imagine - I like to do something which doesn't have any limitation or restriction. That is why people around me always caught me daydreaming (-_-") I was always in my deep thought... *sigh*

But now, in my final semester of my final year, I am clueless of how to be what I wanted to be. My dreams stayed with me, but to make it into a reality was still a mystery to me. Among my dream jobs, the one job which is closest to reality and is more available here in Malaysia would most probably is a writer.But even this job seemed hard to find at the moment. I mean to become a journalist, you cannot simply go for an interview and tell your potential future employer that writing is your hobby, that is why you like it so much, but instead, you have to prove it by at least having some reputation in writing - articles, blog, etc.

So instead of looking for a serious job after the coming graduation, I changed my plan to applying of postgraduate studies. It was by chance that Hawa told me about this Master studies application and voila, now I kinda sure that I want to continue with master degree. I even called my mama and told her about it, and she was more than happy to hear about this. I mean, though she wanted me to go back after my final exam so much, she was happy to know that finally I wanted to choose this path as she thought that pursuing a Master degree will ensure better future. If I do not continue with Master, she preferred that I work at home than working here in Penang.

At the moment, I am thinking of continuing with Master, but since the new semester starts four months after the final exam, I have four months to figure it out first. Oh help me please!

To be a master of my career, I have to ensure my eligibility. Thus, I have to continue with my studies, eh? (part 2)

words of lamehood by lameleftygirl2 (2011)

JANGAN pandang camera!!!

2011-03-12T05:18:00.000-08:00

Sila click di sini untuk rujuk terma dan syarat untuk menyertai pertandingan ini .

APAKAH INI?

jeng jeng jeng

INI IALAH PERTANDINGAN BERGAMBAR TANPA MEMANDANG KAMERA.

Aku merupakan antara chosen 3 yang ditag oleh Encik Melod untuk menyertai pertandingan ini dan sebab rasa ingin tahu yang teramat sangat, aku pun click kan link blog seorang blogger yang bernama dyanzjha.

Aku pantang kalau dengar ada contest melalui blog, jadi apa lagi, aku nak join sebab aku suka nak menyertai apa-apa pertandingan yang percuma hehhe. Sebab tiada harapan untuk menang pertandingan melukis, pertandingan ratu cantik, pertandingan karaoke ataupun pertandingan menari, aku cuma bergantung pada tuah badan untuk memenangi sesuatu. Dan peluangnya ada di sini.

Jumlah peserta adalah ramai, peluang nak menang pun tipis tapi sekurang-kurangnya mencuba la kan?

Ok, bila dah cakap pasal gambar yang tak pandang camera, gambar yang pertama muncul dalam ingatan aku ialah gambar di bawah, iaitu gambar yang pernah menjadi profile picture aku kat facebook. Gambar ini diambik oleh kawan baikku Hawa semasa kami melakukan research untuk paper major di Pulau Aman.

Gigih la aku dan Hawa bangun awal selepas beliau sembahyang subuh untuk mengambil gambar di sekitar Pulau Aman yang menjadi lokasi penggambaran untuk drama bersiri Seribu Kali Cinta yang pernah ditayangkan di TV3 suatu ketika dahulu.

Aku suka gambar ni sebab gambar ni membuktikan aku bangun awal. Gambar ketika matahari terbit la katakan.

Ok, itu ja. Urm saya nak tag siapa ya?

Saya nak tag Cik Hawa, Cik Kiki , Cik Mel dan juga Kak Mel sebab diaorang memang ada gambar yang tak pandang kamera rasanya hahah.

Sila la join contest ni kalau rajin. Bagi yang tak ditag, jangan risau. Anda juga berpeluang menyertai pertandingan ini dengan melayari blog ini.

Sekian. hahah

Madness Anniversary~

2011-03-03T19:33:00.000-08:00

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of this blog and hey, happy birthday lameleftygirl2.blogspot.com! Sorry, no birthday cake to you though. I am lazy even to find a virtual birthday cake for ya! :P

It shares the same birthday with my sista, Mel Chua , so happy birthday to you yo gangsta Sista, Chua 2nd sister!

Lately, I lost my motivation to update you lameleftygirl2.blogspot.com, I don't know why. Though this is my free-est semester so far, I lack the motivation to blog. Compared to my first year and my 2nd year, I was determined to blog, even during my busy time.

So what happened to me? Geez...

Okay, back to business..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOUL SISTA!

THANKS FOR BEING THERE WHEN I NEED YOU THE MOST!

THANKS FOR SCOLDING ME WHEN I DESERVED IT!

THANKS FOR COOKING FOR ME WHEN I THINK OF HOME!

THANKS FOR MAKING ME LAUGH AT MYSELF SOMETIMES, HAHAH - I NEED SOMEONE WHO KNOWS ME WELL TO LOOK AT ME AND NOT BECOMING THE MAGIC MIRROR WHICH MAY DELUDE ME. YOU ARE THE MIRROR WHICH LOOKS AT MY INNERMOST THOUGHT, READ THEM AND LET ME REALIZE ABOUT THE DEEDS THAT I'VE DONE.

OK DONE.

I DON'T WANT YOU TO CRY LATER HAHAH.

ENJOY YOUR BIRTHDAY, AND GOD BLESS!

I know what you are doing right now, I can't wait to spill the beans but, okay.. the least i can do is to keep it a as a surprise to your / our friends.. ;)

Will You Wed Me (in My Dream)?

2011-01-28T22:15:00.000-08:00

Interframe: I guess I lost this 30 day blogging challenge, for delaying my 7th challenge, but still, I want to go on with it. Let it be. Lol. Guess what, I had weird dreams last night. First, I dreamed about my eldest sister, then about my lecturer's holidaying with her sister, then I dreamed about meeting a potential life partner whom my family chose for me in that dreams. What the heck was that?

photo source: here

Dream wedding.

I had always imagined how my wedding could be, and yeah, I admit it, despite the singlelicious spirit I had in me, actually sometimes, I have a lot of thoughts and ideas for my dream wedding. But the thing is, lol, I guess none of it can be practiced in real life. Hahah. I mean, where's the groom, first of all?

To set the record straight, yeah, I love wedding, but at the same time, I am aware of the harsh reality of a married life. So I always had dreams about wedding but not marriage itself. Meaning, I am not a fan of marriage. Cause I cannot imagine myself settling down yet. Hahah. Okay, back to dream wedding topic.

The thing that always remain the same in all of those ideas and dreams were the church bell ringing. It's kind of romantic and blissful to hear the church bell ringing on a wedding.

photo source: here

I would love to wear this Victorian wedding dress on my wedding because it is elegant and classic.

Well, among all of the celebrity weddings, the wedding that resembles most to my dream wedding would be the one dream wedding of Giuliana and Bill Rancic. :') I would cry and thank God on my knees if I can have a wedding like that. I mean, it was grand, yet intimate where only their closest family and friends were there to celebrate. I want something like that. A grand, yet intimate wedding. Hmm..

So what do I need to have to make sure my dream wedding come true?

Beautiful wedding dress, check!

Yummy wedding cake, check!

Wedding photographer, check!

Lovely guests, check!

Wedding rings, check!

Don't forget, dream bridegroom, check!

OMG, it is such a headache to plan a wedding yourself!

How bout if I just replace the necessities with a good wedding planner?

Yeah, a wedding planner with the same taste like mine and voila, I can just focus on enjoying myself on my wedding instead of worrying over all that stuffs!

photo source: here

I love this couple, Bill Rancic and Giuliana Rancic.

