My Happiest Moment

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

laughed without caring about people around you, 

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

 image grabbed from here

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

image grabbed from here

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

One question that could sum all these questions up is,

when was the happiest moment of your life?

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

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

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

MY HAPPIEST MOMENT!

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

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

 

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

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

(-_-")

Yeah. So much for my happy ending, huh. 

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

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

Prayer to St Joseph

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

so prompt before the throne of God. 

I place in you all my interest and desires. 

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

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

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

here below your heavenly power, I may offer my thanksgiving 

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

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

I dare not approach while He reposes near your heart. 

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

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

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

 Image grabbed from here.

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

How Old are You, Mentally?

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

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

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

No.

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

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

Which brings me to a chain of new questions. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impression and Intimidation

First day of class could mean two things.

First impression and intimidation.

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

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

 

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

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

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

I was dumbfounded. Why did she call my name?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Passionate Peyton & My Passiveness to Pursue

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


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

The casts of One Tree Hill

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

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

Peyton Sawyer's style

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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