Didn't they just have the wedding of the century?

My dream wedding would be one really expensive wedding because I want to keep the guests happy. What will make the guests happy more than a generous reception, right?

Just like Giuliana and Bill Rancic wedding, I would want a destination wedding. They had it at Capri Island. I would want to have it at... erm... an island which have its own church or chapel, still undecided yet, but it has to be in Malaysia. But oh well, my wedding planner will pick them up for me and let me choose.

photo source: here

The chronology of my wedding will be like this.

Starts with wedding ceremony at church witnessed by close family and friends, followed by a tent built outside church for lunch reception.

Then after that, during the night time, there will be a dinner reception at a favourite hotel, and we will have ballroom dancing for all the guests.

The rest, my imaginary wedding planner will take care of it. If you want to get a clearer picture of my dream wedding, you can visit this link and see how Giuliana and Bill making a fantasy wedding a reality. :D

photo source

And they lived happily ever after! :D

PS: So, this marks the 7th day of the 30 days blogging challenge.

My dream wedding ( / )

Just Because It has the Power to Make Me Smile and Cry~

2011-01-24T17:08:00.000-08:00

photo source: here (the puppy starring as Marley in 'Marley and Me')

Day 6: a photo of an animal you'd love to keep as a pet ( / )

I have more than a dozen cats at home, but there's still one other animal that I would love to keep as a pet besides them, and as you can see, it's the cute animal you can see from above.

Actually, I was thinking of picking some exotic, beautiful animal, but I think, I want to keep a pet which needs me instead of me purposely buying it from expensive pet store. I would like to keep especially those stray animals which wander around the neighbourhood.

If I get to see a stray puppy, I would definitely make it mine.

There are reasons I chose dog or puppy, besides the facts that they are cute and they are man's best friend, I chose them because above all that,

dog is a faithful animal.

I am not making a joke, but even people born in the year of dog can make a faithful person. I experienced it first hand, perhaps it could be a coincidence, but still... it still does make a point right?

Before I die~

2011-01-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

I want to...

photo source: here

...write and publish a book...

It could be a fiction, it could be a memoir, or anything, as long as not thesis or journal. :p

It's my life long dream, to write at least a book. I have so many dreams, this was one of it, and this was the only dream which remains with me while the other dreams come and go.

And I really hope I get to do this before I die.

Day 5:

a picture of something I want to do before I die ( / )

;)

Day 4 Challenge...

2011-01-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Ada~!

Hawa~!

Step~!

PS: Pictures are organized according to their month of birth.. hihi

These are my favourite photographs of them because

1) I was with them that time

2) I took those pictures

3) They were happy

Guess what the challenge was? *wink2*

Day 04 challenge ( / )

DONE~!

My Imaginary Perfect First Date~

2011-01-21T07:23:00.000-08:00

First of all, how much perfect should a perfect date be? Fancy, expensive restaurant, a drive in a limo?

Na-ah~. These are not necessary.

One thing for sure, my idea of a perfect date would absolutely NOT be a blind date. Imagine, ice-breaking with a person you did not know during a date for two people. It's awkward. If the person doesn't have any chemistry with you, you're stuck with ONLY him for quite a long duration. I would not take that risk on a first date. If I want to meet new people, I would go for a gathering where I get to meet a lot of new people, where the more people, the less tense it would be.

But for my first date, let it be with somebody I already know and like (for example, Jericho Rosales *sigh*), and whom I would like to know better. That would be nice. Even if your date won't end up becoming your other half, at least, you get to spend some quality time with somebody you know right? A deeper friendship might just blossom through that experience.

Ok, let's see about my ideas of a perfect first date. First, the time should be just right. Not too early, not too late. I would like the time to be from around 5 pm till 10 pm.. Now let's see where my imagination leads us to my idea of a perfect first date.

Okay, so now I am imagining myself freshly showered, dressed in a pair of jeans and my favourite blouse, with a vintage sling bag. Why am I wearing jeans instead of dress? Hehe. That's because I want to do some outdoor activities, peeps.

Then, my date would arrive at 5 pm, and pick me up using a car. Not motorcycle or anything else but a car, cause we need to make a decision on where to go inside a car. If we were using a motorcycle, I have to shout to talk to him. So that's the rationale I choose car instead of motorcyle, ya, peeps. Hihi. Not because I want to be pampered okay~

Since it's still too early for dinner (5pm), we would walk around the nice street at Penang. Okay, perhaps the street that I would like to visit again is Little India. We would explore there together, take pictures and just to enjoy the street scenery. Maybe it will be noisy, but at least it break the tension between two people who are having their first date. That's the reason why I choose to go to place with many people on the first phase of my first date. We would have something to talk about, something to do with the atmosphere that we are in.

picture source: here

After walking for around half an hour exploring the town, we would stop by a favourite cafe or restaurant, to purchase a takeaway food. My idea of a nice takeaway food will be pizza, since it's easier to be consumed. Then, after purchasing those takeaway food and drinks, we would drive to the beach. And yeah, we would walk around the beach, or cycle if possible, and bury something (like a bottle with message inside) inside the sand. Later, we would sit on the beach, watching sunset, while enjoying our dinner. After the sunset, we will take pictures and walk around the beach.

Next, instead of going to my favourite location again, we would head to his favourite location. Remember, a date is about give and take. And I just imagine that his favourite location would be hmmm... I'm clueless about guy's favourite location actually. How bout ice-skating? Yeah, that could be it. Then we would go to a complex and ice skate there. He would teach me how to skate cause I am clueless! (-_-")

Then we would have fun. Notice that I didn't include shopping and movies as the date activity? Hmm. It's because movies are more suitable for the upcoming dates but not for the first ones, and shopping is not a date. Remember lol. Unless you found a guy who likes to shop, then it will be an exception.

For sure, I don't want my first date to be merely just an experience, but a memory which I would treasure and relate to years from now.

So this marks the third day of my blogging challenge --> My idea for perfect first date ( / ).. It's done, peeps..

A Movie With Millions of Messages

2011-01-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

Do you believe in destiny?
A) Yes
B) No

If you watch this movie, you would answer A.

This is the one of those movies which got me engrossed from the start till the beginning. I mean, really engrossed, where I would observe the dialogues attentively.

Photo source: here

I was not interested in this movie at first, because I didn't know who Danny Boyle is, and who the casts were... until I knew that it won like 8 Oscars.I was like.. okay.. I gotta watch this movie. And I am glad I did (though I watched it from pirated DVD)

Slumdog Millionaire has a lot of underlying messages, from what I can observe.

-It shows that people usually rate others according to their background,
-how some people looked down on slum kids as if they have lower caste than animals,
-how people will fight for their beliefs and religion when fighting is against the teaching of their religion,
- how some cruel people used kids to gain profits
- and how school education and certification is so overrated, because above all, experience is the best teacher one could have.

Jamal Malik, the main character in this movie, could beat the lawyers and doctors to answer all these killer questions in tv programme 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' just based on his experience.
It kinda shows that our experience is the best teacher because we will rarely forget our experience and we understand about something more through experiencing it.

So, if I ask you this question:

Is Slumdog Millionaire your favourite movie?

A)No

B) Maybe

C) Not sure

D) Yes. Always my favourite.

By the way, this marks the 2nd day of blogging challenge: My Favourite Movie ( / ). Checked.

My Answer: D

What's Your Favourite Song?

2011-01-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

If somebody asked me about my favourite song, I will try to relate my favourite song with my favourite singers. Most of the times, my choice of favourite songs are affected by the singers. If the singer is someone that I like, then I will favour the song. But if it isn't, then I would be biased and try not to make the song my favourite. For example, I like 'Baby' by Justin Bieber but since I am not a big fan of his, I tried not to be so into his songs. (-_-") Oh no, I am such a discriminator.

If I were to list down my favourite songs, it is an easy job because I favour so many songs in this world. Yeah, I am a MTV freak and music makes my world go round, especially the song which can trigger me to dance (eg: hip hop song by Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna, and so on). But to pick one favourite song which is worth a post, and worth my whole attention, it is hard. Which song do I like the best?

*THINKING MODE ON*

You know what? I would like to pick a song which is not sung by a singer I know. That means this song would be my real favourite song since I like the song not because of the singer, but merely because of the song itself. And I noticed there is a song which I like this way. A song which triggers me to dance though I don't know what is the lyric and who the singer is.

And that song is jeng jeng jeng...

Tinggi Tinggi Gunung Kinabalu

During the camp or a gathering, whenever I hear this song, I felt like dancing.I don't even know the lyrics of this song except for the title part of the song.

For that, I will present to all of you the lyrics of this song.

TINGGI TINGGI GUNUNG KINABALU
TINGGI LAGI SAYANG SAMA KAMU
BIRU BIRU HUJUNG KINABALU
TENGOK DARI JAUH HATI SAYA RINDU

KINABALU DEKAT DI KUNDASANG
BANYAK SAYUR BULIH PILIH PILIH
APA GUNA PERGI LUAR NEGERI
NAIK KINABALU HATI SAYA RINDU

SUMANDAK SUMANDAK PUN RAMAI MENUNGGU
MENARI NARI LENGGANG SUMAYAU
SEKALI MELIHAT MELEPAK KULITNYA
SAYANG JATUH CINTA

SAYANG SAYANG SAYA KINABALU
KAAMANTAN PESTA BULAN LIMA
SAYANG SAYANG KITA PERGI TAMU
JALAN TAMPARULI HATI SAYA RINDU

KINABALU DEKAT DI KUNDASANG
BANYAK SAYUR BULIH PILIH PILIH
APA GUNA PERGI LUAR NEGERI
NAIK KINABALU HATI SAYA RINDU

SUMANDAK SUMANDAK PUN RAMAI MENUNGGU
MENARI NARI LANGGANG SAMAYAU
SEKALI MELIHAT MELEPAK KULITNYA
SAYANG JATUH CINTA

SYANG SAYANG SAYA KINABALU
KAAMANTAN PESTA BULAN LIMA
SAYANG SAYANG KITA PERGI TAMU
JALAN TAMPARULI HATI SAYA RINDU

SAYANG SAYANG KITA PERGI TAMU
JALAN TAMPARULI HATI SAYA RINDU

I wish I could present you guys with the melody too but I can't post youtube here. And I don't know how to share music in a post. Hihihi..

So this post marks my first day of challenge in this blogging challenge.

Day 1: My Favourite Song ---> Checked (/)

UPDATED: THANKS STEP FOR THE TIPS. SAYA SALUTE KAMU! HAHAH. KERANA DIA ANDA DAPAT DENGAR LAGU INI. ENJOY~!

Self Discovery Through 30 day blogging challenge

2011-01-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

So Kiki mentioned to me about the 30 day blogging challenge the other day. I went to her blog entry here and copied the 30 day challenge titles. I was somewhat interested, cause this is a good challenge for the person like me who is very lazy in updating my blog lately. Yeah, I ran out of ideas, I lost the motivation to write, and I kinda neglect my blog and focus and facebook more.. *Sigh*

day 1 : your favorite song

day 2 : your favorite movie

day 3 : your idea for perfect first date

day 4 : your favorite photograph of your best friend

day 5 : a picture of something you want to do before you die

day 6: a photo of an animal you'd love to keep as a pet

day 7 : your dream wedding

day 8 : a song that match your mood

day 9 : a photo of the item you last purchased

day 10 : a photo of your favorite place to eat

day 11 : what's in your make up bag?

day 12 : your current relationship, if single discuss how single life is

day 13 : a picture of your favorite band or artist

day 14 : a tv show that you're currently addicted to

day 15 : something that you don't leave the house without

day 16 : a picture of someone who inspires you

day 17 : how you hope your future will be

day 18 : 5 things that irritate ME about opposite/ same sex

day 19 : a picture of something you want to do before you die

day 20 : the meaning behind your blog name

day 21 : a photo of something that makes you happy

day 22 : a letter to someone who hurt you recently

day 23 : 15 facts about you

day 24 : a photo of something that means a lot to you

day 25 : who are you ?

day 26 : a photo of somewhere you want to go

day 27 : what kind of person attracts you?

day 28 : in this past month, what have you learn?

day 29 : something that you could never get tired of doing

day 30 : a photograph of yourself today + three good things that happened in the past 30 days.

From the titles, I guess this is a good way for self discovery. I mean, yea, at least I will know how to describe myself during the job interview later when I finally graduate. So what am I waiting for? Let's type it out.. later... hehe.

PS: On the other hand, I think I may have difficulties to update my blog during the upcoming CNY holidays. So it won't be a full 30 continuous day challenge anymore T_T. And at the same time, I want to tag Mel Chua, Hawa, Ada, Mel Ed, Pamela (I can't find your link, Pam), Melod, Step Ultraman, Claire Marie, Natalia, Esteranza and others who want to do this tag.. ;)

That's all for now. Thanks again Kiki for informing me about this challenge the other day. Caiyok caiyok.. heheh..

My Open Diary~ (A Tribute to Facebook)

2011-01-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

It may be late for me to wish a happy new year but well, I still wana wish it. It's the 12th day of year 2011 and there were rumours going around that Facebook will close down on March. I may be bluffing if I say that Facebook has no impact on my life. Facebook, in fact, has affected my life so much. I treated it like my open diary. Yea, I know, a blog like this is an open diary too, but Facebook is more interactive and your friends can comment on the spot about your thoughts and you can do the same on theirs. It affects my life socially and financially (where I can just use the tagging service in facebook instead of sending sms-es). Hehe.

Why is it not such an exaggeration if I say that my university life mainly revolves around facebook?

Facebook lets me share my thoughts openly with my friends. Facebook enables me to see who has the same thought as me, and who doesn't. Sometimes, I know people will say that it is 'wu liao' and 'ciak pa eng' but I tell you, it was through facebook that I could borrow a text book from my junior, and it was through facebook I know the latest news, such as when do I need to get the result slip. It has done me more good than harm. And of course the harm that facebook did to me was to distract me from my studies, but apart from that, facebook had prosper my life socially.

But I remember there were times where facebook nearly jeopardize my relationship with my cousin and my eldest sister. I remember when my eldest sister commented on my status when I lost my cell phone, I retorted back at her comment sarcastically and I knew she was hurt. And there was another time, when I went through my cousin's facebook wall, I was oversensitive and misjudged my cousin's friend comment as racist, and I bashed my cousin's friend with hurtful comments, and consequently, I jeopardized my cousin's friendship with his friend. I did apologized at the end, but the thing happened. I couldn't erase it with an apology, right? Even my second sister and my bestie said that what I commented was too harsh. My sister told me it could be just a casual remark and good-natured jokes between friends and I took it a bit too seriously.

Despite the negative outcomes, facebook is still important to my life, especially right now., and it is a lie if I tell you that facebook closing down would not affect me.

To end this post, I would like to include the 10 most memorable posts of 2010 that I've shared in facebook.

MY OPEN THOUGHTS LAST YEAR:

7 December 2010, at 3:08 pm: I wonder if this Xmas tree that we put up in our house will survive through Xmas season. With more than a dozen cats around which hold the threat of sabotaging your Xmas tree anytime, I may not sound so paranoid for even thinking that it's might not be a crazy idea to insure every single thing in your house. (-_-")

December 3, 2010 at 10.43 pm: Got a very special gift this Xmas. GUess who won Blackberry Torch 9800 from Digi Evangelist at Nuffnang? ;) Thank God for this..! Never thought i could be this lucky! :')

November 26, 2010 at 10.51am: I wonder if the saying 'Time is Money' is still applicable. Cause sometimes we Spend and Waste our time just to Save money.. Proof: I am gonna be at KLIA from about 8 am till 7.30 pm tomorrow. Because the tickets are cheaper at that time.I desperately need something to kill the time at the airport tomorrow. sigh

November 24, 2010 at 10:32 pm: Exam abis.Pergi shopping.Beli barang.Syok sangat.Balik malam.Check facebook.Nanti mandi.Basuh baju.Jemur baju.Cadar juga.Last, packing.Benci packing.Sangat benci. Tapi terpaksa.Tak apa.Tabah saja.Fikir positif.Yang penting.Exam abis.Happy holiday. ;) Kepada yang masih exam- pesanan dua perkataan.Eh,bukan 'good luck'. Itu terlalu biasa dan klise.Dua perkataan je."Jangan jeles." :P Okay. good luck juga.Jgn marah.;)

November 5, at 11:22 pm: Sari berita utama:Seorang pelajar USM Siti Hawa Suhaili telah dianugerahkan gelaran penyumbang ekonomi negara terbaik atas jasa beliau membelanjakan lebih daripada RM100 dlm sekelip mata di Tesco Sungai Dua petang ini.Barangan yg dibeli berupa barangan kegunaan dari hujung rambut ke hujung kuku kaki.Syabas diucapkan.Dijangka pencapaian beliau ini akan direkodkan dalam Malaysia Book of Records.Sekian.

November 5, 2010 at 11:14am : is falling in love with Chinese songs, Chinese movies all over again. And she can't believe she fell in love with Korean artistes and songs too - (thanks to Steppu Chan). These are the Asian jewels she has overlooked all this while. And oh how she wish she did learned Chinese properly last time, she would have understood the meaningful lyrics of the songs. :(

November 3, 2010 at 8:02pm :· Menurut Siti Hawa Suhaili (2010), Facebook bukan sahaja digunakan oleh majikan untuk mengetahui bakal pekerja yg mereka ingin upah dengan lebih mendalam, tapi boleh digunakan oleh kita semua untuk mengenali bakal life partner dengan lebih mendalam melalui proses stalking, dan sebagainya. (actually proses stalking je - 'dan sebagainya' itu sebagai formaliti sahaja)

October 26, 2010 at 4:53pm : hari ni hari malas aku first time skip dua tutorial in a row mesti susah nak cari kerja kalau my future prospective boss nampak status ini tapi aku malas nak fikir pasal future hari ini malas sangat sampai malas nak guna fullstop dan huruf besar juga btw hari malas kamu bila ok tido dulu zzzzzz

October 21, 2010 at 9:37am: Dear God, please let me finish my Semantic assignment by today so that I will not skip the CUS gathering tomorrow.. And please, please, please make my
lecturer scribble the first letter that she learned when she check this assignment. In this, I pray, Amen.

October 16, 2010 at 11:14pm: Just when I thought my family at home have forgotten about me for not calling me more than a week, suddenly I heard my ringtone ringing.. Mama, how come you can read my mind? Miss u, miss family, miss home, miss the cats, arggh... but i don't miss the house work.. :P

Interframe: And I wonder, when facebook ends, where can I share these short thoughts with my friends? Hmm..

My Very Special Xmas Gift~

2010-12-23T22:40:00.000-08:00

Just saw the exam result I was very satisfied.

Thank you Jesus, thank you St Joseph of Cupertino for giving me a very special Xmas gift!

;)

Have a merry, blessed and joyous Christmas everyone~!!

Putting Our Trust in Him

2010-12-17T07:53:00.000-08:00

photo source: here

It's the Advent Season and what is a better Christmas present than to share some good news with my brothers and sisters in Christ, right? For all ye Christians especially Catholics, the knowledge about Chaplet of Mercy or Divine Mercy is crucial.

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy (or the Divine Mercy Chaplet) is a Catholic devotional prayer based on the visions of Polish nun Sister Faustina Kowalska. In the 1930s, Sister Faustina had received visions from the Lord asking to spread His message of mercy throughout the world. She also received instructions on how to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet. The Catholic Church teaches that anyone who recites this prayer at the hour of death will receive great mercy. Jesus also promises that anything can be obtained with this prayer, provided that it is compatible with God’s Will. This prayer can be recited with or without a rosary.

(source of information: here)

I did recite this prayers occasionally when I had the motivation, but after reading about the outcome of this prayer, I regret not reciting this prayer diligently like I should. Chaplet of Mercy is best recite at 3 am, but since I am at dreamland that hour, my family and I would recite it at 3 pm in the afternoon.

I remember, during this holiday, me, my mother and my sister Mel were reciting this prayer and we made a petition so that our beloved cat Kitty, who did not come back since the day before, to come back to us. (Yeah, we sometimes dedicate prayer to our pet). That same afternoon, about 4 pm, one hour after we prayed, Kitty came back and meowed to us. Imagine our gratefulness to the Lord that moment for answering our prayer that soon~!

There are a lot of miraculous and great effects of this prayer shared by Brother Stanley C. Villavicencio of the Philippines about this prayer. I will share with you on the coming post. Right now, for those who are not familiar with this prayer, I would like to share with you how to recite this prayer.

photo source: here

1) Begin by touching the crucifix and make the sign of the cross.

2) Start by reciting one OUR FATHER, one HAIL MARY and continue with the one APOSTLES CREED.

3) By referring to the picture, pray this at the center medal.

ETERNAL FATHER, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

4) On the 10 beads, recite this prayer:

FOR THE SAKE OF HIS SORROWFUL PASSION, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

5) On the red beads (refer to the picture) where we usually recite the Our Father during the Rosary, you recite the same prayer just like at no 3.

ETERNAL FATHER, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

6) Continue the pattern of praying ten clear beads followed by a red bead until you come back to the center medal.

7) On the center medal pray three times:

HOLY GOD, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

8) Include this prayer after step 7.

'Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your Holy Will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

9) End by touching the crucifix and pray The Sign of the Cross.

SOURCE OF PRAYING STEPS: HERE

Enjoy this Christmas gift from me and don't forget to share this gift with your other brothers and sisters in Christ too yeah~! Have a blessed Christmas in advance~!

If You Really Knew Me...

2010-12-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

If you really knew me, you would know that ....... (fill in the blank)

If you were to utter those words out, what would you fill in the blank?

This is a phrase adapted from a programme called 'Challenge Day' , a workshop which was conducted by an organization (Challenge Day Org) at high schools around USA. I first knew about this programme through the Oprah Winfrey Show, oh yeah my favourite talk show of all time. Now it is aired on MTV with the title 'If you really knew me'.

"On March 5, 2001 at 9:20 a.m., 15-year-old Charles Andrew Williams pulled a .22 caliber pistol from his book bag at Santana High School in Santee, California and fired more than 30 shots into a crowd of students in and around the boys’ restroom." (source: here, a report prepared by Richard D. Reo, Jr.)

"According to The 2003 National School Climate Survey, more than 800,000 students are verbally harassed every year in American high schools because of their race. "Last year we had a whole bunch of fights between black people and white people," says Dorian, a junior at Monroe. "They had the police at the school." (source: here, regarding Monroe High School and the other high schools in USA)

Challenge Day programme was created to curb high school killings (which involved shooting), suicide,students' depression, bully and racial tension. To curb this, the wall that separated the students through the typical labels such as 'popular clique', 'class clowns', 'athletes', 'nerds,' and 'emo kids' has to be broken.

So have you ever bullied someone, hated someone, or loathed someone just because he or she is different from you? Have you ever teased, made fun of someone merely because of the way he or she looks?

photo source: here

The picture depicting students from different cliques opening up to each other.. ;)

So if you think you have done the things above, you should watch this programme. It is aired on MTV, but you can also watch the video online at this link or know it briefly through this video..

The effectiveness of this programme to change the students can be found here.

Pursuit for Career HappYness

2010-12-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

photo source: here

My mom always tell me not to be too choosy while looking for a job.

I know that. I know I am considered choosy because the first priority for me in choosing a job for me is whether I like that job or not. Not the salary nor the classification of the job whether it is blue collar or white collar [I am even clueless which job falls on which category (-_-") ].Whether people will classify the job as good one or not, as long as I like it and it's a clean job, then I'm on for it. I don't give a damn about what others think of my job because it's my job, my career and it is for me to decide whether it is a right job for me (or not).

I am already feeling the heat of job hunting cause I will graduate next year. Most of my peers already had their own careers and I realized that I am going to join them in the real adult world soon - the working world. No institution like university to protect you anymore, no privilege of getting student price for the services that you want to purchase, nothing.

My mom suggested me to continue with Master and she told me not to worry so much about the school fee but worry more about my future. It's nice to hear some comforting words like that but at the moment, I am done with studying. I mean, there's more to life than education, right? Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against education but for me, education is not only gained at class and lectures, but experience in the real world is an education itself.

I would like to continue Master if I can make time for it, but it won't be right after my degree I guess. I have not decide what I want to Master in, which field I like the best, so why indulge myself in something which I am still unsure of, right?

Personally, I would like to gain experience in a job first before I go for my dream career. My dream career is to be a writer, columnist or a journalist - anything to do with writing or being creative. Then again, before pursuing for this dream career, the job that I would like to experience first is the job that my senior is doing, which is to serve the community. I mean, what job is cooler than to get paid for doing good deeds for others right? Some would even do it for free.

Still, I have to think it over. I want my future career not to revolve around earning money or getting promotion alone, but something which is more important like it involves my passion, gives me personal satisfaction and not to forget, giving back to the community.

So, what is your definition of a career happiness? Is it a stable job, stable income, promotion, or doing what you enjoy doing? I hope it is the last one.

Whatever it is, I hope your pursuit for career happiness will meet a good outcome.

Every Boy's Got One...

2010-12-05T07:16:00.000-08:00

I'm in my book-maddening mode again this holiday - the only time where I got the mood to spend times with novels and such.

photo source: here

The novel I just recently finished reading was 'Every Boy's Got One' by Meg Cabot. This is the third title in 'The Boy Series'. This third title was just as good as the previous title - Boy Meets Girl. The way Cabot narrated this story and the other stories in this series was truly creative - she was using the medium of notes, diary, e-mails, sms-es, etc to tell this story from different characters - which gave us the chance to know the viewpoints of different people. It was hilarious - I mean the diary and the e-mails' contents. I guess Cabot was convincing when writing some notes from the viewpoint of the male characters. That's what I call a good author.

This story is narrated mainly from the viewpoint of Jane Harris - the maid of honour/best friend of Holly the bride. Jane was helping Holly to elope to Italy with Holly's boyfriend, Mark Levine, who also brought along his best friend Cal Langdon to be his best man. Jane and Cal had totally different view about the elopement, Jane was totally supportive of the marriage while Cal, thinks that it's too early for Mark to settle down.

Actually, this story was inspired by Cabot's own elopement back in Italy too, but creative Cabot was not sticking to the cliche of having the bride as the main character or narrator; instead she narrated this story from the viewpoint of the maid of honour.

About the main characters, both Jane and Cal are very different but yet very similar - Jane loves cats and Cal (though he won't admit it) actually loves cats too. They are both very successful, Jane is the artist who created and drew Wondercats while Cal is a journalist who wrote best-selling nonfiction book.

When will Jane change her negative view about Cal? And when will Cal start to believe in love and marriage again?

Ah.. I won't give you the answer to the question above. You have to find out yourself by (duh!) reading this book..

If you are into romance and comedy, this is the perfect book for you. ;)

Surreal Moment in my Blogging Experience

2010-12-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

Interframe (credits): Thanks to Cik Kiki for teaching me how to grab and save picture from the web.. Thanks to sis Mel for updating my edit post so that I can use this ~~canceling function~~.. ;)Without you guys, I would be left in the dark of how to blog in an advanced manner lol.

If only words can be used to express what I felt after receiving this e-mail...

Look who won on week 1.. *wink2*

The adjectives like speechless, unbelievable, superexcited, can't breathe, Xmas feeling mode on, sure would come out...

I WON A BLACKBERRY TORCH 9800 (!!!!)

For my blog entry for a contest held by Nuffnang and Digi - one of my privilege to join this competition for being a Digi angel.

A few minutes later, after digesting this news from the e-mail, ahem, it's a must for me to ~~announce~~ share the good news and spread the joy around on facebook. Thanks for all who congratulated me and were happy for me.

Can't believe I received two phone calls right after sharing this good news on facebook. My bestie Amanda called within 5 minutes all the way from Kuching after I posted this status on my facebook just to congratulate me on this winning. That was so sweet of you to call in the midst of study week. All the best to you girls on your exam yea. Pray to St Joseph of Cupertino. After the phone call from Ada, I received another call from a friend of mine, Mark (bukan nama sebenar) who happens to be a Blackberry and gadget geek - who called all the way from Penang to confirm this and asked me how I won it besides congratulating lol. I guess the aura of Blackberry Torch 9800 must be that big for a Blackberry ~~maniac~~ expert to call me to confirm this. Mark, iboh jeles k.. (itupun kalo ko baca post ini hua3) I will let you see it secara live when I finally got it later. Hahah. Ok kidding.

OMG. Okay, enough with all that excitement. I hope I am not gonna jinx this. *paranoid mode on*

I hope no bad luck will come after I became so happy for this. *superstitious mode on*

Thank you guys! *touched mode on*

I felt like just hitting a first prize lottery or getting straight As for my public exams.

Thank God for all the blessings!

Thank you Nuffnang and Digi!

OMG I gotta do some charity (like washing the dishes and clean the gates) after this.

Legacy (Private Series) - Book Maddening Mode

2010-12-01T06:18:00.000-08:00

photo source: here

When I looked at the cover of this book, I knew that this book is going to be another typical popular rich girls involved in sorority drama + scandal + mystery + power and all the elements of students attending private school. The good thing about reading a typical genre is that you know what it's going to be like, it may not give you so much suspense like Sidney Sheldon books but it's not going to bore you to death either. Reading some typical book is like ordering that dish that you already know how it taste like but still you order it for the sake of eating it again and to make yourself full. And that was exactly what I was doing. I have expectation towards this book, but if it doesn't meet up to my expectation, then that's the downside of reading something typical. And I digressed...

So let's get back to the main focus, which is to give my review on this book.

Okay, so this book, LEGACY, is one of the PRIVATE series.

I guessed by reading LEGACY, I've skipped the earlier PRIVATE series and left blur blur with all the characters mentioned in LEGACY. That's the thing annoying about reading book series. You skip the first volume or the other volumes before that particular volume that you are reading, you are going to be left in the lurch.

The story revolves around Reed Brennan, a scholarship student who entered the prestigious Easton Academy Private School. Coming from a middle class family, she is not the typical private school rich girl type, and of course SO TOTALLY not the Billing girls type. Billing House is the sorority house for the posh and rich girls who are the member of the Billing underground society. The society is so exclusive, you have to be popular, rich and daring to be one of the Billings, but in this volume of the PRIVATE series, Reed is elected the president after the death of Cheyenne Martin, the previous Billing president. I guessed in the previous series, Reed had proven herself to be worthy of being Billing girls. In this volume, Reed could not get over the fact that Cheyenne sent her an e-mail blaming Reed for her suicide before she died.

And during this year, it was the first time the Billing girls and the students from Easton Academy were not invited to Legacy, a very exclusive and grand party that got people talking. Only the third generation of private school attendees are eligible to be invited to this party. Thus, as the new president of Billings, Reed had to find a way to get the girls and her friends to the party, though she herself was sure she was not eligible to attend it herself.

At the same time, in the midst of all that troubles, Reed felt that she was being watched, but by who?

So how did she manage to get the girls to the party? And who is that mysterious person who threw the LEGACY party and deliberately left Easton students out of the guest list? And was Reed dreaming or being a plain paranoid when she felt that she was being watched?

Read this book and better, the whole PRIVATE series, and you will find the answers. Or else you will left hanging with no answer like me for just depending on this one book to read. Hmmph.

Dear 208 binti Harapan 25

2010-11-25T08:21:00.000-08:00

Dear 208,

I am leaving you tomorrow. I have lived with you for one semester. And you are really a warm haven for me. I'm sorry for filling you up with rubbish. Or junks. Whatever you call it. But for me they are treasures. Treasures I've been keeping since my first year. And now bit by bit, I am throwing them away. Because I realized, that without these 'treasures' I can still lived. Ugh, and I digressed.

When I first heard your name at the registration office, I felt that you are kinda familiar. No wonder. You were my senior's (Matthlessa) haven too. And I began to know you more when I started to live with you and in you.

It's tough at first. Whenever it's time to sleep, I could hear guys screaming insanely from the opposite, where your mother's twin brother, Harapan 26, stood. I know, as one of the approximately 300 children of Harapan 25, you have no say in this matter. You are usually gentle, and tolerate towards Uncle Harapan 26. Thank God too I am an easy sleeper. I could fall asleep easily, anywhere, anytime, regardless of how many noises and distractions there are.

At first, I treated you with care. Biasalah kan, kalau baru berkenalan, memang layan sehabis baik. Then, when I am getting busier and lazier, I began to neglect you. And bring more junks that may harm your health, 208. I am truly sorry 208. I never realized that too many junks can be harmful to you too, though you're not human.

Then, I began to complain about your mouth. Sometimes, it's hard to shut your mouth. I had to pull hard to make your lips closed together. And that made me pissed-off cause I thought it's easy to open and shut your mouth when I have the keys. But still, it's not guaranteed.

You've been so kind to me 208, but still, that doesn't mean I've forgotten about your half sister, 339. Though 339 is not as reachable as you are, the atmosphere is quieter when sleeping, where I faced the lake of Harapan instead.

And now, last but not least, I want to thank you, 208. And a deep apology for what you are experiencing now. I'm causing you to be dusty and messy now. I hope you don't mind 208. After tomorrow, perhaps you will new faces, whom I am unsure whether she will treat you nicer than I do.. Take care dear.

Regards,

Maureen

Daring You to Document...

2010-11-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

It's that time of the year again...

for...

*drum rolls*

Yeah baby.. Freedom Film Festival 2010~!

And yes, I am now a KOMAS crew. Though temporarily.. ;) hehe.

Don't believe? Here's the proof. Me and my two lovely seniors.

I got to know about this volunteer thingy from a friend of mine, Man Lee. Though it was in the exam season, I could not lose this opportunity to participate in something happening like this. So voila, me, two seniors and two juniors jumped up to this opportunity to volunteer in Freedom Film Festival 2010 at Kompleks Penyayang Pulau Pinang, and the rest of the process, as they say, is history...

The two of us with Sarah, one of the organizers.

Counter girls in action!

Me and my seniors & juniors kept switching roles and taking turns in our duty so that each of us could have the opportunity to watch the movies.

We switched between the duty as registration receptionist and the usher - which is also a good thing to train us to be more versatile (hak3) besides being not bored to death to stuck with one job the whole day.

The three winning films for this year are namely;
1) Pilih (by Loo Que Lin)
2) Hak Dinafikan (by Abri Yok Chopil & Shafie bin Dris)
3) Kisah Tauke Mancis & Minyak Tumpah (by Sheridan Mahavera & Siti Nurbayah Nadzmi)

Pilih is briefly about the student body election in Malaysian campuses and how the AUKU (Akta Universiti and Kolej Universiti) had put a boundary to the students' freedom and rights in decision-making.

Hak Dinafikan, on the other hand, portrayed how the orang Asli protested against a proposed new land policy, and among the faces there I recognized is Kak Tijah, one of the orang Asli active spokeperson.

Kisah Tauke Mancis & Minyak Tumpah depicted the story of the extremism regarding the relocation of a temple - and how some intolerance occur among neighbours in a neighbourhood. This film is somewhat daring for portraying a little sensitive issue regarding races and religions.

Among the three, I liked Pilih the best because it was something I can relate to, which is the student body election. I never really knew my rights as a university student until I watched this film.

There were a lot of other films but I did not get to watch them because it was about the overseas countries.

Quite a crowd turning up during the night of 13th November. ;)

Last but not least, say hi to the friendly usher, my junior Vera. ;)

Actually, KOMAS did come to Sarawak for this FFF screening at Miri but the feedback was cold. Not many who turned up for the screening. Perhaps the issues being shown were not that relevant to Sarawakians compared to here at Peninsular. Thus, we Sarawakians were encouraged to propose and idea for short films to document it back there so that the other Sarawakians can relate to it. Issues? haha. I have no trouble looking for issues as the first issue back in my hometown Sibu would be about gangsterism. How many of us Sibu people are daring to do some short film about that? Hmm..

What I can conclude from my experience here was that there are many issues around the country but many do not dare to document or even to speak about it. Most of us just kept quiet, since it did not affect us directly. Well, I am one of them. When I saw injustice, I rage and vent my anger over it but I did not do anything which may lessen or even make a little difference to that injustice.

Wow you may say that I start to involve politics here but that was not it. I want to talk about social responsibility. Since I couldn't do something about it, all I can do for now is to blog about it.

And yeah, I had fun volunteering at FFF for the priceless experience!

PS: Thanks KOMAS (as if they are reading my blog lol but anyway) for the free t-shirt, free food and the pocket money lol. Thanks for rewarding me for doing something which I would do for free!

DiGi BlackBerry Torch 9800 – Hotter and Smarter

2010-11-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

Greetings people~

I am in the mood of story-telling now.

Let me tell you about a story of a vain queen and her magic mirror. The setting for this story is during this current period, this current era. But this particular queen never watches Miss World or Miss Universe, thus she was very delusional and thought that she indeed was the hottest creature in the planet. She was so outdated, and so was her magic mirror.

Photo source: here.

Every morning, the queen would stand in front of the magic mirror and said
"Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the hottest creature in this world?"

Because the magic mirror was totally outdated, it would always answer the queen with the same "Yes, your majesty. You are indeed the hottest creature in the planet."

And after hearing that particular utterance from the magic mirror, the queen would be happy and contented - because her aim to be the hottest creature in the planet was fulfilled.

One day, after her plastic surgery, the queen upgraded her magic mirror because she wanted to be sure that she was still the hottest -even among the creatures of all the other planets. To upgrade her mirror efficiency, she subscribed to DG Smart Plan, after the advice of her surgeon of course.

The queen was very excited to use her updated version of her magic mirror for the first time.
And now, she asked the mirror

"Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the hottest creature in the galaxy?"

Suddenly a yellow man whose appearance looks like a member of the Teletubbies came into the view of the queen.

Photo source: here

"The hottest creature eh?"
the Yellow Man from the magic mirror began.

"It's Jessica Alba~!" he answered excitedly.

Photo source: here.

Upon hearing this, the queen was furious.
"What? I can't believe this!"

"Ah.. slow down. Please my queen, do not be furious. I was just joking. The hottest creature in the galaxy of course is..."

The queen was very anxious and she expected her name -
but instead the Yellow Man uttered..

jeng jeng jeng

"BLACKBERRY TORCH 9800!!"

The queen was speechless while the Yellow Man continued to talk about the hotness of the
Blackberry torch 9800.

"Blackberry torch is the world's first Blackberry with QWERTY keypad and touchscreen. It is hotter than any smartphones ever existed before. Why it's hotter, you may ask, your Majesty. Well, here are the reasons why."

"My queen, instead of letting your hotness be reflected temporarily on this humble magic mirror, with this smartphone, your majesty can do unlimited camwhoring using the 5MP camera and with its capacity of 8GB memory. If your majesty thinks that 8 GB memory is still not enough to store up all your files and vain pictures (ahem), your majesty can expand its memory with a microSD card up till 32 GB!"

"Oh..." The queen nodded. "What else is so special about this so-called hot stuff?"

"Well," the Yellow Man continued. "Besides the camera, you can always update yourself by browsing the net through this smartphone. It has faster and richer browsing, where Your Majesty can manage multiple open websites with tabbed browsing. It also have the hot features, namely 3G, GPRS and EDGE."

"Oh" the queen nodded.

"But gee, Yellow Man, though I am a queen, ahem, I have a teeny problem with my budget. You know, after my plastic surgery and magic mirror upgrade and all that, I don't have much money to buy this smartphone though I really, really am interested to buy it... Because it's really, really hot..." The queen said with a sad face.

"Fret not, your highness. This smartphone though its price is RM 2299, but since you had subscribed to DG smartplan, you can get this smartphone at cheaper price. Let me tell you something. It's better for you, your Highness, to subscribe to this plan for 24 months so that you can buy this hot smartphone at only RM1499, which is RM800 cheaper than its original price!"

"Really?" the queen was very interested to be the owner of the hot stuff.

"Yes, your Highness. I won't lie to you. Besides there are other benefits of signing up for this smartplan as you can see from this magic mirror,"
the Yellow Man said as he depicted these information on the magic mirror.

Why this DG smartplan is the smart plan for you, you and you:

The next thing we know, the queen was spotted by the paparazzi at the nearest retail shop, purchasing her very first hottest stuff in the universe and galaxy, Blackberry Torch 9800 while signing up for the 24 month DG smartplan contract for 24 months.

So, what are you waiting for?

Be SMART, but don't forget be HOTTER, people~.

For more information, it's just a click away!

M for Malash

2010-11-03T11:48:00.001-07:00

Daripada tajuk di atas, anda dah tau status aku sekarang - malash tahap cipan (walaupun aku tak tau apa itu cipan sebab aku malash nak ambik tau). Orait. Mungkin sebab nama aku mula dengan huruf M kot, sebab tu la malas. (Salahkan nama dan bukannya peribadi atas kemalasan, bravo Maureen~!)

Walaupun berada dalam keadaan malas, aku tak dapat tidur oh terima kasih kepada teh tarik Kedai Makan Nazri tadi.

Dalam kemalasan ini, aku tengah sibuk stalking seorang blogger yang aku dah pernah discover blog dia, cuma belum sampai tahap check post dia dalam archive satu persatu. Namun entah kenapa sekarang ni aku rajin check postnya satu persatu. Wah alangkah bagusnya kalau kerajinan aku mengestalk blogger ini aku aplikasikan ke dalam Sociolinguistic, Discourse Analysis, Semantics, dan sebagainya. Tapi apakah daya. Blognya memang penuh dengan tulisan dan kadang-kadang I have zero tolerance for tulisan kalau font dia kurang daripada 11.

Time aku malas baca blog bertulis, aku beralih pula kepada blog ini yang ada tulisan tapi kurang tulisan.

Orait, sampai di sini sahaja pertemuan kita. Aku malash mau ca....kap..... lebih..........................

Sedang Merajinkan Diri....

2010-10-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

.....untuk membaca blog-blog yang dipromotekan oleh Step (blog yang Step perkenalkan ni biasanya blog yang suci dan berilmiah ahem) dan juga updates yang Hawa mention pasal blog kengkawan yang cool sekalian (ini bukan bodek). Serius aku alpa dalam mengupdatekan diri dengan membaca blog kerana sibuk berfacebook. Dan juga sibuk untuk tidur petang. Dan sibuk untuk menyibuk benda yang tak patut aku sibukkan. Blog sendiri pun update once in a bluemoon. Ok tiada alasan untuk justify kealpaan aku. Aku bersalah sebab malas. Noktah.

Ok, sori sebab ini bukan post yang ilmiah walaupun exam dah dekat. Good luck everyone in your exam.

Erm by the way, happy Halloween? :S

Advanced Wish

2010-10-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo~! Come on guys.. Let us play a guessing game~!

Let us guess which girl among these people who made 30th October every year significant?

TA DAA~!

Let me mark her face with love...

Hmmm..

jeng jeng jeng

ta daa~

here she is~

na...

Yeah, so we did spotted the girl who made 30th October a significant date.

And she's our bestie - Stephanie Hermon.

She's going to turn 22 this 30th October (Saturday)

A double number age~!

To Stephanie a.k.a Deng Deng hihi:

Girl, I wish I will be there during your birthday just like in the pictures above, to share the joy during your birthday with your beloved girls (Ada, Sally, Pam, and the rest whom I couldn't list down all the names) :

Since I can't be there to witness you blowing your candles on your cake LIVE during your birthday unless through pics posted on facebook by one of the lovely girls [ you girls know who you are ;)]

And I can't try your cake ahahaha (takde kerja lain kan?) or I can't even be the photographer during your birthday (macam la skill camwhore aku best sangat wahahaha)

so I guess thanks to internet I am gonna do it online... hehe

So dear Step,

(picture grabbed from Pamela's facebook album)

I invite you to blow these candles on this cake which I prepared a.k.a googled
for you...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIRL~!

ALL THE BEST~

BEST WISHES TO YOU FROM PENANG TO KUCHING...

Have fun with your girls yea... ;)

So happy birthday Deng~

:)

May God bless u always..

And see you this year-end...

;)

(Gotta post this birthday post a day earlier cause I'm gonna have a sleepover at a wireless-LESS place this weekend so can't online to wish you on your birthday itself huhu)

Kids, I Ain't Kidding You~

2010-10-16T23:49:00.000-07:00

Imagine... you have prepared your lessons the night before. You read the Gospel like you never did before just because you wanted to relate your teaching with the Gospel today. You had planned what you wanted to teach, what you wanted to mention during the class. You wanted to do your best in your lesson today, but then, when you entered the class, there was one kid, kept running around the class with noises and gave a lot of troubles for the class. You wanted to ignore him, but he won't let you. When you give him attention, he was rebelling against you. You are clueless what he wants from you.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meet Ray (bukan nama sebenar) a kid who won't let you teach in peace, and yours truly, a part-time Catechism teacher who is truly clueless about handling kids like Ray.

It was Elo and my turn today to teach the Catechism class to the Standard 2 pupils at the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows. And guess what, I thought Ray could have behaved better today than my last experience with him, but boy I was so wrong. His negative vibes was spreading to the other kids, but thank God, really, really thank God that I had the lollipops that Claire gave to me that kept some of them well-behaved through out the lesson.

I threatened not to give them the lollipops if they do not behave - and it worked *wink2*- but not with Ray. He was oh-so-impossible. (-_-") His little brother, Morrie (bukan nama sebenar) was more well-behaved than him - as far as I remember, and I ain't sure what to do with him. I guess I need help from my sister next year if we met him again.

Well, what we did today was that, I asked Ray to lead the opening prayer by reading the prayer prepared in the text book. He was trying to be funny at first but when I said the word 'Lollipop', he began to behave... but for a little while. (-_-")

Then, after like teaching them about the two lessons from the book, I asked them to write their own prayers - because at the start of the lesson, when I asked them about the prayer they recited before they eat, all the answers I got was Hail Mary and Our Father. So, I wanted them to be creative and try to compose their own prayers. I mean, I want them to pray from their heart, and not from their memory. I mean, how many vocabulary of the Our Father and Hail Mary that a kid really understand? Right? I didn't understand most of the vocab when I was their age. Yea, I am aware that they need to know about the prayers but let's not limit their prayers - let them pray too for what they want from their heart.

Some of them did good job in composing their own prayer while some of the kids' own prayer was kinda cute. Lol. "God, please help me. Please God." -- An excerpt from Harry 's (bukan nama sebenar) prayer. Then there was this girl, Nicky (bukan nama sebenar), where her prayer really was the best among the rest so far. Her prayer was like "God, please help me. Please help the people with no hand, please help the people with no home." I was like, "Wow, look kids. Her prayer is good because she is not only praying for herself but for others too. I want you to include others in your prayer."

The kids in the class, each of them is different from the other. There are hyperactive while there is some who's so quiet.

Overall, my two times experience with the kids were really good, though Ray is kinda out of control. Maybe it's just that phase, that naughty phase of your childhood. Once he grow older, he will be more in control perhaps. *cross fingers*

We were really blessed to have the chance to experience teaching these kids. Hopefully the next semester we will be more prepared to face the children. ;)

Moral Dilemma

2010-09-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

I will have an important test tomorrow, but because I need to have peace with my mind, I had to spill out what had been bothering me today. Huh~

On my way to my 3 pm class today, while I was trying to cross the road, I saw a guy on a wheelchair, using both his hands forcefully to push forward his wheelchair at the side of the road. His wheelchair was not the automatic one, but it was the manual one, where you have to use your hands energy to push it forward. I just looked at him, wondering whether I should help him or not. When he finally passed by me, I didn't help me, instead I smiled at him.

He didn't smile back. Perhaps it was because he didn't know me or he was too tired to smile. After I managed to cross the road, I regretted for not helping him. I mean, probably he needed my help, and obviously a smile didn't help. I kept thinking about what if I came late to class? Hmm.. I should be more practical next time, instead of becoming a hypocrite. What's the use of regretting and being sad for not helping someone when I had the chance? He had been pushing his own wheelchair from God knows where, the Aman hostel or another hostel further down.

On my way to the class, everything was blurry, I didn't notice anybody, even a junior of mine, aka my CUS granddaughter, Lia, when she called me. (psst, sorry Lia, I was in a deep thought just now huhu and God knows how many person I had ignored on the way to class) I managed to reply a brief smile. I kept thinking about what I could have done to make a small difference, and I blew it away.

That's not the only dilemma I have for today. In the evening during a dinner with my friends Lee Ying and Kim Hong, I heard the news of the death of my friend's mother. I was shocked. I mean, I just mentioned my friend's name out of nowhere and BAM, I heard a bad news about her mother. I didn't dare to send her a condolence message just yet before I really confirm the news. It was really frustrating. She was probably in a deep sorrow now. And I couldn't do anything about it.

But everything happens for a reason. Haiz. I have yet to find the reason. I wish I could do something about it than just to sit there and contemplate all these things theoretically. And to wheelchair guy, wherever you are, have a safe journey around USM. If we were to meet again, I won't just smile and walk away, but I will try to approach you and to offer a help, provided you need it. And to my dear friend, if only you read this, I want to let you know that we at CUS here care for you. Be strong ya girl.

Only You Know the Answer

2010-08-27T08:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the easiest, simplest question, which did not require any reading would be the hardest question of all. It became THE million dollar question.

Today, during the sleepover gathering for the Catholic Undergraduate Society at FM house, I was struck by the question asked by Claire to Helen for the snake and ladder game. It was a very simple question, but only a few can answer it honestly and be truly confident to answer it, at least in my case.

The question is not about "Who's the love of your life", but it sounded like this:

"When was the happiest moment of your life?"

It was really simple and direct, but it's hard to determine when it was, either because you have too many happy moments to choose from or it was because you never had a perfect joyous moment in your life. There could be some flaws here and there which flawed your happiest moment.

In my case, honestly, so far during these past few years, I didn't experience one perfect happy moment. Why? How do I determine this?

It's because I still felt the insecurity or there's something missing whenever I am involved in a certain situation. In my own definition of happiness, it's just not about smiling or laughing, or enjoying a moment. Perhaps, enjoying a moment could carry the meaning of happy, but not THE happiest moment. As Claire had stated during the gathering, she described the happiest moment of your life as the flawless moment, there's NOTHING which could annoy or upset you at that very moment, which you could described as rainbow moment.

Though it was Helen who was required to answer the question, I was in my deep thought, trying to recall my own happiest moment. All I could think of was my childhood. During the simplest, most uncomplicated moments of my life. An ice cream could make my day. But now, it takes a lot more than that to make me feel blissful in and out. I guess as we grew older, we needed something abstract more than something concrete as it won't last forever.

When I tried to recall my adult life, I couldn't really determine when I am happy or not. There were times when I pretended to be happy just to erase my sadness, or not to worry my family and friends, and there were times when I am happy but only after a long set of worriness and fatigues. It was like I had to pay a very high price before I get to enjoy. [For example, it's like you had to pay for the roller coaster ride before you can take a ride on them.] In short, sometimes, I too became confused whether I was truly happy or pretended to be happy during certain moments because I was falling into this make-believe so-called happy moments.

On the other hand, it's easier to determine when I am sad than happy cause nobody would want to pretend to be sad but we always tried our best to look happy even though when we were not.

But as I think back, the way to make yourself happy is to just live life simply. Desiring too much and expecting too much out of lives can lead to lots of disappoinments if your desires couldn't be fulfilled.

And to determine the moment when you are really happy, it's the moment when you can't help smiling widely until you cry because you are so touched by the happiness and also because you regret that the moment won't last forever.

And I hope that everyone can find their answers to this million dollar question.